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The 17th- 18th century English Dictionaries

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ENGLISH – PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

 

Evolution of English can be illustrated with the help of one sentence written in Old English, Middle English and Modern English.

The periods in the History of English

Historians and linguists who deal with the history of English may have different views about the historical dates which coincide with the stages of the English language development but generally they agree on three major periods:

l Old English 450-1150 (the period of full inflections) l Middle English 1150-1500 (the period of leveled inflections) l Modern English 1500 (the period of lost inflections)   l Old English 449-1066 (the period of full inflections) l Middle English 1066-1475 (the period of leveled inflections) l Modern English 15th century onwards (the period of lost inflections)  

 

Ø Early Old English is viewed as pre-written functioning of the language.

Ø Formation of kingdoms transformed tribal dialects into regional (local) dialects and resulted into Written Old English (Anglo-Saxon period)

 

Best known texts cited as typical samples of Old English and Middle English are as follows:

l Old English: Beowulf, chronicles, riddles, prayers

l Early Middle English: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Peterborough Chronicle, Ormulum

l Late Middle English: The Canterbury Tales

 

l Early New English - Shakespearean English

l The New English - since mid 17th century

l Post-modern period of English – 1876-1877 marked by invention of the telephone by Alexander Bell and of the phonograph by Thomas Alva Edison

l Late English we study and speak now

 

 

Language Stage Beginning Ending
OE Old English EOE Early Old English LOE Late Old English    
ME Middle English EME Early Middle English LME Late Middle English    
EMdE Early Modern English    
MdE Modern English    
PDE Present Day English   present

English as an Indo-European language

l Sanscrit pitar l Latin pater l English father l Dutch vader l Gothic fadar l German vater l Greek patēr l Old Irish athir l Sanscrit asmi asti l Old Eng. eom (am) is l Gothic sum ist l Latin sum est l Greek eimi esti

l The discovery of Sanscrit located in Asia, invasion of the Hun and the Turk and other Asiatic peoples, movement of population westwards. Some Asiatic peoples moved eastward. There are confirmations which appeared in the 19th century as a result of comparative studies. Now I-E languages have common words for snow and winter. It is likely that the original home for the family was in a climate that at certain seasons was fairly cold.

Harold H.Bender Home of Indo-Europeans

l There are no ancient I-E common words for elephant, rhinoceros, camel, lion, tiger, monkey, crocodile, parrot, rice, bamboo, palm, BUT there are common words spread over I-E territory for snow, freezing cold, oak, beech, pine, willow, bear, wolf, deer, rabbit, sheep, goat, eagle, snake etc. There is no common word for sea.

The branches of I-E family fall into 2 well-defined groups according to modification of consonants in each of them in comparison with parent speech:

l Centum (Latin) - Hellenic, Italic, Germanic, Celtic

l Satem (Avestan) - Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Albanian

Grimm’ s Law

l In 1822 Jacob Grimm following suggestion of Rasmus Rask, Danish philologist, formulated an explanation of systematic correspondences between certain consonants in the Germanic languages. The pronunciation of Proto-Germanic had undergone a series of startling but highly regular changes. One of the most famous of these is the First Germanic Consonant Shift, otherwise known as Grimm’s Law. The cause of sound shift (occurring as far as 5th century B.C.) is unknown, but most often attributed to contact with non-German population. The contact could have resulted from migration of German tribes or from penetration of a foreign population into Germanic territory. Whatever its cause, the Germanic sound shift is the most distinctive feature marking off the Germanic languages from the languages to which they are related.

l Some Grimm’s Law changes

l (IE (and Latin) /p t k/ → > Germanic /f θ h/ Latin English l pater father l piscis fish l ped- foot l tres three l tenuis thin l cornu horn l cord- heart l collis hill   IE (and Latin) /b d g/ > Germanic /p t k/     l decem ten l dent- tooth l duo two l granum corn l genu knee (whose /k/ used to be pronounced) l gelidus cold  

 

l In 1875 Karl Verner proved that when the Indo-European accent was not on the vowel immediately preceding, such voiceless fricatives became voiced in Germanic.

Germanic Legacy of English

Ø English belongs to the Germanic family of languages, whose other members include

High German, Low German, Dutch, Faroese, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish,

Icelandic, as well as the oldest attested but now extinct Germanic language, Gothic.

l Brief History of English

PRE - Old English period

l English was introduced into the island in 5th A.D.

l 50000 - 250000 people inhabited the area then.

l The first people in England about whose language we have evidence were Celts.

l The native Celts were civilized, law-abiding, accustomed to administration, government and police, central heating, running water. The conveniences appeared in London again 1500 years later.

