| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Two Contributions William the Conquerer made to English culture | 1. Feudal System 2. French language |
| Why the number of dialects in English increased after the Conquest? | With the feudal system, the peasants were tied to the land & isolated from one another. |
| 3 reasons for the survival & resurgence of English during the period 1204-1509 | 1. John Lackland's loss of land in France 2. Black Death 3. 100 years war |
| Effect of Black Plague on English language | Labor shortages increased the prestige of English (spoken by peasants) |
| Why texts in English are rare during period 1100-1200 | English lost prestige; French & Latin were literary languages. |
| Dialect of English from which Middle English developed | London Standard (East Midlands) |
| 2 Losses in consonant sounds from OE to ME with examples of words that illustrate those losses | 1. loss of long consonants (bedd) 2. /h/ before some consonants (hwil) |
| What happened to dipthongs from OE to ME? | Entire inventory changed; raised vowels shifted all dipthongs |
| What happened to short vowels in unstressed syllables during ME? | they were reduced to /schwa/ , which came to be spelled with an "e." There was heavy stress on the root syllable. |
| Digraph | a pair of graphemes that represents a single phoneme |
| What happened to vowel LENGTH from OE to ME | It leveled. Short vowels lengthened, and vowel length stopped being phonemic. |
| What happened in ME to unstressed OE final e? | It was lost in pronunciation of words around 1375 (seen in Chaucer's work) |
| Change in phrasal rhythm from OE to ME | AS= trochaic (heavy beat with weak stress) ME-iambic ~/~/~/~/ |
| Iambic | Rhythm adoped after Norman Conquest; it is more song-like. |
| Trochaic | Rhythm of Anglo-Saxon poetry; heavy beat with weak stresses |
| Change in spelling from OE to ME | spelling became more chaotic, and began using French rules. |
| Digraphs that entered English during ME period. | ch, ou, gh, wh |
| Most important change in morphology in ME | loss of inflectional endings |
| 3 changes during ME associated with progress of English from a synthetic to a more analytic language | 1. loss of grammatical gender (replaced with biological) 2. loss of inflections 3. loss of strong/weak adjectives |
| 3 forms of noun in ME | 1. singular 2. plural 3. posessive |
| 3 types of eccentric plurals in ME | 1. unmarked (deer, fish, elk, moose) 2. mutated (mice, men) 3. "n" ending (children) |
| Change in inflection of the adjectives from OE to ME | adjectives lost all inflections and strong/weak distinctions |
| Something new in comparison of adjectives in ME | periphrastic- formed in phrase (more, most, not -est) |
| Only English pronoun that signals gender | 3rd person singular |
| 4 inflectional categories preserved in ME (and PDE) pronoun | 1. number 2. gender 3. case 4. person |
| Distinguish biological and grammatical gender. Which did ME have? | grammatical gender is not related to physical gender; it is arbitrary. Biological gender is based on the sex of the person or animal discussed. ME had biological gender. |
| In ME, the singular pronoun meaning "you" and the plural one. | singular: "th's" thou, thine, thee, thy, etc. plural/formal: yo, eow, eower. Generalized. |
| Development of definite and indefinite articles | a/an was an AS word for "one" |
| Historical stage of the language in which omission of the relative pronoun was impermissible. | AS and PDE. |
| Useful OE indefinite pronoun, used less in ME and lost in PDE. What words do we substitute for it. | "Mann." We substitute "one" or "you." |
| Separable Verb | a 2 part verb with a base verb and a separate prepositional verb (eg, pick up) |
| Type of verbs that suffered greatest lexical losses in ME | strong verbs |
| number of the original seven OE verb classes remaining in ME | none; all had decayed, and there were no longer 7 distinct verb classes. |
| Why PDE speakers often err by saying "hisself" | Defective paradigm. With new development, other forms emerged. |
| Changes in verb tenses during ME period | Pred tense change= compound/complex tenses. More than one word. |
| What is meant by the OE "plural preterite," a form more and more lost in ME? | ends in "n"- plural form and infinitive. eg, riden, goon |
| Why is periphrasis an important term in discussing development of verb tenses in ME? | periphrasis- expresses in a phrase what was once expressed with inflections, eg "a prince of _____", phrase |
| 3 word classes that became larger in ME | 1. adverbs 2. prepositions 3. conjunctions |
| What happened to the suffix "lic" in ME? | It changed to ly. It was an adjective suffix (eg, manlic- manly) |
| Example of correlative conjunction | words that come in pairs. either/or, neither/nor, used more in AS than today. |
| Meaning of "very" in ME | "true" (comes from French "vrai", spelled verray) |
| One statement about profanity | There was a difference between idle and necessary swearing |
| Comment on rigidity of syntax in ME | ME was less free than AS because inflections were lost, but not as rigid as PDE |
| Comment on coordination and subordination of syntax in OE and ME | paratactic ME had more subordinate and embedded clauses |
| What is the periphrastic posessive, and how did we get it? | It came from French. It involves using multiple words to express posessive, such as "the house of my father" |
| Give an example of a group posessive, a construction impossible in ME. | The house on the corner's roof |
| Comment on negation of the verb in OE and ME | double negatives could be used. ne+verb+not |
| comment on double negatives in ME and PDE | They could be used in ME. 19th century grammarians said that it inverted the meaning in PDE |
| What are "perfect" verb tesnes? | actions already completed |
| Prepositions used with passive verb- in early ME and in late ME | all prepositions changed their meaning. agentive- preposition used with passive verb, such as "by" or in ME, "with" |
| Change in formation of the future tense during ME | OE used present tense to express the future. ME used modal auxiliaries such as "shall" and "will." |
| Example of the inflected subjunctive in PDE | unrealized, impossible. "If I were you." |
| comment on use of modal auxiliaries in ME | began to use modal auxiliaries like "may" and "might" as well as quasi-modals like "be going to" in place of inflected subjunctive |
| Two new uses of auxiliary "do" in ME | pro-verb or pro-clause. replace verb or caluse ME- negative. "Do not." |
| How infinitive was marked in OE and ME | OE- "an" ME- preposition before verb substituted for infinitive ending |
| What are "levels of diction?" | Intricate systems of vocabulary used in different situations, ranging from colloquial to formal |
| Two "dummy subjects" that came into use during ME | it, there |
| Characterisitcs of English that make it easy for us to borrow words from other languages | 1. inflectional simplicity 2. wide variety of phonemes 3. complex, allowable syllable structure |
| Why many French loanwords were adopted but quickly lost | So many were adopted that they became redundant. Increased specialization, narrowing. |
| 4 means of word formation in ME | 1. compounding 2. affixing 3. clipping 4. back formation 5. blends |
| Where most new derivational prefixes and suffixes in ME came from | French |
| Define Back formation | making new words from existing words by incorrectly assuming that they are forms of another word (eg, getting pea from "pease") |
| Types of OE words that survived best in ME | the most common words |
| Most common type of semantic change in ME and way | narrowing, because the language got so many new words from French |
| What is meant by "shift in denotation?" | a change in the word's literal definition |
| List ME dialect areas | 1. Northern 2. Southern 3. West Midland 3. East Midland 5. Kentish |
| What is "oral literature?" | verse, rhyming poetry. It came into English after the conquest. In a non-literate society, it had to be easy to memorize. Included histories, Bible stories, recipes, etc, and were passed by minstrels. |
| Five types of ME literature | 1. Secular 2. Religious Prose 3. Secular Verse 4. Religious & didactic verse 5. drama |
| Define alliteration | 2 or more words in a phrase with the same sound |
| 3 Literary Languages during ME period | 1. Latin 2. French 3. English |
Combine with other sets
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace