Middle English Overview

In relation to the Conquest, Burnley (2000) suggests that innovations linked to the birth of Middle English were only broadly related to the arrival of the Norman French. He claims that, in many instances, dialect manuscripts of the period merely reveal that diversity and change was already occurring in Old English, a result of the substantial linguistic influence of the Scandinavian invaders in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Furthermore, Baugh and Cable (1993) observe that these changes were not only phonological but also grammatical and lexical. However, such changes did not all occur all a…