Typology of Morphological Changes in Present-Day English: Verbal Processes

Abstract.

TYPOLOGY OF MORPHOLOGICAL CHANGES IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH: VERBAL PROCESSES

Oksana Putilina

Department of Ukrainian Language and Applied Linguistics, Donetsk National University, Donetsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine

Available 3 August 2013.

Abstract

Relevance

Results of global integration (strengthening intercultural relations, development of world "live" languages, including English) are a rapid process, particularly not only on the lexical but on grammatical (including morphological) level that are not always predictable. Analysis of patterns adjusted by many linguists, who are concerned about this fact, revealed new structural types of lexical items, such as fragmented elements (splinters), a significant number of highly unstable compound nouns with a separate writing, but common unifying accent (block compounds) and a creation on their basis of compound words / pseudo-compound words (other parts of speech), whose self-morphological identity usually defined only within a specific context for the fulfillment of their syntactic role, that is, their appearance has a strengthening influence of analogy in the formation of composites / quasi-composites that can lead to structural changes of lexical units, including the conversion of compound words in derivatives for potentially unlimited number of new words with unstable and unpredictable grammatically-categorical indicators [Putilina 2012; Putilina 2013].

Dynamics of spreading any language necessarily led to the changes of its lexical and grammatical forms, but if the process of changes in vocabulary occurs naturally (due to word-formation and borrowing), the grammatical changes are more noticeable for a native speaker and especially for those who use a language as a second one [Müller 2008: 9]. A set of grammatical changes caused "shifts" in all grammatical system of language, resulting may be particular difficulties that often arise in the modern media of English (especially in order to whom English is not native) in the process of reading art texts in lexical and sociolinguistic areas.

This process is one of the differential features of Present-day English, especially British (BE) and American (AmE) variants as competitors that stand out against other variants of English (such as the Australian or Canadian ones) with multiplicity of media, geographical area due to extralinguistic factors of their spread – as the classic, 'original ', 'true' English (as claimed by some supporters of BE) in the status of one of the languages of international communication and as less conservative language with signs of language-cosmopolitan, that absorbed into itself the elements of other languages, which directly contacted, and in the role of the language of the powerful state in the world (AmE), respectively. Lack of substantial research in this area makes the relevance of proposed research.

Purpose

A comprehensive analysis of innovative processes that currently take place in the English language, primarily on the grammatical level [Путіліна 2011; Jespersen 1922; Putilina 2012a], not be possible without the differentiation of specific syntactical constructions and features of social stratification of the vocabulary in Present-day English that is the purpose of the study.

Tasks

It is quite obvious there is a determination of the main tasks, namely: a characterization of grammatical (morphological) processes in Present-day English and their lexical interpreting, an establishing of the nature and causes of grammatical (and, of course, sociolinguistic) changes in the vocabulary of English, a separation of literary / colloquial functioning form of English, a classifying types of new constructions in English.

Conclusion

It should be noted that the list of morphological (verbal) changes is much broader and covers all parts of speech, but so far the main area of their operation – is first and foremost spoken language and journalism in all manifestations, and partly – fiction texts. Thus, complex analysis of Present-day English is impossible without taking into account not only consistent intralinguistic but extralinguistic factors that influence of the speakers, and therefore – also on the language itself, thus and so a social factor is extremely important in the linguistic sense in English-language society and it demonstrates the national language specifics. The whole development of Present-day English language (without regard to a particular variant of it) at this stage shows the active cooperation of all levels of language, because the appearance of new lexical items consistently provokes the changes, at that systematic, on the grammatical (morphological) level, often having sociolinguistic motivation, but the changes apply to all instances of verbal and semantic manifestations of a linguistic unit – from pronunciation to stylistic constraints and graphic design.

Perspective

Perspective of this study is to analyze the processes that deepen the internal stratification of Present-day English vocabulary as a whole system within each of the languages the whole and its individual variants in English (AM) (British, American, Australian, etc.), the latter more deeper trends in the breeding options for English as a relatively independent entities and strengthening of the modern sociolinguistic factors that determine the formation of vocabulary (literary / common, colloquial (AM)) taking into account the relationships between regional, social and situational parameters that lead to the selection of specific lexical items by carriers of English based on communicative situation.

Research highlights

► The paper is devoted to a characterization of causes of forming a grammatical, especially morphological, changes as basis of innovative processes in Present-day English, an establishing of the nature and prime causes of changes in the grammatical organization (proper morphological and morphological-syntactic) and at the lexically-semantic and sociolinguistic levels of English at the stage of its modern development, a separation of functioning forms in British and American English, a classifying intralinguistic / extralinguistic reasons of morphological (verbal) changes of innovative type in English.

Keywords: accidental usage, auxiliary verb, democratization of English, dialogical speech, equivalent, formal / unofficial correspondence, frequency of use, initial phrase, interrogative sentence, loss of lexical meaning, modal equivalent, modal verb, neutral (literary) speech, occasional use, phonetic reduction, semantic difference, semiauxiliary verb, specific marker, spoken synonym, stylistic markings.

