29 Word-building

There are three main types of word-building in OE: 1. Morphological word-building, that is, creating new words by means of morphological elements. 2. Syntactical word-building, that is, building new words from syntactical groups. 3. Semantic word-building, that is building new words by using existing words in new meanings. Suffixes (thu, nes, ung, a (hunta) Word-composition mann – cynn Prefixes mis-, be-, ofer-

30 Norman Conquest

a) 1258 — Proclamation of King Henry III was published besides French also in English:

b) 1362 — the English language became the language of Parliament, courts of law: later, at the end of the century — the language of teaching;

c) the rule of King Henry IV (1399—1413) — the first king after the conquest whose native tongue was English.

The end of the 14^th century also saw the firs! "English" translation of the Bible, and Chaucer was writing his "English" masterpieces. The new merchant class and the spread of lay learning were building a national civilisation, and by the end of the century French had probably died out as a spoken language.

31 Middle English changes in spelling: Consonants

In ME the runic letters passed out of use: Þ (thorn) and D (eth) were replaced by the digraph th; Þ (wynn) was replaced by “double u” w; e (esh) was no longer used and was replaced by e, ea, e; g (yogh) was replaced by g ( OE Zod →ME god);

G representing j = gh right; digraph ch, gh, ph; c not only k but s brfore i, e, y;

32 Middle English changes in spelling: Vowels

Many innovations in ME spelling testify to the influence of French. ; double letters;

Long [e:]could be indicated by ie and ee; The letter y was used as an equivalent of i and it was preferred when i could be confused with the surrounding letters m, n and others.

w was interchangeable with u in the digraphs ou, au. ME doun.

33 Middle English changes in phonetics: Vowels

Unstressed vowels: Late ME had only 2 vowels: [e] and [i] OE fiscas – ME fishes

Stressed Vowels: Stressed vowels changed in quality and in quantity. had a strong tendency to become narrower and to diphthongize, but short vowels displayed a reverse trend – towards greater openness. Quantitative Changes: Short vowels were lengthened before ld, nd, mb unless followed by a third consonant wild; All other groups of two or more consonants made the preceding long vowels short kepte;. Short vowels became long in open syllables (mainly [e], [a], [o]) open Qualitative Changes:OE [y], [y:] disappeared in ME; OE [a] was narrowed to [o] OE stan > ME stoon, stone ; OE short [e] > ME back [a]

Diphthongs One of the most important sound changes of the Early ME period was the loss of OE diphthongs and the growth of new ones. OE diphthongs were contracted to monophthongs: east > eest (east)

34 Middle English changes in phonetics: Consonants

English consonants were far more stable than vowels.

The most important developments in the history of English consonants were the development of affricates and sibilants. In OE there were no affricates and no sibilants except [s, z]. The new type of consonants developed from OE palatal plosives [k', g'] and from [sk']. The three new phonemes were [C], [G], [S] (in writing - ch, tch, g, dg, sh, ssh, sch)

Initial h was dropped before r, l, n; OE hring > ME ring; Before w h remained in the North where OE hw > quh or qwh. In the South h was dropped before w; V was dropped before consonants.