Late Modern
English Period
It
is now normal to divide the time since the end of the Middle English period
into the Early Modern English period (1500-1700) and the Late Modern English
period (1700-1900). The latter period starts with the Augustan Age – called
after the reign Augustus (63 BC - AD 14), a period of peace and imperial
grandeur – which begins after the Restoration period (1660-1690) and ends in
the middle of the 18th century. Dates which can be mentioned for the end of the
Augustan Age are the death of the poets Alexander Pope (1688-1744) and Jonathan
Swift (1670-1745). The latter was particularly concerned with ‘ascertaining’
and ‘fixing’ the English language to prevent it from future change (a futile
undertaking in the view of linguists).
Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope
Among
other important authors of the Augustan Age are Joseph Addison (1672-1719),
Richard Steele (1672-1729). The influential periodicals The Tatler (1709-11)
and The Spectator (1711-12), which did much to establish the style of English
in this period, are associated with these authors.
Joseph
Addison and Robert Steele
The
prescriptive tradition
The
uncertainties of the 16th and 17th centuries about the suitability of English
as a language of science and learning led to quite massive borrowing from
classical languages. It also engendered a frame of mind where people thought
English was deficient and this in its turn gave rise to many musings in print
about just what constitutes correct English. With this one has the birth of the
prescriptive tradition which has lasted to this very day. Much of this was
well-meaning: scholars of the time misunderstood the nature of language variation
and sought to bring order into what they saw as chaos. Frequently this merged
with the view that regional varieties of English were deserving of disdain, a
view found with many eminent writers such as Jonathan Swift who was quite
conservative in his opinions. The difficulty which present-day linguists see in
the prescriptive recommendations of such authors is that they are entirely
arbitrary.
The
eighteenth century is also a period when grammars of English were written – by
men and women. This tradition of grammar writing goes back at least to the 17th
century in England. The playwright Ben Jonson was the author of a grammar and
John Wallis published an influential Grammatica linguae Anglicanae in 1653.
This led to a series of works offering guidelines for what was then deemed
correct English. The eighteenth century saw more grammars in this vein such as
Joseph Priestley’s The rudiments of English grammar (1761). Bishop Robert Lowth
(1710-1787) who published his Brief introduction to English grammar in 1762.
This work was influential in school education and enjoyed several editions and
reprints. It is held responsible for a series of do’s and don’ts in English
such as using whom as the direct object form of who or not ending a sentence
with a preposition as in The woman he shared a room with. Lowth also formulated
a rule for future tense shall and will in English which has been reiterated
since but which does not hold for many speakers (the reduced form ’ll [l] is
normal and the full form will [wɪl] is used for emphasis while shall is often
neglected). Other influential authors of grammars are Lindley Murray
(1745-1826) who produced an English grammar in 1794 and William Cobbett whose
English grammar appeared in 1829.
Prescriptive
authors are responsible for perennial issues in English prescriptive grammar.
Apart from the disapproval of prepositional-final sentences mentioned above one
has the prohibition on the split infinitive, as in to angrily reply to a
question. The list with time grew longer and longer and today includes many
elements which stem from current changes in English, for instance the
indecisiveness about the preposition with the adjective different (from, as or
to depending on speaker) and the condemnation of less for fewer with plural
nouns as in prescribed He has fewer books than she rather than He has less
books than she. Another evergreen is the demand for I as first-person pronoun.
English usage today is that I only occurs in immediately pre-verbal position;
in all other instances me occurs: I came but It’s me, Who’s there? Me.
Prescriptivists often insist that I be used on such occasions and even ask for
it in phrases like between you and me, i.e. between you and I where it never
occurred anyway as here the pronoun is in an oblique case whose form was never
I.
One
set of writers who most definitely were prescriptive in their condemnation of
what they saw as ‘incorrect’ usage in their day are those who wrote pronouncing
dictionaries and rhetorical grammars. Foremost among these are the Irishman
Thomas Sheridan and the Londoner John Walker. The pronouncing dictionary of the
latter was immensely popular and went through more than 100 editions, remains
in print until 1904.
