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A History of the English Language
Chapter 5: Early Modern English
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Time Line 1 1509 Henry VIII 1534 Act of Supremacy 1536 Small monasteries dissolved 1534 English translation of Bible in
any church 1547 Edward VI 1553 Mary Tudor 1558 Elizabeth I 1559 Act of Supremacy restores laws
of Henry VIII 1574 First company of actors; theatre
building begins 1584 Colonists at Roanoke 1600 English East India Co. Formed 1603 James I 1607 London Co. plants colony at
Jamestown 1611 King James Bible
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Time Line 2 1616 Death of Shakespeare 1625 Charles I 1639 English established at Madras 1642-1646 Civil War 1649 Charles I beheaded 1649 Commonwealth established 1653 Cromwell becomes Lord Protector 1660 Charles II restored to the throne 1689 William and Mary proclaimed king
and queen in England and Ireland 1702 Queen Anne 1707 Union of England and Scotland as
Great Britain 1727 George I 1760 George III 1775-1783 American War of
Independence
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Political, Cultural, and Technological Influences
1: The Introduction and Dissemination of
Printing: 1476 William Caxton introduces printing press
2: The Renaissance 3: The Protestant
Reformation 4: The Enclosures 5: Exploration and
Colonization 6: The American
Revolution
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The Self-Conscious Language
Writings in Latin:
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620)
Isaac Newton, Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687): Latin works
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The Debate over Vocabulary
Early Modern English is the Age of Linguistic Anxiety: debates about its deficiencies and its purity
Earliest perceived inadequacy was in the lexicon
Borrowing was the easiest and most obvious way to fill the gaps and Latin was the easiest and most obvious language from which to borrow
Largest number of borrowings in the history of English
Borrowing was deliberate to improve the language
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Inkhorn terms vs. Archaisms
Thomas Wilson:Some seeke so far for outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mothers tongue. And I dare sweare this, if some of their mothers were aliue, thei were not able to tell what they say: … The vnlearned or foolish phantasticall, that smelles but of learning (such fellowes as haue seen learned men in their daies) wil so Latin their tongues, that the simple can not but wonder at their talkes…
Edmund Spenser, John Cheke: crossed vs. crucified, fleshstrings/muscles grosswitted, endsay, over-reacher, drymock
discretion, exaggerate, transumptive, effodicate, exinanite
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The Spelling Reformers The ideal: a simplified,
consistent, phonetic, standardized spelling system for English
John Cheke (1569), Thomas Smith (1568), John Hart (1569), William Bullokar (1580), Richard Mulcaster (1582)
No effect of the proposed reforms
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The Dictionary Makers
Robert Cawdrey (1604): A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usuall English wordes, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greek, Latine, or French &c. With the interpretation thereof by plaine English words. gathered for the benefit & helpe of Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons. Whereby they may the more easilie and better understand many hard English wordes, which they shall heare or read in Scriptures, Sermons, or elseqhere, and also be made able to use the same aptly themselues
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
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The Movement for an English Academy
Accademia della Crusca (1582)
Académie Française (1635) Daniel Defoe (1697),
Jonathan Swift (1712), Joseph Addison (1711)
John Adams (1803) in the US
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Prescriptive Grammars Thomas Wilson, The Arte of
Rhetorique (1553) William Bullokar, Bref Grammar
(1586) Alexander Gil, Logonomia Anglica
(1621) John Wallis, Grammatica Linguae
Anglicanae (1653): all Latin-based Robert Lowth, A Short Introduction to
English Grammar (1762) Joseph Priestley, The Rudiments of
English Grammar (1762) Noah Webster, Plain and
Comprehensive Grammar (1784) Lindley Murray, English Grammar
(1795)
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Early Modern English Phonology: Basic Features
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Consonants
Addition of phonemic /N Z/: sing vs. sin pleasure, vision: assibilation
The postvocalic allophones of /h/, [ Ç] and [ X ] disappeared
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The Great Vowel Shift 1
ME1300
1400 1500 1600 1700 PDE
i rise(n) Ii Vi/Ei ------- -----> [x ] rise
U mouth uu Vu /Eu --------- -------> X mouth
e: feet -------- i --------- -------> i feet
o: goos -------- U --------- ------> U goose
E: beem --------- -------> e: i: i beam
