- •Contents
- •Unit 2: The Comparative Method ………………………..8 Unit 3: The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law ………………………10
- •Unit 1 The Indo-European Family
- •Centum and Satem Groups of ie Languages
- •Unit 2 The Comparative Method
- •Unit 3 The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law
- •Exceptions to Grimm’s law:
- •Unit 4 The Accent Shift and Verner’s Law
- •Rhotacism
- •The Palatal Mutation
- •Unit 6 The Early Germans
- •The Life and Social Organization of the Germans
- •The Great Migration
- •Unit 7 Ancient Germanic Tribes and Their Classification
- •The Proto-Germanic Language
- •Unit 8 The East Germanic Group The Goths
- •Ulfilas and the Gothic Bible
- •Unit 9 The North Germanic Group
- •Unit 10 Northern Mythology
- •The Joys of Valhalla
- •Thor and the Other Gods
- •The Death of Balder
- •Unit 11 The West Germanic Group
- •Unit 12 Old English
- •Three Periods of the History of English
- •Unit 13 Old English Alphabet and Pronunciation
- •Diphthongs
- •Consonants in Old English
- •Unit 14 Some Phonetic Changes of the Old English Period
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Oe Fracture, or Breaking
- •II. Unstressed Vowels
- •III. Consonants
- •Palatalization of Velar Consonants
- •Voicing and Unvoicing of Fricatives
- •Metathesis
- •IV. Word Stress
- •Unit 15 The Noun Grammatical Categories
- •Declensions
- •Unit 16 The Adjective
- •The Weak Declension
- •D. Other classes of pronouns
- •Unit 18 The Verb
- •Mutation or Umlaut
- •The Grammatical Forms and Categories of the Verb
- •Unit 19 Strong Verbs
- •Weak Verbs
- •To Class III belong only four verbs:
- •Preterite-Present Verbs
- •Irregular Verbs
- •Unit 20 The Middle English Period Early Middle English
- •Changes in the Orthographic System
- •Unit 21 Middle English Phonetic Changes
- •Consonants
- •Unstressed Vowels
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Quantitative Changes
- •Qualitative Changes
- •Monophthongs
- •New Diphthongs
- •Unit 22 Middle English Morphology Nouns
- •Articles
- •Pronouns
- •Adjectives
- •Unit 23 The Formation of the National English Language
- •The Great Vowel Shift (gvs)
- •Unit 25 The Mood
- •Conjugation of Strong Verbs
- •Conjugation of Weak Verbs
- •Unit 26 Development of the System of Verbids and Their Grammatical Categories
- •Unit 27 Syntactic Structure
- •Unit 28
- •Varieties of English
- •Unit 29 Etymological Composition of the English Vocabulary
- •Unit 30 The connection of the history of the English language with the history of the English people
New Diphthongs
As a result of the vocalization of [j] and [w] new diphthongs were formed whose second element was either [i] (the letters, i, y) or [u] (mostly w).
[ei] |
OE |
weg |
ME |
wey |
ModE |
way |
[ai] [au]
[ou]
[au + x] |
|
dæg sagu lagu boga snāw cnāwan brāhte |
|
day saw(e) lawe [lauə] bowe [bouə] snou knowen [knouən] braughte [brauxtə] |
|
day saw law bow snow know brought |
Besides the above-mentioned diphthongs which developed from native sources, similar diphthongs (with i and u – glides) are found in some ME borrowings, e.g.
-
[oi]
in ME boy, joy
[au]
in ME pause [pauzə], cause
The formation of new diphthongs in ME was an important event. By that time the OE diphthongs had been contracted into monophthongs. The new ME diphthongs differed from the OE ones in structure: they had an open nucleus and a closer glide; they were not contrasted through quantity as long to short.
Unit 22 Middle English Morphology Nouns
The OE system of noun declension was undergoing a constant process of simplification and unification during the ME period. The process was much more intensive in the north than in the south.
By the end of the ME period gender distinctions were lost nearly everywhere.
The variety of types of declension found in Old English no longer existed. With a few exceptions the nouns had all gone over to the former masculine a-declension. In the south, however, the n-stem declension was retained for a long time, and its endings were even added to some nouns of other stems. Thus the noun child (former s-stem) acquired the plural-form children instead of childre (< OE cildru). There existed also such forms as applen, horsen, scipen (< OE pl. æpla(s), hors, scipu), etc.
Of the OE case-endings only –es of the genitive singular and –as of the nominative and accusative plural (a-stems, masculine) were preserved as productive endings, ME –es [əs].
Instead of the four cases of OE we find only two cases in ME. The endings of the nominative, dative and accusative cases, singular, mostly fell together, and these case forms were fused to represent but one case, which may be called the common case.
The genitive case remained but it was used not so often as in Old English. It gradually narrowed its meaning to that of possession, so that it could already be called the possessive case. But unlike Modern English, the possessive case was not restricted to nouns denoting living beings.
In the plural the ending –es (from OE –as) spread to all cases of most nouns, so that, in fact, there were no case distinctions in the plural.
Here is a sample of the ME dominant type of declension.
-
Singular
Plural
Common case
stōn
stōnes
Possessive case
stōnes
stōnes
A few nouns retained the plural ending –en of the weak declension: oxen, eyen (E. eyes).
Some nouns preserved the uninflected plural forms of the a-stems, neuter gender. E. g. shēp, dēr, hors. (E. sheep, deer, horse).
Several nouns of the root-stems had different vowels in the singular and the plural forms: man – men, fōt – fēt; etc.
With the loss of case infections the role of prepositions grew ever more important. Many prepositional phrases came to denote the same relations that had formerly been expressed by case forms. Some meanings of the preposition of were akin to those of the ME possessive case. E. g. the drogte of March (E. the drought of March). Phrases with the preposition to replaced the dative case in expressing the indirect object. E. g. French of Paris was to hire unknowe. (E. The French of Paris was unknown to her). But the preposition was often not used in positions where it would be used in Modern English. E. g. As it seemed me (E. As it seemed to me.)