Old, Middle and Modern English MCQ Quiz

Old, Middle and Modern English – Exam Based MCQs

1. The Old English (Anglo-Saxon) period of the language is conventionally dated from about: (UGC NET 2015; PGTRB 2018; SET 2020)

A) 200–800

B) 450–1150

C) 1066–1500

D) 1500–1700

Ans: B) 450–1150

2. The Middle English period is usually said to run from about: (PGTRB 2019; SET 2018)

A) 1150–1500

B) 1000–1300

C) 1500–1700

D) 1700–1900

Ans: A) 1150–1500

3. Early Modern English is generally dated from: (UGC NET 2016; SET 2017)

A) 900–1200

B) 1200–1500

C) 1500–1700

D) 1700–2000

Ans: C) 1500–1700

4. Which historical event is commonly associated with the transition from Old English to Middle English? (PGTRB 2020; UGC NET 2017)

A) The Great Fire of London

B) The Norman Conquest of 1066

C) The Industrial Revolution

D) The English Civil War

Ans: B) The Norman Conquest of 1066

5. The language of the Anglo-Saxons is more properly called: (SET 2019)

A) Middle English

B) Old Norse

C) Old English

D) Early Modern English

Ans: C) Old English

6. Which major epic poem is the most famous work in Old English? (PGTRB 2018; UGC NET 2014)

A) The Faerie Queene

B) Beowulf

C) Paradise Lost

D) Piers Plowman

Ans: B) Beowulf

7. Old English vocabulary was largely derived from: (SET 2020)

A) Celtic and Latin

B) Germanic roots

C) French

D) Greek and Latin

Ans: B) Germanic roots

8. Which of the following tribes did NOT significantly contribute to Old English? (PGTRB 2017)

A) Angles

B) Saxons

C) Jutes

D) Romans

Ans: D) Romans

9. Old English is often described as a ______ language. (UGC NET 2018; SET 2016)

A) Highly inflected (synthetic)

B) Completely analytic

C) Isolated

D) Tonal

Ans: A) Highly inflected (synthetic)

10. In Old English, grammatical relationships were mainly shown by: (PGTRB 2021)

A) Word order only

B) Prepositions only

C) Inflectional endings

D) Punctuation

Ans: C) Inflectional endings

11. Which dialect of Old English became the chief literary dialect before the Norman Conquest? (UGC NET 2013; SET 2015)

A) Northumbrian

B) Mercian

C) Kentish

D) West Saxon

Ans: D) West Saxon

12. Which language had the greatest influence on English after the Norman Conquest? (PGTRB 2016; UGC NET 2015; SET 2019)

A) Italian

B) French (Norman French)

C) Spanish

D) Russian

Ans: B) French (Norman French)

13. Middle English is characterized by a great reduction in: (UGC NET 2017)

A) Vocabulary

B) Inflectional endings

C) Use of pronouns

D) Word borrowing

Ans: B) Inflectional endings

14. In the Middle English period, English changed from a mainly synthetic language towards a more: (PGTRB 2015; SET 2016)

A) Isolating language

B) Agglutinative language

C) Analytic language

D) Tonal language

Ans: C) Analytic language

15. Which of the following is the most important Middle English poet? (UGC NET 2014; PGTRB 2019)

A) John Milton

B) Geoffrey Chaucer

C) Edmund Spenser

D) William Wordsworth

Ans: B) Geoffrey Chaucer

16. The language of The Canterbury Tales is usually described as: (SET 2017)

A) Old English

B) Northern Middle English

C) East Midland/London Middle English

D) Early Modern English

Ans: C) East Midland/London Middle English

17. Which development helped to fix spelling and standardize English during the transition to Modern English? (PGTRB 2018; UGC NET 2016)

