169. Reinforcement through France
• English borrowed many words from Latin and French
Verb (consist and explore)
• Latin: consistere and explorare
• French: consister and explorer
Adjectives (affable, audible and jovial)
• Latin: affabilis
• French: affable
170. Words from Roman Language
• 16th century: Three classes of strange words: inkhorn
terms, oversea language and Chaucerisms.
• English vocab adopted more than 50 languages:
• French
• Italian
• Spanish
• English travel in France and consumption of books in such word
as alloy, baluster, comrade, detail, entrance…etc.
• English travel in Italy observed Italian architecture and brought
back Italian manners and styles of dress and Italian words.
• Italian words: algebra,balcony, cameo,design…etc.
• Italian words adapted to French: batallion, bankrupt, carat, gala…. etc.
• from Spanish and Portuguese: alligator, apricot, armada, banana, brocade….
etc.
171. The Method of Introducing New Words
• Influenced the work of churchmen and scholars
• Effort of individual writers and their associates
Books
Medium
of writing
172. Enrichment from Native Sources
• English vocab was drawn from sources outside
English.
• Foreign words have implied a disparagement of
English resources that was resented in some quarters.
• Poetical innovation: old words revived such as astound,
blameful, displeasant, enroot…etc.
• Adaptation of and derivative of old words: baneful,
briny, changeful, drear…etc.
173. Method of Interpreting the New Words
• New words were presented in various ways:
i. Explanations were added parenthetically
ii. Equivalent word or expression was combined the
new and old in a self-interpreting pair.
176. The Movement Illustrated in Shakespeare
• Shakespeare had the largest vocabulary of any English
writer.
• Shakespeare’s words: agile, antipathy, catastrophe,
consonancy, critical, dire, emphasis…etc.
• He use new words illustrates an important point in
connection with them.
177. Shakespeare’s Pronunciations
• Much more like ours: [e] for [i] in some words
• Er, ir and ur have same pronunciation (e.g., herd, birth,
hurt)
• Two different sound:
i.
Close sound which spelled with ee or ie (deep, field)
ii.
Open sound was written ea (sea, clean)
• Words containing a ME Ộ regularly develop into [u:] (room,
food, roof and root)
• Vowel was shortened and unrounded to the sound in blood and
flood
• In 1700, the length was shortened without being unrounded
(e.g., good, stood, book and foot)
• Fluctuations in pronunciation of words containing Middle
English vowel.
178. Changes shown through corpus
Linguistic
• Flourishing of sociolinguistics and availability of electronic
databases, converged to give a fuller picture of English
language.
179. Grammatical Features
• English grammar in the 16th and early 17th century is
marked more by survival of certain forms and usage.
• Reduced in inflection of OE
• Few parts of speech was retained some of their original
inflections.
180. The Noun
• The inflections retained in the noun were plural and
possessive singular.
• S-plural become so generalized except:
i.
sheep and swine – unchanged plurals
ii.
mice and feet –mutated vowel
• In ME –es of genitive was written and pronounced –is, -ys.
• The ending identical to the pronoun his (lost h when
unstressed)
• So, pronunciations stonis and ston his (his) are the same
181. The Adjective
• Adjectives lost all its ending; no distinctions of gender,
number and case
• Two method used to form comparative and
superlative:
 ending –er and –est
the adverb more and most
• Shakespearian comparison (honester and violentest)
replaced by analytical forms
182. The Pronoun
• 16th century: establishment of personal pronoun.
• Involved three changes:
i.
Disuse of thou, thy and thee
ii.
Substitution of you for ye as nominative case
iii.
Introduction of its as possessive of it
i. Disuse of thou, thy and thee
• Early period of English:
• thou = singular
• ye = plural
• 13th century:
• thou, thy and thee= singular [addressing children or persons of inferior rank]
• ye, your and you= plural [addressing superior]
• Later, ye, your and you become the usual pronoun of direct
addressing irrespective of rank or intimacy.
• Shakespeare’s time: y- form displaced the th- form among both men
and women.
ii. Substitution of you for ye as nominative case
• ye = nominative
• you = objective
• 14th century:
• you used as nominative, and ye appear for objective case
• Finally, ye disappeared
iii. Introduction of its as possessive of it
• Formation of new possessive neuter its.
Old English
Middle English
Modern English
Declined in neuter
pronoun
Merging of dative and
accusative
Unstressed position
hit, his, him, hit
hit, his, hit
it, his, its
• his remain the proper form of possessive
• Noun (stone’s , horse’s) suggest the analogical form of
it’s for possessive of it.
The use of who as a relative
Old
English
• No relative pronoun
• [se, sēo, þæt] have more demonstrative
force
• Þe was added and used alone
Middle
English
• Þe taken placed by , þæt (that)
• which alternate frequently with that
• Uses of who are the sources of new construction:
• as indefinite pronoun
• as interrogative in indirect questions
183. The verb
• Verb used to distinguish part of speech from its form in
later times.
i.
Common interrogative form without an auxiliary
ii.
Scarcity of progressive forms
iii.
Impersonal use of verb
iv.
Difference in inflection

Ending of third person singular of present indicative
• Difference in inflection
 In South and Southeastern part of England: The formation of
the standard speech was –eth.
 Chaucer: telleth, giveth, saith, doth
 North the formation of –es
• 16th century –eth spread into north and become majority
form
• -es was preferred by women than by men
• -es was resurfaced in London and ending word had
undergone contraction.
184. Usage and idioms
• Defy explanations or logical classification.
• Placing of the negative before verb:
Shakespeare
Nowadays
At the length
At length
At the last
At last
185.General characteristic of the period
• Conscious interest in the English language
• Effect of the Great Vowel Shift
• Words had not distributed themselves into rigid
grammatical categories
• Many features of language were unsettled: alternative
forms in grammar, experiments with new words and
variations in pronunciation and spelling.