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THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH (CAP. 2)
In the early decades of the 5th^ century, the Scots and Picts ferociously invaded the Celtic people. Although the Romans had sent assistance in the past, they were now fully occupied by their own wars with Bledla and Attila, kings of the Huns. The attacks from the north continued, ant the British were forced to look elsewhere for help. They consulted what was to be done, and where they should seek assistance to prevent or repel the cruel and frequent incursions of the northern nations; and they all agrees with their King Vortigern to call over to their aid, from parts beyond the sea, the Saxon nation. The nation of the Angles, or Saxons, being invited by the aforesaid king, arrived in Britain with three long ships, and had a place assigned them to reside in, in the eastern part of the island, that they might thus appear to be fighting for their country, whilst their real intentions were to enslave it. They engaged with the enemy, who were come from the north to give battle and obtained the victory. Bede describes the invaders as belonging to the three most powerful nations of Germany – the Saxons, the Angles and the Jutes.
- The first group to arrive came from Jutland, in the northern part of modern Denmark, and were led by two Jutish brothers, Hengist and Horsa. They landed at Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet, and settled in the areas now known as Kent, the Isle of Wight, and parts of Hampshire.
- The Angles came from the south of the Danish peninsula, and entered Britain much later, along the eastern coast, settling in parts of Mercia, Northumbria and what is now East Anglia.
- The Saxon came from an area further south and west, along the coast of the North Sea, and from 477 settled in various parts of southern and south-eastern Britain. The chroniclers talk about groups are reflected in the later names of Essex, Wessex and Sussex. The name Middlesex suggest that there were Middle Saxons too. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives a grim catalogue of disasters for the Britons.
- In this year Hengest and Aesc fought against the Britons at a place which is called Crecganford and there slew four thousand men; and the Britons then forsook Kent and fled to London in great terror.
- In this year Hengest and Aesc fought against the Welsh near Wippedesfleot and there slew twelve Welsh nobles; and one of the thanes was slain there.
- In this year Hengest and Aesc fought against the Welsh and captured innumerable spoils, ant the Welsh fled from the English. The fighting went on for several decades, but the imposition of Anglo-Saxon power was never in doubt. Over a period of about a hundred years, further bands of immigrants continued to arrive, and Anglo-Saxon settlements spread to all areas apart from the highlands of the west and north. By the end of the 5th^ century, the foundation was established for the emergence if the English language. THE NAME OF THE LANGUAGE The Germanic invaders called the native Celts wealas (‘foreigners’), from which the name Welsh is derived. The Celts called the invaders ‘Saxons’, regardless of their tribe. By the end of the 6th^ century, the term Angli (‘Angles’) was in use and during the 7th^ century Angli or Anglia (for the country) became the usual Latin names. Old English Engle derives from this usage, and the name of the language found in Old English texts is from the outset referred to as Englisc.
References to the name of the country as Englaland (‘land of the Angle’), from which came England, do not appear until c. 1000.
OLD ENGLISH (CAP. 3)
THE EARLY PERIOD
Before the Anglo-Saxons invasions, the language spoken by the native inhabitants of the British Isles belonged to the Celtic family, introduced by a people who had come to the island around the middle of the first millennium. Many of these settlers were subjugated by the Romans, who arrived on 43. But by 410 the Roman armies had gone, with drawn to help defend their Empire in Europe. CELTIC BORROWINGS There is very little Celtic influence, given the savage way in which the Celtic communities were destroyed or pushed back into the areas we now known as Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria and the Scottish borders. Many Celts remained in the east and the south, perhaps as slaves, perhaps intermarrying but their identity would after a few generations have been lost within Anglo-Saxon society. The Celtic language of Roman Britain influenced Old English hardly at all. Only a handful of Celtic words were borrowed at the time, and a few have survived into modern English, sometimes in regional dialect use. A few Celtic words of this period come from Latin, brought in by the Irish missionaries. But there cannot be more than two dozen loan words in all. And there are even very few Celtic-based place names in what is now southern/eastern England. LATIN LOANS Latin has been a major influence on English throughout its history and there is evidence of its role from the earliest moments of contact. The roman army and merchants gave new names to many local objects and experiences, and introduced several fresh concepts. About half of the new words were to do with plants, animals, food and drink, and household items. Other important clusters of words related to clothing, buildings and settlements, military and legal institutions, commerce and religion. Whether the Latin words were already used by the Anglo-Saxons tribes on the continent of Europe, or were introduced from within Britain, is not always clear but the total numbers of Latin words present in English at the very beginning of the Anglo-Saxon period is not large – less than 200. Although Vulgar Latin must have continued in use – at least, as army left, for some reason it did not take root in Britain as it had so readily done in Continental Europe. THE OLD ENGLISH CORPUS There is a ‘dark age’ between the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and the first Old English manuscripts.
