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Lecture 5. Middle English as a Period of Great Change

1. Historical Background of the ME period

2. Middle English dialects
3. The Rise of Standard English. The London dialect
4. Vocabulary of Middle English. Borrowings
5. Word-building

The Middle English period (1066–1500) was marked by great changes in the English
language, changes more extensive and fundamental than those that have taken place at any time
before or since. Some of them were the result of the Norman Conquest and the conditions
which followed in the wake of that event. Others were a continuation of tendencies that had
begun to manifest themselves in Old English. The changes of this period affected English in
both its grammar and its vocabulary. They were so extensive in each department that it is
difficult to say which group is the more significant. Those in the grammar reduced English
from a highly inflected language to an extremely analytic one. Those in the vocabulary
involved the loss of a large part of the Old English word-stock and the addition of thousands of
words from French and Latin. At the beginning of the period English is a language that must
be learned like a foreign tongue; at the end it is Modern English.

Historical Background
The end of the Old English period and the beginning of Middle English is marked by two
outstanding political events — the Scandinavian invasion and the Norman conquest.
1. Scandinavian Invasion
It is impossible to state the exact date of the Scandinavian invasion as it was a long process
embracing over two centuries, the first inroads of the Scandinavian Vikings began as far as the
end of the 8th century. Various Scandinavian adventurers at the head of their troops came to
England wave after wave, although the English offered the invaders a stubborn resistance. At
first the invaders fought with the natives, robbed and plundered the country, but later they
began to settle on the lands they had managed to conquer.
The Scandinavian invasion and the subsequent settlement of the Scandinavians on the
territory of England, the constant contacts and intermixture of the English and the
Scandinavians brought about many changes in different spheres of the English language:
word-stock, grammar and phonetics. The influence of Scandinavian dialects was especially felt
in the North and East parts of England, where mass settlement of the invaders and
intermarriages with the local population were especially common. The relative ease of the
mutual penetration of the languages was conditioned by the circumstances of the Anglo-
Scandinavian contacts, i.e.:
a) there existed no political or social barriers between the English and the Scandinavians,
the latter not having formed the ruling class of the society but living on an equal footing with
the English;
b) There were no cultural barriers between the two people as they were approximately the
same in their culture, habits and customs due to their common origin, both of the nations being
Germanic;
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c) The language difference was not so strong as to make their mutual understanding
impossible, as their speech developed from the same source — Common Germanic, and the
words composing the basic word-stock of both the languages were the same, and the grammar
systems similar in essence.
2. The Norman Conquest – 1066. Norman influences on English culture and life
In 1066, the Duke of Normandy, the famous William, henceforth called "the
Conqueror", sailed across the British Channel. He challenged King Harold of England in the
struggle for the English throne. After winning the battle of Hastings where he defeated Harold,
William was crowned King of England. A Norman Kingdom was now established. The Anglo-
Saxon period was over.
The Norman Conquest was not only a great event in British political history but also the
greatest single event in the history of the English language. The Norman Conquerors of
England had originally come from Scandinavia. First they had seized the valley of the Seine
and settled in what is known as Normandy. They were swiftly assimilated by the French and in
the 11th c. came to Britain as French speakers. Their tongue in Britain is often referred to as
“Anglo-French” or “Norman French”, but may just as well be called French. The most
important consequence of Norman domination in Britain is to be seen in the wide use of the
French language in many spheres of life. French became the language of the affairs of
government, court, the church, the army, and education where the newly adopted French words
often substituted their former English counterparts. The intellectual life, literature and education
were in the hands of French-speaking people. Clearly, to learn French was the only way
possible to climb up the social ladder. For all that, England never stopped being an English-
speaking country. The bulk of the population spoke its own tongue and looked upon French as
foreign and hostile. At first two languages – English and French existed side by side without
mingling. Then, slowly and quietly, they began to penetrate each other. The three hundred years
of the domination of French affected English more than any other foreign influence before or
after. The early French borrowings reflect accurately the spheres of Norman influence upon
English life; later borrowings can be attributed to the continued cultural, economic and political
contacts between the countries. The linguistic influence of Norman French continued for as
long as the Kings ruled both Normandy and England.
3. The decline of French
When King John lost Normandy in the years following 1200, the links to the French-
speaking community subsided. English then slowly started to gain more weight as a common
tongue within England again. In 1348 English became the language of grammar-schools
(excluding Oxford and Cambridge where Latin was used) and in 1362 the Language Act
declared English the official language of the law courts. In 1399, Henry IV was the first man
on the throne with English as his mother tongue. From 1423 onwards all parliament records
were written in English. A hundred years later, English was again spoken by representatives of
all social classes, this new version of the English language being strikingly different, of course,
from the Old English used prior to the Norman invasion. The English spoken at this turn of
events is called Middle English.

