The correct answer is 2 because Modern English lost its highly developed inflectional system, which made word order more rigid.
Explanation:
Old English (Anglo-Saxon) had a rich inflectional system, meaning that words had different endings (inflections) to indicate their grammatical roles (such as subject, object, or possessive), much like Latin or German today.
Example (Old English): Se hlāford lufode þone cniht ("The lord loved the knight")
The subject (hlāford, "lord") and object (cniht, "knight") were marked by their endings, so the word order could be flexible.
Over time, English lost most of these inflections, especially after the Norman Conquest (1066), due to influences from Old Norse and French. As a result, the language could no longer rely on inflectional endings to indicate grammatical relationships.
To compensate for the loss of inflections, Modern English adopted a fixed word order (SVO - Subject-Verb-Object) to clarify meaning.
Example (Modern English): "The lord loved the knight."
If we switch the words ("The knight loved the lord"), the meaning changes completely because we no longer have inflections to indicate roles.
Why the other options are incorrect:
Option 1: English did not develop its inflectional system; it actually lost most of it.
Option 3: The derivational system (word formation using prefixes/suffixes) was not lost and does not significantly affect word order.
Option 4: The development of derivational morphology (e.g., adding -ness, -ly, un-) is unrelated to fixed word order.
Thus, the loss of inflections led to a greater reliance on word order for grammatical clarity, making Option 2 the correct answer.
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