We know more of the prose authors, who included King Alfred, Archbishop Wulfstan and Abbot Aelfric, but even here most of the surviving material is anonymous. OLD ENGLISH LETTERS Although there is much in common between Old and Modern English, it is the differences which strike us most forcibly when we first encounter edited Anglo-Saxon texts. The editors have done a great deal to make the texts more accessible to present-day readers, by introducing modern conventions of word spaces, punctuation, capitalization and line division, but there are certain features of the original spelling which are usually retained, and it is these which make the language look alien. Old English texts were written on parchment or vellum. The first manuscripts were in the Roman alphabet, using a half-uncial, minuscule script brought over by Irish missionaries. The rounded letter shapes of this script later developed into the more angular and cursive style (called the insular script), which was the usual form of writing until the 11th^ century. The Old English alphabet was very similar to the one still in use, thought any modern eye looking at the original manuscripts would be immediately struck by the absence of capital letters. Several of these letters were used in combinations (digraphs) to represent single sound units, in much the same way as do sever modern forms, such as rh and ea. One other point about spelling should be noted. There was a great deal of variation, reflecting the different preferences of individual scribes, as well as regional attempts to capture local sounds precisely. Practiced also varied over time. But even with a single scribe in a single place at a single time, there could be variation, as can be seen from the existence of several variant forms in manuscripts such as Beowulf. The spelling became much more regular by the time of Aelfric (in the late 10th^ century), but this was a temporary state of affairs. Change was on the horizon, in the form of new Continental scribal practices, an inevitable graphic consequence of 1066. OLD ENGLISH SOUND How do we know what Old English sounded like? The answer is that we do not. In later periods, we can rely on accounts by contemporary writers – but there is none of this in Old English. The best we can do is make a series of informed guesses, based on a set of separate criteria, and hope that the results are sufficiently similar to warrant some general conclusions. A great deal of scholarship has been devoted to this issue, and we now have a fair degree of certainty about how most of the sounds were pronounced. There is no reason to suppose that there was any less phonetic variation in Anglo-Saxon times than there is today, and the symbols opposite should not be interpreted too narrowly. THE EVIDENCE There are four main types of evidence used in deducing the sound values of Old English letters.
- Alphabetic logical We know a great deal about how the letters of the Romana alphabet were pronounced, and it seems reasonable to assume that, when the missionaries adapted this alphabet to Old English, they tried to do so in a consistent and logical way. A great deal of information comes from the way variations of regional accent and changes over time are shown in the spelling of Old English texts. The scribes generally tried to write words down to show the way they were spoken.
- Comparative reconstruction We can work backwards from later states of the language to make deduction about how Old English must have sounded. Several of the sounds of Modern English (especially dialect forms) are likely to have close similarities with those of Old English. It is unlikely that there is any real difference in the way most of the consonants were pronounced then and now. The chief problems are the vowels, whose values are always more difficult to pinpoint.
- Sound changes We know a great deal about the kinds of sound change which take place as language progresses. It is therefore possible to propose a particular sound value for an Old English letter different from the one in existence today, as long as we are able to give a plausible explanation for the change.