Middle English dialects

The Middle English texts reveal that English went through considerable internal
developments irrespective of the language contact situation with French: The Old English
dialects evolved and became ME dialects. The dialect division which evolved in Early ME was
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on the whole preserved in later periods. In the 14th and 15th c. we find the same grouping of
local dialects: 1) the Southern group included Kentish and the South-Western dialects.
Kentish was a direct descendant of the OE dialect known by the same name – Kentish. The
South-Western dialect was a continuation of the OE Saxon dialect), 2) the Midland group is
divided into West Midland and East Midland as two main areas (the Midland group
corresponds to the OE Mercian dialect) and 3) the Northern group (had developed from OE
Northumbrian).
The peculiarities that distinguish these dialects are partly matters of pronunciation,
partly of vocabulary, partly of inflection.
A few illustrations will give some idea of the nature and extent of the differences. The
feature most easily recognized is the ending of the plural, present indicative, of verbs. In Old
English this form always ended in -th with some variation of the preceding vowel. In Middle
English this ending was preserved as -eth in the Southern dialect. In the Midland district,
however, it was replaced by -en, probably taken over from the corresponding forms of the
subjunctive or from preterite-present verbs and the verb to be, while in the north it was altered
to -es, an ending that makes its appearance in Old English times. Thus the English have loves in
the north, loven in the Midlands, and loveth in the south.
Dialectal differences are more noticeable between Northern and Southern; the Midland
dialect often occupies an intermediate position, tending toward the one or the other in those
districts lying nearer to the adjacent dialects. Thus the characteristic forms of the pronoun they
in the south were hi, here (hire, hure), hem, while in the north forms with th- (modern they,
their, them) early became predominant.
In matters of pronunciation the Northern and Southern dialects sometimes presented
notable differences. Thus OE ā, which developed into an south of the Humber, was retained in
the north, giving us such characteristic forms as Southern stone and home, beside stane and
hame in Scotland today. Initial f and s were often voiced in the south to v and z. In Southern
Middle English we find vor, vrom, vox, vorzoþe instead of for, from, fox, forsope (forsooth).
This dialectal difference is preserved in Modern English fox and vixen, where the former
represents the Northern and Midland pronunciation and the latter the Southern. Similarly ch in
the south often corresponds to a k in the north: bench beside benk, or church beside kirk. Such
variety was fortunately lessened toward the end of the Middle English period by the general
adoption of standard written (and later spoken) English.

The Rise of Standard English. The London dialect

Out of this variety of local dialects there emerged toward the end of the fourteenth
century a written language that in the course of the fifteenth won general recognition and has
since become the recognized standard in both speech and writing.
The part of England that contributed most to the formation of this standard was the East
Midland district, and it was the East Midland type of English that became its basis, particularly
the dialect of the metropolis, London. Several causes contributed to the attainment of this
result:
1. In the first place, as a Midland dialect the English of this region occupied a middle
position between the extreme divergences of the north and south. It was less conservative than
the Southern dialect, less radical than the Northern. In its sounds and inflections it represents a
kind of compromise, sharing some of the characteristics of both its neighbours.
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2. In the second place, the East Midland district was the largest and most populated of
the major dialect areas.
3. A third factor, more difficult to evaluate, was the presence of the universities, Oxford
and Cambridge, in this region. In the fourteenth century the monasteries were playing a less
important role in the dissemination of learning than they had once played, while the two
universities had developed into important intellectual centres.
4. By far the most influential factor in the rise of Standard English was the importance of
London as the capital of England. London was, and still is, the political and commercial centre
of England. It was the seat of the court, of the highest judicial tribunals, the focus of the social
and intellectual activities of the country.
The history of Standard English is almost a history of London English. In the latter part
of the fifteenth century the London standard had been accepted, at least in writing, in most
parts of the country. Considerable diversity still existed in the spoken dialects. But in literary
works after 1450 it becomes almost impossible to determine with any precision the region in
which a given work was written. And in correspondence and local records there was a
widespread tendency to conform in matters of language to the London standard.
A further important factor that supported the standardisation process was the introduction
of the printing press by William Caxton in 1476. In addition, the Chancery scribes, the writers
of the royal administrative documents, had their office at Westminster very close to Caxton’s
printing press. It is possible that their spelling influenced the written standard as well, though
only marginally.
Since that time — the end of the 15 th century the English language began its
development as the language of the English nation, whereas up to that time, beginning with the
Germanic conquest of Britain in the 5th century and up to the 15th century, what we call the
English language was no more than a conglomerate of dialects, first tribal and then local.

