Modern English Period

 

The Modern English Period covers roughly the period from about 1500 A.D which marked the close of the Middle Ages and the full tide of the Renaissance in England to the present day. The factors which contributed to the important developments in this period are the influence of Renaissance scholarship, the religious controversies of the reformation, the translations of the Bible, the introduction of the printing press and the discovery of America.

The language during the early Modern English period is more or less like the present day tongue. It is because a large part of the early inflectional system had by then been dropped. The only inflections retained were to mark plurals of nouns and possessive singular and past verbal forms. It was also during this period that the adjectives became simpler, dropping inflectional endings and a complicated system of verbs evolved.

The Renaissance

The full flood of the Renaissance reached England about the year 1500 and it had a marked influence upon the English language and literature. The new scholarship produced new forces and added new words to the vocabulary. Thus it marked the beginning of the Modern Age in the history of English language. It was a classical renaissance and mainly a Latin one. Hence the chief effect upon the English vocabulary was to introduce and give currency to words of Latin origin or from Latin roots. The Latin words which had existed in the Middle English Period had come mainly through French. But during the Renaissance, we find new words being made direct from Latin and since the home of the new scholarship was Italy, Italian words also began to make their appearance in English especially in connection with music and arts. At first, the new words were not easily absorbed into ordinary speech. They remained part of the vocabulary of scholarship.

The scholars of the period were proficient in the classical languages and they wanted to enrich the English language by borrowing a number of words from them. The term ‘Inkhorn terms’ refer to such words and expressions borrowed indiscriminately from the classical languages.

Ø  Some of these words retained their Latin spelling.

Eg: genius, species, militia, radius, focus, specimen, apparatus, equilibrium, formula, veto.

Ø  Some Latin words were modified when they entered English.

Eg: complex (complexus), considerable (considerabilis), external (externus), conspicuous (conspicuous)

Ø  The renaissance gave rise to a number of synonyms which have enabled us to make nice distinctions in meaning which otherwise would not have been possible. In many instances, we find these words falling into groups of three-one from a native root, one from French and the other from Latin. All have roughly the same signification, yet there are subtle differences in usage.

For eg: kingly (English root), Royal (French), Regal (Latin). Kingly refers to those gracious qualities or characteristics which we associate with the ideal king. Royal merely means pertaining to a king. Regal suggests the pomp, splendor and majesty of kingship or the external trappings that traditionally accompany kingship. Thus it is found that the native word has an intimate, more human signification, the more commonplace one is a French derivation, while that of the Latin origin carries a suggestion of formality and impressiveness. Such triads of words are

Friendly (eng), Amiable (Fre) Amicable (Lat)

Childish (eng), Infantile (Fre), Puerile (Lat)

Ø  In some cases, as a result of the entry into the language of a word from the classical tongues, an older synonym gradually developed a completely different new meaning.

Eg: the word ‘caitiff’ which came through French from Latin ‘captivus’ meant prisoner. But when ‘captive’ came into English direct from Latin, the older term ‘caitiff’ came to mean a scoundrel. The same difference in meaning between two words from the same source is to be seen in the case of fragile and frail, sure and secure.

Ø  From the Latin scholars, the English language got its peculiar spelling convention in words like ‘debt’ and ‘doubt’, which came from Latin words debitum and dubitare. The same can be said for the blunderous insertion of the letter ‘s’ into the word island, influenced by the Latin word ‘insula’, instead of the original Anglo-Saxon term ‘igland’.

 

Ø  Another feature of the English language which we owe to the Renaissance is the habit of using an adjective of classical derivation to correspond to a native noun. Thus we have

Noun (English)	Adjective (Latin)
Sun	Solar
Moon	Lunar
Hand	Manual
Village	Rural
Nose	Nasal

 

Reformation

In the wake of the Renaissance followed the Reformation. Though its importance was primarily religious and political, the Reformation had its effect upon the English language. The bitter religious controversies to which it gave rise produced numerous words, most of them expressing disapproval. They gained a permanent place in the vocabulary. Since England had officially become a Protestant country, most of these terms naturally applied to Catholics.