- Poetic evidence The way in which poets make words rhyme or alliterate can provide important clues about the way the sound system works. So can the rhythmical patterns of lines of verse, which can show the way a word was stressed, and thus indicate what value to give to a vowel appearing in an unstressed syllable. COMPLICATIONS Scribes could be very inconsistent. They were also prone to error. But of course we do not know in advance whether an idiosyncratic form in a manuscript is in fact an error or a deliberate attempt to represent an ongoing sound change or a regionalism. The absence of universal spelling rules can also pose a problem, as there was no necessity for scribes to be consistent, and many were not. SOME FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR Old English grammar provides a fascinating mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar. The word order is much more varied than it would be in Modern English, but there are several places where it is strikingly similar. Adjectives usually go before their nouns, as do prepositions, articles, and other grammatical words, just as they do today. Sometimes, whole sentences are identical in the order of words, or nearly so. The main syntactic differences affect the placing of the verb, which quite often appears before the subject, and also at the very end of the clause. In Modern English, word order is relatively fixed. The reason Old English order could vary so much is that the relationship between the parts of the sentence were signalled by other means. Like other Germanic languages, Old English was inflected: the job a word did in the sentence was signalled by the kind of ending it had. Today, most of these inflections have died away. It is necessary to learn the different forms taken by the verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and the definite article. The irregular verbs are a particular problem because there are so many more of them. OLD ENGLISH VOCABULARY The vocabulary of Old English presents a mixed picture to those encountering it for the first time. The majority of the words are very close to Modern English – once we allow for the unfamiliar spelling and the unexpected inflections whereas those in the poetic texts are not. One the order hands, some of the words look very strange, because they have since disappeared from the language.
Up to c. 1000, many continued to arrive from spoken Latin, and these tended to relate more to everyday, practical matters. After c. 1000, following the rebirth of learning associated with King Alfred and the 10th- century Benedictine monastic revival, the vocabulary came from classical written sources, and is much more scholarly and technical. Sometimes, even, the Latin ending would be retained in the loan, instead of being replaced by the relevant Old English ending. Many of these learned words did not survive – though several were to be reincarnated later in a second stage of classical borrowing. THE EFFECT OF NORSE The second big linguistic invasion came as a result of the Viking raids on Britain, which began in AD 787 and continued at intervals for some 200 years. Regular settlement began in the mid-9th century, and within a few years the Danes controlled most of eastern England. They were prevented from further gains by their defeat in 878 at Ethandun. By the Treaty of Wedmore (886) the Danes agreed to settle only in the north-east third of the country - east of a line running roughly from Chester to London - an area that was subject to Danish law, and which thus became known as the Danelaw. In 991, a further invasion brought a series of victories for the Danish army (including the Battle of Maldon) and resulted in the English king, Æthelred, being forced into exile, and the Danes seizing the throne. England then stayed under Danish rule for 25 years. The linguistic result of this prolonged period of contact was threefold. A large number of settlements with Danish names appeared in England. There was a marked increase in personal names of Scandinavian origin. And many general words entered the language, nearly 1,000 eventually becoming part of Standard English. Only c. 150 of these words appear in Old English manuscripts, the earliest in the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum, and in the northern manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Many words did not survive in later English (mostly terms to do with Danish law and culture, which died away after the Norman Conquest). The closeness of the contact between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danish settlers is clearly shown by the extensive borrowings. Some of the commonest words in Modern English came into the language at that time. Even the personal pronoun was affected replacing the earlier forms. And - the most remarkable invasion of all - Old Norse influenced the verb to be. VOCABULARY THEN AND NOW It should be plain that there are many differences between the way vocabulary was used in Old English and the way it is used today. The Anglo-Saxons' preference for expressions which are synonymous, or nearly so, far exceeds that found in Modern English, as does their ingenuity in the use of compounds. The absence of a wide-ranging vocabulary of loan words also forced them to rely on a process of lexical construction using native elements, which produced much larger 'families' of morphologically related words than are typical of English now.
