It has already been shown in relation to art and science 
and scriptural exegesis how the Middle Ages had tended 
steadily towards visual stress. It is now time to mention the 
gradual shift in medieval language, preparatory to the leap 
towards visual fixity represented by print.

          In general, then, in respect to the expression of the 
     subject and object relations, the development in English has 
     been away from inflectional devices which made it 
     grammatically possible for subjects and objects to stand in 
     any position among the words of a sentence, to the use of 
     grammatically functioning fixed word order patterns which 
     made the position before the verb “subject” territory and 
     the position after the verb, “object” territory. (87)

     Inflection is natural to the oral or auditory culture, for it is