Middle English. General characteristics of the period.

Historical period

The chronological boundaries of the Middle English period are not easy to define, and
scholarly opinions vary. The dates that OED3 has settled on are 1150-1500. (Before
1150 being the Old English period, and after 1500 being the early modern English
period.) In terms of ‘external’ history, Middle English is framed at its beginning by the
after-effects of the Norman Conquest of 1066, and at its end by the arrival in Britain of
printing (in 1476) and by the important social and cultural impacts of the English
Reformation (from the 1530s onwards) and of the ideas of the continental Renaissance.

Two very important linguistic developments characterize Middle English:

in grammar, English came to rely less on inflectional endings and more on word order to
convey grammatical information. (If we put this in more technical terms, it became less
‘synthetic’ and more ‘analytic’.)Change was gradual, and has different outcomes in
different regional varieties of Middle English, but the ultimate effects were huge: the
grammar of English c.1500 was radically different from that of Old English. Grammatical
gender was lost early in Middle English. The range of inflections, particularly in the
noun, was reduced drastically (partly as a result of reduction of vowels in unstressed
final syllables), as was the number of distinct paradigms: in most early Middle English
texts most nouns have distinctive forms only for singular vs. plural, genitive, and
occasional traces of the old dative in forms with final –e occurring after a preposition.In
some other parts of the system some distinctions were more persistent, but by late
Middle English the range of endings and their use among London writers shows
relatively few differences from the sixteenth-century language of, for example,
Shakespeare: probably the most prominent morphological difference from
Shakespeare’s language is that verb plurals and infinitives still generally ended in –en
(at least in writing).

+in vocabulary, English became much more heterogeneous, showing many borrowings
from French, Latin, and Scandinavian. Large-scale borrowing of new words often had
serious consequences for the meanings and the stylistic register of those words which
survived from Old English. Eventually, various new stylistic layers emerged in the
lexicon, which could be employed for a variety of different purposes

 The Scandinavian Conquest. The Scandinavian influence on

the English language
+Under the year 787 three shiploads of Northmen landed upon the coast of Britain and
invaded the country. These invaders were Scandinavian tribes: The Danes, the
Swedes. They inhabited the north of Europe (modern Denmark, Norway and Sweden).
They started their invasion taking possession over the East of Britain and the Danish
invasion resulted in the occupation of a great part of the territory by Scandinavian
settlers. In the year 878 the English King Alfred the Great, by the Treaty of Wedmore
was obliged to recognize Danish rule over a territory covering two-thirds of modern
England; all Northumbria, all East Anglia and one half of Central England made up
District called the Danelaw.
The effect of the Danish Conquest was a contribution of many Scan¬dinavian words to
the English vocabulary.

 Early Middle English, starts after 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest, and covers the 12th,
13th and the 14th c. It was the stage of the greatest dialectal divergence caused by the feudal
system and by foreign influences – Scandinavian and French.

 Under Norman rule the official language in England was French, known as its variety called
Anglo-French or Anglo-Norman.

 The local dialects were mainly used for oral communication and were little employed in writing.
Towards the end of the period their literary prestige grew, as English began to displace French in
the sphere of writing, as well as in many other spheres.

The vowel in a word can also be an indication of borrowing from Scandinavian. Thus
the Germanic diphthong /ai/ became /a:/ in Old English but was /ei/ or /e:/ in Scandinavian
and can be used to explain an unexpected vocalism in some later English words such
as aye, nay, hale, reindeer, swain. In some cases the Scandinavian loans survived into
Middle English but not any further, thus one has forms such as leith, laith which did not
continue in English, the Modern English word loath coming from a native form with lath /
loth. However, with the pair hail and whole one sees two forms of the same etymon, the
first deriving from Scandinavian and the second from a purely English source, hence the
pronunciation with /ei/ and /əʊ/ respectively in Modern English. The root is also to be found
in a series of other words, e.g. heal which comes from hælan and holy is from hælig.
Meaning can be used on some occasions to decide whether a word is a continuation of an
English or a Scandinavian form. Thus the Modern English word bloom could have come from
either Old English bloma or Scandinavian blom. But the former meant ‘ingot of iron’ and
only the latter word had the meaning ‘flower, bloom’. Further cases are: gift which in Old
English meant ‘price of a wife’ (cf. German Mitgift) but ‘gift, present’ in
Scandinavian; plow meant a measure of land in Old English but a farm instrument in
Scandinavian.

A feature of the Scandinavian influence on the vocabulary of English is that there are many
cases of co-existence of Old Norse and Old English words, usually with some semantic
differentiation. This is also true of later French loans but the latter are located on a higher
stylistic level.

2.

The Norman conquest of England was the 11th-century invasion and

occupation of England by an army of Norman, Breton, and French soldiers led by Duke William
II of Normandy, later William the Conqueror. William's claim to the English throne derived from
his familial relationship with the (childless) Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Confessor, who may
have encouraged William's hopes for the throne. Edward died in January 1066 and was
succeeded by his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson. The Norwegian kingHarald Hardrada
invaded northern England in September 1066, was victorious at the Battle of Fulford, but Harold
defeated and killed him at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September 1066. Within days,
William landed in southern England. Harold marched south to confront him, leaving a significant
portion of his army in the north. Harold's army confronted William's invaders on 14 October at
the Battle of Hastings; William's force defeated Harold, who was killed in the engagement.
Following the Conquest a lot of Normans crossed the channel, and enlarged the
population of England. 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. The three hundred years of
French domination affected the English language enormously. But English language didn’t die
as the English speakers demographically prevailed. 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.
 Harold II, also called  Harold Godwineson or Harold Godwinson (born 1020—died Oct. 14, 1066,
near Hastings, Sussex, Eng.), last Anglo-Saxon king of England. A strong ruler and a skilled
general, he held the crown for nine months in 1066 before he was killed at the Battle of Hastings
by Norman invaders under William the Conqueror.