A) The rise of the internet

B) The invention of radio

C) The introduction of printing

D) The Norman Conquest

Ans: C) The introduction of printing

18. Who introduced the printing press into England in 1476? (SET 2018; UGC NET 2015)

A) William Tyndale

B) William Caxton

C) John Wycliffe

D) Samuel Johnson

Ans: B) William Caxton

19. The “Great Vowel Shift” chiefly affected: (PGTRB 2020; UGC NET 2013)

A) Consonant clusters

B) Stress patterns

C) Long vowels

D) Short vowels

Ans: C) Long vowels

20. The Great Vowel Shift took place mainly between: (SET 2019)

A) 500–800

B) 800–1000

C) 1400–1600

D) 1800–1900

Ans: C) 1400–1600

21. Which period of English is most closely associated with Shakespeare? (PGTRB 2017; UGC NET 2014; SET 2016)

A) Old English

B) Middle English

C) Early Modern English

D) Late Modern English

Ans: C) Early Modern English

22. The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible (1611) is written in: (UGC NET 2015)

A) Old English

B) Middle English

C) Early Modern English

D) Late Modern English

Ans: C) Early Modern English

23. Which of the following features is most typical of Old English? (SET 2020)

A) Fixed SVO word order

B) Abundant case endings on nouns

C) Use of “do” as an auxiliary

D) Loss of grammatical gender

Ans: B) Abundant case endings on nouns

24. The disappearance of grammatical gender in English nouns occurred mainly during the: (UGC NET 2016; PGTRB 2018)

A) Old English period

B) Middle English period

C) Early Modern English period

D) Modern English period

Ans: B) Middle English period

25. The replacement of many Old English pronouns by forms like “they”, “them”, “their” is largely due to contact with: (SET 2017)

A) Celtic

B) Old Norse (Scandinavian)

C) Latin

D) Italian

Ans: B) Old Norse (Scandinavian)

26. The rise of standard written English is associated especially with: (PGTRB 2019; UGC NET 2018)

A) The West Saxon dialect

B) Northern Middle English

C) The East Midland/London dialect

D) Kentish dialect

Ans: C) The East Midland/London dialect

27. Which period saw the greatest influx of French vocabulary into English? (UGC NET 2015; SET 2018)

A) Old English

B) Middle English

C) Early Modern English

D) Late Modern English

Ans: B) Middle English

28. The main source of scientific and learned vocabulary in Early Modern English was: (PGTRB 2020; UGC NET 2017)

A) Celtic

B) Norse

C) Latin and Greek

D) Hindi

Ans: C) Latin and Greek

29. In Old English, the definite article system was: (SET 2015)

A) A single invariable “the”

B) A set of forms inflected for case, gender and number

C) Entirely absent

D) Borrowed from French

Ans: B) A set of forms inflected for case, gender and number

30. The auxiliary “do” in questions and negatives (e.g. “Do you know?”) became regular in: (PGTRB 2016; UGC NET 2014)

A) Old English

B) Middle English

C) Early Modern English

D) Late Modern English

Ans: C) Early Modern English

31. The spelling of Modern English often reflects pronunciations before: (SET 2019; UGC NET 2016)

A) The Industrial Revolution

B) The Great Vowel Shift

C) The Norman Conquest

D) The Second World War

Ans: B) The Great Vowel Shift

32. Which of the following is typical of Late Modern English (1700 onwards)? (PGTRB 2018)

A) Heavy use of inflections

B) Expansion of vocabulary through science and empire

C) Total absence of loanwords

D) No change in pronunciation

Ans: B) Expansion of vocabulary through science and empire

33. Samuel Johnson’s famous Dictionary of the English Language was published in: (UGC NET 2015; SET 2017)

A) 1476

B) 1604

C) 1755

D) 1800

Ans: C) 1755

34. Which period is marked by attempts to “fix” and regulate English through grammars and dictionaries? (PGTRB 2019; UGC NET 2018)

A) Old English

B) Middle English

C) Early and Late Modern English

D) Only 20th-century English

Ans: C) Early and Late Modern English

35. The loss of most Old English case endings gradually led to a greater reliance on: (SET 2016)

A) Tone

B) Word order and prepositions

C) Gender agreement

D) Reduplication

Ans: B) Word order and prepositions

36. The Old English word “cniht” (boy, servant) later became “knight” with the sense “noble warrior”. This reflects changes across: (PGTRB 2017; UGC NET 2013)

