The formation of the national E language. The London dialect.

The formation of the national literary English covers the Early NE period.

Factors that influenced:

a. The unification of the country and the progress of the culture;

b. Increased foreign contacts influenced the grouth of the vocabulary.

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Latin invention of printing → spreading of written form of English.

Early NE → Renaissance: Shakespeare, Thomas More. The end of the 17^th cent. – books and dictionaries.

In the18th cent the speech of educated people differed from that of common people: 1) pronunciation; 2) choice of words; 3) grammar.

By the end of the 18^th cent the speech may be regarded as completed for new, it possessed both a written and spoken standart.

The history of London dialect reveals the sources of literary language in late ME. The London dialect fundamentally East Saxon.

ME division → LD belonged to the S. Western dial. group.

12-13^th S. West. districts – “Black Death” → new arrivals from the East Midland → London dialect became more Anglian.

Early Middle English: The earliest samples of Early ME prose are the new entries made in the Anglo-Saxon chronicles (1122) known as Peterborough chronicle, Poem morale (Moral ode) – Kentish dialect, Ormulum – North-East Midland dialect, Ancrene Riwle – South-Western dialect.

The dialect division which evolved in Early ME was on the whole preserved in later periods. In the 14^th, 15^th cent there were the same grouping of local dialects.

1. Southern group → Kentish

→ South-West dialect

2. Midland group → East Midland

→ West Midland

3. Northern group

French was ousted from official spheres and from the sphere of writing.

The Hourishing of literature which makes the second half of the 14cent testifies to the complete reestablishment of English as the language of writing. It was “the age of Chaucer ”, the greatest author of this period. “ Canterbury tales ”

Chaucer was the most outstanding figure of the 14^th cent. He had the most varied experience as student, official member of Parliament. His later works were imitative of other authors. He never wrote in any other language than English. The culmination of his work as a poet is his unfinished collection of stories “The Canterbury tales”. He presented in the pilgrims a gallery of life-like portraits taken from all works of life. Chaucer’s literature language based on the mixed London dialect is known as classical ME, in the 15-16^th cent it became the basic of the national literary Engl language.

ME 12-15^th:

PRINCIPAL OE AND ME WRITTEN RECORDS

Alphabets

The first Old English written records are considered to be the runic inscriptions. To make these inscriptions people used the Runes/the Runic Alphabet – the first original Germanic Alphabet.

Runes/Runic Alphabet:

· appeared in the 3^rd – 4^th c. A.D.;

· the word “rune” meant “secret, mystery”;

· each symbol indicated a separate sound (one symbol = one sound);

· the symbols were angular due to the fact that they had to be carved on hard materials;

· the number of symbols: GB – 28-33; on the continent – 16-24).

Best known Runic Inscriptions:

1. Franks Casket – a box with 4 sides made of whale bone, each side contained a picture in the centre and runic inscriptions around the picture that told the story of the whale bone in alliterative verse.

2. Ruthwell Cross – was found near thevillage of Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, it is a 15 feet tall stone cross ornamented in all sides with runic inscriptions that are actually a passage from a religious poem “The Dream of the Rood”.

Old English Alphabet

The Old English Alphabet was borrowed from Latin, but there were also some letters that were borrowed from the Runic Alphabet: (“thorn”) = [q] and [ð];(“wynn”) = [w]; (“mann”) = stood for OE word “man”; (“dæζ”) = stood for OE word “day”. Some new letters were introduced:

ζ = [g] and [j]; ð/þ/Đ/đ = [q] and [ð]; æ = a ligature of [a] and [e]; œ = a ligature of [o] and [e].

Rules of Reading:

They resemble the modern rules, with several exceptions though:

1. f = [v] s = [z] 1. between vowels;2. between a vowel and a voiced consonant ([r, m, n, l, d, etc.]). ð/þ = [ð]

2. – [j] – before and after front vowels (y, e, i, æ]);

ζ (yough) – [g] – before back vowels ([a, o, u]) and consonants at the beg of words, after n

- [г бел] – between 2 back vowels (a,o,u) and after l. r

cζ = [г’].

3. –[ k’] before and after front vowels (y, e, i, æ)

c - [k]

4. –[ x’ ] after front vowels (y, e, i, æ)

h - [x] after back vowels ([a, o, u]) and consonants at the beg of words, after l,r

- [h] before vowels at the beg of words

Old English Manuscripts

Most of the Old English manuscripts were written in Latin letters (some letters were changed and some new letters were added). The Old English manuscripts that give us the examples of the language of that period are:

· personal documents containing names and place names;

· legal documents (charters);

· religious texts

· textual insertions (pieces of poetry).

· Anglo-Saxon chronics

Old English Poetry

1. Among the earliest textual insertions in Old English are the peaces of Old English poetry. They are to be found in “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People” written in Latin in the 8^th c. by Bede the Venerable, an English monk. These two pieces are: 5 lines know as “Bede’s Death Song”; 9 lines of a religious poem “Cædmon’s Hymn”.