Eg: Papist, Papistical, Monkish

The Catholics gave currency to the words ‘Heretic’ and ‘Puritan’. The Puritans contributed the words saintly, reprobate, conscientious, conscience, selfish and self-denial.

 

Printing Press

The printing press was introduced into England about 1476 by William Caxton. The popularity of the printing press can be assumed by the fact that before the year 1500, almost 35000 books were published in Europe. The majority of these were in Latin. But it is in the modern languages that the effect of the press was chiefly felt. In England, over 20000 titles in English had appeared by 1640, ranging from mere pamphlets to massive folios. It resulted in the availability of books to a wide population. The prowess to reproduce a book in a thousand copies promoted a standard, uniform language.

 

The Great Vowel Shift

All Middle English long vowels underwent extensive alteration in passing into Modern English. The short vowels, in accented syllables remained more or less the same. In the fifteenth century, a great change is seen to have taken place. All the long vowels gradually came to be pronounced with a greater elevation of the tongue and closing of the mouth. Those that could be raised, were raised and those that could not, without becoming consonantal became diphthongs.

The Period: The transition from Middle English to Early Modern English was marked by major change in the pronunciation of vowels from about 1350 to 1700. This change termed The Great Vowel Shift consisted of a shift in the articulation of vowels with respect to the positions assumed by the tongue and the lips. The end of Early Modern English is characterized by the completion of the Great Vowel Shift. The term Great Vowel Shift was coined by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. It began in the 14^th century and took till the beginning of 18^th century to fully develop. It developed in a series of stages.

Irregularities: The Great Vowel Shift did not affect all dialects of England, especially in the Northern parts. It also did not affect all words of a particular vowel class. For example, in the ‘ea’ class of the vowel /i:/, there exists distinct pronunciations.

1.       Swear, bear, wear

2.       Great, break, steak

3.       Dead, head, read, threat, wealth

Likewise, in the ‘oo’ class, there are words like book, foot, good pronounced with a short vowel and blood pronounced differently. This is different from the pronunciation of words like fool, cool etc.

Reasons: The reasons for the Great Vowel Shift has not been clarified perfectly. The mass immigration to South England is stated to be one of the reasons because of the Pandemic Black Death in 1348. The resultant social mobility might have resulted in the change. There was a rapid spreading and mixing of dialects at this stage. A standard dialect evolved around London, which was accelerated and fixed by the printing press. Language contact, when speakers of different languages engage closely, it is typical to be influenced by each other. Since the English spelling did not change by and large during the Great Vowel Shift, the discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation can be explained.

 

Spelling Reforms

The English language is characterized by a lack of correlation between spelling and pronunciation. In a perfectly consistent system of spelling, there should be one symbol for each phoneme. Present day English is very far from this state. English spelling is an Achilles heel to non-native speakers of English. For example, the central vowel (weak vowel ә) is represented in many different ways as in words like about, father, neighbor, pleasure, the, theatre etc. on the other hand, the letter ‘a’ is used to represent several entirely distinct sounds such as those in about, gate, cat, father, talk.

·         One reason why English spelling is misleading is that we overwork the alphabet. There are many phonemes than letters in the present day English. It is inevitable that some symbols have to be used to represent more than one sound. The un-phonetic quality of the language is evident in its use of 26 letters to represent 44 sounds.

·         An even more important reason for the unreliability of spelling as a guide to contemporary pronunciation is that for at least three centuries or more, English spelling has changed little, whereas pronunciation is constantly changing. English spelling therefore often represents pronunciation as it used to be rather than as it is today.

·         Another reason for the variety of English spelling is that more than one system of spelling conventions has been at work. Some of our spelling conventions go back to Old English and others were introduced by French scribes during the period of Norman Conquest. This is the explanation of the difference between the spelling of the sound /s/ in mouse and mice. The ‘s’ is native spelling, whereas ‘c’ is a French spelling, made possible by the fact that all French ‘c’ became /s/ before front vowels. The influence of Latin spelling convention also made its small contribution to the conclusion. The influence of foreign spelling conventions is the most strongly marked in loaned words. Recent borrowings from other languages reflect the spelling conventions of the languages from which or through which there were borrowed. Thus we have ‘ph; as a spelling for the phoneme /f/ in many words of Greek origin like telephone, philosophy and ‘c’ as a spelling for /s/ before front vowels in words like receive, cede, which were borrowed from French.

