English chiefly in date, and consequently in pronunciation. We pass
on from Manning to Chaucer, from Chaucer to Lydgate and Caxton, and
from Caxton to Lord Surrey and Sackville and Spenser, without any real
change in the actual dialect employed, but only in the form of it.


II. WEST MIDLAND

We have seen that there are two divisions of the Mercian dialect, into
East and West Midland.

The West Midland does not greatly differ from the East Midland, but it
approaches more nearly, in some respects, to the Northumbrian. The
greatest distinction seems to be in the present and past participles
of verbs. In the West Midland, the present participle frequently ends
in _-and_, as in Northumbrian, especially in the Northern part of the
Midland area. The East Midland usually employs _-ende_ or _-inge_
instead. In the West Midland, the prefix _i-_ or _y-_ is seldom used
for the past participle, whilst the East Midland admits it more
freely. In the third person singular of the present tense, the West
Midland favours the Northern suffix _-es_ or _-is_; whilst the East
Midland favours the Southern suffix _-eth_. The suffix _-us_ appears
to be altogether peculiar to West Midland, in which it occurs
occasionally; and the same is true of _-ud_ for _-ed_ in the
preterite of a weak verb.

There is a rather early West Midland _Prose Psalter_, belonging to
the former half of the fourteenth century, which was edited for the
Early English Text Society by Dr Karl Bulbring in 1891.