A great deal of the more sophisticated lexicon was consciously created, as can be seen from the many loan translations (or calques) which were introduced in the later period. Calques are lexical items which are translated part-by-part into another language. The process is unusual in Modern English. In late Old English, by contrast, calques are very common. WIÐMETENNIS There are around 24,000 different lexical items in the Old English corpus. This lexicon, however, is fundamentally different from the one we find in Modern English. About 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use. Moreover, only 3 per cent of the words in Old English are loan words, compared with over 70 per cent today. Old English vocabulary was thus profoundly Germanic, in a way that is no longer the case. Nearly half of Modern English general vocabulary comes from Latin or French, as a result of the huge influx of words in the Middle English period. And the readiness to absorb foreign elements has given the modern language a remarkable etymological variety which was totally lacking in Old English. OLD ENGLISH DIALECTS The Old English texts which have survived come from several parts of the country, and from the way they are written they provide evidence of dialects. As there was no standardized system of spelling, scribes tended to spell words as they sounded; but because everyone used the same Latin-based alphabetic system, there was an underlying consistency, and it is possible to use the spelling to work out dialect differences. Most of the Old English corpus is written in the West Saxon dialect, reflecting the political and cultural importance of this area in the 10th^ century. Dialects from other areas are very sparsely represented, with only about a dozen texts of any substance – inscriptions, charters, glosses, and verse fragments – spread over a 300-year period. THE HISTORICAL SETTING The major areas are traditionally thought to relate to the settlements of the invading tribes, with their different linguistic backgrounds; but what happened in the 300 years after the invasions is obscure. There is evidence of at least 12 kingdoms in England by the year 600. Seven are traditionally called the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy (Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex, Wessex), but it is difficult to know what realities underlie such a grouping. From a linguistic point of view, only three kingdoms emerged with enough power for there to be clear dialectal consequences: Northumbria, in the 7th century, then Mercia, and by the 9th century Wessex, the latter emerging under King Egbert. These three areas, along with Kent (whose early importance is suggested by the Augustine story, have led to the recognition of four major dialects in Old English. To talk about regional dialects at all is somewhat daring, given that the areas are so approximate, and the texts are so few. Indeed, regional definition may not be the best approach, given the political and religious situation of the time. Social and literary factors may have been paramount.
Within 20 years of the invasion, almost all the religious houses were under French-speaking superiors, and several new foundations were solely French. Large number of French merchants and craftsmen crossed the Channel to make advantage of the commercial opportunities provided by the new regime. And aristocratic links remained strong with Normandy, where the nobles kept their estates. Bilingualism quickly flourished among those who crossed the social divide – English People learning French in order to gain advantages from the aristocracy, and baronial staff learning English as part of the daily contact with local communities. THE RISE OF ENGLISH During the 12th^ century, English became more widely used among the upper classes, and there was an enormous amount of intermarriage with English people. By the end of the 12th^ century, contemporary accounts suggest that some children of the nobility spoke English as a mother tongue, and had to be taught French in school. French continued to be used in Parliament, the courts, and in public proceedings, but translations into English increased in frequency throughout the period, as did the number of handbooks written for the teaching of French. From 1204, a different political climate emerged. King John of England came into conflict with King Philip of France, and was obliged to give up control of Normandy. The English nobility lost their estates in France, and antagonism grew between the two counties, leading ultimately to the Hundred Years War. The Status of French diminished as a spirit of English nationalism grew, culminating in the Baron’s War. In 1362, English was used for the first time at the opening of Parliament. By about 1425 it appears that English was widely used in England, in writing as well as in speech. REASONS FOR SURVIVAL How had the language managed to survive the French invasion? Celtic had not survived the Anglo-Saxon invasions 500 years before. Evidently the English language in the 11th century was too well established for it to be supplanted by another language. Unlike Celtic, it had a considerable written literature and a strong oral tradition. This 150 years of good relations between England and French is something of a 'dark age' in the history of the language. There is very little written evidence of English. Judging by the documents which have survived, it seems that French was the language of government, law, administration, literature, and the Church, with Latin also used in administration, education and worship- The position of English becomes cleared in the 13th^ century, when we find an increasing number of sermons, prayers, romances, songs and other documents. In the 14th^ century, we have the major achievements of Middle English literature. THE TRANSITION FROM OLD ENGLISH A fundamental change in the structure of English took place during the 11th and 12th centuries. Grammatical relationships in Old English had been expressed chiefly by the use of inflectional endings. In Middle English, they came to be expressed (as they are today) chiefly by word order.
