Middle English

 

Middle English

Middle English Subperiods

1066-1204 Decline of English

1204-1348 Rise of English

1348-1509 Dominance of English

 

Middle English Phonology

not much English writing during 1100-1200 period; match between sound and spelling worsened; influence of French scribes, confusion in spelling system; new standard English not a direct descendant of West Saxon

Consonants

 

Vowels

loss of OE y and æ: y unrounded to i; æ raised toward e or lowered toward a

all OE diphthongs became pure vowels

addition of schwa; schwa in unstressed syllables, reduction of all unstressed vowels to schwa or i as in K/i/d, reason for ultimate loss of most inflections; a source of schwa was epenthetic or parasitic vowel between two consonants, generally spelled e (OE setl, æfre, swefn> ME setel, ever, sweven)

French loanwords added several new diphthongs (e.g. OF point, bouillir, noyse > ME point, boille, noise) and contributed to vowel lengthening; diphthongs resulted from vocalization of w, y, and v between vowels;

lenghtening and shortening:

loss of unstressed vowels: unstressed final -e was gradually dropped, though it was probably often pronounced; -e of inflectional endings also being lost, even when followed by consonant (as in -es, eth, ed) (e.g. breath/breathed), exceptions: wishes, judges, wanted, raided; loss of -e in adverbs made them identical to adjective, hence ambiguity of plain adverbs e.g. hard, fast; final -e in French loanwords not lost because of French final stress, hence cite>city, purete>purity

 

Middle English Prosody

stress on root syllables, less stress on subsequent syllables; loss of endings led to reduction in number of unstressed syllables, increased use of unstressed particles such as definite and indefinite articles, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, analytic possessive (of), marked infinitive (to), compound verb phrases; OE trochaic rhythm shift to iambic rhythm of unstressed syllables followed by stressed ones (caused by increase in use of unstressed particles and by French loans)

 

Middle English Graphics

26 letters, ash and eth dropped, thorn and yogh retained; French loans j and v treated as allographs of i and u; v reserved for initial position; interchangeable y and i;

yogh: velar fricative /x/ (po/h/t), semivowel /j/ (/y/ung), alveopalatal voiced affricate /j/ (brid/g/e), also used as z (daiz)

q and z more widely used under French influence, qu for /kw/ OE cwic, cwen> ME quicke, quene

tendency for use of digraph th instead of thorn, thorn retained in function words, that, thou, then; confusion of y and thorn, hence ye olde coffee shoppe

poor match of sound and symbol caused by OE > ME sound changes, French influence, new spelling conventions, dialectal differences

o for u (come, love, son, won, tongue, some), way to avoid confusion caused by use of minims (vertical strokes)

c for s, influence of French loans like cellar, place affected spelling of native words like lice, mice

k for /k/, before i/e, n (OE cene, cyssan, cneow> keen, kiss, knee), cf. cat, cool, cut, clean

increased use of digraphs: th for thorn/eth sounds, ou/ow for long u (hour, round); doubling of vowels to indicate length (beet, boot); sh for alveopalatal fricative s (OE scamu> shame); ch for alveopalatal affricate c (OE ceap, cinn> ME cheap, chin); dg for alveopalatal affricate j (OE bricg>ME bridge), (but j in initial position according to French convention, ME just); gh for velar fricative (OE poht, riht> ME thought, right; wh for w (voiceless aspirated bilabial fricative), OE hwæt, hwil, order of letters reversed in ME, what, while; gu for g, in French loans, guard, guile, guide, OE gylt>guilt

punctuation: point, virgule indicated syntactic break; punctus elevatus, somewhat like comma; question mark; hyphen for word division at end of line; paragraph markers

handwriting: insular hand replaced by Carolingian minuscule in cursive and gothic styles