The Word-Order

As OE was a highly inflectional language with an elaborate system of noun and adjective declension, verb conjugation, words in a sentence were connected syntactically – by inflections. That’s why they need not stand close together in the sentence and the word-order is free.

Lecture 8. The Middle English (ME) Period.

Contents:

1. Effect of the Norman Conquest on the linguistic situation in England.

2. Early and Late ME dialects and writings. Extension of English territory. Reestablishment of English as the language of the state and literature.

3. The growth of the London dialect. The age of Chaucer.

The Middle English period started in the beginning of the 11^th c. and ended in the end of the 15^th c. the two important historical events being the Norman Conquest and the Wars of the Roses.

Effect of the Norman Conquest on the linguistic situation in England

The Norman Conquest of England began in 1066. This year was a crucial year for the Saxon King and for the history of the English. In 1066 king Edward the Confessor died. During his reign he brought over many Norman nobles, distributed among them English lands and appointed them to important positions in the government. He insisted on French being spoken at the court. In 1066 the Elders of England proclaimed Harold, the powerful Earl Godwin of Wessex, king of England. William, Duke of Normandy, had long claimed the English throne. As soon as the news reached him, he assembled an army and landed in England. After a hard and long struggle Harold was killed, William captured London and was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.

The defeat of Harold’s army in 1066 marked the beginning of another foreign invasion of England which far surpassed the preceding Viking invasions.

Most of the lands of the Anglo-Saxon lords passed into the hands of the Norman barons. Hundreds of people from France crossed the Channel to make their home in Britain. French monks, tradesmen, craftsmen flooded the south-western towns, so that not only the higher nobility was French, but also much of the middle class.

During several centuries England was trilingual. Latin retained its position as the language of religious ceremony and intellectual work, Norman French displaced OE as the language of the courts and of government. Speakers of Norman French probably numbered between 10.000 and 20.000 in a population of 1.5 million occupied the positions of power in different spheres of life among the elite.

English was the language of daily life for the great majority of the population. It was reduced to a lower social sphere: peasantry and townspeople. The decline of English was reflected in literature. During the 12^th and the early 13^th c. French-language literature flourished in England.

Under such circumstances, with two or even 3 languages spoken in the country, they were bound to struggle with each other and influence each other.

At first French and English existed side by side without blending. Then slowly they began to permeate each other. The Norman barons and the French town-dwellers had to pick up English words to make themselves understood, while the English began to use French words. A good knowledge of French would mark a person of higher standing giving him a certain social prestige. Probably many people became bilingual and had a fair command of both languages.

By the middle of the twelfth century, a balance among the 3 languages of England seems to have been struck. In the 12^th c. the area of the English language in the British Isles grew. After the Norman Conquest the Celtic kingdoms fell under Norman rule. Wales was subjugated in the late 13^th c.: its eastern half became part of England, while the North and West were governed separately. In the late 12^th c. the English made the first attempts to conquer Ireland and soon both people were assimilated. Though part of Ireland was ruled from England, the English language was used in Ireland alongside Celtic language. So the English language spread all over the British Isles.

In 1204 Philip II of France conquered Normandy. That victory isolated the Norman French rulers of England from their continental lands and thus led to increased use of English among the aristocracy.

In 1258 Henry III addressed the population of the country in a Proclamation written in English. In 1362 Edward III in The Status of Pleading required that all pleas shall be pleaded, defended, answered, and judged in the English tongue as French was too little known. In the same year English was first used in Parliament itself.

About this very time French was replaced by English as the language in which teaching was conducted in schools. Latin and French were used for the written record of decisions, for archival purposes.

The struggle for supremacy between Latin, French and English ended in favour of English, but English vocabulary was enriched by French words. The victory of English was due to the rise of social layers that spoke it – the gentry and the town bourgeoisie.

Linguistically, the Norman Conquest meant the dissemination in England of a non-Germanic language, which over a period of almost three and a half centuries was to play a significant role as a means of oral and written communication.

As French in early ME was the state and literary language the local English dialects were relatively equal. They were Northern, Midland and Southern. OE Northumbrian developed into the Northern dialect, Mercian corresponded to Midland or Central dialects with West Midland and East Midland. OE Kentish dialect remained the same, and West Saxon and East Saxon yielded South-Western dialect. The Kentish and the South-Western dialects are united under the heading Southern dialects.

