2. Classification of Germanic languages and their chief characteristics..

1. East-germanic 2. North-germanic 3. West-germanic

 Gothic  O. Norwegian  High germanic
 Vandalic  O. Danish  Anglo-Saxon
 Burgudean  O. Swedish  Franconic
 O. Icelandic  Old English
 Old Dutch

Gothic is extremely important as The Gothic Gostel is considered to be the first written
text connected with Germanic languages and other European languages.

The first group is dead, but vandalic had similar features with Spain and burgudean
with French.

The second group (north-germanic) – was not until the 10th cent, it was called “old
Norse” (древне северный). After the 10th cent. North split into O. Norwegian, O.
Danish, O. Swedish, O. Icelandic. Historically the most important is O. Icelandic.

The third group (west-germanic) consists of 5 members:

1. O.English → Mid. English → Mod. English.

2. O. Frisian → Frisian.

3. O. Saxon → Low G. dialects (Wothern)

4. O. Low Franconian → M. Dutch: Netherlandish, Africans.

5. O. High German → Middle High German → Mod. German (Yiddish).

Principal features:

Old German languages show differences in comparison with other European Lang on 3
main linguistic levels: grammatical, phonetic and lexical.

Grammatical level – the most important innovation in G. was the emergence of the new
types of verbs – “weak”, past tense with the dental suffix –d-: open – opened, work –
worked.

Phonetic peculiarities – 1) accent (word stress) in IE was free and musical; in

protogerm. Accent become fixed on the root syllable and dynamic, 2) Grimm’s law.
3. The periods of the history of the English language.   

I. Old English (500-1100 AD)

West Germanic invaders from Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles (whose name is
the source of the words England and English), Saxons, and Jutes, began populating the British
Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. They spoke a mutually intelligible language, similar to
modern Frisian—the language of northeastern region of the Netherlands – that is called Old
English. Four major dialects of Old English emerged, Northumbrian in the north of England,
Mercian in the Midlands, West Saxon in the south and west, and Kentish in the Southeast.
These invaders pushed the original, Celtic-speaking inhabitants out of what is now
England into Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland, leaving behind a few Celtic words. Also
influencing English at this time were the Vikings. Norse invasions, beginning around 850,
brought many North Germanic words into the language, particularly in the north of England, and
influenced grammar greatly.
Old English, whose best known surviving example is the poem Beowulf, lasted until
about 1100. This last date is rather arbitrary, but most scholars choose it because it is shortly
after the most important event in the development of the English language, the Norman
Conquest.

II. The Norman Conquest and Middle English (1100-1500)

William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England and the
Anglo-Saxons in 1066 AD at the battle of Hastings. The new overlords spoke a dialect of Old
French known as Anglo-Norman. The Normans were also of Germanic stock and Anglo-Norman
was a French dialect that had considerable Germanic influences in addition to the basic Latin
roots. As a result, many words commonly used by the aristocracy have Romanic roots and words
frequently used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners have Germanic roots (not always, of course).
Sometimes French words replaced Old English words, other times, French and Old English
components combined to form a new word, or even two different words with roughly the same
meaning survive into modern English.
In 1204 AD, King John lost the province of Normandy to the King of France. This began
a process where the Norman nobles of England became increasingly estranged from their French
cousins. England became the chief concern of the nobility, rather than their estates in France, and
consequently the nobility adopted a modified English as their native tongue. About 150 years
later, the Black Death (1349-50) killed about one third of the English population. The laboring
and merchant classes grew in economic and social importance, and along with them English
increased in importance compared to Anglo-Norman. This mixture of the two languages came to
be known as Middle English. The most famous example of Middle English is Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales.
By 1362, the linguistic division between the nobility and the commoners was largely
over, in that year, the Statute of Pleading was adopted, which made English the language of the
courts and it began to be used in Parliament.
 The Middle English period came to a close around 1500 AD with the rise of Modern
English.

III. Modern English (1500-nresent)

1. Early Modern English (1500-1800)

The next wave of innovation in English came with the Renaissance. The revival of
classical scholarship brought many classical Latin and Greek words into the Language.
Elizabethan English, has much more in common with our language today than it does
with the language of Chaucer. Many familiar words and phrases were coined or first recorded by
Shakespeare, some 2,000 words and countless catch-phrases are his.
Two other major factors influenced the language and served to separate Middle and
Modern English. The first was the Great Vowel Shift. This was a change in pronunciation that
began around 1400. Long vowel sounds began to be made higher in the mouth and the letter “e”
at the end of words became silent. In linguistic terms, the shift was rather sudden, the major
changes occurring within a century. The shift is still not over, however, vowel sounds are still
shortening although the change has become considerably more gradual.
The last major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of the
printing press. William Caxton brought the printing press to England in 1476 (the first printed
book in Britain – translation of the History of Troy). Books became cheaper and as a result,
literacy became more common. The printing press brought standardization to English. The
dialect of London, where most publishing houses were located, became the standard. Spelling
and grammar became fixed, and the first English dictionary was published in 1604.

2. Late-Modern English (1800-Present)

The principal distinction between early- and late-modern English is vocabulary. Pronunciation,
grammar, and spelling are largely the same, but Late-Modern English has many more words.
These words are the result of two historical factors. The first is the Industrial Revolution and the
rise of the technological society. This necessitated new words for things and ideas that had not
previously existed. The second was the British Empire. At its height, Britain ruled one quarter of
the earth’s surface, and English adopted many foreign words and made them its own.
 4. The linguistic situation in the OE period.

The Germanic tribes who settled in Britain in the 5th and 6th c. spoke closely related
tribal dialects belonging to the West Germanic subgroup. Their common origin and their
separation from other related tongues as well as their joint evolution in Britain transformed them
eventually into a single tongue, English. Yet, at the early stages of their development in Britain
the dialects remained disunited. On the one hand, the OE dialects acquired certain common
features which distinguished them from continental Germanic tongues; on the other hand, they
displayed growing regional divergence. The feudal system was setting in and the dialects were
entering a new phase; tribal dialectal division was superseded by geographical division, in other
words, tribal dialects were transformed into local or regional dialects.
The following four principal OE dialects are commonly distinguished: Kentish, a dialect
spoken in the area known now as Kent and Surrey and in the Isle of Wight. It had developed
from the tongue of the Jufes and Frisians.
West Saxon, the main dialect of the Saxon group, spoken in the rest of England south of
the Thames and the Bristol Channel, except Wales and Cornwall, where Celtic tongues were
preserved. Other Saxon dialects in England have not survived in written form and are not known
to modern scholars.
Mercian, a dialect derived from the speech of southern Angles and spoken chiefly in the
kingdom of Mercia, that is, in the central region, from the Thames to the Humber.
Northumbrian, another Anglian dialect, spoken from the Humber north to the river Forth
(hence the name — North-Humbrian).
The distinction between Mercian and Northumbrian as local OE dialects testifies to the
new foundations of the dialectal division: regional in place of tribal, since according to the tribal
division they represent one dialect, Anglian.
The boundaries between the dialects were uncertain and probably Movable, The dialects
passed into one another imperceptibly and dialectal forms were freely borrowed from one dialect
into another; however, information is scarce and mainly pertains to the later part of the OE
period. Throughout this period the dialects enjoyed relative equality; none of them was the
dominant form of speech, each being the main type used over a limited area.
England in the Old English period
As mentioned above, by the 8th c. the centre of English culture had shifted to
Northumbria, which must have brought the Northumbrian dialect to the fore; yet, most of the
writing at that time was done in Latin or, perhaps, many OE texts have perished. In the 9th c. the
political and cultural centre moved to Wessex. Culture and education made great progress there;
it is no wonder that the West Saxon dialect has been preserved in a greater number of texts than
all the other OE dialects put together. Towards the 11th c. the written form of the West Saxon
dialect developed into a bookish type of language, which, probably, served as the language of
writing for all English-speaking people.
6. General trends in the development of consonants. The First Consonant
Shift and its causes. 