 On October 14, 1066, at the Battle of Hastings in England, King Harold II (c.1022-66) of England
was defeated by the Norman forces of William the Conqueror (c.1028-87). By the end of the
bloody, all-day battle, Harold was dead and his forces were destroyed. The battle changed the
course of history and established the Normans as the rulers of England.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge

 Harold’s reign, however, was destined to be short and troubled. He was immediately threatened
by William and Harald III Hardraade, king of Norway, as well as by Tostig.

 In May 1066, Harold mobilized his fleet and a peasant army of the south to guard the coast
against an expected invasion by William. Meanwhile, Harold was forced to repel Tostig’s raids
on the southern and eastern coasts.
 In September Harald and Tostig invaded in the north, defeating an army at Gate Fulford;
marching northward, Harold met them at Stamford Bridge, where he won an overwhelming
victory on September 25. Harald and Tostig were killed, and the remnants of their armies quickly
left England.

William the Conqueror

 William, the illegitimate son of Robert I, duke of Normandy, by his mistress Arlette.

 The duke, designated William his heir, and with his death in 1035 William became duke of
Normandy at age 7. By the time he was 20, William had become an able ruler and was backed
by King Henry I of France.

 Claiming his right to the English throne, William, Duke of Normandy, invades England at
Pevensey on Britain’s southeast coast. His subsequent defeat of King Harold II at the Battle of
Hastings marked the beginning of a new era in British history.

3.

The dialect division in Early ME, in the 14th and 15th c. we find the same grouping of local dialects:

(1) the Southern group, including Kentish and the South-Western dialects (the South-Western
group was a continuation of the OE Saxon dialects);

(2) the Midland or Central (corresponding to the OE Mercian dialect – is divided into West Midland
and East Midland as two main areas); and

(3) the Northern group (< OE Northumbrian).

The history of the London dialect reveals the sources of the literary language in Late ME and also the
main source and basis of the Literary Standard, both in its written and spoken forms.

The Early ME written records made in London – beginning with the PROCLAMATION of 1258 – show,
that the dialect of London was fundamentally East Saxon. Later records indicate that the speech of
London was becoming more fixed, with East Midland features gradually prevailing over the Southern
features.

 Chaucer was the first great poet writing in English, whose best-known work is 'The Canterbury
Tales'.

 Geoffrey Chaucer was born between 1340 and 1345, probably in London. His father was a
prosperous wine merchant.

In 1357, he was a page to Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, wife of Edward III's third son. Chaucer was
captured by the French during the Brittany expedition of 1359, but was ransomed by the king.
Edward III later sent him on diplomatic missions to France, Genoa and Florence. His travels exposed
him to the work of authors such as Dante, Boccaccio and Froissart
French graphic habits were introduced, and marking the sounds became more
European, all the letters were exclusively Latin. English sounds, earlier marked by
letters specific only for the English language were replaced by digraphs. ʒ and wynn
were replaced by Latin letters: ʒod - god , ʒēar – year
The sound dʒ marked by cʒ was also rendered by g or dg - singe, bridge. In French
borrowings the same sound was marked according to the French tradition by j - judge,
June.

The letter q always accompanied by u is introduced to denote either the consonant k or

the cluster kw - quay; quarter, queen.

z is introduced to denote the corresponding sound in some cases Zephyrus, zel (zeal);
but in traditional chesen it was not.

Long ū was replaced by digraph ou, in the French tradition: hūs – hous; it was found in
French words: trouble, couch; in final position, and occasionally in medial it was ow: hū-
how; cū-cow, dūn - down.

In some cases the sound u came to be represented by 0, especially when it stood

neighbouring the letters with many vertical lines lufu - loue; cumen — comen etc.

Long sound ō is now rendered by oo: fōt —>foot

Long Old English ē was marked either by a digraph ee: mētan - mete, meete (to meet)
or turned into ie; feld -field;

The sibilant [tʃ] formerly rendered by c before or after front vowels was replaced by a
digraph ch: cild, cēosan, hwilc - child, chesen, which (the same sound was found in the
words chambre, chair, taken from French);

The sound [dʒ] of various origin is marked by the letters j, g, dg - courage, joy, bridge.

The sound [ʃ] , formerly rendered by sc is rendered by the combinations sh and sch:
scip, fisc, sceal - ship, fish, schal.

+The sound [k] rendered by c before consonants is rendered by k - cniht - knight.

CHANGES IN PRONUNCIATION

Monophthongization of OE diphthongs

Vowels:

OE ie, īe > ME y, i; nieht > niht, nyht

OE /æ/ > ME /a/ þæt > þat, wæs > was

OE ēo, ē > ME /ē/ [e:]; dēop > dēp; sēon > sēn

OE /ā/ > ME /ō/ [ᴐ:]; stān > stōn; ᴣān > ᴣōn

OE ēa, ǣ > ME ę [ε:]; ēaᴣe > ēᴣe

OE ō > ME ō [o:]; sōna > soon

OE ea >ME æ >a

 OE eo > ME e, eo

NEW DIPHTHONGS

1. /ai/ from /a/ < OE /æ/ or /æ/ + /i/ < OE /j/ ; Spelling ai or ay;

OE dæȝ > dai; OE næȝl > ME nail;

2. /ei/ from /e/ + /i/ < OE /j/; spelling ei or ey;

OE weȝ > ME wey; OE seȝl > ME seil;

3. /au/ from /a/ < OE /a/ + /u/ from fricative velar /γ/; Spelling aw;

OE draȝan >ME drawen

ON laȝu > OE laȝu > ME lawe