Notes: the test will have both an analysis part and a theory part, so both types of answers

should be given in this cheat sheet.

TEXT ANALYSIS:

A: OLD ENGLISH
Order for analysis:
1. Phonology/Spelling 2. Morphology (nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs)
3. Syntax and 4. Lexical

1. Phonology and Spelling (superficial changes):

-Elder Futhark: runic alphabet coming from Scandinavia, inherited for writing in
many Germanic tribes. In the Old English alphabet, the letters Wynn and Thorn are
examples of a repurpose and evolution of the Futhark, coming from Wunjo and
Thurisaz respectively.
-Fricative Voicing: the voicing of fricative (f, s; v, z,) sounds is determined entirely
by position: it is voiced when it’s between vowels or other voiced sounds and
voiceless in other positions. <r> is rolled: <f> can be realised as either /f/ unvoiced
or /v/ voiced, <ð ᚦ> as /θ/ unvoiced or /ð/ voiced and <s> as /z/ unvoiced or /s/
voiced.
*Tip: the pronunciation is irrelevant to the graphemes shown.
-Stress falls usually on the first syllable, though prepositional prefixes can be accented
or unaccented and compounds in which both elements retain meanings have a
secondary stress on the root of the second element.
-Palatalisation: the phenomenon of the variation of <c> and <g> in the context of
an /e/ or /i/, that can be realised either as an /k/ or /tʃ/ and /je/ or /ge/ depending on the
position given.
-Quantity and quality: Quantity is the vowel length, signalled by the line on top of the
letter, and quality is the place of articulation, which was subjected to the most changes
during the Great Vowel Shift.
-Great Vowel Shift: Coined by O.Jespersen, it began in the 15th century and was
completed in the 18th. It was a non-uniform chain process; some stages did overlap. It
consisted of: all long vowels raising by one slot (except /ɛː/ raises by two), high long
vowels diphthongise (i.e: PDE (present day English) "life" and "how") and length
alternations become lengths+quality alternations. It is subjected to dialectal variation.
The final “e” indicates that the previous vowel is either long or a diphthong.
-Diphthongisation: the process by which the highest vowels turned into diphthongs
after the Great Vowel Shift for example, but it can happen in other given contexts.
-Monothongisation: (phonologically) in relation to Middle English smoothing,
making a diphthong a vowel.
-Loss of final “e”: the final "e" is reduced and pronounced as a schwa in Middle
English
 -Merger of unstressed vowels/sounds: like in the example (heafon<heaven),
unstressed vowels merge phonologically becoming schwa, most often represented in
ME as a "e"
-Grimm’s Law: DOES NOT APPLY TO VOWELS involving the changes from
voiceless and voiced sounds particularly in plosives and fricatives: Proto-Indo-
European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives, Proto-Indo-European
voiced stops become voiceless stops and Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops
become voiced stops or fricatives (as allophones).
-Verner’s Law: DOES NOT APPLY TO VOWELS. Restriction to Grimm’s Law on
the variation of consonants. Grimm’s law stated that the Indo-European p, t, and k
sounds changed into f, th or d, and h in the Germanic languages. Verner noticed that
Grimm’s law was valid whenever the accent fell on the root syllable of the Sanskrit
cognate, but, when the accent fell on another syllable, the Germanic equivalents
became b, d, and g. For our purposes, Verner’s Law will refer to the alternation of z
(orthographically represented by <s>) to r, both for phonemic and orthographic
purposes. This alternation is mainly given when followed by a voiced vowel.
Technically, this rule states that in the Germanic branch of Indo-European, all non-
initial voiceless fricatives (spirants) became voiced between voiced sounds if they
followed an unaccented syllable in Indo-European or Sanskrit. Visible in the
alternation of the past in the development of the verb “to be”, because of its high
frequency -use-. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Verners-law )
- Raising and rounding of OE /ɑː/ to /ɔː/
- Middle English open-syllable lengthening (MEOSL)
- Cluster simplifications (e.g. /sw/ > /s/ before a back vowel; loss of the h-clusters)
- Shortenings (precluster and trisyllabic shortenings)
- Raising of /æː/ to /ɛː/
- etc. (this is all in Middle English)

2. Morphology

2.1 Nouns:
-Weak and strong nouns: those whose stems end with a vowel except for “u” are
weak, nouns whose stem ends with a consonant are strong (60% of cases). Strong
nouns can have either a short stem (short vowel + consonant) or a long stem (long
vowel + consonant)
-”U-stem nouns”: characterised by their ending in “u”, the most recognizable case
being “sunu”
-Athematic nouns: separate category due to mutation caused by Umlaut
-Umlaut: is a pre-OE change, visible in different vowels in words: the /i/ or /j/ affects
the previous vowels, making them front. Aka “i-mutation”: stressed vowel + /i/ or /j/
undergoes morphological “i-mutation”, resulting in the short vowels raising a level,
all back vowels becoming front and the diphthongs shift. Its triggering environment is
lost, leaving umlaut as a morphological process. (Ex: mann<menn, freond<friend)
-Case system: used to assign syntactic functions to words based on case endings,
namely: nominative (subject or predicate nominative “atributo”), accusative (direct
object), genitive (possession), dative (indirect object) and instrumental (instrument).
There are also some verbs which may require a specific case (e.g. genitive) as their
objects. In PDE it is only preserved in some aspects of the personal pronouns. In
Middle English would be replaced by functions assigned by prepositions and word
order.
-Synthetic language: a language that uses inflection or agglutination to express
syntactic relationships within a sentence. Old English uses inflection, that is, to add
morphemes to a root word that assigns grammatical property to it. This morpheme can
convey information such as gender, number and role in a sentence.
-Analytic language: as opposed to a synthetic language, the relationships between
words and their functions are conveyed by word order and ‘helper words’ (particles
and prepositions for example), relying on pre-established orders such as SVO.
-Grammatical gender: typical of OE, gender is assigned based on the structure of the
word, not the object they represent. The genders are: masculine, feminine and neuter.
It would be eventually replaced by semantic gender.
-Number: in Old English, the possible numbers for words are singular, plural and
dual, the third number classification, used for pairs. Only found in 1st and 2nd person
pronouns.

