A History of the
English Language
Chapter 5: Early
Modern English
1
Time Line 1
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1509
1534
Henry VIII
Act of Supremacy
1536
1534
Small monasteries dissolved
English translation of Bible in
any church
Edward VI
Mary Tudor
Elizabeth I
Act of Supremacy restores laws
of Henry VIII
First company of actors; theatre
building begins
Colonists at Roanoke
English East India Co. Formed
James I
London Co. plants colony at
Jamestown
King James Bible
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1547
1553
1558
1559
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1574
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1584
1600
1603
1607
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1611
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2
Time Line 2
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1616 Death of Shakespeare
1625 Charles I
1639 English established at Madras
1642-1646 Civil War
1649 Charles I beheaded
1649 Commonwealth established
1653 Cromwell becomes Lord Protector
1660 Charles II restored to the throne
1689 William and Mary proclaimed king
and queen in England and Ireland
1702 Queen Anne
1707 Union of England and Scotland as
Great Britain
1727 George I
1760 George III
1775-1783 American War of
Independence
3
Political, Cultural,
and Technological
Influences
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1: The Introduction and
Dissemination of Printing:
1476 William Caxton
introduces printing press
2: The Renaissance
3: The Protestant
Reformation
4: The Enclosures
5: Exploration and
Colonization
6: The American Revolution
4
The Self-Conscious
Language

Writings in Latin:
 Francis
Bacon, Novum Organum
(1620)
 Isaac Newton, Philosophia
Naturalis Principia Mathematica
(1687): Latin works
5
The Debate over
Vocabulary
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Early Modern English is the Age
of Linguistic Anxiety: debates
about its deficiencies and its
purity
Earliest perceived inadequacy
was in the lexicon
Borrowing was the easiest and
most obvious way to fill the gaps
and Latin was the easiest and
most obvious language from
which to borrow
Largest number of borrowings in
the history of English
Borrowing was deliberate to
improve the language
6
Inkhorn terms vs.
Archaisms
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Thomas Wilson:Some seeke so far for
outlandish English, that they forget
altogether their mothers tongue. And I
dare sweare this, if some of their
mothers were aliue, thei were not able
to tell what they say: … The vnlearned
or foolish phantasticall, that smelles but
of learning (such fellowes as haue seen
learned men in their daies) wil so Latin
their tongues, that the simple can not
but wonder at their talkes…
Edmund Spenser, John Cheke: crossed
vs. crucified, fleshstrings/muscles
grosswitted, endsay, over-reacher,
drymock
discretion, exaggerate, transumptive,
effodicate, exinanite
7
The Spelling
Reformers
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The ideal: a simplified,
consistent, phonetic,
standardized spelling
system for English
John Cheke (1569),
Thomas Smith (1568),
John Hart (1569), William
Bullokar (1580), Richard
Mulcaster (1582)
No effect of the proposed
reforms
8
The Dictionary
Makers
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Robert Cawdrey (1604): A Table
Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching
the true writing, and understanding of
hard usuall English wordes, borrowed
from the Hebrew, Greek, Latine, or
French &c. With the interpretation
thereof by plaine English words.
gathered for the benefit & helpe of
Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other
unskilfull persons. Whereby they may
the more easilie and better understand
many hard English wordes, which they
shall heare or read in Scriptures,
Sermons, or elseqhere, and also be
made able to use the same aptly
themselues
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the
English Language (1755)
9
The Movement for an
English Academy
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Accademia della Crusca
(1582)
Académie Française (1635)
Daniel Defoe (1697),
Jonathan Swift (1712),
Joseph Addison (1711)
John Adams (1803) in the US
10
Prescriptive Grammars
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Thomas Wilson, The Arte of
Rhetorique (1553)
William Bullokar, Bref Grammar
(1586)
Alexander Gil, Logonomia Anglica
(1621)
John Wallis, Grammatica Linguae
Anglicanae (1653): all Latin-based
Robert Lowth, A Short Introduction to
English Grammar (1762)
Joseph Priestley, The Rudiments of
English Grammar (1762)
Noah Webster, Plain and
Comprehensive Grammar (1784)
Lindley Murray, English Grammar
(1795)
11
Early Modern
English Phonology:
Basic Features
12
Consonants

