Фани бўйича ўҚув-услубий мажмуа

Phonological Structure of the Middle English Period

1. 
   Changes in vowels. Unstressed vowels. Lengthening and shortening of OE vowels in the ME period. Monophthongization of OE diphthongs. Formation of new diphthongs
   
2. 
   Spelling changes in ME
   
3. 
   ME consonants. Growth of sibilants and affricates. Treatment of fricative consonants in ME
   

ИТП – аклий хужум
ИАТ – флепчат, фломастер ва х.к.
Phonetic and Morphological Structure of Middle English

1. 
   Middle English a Period of Great Changes
   
2. 
   Changes in the Vowels
   
3. 
   Formation of New Diphthongs
   
4. 
   Consonants in the Middle English Period
   
5. 
   Decay of Inflectional Endings
   
6. 
   The Noun
   
7. 
   The Adjective
   

Key words: the growth of new sets of sounds – affricates and sibilants in ME; the new phonological treatment of fricatives; a general reduction of inflections; –s as the universal sign of the plural by the 13^thc.

The Middle English period was marked by momentous changes in the English language, changes more extensive and fundamental than those that have taken place at any time before or since. Some of them were the result of the Norman Conquest and the conditions, which followed in the wake of that event. Others were a continuation of the tendencies that had begun to manifest themselves in Old English. These would have gone on even without the Conquest, but they took place more rapidly because the Norman Invasion removed from English those conservative influences that are always felt when a language is extensively used in books and is spoken by influential educated class. The changes of this period affected English in both its grammar and its vocabulary. They were so extensive in each department that it is difficult to say which group is more significant. Those in grammar reduced English from a highly inflected language to an extremely analytic one. Those in vocabulary involved the loss of a large part of the Old English word-stock and the addition of thousands of words from French and Latin. At the beginning of the period, English is a language that must be learned like a foreign tongue; at the end it is Modern English.

In the phonological development from OE to MnE, five of the OE simple vowels changed in quality, and the four OE diphthongs became simplified to monophthongs.
Sounds Examples
OE ME OE ME
1. [α:] > [o] bān > bōn “bone”
2. [æ] > [α] þæt > that “that”
3. [æ:] > [ε:] sǽ > sē “sea”
4. [y] > [i] synn > sinne “sin”
5. [y:] > [i:] hỹdan > hīden “hide”
6. [æə] > [a:] hearm > harm “harm”
7. [æ:ə] > [ε:] strēam > strēme “stream”
8. [εo] > [ε] heofon > heven “heaven”
9. [e:o] > [e:] bēon > bēn “to be”

In addition to the changes in the OE vowels, six new diphthongs appeared in the language. The full history of these diphthongs is complex because of the varied sources from which a single diphthong could derive. Different phonological contexts in OE resulted in ME [au], for example, and that diphthong entered ME directly from Old French and Old Norse. The representative sources that are given below for five of the six diphthongs are all of the same phonological type: two separate elements in OE, which merged to produce a single diphthong in ME. This is the most important of the contexts that produced the new diphthongs. The sixth diphthong is one that came from French, [oi], a sound that English still has in “choice, royal, annoy”.