2.2 Pronouns:
-Pronouns: in Old English, personal and demonstrative pronouns aka determiners, can
also function as the definite article (“the”) (these will become independent in ME).
Personal pronouns in some cases remain unchanged (i.e: he/him) but others change
(i.e: she/they)
-Th-determiners: Developed later in ME. "The" shifts from introducing relative
clauses in OE, definite article in ME -to introduce a relative clause in
ME we use "that"-. Notice the ME article and the OE relative
pronoun have different origins and histories, so the sources
for the two are different. OE invariable þe ≠ ME þe (although
they look the same).

2.3 Adjectives:
-Weak and strong adjectives: it depends on whether the adjective stands on its own
(“good men”), or if it needs to be supported by an article, demonstrative or possessive
(“these good men”). It has nothing to do with the noun it modifies.
*Tip: they usually take either the “-e” ending, or nothing in Middle English
 2.4 Verbs:
-Weak and strong verbs: weak verbs mark the past tense with a suffix including a
dental stop (ending in voiceless+/t/ or voiced+/d/), strong verbs feature vowel
alternation in their inflection
-Ablaut: vowel alternation found in inflected verbs inherited from proto-indo
european, partially depending on accent. There are seven classes of ablaut pattern
-Strong and weak verbs conjugation: very similar, but differ in the past indicative and
past subj endings. In weak verbs all persons in both past indicative and subjunctive
are conjugated with “-de”, and in strong verbs past 1st and 3rd person have no ending,
and the second is made with an “-e”, and the past sub is made with an “-e” for all
three persons
-Preterite Presents: small class of verbs that have what it looks morphologically like
strong past forms in the present, and weak past forms in the past, the ancestors of PDE
modal verbs (cunnan, sculan, magan and witan)
-Present Participle: ending in (-ende) is used, just like PDE “-ing”
-Nominalising suffix: The nominalising suffix is -ung although -ende and -ung will
eventually merge yielding -ing.
-Irregular/Anomalous verbs: beon "to be" and gan "to go" that has two paradigms
(one form is taken from a different verb, "eode", replaced in ME by the suppletive
form "went" (past of "wenden") and “wesan” (to be), which are highly irregular
-Suppletive: the “irregular” verbs of a language, referring to the use of one word as the
inflected form of another when the two words are not cognate. There is a gap in the
paradigm filled by a form “supplied” by a different paradigm. In the case of Old
English, these are ‘wesan’ and ‘beon’, both meaning ‘to be’, but the former is
commonly used and the other is used for gnomic truths or literature.
-New verbs in PDE: generally weak
-On/A+verb: the prefix “on” is used before a verb plus “unge” to convey a
progressive sense “on huntinge”, which later evolves like “on hunting” and then “a-
hunting”, it indicates a continuous sense. Found in songs.

2.5 Adverbs:
-Adverb endings: distinct by the suffix "-lice" in OE, and in ME we had "-liche" / "-
like" and in PDE, finally "-ly", though they be attached to verbs, they are mainly
found in adverbs.

3. Syntax
-SVO/V2 word order: main clauses are V2 with a preference for SVO -though V1 is possible
in neg clauses-
-Verb-final clauses: mainly found in embedded clauses (subordinates)
-Particle-V + V: found in particle/phrasal verbs (verb final or verb+complement+verb: then
stuck him one the eyes out)
-Aspect progressive: though rare, there is an OE progressive construction formed by “to
be+pres part (-ende)”
-Aspect perfect: formed by “have + past part (ge-)” or “be + past part (ge-)”
-Tense: past, present and ‘future’(the future does not exist as an independent tense in OE –
see, e.g., present tense verbs translated with a future meaning). The future does not refer to
future events, but to the volition to perform them.
-Genitive: behaves like a case ending (-es), and can precede or follow the head noun in OE.
Divided genitives are common (Inwaer brother and Healfden’s)
-”Of” Genitive: would start to be considered in ME.
-Non-accusative objects: usually the direct object is represented by an accusative, but in some
cases they might take a dative
-Subjunctive: it is found in OE in its habitual context, and would eventually be mostly
replaced by periphrastic constructions, such as “will + verb” (its sense of volition in OE
would eventually evolve to a future auxiliary)
-Modal auxiliaries: develop distinctive properties later in English. The core are “willan”
(will/want), “sculan” (shall/owe), “magan” (may be able), “cunnan” (known/can). At this
stage of OE, they act pretty much like any other verb (notice that there are two theories about
the development of these verbs, one suggesting they were already different) , but their
stranding in ME and onwards will cause them to have particularities, like a detachment from
their original past forms
-Passive: formed by “be + past part -like PDE-” or “become (weorthan) + past part”. There
are no continuous passives. “Weorthan” will eventually become obsolete.
-Relative clauses: formed by the particle “the” (with thorn), the article (for example, “se”) as
a relative pronoun or both together. The latter would be reduced to “that” and “them”, then
eventually to “wh-relative pronouns”.

