Notatki Modern English:
These are linguistically safer times for English now because French was replaced by English. However, it doesn't mean that English had no rival. The rival language was Latin. In fact, quite a few years passed before English replaced Latin for good in all areas of life. Why was Latin a rival language? From the early 16th century Latin was taught at schools, Latin literature and history were taught. Latin was the medium of instruction. Many scientific works of that time were written in Latin (examples).
English vs Latin
From the 15th to the 17th century there were many disputes (especially religious ones) which greatly contributed to the final establishment of English as the sole literary medium in England. Talk about Sir Thomas More & Milton. Later texts were written in English as the authors wanted to have their books read by larger groups of people. But there were a few events which lead to a rise of English as a national language (discuss). The other factor was the rise of social and occupational groups which knew little or no Latin at all. They wanted to read books in English. These people were soldiers, navigators, explorers, instrument makers, skilled craftsmen. On the other side of the frontline there were scientists who were doing their best to keep Latin. They argued that English was not a good language to publish works of science. These debates were the most fiery in the second half of the 16th century. Slowly, English was establishing its superiority over Latin. However, English inherited quite a few loan-words from Latin in the Renaissance, i.e. 15th - 17th centuries. The peak period of Latin borrowings was between about 1580 and 1660. The voraciousness and omnivorousness of the English language shows perhaps most clearly in this period. The vocabulary of English grew dramatically. New words were borrowed from the disciplines of experimental science, classical scholarship, and practical technology. New words were coined from Latin and Greek to express technical concepts, but also to enrich or beautify the English language. Imperial exploration also brought with it a host of words from New Worlds. So far, we have talked about words borrowed from Latin. You will remember the words such as street or wine - borrowed while the English were still on the continent. Then words, like bishop - during OE. In ME requiem, client, conflict, etc. But the number of words borrowed from Latin during the Early Modern Period was simply incomparable. We may say that at first it was just a little stream, which then in Early Modern English period it becomes a river, and by 1600 it is an ocean of Latin-borrowed words. Let's look at some of these borrowings (examples).
A great number of words entered English through translations made from Latin. There was a purist movement which was strongly against these loan-words. These purists, among whom Ralph Lever was one of the most active purists and he claimed that English should coin its own words instead of copying them from other languages (such as Latin). Ralph's suggestions (examples). None of these words was strong enough to overcome the power of Latin. In many cases these words were taken and after some time their meanings changed; e.g. the word focus originally meant `hearth', `fireplace'.
In other cases Latin borrowings were adapted and were given an English form (examples). In other cases, Latin endings were simply dropped (examples). The spelling of Latin borrowings is also influenced by the form of French words derived from Latin (examples). In the second half of the 16th century discussions started on the motives for loans (discuss).
The problem, however, started when people went too crazy about being considered `educated' and therefore they overused Latin words in their speech and hence were not understood by others. They often used strange or pompous words in place of those long established English words. And these `strange' words are referred to as inkhorn terms. They are the most interesting group of words: An inkhorn is an inkwell made out of horn. Inkhorn terms are words coined from Latin or Greek for educated effect and sonic power. Such words were perceived to come right from the inkhorn, or the inkwell. While they were often a mark of education by the user, they were sometimes the object of derision by those who felt they had little rational basis in the history of the language. Some examples of inkhorn terms still in the language include: allurement, anachronism, allusion, autograph, capsule, denunciation, dexterous, disregard (first used by Milton), erupt, and meditate and many others… These words are polysyllabic, often based on Latin or Greek, and they refer specifically to high-tech concepts, to specific features of new disciplines or new landscapes. Milton is a great user of these inkhorn terms.