THE DECAY OF INFLECTIONS
There are clear signs during the Old English period of the decay of the inflectional system. The surviving texts suggest that the change started in the north of the country, and slowly spread south. Several of the old endings are still present in the 12th-century text of the Peterborough Chronicle opposite, but they are not used with much consistency, and they no longer seem to play an important role in conveying meaning. But why did the Old English inflectional endings decay? The most obvious explanation is that it became increasingly difficult to hear them, because of the way words had come to be stressed during the evolution of the Germanic languages. The ancestor language of Germanic, Indo-European, had a ‘free' system of accentuation, in which the stress within a word moved according to intricate rules. In Germanic, this system changed, and most words came to carry the main stress on their first syllable. This is the system found through-out Old English. Having the main stress at the beginning of a word can readily give rise to an auditory problem at the end. This is especially so when there are several endings which are phonetically very similar. In rapid conversational speech it would have been difficult to distinguish them. THE CONTACT SITUATION However, auditory confusion cannot be the sole reason. Other Germanic languages had a strong initial stress, too, yet they retained their inflectional system (as is still seen in modern German). Why was the change so much greater in English? Some scholars cite the Viking settlement as the decisive factor. During the period of the Danelaw, the contact between English and Scandinavian would have led to the emergence of a pidgin-like variety of speech between the two cultures, and perhaps even eventually to a kind of creole which was used as a lingua franca. As with pidgins everywhere, there would have been a loss of word endings, and greater reliance on word order. Gradually, this pattern would have spread until it affected the whole of the East Midlands area – from which Standard English was eventually to emerge. At the very least this situation would have accelerated the pro-cess of inflectional decay – and may even have started it. Perhaps there existed a considerable degree of mutual intelligibility, given that the two languages had diverged only a few hundred years before. The roots of many words were the same, and in the Icelandic sagas it is said that the Vikings and the English could understand each other. Whatever the case, we can tell from the surviving Middle English texts that the Danelaw was a much more progressive area, linguistically speaking, than the rest of the country. Change which began here affected southern areas later. Some form of ex Viking influence cannot easily be dismissed. As inflections decayed, so the reliance on word order became critical, resulting in a grammatical system which is very similar to that found today. THE MIDDLE ENGLISH CORPUS The Middle English period has a much richer documentation than is found in Old English. This is partly the result of the post-Conquest political situation.
THE CHAUCERIAN ACHIEVEMENT
Chaucer’s work is very important to any history of the language. It is partly a matter of quantity – one complete edition prints over 43.000 lines of poetry, as well as two major prose works – but more crucial is the breadth and variety of his language, which ranges from the polished complexity of high-flown rhetoric to the natural simplicity of domestic chat. No previous author had shown such a range, and Chaucer's writing is thus unique in the evidence it has provided about the state of medieval grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Chaucer's best-known work, The Canterbury Tales, is not a guide to the spoken language of the time: it is a variety of the written language which has been carefully crafted. It uses a regular metrical structure and rhyme scheme. It contains many variations in word order, dictated by the demands of the prosody. There are also frequent literary allusions and turns of phrase which make the text difficult to follow. What has impressed readers so much is that Chaucer has managed to capture so vividly the intriguing characters of the speakers, and to reflect so naturally the colloquial features of their speech. MIDDLE ENGLISH SPELLING What is immediately noticeable is the extraordinary diversity of Middle English spelling – far greater than that found in Old English. Some words have a dozen or more variants. This situation results from a combination of historical, linguistic and social factors. The sociolinguistic impact of the French invasion, the continuation of the processes of sound change which began in Anglo-Saxon times, and the considerable growth and movement in population during the medieval period, especially in the south-east of the country, all helped to influence the shape of the writing system. There is a marked contrast between the diverse and idiosyncratic forms used at the beginning of the period and the highly regularized system of spelling which begins to appear in the 15th century. SOME TEXTUAL FEAUTURES The text of the Peterborough Chronicle, dating from the very beginning of the period, shows some of the important features of Middle English spelling. The Old English runic symbols are still in use, but there is some inconsistency. Because of the spelling, several words look stranger than they really are. NORMAN INFLUENCE As the period progressed, so the spelling changed. The Norman scribes listened to the English they heard around them, and began to spell it according to the conventions they had previously used for French. By the beginning of the 15th century, English spelling was a mixture of two systems, Old English and French. MIDDLE ENGLISH SOUNDS At the same time as new letter shapes and preferences were emerging, there was a continual process of change affecting the way English was pronounced. The result is a degree of complex interaction between the writing and sound systems which has no parallel in the history of English.
