 Welcome back to our series of e-lectures about the history of English. This e-lecture discusses the sound inventory of Middle English, indicating the type of sound changes that led from Old English to Middle English and illustrating the pronunciation of Middle English using as many examples as possible. We will do the following in this e-lecture. First, we will define a reference variety of Middle English. Then we will point out the major changes that happened from Old English to Middle English. We will list and discuss the Middle English phonemes and will eventually exemplify Middle English on the basis of an excerpt from the Canterbury Tales. Now, during the Middle English period that lasted from 1100 to 1500, dialectal differences were becoming greater than during the Anglo-Saxon times where West Saxon had emerged as some sort of standard. The dialectal situation in Middle English was different and a new standard was eventually based on London's speech, essentially an East Midland dialect. The transition from Old English to Middle English was marked by a number of sound changes that affected both consonants and vowels. Whereas most consonantal changes had little or no effect on the general organization of the English language, the vocalic changes by contrast were highly influential with regard to the development of Middle English morphology. In particular, the realization and eventual loss of vowels in unstressed syllables as in Old English, Herthe, where we marked the stressed syllable in red, led to the weakening of the entire Old English case system in Middle English and thus eventually to the fixing of word order from a relatively free word order in Old English to SVO in Middle English. Well, here is the second step that led to this reduction, the loss of the final unstressed vowel which led to the pronunciation of Herthe to Herthe and from here it's only a small step to present-day English heart. Let us look at the phonemic changes in detail. Do you remember the Old English fricative rule? Well, here it is. It was quite simple. It simply said that the fricatives, the dental fricative The, the labial dental fricative The and the alveolar fricative Sir, here expressed by a placeholder, a capital, you might call it archipholium, had two allophones each, a voiced one in voiced environments, for example Drivan, and a voiceless one elsewhere. Here the example is Fur. This changed in Middle English. Now all former fricative allophones became new phonemes. For example, the labiodental one The, the dental one The and the alveolar one Sir. This phenomenon has become known as the voicing of fricatives. It is not entirely clear why English that had got along nicely without a voiced, voiceless phonemic fricative contrast for almost half a millennium should develop such a feature. The following hypotheses are generally put forward. The influence of French loanwords could have been at work. A mixture of several dialects could have influenced this development. And last but not least, the loss of final vowels which led to a less voiced environment. Over and above these changes in the inventory of consonantal phonemes, the following consonantal changes occurred during the Middle English period. Well, here is the first one. The loss of glottal fricatives before consonants examples are items such as Laugh, which became Laugh rather, which became Rather. Now we know that there are some environments where this did not take place. For example, the typical environment is the WH environment, where the glottal fricative has survived even until the present day in some varieties of English. Some people still say which or where and so on. Another example is the loss of the voiced vela fricative, a typical Germanic consonant. Halrien became Halwen. Fuhl became Fowl. Or take this one, the loss of the labiovela approximate after consonants. The examples listed here are Two, which became Two, or Swa, which became Sa. Further consonantal changes are here, for example, the loss of the voiceless africate, post-alveolar africate in unstressed syllables. So here the syllables have been nicely marked by the dot separator. Soth li che became Soth lia. Another typical change that affected the transition from Old English to Middle English is the loss or the replacement of the prefix je by a simple vowel. So items such as jenoch became inoch, jedriven became idriven. So clearly a change of the prefix. And finally, due to the levelling of unstressed syllables, final nasals were lost typically in infinitives such as Luvian, which became Luvia, or driven, which became driva. Let's now look at some vocalic changes. Now the most significant vocalic change in Middle English was the addition of new diphthongs due to the influence of French, of course, or due to some consonantal changes. Well, here are some of them. OI was a new one as in joye. O came in new as in groen. And I as in seide. Further inventorial changes concerned the loss of the rounded front vowel u, where fur became fir. And the raising of the low back vowel a to o, example stan became staun. The most influential change, as already said, was the weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables. All of them appearing as the central vowel schwa. And the examples we've listed here are stanas, which became stanus. Furol, which became foal. In spelling, by the way, unstressed vowels were mostly represented by the character e. Other phonological changes that mark the transition from Old English to Middle English include the disappearance of the low front vowel a, the so-called ash, which became more centralised. And the monophongisation of most Old English diphthongs. Let's now look at the phonemes of Middle English in detail. There were, first of all, 13 monophongs, seven long ones, like in Old English. Five short monophongs and one central monophone. The number of diphthongs was now six and there were 23 consonant phonemes in Middle English. Let us look at them in detail. Here are the seven long monophongs. Now apart from some qualitative changes, that is vowel length, the quantity, that is the position, front, back, high, low, was retained as a distinctive feature in most cases. Furthermore, the Old English diphthongs became monophongs in Middle English. The most significant change, as you can see here, was that Middle English no longer had rounded front vowels such as yu or yu. Here are the long monophongs. The high front vowel yi as in tide, present-day English, tide. The mid high front vowel yi as in grain, present-day English, green. The