From Where Did the Death of the English Inflection Come? Janusz Malak University of Opole, Poland ABSTRACT: Modern English is a deflectional language, i.e. the one in which inflection plays a marginal role in the production and interpretation of linguistic products. This fact appears to be surprising if one takes into account the fact that the initial stages of the language spoken on the British Isles between the 5th and 11th century, i.e. Old English, was an inflectional language and there has never been any communicational breach between successive generations of English speakers down to the present time. The Middle English period between 1150 and 1450 is the stage in the history of the English language during which the inflection almost disappeared. Generally, it is phonological phenomena which are held responsible for the disappearance of inflection in Middle English. Here this approach is termed ‘intrasystemic scenario.’ Taking into account the linguistic facts coming from different Middle English dialectal areas, an approach is proposed which is based on conditions which are extraneous to the system. This approach is termed ‘extrasystemic scenario.’ The two scenarios are compared and evaluated. KEYWORDS: inflection, Old English dialects, Middle English dialects, Open Syllable Lengthening, Trisyllabic Shortening, Case, Gender 1. Introductory remarks The English language is a deflectional language, which means that inflection as the means of conveying grammatical information plays a rather marginal role. The deflectional character of the English grammar is more surprising if one takes into account the fact that the earliest predecessor of Modern English, i.e. Old English, was a fully inflectional language. If one takes into consideration the fact that there has never been in the history of English any communication breach between the subsequent generations of people speaking this language, the sources of the deflectional character of English appear to be an issue worth exploring. The Middle English period can be conveniently treated as the transitory period between the earliest stage of the language used by Germanic tribes that came to live on the British Isles in the 5th century and the English language as it is generally spoken in different
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