The first thing to be said about the parameters of this variety of belles-lettres is that the
language of plays is entirely dialogue. The author’s speech is almost entirely excluded, except
for the playwright’s remarks and stage directions.
The degree to which the norms of ordinary colloquial language are converted into those
of the language of plays, that is, the degree to which the spoken language is made literary varies
at different periods in the development of drama and depends also on the idiosyncrasies of the
playwright himself.
Any presentation of a play is an aesthetic procedure and the language of plays is of the
type which is meant to be reproduced. Therefore even the language of a play approximates that
of a real dialogue, it will none the less be stylized.
The language of the characters is in no way the exact reproduction of the norms of
colloquial language, although the playwright seeks to reproduce actual conversation as far as the
norms of the written language will allow.
The language of plays is always stylized, that is, it strives to retain the modus of literary
English, unless the playwright has a particular aim which requires the use of non-literary forms
and expressions.
The general trends in the developing literary language were also reflected in the wide use
of biblical and mythological allusions, evocative of Renaissance traditions, as well as in the
abundant use of compound epithets, which can also be ascribed to the influence of the great
Greek and Latin epics.
The analysis of the language texture of plays has shown that the most characteristic
feature here is, to use the term of the theory of information, redundancy of information caused by
the necessity to amplify the utterance. This is done for the sake of the audience.
The language of plays is already purposeful. The sequence signals, which are not so
apparent in lively conversation, become conspicuous in the language of plays.
The First Consonant Shift
These peculiarities are mostly concerned with the system of consonants and are due to the
so-called first consonant shift. This shift was explained by the German philologist Jacob
[dзeikəb] Grimm in 1822. This exploration has the name Grimm’s Law.
Grimm’s Law shows the difference between the European system of plosives (взрывной)
and that of the Germanic Languages.
The Law explains regular correspondences Germanic consonants and consonants such
European languages as Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Russian and so on. These correspondences
may be grouped into 3 theories or 3 acts:
1. The change of plosive voiceless stops [p], [t], [k] in Indo-European languages to
voiceless fricatives [f], [θ], [h] in the Gl-s. For example:
 [p] > [f] R пена – OE fām – NE foam
[t] > [θ] Lat. tu – OE Әu – NE thou
[k] > [h] Lat. cordis – OE heorte – NE heart
2. I-E voiced stops [b], [d], [g] correspond to Germanic voiceless stops [p], [t], [k]
[b] > [p] R болото – OE pōl – NE pool
[d] > [t] R два – OE tva – NE two
[g] > [k] R иго – OE ʒeoc – NE yoke
3. I-E voiced aspirated stops [bh], [dh], [gh] correspond to the G. voiced stops without
aspiration [b], [d], [g]
[bh] > [b] Sct [bharat] – Goth bairan – OE beran
[dh] > [d] Sct [madhu] – OE medu
[gh] > [g] Sct [stighnoti] – Goth steigan – MnG steigen

7. Verner’s Law. The Second Consonant Shift. 

Danish scholar Carl Verner discovered another series of consonant changes in the late
19th century. By Verner’s Law the voiceless fricatives which had developed through stage
2 became voiced when they were in a voiced environment and when the stress in IE was
on the syllable which preceded this consonant.

This result in the following changes:

f>v

th > d

k>g

In addition the voiceless fricative /s/ became /z/ and then in North and West Germanic
developed further to /r/. This change is called Germanic Rhotacism. The effects of
this change by Verner’s Law are not very visible in Mod E, because of various
developments which have taken place subsequently. In Old E the variation between the
original consonants and the new one can be seen in the present and singular preterite
tense as compared with the preterite plural and past participle of strong verbs.

OE weorpan – preterite plural wurdon

forleosan – past participle forloren (Mod E adj forlorn)

8. Qualitative phonetic changes in Old English vowels. 

The phonetic changes in the vowels system were qualitative (качественные) and
quantitative (количественные).
The qualitative changes are
 fracture (breaking) (преломление)
 palatalization (палатализация)
 mutation/umlaut (умлаут)

FRACTURE
OE fracture is diphthongization of short vowels before certain consonant clusters
(кластеры, группы).
 æ >ea before ‘r +consonant’, ‘l+consonant’, ‘h+consonant’ and before final h:
ærm>earm ‘arm’, æld>eald ‘old’, æhta>eahta ‘eight’, sæh>seah ‘saw’.
 e>eo before the clusters ‘r, l, h+consonant’, and h final:
herte>heorte ‘heart’, melcan>meocan ‘milk’(v),
selh>seolh ‘seal’, feh>feoh ‘cattle’, ‘property’.
The essence of fracture is that the front vowels are partially assimilated to the following
hard consonant by forming a glide, which combines with the vowel to form a diphthong.
PALATALIZATION
Palatalization is diphthongization after palatal consonants [j,k] and the cluster [sk].
e>ie: ʒefan>ʒiefan ‘give’, ʒeldan>ʒieldan ‘pay’
æ>ea: ʒæf>ʒeaf ‘gave’, cæster>ceaster ‘camp’, scæl>sceal ‘shall’
æ>ea: ʒæfon>ʒeafon ‘gave’ (pl.)
a>ea: scacan>sceacan ‘shake’
o>eo: scort>sceort ‘short”
MUTATION (UMLAUT)
Mutation is the change of one vowel to another through the influence of a vowel in the
succeeding syllable (последующий слог).
It was of three types:
1) i-mutation (palatal mutation)
2) back mutation
 3) mutation before h
I-MUTATION
The most important type of mutation is that caused by an i (j) of the following syllable.
Let’s study the mechanism of i-mutation, taking the change fullian>fyllan ‘fill’ as an example.
The vowel u is articulated by raising the back of the tongue together with rounding the lips. The
sound i requires raising the front of the tongue. When the speaker begins to articulate the u, he at
the same time anticipates (предвидеть)the articulation needed for i and raises the front of the
tongue instead of its back. The lip-rounding is preserved. The result is the vowel y.
BACK MUTATION
Another type of mutation was caused by a back vowel (a, o, u) of the following syllable.
The essence of it is the following. The articulation of the back vowel is anticipated in the
preceding front vowel, which accordingly develops into a diphthong.
These are the examples of back-mutation:
i>io hira>hiora (heora)‘their’, sifon>siofon ‘seven’
e>eo herot>heorot ‘heart’
a>ea saru>searu ‘armour’
MUTATION BEFORE h
There’s no satisfactory explanation for the essence of this type of mutation. This is an
example of such a change.
naht>neaht, nieht, niht, nyht ‘night’
It may be due to a palatal quality of the h or due to an i which was probably a case ending
(падежное окончание) in the original type of declension (склонение) to which the word
belonged.

9. Quantitative phonetic changes in Old English vowels. 

Quantitative changes in OE vowels are represented by lengthening. Lengthening took

place in certain positions in the 9th century.
1. Vowels are lengthened before the clusters ld, nd, mb:
cild>cīld ‘child’
bindan>bīndan ‘bind’
climban>clīmban ‘climb’
But if the cluster was followed by another consonant, lengthening did not take place, as in
cildru ‘children’.
LENGTHENING
2. It took place if some consonants were lost.
 a) The vowels were lengthened when ʒ was lost before d,n.
sæʒde>sǣde ‘said’
mæʒden>mǣden ‘maiden’
b) The vowels were lengthened when m,n were lost before f, s, Þ, h.
bronhte>brōhte ‘brought’, finf>fīf ‘five’, uns>ūs ‘us’,
onÞer>ōÞer ‘other’.
3. Lengthening took place in case of contraction (стяжение). If, after a consonant had
dropped, two vowels met inside a word, they usually contracted into one long vowel.
ah+vowel>eah+vowel>ea slahan>sleahan>slēāh ‘slay’ (бить, избивать)
eh, ih+vowel>eoh+vowel>eo sehan>seohan>sēōn ‘see’
oh+vowel>o fohan>fōn ‘catch’

