Week 10 Flashcards
When were the main changes in pronunciation that made up the GVS and completed it?
By about 1700.
What grammatical forms disappeared in Late Modern English and which features were standardised?
Third-person forms like loveth. Pronouns thou, thee and the corresponding verb form lovest also disappeared from standard usage.
Auxiliary do had come to be used as we use it today.
Which distinction disappeared during the Late Middle English era?
The distinction between the past singular and the past plural disappeared.
Differences between PDE and Late Modern English that may appear in a late modern text
- Capitalised nouns
- Apostrophe on the plural
- “Carry’d”
- “Publick”
5.
What did non-standardised spelling mean? What is an example?
Spellings varied from writer to writer, and even within the work of one writer.
Shakespeare left three different signatures on his will.
What was a powerful force for standardisation?
The introduction of the printing press.
What explains the PDE spelling oddities?
The standard spelling system which became established by the end of the 17th century represents the pronunciation of English before the GVS. This explains the spelling oddities in PDE. Like, k in knight, t in castle, w in wrong, meat/meet.
Ruled language
A ruled language is one in which acceptable usage is explicity laid down, for example by grammars and dictionaries,
What did people think about a ruled language?
Some people believed that a properly ruled language would also be unchanging.
The scholar Richard Bentley believed that every language is in perpetual motion but nevertheless was thinking of establishing an “English academy”. Its functions would be to ‘refine’ or ‘correct’ the language, to lay down correct usage.
This is delusive: no language which is being used can be prevented from changing.
When was the publication of first grammars and dictionaries of English, and what was memorable about them?
What did people use before dictionaries?
The 17th century, but the 18th century brought the first really comprehensive dictionaries of English, and an enormous number of English grammars, especially in the second half of the century.
They weren’t equally ‘prescriptive’.
There were two-language dictionaries (for example, English-French and Latin-English), but no full English.
What did the dictionaries of the seventeenth century progressively contain?
When did the dictionaries start to include ordinary everyday words of the language?
They included progressively more information, such as etymology, and differences of style or acceptability.
Eighteenth century (the first being A New English Dictionary of 1702, perhaps by John Kersey).
What helped English be standardised?
Dictionaries helped to stabilise spellings and word-meanings, and inevitably came to be treated as authorities.
What was a reason why grammars of English began to appear in large numbers in the late modern period? And what were these grammar books often based on?
Schools were beginning to teach english, so textbooks were needed.
The models of the textbooks were influenced by Latin grammars and textbooks, and forced the language to conform to classical patterns and paradigms. But not all!
What rule did the ‘classical grammar forms’ give?
The term ‘preposition’, applied to the category including words such as at, by, from, on, with, derives from a Latin word which implies that they are placed before the nouns and pronouns with which they are associated.
But in English this is not necessarily the case.
To what do grammars of English written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries make references to?
Social class.
The Industrial Revolution was on the rise, and the upper class distinguished themselves by means of language and manners.
