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MIDDLE ENGLISH (ME)

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Title: MIDDLE ENGLISH (ME)


1
MIDDLE ENGLISH (ME)
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  • Middle English (ME), is a kind of middle stage
    within the evolution of English
  • Lasting from about 1150 to about 1500
  • ME is the period that lies between Old English
    (650-1100) and (Early) Modern English
    (1500-today)
  • By the end of the ME stage, all the basic
    linguistic parameters that lead to its modern
    structure and anatomy are established

4
  • Marks the transformation of English from the
    Anglo Saxon to modern English

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LANGUAGE CONTACTS IN MIDDLE AGE
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  • In this period, English came into contact with
    many foreign languages resulted from invasion.
  • In the early OE, English co-existed with Latin.
    Eventually, Latin usage was restricted to
    monasteries only.
  • In the second half of OE, English came into
    contact with Old Norse, the language of
    Scandinavian. This language was brought in by the
    Vikings.

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  • In ME period, English came into contact with
    French which was brought in by the Normans.
  • This invasion drove its development into a
    direction that was markedly different from the
    development of other West Germanic languages such
    as German.

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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE NORMANS IN ENGLAND
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  • The invasion took place in 1066 led by the
    powerful William the conqueror who hailed from
    Normandy.
  • Normandy is located at the French border, north
    of England

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He killed King Harold in Battle of Hasting
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  • The events at Hastings were woven into the
  • famous Bayeux tapestry - a unique and
  • extraordinary document to reflect this
  • episode of English history.

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NORMAN INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH CULTURE AND LIFE
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  • During the period of their invasion which was
    about 200 years, the Normans have made tremendous
    impacts on the life of the English politically,
    linguistically and culturally
  • The Normans left behind their political system
    (feudal system) and religious influence for the
    English adoption

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  • Since many of the Anglo-Saxon nobility were wiped
    out at Hastings, the English ruling class was
    replaced by Norman noblemen.
  • The Normans imported the feudal system and
    lordship by taking the key positions in the state
    and church.
  • These positions correspond to the high ranks of
    power in the medieval social order.
  • At that time, there were three strata of society
    which were the nobles, the clergy, and peasants.

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  • Since the grammar schools also lay in the hands
    of the church in the Middle Ages, the Normans
    also controlled education.
  • In a nutshell, they established the new
    upper-class.

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THE SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF MIDDLE ENGLISH
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  • The Norman Conquest influenced the linguistic
    landscape of England decisively.
  • The following statement in the Chronicle of
    Robert of Gloucester from around 1300 illustrates
    this nicely

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  • Thus came, lo, England into Normandy's hand
    and the Normans then knew how to speak only their
    own language, and spoke French as they did at
    home, and also had their children taught it, so
    that noblemen of this land, that come of their
    stock, all keep to the same speech that they
    received from them for unless a man knows
    French, people make little account of him. But
    low men keep to English, and to their own
    language still. I think that in the whole world
    there are no countries that do not keep their own
    language, except England alone. But people know
    well that it is good to master both, because the
    more a man knows the more honoured he is.

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  • Translation
  • Þus com, lo, Engelond in-to Normandies hond And
    Þe Normans ne couÞe speke Þo bote hor owe speche,
    And speke French as hii dude atom, and hor
    children dude also teche, So Þat heiemen of Þis
    lond, Þat of ho blod come, HoldeÞ alle Þulke
    speche Þat hii of hom nom Vor bote a man conne
    Frenss me telÞ Aof him lute. Ac lowe men holdeÞ
    to Engliss, and to hor owe speche-ute. Ich wene
    Þer ne beÞ in al the world contreyes none Þat ne
    holdeÞ to hor owe speche, bote Engelond one.Ac
    wel me wote uor to conne boÞe wel it is, Vor Þe
    more Þat a mon can, Þe more wurÞe he is.
  • (Chronicle
    of Robert of Gloucester, 1300)

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MIDDLE ENGLISH WRITING
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  • The chronicle indicates that the Norman
    upper-classes, first and foremost, spoke French
    and they taught this language to their children.
    French was the prestigious H-language. English,
    however, was the language of the lower classes
    the vernacular. But, English was spoken by the
    majority of the population of England.

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  • The move from Old to Middle English was a gradual
    development. Nevertheless, there is a
    recognizable gap in the transition from the Old
    English to the Middle English text corpus. This
    is the consequence of the political changes after
    the Norman Conquest. Written English was
    basically non-existent for about 100-150 years.
  • Features of OE was still present in ME
    writing

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  • Writing was dominated by the Norman French ruling
    class. As we have seen, this class used French or
    Latin and not English. As a consequence, the
    West-Saxon written standard was replaced by
    French and Latin texts. Literature in English
    only started to be written again from about 1150
    onwards.

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  • Due to the absence of a written standard for
    English, this literature is highly dialectal.
    Middle English writers used a dialectal
    pronunciation-based spelling.

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  • Middle English literature includes a variety of
    genres constituting an impressive corpus of
    Middle English literature, the most celebrated
    text being Geoffrey Chaucers masterpiece, the
    Canterbury Tales (1387, East Midland dialect)

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MIDDLE ENGLISH DIALECTS
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  • Traditionally, there are five major dialects of
    ME. They are
  • Middle English dialect Old English antecedent 1.
    Northern Northumbrian
  • 2. Midland Mercian
  • 3. East Anglian
  • 4. South-eastern Kentish
  • 5. South-western West Saxon

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  • The Middle English texts reveal that English went
    through considerable internal developments
    irrespective of the language contact situation
    with French The Old English dialects evolved and
    became ME dialects.