Celtic impact on English

l The Celts, those who did not assimilate to Germanic ways, moved west and south into Cornwall and Wales; Scotland with its hills, wild terrain, and rain remained untamed by both Roman and Saxon. The languages of the Celts survive today in the forms of Irish (the preferred designation today for what still is often called Gaelic), Welsh, and Scots Gaelic.

 

l In the country inns of a small corner in Northern Germany connecting Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark one might hear the phrases like ‘veather ist cold ’ or ‘ what ist de clock?’ which make sense. Prof. Menke states that they are very close to the language people spoke in England 1000 years ago.

 

The Roman Conquest

l In the summer of 55 B.C. Caesar having completed the conquest of Gaul, planned the an invasion of England. Celts’ resistance was spirited, he exacted tribute from them and returned to Gaul. Since then Roman legions did not trouble England for nearly 100 years.

l In 43 A.D. the Emperor Claudius attacked the island with the knowledge of Caesar’s experience. Romans progressed northwards but never penetrated into the mountains of Wales and Scotland. The Celts had a number of uprisings.

l Under the Governor Agricola (AD 78-85) they erected stone northern frontier. The district to the south of the stone wall stretching across England was under Roman control for 300 years.

Romanization of England

l Numerous inscriptions found in Latin do not indicate a widespread use of Latin by native population. Romans did not replace the Celtic language with Latin as they did in Gaul. Latin was restricted to upper classes and was familiar to residents of towns. But Latin was not sufficiently widespread to survive as Celtic survived Germanic invasions.

l Borrowing from Latin continued during the Old English period, but their nature changed as there were lots of religious terms. Earlier the words entered English via oral speech, later via writing.

l 597 – The Roman Cristinizing of England – first contact with Roman civilization and considerable increase of vocabulary.

Latin words – c.450 c.650 Old English Modern English Latin

l Forca fork furca

l Pere pear pirum

l Segn sign signum

l Torr tower turris

 

Latin words – c.650- 1100 Old English Modern English Latin

l Alter altar altar

l Cucumer cucumber cucumer

l Diacon deacon diaconus

l Mamma breast mamma

l Orgel organ organum

l Philosoph philosopher philosophus

l Sabbat sabbath sabbatum

l Scol school scola

QUIZ: 12 –Latin? 12- Germanic?

Divide the words given below in line with their origin:

Belt, bin, cook, craft, cup, day, earth, good, god, gold, home, light, pan, pin, post, pot, red, sack, sock, stop, sun, wall, wife, work

l Latin in England probably declined after 410 when Roman legions were officially withdrawn from the island.

 

The Scandinavian invasions. Vikings

 

l The Scandinavian invasions resulted into considerable mixture of 2 nations and 2 languages

Scandinavian impact

l In Yorkshire & North Lincolnshire 60% of the names recorded in Middle English sources are of Scandinavian origin: -by in Old Norse ‘town’ – Burnby, Westerby, -thorpe ‘village’ – Althorp, Milthorpe…

 

l The everyday flavor of the Scandinavian loans can be seen in the two dozen words which survived into modern Standard English: anger, awkward, bond, cake, crooked, dirt, egg, fog, freckle, get, kid, leg, lurk, meek, muggy, neck, seem, skill, skirt, smile, window

 

 

Some words changed their meaning coming from the same source.

Doublets:

l Craft & skill,

l Wish & want

l Skirt VS shirt

l Stick VS stitch

l Wake VS watch

l Break VS breach

 

l Scandinavian impact on vovabulary

l Sky, skin, skill, skirt, scrape, scrub, scream

l husband

l get, give, gild, leg

l take, lift, trust, crawl, dazzle

l they, them, their

 

l Place-names: Derby, Rugby

 

Old English: [sk] sc →/∫/ →sh

l In very early Old English, the consonant sequence /sk/ changed into the single sound /∫/ we spell <sh> today. So, for example, Old English fisc had once been pronounced /fisk/ but by the time of King Alfred it was pronounced in a similar manner to the modern pronunciation. As a result of this change, no native English word ever contains the sequence /sk/ – with a couple of exceptions like ask and tusk, which have complicated histories.