12. Grammatical categories and morphological classification of OE Nouns. 

a) Grammatical Categories.
The OE noun had 2 grammatical categories: number and case. In addition, nouns
distinguished 3 genders, but this distinction was not a grammatical category; it was merely a
classifying feature accounting, alongside other features, for the division of nouns into
morphological classes.
The category of number consisted of 2 members, singular and plural. The noun had 4
cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative.
b) Morphological Classification of the Nouns (system of declension).
The most remarkable feature of OE nouns was their elaborate system of declensions,
which was a sort of morphological classification.The total number of declensions, including both
the major and minor types, exceeded 25. All in all there were only 10 distinct endings (plus some
phonetic variants of these endings) and a few root-vowel interchanges used in the noun
paradigms.
In the first place, the morphological classification of OE nouns rested upon the most
ancient (IE) grouping of nouns according to the stem-suffixes. Stem-suffixes could consist of
vowels (vocalic stems), of consonants (consonantal stems), of sound sequences. Some groups of
nouns had no stem-forming suffix or had a "zero" suffix; they are usually termed "root-stems"
and are grouped together with consonantal stems.
OE nouns distinguished 3 genders: Masculine, Feminine and Neuter.Gender in OE was
not always associated with the meaning of nouns: e.g. wīf - "woman" (Neut.); wīfman -
"woman" (Masc.).
In OE gender was primarily a grammatical distinction; Masc., Fem. and Neut. nouns
could have different forms, even if they belonged to the same stem (type of declension).
 Other reasons accounting for the division into declensions were structural and phonetic:
monosyllabic nouns had certain peculiarities as compared to polysyllabic; monosyllabic with a
long-root syllable (that is, containing a long vowel + a consonant or a short vowel + 2
consonants – also called "long-stemmed"nouns) differed in some forms from nouns with a short
syllable (short-stemmed nouns).

13. Morphological classification of OE Nouns. Strong declension. 

Old English had four major types of vocalic nouns, inherited from Germanic. These
were the a-stems, the ō-stems, the i-stems and the u-stems.

a-stem (masculin and neuter)

+a-stems masculine

Singular Plural

stān stānas

stānes stāna

stāne stānum

stān stānas

The a-stems form the most important declension for the later history of the
language. Thus, as PDE stones indicates, the plural inflexion -as is the antecedent of
the modern standard plural marker. Even in Old English it was probably the most
important declension, containing about one-third of the nouns in the language.

o-stems (feminin)

Let us now turn to the ō-stems, which formed the principal vocalic declension of
feminine nouns, parallel to the a-stem masculines and neuters, and also accounted for
the vast majority of feminine nouns in the language.

Singular Plural
Nom. lufu lufa
Gen. lufe lufa
Dat. lufe lufum
Acc. Lufe lufa

i-stems (all genders)

The i-stem declension can only be recognised as original i-stems by the i-mutation of

the stem vowel, and there are no relic forms with the original inflexions.
N. mete mete

G. metes meta

D. mete metum

Acc. mete mete

u-stems (masculin and feminin)

There is one other vocalic declension, the u-stems. There were only a few such nouns
in Old English, all either masculine or feminine. These nouns were, however, often of
high frequency, e.g. sunu ' son feld 'field', nosu 'nose', hand 'hand'. A typical light
base paradigm is that of sunu, heavy bases apocopated final /u/:

Singular Plural

Nom. sunU suna

Gen. suna suna

Dat. suna sunum

Acc. sunU suna

14. Morphological classification of OE Nouns. Weak declension. 

Weak declension = n-stems

+The n-stems was an important consonant declension in Old English. This declension

gave the later -en plural, fairly common in Early Middle English but now, in the standard
language, existing only in oxen ( < OE oxan) and the double plurals children.

15. Morphological classification of OE Nouns. Root declension. 

The most obvious and important characteristic of root declension nouns is that they
should have shown i-mutation in the dative singular and in the nominative and
accusative plural, where in proto-Old English there was an inflexional -i-. These
nouns were either masculine or feminine.

Singular Plural

Nom. fōt fēt

Gen. fōtes fōta

Dat. fēt fōtum

Acc. fōt fēt

The importance of this declension lies partly in the fact that to it belonged a number of
very common nouns, e.g. mann 'person', partly in that it is the source of irregular plurals
such as PDE foot ~ feet, man ~ men, goose ~ geese.

There were, as we have said, several minor consonantal declensions, some

containing important words;

 the r-declension, for instance, the kinship

terms fæder father', modor 'mother', broðor 'brother', dohtor 'daughter', sweosto
r ‘sister';
 the nd-declension: freond, frynd ' friend, friends' ind feond, fynd fiend, fiends'
were members of.

20. Morphological classification of OE Verbs. Strong verbs. 

The majority of OE verbs fell into two great divisions: the strong verbs and the weak
verbs. Besides these two main groups there were a few verbs which could be put
together as “minor” groups. The main difference between the strong and weak
verbs lay in the means of forming the principal parts, or “stems” of the verb.

The strong verbs formed their stems by means of ablaut and by adding certain
suffixes; in some verbs ablaut was accompanied by consonant interchanges. The
strong verbs had four stems, as they distinguished two stems in the Past Tense –
one for the 1st and 3rd p. sg Ind. Mood, the other – for the other Past tense forms,
Ind. and Subj. The weak verbs derived their Past tense stem and the stem of
Participle II from the Present tense stem with the help of the dental suffix -d- or -t-;
normally they did not interchange their root vowel, but in some verbs suffixation
was accompanied by a vowel interchange. Minor groups of verbs differed from the
weak and strong verbs. Some of them combined certain features of the strong and
weak verbs in a peculiar way (“preterite-present” verbs); others were suppletive or
altogether anomalous.

Strong Verbs

The strong verbs in OE are usually divided into seven classes. Classes from 1 to 6
use vowel gradation which goes back to the IE ablaut-series modified in different
phonetic conditions in accordance with PG and Early OE sound changes. Class 7
includes reduplicating verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of
repeating the root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of root-
vowel interchange.

The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of
class: -an for the Infinitive, no ending in the Past sg stem, -on in the form of Past pl,
-en for Participle II.
21. Morphological classification of OE Verbs. Weak verbs. 

The number of weak verbs in OE by far exceeded that of strong verbs. The verbs of
Class I usually were i-stems, originally contained the element [-i/-j] between the
root and the endings. The verbs of Class II were built with the help of the stem-
suffix -ō, or -ōj and are known as ō-stems. Class III was made up of a few survivals
of the PG third and fourth classes of weak verbs, mostly -ǽj-stems.

Minor groups of Verbs The most important group of these verbs were the so-
called “preterite-presents” or “past-present” verbs. Originally the Present tense
forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present
meaning but preserved many formal features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs
had new Past Tense forms built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also
acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles and Infinitives. In OE there were
twelve preterite-present verbs. Six of them have survived in Mod E: OE āз; cunnan;
cann; dear(r), sculan, sceal; maзan, mæз; mōt (NE owe, ought; can; dare; shall;
may; must). Most preterite-presents did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind
of attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive which followed the
preterite-present. In other words they were used like modal verbs, and eventually
developed into modern modal verbs.

24. General characteristics of Old English vocabulary. 

The surviving vocabulary of Old English (OE) is relatively small. The Thesaurus of Old
English (TOE), with which you will be working, contains almost 34,000 different word forms,
whereas a modern desk dictionary might contain 80,000. Some of these words have more than
one meaning, i.e. they are polysemous: TOE contains just over 50,000 meanings altogether. An
example of multiple meaning or polysemy is OE ecg, pronounced in the same way as its
Modern English (Mod. E.) descendant ‘edge’. In addition to meaning ‘edge’, it also means
‘blade’, the part of an object that has a sharp edge, and ‘sword’, an object distinguished by
having a sharp edge or blade. This is an example of metonymy, the identification of an object
by one of its attributes, as when the Prime Minister is referred to as ‘No. 10’. ‘Edge’ in Mod. E.
also has a metaphorical sense, where an abstract idea is conveyed by referring to something
concrete, as in ‘her voice had an edge to it’.
Much of the vocabulary of Mod. E. derives from OE. This applies particularly to
our core vocabulary: common words in everyday use for fundamental concepts. Examples
include the natural world (earth, sea, wind, fire, water; sun, moon, star ); people (man, woman,
child, father, mother, brother, daughter ); the body (hand, arm, elbow, finger, foot, nose,
mouth); and other basic concepts such as food, drink; heaven, hell; friend, neighbour; love,
good, evil; hot, cold; after, over, under. However, not all words which look alike necessarily
refer to the same thing – such misleading words are often called false friends. An example pair
is OE bēor / Mod. E. beer. Although both refer to alcoholic drinks, the nature of the drink is
quite different.
The examples above are all typical of OE words in being one or two syllables in length.
Where there are two syllables, the stress is on the first. Initial stress is a characteristic feature of
the Germanic languages as a group and remains the most common type of word structure in
Mod. E. We have also retained from OE many of the ways of making new words, but at the same
time English has borrowed numerous words from other languages, notably French and Latin.
Thousands of French words were brought into English after the Norman Conquest of 1066,
which ended the rule of the Anglo-Saxon kings and introduced considerable social change. New
words occur especially in fields where Norman influence was strongest, such as Law, Literature
and Fashion. These loan words from other languages often exhibit different stress patterns from
the basic Germanic vocabulary, as with anatomy and cagoule from
French, armada and potato from Spanish, kamikaze from Japanese, anathema from Greek
and flamingo from Portuguese.