4. Lexic
-Germanic vocabulary/Compounds: it is mostly formed by compounding
-Loanwords: more pervasive in ME, particularly from French and Old Norse, as it
became the prestige language, and it was spoken in court. The vocabulary left
revolved mainly around:
1. French: inherited by the Normand Conquest. It revolved around arts,
aristocracy, politics, law and religion (chancellor, virgin, bureau…) The “-ur”,
is a telling feature of French loanwords.
2. Old Norse: started to appear in Middle English, and inherited from the
Vikings, refers mainly to war: weak, awkward, ransack, sky, window…

5. Dialects and Standardisation

There are four dialects in Old English:
-Northumbrian: Northern England and Southeaster Scotland
-Mercian: Central England
-Kentish: Southeastern England
-West Saxon: Southern and Southwestern England. This is the most relevant and persistent
one in manuscript writing (i.e: King Alfred’s Preface to Gregory’s Pastoral Care). The one
we study. It became the first standardised written English (“Winchester standard”)

There are four dialects in Middle English:

-Northern
-West midlands
-East midlands
-Southern

In a time when the language of prestige was French, the Old English variety known as West
Saxon, in use before the Norman Conquest, became discontinued for about a 90-year gap
during which there was not a single standard. During the Middle English period the dialects
were subjected to even more regional variations. It began to be used for administration
throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Up until the standardisation, the regional
variations of each dialect made it nearly impossible for people of different areas to
understand each other.

-Main differences between OE and ME dialects:

1. More voicing of initial fricatives (vather > father) in the south
2. Change of /aː/ >/ɔː/ in the south (ME).
3. /ʃ/ > /s/ is typical of the north.
4. More sound changes seem to occur in non-northern areas; morphological changes are
just the opposite.
5. The East Midlands area behaves more like the north.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Old-English-language

-Standardisation or supralocalisation (variant reduction)

Overview: A gradual change made through the training of Chancery scribes in Latin and
French, therefore introducing a revision in spelling, orthography, a handful of French and
Latin loanwords and structures and a revision of old graphemes. This process extended
presumably through the sharing of the Chancery scribes and the texts written and adapted by
them. To root the standardisation, a prescriptive tendency was adopted, given the dire need
for a general grammar due to extreme diatopical variation.

According to Milroy, 1985/91, the stages are (S.A.D.M.E.C.P):

•Selection: made through referencing to Latin spellings by the chancery clerks, producing
words with similar structures. As for the orthographic and morphological choices, a few
notable examples are: those for tho, -ly for -liche, no -(e)n plural for verbs… Some of these
changes, such as the verbal termination “-(e)th” does not survive until PDE, and much
variation is still tolerated.
•Acceptance:
•Diffusion: not entirely clear, but is safe to assume that the Chancery trained scribes diffused
the norm to other centres.
•Maintenance: mainly by printing curated works of literature, therefore rapid dissemination
of spelling norms. Literacy slowly rises. Replacement of old graphemes:
<þ> by <th> <ʒ> by <gh>
•Elaboration of function: Caxton’s translation introduced French and Latin loans, expanding
the functions of English, though not all new functions gained currency.
•Codification: setting out the rule in grammars and dictionaries. The marked diatopical
variation of English begged for a standardisation of grammar, so that people could understand
each other without the need for an interpreter.
•Prescription: as in prescriptive grammar, any deviation from the norm is condemned.

From this point, the several attested forms and variations of a different word, which were
abundant in Old English, start to dwindle.

B: CHANGES INTO MIDDLE ENGLISH

0. Sound changes from Old English to Early Modern English:

Overall, as any language evolution, tends to the simplification of sounds -particularly vowels-
and loss of complicated consonant clusters.

1.Old English to Middle English

Overview: merging of vowels and loss of many consonant clusters. New diphthongs are
developed thanks to French loans. This is all due to a general tendency to simplify sounds.
-Merger of final unstressed short vowels to <e>
-Loss of h-clusters into the letter that accompanies the h (/hn/</n/)
-Raising of /æː/ to /ɛː/
-Loss of OE /y/ and /y:/
-ME smoothing: diphthongs become monophthongs
-Precluster shortening: long vowels shorten before other clusters (with a few exceptions)
-Trisyllabic shortening: long vowels shorten in the antepenultimate syllable or trisyllabic
words
-Homorganic lengthening: short (and particularly high) vowels lengthen before clusters of
nasal/liquid + homorganic voiced obstruent, except if there is a consonant cluster of three or
more
-Middle English breaking: ME develops new diphthongs by either inserting a high vowel
between a non-high and a velar/palatal consonant or by the vocalisation of specific
allophones
-Fricative voicing ME: voicing contrast in fricatives (/v z ð/) due to French loans with voiced
fricatives in positions where they would’ve been voiceless in OE
-Loss of some /sw/ clusters: it becomes /s/ before a back vowel

2.Middle English onwards changes:

2.1 Phonological changes

-Raising and rounding of OE /ɑː/ to /ɔː/
-Middle English sporadic open syllable lengthening
-Loss of final /e:/, becoming an orthographic marker
-Medial and final /x/ either deletes with compensatory lengthening or becomes /f/ or /h/
-Great Vowel Shift: Coined by O.Jespersen, it began in the 15th century and was completed
in the 18th. It was a non-uniform chain process, some stages overlapping. It consisted of: all
long vowels raising by one slot (except /ɛː/ raises by two), high long vowels diphthongise and
length alternations become lengths+quality alternations. It is subjected to dialectal variation.
2.2 Morphological changes from Old English to Early Modern English
Overview: The reduction of distinctions in the nominal paradigm, again due to the general
tendency towards simplification, wounds up in the eventual loss of the case system -it is still
somewhat present in the pronouns system in PDE-. This loss would be particularly present in
the adjectives, which are arguably the ones that are most subjected to change. Another of the
most important changes is the development of the general “-s” for plurals and the
development of semantic gender.