Old English – Old Norse

l But Old Norse retained /sk/: most everyday words in English beginning with this sequence come from Old Norse, including sky, skin, skid, scales (for weighing), skip, skittish, scant, skittle, skulk, skull, scare, scathe, scoff, scold, scorch, score, scrap, scream and scrape.

l Interestingly, native English shirt and Scandinavian skirt are the same word in origin. We can assume, I think, that the word meant ‘large garment worn close to the skin’; over time – and perhaps through developments in fashion (and greater affluence) – the English form came to be associated with a garment covering the torso, while the Norse word now refers to a garment covering the upper legs.

l Also from Old Norse is leg. The Old English word was sceanca, which has become our word shank, remembered now largely in the nickname of Edward I of England, called Langshanks because of his long legs. But shank has now become specialised to denoting the lower part of the leg and to certain metaphorical uses, and the Old Norse word has taken over as the ordinary anatomical term.

l Scandinavian they, them, their replaced Old English inflected forms (hi, hie, hira, heora, heom). Pronouns do not change very often in the history of a language, and to see one set of forms replaced by another is noteworthy. It took 300 years for the substitution to work through the language.

 

Germanic invasion

OLD ENGLISH

l The beginnings of English can be traced back to 449, when two German leaders, Hengist and Horsa, helping their Celtic ally brought their tribes to the Isles.

l Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

l Bede in Ecclesiastical History of the English People: The Jutes, Saxons, Angles invaded the island after 449. Angles occupied the eastern coast and in 547 established the Anglian kingdom

l When the invaders arrived in England, they did not bring with them three ‘pure’ Germanic dialects – Anglian, Saxon, Jutish – but a whole range of spoken varieties, displaying different kinds of mutual influence. They had a common oral literary heritage and a common set of religious beliefs, probably the dialects were mutually comprehensible, for the most part, with some difficulty in pronunciation and vocabulary.

l Anglo-Saxons were relatively uncultured, they were pagan and preserved the names of their gods for weekdays: Tiw, Woden, Thor, Woden ‘s wife –Frig → Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Saturday, Sunday and Monday take their names from Saturn, the Sun and the Moon.

l West Saxon Kings were able to maintain their claim to be the kings of all the English, under Alfred (871-889). Wessex attained a high degree of prosperity though the formation could be hardly called a united kingdom.

l Why England, not Saxonland, Saxland? Latin writers used the words Saxones and Saxonia referring to all Germanic tribes. But soon Angli / Anglia appeared with reference to all West Germanic tribes. Angli Saxones to mean English Saxons (Britain, since the 8th century) opposed the Old Saxons (of the Continent).

l The name English is older than England. Englisc is used to define the language <<< derived from OE. Engle (Angles)

l AEthelbert, king of Kent, is styled as rex Anglorum by Pope Gregory in 601. Possibly a desire to avoid confusion with Saxons and predominance of early Anglian kingdoms were predominant in usage.

l The land and the people are called Angelcynn (Angle-kin or race of Angles). From about 1000 Englaland (the land of Angles) begins to appear in the texts.

l The spelling England no longer represents the pronunciation of the word. Under the influence of nasal –ng the e has undergone the regular change to i. The spelling Ingland occurs in Middle English and the vowel is acurately represented in Spanish Inglaterra and Italian Inghilterra.

l Old English dialects: Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, Kentish. West Saxon is represented in texts of the period. Nearly all Old English literature survived in manuscripts written in that area. With the ascendancy of West-Saxon kingdom and due to abundance of texts West –Saxon dialect was becoming a literary standard – the progress was interrupted by the Norman conquest. When standard English began to arise in the LATE Middle English period it was on the basis of another dialect – that of the East Midlands.

 

l Adoption of the strong stress accent on the first root syllable what is responsible for the progressive decay of inflections. English did not experience modification of consonants known as The Second or High German sound-shift.

 

 

Characteristics of Old English.

In general the differences between Old and Modern English concern spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar.

l A page of Old English is less familiar to our contemporaries than a page of French or Italian as some letters are not a part of current alphabet. 300000 Frisians in the north of Holland whose language has been slightly altered can read Beowulf at sight, as Charlton Laird, linguistic historian claims.

l Old English was much simpler and more reliable as every letter was distinctively related to a single sound. Long vowels of Old English have undergone considerable changes:

Old English Modern English

stān - stone

hālig - holy

gān - go

hlāf - loaf

cū - cow

hū - how

Other vowels have changed considerably as well: fōt - foot, fŷr - fire, riht - right.

