MIDDLE ENGLISH LEXICON

Gender Concord in OE

 In OE gender was expressed grammatically. Every noun had a particular grammatical

gender, including objects with no natural gender.

 There were 3 grammatical genders:

o Masculine, feminine and neuter

 In principle, in OE the pronouns used to refer back to nouns had to agree in gender
with the corresponding nouns: hē for masculine nouns, hēo for feminine nouns and hit
for neuter nouns.

 However, towards the end of the OE period, there is evidence that the system was
breaking down and we find hēo (fem.) used to refer back to neuter nouns with female
referents: wīf (woman).

Gender concord in OE

(a) Non-conflicting:

(b) Conflicting:

TEXT: life of st. Swithin

-wif: meaning “wife”

Loss of Grammatical Gender

 Reasons for the loss of grammatical gender:

o Loss of inflections in determiners

o Old Norse influence

 By Chaucer´s time there was no grammatical gender anymore.

Syntactic Innovations

• IMPERSONAL VERBS

• Found in OE, but much more common in ME.

• Us thynketh (it seems to us)

• Hem thoughte (it seemed to him)

• This construction was highly restricted in Early Modern English times and has
now largely disappeared.

• PHRASAL VERBS

• This characteristic English formation developed during the ME period: give up,
sit down, etc.
 • The verbs existed in OE, but their increase in use in ME derives from
interaction with Old Norse.

• Already in ME, phrasal verbs had a distinct colloquial air, and most of them
have a single-word counterpart which is more formal and was borrowed into
English in this same ME period.

Word Order

• Shift from synthetic to analytic structure:

• From a syntactic system that is highly dependent on inflectional endings with

less strictly fixed word order

• To a system with few endings and highly prescribed word order.

• The new word order SVO led to the gradual abandonment of SOV is a common word
order:

• If that a prynce useth hasardye (if a prince practises gambling)

• Marked word order may occur for rhyming purposes:

This tresor hath Fortune unto us yiven,

In myrthe and joliftee oure lyv to lyven.

• Split between auxiliary and lexical verb:

• He kan no difference fynde. (He can find no difference.)

• Older constructions are still found in Chaucer’s time, especially with the verb at the
end of the clause when the DO was a pronoun. This is possible because pronouns keep
case marking for longer:

• This olde man ful mekely hem grette.

• This old man greeted them very humbly.

• The OE word order with the subject after the verb when the first element of the clause
is an adverbial (verb-second position is maintained here):

• At many a noble armee hadde he be.

• He had been at many a noble military expedition.

 In subordinate clauses are sometimes also in main clauses, we can still find the verb in
final position.
Herkeneth to me, gode men—

Wives, maydnes, and alle men-

Of a tale that ich you wile telle

Wo so it wile here and therto dwelle

The tale is of Havelok, imaked

While he was litel, he yede ful naked

(From Havelok the Dane, 1295-1310)

Relative Clauses

The relative pronouns used in ME are

That mainly

Which /whiche

The which/ the whiche

Which that.

The PDE distinction between human and non-human is not made in ME yet:

This yongeste, which tat wente to the toun

The form whiche was usually selected to mark the plural of the antecedent

Which he was- whiche they weren

The forms who(m) and whos were interrogative pronouns and only occasionally appear as
relative pronouns.

The relative pronoun is sometimes omitted in OE.

Negation

Negative particle “ne” before the verb as in OE.

In ME it became increasingly common to add another negative particle after the verb:
naht/nought.

Towards the end of the ME period it became common to drop unstressed “ne” and leave only
the post-verbal particle naht/nought to mark negation.

If the wol nat tarie ( If he does not wish to wait)

As in OE, multiple negation was not stigmatized in ME.

He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde ( ne never yet spoke any coarse speech)

Interrogation

 As in OE, in ME interrogatives are expressed by subject-verb inversion

  Why Iyvestow so longe in so greet age?

 Why do you live so long in such great age?

MIDDLE ENGLISH LEXICON

Middle English Lexicon

• SOURCES OF NEW WORDS:

• Borrowings from other languages

• Derivation process in English: compounding & affixation.

• REASONS FOR THE HIGH NUMBER OF BORROWINGS IN MIDDLE ENGLISH

• Large-scale contact between English speakers and speakers of other

languages, mainly Norse and French.

• 12th c. Latin Renaissance, widespread use of Latin for documentary purposes

• ME had lost most inflections, so it became easier to adapt foreign words to fit
the English vocabulary.