Vocabulary of Middle English

The principal means of enriching vocabulary in Middle English are not internal, but
external — borrowings. Vocabulary of Middle English was influenced by the Scandinavian,
French and Latin languages. The nature of the borrowings and their amount reflected the
conditions of the contacts between the English and these languages.
The most significant source of borrowings at that time was French. It is assumed that
about 10,000 words with French origin were borrowed, along with some affixes. About three-
fourths of those words are still in use today.
French borrowings
The influx of French loanwords correlates with the decline of the status of French. In the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, when French was the unchallenged language of the upper
classes, the number of words borrowed by English was not great, but in the thirteenth, and still
more the fourteenth century, there was a flood of loan-words. Bilingual speakers who switched
to English felt the need for specialised terms and brought those terms over from French,
replacing synonymous English words.
As we have seen, the French dominated the domains of courtly life, government,
administration, the law court, and church. These are the domains where most loanwords came
from.
Courtly life: food, fashion, leisure & arts
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appetite, beef, biscuit, dinner, fruit, poultry, boots, button, fashion, wardrobe, art, beauty,
literature, painting, etc.
Administration, Government, Military & Law
authority, baron, council, court, crown, government, parliament, noble, minister, prince, tax,
treaty, liberty, archer, enemy, soldier, accuse, arrest, crime, guard, warden, jury, prison,
punishment, etc.
Religion & Church
abbey, catherdral, charity, clergy, confess, prayer, religion, saviour, virgin, virtue, create,
creator, divine, faith, etc.
Aside from the already mentioned new vocabulary pertaining to the affairs of
government, court, the church, the army, and education, many words relating to food and
fashion were introduced as well. In some fields an original English terminology did not exist.
Therefore, many French terms were borrowed. One example is the names of animals and their
meat. Whereas the names of the animals remained the same, their meat was renamed according
to the Norman custom.
This correlated to the sociological structures: the farmers that raised the animals were
predominantly English natives and could afford to keep using their own vocabulary while
farming - those serving the meat at the dining room table to the mainly French upper classes
had to conform to the French language.
ANIMAL MEAT
sheep mutton
cow beef
swine pork

The place of the French borrowings within the English language was different:
1. A word may be borrowed from the French language to denote notions unknown to
the English up to the time: government, parliament, general, colonel, etc.
2. The English synonym is ousted by the French borrowing:
English French
micel large
here army
3. Both the words are preserved, but they are stylistically different:
English French
to begin to commence
to work to labour
Words that entered the language from French have nobler and more formal connotations
than their near-synonyms of Germanic origin: e.g., mansion, palace vs. house, home. Moreover,
the original social background of borrowed words becomes conspicuous in stylistics: a kingly
meal points to size or portion, a royal meal is very noble, finally, a regal matter is a highly
formal issue. As we see, the French borrowing is generally more literary or even bookish, than
the English word.
4. Sometimes the English language borrowed many words with the same word-building
affix. The meaning of the affix in this case became clear to the English-speaking people. It
entered the system of word-building means of the English language, and they began to add it to
English words, thus forming word-hybrids. For instance, the suffix -ment entered the language
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within such words as "government", "parliament", "agreement", but later there appeared such
English-French hybrids as: fulfilment, amazement.
The suffix -ance/-ence, which was an element of such borrowed words as "innocence",
"ignorance", "repentance", now also forms word-hybrids, such as hindrance.
5. One of the consequences of the borrowings from French was the appearance of
etymological doublets.
— from the Common Indo-European:
native borrowed
fatherly paternal
— from the Common Germanic:
native borrowed
yard garden
ward guard
— from Latin:
earlier later
(Old English) (Middle English)
borrowing borrowing
mint money
inch ounce
6. Due to the great number of French borrowings there appeared in the English language
such families of words, which though similar in their root meaning, are different in
origin:
Native borrowed
mouth oral
sun solar
7. There are calques on the French phrase:
It's no doubt - Se n'est pas doute
Without doubt- Sans doute
Out of doubt - Hors de doute.

