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Rise of new diphthongs EI, AI type.

Changes in the system of consonants

affricates TSh, Dg aroused. The number of consonants increase. F and V S and Z became separate phonemes. Cild – child, hwilc – which. taecan – teach. Sc – sh. Varians with , sh< tch depended on the dialects. cg – became DG brycg – bridge. J'- J jear - yeer, year – day . H at the beginning of the word was lost in clusters hr, hi, hn, hw hrinj - ring hrycg - ridge . The sound Y (marked by j) in the intervocal position vocalised and turned into w, which led to the following diphthongs: aç - aw(au) drajan – drawen. The combinations j+ vowel lead to long vowels: tigele – tile; In combination with liquids (/ and r) new diphthongs appeared: 'j> rj- lw,rw [ou] and [ŕč]

Changes in the system of vowels

1. There were quantitative changes in vowels. In Old English a short or a long vowel might be found in any position; they were absolutely independent phonemic units. The Middle English vowel system was basically different. The quantity of vowels becomes dependent on the environment, on what follows the vowel. With a few exceptions the situation in Middle English is briefly this: in some phonetic environment only short vowels are possible; in the other the vowels are invariably long.

First, a long vowel before two consonants is shortened;fe:dan – fe:den – fe;dde – fedde. the exception here are the clusters mb, Id, nd (i.e. two voiced sonorants) or when the two consonants belonged to the second syllable of the word, (maeste, laest -> most; least).

But short vowels were lengthened in open syllables (A, E, O). ca:ru – care; talu – t:ale, macian – make. I, U didn't lengthen.

2. Monophthongization of all Old English diphthongs EA, EO type.. The sounds that appeared as a result of this process were not new to the English language - they simply coincided with the sounds that already existed in the language, in many cases returning the vowel to its previous quality, which was changed in the course of breaking, diphthongization after palatal consonants, and mutations a heard - hard earm - arm healf-half eall – all< heorte – herte.

Individual changes.

Changed – long A – long O – ha:m – ho:m;

Short Ae – short - aeppel – appel; waes – was.

Long AE – long open E – slaepan – sle:pen (with dialectical variant).

Short and long Y – I, e, y.

OE first – North, East first; Kent – ferst; West – Fyrst. Fyr – fir, fer, fyr. Other vowels remained unchanged.

Levelling of unstressed vowels.

All unstressed vowels were weakened and reduced to shwa, denoted by E. bindan – binden; sunu – sune.

Rise of new diphthongs EI, AI type.

They originated from groups consisting of a vowel or either a palatal or a velar fricative. DAEG – dai, day; WAEG – way; greg – grey; sagu – legend – sawe; When a vowel was followed by H, a diphthong arouse: naht – naught; brohte – broughte; troh – trough; plo:h – plough. French letters were replaced by correspondent English.



 

32. English verb, categories in OE Classification: 1. Finite. They had the following categories: Tense – Present and Past (NB no Future! – future actions were expressed by the Present Tense forms); Mood – Indicative, Imperative, Superlative; Person – 1st, 2nd, 3rd; Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl); Conjugation – strong and weak. 2. Non-finite: Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of; Case – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat), e.g. Nom beran (uninflected)Dat to berenne (inflected, indicated direction or purpose); Participles 1, 2 resembled the Verb, the Noun and the Adjective and had the following categories; Tense – Present (Participle 1) and Past (Participle 2); Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl); Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N); Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc); Voice – Active (Part. 1, 2) and Passive (Part 2). 3)Preterite-Present Verbs: There were 12 of these verbs and most of them later turned into Modal Verbs. 4)Anomalous Verbs: They were irregular verbs that combined the features of the weak and strong verbs. There were 4 of them – willan (will), bēon (to be), ζān (to go), dōn (to do).

33. Strong verbs The strong verbs in OE are usually divided into seven classes. Classes from 1 to 6 use vowel gradation which goes back to the IE ablaut-series modified in different phonetic conditions in accordance with PG and Early OE sound changes. Class 7 includes reduplicating verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of repeating the root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of root-vowel interchange. The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class: -an for the Infinitive, no ending in the Past sg stem, -on in the form of Past pl, -en for Participle II.

34 Weak verbs W.v. form their Preterit and Participle2 by addition of a dental suffix (d/t) –love, loved. Weak verbs form the majority of OE verbs. There are three major classes of weak verbs in OE. The first class displays i-mutation in the root. The verbs of Class I usually were i-stems, originally contained the element [-i/-j] between the root and the endings. The verbs of Class II were built with the help of the stem-suffix -ō, or -ōj and are known as ō-stems. Class III was made up of a few survivals of the PG. Third and fourth classes of weak verbs, mostly -ǽj-stems.

