Home Random Page


CATEGORIES:

BiologyChemistryConstructionCultureEcologyEconomyElectronicsFinanceGeographyHistoryInformaticsLawMathematicsMechanicsMedicineOtherPedagogyPhilosophyPhysicsPolicyPsychologySociologySportTourism






Adjectives

The changes in the grammatical properties of adjectives were even greater than in those of nouns and pronouns.

During the ME period the adjectives lost their gender and case distinctions altogether.

The peculiar suffix –en (from OE –an) of the weak declension lost its n.

Thus, the ME declension of adjectives looked like this:

  Sg. Pl.
Strong declension yong yonge
Weak declension yonge yonge

In other words, it was still possible to distinguish between the strong and the weak form of an adjective in the singular (cf. The yonge sonne “the young sun” and a yong Squier “a young squire”) and between the singular and the plural forms of a strong adjective (cf. He was wis (E. wise), hise wordes weren so wise ‘his words were so wise’).

An innovation was the introduction of the analytical ways of building up the degrees of comparison with the help of more and most.

Verbs

More than a hundred of the Old English strong verbs were lost at the beginning of the Middle English period.

The morphology of the verb displayed two distinct tendencies of development: simplifying changes affected the synthetic forms of the verb, but the system became more complicated owing to the growth of new, analytical forms and new grammatical categories.

      ME Early ModE
Infinitive     finde(n) find
Present sg. finde find
    findest/findes findest
    findeth/findes finds/findeth
  1-3 pl. finde(n) findeth findest   find
Past 1-3   pl. fand founde/fand/fondest fand founden     found

 

In the 13th and 14th c. the ending –enturned into the main, almost universal, marker of the plural forms of the verb. The variants –ethand –esin the Present tense were used only in the Southern and Northern dialects, respectively.

In the Past tense there was an additional distinctive feature between the singular and plural forms of strong verbs: different root – vowels.

But all the ways of indicating plural forms in the Present tense were unstable. The ending –enwas frequently missed out in the late 14th c. and was dropped in the 15th c.

By the end of the 15th c. the two forms of the Past tense of strong verbs fell together; fandandfounde(n)were replaced by one form – found.

All number distinctions were thus lost with the exception of the 2nd and 3rd person, Present tense, sg.: -est(2nd person), -eth/-es (3rd person).

The distinctions in the 2nd person sg. existed as long as the pronoun thou(OE Þū) was used. Beginning with the 15th c. the plural forms of the 2nd person – ye/you, your – were applied more and more often to individuals. In Shakespeare’s time the plural forms of the 2nd person were widely used as equivalents of thou, thee, thine. Later thou became obsolete in Standard English.



Note: In Middle English the OE endings of the 3rd person sg. (-þ, eþ, -iaþ) merged into a single ending –(e)th. The variant –es was a new marker first recorded in the Northern dialects. It was probably borrowed from the plural forms which usually ended in –es in the North. It spread to the singular and came to be used as a variant in the 2nd and 3rd person, but later was restricted to the 3rd person. In Shakespeare’s sonnets the number of s-forms exceeds that of eth-forms.

In Early Modern English the distinction of tenses was preserved. As before, the Past tense was expressed with the help of the dental suffix in the weak verbs, and with the help of the root-vowel interchange in the strong verbs. After the loss of verbal endings the functional load of the root-vowel interchange grew. The only exception was a small group of verbs which came from OE weak verbs of Class I. In these verbs the dental suffix fused with the last consonant of the root [t] and after the loss of endings the three principal forms coincided:

 

OE settan - sette - ge-set(ted)
ME setan - sette - set
ModE set - set - set

The most important feature of the history of the verb in ME was the development of analytical forms.

1. The syntactical combinations of OE sculan (ModE shall) and willan(ModE will) with the infinitive developed into analytical forms of the Future tense.

2. Combinations composed of different forms of OE habban (ModE have) and Participle II of other verbs developed into a set of analytical forms known as the perfect forms – the category of order (or time coordination).

