32.Chaucer&his Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer- author,poet,philosopher,bureaucrat courtier,and diplomat,is described as the founder of the literary lang.was born in London&had the most varied experience as student, courtier, MP.He never wrote in any other lang besides Eng.Ch.wrote in a dialect which in the main coincided with that used in documents produced in LondonHe didn’t really created the literary lang,he set up a pattern to be followed in the 15 c.His poems were copied many times &were among 1^st to be printed.Ch’s lang I known as a classical ME-in the 15-16c it become the basis the national literary E.lang.

Canterbury Talesis a collection of stories written in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the rest in verse).The tales,some of which are originals and others not.The poet found himself at the Tabard Inn,bound on pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury.There he met piligrims&at the suggestions of the host,they began story-telling.In social position people,heros of the story,range from knight to drunken cook.The peope are shown with their distinct features&with theirs personal history The Canterbury Tales are written in ME.Some of the tales are serious&others comical.

Major works:Translation of Roman de la Rose, possibly extant as The Romance of the Rose;The Book of the Duchess;The House of Fame;Translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy as Boece.Short poems An ABC;Chaucers Wordes unto Adam.

33.The rise of articles

In OE texts the pronouns “se,seo,pat”were frequently used as noun-determiners with a weakend meaning,approaching that of the modern definite article(D.A)In the course of ME there arose an important formal difference between the demonstrative pronoun&D.A.:as a demonst.pronoun “that”preserved №distinctions whereas as a D.A-usually in weakend form “the”-it was uninflected.In the 14c.the article had lost al traces of inflection&became a short unaccented form-word.The meaning&functions of the D.A.became more specific when it came to be opposed to the indef.artc,which had developed from the OE numeral&indefin.pronoun “an”.In OE there existed 2words:an(a numeral)&sum(indef.pronoun)which were oft used in functions approaching those of the modern indef.artc.”An”seems to ve been a more colloquial word,while sum tended to assume a literary character.In early ME the indef.pronoun “an”whih had 5-case declension in OE lost its inflection.Its believed that the growth of artcls in early ME was caused by:the development of the D.A is connected with the changes in the declension of adject.,namely with the loss of distinctions b/n strong&weak forms;&the changing function of the word order(now the parts of the sentence had their own fixed places.

34.Major spelling changes in me

In ME runic letters passed out of use.They were replaced by new letters&digraphs(thorn-p-&crossed “d” by digraph “th”, “double u” by “w”)After the period of Anglo-Norman dominance,E regained its prestige as the L of writing,through for a long time writing was in the hands of those,who had a good knowledge of French.Many innovations in ME spelling reveal in an influence of the Fr.tradition.The digraphs “ou,ie,ch”were adopted as new ways of indicating nthe sounds[u:][e:][tS].The letters “j,k,v,q”were probably 1^st used in imitation of Fr. manuscripts.Others changes in spelling can’t be traced directly to Fr. Late ME notaries introduced “sh”, to indicate the new sibillat [s/],the digraph “wh” replaced the OE sequence of letters “hw”as in OE hwaet,ME what .Some replacemens were probably made to avoid confusion of letters.The letter “y”came to be used as equivalent of “I”& was preferred when “I” could be confused with the surrounding letters “m,n”&others

Long sounds in ME texts are oft shown by double letters/digraphs.The length of vowel can be inferred from the nature of the syllable;open syll.contain long vowels,while closed syll.may contain 2:short&long vowels.In the numerous borrowed words of roman origin,adopted in ME&early NE the stress fell on the last syll.In the accordance with the phonetic tendencies the stress moved closer to the beginning of the word