2.2.1 Nominal paradigm:

-Reduction of distinctions in the nominal paradigm, which would up in the loss of the case
system
-Analogical changes such as levelling simple paradigms and make them more regular

2.2.2 General outline:

-Replacement of dative plural with unmarked general s-plural
-Spread of s-genitive for femenine and plural nouns
-Grammatical gender is replaced by semantic gender
-Generalisation of the s-plural

2.2.3 Pluralisation:
-Only a few weak plurals remained, some nouns gain one
-Some r-stem neuters gain an extra n-plural marker

2.2.4 Adjectival morphology

-Undergo even more loss of inflection
-Weak-strong distinction is lost, and they agree with nouns for gender
-Case and number is lost later
-Comparative/superlative analytical forms appear in Middle English (-er/-est, determined by
monosyllabic or disyllabic ending in vowel) though the synthetic forms already existed in
OE.
-Double comparative and superlative for emphasis
-Development of articles: initial “th-” spreads to masc/fem nom sing forms by analogy, and
then the singular “the” extended as an invariant for for all numbers/cases/genders, preceding
the loss of gender and case as categories

2.2.5 Pronominal changes:

Overview: grammatical gender is lost, grammatical case is largely lost, The OE inflectional
cases are reduced to one regular class and a handful of irregulars. The two possible
explanations are: either the sound changes made the morphological system unstable and the
speakers regularised it, or it was due to contact with Old Norse/French resulting in simplified
systems
-The dual is lost in early Middle English
-1ps nom sing “ich” turns into “I”
-Accusative and dative merge
-3ps plural pronouns starting with “th-” are borrowed from Old Norse
-”She” develops from “heo” or from “seo”
-New possessives hers/ours/yours/theirs develop
-Mine/My distinction
-Possessive “it” emerges
-Second person pronouns are completely reorganised, borrowing from French the use of
plural as a formal singular, which spreads and ends up being used from all the forms (“you”)
losing also subject/object distinction

2.2.6 Changes in inflectional endings:

-Some forms merge by sound change (-eth, -en), leaving both of these as person-number
endings
-1ps sing (-e) drops, and 2ps sing (-st) is added sometimes to modals
-Due to the Northumbrian Old English influence, the 3ps sg “-s” spreads in the 15th century,
through dialect contact.
-Infinitive markers are lost, and nominalisations are restructured eventually giving the “-ing”

2.2.7 Verbal Morphology

-Singular-plural vowel alternation in the preterite is lost by: generalisation of the singular
vowel or the plural vowel
-Many strong verbs analogically become weak
-Loss of distinct paradigms of “beon” and “wesan”, but still preserves more morphology
than any other english verb
3. Middle English Grammar

Before the Norman Conquest, the grammar and orthography taught greatly differed from the
way people actually spoke -as it is still the case in PDE-. After the Conquest, and the
endorsement of French as the prestige language, the Old English tradition was lost and few
writers could understand it, let alone reproduce it. Therefore Middle English writers wrote in
their own dialects, which as stated before, were subjected to heavy diatopical variation. The
first attempt at a standard was with the London dialect of Geoffrey Chaucer.

3.1 Pronunciation

3.1.1 Vowels
-The letters a, e, i, o, and u are generally pronounced as in Spanish.
-Sometimes e, i, o, and u are pronounced in as in English “bet”, “bit”, “for” and “put”,
especially when followed by two consonants. The rules for this are complicated
-The letter e is always pronounced, even at the ends of words, (though there will be variation,
reduction to schwa, and eventual complete loss).
-The vowel i may also be spelt y or j. The pronunciation is the same.
-The vowel u can sometimes be represented v or w. The pronunciation is the same.
-Combinations of vowels: oi/oy are pronounced as in Modern English “boy”. Au/aw are
pronounced as in Modern English “house”. Ou/ow are pronounced as in Modern English
“boot”. Ai/ay/ei/ey are pronounced like the vowel in “find”. Double vowels like aa are
pronounced just like single vowels.

3.1.2 Consonants
-F, h, k, l, v and w are pronounced like in PDE.
-”g” is pronounced as in goat before the vowels a, o, and u. Before “i” and “e” it may be
pronounced like “j”. The combination gg sometimes represents the g sound (e.g. pigge) and
sometimes represents the j sound
-ȝ is the Middle English letter ‘yogh’. Between vowels such as a, o, and u it was pronounced
like the ch in Scottish loch, but with more vibration of the vocal cords. Next to e and i, it is
pronounced like y.
-þ is the Middle English letter ‘thorn’. It is pronounced like Modern English ‘th’ in then or
thigh.