·         A fourth reason why English spelling does not always present a true picture of the pronunciation is that forms from various provincial dialects have passed into Standard English pronunciation although the dialectical pronunciation is not always recorded in spelling. Thus the initial /w/ that occurs in the pronunciation of ‘one’ is borrowed from some local dialect.

·         Another contributing cause of the conclusion of Modern English spelling is to be found in what is called inverted spellings, which are liable to occur whenever a sound change has taken place. When a sound change takes place, the change is sometimes but not always recorded in spelling. Hence, after a sound change takes place, there often occur side by side two different forms of the same word, one with the spelling representing the old pronunciation and one a more phonetic spelling representing the new pronunciation. When the resulted variation in spelling is extended to the other words in which the sound change in question has not taken place, an inverted spelling is said to occur.

·         Many attempts have been made to reform English spelling and some of them have had a permanent effect on the English language. But the influence of spelling reformers has for the most part merely touched the fringe of the problem changing the spelling of the individual words or of a small group of words. The efforts of reformers have sometimes have had an effect opposite to the one intended. They have led to the introduction of a few variant spellings which have gained widespread but not universal acceptance, with the result that inconsistency is now added to diversity.

The fundamental problem of spelling reform is to strengthen the connection between speech and writing. Reform is not the only way of bringing together pronunciation and spelling. Another way of achieving the same result is by altering one pronunciation to make it agree with the spelling.

The disadvantages of spelling reforms are even greater than advantages. The new spelling would have to replace the old. In a country with a high proportion of illiteracy or with few printed books, such a thorough change would be practicable. But the task of rewriting and reprinting all existing English books worthy of preservation would be an overwhelming one. Another drawback of phonetic spelling is the lack of uniformity of the spoken language.

 

Dictionaries

·         Classical Ancients and the people of the Middle Ages were accustomed to the use of glossaries or collections of glosses.

·         Gloss- a Latin term for “a rare word needing special explanation”

·         Earliest glossaries dealt only with selected words.

·         Many glossaries appeared for Latin and Greek, slowly native language words were also gathered.

·         16^th century- crude attempts in lexicography.

Ø  1565- Thomas Cooper’s Thesaurs Linguage Romance at Britannicae

Ø  1604- Robert Cawdrey’s A Table of Alphabetical English Words

Ø  1658- Edward Philips’ New World of English Words

·         Many etymologies were also attempted

Ø  1667- Stephen Skinner’s Etymologicon Linguaed Anglicane.

Ø  1677- Francis Junius’ Etymologicon Anglicanum

·         Preliminary attempts on lexicography

Ø  1708- John Kersey- Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum or A General English Dictionary

Ø  1730- Nathan Bailey- Dictionary

Ø  Illustrations and quotations were used

·         1755- Samuel Johnson- Dictionary of English Language

Ø  Illustrative quotations

Ø  Clear, concise, effective scholarly definitions; some are marred by personal bias

Ø  Attempts to fix the spelling and pronunciation.

·         1836- Charles Richardson’s A New Dictionary of English Language

Ø  Also attempted to indicate the historical uses of words or the meanings which they had in older stages of the languages and also its contemporary sense.

·         1842- Philological Society formed

·          A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles or The Oxford English Dictionary.

Ø  Work began in 1883, completed in 1928.

Ø  Editor: Sir James Murray

Ø  414825 words, 1827306 quotations

Ø  Definitions and historical changes of meaning.

Ø  Pronunciation with phonetic script

Ø  Vocabulary included slang terms, casual words etc.

Ø  Presented to King George V and American President Calvin Coolidge.

·         Other Dictionaries

Ø  Daniel Jones- An English Pronouncing Dictionary

·         American Dictionaries

Ø  1806- Noah Webster- Compendious English Dictionary

Ø  1828- Webster’s American Dictionary

Ø  1864- An American Dictionary of the English Language

Ø  1909- Webster’s New International Dictionary

 

 

 

Makers of English

 

An author can influence a language in many ways. He may directly influence the language by introducing new words or new uses of existing words. He may also be successful in giving a wider currency and new values to forms of expression already existing in a language, by virtue of his popularity.

