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Historical background of Middle English

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF UKRAINE

Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University

Humanitarian Institute

Germanic Philology Department

Noun grammatical categories in Middle period

Term Paper

Anna Dragunova

Group Fab-1-12-4.0d

 

 

Research supervisor

Associate Professor Chuvardynska O.V.

 

 

Kyiv 2016

 

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION...2

CHAPTER 1. Historical background of Middle English...4

1.1. Evolution of the grammatical system (from 11th to 18 th c)..5

1.2. Spelling changes in Middle English. Written standardization7

1.3. Semantic changesin the vocabulary..9

1.3.1. The Latin influence on English vocabulary.11

1.3.2. The French influence on the vocabulary in Middle English.13

CHAPTER 2. Dialect variations in Middle English..15

2.1. Decay of noun declensions in Early Middle English. 17

2.2. Evolution of category of case19

2.3. Evolution of category of gender..20

2.4. Evolution of category of number21

CONCLUSIONS..22

REFERENCES....24

 

INTRODUCTION

The issues that provoke high interest and are researched by many scholars are still urgent and arguable so far as the theory is new and is not well-founded. This creates the relevance of the chosen subject.

The object of the study is a use of nouns in Middle English.

The subject of the scientific research is a difference of nouns in Middle English.

The problem of identifying the simplification of noun morphology affected the grammatical categories of the noun in different ways and to a varying degree and the Latin and French influences on English vocabulary in Middle English.

The main purpose of the study is to analyze the evolution of category of number, case and gender of nouns.

The aims:

To research evolution of the grammatical system

To analyze the semantic changes in the vocabulary in Middle English

To find out the rules of reading and written standardization

To distinguish thespelling changes in Middle English

The linguistic methods used in the study:

1. Comparative

2. Descriptive

The materialfor research is noun grammatical categories in Middle period.

The structure of the study includes introduction, two chapters, conclusions and references.

 

 

CHAPTER 1.

Historical background of Middle English

There are three main stages in the history of the development of the English language that are usually recognized by the scientists.

1. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, dates from AD 449 to 1066 or 1100.

2. Middle English dates from 1066 or 1100 to 1450 or 1500.

3. Modern English dates from about 1450 or 1500 and is subdivided into Early Modern English, from about 1500 to 1660, and Late Modern English, from about 1660 to the present time.



Speaking about the historical background of Middle English I want to notice about the Scandinavian Conquest of England. It was a great military and political event, which also influenced the English language. Scandinavian inroads into England had began as early as the 8th century. The Anglo-Saxons offered the invaders a stubborn resistance, which is seen in the narrations of Chronicle. In the late 9th century the Scandinavian had occupied the whole of English territory north of Thames. In 878 king Alfred made peace with the invaders. The territory occupied by the Scandinavian was to remain in their power. The northern and eastern parts of England were most thickly settled by Scandinavians. In the late 10th century war in England was resumed, and the whole country fell to the invaders. England became part of a vast Scandinavian empire in Northern Europe. The Scandinavian conquest had far-reaching consequences for the English language. The Scandinavian dialects spoken by the invaders belonged to the North Germanic languages and their phonetic and grammatical structure was similar to that of OE. They had the same morphological categories, strong and weak declension of substantives, of adjectives, of verbs. Close relationship between English and Scandinavian dialects made mutual understanding without translation quite possible.

The Norman conquest of England began in 1066. It proved to be the turning-point in English history and had a considerable influence on the English language. The Normans were by origin a Scandinavian tribe. In 9th century they began inroads on the northern coast of France and occupied the territory on both shores of the Seine estuary. Mixing with the local population and adopting the French language and in the mid-11 century, in spite of their Scandinavian origin, they were bearers of French feudal culture and of the French language. In 1066 king Edward the Confessor died. William, Duke of Normandy, who had long claimed the English throne, assembled an army with the help of Norman barons, landed in England, and rooted the English troops. William confiscated the estates of the Anglo-Saxon nobility and distributed them among the Norman barons. All posts in the church, from abbots upwards, were giving to persons of French culture. Frenchmen arrived in England in great numbers. During the reign of William the Conqueror about 200 000 Frenchmen settled in England.

