Middle English Grammar
The Middle
English period shows extensive changes in
-- pronunciation:
especially reduction and loss of unstressed inflectional endings
-- vocabulary:
infusion of French, loss of native Old English words
-- syntax:
loss of many grammatical distinctions
These changes are often interrelated. Loss of an unstressed
ending syllable that carries information about grammatical gender, case, or
number means that information either has to appear elsewhere in an utterance or
it gets lost altogether.
Since ME is a transitional period, we expect to find, and we
do find, evidence to show extreme variation in the “rules” of the language.
Sometimes final -e is pronounced in a word, sometimes not. Sometimes the 3rd person plural pronoun begins with h-, as it did in OE, sometimes with th-, as it does in MnE.
Sometimes French influence drives out a native word,
sometimes the native word shifts meaning and survives, sometimes both borrowed
and native word continue more or less as synonyms.
Consider the case of the food vocabulary (beef/cow;
veal/calf; mutton/sheep; venison/deer)
What are
some of the spelling changes from OE to ME?
many French
spelling conventions were borrowed (as a result, ME looks more like Modern
English)—
1.
th replaces thorn and eth (∂)
2.
uu (w) replaces wynn
3.
OE
yogh, 3, is used
for a variety of things in ME:g, 3, w, gh: goos, 3elden (or yelden), drawen, cni3t or knight, ∂ur3 or thurgh
4.
initial v from French (in
OE, f/v were not distinctive: fox, vixen) v now used for medial voiced f: drifan > driven
5.
ch for palatalized c: cild >
child
6.
sk
> sh sceal > shall; shirt > shirt (the MnE word skirt is a re-borrowing from
Scandinavian)
7.
hw
> wh hwaet > what, hwi >
why, hwan > when
8.
In OE, c stood for /k/ or
/ch/; in ME c used
for /s/: citee, grace
9.
cw > qu cwen > queen, cwic
> quick; in the
North and Scotland, qu- often appears for wh-, quhat for what, etc.
10.
OE cg
> gg ecg > egge > edge
Vowels:
1.
length
indicated by doubling of letters, esp. ee and oo
2.
final unstressed
vowels fell together as e
3.
doubled
consonants began to indicate preceeding short vowel
4.
in
North, i used to
indicate long vowel: rad > raid, red > Reid (as in the name), all mean
‘red’; gud, in Scots, guid, = ‘good’
5.
OE
short u > ME o : hunig > honey tunge > tonge wondor >
wonder munuc > monk lufu > love
6.
OE
long u > ME ou hus > house
7.
ME y used for
semivowel /y/ and for i to distinguish minims and in final position hungrig > hungry, min
> myn
8.
relaxed
orthography in ME: words are spelled many different ways even in the same text.
Middle
English shows the rise of the London standard: during much of the period,
writers wrote in their local dialect; toward the end, more began adopting the
London dialect as the standard. This may have happened because of increasing influence of central
government, extension of the reach of the civil service into the provinces, and
literary prestige accruing to London authors. The rise of standards is complex, involving economics,
politics, social class, education, literary influence, and external forces (the
French influence was stronger in London than in the North, for example), not to
mention nationalism, isolationism, disease, and the rise of TV(which happened
much later).
Pronunciation
changes:
1.
OE
initial hl-, hn-, hr- become in ME l, n, r: hleapan,
leap; hnutu, nut; hrador, rather
2.
OE g > ME w after l or r: halgian > hallow; morgen > morrow
3.
OE w is lost
between a Consonant (esp. s or t) and a back Vowel: swa
> so, twa > to ‘two’; sometimes the w is retained in the spelling: two, answer (OE andswarian), sword; and in contractions: ne + wille > nille (willy nilly), ne + wiste >
niste ‘did not know’; nis ‘isn’t’
4.
ch is lost in unstressed sylls in Late
ME: OE -lic > -ly
5.
v lost before Consonant, with syncope
of unstressed vowel: OE heafod > ME heved > ME, MnE head
6.
OE
prefix ge- > i- gewiss > iwis, ‘certainly,’ gelimpan >
ilimpen ‘happen’
7.
final
inflectional -n lost gradually min > my (except before initial vowels: my
father, mine eye); an ewt > a newt, an ekename > a nickname an
nadder > an adder, an napron > an apron an noumpere > an umpire
8.
in
South, initial f,s,th were voiced: fox/vixen fat/vat
9.
