MiddleEnglish.pptVIP

Middle English (1150-1500) Synchronic / Inner History Many changes would have occurred regardless of the Norman Conquest, but the Conquest accelerated these changes and created changes in new directions. Synthetic to Analytic Accelerated movement from a synthetic to an analytic language. By the end of ME, this process is virtually completed. What causes this? 1. General Reduction in Inflections. Endings of nouns, verbs, and adjectives which indicated distinctions in number, case and gender were altered to in pronunciation to such an extent that they lost their distinctive forms. When these endings begin to sound the same, they become useless and are dropped. Loss of Inflections 2. Distinct endings (-a, -u, -e, -au, -um) were all reduced to -e or schwa [ ? ]. Grammatical distinctions that these earlier inflectional endings signified are lost. In linguistics, this is called leveling. In this instance, we have the falling together of ME -a, -o, and -u with -e in unstressed syllables, Eventually this becomes [ ? ]. Inflectional Leveling OE lama ME lame (lame) OE Foxum (singular) ME foxen foxe fox [um en ? 0] Remnants of these lost inflections still exist. For example, compare these I learned it. A learned man. Middle English Nouns OE inflectional endings merge due to leveling and are finally reduced to two forms (dog / dogs / dogs / dogs) There are no case distinctions except in the genitive (identical with the plural). Particles (prepositions and conjunctions) and word order are used to express grammatical relations. In ME only three methods of indicating the plural remained distinctive: 2 forms from the strong (consonant) declensions: A. bird / birds (strongest in the North and Midlands). B. wolf / wolves; fox / foxes (in use everywhere). 1 form from the weak (vowel declensions): ox / oxen (strongest in the South). Middle English Pronouns The simplification of inflections on nouns and adjectives meant that personal pronouns retained their in