 After the radical inflectional losses that characterised the previous periods of English, so few inflections were left that from about 1500 onwards, most of the grammar of English was carried by syntax rather than morphology. In general, inflectional morphology in early modern English was the same as that of present-day English. Nevertheless, there were a number of distributional and inventorial changes in the inflectional system of early modern English. They concerned the systems of declension and conjugation and reduced the degree of synthesis of early modern English even towards the value of present-day English. Let us start with the discussion of declension. Early modern English was no longer a true synthetic language. In many ways, it had become an almost analytic language relying on word order and particles to indicate the relationships among the words within a sentence. The system of declensions, that is, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, determiners, etc., was almost identical to that of middle English. The following word classes were declined in early modern English. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns, determiners were no longer inflicted. Now, in looking at nouns, we can find that essentially, noun morphology of early modern English was the same as that of present-day English and it inherited all aspects from middle English. As you can see here, this is the inflectional paradigm of the middle English noun hund, present-day English dog or hound. And there were two cases in middle English and so they were in early modern English, just like in present-day English. The oblique case hound, the genitive case hounds in the singular and almost the same in the plural. All traces of grammatical gender were gone and the distinction between singular and plural that was fused with the case ending was the only one that remained the same. The only differences between early modern English and present-day English were the use of a few plurals in en which have since disappeared, words like hosen, hosen, ayn, for example, and the somewhat indifferent use of the genitive case. By early modern English, the s-genitive, that you can see over here, for both singular and plural nouns was almost standard. However, there are interesting differences between the use in early modern English and present-day English. In many cases, the phonological representation of the genitive, that is these three variants over here, this phonological interpretation was misinterpreted as a contraction of the possessive adjective his and the preceding noun. So something like Mrs. Sands is made, where the genitive s, which was phonologically represented as is, was wrongly interpreted as Mrs. Sands his made. And this misinterpretation spread to the other possessive adjectives by analogy. So we could find examples like these, John Browne, his meadow, and Lucilla, her company. Now, for the Germans who watch this video, does that ring a bell? In German, there is a substandard genitive variant that is quite similar. Well, just think about it. Let's now look at adjectives. Now, by the end of the Middle English period, adjectives had lost all their inflectional endings, except the suffixes for gradation. So there were the suffixes, well, the base form with no affix, then the comparative form and the superlative forms. The rules for adjectival gradation, however, had not fully stabilized. For example, the use of the comparative and the superlative forms either is inflected or as periphrastic forms had not yet reached its present-day English rigidity. These examples here from Shakespeare would not occur in present-day English. The laying-est knave and may unworthy-est hand and then more and most were used as intensifiers, not as markers of gradation. In early modern English, this intensifying function was obviously felt much more strongly in forms such as these over here. The bassist and most purist shape and cameo more nearer. Well, these forms can be found in the works of William Shakespeare whose drama served as a primary source for the development of early modern English. The system of pronouns underwent a number of changes during the early modern English period, both in the system of personal pronouns and in other types of pronouns. The most obvious change was the loss of the second person singular. From Middle English, early modern English had preserved the pronominal distinction between the second person singular, though expressing intimacy and affection, used among others to address children and animals, and the second person plural, yo, used to address people of higher rank. In early modern English, this distinction gradually disappeared. During the 17th century, yo, now notice that the pronunciation had changed, gradually supplanted though, later thou, in the speech of gentry and citizenry, and by the end of the 18th century, thou and thee forms had dropped out almost completely. The only uses of thou and thee were in poetry and dialectical use, especially in the lower classes. In addition to this, early modern English developed today's system of relative and reflexive pronouns. Middle English had no relative pronoun as such. Instead, it used the indeclinable particle that, that supplanted old English fe, as an all-purpose pronoun. Among others, as a relative pronoun. By the end of the 18th century, the present-day English pattern was established in all essentials, but in practice, especially the choice of reference, varied during early modern English itself. The following system of pronouns, of relative pronouns, emerged. With the exception of as a substandard form, it was formally identical with that of present-day English, even though the use of the relative pronouns was far more flexible than today, so that these early modern English examples would no longer be grammatical in present-day English. The mistress, which a serif, and her lips, who in pure modesty, still blush. These examples wouldn't be found in present-day English. Now, the use of reflexive pronouns, that is, forms that involve the item self, began in middle English and became more frequent in early modern English, but the older practice of using the simple object form of a pronoun also continued. So, we had two parallel options as shown in Shakespeare's dramas. We could use the simple personal pronoun object form, get thee a good husband. A will shelter me here, personal pronoun object form. Or we could use a true reflexive pronoun as exhibited over here, though does they self a pleasure if they drown me self-wittingly. Again, two nice examples from Shakespeare's dramas. And last but not least, there were forms like these, where self, by contrast, was originally an independent pronoun in English and could be used as subject and as object. Because may self do want may severance fortune, and lake may reach self. A different use of the reflexive pronoun as compared with present-day English. Let's finally look at conjugation, the conjugation of verbs. By the end of the early modern English period, the total number of verbal inflections have been reduced to its present-day English state. The two personal affixes that had been part of middle English and were used during the early modern English period had gone. So, these forms here, the second and third person singular, disappeared. The most significant changes in the system of verbs involve the development of verb phrases, hence really a development that concerns syntax rather than morphology. Well, let's summarize. At the end of the early modern English period at around 1700, the English morphology was very similar to that of present-day English. The case system of nouns had been reduced to two cases, pronouns had retained three cases. The verbal paradigm was reduced to four forms in the weak paradigm, whereas strong verbs still had five forms. And adjectives occurred in three variants, the basic form, the comparative and the superlative. Many grammatical categories that had been realized by inflectional operations such as affixation had been replaced by syntactic operations such as the use of periphrastic forms. And probably, as the most remarkable effect, the word order that was fairly flexible before had been fixed to the predominant pattern, subject, verb, object. These two effects, the weakening of inflections, in particular the weakening of the case system on the one hand, and the fixing of word order on the other had some interesting consequences for the English language. These consequences are discussed in our e-lecture syntax, the consequences of case syncretism. If you wish, see you there.