Old
French borrowings with initial v: veal, virtue, visit
10.
OF
initial z- zeal, zodiac
11.
initial th in unstressed
words > +voice (the, that,
this)
12.
with
loss of final -e, th, v, and z came to occur word finally as well: give, lose, bathe — thus the voiced fricatives
gained phonemic status (bath vs. bathe)
ME Vowels
1.
OE
long vowels remain unchanged in pronunciation (though spelling reflected
length)
2.
most
short vowels stayed same as well
3.
OE /y/ unrounded to /i/
4.
long a remained in North, became [ ] elsewhere: ham > home, stan >
stone
5.
OE
long æ > ME
long / e /
6.
OE
short æ > ME a glaed, glad
diphthongs:
·
OE
diphthongs disappeared, new ME ones arise: ea, eo smooth to monophthongs in late OE leaf
> leef, seon > see heorta
> herte
·
offglides
/ai/ and /ei/ develop < OE as g>i after front vowels: saegde > seyede,
weg > way
·
off-glides
au, ou, eu, iu: aht > ought
·
oi < French joie, cloister
·
ui < French boilen, poison, joinen (bile, pizen, jine)
·
short
vowels lengthen before mb, nd, ld, rd, rth: climben ‘climb’ comb bindan
> binden, bounden milde > milde, yelden ‘to pay’ ald > old ; reshortening occurs in wind,
held, send, friend (compare with vb. wind, field, fiend, where lengthening survives
·
short a,e,o lengthened in
open sylls: nama > name, wudu > wode
·
shortening
before CC: hydde > hidde ‘hid’ cepte
> kepte five/fifty wise/wisdom shortening in unstressed sylls: wisdom
> wisdom (dom
> dom)
·
levelling
of unstressed vowels
·
a,
o, u, e fall
together as schwa in unstressed syllables. This is the most significant vowel change for syntax
·
final
schwa gradually lost in North in 13c, a bit later elsewhere; sometimes the variation continued for a
while, so the final e is often preserved in spelling (bridde, bride)
·
in
some cases, too, -e was added to fill out short lines by scribes.
·
schwa
lost in -es except after sibilants: bud/buds bus/busses
·
schwa
lost in -eth for
3 pers sg indicative: sayeth > saith, beareth > berth cometh >
comth
·
schwa
retained in final -ed until 15c: blessed, aged, learned contrast with blest, agd, learnt
Grammar
changes:
·
reduction
of inflections a major effect on syntax
·
all
adj. inflections fall together as -e; loss of strong/weak, loss of gender, loss
of # (for adjs)
·
all
infinitives fall together as -en, which then gets lost in MnE
·
-es of plural > s
·
noun
inflections: gen sg. and nom plural fell together as -es, -s
·
OE -s-less plurals continue: deer,
fish, feet, oxen
·
-n plurals > -s plurals: eyen > eyes foon
> foes
·
schoon
> shoes
·
loss
of case > fixed Subject Verb Object, or SVO word order
Pronouns:
·
these
retain some of their OE complexity
·
subj/obj/possessive
case forms
·
sg/pl i/we, thou/ye, he/they
·
Northern
forms: ic, they, contrast with Southern i, he
·
dative him took over
acc. hine
·
fem
gen. her took
over acc. hi
·
OE
demonstratives reduce to ME the, that, tho (plu)
·
tho
> those
·
the becomes definite article
·
hwa
> who
Verbs:
·
strong
and weak distinctions continue, but new verbs tend to be placed in weak pattern
(dental), with past tense and past participle ending in -ed
·
many
strong verbs > weak in ME:
o
glide glod/glided
o
crepen
crep/crept
o
helpen
holp/helped
some
variation continues in MnE
hang hung/hanged
weave wove/weaved
personal
endings:
present
1 pers sg finde plu finde(n)(s)
2 pers sg findest
3 per sg findeth
(findes)
preterite
sg. plu
1/3 fond,
thankede founde(n),
thanked(e) (thanken)
2. founde,
thankedest
to be:
am,art/beest, is/beeth; bee(n), beeth, sinden, aren
1/3 was
2 wast,were plu: were(n)
will: 1/3 wil(le), wol(le)
2 wilt/wolt plu: wilen, wol (n)
1.3 wolde
2 woldest plu: wolde(n)
pres part: -ende,
-ande, -inge
past part : =/- y-, i-
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