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ENGLISH LANGUAGE – 2° YEAR THE LANGUAGE OF CHAUCER Annalisa Federici, Ph.D. D. Burnley, The Language of Chaucer, Macmillan 1983 (chapter 1). GRAMMAR: NOUNS • The Noun in Chaucer presents few difficulties in interpretation, since it is formally and functionally close to the noun in ModE. • The complex inflectional system of OE (inflectional endings for gender, number, case) has largely disappeared. • Occasional traces of a dative inflectional -e (in the pronunciation and writing of which a considerable degree of freedom existed) are found in few prepositional idioms, e.g. for Gode (CT A 3526), in lande (CT B 4069). GRAMMAR: NOUNS • The only inflectional endings commonly surviving are es (derived from the genitive singular and the nominative/accusative plural of OE strong masculine nouns, and indicating both possession and plurality) and -en (derived from nominative and accusative plural inflections of OE weak nouns, and used for plurality, without distinction in case). Cf. eyen (“eyes”), asshen (“ashes”), Cristes passioun (“Christ’s passion”). • The genitive case may coexist with periphrastic forms: loue of frendes (TC II 379) and frendes loue (TC III 1591). GRAMMAR: ADJECTIVES • Though all traces of case and gender inflections had disappeared from adjectives in London English by the time of Chaucer, inflection for plurality is sometimes evident in a final -e: clene, grene, swete. • These conditions do not apply to polysillabic adjectives (not inflected), to adjectives whose stem in OE ended in a vowel, or to French-derived monosyllables. GRAMMAR: PRONOUNS • The forms of personal pronouns in Chaucer differ from those in ModE in some respects: • Subject pronouns: First person: I – we Second person: thow/thou – ye Third person: he/she/hit – they/thei • Object pronouns: First person: me – us Second person: thee – yow/you Third person: hire/him/(h)it – hem GRAMMAR: PRONOUNS Some observations: • The forms hem and hire are derived from OE, whereas they is of Scandinavian origin, showing that Chaucer’s London English employed only the subject form of this originallyScandinavian paradigm. • The choice between ye and thou (sing.) has social and attitudinal implications: in case of unequal status, the superior addresses the inferior as thou and expects to be referred to as ye. • Existence of separate pronouns for second-person singular and plural pronouns, whereas ModE only admits thou – as an alternative to you – in a few specific registers (such as liturgical language). GRAMMAR: POSSESSIVES • Possessives in Chaucer differ from ModE forms: First person: my(n)/myne – oure Second person: thy(n)/youre Third person: hire (fem.)/his (masc./neut.) – hire/thair This was thyn ooth and myn also certeyn (CT A 1139) Allas myn hertes queene, allas my wyf (CT A 2775) • The third-person possessive does not adequately distinguish between singular and plural (hire). • The third-person singular possessive fails to distinguish between masculine and neuter gender (his). GRAMMAR: DEMONSTRATIVES AND RELATIVES DEMONSTRATIVES • Chaucer’s language uses the demonstratives that and this (singular), and tho and thise (plural). RELATIVES • Fourteenth-century English used a range of relatives similar to that of modern English, but differing in some aspects of their use. • Though from OE onwards there had been a tendency to distinguish between personal and non-personal antecedents in pronoun usage, no distinction was regularly maintained in Chaucer’s time. The knyght cam which men wenden had be deed (CT D 2029) GRAMMAR: RELATIVES • Whos, whom and which are commonly used, frequently preceded by a preposition. This Sowdanesse whom I thus blame and warye (CT B 372) This clerk whos rethoryk swete (CT E 32) For if a preest be foul in whom we truste (CT A 501) This duc of whom I make mencion (CT A 893) Lord to whom Fortune hath yiuen / Victorie (CT A 915-6) GRAMMAR: RELATIVES • Who is not generally used as a relative, and remains an interrogative and indefinite pronoun, as in OE. • The most common relative is that, used for both personal and non-personal antecedents (though more common with the former). GRAMMAR: VERBS • In Chaucer’s ME, the categories of strong and weak verbs are distinguishable only by the forms of the preterite and the past participle. • In strong verbs the preterite is formed by a change in the root vowel, and the past participle by adding the inflexional ending e(n): knowe(n) – knew – knowe(n); take(n) – took – take(n); breke(n) – brak – broke(n). • Weak verbs form the preterite and past participle by adding the suffixes (e)d or t, usually to the stem of the infinitive, but sometimes to a special preterite form which had arisen in the past: wedde(n) – wedded – wedded; seke(n) – soght – soght; wende(n) – went – went. GRAMMAR: VERBS • Weak verbs were, as now are, the most common class, although some strong verbs were of very frequent occurrence. • All new coinages and foreign borrowings were treated as weak (e.g. daunce(n) – daunced – daunced). • Gradually, formerly strong verbs started to develop weak forms. In such a transitory phase, boh variants may be found. • In Chaucer’s language, both strong and weak past participles can occur in two forms, i.e. with or without the prefix y-/i- (a phonetically-reduced form of the OE prefix ge-): ycleped/cleped, ycome(n)/come(n). GRAMMAR: VERBS • The infinitive often ends in –en, but forms lacking the final n are also common: helpen/helpe; don/do. • In the present tense, the third person singular generally ends in -eth, whereas the third person plural generally ends in -en (e.g. he/she/it passeth, they passen). As in the infinitive and past participle, forms lacking the final -n also occur. • In Chaucer’s language, as in ModE, only the present and the preterite were distinguished by verb inflexions. Future time is expressed via the present tense or by a periphrastic form with the auxiliaries shal and wol followed by an infinitive.