1

Lecture 6. Changes in the Phonetic System in Middle English. Evolution of the

Grammatical System

1. Changes of vowels in the unstressed position

2. Changes of vowels under stress: qualitative and quantitative changes
3. Evolution of consonants
4. Changes in alphabet and spelling in Middle English
5. Evolution of the grammatical system in Middle English

1. Changes of vowels in the unstressed position

All vowels in the unstressed position underwent a qualitative change and became
the vowel of the type of [ə] or [e] unstressed. This phonetic change had a far-reaching
effect upon the system of the grammatical endings of the English words which now due to
the process of reduction became homonymous. For example:
— forms of strong verbs
Old English writan — wrāt — writon — writen
with the suffixes -an, -on, -en different only in the vowel component became
homonymous in Middle English:
writen — wrōt — writen — writen
— forms of nouns
Old English Nominative Plural a-stem fiscas
Genitive Singular fisces
Middle English for both the forms is fisces;
or
Old English Dative Singular fisce
Genitive Plural fisca
Middle English form in both cases is fisce.

2. Vowels under stress

2.1. Qualitative changes
— Changes of monophthongs
Three long monophthongs underwent changes in Middle English:
Table 1. Long Monophthongs
Periods Old English Middle English (New
English)
a>ō bat bōt boat
ǽ>ē slæpan slēpen sleep
y>ī fyr fir fire

The rest of the long monophthongs preserved their original quality, for example:
Old English Middle English
[ē] tēþ teeth (though the spelling devices
[ō] tōþ tooth may be different)
[ū] ūt out
[ī] tīma time
 2
Out of the seven principal Old English short monophthongs a, e, o, i, u, æ, у — two
changed their quality in Middle English, thus [æ] became [a] and [y] became [i], the rest of
the monophthongs remained unchanged, for example:
Old English Middle English Old English Middle English
þæt that but tellan tellen
first first hors hors
singan singen
putan putten

— Changes of diphthongs
All Old English diphthongs were contracted (became monophthongs) in Early
ME.
Table 2. Diphthongs

Sounds Old English Middle English New English

ēo>e: dēoþ deep [de:p] deep
ēa>ε: ēast eest [ε:st] east
eo>e heorte herte [hertə] heart
ea>a earm arm [arm] arm
ie>i/e nieht night [nix’t] night
hierde herd [herd] shepherd

Instead of the former diphthongs that had undergone contraction new diphthongs
developed from some sequences of vowels and consonants. The new diphthongs sprang
into being due to:
1) the vocalization of the consonant [j] after the front vowels [e] or [æ] or
2) the vocalization of the consonant [γ] or the semi-vowel [w] after the back vowels
[o] and [a].
In early ME the sounds [j] and [γ] between and after vowels changed into [i] and [u]
and formed diphthongs together with the preceding vowels. For instance:
Old English Middle English New English
weЗ wey [wei] way
ЗrēЗ grey [grei] grey
mæЗ may [mai] may
laЗu lawe [laue] law
boЗa bowe [bouə] bow
cnāwan knowen [knouən] know

Thus in Middle English there appeared four new diphthongs: [ai], [ei], [au], [ou].

2.2. Quantitative changes

Besides qualitative changes mentioned above vowels under stress underwent certain
changes in quantity.
— Lengthening of vowels
 3
The first lengthening of vowels took place as early as late Old English (IX century). All
vowels which occurred before the combinations of consonants such as mb, nd, ld became
long.
Old English Middle English (New English)
[i] > [i:] climban climben climb
findan finden find
cild cild child
[u] > [u:] hund hound hound

The second lengthening of vowels took place in Middle English (XII—XIII century). The
vowels [a], [o] and [e] were affected by the process. This change can be observed when
the given vowels are found in an open syllable.

Old English Middle English (New English)

a>a: talu tale [ta:lə] tale
e>e: stelan stelen [stε:lən] speak
o>o: hopian hopen [ho:pən] hope

— Shortening of vowels
All long vowels were shortened in Middle English if they are found before two
consonants (XI century). The exception here are the clusters mb, ld, nd.
Old English Middle English (New English)
cēpte cepte keep
wīsdom wisdom wisdom
Through phonetic processes the lengthening and the shortening of vowels mentioned
above left traces in grammar and wordstock.
Due to it vowel interchange differentiated between:
— forms of the same word, e.g. [e:] — [e] kepen – kept;
— words formed from the same root, e.g. [i:] — [i] wis – wisdom

