10. The chronological divisions in the history of English: the Middle English period.

According to English scientists Henry Sweet the periods of the English development may be classified with the development of English endings: 1.The Period of Full Endings 2.The Period of Levelled Endings in reality contains the levelled vowel in the ending, but at the same time lots of endings were already lost; 3.The Period of Lost Endings. Generally held classification is as follows: 1)Early Old English (5^th cent-7^th cent.) 2)Old English or Anglo-Saxon(8^th cent. – 11^th cent.) 3)Early Middle English(1066(Norman Conquest) - middle oh 14^th cent.) 4)Late or classical Middle English (2^nd half of 14^th cent. -15^th cent.) 5)Early New English (1475 (introducing of printing) – 1660(Age of Shakespeare)) 6)The age of normalization&correctness(mid 17^th cent. – end 18^th) 7)New English(from 19^th cent.)

In the course of ME many new devices were introduced into the system of spelling. In ME the runic letters passed out of use. Thorn – þ – and the crossed d – đ, ð – were replaced by the digraph th, which retained the same sound value: [Ө] and [ð]; the rune “wynn” was displaced by “double u” – w – ; the ligatures æ and œ fell into disuse. After English regained its prestige as the language of writing. Therefore many innovations in ME spelling reveal an influence of the French scribal tradition. The digraphs ou, ie, and ch which occurred in many French borrowings and were regularly used in Anglo-Norman texts were adopted as new ways of indicating the sounds [u:], [e:], and [t∫]. A wider use of digraphs. (ch, ou, ie, th, d sh-later) digraph wh replaced the OE sequence of letters hw as in OE hwæt, ME what [hwat]. Long sounds were shown by double letters, e.g. ME book [bo:k], though long [e:] could be indicated by ie and ee, and also by e. The letter y came to be used as an equivalent of i and was evidently preferred when i could be confused with the surrounding letters m, n and others. Sometimes, y, as well w, were put at the end of a word, so as to finish the word with a curve, e.g. ME very [veri], my [mi:]; w was interchangeable with u in the digraphs ou, au, e.g. ME doun, down [du:n], and was often preferred finally, e.g. ME how [hu:], now [nu:].

Word Stress in ME and Early NE

In OE stress usually fell on the first root syllable of the word, rarely on its second syllable The word accent acquired greater positional freedom and began to play a more important role in word derivation. As the loan-words were assimilated, the word stress was moved closer to the beginning of the word. It is known as the “recessive” tendency, e.g. vertu [ver´tju:] became NE virtue [və:t∫ə]. In words of three or more syllables the shift of the stress could be caused by the recessive tendency and also by the “rhythmic” tendency. Under it, a secondary stress would arise at a distance of one syllable from the original stress. Stress was not shifted to the prefixes of many verbs borrowe. Corresponding nouns sometimes received the stress on the first syllable: NE ΄present n - pre΄sent v;

Unstressed vowels

In Early ME the pronunciation of unstressed syllables became increasingly indistinct. As compared to OE, which distinguishes five short vowels in unstressed position [e/i], [a] and [o/u], Late ME had only two vowels in unaccented syllables: [ə] and [i], e.g. OE talu – ME tale [΄ta:lə] – NE tale, OE bodiз – ME body [΄bodi] – NE body. The final [ə] disappeared in Late ME though it continued to be spelt as -e. When the ending –e survived only in spelling, it was understood as a means of showing the length of the vowel in the preceding syllable and was added to words which did not have this ending before, e.g. OE stān, rād – ME stone, , new unstressed vowels appeared in borrowed words or developed from stressed ones, as a result of various changes, e.g. the shifting of word stress in ME and NE, vocalization of [r] in such endings as writer, actor, where [er] and [or] became [ə].

Quantitative vowel changes in Early ME

In Later OE and in Early ME vowel length began to depend on phonetic conditions. The earliest of positional quantitative changes was the readjustment of quantity before some consonant clusters:

1) Short vowels were lengthened before two consonants – a sonorant and a plosive; consequently, all vowels occurring in this position remained or became long, e.g. OE wild – ME wild [wi:ld] – NE wild.

2) All other groups of two or more consonants produced the reverse effect: they made the preceding long vowels short, and henceforth all vowels in this position became or remained short, e.g. OE cēpte > ME kepte [΄keptə] – NE kept.

3) Short vowels became long in open syllables, e.g. OE nama > ME name [na:mə] – NE name. In spite of some restrictions no lengthening occurred in polysyllabic words and before some suffixes, OE bodiз > ME body [΄bodi] – NE body.

In Early ME the dialectal differences grew. In some areas OE [y], [y:] developed into [e], [e:], in others they changed to [i], [i:]; in the South-West and in the West Midlands the two vowels were for some time preserved as [y], [y:], but later were moved backward and merged with [u], [u:], e.g

Qualitative vowel changes.

OE possessed a well developed system of diphthongs: falling diphthongs with a closer nucleus and more open glide arranged in two symmetrical sets – long and short: [ea:], [eo:], [ie:] and [ea], [eo], [ie]. Towards the end of the OE period some of the diphthongs merged with monophthongs. As a result of these changes the vowel system lost two sets of diphthongs, long and short. In the meantime anew set of diphthongs developed from some sequences of vowels and consonants due to the vocalization of OE [j] and [γ], that is to their change into vowels. These changes gave rise to two sets of diphthongs: with i-glides and u-glides. The same types of diphthongs appeared also from other sources: the glide -u developed from OE [w] as in OE snāw, which became ME snow [snou], and before [x] and [l] as in Late ME smaul and taughte.

in grammar, English came to rely less on inflectional endings and more on word order to convey grammatical information.The range of inflections, particularly in the noun, was reduced drastically (partly as a result of reduction of vowels in unstressed final syllables), as was the number of distinct paradigms: in most early Middle English texts most nouns have distinctive forms only for singular vs. plural, genitive, and occasional traces of the old dative in forms with final –e occurring after a preposition..

in vocabulary, English became much more heterogeneous, showing many borrowings from French, Latin, and Scandinavian. Large-scale borrowing of new words often had serious consequences for the meanings and the stylistic register of those words which survived from Old English. Eventually, various new stylistic layers emerged in the lexicon.

