The scope of the present study limits itself to the noun phrase and to the major element ordering of the sentence. Since the word order in Old English was relatively free as compared with that of Middle English or Modern English the discussion here is...
The scope of the present study limits itself to the noun phrase and to the major element ordering of the sentence. Since the word order in Old English was relatively free as compared with that of Middle English or Modern English the discussion here is keyed around OE and comparisons with Mid E and Mod E are brought into it so that the historical changes in the word order may be clear to see.
The references used here are some old English anthologies, excerpts from Wyclif's Bible, Chancer and Milton, Miltonian English is by and large the same as present-day English and even Wyclif's Bible is quite close to Mod E. Such is the reason why this paper emphasizes OE structures; and Mid E and Mod E are used to show how the changes have been brought about. Actually the examples from Miltonian English are not used here. Instead, Mod E translations are given as examples for comparison.