27. The linguistic situation in the ME period. 

It hardly can be argued that the Norman Conquest was not only a great event in British political
history but also the greatest single event in the history of the English language. Its earliest effect was a
drastic change in the linguistic situation.
The Norman Conquerors of England had originally come from Scandinavia. About one hundred
and fifty years before they seized the valley of the Scine and settled in what was known as Normandy.
They were swiftly assimilated by the French and in the 11th century came to Britain as French speakers
and bearers of French culture. They spoke the Northern dialect of French, which differed in some points
from Central, Parisian French. Their tongue in Britain is often referred to as ‘Anglo-French’ or ‘Anglo-
Norman’, but may just as well be called French, since we are less concerned here with the distinction of
French dialects than with the continuous French influence upon English, both in the Norman period of
history and a long while after the Anglo-Norman language had ceased to exist.
In the early 13th century, as a result of lengthy and inefficient wars with France King John
Lackland lost the French provinces, including the dukedom of Normandy. Among other consequences the
loss of the lands in France cut off the Normans in Britain from France, which speeded up the decline of
the Anglo-French language.
The most immediate consequence of the Norman domination in Britain is to be seen in the wide
use of the French language in many spheres of life. For almost three hundred years French was the
official language of administration: it was the language of the king’s court, the law courts, the church, the
army and the castle. It was also everyday language of many nobles, of the higher clergy and of many
townspeople in the South. The intellectual life, literature and education were in the hands of French-
speaking people; French, alongside Latin, was the language of writing. Teaching was largely conducted in
French and boys at school were taught to translate their Latin into French instead of English [20; 28; 38].
As A. Baugh states, England never stopped being an English-speaking country. The bulk of the
population held fast to their own tongue: the lower classes in the towns, and especially in the country-
side, those who lived in the Midlands and up north, continued to speak English and looked upon French
as foreign and hostile. Since most of the people were illiterate, the English language was almost
exclusively used for spoken communication.
At first the two languages existed side by side without mingling. Then, slowly and quickly, they
began to permeate each other. The Norman barons and the French town-dwellers had to pick up English
words to make themselves understood while the English began to use French words in current speech. A
good knowledge of French would mark a person of higher standing giving him a certain social prestige
probably many people become bilingual and had a fair command of both languages [20].
Undoubtedly, these peculiar linguistic conditions could not remain static. The struggle between
French and English was bound to end in the complete victory of English, for English was the living
language of the entire people, while French was restricted to certain social spheres and to writing. Yet the
final victory was still a long way off. In the 13th century only a few steps were made in that direction.
The earliest sign of the official recognition of English by the Norman hinges was the famous
Proclamation issued by Henry III in 1258 to the councilors in Parliament. It was written in three
languages: French, Latin and English.
The three hundred years of the domination of French affected English more than any other
foreign influence before or after. The early French borrowings reflect accurately the spheres of Norman
influence upon English life; later borrowings can be attributed to the continued cultural, economic and
political contacts between the countries. The French influence added new features to the regional and
social differentiation of the language. New words, coming from French, could not be adopted
simultaneously by all the speakers of English; they were first used in some varieties of the language,
namely in the regional dialects of Southern England and in the speech if the upper classes, but were
unknown in the other varieties of the language

28. Phonetic changes in Middle English vowels and consonants. 

Vowels.

In ME a great change affected the entire system of vowel phonemes. OE had both short
and long vowel phonemes, which were absolutely independent and could occur in any phonetic
environment. In the 10th-12th c. quantity of vowels becomes dependent on their environment: in
some phonetic environment only short vowels can appear, while in other – only long due to a
number of changes:
shortening: Long vowels occurring before two consonants are shortened; though they
remain long before “lengthening” consonant groups “ld, nd, md” and before clusters belonging
to the following syllable. They are also shortened before one consonant in some three-syllable
words:

e.g.: cēpte – kepte (keep); wīsdōm – wisdom

wēnde – wēnde (think)

lāferce – laferce (lark); sūþerne – suþerne (southern)

1. lengthening: Short vowels were lengthened in open syllables and affected short vowels “a, e,
o”. The vowels “i, u” remained unaffected though sometimes were also lengthened in open
syllables, “i” became “ē”, “u” – “ō”:

e.g.: caru – cāre (care); werian – wēren (wear); hopian – hōpen (hope)

yfel – ifel – ēvel; dures – dōres (doors)

2. monophthongization of OE diphthongs: All OE diphthongs became monophthongs in ME:

· short “ea” became “a” passing through the stage of “æ: eald – ald; healf
– half;

· long “ēā” changed into long “ē” strēām – strēm;

3. rise of new diphthongs: New diphthongs arise in ME different from the OE ones and
originated from groups consisting of a vowel and either a palatal or velar fricative:

· rise of diphthongs in –i: æz ► ai, ay (dæz – dai, day); ez ►ei, ey (wez – wei, wey);
ēz ► ei, ey (zrēz – grei, grey);
 · rise of diphthongs in –w: az ►aw (drazan – drawen; sazu – sawe (saw)); āz ►ōw in
Northern dialects (āzen – ōwen (own));

4. leveling of unstressed vowels: All unstressed vowels were weakened and reduced to a

neutral vowel which was denoted by the letter “e”:

e.g.: bindan – binden, tellan - tellen

Consonants.

OE palatal “c”, which occurred initially before front vowels, medially before “i” and
finally after “i” developed into the affricate [t∫]:
e.g.: cild – child; ic – ich (I); swilc – swich (such)
In a few cases ME has variants with [k] and [t∫], [sk] and [∫]:
e.g.: picken (pick) – pitchen (throw); bank (hill) – bench ; skirt – shirt
The OE long consonants denoted by the spelling “cz” developed into voiced affricate
[dz]:
e.g.: brycz – bridge; seczan – seggen
In the Southern dialects initial “f” became voiced: for – vor.
In Kent initial “s” in words of OE origin was also voiced: synne – zenne (sin)
 

30. Nouns in Middle English. 

Old English complex classification of nouns was based on differences in declension, in endings
that were added to them in various forms; as the endings were levelled, the grounds for distinguishing the
very classes become insignificant. The category of gender was lost. The category of number was
preserved. If we have a look into the Old English nominal paradigms, we’ll see that the plural ending
originally were: -as ( of the a-stems masculine, r-stems masculine); 0 (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). Due to the reduction of the unstressed vowels all these came to:-es, -0, -e or -0, -en
So finally we have -es, -en, which becomes a competing ending. Ending -es was invariably added
to form the plural form of numerous borrowings(two felawes; the chambres and the stables; fresshe
floures )
Several nouns retain their Old English plural with the mutated vowel (such as man - menn, foot -
feet, gOOSe - geese etc.;). Some former -n-stems still retain their suffix as a marker of the plural form:
Thou seist, that oxen, asses, hors, and houndes...< you see that oxen, asses, horses and hounds...);
from hise even ran the water doun... (from his eyes the water ran down)
The nouns naming some domestic animals such as sheep, swyn, hors retained their old
uninflected plurals. The plural of child developed in a unique way - it retained its suffix of the former -s-
stems (it was -r- through rhotacism) and additionally got the -en suffix - children.
Case
The number of cases was reduced from Old English four to two, the Nominative and the Genitive.
The ending -es of the a-stems nouns, which were the most numerous group, becomes predominant; it
irradiates not only to the singular but also to the plural. In Middle English only some nouns have a
distinct paradigm of four forms: man – menn; mannes – mennes; nama – namen; names - (namene)
names
In other cases the context resolved the ambiguity:he hadde a fyr-reed cherubynnes face (he had
fire-red cherub’s face)
 at the kvnges court ( at the king’s court)
His lordes sheep (his lord’s sheep) a wvdwes sone (a widow’s son) waspes nest (wasps’ nest)
daves light (day’s light)
sette the foxes tavles alle on fire (and set the foxes’ tails all on fire) at his beddes heed (at the
head of his bed)

