Old & Middle English

Periods
INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE
Periods in the History of English
Old & Middle English Periods
Key dates
The birth of English
Grammatical Categories
Inflections
Grammatical Gender
Variations and Development
Old English period
Characteristics of old English period
Vocabulary of Old English
Grammar of old English
Vikings invasions
Old Norse lexical Influence
Recap
Middle English period
Grammar of Middle English
Decay of Inflectional endings
Latin borrowings
Summary
 The Prehistory of English
The ultimate origins of English lie in Indo-European, a family of languages consisting of most of
the languages of Europe as well as those of Iran, the Indian subcontinent, and other parts of Asia.
Because little is known about ancient Indo-European (which may have been spoken as long ago
as 3,000 B.C.), we'll begin our survey in Britain in the first century A.D.
43—The Romans invade Britain, beginning 400 years of control over much of the island.
410—The Goths (speakers of a now extinct East Germanic language) sack Rome. The first
Germanic tribes arrive in Britain.
Early 5th century—With the collapse of the empire, Romans withdraw from Britain. Britons are
attacked by the Picts and by Scots from Ireland. Angles, Saxons, and other German settlers arrive
in Britain to assist the Britons and claim territory.
5th-6th centuries—Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians) speaking West
Germanic dialects settle most of Britain. Celts retreat to distant areas of Britain: Ireland, Scotland,
Wales
 KEY DATES
450 - Arrival of the Germanic Tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes): beginning of the Old English
Period
800-1000- Viking Invasions
1066 - Norman Conquest (Battle of Hastings): the French ruling class forces English to “go
underground”, beginning of the Middle English period.
1100-1500- Middle English Period
 THE BIRTH OF ENGLISH (450)
“Both the historical sources and the archeological evidence seem to agree that the major influx of
Germanic immigration into England came in the mid-fifth century. The sources refer to a Celtic
proud tyrant, who invited the Saxons into the country to help his people resist attacks from the
barbarians Picts and Scots of the north. This invitation was a gross miscalculation, as the
Germanic tribes soon turned against their erstwhile employers”
Robinson (1992)
 LANGUAGES THAT HAVE
INFLUENCED ENGLISH
5% Greek
7.5% Latin
40% Anglo Saxon
15% Norse
30% French
2.5% other languages
 GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES
A Grammatical category is a class of units (such as nouns and verbs) or features (such as numbers
and case) that share a common set of characteristics. They are the building blocks of a language
which allows us to communicate with one another.

Number- Number is a property of nouns and pronouns and it indicates quantity. Number has 2
values singular and plural.
Case- it is a property of nouns and pronouns and expresses their relationship with the rest of the
sentence. It has 3 values subjective, objective and possessive.
Gender- Masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Person- 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person
 GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES
Tense- it is a property of verbs. It corresponds with location in time.
Aspect- it is a property of verbs. it expresses our view of the time structure of an activity or state. It has 3
values: simple, continuous, and perfect.
Mood- it is a property of verbs. It relates to the speaker’s feelings about the reality of what he is saying. It
has 3 values: indicative, imperative, subjunctive.
Voice- it is a property of transitive verb. It expresses relationship of the subject to the action. It has 2 values:
active & passive
Degree- it is a property of gradable adjectives and adverbs. It indicates amount. It has 3 values: positive,
comparative, and superlative.
 INFLECTIONS
Inflection is a change in the form of a word (Addition of endings). It does not change the part of
speech.
Refers to a process of word formation on which items are added to the base form of a word to
express grammatical meanings such as inflection “s”.
There were three factors of inflections in old English period according to numbers; singularity,
duality, plurality. The dual form disappeared in Middle English.
 GRAMMATICAL GENDER
In linguistics, grammatical gender is a specific form of a noun class system in which division of
noun classes forms an agreement system with another aspect of the language such as adjectives,
articles, pronouns or verbs.
A system of grammatical gender whereby every noun was treated as either masculine, feminine or
neuter existed in Old English but fell out of use during the Middle English period increasingly the
male form of such noun is used for either man or woman.
Old English had a system of grammatical gender similar to that of Modern German with three
genders; masculine, feminine and neuter.
VARIATIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS
Variation in vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and orthography.
Varied writing conventions.
Standardized language became fragmented, localized and improvised.
Aided by invention of printed press in 1439.
Basis for modern English spelling.
Old English grammatical features became simplified and disappeared.
Noun, adjectives and verb inflections were simplified.
Adoption of Norman French vocabulary especially in the area of politics, law, arts, and politics as well
as poetic and
Changes in pronunciation.
 OLD ENGLISH PERIOD
Old English period
(450-1150)
This age started in 5th century
The term Anglo-Saxon comes from two Germanic tribes, the Angles and the Saxons.
Old English or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language , spoken
in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great
Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works
date from the mid-7th century. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since
during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into
a phase known now as Middle English.