When inkhorn terms entered poetry they came to be known as very ornate, beautiful terms. These words were thought of as golden for a variety of reasons; they seemed to shine, they were viewed as the jewels of language. In poetry, the corresponding use of new or unusual coinages or loans was called aureation because the words appeared glistening in their Latinity. Aureation uses a Latinate and Romance vocabulary modeled on Chaucer's poetry and that of his heirs. It is highly polysyllabic and often relies on metaphors of beauty, visual splendor, sweetness, and purification. Aureate diction arose both positive and negative emotions. In the mid 16th century, the scholar and grammarian - Thomas Wilson - wrote a handbook for poets called “The Art of Poetry” (1553). Thomas Wilson liked to parody the aureate style… Here is what he writes in just one - a sentence long - (example). Some inkhorn terms did not remain in the language; they did not survive. There are, however, a few examples which are still in use today: adepted [attained], adnichilate [reduced to nothing], obstupefact [to make unclear], or temulent [drunk]. Examples of rejected inkhorn terms (examples).
The new world of words came into English not just from these Latin and Greek coinages, but also from colonial and economic expansion. Commerce and contact with European countries brought new words into English (examples). Many of these words reflect colonial contact, especially in the Americas and Africa. These are not just words from different languages but words that enter into the register of colonization and military engagement. There were also words from non-European languages entered through travel, trade, and conquest (examples) and words arrived from science, naturalist study, and technology (examples). The growth of the English vocabulary prompted several discussions about whether loan words, or new coinages, of these kinds, were in keeping with what was called the `genius' of the English language. English schoolmasters of the 16th and 17th centuries frequently reflected on the nature of English. Introduce: Alexander Gill.
English borrowed from many world languages - that was one source of words. The second source was relying on the traditional word formation processes, such as affixation, compounding and conversion (aka category change, functional shift). In fact, it is believed that even more words entered English by word formation processes than were borrowed from other languages. On the other hand, the two sources of words in English can't be treated separately because once a word was borrowed from a foreign language it was `domesticated' and subject to further changes. In the 14th century, the adjectives comfortable was borrowed from French, by the end of the century the adverb comfortably had been derived from it, which was then followed by the adjective uncomfortable (1592).
The most common method of word-formation in the Early Modern English period was affixation, that is the coining of new words by the use of prefixes and suffixes. Affixation affected mostly nouns and adjectives. The two suffixes most frequently used for forming nouns were -ness and -er (examples). Adjectives were usually formed by the addition of -ed or -y (examples). Adverbs were normally formed adjectives with the suffix -ly, but sometimes by adding -wise (examples). The usual suffix for forming verbs was -ize. When it comes to prefixes, the most common one was un- and was used with nouns, adjectives, participles, verbs and adverbs (examples). Quite a few words were formed by compounding (examples). Conclusion?
In the 16th and 17th century there were many developments to define the nature of English at this time and to discern contemporary attitudes of that nature. Let's look at the way in which education and its institutions helped to shape the making of English. Thus, we have to ask ourselves the following questions (analyze). These kinds of questions are asked anew in the 16th and 17th centuries by grammarians, pedagogs, and scholars of the language. Before considering how institutions helped to shape English, we must review the three major changes in English that occurred in the period when the language was shifting from the Middle English to Modern English. So, let's look at the three major areas of change during this period: vocabulary; syntax and grammar; spelling and pronunciation. The period from about the year 1500 to the year 1700 was the period in which the English vocabulary increased dramatically. The rise of coined words, inkhorn terms, words borrowed or words borrowed from Latin and Greek radically increased the vocabulary available for science, technology and intellectual inquiry. But there were also words that came from the contact through trade and exploration with non-English peoples introduced new terms; the contact with non-European peoples. Also, the language of literature prompted a wider, aureate vocabulary (we will be talking about Shakespeare, whose contribution was just enormous; he used tens of thousands of words, many of which are still in use today).
Now, syntax and grammar. The word order is now, to a certain degree, being replaced by new vocabulary terms. By 1700, the major patterns of word order, word endings, and grammar became recognizable as our own.
Spelling and pronunciation. I talked about the GVS as a phenomenon, which we can see beginning in the mid 15th century, but which is hard to see ending. The GVS did not close down one day. Certainly, this is an import_ant point. The sounds of English vowels changed radically from earlier pronunciations. By 1700, the GVS had run its course, and pronunciation, with a few exceptions, probably differed little from that of three centuries later. At that time what we observe is a growing gap between spelling and speech.
