The Grammar Section of this site is intended as a basic introduction for anyone wishing to read Chaucer in the original. Readers may also wish to consult the section on Language in The Riverside Chaucer, pp. xxxiv-xlii, or The Canterbury Tales Complete, pp. xxix-xxxvi) for deeper analysis or the section on “Reading Chaucer” in the Oxford Chaucer. When we give examples below we give the line numbers in Chaucer’s poems using the abbreviations used in the Oxford Chaucer.
Inflection and Case Endings
Middle English refers to the period in the development of the English language between 1150 and 1500. Old English, which refers to the language of the preceding period (ca. 450 to 1150), was highly inflected, meaning that the suffix or prefix attached to the basic form of a word (its stem) signals its grammatical function (its “case”). The stem of an inflected noun contains its meaning and its gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter). The case ending tells the reader two things: 1) how the noun is being used in a sentence and 2) whether the noun is singular or plural. The table below illustrates the principle of inflection by showing the case endings for the three types of Old English nouns: hund (masculine) (meaning “dog”); giefu (feminine) (meaning “gift”) and scip (neuter) (meaning “ship”). Don’t worry if the words seem unfamiliar or the system complex. Focus, instead, on the ways that case endings change to reflect the number, gender, and function of a noun. Simply being aware of these early English inflections will help you better understand how to read Chaucer’s English:
| masc (sg) | masc (pl) | fem (sg) | fem (pl) | neut (sg) | neut (pl) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative (subject) | hund (dog) | hunda (dogs) | giefu (gift) | gief (gifts) | scip (ship) | scipu (ships) |
| Genitive (possessive) | hunde (of the dog) | hunda (of the dogs) | giefe (of the gift) | giefa (of the gifts) | scipes (of the ship) | scipa (of the ships) |
| Accusative (direct object) | hund (dog) | hundas (dogs) | giefe (gift) | giefa (gifts) | scip (ship) | scipu (ships) |
| Dative (indirect object/ object of a preposition) | hunde (to the dog) | hundum (to the dogs) | giefe (to the gift) | giefum (to the gifts) | scipe (to the ship) | scipum (to the ships) |
| Instrumental (by means of, with) Cp. Ablative case in Latin* | hunde (by means of the dog, with the dog) | hundum (by means of the dogs, with the dogs) | giefe (by means of the gift, with the gift) | giefum (by means of the gifts, with the gifts) | scipe (by means of the ship, with the ship) | scipum (by means of the ships, with the ships) |
Changes in the pronunciation of the language over time meant that these case endings gradually began to approximate one another: consonants were less and less frequently pronounced, so less and less frequently written, and vowels tended to collapse into a single sound usually written as a final –e (pronounced /uh/).
Below you can follow the transition of the Old English word stān (stone) from Old English to Early Middle English to Late Middle English. Notice how the inflection shifts over time:
| Old English | Early Middle English | Late Middle English | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nom/Acc (sg) | stān | ston | stoon |
| Dative (sg) | stān-e | ston-e | stoon |
| Genitive (sg) | stān-es | ston-es | stoon-(e)s |
| Nom/Acc (pl) | stān-um | ston-en, -es | stoon-(e)s |
| Dative (pl) | stān-um | ston-en, -es | stoon-(e)s |
| Genitive (pl) | stān-a | ston-e, -es | stoon-(e)s |
This dramatic decrease in the use of inflections was attended by the equally dramatic increase in vocabulary derived from French which accompanied the arrival of the Normans in 1066, and the formation of a dialect of French usually referred to as ‘Anglo-Norman’. Although these grammatical and lexical changes began before Chaucer’s lifetime, they were accelerating in the period in which he wrote. Most of the Old English texts we read today originate in West Saxon and represent a single dialect. By contrast, the sheer number of surviving Middle English texts has allowed scholars to identify five different dialects: Northern, East Midlands, West Midlands, Southern, and Kentish. Chaucer’s works contain words borrowed from the French (by now the language of the aristocracy, not simply the French of Anglo-Norman England) as well as Latin (the language of the government and the church), while the northern dialects retain the influence of the Germanic predecessors, as well as Norse words from the Viking invaders who settled there. It is helpful to modern readers that Chaucer’s dialect—the English of London and the East Midlands—is the dialect that led most directly to Modern English forms.