middle english language

SS:2013
PS: INTRODUCTION TO MIDDLE ENGLISH
Dr. THOMAS SCHÖNWEITZ
MERVE BOYRAZ [e-mail] 1265666

Merve Boyraz

Boyraz 1

Dr. Thomas Schönweitz

8 credits / graded

PS: Introduction to Middle English

MIDDLE ENGLISH LEXICON
Table of Content
1.

Introduction

2.

Scandinavian Influence

3.

French Influence

4.

Latin Influence

5.

Celtic Influence

6.

Dutch and Low German Influence

7.

Influence from Other Languages

8.

Formation of New Words

8.1. Compounding
8.2.
9.
10.

Affixing
Conclusion
Work Cited

Boyraz 2
1. Introduction
The Norman invasion by the Duke of Normandy in 1066 is arguably the single most cataclysmic event in English history. It was the last but the most complete invasion of England by foreigners. It unified England for the first time in its history. And it was the most comprehensive event ever to occur in the outer history of the English language. Politically and linguistically, it was a French conquest of England. Ethically, it represented the last of the great Germanic invasions of England.
In the Middle English Language (1066-1204), the linguistic situation in Britain was complex due to the Norman invasion. French was the native language of a minority of a few thousand speakers, but a minority with influence out of all proportion to their numbers because they controlled the political, ecclesiastical, economic, and cultural life of the nation. The crushing majority of the population of England spoke English, but English had no prestige whatsoever. Latin was the written language of the Church and of many secular documents; it was also spoken in the newly emerging universities and in the Church. Scandinavian was still spoken (but not written) in the Danelaw and other areas of heavy Scandinavian settlement, though it was soon to be assimilated to English, its influence being restricted primarily to loanwords in English and to dialectical peculiarities of the area. Beyond the borders of England proper, Celtic languages still prevailed in Wales and Scotland
(where a new standard Scots English was eventually to develop, depended on the English of
Edinburgh) (Millward, 120-121) . In this essay, the considerable influences of all language on
Middle English Language and formation of new words will be analyzed. In general, the greatest inundation of loanwords into Middle English came from French, but English borrowings from other languages such as Scandinavian, Latin, Celtic, Dutch and Low German also appeared at this time.
Compounding and affixing sustained English so many new words.
2.

Scandinavian Influence

Chronologically, the first significant new source of loanwords in Middle English was Scandinavian.
Many of the Scandinavian words that first appear in writing during ME were essentially borrowed earlier, but, particularly in a society with a low literacy rate, there is a lag between use in speech and first appearance in writing. When they were written down, it was usually first in the North and the
East Midlands, those regions with heaviest Norse Settlements. Only later did they spread to other areas of England. The largest number of loanwords came into writing during the period 1150-1250, a few score more appeared 1250-1350, and the influx diminished to a trickle in the period 13501500. The listing below is representative but not exhaustive.

Boyraz 3
c. 1150-1250 anger, bag, band, bloom, both, bound, bull, cake, call, carp, cast, clip, club, die, egg, fellow, flit, gad gape, gear, get, hit, husband, ill, kid, kindle, loan, loft, loose, low, meek, muck, raise, ransack, rid, root, rotten, sale, same, scab, scale, scare, scathe, score, seat, seem, skill, skin, sky, sly, snare, swain, take, thrall, thrive, thrust, thwart, ugly, wand, wassail, window, wing c.1250-1350 awe, bait, ball, bark (of tree), bat (the animal), birth, blend, bole, bracken, brad, brunt, crawl, dirt, dregs, droop, flat, flaw, geld, gift, girth, glitter, leg, lift, likely, midden, mire, mistake, race, rag, rive, skate (the fish), sleight, slight, snub, stack, stagger, stem, teem, weak, whirl
c. 1350-1500 awkward, bask, bawl, bulk, down (feathers), eddy, firth, flag, freckle, froth, gap, gasp, keel, leak, link, raft, reef (sail), reindeer, scant, scrap, steak, tatter, tether, tyke (Millward, 169170).
These lists shows that almost all these words are so widespread in English today, so native in appearance, that actually it is difficult to believe that they are loans from another language. Part of their familiarity is explicable by the fact that they have been in the language for a long time that they had plenty of time to become completely assimilated. Besides, Scandinavian is so closely related to English that these loans “feel” like English. Some of the Norse loans (such as both, call, take) explains such main concepts that we feel that they must be native words, that Old English could not have done without them. Old English did have its own terms for the concepts, but, unlike the majority of Middle English loans from French or Latin, Norse loans often supplanted rather than supplemented native vocabulary. As a result, Norse call replaced Old English hātan, both replaced
Old English bā, and take replaced Old English niman and fōn. In other instances, the Norse loan took over only part of domain of the native English word, while the English word survived in a narrowed usage. For example, Old Norse sky replaced old English heofon as the general term for the upper atmosphere, but heaven survives, especially in the sense of “dwelling sense of God.”
Occasionally, both the native word and the Norse loan survive as almost complete synonyms; few

