Lecture 8. Evolution of the sound system in me

In Early ME the pronunciation of unstressed syllables became increasingly indistinct. The final unstressed vowel disappeared in Late ME though it continued to be spelt.

Quantitative changes included short vowel lengthening in open syllables and long vowel shortening before two or more consonants.

Qualitative changes included the change of /a:/ > /o:/; the short /ae/ > /a /; OE /y / turned into /i /, /e/, /u/ in different dialects. Vowels in unaccented syllables were reduced to a weak aound.

The OE diphthongs became monophthongs. A number of new diphthongs appeared in ME according to a process of vocalization. Certain consonants turned into vowels and formed diphthongs together with the preceding vowels.

A new type of consonants developed from OE palatal plosives. The new phonemes were indicated by special letter combinations: ch, tch, dg, sch, sh, ssh.

Lecture 9. The grammar system of the me language

During the ME period the English language gradually changed from a synthetic type of language into analytical. Analytical forms developed from free word groups the first component of which gradually lost its lexical meaning and turned into a grammatical marker, while the second component preserved its lexical meaning and got a new grammatical value in the compound form.

The ME Noun

The 11^th – 12^th c were characterized by a strong tendency towards simplification of a system of declension. It started in the Northern dialects. There were two cases in Late ME: the Common and Genetive cases. In Late ME gender disappeared. It became a lexical category. The ME Common case had a very general meaning that was specified by the context, prepositions, the word order and he meaning of the predicate.

The category of Number was preserved with its peculiar ways of expressing.

The ME Pronoun

There were some changes in the system of ME Pronoun. The 3d person singular feminine was substituted by she. The 3d person plural was substituted by the Scandinavian borrowing they. In the 15^th c the forms ye, you, your began to be used.

The dual number of personal pronouns disappeared.

In Early ME the demonstrative pronouns lost most of their inflected forms and were unified to that and this. The other direction of the development of the demonstrative pronouns of Group 1 led to the formation of the definite article.

The ME Adjective System

The ME adjective was also simplified. It lost its grammatical categories with the exception of the degrees of comparison. During the early ME period the agreement between the noun and the adjective was almost lost.

The decay of the grammatical categories of the adjective began with the disappearance of the category of gender by the 11^th c.

Analytical forms appeared for the formation of the degrees of comparison: more and most.

The verb in Middle English

The OE division of verbs into strong and weak ones was rearranged and broken. Most verbs adopted a dental suffix for building their forms.

A strict classification of strong verbs was broken. The forms of the strong verbs reduced from 4 to 3. There was a tendency among the strong verbs to build their forms according to the weak ones. Their number reduced.

The growth of analytical forms was a common Germanic tendency. The development of analytical forms was characterized by the loss of the lexical meaning of the first component and its turning into an auxiliary one and retaining the lexical meaning by the second component of a verbal phrase.

The category of aspect. The continuous form as a means of expressing the continuous aspect goes back to the OE free phrase beon / wesan + Present Participle. Another OE phrase that might have been a source of the continuous form was beon /wesan + a verbal noun.

The category of tense. The starting point of the formation of the analytical form of the Future Tense was a free OE phrase sculan/ willan + the Infinitive. They were originally compound modal verbal predicates. In ME the original meanings of volition/determination involved in sculan were weakened to such a degree that both phrases began to denote an idea of a future action.

The category of Voice. The origin of the Perfect form. A free phrase beon / weorpan + Past Participle of a transitive verb is supposed to be the basis for the analytical form of the Passive Voice. The first component gradually lost its lexical meaning and turned into an auxiliary one. At the beginning o the period weorpan was used more widely in such constructions. But it was gradually replaced by ben.

There were free phrases with habban and beon + Participle 2 in OE. They gradually lost their own lexical meanings and turned into auxiliary verbs used for the formation of the Perfect Tense. The form with ben was used with intransitive verbs. It was only in the NE period that it was replaced by the verb have.