early modern and modern english

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EARLY MODERN AND MODERN ENGLISH

REPORTER: Dan Dennis S. Alera



PERIODS

Early Modern English(1500-1800)

Modern English (1800-

present)



HISTORICAL FIGURES AND EVENTS

HENRY VIII (r. 1509-1547)

ELIZABETH I (r. 1558-1603)

JAMES I of England (VI of Scotland)(r. 1603-1625), patron of King James

Bible



ENGLISH CIVIL WAR, 1642-1651, royalistsvs. parlamentarians, execution of Charles I(1625-1649)

OLIVER CROMWELL, Lord Protector of theCommonwealth (1653-1658)

RESTORATION, Charles II (1660-1685)

ACT OF SETTLEMENT (1701), provision byParliament for throne to be transferred toGerman house of Hanover



ACT OF UNION (1707), England andScotland united to form Great Britain

GEORGE I (r. 1714-1727), greatgrandsonof James I, could not speak English, begins

Hanover (German) dynasty (five kings)which ended with Queen Victoria

GEORGE III (r. 1760-1820), independenceof American colonies (1783); beginnings ofindustrial revolution; eventual insanity of

king



WAR WITH FRANCE (1789-1815), Englishagainst French Revolution and later against

Napoleon I (Emperor of France, 1804-1814); English victories by Nelson atTrafalgar (1806) and finally by Wellington atWaterloo (1815), Napoleon's death (1821).

IRELAND incorporated to England 1801

English victory over Napoleon Bonaparte atWaterloo (1815)



QUEEN VICTORIA (r. 1837-1901), granddaughter ofGeorge III

WORLD WAR I (1914-1918)

WORLD WAR II (1939-1945)



PRINTING:

William Caxton, introduction ofprinting to England in1474; fixing of spelling; literacy;translations of classics;loanwords from Latin and

Greek



RENAISSANCE:

Interest in classical learning; many

loanwords; attempts to improve English

according to vocabulary, grammar, andstyle of classical languages like Greek

and Latin

New vocabulary developed for

technical and scientific work; also newwords related to exploration, discovery,and colonialism



REFORMATION:

Henry VIII's disputes with thePope; Church of England;Bible translations into

English, Authorized Version1611 (King James Bible)



ECONOMY:

Wool production, large sheep pastures, migration

to cities, urbanization, rise of middle class, upwardmobility

dilution of dialectal differences through population

blending at urban centers

middle class quest for "correct" laguage usage;

production of authoritarian grammar handbooks



ECONOMY:

Industrial Revolution: more

intensive urbanization,

technical vocabulary based onLatin and Greek roots,decreased literacy due to child

labor



EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION:

Defeat of Spanish Armada 1588,

control of seas, acquisition of coloniesthroughout the world (Bermuda,Jamaica, Bahamas, Honduras,Canada, American colonies, India,Gambia, Gold Coast, Australia, NewZealand); many loanwords fromlanguages of the colonies used to

designate new and exotic products,plants, animals, etc., spread of Englisharound the world



BRITISH EMPIRE

Gradual expansion of British

power since the days of Elizabeth

I, culminating in British dominionover about one quarter of theworld around 1922 and then

declining until its dissolution in thelast decades of the twentiethcentury



AMERICAN REVOLUTION:

Separation of English

and Americanspeakers, beginning of

multiple nationalEnglish varieties



SCHOLARLY WRITING

17th c. scholarly writing still

mostly in Latin, (e.g. Newton,Francis Bacon); middle classembraced English as scholarly

language during18th c.



LINGUISTIC ANXIETY:

perceived lexicon inadequacies, borrowing

from Latin, deliberate attempts to improvethe language; Sir Thomas Elyot, introductionof neologisms(e.g. consultation , fury, majest

y )critics of borrowings and neologisms called

them "inkhorn terms" (Thomas Wilson,Roger Ascham, Sir John Cheke); John

Cheke tried to translate the New Testamentusing only native English words



LINGUISTIC ANXIETY:

Attempt to preserve "purity" of English, revivingolder English words; archaizers like EdmundSpenser (1552-1599); compounding of Englishwords: Arthur Golding (1587): "fleshstrings" (insteadof the French borrowing "muscles"), "grosswitted"

(instead of the French borrowing "stupid")Others tried to produce native English technical

vocabulary: threlike (equilateraltriangle), likejamme (parallelogram), endsay (conclu

sion),saywhat (definition), dry mock (irony)



LOANWORDS:

