1LING 2301

Early Modern English (p. 135). 1509 Henry VIII

1534 Act of Supremacy (Henry’s succession from the Catholic Church and influence of Latin)

1536 Monasteries dissolved and England becomes a Protestant country Statutes incorporates all of Wales with

England 1539 English translation of the Bible in every

church 1574 First company of Actors and the

building of theatres (time period of William Shakespeare 1564 –

1616) 1584 Colonist at Roanoke 1600 English E. India Co. Formed

2LING 2301

Early Modern English (p. 135). 1603 James I in Power

1607 Colony planted by London Co. at Jamestown 1611 King James Bible published

"To provide a politically more acceptable alternative to the Geneva Bible and to shore up the position of the king, while at the same time criticizing the clergy and casting aspersions on 'Popish persons'." Later became "the Authorized Version" used overwhelmingly in Britain until 1960's

1616 John Bullokar publishes An English Exposition (English dictionary)

1640 approximately 20,000 book titles available in English

1755 Samuel Johnson publishes a 2 volume set comprising of 2300 pages and 40,000 entries A Dictionary of the English Language (The original purpose was “to 'fix' the language and establish a standard for the use of words and their spellings”)

1775-1783 American war of Independence 1788 Penal Colonies established in Australia

3LING 2301

EME Change in Consonants: Loss of /l/ after low back vowels and

before labial or velar consonants almond, folk, palm but not after other vowels

film, hulk… Loss of /t/ or /d/ in consonant clusters

with /s/ castle, hasten, handsome, landscape

loss of initial /k/ and /g/ before /n/ knock, knee, knight, gnome,…

Loss of /w/ before /r/ wreak, wrong …

Loss of /r/ before /s/ ME bares bass (a type of fish)

In 18th century /r/ was lost in standard English before a consonant and word finally.

4LING 2301

EME Changes in Vowels:

Unstressed vowels were reduced to [ɪ] or [ə] in ME and continued in EME

The Great Vowel Shift http://facweb.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/seehear.htm http://facweb.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/what.htm http://courses.fas.harvard.edu/%7Echaucer/vowels.html

(see other ppt and handout on language change

Clark Language… p 250, 337

5LING 2301

EME Pronouns:

Main Significant change in Early Modern English was the shift to using you for 2nd person over other choices of 2nd person pronouns

6LING 2301

EME Verbs: 100+ of around 300 previously strong

verbs {those irregular forms like ride/rode/(has) ridden or sink/sank/(has) sunk} have been made weak {jump/jumped}. For Example: help, brew, climb, bide (from bide/bided

instead of bode/bided/bidden), crow, flay, mow (mow mowed mowed/mown), dread, wade

verbs that are still irregular (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_irregular_verbs)

7LING 2301

EME Nouns:

Possessives based on a contraction of the possessive pronoun (e.g. his) The King his crown the King's crown

But was attached to the head noun as in "The King's Crown of England" (maybe

would have been like The King his Majesty of England)

Rather than our modern day "The King of England's crown".

8LING 2301

EME Vocabulary: Due to increased communication and the

expansion and new experience due to colonialism English speakers were coming into contact with ideas and phenomena that they had not encountered before. The vocabulary had to adjust to this. Many new words (in many cases illustrated by

the vocabulary of Shakespeare) are coming into the lexicon.

agile, critical, demonstrate, emphasis, horrid, impertinency, modest, prodigious, accommodation, apostrophe, assassination, dexterously, frugal, obscene, pedant, premeditated, reliance, vast…

Other words at this time coming in via the Renaissance: Ambuscade, armada, barricade, bastinado,

cavalier, mutiny, palisade, pell-mell, renegade…

9LING 2301

Latin and Greek (the Renaissance) Again Latin and Greek were seen as

scholarly languages – as the crusaders started to learn about the

science of the Arabs who had translated many of the works from Latin and Greek. Many modern languages were being advocated as a medium of learning.

While English eventually became accepted by the academe many of the Science and Literary authors such as Sir Francis Bacon, John Milton, and Sir Isaac Newton wrote their major works in Latin.

Eventually the use of Latin declined, but the vocabulary was brought into English to "fill the gaps"

Some words were borrowed from Greek via Latin or French: anachronism, climax, pathetic, system, & antithesis