3. Evolution of Consonants
English consonants were on the whole far more stable than vowels. A large number
of consonants have probably remained unchanged through all historical periods. Thus we
can assume that the sonorants [m, n, l], plosives [p, b, t, d] and also [k, g] in most
positions have not been subjected to any noticeable changes.
The most important change in the consonant system that can be observed if we
compare the Old English and the Middle English consonant system will be the
development of the fricative consonant [  ] and the affricates [t  ] and [d3] from
Old English palatal consonants or consonant combinations. In Early ME they began to be
indicated by special letters and digraphs, which came into use mainly under the influence
of the French scribal tradition – ch, tch, g, dg, sh, ssh, sch. Thus:
Old English Middle English New English

[k'] > [t  ] cild child [t  i:ld] child

cin chin [t  in] chin
 4
[sk'] > [  ] scēap sheep [  ε:p] sheep
scip ship [  ip] ship
[g'] > [d3] brycЗe bridge [bridЗə] bridge
Thus we can notice that variants of some Old English consonant phonemes
developed differenly. For example: the phoneme denoted in Old English by the letter с had
two variants: [k] — hard and [k'] — palatal, the former remaining unchanged, the latter
giving us a new phoneme, the phoneme [t  ].
In OE the letter “З” (yoke) denoted sounds: [g], [j] and [γ]. In ME these sounds had
the following development:
[g] remained unchanged, e.g. Зōd (OE) – good (ME);
[j], [γ] were vocalized , e.g. dæЗ (OE) – dai (ME)
draЗan – drauen
Special notice should be taken of the development of such consonant phonemes that
had voiced and voiceless variants in Old English, such as:
[f]— [v] in spelling f
[s] — [z] in spelling s
[θ] —[ð] in spelling þ, ð
They became different phonemes in Middle English.
As a result of these changes the consonant system in Late ME was in some respects
different from the OE system.

4. Changes in alphabet and spelling in Middle English

As we remember, the Old English spelling system was mainly phonetic. However,
the 13th and 14th centuries witnessed many changes in the English language, including its
alphabet and spelling. As a result of these modifications the written form of the word
became much closer to what we have nowadays.
In Middle English the former Anglo-Saxon spelling tradition was replaced by that of
the Norman scribes reflecting the influence of French and often mixing purely phonetic
spelling inherited from Old English with French spelling habits and traditions.
Some letters came into disuse, replaced by new means of expressing the sounds
formerly denoted by them — thus the letters þ ("thorn") and p=w ("wynn"), З (“yoke”)
being of runic origin, unknown to the Norman scribes, disappeared altogether. New letters
were added — among them j , w, v and z. Many digraphs — combinations of letters to
denote one sound, both vowel and consonant — appeared, mostly following the pattern of
the French language.
1. The following letters disappeared:
ð, þ [θ, ð] replaced by th: þat — that
-3 [g, j] replaced by g: 3od — god or y: 3еаг — year
æ [æ] replaced by e: lætan — leten (let)

2. The following letters were introduced:

g for [g] in god and [d3] in singe
j for [d3] in words of French origin: joy, judge
k for [k] instead оf с before front vowels and n: drincan — drinken, cnawan — knowen
v for [v] instead of f as a separate phoneme: lufu — love [luvə]
 5
q fог [k] (followed by u) in quay or [kw] in cwen—queen to replace OE cw
z for [z] as a separate phoneme: zel

3. The following digraphs appeared:

a) consonant digraphs:
ch for the sound [t  ] cild — child
dg [d3] brус3 — bridge
gh [χ] ri3t—right
th [θ, ð] þencan — thinken, moðor — mother
sh [J] scip — ship
ph [f] in words borrowed from Latin: phonetics
ch [k] in words borrowed from Latin: chemistry

b) vowel digraphs — to show the length of the vowel:

еа [е:] mete — meat
ее [е:] fet — feet
оа [о:] bat — boat
оо [о:] fot — foot
ie [e:] feld — field
ou/ow [u:] hus — hous, tun — town

Some changes were made for ease of reading and for a better visual image of the
word:
1. in the final position for better visual separation of words
k was used instead of с boc — book
y instead of i by, my
w instead of u now
Besides, у and w were considered more ornamental than i and u at the end of the
word, allowing to finish it with an elegant curve.