Part of Beowulf, a poem written in Old
English (public domain)
 HISTORY
The Jutes and the Angles had their homes in the Danish peninsula , the jutes in the northern half
(hence the name Jutland) and the Angles in the south, in Schleswig-Holstein, and perhaps in a
small area of the base. The Saxons were settled to the south and west of the Angles, roughly
between the Elbe and Ems. But by the time of invasion, the Jutes settled down to the coastal area
near the Weser being in contact with Saxons.
Britain had been exposed to attacks by the Saxons as early as the 4th century. Even the island was
under the control Roman rule.
The Jutes, decided to stay in the island and began making a feasible settlement in the southeast, in
Kent.
In 945, Saxons settled in Wessex, and in 547, they established an Anglian Kingdom north of the
Humber.
 ANGLO-SAXON CIVILIZATION
Anglo-Saxon settled down beside the Celts in more and less peaceful contact.
In others, as in the West Saxon territory, the invaders met with stubborn resistance and succeeded
in establishing themselves only after much fighting. Many of the Celts undoubtedly were driven
into the west and sought refuge in Wales and Cornwall, and some emigrated across the Channel to
Brittany. In any case such civilization as had been attained under Roman influence was largely
destroyed. The Roman towns were burnt and abandoned.
In time various tribes combined either for greater strength or, under the influence of a powerful
leader, to produce small kingdoms. Seven of these are eventually recognized, Northumbria,
Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex, and are spoken of as the Anglo-Saxon
Heptarchy. But the grouping was not very permanent, sometimes two or more being united under
one king, at other times kingdoms being divided under separate rulers.
 THE ORIGIN AND POSITION OF
ENGLISH
The English language of today is the language that has resulted from the history of the dialects
spoken by the Germanic tribes who came to England in the manner described.
It is impossible to say how much the speech of the Angles differed from that of the Saxons or that
of the Jutes. The differences were certainly slight.
Even after these dialects had been subjected to several centuries of geographical and political
separation in England, the differences were not great.
English belongs to the Low West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family. This means in
the first place that it shares certain characteristics common to all the Germanic languages.
In the second place it means that English belongs with German and certain other languages
because of features it has in common with them and that enable us to distinguish a West Germanic
group as contrasted with the Scandinavian languages (North Germanic) and Gothic (East
Germanic).
 THE PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF
ENGLISH
The period from 450 to 1150 is known as Old English. It is sometimes described as the period of
full inflections, because during most of this period the endings of the noun, the adjective, and the
verb are preserved more or less unimpaired.
From 1150 to 1500 the language is known as Middle English. During this period the inflections,
which had begun to break down toward the end of the Old English period, become greatly
reduced, and it is consequently known as the period of leveled inflections.
The language since 1500 is called Modern English. By the time we reach this stage in the
development a large part of the original inflectional system has disappeared entirely, and we
therefore speak of it as the period of lost inflections. The progressive decay of inflections is only
one of the developments that mark the evolution of English in its various stages. We shall discuss
in their proper place the other features that are characteristic of Old English, Middle English, and
Modern English.
 PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF
ENGLISH

OLD MIDDLE MODERN

ENGLISH ENGLISH ENGLISH
450-1150 1150-1500 1500-Present
 THE DIALECTS OF OLD ENGLISH
Old English was not an entirely uniform language. Not only are there differences between the
language of the earliest written records (about A.D. 700) and that of the later literary texts, but the
language differed somewhat from one locality to another. We can distinguish four dialects in Old
English times:
Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, and Kentish.
The only dialect in which there is an extensive collection of texts is West Saxon, which was the
dialect of the West Saxon kingdom in the southwest. Nearly all of Old English literature is
preserved in manuscripts transcribed in this region.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF OLD
ENGLISH
The English language has undergone such change in the course of time that one cannot read Old English
without special study. In fact a page of Old English is likely at first to present a look of greater
strangeness than a page of French or Italian because of the employment of certain characters that no
longer form a part of our alphabet. In general the differences that one notices between Old and Modern
English concern spelling and pronunciation, and the grammar.
The pronunciation of Old English words commonly differs somewhat from that of their modern
equivalents. The long vowels in particular have undergone considerable modification. Thus the Old
English word stān is the same word as Modern English stone, but the vowel is different. A similar
correspondence is apparent in hālig—holy, gān—go, bān—bone, rāp—rope, hlāf— loaf, bāt—boat. Other
vowels have likewise undergone changes in fōt (foot), cēne (keen), metan (mete),fyr (fire), riht (right), hū
(how), and hlūd (loud), but the identity of these words with their modern descendants is still readily
apparent. Words like hēafod (head), fæger (fair), or sāwol (soul) show forms that have been contracted in
later English.
 VOCABULARY OF OLD ENGLISH
The vocabulary of Old English is almost purely Germanic. A large part of this vocabulary,
moreover, has disappeared from the language. When the Norman Conquest brought French into
England as the language of the higher classes, much of the Old English vocabulary appropriate to
literature and learning died out and was replaced later by words borrowed from French and Latin.
An examination of the words in an Old English dictionary shows that about 85 percent of them
are no longer in use. Those that survive, to be sure, are basic elements of our vocabulary and by
the frequency with which they recur make up a large part of any English sentence.
