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

- French - decrease during the Hundred Year's War

- English - language of rural people and merchants

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

3) New standard

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

    - koinéization - spoken
    - Chancery English - written

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)