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§ 2. The effect of the Norman Conquest on the linguistic situation
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| § 2. The effect of the Norman Conquest on the linguistic situation
A) Changes in the alphabet and spelling During several centuries after the Norman Conquest the business of writing was in the hands of French scribes. They introduced into English some peculiarities of French graphic habits. Traces of French traditions in writing have stayed on in English to the present day. First of all, there were certain changes in the alphabet. Several letters typical of OE gradually came out of use, and some new ones were introduced. The alphabet of the 14 th century is basically the same that is in use in our days. The most significant changes affecting the English spelling system of that period are as follows: 1. The letter ʒ , which was used in OE to denote several distinct consonant phonemes, is gradually replaced by the letters g and y . Thus, OE ʒ ōd turned into ME gōd, and the OE ʒ ēar into ME yēr (MnE ‗ good‘, ‗ year‘). 2. The ligature æ also comes into disuse in ME and appears in the form of a and in some dialects in the form of e. 3. The phoneme [ θ -ð], which had never existed in French, was denoted by the rare in OE digraph th: thick, that . 4. For denoting the hard consonant [ χ ] (like Russian [ х ] in the word ― хочу ǁ ) and the palatalized one [ χ ‘] like in the word ― хилый ǁ ) the digraph gh was used (ME thought, night ). 5. For denoting dental fricatives, which had not been of great importance in OE, the following French symbols were used: sh and sch for [ ʃ ]: ship, waschen ; ch and tch for [t ʃ ]: child, fetch; 26 dg and j for [d ʒ ]: bridge, John . 6. The letter c sounded as [k] in OE. In French it was read as [k] only before the back vowels. According to the rules introduced by the clerks the letter c began to be read as [k] only before the back vowels ( cat, cold ), and as [s] before the front vowels ( city, cell ). In English words containing [k] before the front vowels letter k was used ( king, Kent ). 7. Such letters as v, z, q (always accompanied by u ) also appeared in the English language due to the French scribes. 8. The sound [u:] which was represented by the letter u in OE, came to be spelled ou , the way it was spelled in French. In final position, and occasionally in medial position as well, instead of ou the spelling ow was introduced. E.g. OE hūs > ME hous ; OE hū > ME how; OE dūn > ME down. 9. The vowel [u] is often represented by the letter o . This spelling is probably due to graphic considerations. The letter o denoting [u] is found mainly in the neighborhood of such letters as u (v), n, m, that is, letters, consisting of vertical strokes. A long series of vertical strokes might be confusing: E.g. it might be hard to distinguish between the letters in the words cume, luve ( ‗ come‘, ‗ love‘) 10. The letter y which in OE was used to denote the sound [ü] came to be used to denote [i] and was later often replaced by the letter i. Besides these features, due to French influence, ME spelling has some more peculiarities, which have partly been preserved down to the present day. It became a habit in ME to replace the final –i by –y. The motive was purely graphic: y is more ornamental. That‘s why in MnE we have only a few words ending in i. Similarly, the letter u when final was replaced by w , which was more ornamental. On the whole ME spelling is far from being uniform. Purely phonetic spellings mix with French spelling habits and also with traditions inherited from OE. Besides, there are differences between dialects in this respect, too. B) Changes affecting the vocabulary Penetration of French words into English did not start immediately after the Norman Conquest. It only started in the 12 th century, and reached its climax in the 13 th and 14 th . The words borrowed from French at that period can be divided into several semantic groups: a) words connected with the life of the royal court: court, servant, guard, prince; but the words king and queen remained English; b) words connected with war and army: army, regiment, battle, banner, victory, soldier ; but the word knight is of the English origin; с ) words connected with church: religion, chapel, prayer, confess, saint ; d) words connected with the organization of the state: vassal, govern, government, serf, village; e) justice: judge, verdict, sentence ; f) city life and organization: city, merchant, butcher, painter, tailor; 27 g) art notions: art, colour, figure, image, ornament, column. h) amusements : pleasure, leisure, dinner, supper, roast . Many other words were also taken over, which were not connected with any specific semantic sphere, such as: air, place, river, large, change , etc. The usage of the names of domestic animals and their meat depended on the place where it was pronounced. In the village they were an ox, a cow, a sheep, a pig, a swine, a calf, etc . But when their meat was served to the table of a Norman lord, words of French origin were used: beef, mutton, pork, veal, etc . Another type of differentiation may be found in some pairs of synonyms: e.g. to begin – to commence (ME ‗ beginnen‘ – ‗ commencen‘). The native word ‗ to begin‘ has stayed on as a colloquial word, while the French ‗ to commence‘ is an official term and is mainly used in documents or in literature (compare also ‗ work‘ – ‗ labour‘, ‗ life‘ – ‗ existence‘) French words could co-exist with their English equivalents though their meaning was somewhat different. Compare: autumn (Fr.) and harvest (meant ― autumn ǁ in Old English). Sometimes the borrowed word ousted the native one: army (Fr.) – here (OE). Some words extinct from the literary language still remain in several dialects. жүктеу/скачать 0,78 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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