3.2 Grammar

3.2.1 Nouns
-The plurals of nouns generally end in –s or –es. However, some nouns end in –n or –en
-Possessive forms end in –s or –es. There is no apostrophe; possessives are distinguished
from plurals by context.
3.2.2 Verbs
-Infinitive: ends in –n or –en
-Plural form in the present tense: The –n or –en ending can also indicate a plural form of the
verb
-Plural form in the past tense: the ending may be –n, -en, or –ed.
-Past participle: The –n or –en can also be a past participle, in this case the word will
generally be preceded by a form of have or be, or else it will function as an adjective
describing a noun.
-About the past tense ending
● The ending –þ or –eþ (-eth in modern spelling) is indicative of the past tense -it can
also be an imperative-. This ending generally contains –t, -d, or –ed.
● The past tense and past participle may also be indicated by a change in the root vowel
of the word, as in Modern English sing, sang, sung (these irregulars were habitual in
ME, more so than in PDE)

-Subjunctive constructions: ‘if he be’, ‘let him be’, or ‘may he be’, which suggest
hypothetical or desirable situations, are indicated by the subjunctive form of the verb, which
ends in –e, or –en in the plural.
-Negatives: Verbs are made negative by the use of (either or both) words ne and nat on either
side of the verb.

3.2.3 Pronouns
Overview: The development of pronouns at different stages of OE and ME was an
overlapping process at several stages, and the influence of the case system is still greatly felt
across the evolution. Perhaps the most striking developments are those of “she” and “they”,
which greatly differ from their OE and Early ME forms: “she” comes from “heo” the
demonstrative sēo , change of the vowel by analogy with “he”, and “they” from “hi”, through
influence of the Old Norse.

-Thou and ye: The ‘thou’ form is used to refer to one person, whereas the ‘ye/you’ form
refers to more than one person (only in Old English).
-OE he, she and they: It can be very difficult to distinguish the words for ‘he’, ‘she’, and
‘they’ in early Middle English, since they all look pretty much the same. You need to judge
by context.
-In early texts ‘thee’ pronoun is spelt þe, which can look like the definite article ‘the’ or
the relative pronoun meaning ‘that’, ‘which’, or ‘who’.
-Over time, the words for ‘my’ and ‘thy’ increasingly lose the –n when the following word
begins with a consonant.
-The possessive of it (present-day its) is his, right up to the time of Shakespeare.
-In early texts the word for ‘their’, hir(e), can look like the word for ‘her’ (see above)
QUESTIONS

-Old English:
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest attested form of the English language.
Brought by Anglo-Saxons settlers in the 5th century, it was spoken through a great part of the
Middle Ages, with a brief interruption during the Norman Conquest that would eventually
birth the Middle English thanks to the Anglo-Norman influence. Historical linguistics link its
roots to the West variety of the Proto-Germanic, situating it as part of the immense family of
Indo-european languages.
It was divided into four, very distinct, diatopical variations or dialects: Northumbrian,
Mercian, Kentish and the West Saxon, which would become the most relevant and persistent
one, particularly in manuscript writing. It was enforced particularly during the ruling of King
Alfred, and his influence is best attested in his written prologue to Gregory’s Pastoral Care.
Old English was written in runic in its early attestations, with graphemes and meanings
inherited from the Elder Futhark, such as the runes “thorn” and “wynn”, and later in Latin -
Old English alphabet-.
It had a distinctive phonology, spelling and overall grammar from Present Day
English (PDE). Most pronunciation aspects relied on the immediate phonological context of
the sound itself, not on its individual qualities. For example, fricative voicing was determined
by whether the fricative was found in-between vowels or in other position, as well as the
palatalisation, making the graphemes <c> and <g> to be realised as /k/, /ch/, /je/ or /ge/
depending on their proximity and position in relation to /e/ or /i/. In Old English there was
also a fair share of dipthongs and consonant clusters that would be eventually lost or greatly
reduced during the Great Vowel Shift. Coined by O.Jespersen, it was a non-uniform chain
process which lasted from the 15th century to the 18th, consisting on the raising of all long
vowels by one slot, diphthongisation of the high long vowels and such.
As for morphology, Old English used a case system with nominative for subjects,
accusative for direct objects, genitive to indicate possession, dative for indirect objects and
instrumental to refer to instruments. As for gender, it referred to the grammatical gender of
the words themselves, not the entities they represented -that is, syntactic gender-, and for
number it would employ the categories of singular, plural and dual, for pairs, only found in
1st and 2nd person pronouns. The development of personal pronouns and relative adjectives
would be a process that would not come to total fruition until Middle English and its French
and Latin influence. Another more unusual classification was found, a distinction between
weak and strong nouns, that would also extend to adjectives and verbs. In the case of verbs
and nouns, this depended on their syntax and stems, and in the case of the adjectives, on
whether they could “stand on its own” without the help of supportive elements. The irregular
or anomalous verbs “beon”, that is “to be” and “gan”, that is “to go”, would later evolve in
the PDE “to be”.
In the syntax aspect, Old English primarily sticks to the prototypical Subject Verb
Object or SVO word order, with the exception of verb-final clauses for subordinates. Its verbs
are able to showcase a tense -past, present and “future”- and aspect -perfect and progressive,
though the latter is rare- system, plus the indicative and a subjunctive that would eventually
evolve to a future auxiliary from its sense of volition in OE. Modal auxiliaries are attested
too, though they would develop distinct properties later in Middle English, and at this stage
function like any other verb. These are “willan” (will), “sculan” (shall), “magan” (be able to)
and “cunnan” (know/can).
Finally, accounting for the lexical aspect, many Germanic vocabulary, mainly
compounds can be appreciated in the Old English vocabulary. In Middle English, loanwords
inherited from French and Old norse would be much more pervasive, particularly referring to
matters of arts and aristocracy and battle and conquest respectively.

