The Middle English Period
(1066-1500)
1066-1204 Decline of English
• French (Norman) invasion (1066), William, Duke of Normandy's conquest and unification of England, crowned king of England as William I, the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087); Normans were descendants of Danes living in northern France and spoke a French influenced by Scandinavian; death of many Anglo-Saxon nobles
• French became the dominant language in England, spoken by the upper classes from 1066 until late in the 14th century. English language was relegated to the lower classes and was heavily influenced by French in matters of vocabulary, prosody, and spelling
• Frenchmen in all high offices; kings of England spoke French, took French wives and lived mostly in France; French-speaking court; imposition of feudal system, vassalage, peasants bound to the land
• Henry II (House of Plantagenet, Angevine) (r. 1154-1189), married to Eleanor of Aquitaine; Henry II and Eleanor were the parents of Richard I, the Lionheart (r. 1189-1199) and John Lackland
• lack of prestige of English; French was the language of the court; Latin was the written language of the Church and secular documents; Scandinavian still spoken in the Danelaw; Celtic languages prevailed in Wales and Scotland
• development of bilingualism among Norman officials, supervisors; some marriages of French and English; some bilingual children
• examples of words of French origin: tax, estate, trouble, duty, pay, table, boil, serve, roast, dine, religion, savior; pray, trinity
• very little written English from this period; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued to be written until 1154.
1204-1348 Rise of English
• King John (John Lackland) (r. 1199-1216); loss of Normandy in 1204; beginnings of the political and cultural separation between England and France
• many Norman landholders chose to stay in England, spoke Anglo-French dialect
• Henry III (r. 1216-1272), son of John; francophilia of Henry III, many Frenchmen given official positions
• eventual decline of French cultural dominance in England
• rise in use of English, smoothing out of dialectal differences, beginning of standard English based on London dialect; crusades and pilgrimages contributed to increase in communication and formation of common language.
1348-1509 Dominance of English
• French remained official language of England until second half of 14th c.; by mid to late 14th c. English was normal medium of instruction; in 1362 English became official language of legal proceedings; everyone in England spoke English by end of 14th c., displacing French, Norse, and Celtic languages
• increase in English writing, more common in legal documents than French or Latin by 15th c.
• emergence of London/East Midland dialect as standard spoken and written language; dominance of London as commercial center, seaport, proximity to Westminster court
• Edward III (Windsor) (r. 1327-1377); his claim to French throne led to Hundred Years' War (1337-1453); eventual French victory; England lost all of its continental holdings; English hostility to French language and culture
• Black Death 1348-1351, death of one third of English population, social chaos, labor shortages, emancipation of peasants, wage increases, rise in prestige of English as language of working classes
• War of the Roses (1455-1485), House of York (white rose) vs. House of Lancaster (red rose)
• printers' activity (William Caxton 1474), increased literacy
• Henry VII (House of Lancaster) (r. 1485-1509) marries Elizabeth of York (daughter of Edward IV), fathers Henry VIII, and begins Tudor dynasty
• 1509 begins reign of Henry VIII; end of Middle English Period, beginning of English Renaissance and Early Modern English Period.
Middle English
• French influence
• Scandinavian influence
• loss of inflections
• less free in word order
• loss of grammatical gender
• more phonetic spelling
• final -e pronounced, as well as all consonants
• resurrection of English in 13th and 14th c.
• dialects: Northern, Midland, Southern, Kentish
• dominance of London dialect (East Midland)
Middle English Subperiods
1066-1204 Decline of English
• Norman invasion (1066), French conquest and unification of England; Norman = North-man, descendants of Danes, spoke French influenced by Germanic dialect
• William in full control of England within ten years
• death of many Anglo-Saxon nobles
• end of internal conflicts and Viking invasions; control of the Welsh
• Frenchmen in all high offices
• Anglo Saxon Chronicle written until 1154
• imposition of feudal system, vassalage, peasants bound to the land
• increase in dialectal differences
• kings of England spoke French, took French wives and lived mostly in France, French-speaking court
• Henry II Plantagenet (r. 1154-1189), married to Eleanor of Aquitaine, father of Richard I, the Lionheart (r. 1189-1199) and John Lackland
• assassination of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket in 1170
• lack of prestige of English; Latin was written language of the Church and secular documents; Scandinavian still spoken in the Danelaw, Celtic languages prevailed in Wales and Scotland
• development of bilingualism among Norman officials, supervisors, some marriages of French and English, bilingual children
• examples of French words: tax, estate, trouble, duty, pay, table, boil, serve, roast, dine, religion, savior; pray, trinity
• very little written English from this period.
