Middle English Dialects and The Great Vowel Shift The Role of Dialect Mixture In Late Middle English

Middle English Dialects Cultural and political backgrounds of Medieval England lent themselves to dialectal diversity Northern England largely Scandinavian until 1066 Feudal system arrived with William the Conquerer in 1066. Peasants were bound to the land, unable to travel without permission. Few autonomous towns thrived until the 14th century.

Dialect “Smoothing” Crusades brought additional dialectal contacts. Troops massed in coastal towns, served together, and returned in groups. “Then longen folk to go on pilgrimages…” Towns become major players after 1351 (Black Plague end point). Results in the Peasant’s Revolt. English becomes official language of law in 1362. London grows in importance culturally and politically.

Dialectal Boundaries So numerous you could talk of a county-by-county breakdown (p. 189). Five general areas: Northern, East Midland, West Midland, Southern, and Kentish. Features: Verbal endings, present participial ending, plural pronouns, vowel differences, consonantal differences,

Dialectal Differences Plural, present tense ending: OE: -að, we cumað to strande ‘we come to the shore’ Northern: -es, we comes Midland: -en, we comen Southern: -eth, we cometh Present participial ending: OE: -ende, lovende Northern: lovande Southern: lovinde; loving

Periphrastic Periphrasis: multiple words for one grammatical concept Inflective infinitive: “to lufianne” “to love” I like “to swim” Ic thyce to swimanne. “to swim” “for to swim” Passive voice: where the patient (experiencer) of an action is the subject of the sentence.

Passive Voice The student read the book. Agent action Patient The book was read.

Perfect Aspect Perfect expresses past action distant from time of speaking To Have/to be ME Thi brother is comun Y have synned

Development of Modal Auxiliaries and Future OE willan “to desire/to want” express future in periphrastic constructions in ME OE sculan “to feel obligation”

Subjunctive OE ic sweve ACTION-subjunctive OE ic telle [that Hrothgar was--SUBJ king]

“Methinks” OV: In certain sentences where the verb has a pronoun object, the object proceeds the verb. ME I you beseech\ OE had very small inventory of “impersonal verbs.” “thyncan”—impersonal verb, “to seem.” “Methinks”— “It(unexpressed) seems to me.”

More Dialectal Differences Plural pronouns: OE: hie, hem Northern: thei, them Southern: hi, hem 3rd p. sing. Feminine OE: heo, hie N: scho/sche Southern: heo/ho Vowel differences: OE: stān Northern: stane Southern stone Consonant differences: Initial voiced fricatives Southern: vox ‘fox’; vixen (pl.  feminine), vat ‘fat’, vrom ‘from’, vader, ‘father’, zaul ‘soul’ Initial /tʃ/ Northern: kirk South: church

Great Vowel Shift GVS sound change that separates Middle from Early Modern English; complete by 1700. Complete reordering of the vowel space that accounts for the lack of phonetic correspondence between English and its alphabet. Only affected long vowels. Online tutorial