 

William Shakespeare

Among the masters of literature who have contributed to the making of English, the name of Shakespeare is of paramount importance. His influence on the language is evident by the amount of words and expressions he has added to the literary vocabulary through his unrivalled oeuvre. The influence which Shakespeare had could be compared to that of the Bible. He experimented with all kinds of linguistic innovations, dialectical adaptations and archaisms.

Classification	Words/Expressions
Dialect Words	Mobled (Hamlet) Pheeze (meaning to drive away in The Taming of the Shrew) Speak within door (Othello) Dwindle (meaning waste away, a West Midland word used in Macbeth)
Expressions taken from spoken language (Some words which are found in Shakespeare and not found in earlier writers. These may have been borrowed or coined)	Control, credent, home keeping, illume, lonely, orb, bump, castigate, incarnadine, what the dickens.
Telling  Words and Phrases	Past praying for, like patience on a monument, to the manner born, hoist with his own petard (caught in one’s own trap), to be or not to be, caviare to the general(common multitude), too solid flesh, ‘stale, flat and unprofitable’, mind’s eye, more in sorrow than anger, the primrose path, rich not gaudy, with all my imperfections on my head, still harping on, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, there’s the rub, this mortal coil, the undiscovered county, the observed of all observers, to hold the mirror up to nature, very like a whale, to speak daggers, a king of shreds and patches, cruel only to be kind, to cudgel one’s brains, chapfallen, ministering angel, sweets to the sweet, towering passion, a very palpable hit, to wear one’s heart upon one’s sleeve, one pound of flesh, a tower of strength, full of the milk of human kindness, the seeds of time, A Daniel came to judgement, yeoman’s service, curled darlings, moving accident, summer-seeming lust, the guest of summer, a Triton among the minnows.
New Compounds (He took liberties in using one part of speech for another)	·         He used the French prefixes em- and en- to coin new words- enact, enchafed, enchased, endeared, engird, enkindle, enlink, enmesh, enrooted, ensky, entame, embattle, embayed, empson. ·         Poetic compounds out of adjectives- daring-hardy ·         Adjectives used as verbs- to make safe, ·         Nouns as verbs- spaniel’d, childed, fathered ·         Prefix un- for new words- unavoided, unfellowed, ungot, unhair, unkiss ·         Compounds using ‘out’- to outherod Herod, outnumber, outlive

 

Geoffrey Chaucer

He is described as the “first illumine” of the English tongue and “the well of English undefiled”. His influence on English has been undoubted, though we have no means to prove it now. As he lived before the age of printing, it cannot be told for certain how he has made substantial contribution to the English vocabulary.

·         He wrote in East Midland dialect, which was certainly given an impetus as he was the court poet and the greatest poet of the day. Chaucer was the paramount of the influences that brought about the adoption of a standard language.

·         His language is replete with a large amount of French.

·         His language shows Modern English grammar in its making. The Old English inflections have been simplified. He used –s plural termination for nouns. The adjective is nearer to Modern English. The definite article is the indeclinable ‘the’. Pronouns are most likely those in Modern English.

·         Chaucer’s words order is loose and conversational. It does not insist upon rigidity or strict regularity. English was still in a stage of transition and the process of standardization had not yet begun. His language shows how the English language is set on the way to simplification.

 

Edmund Spenser

Considered as the poet’s poet, Spenser’s influence is easier to trace than that of Shakespeare. With him begins the division of the language into literary and colloquial. While Chaucer had contended himself with writing in the ordinary language of his time and never consciously inventing new words, Spenser deliberately framed for his own use, a kind of artificial dialect. His poetical innovations include

1.       Revival of old words- needments, brent, uncouth, housing fore creast reed raft astound blameful, displeasance, enroot doom, forby, emplight, natheless, mickle, whilere (a while before)

2.       New Coinages- elfin, blatant, askew, filch, flout, freak, bellibone, braggadocio, chirrup, cosset, delve, dit (song), scruze (screw+squeeze), squall (cry), wrizzled (wrinkled)

3.       Adaptations of old words- baneful, briny, changeful, drear, hapless, oaten, sunshiny, wolfish

4.       One grammatical category as another- adverb ‘most’ used as an adjective, adjective ‘faire’ used as adverb, adjective ‘weak’ used as noun etc.