3. Combinations comprising different forms of OE bēon/wesan(ModE be) and Participle II of other verbs developed into a set of analytical forms of the passive voice.

 

Unit 23

The Formation of the National English Language

The Germanic tribes who settled in Britain in the 5th-6th c. spoke closely related tribal dialects belonging to the West Germanic group. Their common origin and their joint evolution in Britain transformed them eventually into a single tongue, English. But at the early stages of their development in Britain the dialects remained disunited.

The dialectal division which existed in Old English was on the whole preserved in later periods. In the Middle English period we find the same grouping of local dialects: the Southern group, including Kentish and the South-Western dialects, the Midland group and the Northern group. And yet the relations among them were changing. The development of trade, the growth of towns with a mixed population favoured the intermixture of the regional dialects. The most important event in the changing linguistic situation was the rise of the London dialect as the prevalent written form of language.

The Early Middle English records made in London show that the dialect of London was fundamentally East Saxon. In terms of the Middle English division, it belonged to the South-Western dialect group. Later records indicate that the speech of London was becoming more mixed, with East Midland features gradually prevailing over the Southern features. The explanation for the change of the dialect type and for the mixed character of London English lies in the history of the London population.

In the 12th and 13th c. the inhabitants of London came from the south-western districts. In the middle of the 14th c. London was practically depopulated during numerous outbreaks of bubonic plague. Later, most of the new arrivals came from the East Midlands, though these regions did not border immediately on the capital. As a result, the speech of Londoners was brought much closer to the East Midland dialect; the London dialect became more Anglian than Saxon in character. This dialect, which had extended to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, ousted French from official spheres and from the sphere of writing.

The complete reestablishment of English as the language of writing took place in the 14th century. The second half of the 14th c. was marked by the flourishing of English literature. This period of English literature is known as the age of Chaucer. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) was the most outstanding figure of the time. ‘The Canterbury Tales’ is Chaucer’s best-work, and the first major work in English literature. In many books on the history of England Chaucer is characterized as the founder of the literary language. But in fact, it isn’t so. He did not really create the literary language, but as a poet of outstanding talent he made better use of it than his contemporaries and set up a pattern to be followed in the 15th c. Chaucer’s literary language, based on the London dialect, is known as classical Middle English. In the 15th and 16th c. it became the basis of the national literary English language.

The written standard of English had been established by the middle of the 17th c., but it was far less normalized than the literary standards of later ages. The writings of this period display a wide range of variation at all linguistic levels: in spelling, in theshape of grammatical forms and word-building devices, in syntactical patterns and in the choice and use of words. The 18th c. is remarkable for deliberate attempts to fix the language and interfere with its evolution.

Among the exponents of this movement were not only the authors of prescriptive English grammar books and the great 18th c. lexicographers, but also the writer Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the founders of the first English newspapers R. Steele and J. Addison.

The greatest achievement in the process of normalization of Modern English is connected with the name of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Samuel Johnson was one of those scholars who believed that the English language should be purified and corrected. He undertook to compile a new dictionary based upon the usage of recognised authors. In the two volumes of his dictionary (1755) he included quotations from several hundred writers and poets of the 17th and 18th c. His dictionary also contained a special section devoted to grammar. The weight of Johnson’s authority was so great that later writers did not dare to deviate from the spellings prescribed by the dictionary. Even today some authors blame him for fixing English spelling and thus making it conservative. Johnson’s dictionary passed through many editions and revisions and is still relevant for present-day English.

The Great Vowel Shift (GVS)

The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) is a systematic change in the pronunciation of long stressed vowels in English. The shift took place from about the middle of the 15th century and continued till about the end of 16th. It changed radically the sound of spoken English making its vowels unique in pronunciation among European languages. It also affected the way in which English verse was written (by changing radically the rhyming possibilities of the language). Finally, it was the key change that transformed Middle English into Modern English. GVS has become something of a myth in English linguistic history. The origins of the Great Vowel Shift have, notoriously, been regarded by many scholars as ‘mys'terious’.