Coming from the language of the upper social classes, French loanwords penetrated the
English language socially downwards from the prestige language to the vernacular, whereas
Scandinavian loanwords entered the Northern and Mid-Eastern dialects and from there spread
socially upwards.

Scandinavian borrowings
Due to contacts between the Scandinavians and the English-speaking people many words
were borrowed from the Scandinavian language, for example:
Nouns: law, fellow, sky, skirt, skill, skin, egg, anger, awe, bloom, knife, root, bull, cake,
husband, leg, wing, guest, loan, race
Adjectives: big, week, wrong, ugly, twin
Verbs: call, cast, take, happen, scare, hail, want, bask, gape, kindle
Pronouns: they, them, their; and many others.
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The conditions and the consequences of various borrowings were different.
1. Sometimes the English language borrowed a word for which it had no synonym. These
words were simply added to the vocabulary. Examples: law, fellow
2. The English synonym was ousted by the borrowing. Scandinavian taken (to take) and
callen (to call) ousted the English synonyms niman and clypian, respectively.
3. Both the words, the English and the corresponding Scandinavian, are preserved, but
they became different in meaning. Compare Modern English native words and
Scandinavian borrowings:
Native Scandinavian borrowing
heaven sky
starve die
4. Sometimes a borrowed word and an English word are etymological doublets, as words
originating from the same source in Common Germanic.

Native Scandinavian borrowing

shatter scatter
raise rear
5. Sometimes an English word and its Scandinavian doublet were the same in meaning
but slightly different phonetically, and the phonetic form of the Scandinavian borrowing is
preserved in the English language, having ousted the English counterpart. For example, Modern
English to give, to get come from the Scandinavian gefa, geta, which ousted the English 3iefan
and 3ietan, respectively: Similar Modern English words: gift, forget, guild, gate, again.
6. There may be a shift of meaning. Thus, the word dream originally meant "joy,
leasure"; under the influence of the related Scandinavian word it developed its modern
meaning.

Latin Borrowings in Middle English

Latin Borrowings in Middle English are generally known as the Latin Influence of the
Third Period. The large number of words was borrowed directly from Latin in Middle English.
Though they were less popular and gained admission generally through the written language.
Of course, it must not be forgotten that Latin was a spoken language among ecclesiastics and
men of learning, and a certain number of Latin words could well have passed directly into
spoken English. Their number, however, is small in comparison with those that we can observe
entering by way of literature.
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were especially prolific in Latin borrowings. Many
of them occur in the so-called Wycliffe translation of the Bible and have been retained in
subsequent translations, they have passed into common use. Latin borrowings related to law,
medicine, theology, science, and literature, words often justified in the beginning by technical
or professional use and later acquiring a wider application. Among them may be noticed several
with endings like -able, -ible, -ent, -al, -ous, -ive, and others, which thus became familiar in
English and, reinforced often by French, now form common elements in English derivatives.
There is a selected but miscellaneous list of examples of Latin loanwords: allegory, conspiracy,
contempt, custody, distract, frustrate, genius, gesture, history, homicide, immune, incarnate,
include, incredible, index, individual, infancy, inferior, infinite, innate, intellect, interrupt,
legal, limbo, lucrative, lunatic, magnify, mechanical, minor, moderate, necessary, nervous,
notary, ornate, picture, polite, popular, prevent, private, project, promote, prosecute, prosody,
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quiet, rational, reject, script, scrutiny, secular, solar, solitary, spacious, subdivide, submit,
subordinate, subscribe, substitute, summary, suppress, temporal, testify, testimony. All the
words in the above list are accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary as direct borrowings
from Latin.
Other languages also contributed to the Middle English lexis, but to a lesser extent, such
as Persian words connected with chess: chess, rook, check.

Word-building
As we have already discussed, Old English, like other Indo-European languages,
enlarged its vocabulary chiefly by a liberal use of prefixes and suffixes and an easy power of
combining native elements into self interpreting compounds. In this way the existing resources
of the language were expanded at will and any new needs were met. In the Middle English
period, however, there is a visible decline in the use of these old methods of word formation.

