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

Monophthongixation of OE Diphthongs. All OE diphthongs were 
monophthongixed in ME. OE short ea became a passing through the stage of æ, 
as in eald>ald ‘old’, healf> half, earm> arm ‘poor’. 
OE ea before ld yielded different results in different dialects. 
In the ME period a great change affected the entire system of vowel phonemes. To fully 
understand the importance of this change, we must briefly summarize the essential 
characteristics of the OE vowel system. OE had both short and long vowel phonemes, and each 
these could occur in any phonetic environment, that is they were absolutely independent 
phonemic units. As a result of important changes coming into the vowel system in the 10th-
12th centuries, the ME vowel system was basically different. While, in OE, quantity (that is 

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langth/ shortness) was a distinctive phonemic feature, in ME (by the 13th century) this is no 
longer so. Quantity of vowels becomes dependent on their environment- to be exact, on what 
follows. With a few exceptions (see below, ¸319) the situation in ME is briefly this: in other 
phonetic environments only short vowels can appear, while in other phonetic environments only 
long vowels can appear. The quantity (langth/ shortness) of a vowel is with those few exceptions 
still to be considered unambiguously predetermined by the environment. Thus quantity ceases 
being a phonemically relevant feature and becomes a merely phonetic peculiarity of a vowel 
sound. Now we will consider the various items of this development, which come under separate 
headings. Shortening and Lengthening of Vowels. A long vowel occurring two consonants 
(including a doubled, i.e. long, consonant) is shortened. Compare the following examples: 
OE 
këpen cëpte 
(Past Tense) 
fëden fëdde (Past Tense) 
‘wisdom’ wisdom 
ME cëpan 
(Infinitive) 
‘kept’ 
kepte fëdan (Infinitive) 
fedde wis 
‘wise’ 
‘keep’ 
‘feed’ 
wis wisdöm 
The vowels are shorened before two consonants, but remain long in other environments. 
However, long vowels remain long before the “lengthening” consonant groups ld, nd, mb, i.e. 
those consisting of two voiced consonants articulated by the same organ of speech ( these were 
lengthened in Late OE, cf. ¸107), e.g.) e.g. 
wënan (Infinitive) 
hëran 
(Infinitive) 
‘think’ wënen wënde (Past Tense) 
wënde 
‘hear’ hëren hërde 
(Past Tense) hërde 
Long consonants also remained long before such consonant clusters as belonged to the 
following syllable. This mainly affects the group st as in the words OE ME læsta ‘least lęst 
ëastan ‘from the East’ ęsten mæsta, mästa ‘largest’ möst, mäst From such forms as these the 
long vowel could also penetrate into forms with final -st: -mëst, mäst, lëst, läst. On the other 
hand, in the words brëst >brest ‘breast’, blæst>blast ‘blast’, f ÿ st> fist, d ü st> dust the vowel 
was shortened, that is, the from without ending took the upper hand. A long vowel is also 
shortened before one consonant in some three- syllable words: läferce> laferce> larke ‘lark’, 
häl3dæ3> haliday ‘holiday’, sü þ erne> su þ erne ‘southern’. 
Lengthening. In the 13th century 
short vowels were lengthened in open syllables. This was another item of the development which 
deprived quantity (length/ shortness) of its status as a phonemic feature. Lengthening affected 
the short vowels a, e, o. In the Northern dialects it started in the 12th century, and in the 13th it 
spread all over England. The long vowels ë and ö which resulted from this change were open 
vowels; thus, the ë from e coincided with ë from æ and ëä; the öfrom o with ö from ä (in 
Midland and Southern dialects). For example: cäru> care ‘care’, talu> täle ‘tale’, macian> 
mäken ’make’, węrian> wëren ‘wear’, stelan> stëlen ‘steal’, specan> spëken ‘speak’, hopian> 
höpen ‘hope’, smocian> smöken ‘smoke’. The narrow vowels i and u remained as a rule 
unaffected by this change, and thus the difference between short i and long and also that between 
short u and ü retained its quality as a phonemically relevant feature. In a few words, however, 
the narrow vowels were also lengthened in open syllables, and the narrow vowels were widened 
in the process, thus, i>ë, u>ö, as in wikes> wëkes ‘weeks’, yfel> ifel> ëvel ‘evil’, dures> döres 
‘doors’. This change mainly occurred in the Northern dialect; it partly also affected the East 
Midland dialect. 
Development of other vowels. OE e, ë, i, ï, o were unchanged in ME: cf. 
bettre, tellan> tellen , ‘tell’, cëpan> këpen ‘keep’, tëp> tëth ‘teeth’, sin3an> singen ‘sing’, wille> 
will, writan> writen ‘write’, tima> time ‘time’, folc> folk ‘folk’. OE long ö mostly remained 
unchanged: föt ‘foot’, böc> bök ‘book’. However, in the Northern dialects the long ö began in 
the 13th century to develop into {ö>ü}. This vowel rhymes with French {ü}; it is denoted by the 
letter u or by the digraph ui, as in gud ‘good’, buk ‘book’, fut ‘foot’. OE short u and long ü 
remained unchanged in ME: sunu> sone {sun1}’son, hü> how {hü}, tün> town {tu:n}, üt> out 
{u:t}. Monophthongixation of OE Diphthongs. All OE diphthongs were monophthongixed in 

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ME. OE short ea became a passing through the stage of æ, as in eald>ald ‘old’, healf> half, 
earm> arm ‘poor’. OE ea before ld yielded different results in different dialects. 
The language of the Middle English period was made up of a number of local dialects. 
The disunity inherited from the Old English times had considerably increased due to the isolation 
of districts in the feudal state and to the two foreign influences. 
The following table (Table 1) shows the main dialect groups in Middle English and their 
Old English sources; it also shows the origin of the mixed dialect of London which shifted from 
the South Western to the East Midland type in the course of the Middle English period. 
Middle English Dialects 
OE 
Northumbrian 
Mercian 
ME 
NORTHERN 
(Northern, Lowland, Scottish) 
MIDLAND 
West Saxon 
Kentish 
(West Midland, East Midland, South-West 
Midland) 
LONDON 
SOUTHERN 
(South-Western) 
KENTISH 
The earliest records of the Middle English period are written in the local dialects, for no 
literary standard was yet in existence. We ought to keep in mind that for some time after the 
Norman conquest (1066) literature in the English language was practically nonexistent. In some 
dialects this gap (пробел) covers almost two hundred years. 
The earliest samples of Middle English prose are the new enties () made in the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicles from the year 1122 to the year 1154 known as the Petersborough Chronicle. 
2.2. The London Dialect and the Flourishing of literature in the late 14