-Middle English:
The evolution from Old English, influenced by the Norman Conquest, and spoken
from the 11th to the 15th century, roughly the High to Late Middle Ages. It was spoken in the
majority of England, except from Cornwall, and in some localities in the eastern fringe of
Wales, southeastern Scotland and some parts of Ireland, and had four distinct dialects:
Northern, West Midlands, East Midlands and Southern. The main differences between OE
and ME dialects are: More voicing of initial fricatives (vather > father) in the south, change
of /aː/ >/ɔː/ in the south (ME) and /ʃ/ > /s/ is typical of the north.
In a time when the language of prestige was French, due to the Norman Conquest, the
West Saxon became the standard in written texts. During the Middle English period the
dialects were subjected to even more regional variations. It began to be used for
administration throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Up until the standardisation,
the regional variations of each dialect made it nearly impossible for people of different areas
to understand each other. A gradual change was made through the training of Chancery
scribes in Latin and French, therefore introducing a revision in spelling, orthography, a
handful of French and Latin loanwords and structures and a revision of old graphemes. This
process extended presumably through the sharing of the Chancery scribes and the texts
written and adapted by them. To root the standardisation, a prescriptive tendency was
adopted, given the dire need for a general grammar due to extreme diatopical variation.
The overview for the changes from OE to ME goes in the direction of a simplification
and unification of the language, both in syntax, phonetics and grammar. In phonetics this is
seen in phenomena such as the merger of final unstressed short vowels, loss of several
consonant clusters and the precluster and trisyllabic shortening. The loss of the final /e:/ and
its becoming an orthographic marker, is also noteworthy, due to it being a process still
present in PDE. The simplification also extends to pronunciation, as many graphemes are
pronounced as those in Spanish, with minimal variation subjected to their phonetic
environment, unlike OE.
As for morphology, the reduction of distinctions in the nominal paradigm, again due
to the general tendency towards simplification, wounds up in the eventual loss of the case
system -it is still somewhat present in the pronouns system in PDE-. This loss would be
particularly present in the adjectives, which are arguably the ones that are most subjected to
change. Another of the most important changes is the development of the general “-s” for
plurals and the development of semantic gender. In the pronominal aspect, grammatical
gender is lost, grammatical case is largely lost, The OE inflectional cases are reduced to one
regular class and a handful of irregulars. The two possible explanations are: either the sound
changes made the morphological system unstable and the speakers regularised it, or it was
due to contact with Old Norse/French resulting in simplified systems. The development of
pronouns at different stages of OE and ME was an overlapping process at several stages, and
the influence of the case system is still greatly felt across the evolution. Perhaps the most
striking developments are those of “she” and “they”, which greatly differ from their OE and
Early ME forms: “she” comes from “heo”, “ha” and “he”, and “they” from “hi”, “heo” and
“ha”, through influence of the Old Norse.

Rough notes:
Historical linguistics:
Changes can be internal (changes as movements towards unmarked types of language) or
external (‘borrowing’ of sounds, structures, loanwords). They can affect phonology,
morphology, syntax, etc.
They can be traced through a comparison method of attested forms of their daughter
languages, which give information about parent languages (historical reconstruction).

English comes from the proto-germanic division of the proto-indo european, particularly the
west variety. This is noticed in the stress movies to initial syllables, a restructuring of the
tense/past aspect and Grimm’s and Verner’s law.
-Grimm’s Law: DOES NOT APPLY TO VOWELS involving the changes from voiceless
and voiced sounds particularly in plosives and fricatives: Proto-Indo-European voiceless
stops change into voiceless fricatives, Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless
stops and Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops become voiced stops or fricatives (as
allophones).
-Scandinavian influence: borrowings from Old Norse, endings in -kirt, -kirk, -caster, -chester.
This would explain changes in verbal inflection and word order.
-Verner’s Law: Restriction to Grimm’s Law on the variation of consonants. Grimm’s law
stated that the Indo-European p, t, and k sounds changed into f, th or d, and h in the Germanic
languages. Verner noticed that Grimm’s law was valid whenever the accent fell on the root
syllable of the Sanskrit cognate, but, when the accent fell on another syllable, the Germanic
equivalents became b, d, and g. For our purposes, Verner’s Law will refer to the alternation
of z (orthographically represented by <s>) to r, both for phonemic and orthographic
purposes. Technically, this rule states that in the Germanic branch of Indo-European, all non-
initial voiceless fricatives (spirants) became voiced between voiced sounds if they followed
an unaccented syllable in Indo-European or Sanskrit. Visible in the alternation of the past in
the development of the verb “to be”, because of its high frequency -use-.
(https://www.britannica.com/topic/Verners-law )

Grammar:
Grammatical gender: typical of OE, gender is assigned based on the structure of the word, not
the object they represent.
Cases: OE uses a system of cases to assign grammatical functions: nom, ac, gen, dat,
instrumental (still noticeable in PDE pronouns)

Phonetic changes
-Fricative voicing: the voicing of fricative sounds is determined entirely by position: it is
voiced when it’s between vowels or other voiced sounds and voiceless in other positions. <r>
is rolled.
-Stress falls usually on the first syllable, though prepositional prefixes can be accented or
unaccented and compounds in which both elements retain meanings have a secondary stress
on the root of the second element
-Palatalisation: c is /k/ or /ch/ (palatalization) and ge is /je/ given in the context of an /e/ or /i/