Eighteenth-century
prescriptive writers were self-appointed guardians and defenders of what they
regarded as good style. They established a tradition which was to have
considerable influence in English society and continued by such authors as
Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933) who saw it as their task to combat the signs of
decay and decline in the English language.
ELOCUTION
Apart from prescriptive grammar, another occupation of eighteenth-century and
later authors was criticizing regional speakers of English for their incorrect
pronunciation. Elocution, the art of successful public speaking, was regarded
as a desirable accomplishment and demanded a standard pronunciation of English,
even though it was not always certain what this consisted of. Both John Walker
and Thomas Sheridan (mentioned above) published work with the title Rhetorical
Grammar of the English Language and both had an appendix in which they voiced
their criticism of vernacular London, Dublin, Welsh or Scottish English, for
example.
The
aftermath of Sheridan and Walker
Both
were held in great esteem and their influence can be recognized in the
revamping of the originals which occurred in the 50 years or so after their
deaths.
The legacy of Sheridan and Walker
Did the strictures of Walker or Sheridan
influence the later pronunciation of non-local British English? The answer to
this question must be ‘no’. In some cases Walker, as opposed to Sheridan,
favoured a form which was later to become default in English, e.g. merchant for
marchant. But this did not happen because of Walker's opinion on the matter.
In
many respects, Walker was swimming against the tide of language change. His
insistence on maintaining regular patterns of pronunciation across the language
(his ‘analogy’) and, above all, his view that the spoken word should be close
to the written word, meant that he favoured archaic pronunciations. His view
that syllable-final /r/ should be pronounced was already conservative in his
day. In many of his statements he does, however, accept change although he
might not have agreed with it.
The
legacy of both Sheridan and Walker should be seen in more general terms. Even
if their individual recommendations were not accepted by standard speakers of
British English, both were responsible for furthering general notions of
prescriptivism. And certainly both contributed in no small way to the perennial
concern with pronunciation which characterizes British society to this day.
Changes in grammar
MAXIMISING
DISTINCTIONS The demise in English morphology which one observes in the history
of the language should not be interpreted as an abandonment of grammatical
distinctions. Quite the opposite is the case. The introduction of northern,
originally Scandinavian forms they, their, them (to replace OE hi, hir, hem)
and the development and acceptance of she (from OE hēo) as a distinct form from
the documents the maximization of distinctions, although many redundant
inflections, such as verbal suffixes, were dropped. In this connection one
should mention the rise of it’s as the possessive form of it in the early 17th
century. Previously the form was his but this was homophonous with the form for
the third person singular masculine so the change was semantically motivated.
DEICTIC
TERMS There is just a two-way system in Modern English, but formerly a
three-way system with a term for distant reference, yon(der) — of uncertain
etymology — existed and is still found, in Scottish English for instance.
This
(close at hand) that (over there) yon(der) (in the distance)
RELATIVE
PRONOUNS In modern English there is an exclusive use of which and who, whereby
the latter refers to inanimate things and the latter to animate beings. Up to
early modern English, however which could be used for persons as well and
dialectally this is still found in English today: The nurse which gave him the
injection. Similarly, that is generally employed with defining relative clauses
today as in The car that was stolen turned up again. However, earlier that was
common in non-defining relative clauses as well, e.g. The girl that (who)
having failed her exam left college for good.
REFLEXIVE
PRONOUNS English, like German, frequently used an oblique case form of the personal
pronoun with reflexive verbs; the ending -self was found only in cases of
emphasis. But later the emphatic element became obligatory in all reflexive
uses, so that a sentence like I washed me quickly came to be expressed as I
washed myself quickly.
ZERO
SUBJECTS A characteristic of Modern English is that it does not require a
relative pronoun when the reference is an object in the main clause, e.g. This
is the man she saw yesterday. Now in early modern English it was common for
this to apply in cases with a subject as main clause referent and this is still
typical of popular London English (Cockney): This is the man —— went to town
yesterday. It may well have been that the latter type was tabooed because it
was present in popular London and not because of perceptual strategies; there
is no greater difficulties in processing the second rather than the first of
the following sentences.
The
woman —— he knows has come.
The
woman —— lives here has come.