The relations among the dialects changed. Some lexical and phonetic dialectal features intermixed, e.g. Scandinavian loan-words penetrated the West Midland and Southern dialects. French borrowings spread in the reverse direction – from the South to the Midlands.

A special position among the ME dialects belonged to the dialect of London, which after the Norman Conquest became the capital of England. London is situated on the Thames and lies on the boundary line between the Midland and the Southern dialects. In the 13^th c. it showed a mixture of East Midland and Southern elements. Later Midland elements prevailed.

Towards the end of the 14^th c. London dialect became the dominating dialect in other parts of the country. London’s geographical position was extremely favourable: many roads, along which England’s internal trade was conducted, crossed in London. Owing to the great depth of the Thames, seaships could easily reach London and it became a centre of the country’s trade with the continent.

The London dialect became the base of the national English language. It contained East Midland, South Eastern and partly South Western elements. The early ME records made in London – beginning with the Proclamation – show that the dialect of London was fundamentally East Saxon.

Later records indicate that the speech of London became more mixed, with East Midland features gradually prevailing. This transformation – from Saxon to Midland character of the London dialect is believed to be due to the Black Death: the major part of London inhabitants died and the new arrivals came from the East Midland counties Norfolk and Suffolk. The speech of Londoners was brought much closer to the East Midland dialect. So the London dialect became more Anglian than Saxon in character.

ME represents variety of literary compositions in different dialects. The Midland dialects – West Midland and East Midland are represented by the following texts. West Midland: Legends of Catherine, Margaret, and Juliana (13^th c.) and Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight (14^th c.). East Midland : King Horn (13^th c.), Havelok the Dane (early ME, 13^th c.), Ormulum (religious poem, early ME, 13^th c.), Debate of Body and Soul (13^th c.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (continuation of the OE Chronicle, early ME).

The Southern – Kentish and South-Western – dialects are represented by Ayenbite of Inwit by Dan Michel, Poems by William of Shoreham (14^th c.), Poema Morale (early ME, 13^th c.); Brut by Layamon (early ME), Ancren Riwle (Statute for Nuns, early ME), Rhymed Chronicle by Rober of Gloucester, Polychronicon by John Trevisa.

The Northern dialect is represented by the Prick of Conscience by Richard Rolle de Hampole (early ME, 14^th c.), Towneley Plays, York Plays (15^th c.).

Scotland dialect is represented by Bruce, the poem by Barbour, The King’s Book by James I, collection of poems, early 15^th c.

The London dialect of the 14^th century is represented by several important documents, namely: Henry III’s Proclamation of 1258, poems by Adam Davy, the works by Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower and John Wycliffe.

Let’s consider the influence of the latter - John Gower and John Wycliffe. The language of John Gower, a poet at the court of Richard III and Henry IV preserves some archaic features, e.g. Gower uses first participle forms in –ende, which were common in the Midland dialects before the –inge suffix came into use.

An important literary document of the time were the works of John Wycliffe and especially his translation of the Bible.

A great role in the formation of the national English language belongs to Geoffrey Chaucer. He was the most outstanding figure of the time. The culmination of Chaucer’s work as a poet is The Canterbury Tales.

Some 19^th century scholars thought that Chaucer laid the foundations of the national language, but this view was very much exaggerated because Chaucer did not create the language - he only made a masterly use of it. The most important was the fact that Chaucer set up a pattern in the literary language to be followed in the 15^th c. It was Chaucer who fixed the peculiarities of the Middle English forms which contained the dominating East Midland elements. For example, the Southern ending – eth of the present plural was superseded by the ending –en typical of Midland dialects. The nominative case of the third person plural personal pronoun hii was superseded by the East Midland they.

Chaucer’s literary language, based on the mixed London dialect is known as classical ME; in the 15^th and 16^th c. it became the basis of the national literary English language.

Lecture 9. Middle English Phonology.