2. All in all we have about 30 000 lines of OE verse from many poets, but most of them are unknown. The two best known Old English poets are Cædmon and Cynewulf (Northumbrian authors).

3. The topics of Old English poetry:

· heroic epic (“Beowulf”, the oldest in the Germanic literature, 7^th c., was written in Mercian or Northumbrian but has come down to us only in a 10^th c. West Saxon copy. It is based on old legends about the tribal life of the ancient Teutons and features the adventures and fights of the legendary heroes);

· lyrical poems (“The Wanderer”, “The Seafarer”, etc. Most of the poems are ascribed to Cynewulf);

· religious poems (“Fate of the Apostles” (probably Cædmon), “Dream of the Rood”, etc.).

4. The peculiarities of Old English poetry:

· written in Old Germanic alliterative verse:

- the lines are not rhymed;

- the number of the syllables in a line is free;

- the number of stressed syllables in a line is fixes;

- the line is usually divided into 2 halves, each half starts with one and the same sound;

· a great number of synonyms (e.g. beorn, sec ζ, ζ uma, wer were all the synonyms of “man”) and kennings metaphorical phrases or compounds describing the qualities or functions of a thing in which the 1^st element provides the clue to the riddle of the 2^nd element(e.g. hronrād “whale-road” (for “sea”); bānhūs “bone-house” (for “a person’s body”); hēaþu-swāt “war-sweat” (for “blood”)).

Main Written Records of the Middle English Period

Geoffrey Chaucer and His Contribution

Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the most prominent authors of the Middle English Period and he set up a language pattern to be followed. He is considered to be the founder of the literary language of that period. Most authors of the Middle English Period tried to fallow this standard.

Features of the Chaucer’s Language:

· Chaucer’s Language was the basis for the national literary language (15^th – 16^th c.).

· New spelling rules (digraphs) and new rules of reading (1 letter = several sounds) appeared as compared to the Old English.

· New grammatical forms appeared (Perfect forms, Passive forms, “to” Infinitive constructions, etc.).

· Chaucer tried to minimize the number of the French loans in the English Language.

· Chaucer introduced rhyme to the poetry.

Middle English Alphabet

The Middle English Alphabet resembled the Old English Alphabet but some changes were introduced:

· th replaced ð/þ/Đ/đ;

· æ, œ disappeared;

· digraphs (2 letters = one sound) appeared (came from French): th for [q] and [ð];

tch/ch for [t∫]; sch/ssh/sh for [∫]; dg for [dζ]; wh replace hw but was pronounced still as [hw]!;

gh for [h]; qu for [kw]; ow/ou for [u:] and [ou]; ie for [e:].

Rules of Reading:

They resemble the modern rules, with several exceptions though:

1. Double vowels stood for long sounds, e.g. oo = [o:]; ee = [e:].

2. g = [dζ]

c = [s] before front vowels ([i, e]).

=[k] in all other cases

g = [g]

c = [k] before back vowels ([a, o, u]).

3. y = [j] – at the beginning of the word;

= [i] – in the cases when i stood close together with r, n, m and could be confused with one of these letters or could be lost among them, it was replaced with y, sometimes also for decorative purpose.(e.g. nyne [‘ni:nə], very [‘veri]).

4. th = [ð]

s = [z] between vowels.

5. o = [o] – in most cases;

= [u] – in the words that have [Λ] sound in Modern English (e.g. some, love), close to n,m,v

6. j = [dζ]

Beowulf.

Heroic epic (7/8th).The oldest poem in Germanic literature. It’s the story of the youth and age of a hero. Built up of several songs arranged in 3 chapters.Based on old legends about the tribal life of the ancient teutons language – Late West Saxon. It is written in the alliterative verse. It was meant to be heard rather than read

SPELLING CHANGES IN ME

The most important feature of Late ME texts in comparison with OE texts is the difference in spelling. The written forms of the words in Late ME texts resemble their modern forms, though the pronunciation of the words was different.

In the course of ME many new devices were introduced into the system of spelling; some of them reflected the sound changes which had been completed or were still in progress in ME; others were graphic replacements of OE letters by new letters and digraphs.

In the ME the runic letters passed out of use.

· th replaced ð/þ/Đ/đ;

· æ, œ disappeared;

· the rune “wynn” was displaced by –w-

After the period of Anglo-Norman dominance (11^th-13^th c.) English regained its prestige as the language of writing, writing was in the hands of those who had a good knowledge of French. Therefore many innovations in ME spelling reveal an influence of French scribal tradition. The digraph ou ie and ch which occurred in many French borrowings and were regularly used in Anglo-Norman texts were adopted as new ways of indicating the sound [u:], [e:], [tſ].