Boyraz 4 people could specify any distinct difference in meaning between Norse crawl and native English creep. A number of the Norse loans are cognates of existing English words. Usually such doublets as have survived have undergone a differentiation in meaning each has carved out a specialized semantic territory for itself. Examples include Norse raise, skin, and skirt, cognates of native rear, shin, and shirt. In a few instances, blends have occurred. For example, reindeer is a blend of Old Norse hrein
‘reindeer’ and English deer (from Old English dēor ‘wild animal’). Most of these early Norse loans represent basic homely concepts and lack the apparent intellectual sophistification of so many
French and Latin loans. Nonetheless, a number of them have come to express remarkably subtle distinctions of meaning. Awkward has domain of its own, separate from its many near synonyms such as clumsy, ungainly, ungraceful, gauche, gawky, maladroit, or unskilful. Similarly, none of the words like mild, submissive, humble, patient, stoical, gentle, forbearing, long-suffering, unresisting, or unassuming quite captures the precise meaning of meek. In addition to its contributions to the general vocabulary, Norse introduced a number of new place-name elements into English, especially into the areas heavily settled by Scandinavians. Chief among these were –beck ‘brook’, by ‘town’, -dale ‘valley’, -thorp ‘village’, -thwaite ‘piece of land’, and –toft ‘piece of ground’.
Within a relatively small area of Cumberland and Westmorland, for instance, are settlements named
Grizebeck, Troutbeck, Thursby, Glassonby, Knarsdale, Uldale, Braithwaite, and Seathwaite. In the old Danelaw area in the east, -beck and –thwait names are scarcer, but the map is dotted with such places as Easttoft, Langtoft, Ugthorpe, and Fridaythorpe. English settlers were later to import these names to all parts of the globe from Yelvertoft, Australia, to Uniondale, South Africa, to
Oglethorpe, Georgia, to Moresby Island, British Colombia. Finally, Norse influence was heavy at about the time the English began to use surnames, so Norse was able to give English the common surname suffix –son. This suffix proved so popular that it was attached not only to first names of
Norse origin (Nelson, Anderson), but also to native English names (Edwardson, Edmundson) and even to French names (Jackson, Henryson). English did not, however, adopt the Scandinavian practice of using –datter ‘daughter’ as a surname suffix for females.
3.

French Influence

William I’s forceful conquest of the country had the consequence that he replaced the English nobility with new, French nobles and appointed Normans to high positions in the military and church. This state of affairs was to continue for a number of generations. Once important posts such

Boyraz 5 as that of archbishop were all Norman, the lower echelons soon also filled with Frenchmen, as huge numbers flocked to Britain to take advantage of the situation. In fact, of all the English bishops only
Bishop Wulfstan remained in office.(Fennell, 106). Consequently, French was associated with higher social status, while English was the language of the masses. The French words appear in
English before 1250, approximately 1000 in number, many of them were such as the lower classes would become familiar with through contact with a French-speaking nobility (baron, noble, dame, servant, messenger, feast, minstrel, juggler, largess). Others, such as story, rime, lay, douzepers, clearly owed their introduction into English to literary channels. The largest single group among the words that came in early was associated with the church, where the necessity for the prompt transference of doctrine and belief from the clergy to the people is convenient to account for the frequent transfer of words. The influence of French on Middle English is strongest because of the fact that the French speakers are supplementing French words to the English they are obtaining. In the period after 1250 the conditions under which French words had been making their way into
English were supplemented by a new and powerful factor: those who had been accustomed to speak
French were turning increasingly to the use of English. Whether to supply deficiencies in the
English vocabulary or in their own imperfect command of that vocabulary, or perhaps merely yielding to a natural impulse to use a word long familiar to them and to those they addressed, the upper classes carried over into English an astonishing number of common French words.
Table 1. French Borrowings in the History of English (Jespersen, 1982 [1905]:87) date number

