Vocabulary
The vocabulary of Old English is entirely Germanic; 'sceaða,' for example, comes via Old Saxon. 'Thief,' Wycliffe's choice of word, derives from Old English. The modern passage uses a different word again, 'robber,' which is of Latin origin: the proportion of Latinate words increases over time, showing the influence of the Norman invaders on the language. Interestingly, the Middle English passage uses a word related to 'robber,' 'robbiden,' but with the sense 'to strip.' On the whole English has grown in vocabulary with each word developing a more specific meaning. An example of this is Old English's frequent use of 'þa,' which in Modern English translates as four different words: 'they,' 'them,' 'when' and 'the.' Conversely, this passage of Old English expresses 'also' two ways: 'eall swa' and 'eac.' The former of these is contracted to 'also' over time, just as the Middle English 'to gidere' contracts to 'together.' Although later English uses plenty of compounds such as 'forsothe' and 'innkeeper' it tends to feature verbs in two parts like 'cam doun' and 'went up.'
The feelings of the Samaritan for the injured man are described chronologically as 'mildheortnesse,' Germanic, and 'mercy' and 'pity,' which are Latinate, again showing the impact of French on the language. The three extracts also have different interpretations of where the robbers' victim is taken: the Old English has a hospital and doctor, the Middle English a stable and the keeper of the stable and the modern passage mentions an inn and an innkeeper. These discrepancies can probably be explained by examining the various authors' sources. The recent version is at pains to use terms equivalent to those in the original sources rather than English paraphrases, for example 'silver pieces' instead of 'pens' and 'a Levite' (a Hebrew word) rather than a 'dekene.' A shift in the meanings of prepositions can also be seen over time: both Old and Modern English have the Samaritan pouring 'on' fluids, yet Middle English has, '...heeldynge yn oyle and wyn.' The Anglo-Saxon passage has 'wið' meaning both 'at' and 'by,' whereas the modern sense of 'with' is conveyed by 'mid.' 'Amid' would now mean 'among,' but this is expressed by 'on' in Old English. In medieval English 'bisydis' can mean 'along' as well as 'alongside of,' and it features the preposition 'forth' which has since fallen into disuse. Many of the functional words of English have remained virtually unchanged since Anglo-Saxon times, however, such as 'from,' 'and,' 'three' and 'he.'
Sounds and Spelling
The Old English passage does not contain the letter 'j,' resulting in the spellings 'Hierusalem' and 'Hiericho.' The /dZ/ could be produced by the 'cg' spelling, so either this was not used at the beginning of words or the towns were pronounced with a /h/ sound. A distinction is made between long and short vowels, the former carrying an accent; 'e' at the end of a word was also pronounced as a distinct syllable. 'Y' and 'i' are fully interchangeable, leading to variable orthography such as 'hine' and 'hyne.' In addition, there is a vowel sound intermediate to 'a' and 'e' since lost represented by ash: 'æ.' Other combinations particular to Old English are 'sc' for /S/ as in 'Samaritanisc,' 'c' for /tS/ as in 'ic' and 'g' for /y/ as in 'wege.' The classically trained scribes adopted runic letters for the sounds not in their alphabet: thorn (Þ, þ) and eth (Ð, ð) appear here.
The Middle English text, on the other hand, gives these as 'th' but uses a different runic character, yogh or 'Z,' which corresponds to /y/ at the start of words and /x/ elsewhere; the latter is now only found in borrowed words such as the Scots 'loch.' Interrogative and relative pronouns begin with 'wh-' rather than the older 'hw-,' though they may have been sounded much the same. Wycliffe uses a capital 'j' for Jerusalem and Jericho but an 'i' in 'journey.' Orthographically, 'u' is used for 'v' and 'y' and 'i' are still fairly interchangeable, as in the participle endings of 'comynge' and 'puttinge.' Variable spelling can also be seen in 'forsothe' and 'forsoth'; this reflects the increasing tendency in the late fourteenth century not to sound a final 'e.'
Modern English has regularity of spelling, but a very irregular written rendition of sounds due to continuing oral change. As a result the same sound may be recorded in several different ways: from this passage, 'these,' 'three' and 'beast' all have the sound /i:/ written in different ways. The alphabet is now entirely romanised and no accents are used; 'y' can be a vowel or a consonant, but is no longer interchangeable with 'i.'
Although there are many vowel changes to be observed throughout time, related words in English remain fairly recognisable due to the distinctive arrangements of consonants. Some words, such as 'man,' 'his' and 'brought,' have barely changed in spelling, sound or meaning over a thousand years.
Grammar and Syntax
Old English is noticeably more inflected than the later varieties, particularly in its pronouns and the definite article. In this passage the latter appears in four forms: 'þa,' singular following the preposition 'wið'; 'þam,' singular and dative; 'ða,' plural and following the preposition 'on'; and 'þara,' plural and genitive. The first person pronoun appears only as 'ic,' singular and nominative. The second person singular pronoun appears as 'þu,' nominative, and 'þe,' dative. The third person pronoun has masculine, feminine and neuter gender. Here the masculine singular appears as 'he,' nominative, 'hine,' accusative and after 'wið' as 'his' or 'hys,' genitive. The neuter is 'hit' in both nominative and accusative and the nominative plural is 'þa.' It should be noted, however, that the pronoun is sometimes admitted: 'And sealde þam læce,' 'And gave [them] to the doctor.' The relative pronoun is 'þe' and the demonstrative is 'þæt' in the nominative and accusative and 'þæs' in the genitive.