Compare: out – ūt, chief – thief. The letters “j, k, v, q” were probably first used in imitation of French manuscripts. The 2-fold use of “g” and “c” stood for [dg], [s], before front vowels and for [g], [k] before back vowels.

Other alterations in spelling cannot be traced directly to French influence though they testify to a similar tendency: a wider use of digraphs. In addition to ch, ou, ie and th, introduced sh (also ssh and sch) to indicate the new sibilant [ſ], dg to indicate [dg], alongside j and g (before front vowels) the digraph wh OE sequence of letters “hw” as in OE “hwæt” but it was still reading like hw. Long sounds were shown by double letters, for ex. ME book, though with vowels this practice was not very regular, long [e:] could be indicated by ie and ee and also by “e”.

Some replacements were probably made to avoid confusion of resembling letters: thus [o] was employed not only for [o] but also to indicate short [u]; it happened when “u” stood close to n, m, v for they were all made up of down strokes and were hard to distinguish in a hand-written text. This replacement was facilitated – if not caused – came to be used as an equivalent of ‘i’.

For letters indicating 2 sounds the rules of reading are as follows: g and с [dg], [s], before front vowels and for [g], [k] before back vowels. “y” – stand for [j], at the beginning of words equivalent of “i”. “Th” and “s” indicate voiced sounds between vowels and voiceless – initially finally and next to the other voiceless consonants.

Note! in ME – unlike OE- this rule doesn’t apply to the letter “f”, it stands for the voiceless [f] while the voiced [v] is shown by “v” and “u”.

Long sounds in ME texts are often shown by double letters or digraphs: open syllables often contain long vowels, while closed syllables may contain both short and long vowels. Vowels are long before a sonorant + a plosive consonant and short before other sequences.

OE SOUND SYSTEM

The OE sound system developed from the PG system. It underwent multiple changes in the pre-written periods of history, especially in Early OE.

In OE a syllable was made prominent by an increase in the force of articulation; in other words, a dynamic or a force stress was employed. In disyllabic and polysyllabic words the accent fell on the root-morpheme or on the first syllable. Word stress was fixed; it remained on the same syllable in different grammatical forms of the word and, as a rule, did not shift in word-building either.

OE Vowels

The OE vowel system shows 7 points of short and long vowels.

ī ĭ y (short and long) ŭū

ēĕ ōŏ

æ (short and l) ăā

The peculiarity of OE vowels: it showed full symmetry.

Length of vowels was phonological, that is to say it could distingyish different words: gōd (=good NE) and gŏd (god NE)

In ME the following changes occurred (14^th c)

Short: Long:

i u i: u:

e o e: o:

a e: o:

a:

The number of short vowels decreased, instead of 7 we find 5 (y-i, æ – a) these vowels merged.

The main process that took place in long vowels was narrowing (ē → e: æ (long)→e: ŏ→o: ā→o:). The origin of a: it developed from short a in open stressed syllables.

Palatal Mutation/i-Umlaut

Mutation – a change of one vowel to another one under the influence of a vowel in the following syllable.

Palatal mutation (or i-Umlaut) happened in the 6^th -7^th c. and was shared by all Old Germanic Languages, except Gothic. I-mutation is a change of root back vowels to front ones or root open vowels to closer ones under the influence of i/j in the next syllable.

Palatal mutation – fronting and raising of vowels under the influence of [i] and [j] in the following syllable (to approach the articulation of these two sounds). As a result of palatal mutation:

· [i] and [j] disappeared in the following syllable sometimes leading to the doubling of a consonant in this syllable;

· new vowels appeared in OE ([ie, y]) as a result of merging and splitting:

Traces of i-Umlaut in Modern English:

4. irregular Plural of nouns (man – men; tooth – teeth);

5. irregular verbs and adjectives (told ←tell; sold ←sell; old – elder);

6. word-formation with sound interchange (long – length; blood – bleed).

Breaking

Under the influence of succeeding and preceding consonants some Early OE monophthongs developed into diph­thongs. If a front vowel stood before a velar consonant there developed a short glide between them, as the organs of speech prepared themselves for the transition from one sound to the other. The glide, together with the original monophthong formed a diphthong.

The front vowels [i] and [e] and the newly developed [æ], changed into diphthongs with a back glide when they stood before [h], before long (doubled) [ll] or [l] pJus another consonant, and before [r] plus other consonants, e.g.: OE deorc, NE dark. The change is known as breaking or fructure. Breaking is dated in Early OE, for in OE texts we find the process already completed.