NEW SPELLING CONVENTIONS
Several consonant sounds came to be spelled differently, especially because of French influence. New conventions for showing long and short vowels also developed. Increasingly, long vowel sounds came to be marked with an extra vowel letter. Short vowels were identified by consonant doubling, in cases where there might other- wise be confusion, as in sitting vs siting. This convention became available once it was no longer needed to mark the lengthened consonants which had been present in Old English, but lost in early Middle English. A similar redeployment of graphic resources followed the loss of the unstressed vowels that originally distinguished inflectional endings. Although the final /ə/ sound disappeared, the -e remained, and it gradually came to be used to show that the preceding vowel was long. The availability of such a useful and frequent letter also motivated its use in other parts of the system. NEW PRONUNCIATION Several sounds altered during the early Middle English period. Some took on a different value; some disappeared altogether. In particular, there was a restructuring of the Old English vowel system. The original diphthongs became pure vowels, and new diphthongs emerged. Some of the new units arose when certain consonants at the end of a syllable came to be pronounced in a vowel-like manner. French loan words also introduced new diphthongs. Several of the pure vowels also changed their values. For example, in most parts of the country (except the north), Old English /a:/ came to be articulated higher at the back of the mouth. Northern speech followed its own course in several other areas); for example, several of the new diphthongs were far more evident in the south, being replaced by pure vowels in the north. An interesting change happened to [h]. This sound appeared before a consonant at the beginning of many Old English words. It was lost early on in the Middle English period – the first sign of the process of 'aitch-dropping' which is still with us today. The loss of h before a vowel began some time later, producing variations in usage which continued into the 16th century. Middle English manuscripts show many examples of an h absent where it should be present or present where it should be absent. The influence of spelling led to the h-forms being later restored in many words. NEW CONTRAST Middle English phonology is made increasingly difficult by the intricate dialect situation.
Several of its words have since dropped from the language. And of the words which are still found today, several have altered meanings. THE FRENCH FACTOR French influence became increasingly evident in English manuscripts of the 13th century. It has been estimated that some 10.000 French words came into English at that time - many previously borrowed from more distant sources (such as alkali from Arabic). These words were largely to do with the mechanisms of law and administration, but they also included words from such fields as medicine, art. and fashion. Many of the new words were quite ordinary, everyday terms. Over 70 per cent were nouns, A large number were abstract terms, constructed using such new French. About three- quarters of all these French loans are still in the language today. As new words arrived, there were many cases where they duplicated words that had already existed in English from Anglo-Saxon times. In such cases, there were two outcomes. Either one word would supplant the other; or both would co-exist, but develop slightly different meanings. The first outcome was very common, in most cases the French word replacing an Old English equivalent. Hundreds of Old English words were lost in this way. But at the same time, Old English and French words often both survived with different senses or connotations. Sometimes pairs of words were used, one glossing the other, and legal terminology often developed coordinations of this kind. Bilingual word lists were compiled as early as the mid-13th^ century to aid intelligibility between English and French. THE ROLE OF LATIN French is the most dominant influence on the growth of Middle English vocabulary, but it is by no means the only one. During the 14thand 15th^ centuries several thousand words came into the language directly from Latin (though it is often difficult to exclude an arrival route via French). Most of these words were professional or technical terms, belonging to such fields as religion, medicine, law, and literature. They also included many words which were borrowed by a writer in a deliberate attempt to produce a 'high' style. Only a very small number of these 'aureate terms' entered the language, however. The vast majority died almost as soon as they were born. The simultaneous borrowing of French and Latin words led to a highly distinctive feature of Modern English vocabulary – sets of three items all expressing the same fundamental notion but differing slightly in meaning or style. The Old English word is usually the more popular one, with the French word more literary, and the Latin word more learned. OTHER SOURCES The effects of the Scandinavian invasions also made themselves felt during this period. Although the chief period of borrowing must have been much earlier, relatively few Scandinavian loans appear in Old English, and most do not come to be used in manuscripts until well into the 13th century, and then mainly in northern areas where Danish settlement was heaviest. Several other languages also supplied a sprinkling of new words at this time, though not all survived.