mid low front vowel air as in mat, present-day English, meat. The low central vowel a as in maken, present-day English, make. The mid low back vowel o as in got, present-day English, goat. The mid high back vowel o as in foud, present-day English, food. And finally, the high back vowel u as in huss, present-day English, house. Orthographically, by the way, length was no longer indicated by a macron, but either by vowel length or vowel clusters, or it had to be remembered. Let's now add the five short vowels and the central monophong to this system. Now, let's listen. There was a short e as in kissen. There was a short e as in bed. There was a short a slightly backed as in that. There was a short o as in hoppen. There was a short u as in pho. And last but not least, there was a central vowel as in modern, present-day English, mother. Okay, so much for the monophongs. Let's now turn our attention to the six diphthongs in middle English. Although all old English diphthongs smoothed to monophongs in middle English, an assortment of new diphthongs arose. Most of them as a result of the vocalization of old English consonants, primarily the approximate w or the rounded front vowel u. And they occurred between vowels, but were now turned into diphthongs. The diphthongs were all closing. That is, their second vocalic element was higher than its onset. This movement towards a higher target can also be referred to as up-gliding. Here they are. Let's start with the back up-gliding diphthongs. There's first of all this one here. Iu as in triuva. Then we have eu as in feuva, present-day English few. And there was this one. Eu as in blower, present-day English blow. And now the front up-gliding ones. Here they are. Ai as in dai, present-day English day. Oi as in present-day English joy, middle English joy. And finally, ui as in point, present-day English point. So much for the vowels, monophthongs and diphthongs. Now here are the consonants. And as we said, there were 23 consonantal phonemes. Middle English retained all old English consonants. The only system-wide change between the consonants of old English and middle English was the already mentioned addition of the phonemic voiced fricatives. For example, se as in son or ze as in reason were no longer alophones of the same phoneme, but became independent phonemes. And inventorily, the sound inventory was now almost identical with that of present-day English. Only on the alophonic level, we still had the palatal and vela fricatives as alophones of a glottal fricative. Here they are. She as in licht and ch as in thocht. As far as roticity was concerned, middle English still had a high degree of roticity. That is, the R was pronounced in all contexts even after vowels. And like in old English, it is still hard to say what type of R was used. The alveola krill, the alveola approximate, or in special cases the alveola flap as in driven. Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that the alophones of R vary freely. So, you have the choice. You can either say ridden or ridden. You can say yer or yer. Finally, some comments about the orthography of middle English. Now, the Norman conquest made the change from old English to middle English look more sudden than it really was by introducing new spelling conventions. The Normans disregarded traditional Anglo-Saxon spelling and simply spelled the language as they heard it, using many of the conventions of Norman French. During the middle English period, spelling styles varied greatly over time and in different areas of the country. The alphabet shown here thus contains only generalizations, focusing primarily on the most common features of middle English. And as you can see, there was no longer any use of the makron to indicate vowel length. So, this was out. Vowels such as the ash and the ev were no longer used. And the thorn also gradually disappeared. All these vowels were no longer, vowels and consonants were no longer used. The thorn, however, was still at least at the beginning part of the system. And then, quite interestingly, there's a new consonant that supplemented the middle English alphabet. By and large, however, the alphabet became almost identical with what we know from present day English. Before we now exemplify middle English, let's say something about the literature that serves as the basis for this exemplification. The many linguistic developments which identify the middle English period are most evident in the poetry and prose of the second half of the 14th century. There are several surviving prose texts, especially on religious themes. Notably, the first complete translation of the Bible into English by John Wycliffe and among the best known poetic creations of that time is the poem Piers Plowman by William Langland. However, the universally best known poetic achievement in middle English are, of course, the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. They provide a wealth of information about the medieval attitudes and society and about the contemporary linguistic structure and style. And now I'm going to exemplify middle English by reading a passage from the Canterbury Tales. In fact, I will take the prologue of the Canterbury Tales. Here it is. And the young son has in the realm his halve course, your honor. And smaller folies mark a melody that sleep all the night with open ear. So pricketh him, nature in here curages, than a long folk to go on pilgrimages. And palmrests for to saken strong just rondes, to ferne halves, cool in sundry londes. Well, that may suffice as an impression and we can now summarize this lecture. The middle English sound system was in a transition from a system very much Germanic in character to a sound system that was now influenced by French and had changed in several ways. New vowels and consonants came in and suprasegmental aspects affected the metrical structure of words. The effects of these changes on middle English morphology and syntax were not discussed in this e-lecture. However, from the general principles of language change, we know that phonological changes are always at work and more dramatic linguistic changes affect the morphology and the syntax of a language. And exactly this is what happened. From a synthetic language with a relatively free word order, middle English changed to a far more analytic language with a more or less fixed word order. We will come back with this in another e-lecture about the morphology and syntax and all these changes that middle English underwent. So see you there.