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Middle English          

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The Middle English Period:  1100 - 1500 AD

Period Introduction:  Perhaps the best way to view Middle English is as a period of transition.  During the Middle English period, the English language underwent profound changes so extensive that speakers at the start of this period would have found English at the end of this period 400 years later – the English of Shakespeare for example – virtually incomprehensible.  While assigning a specific date to the start of the Middle English period that is based on attributes of language change would prove arbitrary, it is safe to say that by 1100AD, discernible changes in the English language had become sufficiently well established that is realistic to use this date as a general starting point.  The Middle English period saw dramatic changes in virtually every aspect of the English language: its sounds, its word meanings, its word stock, its lexical derivations, its pronunciation, its use of inflexions, and, in fact, every aspect of language’s grammar.  But it is far more than the English language that changes during this period – an equally dramatic change in the face of England and English culture is also a hallmark of this transition period.

The Norman Invasion & Linguistic Apartheid: 1100 – 1200 AD

The origins of the Middle English period can be traced back to the death of a king.  Edward “the Confessor”, the last descendant of Alfred the Great, dies in 1066 without an heir apparent – a circumstance that will bring much conflict and change to England.  Initially, the problem of succession is handled with the election of the powerful Harold of Godwin as King.  But almost immediately, a dark and ominous cloud formes across the channel in French Normandy.  A distant relative of Edward the Confessor, William the 7^th Duke of Normandy, feels that he has a stronger claim to the throne of England, and is intent on making his claim good by force.  In 1066, the armies of Harold and William meet on the battlefield, and play out one of the great epics in Western history.  At the ensuing Battle of Hastings, Harold is shot through the eye with an arrow, and together with his two brothers, dies: William claimes England as his prize and England will be immediately & for ever changed.  Henceforth, William will be known as William the Conqueror. 

To understand the events that will follow, it is necessary to first understand who and what these Norman invaders were and where they came from.  These hardy invaders came from France, but were actually descended from the same Scandinavian Vikings that a few centuries before had invaded England.  These Scandinavians who had settled in France were known by the Old French form of Northman, pronounced as Norman, and the area they settled was was known as Normandy.  William’s great-great-great grandfather was Rollo (Hrolfr), the great Danish chieftain, but in the 6 generations between Rollo and William, the Normans had become almost totally assimilated, French in both their culture and their language.  At this point in time, the French were not a very sophisticated culture, having very little in the way of learning, art or literature, and possessing nothing comparable to that which flourished in England.

William the Conqueror is crowned King of England on Christmas Day in 1066 in a ceremony that used both English and Latin.  This will be the last major official event that will take place using the English language for many generations, and what will follow will be a hundred years of linguistic apartheid.  By 1150, in less than one hundred years, the once-great institutions of English literature and art have fallen ominously silent.   The English church has been purged of its Saxon predecessors and all but the lowest positions replaced with French-speaking Normans.  In 1154, a final entry is recorded and the monks that had so faithfully maintained the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle abandon their great work for ever.  In all matters of court, government, church and middle or upper-class society, French and Latin are now the only languages of acceptability.  The only reason a person of position or learning would speak English would be to convey an order to an “illiterate servant”.  English is now the language of the peasant – the language of the illiterate, the language of the disenfranchised.  It had become the “bastard language” – a language without legitimacy, without parentage, and without dignity. 