o ston --------- -------> o: -------> ou/C stone
a: name -------> æ: E: e: Y name
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The Great Vowel Shift 2:
i u:
e: o:
E: o
a: x Au A:
pull-chain
push-chain
chain-shift
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Great Vowel Shift 3
threat, head, death, deaf cheat, plead, wreath, leaf break, yea, steak, great boot, loose, mood, pool, soon foot, good, hook, wood, wool flood, blood But, thou, false guardian of a
charge too good/Thou, mean deserter of thy brother’s blood (Alexander Pope)
root, soot, room
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Development of Short Vowels 1
All remaining final unstressed -e’s from ME were lost during EModE
/æ/ > / / before /r/ and voiceless fricatives; 17th and 18th c. : harm, scarf, hard, park; staff, class, path, fast, half; classical, passage: no change if the fricative was followed by another vowel
/ / resulting from /a/ before /l/: all, fall, walk, salt, chalk, halt; after /w/: want, wash, swan
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Development of Short Vowels 2: A following nasal tends to
raise /E/ to /I/: wing, England, hinge, mingle, nimble; pen,sense
Dialectal variant in Britain extensively used in US: /A/ for /O/: hot, rock, pocket,top, shot
/u/ centering and unrounding to /V/: run, mud, cut, cup; unrounding did not occur in protected environments: full, push, bull, bush, butcher; bulky, shrub; put, putt
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Development of Short Vowels 3
Influence of following /r/: Lowering: /Er/ to /Ar/: far, star,
farm, barn; vs. Servant, sermon, certain, verdict, sterling
Lowering and centering: /I u E/ to /E:/ > /W/ girl, dirty, hurt, her, curse
In many words, a following /r/ blocked the GVS: wear, bear, floor, sword, course, court
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Development of Diphtongs
/iu/ and /Eu/ fell together as /iu/; then /iu/ became /ju:/: pure, mute, beauty, accuse; after labial consonants, /ju:/ almost always remains, but after other consonants there is often dialectically variable simplification to /u:/: new, fruit, rude, duty, lute
ME /Au/ became /o/: cause, hawk; before /l/ plus a labial consonant /æ / or /a/: half, calm, palm and /l/ was lost
/Ou/ > /o:/ > /C/: know, blow, grow /ai/ > /æi/ > /e:/ > /Y/: day, pay, stake
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Spelling and Punctuation
By the end of the 17th c., the principle of a fixed spelling for every word was firmly established for printed works, and , over the course of the following century, personal spelling followed
(Un)etymological spelling: rhyme, indict, victuals; debt > dette; island; aisle; delight
Capitalization remained haphazard During the 16th c, the comma replaced
the virgule (/) as the primary mark of sentence-internal punctuation
The apostrophe was used for contractions; not used for marking the possessive before late EModE
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Early Modern English Morphology: Basic Facts 1
In all essentials, noun morphology in EModE was the same as that of PDE
By EModE, the ‘s-possessive for both sg. and pl. nouns was almost universal, although traces of uninflected genitives remained. mother tongue, lady slipper, for peace sake
John Browne his meadow, his deceased mother her will, Mister Jones his cow; after mine & my wifes her decease
in the calmest and most stillest night, less happier lands, violentest, certainer, more bold, most brave (Sh)
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Morphology: Basic Facts 2
Development of separate forms for possessive adjectives and possessive pronouns: my, mine; thy, thyne
Appearance of possessive its at the beginning of the 17th c (between it’s lips, Sh)
During the 17th c., the sg. thou/thee forms dropped out altogether: sg.-pl. distinction lost; ye gave way to you in the 17th c; result: one form you
who as a relative pronoun became frequent in EModE and was rare before restrictive clauses; that, which and as used as relative pronouns: All the goods as was brought to our view
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Morphology: Basic Facts 3
Forming reflexive pronouns by combining -self with the personal pronouns became more frequent in EModE, but the older practice of using the simple object form of the pronouns as a reflexive continued: thou dost thyself a pleasure, get thee a good husband, I will shelter me heere (Sh)
General use of reflexive pronouns declined
By the end of the EModE period, the division of English verbs into strong and weak was no longer viable
Collapse of the distinction between past tense and past participle
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Morphology: Basic Facts 4
By the end of ME, weak verbs had become the regular verbs of English, and almost any new verb entering the language would follow this paradigm