References

Vejhman, G. A. (1990). Novoe v anglijskoj grammatike. M.: Vysshaja shkola.

Dubenec, Je. M. (2003). Lingvisticheskie izmenenija v sovremennom anglijskom jazyke. M.: "Glossa-Press".

Putilina, O. L. (2011). Innovations in Present-day Ukrainian and English languages (Phonetics. Lexicology. Phraseology). Donetsk: DonNU.

Barber, Ch. L. (1964). Linguistic Changes in Present-day English. Lnd.; Edinburg: Oliver & Boyd.

Close, R. A. (1975). A Reference Grammar for Students of English. London: Longman.

Denison, David (1998). Syntax. The Cambridge History of the English Language, IV: 1776–1997, 92-329. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Foster, Brian (1968). The Changing English Language. London: Macmillan.

Hoffmann, Sebastian (2005). Grammaticalization and English Complex Prepositions: A Corpus-based Study. London: Routledge.

Jespersen, О. (1922). Language: Its Nature and Development. New York: H. Holt Publishing. E-portal:www.archive.org/stream/languageitsnatur00jespuoft/languageitsnatur00jespuoft_djvu.txt.

Kastovsky, D. (1991). Historical English Syntax. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Krug, Manfred (2000). Emerging English Modals: A Corpus-based Study of Grammaticalization. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Labov, William (1994). Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. I: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.

Labov, William (2000). Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. II: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.

Labov, W. (2010). Principles of Linguistic Change, Cognitive and Cultural Factors. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Lass, R. (1994). Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leech, G. & Hundt, M. & Mair, C. & Smith, N. (2009). Change in Contemporary English. A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lindquist, Hans & Mair, Christian (eds.) (2004). Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Luoma, S. (2004). Assessing speaking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Millward, C. M., & Hayes, M. (2011). A Biography of the English Language. Boston: Cengage Learning.

Müller, S. (2008). The Mental Lexicon. GRIN Verlag.

Potter, Simeon (1975). Changing English. London: Deutsch.

Putilina, O. (2012). Historical and Contemporary Factors of Innovative Processes in the Present-Day English Language in Comparison with Ukrainian One: Conflict or Cooperation? Linguistic Studies, 25, 89-94. Donetsk.

Putilina, O. (2012a). Innovations in Present-day Ukrainian and English Languages (Morphology. Syntax. Sociolinguistics). Book 2. Donetsk: Donetsk National University.

Putilina, Oksana (2013). Derivation in Modern English in comparison with Ukrainian. Donetsk: DonNU.

Rickford, John R. & Mendoza-Denton, Norma & Wasow, Thomas A. & Espinoza, Juli (1995). Syntactic variation and change in progress: Loss of the verbal coda in topic restricting as far as constructions. Language, 1995, 71 (1), 102-131.

Romaine, Suzanne & Lange, Deborah (1991). The use oflike as a marker of reported speech and thought: A case of grammaticalization in progress. American Speech, Autumn 1991, 66 (3), 227-279.

Correspondence: o.l.putilina@gmail.com

Vitae

Oksana L. Putilina, Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor at Department of Ukrainian Language and Applied Linguistics in Donetsk National University. Her research areas include comparative-historical and typological linguistics, case grammar, cognitive linguistics, universal linguistics, and generative grammar.

Article.

Oksana Putilina

УДК 81371+81366.5=811.112.2

TYPOLOGY OF MORPHOLOGICAL CHANGES

IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH: VERBAL PROCESSES

The paper is devoted to a characterization of causes of forming a grammatical, especially morphological, changes as basis of innovative processes in Present-day English, an establishing of the nature and prime causes of changes in the grammatical organization (proper morphological and morphological-syntactic) and on the lexically-semantic and sociolinguistic levels of English at the stage of its modern development, a separation of functioning forms in British and American English, a classifying intralinguistic / extralinguistic reasons of morphological (verbal) changes of innovative type in English.

Keywords: accidental usage, auxiliary verb, democratization of English, dialogical speech, equivalent, formal / unofficial correspondence, frequency of use, initial phrase, interrogative sentence, loss of lexical meaning, modal equivalent, modal verb, neutral (literary) speech, occasional use, phonetic reduction, semantic difference, semiauxiliary verb, specific marker, spoken synonym, stylistic markings.

Results of global integration (strengthening intercultural relations, development of world "live" languages, including English) are a rapid process, particularly not only on the lexical but on grammatical (including morphological) level that are not always predictable. Analysis of patterns adjusted by many linguists, who are concerned about this fact, revealed new structural types of lexical items, such as fragmented elements (splinters), a significant number of highly unstable compound nouns with a separate writing, but common unifying accent (block compounds) and a creation on their basis of compound words / pseudo-compound words (other parts of speech), whose self-morphological identity usually defined only within a specific context for the fulfillment of their syntactic role, that is, their appearance has a strengthening influence of analogy in the formation of composites / quasi-composites that can lead to structural changes of lexical units, including the conversion of compound words in derivatives for potentially unlimited number of new words with unstable and unpredictable grammatically-categorical indicators [Putilina 2012; Putilina 2013].

