МІНІСТЕРСТВО ОСВІТИ І НАУКИ УКРАЇНИ
Запорізький національний технічний університет
Е. О. Кущ
Тексти (конспект) лекцій з дисципліни
Історія англійської мови. Середньоанглійський
та новоанглійський періоди
для студентів спеціальності 6.030500 “Філологія”
2013
Тексти (конспект) лекцій з дисципліни “Історія англійської мови. Середньоанглійський та новоанглійський періоди” для студентів усіх форм навчання спеціальності 6.030500 “Філологія” /Укл.: доцент, к.філ.н., Е.О. Кущ. - Запоріжжя: ЗНТУ, 2013. – 60 с.
Укладач: Е.О. Кущ, доцент, к.філ.н.
Рецензент: Г.Б. Підгорна, доцент, к.філ.н.
Відповідальний
за випуск: Е.О. Кущ, доцент, к.філ.н.
Затверджено
на засіданні кафедри “Теорії і практики перекладу”
Протокол № 2
від “18” вересня 2013 р.
Contents
1. General characteristics of the Middle English Period....................4
2. Writings in Middle English……………………………………..12
3. Phonetic Changes in Middle English…………………………...14
4. Middle English Morphology. Middle English Noun ...................20
5. The Article....................................................................................22
6. Middle English Adjective.............................................................23
7. Middle English Verb...................................................................23
8. Middle English Vocabulary..........................................................28
9. Middle English Syntax …………………………………………30
10. General Characteristics of the Early New English
Period...........................................................................................31
11. Phonetic Changes in the Early New English Period..................39
12. Early New English Grammar. Nouns and Adjectives................42
13 The Verb in Early New English ……………………………….44
14. Early New English Syntax and Vocabulary...............................50
15. Expansion of English…………………………………………..54
1. General characteristics of the Middle English Period
Traditionally it is considered that the Middle English period begins from the year 1066, the most significant event in English history, the event that changed the official, prevalently Germanic language of the population into a colloquial tongue, an adulterated with numerous borrowings and utterly spoiled and pigionized vernacular, which had to lead continuously and strenuously struggle to survive, and when it at last re-emerged as an official state language it was changed beyond recognition. Much can be said about the reasons and the processes that took place in this period, and historical background, of course, is of paramount importance to understand why it happened. A brief survey of historic events of the period is needed, to get a better understanding of the linguistic consequences of these events.
The event that preceded the Norman conquest and paved the way to it was the Scandinavian invasion. This event is probably less memorable, yet it prepared the ground for further changes in the society as well as in the language. Scandinavians (then simply Danes, for Swedish, Norse, Danish in those times simply were not yet discerned within the language commonly known as Old Norse) were old rivals of the English, and were troubling Anglo-Saxons ever since their settlement on the Isles. They occasionally raided into their territory, looted the monasteries, and in many respects interfered with the life of the local population. Through the so-called Wedmore peace treaty King Alfred of Wessex in 878 yielded a considerable part of the country to economic control of the Danes so that the latter could come and levy taxes from the population; the territory was called Danelaw and in the long run this rather shameful treaty contributed to the peaceful and happy life of the Southern part of the country, and the majority of written monuments of Anglo-Saxon culture are dated back to those happy years.
Chronicles, translations of Latin works on geography, the beginnings of grammar, numerous religious texts and finally the very text of the most significant epic poem, Beowulf, are dated back to the years of King Alfred and the Danelaw. The ^andinavians, for their part, not only came to collect money but comprehended that the very territory of the islands was much more suitable for living and economic activity and moved and settled there. They mixed with the local population, and without much effort penetrated into that community which was to become the basis for the English nation. Their languages were similar, so mutual understanding was not specifically difficult, only some simplification was needed as is usual when languages differ in particulars. These particulars, i.e. endings and other unnecessary details might be omitted without significant effort. Yet as time passed, the English kings were less and less apt to recognise the Wedmore accords, and the Scandinavians, that had already tasted the advantages of these territories grew more intent on getting still more, and the onslaughts were resumed. They resulted in the 1013 Scandinavian invasion of King Sweyn, and the additional almost 30 years of Scandinavian rule. King Sweyn started the process, and in 1016 his son Canute (or Knut) became the ruler of England. The invasion was not utterly ferocious; of course there were victims and many people were killed, but seeing that there was no prospect for further resistance, king Aethelred fled to Normandy, and the whole country was controlled by the Scandinavians. The invaders came with their families, intermarried and intermixed with the local population, and finally were absorbed ethnically and linguistically by if, the relations between the languages were considerably equal, and the influence of the Scandinavian on the English language was moderate.