31. Adjectives and Pronouns in Middle English. 

Adjective The paradigm of the adjective in Middle English is simplified drastically. The
endings become scarce. The category of gender is lost, for the nouns no longer have it. The
adjective no longer agrees with the noun in case, the only remaining endings being - the plural
form having the ending -e and the remains of the weak declension, the weak form (the one
preceded by an article) -e : young kniht /the younge kniht; younge knihtes/the younge knihtes
smale fowles maken melodie (small birds sing /make melody) ( strong,plural); a voice he had as
smal as has a goot (he had as small voice like that of a goat) (strong, singular)
But some of the adjectives had the very ending -e as a result of levelling of the vowels at
the and, and so such adjectives as grene were already unchangeable; in the plural the strong and
the weak forms also coincided.
+The forms of the suffixes of the degrees of comparison were reduced ~er, -est :glad -
gladder – gladdest; greet - gretter – grettest
His voys was murier (his voice was merrier...)
Lucifer, brightest of aungels alle (Lucifer, the brightest of all angels)
Some adjectives retained a mutated vowel they had had in Old English: old - elder –
eldest; long - lenger – lengest; strong - stregner –strengest
The eldeste lady of hem alle spak (the lady, the oldest of them all, spoke).
Some preserve former suppletivity, and their degrees of comparison look like this: good -
bettre - best ;muchel - more - most, mest
She may have bettre fortune than yow semeth (She may have better fortune that it seems
to you)
Some adjectives, especially of foreign origin, are found in a form that came into wider
usage only later, that is they may be associated with the adverb moore/most
Moore delicaat, moore pompous of array, Moore proud was nevere emperour than he...
(There never was an emperor more delicate, more pompous in clothing and more proud...).
Pronouns
All pronouns in Middle English with the exception of the personal ones lose the categories of
gender and case, some lose their number.
We find the forms I or ich, with the growing frequency of the first variant, thou (just new spelling
of Old English ðū), he (no visible changes); the feminine pronoun is found in variants he/she. Hit is
reduced to it. We and ye in the plural did not change and neither did us and you. Scandinavian they/them
penetrate into the language; but not simultaneously. By the end of the 14th the pronoun they was well
established in the language, while the objective case of Old English pronoun hem persists.
The paradigm of personal pronouns now is :
Sg. N. ich/1 thou he she hit/it
D. me thee him hir him/hit/it
PI. N. we ye hi/they
D. us you hem/them
The tendency to use ye in addresing one person is already spreading.
A new class of pronouns appears - possesive pronouns:
1st person Singular min, myn /my plural: our
2nd person thin, thyn/thyyour
3rd person hir/her, his plural: hire/their
Only the context shows the real gender of the pronoun - when referring to living beings, it is
masculine and neuter when it points to a lifeless thing
Demonstrative pronouns retain the category of number only (that - tho, thos; this - thes/thise),
case and gender forms disappeared, and so the reduction in the number of forms of this class of pronouns
is really significant - from 17 to two: ‘’This Palamon, whan he tho wordes herde’’ (This Palamon, when
he heard those words...)
Interrogative pronouns change phonetically, the aspiration is weakened and in spelling the letters
h and w change place: who what, whos whos, whom what.
The instrumental case of hwy changed into the adverb why.
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 (later myself
ourselves, yourself and themselves replaced native hemselven)
+ǣʒðer, ǣtc, swilc, sum, ǣniʒ, nān changed their phonetic form and give the present- day either,
each, such, any, none. Definite pronoun the same borrowed from Scandinavian replaces sē ilca, though
occasionally we may find that ilke too, more often reduced to the form thilke. The article before the
pronoun varies with the demostrative pronouns this and that. A new part of speech appears - the article.
The pronoun was the real marker of the case of the noun. This, probably led to overuse of the
demonstrative pronouns in Old English, and to weakening of their deictic function. In Middle English this
weakened form of the demonstrative pronoun which signalled only the definiteness of the noun was
supplemented by the weakened form of the numeral ān (one) and now was used to render the meaning of
indefiniteness, a person or thing unknown or unmentioned. This part of speech contains only two words -
the from reduced ðata and an, a from the numeral ān.

32. Verbs in Middle English. 

Personal Endings

Important changes occurred in conjugation.

Since the ending -e of the 1st person Sg., of the Pl. Present Indicative and of the Infinitive was
lost, these forms now had no ending at all.
 Another change affected the 3rd person Sg. Present Indicative. The ending eth was replaced by -
a, which in ME had been a characteristic feature of the Northern dialect, in the 15th century the -s-form
gradually penetrated, through the medium of Midland dialects, into the literary language. In
Shakespeare’s works the -s-form is used alongside with -eth, apparently without any stylistic
differentiation.
In the 17th cent, the ending -eth was finally superseded by -a and was only preserved in
elevated style. But even in this sphere -th- forms are only used sparingly.
The 2nd person form in –st, connected with the personal pronoun thou, was gradually ousted
during the 17th century from the normal literary language. The difference between forms in -st (or in t)
and forms without ending when addressing one person is not quite definite. What seems certain, however,
is that forms in -(s)t can only be used when there is some degree of intimacy between the speaker and
the person addressed.
Thus, the category of number in the 2nd person of verbs is on the point of vanishing.
 
Strong Verbs

In formation of strong verbs forms an important change also took place in this period.
In OE and ME every strong verb was characterized by four basic forms: Infinitive; 1st and 3rd
person Sg., Past Indicative; Plural Past Indicative with 2nd person Sg. and Past Subjunctive; Participle II.
In NE these four forms were reduced to three: Infinitive; Past Tense; Participle II.
 In several verbs the Past Singular form superseded that of the Participle II: Class I – abide, shine,
strike, Class V – sit, Class VI – wake, stand, Class VII – hold.
In the past tense of the verb strikethe long [o:] developed into [U:>U>A] (struck), in the same
way as in the words brother, blood, etc.
The ME verb bidden, bedendeveloped in NE the forms bid, bade, bidden.
The starting point of the whole process appears to have been Class VI and Class VII verbs, whose
Past Sg. and Past Pl. vowels had coincided since the oldest times. In these verbs when the plural ending
was dropped, all difference between numbers in the Past Tense disappeared, e.g . shok, tok, knew, fell.
Their influence was corroborated by that of weak verbs which had also lost any differentiation
between numbers in the past tense.
 
Participle II

The -en ending of the Participle II requires special discussion. It proved strong enough in many
verbs to withstand the general tendency to drop unstressed endings. With some verbs which had been
dropping the ending in ME it was later restored and is now obligatory. Thus, in the verb fall, as in a
number of other verbs, the -en of the second participle was liable to be lost in ME. In NE the only
admissible form of the participle is fallen.
In a few verbs, a second participle is found both with the –en ending and without it. Thus the
verb bid has a second participle biddenor bid; the verb bite - the participle bittenor bit.
Weak Verbs

Classification of weak verbs into I and II classes is no longer applicable in NE. In ME it was still
possible to draw a distinction between the two classes according as the past tense had or had not an  -
e- before the -d of the past suffix; in NE, when the unstressed -e- disappeared in all cases, this
distinction can no longer be upheld. The ME Class I verb demen – demde – demed and the ME Class II
verb hopen – hopede – hopedhave quite similar forms in NE: deem – deemed – deemed; hope – hoped –
hoped.
The unstressed vowel has been preserved after -d and -t only: end – ended – ended, want –
wanted – wanted. This difference, due to purely phonetic causes, cannot be sufficient reason for
establishing a special grammatical class of verbs.

