In the Spotlight

To a certain extent, the syntax of Early Modern English agrees with aspects of Present-day English.

For example, the basic word order of subject-verb-object has manifested itself during this period.

With the loss of inflectional endings, a fixed word order was necessary to mark syntactic functions and relations between the components inherent in phrases and sentences.

The exercises of this unit will deal with

- The rise of periphrastic do

- The development of modals and negations

- The forming of syntactic patterns in general