Middle English: the emergence of Standard English

Middle English between 1350 and 1500

1) Political and social overview:

- 13th century – stability and population growth - 1315-17 – The Great Famine --> decrease of population - 1348 and the following years – the first wave of the Plague --> 20 – 50 % population decrease - 1337 – 1453 – the Hundred Years’ War --> loss of almost all continental lands

                                            --> resentment towards all French
                                            --> unjust taxes - Peasant's Revolt (1381)
                                            --> geographical mobility - contact of varieties
                                            --> social mobility

- 1455 – 1485 – the Wars of the Roses --> weakening of feudal power and strengthening of merchant classes - religious matters - Lollardy - movement led by J. Wycliffe demanding changes in the Church --> challanging Latin

2) Languages in then England:

- Latin - language of laws and of the Church

       - with questioning of the habits of the Church came challanging of Latin
       - De heretico comburendo - the ban of translations of the Bible into English
       - familiarization of the mass population with Lollard's Bible represented a threat to the Church

- in scholarly writing present until EModE

- French - decrease during the Hundred Year's War

- became a language of 'culture and fashion rather than an economic or political necessity'

- English - language of rural people and merchants

         - minor documents - wills, municipal proclamations, merchants' documents, guilds rules

- later spoken in courts (written still Latin)

3) New standard

- people from various parts moved to London (centre of government, administration, trade) - London English began to function as a standard

    - koinéization (dialects levelling) - spoken
    - Chancery English - written

- people from North came to London and got to the upper class - reflected in London (later Standard) English

- the Midlands variety best for StE - in the middle, neither radical nor too conservative, Oxbridge

- Chancery English - official documents, letters of the men of affairs

- the wave theory - prestigious varieties moving to neighbouring areas

4) Name the innovations of the late ME period in the pronominal system, in the system expressing verbal categories and in the word order.

Pronominal system

You singular

• started to by used instead of thou
• due to French influence (upper class and bureaucrats) x sg. vous more consistent
• sg. you used for pagan deities x thou for Christian God
• shift towards you = a sign of respect; sg. you used between equals x who uses though indicates his/her superiority → thou became more of an “insult”, you used more and more as a polite form

One

• emergence in 15th century
• influenced by French on x on appears only as a subject, while earliest forms of one were non-nominal case → French probably not that important
• (gradual loss of indefinite man – similarity to man “man” and the problems of agreement and anaphoric references → more suitable candidates for indefinite references (you, they, we, people)

Relative pronouns

• þat replaced by what (early ME) and by which (late ME)
• that as non-restrictive probably began in ME, but were essential in ModE

Periphrastic structures

• ME was the beginning of widespread phrasal/periphrastic structure
• occurred already in OE, but the auxiliary status was hard to determine
• two words (auxiliary have and also be combined with past participle) took over the function of a single word with and inflectional ending
• affected the progressive, the modal auxiliaries in place of the subjunctive and periphrastic do

Word order

• most prominent change was gradual move from accusative object before verb to accusative object after the verb (by 1500 98% of accusative objects are after verb)