169. Reinforcement through France English borrowed many words from Latin and French Latin : consistere and explorare French: consister and explorer Verb.

169. Reinforcement through France

• English borrowed many words from Latin and French

• Latin: consistere and explorare• French: consister and explorer

Verb (consist and explore)

• Latin: affabilis• French: affable

Adjectives (affable, audible and jovial)

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

Medium of

writing

Books

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.

• his remain the proper form of possessive

• Noun (stone’s , horse’s) suggest the analogical form of it’s for possessive of it.

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

The use of who as a relative

• Uses of who are the sources of new construction:• as indefinite pronoun

• as interrogative in indirect questions

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

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.