Sources of Loanwords

 Norse

 Latin

 French

Borrowings from Norse

• In OE very few Norse borrowing are recorded in the written form, mostly words in
specialized registers: griÞ (truce), liÞsmenn (sailors), ūtlaga (outlaw).

• Most words in PDE borrowed from Norse during the ME period refer to very common
concepts: bag, bull, cast, dwell, egg, root, ugly, window, wing.

• 3rd p. plural personal pronoun: they. (grammar)

• Influence in the development of the 3 rd p. sing. personal pronoun ‘she’

Borrowings from Latin

 • Many learned words came into ME via translations from Latin: testament, omnipotent.

• Through Latin came also words from other exotic languages into ME:

• Saffron, cider (from Arabic)

• Sable (Slavic)

• Coach (Hungarian)

• Aureate diction, 15th c.: high or elevated poetic diction used for special ceremonial or
religious occasions. Main poet: John Lydgate (1379-1449).

• Obscure Latin terms used in Middle English to impress the audience.

• Towards the end of the ME period, with the beginning of the Renaissance, many more
words were borrowed from Latin.

Borrowings from French

• By far the majority of the borrowings in Middle English.

• Differences between:

• Early borrowings from French: 11th-13th c.

• Borrowings from the 14th c. on

• Up to the 13th c. most borrowings reflect the role of French as the language of the
ruling class (religious & feudal terms):

• Saint, baptism, sermon, chaplain, parson, pastor, vicar, abbey, justice, prison,
obedience, mastery, service, crown, throne, etc. (related to power and into
religion).

• These borrowings came from Norman French, and as a result the PDE form deviates
from their cognates in Present-Day standard French: war (Norman French werre –
standard French guerre); glory (Norman French (variety of French, not standard
French) glorie – standard French gloire).

• From the 14th c. onwards, many more borrowings entered the English language from
standard Central French.

• After the loss of Normandy in 1204, the upper classes moved then more towards
English and Anglo-French bilingualism declined. As they moved to English they brought
with them the French words they were accustomed to using (nouns, verbs and
adverbs):

• fields of finance, property & business, building, household equipment, law,

social organization, religion, war, arts, clothing, food, entertaining, hunting,
animals, science & medicine.

• All in all, over 10,000 words were borrowed from French in the ME period (Baugh &
Cable 2002). (More words than OE)
 • The once natural use of French by the upper classes had become artificial by the 13 th-
14th c. Books for learning French are found from the early 13 th c. on.

• The use of French loanwords when speaking English was a sign of high social class.
Whoever could, would try to learn French to climb the social ladder.

Lewede men cune Ffrensch non, Common men know no French,

Among an hundryd unneÞis on. Among a hundred scarcely one.

(The Romance of Richard the Lion-hearted, c. 1300).

Re-Emergence of English

• The ultimate end of English ambitions in France came with the Hundred Years War
(1337-1453).

• Growing national feeling: English was regarded as uncultivated, but this attitude
changed.

Riʒt is, Þat Inglische vnderstond, Right it is that English understand

Þat was born in Inglond; whoever was born in England.

Freynsche vse Þis gentilman, OVS The gentleman uses French,

Ac euerich Inglische Inglische can: SOV But every Englishman knows English.

Mani noble ich haue yseiʒe, Many a noble I have seen

Þat no Freynsche couÞe seye. SOV Who could not speak French.

(Of Arthour and of Merlin, before 1325)

French borrowings in Chaucer

• Chaucer makes an extensive use of French loanwords in his writings:

• Chiualrie, honour, curteisie, compaignye, tendre, etc.

• The OED quotes citations from Chaucer as the first use of many French loanwords in
the English language.
-Augmentacioun and increes (one from French, one from English)

-Consuetude (from French)

-Plees (Anglosaxon)

-Contravercyes (French)

-Worschipfull (anglosaxon)

-Honorable (French)

It is a mixture of English and French. Enormous compound of borrowing.

Borrowings from Celtic

• Very few in Middle English.

• A few were borrowed in the written form in ME, although they may have been in use
in their oral form in OE already:

• barn, clan, crag, glen.

• Possibly: bald, hog and gull.

• A few other lexemes were borrowed into French from Celtic and then transferred to
ME from French:

• Mutton, change, garter.

Borrowings from Low Dutch

• Increasing trade relationships with ports in the Low Countries, especially Antwerpen
(now in Belgium).

• Limited range of words derived from:

• Seafaring: halibut, skipper, pump, deck, dock

• Textiles: cambric, nap, duck

• Trading containers: bung, cork, tub

• Art: easel, landscape

• Non-specialized: clock, grime, tallow, wriggle