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ME - THE RISE OF A NEW STANDARD
English was so strongly influenced by French that in the ME period 10000 words were adopted from it and the 75% of those are currently in use in PDE. Nouns (people, city) Adjectives (blue, calm, rich, sure) Verbs (catch, fail) The absence of a standard led to dialectal diversity: Northern East-Midlands West-Midlands Southern Kentish Standard English, which appeared in the 15th century, got rid of variation in writing. It originated in London as it had a very powerful influence as it was the capital city. Chancery English was used by scribes in administrative documents ↓ English began to emerge as a literary language ↓ Documents sent everywhere and generally understood London English was the first of “Essex Type” with the influence of Central Midland features in the 14th century Scientific writing → variety Central Midlands Standard Universities where a place for
dialect mixing and standardization, which took place in the 15th century The printing press was invented by William Caxton in 1476. This lead to: The spread and acceptance of the new ModE standard based on the Midlands dialects. The publishing business was a crucial step to standardization in the late 15th century. SOME LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF ME – ORTHOGRAPHY AND PHONOLOGY By copying French and Latin, OE conventions were displaced. INNOVATIONS OE → ( qu een) OE <tʃ> → (lOE cyri ce > ME ch yri che ( ch ur ch ) OE = /k/ ( c old) (final + mid position) = /k/ /(as k, po ck et) → French value /s/ (fa ce ) (1300) < OE /h/ post-vocalic position = [ç] and [x] (lost) (1180) < OE = /./ by Orm Eth <ð> disappeared between 1170 and 1250, so there was no confusion with Thorn <Þ> > = /./ and /ð/. it was gradually retained in restricted uses. OE yogh <.> > ME <.> = /g/, /j/, [x], [.]. yogh was replaced by = /g/ + = /u:/ (1300) = /./ + /.:/ (eat ; lead) <v/u> = /v/ + /./; = /./ when in contact with m, n ; u, v; uu, vv VOWEL DEVELOPMENTS - Palatal [ij] + vocalization /j/ + shortening /ɪ/ = [ɪɪ] + /i:/ in ME disyllabic nouns and adjectives in unstressed position (‘ bodiʒ [‘bodij] > bodiʒ [bodɪɪ])
M ORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX ME morphology → North of the river Humber inflections of the noun system = ModE → 1 inflection due to contact between Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons in the North. NOUNS During the 11th century, the case system was reduced to three declensions Type I (a- stem = masculine and neutral) → it was the only available paradigm, and the nouns that didn’t follow it became exceptions. Type II (o- stem = feminine) Type III (n-stem) When cases were levelled two things occurred: The nominative case developed the plural A general analogical process affected other declensions. French might have contributed to this. At the start of the ME: Northern English only had Type I The Midlands went from Type III to Type I when final – e was lost. ADJECTIVES Towards the 12th century we still distinguish between weak/definite and strong/indefinite because monosyllabic adjectives ending in consonant could be strong (sg ᴓ, pl. – e) or weak (-e). Adjectives with more than one syllable were inflected in ME. Both weak and strong didn’t hold for the –e ending. Imports from French kept –es plural ending and the adjectives’ syntactic postposition. Comparison Comparative: OE – ra → ME –er, -re Superlative: OE – ost/-est → ME –est Suppletive : gōd – better – best ; ēvil – werse/wyrse – werst/wyrst Periphrastic comparison by particles: more/most; lesse/least ADVERBS OE suffix – līc(e) was used to form adverbs. VERBS In the North all persons and numbers in the present of indicative mode ended in – s , and the preterit tense was uninflected. In the South OE conjugations were still being used. At the end of the ME period, the standard dialect developed in the conjugational system of the Midlands. Other variants Common form of the 3rd person singular and plural Subjunctive similar to indicative Alteration of short verb vowels from 4 in OE to 3 in ME Weak verbs were affected by the weakening of vowels and reduced from 3 types in OE to 2 types in ME ANALYTICAL TENDENCIES AND SYNTAX The loss of inflections affected noun and verb phrases, which were influenced by word order. The reduction of noun cases affected basic prepositions such as of, at, in, by and to , which were influenced by prepositions in French and Latin. French influence Lasting, instead of → calquing Because → be (ME bi ) + cause (OE cause ) New prepositions and conjunctions o Per, contré, maugré, sans, save → some were adapted through the addition of – ing , such as according to, considering, concerning, during Verb phrases had no conjugational system, which led to the rise of auxiliaries. OE verb prefixes ʒe-, be and a- were lost and substituted by periphrastic constructions. There were two ways of influence: the growth of modals, which made the subject less necessary; and, the lack of transparency of the subject which helped to the development of modals. Syntactic patterns Loss of cases was accelerated by French SVO: greater structural rigidity OV: common in impersonal constructions. Used with it, it changes to VO. VSO: interrogatives with no auxiliary inversion. When auxiliary do appears it changes to SVO. ME LEXIS New words were introduced by two processes: By native word formation Latinate and North imports modified the make-up of core vocabulary. French and Latin introduced Latinate affixes that affected derivative morphology and stress. ME WORD FORMATION English had lost its Germanic derivational morphology. Some prefixes became out of use ( a-, ʒe-, to-, ymb- ), some affixes survived ( un-, full-, -ish ) and others appeared ( mis- ). Verbal suffixes Disappeared except – en Roman suffixes – ate, -ify, -ise Compounding was quite productive, and conversion became more relevant. ME FOREIGN INFLUENCES The major sources were French, Latin and Old Norse (ON) |