Apart from pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and the like, they express
fundamental concepts like mann (man), wīf (wife, woman), cild (child), hūs (house), weall (wall),
mete (meat, food), goers (grass), lēaf (leaf), fugol (fowl, bird), gōd (good), hēah (high), strang
(strong), etan (eat), drincan (drink), (sleep), libban (live), feohtan (fight). But the fact remains
that a considerable part of the vocabulary of Old English is unfamiliar to the modern reader.
 GRAMMAR OF OLD ENGLISH
Modern English is an analytic, Old English a synthetic language. In its grammar Old English
resembles modern German.
A synthetic language is one that indicates the relation of words in a sentence largely by means of
inflections. In the case of the Indo-European languages these most commonly take the form of
endings on the noun and pronoun, the adjective and the verb.
Languages that make extensive use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs and depend upon word
order to show other relationships are known as analytic languages.
The Noun
The inflection of the Old English noun indicates distinctions of number (singular and plural) and
case. The case system is somewhat simpler than that of Latin and some of the other Indo-
European languages.
The Old English noun has only four cases. The endings of these cases vary with different nouns,
but they fall into certain broad categories or declensions. There is a vowel declension and a
consonant declension, also called the strong and weak declensions, according to whether the
stem ended in Germanic in a vowel or a consonant, and within each of these types there are
certain subdivisions. The stems of nouns belonging to the vowel declension ended in one of four
vowels in Germanic a, ō, i, or u, and the inflection varies accordingly.
Examples of the strong declension and one of the weak: stān (stone), a masculine a-stem; giefu
(gift), a feminine ō-and hunta (hunter), a masculine consonant stem.
Four cases, nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative.
Grammatical Gender
As in Indo-European languages generally, the gender of Old English nouns is not dependent upon
considerations of sex. Although nouns designating males are often masculine and those indicating
females feminine, those indicating neuter objects are not necessarily neuter.
Stān (stone) is masculine, mōna (moon) is masculine, but sunne (sun) is feminine, as in German.
In French the corresponding words have just the opposite genders: pierre (stone) and lune (moon)
are feminine while soleil (sun) is masculine.
Often the gender of Old English nouns is quite illogical. Words like moegden (girl), wīf (wife),
bearn (child, son), and cild (child), which we should expect to be feminine or masculine, are in
fact neuter, while wīfmann (woman) is masculine because the second element of the compound is
masculine.
The Adjective
An important feature of the Germanic languages is the development of a twofold declension of
the adjective. one, the strong declension, used with nouns when not accompanied by a definite
article or similar word (demonstrative or possessive pronoun), the other, the weak declension,
used when the noun is preceded by such a word.
Thus we have in Old English gōd mann (good man) but sē gōda mann (the good man). The
forms are those of the nominative singular masculine in the strong and weak declensions
respectively, as illustrated below.
The Definite Article
Like German, its sister language of today, Old English possessed a fully inflected definite article.
How complete the declension of this word was can be seen from the following forms:
The Personal Pronoun
Old English shows this tendency not only in having distinctive forms for practically all genders,
persons, and cases but also in preserving in addition to the ordinary two numbers, singular and
plural, a set of forms for two people or two things— the dual number. Indo-European had
separate forms for the dual number in the verb as well, and these appear in Greek and to a certain
extent in Gothic. They are not found, however, in Old English, and the distinction between the
dual and the plural was disappearing even from the pronoun in Old English. The dual forms are
shown, however, in the following table of the Old English personal pronoun:
The Verb
The inflection of the verb in the Germanic languages is much simpler than it was in Indo-
European times.
Old English distinguished only two simple tenses by inflection, a present and a past, and, except
for one word, it had no inflectional forms for the passive as in Latin or Greek. It recognized the
indicative, subjunctive, and imperative moods and had the usual two numbers and three persons.
A peculiar feature of the Germanic languages was the division of the verb into two great classes,
the weak and the strong, often known in Modern English as regular and irregular verbs.
 THE RESOURCEFULNESS OF OLD
ENGLISH VOCABULARY
By means of prefixes and suffixes a single root is made to yield a variety of derivatives, and the
range of these is greatly extended by the ease with which compounds are formed. The method can
be made clear by an illustration.
The word mod, which is our word mood (a mental state), meant in Old English ‘heart’, ‘mind’,
‘spirit’, and hence ‘boldness’ or ‘courage’, sometimes ‘pride’ or ‘haughtiness’. From it, by the
addition of a common adjective ending, was formed the adjective modig with a similar range of
meanings (spirited, bold, high-minded, arrogant, stiff-necked), and by means of further endings
the adjective modiglic ‘magnanimous’, the adverb modiglice ‘boldly’, ‘proudly’, and the noun
modignes ‘magnanimity’, ‘pride’. Another ending converted modig into a verb modigian,
meaning ‘to bear oneself proudly or exultantly’, or sometimes, ‘to be indignant’, ‘to rage’.