Syntactic changes
-SVO/V2 word order: main clauses are V2 with a preference for SVO -though V1 is possible
in neg clauses-
-Verb-final clauses: mainly found in embedded clauses (subordinates)
-Particle-V + V: found in particle/phrasal verbs (verb final or verb+complement+verb: then
stuck him one the eyes out)
-Genitive: behaves like a case ending, and can precede or follow the head noun. Divided
genitives are common (Inwaer brother and Healfden’s)
-Non-accusative objects: usually the direct object is represented by an accusative, but in some
cases they might take a dative
-Subjunctive: it is found in OE in its habitual context
-Aspect progressive: though rare, there is a OE progressive construction formed by “to
be+pres part (-ende)”
-Aspect perfect: formed by “have + past part” or “be + past part”
-Modal auxiliaries: develop distinctive properties later in English. The core are “willan”
(will/want), “sculan” (shall/owe), “magan” (may be able), “cunnan” (known/can). At this
stage of OE, they act pretty much like any other verb, but their stranding in ME and onwards
will cause them to have particularities, like a detachment from their original past forms
-Passive: formed by “be + past part -like PDE-” or “become (weorthan) + past part”. There
are no continuous passives. “Weorthan” will eventually become obsolete.
-Relative clauses: formed by the particle “the” (with thorn), the article (for example, “se”) as
a relative pronoun or both together

Morphological changes
-Synthetic language: is more inflectional in nouns, verbs and particularly pronouns and
determiners.
-Weak and strong nouns: whose stems end with a vowel except for “u” are weak, nouns
whose stem ends with a consonant are strong (60% of cases)
-Strong nouns can have either a short stem (short vowel + consonant) or a long stem (long
vowel + consonant)
-Umlaut aka “i-mutation”: stressed vowel + /i/ or /j/ undergoes morphological “i-mutation”,
resulting in the short vowels raising a level, all back vowels becoming front and the
diphthongs shift. Its triggering environment is lost, leaving umlaut as a morphological
process. (Ex: mann<menn, freond<friend)
-U-stem nouns: nouns ending in “u” (ex: sunu)
-Dual: third number classification, used for pairs. Only found in 1st and 2nd person pronouns
-Pronouns: they retain a structure very similar to those of Greek, retaining a nom-ac
distinction in fem and masc, and no gender distinctions in plural for example
palatalization, nominalization, processes, etc
-Weak and strong adjectives: it depends on whether the adjective stands on its own (“good
men”), or if it needs to be supported by an article, demonstrative or possessive (“these good
men”). It has nothing to do with the noun it modifies.
-Weak and strong verbs: weak verbs mark the past tense with a suffix including a dental stop
(ending in voiceless+/t/ or voiced+/d/), strong verbs feature vowel alternation in their
inflection
-Ablaut: vowel alternation found in inflected verbs inherited from proto-indo european,
partially depending on accent. There are seven classes of ablaut pattern
-Strong and weak verbs conjugation: very similar, but differ in the past ind and past subj
endings. In weak verbs all persons in both past ind and sub are conjugated with “-de”, and in
strong verbs past 1st and 3rd person have no ending, and the second is made with an “-e”, and
the past sub is made with an “-e” for all three persons
-Preterite presents: small class of verbs that have what it looks morphologically like strong
past forms in the present, and weak past forms in the past, the ancestors of PDE modal verbs
(cunnan, sculan, magan and witan)
-Present participle: ending in (-ende) is used to nominalise verbs, just like PDE “-ing”
-Irregular verbs: “gan” (go) -replaced by “went” in ME- and “wesan” (to be) are highly
irregular
-New verbs in OE: generally weak
-Sound changes from Old English to Early Modern English:
Overall, as any language evolution, tends to the simplification of sounds -particularly vowels-
and loss of complicated consonant clusters.
1.Old English to Middle English
-Merger or final unstressed short vowels to <e>
-Loss of h-clusters into the letter that accompanies the h (/hn/</n/)
-Raising of /æː/ to /ɛː/
-Loss of OE /y/ and /y:/
-ME smoothing: diphthongs become monophthongs
-Precluster shortening: long vowels shorten before other clusters (with a few exceptions)
-Trisyllabic shortening: long vowels shorten in the antepenultimate syllable or trisyllabic
words
-Homorganic lengthening: short (and particularly high) vowels lengthen before clusters of
nasal/liquid + homorganic voiced obstruent, except if there is a consonant cluster of three or
more
-Middle English breaking: ME develops new diphthongs by either inserting a high vowel
between a non-high and a velar/palatal consonant or by the vocalisation of specific
allophones
-Fricative voicing: voicing contrast in fricatives (/v z ð/) due to French loans with voiced
fricatives in positions where they would’ve been voiceless in OE
-Loss of some /sw/ clusters: it becomes /s/ before a back vowel
2.Middle English onwards changes:
2.1 Main changes
-Raising and rounding of OE /ɑː/ to /ɔː/
-Middle English sporadic open syllable lengthening
-Loss of final /e:/, becoming an orthographic marker
-Medial and final /x/ either deletes with compensatory lengthening or becomes /f/ or /h/
-Great Vowel Shift: Coined by O.Jespersen, it began in the 15th century and was completed
in the 18th. It was a non-uniform chain process, some stages overlapping. It consisted of: all
long vowels raising by one slot (except /ɛː/ raises by two), high long vowels diphthongise and
length alternations become lengths+quality alternations. It is subjected to dialectal variation.
-Morphological changes from Old English to Early Modern English
1.Nominal paradigm:
-Reduction of distinctions in the nominal paradigm, which would up in the loss of the case
system
-Analogical changes such as levelling simply paradigms and make them more regular
2.General outline:
-Replacement of dative plural with unmarked general s-plural
-Spread of s-genitive for femenine and plural nouns
-Grammatical gender is replaced by semantic gender
-Generalisation of the s-plural
3.Pluralisation:
-Only a few weak plurals remained, some nouns gain one
-Some r-stem neuters gain an extra n-plural marker
4-Adjectival morphology
-Undergo even more loss of inflection
-Weak-strong distinction is lost, and they agree with nouns for gender
-Case and number is lost later
-Comparative/superlative appear in Middle English (-er/-est, determined by monosyllabic or
disyllabic ending in vowel)
-Double comparative and superlative for emphasis
-Development of articles: initial “th-” spreads to masc/fem nom sing forms by analogy, and
then the singular “the” extended as an invariant for for all numbers/cases/genders, preceding
the loss of gender and case as categories
5.Pronominal changes:
Overview: grammatical gender is lost, grammatical case is largely lost, The OE inflectional
cases are reduced to one regular class and a handful of irregulars. The two possible
explanations are: either the sound changes made the morphological system unstable and the
speakers regularised it, or it was due to contact with Old Norse/French resulting in simplified
systems
-The dual is lost in early Middle English
-1ps nom sing “ich” turns into “I”
-Accusative and dative merge
-3ps plural pronouns starting with “th-” are borrowed from Old Norse
-”She” develops from “heo” or from “seo”
-New possessives hers/ours/yours/theirs develop
-Mine/my distinction
-Possessive “it” emerges
-Second person pronouns are completely reorganised, borrowing from French the use of
plural as a formal singular, which spreads and ends up being used from all the forms (“you”)
losing also subject/object distinction
6. Changes in inflectional endings:
-Some forms merge by sound change (-eth, -en), leaving both of these as person-number
endings
-1ps sing (-e) drops, and 2ps sing (-st) is added sometimes to modals
-Due to the Northumbrian Old English influence, the 3ps sg “-s” spread in the 15th century,
through dialect contact.
-Infinitive markers are lost, and nominalisations are restructured eventually giving the “-ing”
7-Verbal Morphology
-Singular-plural vowel alternation in the preterite is lost by: generalisation of the singular
vowel or the plural vowel
-Many strong verbs analogically become weak
-Loss of distinct paradigms of “beon” and “wesan”, but still preserves more morphology than
any other english verb