Dynamics of spreading any language necessarily led to the changes of its lexical and grammatical forms, but if the process of changes in vocabulary occurs naturally (due to word-formation and borrowing), the grammatical changes are more noticeable for a native speaker and especially for those who use a language as a second one [Müller 2008: 9]. A set of grammatical changes caused "shifts" in all grammatical system of language, resulting may be particular difficulties that often arise in the modern media of English (especially in order to whom English is not native) in the process of reading art texts in lexical and sociolinguistic areas.

This process is one of the differential features of Present-day English, especially British (BE) and American (AmE) variants as competitors that stand out against other variants of English (such as the Australian or Canadian ones) with multiplicity of media, geographical area due to extralinguistic factors of their spread – as the classic, 'original ', 'true' English (as claimed by some supporters of BE) in the status of one of the languages of international communication and as less conservative language with signs of language-cosmopolitan, that absorbed into itself the elements of other languages, which directly contacted, and in the role of the language of the powerful state in the world (AmE), respectively. Lack of substantial research in this area makes the relevance of proposed research.

In the words of F. Leech, M. Hundt, C. Mair, N. Smith, in phonology, it may well be possible (and useful) to describe British and American English (or Indian English, New Zealand English or any other variety, for that matter) as separate systems characterized by their own categorically distinct features. At the lexico-grammatical level, however, such categorical ‘either–or’ contrasts are the exception rather than the rule. It is our view that standard varieties of English all over the world share the same basic system of grammatical options, and that regional contrasts among varieties in most cases manifest themselves in different statistical preferences in the choice of variants, or in the extension of shared constructional patterns to new lexical items. This has obvious implications for the assessment of mutual influences between British and American English, an important concern of the present study. Whereas in popular perception, particularly in Britain, there is often fear of a blanket ‘Americanization’ of British English, our analyses will show that documenting the true extent of the grammatical influence of American English on British English is a complex business [Leech, Hundt, Mair, Smith 2009: 40-41].

There are fragments of the grammar in which American influence is absent and even some divergence between the two varieties can be observed, as in the spread of from-less gerunds after verbs of prevention (cf., e.g. that’ll stop him calling again), which is a British development as yet not paralleled in American usage. There are a few limited instances of presumably direct American influence on British usage, as in the area of the ‘mandative’ subjunctive (e.g. we request that this be made public). But the most common constellation by far is that American English reveals itself to be slightly more advanced in shared historical developments, many of which were presumably set in motion in the Early Modern English period, before the streams of British and American English parted [Leech, Hundt, Mair, Smith 2009: 41].

However, a comprehensive analysis of innovative processes that currently take place in the English language, primarily at the grammatical level [Путіліна 2011; Jespersen 1922; Putilina 2012a], not be possible without the differentiation of specific syntactical constructions and features of social stratification of the vocabulary in Present-day English that is the purpose of our study. It is quite obvious there is a determination of the main tasks, namely: a characterization of grammatical (morphological) processes in Present-day English and their lexical interpreting, an establishing of the nature and causes of grammatical (and, of course, sociolinguistic) changes in the vocabulary of English, a separation of literary / colloquial functioning form of English, a classifying types of new constructions in both languages.

In the study of grammatical change in present-day English, the ‘tip of the iceberg’, that is the collection of disputed usages that has aroused the concern of prescriptivists, has been covered regularly, though not necessarily in the dispassionate and empirically sound way that is characteristic of the best research on older stages in the history of English.

Among the works which have guided us in our choice of phenomena to study and in formulating our hypotheses, we would like to mention three treatments of ongoing change in English published in the 1960`s and 1970`s, namely Barber’s (1964) "Linguistic Change in Present-Day English", Foster’s (1974) "The Changing English Language" and Potter’s (1975) "Changing English". These works offer many insightful comments but, unsurprisingly in view of their dates of publication, the amount and quality of the documentary evidence offered leaves a lot to be desired by the standards of contemporary innovative-linguistic practice. A first tentatively corpus-linguistic approach to change in progress is presented by Bauer (1994) in his "Watching English Change". It is not to deny the merit of Bauer’s pioneering effort to point out that it is comprehensive neither in its coverage of the phenomena nor in its use of the available textual resources, thus leaving many important topics for the present study and others to explore [Leech, Hundt, Mair, Smith 2009: 46].