The
verbal area
AUXILIARY
VERBS In present-day English the only auxiliary is have. But formerly English
had be in this function with verbs expressing motion or change of state, much
as does German to this day, e.g. He is come for He has come; She is turned back
for She has turned back.
THE
SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD semantically the subjunctive is used to refer to a situation
which is uncertain, unreal or conjectural. From the early modern period onwards,
there was no inflection for the subjunctive so that it is recognizable by a
simple verb form without -s (in the third person singular). The verb be has a
special form were which is still used in if-clauses in modern English: If it
were necessary we would go.
UNSTRESSED
‘DO’ WITH LEXICAL VERBS One of the major changes of the later 16th and the 17th
centuries concerns the disappearance of unstressed do with full verbs in
declarative sentences of the type I do like poetry (non-emphatic). This use has
been retained for negative, interrogative and emphatic sentences but otherwise
it has been lost. There are many views about the mechanics of the change. In general,
there is agreement that the unstressed do was functional and dropped out
because of its superfluous. It was retained longest in the west and south-west
of England as is evidenced by writers like Shakespeare.
In
many forms of English, particularly overseas, the unstressed do was re-functionalized,
usually to express habitual aspect. In varieties as diverse as Irish English
and Black English sentences like I do be working all the night have a habitual
connotation
DOUBLE
NEGATION The use of two negators was common to heighten the negation. However
with prescriptive notions in the 17th and 18th centuries this came to be
frowned upon. The application of an inappropriate form of logic allowed only
one negator because two were regarded as neutralizing the negation, i.e. they
represented a positive statement (He doesn't know nobody = He knows somebody).
The same type of reasoning was used in German and led to the proscription of
double negation here as well. However, many dialectal forms of English allow
two or more negators, all of which serve to strengthen the negation, as in He
don't take no money from nobody.
USE
OF THE PERFECT AND THE PROGRESSIVE Throughout the entire early modern period up
to the present-day the use of both the perfect tense (with have as auxiliary)
and the progressive with the suffix -ing in the present became increasingly
more common. For instance, the simple past could be used with questions where
nowadays only the perfect is permissible, e.g. Told you him the story? for Have
you told him the story?
The
perfect in declarative sentences gained more and more what is termed
‘relevance’ to the present, i.e. it signals an action or state which began in
the past and either still continues or is still relevant to the present. I have
been to Hamburg (recently) but I was in China (years ago as a child).
The
progressive is used to express a continuing action. This essential durative
character has meant that it is not used with verbs which express a state, hence
*I am knowing is ungrammatical.
MULTI-WORD
VERBS One of the consequences of the demise of inflections in English is that
the system of verb prefixes also declined. There are only a handful left today,
such as for- in forget, forbear; with- in withstand, withdraw; be- in beget.
But in the course of the early modern period, English developed a system whereby
semantic distinctions and extensions are expressed by the use of particles
after the verb, often more than one. There may even be verbs which take more
than one particle in such cases. These verbs are termed collectively multi-word
verbs (rather than the less satisfactory term ‘phrasal verbs’).
USE
OF PREPOSITIONS AS FULL VERBS This is in keeping with the typological profile
of English which functionalized prepositions to indicate sentence
relationships.
to up the prices; to down a few beers
BACK
FORMATION This is a process whereby a verb is derived from a noun, the reverse
of the normal situation in English. The reason is nearly always because the
noun appeared first in the language, usually through borrowing.
CONTRACTED
FORMS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH Spoken English has always shown contracted
forms of auxiliary verbs with particles indicating negation or with pronouns
found in verb phrases. In the Old English period these forms were written in
the standard koiné, e.g. nis ‘not is’ nolde ‘not wanted’.
In
Modern English there is a precarious balance between contracted and full forms
which is maintained by the force of the standard, particularly in the
orthography. Hence one has forms like won't, can't, don't but also the full
forms will not, cannot, do not, used above all in writing. Indeed in colloquial
registers there can be even greater reduction as with I dunno [dʌnou] for ‘I do
not know’. The restraining influence of the standard has meant, however, that
such forms have not ousted the longer forms in the orthography.
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