CHANGES FROM OLD ENGLISH TO MIDDLE ENGLISH

Sound and spelling changes
900:
difference between dialects: OE WS ie, īe = OE A e, ē
1000 - 1100:
monopthongisation and lowering: ea > æ then æ > a
monopthongisation: ēa > ǣ
smoothing: eah, ēah > eh, ēh
lengthening of short vowels before ld, nd, ng 1
shortening of long vowels before ht, pt, st, fd
unstressed short vowels > e /ə/
1100 - 1200:
loss of initial h before l, n, r
unrounding: y, ȳ > i, í
spelling of /j/: ġ > ȝ
closing and shortening before /j/: ǣġ, ēġ > eȝ 9
spelling of /k/: c > k before e, i 11
monopthongisation: eo, ēo > e, é
Simplification of Noun paradigms
complete by 1150
the OE declensions are reduced to one, based on the masculine a-stems;
the plural ending for all cases is -es;
in addition to the irregular plurals which have survived to ModE, there are a handful of nouns
with plural ending in -en and a slightly larger group with no plural ending;
the nominative singular of strong feminine nouns generally gains a final e in eME.
all reflexes of OE nouns ending in <g>, have <h> as the final consonant in the nominative
singular;
underway in eME
the dative singular case is no longer indicated;
there is no stem alternation; the <w> of OE wa- and wo-stems and the final <h> of certain
OE a-stems, is either dropped or extended, throughout the paradigm;
the small group of unmarked genitives acquire the characteristic -es ending;
Simplification of Verb paradigms
complete by 1150
the OE infinitive ending ~an becomes ~en;
the OE present tense plural ending ~aþ becomes ~en;
in the reflexes of class II weak verbs, the infinitive and present participle, as well as the 1st
person and plural present tense forms, lose the <i> or <ġ> which had immediately followed
the stem;
the OE weak class II preterite stem ~od~ becomes ~ed~;
weak classes are reduced to one;
in strong verbs, in the present tense, the 2nd and 3rd person singular forms, assume the vowel
of the 1st person and plural forms;
underway in eME
in the preterite of strong classes 4 and 5, the plural form assimilates to the 1st & 3rd person
singular form.
in the reflexes of class I weak verbs, the infinitive and present participle, as well as the 1st
person and plural present tense forms, lose the gemination (doubling) of the final consonant
in the stem;
in strong contracted verbs, the final consonant of the past participle stem, either <g> (ɣ) or
<ng>, is extended throughout the infinitive and present tense stems;
in classes 1, 6 and 7 of strong contracted verbs, the infinitive and present tense forms assume
the standard present tense vowel of the respective class;
Reduction of Adjectival declension
the adjective is no longer marked for case or gender;
~e is added before plural nouns or when an adjective represents a plural noun or pronoun;
~e is added after 'the', demonstrative adjectives and possessive pronouns;
alternation of ~u/~we~ in the stem disappears and is replaced either by final ~e or ~we
throughout the paradigm;