Prefix and Suffix
The Old English vocabulary comes from the generous use made of prefixes and suffixes to form new
words from old words or to modify or extend the root idea. In this respect it also resembles modern
German. Among the words mentioned in the paragraph there are several that are formed with the
suffixes -ig, -full, -lēas, -līce, -nes, and -ung. Others frequently employed include the adjective suffixes
-sum (wynsum) and -wīs (rihtwīs), the noun suffixes –dōm (cyningdōm, eorldōm), -end, and -ere
denoting the agent, -hād (cildhād), -ing in patronymics, -ung (dagung dawn), -scipe (frēondscipe), and
many more.
In like manner the use of prefixes was a fertile resource in word building. It is particularly a feature in
the formation of verbs. There are about a dozen prefixes that occur with great frequency, such as ā-,
be-, for-, fore-, ge-, mis-, of-, ofer-, on-, tō-, un-, under-, and wiþ-. Thus, with the help of these, Old
English could make out of a simple verb like settan (to set) new verbs like āsettan ‘place’, besettan
‘appoint’, forsettan ‘obstruct’ foresettan ‘place before’, gesettan ‘people’, ‘garrison’, ofsettan ‘afflict’,
onsettan ‘oppress’, tōsettan ‘dispose’, unsettan ‘put down’, and wiþsettan ‘resist’. The prefix wiþenters
into more than fifty Old English verbs, where it has the force of against or away. Such, for example,
are wiþcēosan ‘reject’ (cēosan=choose), wiþcweþan ‘deny’ (cweþan=say), wiþdrīfan ‘repel’,
wiþsprecan ‘contradict’, and wiþstandan.
 RECAP
Old English was highly inflected language and so the old English period is called the period of full inflection.
Old English was a synthetic language i.e, one which indicates the relation of words in a sentence by means of
inflections.
Old English nouns had 2 numbers singular and plural. All noun had grammatical gender. There were two
forms of adjectives in old English There were two tenses; single present tense and single past tense .
In the course of first 700years of its existence, English was brought into contact with three other language.
The language of the Celts, the Romans and the Scandinavian . Each of these contacts resulted in additions to
its vocabulary.
There were three distinct occasions on which borrowing from Latin occurred before the end of the old
English period. Continental Borrowing Latin through Celtic transmission Christianization of Britain.
Near the end of the old English period , English underwent a third foreign influence the result of contact with
another important language Scandinavian –the language of swedes, Norwegians and the Danes. They are
commonly called as VIKINGS. The period of their activity extended from the middle of the 8th century to the
beginning of the 11th century is popularly known as Viking age. The Scandinavian influence upon old
English was due to their attacks ,settlements and ultimate conquest of Britain .
Old English had three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) in the noun and adjective, and nouns,
pronouns, and adjectives were inflected for case. Noun and adjective paradigms contained four cases—
nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative. Old English had a greater proportion of strong
verbs (sometimes called irregular verbs in contemporary grammars) than does Modern English. Many
verbs that were strong in Old English are weak (regular) verbs in Modern English (e.g., Old
English helpan, present infinitive of the verb help; healp, past singular; hulpon, past plural; holpen, past
participle versus Modern English help, helped, helped, helped, respectively).
THE LATER HISTORY OF OLD ENGLISH
What happened to Old English? Why aren’t we speaking it today? In some respects, of course, we still
are. Much of our everyday (or ‘core’) vocabulary derives from Old English.
Words such as bear, father, foot, fish, God, good, hare, he, him, his, I, king, lady, lord, love, man, me,
night, oyster, queen, raven, ship, sing, stone, tongue, us, we, where, white, widow and wolf, all of
which are still in use today. Many have changed their spellings, and some have developed different
meanings. OE dēor ‘wild animal’, for instance, has narrowed in meaning to refer to a single type of
animal (‘deer’), and OE wīf ‘woman’ has narrowed to refer to a married woman (‘wife’). Nonetheless,
they are still recognizable as the precursors of Present-Day English words.
Some of the apparent oddities of the modern spelling system, such as the silent letters in words such
as knight, light and write, can also be traced back to Old English, where they represented sounds that
were pronounced. They have now become fossilized, preserving evidence for the history of the
language. In addition, some grammatical inflections have been retained. This applies particularly to the
pronoun system; but the verb system too reflects many aspects of its Old English roots, including the
division between strong and weak verbs, and the use of irregular forms of the verb ‘to be’.
 MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD
MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD
(1150-1500)
This period started with the Norman Conquest in 1066 and ended with the end of fifteenth
century. The Middle English period (1150–1500) was marked by momentous changes in the
English language, changes more extensive and fundamental than those that have taken place at
any time before or since.
Some of them were the result of the Norman Conquest and the conditions which followed in the
wake of that event. Others were a continuation of tendencies that had begun to manifest
themselves in Old English. These would have gone on even without the Conquest, but they took
place more rapidly because the Norman invasion removed from English those conservative
influences that are always felt when a language is extensively used in books and is spoken by an
influential educated class.
 MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD
The changes of this period affected English in both its grammar and its vocabulary. They were
so extensive in each department that it is difficult to say which group is the more significant.
Those in the grammar reduced English from a highly inflected language to an extremely analytic
one. Those in the vocabulary involved the loss of a large part of the Old English word-stock and
the addition of thousands of words from French and Latin. At the beginning of the period
English is a language that must be learned like a foreign tongue; at the end it is Modern English.
An example of Middle English by
Chaucer (public domain)
 GRAMMAR OF MIDDLE ENGLISH
Nouns
The plurals of nouns generally end in –s or –es. However, some nouns end in –n or –en (like
Modern English ox, oxen), especially in earlier texts.
Possessive forms end in –s or –es. There is no apostrophe; possessives are distinguished from
plurals by context.
Noun
word =stan stana (-as) used to from plurality of the noun.
Huntaa --huntan (-an) used to from plurality of the noun.
Suffix(-as) was extended to modern English (-s,-es) to form plural such as
(boys, boxes, churches ).This form was used in the northern dialects of OE.
Suffix(_an) was extended to modern English (-en) to from plural like (children, oxen, brethren).
This form was used in the southern dialects of OE. (i.e., eyen, englen).
By 15th Century the suffixes –s and –es were more or less displaced –in all over England.
The Possessive Form
According to the rules of inflection in old English, certain nouns had- es at the end in their
singular genitive form. The singular genitive form of the word stone, for example
was stanes. This - es at the end of words of this class was generalized and later became accepted
as the common suffix for forming the genitive form of most nouns in English.
With the passage of time ,this –es at the end of plural nouns was changed into-is and then into the
modern English apostrophe followed by an s.
Adjectives
During the first half of the middle English period, adjectives had two forms. the unmarked
singular form (e.g, fair) and the marked plural form with an e at the end (e.g. ,faire)
Chaucer, for example,
Uses expressions Like :
(i) the weder is fair (The weather if fair)
(ii) faire waves (fair waves).
Towards the end of the middle English period the –e at the end of plural adjectives was lost and
adjectives in English became indeclinable.
The formation of the comparative and superlative adjectives were basically the same as they are
in present-day English.
Adjectives
In Middle English, the comparative and the superlative were generally formed directly form the
positive . Late old English, for example, had gret, gretter and grettest. These forms survived for some
time even after the old English period but Middle English had greter and gretest formed directly from
the positive gret.
Late old English had old, elder and eldest. Elder and eldest have survived with a slight change in
meaning and are part of the twentieth-century English vocabulary. But Middle English formed its own
comparative form its own comparative and superlative forms older and oldest directly from the
positive form old.
Late old English had late, latter and last, these forms were used in middle English as they are used
even in present-day English.
Middle English formed its own comparative and superlative forms later and latest directly
from late. Besides, Middle English dropped t occurring before st in Old English adjectives. Old
English bet(e)st, for example, became best in Middle English and Old English latost became last.
Articles
As is evident from the following table, in Old English the use of the definite article was subject
to an elaborate paradigm of declension.

Masculine Feminine Neuter All genders

Nominative se seo ðӕt ða

Genitive ðӕs ðӕre ðӕs ðaar

Accusative ðӕm ðӕre ðӕm ðӕt

Dative ðone ða ðӕt ða

Articles
Se = used before singular masculine nouns in their nominative form.
Seo = used before singular feminine nouns in their nominative form.
Se & seo were changed into the to represent both masculine and feminine nouns.
ðӕt was used as a neuter in Old English but it took the demonstrative function since the Middle
English period up to date to represent both masculine and feminine forms.
Verbs

The infinitive form (e.g. ‘to go’, ‘to sleep’, ‘to sing’) ends in –n or –en: e.g. goon, slepen, singen. In
later texts, the –n may disappear.
The –n or –en ending can also indicate a plural form of the verb: e.g. they goon, they slepen, they
singen. In the past tense, the ending may be –n, -en, or –ed.
From the point of view of inflectional forms, verbs in Middle English could be studied in relation to
two numbers (singular & plural) and two tense forms (past & present).
It distinguishes three moods: the indicative, the subjunctive, and the imperative.
Verbs in Middle English had no passive form as it emerged during the Modern English period.
Shall/will:
In Old English, ic wille meant “I wish to” and ic sceal” meant “I am obliged to”. In Modern English
period, shall and will have several functions, one of which is the future reference. This function
established during the Middle English period.
Verbs
There was a struggle between the strong and weak verbs for survival.
About one-third of strong verbs of Old English died or out of use, and about ninety of them have
no trace in writing records.
Many of the strong verbs were converted into the weak form. For example, climb, creep, shave,
yield.
There are, however, few weak verbs were converted into strong verbs such as blow, know, tear.
During the process of converting the strong verbs into weak verbs, past participle form of the
weak verbs turned out to be more persistent than the past tense form.
E.g.
Grave graved graved, graven
Melt melted melted, molten
Gender
Old English had a system of grammatical gender similar to that of modern G, German with three
genders: masculine, feminine, neuter. Personal pronouns showed gender inflection in agreement .