One of the things that happens in this period is that schoolmasters take it upon themselves to reform spelling. The issue of spelling came to be a major problem for schoolmasters of the Renaissance. Under the influence of such teachers and scholars, literary writers and translators began to respell native or long-accepted loan words in new ways - ways that are not really etymological or historical, but pseudo-etymological. Let me give you a few examples… Many words entered English in the Middle English period from French, and we have see lots of them. Because French is a Romance language, those words automatically descend from Latin.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, English education, even though it's going on in English is still very much involved in the study of Latin. What scholars and pedagogs noticed was, of course, that words from French had Latin originals. But the point that changes this attitude or the thing that distinguishes that simple awareness of an origin from a change in spelling is the argument that words should be respelled as if they were Latin words. What's emerging in the 16th and the 17th centuries is a new concept of English spelling, and that is that English spelling should be historical and etymological even if that spelling really doesn't reflect the actual history of the word.
For example, a word like debt or doubt. These two words came in from French. Now, when they came in from French they were not spelled with a /b/ in them. But they came to be respelled to look like the Latin words, debitum and dubitare. Such silent letters are the `fantasies' of schoolteachers. SO, what we have here are silent letters. But what is import_ant to notice, is that these silent letters are not the same as in the words knee or knight. Here the silent `k' is really etymologically and historically justified as these letters used to be pronounced earlier. Words such as adventure, perfect, and verdict also never had a /d/ or /c/ in them, coming directly from French forms into ME. But they, too, were respelled to look like Latin.
Spelling came further to become a mark not of pronunciation - or in cases such as these, not even word history - but of learning itself. Spelling is the mark of education. If you don't spell well, you are considered illiterate. So, what in fact emerges at this time, is not so much the new spelling, but the idea to be able to produce educated speech, to follow the new, educated patters.
The changes in English created a new response to the problem of a standard. Old criteria for standard formation such as region, class, or official affiliation gave way to a new criterion: education. Central to the arguments of 16th and 17th century writers on language was the assertion that educated people from whatever geographical region will use the same forms of speech and writing. This was a new idea.
Furthermore, the implication was that education itself confers a kind of class or status with which birth or wealth alone cannot compete. Thus, the notion of standard English became intimately linked with other products of education (knowledge, reasoning ability, moral elevation). Such education
eradicated the boundaries of geography or birth. Education became a commodity, something that was bought and sold.
We can examine the writings of several educators of the period to illustrate problems with the standard. Some people propounded education as a factor. John Hart, writing in the 1560s, considered the best English as that of the `learned and the literate'. Alexander Gill, writing in 1619, claimed that words should be spelled as they were pronounced only by `learned or elegantly refined men in speaking and reading'.
Others claimed that regionalism was critical. Thomas Puttenham, writing in 1589, recommended the best English as that of the Court and the region of England nearest to it (i.e., the southeast). Owen Price, writing in 1665, considered the speech of `London and our Universities' as the best standard. The meaning of vulgar - `of the people' - was being transformed into a pejorative.Generally speaking, spelling reform was advocated. The `genius' of the language became a topic of discussion. These debates led to a new discussion, which we will see raised to a higher level in the 18th century, about just what was the essence, or the `genius' of English, and how speech, writing, and usage could be based on this essential quality.
Early Modern English offered its speakers a range of forms and constructions (esp. verb inflections, personal pronouns, relative pronouns, negatives and questions).