Addition of phonemic /N Z/:
 sing
vs. sin
 pleasure, vision: assibilation

The postvocalic allophones
of /h/, [ Ç] and [ X ]
disappeared
13
The Great Vowel
Shift 1
ME
1300
1400
1500
1600
1700
Ii
Vi/Ei
-------
----->
PDE
i
rise(n)
U
mouth u u
e:
feet
-------- i
--------- -------> i
o:
goos
-------- U
--------- ------>
E:
beem
--------- -------> e:
i:
o
ston
--------- -------> o:
-------> ou /C
a:
name
-------> ѕ:
e:
[x ]
Vu /Eu --------- -------> X
E:
rise
mouth
feet
U
goose
i
beam
Y
stone
name
14
The Great Vowel
Shift 2:
i
u:
e:
o:
E:
o
a:
pullchain
x
Au
A:
push- chainchain shift
15
Great Vowel Shift 3
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threat, head, death, deaf
cheat, plead, wreath, leaf
break, yea, steak, great
boot, loose, mood, pool, soon
foot, good, hook, wood, wool
flood, blood
But, thou, false guardian of a
charge too good/Thou, mean
deserter of thy brother’s blood
(Alexander Pope)
root, soot, room
16
Development of Short
Vowels 1
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All remaining final unstressed -e’s
from ME were lost during EModE
/æ/ > / / before /r/ and voiceless
fricatives; 17th and 18th c. : harm,
scarf, hard, park; staff, class, path,
fast, half; classical, passage: no
change if the fricative was followed
by another vowel
/ / resulting from /a/ before /l/: all,
fall, walk, salt, chalk, halt; after /w/:
want, wash, swan
17
Development of Short
Vowels 2:
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A following nasal tends to raise
/E/ to /I/: wing, England, hinge,
mingle, nimble; pen,sense
Dialectal variant in Britain
extensively used in US: /A/ for
/O/: hot, rock, pocket,top, shot
/u/ centering and unrounding to
/V/: run, mud, cut, cup;
unrounding did not occur in
protected environments: full,
push, bull, bush, butcher; bulky,
shrub; put, putt
18
Development of
Short Vowels 3