Each Wv. is characterized by 3 basic forms: infinitive, Preterit and a participle 2.

35. Preterit-Present verbs The preterite-present verbs had the following characteristics: Their Present-Tense forms resembled Past-Tense forms (Germ. “Präteritum” = past tense, that’s why they were called so); Some of these verbs did not have a full paradigm and were called “defective”;These verbs expressed attitude and were followed by the Infinitive without “to” (NB! Most of these verbs are present-day modal verbs);Out of 12 preterite-present verbs only 6 survived in ModE: āζ (ought), cunnan (can), dear (dare), sculan (shall), maζan (may), mōt (must). Present Tense form formed like Past Tense of strong verbs); Past T. form formed like Past Tense of weak verbs.

36. English verb, development in ME. The ME verb in different syntactic contexts could take a finite (inflected) or a non-finite (uninflected) form. The finite forms were inflected by means of suffixation, ie. the addition of inflectional morphemes to the end of the stem of a word, for the following verbal subcategories:mood: indicative, subjunctive, imperative;tense: present, past;number:singular, present;person: first, second, third.\Verbs are divided in 2 major groups according to how preterite and past participle is formed:weak verbs; preterite formed with a dental suffix (-de/-te);strong verbs; preterite formed with an ablaut.\ 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. 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 (see point 3 above). 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.

52. Word-formation in ME and NE. Very noticeable changes in Middle English appear in the lexicon as thousands of loans are introduced into the language. Compounding is not as frequent in Middle English as it in Old or Early Modern English. This may be due to the wealth of loans in Middle English.

In Old English, the following derivational suffixes are used to create abstract nouns: -dom, -hede (-hade, etc.), -lac (-lec, etc.), -ness, -ship, and -ung (-ing, etc.). Many of them remain active in Middle English.

Some Old English suffixes, such as -er(e), -end, -el, and -ling, form agent nouns: worshiper, allwaldend, and fosterling. The Romance innovations -ant, -ard, -arie, -erel, -esse, -ist, -istre, and -our are used in servant, secretary, ministry and conquerour.

Old English suffixes that form adjectives are -ed, -en, -fold, -ful, -ig (-y, etc.), -less, -ly (-lich, etc.), -som (-sum, etc), -ward, and -wise: thousandfold, blisful, homeward, and otherwise. The Romance ones, -able, -al, -ive, and -ous, are found in mesurable, moral, and jalous. The verbal suffixes (and prefixes) that enter via French and Latin. Some synonymous Germanic and Romance Germanic Latin/French

-dom/-hood (freedom; likelihood) -ite (liberty; probability)

-hood (boyhood) -ence (adolescence)

-ful (sinful) -al (not moral)

-ing (beginning) -ment (commencement)

-ship (worship) -ation (adoration)

NE. According to certain patterns specific for the language or without any outward means.
(conversion)

2 major groups of word formation:

1) Words formed as grammatical syntagmas, combinations of full linguistic signs (types: compounding, prefixation, suffixation, conversion, and back derivation)

2) Words, which are not grammatical syntagmas, which are not made up of full linguistic signs.

Ex.: expressive symbolism, blending, clipping, rhyme & some others.

Different types of word formation:

COMPOUNDING (joining together 2 or more stems)

Types:

1) Without a connecting element (headache, heartbreak)

2) With a vowel or consonant as a linking element (speedometer, craftsman)

3) With a preposition or conjunction as a linking element (down-and-out son-in-law)

Compounds can be classified according to their structure:

- consisting of simple stem (heartbreak)

- compounds where at least one stem is a derived one (football player)

- where one stem is clipped (Xmas, H-bag (handbag)

- where one of the elements is also a compound (wastepaper basket compound nouns, adjectives, verbs)

There are also the so-called reduplicative compounds: Tick-tick, chow-chow

Prefixesare such particles that can be prefixed to full words. But are they not with independent existence.

Native prefixes have developed out of independent words; there is a small number of them.

a- be- mid- fore- mis-

6 ways of suffixing in English:

1) Derivation by native suffixes without changes in stress, vowels, consonants (Godlike)

2) Derivation by borrowed suffix without changes in stress, vowels, consonants (loveable)

3) Derivation by imported suffixes, which involves the change in (Japan Japanese)

4) The suffix is added to a Latin stem which closely related to an English word (science – scientist)

5) The suffix is added to a Latin stem, which has no English equivalent (lingua – lingual)

6) Words borrowed separately but have the same patterns of word building(candidate – candidacy, president – presidency) This is called correlative derivation.

 

55. Development of Eng. vocabulary in ME

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.