Вопрос № 11

Chronological division in the history of English: the Early New English period.

Traditional periodization divides English into 3 periods – old English, middle English, new English.

1475(printing) - the start of the New English period

Early New English 1475- 1660 , first printed book by William Caxton in 1475 . Literary Renaissance. The growth of the great English Nation was accompanied by the formation of the English Language .

Early ME was a time of sweeping changes at all levels – lexical and phonetic. New bourgeois society was the reason for growth of vocabulary, new words from internal and external sources enriched vocabulary. Extensive phonetic changes were transforming the vowel system => gap between written and spoken forms. Grammatical forms and syntactical constructions were almost same with Modern E, but their use was different.

Вопрос № 12

The Formation of the National Literary English language thought to be 15^th -17^th cent.

Factors, led to this development:

1. the unification of the country

2. the progress of culture.

Increased foreign contacts affected the wordstock.

Processes played an important role in the unification of the English language:

1. the changes in the economic and social conditions

2. the intermixture of people coming from different regions

3. the growth of towns with a mixed population

4. the strengthening of social ties between the various regions.

In the 15^th and 16^th centuries England needed a uniform standard language to make further progress. The making of the English nation was connected with the formation of the national English language.

The universities at Oxford and Cambridge (founded as early as the 12^th century) - centres of new learning in England. Education ceased to be the privilege of the clergy; it spread to laymen and people of lower social ranks: the lower nobility, merchants and artisans. After the reformation (1534) teachers and tutors could be laymen as well as clergymen.

The main subject in schools - Latin; the English language - instrument in teaching Latin. Scientific and philosophical treatises were written in Latin, an international language. => The enrichment of the English vocabulary.

The invention of printing had the most immediate effect on the development of the language.

The art of “artificial writing” was invented in Germany in 1438; the first book in the English (1476, printed by William Caxton) - story of Troy. The total circulation of the books was about 10 000.

Printers used the London literary English (since the age of Chaucer) and modified in accordance with the linguistic changes that had taken place during the past hundred years. Cheap printed books became available all over England => the London form of speech spread in other regions (was imitated in the written words produced there). The form of the language used by the printers became the standard form of literary English recognised throughout the country.

Writers of the 15^th century: Thomas Hoccleve (1370-1450) and John Lydgate (1370-1450), the disciples and imitators of Geoffrey Chaucer.

In the 16^th century: Thomas More (1478-1535), who wrote both in Latin and in English, and William Tyndale, the famous translator of the Bible. His translation of the New Testament was first published in Worms in 1525. All versions of the bible in English and first of all King James’ Bible(1611), which was officially approved and spread were largely based on Tyndale’s translation.

The progress of literature and drama in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries are linked up with an enrichment of the language. William Shakespeare (1564) and his contemporaries (Edmund Spencer, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, Philip Sidney, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher and others) wrote in the Early New English literary language, which was represented by a wide variety of literary styles and was characterised by a rapid growth of the vocabulary, freedom in creating new words and meanings, and versatility of grammatical construction.

The early 16^th century: John Cheke, a scholar of Cambridge and a pioneer among spelling reformers, proposed that all letters should be consistently doubled to indicate length – a practice very regularly employed before his time; Thomas Smith set out a new alphabet of 34 letters to the same object.

The greatest English phonetician of the 16^th century was John Hart (“ An Orthographie”, 1569): the changing values of the letters brought about by the change in the sounds. His proposed reforms of the English spelling, however, were as unsuccessful as those of his contemporaries.

Richard Mulcaster (The Elementarie, 1582) admitted that no spelling could record the changing sounds. He suggested that traditional spelling should be employed as before, but wherever possible, should be made more consistent: words pronounced alike should be spelt in the same manner, through analogy.

The written form of the English language became standardised earlier than its spoken form. The literary form of English came into existence in the age of Chaucer, was fixed and spread with the introduction of printing and was further developed as the national English literary language during the rise of literature in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

The question of sources and dating for the standard superdialect form of the spoken literary language is more problematic. Its formation had the same basics as the linguistic unity in the sphere of writing. The earliest date suggested as the time of the formation of the spoken standard is the end of the 17^th century; some authorities refer it to the period of “fixing the pronunciation” (the 18^th century), yet others believe that the process is not over to this day.

The first references to a form of speech superior to other forms are found in the works of the earliest phoneticians: John Hart (16^th century). In the 17th century the type of speech used in London and in the Universities was unanimously proclaimed the best type of English.

17^th century: the gap between the written language and the spoken language became narrower. Spread of education => more people learned to speak “correctly”. Standard speech was distinguished from local dialect upon the 18^th century (insisted in the grammars and dictionaries).

By the 17^th century the tongue of London (the basis of the spoken standard) had absorbed many new features of the local dialects, because:

1. the country was more unified

2. the ties between its regions strengthened,

3. and the population of London had become still more mixed.

The tongue of the middle class of London had become closer to the tongue of the common people. In the turbulent 17^th century – the age of the English Revolution –people of lower ranks joined the upper and middle classes => speech assumed many of the features of the lower varieties of English.

The spoken form of the literary language is not stable even now: + professional jargon, social dialects or local dialects => the spoken standard comes into the written standard.