date

number

date

number

Before 1050

2

1301-1350

120

1601-1650

69

1051-1100

2

1351-1400

180

1651-1700

34

1101-1150

1

1401-1450

70

1701-1750

24

1151-1200

15

1451-1500

76

1751-1800

16

1201-1250

64

1501-1550

84

1801-1850

23

1251-1300

127

1551-1600

91

1851-1900

2

By Jespersen’s figures, 42.7 per cent of the loan words entered the language between 1250 and
1400, a period that probably saw the greatest bilingualism, with French speakers gradually becoming English speaker and importing items from their first language.In changing from French to
English they transferred much of their governmental and administrative vocabulary, their ecclesiastical, legal, and military terms, and their familiar words of fashion, food, and social life, the

Boyraz 6 vocabulary of art, learning, and medicine. In general, in the earlier Middle English period the
French words introduced into English were such as people speaking one language often learn from those speaking another; in the century and a half following 1250, when all classes were speaking or learning to speak English, they were also such words as people who had been accustomed to speak
French would carry over with them into the language of their adoption.

Governmental and Administrative Words
Government, administer, state, empire, royal, princess, slave, servant, authority, parliament, statue, majesty, tyrant, sovereign, court, council, tax, alliance, governor, minister

Ecclesiastical Words
Religion, theology, sermon, homily, socrament, baptism, communion, confession, penance, prayer, lesson, passion, crasier, censer, clergy, cardinal, parson, pastar, faith, simony

Law
Assize, eyre, derendant, judge, advocate, bill, peition, ransom, judgement, sentence, award, proof, prison, legacy, heritage, accuse, indict, innocent, cry, jury

Army and Navy
Peace, enemy, arms, battle, combat, skirmish, siege, defense, ambush, stratagem, retreat, soldier, garrison, guard, spy, captain, lieutenant, sergeant, mail, chieftain

Fashion, Meals, and Social Life
Apparel, cape, cloak, veil, train, blue, saffron, ivory, chaplet, ermine, pork, bacon, sausage, cream, sugar, leisure, dance, falcon, plaver, heron

Art, Learning, Medicine
Art, painting, music, beauty, color, study, ogic, geometry, noun, melody, stomach, pulse, remedy, oinment, balm (Baugh & Cable, 157-160)

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Less specialized words are also borrowed at this time: nouns such as air, bucket, calender, cheer, gum, mountain, number, order, poverty, and rancor; adjectives such as easy, gentle, large, foreign, horrible, nice, second, special, and tender; verbs such as apply, betray, change, desire, endure, move, obey, prefer, strive, and travel (Baugh& Cable, 160-161, 2002).
Prefixes and suffixes that built words are called derivational, these are not borrowed directly but as parts of French (Latin) words, such as majority, inferiority ,envious, glorious, religious, advantageous, hideous, dangerous, labor, (or labour), rigor, (or rigour), honor (honour). Many of the prefixes and suffixes avoid originally English words, except as jokes as happi-ous, between-ity, woman-ity, youthfull-ity (the last three from the Old English Language) (Gelderen, 100).
There are, however, some hybrids French (or Latin, i.e. Romance) prefixes and suffixes attached to
English words and vice versa. These occur after a word with a prefix or suffix has been borrowed.
Examples of hybrids are given (1) and (2): en-dear-ment, for example, is from the English root dear with a Romance prefix –en (note that French –en derives from Latin in-) and a Romance suffix – ment: (1) Hindrance, endearment, disbelief, rekindle, overrate, overvalue, rudely, oddity
(2) Immenseness, martydom, apprenticeship, useless, quarrelsome, grateful (Morris, 1882:40)

