Types of change in the transformation of English
Look at the versions of the Lord’s Prayer given in (1)–(4) in File 13.1 OR the excerpt of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde given in (7) in the same file. Identify at least one of each of the following types of change in the transformation of English between Old English and Modern English: sound change, morphological change, syntactic change, semantic change.
a. Which text did you choose–the Lord’s Prayer or Troilus and Criseyde?
b. Sound change:
c. Morphological change:
d. Syntactic change:
e. Semantic change:
Referring to the Lord’s Prayer and Troilus and Criseyde given in File 13.1.
For sound change, one example of this type of change is the Great Vowel Shift which occurred between the 14th and 17th centuries. This shift affected the pronunciation of long vowels in English. For example, the word “name” was pronounced as “nahm-eh” in Middle English but is now pronounced as “naym” in Modern English1.
For morphological change, one example is the loss of inflectional endings in English. In Old English, nouns had different endings depending on their grammatical function (e.g., “dæg” for “day” in the nominative case and “dæge” in the dative case). In Modern English, however, nouns generally have only two forms: singular and plural1.
For syntactic change, one example is the word order changes that occurred between Old English and Modern English. In Old English, the word order was more flexible than it is in Modern English. For example, “Ic eom se cyning” (I am the king) could be rearranged as “Se cyning eom ic” (The king am I)1.
For semantic change, one example is the evolution of word meanings over time. For instance, the word “meat” originally referred to any type of food but now refers specifically to animal flesh1.