Vocabulary of Middle English was influenced by many tongues, but the most significant source at that time was French. It is assumed that about 10,000 words with French origin were borrowed, along with some affixes. About three-fourths of those words are still in use today, such as: baron, coroner, court, sir in administration, ambush, battle, combat in military, and many more in different spheres of life. Apart from that, words were also borrowed from Latin, especially words relating to science: scribe, index, essence, discuss, religion: requiem, rosary, memento, but also general words: picture, reject, substitute. Other languages also contributed to the Middle English lexis, but to a lesser extent, such as Persian words connected with chess: chess, rook, check.

56. Development of Eng. vocabulary in MnE

The twentieth century was marked by controversy over English usage. Impassioned critics of language change saw impending doom in every departure from Standard English, and groups of like-minded individuals were set up to try and stem the tide, from the Society for Pure English in 1913 to the Queen’s English Society in 1972. Meanwhile, the publication of Henry Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage in 1926 provided a benchmark view on contentious topics such as the use of like as a conjunction and the ‘correct’ deployment of who and whom that remained influential for the rest of the century. Linguisticians, who for the most part are descriptivists, tend to be dismissive of prescriptivists, who seek to lay down standards of ‘correctness’, but there is no doubt that, given a sufficient head of steam, campaigns on particular topics can exercise an influence over the English language – as witness the fate of the so-called ‘split infinitive’, an entirely factitious solecism which has been so consistently and energetically condemned by self-appointed guardians of English grammar that generations of speakers and especially writers have been terrorized into avoiding it.

The most recent scare has arisen from the usage of English in electronic communications, such as emails and especially text messages, blogs and postings on social networks. This is certainly an area of the written language unconstrained by the usual norms of orthography, punctuation and grammar, and those particularly who do not communicate in these ways may fear that linguistic anarchy will ensue. But there is little to it that is truly novel, and anyway, at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century there are signs that the popularity of textspeak is subsiding. English, in arguably its sixteenth century of existence, continues to thrive and grow.

57. OE texts The first OE written records are considered to be the runic inscriptions. To make these inscriptions people used the Runes/the Runic Alphabet – the first original Germanic Alphabet.Runes/Runic Alphabet: appeared in the 3rd – 4th c. A.D.; it was also called Futhark (after the first 6 letters of this alphabet); the word “rune” meant “secret, mystery” and was used to denote magic inscriptions on objects made of wood, stone, metal; each symbol indicated a separate sound (one symbol = one sound); OE Alphabet- The OE Alphabet was borrowed from Latin, but there were also some letters that were borrowed from the Runic Alphabet. Most of the OE manuscripts were written in Latin characters. The Latin Alphabet was modified by the scribes to suit the English L (some letters were changed and some new letters were added).

The peculiarities of OE poetry: 1)written in Old Germanic alliterative verse; 2)the lines are not rhymed; 3)the number of the syllables in a line is free; 4)the number of stressed syllables in a line is fixes; 5)the line is usually divided into 2 halves, each half starts with one and the same sound; this sound may be repeated also in the middle of each half. Among the earliest textual insertion is “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People” written in Latin in the 8th c. by Bede the Venerable, an English monk. The topics of OE poetry: heroic epic (“Beowulf”); lyrical poems (“The Wanderer”, “The Seafarer”); religious poems (“Fate of the Apostles” , “Dream of the Rood”).

58 ME texts The flourishing of literature, which marks the second half of the 14th c. This period of literary florescence is known as the "age of Chaucer", the greatest name in English literature before Shakespeare. His work is «Canterbury Tales», «A Legend of Good Women». John Wyclif (1324—1384), the forerunner of the English Reformation. His most important contribution to English prose was his translation of the BIBLE completed in 1384. The London Dialect of the beginning of the XIV cent. is represented by Adam Devi’s poems; the second half of the cent. by works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 'John Gower and 'John Wicliff. The literary texts of the late 14th c. preserved in numerous manuscripts, belong to a variety of genres. Translation continued, but original compositions were produced in abundance; poetry was more prolific than prose.

59. Beowulf. Beowulf is the conventional title of an Old English heroic epic poemconsisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.

Beowulf was written in England, but is set in Scandinavia. It has variously been dated to between the 8th and the early 11th centuries.[31] It is an epic poem told in historical perspective; a story of epic events and of great people of a heroic past. Although its author is unknown, its themes and subject matter are rooted in Germanic heroic poetry, in Anglo-Saxon tradition recited and cultivated by Old English poets called scops.

It survives in a single manuscript known as the Nowell Codex. Its composition by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet is dated between the 8th and the early 11th century. In 1731, the manuscript was badly damaged by a fire that swept through a building housing a collection of Medieval manuscripts assembled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. The poem fell into obscurity for decades, and its existence did not become widely known again until it was printed in 1815 in an edition prepared by the Icelandic-Danish scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin.

