Middle English Morphology

1. French influence in the Middle Ages is most obvious in the vocabulary. Two stages of loan words:
1. Before c. 1250: about 900 words of nobility, high literature, and the church. These words are consistent with words that the lower classes would learn through contact with nobility.
2. After c. 1250: Many more common words. Those used to speaking French were switching to English and supplementing its vocabulary with French words.



2. French loan words:
1. Governmental & Administrative
2. Ecclesiastical
3. Law
4. Army and Navy
5. Fashion, Meals, and Social Life
6. Art, Learning, Medicine





3. Period of Greatest French Influence: late 1300s.





4. Differentiation in Meaning: When English and French words survived, they usually differentiated in meaning.
1. hearty vs. cordial
2. stench, smell vs. aroma, odor, scent
3. ox, sheep, swine, calf vs. beef, mutton, pork, and veal





5. Latin Loan Words: During the Middle Ages, Latin primarily enters English through literature. It's hard to tell which terms came immediately from Latin or via French.



1. orient, laureate
2. came to be known as the "ink horn" phenomenon



6. Aureate Terms: a phenomenon (beginning in the 14th century) in which authors introduced unusual words from Latin and "Englishfied" them.





7. Loan words from the Low Countries (Flemish, Dutch, Low German) result from trade contact, especially terms involving the cloth and weaving trades

1. Curtailment of OE Process of Derivation
1. Prefixes
2. Suffixes
3. Self-Explaining Compounds



2. Rise of Standard English. The East Midland's dialect eventually rose to become the ancestor of NE. Why?
1. Geographic: between the extremes of Northern and Southern dialects
2. Size: the EM district was largest and most populous; London as political and economic capital of England
1. better (flatter) land
3. Universities: Oxford and Cambridge developed into important intellectual centers