Breaking produced a new set of vowels in OE — the short diphthongs [ea] and [eo[ they could enter the system as counterparts of'the long [ea:], [eo: ] which had developed from PG prototypes

Old English Consonant System

The system consisted of several correlated sets of consonants. All the consonants fell into noise consonants and sonorants. The noise con­sonants were subdivided into plosives and fricatives; plosives were further differentiated as voiced and voiceless, the difference being pho­nemic. The fricative consonants were also subdivided into voiced and voiceless; in this set, however, sonority was merely a phonetic difference. The opposition of palatal and velar lingual consonants [k] — [k'], [g]— [g'] had probably become pho­nemic by the time of the earliest written records It is noteworthy that among the OE consonants there were few sibi­lants (s,z) and no affricates.

The most universal distinctive feature in the consonant sys­tem was the difference in length. During the entire OE period long con­sonants are believed to have been opposed to short ones on a phonem­ic level; they were mostly distinguished in intervocal position. Sin­gle and long consonants are found in identical phonetic conditions.

Place of artic Manner	labial	dental	palatal	velar
noise	Plosive voiceless voiced	p p: b b:	t t: d d:	k’ k’: g’:	k k: g g:
fricative voiceless voiced	f f: v	q q: s s: ð z:	x’ x’: y’ j	x x: y
sonorants	m m: w	n n: r l	j	gn

 

Treatment of Fricatives. Hardening. Rhotacism. Voicing and Devoicing

The changes under Grimm's Law and Verner's Law PG had the following two sets of fricative consonants: voiceless [f, th, x, s] and voiced [v z y z]

In Early OE the difference between the two groups was supported by new features. PG voiced fricatives tended to be hardened to corresponding plosives while voiceless fricatives, being contrasted to them primarily as fricatives to plosives, developed new voiced allophones.

The PG voiced [ð] (due to Verner's Law or to the third act of the shift) was always hardened to [d ] in OE and other WG languages. The two other fricatives, [v] and [γ] were hardened to [b] and [g] ini­tially and after nasals, otherwise they remained fricatives

Hardening (the process when a soft consonant becomes harder)– usually initially and after nasals ([m, n])

[ð] à	[d]	rauðr (Icelandic)	rēad (OE) (red)
[v] à	[b]	-	-
[γ] à	[g]	guma (Gothic)	ζuma (OE) (man)

PG [z] underwent a phonetic modification through the stage [5] into [r] and thus became a sonorant, which ultimately merged with the older IE [r]. This process, termed rhotacism, is characteristic not only of WG but also of NG

In the meantime or somewhat later the PG set of voiceless fricatives [f, q, h, s] and also those of the voiced fricatives which had not turned into plosives, that is, [v] and [y], were subjected to a new pro­cess of voicing and devoicing. In Early OE they became or remained voiced intervocally and between vowels, sonorants and voiced conso­nants; they remained or became voiceless in other environments, name­ly, initially, finally and next to other voiceless consonants.

The mutually exclusive phonetic conditions for voiced and voice­less fricatives prove that in OE they were not phonemes, but allophones.

Velar Consonants in Early Old English. Growth of New Phonemes

The velar consonants Ik,g,x,yl were palatalised before a front vowel, and sometimes also after a front vowel, unless followed by a back vowel. Thus in OE cild (NE child) the velar consonant [k]was softened to [k'] as it stood before the front vowel [i] In the absence of these phonetic conditions the consonants did not change, with the result that lingual consonants split into two sets, palatal and velar. The difference between them became phonemic when, a short time later, velar and palatal consonants began to occur in simi­lar phonetic conditions.

Growth of new phonemes: Palatalisation of Consonants (a process when hard vowels become soft) – before a front vowel and sometimes also after a front vowel

[g, γ, k, h] à [g’, γ’, k’, h’]

Though the difference between velar and palatal consonants was not shown in the spellings of the OE period, the two sets were undoubtedly differentiated since a very early date. In the course of time the phonetic difference between them grew and towards the end of the period the pal­atal consonants developed into sibilants and affricates: |k')>ch [gl>ld31; in ME texts they were indicated by means of special digraphs and letter sequences

Loss of Consonants In Some Positions

Nasal soncrants were regularly lost before fricative consonants; in the process the preceding vowel was probably nasalised and length­ened

Fricative consonants could be dropped between vowels and before some plosive consonants; these losses were accompanied by a compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel or the fusion of the preceding and succeeding vowel into a diphthong,

We should also mention the loss of semi-vowels and conso­nants in unstressed final syllables. |j] was regularly dropped in suffix­es alter producing various changes in the root: palatal mutation of vow­els, lengthening of consonants after short vowels. The loss of [w] is seen in some case forms of nouns

Loss of Consonants:

· sonorants before fricatives (e.g. fimf (Gothic) – fīf (OE) (five));

· fricatives between vowels and some plosives (e.g. sæζde (early OE) – sæde (late OE) (said));

· loss of [j] – as a result of palatal mutation (see examples above);

· loss of [w] (e.g. case-forms of nouns: sæ (Nominative) – sæwe (Dative) (OE) (sea).