During several centuries the ruling language in England was French. It was the language of the court, the Government, the courts of laws, the English language was reduced to a lower social sphere. The relation between French and English was different from that between Scandinavian and English: French was the language of the ruling class. Under the circumstances, with two languages spoken in the country, they were bound to struggle with each other, and also influenced each other. This process lasted for three centuries the 12th 14th. Its results were twofold: the struggle for supremacy between French and English ended in favor of English, but its vocabulary was enriched by a great number of French words.

 

1.1. Evolution of the grammatical system (from 11th to 18 th c)

In the course of ME and Early NE the grammatical system of the language underwent profound alteration. Since the OE period the very grammatical type of the language has changed, from what can be defined as a synthetic or inflected language, with a well developed morphology English has been transformed into a language of the analytical type, with analytical forms and ways of word connection prevailing over synthetic ones. This does not mean, however, that the grammatical changes were rapid or sudden; nor does it imply that all grammatical features were in a state of perpetual change. Like the development of other linguistic levels, the history of English grammar was a complex evolutionary process made up of stable and changeable constituents. Some grammatical characteristics remained absolutely orrelatively stable; others were subjected to more or less extensive modification. The division of words info parts of speech has proved to be one of the most permanent characteristics of the language. Through alt the periods of history English preserved the distinctions between the following parts of speech: the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, the numeral, the verb, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection. The only new part of speech was the article which split from the pronouns in Early ME (provided that the article is treated as an independent part of speech).

Between the 10th and the 16th c., that is from Late OE to Early NE the ways of building up grammatical forms underwent considerable changes. In OE all the forms which can be included into morphological paradigms were synthetic. In ME and Early NE, grammatical forms could also be built in the analytical way, with the help of auxiliary words. The proportion of synthetic forms in the language has become very small, for in the meantime many of the old synthetic forms have been lost and no new synthetic forms have developed..

In the synthetic forms of the ME and Early NE periods, few as those forms were, the means of form-building were the same as before: inflections, sound interchanges and suppletion; only prefixation , namely the prefix je-, which was commonly used in OE to mark Participle II, went out of use in Late ME (instances of Participle II with the prefix y- (from OE se-) are still found in Chaucers time.

 

1.2. Spelling changes in Middle English. Written standardisation.

The written forms in ME resemble modern forms, though the pronunciation was different.

- In ME the runic letters passed out of use. Thorn and the crossed d: đ were replaced by the digraph th-, which retained the same sound value: [Ө] & [ð]; the rune wynn was displaced by double u: -w-;the ligatures æ & œ fell into disuse.

Many innovations reveal an influence of the French scribal tradition. The digraphs ou, ie & ch were adopted as new ways of indicating the sounds [u:], [e:] & [t∫] : e.g. OE ūt, ME out [u:t]; O Fr double, ME double [duble].

The letters j,k,v,q were first used in imitation of French manuscripts.

The two-fold use of g- & -c- owes its origin to French: these letters usually stood for [dz] & [s] before front vowels & for [g]&[k] before back vowels: ME gentil [dzentil], mercy [mersi] & good[go:d].

A wider use of digraphs: -sh- is introduced to indicate the new sibilant [∫]: ME ship(from OE scip); -dz- to indicate [dz]: ME edge [edze], joye [dzoiə]; the digraph wh- replaced hw-: OE hwæt, ME what [hwat].

Long sounds were shown by double letters: ME book [bo:k]

The introduction of the digraph gh- for [x]& [x]: ME knight [knixt] & ME he [he:].

Some replacements were made to avoid confusion of resembling letters: o was employed to indicate u: OE munuc > ME monk; lufu > love. The letter y an equivalent og i : very, my [mi:]. [19(154)]

We have seen that towards the end of the ME period, English was developing at the end of the Middle Ages as an elaborated language, available across the country for use in a range of functions. As English took on these national functions, there is evidence from at least the fifteenth century onwards of the emergence of sociolinguistic variation in the use of English. In other words, it became possible to write and speak English in more or less proper ways. As French ceased to be used as a prestigious spoken language, prestigious forms of English emerged, studded with loanwords from French, used to mark social difference; with the rise of humanism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Latin vocabulary was also transferred wholesale into the English lexicon. The standardisation of English correlates with the functional extension of the vernacular back into national life beyond the parochial. John Fisher has gone so far as to express the view that precise spelling-forms were adopted as the result of a particular royal initiative on the part of Henry V (see, for example, Fisher 1984, 1996). However, Fishers views, although they derive in part from insights developed during the creation of LALME, have been challenged by the LALME team .

