ENGL 361 Final Exam

Start Studying!

Terms

undefined, object

copy deck

Define alliteration: 2 or more words in a phrase with the same sound
Trochaic: Rhythm of Anglo-Saxon poetry; heavy beat with weak stresses
Where most new derivational prefixes and suffixes in ME came from: French
Something new in comparison of adjectives in ME: periphrastic- formed in phrase (more, most, not -est)
Meaning of "very" in ME: "true" (comes from French "vrai", spelled verray)
Comment on negation of the verb in OE and ME: double negatives could be used. ne+verb+not
Why the number of dialects in English increased after the Conquest?: With the feudal system, the peasants were tied to the land & isolated from one another.
What is the periphrastic posessive, and how did we get it?: It came from French. It involves using multiple words to express posessive, such as "the house of my father"
Comment on rigidity of syntax in ME: ME was less free than AS because inflections were lost, but not as rigid as PDE
Most important change in morphology in ME: loss of inflectional endings
What is meant by the OE "plural preterite," a form more and more lost in ME?: ends in "n"- plural form and infinitive. eg, riden, goon
number of the original seven OE verb classes remaining in ME: none; all had decayed, and there were no longer 7 distinct verb classes.
What are "levels of diction?": Intricate systems of vocabulary used in different situations, ranging from colloquial to formal
Why PDE speakers often err by saying "hisself": Defective paradigm. With new development, other forms emerged.
Types of OE words that survived best in ME: the most common words
How infinitive was marked in OE and ME: OE- "an" ME- preposition before verb substituted for infinitive ending
Change in inflection of the adjectives from OE to ME: adjectives lost all inflections and strong/weak distinctions
3 word classes that became larger in ME: 1. adverbs 2. prepositions 3. conjunctions
What happened to the suffix "lic" in ME?: It changed to ly. It was an adjective suffix (eg, manlic- manly)
What happened to dipthongs from OE to ME?: Entire inventory changed; raised vowels shifted all dipthongs
4 inflectional categories preserved in ME (and PDE) pronoun: 1. number 2. gender 3. case 4. person
What happened to vowel LENGTH from OE to ME: It leveled. Short vowels lengthened, and vowel length stopped being phonemic.
What are "perfect" verb tesnes?: actions already completed
What happened in ME to unstressed OE final e?: It was lost in pronunciation of words around 1375 (seen in Chaucer's work)
3 reasons for the survival & resurgence of English during the period 1204-1509: 1. John Lackland's loss of land in France 2. Black Death 3. 100 years war
Historical stage of the language in which omission of the relative pronoun was impermissible.: AS and PDE.
Two new uses of auxiliary "do" in ME: pro-verb or pro-clause. replace verb or caluse ME- negative. "Do not."
Distinguish biological and grammatical gender. Which did ME have?: grammatical gender is not related to physical gender; it is arbitrary. Biological gender is based on the sex of the person or animal discussed. ME had biological gender.
Two "dummy subjects" that came into use during ME: it, there
Type of verbs that suffered greatest lexical losses in ME: strong verbs
One statement about profanity: There was a difference between idle and necessary swearing
Why many French loanwords were adopted but quickly lost: So many were adopted that they became redundant. Increased specialization, narrowing.
Useful OE indefinite pronoun, used less in ME and lost in PDE. What words do we substitute for it.: "Mann." We substitute "one" or "you."
What is meant by "shift in denotation?": a change in the word's literal definition
Five types of ME literature: 1. Secular 2. Religious Prose 3. Secular Verse 4. Religious & didactic verse 5. drama
Define Back formation: making new words from existing words by incorrectly assuming that they are forms of another word (eg, getting pea from "pease")
Effect of Black Plague on English language: Labor shortages increased the prestige of English (spoken by peasants)
Changes in verb tenses during ME period: Pred tense change= compound/complex tenses. More than one word.
What is "oral literature?": verse, rhyming poetry. It came into English after the conquest. In a non-literate society, it had to be easy to memorize. Included histories, Bible stories, recipes, etc, and were passed by minstrels.
Two Contributions William the Conquerer made to English culture: 1. Feudal System 2. French language
Only English pronoun that signals gender: 3rd person singular
comment on use of modal auxiliaries in ME: began to use modal auxiliaries like "may" and "might" as well as quasi-modals like "be going to" in place of inflected subjunctive
Give an example of a group posessive, a construction impossible in ME.: The house on the corner's roof
Why is periphrasis an important term in discussing development of verb tenses in ME?: periphrasis- expresses in a phrase what was once expressed with inflections, eg "a prince of _____", phrase
3 Literary Languages during ME period: 1. Latin 2. French 3. English
Digraph: a pair of graphemes that represents a single phoneme
Comment on coordination and subordination of syntax in OE and ME: paratactic ME had more subordinate and embedded clauses
Dialect of English from which Middle English developed: London Standard (East Midlands)
Digraphs that entered English during ME period.: ch, ou, gh, wh
In ME, the singular pronoun meaning "you" and the plural one.: singular: "th's" thou, thine, thee, thy, etc. plural/formal: yo, eow, eower. Generalized.
3 forms of noun in ME: 1. singular 2. plural 3. posessive
What happened to short vowels in unstressed syllables during ME?: they were reduced to /schwa/ , which came to be spelled with an "e." There was heavy stress on the root syllable.
Example of the inflected subjunctive in PDE: unrealized, impossible. "If I were you."
Iambic: Rhythm adoped after Norman Conquest; it is more song-like.
3 types of eccentric plurals in ME: 1. unmarked (deer, fish, elk, moose) 2. mutated (mice, men) 3. "n" ending (children)
Prepositions used with passive verb- in early ME and in late ME: all prepositions changed their meaning. agentive- preposition used with passive verb, such as "by" or in ME, "with"
3 changes during ME associated with progress of English from a synthetic to a more analytic language: 1. loss of grammatical gender (replaced with biological) 2. loss of inflections 3. loss of strong/weak adjectives
Example of correlative conjunction: words that come in pairs. either/or, neither/nor, used more in AS than today.
comment on double negatives in ME and PDE: They could be used in ME. 19th century grammarians said that it inverted the meaning in PDE
Most common type of semantic change in ME and way: narrowing, because the language got so many new words from French
Change in spelling from OE to ME: spelling became more chaotic, and began using French rules.
Separable Verb: a 2 part verb with a base verb and a separate prepositional verb (eg, pick up)
Development of definite and indefinite articles: a/an was an AS word for "one"
Characterisitcs of English that make it easy for us to borrow words from other languages: 1. inflectional simplicity 2. wide variety of phonemes 3. complex, allowable syllable structure
4 means of word formation in ME: 1. compounding 2. affixing 3. clipping 4. back formation 5. blends
Why texts in English are rare during period 1100-1200: English lost prestige; French & Latin were literary languages.
2 Losses in consonant sounds from OE to ME with examples of words that illustrate those losses: 1. loss of long consonants (bedd) 2. /h/ before some consonants (hwil)
Change in phrasal rhythm from OE to ME: AS= trochaic (heavy beat with weak stress) ME-iambic ~/~/~/~/
List ME dialect areas: 1. Northern 2. Southern 3. West Midland 3. East Midland 5. Kentish
Change in formation of the future tense during ME: OE used present tense to express the future. ME used modal auxiliaries such as "shall" and "will."

Start Studying!

Deck Info

Number of cards 70