34. ME dialects. 
Kentish
Kentish was originally spoken over the whole southeastern part of England, including London
and Essex, but during the Middle English period its area was steadily diminished by the encroachment of
the East Midland dialect, especially after London became an East Midland-speaking city (see below); in
late Middle English the Kentish dialect was confined to Kent and Sussex. In the Early Modern period,
after the London dialect had begun to replace the dialects of neighboring areas, Kentish died out, leaving
no descendants. Kentish is interesting to linguists because on the one hand its sound system shows
distinctive innovations (already in the Old English period), but on the other its syntax and verb inflection
are extremely conservative; as late as 1340, Kentish syntax is still virtually identical with Old English
syntax.
Southern
The Southern dialect of Middle English was spoken in the area west of Sussex and south and
southwest of the Thames. It was the direct descendant of the West Saxon dialect of Old English, which
was the colloquial basis for the Anglo-Saxon court dialect of Old English. Southern Middle English is a
conservative dialect (though not as conservative as Kentish), which shows little influence from other
languages — most importantly, no Scandinavian influence (see below). Descendants of Southern Middle
English still survive in the working-class country dialects of the extreme southwest of England.
Northern
By contrast with these southernmost dialects, Northern Middle English evolved rapidly: the
inflectional systems of its nouns and verbs were already sharply reduced by 1300, and its syntax is also
innovative (and thus more like that of Modern English). These developments were probably the result of
Scandinavian influence. In the aftermath of the great Scandinavian invasions of the 860's and 870's, large
numbers of Scandinavian families settled in northern and northeastern England. When the descendants of
King Alfred the Great of Wessex reconquered those areas (in the first half of the 10th century), the
Scandinavian settlers, who spoke Old Norse, were obliged to learn Old English. But in some areas their
settlements had so completely displaced the preexisting English settlements that they cannot have had
sufficient contact with native speakers of Old English to learn the language well. They learned it badly,
carrying over into their English various features of Norse (such as the pronoun they and the noun law ),
and also producing a simplified syntax that was neither good English nor good Norse. Those
developments can be clearly seen in a few late Old English documents from the region, such as the
glosses on the Lindisfarne Gospels (ca. 950) and the Aldbrough sundial (late 11th century). None of this
would have mattered for the development of English as a whole if the speakers of this "Norsified English"
had been powerless peasants; but they were not. Most were freeholding farmers, and in many northern
districts they constituted the local power structure. Thus their bad English became the local prestige
norm, survived, and eventually began to spread (much later — see below).
East-Midland and West-Midland
The East-Midland and West-Midland dialects of Middle English are intermediate between the
Northern and Southern/Kentish extremes. In the West Midlands there is a gradation of dialect
peculiarities from Northern to Southern as one moves from Lancashire to Cheshire and then down the
Severn valley. This dialect has left modern descendants in the working- class country dialects of the area.
The East-Midland dialect is much more interesting. The northern parts of its dialect area were also an area
of heavy Scandinavian settlement, so that northern East-Midland Middle English shows the same kinds of
rapid development as its Northern neighbor. But the subdialect boundaries within East-Midland were far
from static: the more northerly variety spread steadily southward, extending the influence of
Scandinavianized English long after the Scandinavian population had been totally assimilated. In the 13th
century this part of England, especially Norfolk and Suffolk, began to outstrip the rest of the country in
prosperity and population because of the excellence of its agriculture, and — crucially — increasing
numbers of well-to-do speakers of East-Midland began to move to London, bringing their dialect with
them. By the second half of the 14th century the dialect of London and the area immediately to the
northeast, which had once been Kentish, was thoroughly East-Midland, and a rather Scandinavianized
East Midland at that. Since the London dialect steadily gained in prestige from that time on and began to
develop into a literary standard, the northern, Scandinavianized variety of East-Midland became the basis
of standard Modern English. For that reason, East-Midland is by far the most important dialect of Middle
English for the subsequent development of the language.

35. The great vowel shift. 

A vowel shift is a systematic sound change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of a language.
The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place
in England between 1350 and 1700. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–
1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term.
The main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English is in the value of
the long vowels, described as the Great Vowel Shift. Vowels of Middle English had "continental" values
much like those remaining in Spanish and liturgical Latin. However, during the Great Vowel Shift, the two
highest long vowels became diphthongs, and the other five underwent an increase in tongue height with
one of them coming to the front ([uː]).
---Middle English [aː] (ā) fronted to [æː] and then raised to [ɛː], [eː] and in many dialects diphthongized
in Modern English to [eɪ] (as in make; the [aː] in the Middle English words in question had arisen earlier
from lengthening of short a in open syllables and from French loan words, rather than from original Old
English ā, because the latter had in the meantime been raised to Middle English [ɔː].)
---Middle English [ɛː] raised to [eː] and then to modern English [iː] (as in beak).
---Middle English [eː] raised to Modern English [iː] (as in feet).
---Middle English [iː] diphthongized to [ɪi], which was most likely followed by [əɪ] and finally ---Modern
English [aɪ] (as in mice).
---Middle English [ɔː] raised to [oː], and in the 18th century this became Modern English [oʊ] or [əʊ] (as
in boat).
---Middle English [oː] raised to Modern English [uː] (as in boot).
---Middle English [uː] was diphthongized in most environments to [ʊu], and this was followed by [əʊ], and
then Modern English [aʊ] (as in mouse) in the 18th century. Beforelabial consonants, this shift did not
occur, and [uː] remains as in soup and room (its Middle English spelling was roum).
This means that the vowel in the English word same was in Middle English pronounced [aː] (similar to
modern psalm); the vowel in feet was [eː] (similar to modern fate); the vowel in wipe was [iː] (similar to
modern weep); the vowel in boot was [oː] (similar to modern boat); and the vowel in mouse   was [uː]
(similar to modern moose).
The effects of the shift were not entirely uniform, and differences in degree of vowel shifting can
sometimes be detected in regional dialects both in written and in spoken English. In Northern English, the
long back vowels remained unaffected, the long front vowels having undergone an earlier
shift. In Scotland, Scots differed in its input to the Great Vowel Shift, the long
vowels [iː], [eː] and [aː] shifted to [ei], [iː] and [eː] by the Middle Scots period, [oː] had shifted
to [øː] in Early Scots and [uː] remained unaffected.
The effect of the Great Vowel Shift may be seen very clearly in the English names of many of the letters
of the alphabet. A, B, C and D are pronounced /eɪ, biː, siː, diː/ in today's English, but in contemporary
French they are /a, be, se, de/. The French names (from which the English names are derived) preserve
the qualities of the English vowels from before the Great Vowel Shift.
36. Means of word-building in Middle English and Early New English. 

Word-building in Middle English develops along the same line as were found in Old
English. The number of affixes grows, for some of the French suffixes become productive.
The semi-suffixes in ME remained productive. (wifehood, greenhood, godhood)
The use of prefixes was a productive way of forming new words, and their number exceeds that
of prefixes in Modern English. The most frequent and important native prefixes are
(befool, misadventure, overcast, unable, outcast, outcome, withdraw)
It is in the middle English that hybrid formations appear – native prefixes and suffixes are
added to borrowed roots and vice versa. This testifies that the borrowed words are very soon
assimilated by the lexical system of the English language: unable, uncertain…
EARLY NEW ENGLISH
Early New English period is marked by the introduction of printing (by William Caxton in 1475).
The appearance of a considerable number of printed books contributed to the normalization of spelling
and grammar forms.
This period was also a time of sweeping changes at all levels, in the first place lexical and
phonetic. They include the growth of the vocabulary due to external and internal sources; extensive
phonetic changes which resulted in the growing gap between pronunciation and spelling; the loss of most
inflectional endings in the 15th century; the differentiation of the inventory of grammatical forms and
syntactic constructions.
In the 17th and 18 th centuries there appeared a great number of grammar books whose authors
tried to stabilize the use of the language. Thus Samuel Johnson, the author of the famous Dictionary
„dictionary of the English language” (1755). He gave precise definitions of words, supplied the dictionary
with pronunciation guide to the words given it, considering that…."
Many famous writers also greatly contributed to the formation of English, and among them, first
and foremost, the great Shakespeare.

