Syntactic and morphological disparity

It is symptomatic of the state of affairs that present-day descriptions of Old English and Middle English stress disparity and inconsistency in contrast to earlier idealizing portrayals, which emphasized linguistic uniformity and unity (Hogg 1992; Blake 1992). This is certainly not because linguistic evidence of both periods belongs to a linguistic transitional epoch in which language norms and categories are normally weakened and in part fail, thus raising questions for both the reader of that day as well as the present. Lass (1994: 244) quite correctly points out that late Old English manuscripts are virtually chaotic in appearance on all grammatical levels. Referring to the linguistic appearance of Wulfstan's Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (ca. 1013), Whitelock talks, for example about "confusion" (1977: 21). This is quite certainly not to be explained by a lack of writing traditions. For Old English is by far the best known and documented idiom among all the old Germanic languages, which means that the situation described here more likely indicates a fundamental situation.

The same findings are also true of the Middle English handed down to us in a wealth of manuscripts. Middle English begins to take on a somewhat homogeneous shape from the second half of the 15th Century. Apart from that, however, as Fisiak maintains (1992), it should rather be pointed out that no linguistic reality as such exists for Middle English. There is, of course, no uniform linguistic frame for Middle English; it does not even exist for the individual work or manuscript, neither in the early or late periods of Middle English. This is also a matter of the particular political situation of an age which at first did not even accept Middle English as the official vernacular. In addition, a number of fundamental linguistic changes influenced Middle English that were then integrated in different ways. Finally, it is quite difficult to establish the range, extent and date of any linguistic change in Middle English. It is often only reflected in a limited way in manuscripts and then leads to controversial interpretations especially in regard to the question to what extent such language changes are to be judged as individual in nature or as part of a greater development. All of this makes it extremely difficult to establish universal, unambiguous linguistic rules and structures for Middle English, which would in turn facilitate a clear decoding of Middle English texts.

If one browses through the English literature of the Middle Ages with regard to this aspect, each of these observations will be confirmed. Both Old English poetic and prose texts are characterized by the instability of verbal and nominal endings, which sometimes applies even to the very same text. Texts of Northumbrian provenance are particularly affected by this phenomenon. Old English nouns can alter both declination class and gender relatively easily, which results in a certain syncretism in favor of frequently used paradigms. Accordingly, this also applies to Old English verbs~ (Hogg 1992: 122-167). Inflections in Old English can vary depending on the context and thus those cases that are combined with prepositions are also not unequivocal in Old English (Mitchell 1995: 15-54). This morphological ambiguity implying the openness of texts can be observed to an even greater extent in Middle English. In Middle English grammatical morphemes are still discernible in written texts, yet they are often linguistically without function. Frequently they are not obligatory, but in many cases only optional and, besides, not clearly marked (Lass 1992).

Certainly the degree of openness was lower in the oral discourse of the Middle Ages as it could be reduced more or less strongly by extra linguistic indicators. However, in our case, without being able to have recourse to native speakers, we have to rely solely on the written basis. Unfortunately, the syntactic relations resulting from Old English and Middle English texts do not contribute to clarification either. Relations between sentences were not clearly marked in those times. It is true that word order in Old English is not free, yet neither for prose nor for poetry can generally valid rules be formulated (Mitchell 1995: 61). Likewise, it is impossible to register syntactic regularities in a consistent and uncontradicted way, which could have been considered as part of a superordinate system (Fischer 1992: 207-209).