Influence of following /r/:
/Er/ to /Ar/: far, star,
farm, barn; vs. Servant, sermon,
certain, verdict, sterling
 Lowering:
 Lowering
and centering: /I u E/
to /E:/ > /W/ girl, dirty, hurt,
her, curse
 In many words, a following /r/
blocked the GVS: wear, bear,
floor, sword, course, court
19
Development of
Diphtongs
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/iu/ and /Eu/ fell together as /iu/; then
/iu/ became /ju:/: pure, mute, beauty,
accuse; after labial consonants, /ju:/
almost always remains, but after other
consonants there is often dialectically
variable simplification to /u:/: new, fruit,
rude, duty, lute
ME /Au/ became /o/: cause, hawk;
before /l/ plus a labial consonant /æ / or
/a/: half, calm, palm and /l/ was lost
/Ou/ > /o:/ > /C/: know, blow, grow
/ai/ > /æi/ > /e:/ > /Y/: day, pay, stake
20
Spelling and
Punctuation
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By the end of the 17th c., the principle
of a fixed spelling for every word was
firmly established for printed works,
and , over the course of the following
century, personal spelling followed
(Un)etymological spelling: rhyme,
indict, victuals; debt > dette; island;
aisle; delight
Capitalization remained haphazard
During the 16th c, the comma replaced
the virgule (/) as the primary mark of
sentence-internal punctuation
The apostrophe was used for
contractions; not used for marking the
possessive before late EModE
21
Early Modern English
Morphology: Basic
Facts 1
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In all essentials, noun morphology in
EModE was the same as that of PDE
By EModE, the ‘s-possessive for both
sg. and pl. nouns was almost
universal, although traces of
uninflected genitives remained.
mother tongue, lady slipper, for peace
sake
John Browne his meadow, his
deceased mother her will, Mister
Jones his cow; after mine & my wifes
her decease
in the calmest and most stillest night,
less happier lands, violentest,
certainer, more bold, most brave (Sh)
22
Morphology: Basic
Facts 2
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Development of separate forms for
possessive adjectives and possessive
pronouns: my, mine; thy, thyne
Appearance of possessive its at the
beginning of the 17th c (between it’s
lips, Sh)
During the 17th c., the sg. thou/thee
forms dropped out altogether: sg.-pl.
distinction lost; ye gave way to you in
the 17th c; result: one form you
who as a relative pronoun became
frequent in EModE and was rare
before restrictive clauses; that, which
and as used as relative pronouns: All
the goods as was brought to our view
23
Morphology: Basic
Facts 3
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Forming reflexive pronouns by
combining -self with the personal
pronouns became more frequent in
EModE, but the older practice of using
the simple object form of the pronouns
as a reflexive continued: thou dost
thyself a pleasure, get thee a good
husband, I will shelter me heere (Sh)
General use of reflexive pronouns
declined
By the end of the EModE period, the
division of English verbs into strong
and weak was no longer viable
Collapse of the distinction between
past tense and past participle
24
Morphology: Basic
Facts 4
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By the end of ME, weak verbs had
become the regular verbs of English,
and almost any new verb entering the
language would follow this paradigm
By the end of EModE, the total number
of verb inflections had been reduced to
its PDE state; the last vestiges of the n infinitive disappeared; as did the
present plural indicative plural endings
-n or -th; the present participle suffix ing became universal in all dialects;
second person sg. present ending -est
survived until the category was lost,
that is, until you supplanted thou
25
Morphology: Basic
Facts 5
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Although -th was still being written as
the third-person sg. ending as late as
the 18th c., the -s ending seems to
have been universal in speech from
the 17th c. on
EModE was the period of great
changes in what were to become the
modal auxiliaries of English; will
moved into the category of modal
auxiliaries;need and dare; in EModE
the modals were still sufficiently
independent to appear without a
following infinitive: I must away this
night, thou shalt to prison (Sh); can
could still mean ‘know’; would was still
the past tense of will
26
Morphology: Basic
Facts 6
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Verb-particle constructions became
extremely common during the period
New phrasal prepositions: by means
of, in spite of, because of, with regard
to, in accordance with
The chief means of forming new
adverbs from existing adjectives in
EModE was by adding -ly; plain
adverbs were still common, however
27
Early Modern English
Syntax: Basic Facts 1
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In most of the larger patterns, the
syntax of EModE is like that of PDE;
more elusive are the differences that
are merely statistical, such as the
greater use of the inflected subjunctive
A number of ways in which E ModE
syntax differs from that of PDE are
negative ones: e.g., market data
analysis sheets
The ME legacy of allowing single
adjective modifiers (especially Latinate
adjectives) to follow rather than
precede their noun head continued in
EModE: means convenient, faith
invincible
28
Early Modern English
Syntax: Basic Facts 2
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A tendency remained to place the
adverbial before rather than after the
words being modified: which he behind
him left, and was by them examined
Double negatives became less common
in EModE
By the 16thc. have continued to
suppress be in compound tenses; cf.:
this gentleman is happily arrived; I have
since arrived; did he not say my brother
was fled; love’s golden arrow at him
should have fled
The progressive was fully developed by
the end of the 16th c. though still used
less frequently
29
Early Modern English
Syntax: Basic Facts 3
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The combination of progressive
and perfect in a single verb
phrase was still rare: I have been
watching you; the progressive
passive (you are being watched)
did not develop until the late 18th
c.; the construction you have
been being watched did not
appear until PDE
Passive constructions were less
common
30
Early Modern English
Syntax: Basic Facts 4
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The use of do as a dummy auxiliary for
forming interrogatives and negatives
was fully developed by EModE, but not
yet obligatory: I doubt it not/I do not
doubt you; Why do you look on
me/Why look you so on me (Sh)
Be going to, have to, be obliged to, be
about to became common during
EModE
I don’t like to have to keep on nagging
you
EModE still had more word-order
flexibility
31
Stylistic Traditions
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The influence of Latin on
English complex syntax: long,
heavily subordinated, periodic
sentences, absolute participles
were imitated
Plain style tradition found in
the King James Bible as a rival
conception
Ornate style became popular
32
Early Modern English
Lexicon 1
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Loans from Latin and Greek: English
borrowed roots and affixes to form
new words that had not existed in
the classical languages themselves:
cortex, cortical; fibroma
An A-Z sample: ambiguous, biceps,
census, decorate, emotion, fanatic,
gladiator, harmonica, identical, joke,
lichen, mandible, navigate,
opponent, perfidious, quotation,
ratio, scintillate, tangent, ultimate,
vacuum, zone
33
The Early Modern
English Lexicon 2:
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
Lexical doublets: armor/armature;
chamber/camera; choir, chorus;
frail/fragile; gender/genus;
jealous/zealous; mould/module;
pale/pallid; porch/portico;
prove/probe; strait/strict;
strange/extraneous;
treasure/thesaurus
Functional shifts: fac simile,
propaganda, deficit, fiat, veto, tenet
34
Loans from Other
Languages
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French: liaison, sociable, compute
Italian: trade, architecture, arts:
balcony, bandit, ghetto, carnival,
arsenal
Spanish and Portuguese: mango,
cashew, cigar, papaya, cannibal,
tomato, tortilla
Dutch: prominence in seafaring gave
nautical words: deck, smuggle,
yacht; etch, landscape, sketch
German: German loans have never
been heavy in English: cobalt,
gneiss, quartz, zinc, waltz
35
Early Modern English
Word-Formation 1