45. The Anglo-Saxon Invasion

The Roman influence was largely confined to the towns. In the countryside where the most
people lived Celtic traditions and speech continued to be dominant. But, during the V century, a number
of tribes from the north-west of Europe invaded and settled in large numbers. Two of these tribes were
the Angles and the Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons soon had the south-east of England in their grasp. In the
west their advance was temporarily stopped by an army of Britons led by legendary King Arthur.
Nevertheless, by the end of the VI cent., all the Britons were either saxonized or pushed westwards,
where their culture and language survived in Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.
The Anglo-Saxons had little use for towns and cities. But they had a great effect on the
countryside, where they introduced new farming methods and founded the thousands of self-sufficient
villages which formed the basis of English society for the next thousand years.
 The Anglo-Saxons were paganwhen they came to Britain. Christianity spread throughout Britain
from 2 different directions in the VI and VII cent. It came directly from Rome when St. Augustine arrived
in 597 and settled in Canterbury. And it had already been introduced into Scotland and northern England
from Ireland, which had become Christian more than 150 years earlier.
In the VII century seven kingdoms emerged: Essex, Sussex, Wessex, Kent, Mercia,
Northumbria and East Anglia. The Anglo-Saxon kings were elected by the Witan.

46. The Scandinavian Invasion and its influence on the English language. 

In the 8th – 9th c. Britain was raided and attacked by the Danes/Scandinavians/Vikings. The
struggle of the English against the Scandinavians lasted over 300 years, in the course of which period
more than half of England was occupied by the invaders and reconquered again. At first the Danes came
in small bands, ravaged the district and escaped with the booty to their ships. About the middle of the
9th c. the raids increased in frequency and entered upon a new phase. The Scandinavians subdued
Northumbria and East Anglia, ravaged the eastern part of Mercia, and advanced on Wessex. The
Scandinavians came in large numbers to settle in the new areas. They founded many towns and villages in
northern England. In many regions there sprang up a mixed population made up of the English and the
Danes. Their linguistic amalgamation was easy since their tongues belonged to the same linguistic group.
The ultimate effect of the Scandinavian invasions on the English language became manifest at a later
date, in the 12th-13th c., when the Scandinavian element was incorporated in the central English dialects,
but thehistorical events that led to the linguistic influence date from the 9 th and 10th c. Only Alfred the
Great of Wessex kept them away. In 878 the Treaty of Wedmore was signed and England was divided
into Wessex (belonged to Alfred) and Danelaw (belonged to the Danes). The reconquest of Danish
territories was carried on successfully by Alfred’s successors but in the late 10 th c. the Danish raids were
renewed again. They reached a new climax in the early 11 th c. headed by Sweyn and Canute. The attacks
were followed by demands for regular payments of large sums of money. In 1017 Canute was
acknowledged as king and England became part of a great northern empire, comprising Denmark and
Norway. On Canute’s death his kingdom broke up and England regained political independence, by that
time it was a single state divided into six earldoms. The Scandinavian dialects belonged to the Germanic
group, the Danes soon linguistically merged into the local Old English dialects leaving some
Scandinavian elements.
By the end of the 8-th cent Britain was often invaded by Vikings (Danes from Denmark and
Northmen from Scandinavia). England was invaded by Danes, Scotland and Ireland by Northmen. At first
they came in small groups, than in large bands conquering territories one after another. Wessex kingdom
under Alfred the Great began to struggle. But still Scandinavian invasion had made some effect on
English:
1. words beginning on “sk” (sky, skirt, skin)
2. the system of personal pronouns (they, them, their)
3. the form ‘are’ of the verb to be/
4. the ending –s- for Present Simple, 3-rd person singular (in verbs) (he makes, she gives).
5. the system of personal names ending on –son-: Davidson, Richardson, Jefferson.
6. there are more then 1500 words of Scandinavian origin in ModE: sister, bad, fog, cake, get,
again etc.
Effect of the Scandinavian Invasions
 Though the Scandinavian invasions of England are dated in the OE, period, their effect on the
language is particularly apparent in ME.
While some of the Scandinavians came to England merely to plunder and return to their
homeland, others made their permanent home in North East England.
In the early years of the occupation the Danish settlements were little more than armed camps.
But gradually the conditions stabilized and the Danes began to bring their families. The new settlers and
the English intermarried and intermixed; they lived close together and did not differ either in social rank
or in the level of culture and customs; they intermingled the more easily as there was no linguistic barrier
between them.
Altogether more than 1,400 English villages and towns bear names of Scandinavian origin (with
the element thorp meaning "village", e.g. Woodthorp, Linthorp; toft 'a piece of land', e.g. Brimtoft, Lo-
tttfstoft and others). Probably, in many districts people became bilingual, with either Old Norse or
English prevailing.
Eventually the Scandinavians were absorbed into the local population both ethnically and
linguistically. They merged with the society around them, but the impact on the linguistic situation and on
the further development of the English language was quite profound.
The increased regional differences of English in the 11th and J2th c. must partly be attributed to
the Scandinavian influence. Due to the contacts and mixture with О Scand, the Northern dialects had
acquired lasting and sometimes indelible Scandinavian features. We find a large admixture of
Scandinavian words in Early ME records corning from the North East whereas contemporary texts from
other regions are practically devoid of Scandinavian borrowings.
In later ages the Scandinavian element passed into other regions. The incorporation of the
Scandinavian element in the London dialect and Standard English was brought about by the changing
linguistic situation in England: the mixture of the dialects and the growing linguistic unification.[1] Yet
neither in the South nor in Standard English -did the Scandinavian element ever assume such proportions
as in the North-Eastern ME dialects.

47. Scandinavian borrowings in the English Language. 

Scandinavian words were adopted by the English language after the Scandinavian invasion. The
dialects spoken by the invaders and the Anglo-Saxons were closely related to each other. They belonged
to the Germanic group of the Indo-European family and had many common features in the spheres of
grammar and vocabulary. The language of the invaders could be easily understood by the Anglo-Saxons
who made practice of using Scandinavian words. As a result towards the Early ME period a considerable
number of Scandinavian words established themselves as part of the English vocabulary. Scandinavian
borrowings in the English vocabulary are mainly restricted to the sphere of everyday communication.
They are such words as husband, window, fellow, root, bag, birth, sky, law, take, egg, skirt, happy, ill,
call, happen, die, hit.
Many of them are rather interesting from the view point of their etymology:
husband < OSc. hūs + bondi (the master of the house);
window < OSc. vind + auga (an eye for wind);
fellow < OSc. fē + lagi (the one who shares a fee).
Some of the Scandinavian borrowings may be recognized by phonetic criteria. Thus, the sound
cluster [sk] and the sounds [k], [g] before front vowels are suggestive of the Scandinavian origin of the
word. Such words cannot be native as OE [sk], [k] and [g] had been palatalized and turned into [∫], [t∫]
and [dZ] (see 041), cf., for example:

English origin Scandinavian origin

OE skirt > NE shirt skirt
OE cirice > NE church kirk (dialectal)
OE scætter > NE shatter scatter
By the time of the conquest both the Scandinavians and the Anglo-Saxons had reached
approximately the same level of cultural and social development. Therefore the Scandinavians could not
introduce considerable innovations into the life of the Anglo-Saxons. Accordingly most of the borrowed
words denoted things familiar to the Anglo-Saxons. In most cases a borrowing had its synonym among
the native words. The further development of the synonyms could take different directions.
1. One of the synonyms could replace the other. Thus, Sc. Þeir (they) ousted OE hīe; Sc. kala
(call) came to be used instead of OE clipian; Sc. till took the place of OE oþ.
2. Both synonyms could survive in the language. In case of such an outcome the synonyms
developed different shades of meaning.
 

