1. What are the five major dialect areas in Middle English?
2. Describe how each of the important events that occurred at 1066, 1204, 1337, 1348-50,
and 1362, and 1430 had an impact on how the English language was used and/or
perceived.
3. Know the spelling changes that occurred between Old and Middle English
(PowerPoint).
4. What phonological development had the most far-reaching effect on the language?
(PowerPoint)
5. As a result of the answer to the previous question, what two major grammatical
changes occurred that have resulted in English becoming an analytical instead of a
synthetic language?
6. What is smoothing? Unrounding? Give specific examples of these processes during
this period.
7. What changes occurred to the nouns (compare OE “hound” to ME “hound)? Be able to
explain the kinds of changes that we discussed in class.
8. Learn the nominative forms of all of the pronouns: ich/I, we, thou, ye, he, hit/it,
she/ho/hyo/scho/he, and hi/they. Why do we find such variety in the feminine singular
pronoun? Why these third-person plurals? [This somewhat abbreviated list (vs. the
PowerPoint) represents what you should know.]
9. Rather than learn all of the first and second-person pronouns, choose first-person
singular, first-person plural, second-person singular, or second-person plural. Remember
how one of these groups changes from OE to ME. For example, second-person plurals:
OE. nominative gē [ye:] changes to ME subj. ye [ye:]. This means “you all” in the subject
position. OE acc./dat. ēow changes to ME objective you. These mean “you all” in the
object position. OE gen. ēower changes to ME possessives your(e) and youres. [You do
not need to memorize their phonology, but do remember that many continue to sound
very similar to their OE forms.]
10. Be able to conjugate the verb “been” and match its forms with the appropriate
pronoun.
11. Describe two specific ways in which the first entry of the Peterborough Chronicle
reflects Old English. Describe two specific ways in which the Peterborough Chronicle
reflects Middle English. (PowerPoint)
12. The transitional period between OE and ME lasted how long, according to Crystal?
(PowerPoint)
13. Which genre of OE writings continued to be copied during the transitional period?
14. After the Norman Invasion, why didn’t French replace English during the 12th and 13th
centuries?
15. In what ways did French impact English? See PowerPoint slides titled “impact of
French lexicon,” “doublets in phrases,” “English and French doublets that differentiated,”
“French influence on pronunciation of ME,” and the slides on spelling. See next question.
16. Be able to give examples of French words that were absorbed into English, including
one scientific or technical term (see Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe), one idiom, one
doublet, one prefix and one suffix. (See Crystal and PowerPoint)
17. Which 3 languages were commonly used in England? In which domains of life?
18. When Crystal discusses “bidialecticalism,” he means two major types of registers
represented in writing in English during the late Middle English period. (These “dialects”
probably existed in a less stylized manner in actual speech.) Using pp. 169-80, describe
as clearly and thoroughly as possible the bidialecticalism of this period. What are these
two major types? Who speaks each “dialect”? In what domains of discourse is each used?
How do speakers of one “dialect” purportedly view the “dialect” of the other group? Why
does Crystal say that “vocabulary proves to be the most distinctive marker” used to
distinguish between these two groups?
19. When does standard English begin to emerge?
20. What does David Crystal mean by a standard?
21. Why is the region of the East Midlands the principal source of the emerging standard?
22. As clearly and thoroughly as possible, describe the cultural forces that (1) hindered
the development of a standard (=4) and (2) that hastened or contributed to the
development of a standard (=7). Hint for part (2): see the first sentence of p. 243, which