E.g. sun is feminine, so a feminine pronoun should be used.
Wife, girl used as neutral.
The Middle English of the 13th century was in transition to the loss of a gender system, as
indicated by the increasing use of the gender-neutral identifier þe (the).] The loss of gender
classes was part of a general decay of inflectional endings and declensional classes by the end of
the 14th century. Gender loss began in the north of England; the south-east and the south-west
Midlands were the most linguistically conservative regions, and Kent retained traces of gender in
the 1340s. Late 14th-century London English had almost completed the shift away from
grammatical gender, and Modern English retains no morphological agreement of words with
grammatical gender.
Vocabulary
The majority of words in ME were inherited from OE. These words were Anglo-Saxons words,
Scandinavians (Vikings), and Latin.
Words borrowed from French:
When William the Conqueror became king of England in 1066, French took over as the language
of the court, administration, and culture - and stayed there for 300 years. Meanwhile, English was
"demoted" to everyday, unprestigious uses. These two languages existed side by side in England
with no noticeable difficulties; in fact, since English was essentially ignored by grammarians
during this time, it took advantage of its lowly status to become a grammatically simpler language
and, after only 70 or 80 years existing side-by-side with French, Old English segued into Middle
English.
Vocabulary
Words concerning warfare
army, navy, peace, enemy, arms, battle, spy, combat, siege, defence, ambush, soldier, guard, mail,
buckler, banner, lance, besiege, defend, array.
Words concerning Administration
govern, government, administer, crown, state, empire, royal, majesty, treaty, statute, parliament,
tax, rebel, traitor, treason, exile, chancellor, treasurer, major, noble, peer, prince, princess, duke,
squire, page (but not king, queen, lord, lady, earl), peasant, slave, servant, vassal.
Words to show he title of respect like, madam, mistress, sir.
Words concerning Law
Advocate, defendant, plaintiff, plea, suit, adultery, arson, assault, fraud, libel.
Vocabulary
Words concerning Christianity
Words from French could be listed as:
(a) Nouns referring to some of the fundamental concepts of Christianity: baptism, charity,
confession, creator, damnation.
(b) Nouns referring to ranks in the hierarchy of the church: abbes, chaplain, clergy, dean.
(c) Nouns referring to places of residence connected with the church: abbey, convent, cloister.
Words about science and Medicine
The word medicine itself is borrowed from French.
Words such as anatomy, ointment, pain, paralysis, physician, remedy, stomach, surgeon are of
French origin.
Vocabulary
Words from Architecture
Base, ceiling, cellar, chamber, column,
Words of Art, Literature, and Grammar
chapter, grammar, paper, pen, poet, preface, chronicle, story, title.
Words regarding food
Biscuit, cream, salad, sugar, toast
Names of fruit: almonds, cherry, date, fig, fruit, grape, orange, peach.
Names of meat
Bacon, beef, mutton, pork, veal,
Words of culinary processes involved in preparing different types of sophisticated items of food:
blanch, boil, fry, grate, stew, roast.
Vocabulary
Words regarding Dress, Jewellery, and Precious Stones
Apparel, attire, boots, dress, clock.
Words for jewels: brooch, ivory, ornament.
Words for precious stones: amethyst, beryl, coral, diamond, pearl.
Words for colour: blue, brown, saffron, vermilion.
GRAMMAR OF MIDDLE ENGLISH
The –n or –en can also be a past participle (like Modern English eaten). In this case the word will
generally be preceded by a form of have or be, or else it will function as an adjective describing a
noun.
The ending –þ or –eþ (-eth in modern spelling) indicates the present tense. In can also indicate an
imperative (command) addressed to more than one person.
The past tense is generally indicated, as in modern English, with an ending containing –t, -d, or –
ed. Verbs of this type have similar past participle forms The past tense and past participle may
also be indicated by a change in the root vowel of the word, as in Modern English sing, sang,
sung. Middle English possessed more verbs of this ‘irregular’ type than Modern English does,
and some Modern English verbs of the ‘regular’ type were ‘irregular’ in Middle English, e.g. holp
‘helped’.
Verbs are made negative by the use of the words ne and nat on either side of the verb. Either one
or both words may be present to indicate the negative.
Pronouns
Middle English pronouns are most easily understood by means of a broad historical overview. The tables below give only some common
spellings, the actual number of spellings to be found in Middle English texts is much larger. In using the tables below, keep in mind that
there is considerable overlap between the different periods.
For the subject of a sentence:
Old English Early Middle English Late Middle English Early Modern English
ic ich I I
þu þou thou thou (used to refer to one person)
he he he he
heo he, heo, ha she she
hit hit hit it
we we we we
ge ye, you ye, you you, ye (refers to more than one person)
hi hi, heo, ha they they
 DECAY OF INFLECTIONAL
ENDINGS
The changes in English grammar may be described as a general reduction of inflections. Endings of the
noun and adjective marking distinctions of number and case and often of gender were so altered in
pronunciation as to lose their distinctive form and hence their usefulness. To some extent the same thing
is true of the verb.