Greek and Latin technical

vocabulary; continued borrowing

from French (comrade, duel,ticket, volunteer),also Spanish (armada, bravado,

desperado,peccadillo), Italian (cameo,cupola, piazza, portico)

PROPOSED SPELLING REFORMS



PROPOSED SPELLING REFORMS:

John Cheke (1569): proposal for

removal of all silent lettersSir Thomas Smith (1568): proposal to

make letters into "pictures" of speech;

elimination of redundant letters like cand q; reintroduction of thorn (þ), use oftheta θ for [ð]; vowel length marked with

diacritical symbols like the macron (ahorizontal bar on top of a vowel to

indicate a long sound)



PROPOSED SPELLING REFORMS:

Similar proposals by John Hart (1570):

proposals for use of diacritics to indicatesound length; elimination of y, w, c, capitalletters

William Bullokar (1580): proposed diacriticsand new symbols, noted the desirability ofhaving a dictionary and grammar to setstandards;

Public spelling eventually becamestandardized (by mid 1700's), underinfluence of printers, scribes of Chancery



DICTIONARIES:

desire to refine, standardize, and fix the language

William Caxton, French-English vocabulary fortravelers (1480)

Richard Mulcaster's treatise on education,The Elementarie (1582), 8,000 English words but no

definitionsRoger Williams's Key into the Languages of

America (1643)

First English dictionary, Robert Cawdrey's A Table

Alphabeticall (1604), 2,500 rare and borrowed words,intended for literate women who knew no Latin orFrench, and wanted to read the Bible; concern withcorrectness



DICTIONARIES:John Bullokar's An English Expositor (1616),

marked archaic wordsHenry Cockeram's English

Dictionarie (1623), including sections onrefined and vulgar words and mythology

Thomas Blount's Glossographia (1656),11,000 entries, cited sources andetymologies

John Kersey's A New English Dictionary (1702), first to include everydaywords

DICTIONARIES



DICTIONARIES:

Nathaniel Bailey's An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721)and Dictionarium Britannicum (1730),48,000 entries, first modern lexicographer,ordinary words, etymologies, cognate

forms, stress placementSamuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the

English Language (1755), 40,000 entries,

based on Dictionarium Britannicum ;illustrative quotations



DICTIONARIES:

Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)

Oxford English Dictionary (OED), dictionary

on historical principles; followed model ofJohnson's dictionary; origins in 1857proposals at Philological Society inLondon; first installment published 1884;

first full version 1928; second edition 1989,290,500 main entries



ENGLISH ACADEMY MOVEMENT:

17th-18th c., movement favoring the creation of anorganization to act as language sentinel, keep

English "pure"; following the model ofthe Académie Française (1635); proponents:scientist and philosopher RobertHooke(1660); Daniel Defoe (1697); JosephAddison (1711); Jonathan Swift(1712); Queen Annesupported the idea but died in 1714 and hersuccessor George I was not interested in English;

opposition from liberal Whigs who saw it as aconservative Tory scheme; Samuel Johnson'sdictionary substituted for academy; John Adamsproposed an American Academy

GRAMMARS



GRAMMARS:

Spirit of the Age of Reason (17th-18th

centuries): logic, organization,classification; attempts to define andregulate grammar of language

Notion of language as divine in origin,search for universal grammar, Latinand Greek considered less

deteriorated, inflections identified withbetter grammar



GRAMMARS:

18th century attempts todefine proper and improperusage; aspiring middle

classes, desire to define andacquire "proper" linguistic

behavior to distinguishthemselves from lower classes

GRAMMARS:



GRAMMARS:

18th c. grammarians: attempts to providerules and prevent further "decay" of

language, to ascertain, to refine, to fix;usage as moral issue, attempt toexterminate inconvenient facts:

Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique (1553) based on classicalmodels

Henry Peacham's The Garden of Eloquence (1577), dictionary of rhetoricaltropes

William Bullokar's Bref Grammar (1586)

GRAMMARS:



GRAMMARS:

Alexander Gil's Logonomia Anglica (1621), verytied to Latin

Jeremiah Wharton's The English Grammar (1654),

accepted lack of inflectionsRobert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English

Grammar (1762), most prominent of 18th c.grammars; authoritarian, prescriptive, moralistic

tone Joseph Priestley's The Rudiments of English

Grammar (1761), more enlightened and liberalattitude towards language usage, awareness ofchange and conventionality of language features

Noah Webster's Plain and Comprehensive Grammar (1784), American grammar, based oncommon usage but concerned with "misuse" byIrish and Scots immigrants