Rebirth & the Power of Common Language: 1200 – 1325 AD

Even though linguistic division is still very strong, English is starting to make a comeback on both a written and spoken level.  Church sermons, prayers and carols are now commonly finding expression in English, and English is even being used in minor documents and for business.  The great silence that has been overshadowing English for the last century is starting to lift.  English refuses to die - for three prominent reasons….  Firstly, English was simply too well established prior to the Norman invasion, and even though English speakers comprised the lower classes, they constituted an overwhelming majority of the nation’s citizenry.  Secondly, despite the Norman subjugation, there is a large body of evidence that suggests the Norman overlords and their English subjects enjoyed a relatively peaceful coexistence.  Almost immediately, the Normans started to intermarry, taking English wives, who in turn perpetuated the English language through their children and ensured its survival through subsequent generations of Norman nobles.   And thirdly, in 1204, King John and the Normans in France lost control of Normandy, breaking the ties of commerce, language and tradition that the Anglo-Normans had regarded as the major source of their identity.  As the bonds between England and France deteriorated, the English and French would increasingly come to distrust and despise each other.  By the end of the 13^th century, French has become a language of “appearance”, with English regaining much of its popular and patriotic appeal.  Edward I demonstrates the growing popular appeal of English in his now-famous description of Philip IV of France’s “detestable purpose, which God forbid, (is) to wipe out the English tongue”.  As English consciousness and acceptance grows, churches and universities struggled to halt the decline of French in England, with institutions such as Oxford University (in 1326 and 1340) attempting legislation in defense of French and requiring that all students be fully literate in the French language.  But this British-styled French, known as Anglo-French, is doomed.  English has always been the natural language of the English people.  To make things worse, Anglo-French has now evolved into a separate and unique dialect of French – a dialect which few Englishmen view patriotically and a dialect which no other European culture views as prestigious.  Shortly, politics, war and disease will even further erode the French influence in Britain.  

“New” English: Survival, evolution and Change: 1325 – 1500 AD

            The first third of the 14th century is marked by a growing hostility between England and France – a hostility that until now has been played out on the diplomatic battlefront.  But that is about to change.  A succession of diplomatic reprisals culminating in France’s Philip VI confiscating of all of Edward’s fiefs and fiefdoms in France in 1337, and England’s Edward III formally claiming the French crown in 1338 sets the stage for a long and protracted war.  The “100 Years’ War” that followed was actually a series of conflicts between France and England that lasted for 116 years and which endowed history with memorable figures and events  such as Joan of Arc and  the Peasants Revolt of 1381.  The Hundred Years’ War also had a substantial effect on English – it provided a major impetus for the English to not speak French for fear of being seen as unpatriotic or sympathetic to the enemy.  But this was just the first of several events that would impact the English language.  The Black Death between 1347 and 1350 will impact all of Europe in unimaginable ways, and the English language is no exception.  In England, 25% of the population will die of the plague, and in France, the death rate will be over 30%.  Pope Clement VI consecrates the waters of the Rhine so corpses can be sunk there: there is neither time nor room to burry them, and in Britain, the church has given permission to laymen to make confession to each other "or if no man is present, then even to a woman".  Hardest hit are special groups, such as the friars and clergy.  At the height of the plague, 2/3 of England’s clergy will die in less than one year.  The resulting labor shortage causes a rise is social status of the English working man whose claim to English is the strongest.  As rural peasants migrate to the cities to take better paying jobs, social integration and a renewed popular interest in the arts and the theatre are producing the foundations for the eventual standardization of English.  The incredibly high mortality rate in the monasteries and churches is spawning a new generation of semi-educated non-French and non-Latin speakers who are filling the void, producing a truly “English” clergy.  The English literary tradition is reborn with the support of a new middle class that “knows not French nor Latin, but pleasures in the English tongue” (Chaucer 1380).  By 1360, English grammar is being taught in schools, elevating the language to the level of full academic respectability, and in 1362, English becomes the official language of the legal system and court.  An influential triangle of power, learning and trade immerges with Oxford, Cambridge and London as the cornerstones, and the emergence of East Midlands as a the most prestigious English dialect. 

            The close of the Middle English period is marked by a major technological innovation – the printing press – a communications revolution comparable to the computer and internet technologies that has revolutionized our lives.  The earliest printed books, produced in Germany by Johann Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, date to 1450, with the first large quarto printing being the Gutenberg Bible in 1455.  The most notable figure in English printing is William Caxton, a successful merchant and diplomat who, in his retirement, introduces the printing press to England in 1476.  Caxton is probably the first editor-publisher, translating dozens of books from Latin, French and Dutch and then printing them in English, as well as publishing the works of major English authors and poets such as Chaucer, Malory, Gower and Lydgate.  Caxton’s legacy will include one particularly important long-term contribution to the evolution of the English language.  Caxton has chosen the East Midlands dialect of London as the dialect for English printing, which will now form the basis for a standardized variety of English.  In effect, Caxton has fixed the language on the page before the writers and academics of the period have had a chance to arrive at a consensus, or even thoroughly discuss issues of standardization and convention, and it is to this that English owes much of its chaotic nature, particularly with regard to spelling and pronunciation anomalies. 

