The rise of articles

In OE texts the pronouns “se,seo,pat”were frequently used as noun-determiners with a weakened meaning, approaching that of the modern definite article(D.A). In the course of ME there arose an important formal difference between the demonstrative pronoun&D.A.:as a demonst.pronoun “that”preserved №distinctions whereas as a D.A-usually in weakened form “the”-it was uninflected.In the 14c.the article had lost all traces of inflection&became a short unaccented form-word.The meaning&functions of the D.A.became more specific when it came to be opposed to the indef.artc,which had developed from the OE numeral&indefin.pronoun “an”.In OE there existed 2words:an(a numeral)&sum(indef.pronoun)which were oft used in functions approaching those of the modern indef.artc.”An”seems to have been a more colloquial word, while sum tended to assume a literary character. In early ME the indef.pronoun “an” which had 5-case declension in OE lost its inflection. Its believed that the growth of articles in early ME was caused by: the development of the D.A is connected with the changes in the declension of adject., namely with the loss of distinctions b/n strong&weak forms;&the changing function of the word order(now the parts of the sentence had their own fixed places.

34. SPELLING CHANGES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH.

The most conspicuous feature of Late ME texts in comparison with OE texts is the difference in spelling. The written forms of the words in Late ME texts resemble their modern forms, though the pronunciation of the words was different. Before considering the evolution of English sounds one must get acquainted with the system of ME spelling in order to distinguish between sound changes and graphical changes.

1) In ME the runic letters passed out of use. þ — and ð— were replaced by the digraph th, which retained the same sound value: [θ] and [ð]; the rune "wynn" was displaced by "double u" — w —; the ligatures æ and œ fell into disuse.

2) many innovations in ME spelling reveal an influence of the French scribal tradition. The digraphs ou, ie, and ch which occurred in many French borrowings and were regularly used in Anglo- Norman texts were adopted as new ways of indicating the sounds [u: ]. [e:], and [tч].

3) a wider use of digraphs. In addition to ch, ou, ie, and th mentioned above Late ME notaries introduced sh (also ssh and sch) to indicate the new sibilant [ш] e.g. ME ship (from OE scip),

the digraph wh replaced the OE sequence of letters hw as in OE hwset, ME what [hwat] (NE what).

The introduction of the digraph gh for [x] and [x'l helped to distinguish between the fricatives [x, x¹], which were preserved in some positions, and the aspirate [h]

4)Long sounds were shown by double letters, for instance ME book [bo:k],

Some replacements were probably made to avoid confusion of resembling letters: thus o was employed not only for [o] but also to indicate short [u] alongside the letter u , it happened when u stood close to n, m, or v,

5)The letter y came to be used as an equivalent of i and was evidently preferred when i could be confused with the surrounding letters m, n and others. Sometimes, however, y, as well as w, were put at the end of a word for purely ornamental reasons, so as to finish the word with a curve; ME very I'veri], my [mi:] (NE nine, very, my), w was interchangeable with u in the digraphs ou, au, e.g. ME doun, down [du:n]

6) Long sounds in ME texts are often shown by double letters or digraphs. The length of the vowel can sometimes be inferred from the nature of the syllable; open syllables often contain long vowels, while closed syllables may contain both short and long vowels. The succeeding consonant groups can also serve as indicators: vowels are long before a sonorant plus a plosive consonant and short before other consonant sequences.

The dropping of deocreatic signs (“ - “ долгота)