PHONOLOGY

The Great Vowel Shift

(GVS): Middle English (ME)

long vowels came to bepronounced in higherpositions, the highest were

diphthongized:



GVS examples:ME leef [lεf] > Modern English leaf [lif]ME grete [grεtə] > Modern

English great [gret]

Early Modern English tea [te] > ModernEnglish tea [ti]ME bite [bitə] > Modern English bite [bait]ME hous [hus] > Modern

English house [haus]

CONSONANTS



CONSONANTS

Addition of phonemic velar

nasal ([ŋ], as in 'hu/ng/') due toloss of g in final positions;evidence from alternativespellings: tacklin/tackling,shilin/shilling

CONSONANTS



CONSONANTS

Addition of phonemic voiced alveopalatalfricative [ž], as in 'mea/s/ure'], the result of a

phenomenon known as assibilation which isthe development of a palatal semivowel [y] inmedial positions (after the major stress and

before unstressed vowel: tenner/tenure,pecular/peculiar;when [y] followed s, z, t, d, thesounds merged to produce a palatal fricativeor affricate ([š], [ž], [č], [ǰ]): e.g. pressure,

seizure, creature, soldier (this phenomenon isknown as assibilation); dialectal exceptionsand reversals: graduate, immediately,

Injun/Indian



CONSONANTS

General loss of r before

consonants or in final

position; also regular loss of r inunstressed positions or after backvowels in stressed positions:

quarter, brother, March



MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES

*fossilization of spelling;spelling fixed in printed

words by end of 17th c. ___________________ *In linguistic morphology, fossilization refers to two close

notions. One is preserving of ancient linguistic features whichhave lost their grammatical functions in language. Another isloss of productivity of a grammatical paradigm (e.g., ofan affix), which still remains in use in some words.

Examples of fossilization include fossilizedmorphemes and fossil words.

SPELLING PRONUNCIATIONS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_morphology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affix

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bound_morpheme


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_word

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_word



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affix

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_morphology




French loans spelling [t] as "th" led to[θ] pronunciation in English, e.g.

anthem, throne, author, Anthony,

Thames

French and Latin words withunpronounced initial "h" led to Englishwords with pronounced initial h: habit,

hectic, history, horror (exceptions:hour, honor) (compare heir/heritage)





Apostrophe used in contractions

and extensive use ofcontractions; Early ModernEnglish preferred proclitic

contractions ('tis), while ModernEnglish prefers encliticcontractions (it's)

Abandonment of yogh in writingCommon nouns often capitalized




S :

comma replaced the virgule (/) aspunctuation for a pause

2nd person singular pronouns (þu

and thou) disappeared in 17th c;

the plural forms (ye/you) prevailedfor both singular and plural

Verbs:-s and -th were 3rd person

singular present indicative endings(e.g.does/doth)




S :

interjections: excuse me, please (if it pleaseyou), hollo, hay, what; God's name used in

euphemistic distortions: sblood, zounds, egadfull-fledged perfect tense, be as auxiliary for

verbs of motion (he is happily arrived);

increasing use of have as auxiliary; periphrasticuse of do (I do weep, it doth heaviergrow); do as auxiliary in questions andnegatives (why do you look on me?); phrasal

quasi-modals: be going to, have to, be aboutto; some continued use of impersonalconstructions (it likes me not, this fears me,

methinks)




S :

syntax of sentences: influence of Latin,"elegant English," long sentences featuring

subordination, parallelism, balancedclauses; bus also continuation of nativetradition of parataxis, use of coordinators

(but, and, for)fixing of written language obscured dialectal

differences; information about dialects from

personal letters, diaries, etc; e.g. NewEngland dialect features observable inspellings like 'Edwad', 'octobe', 'fofeitures',

'par', 'warran', 'lan'



SEMANTIC CHANGE, SOME EXAMPLES:

Narrowing: Change from

superordinate level to subordinate

level. For example, skyline used torefer to any horizon, but now it hasnarrowed to a horizon decorated

by skyscrapers('deer' formerly hadmeant 'animal')




Amelioration:

(Also called elevation Linguistics (ofthe meaning of a word) a change from

pejorative to neutral or positively

pleasant. The word nice has achievedits modern meaning by amelioration

from the earlier sense foolish, silly

- 'jolly' had meant arrogant)




Pejoration: The process by which themeaning of a word becomes negative orless elevated over a period of time,as silly, which formerly meant "deserving

sympathy, helpless or simple," has cometo mean "showing a lack of good sense,frivolous."

('lust' had meant pleasure, delight)Weakening: ('spill' had meant destroy,

kill)

early modern and modern english

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