Contact with the Low Countries brought poll ('head'), doten ('be foolish'), bouse ('drink deeply'), and skipper (`ship s master'), resulting from commercial and maritime links with the Dutch. Other loans included cork (Spanish), marmalade (Portuguese), sable (Russian), lough (Irish), and many words from Arabic, especially to do with the sciences. In most cases, the words arrived after they had travelled through other countries (and languages), often entering English via French. A good example is the vocabulary of chess, which came directly from French, but which is ultimately Persian. The effect of all this borrowing on the balance of words in the English lexicon was dramatic. In early the Middle English, over 90 per cent of words were if native English origin. By the end of the Middle English period this proportion had fallen to around 75 per cent. MIDDLE ENGLISH DIALECTS The main dialect divisions traditionally recognized in Middle English broadly correspond to those found in Old English, but scholars have given different names to some of the dialects, and there has been one important development. Kentish remains the same, but West Saxon is now referred to as Southern, and Northumbrian as Northern. The Mercian dialect area has split in two: there is now an eastern dialect (East Midland) and a western one (West Midland). And the East Anglian region is sometimes separately distinguished. What evidence is there for dialect difference? The evidence lies in the distinctive words, grammar, and spellings found in the manuscripts. The way verb endings change is one of the main diagnostic features. There are many manuscripts where it is not easy to determine the dialect. Sometimes the spellings of a text seems to reflect a mixture of dialects, perhaps because an author (or scribe) live in a boundary area, or had moved about country. Quite often, an author is not particularly consistent – as would be likely to happen in a period when sounds and spellings were changing so rapidly and texts were being copied repeatedly. Sometimes, most of the forms reflect one dialect, and there is a scattering of forms from another – suggesting that the person who was copying the manuscript came from a different part of the country from the original author. And analysts need always to be watchful for the possibility that a form in a manuscript never had any linguistic existence at all – in other words, the copyist made a mistake. MIDDLE SCOTS Students of the Middle English period have traditionally focused on the dialect situation in England, and especially on those areas in which the standard language was later to develop. This has led to a neglect of what was taking place Scotland at the time, where the language was being influenced by a different set of factors, and developing its own distinctive character. From the outset, the region had its own linguistic history. After the 5th-century invasions, what is now the north-east of England and the south-east of Scotland came to be occupied by the Angles, which led to the emergence of the Northumbrian dialect of Old English. During the Anglo-Saxon period, most of Scotland was Celtic-speaking (chiefly the variety known as Gaelic), but the number of English speakers in the southern part of the country increased greatly in the 11th century, following the Norman Conquest. Many English noblemen became refugees and fled north, where they were welcomed by the Scots King Malcolm Canmore (reigned 1058–93).
The political heart of the country moved from Winchester to London after the Conquest, and the major linguistic trends during Middle English increasingly relate to the development of the capital as a social, political, and commercial centre. A written standard English began to emerge during the 15th century and its rise has traditionally been explained with reference to the following factors.
- A regionally standardized literary language appeared in the last part of the 14th century, based on the dialects of the Central Midland counties, especially Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, and Bedfordshire. This is chiefly found in the large number of Wycliffite manuscripts which have survived, including sermons, tracts, prayers, poems, and the different versions of the Wycliff Bible, as well as several secular works. The Lollards spread this variety widely, even into south- west England, thus increasing its status as a standard. In the long term, it was unable to compete with the quantity of material emanating from the capital; but its Central Midland origins are nonetheless noteworthy (see below).
- The growth of a standard from the London area can be seen by the mid-14th^ century. Although London was very much a dialectal hybrid (with the City influenced by the Essex dialect, and Westminster, some distance further west, showing the influence of Middlesex), patterns of standardization gradually appear. There is a small group of manuscripts, written prior to 1370, which are noted for their uniformity of spelling. A later and much larger group of diverse manuscripts include the work of Chaucer and Langland. These texts in their different ways represent London English of around 1400, but the amount of variation they display suggests that they cannot be called a standard, in any strict sense. Not even Chaucer's writing, traditionally thought to be a precursor of modern Standard English, exercised a specific influence on the form this standard took – nor is it likely that poetic usage would ever influence general usage in any real way. It can hardly be doubted, though, that Chaucer's literary standing would have greatly added to the prestige associated with written language in the London dialect.
