The loss of inflection

B & A focus on the loss of inflection in chapter 9 (The grammar of ME and the rise of a written standard), having dealt with the influence of contact and borrowing on the shape of the English lexicon in transition to the Middle Ages in the previous chapter. In contrast, G tackles the topic in chapter 6 (Middle English: 1150–1500), which covers the period by dealing with spellings, sounds, morphology, syntax, word-formation and dialects. B & A open their chapter with what they regard as the most important sound change with the most far-reaching influence on the grammar of ME, namely, vowel reduction. B & A present the topic explicitly in the overview of the chapter, and, in the objectives set for the chapter, state that the reader should be able to identify inflectional forms of ME and compare them with those of Old and early Modern English at the end of the chapter. They then take the student through the levelling effects of vowel reduction in Middle English inflections, providing illustrative tables that are useful aides-mémoire for the student. These tables are similar in format to the exercises presented for the student to test understanding of the material presented in each section. The good thing about this is that the student can tackle the exercises in a systematic fashion; but there is a downside. This is that there is seldom an opportunity to look at the forms in the context of the texts in which they occur. The consequence is that the focus on declensions, paradigms and lists seems old-fashioned. The prospect of rehearsing the answers to these exercises in a workshop or seminar session is deadly; they do not appear to be designed to generate much in the way of interaction beyond the monosyllabic in the British first-year classroom. However, they would seem to be entirely appropriate for independent study or as a homework assignment.

G actually also begins her chapter by announcing its focus on internal changes, including the simplification of case endings to -e (p. 111). She then provides a taste of the scope and variety of ME by introducing a number of different texts of the period, including facsimiles of Layamon's Brut, the Cursor Mundi and a page of Caxton's Morte d'Arthur. In section 3, G addresses the matter of morphology and points out that the ‘trend is towards a loss of endings’ (p. 120). She provides clear examples and summary information in tables to guide the student through the different manifestations of case-ending loss. She offers a practical activity for the student to examine the degree to which case endings of demonstratives, adjectives and nouns are reduced in texts of the period. She suggests a search of the electronic Middle English compendium for endings like -um, and at the same time identifies examples in the texts introduced earlier in the chapter and informs students of their likely findings so they can check the effectiveness of their search. This activity could be adapted for classroom use or could be formalized as a homework assignment. The use of illustrative texts allows her to discuss the loss of endings in the context of their geographical and historical diffusion, creating a sense of continuity with the previous chapter, which explored the influences of Celtic, Latin, French, Scandinavian and Dutch/Flemish on the vocabulary, morphology and syntax of English.

Both textbooks comment on the loss of inflection as a process of change. B & A present the loss of inflection as the result of vowel reduction on the one hand and of analogy on the other (p. 266). They rehearse the stages in which levelling occurs, summarizing the effects of vowel loss on the inflectional endings of Middle English. They then take the student through salient grammatical developments in Middle English, a treatment organized by part of speech (adjectives, nouns, pronouns, verbs) then syntax (periphrasis and word order). This culminates in a short section discussing the changes in terms of the shift from synthetic to analytical processes. In this section B & A come back to the question that most students are interested in, namely, why these changes happened. They say: ‘While we understand their effects, we are not certain of the causal relationships among them: did the loss of inflections lead to the periphrases and fixed order, or did the development of these analytic structures lead to the loss of synthetic markers?’ (p. 295). They then address the question by introducing M. L. Samuels’ (Reference Samuels1972) drag chain account. What they do is side-step the question by animating and attributing agency to the changes themselves, concluding that the shift from synthetic to analytic is ‘basically a conservative change’ without further explicating the view. In contrast, G simply categorizes the loss of case, gender and number on nouns, adjectives, demonstratives and pronouns as ‘changes from synthetic to analytic’. She addresses causality in the most fleeting way in the observation that the trend towards analytic forms ‘does not continue [into modern English], most likely for external reasons’ (p. 124). She ventures a little into the territory of external causes in her allusion to analogy in the discussion of strong verbs. Here, like B & A, G relies on somebody else's account by invoking Baugh & Cable's explanation for the replacement of strong verb forms with weak paradigms. She dodges any judgement thus: ‘if their assumption [that the “impulse seems to have been checked, possibly by the steady rise of English in the social scale”] is correct, that would be an external reason for the continuation of strong verbal forms’ (p. 125).

Both textbooks are attentive to describing questions of cause but it is a bit frustrating that neither considers a position or stance on causes of change in sufficient detail to engage the reader actively or continually. In chapter 1, G does assert that the change from synthetic to analytic will be a major theme of the book; likewise, she describes and briefly defines external (‘politically, geographically, and socially motivated’) and internal (‘linguistically motivated’) change. B & A devote chapter 3 to discussing both internal and external causes of change and introduce the notions of innovative and conservative changes in language. They are careful to spell out and exemplify the kinds of phenomena that count towards internal changes, from those that speakers are largely unconscious of (ease of articulation, perceptual clarity, universal tendencies, efficiency) to those that speakers are more or less conscious of (spelling pronunciation, hypercorrection, analogy). They also explicate external factors, focusing on language contact and its consequences for languages. However, both books, having dispatched the task of dealing with causes and mechanisms early on, don't come back to them at points where the reader might benefit from elaboration.

English as a creole

G uses the discussion of the influences of contact with speakers of other languages for the shape of Middle English as an opportunity to discuss the status of ME as a creole in chapter 5 (From Old to Middle English). B & A raise the question at the end of their discussion of synthetic to analytic processes in shaping the grammar of Middle English in a section entitled ‘Middle English as a creole?’ (p. 297). Both refer to the scholarship that claims that French–English contact yielded a creole-like language marked by Germanic syntax and phonology and French lexis, beginning with Domingue's 1975 conference paper (cited by G), on which the 1977 published version is based (B & A cite the published reference as ‘Dominique’ – likely a copy-editor's error), with the most recent being McWhorter (Reference McWhorter2002). G then takes the reader through Thomason and Kaufman's (Reference Thomason and Kaufman1988) scale for measuring the effects for a language's structure of contact with another, providing the basis for assessing the relative influences on English of Celtic, Latin, Scandinavian and French. The placing of the discussion allows the assessment of Middle English as a creole resulting from contact with French to be undertaken in a broader context than B & A's treatment. They provide the same information as G regarding Thomason and Kaufman's scale, but in chapter 3 in the context of a general discussion of borrowing as external change. All in all, G's discussion seems to be more effective in terms of situating the question and contextualizing the discussion of the effects of contact on the status of a language.

Concluding remarks

These textbooks are in fact both thorough and well-informed treatments of the history of the English language; their coverage is extensive and well judged, their approaches are linguistically oriented and theoretically informed. They certainly provide the student with enough linguistic grounding to be able to tackle other modules in language and linguistics, not least because they invoke areas like semantics and pragmatics, and sociolinguistics in their approach to changes in the language. They also attend to general academic preparation; B & A have a robust linguistic glossary with good notes and illustrations while G has an appendix on how to use the OED. As textbooks for two different formats of American undergraduate courses on the history of the language, each succeeds in serving its constituency (and I conclude this having taught in both formats). But which one would work best for the problem-based, electronically enhanced module that I teach now? Although I will unhesitatingly draw upon the questions posed and texts offered by G, and the web resources and further readings produced by both, I haven't found in either textbook the book that would fit my course. The solution? No coursebook at all but a discerning dabble in everything out there.