Contents:

1. ME orthography: spelling changes.

2. The scribal traditions of the French.

3. Vowel system: quantitative changes in unstressed vowels.

4. Quantitative changes in stressed vowels.

5. Qualitative changes: development of monophthongs and diphthongs.

ME orthography: spelling changes

During several centuries after the Norman conquest the business of writing was in the hands of French scribes. They introduced into English some peculiarities of French graphic habits. Several letters typical of OE gradually came out of use, and some new ones were introduced. The alphabet of the 14^th century is basically the same that is in use in our days.

OE letter g and the ligature æ, þ, đ came into disuse in ME. þ and đ were replaced by the digraph th. The new letters – g, j, v, q, z were introduced during the ME period.

The scribal traditions of the French.

ME vowels

Now we come to changes in spelling habits. In the sphere of vowels French influence made itself felt into the following sounds: short and long [u], long [e], short [y]. They became spelt in the way they were spelt in French.

1. The long sound [u:], which was represented in OE by the letter u, in ME came to be spelt ou, the way it was spelt in French. From borrowed French words such as trouble, couch, this spelling was transferred to native English words: hous (OE hūs); out (OE ūt); loud (OE hlūd). In final position, and occasionally in medial position the spelling ow was introduced: cow (OE cū); how (OE hū); down (OE dūn).

The use of ou and ow to denote long [u:] resulted in ambiguity, which is still felt in English spelling. The digraph ow could also denote the diphtong [ou]. Thus two series of words came in use: one with [ou]: slow, snow, crow, low, the other – with [u:]: cow, now, down.

2. The vowel [u] is often represent by the letter o to differentiate the letter u and the neighbourring letters u, v, n, m, consisting of vertical strokes. Replacing u by o would avoid the difficulty of confusing these strokes, e.g. in the words: come [kum∂] (OE cuman), som [sum] (OE sum), sone [sun∂] (OE sunu), love [luv∂] (OE lufu).

3. The vowel [e:] is sometimes denoted by the digraph ie. In Anglo-Norman the digraph had the same value. From French loan words like chief [tſe:f], relief [rele:f] this spelling penetrated into native English words like field [fe:ld] (OE feld), thief [ θe:f] (OE þēof).

4. To denote the vowel [ű] in the dialects the letter u was used, as in fur fire’ (OE fyr).

ME consonants

In the sphere of consonants French scribal habits had some influence on the spelling of the sounds[ θ ], [ đ ], [v], [tſ], [ ſ ], [χ], [k], [kw], [ j ].

1. The spellings þ and đ for the sounds

[ θ ] and [ đ ] were gradually superseded by the digraph th: this for OE þis, three for OE þrēo.

2. For the consonant [v] the letter v was introduced. But as v was considered to be merely an allograph of u, both allographs could be used indiscriminately: over, ouer (OE ofer).

3. The affricate [tſ] was denoted by the digraph ch: techen ‘teach’, child. The corresponding voiced affricate [d ] was spelt in the French way either j, g or dg: courage, joy, bridge.

4. The consonant [ſ] was spelt sh and sometimes sch: ship, schip, shal, schal.

5. The consonant [ χ ] was first spelt g , and later gh: ligt, light.

6. The letter c when denoting the consonant [k] was replaced by the letter k before e, i, and also before n: drinken (OE drincan), king (OE cyning, knowen (OE cnāwan).

7. The consonant [ j ], which in OE was spelt g , now came to be spelt y: yēr ‘year’ (OE gēar), ye ‘you’ (OE gē).

8. The letter z was introduced to denote the consonant [z], which in ME became a separate phoneme. But it was not used systematically. E.g. the sound [z] was spelt s in chesen, losen and other words.

Clusters

1. The cluster [kw] was spelt qu instead of OE cw: quethen ‘say’ (OE cweþan).

Ornamental Peculiarities

Besides these features, due to French influence, ME spelling had some more peculiarities, which have partly been preserved down to the present day.

1. It became a habit in ME to replace final –i by –y. The motive was purely graphic, y being more ornamental than i, and eventually this became one of the most characteristic features of English spelling. The letter y was also often used instead of i in medium position: ryden (OE rīdan), wryten (OE wrītan). This habit did not survive.

2. Similarly, the letter u when final was replaced by w, which was more ornamental. Again, words ending in –u in ME are very few: you, thou.