2. to avoid confusion of resembling letters

о was used instead of u when u stood close to letters n, m, v, for they were all made up of
down strokes and were hard to distinguish in a hand-written text, though it was
pronounced as [u], e.g. sunu (OE) — sone (ME), munuc (OE) — monk [muŋk] (ME)

5. Evolution of the Grammatical System in Middle English

General survey of grammar changes in Middle English
The grammar system of the language in the Middle English period underwent
radical changes. In Middle English the paradigms of all parts of speech were to great
extent simplified, and many grammatical notions formerly expressed synthetically either
disappeared from the grammar system of the language or came to be expressed by
analytical means.
There developed the use of analytical form consisting of an auxiliary word and a
notional word, and also fixed, direct word order, special use of prepositions, etc. —
analytical means. The changes in the nominal system were the most significant.
 6
Middle English noun

Simplification of noun morphology affected the grammatical categories of the noun

in different ways and to a varying degree.
There are only two grammatical categories in the declension of nouns against three
in Old English: number and case, the category of gender was lost at the beginning of the
Middle English period. The OE Gender, being a classifying feature, disappeared together
with other distinctive features of the noun declensions. Semantically gender was
associated with the differentiation of sex and therefore the formal grouping into genders
was smoothly and naturally replaced by a semantic division into inanimate and animate
nouns, with a further subdivision of the latter into males and females.

Number
Number proved to be the most stable of the nominal categories. The noun preserved
the formal distinction of two numbers: Singular and Plural.
In Middle English the number of plural endings in nouns was much smaller. If we
have a look at the OE nominal paradigms, we’ll see that the plural endings originally were:
-as (of the a-stems masculine, r-stems masculine), -o (a-stems neuter, some r-stems), -u
(neuter a-stems, i-stems, s-stems, some r-stems), -a (o-stems, u-stems), -e (masculine i-
stems, some root stems), -an (n-stems).
In early Middle English due to the reduction of the unstressed vowels only two
methods of indicating the plural remained fairly distinctive:
1) the -es from the strong masculine declension and
2) the -en (as in oxen) from the weak.
Several nouns (former belonging to root stems) however preserved their OE plural
with the mutated vowel, e.g.
Old English Middle English
Зōs – Зēs goos – geese
The nouns naming some domestic animals (former a-stems neuter gender with long
root vowel) such as sheep, swyn, hors preserved their old uninflected plurals.

Case
The grammatical category of Case was preserved but underwent profound changes.
The number of cases in Middle English was reduced from OE four to two. There are only
two cases in Middle English: Common and Genetive, the Old English Nominative,
Accusative and Dative cases merged into one case the Common case at the beginning of
Middle English.
Old English Middle English
Nominative stān
Accusative stān the Common case stōn
Dative stāne
Genitive stānes → the Genitive case stōnes

In the 14th c. the ending -es of the Gen. singular had become almost universal, there
being only several exceptions – nouns which were preferably used in the uninflected form
(some proper names, names of relationship). In the plural the Gen. case had no special
 7
marker – it was not distinguished from the Comm. case plural or from the Gen. singular.
Several nouns with a weak plural form in -en or with a vowel interchange, such as oxen or
men, added the marker of the Gen. case -es to these forms: oxenes, mennes.

Morphological classification of noun

In Old English there were three principal types of declensions: a-stem, n-stem and
root-stem declension, and also minor declensions – i-stem, u-stem and others. These types
are preserved in Middle English, but the number of nouns belonging to the same
declension in Old English and Middle English varies. The n-stem declension though
preserved as a type has lost many of the nouns belonging to it while the original a-stem
declension grows in volume, acquiring new words from the original n-stem, root-stem
declensions, and also different groups of minor declensions and borrowed words.

Middle English Adjective

In the ME period the adjective underwent great simplifying changes. In OE the
adjective was declined to show the gender, case and number of the noun it modified; it had
a five-case paradigm and two types of declension: weak and strong. Only two grammatical
phenomena that were reflected in the adjectival paradigm in Old English are preserved in
Middle English: declension and the category of number.
The difference between the strong and the weak declension is shown by the zero
ending for the former and the ending -e for the latter, but only in the Singular. The forms
of the strong and the weak declension in the Plural have similar endings. For instance:

Singular Plural
Strong blind blinde
Weak blinde blinde

The difference between number forms is manifest only in the strong declension,
where there is no ending in the Singular but the ending -e in the Plural.
The degrees of comparison were preserved in ME. However, the means employed
to build up the forms of the degrees of comparison were altered considerably. It should be
noted, however, that out of the three principal means of forming degrees of comparison
that existed in Old English suffixation (by adding the suffixes -ra and –est/ost), vowel
interchange and suppletive forms, there remained as a productive means only one:
suffixation, the rest of the means could be seen only in isolated forms. The suffixes of the
degrees of comparison were reduced to -er, -est.
At the same time there was formed and developed a new means of the degrees of
comparison — analytical, for instance: comfortable — more comfortable, most
comfortable. It is noteworthy that in ME, when the phrases with ME more and most
became more and more common, they were used with all kinds of adjective, regardless of
the number of syllables and were even preferred with mono- and disyllabic words. Thus
Chaucer has more swete for “sweeter”. The two sets of forms, synthetic and analytical,
were used in free variation until the 17 th and 18th c., when the modern standard usage was
developed.