Since hybrids are infrequent, Dalton- Puffer (196-222) comes to conclusion that the influence of
French on the morphology was not very strong. Note that the –o(u)r suffix, borrowed from French, originally derives from the Latin words labor- and honor-. The first time they appear in Middle
English, they are spelled labur and honour/honir. British English adopts –our and American
English –or. French settles on –eur and words as grandeur, amateur, connoisseur, chauffeur, and masseur are thus later borrowings.
The influence of French on the grammar of English is not deep. Although the relative wh- pronoun may be the result of French influence, Old English has relatives with a demonstrative, such as se (o) þe, or with þe or þat. In Middle English, þat becomes the most common one. Nevertheless, presumably because French has the same forms for interrogatives and relatives, e.g. qui, certain
English styles, particularly in letters such as (3), adopt wh- pronouns as relatives too:
(3) Be the grace of God, who haue yow in kepyng
‘by the grace of God, who keeps you’ (Paston Letters, Davis 1971:655).

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As Gelderen (101) rightly stated that the French of the 12th and 13th centuries that influenced
English is not similar to present-day French. Considering the French of William the Conqueror was different. It was Norman French, different from that of Paris, which later becomes standard French.
On the other hand, it was Old French, which is quite different from Modern French.

4. Latin Influence
The influence of the Norman Conquest is generally known as the Latin Influence of the Third
Period in recognition of the fundamental source of the new French words. But it is right to include under this designation large amount of words borrowed directly from Latin in the Middle English period. Latin borrowings differed from the French borrowings in being less popular and in gaining admission largely through the written language. Certainly, it must not be disregarded that Latin was a spoken language among ecclesiastics and men of learning, and a certain number of Latin words could well have passed directly into spoken English.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were especially prolific in Latin borrowings. Due to the fact that by the late fourteenth century, no one could have written an English text of any length without using any loanwords from French, but it still would have been possible to write on many topics without using Latin loanwords. Certainly, most French loans were ultimately from Latin, but direct loans from Latin into Middle English tended to be learned words borrowed through the written translation of Latin texts. Regarding Latin was the official language of the Church, a number of religious terms came immediately into English from Latin, such as apocalypse, dirge, limbo, purgatory, and remit. Latin was also often used in legal documents; as a result English borrowed such words as testament and confederate. A few of the other miscellaneous learned directly from
Latin are admit, divide, comprehend, lunatic, lapidary, and temporal. (Millward, 174).

Nevertheless the permanent additions from Latin to the English vocabulary in this period are much larger than has generally been realized. It is unnecessary to attempt a formal classification of these borrowings. Some idea of their range and character may be gained from a selected but miscellaneous list of examples: abject, adjacent, allegory, conspiracy, contempt, custody, distract, frustrate, genius, gesture, history, homicide, immune, incarnate, include, incredible, incubus, incumbent, index, individual, infancy, inferior, infinite, innate, innumemble, intellect, interrupt, juniper, lapidary, legal, limbo, lucrative, lunatic, magnify, malefactor, mechanical, minor, missal,

Boyraz 9 moderate, necessary, nervous, notary, ornate, picture, polite, popular, prevent, private, project, promote, prosecute, prosody, pulpit, quiet, rational, reject, remit, reprehend, rosary, script, scripture, scrutiny, secular, solar, solitary, spacious, stupor, subdivide, subjugate, submit, subordinate, subscribe, substitute, summary, superabundance, supplicate, suppress, temperate, temporal, testify, testimony, tincture, tract, tributary, ulcer, zenith, zephyr. Here we have terms relating to law, medicine, theology, science, and literature, words frequently justified in the beginning by technical or professional use and later gaining a wider usage. Among them may be noticed several with endings like –able, -ible, -ent, -al, -ous, -ive, and others, which thus became familiar in English and, reinforced often by French, now form common elements in English derivatives. All the words in the above list are accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary as direct borrowings from Latin. But in many cases Latin words were being borrowed by French at the same time, and the adoption of a word in English may often have been due to the impact of both languages. (Baugh & Cable, 171-172). All in all, although a great many Latin loans came into
Middle English, the real deluge was not take place until the Early Modern English period.