The earliest seems to have been the change of final -m to –n wherever it occurred, i.e., in the dative plural
of nouns and adjectives and in the dative singular (masculine and neuter) of adjectives when inflected
according to the strong declension.
Thus mūðum (to the mouths) >mūðun, gōdum>gōdun. This -n, along with the -n of the other inflectional
endings, was then dropped (*mūðu, *gōdu). At the same time, the vowels a, o, u, e in inflectional endings
were obscured to a sound, the so-called “indeterminate vowel,” which came to be written e (less often i,
y, u, depending on place and date). As a result, a number of originally distinct endings such as -a, -u, -e, -
an, -um were reduced generally to a uniform -e, and such grammatical distinctions as they formerly
expressed were no longer conveyed.
 LATIN BORROWINGS IN MIDDLE
ENGLISH
The influence of the Norman Conquest is generally known as the Latin Influence of the Third
Period in recognition of the ultimate source of the new French words. But it is right to include
also under this designation the large number of words borrowed directly from Latin in Middle
English. These differed from the French borrowings in being less popular and in gaining
admission generally through the written language
In a single work like Trevisa’s translation of the De Proprietatibus Rerum of Bartholomew
Anglicus we meet with several hundred words taken over from the Latin original. Since they are
not found before this in English, we can hardly doubt that we have here a typical instance of the
way such words first came to be used.
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were especially prolific in Latin borrowings. An
anonymous writer of the first half of the fifteenth century complains that it is not easy to translate
from Latin into English.
Characteristics Features of the Middle
English
1. In OE, the letter “f” used to represent the /f/ and /v/ while middle English letter “v” used to
represent /v/ and ‘f’ to represent the sound/f/. The letter ‘v’ was written sometimes as “u”.
2. Unlike old English, the letter “z” came to the existence in the middle English to represent the
voiced sound /z/.
3. In old English, the letters “t” and “ð” were used for the sounds /θ/ and /ð/. In middle English;
however, These tow letters were discarded and replaced by “th”. The letter “ð” continued about
the end of 12th century and the letter ‘t’ continued up to the end of 13th century.
4. In Old English, the letters “sc” were used for the sound /ʃ/. In Middle English scribes started
using “ss”, sch” or “sh” in place of the Old English “sc”. So the Old English word fisc was
written as fiss, fisch, or fish in Middle English.
Characteristics Features of the Middle
English
5. In Old English, the letters “cg” were used for the sound /dʒ/ but in Middle English “i”,”j” or
“g” were used instead. E.g. the word judge in Modern English was written as cg in Old English,
and as iuge or as juge.
6. In Middle English, the letters “k” and “c” were used to represent the velar stop /k/. The letters
“ch” were used to represent the sound /tʃ/.
7. In cursive writing, it was very difficult to identify the precise number of strokes in sequences of
letters like “um”, “uv” and “wu”. In Middle English, the letter “o” used to replace the letter “u”.
E.g. words cuman was written as comen, lufue was written as love, and sunu as sone.
8. The letter “y” was used as an alternative form of the letter “i”. Words king and kyng were used
interchangeably in spelling and have the same pronunciation.
In Old English, the short vowel /i/ and the long vowel /i:/ were represented by the letter “e”. In
Middle English “ee” and “ ie”were used as alternative representations of /i:/. Therefore, the Old
English words cwene, feld were written queen, field respectively.
Characteristics Features of the Middle
English
One of the changes appeared in Middle English was the loss of a number of consonants.
The consonants were continued to exist in spelling but dropped out of pronunciation.
e.g. the word twa was changed to two, hwa was changed to who.
The consonant “t” disappeared before “st”.
e.g. the Old English bet(e)st was changed into best and latost was changed into last. Similarly, the
letter “d” disappeared before “s” and so the word andswaru was changed
into answer and godspel was changed into gospel.
 SUMMARY
To a certain extent, then, Present-Day English may be viewed as a continuation of Old English.
Nevertheless, there are major differences both in vocabulary and in grammar, which are largely due to
contact with other languages over the last millennium.
The single most important event was the Norman Conquest of 1066. This resulted not only in a huge
influx of French words into English, but in the loss of a high proportion of the existing vocabulary.
Many Old English words went out of use, and are no longer recognizable today.
Changes in grammatical structure were already taking place towards the end of the Anglo-Saxon
period itself. Following the Viking invasions, speakers of Old Norse had settled in England and were
living alongside speakers of Old English. As another Germanic language, Old Norse was sufficiently
similar to Old English for the inflectional systems to become easily confused, resulting in a movement
towards a more analytic language with greater reliance on word order.
