One of the major features of the Middle English is the decay of inflections which was a feature of Latin in Old English. Inflections place stresses on the first syllable of words and it became increasingly difficult to hear them when pronounced. Unlike most Germanic languages in which stress within a word moved according to some rules, the Old
English stress pattern was fixed and this created auditory problems.
When speakers could no longer cope with this, the system was gradually dropped. The disappearance can be traced throughout the Middle English period.
The most important grammatical development of this period is that a fixed pattern of word order between clause elements was established.
The subject-verb-object (SVO) order that was partially evident in Old English was now consolidated. Where the Old English would say
‘robbed they’, Middle English would say “they robbed”. Today, we rely much on word order to enable us work out grammatical function. In Old English this was determined by inflections.
As a result of the decay of inflections nouns lost their numerous inflectional endings or declensions. In early Middle English, only two methods of indicating plurals remained fairly distinct: - s, - es or – en, (as in oxen). Adjectives also lost their inflections, partly because of changes in sounds. What this means is that rather than have a word like
‘blinde’ in Old English as “blinda - blinde and blindan” indicating singular and plural, it became simply ‘blinde’ (blind) in Middle English.
So we can easily say “blind man” or “blind Men.” In Old English it would be something like “blinde man” or “blindan men”.
With the decay of inflections nouns and adjectives were now simplified and it became necessary to depend less on gender, case, and number. To make clear the relation of words in a sentence, word order and prepositions were now used. Demonstratives and pronouns forms were also reduced and simplified. For example, the various forms of sē, sēo, ðæt (i.e. the) survived as “the” and “that” through Middle English till today.
The demonstrative “pēs” “pēos” “pis” (i.e. this) was also reduced to
“this”. However, some personal pronouns in Old English were retained e.g. hē (he) hēo (she) hit (it). The same is true of some forms of accusative (objective) and dative (indirect object) which were combined e.g. him, her (t) hem, h (it). This means that rather than have different forms say “him” or “her” as direct object and indirect object. The Middle English had the same form e.g. I gave him the book (indirect object). I love him (direct object). This survived till Modern English.
Remember, in Old English, “him” would have different forms using inflections to show grammatical functions (i.e. to indicate which is direct or indirect object in this case).
Some nominative (subjective) plurals were also extended to all cases of plural appearing in Modern English as “those” and “these”. The second person pronouns in Middle English looked like this:
Function Singular Plural Subjective
(nominative)
Thou Ye
Objective (accusative) Thee You
Possessive (genitive) Thy/thine Your/yours
Now let’s see how verbs were affected by these changes. An important point to note here is that like nouns, the general process has been that of simplification with the gradual decay of inflections.
In Old English, verbs generally had two forms depending on their conjugations “strong verbs” and “weak verbs”. Strong verbs are those whose forms are changed in order to derive their past tense. Today, we call them “irregular verbs” e.g. write, wrote, written, or sing, sang, sung;
while weak verbs (regular verbs) are those that take –d, -ed, or –en for their past tense, e.g. walk, walked, walked. In Middle English, almost one third of strong verbs in Old English died out. More than a hundred Old English strong verbs were lost at the beginning of the Middle English while about thirty more became absolute in the course of Middle English. Today, more than half have disappeared. Some strong verbs in Old English became weak verbs in Middle English.
In Unit 4 of Module 1, we noted that English was mainly spoken by the lower class and largely removed from the influences of education and literature; naturally many speakers were already wrongly applying the pattern of weak verbs. For example, we have come, came, come (strong verb) but drive, drove, driven; (notice “driven”) as a feature of a weak verb. In the 13th century this trend became clear in written literature.
Verbs like burn, brew, flow, help, mourn, step, weep were then undergoing change and by the 14th century, these verbs showed weak forms. During the Middle period however, strong forms continued to be used while the weak forms continued to grow, and in many cases the inflections for weak verbs were established. So there were variations.
People still had the past tense of “ache” as “oke” while “ached” was used by others. In some ways “stope” and “stepped”, “clew” and
“clawed” were used side by side. However, strong verbs still survived.
We must add here that in the Middle English, there were still inflections for simple present tense in verbs. For example:
Person Modern English Middle English Singular Ist – I Thank Thanke
2nd – you Thank Thankest 3rd – he/she/it Thanks Thanketh (-es) Plural Ist – we Thank Thanke (n) (-es)
2nd – you Thank Thanke (n) (-es) 3rd – they Thank Thanken (n) (es)
The inflections in brackets show other forms, depending on the dialect.
There were about six (6) dialects of the Middle English, namely Northern dialect, Southern dialect, West Midland, East Midland, Kentish and East Anglia. The examples above are Midlands.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
1. Explain why changes normally occur in language, with particular reference to English.
2. Describe some general features of Middle English grammar.
3. Distinguish between Old English forms of nouns and that of Middle English.