Early Modern English 1485 - 1603 Flashcards
Early Modern English contin 1485 to 1603
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- Rise of nationalism linked to desire for more expressive language
- Vocabulary enlarged by new learning Renaissance· imports from Greek and Latin
- Lexis expanded by travel and ideas in maths and science
- In 1582 Richard Mulcaster publishes a list of 7,000 words with spelling forms, but this does not become a universal standard
Great Vowel Shift
Early modern english
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- began in 15th century - took 150-200 years to occur
- Speakers of English gradually changed how they articulate long vowels and articulation point moved upwards in the mouth.
- E.g. Anglo Saxon words to Modern English: gode > good, Boats > boots, Fate > feet
- This caused vowel sounds to be ‘higher’ sounding. Long vowels became dipthongs e.g. hoose > house
- Pull theory – upper vowels moved first and pulled the other ones along
- And Push theory – lower vowels moved upwards, pushing the others ahead.
William Caxton - printing press
> brought printing press in 1476 as he also translated books from Latin and French
People at the time couldn’t understand each other, therefore Caxton chose one form of the language – from London and it became the language of the printed English. Many Greek and Latin texts were translated into English.
He decided to keep the language consistent by keeping the spellings correct and consistently - this period was caused ‘standardisation’.
“standardisation” - huge process of fixing the English language during Early Modern English
Features of Early Modern English
> Shakespeare - coined around 1700 new words such as courtship, excitement and outbreak
word exploration - brought words from African, Asian and New World languages
European renaissance - a huge number of Latin, French and Greek words entered the English language: words were needed for new concepts like psychology
Renaissance
> In the 16th century, there was a rise in the classical languages and literature
and the field of medicine and the arts.
10000-12000 words entered English during this time - For example:
> e.g. Latin and Greek – atmosphere and thermometer.
French - alloy, chocolate and pioneer.
Italy - concerto, sonnet and design.
Spanish - canoe, barricade and hurricane.
People objected and called them ‘Inkhorn’ terms.
Shakespeares influence
He wrote in Early Modern English between 1592 and 1613
> Shakespeare’s plays are full of inventive and experimental language - One of Shakespeare’s poetic techniques was the use of hyphenated compounds.
> This is when you connect two words with a hyphen to create a new word - These include:
> hugger-mugger (confusion)
> house-keeper
> blood-stained
> smooth-faced
The Bible
> In the late 1300, Latin was the language of the Bible so many people couldn’t read it. John Wycliffe opposed the teaching of Christianity. With help of his followers he produced dozens of English manuscript which was a crime as it was seen as an act against the church at the time.
In 1611- The King James Bible turned out to be an excellent and accurate translation - it became the most printed book in the history of the world, and the only book with one billion copies in print.
Brought us many idioms e.g. “the apple of his eye”
Johnson’s dictionary
When - In 1746, Samuel Johnson created the first English dictionary
Purpose - with the idea of standardising the language.
> It took him 8 years to complete.
> Listed 40 000 words that were defined in detail
> Placed words in quotations - 114 literary quotations
> He only included the words he wanted that he felt were ‘correct’.
> He did not like borrowings and only liked ‘pure words’.
> He made up some words some believe
Process of standardisation - Haugen (1966)
Four main processes of standardisation:
1) Selection - of an existing language variety as the basis - the variety selected is usually that of the most powerful and influential social group or ethnic group
2) Codification - reduction of internal variability in selected variety and the establishment of norms of grammatical usage and vocabulary - standardisation involves establishment of a standard spelling for words
3) Elaboration - ensuring that the new language can be used for a wide range of functions - This may involve extension of
the language e.g. new specialised vocabulary or grammatical
4) Implementation – the standard language must be given currency by making texts available in it, by discouraging the use of other language varieties and by encouraging a loyalty and pride in it.
Fairclough
> researched language of UK political part election between 1966 and 1997
noted a tendency towards a more informal conversational style of discourse
claims in temporary Britain there is a blur of the traditionally sharp distinction between genres and between speech + language