Compounding:
 The
most productive type was noun +
noun; gerund + noun: spelling book;
walking stick; possessive noun + noun:
saleswoman, townspeople; verb +
noun combinations: catchword,
pickpocket, scatterbrain; adjective +
noun: commonplace, easy chair,
hotbed
 Noun + adjective: bloodthirsty, kneedeep, lifelong, top-heavy
 Adjective + noun + -ed: good-natured,
red-haired
 Noun/adj + Participle:
earthborn,painstaking, henpecked,
easy-going
36
Early Modern English
Word Formation 2

Affixing: has always been the
single largest source of new
vocabulary items in English:
 Numeral
1530 ,numerality 1646,
numerally 1646, numerant
1660, numerous 1586,
numerosity 1611, numerously
1611, numerousness 1631,
numerical 1628, numerically
1628, numerist 1646,
numerication 1694

Functional Shift/Zero Derivation
 Accelerated
during EModE:
guarantee, pioneer, segment,
cheat, contest, split, whimper,
lower
37
Semantic Processes

Generalization and Narrowing
‘unusual and exiciting
experience; courage ‘heart, mind,
disposition, nature, bravery, valor’ >
‘bravery, valor’; deer ‘animal’ >
‘mammals of the family Cervidae’;
 Adventure:

Amelioration and Pejoration
‘pleasure, delight’; coy ‘quiet,
shy, modest’; knave ‘boy’; jolly
‘arrogant, wanton, lustful’; luxury ‘lust,
licentiousness’; boy ‘rascal, servant,
slave’; fond ‘idiotic, mad’; artful,
crafty, cunning
 Lust
38
Shakespeare, Richard III
Now is the Winter of Our Discontent,
Made glorious Summer by this Son of Yorke:
And all the clouds that lowr’d vpon our house
In the deepe bosome of the Ocean buried.
Now are our browes bound with Victorious Wreathes,
Our bruised armes hung vp for Monuments;
Our sterne Alarums chang’d to merry Meetings;
Our dreadful Marches, to delightfull Measures,
Grim-visag’d Warre, hath smooth’d his wrinkled Front:
And now, in stead of mounting Barbed Steeds,
To fright the Soules of fearfull Aduersaries,
He capers nimbly in a Ladies Chamber,
To the lasciuious pleasing of a Lute.
But I, that am not shap’d for sportiu e trickes,
Nor made to court an amorous Looking-glasse:
I that am Rudely stampt, and want loues Maiesty,
To strut before a wonton ambling Nymph:
I, that am curtail’d of this faire Portion,
Cheated of Feature by dissembling Nature,
Deform’d, vn-finish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing World, scarse halp made vp,
And that so lamely and vnfashionable,
That dogges barke at me, as I halt by them.
39
Development of
English in the
United States 1
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The development of English in the
US is not synonymous with the
development of language, since
there were already indigenous
Native American languages when
the European settlers first arrived
The language that the British
brought with them to America,
beginning with the first settlement in
Jamestown, Virginia, 1607, is Early
Modern English, and is largely the
English of South-East England
40
English in the United
States 2

Subsequent development in
America affected by a number of
factors:
 The
source of the original British
dialect
 Maintenance of contact with the
‘home’ country
 Patterns of settlement
 Influences of languages other than
English
 Caused
by immigration
 Caused by contact with speakers of
other languages within America
 Social
and geographical mobility
41
Settlement by Region:
The Original Thirteen
Colonies 1
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
New England, the Middle Atlantic
States, South Atlantic States
(Georgia)
Mid-Atlantic: Jamestown was mostly
settled by speakers of south-eastern
English dialect, though there was
some admixture of other dialects,
and all social classes were
represented in Virginia
From the outset the population of the
Mid-Atlantic states was mixed in
character and did not have the solid
English core of the other areas
42
Settlement by Region 2
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
The settlement of New England
began around Massachusetts Bay in
1620, extended to Connecticut in
1634
The majority of the settlers came
from the eastern and south-eastern
counties of England, with a
significant number of Puritans from
East Anglia
43
How, Why and When
American English
Began to Diverge from
British English

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The physical separation of America
from Britain
The different physical conditions
encountered by the settlers
Contact with non-native speakers of
English, both Native American and
immigrant
Developing political differences
between the two countries and the
growing American sense of national
identity
44
Noah Webster (17581843)

Dissertations of the English
Language (1789): “As an
independent nation our honor
requires us to have a system of our
own, in language as well as
government. Great Britain, whose
children we are, should no longer be
our standard; for the taste of her
writers is already corrupted, and her
language on the decline. But if it
were not so, she is at too great
distance to be our model, and to
instruct us in the principles of our
own tongue. […] A national
language is a band of national
union.”
45