Points for Discussion

I. Main historical events of the ME period.

II. ME dialects. Rise of the London dialect.

III. ME vowel system. General characteristics.

  

• Ouantitative changes.

• Qualitative changes.

• Levelling of unstressed vowels.

IV. ME  consonant system. General characteristics.

  

1. Main historical events of the me period.

Traditionally, the start of Middle English is dated in 1066 with the Norman Conquest (the Normans (Norþ-man) were descendants of Danish and Norwegian Vikings who setttled in northern France (Normandy) in the 9^th and 10 ^th c.) and its finish in 1485 with the accession of Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch. Both dates are political and historical. The period is called 'Middle' English because it falls between Old and Modern English.

The Norman Conquest changed the whole course of the English language. An event of such far-reaching consequences must be considered in some detail.

Vikings

During the later part of the OE period, 2 different groups of non-English speakers invaded the country. Both groups were Scandinavians in origin, but whereas the first had retained its Scan. speech, the second had settled in northern France and become French-speaking. Both of their languages, Old Norse and Old French had a considerable influence on English.

The Vikings were great traders, sailors, navigators and pirates. The word viking (ON vikingr ) perhaps means “creek-dweller” “pirate», OE, OFrisian wīcing “pirate”.

The Vikings consisted of Swedes, Norwegians and Danes.

The Swedes went eastwards to the Baltic countries and Russia.

The Norwegians and Danes went westwards and southwards (England). Viking Age 9-11^th c. King Alfred held the south and west against vikings (10 ^th c.).

 

Scandinavian influx has left its mark on English placenames. OE and ON were reasonably similar, and Englishmen and Danes could probably understand each other, and pick up each other’s language. There were children of mixed marriges who spoke an intermediate dialect. Thus great mixing took place between the 2 languages. In the end, ON died out in England.

1066 The Norman Conquest

On the northern coast of France directly across from England is a district extending some seventy-five miles back from the Channel and known as Normandy. It derives its name from the bands of Northmen who settled there in the ninth and tenth centuries. A generation after Alfred reached an agreement with the North-men in England, a somewhat similar understanding was reached between Rollo, the leader of the Danes in Normandy, and Charles the Simple, king of France. In 912 the right of the Northmen to occupy this part of France was recognized; Rollo acknowledged the French king as his overlord and became the first duke of the Normans [Baugh, pg.98].

Norman French rule of England:

- The new overlords spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman.

- French (Anglo-Norman) was used in official documents, court; was the language of upper class (till the 13^th c.);

- Latin was the language of the church, of scholarship, and of international communication; 

- English - at the spoken level, except in court circles, among lower classes (peasants and slaves) (the 14^th c. its thriumph).

- Anglo-Saxon earls and freemen deprived of property, killed; many French nobles made their home in Britain;

• • 1204 CE King John Lackland lost Normandy to the French as a result of wars with France, England is now the only home of the Norman English. French began to lose its prestige. This began a process where the Norman nobles of England became increasingly estranged from their French cousins. England became the chief concern of the nobility, rather than their estates in France, and consequently the nobility adopted a modified English as their native tongue.

  • 1215 Magna Carta (Latin “Great Paper”) was written in Latin. MC required king John Lackland to proclaim certain rights, respect certain legal procedures and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It explicity protected certain rights of the barons. It influenced many constitutional documents. It was the 1^st document ro restrict the power of the king.

  • 1258 the first royal proclamation of Henry III issued in English since the conquest;

  • the Hundred Year's War (1337-1453 CE) intensified hatred of all things French. Edward III's claim to French throne led to Hundred Years' War, role of Joan of Arc in French defense (1429). Result – French victory.

  • The Black Death (the Plague. 1348-1351) caused death of one third of English population, social chaos, labor shortages, emancipation of peasants, wage increases

  • By 1362 CE, the Statute of Pleading (although written in French) declared English as the official spoken language of the courts;

The Pleading in English Act 1362 was an Act of the Parliament of England. The Act complained that because the French language was much unknown in England, the people therefore had no knowledge of what is being said for them or against them in the courts, which used French. The Act therefore stipulated that "all Pleas which shall be pleaded in [any] Courts whatsoever, before any of his Justices whatsoever, or in his other Places, or before any of His other Ministers whatsoever, or in the Courts and Places of any other Lords whatsoever within the Realm  shall be pleaded, shewed, defended, answered, debated, and judged in the English Tongue, and that they be entered and inrolled in Latin".

  

• • Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), an English author, poet, diplomat, the father of English language, his narrative Canterbury Tales (1386-1400),

  • War of the Roses (1455-1485), York (white rose) vs. Lancaster (red rose), Richard Duke of York vs. Henry VI

  • 1476 William Caxton brought a printing press to England from Germany. Published the first printed book in England. Beginning of the long process of standardization of spelling. (The 1^st press was assembled in Germany, by the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg, 1439)

  • Sir Thomas Malory (c. 1405-1471), Morte D'Arthur (Death of Arthur ) (printed by William Caxton in 1485), English prose.

Although the popularity of French was decreasing, several words (around 10,000) were borrowed into English between 1250 and 1500 CE (though most of these words were Parisian rather than Norman French). Many of the words were related to government (sovereign, empire), law (judge, jury, justice, attorney, felony, larceny), social life (fashion, embroidery, cuisine, appetite) and learning (poet, logic, physician). Furthermore, the legal system retained parts of French word order (the adjective following the noun) in such terms as fee simple, attorney general and accounts payable.

On the eve of the Norman Conquest, written and spoken English – that is, OE – was widely used throughout the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. In some parts of the East and North this variety was much influenced by varieties of Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), and in one or two western areas of what is present-day England, such as Cornwall and parts of Herefordshire, some people continued to use varieties of Celtic. But otherwise English was used in both speech and writing throughout what is now present-day England. The Anglo-Saxon nobility spoke English habitually, and the Anglo-Saxon state used written English extensively to record transactions and legal decisions. The written English most generally in use was Classical Late West Saxon, based on the usage of Wessex, the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms,which was centered on the city of Winchester, in southern England. But following the Norman conquest, West Saxon lost its place as a standard literary language.

The Conquest changed this situation. The bulk of the population immediately after 1066 – approximately four million people, according to some estimates, most densely clustered in the southern half of England – continued to speak English.