54. Development of Perfect Forms in English.

• In OE there was no perfect.

• Perfective meaning was rendered by non-perfective forms of verbs by means of adding the prefixes (first of all _e-, but also ā-, be-, fōr- etc: _esittan посадити, ārīsan встати, fōr-_iefan віддати).

• The Perfect tense-forms began to develop in OE: Participle II was often used as an attribute to the direct object of the verb habban. Ic habbe _ā bōc (_e)-writen.

• When the forms of agreement with the object were lost, the ties with the object loosened, Participle II became closely attached to the verb habban (haven) and the above combinations began to denote the action and became analytical forms (Table 81).

• The verb haven was used with transitive verbs, the verb bēn with intransitive. Both auxiliaries were used till ENE. The remnants of this use in Mod E are: he is gone, the tree is fallen.

At first the forms of the Present Perfect and Past Perfect could be used indiscriminately and did not differ much from the Past Indefinite as it can be seen from the examples by Chaucer: For he was late y-come from his viage, and wentefor to doon his pilgrimage

55. Middle English Dialects.

OE Nortumbrian > ME Northern

OE Mercian > ME Midland: 1West Midland

2East Midland

OE West Saxon +Kentish > ME Southern

56. The Linguistic Consequences of the Norman Conquest.

The Impact of French on the vocabulary can hardly be overestimated. A more specific influence was exercised on the alphabet and spelling. After the Norman conquest 10.000 were borrowed. 75% have been preserved. The French borrowings belong to the following semantic spheres: government and administration, political sphere, feudal system, titles, court life, military words, law, church, art cuisine (Table 64).

57. The Linguistic Consequences of the Scandinavian Invasion.

• increased the differences between the local dialects;

• affected the word stock of the EL

• partly affected it morphology

• caused the appearance in the EL of some sound combinations which can be traced to OScannd. Dialects.

58. ME Dialects. Development of the Monophthongs y̆, ā, å, ǽ in Different Dialects.

Five main dialects: West Midland, South-western, South-Eastern, East Midland, Northern( Table 83)

59. General Characteristics of Middle English Grammar.

ME – is a transitional period from synthetic(inflected) forms and analytical with analytical means of word connection( prepositions, auxiliary words, verbs, changes of stress, word order).

60. Scandinavian Borrowings in ME.

The influence covered a considerable semantic field – political terms, Everyday life: lagu – law; callen – call; wrang – wrong. Some military terms: fulcian – form( a military unit) but the did not survive. Geological name: Derby, Kirkby.

61. French Borrowings in ME.

10.000 words were borrowed; 75% were preserved. Semantic spheres: government, military terms, church words, law terms, art and architecture, names of titles, cuisine( power, reign, people nation, noble, glory, army, battle, image, figure, court, justice)

62. The development of the Complex sentence structure in ME and NE.

In OE the complex sentences existed too but predicative clause appeared. ( Table 82)

63. Vocabulary in Middle English.

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, which could be employed for a variety of different purposes.

64. Changes in Orthography in ME.

65. Formation of the National literary English language.

Literary language is a developed form of a national language, with norms fixed in writing to varying extents; the language of all manifestations of culture that are expressed in words. The concept of a “developed form” is historically variable (in different ages and with different peoples). In the age of feudalism many peoples of the world used foreign languages as their written literary languages. The Iranian and Turkish peoples used classical Arabic, the Japanese and Koreans used classical Chinese, the Germanic and West Slavic peoples used Latin, and the people in the Baltic region and the Czechs used German. The popular languages supplanted the foreign language in many functional spheres of communication during the 14th and 15th centuries in some states and in the 16th and 17th centuries in others. The literary language is always the result of collective creative activity. The notion that the norms of a literary language are “fixed” is somewhat relative (despite all the importance and stability of the norm, it changes in time). It is not possible to imagine a national culture that is rich and developed without a rich and developed literary language. This is why the problem of the literary language is very important for society. Linguists do not agree about the complex and multifaceted concept of the literary language. Some researchers prefer to talk not about the literary language as a whole but about its variations—the written literary language, the spoken literary language, the language of literature, and so on.