Morphologically it resulted in reduction or levelling of endings which were different in the two languages (compare fiskr -fisc; dxj - dagr; jrlpan - gripa; sittan - sitia), and the loss of the category of gender whatsoever for the same words might have different genders in the two languages (compare собака, степь, боль, живопись, рукопись, корь, посуда which are feminine in Russian while their Ukrainian counterparts arc masculine: собака, степ, біль, живопис, рукопис, кір, посуд). Both languages had agreement of adjectives and pronouns with the nouns they modified, and so not to think about the endings (степ широкий чи широка, біль сильний чи сильна) unsophisticated speakers simply dropped the endings, thus extinguishing a whole category from the language.
The lexical borrowings of this period came equally in many spheres of life and sometimes they denoted some things really absent in the Old English. Perhaps winded je - window was a specific oval kind of an opening in the dwelling that only the Scandinavians knew, or feologa - fellow - that was a kind of specific relations between people when they shared common property and conducted some economic activity jointly. These were not originally found in the English society, but borrowing of the others cannot be accounted for reasonably: lagu - law; wrang - wrong; husbonda - husband, casten - to cast, taken - to take, skye - sky.
So, during the invasion such words were borrowed from the Old Nursias they, them, their; ill, ugly, ransack; skate, sky, skirt, skill, skin, scatter, egg, give, guess, guest. Old English words jiefan, jietan, sej, jiest thus were dropped and replaced by Scandinavian borrowings; such word as shirt coexists with skirt, shatter with scatter, shin with skin; but the words now are different in meaning.
Sometimes it was only new meaning from the Scandinavian that replaced the original meaning of an Old English word: dream that meant joy acquired the meaning dream in a sleep; holm, formerly ocean acquired the meaning island,changed from cultivated land to plough; deyen (to die) was borrowed and Old English verb that had meaning steorfan acquired a new meaning of to stance.So, the English language of the period that preceded the Norman conquest was significantly changed and simplified, and the drastic changes that followed fell onto the prepared linguistic soil.
As is known from history, after the Scandinavian conquest the English king joined his sister who was married to a Norman Duke in Normandy, and his son Edward the Confessor was brought up in the French environment. The English court enjoyed Norman hospitality, and Edward, who was childless constantly reminded William Duke of Normandy, that after his death the only legitimate heir to the English crown was just he, William as the next in line. When in 1042 the Anglo-Saxon barons who remained in England managed to oust the Scandinavians, according to the custom of period it was Edward who regained the rule in England, though he himself did little to do it. On his return, he brought many councillors of French origin, and the language Edward knew much better than English was French: the latter spoken in the English court even before the Normans. The Anglo-Saxon barons among whom was the powerful Earl Godwin of Wessex, however, controlled a significant part of the territory and hoped that after the Edward's death power would pass to one of them, and when Edward died in 1066, they elected Harold Godwin king of England. As soon as the news reached William, the Duke was simply enraged, and mustered a big army by promising lands and positions to his mercenaries - only one third of his soldiers were Normans, the others were from other parts of France and Europe in general. William had the support of the Pope as well. His army crossed the English Channel and on October 14 at the battle of Hastings, 1066, routed the English army, that was smaller and had to guard the northern areas from the recently driven out Scandinavians. King Harold was killed, and William proceeded to London where the Witenagamot officially proclaimed him the King. On Christmas Day, 1066 his coronation took place in the Westminster Abbey. It took him several years to subjugate the whole country; and this process was marked by almost complete extinction of the old Anglo-Saxon nobility (he had promised lands, posts and estates to his allies, so the previous owners of these had to die or disappear). Practically all Archbishops and Barons were either killed in action, executed or emigrated leaving to the Normans whatever they had. William himself became the owner of one-third of the lands in the country, and Norman castles of the period are scattered all over England. He had some difficulties in managing the country; it was much easier for the native barons to collect taxes from the peasants they knew and whose language they spoke. So in 1086 William organised the great census - the Doomsday book was written registering the English population (in turned out to be about 2 mln?). He was the ruler of Normandy as well, and his domain was situated on the continent as well as on the island.