The two publications providing the most important and most immediate frame of reference for the present book are David Denison’s (1998) survey of ‘Syntax’ in volume IV of "The Cambridge History of the English Language" and Mair’s (2006) "Twentieth-Century English" – both works which are recent and based on systematic evaluation of innovations-oriented linguistics. Again, it is not to detract from their merits to point out that neither of these two publications has been able to cover its subject comprehensively. Denison, for example, deals with the evolution of English grammar from 1776 to 1997 and generally highlights nineteenth-century developments rather than the very recent past. Mair (2006), on the other hand, is a general history of Standard English in the twentieth century which also covers developments in pronunciation and the lexicon and is therefore somewhat restricted in the coverage of the grammar in comparison to the present book.

We also owe an intellectual debt to the abundant work on change in progress in the sociolinguistic literature (cf., e.g., [Labov 1994; Labov 2001; Romaine, Lange 1991; Rickford et al. 1995]), although – in view of a widespread disregard in sociolinguistic circles for the study of the standard dialect – the influence has often been indirect.

Of course, innovative impulses for the study of language history have not come from sociolinguistics alone. Today is an exciting time for diachronic studies in other ways, as well, as is witnessed by a recent convergence of interests between corpus linguistics and grammaticalization studies (e.g. [Hoffmann 2005; Krug 2000], or the contributions to [Lindquist, Mair 2004]). Typically, students of grammaticalization focus on the long historical range [Leech, Hundt, Mair, Smith 2009: 48], and studies of grammaticalization processes in English tend to focus on earlier stages in the development of the language. There is no reason to doubt that the same forces are at work today, and in fact the present book will discuss some instances of incipient or ongoing grammaticalization.

Currently in the process of learning English grammar should be considered two groups of factors at least: historical background and tendencies that have the force so far and provoke the appearance of changes including – grammatical, on the one hand, and interpolarity and cosmopolitism of English because of its regional distribution and ensure the functioning of socio-political and economic spheres of human activity, on the other. This leads to consider evolutionary changes of English from the "average" option, known in Britain 300 years ago, to a variety of variants and forms of existence in the lands where the British were offered this language: America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India and others. And the English returned in modified form to the British Isles with immigrants, goods, technology, etc.

However, there is the internal stratification of BE, because inside it there are three types of language: Conservative English – the language of Royal Family and Parliament, Received Pronounciation (RP), or BBC English – accepted standard, language of educated part of London and southeast of England, "proper English", literary English, language of the best private schools (Eton, Winchester, Harrow, Rugby) and universities (Oxford, Cambridge), and Advanced English – language of youth – the most active and most sensitive type of BE, which actively incorporates a new from variants of other English, first of all – from AmE. And this is excluding dialects: Northern, Central, Southwestern, Southeastern, Scottish, Welsh and Irish.

From widely used variants of English Irish (Irish English, IE), Australian (Australian English, AuE) and New Zealand variants (New Zealand English, NZE) in character are closer to the BE, while the American variant (American English, AmE) formed, in fact, own vision of not only vocabulary and phonetics of English, and, above all, grammar, and there is a 3 AmE dialects (Northern, Central and Southen), each of which is divided into several subdialects, most colorful and best known of which, due to the movie and music, is Californian subdialect (interesting that the pronunciation which is characteristic for it, commonly called "real American pronunciation", and the Northern dialect, language of East Coast – New England, where once came the first settlers from Britain – linguists feel rather close to the BE [Kastovsky 1991; Labov 2010; Lass 1994]).

All this leads the ambiguity of correctly interpreting changes and their causes that have occurred (and still going) over the past decades in the grammar and vocabulary of English ie if we consider historic changes that took place in the grammar of English, the vast majority of those innovations about which today Anglicist debate, there is not a random phenomenon, caused only extralinguistic factors, but well-motivated in terms of internal organization of the language process, characterized by signs of consistency and continuity [Putilina 2012a:11].

Grammar is probably the level on which the English language has changed most radically in the course of its recorded history, and this is noted in treatments of Old and Middle English. By contrast, studies of change in the more recent past generally place much more emphasis on phonological and lexical phenomena than on grammatical ones (cf., e.g., the small number of pages devoted to grammar in standard treatments of changes in present-day English such as [Barber 1964], [Foster 1968] or [Potter 1975]). Barbara Strang, herself the author of a classic history of the English language, has noted this imbalance, arguing that it is most likely not rooted in the facts of language history but in our ability to perceive and analyse them:

One possible explanation can hardly be proved false, but should be entertained only as a last resort [Leech, Hundt, Mair, Smith 2009: 37]: namely, that although there has been considerable grammatical change in the past, English grammar in our own lifetime is somehow uniquely stable and free from change.

The most promising direction of search for an explanation would seem to lie in the assumption that there is grammatical change in progress at the moment, as in the past, but that we are considerably less perceptive of it than of other kinds of linguistic change.

What is it that makes grammatical change difficult to perceive? For a lay observer, especially in a language such as English with its largely analytical grammar, part of the difficulty may lie in the fact that so little of the grammar is audible/visible directly – for example in the form of inflectional endings on words – and so much of it is abstract, involving, for example, the position of elements in a clause relative to each other or, as in the case of re-analysis, the development of a new underlying form for an established surface sequence.

Thus – to take an instance of a simple ‘visible’ change – it does not take a degree in linguistics to note that the plural of postman remains irregular (postmen) in present-day English, while the plural of Walkman tends to be Walkmans [Leech, Hundt, Mair, Smith 2009: 37].

For lay and expert observers alike, an additional difficulty in perceiving grammatical change, in particular grammatical change at close range, is that it generally proceeds more slowly than lexical and phonetic change. While a lifetime devoted to observing lexical or phonetic developments in English will generally be enough to arrive at a fair number of definitive conclusions, the same timespan is insufficient to allow testable statements about the direction and speed of grammatical trends. For grammatical changes, therefore, even linguistically trained observers will need more solid orientation than their own necessarily subjective and partial observations provide.

As David Denison has made clear in his magisterial study of grammatical change in nineteenth-and twentieth-century English, practically all grammatical change involves a gradual and statistical element during the long process in which an innovation establishes itself in the community of speakers (or, conversely, a formerly common but now obsolescent form is phased out) [Leech, Hundt, Mair, Smith 2009: 38].

Since relatively few categorial losses or innovations have occurred in the last two centuries, syntactic change has more often been statistical in nature, with a given construction occurring throughout the period and either becoming more or less common generally or in particular registers. The overall, rather elusive effect can seem more a matter of stylistic than of syntactic change, so it is useful to be able to track frequencies of occurrence from EModE through to the present day [Denison 1998: 93].

English, as Ukrainian, is constantly changes in the process of development that affects not only the vocabulary, but also on the grammatical structure that is most resistant to change. One reason for this can be considered a domineering tendency toward democratization of English, for example, convergence of the written / literary speech with speech / spoken, intense interaction between BE and AmE, results in intervariant borrowing and so on.

As for systematic of the processes that testifies that in this case is not about the occasional use or accidental usage of forms but the formation of new patterns in the language, linguists began to speak at the end of 60-s of the 20^th century, in particular Ch. Barber wrote about the changes in the functioning case forms of pronouns and degrees of comparison of adjectives [Barber 1964: 17-21], S. Porter emphasizes on tendency of the increasing use of zero article and on the expansion of the scope of Continuous tense form and change functions of some parts of speech [Дубенец 2003: 8].

In general, among the most characteristic of systematic patterns in the English language today should be called such, mainly concentrated around certain parts of speech, including Verb:

1) short negative forms of auxiliary and modal verbs, including can`t, won`t, needn`t, used now not only in spokenbut also in writing speech (and their use is officially authorized in the written work of students of British schools [Вейхман 1990]) (cf.: in the Ukrainian language equivalents of English auxiliary and modal verbs are usually impersonal-predicative words): You needn`t do it ‘Вам не потрібно це робити’ (букв. ‘Ви не потребуєте цього робити’);

2) changing stylistic markings of some modal verbs, as they are most dependent on context:

· verb must ‘повинен, маєш’, which is generally considered "less polite" than may ‘маєш (in a sense «повинен»), можеш’, under certain circumstances, it may be "more polite". For example, the hostess can tell the guest: a) You must have some of this cake (букв.) ‘Ви маєте скуштувати цього пирога’, but for the guest this phrase is seen as ‘Будь ласка, скуштуйте цого пирога’ or ‘Ви неодмінно маєте скуштувати цього пирога!’ (it is wonderful, you are sure to enjoy); b) You should have some of this cake ‘Вам треба скуштувати цього пирога’ (that you enjoy); c) You may have some of this cake ‘Ви можете скуштувати цього пирога’ / ‘Ви повинні скуштувати цього пирога’. The sentence a) is the most polite, and the sentence c) perceived as the least polite;

· on the semantics of modal verb can affect even change of suffixes of adjective standing next, eg.: You must be very careful ‘Ви маєте бути дуже обережними’ і You must be very careless ‘Ви, вочевидь, дуже необережні’;

· in American English modal equivalents have and have got to are spoken synonyms of modal verb must, especially in cases of phonetic reduction, cf.: The United States must conserve its resources (neutral) ‘Сполучені Штати повинні зберегти свої ресурси’ – from the speech of President of the United States Barack Obama, filed in The New York Nimes and We hafto conserve our resources (spoken) ‘Сполучені Штати повинні зберегти свої ресурси’ (hafto = have to, its exact semantic equivalent gotta = have got to) – from the same speech, delivered during the performing before the voters;

· there is a new modal verb want with the value "it must, it should" ‘так треба, повинен’, which is used as a synonym for ought to, must and should (however, until in the conversational style): You want to take it easy ‘Ви маєте заспокоїтися’;