By the end of EModE, the total number of verb inflections had been reduced to its PDE state; the last vestiges of the -n infinitive disappeared; as did the present plural indicative plural endings -n or -th; the present participle suffix -ing became universal in all dialects; second person sg. present ending -est survived until the category was lost, that is, until you supplanted thou
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Morphology: Basic Facts 5
Although -th was still being written as the third-person sg. ending as late as the 18th c., the -s ending seems to have been universal in speech from the 17th c. on
EModE was the period of great changes in what were to become the modal auxiliaries of English; will moved into the category of modal auxiliaries;need and dare; in EModE the modals were still sufficiently independent to appear without a following infinitive: I must away this night, thou shalt to prison (Sh); can could still mean ‘know’; would was still the past tense of will
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Morphology: Basic Facts 6
Verb-particle constructions became extremely common during the period
New phrasal prepositions: by means of, in spite of, because of, with regard to, in accordance with
The chief means of forming new adverbs from existing adjectives in EModE was by adding -ly; plain adverbs were still common, however
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Early Modern English Syntax: Basic Facts 1
In most of the larger patterns, the syntax of EModE is like that of PDE; more elusive are the differences that are merely statistical, such as the greater use of the inflected subjunctive
A number of ways in which E ModE syntax differs from that of PDE are negative ones: e.g., market data analysis sheets
The ME legacy of allowing single adjective modifiers (especially Latinate adjectives) to follow rather than precede their noun head continued in EModE: means convenient, faith invincible
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Early Modern English Syntax: Basic Facts 2
A tendency remained to place the adverbial before rather than after the words being modified: which he behind him left, and was by them examined
Double negatives became less common in EModE
By the 16thc. have continued to suppress be in compound tenses; cf.: this gentleman is happily arrived; I have since arrived; did he not say my brother was fled; love’s golden arrow at him should have fled
The progressive was fully developed by the end of the 16th c. though still used less frequently
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Early Modern English Syntax: Basic Facts 3
The combination of progressive and perfect in a single verb phrase was still rare: I have been watching you; the progressive passive (you are being watched) did not develop until the late 18th c.; the construction you have been being watched did not appear until PDE
Passive constructions were less common
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Early Modern English Syntax: Basic Facts 4
The use of do as a dummy auxiliary for forming interrogatives and negatives was fully developed by EModE, but not yet obligatory: I doubt it not/I do not doubt you; Why do you look on me/Why look you so on me (Sh)
Be going to, have to, be obliged to, be about to became common during EModE
I don’t like to have to keep on nagging you
EModE still had more word-order flexibility
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Stylistic Traditions
The influence of Latin on English complex syntax: long, heavily subordinated, periodic sentences, absolute participles were imitated
Plain style tradition found in the King James Bible as a rival conception
Ornate style became popular
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Early Modern English Lexicon 1
Loans from Latin and Greek: English borrowed roots and affixes to form new words that had not existed in the classical languages themselves: cortex, cortical; fibroma
An A-Z sample: ambiguous, biceps, census, decorate, emotion, fanatic, gladiator, harmonica, identical, joke, lichen, mandible, navigate, opponent, perfidious, quotation, ratio, scintillate, tangent, ultimate, vacuum, zone
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The Early Modern English Lexicon 2:
Lexical doublets: armor/armature; chamber/camera; choir, chorus; frail/fragile; gender/genus; jealous/zealous; mould/module; pale/pallid; porch/portico; prove/probe; strait/strict; strange/extraneous; treasure/thesaurus
Functional shifts: fac simile, propaganda, deficit, fiat, veto, tenet
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Loans from Other Languages
French: liaison, sociable, compute Italian: trade, architecture, arts:
balcony, bandit, ghetto, carnival, arsenal
Spanish and Portuguese: mango, cashew, cigar, papaya, cannibal, tomato, tortilla
Dutch: prominence in seafaring gave nautical words: deck, smuggle, yacht; etch, landscape, sketch
German: German loans have never been heavy in English: cobalt, gneiss, quartz, zinc, waltz
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Early Modern English Word-Formation 1
Compounding: The most productive type was noun +
