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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 who introduced into English many peculiarities of French graphic habits. Many traces of French writing traditions are present in Modern English. Firstly, certain changes were made 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 important changes that affected the English spelling system of that period are as follows: 1. The letter ʒ , which was used in OE to denote several consonant phonemes, but had never existed in French, was gradually replaced by the letters g and y . Thus, OE ʒōd turned into ME gōd, and the OE ʒēar into ME yēr (MnE „good‟, „year‟). 2.The letter æ (digraph) also came into disuse in ME and started to appear 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, came to be denoted by the rare in OE digraph th: thick, that . 4. To denote the hard consonant [χ] (like Russian [х] in the word “ хотеть ”) and the palatalized one [χ‟] like in the word “ хитрый ”) the digraph gh was introduced (ME thought, night ). 5. To denote dental fricatives, which had not been well developed in OE, the following French combinations of letters were used: sh and sch for [ʃ]: ship, waschen ; ch and tch for [tʃ]: child, fetch; dg and j for [dʒ]: bridge, John . 6. In OE the sound [k] was denoted by the letter c . In French this letter was read as [k] only before the back vowels. According to the spelling rules introduced by the French 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 a new letter - letter k - was introduced ( king, Kent ). 7. Such letters as v, z, q (the latter 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 ū 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 short vowel [u] was often represented by the letter o . This spelling was 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‟) 33 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. In addition to these features, ME spelling had undergone some more changes, traces of which have partly been preserved down to the present day. It became a habit in ME to replace the final –i by –y. The motiation 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 used in the final position, was replaced by the letter w , which looked more ornamental. On the whole, ME spelling was far from being uniform. Purely phonetic spellings mixed with the French spelling habits and also with the traditions inherited from OE. Besides, there were a lot of dialectal differences observable in the written records of that time. B) Changes affecting the vocabulary Penetration of French words into English did not start immediately after the Norman Conquest. It started only in the 12 th century, and reached its climax in the 13 th and 14 th c. The words borrowed from French at that period can be referred to several semantic groups: a) the life of the royal court: court, servant, guard, prince; yet the words queen and king remained English; b) war and army: army, regiment, battle, banner, victory, soldier ; yet the word knight is of the English origin; с) church and religion: religion, chapel, prayer, confess, saint ; d) organization of the state: vassal, govern, government, serf, village; e) justice: judge, verdict, sentence ; f) city life and organization: city, merchant, butcher, painter, tailor; g) art notions: art, colour, figure, image, ornament, column. h) amusements : pleasure, leisure, dinner, supper, roast . Besides, there were borrowed many other words that were not connected with any specific semantic sphere, e.g: 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 calf, a deer, etc . But when their meat was served to the table of a Norman lord, words of the French origin were used: beef, mutton, pork, veal, venison, etc . Another type of vocabulary differentiation can 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‟). Sometimes French words could co-exist in ME with their English equivalents, as their shades of meaning might be somewhat different. Compare: autumn (Fr.) and harvest (meant “autumn” in Old English). 34 In some cases the borrowed word could oust the native one: army (Fr.) – here (OE). However, some words extinct from the literary language still remain in several present-day dialects. жүктеу/скачать 1,38 Mb. 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