· functioning can ‘могти (мати здатність)’ instead of may ‘могти (мати дозвіл на щось)’ with the value of permission to do something not only in spoken but also in neutral (literary) speech, eg.: You can go now ‘Можете починати’ (lecturer to students). While can is more characteristic for AmE, and may – for BE; can has a more conversational tone and less polite than may. The principal is the use of these verbs in interrogative sentences [Вейхман 1990], such May I? ‘Чи можу я…?’ implies that the speaker is aware of its dependence on the goodwill of the interlocutor and makes it clear that he recognizes the right of companion to deny the request. Unlike May I?, question Can I? Does not include the seme of dependence or subordination: the use Can I? makes it clear that the speaker does not even allow doubt he will be denied if the request depend on the willingness of the interlocutor, but the speaker is aware that may may be unknown to him the circumstances which prevent this. Thus, questions like Can I come in? ‘Чи можу я увійти?’, Can I see the manager, please? ‘Скажіть, будь ласка, чи можу я побачити директора?’ should be understood not as "Do you give me permission?" ‘Чи даєте Ви мені дозвіл?’, but "Do allow me, in your opinion, the circumstences?" ‘Чи дозволяють мені, на Вашу думку, обставини?’. Also keep in mind that Can I? May not be asking for permission (cf.: question Can I help you? ‘Я можу Вам допомогти?’ is not so much asking to be allowed to do something as an expression of interest in the form of questions to help another, if the question is put in a situation where, for example, one driver stopped along with another driver, who had something wrong with the car. In that case, Can I help you? Will be equal to narrative sentence You can pass me the salt ‘Передайте мені, будь ласка, сіль / Чи не могли б Ви передати мені сіль?’, ie manifestation of the desire to get something or do);

3) changes in the usage of Present Perfect and overall Perfect forms. First, it was fixed in BE, where the forms Present Perfect moved mostly in colloquial (often – dialogical speech) and journalistic styles (newspaper, radio, correspondence – both formal and unofficial), including discussion about the events of the past usually starts with a question and answers in the Present Perfect, and then continues into the Past Indefinite, cf.:

· In mass media Present Perfect is used in the first sentence / phrase of message of the main news, and details are described already in Past Indefinite: Thirty thousand pounds` worth of jewellery has been stolen from Jonathan Wilde and Company, the jewellers. The thieves broke into the flat above sometime during Sunday night and entered the shop by cutting a hole in the floor (BBC News / UK) ‘Коштовності вартістю 30 тис. фунтів стерлінгів були вкрадені з ювелірної крамниці «Джонатан Уальд і Компанія». Грабіжники вдерлися в квартиру поверхом вище десь підно ввечері в неділю і потрапили до крамниці через пробиту дірку в підлозі’. The same is observed in letters: I am sorry I haven't written for such a long time, but I've been very busy lately as my partner has been away and I have had to do his work as well as my own. However he came back this morning, so things are a bit easier now (example from [Вейхман 1990]) ‘Пробачте, що не писав Вам так довго, але я був дуже зайнятий останнім часом, поки мій партнер був відсутній і я мав виконувати його роботу так само, як і свою. Однак він повернувся сьогодні вранці, тож зараз усе трохи простіше’.

In general, the tendency to use Past Indefinite instead of the Present Perfect is more common in AmE, than in BE, and mostly in conversational speech even against the appearance of specific markers of Present Perfect, for example: I am going to be the happiest girl who ever lived! ‘Я буду найщасливішою дівчиною на світі!’. The main reason the researchers of both variants [Luoma 2004; Millward, Hayes 2011] believe a lack by the Americans a sense of semantic difference between sentences with verb-predicate in the Present Perfect and Past Indefinite like Did you put them away yet? ‘Ти ще приховуєш їх?’ and Have you put them away yet? ‘Ти досі приховуєш їх?’, but on the radio and in the news in the initial phrases prefer Present Perfect: A congressional committee has eliminated from the farm bill an amendment... (The Washington Post) ‘Комітет Конгресу відхилив поправку, що стосувалася аграрного закону…’;

4) a sharp reduction of the frequency of use of Past Perfect form, which is caused by the influence of AmE, since this form is more typical for BE, whereas for AmE is typical Past Indefinite, and semantic function of previous actions performed wuth conjunctions, adverbs and overall context, cf.: After they had paid for their dinner… (BE) і After they paid for their dinner… (AmE) ‘Після того, як вона заплатили за свій обід, …’;

5) to create a more expressive speech there was a tendency to use two or more modal verbs at one infinitive (as in Ukrainian): We can, we must, we should put an end to such flagrant breach of the law ‘Ми маємо, ми мусимо, ми повинні покласти край таким кричущим порушенням закону’ (The Wall Street Journal / U.S. / Election 2012 / Washington Wire); National police is now preventing the universities from developing as they must and should ‘Національна політика полягає в сприянні університетам з країн, що розвиваються, оскільки так має і так повинно бути’ (Forbes / ForbesVideo);