In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats in Scandinavia, comes to the help of Hroðgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall (in Heorot) has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in Sweden and later becomes king of the Geats. After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus, a burial mound, in Geatland.

The manuscript and its editions always present us with a linguistic obstacle: Old English has a different kind of grammar from Modern. Old English is like Latin or Russian, or many other languages whose grammar is expressed by inflection.

The Beowulf manuscript was transcribed from an original by two scribes, one of whom wrote the first 1939 lines and a second who wrote the remainder, so the poem up to line 1939 is in one handwriting, whilst the rest of the poem is in another. The script of the second scribe is archaic.[3] Both scribes proofread their work down to even the most minute error. The second scribe slaved over the poem for many years "with great reverence and care to restoration". The first scribe's revisions can be broken down into three categories "the removal of dittographic material; the restoration of material that was inadvertently omitted or was about to be omitted; and the conversion of legitimate, but contextually incorrect words to the contextually proper words. These three categories provide the most compelling evidence that the scribe was generally attentive to his work while he was copying, and that he later subjected his work to careful proofreading." The work of the second scribe bears a striking resemblance to the work of the first scribe of the Blickling homilies, and so much so that it is believed they derive from the same scriptorium. From knowledge of books held in the library at Malmesbury Abbey and available as source works, and from the identification of certain words particular to the local dialect found in the text, the transcription may have been made there. However, for at least a century, some scholars have maintained that the description of Grendel’s lake in Beowulf was borrowed from St. Paul’s vision of Hell in Homily 16 of the Blickling homilies.[3] Most intriguing in the many versions of the Beowulf FS is the transcription of alliterative verse. From the first scribe's edits, emenders such as Klaeber were forced to alter words for the sake of the poem. "The lack of alliteration in line 1981 forced Klaeber in his edition, for example, to change side (the scribe's correction) to heal. The latter scribe revealed not only astute mechanical editing, but also unbridled nourishment of the physical manuscript itself." Over the years Beowulf scholars have put the work of the scribes under intense scrutiny, many debate whether the scribes even held a copy as some believe they worked solely from oral dictation. Men such as Benjamin Thorpe saw many errors in rhetoric and diction, implying that the transcribing made little to no sense. Most intriguing however becomes the abhorrence of the first scribe's mechanical editing. This reveals the strength of Beowulf's oral history as poetic flow were prioritised over dialect/ grammatical coherency.

60. Canterbury tales. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly written in verse although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.

After a long list of works written earlier in his career, including Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, theCanterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of its characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection resembles The Decameron, which Chaucer may have read during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372.

It is sometimes argued that the greatest contribution that this work made to English literature was in popularizing the literary use of the vernacular, English, rather than French or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language for centuries before Chaucer's life, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries—John Gower, William Langland, and the Pearl Poet—also wrote major literary works in English. It is unclear to what extent Chaucer was responsible for starting a trend rather than simply being part of it. Also, while Chaucer clearly states the addressees of many of his poems (the Book of the Duchess is believed to have been written for John of Gaunt on the occasion of his wife's death in 1368), the intended audience of The Canterbury Tales is more difficult to determine. Chaucer was a courtier, leading some to believe that he was mainly a court poet who wrote exclusively for nobility.

The question of whether The Canterbury Tales is finished has not yet been answered. There are 83 known manuscripts of the work from the late medieval and early Renaissance period, more than any other vernacular literary text with the exception of The Prick of Conscience. This is taken as evidence of the tales' popularity during the century after Chaucer's death. Fifty-five of these manuscripts are thought to have been complete at one time, while 28 are so fragmentary that it is difficult to ascertain whether they were copied individually or as part of a set. The Tales vary in both minor and major ways from manuscript to manuscript; many of the minor variations are due to copyists' errors, while others suggest that Chaucer added to and revised his work as it was being copied and (possibly) distributed.

Even the earliest surviving manuscripts are not Chaucer's originals, the oldest being MS Peniarth 392 D (called "Hengwrt"), compiled by a scribe shortly after Chaucer's death. The most beautiful of the manuscripts of the tales is the Ellesmere Manuscript, and many editors have followed the order of the Ellesmere over the centuries, even down to the present day. The first version of theCanterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton's 1478 edition. Since this print edition was created from a now-lost manuscript, it is counted as among the 83 manuscripts.

Although no manuscript exists in Chaucer's own hand, two were copied around the time of his death by Adam Pinkhurst, a scribe with whom he seems to have worked closely before, giving a high degree of confidence that Chaucer himself wrote the Tales. Chaucer's generation of English-speakers was among the last to pronounce e at the end of words. This meant that later copyists tended to be inconsistent in their copying of final -e and this for many years gave scholars the impression that Chaucer himself was inconsistent in using it.

 


Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1014


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