- The most significant factor must have been the emergence of London as the political and commercial centre of the country. In particular the influence of the administrative offices of the London Chancery was important, especially after c.1430. Vast amounts of manuscript copying took place within the London area, and standards of practice emerged among the Chancery scribes. These practices interacted with those used by other groups of London scriveners, and spelling slowly became increasingly standardized, eventually affecting all kinds of material, including literary texts. The directions of influence were multiple and complex, and are still not entirely understood. But when Caxton set up his press in Westminster, and chose local London speech as his norm, the lasting influence of his scrivening neighbours was assured. These observations add up to the claim that the standard language was the result of an accumulation of influences from different kinds of writing, as well as an accommodation to dialects from different parts of the country, especially the Central Midlands area. That the central area could exercise such influence is suggested by a number of contemporary comments, as well as by deductions based on social history. By way of social considerations, we have evidence of a marked population shift in the 14th century. In the earlier part of that century, immigration to the London area was highest from the East Midlands counties of Norfolk, Essex, and Hertfordshire, but it later increased dramatically from such Central Midlands counties as Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, and Bedfordshire. As a result, the London dialect became increasingly exposed to many of the linguistic features of Midland writing. These observations bring a fresh perspective to the traditional map of Middle English dialects, where no recognition is given to a Central Midlands area, and where special attention is paid to an East Midlands
'triangle' bounded by London, Cambridge, and (on the borders with Southern) Oxford – an area of high population, containing the main social and political centre, and the main seats of learning. This was a wealthy agricultural region, and the centre of the growing wool trade. Its role in promoting the importance of the south-east in the Middle Ages is clear. However, its linguistic influence was far less important than that of the area further west. The final factor in the emergence of a southern literary standard was the development of printing. This resulted in the spread of a single norm over most of the country, so much so that during the early 16th century it becomes increasingly difficult to determine on internal linguistic grounds the dialect in which a literary work is written apart from the northern dialects, such as Scots, which retained their written identity longer.
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH (CAP. 5)
There is no doubt that an Early Modern English period needs to be recognized in the history of English. The jump from Middle English to Modern English would be too great without it. Between the time of Chaucer and the time of Johnson, roughly 1400 to 1800, the language continues to change in quite noticeable ways, and there are many points of difference with modern usage. By the end of the 18th century, however, very few linguistic differences remain. There is no consensus about when the Early Modern English period begins. Some opt for an early date, 1400–50, just after Chaucer and the beginning of the pronunciation shift which identifies a major intelligibility barrier between Middle and Modern English. Some opt for a late date, around 1500, after the effects of the printing revolution had become well established. But it is the advent of printing itself which many consider to be the key factor, and this section accordingly begins in 1476, when William Caxton set up his press in Westminster. The new invention gave an unprecedented impetus to the formation of a standard language and the study of its properties. Apart from its role in fostering norms of spelling and punctuation, the availability of printing provided more opportunities for people to write, and gave their works much wider circulation. As a result, more texts of the period have survived. The story of English thus becomes more definite in the 16th century, with more evidence available about the way the language was developing, both in the texts themselves, and in a growing number of observations dealing with such areas as grammar, vocabulary, writing system, and style. THE FIRST PRINTED WORKS We know of 103 separate items printed by Caxton, several of which are different editions of the same work. They can be grouped into four categories:
- His own translations, such as The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy and The Knight of the Tower. This is the larg- est category, its prologues and epilogues providing a great deal of information about Caxton's aims as a publisher.
- Works of the courtly poets of 1350–1450 – chiefly, Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate – and including two editions of The Canterbury Tales. Caxton's concentration on these authors shows him aware of the fashionable demand for an 'elevated' style of writing.
- Prose works in English, also including many translations, such as Chaucer's Boethius, Trevisa's Polychronicon, and Malory's Morte Darthur.