The standardisation of spelling seems to have been a byproduct of the general elaboration of English, and not the result of a centrally controlled codification. in 1963 offered what has become the seminal account of the

evolution of Types of what he called incipient standard during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries:

Type I: Central Midlands Standard ( Wycliffite)

Type II: Earlier fourteenth-century London (Auchinleck)

Type III: Later fourteenth-/early fifteenth-century London ( Ellesmere)

Type IV: Post-1430 London (Chancery/Kings English)

These types represent, within the cline of ME usages, focused varieties found in several manuscripts, characterised by the prototypical appearance of particular forms. It is important not to overstate their cultural hegemony.[14(p.34)]

 

 

1.3. Semantic Changesin the Vocabulary.

The growth of the English vocabulary in the course of history has not been confined to the appearance of new items as a result of various ways of word formation and borrowings. Internal sources of the replenishment of the vocabulary include also multiple semantic changes which created new meanings and new words through semantic shifts and through splitting of words into distinct lexical units.

Semantic changes are commonly divided into widening and narrowing of meaning and into methaphoric and metonymic shifts, though a strict subdivision is difficult, as different changes were often combined in the development of one and the same word. Sometimes semantic changes are combined with formal changes. It will suffice to give a few examples.[21(p.70)]

Instances of narrowing can be found in the history of OE deor which meant animal and changed into the modern deer; OE mete food, NE meat; OE sellan give, sell, NE sell; OE motan may, must, NE must; OE talu number, story, NE tale; OE toe fastening, prison, NE lock; ME accident event, NE accident, etc. Narrowing of meaning can often be observed in groups of synonyms, as in the course of time each synonym acquires its own, more specialized, narrow sphere of application: thus deer was a synonym of animal and beest in ME, must a synonym of may, lock a synonym of prison.

Widening of meaning can be illustrated by slogan which was formerly only a battle cry of Scottish clans; journey which meant a days work or a days journey (from O Fr journee related to jour day); holiday was formerly a religious festival, as its first component comes from OE kalis, NE holy, but came to be applied to all kinds of occasions when people do not work or attend classes.

Many words of concrete meaning came to be used figuratively, which is an instance of widening of meaning and of metaphoric change. Thus the verbs grasp, drive, go, start, handle, stop and many others formerly denoted physical actions alone but have acquired a more general, non concrete meaning through metaphoric use. The change of ME vixen she-fox to bad-tempered, quarrelsome woman' can be interpreted as metaphor or metonymy (and also as widening of meaning as the old meaning has also been preserved.

Some semantic changes can only be referred to miscellaneous as they involve different kinds of semantic changes and sometimes structural changes too. The changes of meaning undergone by lord, lady, daisy, window in the course of their morphological simplification were described above. The meanings of the verbs strike and hit became synonymous, though in OE the former verb meant stroke, 'rub gently and the latter *not to miss; gradually they replaced smite and slay in the meaning of striking, hitting' as more neutral ways of expressing these actions. Many semantic changes in the vocabulary proceed together with stylistic changes, as in changing their meanings words acquire or lose certain shades of meaning and stylistic connotations. All these subtle changes account for the enrichment of the vocabulary in the ME period. So, French words are generally based in Latin, but they have their own spelling structure, and are often word of class rather than words of intelligence. Final e pronounced /ā/: fiancé, sauté, risqué; et pronounced /ā/: ballet, buffet, croquet, gourmet, beret; ge /zh/: barrage, genre, lingerie, beigech ; /sh/: charade, chic, parachute, chateau; ou /ōō/: soup, coupon;‐que /k/:antique, oblique, unique, critique;final eau /ō/: bureau, trousseau, nouveau, beau, plateau. Soft c and g when followed by e, i: city, nice, gentle.

 


Date: 2016-03-03; view: 4086


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