Western, Central and Southern Dialects

In the sound system Northern, Western, Central and Southern dialects share some features:

(1) the ME long open [ ] (that turned into closed [ ] and narrowed to [i:] in literary English) remained unchanged;

(2) ME short [a] has not developed into [æ];

(3) Initial [h] is dropped, e.g.

’ave (have) – (The West country), ’im (him), ’ill (hill) ’ere (here) – (The South East); ’eard (heard) – (The Midlands)

Other features are typical only of certain dialects.

In some Southern dialects initial [s], [f], [θ] in words of Germanic origin have been voiced, i.e. become [z], [v], [ð] respectively; initial [thr-] has changed into [dr-], Cf. Zo – G so, NE so; volk – G Volk, NE folk; dree – G drei, NE three.

The consonant [ŋ] in unstressed syllables has changed into [n].

 

4.5. Some Essential Grammatical Changes of the New English Period: Morphology

The Noun

Number

The 15th and 16th centuries saw the process of eliminating survival plural forms.

The regular forms eyes, foes ousted eyen, fōn, which were still used by Chaucer.

In some nouns the alteration of the final consonants [f], [θ] with the corresponding voiced consonants [v], [ð] was eliminated, e.g. roof-roofs, belief-beliefs, death-deaths, hearth-hearths.

However, with other nouns the alteration remained, e.g. wife-wives., life-lives, half-halves, calf-calves, wolf-wolves, bath-baths, path-paths, youth-youths.

With a few words two variants are possible [-vz, -fs], [-ðz, -θs], e.g. scarf-scarves, scarfs, truth-truths.

The noun staff (ME staff-staves) split into two separate words: staff-staffs and stave-staves.

The alteration [f-v] extended to the word handkerchief, whose second part is of French origin; alongside the plural form «handkerchiefs» a new form «handkerchieves» was occasionally used.

A few nouns preserved their plural forms in –en (weak declension) or with vowel alternation (root stems), e.g. ox-oxen, child-children, woman-women, foot-feet, goose-geese, tooth-teeth, mouse-mice, louse-lice. Here also belong the forms brethren – members of the same community (alongside brothers – sons of the same mother) and kine (alongside cows).

A few nouns retained their uninflected plural forms, e.g. sheep-sheep, deer-deer, swine-swine, fruit-fruit, fish-fish and the names of several kinds of fish: trout, salmon and cod.

 

Cases

In NE, the two-case system, typical of Chaucer’s language, remained unchanged. However, the range of the genitive case was narrowed. It came to be used almost exclusively with nouns denoting living beings. In the genitive singular the apostrophe was first used about 1680. The use of the apostrophe in the genitive plural dates from about 1780.