Following the Conquest many other Normans crossed the channel, and enlarged the population of England. The approximate number of French settlers was about 200 000. After the Civil war in the reign of king Stephen (1135-1154) new settlers made use of the anarchy in the country and seized the remaining lands. They spoke French, which, though had some peculiarities - it was, in fact, the language learned by the ethnic Germanic tribe of nordmonna that settled in that part of Europe yet in the 9th century. For almost three centuries the French language was the official language of the English kingdom; it was the language of the royal court, the church, courts of law, army and the castle. Education, as it was mainly controlled by the church was also in French, though the Latin language was traditionally also taught.
People in towns and cities spoke French, and English was debased to the speech of common churls from the country: it was mainly spoken and mutilated beyond recognition by the efforts of mutual understanding of the uneducated peasants and uneducated French soldiers, and the French population in general. A good knowledge of French was the sign of higher standing and gave a person a certain social prestige. Probably, some considerable part of the English population was already bilingual. A curious situation occurred when a nobleman was less expert in languages than common peasants. Several stories bear evidence that in some strained circumstances when a mighty bishop had to flee away from the anger of his sovereign Richard Coer de Lion, he to his utter surprise found out that common people, addressing him in English could speak French and understand him, while he was unable to speak or understand their language.
Peace in the country was however rather hard to maintain. In 1203 John the Lackland lost the original possessions of the Norman Dukes in Normandy, and probably that led - first only very slightly - to the feeling of hurt pride and was the first stimulus to reinstating the English language. But it took decades for the first recognition of this language. It was not until 1258 that king Henry III let the language into official use - his famous Proclamation to the councillors in the parliament was written in three instead of the earlier two languages - French, Latin and English.
The three hundred years of French domination affected the English language enormously.The first English kings after the Conquest did not know the English language; Henry IV, who succeeded Richard II on the throne in 1399, was the first king since Harold II whose mother tongue was English. But still in mid-14 century (1362), under King Edward II the Parliament acting on the petition of the City of London ruled that the courts of law should conduct their business in English. In the same year English was first used in the Parliament itself. About this time French was replaced by English in schools.
Why didn't the English language die altogether? Why was it not absorbed into the dominant Norman tongue? Three reasons are usually given. First - it was too well established, too vigorous, and too hardy to be obliterated. The English speakers, in spite of all, demographically prevailed, and they were not going to stop speaking it just because they were conquered. Second - to quell the natural resentment of their English subjects the Normans willy-nilly picked up some English to survive, and in this case the co-existence of the English and the Normans was more peaceful. Third - king John, later called the Lackland, lost most of the English possessions in France; by 1206, Philip II of France had conquered Anjou, Normandy, and Brittany. That did not re-introduce English into official use, but the country was no longer territorially bilingual. French was the language of the higher classes within the country the majority of the population of which was English-speaking.
There were other factors contributing to the revival of English. Among them the Hundred Years' War with France 1337-1454 (the name traditionally given to the Anglo-French conflicts that occurred between 1337 and 1453, but a more accurate set of dates would be the 150-year period from 1294 to 1444); an outbreak of mysterious disease known as The Black Death that is estimated to have killed off from 25 percent to 50 percent of the European population between 1347 and 1351 (mainly those that lived in cities, and in England that was the French-speaking part). The people that came later to the cities and towns from the rural territories brought with them their own, though much simplified and full of French borrowings, native English language.
