A power point presentation on Middle English by the students of English dept. at Metropolitan University, Sylhet. Pulak Barua Ex Lecturer Dept. of English Metropolitan University, Sylhet, Bangladesh

1. Presented by
 Md. Anisul Haque
Fahmida Sharmin
 Bushra E Tamanna
 Rasel Shikdar
 Shah Md. Mohsinul Haque
Sueb 1

2. History of English
Language has three periods
 Old English (450-1150)
Middle English (1150-
1500)
 Modern English (1500- ) 2

3. Middle
English
1150-1500 AD
 Middle English started with the Norman
Conquest
English becomes official language of the law
courts. More and more authors are writing in
English
 A Period of Great Change
 Decay of Inflectional Endings
French Influence on the Vocabulary of Middle
English
The Period of Greatest Influence
 Hw became Wh
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4. Decay of Inflectional Endings
 Middle English Grammar
Changes
Reduction of Inflections
 Change in phonetics
 Old English Manuscripts had
disappeared by the using of press
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5. The Verbs
The original English verb
destroyed
 French dominating
The weak verbs became
strong gradually
 The strong verb declined
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6. Losses among the
Strong Verbs
 Almost one third strong verbs of OE
disappeared
 No reference of strong verbs in the books
after 1150
 Few strong verbs now use in spoken language
 Some strong verbs were rare and other were
in competition.
About a dozen more strong verbs appeared in
twelfth century texts.
 Today more than half of the strong verbs have
disappeared from the standard language. 6

7. Strong Verbs That
Became Weak
 The weak conjugation offered a smoothly structure for
the past and past participle.
 Past participle survive in the resemblance of past tense.
 Past tense were lost and become weak.
 The past participle were not used as past participle but
as adjective
 For Example;
Laden- in OE Past participle
Laden- in Modern Adjective
 Once a time English language was used only by the
people of lower classes.
 Many strong verbs also had weak forms such as blowed
for blew and knowed for knew. 7

8. Survival of Strong Principle
 Past form of the OE survived as the past
participles of strong verbs.
In the verb, beat the participle beaten has
remained the standard form.
Other verbs of the strong participle cloven,
laden are still used especially as adjectives.
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9. Loss of Grammatical
Gender
 Leaving of inflections, Grammatical gender become
ambiguous.
The gender of old English nouns did not depend on
meaning.
Sometimes it was in contradiction with the meaning.
Thus Woman ( Wif- mann in OE) was masculine because
the second element in the compound was masculine.
 In the Middle English after the losing of inflections,
adjectives and demonstratives help to remove the
problem of masculine and feminine.
In the north, grammatical gender disappeared first.
In the south it long lasted because there the decay of
inflection was slower.
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10. Middle English Syntax
 Syntactic and Semantic relationship became complex
because of leaving inflections
 Avoid the ambiguity word order of ME became limited
and restricted
 Development of Middle English as a separate stage of the
language grammatically and phonologically in SV.
Development of grammar increased in the Middle English
after Norman Conquest
 Burce Mitchell writes in book The Language of the
Peterborough Chronicle “Middle English is a process of
transition”
A Latin sentence – “Nero interfecit Agrippinam” is changed
it’s formation in ME
 Language became syntactic to analytic
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11. French Influence on the Vocabulary
 French Language influenced in the Germanic Tribes
because of Norman Conquest
 They transferred French to English in the case of
governmental, administrative, ecclesiastical, legal, military,
food & social life
 Over 10000 French words entered in English gradually
 The number of French word was so large because of it’s
domination
Most of the French word used till in present Modern English
The example of French borrowed word for animals and
their meat
Animal Meat
Sheep Mutton
Cow Beef
Swine Pork 11

12. Period of
Greatest Change
 Otto Jespersen’s statistical study of 1000
words borrowed from French
Last half of 12 century- Slightly increased
 1200-1250= more rapidity
 After 1250- not great
 1250- 1400= 40% French came
 15000 words came and 75% still in use in
English
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13. Assimilation
 French words were assimilated
 English words were added with French origin in ending
 The compounds and derivatives occur with the
adaptations of adjectives. Ex- ‘Gentle’ recorded in 1225
 The adverbial endings-ly have been adopted. Ex- ‘Gently’
recorded in 1330
 Gentle recorded in 1225
 gentlewoman recorded in 1230
 Gentleman recorded in 1275
 gentleness recorded in 1300
 Gently recorded in 1330
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14. Loss of Native
Words
 Duplicate words appeared from French
 Both English and French words used side
by side
After time being huge number of English
words died out
 In the same way French words also
expired
 Thus OE (Old English) eam meaning uncle
in French is still used in Scotland
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15. The Prefixes
 Some prefixes are still used
Some died out because readymade words
of French with same meaning added to
English: for example, the prefix ‘for’ was
formed at about 1300.
 Prefix ‘to’ vanished completely
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16. Suffixes
 Some suffixes are still used
 Some died out because readymade words
of French with same meaning added to
English
 Some words newly formed by using the
suffix ‘dom’
 But a few words formed with falsedom,
richdom died out
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17. Middle English Dialects
Four Dialects in Middle English-
1. Northern
2.East Midland
3. West Midland
4.Southern
East Midland Dialect was
dominating 17

18. The Rise of Standard English
Four reason regarding The Rise of
Standard English
1. Flexibility of the Language
2. Regional Advantage
3. Because of Cambridge & Oxford
Universities.
4. Influence of Chaucer
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19. Importance of
London English
 The London English was the
language of the capital of England
 London was politically and
commercially center of England
 London English became the
language of court
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20. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
A page from the Canterbury Tales by
Geoffrey Chaucer
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21. Chaucer’s Language Vs Present
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22. THANK YOU
ALL
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