The Shifts took place at a key moment of transition in the history of English, when it ceased to be a language of comparatively low status in comparison with Latin and French and began to take on national roles, that is to say that it underwent a process which linguists refer to as ‘elaboration’. The elaboration of English meant that prestigious varieties of that language would begin to emerge.

Indeed, it is because of the GVS that the language of Chaucer was largely opaque by Shakespeare’s time.

The process that took place during the Great Vowel Shift was rather a redistribution of sounds within the lexicon, then their alteration. The phonological essence of GVS consisted in reducing a number of long vowels in English and merging them with the diphthongs, already existing in the language. The Great Vowel Shift did not add any new sounds to the vowel system; in fact any vowel which developed under the Shift can be found in late ME. Only long vowels were affected. These were long, stressed monophthongs.

ME (intermediate stages) ModE. Examples
phonetic changes ME ModE
[i:]   [ai] time ['ti:ma] time
[e:]   [i:] deep [de:p] me [me:] time me
[ε:] [e:] [i:] east [e:st] east
[a:]   [ei] maken ['ma:kən] table [ta:blə] make table
[ɔ:] [o:] [ou] stone [sto:n] boat [bo:t] stone boat
[î:]   [u:] moon [mo:n] don [do:n] moon do
[u:]   [au] mous [mu:s] oure/ ure [u:re] now [nu:] mouse our now
[au]   [ɔ:] cause ['kauzə] drawen ['drauən] cause draw
           

 

As a result of the GVS the following ME long phonemes disappeared: i:, u:, e:, o:, ε:, a:

The GVS can be summarized as follows:

1. High vowels were made into diphthongs.

[i:]changed into [ai] (mice [mi:s] > [mais];

[u:] changed into [au] (house [hu:s] > [haus].

2. The mid-open vowels were raised.

[e:] changed into [i:] (deep [de:p] > [di:p]);

[ε:] changed into [e:], then into [i:] (east [ε:st]>[e:st]>[i:st];

[o:] changed into [u:] (moon [mo:n] > [mu:n].

3. Back open vowels were raised and made into diphthongs

[a:]became [ei] (name [na:m] > [neim]; (low back)

[ɔ:]changed into [ou] (ston [stɔ:n] > [stoun]).(long open)

4. The diphthong [au] changed into the long monothong [ɔ:].

It is believed that at first these changes only happened within some speech communities, and slowly, by degrees, so that the older and newer pronunciations would be heard at the same time.

Northern dialects of Middle English were not affected so immediately by the shift of long vowels. Present-day Scots, for example, still retain the old pronunciation of house [hu:s].

The Great Vowel Shift, unlike most of the earlier phonetic changes, was not followed by any regular spelling changes. The modification in the pronunciations of words usually was not reflected in their written forms. The few graphic replacements made in the 16th century also failed to reflect the changes. For instance, in the 16th c. the close [o:] was shown as oo, and the more open [ɔ:] was generally shown as oa. After the shift oo stands for [u:] while oa stands for [ou]. Another example: ie, åå, and e represented the close [e:], ea was used to show the more open [ε:]. After the shift, [e:], [ε:] became [i:], so the graphic distinctions became unnecessary: steal, steel.

During the shift even the names of some English letters were changed:

ME A [a:] ModE A [ei]
  E [å:]   E [i:]
  I [i:l   I [ai]
  O [î:]   Î [ou]
  Â [bå:]   Â [bi:l
  Ê [ka:]   Ê [kei], etc.

The Great Vowel Shift has attracted the attention of many linguists, as it left no long vowel unaltered. In spite of numerous theories the problem of this shift still remains unresolved.

 


Date: 2014-12-22; view: 1301


<== previous page | next page ==>
Pronouns | C. The verbs bēon, wesan.
doclecture.net - lectures - 2014-2024 year. Copyright infringement or personal data (0.007 sec.)