The Pronoun
 8
In Old English all pronouns were declined, and the pronominal paradigm was very
complicated. In Middle English the system was greatly simplified and what remained of
the pronominal declension is mainly represented by the declension of the personal pronoun
and on a small scale — demonstrative and interrogative (relative).

Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns seem to be the most conservative of all; their system suffered
only slight changes. Though there were some lexical replacements in the system of ME
personal pronouns:
1) OE hēo was replaced by ME she [  ε:];
2) the OE pronoun of the 3rd person pl hīe was replaced by the Scandinavian loan-
word they [θei]
Thus Middle English inherited its personal pronouns from Old English, with the
exception of the third person plural, a borrowing from Scandinavian.
Case
The four-case system that existed in Old English gave way to a two-case system in
late Middle English. The development may be illustrated by the following scheme of the
pronominal paradigm (see Scheme 9-1).
Scheme 9-1. Personal Pronouns
Old English Middle English New English
Nominative Ic → Nominative I → Nominative I
Accusative mec
Dative mē Objective me => Objective me
Genitive mīn
Possessive Pronouns => mine => mine

So the forms of the Dative and the Accusative cases merged into one case –
Objective. The OE Genetive case split from the other forms and turned into a new class of
pronouns – possessive. As a result, in Late ME the paradigm of personal pronouns
consisted of two cases: Nominative and Objective.

Gender
As a grammatical phenomenon gender disappeared already in Middle English, the
pronouns he and she referring only to animate notions and it — to inanimate.

Number
The three number system that existed in Early Old English (Singular, Dual, Plural)
was substituted by a two number system already in Late Old English.
The paradigm of personal pronouns in ME is:
Sg Pl
st
1 p. ich/ I we
nd
2 p. thou ye
3d p. M he they
F she
N hit/it
Demonstrative Pronouns
 9
In Early ME the OE demonstrative pronouns sē, sēo, þæt (“that”); þa (“those”) and
þæs, þæos, þis (“this”); þas (“these”) lost most of their inflected forms: out of seventeen
forms each preserved only two. Case and gender forms disappeared; the category of
number was preserved. The ME demonstrative pronouns are:
Sg Pl
this [θis] thes(e) [θε:s]/thise (NE this – these)
that [θat] thos(e) [θo:s]/tho (NE that – those)

Demonstrative pronouns gave rise to the definite article. In OE texts the pronouns
sē, sēo, þæt were frequently used before nouns to give the additional meaning of
definiteness. They functioned as noun-determiners with a weakened meaning. In ME there
arose an important formal difference between the demonstrative pronoun and the definite
article: as a demonstrative pronoun that preserved number distinctions whereas as a
definite article – usually in the weakened form the [θə] – it was uninflected.
The meaning and functions of the definite article became more specific when it
came to be opposed to the indefinite article, which had developed from the OE numeral
and indefinite pronoun ān.

Other classes of Pronouns

The other classes of ME pronouns were: interrogative, indefinite, reflexive and
relative.
The ME interrogative pronouns were subjected to the same simplifying changes as
all nominal parts of speech. The paradigm of the OE interrogative pronoun hwā was
reduced to two forms – who, the Nom. Case, and whom, the Obj. case. The Gen. case of
OE hwā, hwæt – hwæs developed into a separate interrogative pronoun – whose.
Most indefinite pronouns of the OE period simplified their morphological structure
and some pronouns fell out of use. For instance, man died out as an indefinite pronoun.
New types of compound indefinite pronouns came into use – with the component –thing,
-body, -one.
In ME we also find a new class of pronouns – the reflexive pronouns. Reflexive
pronouns are formed from the possessive pronoun my/thy or the objective case of the third
person personal pronoun him/hir/hem/them + self – himselfe, hirself, hemselven.
OE demonstrative and interrogative pronouns became the source of a new type of
pronouns – relative.