noun; gerund + noun: spelling book; walking stick; possessive noun + noun: saleswoman, townspeople; verb + noun combinations: catchword, pickpocket, scatterbrain; adjective + noun: commonplace, easy chair, hotbed
Noun + adjective: bloodthirsty, knee-deep, lifelong, top-heavy
Adjective + noun + -ed: good-natured, red-haired
Noun/adj + Participle: earthborn,painstaking, henpecked, easy-going
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Early Modern English Word Formation 2
Affixing: has always been the single largest source of new vocabulary items in English: Numeral 1530 ,numerality 1646,
numerally 1646, numerant 1660, numerous 1586, numerosity 1611, numerously 1611, numerousness 1631, numerical 1628, numerically 1628, numerist 1646, numerication 1694
Functional Shift/Zero Derivation Accelerated during EModE:
guarantee, pioneer, segment, cheat, contest, split, whimper, lower
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Semantic Processes Generalization and Narrowing
Adventure: ‘unusual and exiciting experience; courage ‘heart, mind, disposition, nature, bravery, valor’ > ‘bravery, valor’; deer ‘animal’ > ‘mammals of the family Cervidae’;
Amelioration and Pejoration Lust ‘pleasure, delight’; coy ‘quiet,
shy, modest’; knave ‘boy’; jolly ‘arrogant, wanton, lustful’; luxury ‘lust, licentiousness’; boy ‘rascal, servant, slave’; fond ‘idiotic, mad’; artful, crafty, cunning
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Shakespeare, Richard IIINow is the Winter of Our Discontent,Made glorious Summer by this Son of Yorke:And all the clouds that lowr’d vpon our houseI n the deepe bosome of the Ocean buried.Now are our browes bound with Victorious Wreathes,Our bruised armes hung vp for Monuments;Our sterne Alarums chang’d to merry Meetings;Our dreadf ul Marches, to delightfull Measures,Grim-visag’d Warre, hath smooth’d his wrinkled Front:And now, in stead of mounting Barbed Steeds,To fr ight the Soules of f earfull Aduersaries,He capers nimbly in a Ladies Chamber,To the lasciuious pleasing of a Lute.But I , that am not shap’d f or sportiue trickes,Nor made to court an amorous Looking-glasse:I that am Rudely stampt, and want loues Maiesty,To str ut before a wonton ambling Nymph:I , that am curtail’d of this f aire Portion,Cheated of Feature by dissembling Nature,Deform’d, vn-fi nish’d, sent before my timeI nto this breathing World, scarse halp made vp,And that so lamely and vnfashionable,That dogges barke at me, as I halt by them.
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Development of English in the United States 1
The development of English in the US is not synonymous with the development of language, since there were already indigenous Native American languages when the European settlers first arrived
The language that the British brought with them to America, beginning with the first settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, 1607, is Early Modern English, and is largely the English of South-East England
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English in the United States 2
Subsequent development in America affected by a number of factors: The source of the original British
dialect Maintenance of contact with the
‘home’ country Patterns of settlement Influences of languages other than
English Caused by immigration Caused by contact with speakers of
other languages within America Social and geographical mobility
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Settlement by Region: The Original Thirteen Colonies 1
New England, the Middle Atlantic States, South Atlantic States (Georgia)
Mid-Atlantic: Jamestown was mostly settled by speakers of south-eastern English dialect, though there was some admixture of other dialects, and all social classes were represented in Virginia
From the outset the population of the Mid-Atlantic states was mixed in character and did not have the solid English core of the other areas
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Settlement by Region 2
The settlement of New England began around Massachusetts Bay in 1620, extended to Connecticut in 1634
The majority of the settlers came from the eastern and south-eastern counties of England, with a significant number of Puritans from East Anglia
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How, Why and When American English Began to Diverge from British English
The physical separation of America from Britain
The different physical conditions encountered by the settlers
Contact with non-native speakers of English, both Native American and immigrant
Developing political differences between the two countries and the growing American sense of national identity
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Noah Webster (1758-1843)
Dissertations of the English Language (1789): “As an independent nation our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain, whose children we are, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline. But if it were not so, she is at too great distance to be our model, and to instruct us in the principles of our own tongue. […] A national language is a band of national union.”