 

l Besides these genuine changes in pronunciation there are words incomprehensible to our contemporaries due to changes in spelling:

scēap - sheep nacod – naked

spræc - speech benc - bench

sceotan – shoot cynn – kin

Considerable changes in pronunciation resulted into growing lack of correlation betweem spelling and pronunciation.

The Chaos by Gerald Nolst Trenité
800 worst irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation

Shoes, goes, does

Real, zeal

Marriage, foliage, mirage, age

War, far

Done, lone, gone, none, tone

Put, nut

Maria, malaria

 

Old English Vocabulary

l The Vocabulary of Old English is almost purely Germanic. A large part of the vocabulary has disappeared from the language as a result of the Norman Conquest. 85% of 30.000 Old English words died out under impact of Danes and Normans.

l 4500 Old English words survived making 1% of Oxford English Dictionary including fundamental ones known as semantic primitives: man, wife, child, brother, sister, live, fight, love, drink, eat, sleep, house etc. including most function words – in, for, but, and, at, to, on

l Old English words that survived are frequently used and denote fundamental concepts:

mann - man, wīf - wife

cild - child, hūs- house

lēaf- leaf,

gōd - good, strang - strong,

libban –live, etan -eat

l Despite its complexity Old English is not remote from current English:

scip→ship, bricg → bridge have not altered within 1000 years.

l If lexical resources are limited any language develops flexibility in bending old words to new uses and developing derivation. For example, the word mōd (mental state) meant also heart, spirit, mind.

mōdig (spirited, bold),

mōdiglīce (boldy, proudly)

mōdignes (pride)

mōdigin (to rage)

mōdlufu - affection

mōdcaru - sorrow

mōdlēof - beloved etc.

l Compounds which are immensely popular and numerous in Modern English were known in Old English, for instance:

fōtādl (gout) foot disease

ealohūs ale house

dægred (dawn) day+red

 

l Many words in Old-English were highly motivated:

lustfullic ‘pleasure-full’ joyful

god-spellere ‘good-message-er’ evangelist

boc-cræftig ‘book-crafty’ learned, erudite

tungol-witega ‘star-knower’ astrologer

heah-fæder ‘high-father’ patriarch

leornung-cniht ‘learning-boy’ disciple, apprentice

ingethanc ‘in-thought’ conscience

oferlufu ‘over-love’ adulation

hat-heort ‘hot-hearted’ passionate

treowyrhta ‘wood-wright’ carpenter

Cypmann ‘purchase-man’ merchant

 

l Derivation as a type of word-formation was practiced in Old English as well:

cyning-dom, earldom, cildhād. Prefixes un-, under-, a-, be-, mis-, ofer-, on-, out - were already known in OE.

 

GRAMMAR OF OLD ENGLISH

l Grammar of Old English was quite complicated with declension of Nouns and Adjectives and declension of Verbs.

l The Noun:

N. gief-u (gift) gief-a

G. gief-e gief-a

D. gief-e gief-um

A. gief-e gief-a

l The Adjective had strong and weak declension.

Singular Plural

N. Gōd gōd-e

G. gōd-es gōd-ra

D. gōd-um gōd-um

A. gōd-e gōd-e

(Strong Declension, Masculine)

The Adjective Such complexity was unnecessary as English has demonstrated by getting along without it.

The Definite Article

Like German of today, Old English had a fully inflected definite article.

 

The Noun. Gender

l Gender in Old English was quite illogical: wīf (wife), bearn (son, child), mægden (girl) which are expected to be masculine or feminine, are neuter in fact. Wīfmann (woman) is masculine because the 2nd component is masculine.

The Verb

l The inflection of the verb is much simpler than of I-E Verbs. Comparison of Old English and Latin and Greek proves that Old English lost lots of its inflections.

l In Present English word order controls everything: SVO the man saw the woman

In Old English there were 5 other ways

SOV the man the woman saw

OSV the woman the man saw

OVS the woman saw the man

VOS saw the woman the man

VSO saw the man the woman

 

 

Metaphor in Old English

l Human body is described as a banhus or bancofa ‘bone-house’, ‘bone-chamber’,

l a sword as a beadoleoma ‘battle-light’,

l thunder as wolcna sweg ‘sound of clouds’;

l the eye as a heafodgrim ‘head-gem’

 

l In Beowulf alone as Otto Jespersen claimed there are 36 words for hero, 12 for battle, 11 for ship - more than exist today. In Beowulf we find phonological structuring, rhyming, rhythmical patterns.

