Lecture 9. Middle English Dialects. Word-Building.
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aniLecture 9. Middle English Dialects. Word-Building.
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aniLECTURE 9
MIDDLE ENGLISH
1. The Middle English Dialects
The Middle English dialects descended from those of Old English. The Old English
Northumbrian dialect was called the Northern dialect, the dialect of Mercia was called Midland
and the dialect of Wessex was now the Southern dialect. Kentish still retained its old name.
The Midland dialect, which extended over the central part of England, had two variants,
East Midland and West Midland. Of those the former spread over a much larger area, and was
more important both for its linguistics influence and for the character of the literature that was
written in it. It was the Midland dialect that became the national language of the country.
There were several reasons for the increasing importance of the Midland dialect,
especially the East Midland dialect:
1. First, it occupied a favourable geographical position, midway between north and
south, communicating with both regions, thus exerting its influence in both directions.
London, the capital, was just on its border, and the speech of the city was largely East Midland,
though with some traces of the southern dialect;
2. Secondly, it showed a compromise between the extremes of the north and south;
3. Thirdly, it was the dialect of the region most important economically, politically
and culturally. Thus, so-called “standard” English has as its basis the East Midland regional
dialect, with a slight mixture of forms from the other dialects, especially Southern and Kentish.
4. The Middle English Vocabulary: Word-Building
In the centuries following the Norman Conquest, there is a visible decline in the use of
the old ways of word formation. Many of the Old English prefixes gradually lost their vitality,
their ability to enter into new combination. The Old English prefix “for-” was often used to
intensify the meaning of a verb or to add the idea of something destructive. For a while during
the Middle English period it continued to be used occasionally in new formations. It was even
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combined with words borrowed from French. But while these occasional instances showed
that the prefix was not dead, it seemed to have had no real vitality. None of these new
formations were long lived and the prefix is now entirely obsolete.
The prefix “to-“ was used still less. The prefix ”with-“ (meaning “against”) produced a few
new words in Middle English, such as withgo, withdraw, withhold, etc. Some prefixes which
are still productive in Modern English , like “over-“ and “under-“ fell into comparative disuse
for a time after the Norman Conquest.
The prefix “on-“ (MnE “un-“) produced such verbs in Middle English as “unfasten,
uncover, unwrap”, etc.
A similar decline is observable in the use of certain suffixes which were widely used in
Old English. Of the old English suffixes the following were retained: -er, -ness( noun suffixes);
-ful, -less, -some and -ish (adjective suffixes). But the Old English verbal suffixes were no
longer used in forming new verbs.
One further tendency in world-building which was somewhat weakened was that of
combining native words into self-interpreting compounds; and in many cases where a new
word could have been easily formed on the native model, a French word was borrowed
instead.
Study Questions:
1. Discuss the Middle English dialects.
2. Discuss the advantages of the Midland dialect.