5. Celtic Influence

Actually, loanwords from Celtic into English have always been few. Nevertheless, several are registered for the first time during Middle English, including bard, clan, crag, glen, and loch.
Probably but not definitely from Celtic are bald, bray, bug, gull, hog, and loop. French had a large number of words of Celtic origin, and some of them (car, change, garter, mutton, socket, vassal) came into English via French, but these were surely only indirect loans.

6. Dutch and Low German Influence

Throughout the latter part of the Middle English period, business between England and the Low
Countries increased properly, especially as a result of the wool trade, and several dozen loans from
Dutch and/or Low German entered English as a result of this contact. The words like halibut, pump, shore, skipper, and whiting reflect the seafaring interest of the Dutch. The containers in which goods were shipped brought words as bundle, bung, cork, dowel, firkin, and tub. Considering trade,
English gained words like trade and huckster; the wool trade in particular sustained nap (of cloth) and selvage. There were also various words, such as clock, damp, grime, luck, scour, speckle, splinter, tallow, and wriggle.

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7. Influence From Other Languages

During Middle English period, there was little Greek scholarship in England and for this reason nearly no direct borrowing from Greek. Indirectly through French, English acquired a few items as squirrel, diaper, and cinnamon. Particularly, Greek words entered through Latin; a few examples are philosophy, paradigm, phlegm, synod, and physic.
Regarding Europe increased its knowledge of the Levant through the Crusades and the spread of
Islam; many Arabic and Persian words were borrowed into European languages. English, however, almost all the time gained this second hand through French or Medieval Latin. During Middle
English period, among the indirect borrowings from Arabic are the words azimuth, ream, saffron, cipher, and alkali. Although sometimes filtered through several other languages on the way to
English, the loanwords from Persian are borax, mummy, musk, spinach, taffeta, and lemon. From
Hebrew via French or Latin are jubilee, leviathan, and cider. Furthermore, Middle English received
Slavic sable and Hungarian coach via French. At all periods of its history, English has received words whose origin simply cannot be traced to any source. Among the items of unknown origin that are first recorded in Middle English are such similar words as bicker, big, boy, clasp, junk, kidney, lass, noose, puzzle, roam, slender, throb, and wallet.(Millward, 175)

8. Formation of New Words

During the Middle English period, although the thousands of loanwords from French and other sources that poured into English, the language continue creating new words by the older processes of compounding and affixing. In fact, the loanwords sustained new raw material for both processes, and new processes of formation developed during the period.

8.1. Compounding

The loss of inflections made compounding more simple, however, due to this and due to functional shift, it is not easy to decide whether an element in a compound is, say, a noun or a verb. As a result, the compound windfall could be interpreted as noun + noun ( a fall caused by the wind) or as noun + verb (the wind makes it fall). As in Old English, the majority of the many new compounds in Middle English were nouns or adjectives. Foreign elements entered freely into the new compounds (for example, gentleman consist of French gentle + native man). Actually, the most

Boyraz 11

productive types of Old English compound nouns did not stop in Middle English. New noun + noun compounds included such words as cheesecake, toadstool, bagpipe, nightmare, and wheelbarrow.
Adjective + noun compounds can be illustrated by sweetheart, wildfire, quicksand, and commonwealth. Among the adverb + noun compounds were insight, afternoon, and upland. During
Middle English, just coming into use was noun + verb compounds like sunshine and nosebleed.
Also there were verb + noun combinations such as hangman, pastime, and whirlwind. Furthermore,
Middle English saw the beginning of a type that the verb + adverb compound; two examples from
Middle English are runabout and lean-to. Another new type was adverb + verb, including words like outcome, outcast, and upset. English also borrowed a number of French and Latin phrases with the order noun + adjective (knight-errant, heir-apparent, sum, total). However, this type violated the Basic English principle that an attributive adjective precedes its noun, and the type has never become productive in English.
Among the compound adjectives, the OE type noun + adjective continued to be productive; Middle
English examples include threadbare, bloodred, and headstrong. Much less common was the adjective + noun type (everyday). As in Old English, compound verbs in Middle English were generally formed from pre-existing compound nouns or adjectives. The Old English type of adverb
(or particle) + verb continued to be employed: outline, uphold, overturn, underwrite all appeared for the first time in Middle English. Just coming into English was a new type consisting of noun + verb, as in manhandle; most of these compounds, however, were the products of back-formation from nouns compare modern babysit from babysitter), and the type would not become common until
Early Modern English. Some of the compounds that first appear in Middle English have lost their clearness as compounds because of sound changes or because one or both of the constituents have become outdated as independent words. Few native speakers today would recognize cockney as consisting of cock + egg, or gossamer as goose + summer. Wanton does not look like a compound because both wan ‘deficient’ and towen ‘to bring up, educate’ have been lost from the language; the original compound meant ‘‘poorly brought up.’’. Indeed, a number of the loanwords borrowed from
French or Latin during Middle English were compounds or phrases in origin, but were treated as single units in English. For instance, Latin dies mali ‘evil days’ has become dismal; French porc espin ‘spiny pig’ has been anglicized as porcupine.