 

The Norman Conquest, the subjection of English, 1066-1200

 

l Battle of Hastings 1066, William the Conqueror

l 1066 Norman Conquest made English the language of lower classes as Nobles used mainly French

l The Normans were Frenchmen descended from Nordic invaders who had snatched control of pieces of the French coast during the Viking era, much as their cousins had done in England. In 912 the Northmen gained by right of treaty with the king of France the part of France known still today as Normandy. Normans threw themselves into absorbing French culture, military know-how, cuisine, law, and – most importantly for the future history of English – the French language. By the eve of the Norman Conquest Normans were French through and through.

l Coronation of William the Great in London. Introduction of new nobility (old English nobility died at Hastings). In 1072 only one of 12 earls was an Englishman, he was executed 4 years later. All positions in the state were held by Normans or foreigners of high blood.

l The pressure on the French to learn English was much greater. Baronial staff would have to learn English in order to mediate between their lords and local communities. French-speaking clergy found it essential to acquire English to carry out their mission. English survived in monasteries. Considerable number of bilinguals. There are facts of mutual respect and intermarriage between 2 peoples: whatever the difficulties in communication with the spouses the children grew bilingual. Making English the language of uneducated people the Norman conquest made it easier for grammatical changes to go forward unchecked. Thanks to proliferation of English dialects during the Norman conquest mutual understanding of people in different areas of England became possible.

 

Reestablishment of English

 

l The situation changed after 1200. A feeling of rivalry developed between the 2 countries and finally anti-foreign movement resulted into the Hundred Years’ War.

l During two centuries after Norman Conquest French was necessary for upper classes, in the 13th and 14th centuries its maintenance became quite artificial. The spread of English among upper classes was making steady progress.

l The tendency to speak English was becoming stronger even in such conservative institutions as church and university. The 14th century Oxford and Cambridge needed students to construe and translate in both English and French

l The fact which helped English to recover its former prestige was the rise of substantial middle class, as well as of two other important groups – craftsmen and merchants.

l The last step that the English language had to make its gradual ascent was its employment in school. It had to meet the competition with Latin and French.

 

MIDDLE ENGLISH. Linguistic characteristics

Fast and considerable changes in grammar and vocabulary.

Decay of inflectional endings.

Losses among strong verbs

Strong Verbs become weak

Loss of grammatical gender

 

 

l Of the 10.000 words adapted from Norman French, ¾ are still in use: justice, jury, damage, prison, marriage, sovereign, parliament, prince, viscount, baron etc. But king & queen are of Germanic origin.

The Norman flood brought us

l picture, question, treasure, mercy, suspense,

l reception, immediate, pure, crime, subtle, exempt, suffice, mirror, music, defend,

l control, journal, multiply, journey, region, country, office and countless others.

 

l Practically all of English words beginning with /v/ are of Norman French origin:

virtue, vanity, vowel, virgin, vassal, vault, vary, value, vacant, vanquish, vermin and very.

Loans from Norman French

l Native English words never contain the digraph <oi>, and almost all words containing it come from Norman French: oil, coin, boil, join, point, poison, soil, cloy, toil, loyal, royal, joy, poise, foil, destroy, alloy, ointment and others.

l Norman French contributed practically the entire traditional vocabulary of linguistics: language, sentence, question, noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, tense, case, participle, infinitive, subject, object and many more.

l In fact, even such everyday Old English words as andwlita, ea, weald and berg disappeared from the language, replaced by their French equivalents face,river, forest and mountain. Old English dal was reduced to a regionalism, dale, and the normal word became valley.

 

 

Native English legacy in Middle English

 

l Personal pronouns, grammatical words, number names, most body-part names, most kinship terms, names of basic materials, most names of natural phenomena and of geographical features, everyday verbs and adjectives – all are native English:

me, you, and, the, with, to, in, not, two, seven, head, heart, arm, foot, man, woman, child, father, mother, daughter, stone, wood, iron, gold, sun, moon, star, wind, rain, snow, tree, road, path, stream, ford, bridge, come, go, think, believe, speak, wonder, live, laugh, stink, red, black, old, young, new, little and short.

l By the end of the Middle English period, the Germanic element in the English vocabulary had been firmly put in the shade by a Romance and Italian lexical invasion of unprecedented proportions.

