ENG501 Treasure

All Middle English long vowels underwent extensive alteration during this period. However, short vowels, in accented syllables, remained comparatively stable. If we compare Chaucer’s pronunciation of the short vowels with ours, we note only two changes of importance: those of ‘a’ and ‘u’. In some cases, this ME a represented in OE as æ (at, apple, back), and the new pronunciation was therefore a return to approximately the form that the word had had in Old English. It is the usual pronunciation in America and a considerable part of southern England today. The change that u underwent was what is known as unrounding. In Chaucer’s pronunciation this vowel was like the u in full. By the sixteenth century, it seems to have become, in most words, the sound we have in but (e.g., cut, sun; love, with the Anglo-Norman spelling of o for u). So far as the short vowels are concerned, it is clear that a person today would have little difficulty in understanding the English of any period of the language.

The situation is very different when we consider the long vowels. In Chaucer’s pronunciation, these had still their so-called ‘continental’ value—that is, a was pronounced like the a in father and not as in name. Also in Chaucer’s pronunciation e was either like the e in there or the a in mate, but not like the ee in meet. But in 15th century, a great change happened i.e. all the long vowels gradually came to be pronounced with a greater elevation of the tongue and closing of the mouth. Most of the long vowels had approximately acquired their present pronunciation at least by the sixteenth century. The change occurred at the end of the seventeenth century and had become general by the middle of the eighteenth. The spelling of English had become fixed in a general way before the shift and therefore did not change when the quality of the long vowels changed. Consequently, our vowel symbols no longer correspond to the sounds they once represented in English and still represent in the other modern languages.

At the public level, a similar self-consciousness has driven issues of language policy over the past four centuries long before ‘language policy’ acquired its modern meaning. The beginnings of this public discussion are evident in the sixteenth-century defense of English – debates about orthography and the enrichment of the vocabulary. Anxiety about language policy and a new urgency in the second half of the 17th century could be felt. From the 18th century, proposals for an academy were presented. There was a growing self-consciousness about the shape of English language. With the growth of specialized knowledge, English language needed new vocabulary also because now Latin became less and less the vehicle for learned discourse. The rapid accumulation of new knowledge and less publishing of specialized and learned works in Latin also played a role. Selfconsciousness about language had two aspects: individual & public.

Historical event

•  The Norman Conquest
•  The Black Death
•  More general - less influential

A radical force means anything that promotes change in language. Now these conditions are favorable to the spread of ideas and stimulating to the growth of the vocabulary. Apart from the special effects of the Norman Conquest, in the Middle Ages, changes in vocabulary were not so great.

The case of grammar was opposite to vocabulary. Changes in vocabulary were radical. On the other hand, treatment of grammar was conservative. The question is: what do we mean by conservative? It means something or somebody that tends to preserve the existing status. There was a relationship of various agencies in this regard:

•  Printing press
•  The reading habit
•  The advances of learning
•  Science
•  Increased communication

The paradox of the situation was favorable to the spread of ideas and was stimulating to the growth of the vocabulary. But it created social consciousness to work actively toward the promotion and maintenance of a standard, especially in grammar and usage. So, changes in grammar have been relatively slight. But in the Middle English period changes in grammar were revolutionary. For the English, as for the French and the Italians, in the 16th century the question of orthography or ‘right writing,’ as Mulcaster preferred to call it, was important. Generally speaking, the spelling of the modern languages in the Middle Ages had attempted with fair success to represent the pronunciation of words. The same is true of English, though Norman scribes have introduced considerable confusion. How did they do so? The answer is:

•  They tried to write a language that they knew imperfectly
•  Followed pronunciation to create spelling
•  Carried French habits

The confusion was increased when certain spellings gradually became conventional while the pronunciation slowly changed. Reason was because the corresponding word in Latin was spelled so. For example, (debitum, dubitare).

It is not always possible to say whether a word is directly from Latin or came indirectly through French. Reason for this uncertainty is that a wholesale enrichment was going on simultaneously in French. The same words were being introduced in both languages. Often the two streams of influence merged. But of course, first hand borrowing happened. Word fact represents the Latin factum and not the French fait, which was taken into English earlier as feat. Verbs like confiscate, congratulate, and exonerate are formed from the Latin participle (confiscat-us, etc.) and not from the French confisquer, congratuler, exonerer, The form prejudicate is Latin while prejudge represents French prejuger. Instruct and subtract have Latin ancestry (instructus, subtractus). Why is it so? Well, the French instruire and subtraire would have become in English instroy (like destroy) and subtray (which is found in the fifteenth century). Conjugation is probably a direct importation from Latin (conjugation-em) since the more usual form in French was conjugaison.

Sixteenth-century purists objected to three classes of strange words, which they characterized as:

1. Inkhorn terms
2. Oversea language
3. Chaucerisms