Scribd
Upload
2K views2 pages

Significant Linguistic Features of Middle English

The document summarizes the key linguistic differences between Old English and Middle English. It notes changes in phonology like diphthongs becoming monophthongs and new diphthongs emerging. It also discusses changes in morphology like simplification of inflectional systems and loss of grammatical gender. Syntax was impacted by the replacement of case functions with fixed word order. The lexicon saw borrowing of French and Scandinavian loan words. Middle English became more analytical while Old English was more synthetic.

Uploaded by

Krishna Priya
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
2K views2 pages

Significant Linguistic Features of Middle English

The document summarizes the key linguistic differences between Old English and Middle English. It notes changes in phonology like diphthongs becoming monophthongs and new diphthongs emerging. It also discusses changes in morphology like simplification of inflectional systems and loss of grammatical gender. Syntax was impacted by the replacement of case functions with fixed word order. The lexicon saw borrowing of French and Scandinavian loan words. Middle English became more analytical while Old English was more synthetic.

Uploaded by

Krishna Priya
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Significant Linguistic Features of Middle English

A comparison of English texts written in the tenth or eleventh centuries with those produced in the late twelth or early thirteenth reveals the following differences between Old and Middle English:

phonological o Old-English diphthongs become Middle English monophthongs, e.g. on heofonum -> in hevene; o new diphthongs emerge in the Middle English period, e.g. dg > dai, day; o Initial [h] before consonants disappears in the Middle English period, e.g. hrven -> raven; o [f, v] and [s, z] , which were allophones in the Old-English period, become phonemes; 1.1 o unstressed vowels in the inflectional endings become [@] . morphological o the complete Old-English inflectional system is simplified in Middle English; o loss of the strong inflexion of adjectives; o loss of grammatical gender; o emergence of the unified definite article `the.' syntactical o replacement of the case functions by a fixed word order and prepositions. lexical o first borrowing of French loan-words; o increased emergence of Scandinavian loan-words. graphological 1.2 o disappearance of Old English writing conventions; o increased use of Latin and Anglo-Norman.

In general, Old English might be called a synthetic language, which uses inflectional morphemes to express the syntactical relationships. Middle English might be called an analytical language, which uses function words to constitute syntactical relationships. Compare: Old English ealle ealdras ra sacerda and folces writeras with Middle English alle the prynces of prestis, and scribis of the puple. (The same difference holds more or less between Modern High German and Modern English.)

The transition from Middle to Early Modern English is characterized by the following developments:

the first phase of the Great Vowel Shift is completed; the unstressed inflectional vowels become mute; the inflectional endings are reduced to {-s, -st, -th}; London English is more and more regarded as the standard variety; huge extension of the vocabulary by borrowing and word-formation.

You might also like