Middle English consonants. Middle English syntax.

Reduction to /ə/ and eventual loss of short vowels in unstressed syllables

 (lexical words: nama -> name, mete -> meat, nosu > nose, sunu -> son)

o function of silent <-e>?

 grammar words:

o folc (e), niht (e): dative falls in with nominative, accusative

o riht (e), freondlic (e): adverb falls in with adjective

o lufodon, lufoden: preterite indicative and subjunctive plural fall together

 

Loss (inconsistent) of unstressed final consonants following a vowel

o infinitive: helpan -> helpen -> help

o affixes: ānlic -> only

o pronouns: ic -> I, þin -> thi (n)

o article: án -> a(n)

o strong past participles: - en often stays, e.g. written, taken

These are among some quantitative sound changes:

o loss

o lengthening

o shortening

Middle English: Consonants

New phonemes: voiced fricatives /ð/, /v/, /z/

The situation in OE

o voiced fricatives were just allophones of voiceless fricatives

o fricatives were voiceless unless they were between voiced sounds

 [ð]: oðer

 [v]: hlāford, hēafod, hæfde

 [z]: frēosan, ceōsan, hūsian

 

A number of factors promoted the phonemicization of voiced fricatives:

o loanwords from French: vine (fine), view (few), veal (feel)

o but French lacks interdental fricatives or (with a few exceptions) word-initial /z/

o dialect mixing:

o (fox), vixen: southern English dialects

o loss of final (vowels in) unstressed syllables

o OE hūsian [z] -> -> ME house, hous /z/ (cf noun hous /s/)

o “voiced consonants require less energy to pronounce”: previously unvoiced fricatives became voiced in words receiving little or no stress in a sentence, like function words:

o e.g. [f] of -> /v/

o e.g. [s] in wæs, his -> /z/

o e.g. [θ] in þæt -> /ð/

Changes in distribution of consonants

More systematic changes

o loss of ‘long’ consonants: OE man ‘one’, mann ‘man’

o OE /h/:

o word-initial [h]

 lost in clusters: OE hræfn, hlāford, hlūd

 (some evidence of ‘h-dropping’ word-initially)

 in words from French and Latin:

o e.g. oste ‘host’, onour ‘honour’

 written language can retard/block/reverse sound change

 in native words: e.g. OE hit ‘it’;

o (adde ‘had’; herthe ‘earth’)

o postvocalic [ç] or [x]

 still around in ME: light and laugh

 (ultimate fates: to zero or /f/)

o OE /g/:

o allophone [γ] (near l/r or between back vowels) vocalized to [u] or semivowel [w]:

 OE swelgan, sorg, boga

o allophone [j] (near front vowels) vocalized to [i]:

 OE genoh -> ME inough

 OE mægden -> maiden, OE sægde -> said

More sporadic changes:

 in lightly stressed words, voicing of fricatives: that, was

 loss of unstressed final consonants: OE ānlic -> only

 loss of /w/ after /s/ or /t/ and (especially) before rounded vowels

 OE swylc, swā

 OE twā, sweord

 but kept in twin, swim

 

Middle English grammar

OE had been a synthetic language with a well-developed ending system in the Middle English period it was transform in the analytical type. Analytical ways of expression of meaning now prevailed over synthetic one.

                   Analytical type                                                                 Synthetic type

· Auxiliaries                                                                        - ending

· Prepositions                                                                   - affexes

· Articles                                                                            - suffexes

· Particle                                                                             - prefexes

· Word order                                                                      - transfix -n

· Intonation                                                                        - postfix

· Sound interchange

+ таблица, где сравниваются сущ, прил, и местоимения.

The development of Middle English noun and adjective.

The category of case-4 cases:

Nom.

Acc.              Common Case

Dat.

Gen.- Possessive C.

The Gen. case lost its grammatical value and preserve only one.

Adj.

B y the end OE period the agreement of adj. with the noun had become looser and in the course of ME it was practically lost.

Only 1 ending-e which is seen in the 14^th/c text.

Late ME:

Adj.                              sing.        Pl.

             Strong         O           - e

          Weak          - e         - e

Degrees of comparison have been preserved but the form building means altered.

More                are used in ME to form the degree of comparison

Most                     

Bet

Best

The way of formation analytically or syntect. didn’t depend on the     structure of the adj.

* sweter

* More swete