7. Write the foreign influence that affected the sound changes of the English phonetics

Sound changes took place in Eng­lish at every period of history. In the western Europe of medieval and modern times French has exercised a similar, though probably a less overwhelming, influence. English borrowed an immense number of words from the French of the Norman invaders, later also from the court French of Isle like veal and judge; in words of Anglo-Saxon origin v and j can only occur after vowels, e.g., over, hedge). But English has exerted practically no influence on French.

Task 7. Analyze and comment on the origins of the [tʃ] & [dʒ] sounds in the following words: charme, gentil, edge

In OE there were no affricates and no sibilants, except [s, z].

The earliest distinct sets of these sounds appeared towards the end of OE or during the Early ME period. The new type of consonants de­veloped from OE palatal plosives [k', g'](which had split from the corresponding velar plosives [k] and [g] in Early OE (see § 141), and also from the consonant cluster [sk']. The three new phonemes which arose from these sources were [tʃ], [dʒ] and [ʃ]. In Early ME they began to be indicated by special letters and digraphs, which came into use mainly under the influence of the French scribal tradition — ch, tch, g, dg, sh, ssh, sch (see § 357, 358).

The sound changes and examples are shown in Table 9.

Table 9

Development of Sibilants and Affricates in Early Middle English

Charge illustrated		Examples
OE	ME	OE	ME	NE
k'	tʃ	cild	child [tʃi:ld]	child
		tǣcan	techen ['tɛtʃən]	teach
g'	dʒ	ecʒe	edge ['edʒa]	edge
		brycʒe	bridge ['bridʒə]	bridge
sk'	ʃ	fisc	fish [fiʃ]	fish
		scēap	sheep [ʃɛ:p]	sheep

It must be added that the affricates [tʃ] and [dʒ] could also come from a different source: they entered the English language in loanwords from French, e.g. ME charme ['tʃarmə], gentil [dʒen'til] from O Fr charme, gentil ([tʃ] and [dʒ] in the Anglo-Norman pronunciation)

As a result of these changes — and also as a result of the vocalisation of [γ](§ 360) — the consonant system in Late ME was in some respects different from the OE system. The opposition of velar conso­nants to palatal — [k, k'; γ, j] — had disappeared; instead, plosive consonants were contrasted to the new affricates and in the set of affri­cates [tʃ] was opposed to [dʒ] through sonority

8. In which period of the English language did the Future tense appear & Why? In the OE language there was no form of the Future tense. The category of Tense consisted of two members: Past and Present. The Pres. tense could indicate both present and future actions, depending on the context. Alongside this form there existed other ways of presenting future happenings: modal phrases, consisting of the verbs sculan, willan, magan, cunnan and others (NE shall, will, may, can) and the Infinitive of the notional verb. In these phrases the meaning of futurity was combined with strong modal meanings of volition, obligation, possibility.In ME the use of modal phrases, especially with the verb shall, became increasingly common. Shall plus Inf. was now the principal means of indicating future actions in any context. (We may recall that the Pres. tense had to be accompanied by special time indicators in order to refer an action to the future.) Shall could retain its modal meaning of necessity, but often weakened it to such an extent that the phrase denoted "pure" futurity. (The meaning of futurity is often combined with that of modality, as a future action is a planned, potential action, which has not yet taken place.) One of the early instances of shall with a weakened modal meaning is found in the Early ME poem Ormilum (1200); the phrase is also interesting as it contains willen as a notional verb: And whase wile/in shall ?iss boc efft o?errsipe written.In Late ME texts shall was used both as a modal verb and as a Future tense auxiliary, though discrimination between them is not always possible. Cf: Me from the feend and fro his clawes kepe. That day that I shal drenchen in the depe. (Chaucer) (Save me from the fiend and his claws the day when I am drowned (or am doomed to get drowned) in the deep (sea). She shal have nede to wasshe away the rede. (Chaucer) (She will have to wash away the red (blood).)Future happenings were also commonly expressed by ME willen with an Int., but the meaning of volition in will must have been more obvious than the modal meaning of shall: A tale wol I telle (I intend to tell a story)But lordes, wol ye maken assurance. As I shal seyn, assentynge to my loore. And I shal make us sauf for everemore (But, lordes, will you (be so kind as or agree to) make assurance (and take this course) as I shall save and I shall make it safe for us for ever.)The future event is shown here as depending upon the will or consent of the doer. Instances of will with a weakened modal meaning are rare: But natheless she ferde as she wolde deye. (Chaucer) (But nevertheless she feared that she would die.) It has been noticed that the verb will was more frequent in popular ballads and in colloquial speech, which testifies to certain stylistic restrictions in the use of will in ME.In the age of Shakespeare the phrases with shall and will, as well as the Pres. tense of notional verbs, occurred in free variation; they can express "pure" futurity and add different shades of modal meanings. Phrases with shall and will outnumbered all the other ways of indicating futurity, cf. their meanings in the following passages from Shakespeares sonnets:Then hate me when thou wilt (desire) When forty winters shall besiege thy brow. And dig deep trenches in thy beautys field. Thy youths proud livery, so gazd on now. Will be a tatterd weed, of small worth held. ("pure" future) That thou art blamd - shall not be thy defect, (future with the meaning of certainty, prediction)In the 17th c. will was sometimes used in a shortened form ll, (ll can also stand for shall, though historically it is traced to will): against myself Ill fight; against myself Ill vow debate. (Sh) In Early NE the causative meaning passed to a similar verb phrase with make, while the periphrasis with do began to be employed instead of simple, synthetic forms. Its meaning did not differ from that of simple forms.

Task: Make an analysis on the grammatical forms which developed on the basis of the constructions existed in OE. The Old English Like modern German, it had a strong system of inflections to convey grammatical relationships between words. Word order was thus less important in constructing meaning than in modern English. Every noun, pronoun and adjective belonged to one of three genders, one of two numbers and was placed in one of five cases. They were inflected to different patterns according to whether they were strong or weak nouns. Every adjective had to [[agree] with the noun it qualified - in other words, had to match it in number, gender and case. Verbs had four endings in each of the present and pastindicative tense, and two in each the subjunctive tenses. These inflections were shown by suffixes. Verbs were divided into two main groups. Strong verbs inflected for tense by changing the vowels of the stem (as in the modern 'swim' - 'swam' - swum'). (This phenomenon is known as 'ablaut', and is common in Germanic languages.) There were seven classes of strong verbs, each of which had its own pattern of vowel changes. Weak verbs formed their past tenses in the same way as that followed by most verbs in modern English, by adding a suffix formed with a dental consonant - either a '-t-' or a '-d-'. There were a few other classes of verbs in Old English. Their number and nature changed over the some 700 years during which the language developed. It is the number of inflections that made it less important to give words in a particular order. In Modern English, the two sentences "The dog bit the man" and "The man bit the dog" are only different because of the order of the words: there is no change in their shapes. In Old English, on the other hand, the Subject and the Object of each sentence were marked as such by the word-endings, and, no matter in what order the words were placed, the sentences were recognisable as being either quite an expected event - or a most unusual one!