Present-Plural Verb Inflection
· the -en plural ending is used occasionally in the 16th century; In Chaucer: desiren (just like in German: wir haben); In Shakespeare: it is a zero inflection (just like today)
· now and then a plural -eth is found (esp. hath, doth);
· sometimes the -es plural ending from the North is used: as in Shakespeare's `my old bones akes';
· third person singular: -es (rides); -eth (this is replaced by -es during the 16th century);
Plural of Nouns
· -es (masters) - (regular plural) was normal for Shakespeare; at that time this plural also developed three allomorph which are in use today (/-s/, /-z/, /-ez/)
· man - men: irregular plural
Demonstrative Pronouns
· this/these; that/these were used along with
· you, yon or yond(er)
Meanings:
- this: near the speaker
- that: remote from the speaker
- you: remote from the speaker and the hearer and visible in sight
Personal Pronouns
· they, them, their (Chaucer used they, hem, hire)
· you (very common in Shakespeare's times); ye was less common
· in the plural only you was possible, in singular you could choose either you (more formal) or thou (rather informal)
Children and animals were addressed as thou, so were people of lower social class. For the lower-class speaker, however, you was compulsory as it was insulting to say thou to somebody of higher rank.
An innovation of the Early Modern English period was the pronoun/determiner its.
· the traditional possessive form of it was his
· its comes into use at the end of the 16th century; and then the word its spreads quickly and in the 1620s it was a norm because people wanted to avoid confusion by the fact that they had the form his to serve both he and it
This classification now of the pronoun system is also something that is developing in the course of the 16th century.
I also want to say about the 3rd person pronoun - about it. It is a little word, it signals the neuter. I think you remember when, in my lectures on Middle English, I was talking about how grammatical gender began to disappear in the late OE period. Then words that had grammatical gender, like the word /wi:f/ - wife was neuter, lost that grammatical gender and came simply to be referred to by the natural gender. So that instead of using the pronoun /hit/, which is the OE for it, to refer to a wife, you could start to use /hejou/ - which is the OE pronoun for she, or in Middle English - just she.
Now, what happens in the 16th and 17th centuries is that it becomes a place, as it were, where not just gender but relationships of grammar in general find themselves played out. An then comes the idea of its (our third-person neuter genitive) - this is, in fact, a very late development.
Relative Pronouns
The common relative pronouns in Shakespeare's time were who, which and that. However, they were not used in such a strict way as they are today:
- which was freely used to refer to people (personal antecendents): The mistress which I serve quickens (revives) what's dead (The Tempest)
- who could be used with non-personal antecendents: On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand, may seize And steal immortal blessing from her lips, Who, even in pure and vestal modesty Still blush,… (Romeo and Juliet)
- that was used in defining relative clauses (just as today) but was also used (although, not very frequently) in non-defining ones; in the 17th century however that belonged to defining relative clause exclusively
Perfect Tenses
· these tenses were formed with `have': if he have robd these men; have was used with action verbs though
· these tenses were also formed with `be': they are come to search the house; common with verbs of motion (enter, run, come) and with verbs denoting change of state (become, grow, turn)
Dummy Auxiliary
In the Early Modern English period the usage of the auxiliary verb `do' was more liberal than what we have today. Let's look at a few examples:
· if I become not (= if I don't become); do is needed
· I do assure you (= I assure you); do is not needed but is used as a stylistic variant of `I assure'
· in fact the use of `do' is optional; Shakespeare could have used I know, I do know, I know not, I don't know
Auxiliary `do' is used just as other auxiliaries:
· to produce negatives
· to produce questions
· question tags
· for emphatic purposes
It's referred to as a dummy auxiliary as in these functions the verb has no literary meaning.
The word do, the verb to do is very old. It has an Indo European root, it goes into Old English and Middle English, but the uses of the word do change dramatically in the 16th and 17th centuries. We could even say that the tone of Modern English is in many ways shaped by just how we use this verb.
