Transcript Fifth Lecture

Fifth Lecture
1- ME Pronunciation.
2- ME Grammar.
3- The Rise of Standard English.
ME Pronunciation
Throughout the history of English, the consonants have
remained relatively stable when compared with the
notable vowel changes that have occurred.
A- Consonants:
1- The Old English sequences hl, hn, & hr were simplified
to l, n, & r ,respectively.
2- The OE voiced velar fricative g after L or R became W.
3- W ,between a consonant(particularly S or T) & a back
vowel, was lost(e.g. two, answer..etc).
4- The OE prefix ge became i.
5- The voiced fricatives [v, z, ð] achieved
phonemic status.
A- Many words were borrowed from Old
French beginning with[v] and later with[z](e.g.
visit, zeal …etc).
B-Initial [θ]in words usually unstressed was
voiced to[ð](e.g. this, the ..etc).
C-With the eventual loss of final-e , [v],[z], [ð]
came to occur also in final positions(e.g give,
lose ..etc).
B-Vowels:
1- In the Northern & East Midland areas, OE long
and short y were unrounded to long and short i.
3- OE long æ became ME long ε.
4- OE short æ fell together with short a and came to
be written like it in ME.
C-Diphthongs:
1- The OE long diphthongs underwent
smoothing(monophthongization).
2-Two new diphthongs ending in the off glide[i]- [ai]
&[ei] developed from OE sources.
3- Four new diphthongs ending in the off glide[u][au] ,[ɔu],[iu]&[εu] also developed from OE
sources.
4- Two diphthongs ,[ɔi]&[ui],were of French origin.
ME Grammar
A- The Loss of Grammatical Gender:
In OE, gender was distinguishable in most nouns ;
masculine plurals ended in an inflection different
from those of feminine, on the one hand, and those
of neuter, on the other. In ME, however, most of the
nouns acquired the same plural ending(-es).
B-The reduction of Inflections:
1- Adjectives:
A- The loss of all inflections for gener,case, and number.
B- The loss of distinctions between strong and weak, except
for monosyllabic adjectives which end in a consonant .
Nevertheless, the five singular and plural forms of the OE
weak adjective declension were reduced to a single form
ending in-e, with gender as well as number distinctions
completely eliminated.
B- Nouns:
1-All nouns were reduced to two forms: one without –s, used
as a general non-genitive singular form; and one with-s,
used as a genitive singular and general plural form.
2- English also lost all traces of any case distinctions except
for the genitive. It had come to depend on particles
(particularly prepositions & conjunctions) and word order to express
grammatical relations.
C- Personal pronouns:
The dual number of the personal pronouns disappeared.
D- Verbs:
The strong verb patterns continued in ME, and they retained
inflections to indicate tense, mood, number, & person.
Nevertheless, there were more weak verbs than strong
ones. Hence, the weak -ed ending for the preterit and past
participle came to be used with many originally strong
verbs.
The Rise of a London Standard
1- Out of the variety of ME local dialects there
emerged a written language that won general
recognition and has become the recognized
standard in both speech and writing.
2- 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
London).
3- The causes that contributed to the attainment
of this result:
A- 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
& inflections, it shared some of the
characteristics of both neighbors.
B- Its district was the largest & most populous of
the major dialect areas.
C-The presence of the universities, Oxford &
Cambridge, in this region.
Next Week
Mid-term Exam:
All the lectures discussed so far are included.
Good Luck