LECTURE 4: MIDDLE ENGLISH

1. HOW IT EMERGED
In 1066, William the Conqueror led the Norman invasion of England, marking the beginning of the
Middle English period.
 This invasion had a major influence on English from Latin to French. As is often the case with
invasions, the conquerors dominated the major political and economic life in England.
 The Conquest, with its linguistic, cultural, and literary influences, significantly shaped the literary
landscape of medieval England. The infusion of Norman French and the subsequent linguistic
changes resulted in the emergence of Middle English as a distinct language.
 Thus, Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500.

2. DIALECTS
There were five Middle English dialects: Northern, West Midland, East Midland, South Western, and
South Eastern. Each dialect developed its own characteristics.

3. LINGUISTIC FEATURES

3.1 GRAMMAR

English came to rely less on inflectional endings and more on word order to convey grammatical
information. (i.e. it became less ‘synthetic’ and more ‘analytic’.) Change was gradual, and has
different outcomes in different regional varieties of Middle English, but the ultimate effects were
huge: the grammar of English c.1500 was radically different from that of Old English.

Grammatical gender was lost early in Middle English. The range of inflections, particularly in
the noun, was reduced drastically (partly as a result of the reduction of vowels in unstressed final
syllables), as was the number of distinct paradigms: in most early Middle English texts most
nouns have distinctive forms only for singular vs. plural, genitive, and occasional traces of the
old dative in forms with final –e occurring after a preposition. In some other parts of the system
some distinctions were more persistent, but by late Middle English the range of endings and their
use among London writers shows relatively few differences from the sixteenth-century language
of, for example, Shakespeare: probably the most prominent morphological difference from
Shakespeare’s language is that verb plurals and infinitives still generally ended in –en (at least in
writing).

Verbs had two tenses only (present-future and past), three moods (indicative, subjunctive, and
imperative), two numbers (singular and plural), and three persons (1st, 2nd, and 3rd).

Word order: Middle English syntax allowed for more inversion of the subject and verb, or the
subject and object, often to meet the needs of rhyme or poetic meter. For example, "wol I wake"
means "I shall wake up" and "knokke they" means "they knock".
Negation in Middle English (1150-1500 AD) changed from the preverbal negative marker “ne”
to the postverbal “not”. E.g. "I know not þe" (I don't know you), or ‘Fear not’ (Do not fear)

Double negatives: Middle English frequently used double negatives for emphasis. This was
inherited from Old English. A pair of Middle English negative adverbs is best expressed in
translation using a single negative adverb, e.g. ne roghte nat a bene means he didn’t care a bean’.
There are some even ‘triple negatives’, but in these cases the translation must omit both parts of
the double negative around the verb: e.g noon of us ne speke nat a word literally means ‘none of
us not says not a word’, but makes more sense translated as ‘none of us says a word’.

Prepositions: Prepositions were used in Middle English to convey meanings that were previously
conveyed by inflectional endings in Old English.

The Prepositions were often placed at the end of clauses, rather than next to the noun they
modified.

Demonstratives in Middle English included:

 Thise, thes(e) : The Middle English version of the Old English demonstrative pronoun
þis which means "this"
 Tho, thos(e): The Middle English version of the Old English demonstrative pronoun þæt
which means "that"
 The: The Middle English version of the Old English demonstrative pronoun sē which
was used as an article in Late Old English.

3.2 VOCABULARY

An important result of this Norman Conquest was the introduction of a large number of French
words which are the bulk of English Vocabulary. Another result of the Norman Conquest was
that the French scribes were given the task of writing in English.

Here are some examples of Middle English words and their modern English translations:
Anon: Means "at once"
Ny: Means "near"
Lasse: Means "less"
Forthy: Means "therefore"
Quene: Means "queen"
Ich: Means "I"
Ycleped: Means "called,
named"
Hende: Means "courteous,
gentle"
Welkin: Means "sky"
These scribes didn’t know the traditional spellings. Thus, the phonetic character of English
spelling in the Old English was lost. With the weakening of the Old English inflectional endings,
the grammar of the Middle English period had become simplified.