Spenser may have looked upon as a working critic of the language, whose efforts in the production of a poetic diction were to a great influence upon all succeeding poets.

John Milton

Milton enjoys an outstanding position in English literature as the moulder and exemplar of English poetic diction. He experimented with spelling in his poetry. As a keen student of the language, he was a very good practitioner of English. He has contributed a large number of words, mostly of learned or poetic nature to the literary vocabulary of English. But only a few Miltonic words and phrases have become part of the English word stock. This is because Shakespeare meant his plays primarily for the ordinary man whereas Milton intended his works for a chosen few.

·         Coinages- gorgeous East, barbaric pearl and gold, a pillar of state, darkness visible, confusion worse confounded, to prove a bitter morsel, to hide one’s diminished head, human face divine, the last infirmity of noble minds, to scorn delights and live laborious days, calm of mind all passions spent, fresh woods and pastures new, pandemonium, anarch.

·         Familiar words- anarchy (chaos), Olympian, titanic

·         Latin words- argument, grateful, virtue

·         Archaisms and dialect words- clomb, scrannel, frore, rathe (used in Lycidas now remains in its comparative form ‘rather’)

·         Spelling- Sovran (sovereign), iland (island), dropt, walkt, drest (dropped, walked, dressed), heav’n (heaven), forbid’n (forbidden).

 

Bible Translations

 

• The Bible is the most widely read and most frequently quoted of books.
• Its influence has been recognized by men like Tennyson, Macaulay, Carlyle, Huxley and others
• Formative influence on the style of many authors.
• Provided us with new words which were adopted into the spoken language.
• Translation by John Wycliff

Ø  Founder of the Lolland Movement.

Ø  First to translate the Bible into English

Ø  Translated from the Latin Vulgate of St.Jerome

Ø  Imp phrase from this translation- ‘under the sweat of thy brow’.

• Translation by William Tyndale-  1526

Ø  Tyndale had a genius for the telling phrase and the idiomatic yet beautiful rendering.

Ø  A great deal of his phraseology has remained part of the language as it had passed unchanged into the Authorized Version.

Ø  Translated the New Testament from Hebrew.

Ø  Influenced by Martin Luther.

Ø  Scapegoat, glad tidings, beautiful, trespass, congregation, elders, peacemaker, long suffering, ungodliness, weakling, stumbling block, godly, BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY, EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY, THE POWRES THAT BE - words which came into the vocabulary

• Translation by Miles Coverdale - 1535

Ø  First complete Modern English translation of the Bible

Ø  Based on Tyndale’s translation

Ø  Words- loving-kindness, tender-mercy, tender-hearted, avenger of blood, the valley of the shadow of death, morning star, broken-hearted, blood guiltiness, mess of pottae, sweat of thy brow.

 

• Authorized Version of the Bible- 1611

Ø  Begun in 1604 and completed in 1611

Ø  Third translation into English to be approved by the English Church authorities

Ø  Did not provide new words to the English vocabulary.

Ø  But preserved older words like damsel, travail, firmament, raiment,  fatted calf, eat, drink and be merry, the burden and the heat of the day, apparel, list (desire) which might otherwise have died out.

Ø  Many phrases have found their way into the language. A labour of love, clear as crystal, the still small voice, a thorn in the flesh, the eleventh hour, the shadow of death, a howling wilderness, the old Adam, the salt of the earth, to wash our hands off, the holy of holies, the lesser lights, the olive branch, a perfect Babel, a painted Jezebel, to cast pearls before swine, the worship of Mammon, a Leviathan ship etc.

• General contributions from the English Bible

Ø  Use of words and phrases through misunderstanding- to see eye to eye, helpmeet

Ø  Gave the yeomen service to the language. It has fixed the language. The mere habit of reading the Bible and listening to it every Sunday made this book the most familiar.