Transcript Fourth Lecture

Fourth Lecture
1-Inflections in OE.
2-A brief history of Middle English
3-Linguistic Influences of the
Conquest(Spelling in ME)
Inflections in OE
A- The Noun:
The inflection of the noun was much more
elaborate than it is today:
1-Old English nouns were inflected for
number(singular –plural),
2- and for four cases (nominative-accusativegenitive-dative) in the singular and the same
cases in the plural.
C- The Verb:
1- OE distinguished two simple tenses by inflection
(present and past).
2- OE recognized the indicative, subjunctive, and
imperative moods, and had the usual two
numbers(singular-plural) and three persons(1st2nd-3rd).
3- The verbs were divided into two major classes
(weak/regular-strong/irregular).
B- The adjective:
The complexity of OE adjectival inflections contrasts
with the complete absence of inflection from the
adjective in Modern English.
1- OE adjectives were inflected for five
cases(nominative-accusative-genitive-dativeinstrumental);
2- they were also inflected for number(singular-plural),
3- and gender(feminine-masculine-neutral);
4- and ,finally, they were inflected for
definiteness(weak-strong declensions).
D-The Personal Pronoun:
The personal pronouns in OE were almost as
complex as they are today (except for the dual forms & the
2nd person singular and plural forms) .
1- OE pronouns were inflected for number(singulardual-plural), and gender(only for the 3rd person
singular forms).
2- OE indicated cases(nominative, accusative/
dative, genitive).
3- OE also recognized three persons(1st-2nd-3rd)
A brief history of Middle Eng.(1100-1500)
1- The Norman invasion &conquest of 1066 was a catastrophic
event that brought new rulers and new cultural, social and
linguistic influences to the British Isles.
2- The Norman establishment used French & Latin leaving
English as the language of the illiterate & powerless
majority.
3- The influence of French (and Latin, often by way of French) upon the
lexicon continued throughout this period, the loss of some
inflections and the reduction of others accelerated, and
many changes took place within the phonological &
grammatical systems of the language.
4- By the end of that time, the aristocracy had adopted English
as their language and the use and importance of French
gradually faded.
ME Spelling
During the ME period, many changes occurred because of the
French influence such as those which happened to the
spelling conventions.
I) Consonants:
A- Earlier conventions:
Some of the innovations in ME spelling were actually
a return to earlier conventions.
1- The diagraph th , which was reintroduced during
this period, had been used in some of the earliest
English texts, but was replaced in later OE writing
by other symbols.
2-uu was also brought back to England by Norman
scribes in a ligatured form as w.
B- True innovations:
Other new spellings were true innovations during this
period such as:
1- The introduction of the letter V to indicate the prehistoric
OE development of [f] to[v],
2- The use of Ch to indicate the initial sound of child (which in
OE had been spelled simply with c),
3- The preference of wh for the phonetically more accurate
hw used in OE times,
4- The replacement of OE cw with ME qu, and
5- The replacement of OE cg with ME gg in medial and final
positions.
II) Vowels:
1- ME writing employed double letters to indicate vowel
length(e.g. double O came to be used for the long low- back rounded vowel).
2- Final unstressed e following a single consonant also indicated
vowel length(this corresponds to the “silent e” in modern English as in case, rule ..etc).
3- Double consonants, which indicated consonant length in
earlier periods, began to indicate that a preceding vowel was
short (e.g. dinner as contrasted with diner)
4- Short u was written o if m, n, u (v, w) were adjacent (e.g. son,
come ….etc)
5- long u, and sometimes short u, was written as ou.
Next week reading:
Chapter 6 (pp143-162) of The Origins and
development of the English Language