Middle English Verb

The morphology of the verb displayed two distinct tendencies of development: it
underwent considerable simplifying changes, which affected the synthetic forms and
became far more complicated owing to the growth of new, analytical forms and new
grammatical categories.
All types of verbs existing in Old English - strong, weak, preterite-present and
irregular were preserved in Middle English. In each type we find changes due to phonetic
developments of this period, but the proportional value of the weak ones is greater and
continues to grow, and a tendency is already traced - that is, some of the former strong
verbs are drifting in the direction of the weak ones. The drift was not a comprehensive
one; there was even a reverse process, some of the former weak ones became strong.
 10

Strong verbs
The changes in strong verbs are as follows:
1) Nearly a third of the strong verbs in Old English seem to have died out early in the
Middle English period.
2) Passing of some strong verbs into the group of weak verbs and (rarely) vice versa. Most
of the verbs that acquired weak forms in ME belong nowadays to “regular” verbs, for
example bow, burn, climb, flee, flow, help, mourn, row, step, walk, weep.
3) The reduction in the number of stems from four to three. The strong Verbs in Old
English had four principal forms, for example:
writan — wrāt — writon — writen (to write)
bindan — band — bundon — bunden (to shake)
In Middle English, however, they exhibited a marked tendency to have the same
vowel in both the forms of the past tense, thus gradually reducing the number of the
principal forms to three.
Old English bitan —bat —biton —biten
Middle English biten — bot — biten — biten
New English bite — bit — bitten

Weak verbs
The number of strong verbs was diminishing in Middle English mainly due to the
passing of some strong verbs into the weak conjugation. Weak verbs, however, were
becoming more and more numerous. The reasons for this were as follows:
1) almost all the verbs that were typical of the group in Old English, were preserved
in Middle English ;
2) many strong verbs became weak (about seventy verbs originally strong passed
into the weak conjugation);
3) the majority of borrowed verbs and new verbs derived from other parts of speech
were added to the group, e.g. to call, to want, to guess (Scandinavian borrowings); to
pierce, to punish, to finish (French borrowings); to contribute, to create, to distribute
(Latin borrowings).
Preterite-present verbs
Several preterite-present verbs died out. The surviving verbs lost some of their old
forms and grammatical distinctions but retained many specific peculiarities. They lost the
forms of the verbals which had sprung up in OE and the distinctions between the forms of
number and mood in the present tense. Though they preserved their modal meaning. The
main verbs of this group were: ME can from OE cann; ME may from OE mæЗ; ME shall
from OE sceal.

Grammatical categories of the English verb in ME

In Old English the verb had four categories: person, number, tense and mood.
In Middle English there gradually developed more grammatical categories — voice and
aspect.
These grammatical categories used a new grammatical means for the formation,
namely, analytical forms. These analytical forms developed from free word combinations
 11
of the Old English verbs habban, beon/wesan + an infinitive (or participle). The way of
the formation of those analytical forms was the following:
in the free word combination habban, beon/wesan + an infinitive (or participle) the
first element was gradually losing its lexical meaning, and the second — its grammatical
one, thus tending to become notionally and grammatically inseparable: idiomatic.

The category of voice appeared out of the free combination of weorþan (beon) +
past participle:
Old English hē wēarþ ofslæ3en (he was slain)
Middle English engendered is the flour (the flower is generated [born])

The category of aspect was formed in Middle English on the basis of the free
combination of ben (beon) + present participle:
Singinge hē was ... al the dai (he was singing all the day)

The grammatical categories of tense and mood which existed in Old English
acquired new categorial forms.
The Old English present and past tense forms were supplemented with a special
form for the future tense which appeared in Middle English out of the free combination of
the Old English modal verbs "sculan" and "willan" with the infinitive.
This free combination of words was split into two groups:
1) in the first, remaining free, the modal meaning is preserved:
You shall do it — necessity
I will do it — volition
2) in the second the independent meaning is lost and the fixed word combination is
perceived as the future tense form:
I shall go there.
You will go there.
The category of mood in Old English was represented by three mood forms, one
for each of the moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative).
The subjunctive in Old English did not show whether the events were probable or
contrary to fact, but it had two tense forms — past and present, which in the course of
history developed into two subjunctive moods:
- I/he be present — out of the Old English present tense form of the subjunctive
mood
- I/he were present — out of the Old English past tense form of the subjunctive
mood.
The difference between these two subjunctive moods now is in the shade of
probability, and not in the tense, the second one denoting events which are contrary to fact.