The Old and Middle English Period

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Subject: History of English language

English course year II
Name: Nelson Aminosse Zavale
Summary of the Old and the Middle English period
Old English (449-1100)

History
The Celts are the first people in Britain of whom we have any detailed knowledge. It seems
there were two branches of Celtic; Gaelic (now represented by Irish Scottish Gaelic and Manx)
and Brythonic (now represented by Welsh, Cornish and Breton). After the invasion of the
Romans there was more Latin used in Britain but mainly by the upper classes. In 449 began the
history of English. Angles, Saxons and Jute invade and settle in England. These invaders spoke
related Germanic dialects. Because of the pattern of settlement in England OE was not a
uniform language but in fact consisted of four dialects; Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon (the
only one for which we have any extensive records) and Kentish.
The word stock

In modern English we are very used to the idea that words may have been borrowed from other
languages such as French or Latin. In the OE period this was much less the case and the
majority of the words in use were Germanic. Many of these words have now been lost from the
language or changed in meaning.
Spelling
 j, q and v were not used for writing Old English and y was always a vowel
  was called ‘ash’ and is the sound in the word ‘cat’
 // (eth) and þ (thorn) were both pronounced as // (as in ‘thin’) or // (as in ‘then’) and
used interchangeably
Nouns
Inflections
One of the main differences between OE and Mn.E is the number of inflections used in the noun,
definite articles, pronoun and verb. OE was a synthetic language. This means that the
relationship between words in a sentence was shown by endings attached to the words rather
than by word order.
In MnE we inflect nouns for possession and number by adding an /s/ sound. This is shown in
writing as e.g. ‘cat’ vs. ‘cats’ vs. ‘cat’s’ or ‘cats’’. In OE things were rather more complicated as
4 cases were distinguished. As well as the genitive (possessive) the nominative (subject),
accusative (direct object) and dative (indirect object) were used. These functions within the
sentence are know as cases. Every noun changed its form depending on its case and number.
Gender
To complicate things still further OE also employed a system of grammatical gender (like many
present day languages) so every noun was also assigned to masculine, feminine or neutral
gender. This was often quite illogical so ‘wif’ (wife) was neuter, ‘wifman’ (woman) was
masculine and ‘sunne’ (sun) was feminine.
Declensions
Not all nouns took the same forms for each case. There were a large number of patterns called
declensions.
The definite article (the)
There were two demonstratives in OE. The most frequent can be translated ‘the, that or those’.
The article had to agree with the noun it modified in terms of number, gender and case.
Personal Pronouns
The personal pronoun system was almost as complex as today with not only inflection for case
and person but also a separate number system for taking about exactly 2 people.
Verbs
Old English verbs were either weak or strong, corresponding roughly to regular and irregular
verbs in Mn English.
Strong verbs
These verbs form their past tense and past participle by changing their stressed vowel. The
participle may have an <en> ending.
Ridan – rad – ridden (ride)
Drincan – dranc – drunken (drink)
Sprecan – sprac – sprecen (speak)
Weak verbs
These verbs from there past tense and past participle by adding a /t/ or /d/
Cyssan – cyste – cyssed (kiss)
Fyllan – fylde – fylled (fill)
Cnyttan – cnytte – cnytted (knit)
Syntax
 The OE negative adverb came before the verb it modified (Ic ne dyde = I did not).
 Although word order was usually subject-verb-object, like Mn. English, the word order
was less fixed. Because of the rich inflectional system it was, of course, still possible to
identify the subject etc.
 Subordinating one clause to another was generally done by parataxis – the joining of
clauses with no sign of their relationship except perhaps a conjunction.
Middle English (1100-1500)

History:
In 1066 the Normans invaded and French became the language of the governing classes although
English was still spoken by the majority of the population. However, after the loss of Normandy
by King John in 1204 and the hundred years war, ties were lost with France and many ‘Normans’
began to think of themselves as English. At the beginning of the ME period there were many
different dialects and each author wrote in their own dialect. Therefore there is some variation in
the writing of this time. During the course of the period however, the speech of the London
region gradually emerged as the standard form used for writing and eventually developed into
Standard Modern English.
The word stock

The Norman Conquest had a huge influence on the word stock of the language. Many English
words were replaced by French words which are still present in the language today.
OE ME MnE
Rice cuntre country
Genoh plente plenty
Dl porcioun portion
Spelling
 Some French spelling conventions were borrowed. For example <th> was gradually
introduced to replace thorn and eth
 <v>was used to represent either /v/ word initially or /u/ elsewhere
 <ch> was introduced to represent // where OE had simply used <c>
 Middle English scribes introduced <wh> instead of <hw> for the sound at the start of
‘what’
 <qu> replaced <cw> under influence from Latin
 Double vowel letters were introduced to represent long vowels
Morphology
In general many inflections were lost in Middle English. This is due partly to phonetic changes
and partly to analogy. The first change to happen was that inflectional –m became –n, for
example in the dative plurals of some nouns. This meant that a distinction was lost from other
cases and eventually the –n was lost altogether. At around the same time, distinct vowels (-a, -u,
-e) all merged to schwa which was written as <e>. Therefore the distinctions that these vowels
and nasals had signalled could no longer be made. This effectively eliminated grammatical
gender, which had already begun to breakdown in OE.
Nouns
In OE gender had been distinguishable in most nouns. In ME most plurals and genitives came to
be –es (pronounced []). So just like in Mdn English most nouns had only two forms having
lost distinctions of case (except the genitive) and gender. Towards the beginning of this period –
en was still being used to signal plurality, especially in the south but by the 14th century the –s
ending had spread to the vast majority of words across the country.
Personal pronouns
Of course in Mn English these pronouns still retain distinctive gender (in the third person) and
case forms (genitive, subject, object). The dual number was lost during the ME period but the
remaining forms were quite varied in different dialects.
The Definite article

The Old English forms were eventually reduced to ‘the’ ‘that’ and ‘tho’ (later those). So again
distinctions of case and gender are lost.
Verbs
The distinction between weak and strong verbs was maintained but many originally strong verbs
became weak. Some verbs could form the preterit and past participle by either a vowel change
or the addition of –ed (like hung and hanged today), although most eventually could only use the
weak form.
Syntax
Because so many inflections were lost relations between words could potentially be unclear.
Therefore the word order became more fixed. At this stage then the language has changed form
a highly synthetic one in OE to a much more analytic one where the relationship between words
is signalled by word order rather than inflection

The Old and Middle English Period

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UniSave – Maxixe

Subject: History of English language

Summary of the Old and the Middle English period

Old English (449-1100)

The word stock

Middle English (1100-1500)

The word stock

The Definite article

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