Old English adjectives could be inflected where Modern English uses a preposition: 'oðrum' meaning 'on the second'; numbers also agreed with the nouns they described. The plurals of nouns were formed in more than one way; the examples in this passage are 'sceaða-n,' 'wund-a' and 'penega-s.' Verbs come in many classes, both strong and weak. The past tense of weak verbs is formed by the addition of '-od' with '-e' for singular and '-on' for plural verbs, as in 'gebyrode' and 'bereafodon.' Strong verbs in this passage include 'ferde,' the past of 'feran,' and 'ageat,' the past of 'ageotan.' Old English had no distinct future tense and used the present with some time referent, as in the Samaritan's address to the doctor: 'Þonne ic cume, ic hit forgylde þe.' The passage also includes an imperative, 'begym,' and a subjunctive, 'sy.' Some verbs require their objects to take a special case, such as 'genealæcan,' which is followed by the dative. Due to the inflectional morphology, word order is less grammatically important in Old English, as the literal translation shows.
Middle English has uninflected articles, including a simple indefinite article, whereas Old English uses 'sum,' 'a certain,' or 'se,' meaning 'this.' The pronoun system retains its inflections, with 'him' instead of 'hine,' 'it' instead of 'hit' and 'thou' and 'thee' instead of 'þu' and 'þe.' The relative pronoun 'whiche' is included as well as 'that.' The plural of nouns is formed regularly by the addition of the suffix '-s.'
The past tense is uniformly created by adding a morpheme related to '-d,' such as 'fel-de,' 'stir-id' and 'pass-ide.' Some follow the pattern of Old English strong verbs and have a vowel change to signal the past tense: 'ledde,' 'Zaf' and 'cam.' 'Schalen' is used as an auxiliary denoting the future tense: '...thou schalt Zyue over, I schal Zelde to thee'; 'to have' is used as an auxiliary for the continuous past or perfect tense: 'to have be.' Middle English also has present participles such as 'comynge' and uses them to imply continuous action; participle clauses are used paratactically:
And he comynge nyZ, bond to gidere his woundis, heelynge yn oyle and wyn. And he puttinge on his hors…
In Modern English the article and pronoun systems are unchanged from Late Middle English, except for standard usage of 'you' instead of 'thou' and the introduction of the relative pronoun 'who.' The inflections of nouns and verbs are regularised, with most past tense verbs ending in '-ed,' though many common ones retain irregular forms such as 'fell.' The future tense is formed with auxiliary 'will' as in 'I will repay you,' but the present can also imply future action following 'if': 'if you spend any more.' Modern English makes use of the imperfect, formed with 'was' or 'were' plus the present participle: 'who was making.' A common feature in this passage is continuous verbal clauses without repetition of the agent noun phrase linked by 'and':
Next he produced two silver pieces and gave them to the innkeeper, and said…
This is made possible by the syntactical reliance on word order. The shift from inflectional morphology to a syntax based on word order is the biggest and most noticeable development in the history of English.
General Characteristics
There is a notable change in the use of punctuation in each passage. The Old English appears to be punctuated as Modern English, so this has probably been added recently to aid comprehension. The Middle English, however, seems to have its original punctuation and the heavy use of commas can be noted; they appear between nearly every clause. The direct speech of the Samaritan to the stable-keeper is not delineated with speech marks, so though its start is marked with a capital letter it is not clear where it ends. This is avoided in Modern English, and the whole passage is also enclosed with single speech marks to show it is Jesus speaking. Commas are used more sparingly, either to divide lists or clauses.
Ambiguity is reduced through time as the meanings of words become more specific, although later English makes greater use of figurative language, such as the metonymy of, 'The man who fell into the hands of the robbers.' The later passages take thirty to forty words more than the Old English one to tell the same story. This is partly because they add extra information like, 'He went past on the other side.' However, later English tends to take more words to convey its meaning since it uses a more complicated verb system and has fewer inflected pronouns; for example, Old English takes just two words to say, 'Begym hys,' whereas Middle English takes six to say the same thing, 'Have thou the cure of him,' and Modern English three: 'Look after him.' Due to unwieldy phrases such as this, the fourteenth-century text is the longest of the three.
The Study of Earlier English
I think the study of earlier English is very important for students of the language and its literature. Apart from the advantages of being able to read many excellent texts in their original form, it gives us an appreciation of the register and style in which Modern English is being written and spoken; the analysis of Latinate and Germanic vocabulary is an essential part of stylistics. Studying the historical influences and pressures on the language helps us to understand its current state and particularly its dialect forms; it also makes us appreciate the huge vocabulary and evolved structure of the English we use today.
Biography
Bosworth, Joseph and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, (Oxford: Clarendon) 1882
Burchfield, R.W. (ed.), Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon) 1989
Crystal, David, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language, second edition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1997
Kurath, H. (ed.), Middle English Dictionary, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press) 1952
Wright, Laura and Jonathan Hope, Stylistics: A Pratical Coursebook, (London: Routledge) 1996