Scandinavian English
give sell
skill craft
ill sick
sky heaven
It is interesting to note that some of the Scandinavian words were borrowed because they proved
to be more convenient than their English equivalents.
The OE pronoun hīe (they), for example, had a sound form similar to personal pronouns hē (he),
and hēo (she). In rapid speech it was difficult to distinguish between them. To avoid such homonymy the
language borrowed the Scandinavian pronoun Þeir.
The Scandinavian verb deyia (die) displaced OE steorfan (starve) because its sound form suited
the OE words dead (dead) and deoþ (death).

49. The Norman conquest and its influence on the English language. 

The Norman Conquest and its effect on English.

The last of the invaders to come to Britain were the Normans from France. In 14 October 1066
Duke William of Normandy defeated the English at the battle of Hastings and established his rule in the
country as King of England. He is known as William the Conqueror. They started a new period in
England, which is known as Norman period. The Normans settled in the country and the French language
became the official language of the ruling class. This explains the great number of French words in
English (80%) – boots, pearl, beef, biscuit, home, sir, council, tax.
Originally they were also Germanic tribes, but having won the territory of France, they practicaly
assimilated with the people of France and took its high culture and language.
1. French is the lang. of upper classes.
2. Many synonyms appeared: Eg: language (Fr) – tongue (Engl);
 lange, huge (Fr) – great (Engl)
3. French effected all aspects of life: = Government and administration: nation, people. =
Legislation: eg.: judge, court. = Military term: navy, war. = Literature and arts: music/ = Education: ink,
college. = Fashion: dress. = Trade, profession: tailor, grocer. = Religion: pray. = Cooking: roast, fry, boil.
75% of words have survived in NE.

50. French borrowings in the English Language. 

French borrowings make one of the largest layers of modern English word stock. At different
estimates their total varies from 40 to 55 per cent of the whole vocabulary. And а great part of these
words came to the English language in the 13  - 14  centuries. French borrowings of this period resulted
th th

from the Norman conquest which affirmed the French language as the language of the ruling class. In
accordance with this many French borrowings are words which reflect the activities of the Norman
aristocracy. Such words are divided into several semantic groups.
1. State and state administration: government, parliament, counsel, assembly, authority, office,
power, baron, count, duke, duchess, prince, royal, feudal.
2. Court of justice: court, justice, jury, prison, crime, acquit, sentence, penalty, defendant, guilt.
3. Military life: war, battle, army, regiment, general, captain, lieutenant, victory.
4. Church life: religion, parish, altar, Bible, paradise, saint, vice, virtue, divine, clergy.
5. Amusements: leisure, pleasure, sport, tournament, dance, cards, feast, joy.
There are also other groups of French borrowings in modern English. Some of them are rather
small. They may include not more than half a dozen of words (or even less), but these words are also
suggestive of French habits or French innovations.
Thus, migrants from Normandy preferred to settle in towns not in villages. They started their
business in new places and called their professions by their French names. That is why many town
professions in the English language are denoted by words of French origin: butcher, painter, hatter,
grocer, tailor. The professions spread in the countryside retain their English names (smith, miller,
shepherd) because village population was almost purely English.
The forms of direct address sir and madam also came from the French language in the ME
period. Alongside the words like pardon, excuse, please they function today as forms of etiquette.
Other words that reflect the Norman way of life or Norman innovations are found in the
following groups.
· Words denoting articles of clothes: dress, costume, coat, collar, fur, garment.
· Words denoting pieces of art and architecture: art, colour, image, figure, temple, palace,
column, pillar.
· Words denoting meals and dishes: dinner, supper, soup, pastry, roast.
It is interesting to note that unlike dinner and supper the word breakfast is of Germanic origin. A
probable explanation might also be found in the Norman way of life. The French nobility got up late
when the time of breakfast had passed.
It must also be noted that lots of French borrowings have no connections with the activities of
French aristocracy, French innovations or French habits. These are words belonging to different semantic
fields used in everyday communication: advice, flower, travel, treasure, chance, river, mountain, enter,
envy, obey, eager, firm, sure, very, etc.
 The infiltration of French words into the English language gave rise to pairs of synonyms. One of
such synonyms descended from OE, the other came from the French language.
In many cases borrowed words established their position in the English language by ousting their
native synonyms: the French word river replaced OE ēa the word mountain ousted OE berg, the
word army replaced OE fird.

51. Foreign borrowings in the epoch of renaissance 

The development of Europe in the 16th century is notable for its transition from feudal to capitalist
relations. The growth of industry and the division of labour animated trade between the nations. The
commercial ties of England with other European countries created favourable conditions for mutual
enrichment of national vocabularies.
In the succeeding centuries England widened her commercial, political and cultural ties, and loan
words in the NE period never stopped enriching the English vocabulary. The borrowings of the NE period
are varied and numerous, their careful study is the matter of lexicology. Here we shall dwell only on a
few layers of loan words. They are borrowings from classical languages: Latin and Greek and also
borrowings from Spanish, Italian and French.
There are at least three big layers of Latin borrowings in the English language. The first of them
is made up by Latin words adopted by the English language from the Celtic dialects. The second layer
shaped itself after the conversion of England to Christianity
Another wave of borrowings from Latin came in the epoch of the Renaissance. This time the
influx of Latin words was caused by the flourishing of sciences and the revival of learning. Most of the
Latin words borrowed in this period are scientific terms or learned words. Mainly they are verbs
(separate, operate, create, constitute, contribute, execute, elect, protect) and adjectives (permanent,
important, evident, inferior, superior, private, obstinate).
Borrowings from Greek are also connected with the Renaissance. Like Latin words Greek loan-
words are mostly scientific terms. Among these words there are a lot of nouns:  atmosphere, botany,
epoch, metaphor, simile, analysis, nucleus, radius, curriculum, etc.
Borrowings from Italian belong to the semantic fields of art, architecture, music. It is quite natural
as the revival of interest to these spheres began in Italy. These words have become international. They are
found in every IE language. The examples of Italian words in English are the following:  violin, aria,
bass, piano, duet, balcony, cupola, gallery, pedestal.
Spanish borrowings belong to different semantic spheres: negro, canyon, tornado, armada,
sombrero, sherry, mosquito.
Many of them reflect historical events of the 15 th - 16th centuries. Spain was the main rival of
England in the policy of colonial expansion. Hence a number of Spanish borrowings denote articles of
trade exported from its colonies: banana, tobacco, tomato, potato, etc.
French borrowings of the NE period may be grouped under several headings.
Military terms: brigade, barrage, corps, sentinel, manoeuvre, trophy, police, reconnaissance, etc.
These words were entering the English vocabulary while England was gaining military
experience in the wars with France (1512 -1514, 1627), Spain (1588), Scotland (1547, 1639) and in the
Civil Wars of 1642 - 1648.
 
 2. Words denoting notions of art and culture: scene, grotesque, ballet, ensemble, genre, essay,
etc.
As well as Latin, Greek or Italian borrowings these words are connected with the Renaissance.
3. Words reflecting life of the society: ball, cortege, picnic, restaurant, etc.
These words were introduced into the language by the English nobility that found refuge on the
territory of France during the Revolution of 1640 - 1660.
 

56. New English vowels. 

Summary – New English
The changes that affected the vowel and the consonant system in New English were great and
numerous.

Vowels – qualitative changes:

Difference of vowels in the unstressed position at the end of the word.
Changes of all long vowels – the Great Vowel Shift
Changes of two short vowels: [a] > [æ] or [o] and [u] > [ ].

Vowels – Quantitative changes:

Changes of two diphthongs: [ai] > [ei], [au] > [o:].
Lengthening of vowels before [r] – due to the vocalization of consonants.

57. Phonetic changes in Early New English consonants. 

Consonants:

6. Appearance of the consonant [з] and the consonants [t∫], [dз] in new positions.
7. Disappearance or vocalization of the consonant [r].
8. Voicing of consonants – Verner’s Law in New English.
9. Positional disappearance:

r vocalized at the end of the word: far

w before r write

k before n knight

h before t light