1204-1348 Rise of English
• King John (John Lackland) (r. 1199-1216), loss of Normandy in 1204
• many Norman landholders chose to stay in England, spoke Anglo-French dialect
• barons revolt against John, Magna Carta (1215), origins and development of Parliament
• Henry III (r. 1216-1272), son of John; francophilia of Henry III, many Frenchmen given official positions
• Edward I (r. 1272-1307), son of Henry III, conquered Wales and waged war with Scotland
• decline of French cultural dominance in England
• rise in use of English, smoothing out of dialectal differences, beginning of standard English based on London dialect; crusades, pilgrimages contributed to increase in communication and formation of common language.
1348-1509 Dominance of English
• French remained official language of England until second half of 14th c.; by mid to late 14th c. English was normal medium of instruction; in 1362 English became official language of legal proceedings, everyone in England spoke English by end of 14th c., displacing of French, Norse, and Celtic languages
• persistence of dialectal differences, increase in English writing, more common in legal documents than French or Latin by 15th c.
• emergence of London/East Midland dialect as standard spoken and written language, compromise dialect, London as commercial center, seaport, proximity to Westminster court
• printers' activity (William Caxton 1474), increased literacy
• Edward III (Windsor) (r. 1327-1377), his claim to French throne led to Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), English victories at Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), Agincourt (1415), role of Joan of Arc (1429), eventual French victory, loss of all English continental holdings, French no longer significant to the English
• Black Death 1348-1351, death of one third of English population, social chaos, labor shortages, emancipation of peasants, wage increases, rise in prestige of English as language of working classes
• Richard II (1377-1399) (grandson of Edward III), John of Gaunt (1340-1399) (son of Edward III), Richard II deposed by Henry IV (Bolingbroke)
• War of the Roses (1455-1485), York vs. Lancaster, Richard Duke of York vs. Henry VI
• Henry VI executed 1471
• Edward II's brother Richard III (1483-85) killed by Lancastrian Henry VII (Tudor), Henry marries Elizabeth of York (daughter of Edward IV), fathers Henry VIII;
• 1509 begins reign of Henry VIII, end of Middle English period
Middle English Phonology
Not much English writing during 1100-1200 period; match between sound and spelling worsened; influence of French scribes, confusion in spelling system; new standard English not a direct descendant of West Saxon.
Consonants
• consonant inventory much like that of Present Day English except for sounds in hu/ng/ (velar nasal) and mea/s/ure (alveo-palatal voiced fricative)
• addition of phonemic voiced fricatives: v, , z; effect of French loanwords: vetch/fetch, view/few, vile/file
• voiceless fricative /h/ had velar (ME thurh) and alveo-palatal (ME niht) allophones
• loss of long consonants (OE mann )
• h lost in clusters, OE hlæfdige>ME ladi, OE hnecca>ME necke, OE hræfn>ME raven
• voiced velar fricative allophone of g (normally a voiced velar stop in OE) became w after l and r: OE swelgan>ME swolwen, OE feolaga>ME felawe, OE morgen>ME morwen, OE sorg>ME sorow
• OE prefix ge- lost initial consonant and was reduced to y or i: OE genog>ME inough, OE genumen>ME inomen
• unstressed final consonants tended to be lost after a vowel: OE ic>ME i, OE -lic>ME ly
• final -n in many verbal forms (infinitive, plural subjunctive, plural preterite) was lost (remains in some past participles of strong verbs: seen, gone, taken); final -n also lost in possessive adjectives my and thy and indefinite article 'an' before words beginning with consonant (-n remained in the possessive pronouns)
• w dropped after s or t: OE sweostor> sister, OE swilc>such (sometimes retained in spelling: sword, two; sometimes still pronounced: swallow, twin, swim)
• l was lost in the vicinity of palatal c in adjectival pronouns OE ælc, swilc, hwilc, micel> each, such, which, much (sometimes remained: filch, milch)
• fricative v tended to drop out before consonant+consonant or vowel+consonant: OE hlaford, hlæfdige, heafod, hæfde>ME lord, ladi, hed, hadde (sometimes retained: OE heofon, hræfn, dreflian>heaven, raven, drivel)
• final b lost after m but retained in spelling: lamb, comb, climb (remained in medial position: timber, amble); intrusive b after m and before consonant: OE bremel, næmel, æmerge>ME bremble, nimble, ember (also OE puma>ME thombe)
• intrusive d after n in final position or before resonant: OE dwinan, punor > ME dwindle, thunder