6) greatly expanded the scope of functioning Present Continuous, that allows some linguists, including R. Close, talking about the possibility of the use of any verb in this form: Grandpa is forgetting names now ‘Дідусь тепер забуває імена’; John is hoping to spend Easter in Spain ‘Джон сподівається провести Великдень в Іспанії’ [Close 1975]. Present Continuous is used in the value that is characteristic for Present Indefinite form, eg.: I am getting up at 6 o`clock every morning to put my garden straight ‘Я встаю о шостій щоранку, щоб правильно доглядати свій сад’. Furthermore, Present Continuous can functioning to indicate the action in the foreseeable future as equivalent of compound be going to, пор.: John is resigning soon і John is going to resign soon ‘Джон незабаром іде у відставку’;

7) verb to get ‘отримувати’ displace verb дієслово to be ‘бути’ (in the function of semiauxiliary verb with the loss of lexical meaning) in the formation of passive constructions like to get born ‘народитися’ (букв. ‘бути народженим’), for example: We got caught in a heavy rain ‘Ми потрапили під сильну зливу’, and verb to have ‘мати’ (also with the loss of lexical meaning) in structures as to get things done ‘досягти своєї мети’, eg.: He got his hair cut ‘Він зробив стрижку’;

It should be noted that the list of morphological (verbal) changes is much broader and covers all parts of speech, but so far the main area of their operation – is first and foremost spoken language and journalism in all manifestations, and partly – fiction texts.

Thus, complex analysis of Present-day English is impossible without taking into account not only consistent intralinguistic but extralinguistic factors that influence of the speakers, and therefore – also on the language itself, thus and so a social factor is extremely important in the linguistic sense in English-language society and it demonstrates the national language specifics.

The whole development of Present-day English language (without regard to a particular variant of it) at this stage shows the active cooperation of all levels of language, because the appearance of new lexical items consistently provokes the changes, at that systematic, on the grammatical (morphological) level, often having sociolinguistic motivation, but the changes apply to all instances of verbal and semantic manifestations of a linguistic unit – from pronunciation to stylistic constraints and graphic design.

Perspective of this study is to analyze the processes that deepen the internal stratification of Present-day English vocabulary as a whole system within each of the languages the whole and its individual variants in English (AM) (British, American, Australian, etc.), the latter more deeper trends in the breeding options for English as a relatively independent entities and strengthening of the modern sociolinguistic factors that determine the formation of vocabulary (literary / common, colloquial) taking into account the relationships between regional, social and situational parameters that lead to the selection of specific lexical items by carriers of English based on communicative situation.

References.

Вейхман 1990: Вейхман, Г.А. Новое в английской грамматике [Текст] / Г. А. Вейхман. – М. : Высшая школа, 1990. – 128 с.

Дубенец 2003: Дубенец, Э.М. Лингвистические изменения в современном английском языке [Текст] / Э. М. Дубенец. – М. : «Глосса-Пресс», 2003. – 256 с. – ISBN 5-7651-0088-0

Путіліна 2011: Путіліна, О.Л. Інновації в сучасних українській та англійській мовах (Фонетика. Лексикологія. Фразеологія). Навчальний посібник для студентів вищих навчальних закладів [Текст] / О. Л. Путіліна / За ред. А. П. Загнітка. – Донецьк : ДонНУ, 2011. – 277 с.

Barber 1964: Barber, Ch.L. Linguistic Changes in Present-day English [Text] / Ch. L. Barber. – Lnd. ; Edinburg : Oliver & Boyd, 1964. – 154 pp.

Close 1975: Close, R.A. A Reference Grammar for Students of English [Text] / R. A. Close. – London : Longman, 1975. – 342 pp. – ISBN 0-582-522-77-3

Denison 1998: Denison, David. Syntax [Text] / David Denison // The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. IV : 1776–1997 / Suzanne Romaine (ed.). – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1998. – Pp. 92-329.

Foster 1968: Foster, Brian. The Changing English Language [Text] / Brian Foster. – London : Macmillan, 1968. – 263 pp.

Hoffmann 2005: Hoffmann, Sebastian. Grammaticalization and English Complex Prepositions : A Corpus-based Study [Text] / Sebastian Hoffmann. – London : Routledge, 2005. – 192 рр.

Jespersen 1922: Jespersen, О. Language : Its Nature and Development [Hardcover] [Text] / О. Jespersen. – New York : H. Holt Publishing, 1922. – Access mode : URL :

http://www.archive.org/stream/languageitsnatur00jespuoft/languageitsnatur00jespuoft_djvu.txt. – Title from the screen.

Kastovsky 1991: Kastovsky, D. Historical English Syntax [Text] / D. Kastovsky. – Berlin ; New York : Walter de Gruyter, 1991. – 510 pp. – ISBN 3-11-012431-9

Krug 2000: Krug, Manfred. Emerging English Modals : A Corpus-based Study of Grammaticalization [Text] / Manfred Krug. – Berlin and New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 2000. – 332 рр.