A) Old English only

B) Old to Middle English

C) Middle to Modern English

D) Only American English

Ans: B) Old to Middle English

37. Which of the following best describes Middle English spelling? (SET 2018)

A) Completely standardized

B) Highly fixed by dictionaries

C) Varied and unstable, with many regional forms

D) Without any French influence

Ans: C) Varied and unstable, with many regional forms

38. The phrase “Anglo-Saxon” is another term used primarily for: (PGTRB 2016)

A) Middle English

B) Old English

C) Modern English

D) Early American English

Ans: B) Old English

39. Which of the following works is written in Middle English? (UGC NET 2014; SET 2016)

A) Beowulf

B) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

C) Paradise Lost

D) Hamlet

Ans: B) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

40. The emergence of English as the dominant language of government and law in England (replacing French and Latin) happened mainly in: (PGTRB 2020)

A) Old English period

B) Later Middle and Early Modern English

C) Only in the 20th century

D) It never happened

Ans: B) Later Middle and Early Modern English

41. The growth of English as a world language (with global varieties) is especially a feature of: (UGC NET 2018; SET 2020)

A) Old English

B) Middle English

C) Late Modern English

D) Only Early Modern English

Ans: C) Late Modern English

42. Which of the following statements is true of Old English word order? (PGTRB 2015)

A) Always Subject–Verb–Object

B) Completely free with no patterns

C) More flexible than Modern English due to inflections

D) Identical to Modern English order

Ans: C) More flexible than Modern English due to inflections

43. During the Middle English period, English borrowed extensively from French especially in the fields of: (UGC NET 2016; SET 2017)

A) Basic kinship terms only

B) Law, administration, fashion and cuisine

C) Astronomy and physics

D) Native agriculture terms only

Ans: B) Law, administration, fashion and cuisine

44. The transition from Middle English to Early Modern English is associated with: (PGTRB 2019; UGC NET 2017)

A) The loss of all loanwords

B) The Great Vowel Shift and spread of printing

C) Complete return to Old English grammar

D) The adoption of runic letters

Ans: B) The Great Vowel Shift and spread of printing

45. Which of the following is a characteristic feature of Modern English? (SET 2018)

A) Nouns marked for three grammatical genders

B) Extensive case inflections on nouns

C) Largely fixed word order and use of auxiliary verbs

D) Absence of loanwords

Ans: C) Largely fixed word order and use of auxiliary verbs

46. The term “Standard English” usually refers to the form of English that developed from: (PGTRB 2016; UGC NET 2014)

A) West Saxon Old English

B) Northern Middle English

C) London-based Modern English

D) American English alone

Ans: C) London-based Modern English

47. Which period witnessed the greatest codification of English grammar through prescriptive grammarians? (PGTRB 2018; SET 2019)

A) Old English

B) Middle English

C) 18th-century Late Modern English

D) Early Old English only

Ans: C) 18th-century Late Modern English

48. Which of the following pairs correctly matches author and period? (UGC NET 2015; SET 2017)

A) Chaucer – Old English

B) Shakespeare – Middle English

C) Milton – Early Modern / Late Renaissance English

D) Caxton – Old English

Ans: C) Milton – Early Modern / Late Renaissance English

49. The term “Modern English” is commonly used for the period from about: (PGTRB 2017; UGC NET 2016)

A) 1066 to 1500

B) 1500 to the present

C) 450 to 1150

D) 1700 to 1800 only

Ans: B) 1500 to the present

50. Overall, the history of English from Old through Middle to Modern English shows: (PGTRB 2020; UGC NET 2019; SET 2020)

A) A closed, unchanging system

B) A movement from inflectional to more analytic structure and vast lexical expansion

C) A complete rejection of loanwords

D) A reduction of meanings and styles

Ans: B) A movement from inflectional to more analytic structure and vast lexical expansion