Reduced population as a result of the Black Death (1349) made tenants and laborers scarce, encouraging impoverished peasants as well as prosperous artisans and urban workers to demand abolition of serfdom, an easing of the restrictions of the manorial courts, and repeal of the Statute of Labourers (1351), which aimed at imposing a maximum wage. Unrest peaked when a poll tax of a shilling a head was imposed (1380). Its collection sparked revolt simultaneously in Kent and Essex. Scared by the scale of the revolt and to pacify the rebels, King Richard II (then a boy) spoke to the peasants in English.
William Caxton, the first English printer is one of the most remarkable personalities. He introduced the printing press around 1475; he was the first editor-publisher, printing the works of G. Chaucer. W. Caxton's decision to reproduce the English of London and the South-east was crucial. He and his successors gave a special currency to London English. The effects of the French language on the Middle English are hard to overestimate. The changes in spelling that took place in that period laid the basis for present-day English spelling, a great number of words came into the language and the majority of them are still used, fully assimilated and no longer perceived as borrowings. The English grammar was much simplified. The language under Norman rule lost its natural immunity to foreign influence, the nationalistic spirit guarding the purity of the language was muffled, which made the language more liberal, more tolerant to variation and more flexible. And yet despite the many French loanwords, English remained English, not a dialect of French. English grammar, as opposed to vocabulary, remained virtually unaffected by French, and grammatical developments that had begun much earlier during Anglo-Saxon times continued without interruption through the Conquest. Even today it is still obvious that the grammatical structure of English resembles that of German far more than it resembles that of French.
It is at that time that English surnames, family names appeared. In Old English it was enough to be called Aethelred, son of Alfred. First, this was reduced to the suffix - son: Johnson, Thompson; then place names came into use, then occupation; if a person was a foreigner then his nationality might become a surname. The linguistic consequences of Scandinavian and Norman Conquests are presented in the tables:
Table 1
Linguistic Consequence of Scandinavian Invaasion
OE Lazu Outlazu wǽpnazetǽc zriþ liþ òrenz husband laze skin Among them: nouns
adjectives
verbs
pronouns |
NE Law Outlaw Wapentake Peace Fleet Warrior Husband Leg Skin
anger knife wing gate egg bull root seat sister skirt calf score smile window steak flat odd wrong low ugly ill rotten loose scant cast droop rise want give call guest scream smile take drown get seem die they (thai) theire same theym (theime) bathe (both) |
Table 2
Scandinavian suffixes in geographical names
-by (O Sc byr-town) -dale (O Sc dalr-valley) -toft (O Sc toft-a grey spot) -ness (O Sc nes-cape) -beck (O Sc bakkr-rivulet) -wick, -wich (O Sc vik-bay) |
Derby, Kirkby, Whitby Londsdale, Avondale Langtoft Inverness, Earthness Troutbeck Greenwich, Wicklow |
Table 3
Linguistic Consequences of the Norman Conquest
Borrowings from the Norman Dialect of French
Semantic spheres |
Examples |
|
Government and administration |
crown state government reign |
country? power minister parliament |
Social relations |
people (OE ðeod) |
nation |
Feudal system |
feudal |
vassal |
Names of titles |
prince peer duke |
marquise baron viscount |
Adjectives relating to court life |
courteous noble fine |
refined honour glory |
Military terms |
army battle arms march banner war peace |
siege admiral officer enemy soldier force troops guard |
Law terms |
justice judge accuse jury |
court traitor attorney crime |
Church words |
religion angel service saint |
abbey miracle clergy pray |
Words connected with cuisine |
souse soup |
roast sausage toast supper |
Art and architecture |
image figure design ornament |
arch column tower cloister pillar palace |