Prefixes
This is first of all apparent in the matter of prefixes. Many of the Old English prefixes
gradually lost their vitality, their ability to enter into new combinations.
The Old English prefix for- (corresponding to German ver-) was often used to intensify
the meaning of a verb or to add the idea of something destructive or prejudicial. For a while
during the Middle English period it continued to be used occasionally in new formations. Thus
at about 1300 we find forhang (put to death by hanging), forcleave (cut to pieces), and forshake
(shake off). It was even combined with words borrowed from French: forcover, forbar, forgab
(deride). But while these occasional instances show that the prefix was not dead, it seems to
have had no real vitality. None of these new formations lived long, and the prefix is now
entirely obsolete. The only verbs in which it occurs in Modern English are forbear, forbid,
fordo, forget, forgive, forgo, forsake, forswear, and the participle forlorn. All of them had their
origin in Old English.
The prefix to-(German zer-) has disappeared even more completely. Although the 1611
Bible tells us that the woman who cast a millstone upon Abimelech’s head “all tobrake his
skull,” and expressions like tomelt and toburst lived on for a time, there is no trace of the prefix
in current use.
With- (meaning against) gave a few new words in Middle English such as withdraw,
withgo, withsake, and others. Withdraw and withhold survive, together with the Old English
withstand, but other equally useful words have been replaced by later borrowings from Latin:
withsay by renounce, withspeak by contradict, withset by resist, etc.
Some prefixes which are still productive today, like over- and under-, fell into
comparative disuse for a time after the Norman Conquest. Most compounds of over- that are
not of Old English origin have arisen in the modern period.
The prefix on- (now un-) which was used to reverse the action of a verb as in unbind,
undo, unfold, unwind, and which in Middle English gave us unfasten, unbuckle, uncover, and
unwrap, seems to owe such life as it still enjoys to association with the negative prefix un-. The
productive power which these formative elements once enjoyed has in many cases been
transferred to prefixes like counter-, dis-, re-, trans-, and others of Latin origin.
Thus at a time when French borrowings have reached their maximum, it is impossible to
doubt that the wealth of easily acquired new words had weakened English habits of word
formation.
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Suffixes
A similar decline is observable in the formative power of certain suffixes that were
widely used in Old English. The loss here is perhaps less distinctly felt because some important
endings have remained in full force. Such are the noun suffix -ness and the adjective endings
-ful, -less, -some, and -ish. But others equally important were either lost or greatly diminished
in vitality. Thus the abstract suffix -lock (OE lāc) survives only in wedlock, -red (OE ) only in
hatred and kindred. The ending -dom was used in Old English to form abstract nouns from
other nouns (kingdom, earldom, martyrdom) and from adjectives (freedom, wisdom). In Middle
English there are some new formations such as dukedom and thralldom, but most of the
formations from adjectives, like falsedom and richdom, did not prove permanent, and the suffix
is to all intents and purposes now dead. When used today it is for the most part employed in
half serious coinages, such as fandom, stardom.
The endings -hood and -ship have had a similar history. Manhood, womanhood,
likelihood are new formations in Middle English, showing that the suffix retained its power for
a while. Many of the Old English abstracts in -ship were lost. We have kept friendship but not
fiendship, and of those formed from adjectives in Old English the only one still in use is
worship (worthship). Most of the new formations in Middle English had a short life. English
has retained hardship but not boldship, busiship, cleanship, kindship, etc. In all these instances
the ending -ness was preferred. As in the case of prefixes, we can see here a gradual change in
English habits of word formation resulting from the available supply of French words with
which to fill the needs formerly met by the native resources of the language.

Self-explaining Compounds
One further habit that was somewhat weakened, although by no means broken, was that
of combining native words into self-interpreting compounds. The extent to which words like
bookhouse or boatswain entered into Old English has been pointed out previously. The practice
was not abandoned in Middle English, but in many cases where a new word could have been
easily formed on the native model, a ready-made French word was borrowed instead. Today
self-explaining compounds are still formed by a sure instinct (picture tube, driver’s-side air
bag, four-wheel disc brakes), but the method is much less universal than it once was because of
new habits introduced after the Norman Conquest.