英语的历史(7Inner History of ME.pptVIP

Middle English Inner History General Situation Lack of written record of Middle English due to the decline of the use of English after the Norman Conquest (esp. 1100-1200). By the time English was once again written down regularly, many changes had occurred in all aspects of the language. The new standard in Middle English was based on London speech, essentially an East Midlands dialect, Middle English Phonology 1. More like that of PDE, it lacks only phonemic / η / and /z/ to be identical. 2. Voicing of fricatives Consonants a) Loss of long consonants b) loss of initial /h/ before certain consonants c) loss of [?] as an allophone of /g/ d) loss of /j/ in the prefix ge-. Vowels The vowels of English have always been less stable than its consonants. 1. OE /y/ and /y/ had unrounded to /I/ and /I/ in some dialects during the OE period. 2. OE /?/ apparently had lowered to /a/ in all dialects by the end of ME. 3. All the OE diphthongs smoothed (became pure vowels) in ME. Middle English Graphics During most of the Middle English period and in most areas, there were usually 26 letters in the alphabet. However, this alphabet was not identical to that of either Old English or Present-Day English. The OE symbols ?? and ? dropped out of use early in Middle English, but two other symbols, ρ? and З ? were retained from the OE alphabet. Further , although j and v had been introduced by the French, in writing English they were still simply allographs of I and u, respectively. That is, both I and u were used to represent both the vowel /I/ and /il/ and the consonant /j/. Time might be spelled tiim of tijm, and judge could be spelled either iuge or juge. Likewise, both u and v represented both /u/ and /u/ and the consonant /v/. Thus up might be spelled vp or up, and even might be even or euen. Later in the ME period and continuing into EMnE, there was a strong tendency to reserve v for initial position (vp, valeie ‘valley’) and u for other positions (euen, pur ‘p