The Old English vocabulary was almost unmixed while the Middle English vocabulary was
heterogeneous. Though the Scandinavian words had entered the spoken language during the late
Old English period yet till the Middle English period no literature had been produced.

The French words came into the English vocabulary. They were related to the customs, ideas,
art, literature and ways of the life of Normans. These words are poet, prose, poem, art, painting,
beauty, image, palace, mansion etc. Chief of them were related to government, warfare, law and
church. Words like chaplain, charity, grace, miracle, army, navy, diplomacy, corps etc were
borrowed from French.

Examples from this source are:

 Social: baron, noble, dame, servant, messenger, feast, minstrel, juggler, largess.
 Government and Administrative: govern, government, administer, crown, state, empire,
royal, majesty, treaty, statute, parliament, tax, rebel, traitor, treason, exile, chancellor,
treasurer, major, noble, peer, prince, princess, duke, squire, page (but not king, queen,
lord, lady, earl), peasant, slave, servant, vassal.
 Ecclesiastical: religion, theology, sermon, confession, clergy, clergy, cardinal, friar,
crucifix, miter, censer lectern, abbey, convent, creator, savior, virgin, faith, heresy,
schism, solemn, divine, devout, preach, pray, adore, confess.
 Law: justice, equity, plaintiff, judge, advacate, attorney, petition, inquest, felon, evidence,
sue, accuse arrest, blame, libel, slander, felony, adultery, property, estate, heir, executor.
 Military-- Many now-obsolete words for pieces of armor, etc., were borrowed at this
time.) army, navy, peace, enemy, arms, battle, spy, combat, siege, defence, ambush,
soldier, guard, mail, buckler, banner, lance, besiege, defend, array.
 Clothing: habit, gown, robe, garment, attire, cape, coat, collar, petticoat, train, lace,
embroidery, pleat, buckle, button, tassel, plume, satin, taffeta, fur, sable, blue, brown,
vermilion, russet, tawny, jewel, ornament, broach, ivory, turquoise, topaz, garnet, ruby,
pearl, diamond.

Middle English borrowed many words from Latin, usually through French. In fact, an estimated
10,000 of the 20,000 most common words in English come from Latin, either directly or through
French.

Here are some examples of Latin words in English:

 Agenda: A list of things to do
 Altruism: Selfless concern for others
 Ambiguous: Having a double meaning
 A priori: Literally means "from (what comes) first"
 A posteriori: Literally means "from (what comes) after"
  Ad hoc: Literally means "to this"
 Ad hominem: Literally means "to the man"
 Ad infinitum: Literally means "to infinity"
 Ad lib: Literally means "to one's pleasure"

Some common Latin roots in English include:

 Aqua- Water (aquifer, aquatics)
 Aud- To hear (audio, audience)
 Bene- Good (beneficial, benefactor)
 Centri- Center (concentric, central)
 Contra- Against (contrary, contraindicate)
 Dent- Teeth (dental, denture)

Some of them were driven out of use by their Scandinavian or French equivalents. The Middle
English was heterogeneous because the words from the Scandinavian and Latin came in.

3.3 PHONOLOGY

Significant changes in pronunciation took place, particularly involving long vowels and
diphthongs, which in the later Middle English period began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift.

The Great Vowel Shift was a series of pronunciation changes in the vowels of the English
language that took place primarily between the 1400s and 1600s (the transition period from
Middle English to Early Modern English). It began in southern England and today has
effectively influenced all dialects of English.

Why the vowel shift?

While the actual causes are debatable among scholars, the greatest changes occurred during the
15th and 16th centuries, and their origins are at least partly phonetic.
 Population migration: some scholars have argued that the rapid migration of people to
the southeast of England from the east and central Midlands of England following the
Black Death1 produced a clash of dialects that made Londoners distinguish their speech
from the immigrants who came from other English cities by changing their vowel system.
 French loanwords: Some other scholars argue that the influx of French loanwords was a
major factor in the shift.

1
The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the
most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th-
century population.
  Middle-class hypercorrection2: Yet others assert that because of the increasing prestige of
French pronunciations among the middle classes, a process of hypercorrection may have
started a shift that unintentionally resulted in vowel pronunciations that are inaccurate
imitations of French pronunciations.
 War with France: An opposing theory states that the wars with France and general anti-
French sentiments caused hypercorrection deliberately to make English sound less like
French.

How the shift happened

Before the Great Vowel Shift, Middle English in Southern England had seven long vowels,
/iː eː ɛː aː ɔː oː uː/. The vowels occurred in, for example, the words mite, meet, meat, mate,
boat, boot, and bout, respectively.

The words had very different pronunciations in Middle English from those in Modern
English:

 Long i in mite was pronounced as /iː/, so Middle English mite sounded similar to
Modern English meet.
 Long e in meet was pronounced as /eː/, so Middle English meet sounded similar to
modern Australian English met but pronounced longer.
 Long a in mate was pronounced as /aː/, with a vowel similar to the broad a of ma.
 Long o in boot was pronounced as /oː/, so Middle English boot sounded similar to
modern Southern England, Australian and New Zealand English bought.

In addition, Middle English had:

 Long /ɛː/ in meat, like modern short e in met but pronounced longer.
 Long /ɔː/ in boat, with a vowel similar to aw in modern Northern England English
law, or like modern Southern England, Australian and New Zealand English bot but
pronounced longer.
 Long /uː/ in bout, similar to Modern English boot.

The Changes
After around 1300, the long vowels of Middle English began changing in pronunciation as
follows:

 Diphthongisation – The two close vowels, /iː uː/, became diphthongs (vowel
breaking).
 Vowel raising – The other five, /eː ɛː aː ɔː oː/, underwent an increase in tongue height
(raising).

These changes occurred over several centuries and can be divided into two phases.
2
In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a
perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally
believes through a misunderstanding of such rules that the form or phrase they use is more "correct", standard, or
otherwise preferable, often combined with a desire to appear formal or educated. Linguistic hypercorrection occurs
when a real or imagined grammatical rule is applied in an inappropriate context so that an attempt to be "correct"
leads to an incorrect result.
  The first phase affected the close vowels /iː uː/ and the close-mid vowels /eː oː/: /eː oː/
were raised to /iː uː/, and /iː uː/ became the diphthongs /ei/, /ou/ or /əi /,/əu/.
 The second phase affected the open vowel /aː/ and the open-mid vowels /ɛː ɔː/: /aː ɛː
ɔː/ were raised, in most cases changing to /eː iː oː/.

Schematically, it can be illustrated as follows:

Here are some examples of words affected by the GVS:

 Her: The Middle English pronunciation was "hɪə" (here), and the Modern English
pronunciation is "hɜː" (her).
 House: The Middle English pronunciation was "huːs" (hoos), and the Modern English
pronunciation is "haʊs" (house).
 Meet: The Middle English pronunciation was "meɪt" (mate), and the Modern English
pronunciation is "miːt" (meet).
 Mouse: The Middle English pronunciation was "muːs" (moos), and the Modern English
pronunciation is "maʊs" (mouse).

