Middle

English
 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT

Significant changes became visible in the English language. The

main changes from the Old English to the Middle English are:
• Loss of inflections
• The develop of more fixed word order
 SOUND SYSTEM CHANGES
The consonants:
• Certain voiced consonants became voiceless and others
voiceless consonants became voices. Consonants could
occasionally also be lost completely.

• /w/ was lost before a following /o/ if it came after another

consonant: OE swa > ME so (so); OE hwa > ME ho (Who)

• Middle English lost consonant clusters beginning with /h/:

hring > ring, hrof > rof (roof).
 CONSONANT CHANGES

First example: lost of h preceding a resonant (l, n and r)

Second example: lost of a final consonant

Third example: simplification of the cluster /sw/

Fourth example: voicing of voiceless consonants in some dialects

Old English Middle English Meaning

Hlaford Lord Lord
Drivan Drive Drive
Swuster Suster Sister
Self Zelf Self
 VOWEL IN STRESSED SYLLABLES

Short vowels
• æ > a (cærft > craft)
• y > I (brycg > brigge, bridge)
• a, e, i, o, u remained unchanged

Long vowels
• Long a > o (ban > bon, bone)
• Long æ in Old English represented two sounds:
• Long e remained the same in Middle English
• æ was a sound resulting from the i-umlaut of a (OE clǽne >
clene > dǽlen > delen, deal)
(These sounds are now identical to iy)
 VOWELS IN UNSTRESSED
SYLLABLES

The general obscuring of unstressed syllables in Middle English

is one of the fundamental reasons of the loss of inflection.
Before the end of Old english a, e, o and u tended to become an
e in spelling, presumably pronounced as a (schwa).
Unstressed I, on the other hand, remained unchanged.
 LENGTHENING AND
S H O RT E N I N G

Lengthening occurred before the consonant cluster ld, mb, nd in

late Old English: OE tsI¦ld > ME tsIld (Child) .

Lengthening of a, e and o took place in open syllables of

disyllabic words. OE namЄ > ME na¦ma, name.
 LENGTHENING AND
S H O RT E N I N G

Shortening occurred in early Middle English in two

environments:
• Before double consonants and consonant clusters, except the
clusters above that caused lengthening: OE cepte [ke¦pt Є] (he
kept) > ME cept [k Є pt]

• In the first syllable of a trisyllabic word: OE hæligæg [hæ¦lijdæj]

(holiday) > ME halidai [halIdЄi]
 LOSS OF INFLECTIONS

Nouns: the distinctive endings -a, -u, -e, -um, etc. of Old English
were reduced to <e>/[∂]. In the noun there is one inflection relic
left in the singular, the genitive –es, while one form serves for all
in the plural.
 LOSS OF INFLECTIONS

Adjectives: lost all distinction between the strong and weak

declensions, except in monosyllabic adjectives ending in a
consonant, e.g., in yong vs. yonge; strong adjectives of this type
have yong in the singular and younge in the plural.
 LOSS OF INFLECTIONS
Pronouns: the very complex system found in OE was radically
reduced most visibly by the complete loss of the morphological
expression of the dual number; nevertheless, substantial
differentiation among case forms is retained in this category, in
stark contrast to what is seen in the noun and adjectives:
 LOSS OF INFLECTIONS

Prepositions: new prepositions were formed by:

• Conversion, e.g. along < the OE adjective , and among < OE
gemong (‘in a crowd’)
• Compounding, e.g. out + of > out of, in + to > into;
• Borrowing, e.g. till < ONorse, except < Latin, according to,
around, during < French
 OTHER CHANGES UN THE
MORPHOLOGICAL SYSTEM

Conjunctions: Coordinators typical of ME were ac (but) and or (or)

from OE.
Also inherited from OE were the common conjunctions gif (if), peah
(though) and ær (before).

 Adverbs: this were formed by adding a final –e to adjectives in

OE. With the gradual loss of the final –e in ME this died out, and
the distinction between adjective and adverb was lost, leading to
the addition of the suffix –lix instead.