English has survived.  But English is forever changed.

The Legacy of French on the English Language: 1500

            Over a period of 400 years, about 15% of English vocabulary was either absorbed by or replaced with French words. Because French was the language of the official class for most of this period, we would expect many words having to do with government, administration, law, religion and social appearance to be of French origin.  Government, administration, tax, attorney, chancellor, country, court, state, state, judge, jury, prison, noble, royal, abbot, clergy, preach, sacrament, vestment, prince, duke, marques, viscount, baron, countess, army, captain, corporal, lieutenant, sergeant, soldier, defense and faith demonstrate a few of the French forms that entered English during this period.  Some French words replaced their Old English counterparts which then took on new meanings, such as the French word crime which replaced the Old English word sin, which in turn came to mean a religious transgression or fault.  Many contemporary English words for animals as well as the process of preparing these animals are derived from French, examples of which are beef, mutton pork, veal, boil, broil, fry, roast, and stew.  The list of French loan-words is virtually endless – a few more examples of which are dignity, enamor, feign, fool, fruit, horrible, letter, literature, magic, male, marvel, mirror, oppose, question, regard, remember, sacrifice, safe, salary, search, second, secret, size, sentence, single, sober, and solace. 

            While the changes in vocabulary are substantial, the changes in morphology word formation are profound.  Some of the more notable changes include:

o       the loss of most inflexions for nouns including those for the nominative (subject), genitive (possessive), dative (indirect object) and accusative (direct object) cases, as well as for grammatical gender,

o       the total loss of adjectival inflexions for case, gender and number distinctions, as well as the week/strong distinction, the loss of unstressed endings and the increased use if definite and indefinite articles,

o       the simplification of verb tense and conjugation, the loss of the dual/plural verb distinction, the reduction of personal verb endings, the blurring of mood distinctions within and between strong verb classes and the new use of phrasal verbs (pick up, take over),

o       a huge increase in the use of prepositions including the their use before objects  as a dative case marker and the formation of many new prepositions by compounding (out of, unto), conversion from other parts of speech (along, among, behind, beneath) and borrowing (according to, around, during),

o       a huge increase in compounding and affixation including many Middle English innovations for nouns (sunshine), adjectives (threadbare, bloodred), verbs (manhandle, uphold); a multitude of new affixes borrowed from French (de, inter, mal, able, age, ment); wide use if clipping (stress from distress, mend from amend), backformation (fog from foggy, dawn from dawning), blends (escrow + roll for scroll) and the adaptation of common nouns from proper nouns (jacket from Jacques) – as well as the loss of much of the original Old English vocabulary (OE earm replaced by French poor).    

o       the change from a synthetic or structure-based language to an analytic or function-based language – a result of the combined interaction of different inflexional and distinction-based systems associated with Saxon, Scandinavian, Latin and French all of which contributed heavily to the final version of English.       

The French language also influence subjective categories in English grammar as well, as demonstrated by awkwardness in recipient categories.  In Modern English, there are many indirect objects and direct objects that resist appearing as prepositional phrases – for example Jack promised John a job sounds OK to the native speaker, but Jack promised a job to John sounds awkward.  In Old English, nouns used inflectional suffixes to indicate grammatical function as well as quantity, so the preposition was unnecessary – the indirect object contained a suffix inflexion that distinguished it from the direct object.             

French does not use the dative case – it relies on the preposition to distinguish the IO from the DO.  Therefore, awkwardness in English is often determined by the source or origin of the main verb – if the verb came into English during Old English, it may resist appearing as a prepositional phrase, preferring the noun phrase – indirect object – form (give, feed, sell, buy).  If the verb came into English during Middle English it may resist appearing in the noun phrase – indirect object form, preferring the direct object – prepositional phrase form (take).  And if the a verb came into English during Modern English, it will generally accept either the NP – IO form or the prepositional phrase form equally well (fax, mail) .  However, the inevitable changes in spelling, pronunciation and structure that have taken place over the last five centuries has largely obscured many of these historical relationships to a point where even native speakers may no longer recognize issues of awkwardness in many recipient categories.