Labov 1994: Labov, William. Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. I : Internal Factors [Text] / William Labov. – Oxford : Blackwell, 1994. – 664 рр.

Labov 2001: Labov, William. Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. II : Social Factors [Text] / William Labov. – Oxford : Blackwell, 2001. – 592 рр.

Labov 2010: Labov, W. Principles of Linguistic Change, Cognitive and Cultural Factors [Text] / W. Labov. – Chichester : John Wiley & Sons, 2010. – 424 pp. – ISBN 978-1-4051-1215-4 (hardback)

Lass 1994: Lass, R. Old English : A Historical Linguistic Companion [Text] / R. Lass. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1994. – 300 pp. – ISBN 0 521 43087 hardback

Leech, Hundt, Mair, Smith 2009: Leech, G., Hundt, M., Mair, C., Smith, N. Change in Contemporary English. A Grammatical Study [Text] / G. Leech, M. Hundt, C. Mair, N. Smith. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2009. – 341 pp. – ISBN 978-0-521-86722-1

Lindquist, Mair 2004: Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English [Text] / Hans Lindquist, Christian Mair. (eds.). – Amsterdam : Benjamins, 2004. – 265 рр.

Luoma 2004: Luoma, S. Assessing speaking [Text] / S. Luoma. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2004. – 212 pp. – ISBN 0 521 80052 8 hardback

Millward, Hayes 2011: Millward, C., Hayes, M. A Biography of the English Language [Text] / C. M. Millward, M. Hayes. – Boston : Cengage Learning, 2011. – 478 pp. – ISBN-13: 978-0-495-90641-4

Müller 2008: Müller, S. The Mental Lexicon [Text] / S. Müller. – GRIN Verlag, 2008. – 56 pp. – ISBN 978-3-638-94517-2

Potter 1975: Changing English [Text] / Simeon Potter. – London : Deutsch, 1975. – 206 рр.

Putilina 2012: Putilina, O. Historical and Contemporary Factors of Innovative Processes in the Present-Day English Language in Comparison with Ukrainian One : Conflict or Cooperation? [Text] / О. Putilina // Лінгвістичні студії : Зб. наук. праць. – Донецьк : ДонНУ, 2012. – Випуск 25. – С. 89-94.

Putilina 2012a: Putilina, O. Innovations in Present-day Ukrainian and English Languages (Morphology. Syntax. Sociolinguistics). Book 2 [Text] / Oksana Putilina : Educational Supply for Students of Higher Educational Institutions / Ed. by Anatoliy Zahnitko. – Donetsk : Donetsk National University, 2012. – 306 pp.

Putilina 2013: Putilina, Oksana. Derivation in Modern English in comparison with Ukrainian : Путіліна Оксана. Деривація в сучасній англійській мові у зіставленні з українською [Текст] / Оксана Путіліна : Навчальний посібник для студентів вищих навчальних закладів / За ред. А.П. Загнітка. – Донецьк : ДонНУ, 2013. – 100 с.

Rickford, Mendoza-Denton, Wasow, Espinoza 1995: Rickford, John R., Mendoza-Denton, Norma, Wasow, ThomasA., Espinoza, Juli. Syntactic variation and change in progress : Loss of the verbal coda in topic restricting as far as constructions [Text] / John R. Rickford, Norma Mendoza-Denton, Thomas A. Wasow, Juli Espinoza // Language. – Volume 71, Number 1, March 1995. – Pp. 102-131.

Romaine, Lange 1991: Romaine, Suzanne, Lange, Deborah. The use oflike as a marker of reported speech and thought : A case of grammaticalization in progress [Text] / Suzanne Romaine, Deborah Lange. – American Speech. – Volume 66, Issue 3 (Autumn 1991). – Pp. 227-279.

Стаття присвячена характеристиці причин формування граматичних, зокрема морфологічних, змін як підґрунтя інноваційних процесів у сучасній англійській мові, встановленню природи і першооснови змін у граматичному складі (морфологічного і морфолого-синтаксичного характеру), а також на лексико-семантичному і соціолінгвістичному рівнях англійської мови на етапі її сучасного становлення, розмежуванню форм функціонування англійської мови в британському та американському варіантах, кваліфікуванню інтралінгвістичних / екстралінгвістичних причин морфологічних (дієслівних) змін інноваційного типу в англійській мові.

Ключові слова: випадкове вживання, допоміжне дієслово, демократизація англійської мови, діалогічне мовлення, відповідник, офіційне / неофіційне листування, частотність вживання, початкова фраза, питальне речення, втрата лексичного значення, модальний еквівалент, модальне дієслово, нейтральне (літературне) мовлення, оказіональне вживання, фонетична редукція, смислова різниця, напівдопоміжне дієслово, спеціальний маркер, розмовний синонім, стилістичне маркування.

Available 3 August 2013.