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8.2. Affixing

In Middle English, although the extensive borrowing of words from French, the continued productiveness of compounding, and the loss of a number of native prefixes and suffixes, affixing continued to be one of the principal ways creating new words. Several Old English affixes were completely lost, not even surviving in already formed words (or not being recognized as affixes if they did). Among these were ed- ‘again’ (replaced by French/Latin re-); el- ‘foreign’; ymb‘around’; to- ‘motion toward’; and –end, which was used in Old English to form agentive nouns.
Other native affixes survived in pre-existing words, but lost most or all of their productiveness.
Examples include with- as in withstand; for- as in forsake, forswear; and –hood as in motherhood, childhood. During Middle English, the new prefixes borrowed from French are counter-, e-, in‘not’, inter-, mal-, and re-.Suffixes from French include –able, -age, -al, -ery, -ess, -ify, -ist, -ity, and –ment. Some of them, such as re-, were freely attached to native words and loanwords alike.
Others have always retained their association with French or Latin; for instance, though the hundreds of a native root. In other words, however, we are thoroughly comfortable with discernment, which received its –ment after entering English, we find *understanment or knowment decidedly unacceptable and prefer to use the native gerund suffix –ing instead (understanding, knowing). 9. Conclusion

All in all in the Middle English Language period, foreign influence on English was very extensive, actually the most prominent one is French influence due to the Norman Conquest. Besides Latin influence was also important but it was different from French influence because English generally gained Latin words from written language. In deed, the first source of loanwords was Scandinavian, and it is really hard to distinguish Scandinavian words in English as they seem like original words.
Celtic, Dutch and Low German influences were not intensive regarding other languages. In addition to borrowing from other languages, compounding and affixing are also significant ways of creating new words.

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10. Work Cited

Baugh, Albert Croll; Cable, Thomas. A History of the English Language. London: Routledge, 2002.
Dalton- Puffer, Christine. The French Influence on Middle English Morphology. Berlin: Mouten de
Gruyter, 1993.
Davis, Norman. Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Part I. Oxford: Clarendon,
1971.
Fennell, Barbara A. A History of English. Oxford UK: Blackwell Publisher, 2001.

Gelderen, Elly Van. A History of the English Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin’s
Publishing Company, 2006.
Jespersen, Otto. Growth and Structure of the English Language. 10 th edn. Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1982 [1905].
Millward, Celia M. A Biography of the English Language. United States of America: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. 1989.
Morris, Richard. Historical Outlines of English Accidence. London: Macmillen, 1882.

Cited: Baugh, Albert Croll; Cable, Thomas. A History of the English Language. London: Routledge, 2002. Dalton- Puffer, Christine. The French Influence on Middle English Morphology. Berlin: Mouten de Gruyter, 1993. Davis, Norman. Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Part I. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971. Fennell, Barbara A. A History of English. Oxford UK: Blackwell Publisher, 2001. Gelderen, Elly Van. A History of the English Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin’s Publishing Company, 2006. Jespersen, Otto. Growth and Structure of the English Language. 10 th edn. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982 [1905]. Morris, Richard. Historical Outlines of English Accidence. London: Macmillen, 1882.