Lecture Word Stock of Middle English Period. Phonetic peculiarities of Middle English

o with the value [u] came to be used instead of the former u when it stood next to the letters n, 
m, or v, as they were all made up of down strokes difficult to distinguish (thus OE munic became 
ME monk [munk], NE monk; lufu became ME love [luvэ], NE love). A few alterations must have 
been purely ornamental; thus the use of the letters y and w at the end of words with the same 
sound values as i and u can be attributed to the desire of the scribes to finish the word with a 
curve. Compare ME mine [`mi:nэ], NE mine and ME my [mi:], NE my. 
The written form of the English language became standardised earlier than its spoken 
form. The literary form of English came into existence in the age of Chaucer, was fixed and 
spread with the introduction of printing and was further developed as the national English 
literary language during the rise of literature in the 16
th 
and 17
th 
centuries. 
In the 17
th 
century the type of speech used in London and in the Universities was 
unanimously proclaimed the best type of English. The phineticians and grammarians recommend 
it as a model of correct English. 
During the 17
th 
century, the gap between the written language and the spoken language of 
increasing numbers of people became narrower. With the spread of education more people 
learned to speak “correctly”, in the way prescribed by grammars and textbooks. The use of 
standard speech as distinguished from local dialect is insisted upon in the grammars and 
dictionaries of the 18
th 
century. 
However, by the 17
th 
century the tongue of London (which was the basis of the spoken 
standard) had absorbed many new features of the local dialects, for as the country had become 
more unified, the ties between its region had strengthened, and the population of London had 
become still more mixed. The tongue of the middle class of London – which is regarded as the 
source of the spoken standard in the social sense – had become closer to the tongue of the 
common people. 
In the 17
th 
century - the age of English Revolution – the upper and middle classes were 
replenished by people of lower ranks and consequently their speech assumed many of the 
features of the lower varieties of English. 
The English sounds have changed very considerably in the nine hundred years that have 
elapsed since the OE period. The changes have effected not only the pronunciation of separate 
words but even more so the entire system of phonemes and the system of word-stress. 
In OE, stress usually fell on the first syllable of the word and rarely – on its second 
syllable. Its position was determined by phonetic, morphological and semantic factors: in verbs 
with prefixes stress fell on the root-morpheme, although it was not the first syllable of the word, 

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– which means that morphological factors prevailed over phonetic ones. In some polysyllabic 
words, for examle nouns, the first syllable was stressed irrespective ( 
) of whether it 
was the root or the prefix, – in other words, here phonetic factors appeared to be more important. 
Word-stress was fixed, since it was never moved in inflection and rarely – in derivation. 
In the Middle and Early NE periods – roughly between 13
th 
and 16
th 
centuries – the 
system of word-stress in English was considerably altered. In Middle English texts stress is no 
longer the exclusive property of the root-morpheme or the first syllable; on the contrary, its 
position seems to be free, as we come across a great variety of differently stressed words, e.g. 
ME nature [na`ty:r] or [na`tjy:r], NE nature. The main innovation of the ME period was that in 
contrast to OE, stress could fall not only on the first syllable of the word or the root-morpheme 
but also on the syllables following the root-morpheme or on the second syllable of the root. Only 
the grammatical inflections remained unstressed the same as before. 
As the loan-words were assimilated by the English language the stress was moved closer 
to the beginning of the word. In words of three and more syllables the changes proceeded in 
different ways due to the recessive ( 
) 
tendency (in disyllabic words stress was 
shifted from the second to the first syllable – ME virtu [ver`tju:] > NE virtue [`v3:tjэ]), and also 
due to the rhythmic tendency which required a regular alternation of stressed and unstressed 
syllables. Thus stress could be shifted to the syllable immediately preceding in line with the 
recesive tendency, as in ME condicioun [kondi`sju:n] > NE condition; 
ME disobeie [dizo`beiэ] > NE disibey[`diso`bei] . 
Words with the stress falling on the third syllable from the end are common in Modern E 
(NE comfortable, concentrate, ability, evident, etc.). Etymologically they are borrowed words of 
the given type with the stress re-adjusted due to the rhythmic tendency. 
Some alterations in the position of stress are associated not only with the phonetic 
tendencies but also with certain morphological factors. Thus stress was not shifted to the prefixes 
of many verbs borrowed or built in Middle and Early NE in spite of the recessive tendency – 
which conforms to the native OE morphological regularity in the word-stress (to keep verb 
prefixes unstressed), e.g. NE imprison, recover, mistake. 
In the Middle and NE periods the main character and directions of the evolution of 
unstressed vowels were the same as before: the unstressed vowels had lost many of their former 
distinctions – their differences in quantity as well as some of their differences in quality were 
neutralised. 
In the Middle English period the pronunciation of unstressed syllables became 
increasingly indistinct. As compared to OE which distinguished five short vowels in unstressed 
position (representing three phonemes [e/i], [a] and [o/u]), ME reduced them to [e/i] or rather 
[э/i], the first variant being a neutral sound. Compare: OE fiscas 
ME