The loss of the case system in particular makes it necessary to approach Old English almost as a
foreign language. Unlike modern languages, however, there are no native speakers to consult over
points of difficulty; and evidence for the lexicon is limited to the vocabulary preserved in surviving
manuscripts and in place-names. For these reasons, our knowledge of Old English will always be
incomplete – but this is one of the things that make it such a fascinating field of study
 500-1100: The Old English (or Anglo-
Saxon) Period
The conquest of the Celtic population in Britain by speakers of West Germanic dialects (primarily
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) eventually determined many of the essential characteristics of the
English language. (The Celtic influence on English survives for the most part only in place
names—London, Dover, Avon, York.) Over time the dialects of the various invaders merged,
giving rise to what we now call "Old English."
Late 6th century—Ethelbert, the King of Kent, is baptized. He is the first English king to
convert to Christianity.
7th century—Rise of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex; the Saxon kingdoms of Essex and
Middlesex; the Angle kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria. St. Augustine and Irish
missionaries convert Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, introducing new religious words borrowed
from Latin and Greek. Latin speakers begin referring to the country as Anglia and later
as Englaland.
 500-1100: The Old English (or Anglo-
Saxon) Period
673—Birth of the Venerable Bede, the monk who composed (in Latin) The Ecclesiastical History of
the English People (c. 731), a key source of information about Anglo Saxon settlement.
700—Approximate date of the earliest manuscript records of Old English.
Late 8th century—Scandinavians begin to settle in Britain and Ireland; Danes settle in parts of
Ireland.
Early 9th century—Egbert of Wessex incorporates Cornwall into his kingdom and is recognized as
overlord of the seven kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons (the Heptarchy): England begins to emerge.
Mid 9th century—Danes raid England, occupy Northumbria, and establish a kingdom at York. Danish
begins to influence English.
Late 9th century—King Alfred of Wessex (Alfred the Great) leads the Anglo-Saxons to victory over
the Vikings, translates Latin works into English and establishes the writing of prose in English. He uses
the English language to foster a sense of national identity. England is divided into a kingdom ruled by
the Anglo-Saxons (under Alfred) and another ruled by the Scandinavians.
 500-1100: The Old English (or Anglo-
Saxon) Period
10th century—English and Danes mix fairly peacefully, and many Scandinavian (or Old
Norse) loanwords enter the language, including such common words as sister, wish, skin, and die.
1000—Approximate date of the only surviving manuscript of the Old English epic poem Beowulf,
composed by an anonymous poet between the 8th century and the early 11th century.
Early 11th century—Danes attack England, and the English king (Ethelred the Unready) escapes to
Normandy. The Battle of Maldon becomes the subject of one of the few surviving poems in Old
English. The Danish king (Canute) rules over England and encourages the growth of Anglo-Saxon
culture and literature.
Mid 11th century—Edward the Confessor, King of England who was raised in Normandy, names
William, Duke of Normandy, as his heir.
1066—The Norman Invasion: King Harold is killed at the Battle of Hastings, and William of
Normandy is crowned King of England. Over succeeding decades, Norman French becomes the
language of the courts and of the upper classes; English remains the language of the majority. Latin is
used in churches and schools. For the next century, English, for all practical purposes, is no longer a
written language.
 1100-1500: The Middle English Period
The Middle English period saw the breakdown of the inflectional system of Old English and the
expansion of vocabulary with many borrowings from French and Latin.
1150—Approximate date of the earliest surviving texts in Middle English.
1171—Henry II declares himself overlord of Ireland, introducing Norman French and English to
the country. About this time the University of Oxford is founded.
1204—King John loses control of the Duchy of Normandy and other French lands; England is
now the only home of the Norman French/English.
1209—The University of Cambridge is formed by scholars from Oxford.
1215—King John signs the Magna Carta ("Great Charter"), a critical document in the long
historical process leading to the rule of constitutional law in the English-speaking world.
 1100-1500: The Middle English Period
1258—King Henry III is forced to accept the Provisions of Oxford, which establish a Privy
Council to oversee the administration of the government. These documents, though annulled a
few years later, are generally regarded as England's first written constitution.
Late 13th century—Under Edward I, royal authority is consolidated in England and Wales.
English becomes the dominant language of all classes.
Mid to late 14th century—The Hundred Years War between England and France leads to the
loss of almost all of England's French possessions. The Black Death kills roughly one-third of
England's population. Geoffrey Chaucer composes The Canterbury Tales in Middle English.
English becomes the official language of the law courts and replaces Latin as the medium of
instruction at most schools. John Wycliffe's English translation of the Latin Bible is published.
The Great Vowel Shift begins, marking the loss of the so-called "pure" vowel sounds (which are
still found in many continental languages) and the loss of the phonetic pairings of most long and
short vowel sounds.
 1100-1500: The Middle English Period
1362—The Statute of Pleading makes English the official language in England. Parliament is
opened with its first speech delivered in English.
1399 At his coronation, King Henry IV becomes the first English monarch to deliver a speech in
English.
Late 15th century—William Caxton brings to Westminster (from the Rhineland) the first
printing press and publishes Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Literacy rates increase significantly,
and printers begin to standardize English spelling. The monk Galfridus Grammaticus (also known
as Geoffrey the Grammarian) publishes Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae, the first
English-to-Latin wordbook.
THANK YOU