author and a translator. The content of the preface may
also be important in understanding key aspects of
Alfred’s reign as king. By placing himself in the same
category as Saint Gregory and Augustine of Canterbury,
Alfred blurs the line between secular and religious
power and strengthens his own authority over the bish-
ops who received copies of the translated work.
FURTHER READING
Discenza, Nicole Guenther. “Alfred’s Verse Preface to the
Pastoral Care and the Chain of Authority.” Neophilologus
85 (2001): 625–633.
Dobbie, Elliott Van Kirk, ed. The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.
William H. Smith
MIDDLE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Prior to
the arrival of William the Conqueror, the common
English language was OLD ENGLISH, which refl ected its
Germanic roots more distinctly than Middle English.
The NORMAN CONQUEST, however, changed this. The
Norman French infl uence, and the subsequent devel-
opment of an ANGLO-NORMAN culture, deeply affected
the way English was spoken and written. English went
into a decline, and when it reemerged, it was perma-
nently changed.
Scholars agree there were at least fi ve dialects of
Middle English: Southern, West Midlands, Northern,
East Midlands, and Kentish. Many believe, however,
that there were many more dialects than these fi ve, and
scholarly debates continue. Eventually, the East Mid-
lands dialect—the one spoken in London—emerged as
the strongest of these, becoming the standard for spo-
ken and written language. This dialect was not a direct
descendant of West Saxon, the Old English dialect
with the most surviving materials. Moreover, English
was rarely written down during the Anglo-Norman
period, so by the time it became regularly written
down again, there was an even poorer match between
written and spoken language than in Old English.
French scribes introduced additional spelling errors.
Many of these became frozen when the printing press
arrived, leaving a language today that does not match
phonetically and graphemically.
Phonologically, the consonant inventory was much
like Present Day English with a few exceptions, most
notably in fi nal syllables. All Old English diphthongs
became pure vowels, but the French infl uence provided
several new diphthongs. Middle English retained two of
the graphemes not used in the Latin alphabet, the thorn
(þ) and the yogh (ȝ). Occasional use of the ash (æ) and
eth (ð) remained. The consonant inventory was very
similar to Present Day English, with the French infl u-
ence making the occurrence of letters rarely used in
Old English (j, v, q, and z) more common.
The most signifi cant change between Old English
and Middle English was the loss of the infl ectional sys-
tem. No longer a synthetic, infl ected language, Middle
English became an analytic language dependent upon
word order to create syntactical structure. Nouns were
reduced from fi ve cases to two (possessive and non-
possessive), just as they are in Present Day English.
Adjectives lost all infl ections. Syntax became the deter-
mining factor of sentence meaning.
Forms of the fi rst and second pronouns remained
relatively unchanged, but the dual pronoun found in
Old English was lost. The use of ye as a polite form of
address is found from the late 13th century, and is
modeled on French practice. In general, you or þou
was used between equals and to inferiors, while ye was
used to address a superior. Indefi nite and relative pro-
nouns became more defi ned, and late Middle English
witnessed the beginnings of refl exive and reciprocal
pronouns.
Like Old English and Present Day English, Middle
English verbs had only two tenses: past and present.
The present tense was used to express habitual actions
and general truths as well as current activities and,
occasionally, the future. By late Middle English (the
14th century), the historical present was developed
and regularly used in literature, especially ROMANCEs.
Historic present allows the narrative of past events to
place the audience in the midst of the action. Middle
English verbs also had the same three moods as those
in Old English and Present Day English: indicative,
subjunctive, and imperative.
Finally, Middle English had a much larger lexicon
than Old English. Aside from the huge infusion of
French loanwords, Middle English also absorbed
words from the Scandinavian languages, Latin, Celtic
languages, Dutch, and other Continental languages.270 MIDDLE ENGLISH LANGUAGE