NB: The Great Vowel Shift changed vowels without merger, so Middle English before the
vowel shift had the same number of vowel phonemes as Early Modern English after the
vowel shift.
  After the Great Vowel Shift, some vowel phonemes began merging. Immediately
after the Great Vowel Shift, the vowels of meet and meat were different, but they are
merged in Modern English, and both words are pronounced as /miːt/.
 However, during the 16th and the 17th centuries, there were many different mergers,
and some mergers can be seen in individual Modern English words like great, which
is pronounced with the vowel /eɪ/ as in mate rather than the vowel /iː/ as in meat

3.4 SEMANTICS
Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic
drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point
that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage. In diachronic (or
historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. Every word
has a variety of senses and connotations, which can be added, removed, or altered over time,
often to the extent that cognates across space and time have very different meanings.
Examples of Semantic change:
i) Awful — Literally "full of awe", originally meant "inspiring wonder (or fear)", hence
"impressive". In contemporary usage, the word means "extremely bad".
ii) Awesome — Literally "awe-inducing", originally meant "inspiring wonder (or fear)", hence
"impressive". In contemporary usage, the word means "extremely good".
iii) Terrible — Originally meant "inspiring terror", shifted to indicate anything spectacular, then
to something spectacularly bad.
iv) Terrific — Originally meant "inspiring terror", shifted to indicate anything spectacular, then
to something spectacularly good.
v) Nice — Originally meant "foolish, ignorant, frivolous, senseless." from Old French nice (12c.)
meaning "careless, clumsy; weak; poor, needy; simple, stupid, silly, foolish," from Latin
nescius ("ignorant or unaware"). Literally "not-knowing," from ne- "not" (from PIE root
*ne- "not") + stem of scire "to know" (compare with science). "
vi) Naïf or Naïve —Initially meant "natural, primitive, or native" . From French naïf, literally
"native". The masculine form of the French word, but used in English without reference
to gender. As a noun, "natural, artless, naive person," first attested 1893, from French,
where Old French naif also meant "native inhabitant; simpleton, natural fool."
vii) Demagogue — Originally meant "a popular leader". It is from the Greek dēmagōgós "leader
of the people", from dēmos "people" + agōgós "leading, guiding". Now the word has
strong connotations of a politician who panders to emotions and prejudice.
viii) Egregious — Originally described something that was remarkably good. .(as in Theorema
Egregium). The word is from the Latin egregius "illustrious, select", literally, "standing
out from the flock", which is from ex—"out of" + greg—(grex) "flock". Now it means
something that is remarkably bad or flagrant.
 ix) Gay — Originally meant (13th century) "lighthearted", "joyous" or (14th century) "bright
and showy", it also came to mean "happy"; it acquired connotations of immorality as
early as 1637, either sexual e.g., gay woman "prostitute", gay man "womaniser", gay
house "brothel", or otherwise, e.g., gay dog "over-indulgent man" and gay deceiver
"deceitful and lecherous". In the United States by 1897 the expression gay cat referred to
a hobo, especially a younger hobo in the company of an older one; by 1935, it was used
in prison slang for a homosexual boy; and by 1951, and clipped to gay, referred to
homosexuals.
x) Guy — Guy Fawkes was the alleged leader of a plot to blow up the English Houses of
Parliament on 5 November 1605. The day was made a holiday, Guy Fawkes Day,
commemorated by parading and burning a ragged manikin of Fawkes, known as a Guy.
This led to the use of the word guy as a term for any "person of grotesque appearance"
and then by the late 1800s—especially in the United States—for "any man", as in, e.g.,
"Some guy called for you."
xi) Braun changed from meaning "any meat" to meaning "meat from a boar or a pig".

xii) Lewd, In Old English it simply referred to someone who had not been taught to read Latin, i.e., the
uneducated, and thus it referred to the majority of the population. Today, it refers to someone who
is crude, often sexually.
xiii) Cniht in Old English meant a “boy” or even a "servant." Today, as the word ‘knight,’ it has much
more positive connotations of heroism and chivalry.
xiv) Soon, which in Old English meant “immediately,” but now could be several hours away if not longer.
xv) decimate. Its root is from Latin decem, meaning "ten," and it originally meant to destroy or diminish
only one-tenth of something. In fact, it is often meant to tithe, which is giving one-tenth of one’s
income to the church. Today, to decimate means to destroy something completely.

Reading assignment:
Classify the above examples in the following change directions: pejoration,
amelioration, broadening, narrowing, metaphor, and metonymy.