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  • Apart from changes in pronunciation, the most
    striking characteristic of this process is the
    influence of Scandinavian in the Danelaw, which
    led to the division of the Midland dialects (the
    former Mercian dialects) into the East and West
    Midlands dialect areas.

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  • Among many other features, the Scandinavian
    influence can be seen in the use of the plural
    3rd person personal pronoun they, which was first
    used in the North and East Midlands and then
    spread to the other dialects from there.

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  • A relatively large quantity of ME literature
    survives, especially after 1250. Printing presses
    developed in late ME, helped to preserve texts
    from this period.

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THE DECLINE OF THE FRENCH
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  • From around 1300 onwards, the status of French
    declined drastically due to political changes and
    the rise of the English middle-class.
  • More awareness of self-identity, increase in
    English scholarly figures, more widespread of
    reading material
  • The ruling kings were Norman descendants who had
    their feet in two places, Normandy and United
    Kingdom. They were less patriotic to England

39
  • In 1348 English became the language of
    grammar-schools (excluding Oxford and Cambridge
    where Latin was used) and in 1362 the Language
    Act declared English the official language of the
    law courts.
  • In 1399, Henry IV was the first man on the throne
    with English as his mother tongue. From 1423
    onwards all parliament records were written in
    English.

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  • Towards a new written standard for English

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  • With the decline of French, English regained its
    social status as the language of the ruling
    class. As a consequence, a new written standard
    was necessary.
  • Although the modern English standard, as we know
    it, was only established in the centuries to
    follow, a minimum standard had already developed
    towards the end of the Middle English period.
  • The standard was based on the East Midland
    dialect.

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  • The most important reason for this dialect to
    become the basis for the novel standard was the
    strong economic and cultural influence of the
    East-Midlands triangle London-Oxford-Cambridge.
  • This centre attracted a great number of people
    from all over England all of them contributing to
    the development of the new standard.

45
  • Many texts were written in Chancery Standard,
    which shows more Midland features and very
    different from Chaucerys English.
  • This dialect eventually became the basis of
    Modern Standard English.

46
  • A further important factor that supported the
    standardisation process was the introduction of
    the printing press by William Caxton in 1476.
  • In addition,the writers of the royal
    administrative documents, had their office at
    Westminster very close to Caxtons printing
    press. It is possible that their spelling
    influenced the written standard as well.

47
FUNDAMENTAL LINGUISTIC CHANGES FROM OLD ENGLISH
TO MIDDLE ENGLISH
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  • The contact with French had a
  • striking effect on English language. contact
    with French is the vast amount of French loan
    words that flooded the English language and
    transformed its lexicon. Example

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  • A very similar process of code borrowing happened
    in the Middle English period. The French
    dominated the domains of courtly life,
    government, administration, the law court, and
    church. These are the domains where most loan
    words came from.

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  • Coming from the language of the upper social
    classes, French loan words penetrated the English
    language socially downwards from the prestige
    language to the vernacular.
  • In contrast, Scandinavian loan words entered the
    Northern and Mid-Eastern dialects and from there
    spread socially upwards.
  • The high social status of French loan words can
    still be perceived in Modern English.

52
  • Words that entered the language from French have
    nobler and more formal connotations than their
    near-synonyms of Germanic origin e.g., mansion,
    palace vs. house, home.

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LEVELLING AND LOSS OF INFLECTIONS
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  • In the Middle English period, English also went
    through a major structural change which was not
    the direct consequence of Norman dominion.
  • It was a large scale transformation of the
    grammatical system that had its origin in
    pronunciation

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  • The pitch timing of Indo-European languages was
    characterized by free stress (cf. Verner's Law).
  • This, however, changed in Germanic languages,
    which put the stress on the first syllable of
    content words.
  • The same was true for Old English. With the heavy
    stress on the first syllable, the vowel quality
    in the following unstressed syllables was
    weakened and gradually reduced to schwa.

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  • This reduction of different vowel qualities is
    called levelling. The weakening process continued
    and lead to the loss of vowels and corresponding
    syllables.
  • The unstressed vowels dropped of (apocope) or
    they were lost within the word (syncope).

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  • The inflectional system of English went through
    drastic changes.
  • In Old English, all NP-constituents (articles,
    adjectives, nouns, pronouns) were sensitive to
    case, number, and grammatical gender
    distinctions.
  • In most nouns and adjectives, these distinctions
    were marked by inflectional affixes with
    distinctive vowel qualities.

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  • The process of levelling led to the gradual loss
    of these distinctions.
  • As a consequence, information concerning the
    grammatical relations established by NPs was
    lost.
  • Nouns were only left with a marker for the
    genitive singular and a marker for the plural,
    es, which was the reduced form of the nominative
    and accusative plural and was generalized for the
    whole plural by analogy

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  • The process of levelling and the loss of
    inflectional distinctions had far-reaching
    consequences on the English grammar.
  • English moved away from a synthetic language to
    becoming an analytical language. In analytical
    languages grammatical distinctions are not marked
    by inflectional morphemes but by auxiliary
    morphemes
  • Synthetic language, is a language with a high
    morpheme-per-word ratio for example,
    antidisestablishmentarianism

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  • THANK YOU
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