When we talk about the word do - we are talking about a full verb, meaning to perform an action: `I did this'. And this is this oldest and most sustained use. But do comes to work as what we call a replacement verb, that is a verb that replaces a previous verb in an earlier sentence or clause: I went to the store and having done that I then had dinner. This is do as a replacement verb. This is newer and it develops in the Middle English period. [1st use]
One of the things I mentioned in our earlier meetings is that in earlier forms of the language especially in Middle English questions would be asked by inverting the word order, that is the normal word order of SVO as in I eat fish would be inverted when you wanted to ask a question: Eat you fish? This would be a perfectly grammatical Middle English way of asking a question. But by the 16th century this inversion of word order pattern comes to feel archaic and a more contemporary and a more idiomatic way of asking a question is not with the use of word order, but to use the word do. And then, there is another use of do, which we call a periphrastic (opisowy) or place-holding verb. And that's in questions. The verb do developed its function as an `empty' form in questions and negations: `Do you know the way?, I didn't go there' [2nd use]
Finally, do comes to function emphatically. Now, you will remember that emphasis or intensification was also in Middle English of function word order inversion, but here the inversion of the verb and the object: You eat fish à You fish eat. This would be an intensive way of saying that you eat fish.
But by the 16th century, emphatics would be used for do: Do you know the answer? I do know the answer. I did eat the fish. I do love the history of the English language.
Do as an emphatic and as a place holder are new innovations in the 16th century. [3rd use]
The -ing form
But in addition, the ending -ing - conditions so much of the flavor of English. Again, this is the ending which goes back to IE roots. It is the ending -ing or -ung in the Germanic languages and in OE that signals nouns or signals participles of verbs.
Now, let's go back to our little ending -ing. This ending is very old. OE had words that ended in -ing to indicate ownership or genealogy, or to turn a verb into a noun in some sense: love - loving. Love is a verb, loving is the noun; the concept of love. [1st use]
In the ME period, -ing forms start to be used as participles, like going or having. But in the 16th century, what happens is that these uses of -ing really begin to change the whole texture of the verbal system. So you can have expressions like The dog being hungry, he fed him. That's a very new way of talking in the Renaissance. Or phrases like “the cutting of the wood” as a kind of description of action. That too is a very new expression_ in the Renaissance. Don't blame me for having eaten the fish - this would be new in Shakespeare. And when Shakespeare uses phrases like that having done something, they would have been perceived by his audience as brand new expressions. [2nd use]
Very important was the progressive for as in I am talking; I've been waiting; I had been waiting - these are the new ways of expressing tense. These new forms changed the way of expressing action. These forms were used more frequently towards the end of the period, especially in northern texts. Their use then increased dramatically in Early Modern English. Today we just take these structures for granted. But this staff is new in the 16th century.
What I am suggesting is that little bits like do and -ing not only change the way we speak, but become characteristic of the way we speak.
But the way in which it comes to be used again in the 16th and 17th centuries gives rise to new idioms and helps change the structure of the system of verbs in Modern English. Now, let's look at a few examples in detail.
GRAMMAR IN the 19th CENTURY
The following examples from Austen's novels illustrate some of the distinctive grammatical features of early 19th century English, compared with today. There are differences in the following grammatical areas (analyze).
All these examples come from the usage of educated characters in the novels, or are part of Austen's own narrative.
Idiomatic English
Idiomatic Modern English is founded on changes such as these. Now, what are the impacts all these little things had on English?
I think, the major implication is that all these new details make spoken English more idiomatic. Now, what is an idiom? An idiom is a word, or a collocation of words that have a conventional or greed upon meaning or connotation.
An idiom is not the sum of dictionary definitions of the words that make it up. For example, if you think of teaching someone phrasal verbs such as go in, go for, go out of, go on - you can't simply ask that person to go to a dictionary to look these words up individually.
What is happening in English in the 16th and 17th centuries is that it is becoming more idiomatic in precisely this way. What we get, in effect, are sequences of words in which meaning is contextual or figurative rather than lexical.
Phrases such as `how is it going, how do you do', became the idioms of everyday speech and relied on grammatical forms newly developed in the 16th and 17th centuries. Spoken English after about the year 1600 became remarkably idiomatic, as these forms took on new functions and as the system of tense and markings changed.
The language of ritual - `I do' in the wedding service - derives from this idiom of the Renaissance.
Rafał Szypulski