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The Great Vowel Shift rightfully dominates discussion of the
change from Middle English to Modern English because it is

systematic, logical, and comprehensive (all of the long vowels in
words that were in Middle English were affected). But the Shift is

not the only factor in changing Middle English into the language
that we now speak.

Grammatically the language changed little. The old “-n” plural

continued to lose ground: Chaucer uses “eyen” (for “eyes”) and
even Shakespeare uses a few “-n” plurals, but “-s” had won the

battle. One additional inflectional ending that deserves some

discussion is the development of apostrophe [ə’pɔstrəfɪ] s (’s) as the

genitive ending. The genitive case was the Old English method of

indicating possession. For strong nouns, the genitive singular ending
was “-es,” thus “stan” (stone), “stanes” (pronounced “stahn – ehs”;

“of the stone”). Because in Middle English the genitive ending was
unaccented (that lack of stress is one reason most of the inflectional

endings were lost), it ends up being spelled with a variety of vowels,
such as “-is” or “-ys” (the unstressed, mid central vowel in English,

schwa, does not have a specific orthographic symbol). The pronoun

“his” in English was pronounced “-is” because the h was not
pronounced when it was not stressed. Thus “stonis” (stone’s) and

“ston [h]is” would be pronounced exactly the same. Some early
grammarians, ignorant of Old English, were confused, and argued

that the apostrophe s was a shortening of “his,” and so the genitive
was really a contracted form of the pronoun. This makes absolutely

no sense when applied to forms like “the queen’s dress” (“the

queen, his dress”?). The real reason for the apostrophe is that it
marks the missing “e” in the “-es” ending.

The only other grammar changes of significance are in the

pronouns and the verbs. In Old English, “ge” (pronounced “ye”) and
“†u” (pronounced “thoo”) indicated different numbers in the second

person (“ge” was plural and “†u” was singular). In the thirteenth
century, however, the “th-” forms (thou, thy, thee) became familiar;

they were used when addressing social inferiors, children, and close

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