 

French Influence on Middle English Vocabulary

l The peak of borrowing was the last quarter of the 14th century, when over 2.500 French words are identified.

l Governmental and Administrative words: c rown, state, empire, reign, royal, authority, majesty, tyrant, oppress, assembly, tax, revenue

l Ecclesiastical words: religion, theology, baptism, sermon, passion, clergy, pastor, hermit etc.

l Law: arrest, blame, convict, legacy, executor, evidence, fine, prison, etc.

l Army and Navy: army, navy, battle, combat, siege, ambush, retreat, banner, defend etc.

l Fashion, Social life, Meals: c ollar, gown, robe, garment, lace, blue, brown, scarlet, jewel, ivory, diamond, sapphire, pearl, amethyst, topaz, oyster, salad, olives, toast, biscuit, grape, orange, pastry, tart, jelly

l

 

 

l Synonyms at Three Levels due to mixture of Latin, French and native elements:

(English – French- Latin)

Lexical alternatives Germanic French Latin

 

l Climb ascend

l Fast firm secure

l Fire flame conflagration

l House mansion

l Kingly royal regal

 

Word-formation in Middle English:

l In Middle English there have been lots of Adj:-ful was used to generate adjectives from nouns: full of +N = beautiful, graceful, merciful;

l The French -able suffix combined with English roots to produce findable, speakable, makeable, unknowable.In discovering used as a noun we have a French prefix and an English suffix sandwiching a French word.

l French introduced Latin-derived suffixes de-,dis- en, ex-, pre-, pro-, -able, -ence, -ant, ity, -ment, -tion (spelt as -cion).

 

Dialects in Middle English:

Northern, East Midland, West Midland, Southern

l Prof. Barber noticed “Early Middle English texts give the impression of a chaos of dialects, without any common conventions in pronunciation or spelling, and wide divergence in grammar and vocabulary”

Rise of Standard English. East Midland type of English, particularly dialect of its metropolis became the basis of Standard English:

1) It was less conservative than the Southern dialect and less radical than Northern dialect.

2) The East Midland district was the largest and the most populated dialect area

3) The presence of Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the area

4) The importance of London as the capital of England.

Middle English: Trilingualism VS Standard English

 

By the 16th century, trilingualism would have been restricted to a specialised, chiefly legal elite. But earlier educated English people were naturally trilingual:

l English was their mother tongue,

l Latin was the required language of church, was necessary in political-legal matters.

l French was necessary for administrative matters and to be fashionable throughout Western European society.

As the Middle English progressed,

l legal English,

l philosophical English,

l medical English,

l literary English,

l parliamentary English and other varieties started to appear.

 

The Renaissance1500-1650

 

Royal Chancery Standard

l In the early 1400s, young men who had been educated first in English rather than French began to take their places within the royal administration. By 1420–30, these men were now in positions of considerable authority. In using a written English derived from the practices of a limited number of London schools, a new, highly influential, ‘house style’ began to spread in the administration. This house style – dubbed Chancery Standard after the Royal Chancery by scholars – was quickly exported outside government.

 

Shakespeare coined 2000 words and gave us countless phrases:

l to be or not to be,

l to be cruel to be kind,

l flesh and blood,

l cold comfort,

l remembrance of things past,

l the sound and the fury,

l vanish into thin air,

l in my mind’s eye etc…

Semantic changes in English:

Shakespearean English VS Current English

foolish nice

a cold in the head rheumatism

The emergence of linguistic lexicon 1500-1700

l Alphabet (1580) gave rise to alphabetarian, alphabetic, alphabetically. Linguist (skilled in the usage of languages)→ a student of languages; linguacity, linguacious, linguister, none of the derivatives survived

 

l Colon

l Comma

l Dissonance

l Lexicon

l Parenthesis

l Philological

l Pronoun

l Rhetoricise

l Substantive

l trope

The 18th century

l Development of Progressive Verb Forms. In Shakespearean times one would ask ‘What do you read?’ not ‘What are you reading’. ‘The bridge is being built’ was unknown.

The 17th- 18th century English Dictionaries

l From the 17th century on, dictionaries of English began to be written, and the decisions of the lexicographers (dictionary-writers) helped to provide some further stabilisation. Even so, by the time of American independence in 1783, English spelling was still not fully fixed: there were still a number of words with multiple spellings.

 

 


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