• intrusive t after s in final position or before resonant: OE hlysnan, behæs > ME listnen, beheste
• initial stops in clusters gn- and kn- still pronounced: ME gnat, gnawen, knowen, knave
• h often lost in unstressed positions: OE hit>ME it
Vowels
Loss of OE y and æ: y unrounded to i; æ raised toward e or lowered toward a
all OE diphthongs became pure vowels
addition of schwa; schwa in unstressed syllables, reduction of all unstressed vowels to schwa or i as in K/i/d, reason for ultimate loss of most inflections; a source of schwa was epenthetic or parasitic vowel between two consonants, generally spelled e (OE setl, æfre, swefn> ME setel, ever, sweven)
French loanwords added several new diphthongs (e.g. OF point, bouillir, noyse > ME point, boille, noise) and contributed to vowel lengthening; diphthongs resulted from vocalization of w, y, and v between vowels;
Lenghtening and shortening:
• phonemic vowel length in ME (lost in Modern English)
• already in OE short vowels tended to lengthen before certain consonant clusters OE climban, feld> ME climbe, feld
• lengthening of short vowels in open syllables (OE gatu, hopa > ME gate, hope)
• shortening of long vowels in stressed closed syllables, OE softe, godsibb, sceaphirde> ME softe, godsib, scepherde, exceptions (before -st): OE last, gast, crist>ME last, gost, Christ; if two or more unstressed syllables followed the stressed one, the vowel of the stressed syllable was shortened (Christ/Christmas [ME Christesmesse], break/breakfast [ME brekefast]); some remnants of distinctions caused by lengthening or shortening in open and closed syllables: five/fifteen, wise/wisdom; in weak verbs, the dental ending closed syllables: hide/hid, keep/kept, sleep/slept, hear/heard
loss of unstressed vowels: unstressed final -e was gradually dropped, though it was probably often pronounced; -e of inflectional endings also being lost, even when followed by consonant (as in -es, eth, ed) (e.g. breath/breathed), exceptions: wishes, judges, wanted, raided; loss of -e in adverbs made them identical to adjective, hence ambiguity of plain adverbs e.g. hard, fast; final -e in French loanwords not lost because of French final stress, hence cite>city, purete>purity
Middle English Prosody
Stress on root syllables, less stress on subsequent syllables; loss of endings led to reduction in number of unstressed syllables, increased use of unstressed particles such as definite and indefinite articles, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, analytic possessive (of), marked infinitive (to), compound verb phrases; OE trochaic rhythm shift to iambic rhythm of unstressed syllables followed by stressed ones (caused by increase in use of unstressed particles and by French loans)
Middle English Graphics
- 26 letters, ash and eth dropped, thorn and yogh retained; French loans j and v treated as allographs of i and u; v reserved for initial position; interchangeable y and i;
- Yogh: velar fricative /x/ (po/h/t), semivowel /j/ (/y/ung), alveopalatal voiced affricate /j/ (brid/g/e), also used as z (daiz)
q and z more widely used under French influence, qu for /kw/ OE cwic, cwen> ME quicke, quene.
- Tendency for use of digraph th instead of thorn, thorn retained in function words, that, thou, then; confusion of y and thorn, hence ye olde coffee shoppe
poor match of sound and symbol caused by OE > ME sound changes, French influence, new spelling conventions, dialectal differences:
o for u (come, love, son, won, tongue, some), way to avoid confusion caused by use of minims (vertical strokes)
c for s, influence of French loans like cellar, place affected spelling of native words like lice, mice
c for /k/, before i/e, n (OE cene, cyssan, cneow> keen, kiss, knee), cf. cat, cool, cut, clean.
- Increased use of digraphs: th for thorn/eth sounds, ou/ow for long u (hour, round); doubling of vowels to indicate length (beet, boot); sh for alveopalatal fricative s (OE scamu> shame); ch for alveopalatal affricate c (OE ceap, cinn> ME cheap, chin); dg for alveopalatal affricate j (OE bricg>ME bridge), (but j in initial position according to French convention, ME just); gh for velar fricative (OE poht, riht> ME thought, right; wh for w (voiceless aspirated bilabial fricative), OE hwæt, hwil, order of letters reversed in ME, what, while; gu for g, in French loans, guard, guile, guide, OE gylt>guilt.
- Punctuation: point, virgule indicated syntactic break; punctus elevatus, somewhat like comma; question mark; hyphen for word division at end of line; paragraph markers
handwriting: insular hand replaced by Carolingian minuscule in cursive and gothic styles.
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