The origins and development of the english language

Middle English had a number of plurals in –(e)n that have disappeared (eyen –

eyes). During the Middle English period, then, practically all nouns were

reduced to two forms, just as in Modern English – one with –s and one without

it- the s form for the plural and genitive singular and the form without ending

for other singular uses. English had come to depend on particles – prepositions

and conjunctions – and the word order to express grammatical relations that

has previously been expressed by inflections.

Personal pronouns. Only personal pronoun retained a considerable degree of

their complexity from Old English. They alone have preserved distinctive

subject and object case forms. The distinction between accusative and dative

had already disappeared in late Old English for the first and second person

pronouns. The dual number of the personal pronouns also disappeared in

Middle English.

The dialects of Middle English used different pronoun forms. For example, ik

was a Northern form corresponding to ich or I elsewhere. The nominative forms

they or thai derived from Scandinavian, prevailed in North and in Midlands. The

Old English third person masculine accusative hine survived into Middle English

only in the South; elsewhere the originally dative him took over the objective

function. The feminine accusative hi in the later 13° century was supplanted by

the originally dative hir(e) or her(e).

Demonstrative pronouns. Old English se, þæt, seo and plural þa, were

ultimately reduced to the, that. However, inflected forms derived from Old

English declensions continued to be used in some dialects until the 13°. The,

which at first replaced only the masculine nominative se, come to be used as

an invariable definite article. By the 13° century, the singular nominative-

accusative this was used for all singular functions, and new plural forms, thise

and these appeared. These developments have resulted in Modern English

that-those and this-these.

Interrogative and relative pronouns. The Old English masculine-feminine

interrogative pronoun hwa became in Middle English who, and the neuter form

hwæt became what. In Middle English who was used only as interrogative

pronoun. The most frequently used relative pronoun in Middle English is

indeclinable that.

Comparative and superlative adjectives. In general leveling of unstressed

vowels to e, the Old English comparative ending –ra became –re, later –er, and

the superlative suffixes –ost and –est fell together in –est.

Verbs. Verbs continued the Germanic distinction of strong and weak, as they

still do. Although the vowel of endings were levelled, the gradation distinction

expressed in the root vowels of the stron verbs were preserved. The tendency

to use exclusively one or the other of the preterit vowel grades (singular or

plural) had begun: the vowel of the older plural might be used in the singular

and vice versa. The seven class of strong verbs survived. As unstressed vowels

fell together, some of the distinctions in personal endings disappeared, with a

resulting simplification in verb conjugation. The verbs “been” (to be) and

“doon” (to do), “willen” (to want, will) and “goon” (to go) remained irregular in

Middle English.

Participles. The ending of the present participle varied from dialect to dialect,

with ande in the North, ende or inge in the Midlands, and inde or inge in the

South. The -ing ending has prevailed in Modern English. Past participle might or

might not have the prexig –I or –y, from the Old English ge-. It was lost in many

parts of England, but frequently occurred in the speech of London as reflected

in the writings of Chaucer.

Word order. Although all possible variations in the order of subject, verb and

complement occur in Middle English literature, as they did in Old English

Literature, much of that literature is verse, in which even today variations of

normal word order may occur. The prose of Middle English period has the same

word order as Modern English period. Sometimes a pronoun as object might

precede the verb. In subordinate clauses, nouns used as objects might also

precede verbs. In impersonal constructions the object regularly preceded the

verb.

The early Modern English period

The early Modern period was transformative for both England and the

language. The 16° to the 18° centuries were a time of revolutionary

development, opening the way for English to become a world language. The

following events during the early Modern English period significantly influenced

the development of English language:

- 1524 The Act of supremacy established Henry VIII as Supreme Head of

the Church of E.

- The Book of Common Prayer was adopted and became an influence on

English literary stile

- 1558 At the age, Elisabeth I became queen of England and, as a women

with a Renaissance education, began a 45 year reign that promoted

literature, science, exploration etc.

- 1577-80 Sir Francis Drake circumnavigate the globe, the first English man

to do so.

- 1590-1611 William Shakespeare wrote the bulk of his plays, from Henry

VI to The Tempest.

- 1600 The East Indian Company promoted trade with Asia.

- 1604 Robert Cawdrey published the first English dictionary, A Table

Alphabeticall.

- 1607 Jamesttown, Virginia was established the first permanent English

settlement in Amer.

- 1660 The Royal society was founded as the first organization devoted to

the promotion of scientific Knowledge and Research.

- 1688 The Glorious Revolution during which Parliament invited William of

Orange and his wife Mary to assume the English throne.

- 1702 The fist English newspaper was published in London

- 1719 Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, sometimes identified as

the first modern novel in English.

- 1755 Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of English Language.

- 1755-83 The American Revolution resulted in the foundation of the first

indepent nation of English speakers outside the British Isles.

The transition from Middle to Modern English.

Vocabulary. The word stock of English was expanded greatly during the early

Modern period in three ways. As literacy increased, a conscious need was felt

to improve and amplify the vocabulary. As English speakers travelled abroad,

they encountered new things that they need new words to talk about. And as

they travelled, they met speakers of other languages from whom they

borrowed words.

During the Renaissance, an influx of Latin and Greek words was associated with

a vogue for ikhorn terms, so named from the fact that they were seldom

spoken but mainly written. Ikhorn terms: an obscure, affectedly or

ostentatiously erudite borrowing from another language, especially Latin or

Greek. Loanwords from classical literature, they deemed useless because they

required Latin and Greek knowledge to be understood.

The influence of the Classical languages has remained strong ever since.

French also continued to be a major source of loanwords into English, us it has

been from the time of Norman Conquest until today. In addition, Spanish and

Portuguese became significant sources for new words, especially as the result

of colonial expansion in Latin America. Many other languages contributed to

the English vocabulary throughout the period. Celtic and Scandinavian

continued their influence, but new impulses came from Italian and German,

including Yiddish. More far-flung (lontane) influences were from the languages

of Asia, Australia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia Minor and the Americas.

American colonists also changed the use of native English words and expoted

those changes back to England.

Innovation of pronunciation and conservation of spelling. The 15°

century marked a turning point in the internal history of English, especially its

pronunciation and spelling. In that period, we can observe the more important

phonological changes than ay other century before.

The Middle English (e: )of “feet” had been raised to (i:), but all such words were

written as if no change had taken place. Consequently, the phonological value

of many letters of the English Alphabet changed drastically. Learned men

preferred archaic spellings, and they created some by respelling words

etymologically.

The orthography of early Modern English. In few words, notably “the and

thee”, early printed books sometimes used “y” to represent the sounds usually

spelled “th”. This substitution was made because the letter þ was still much

used in English manuscripts, but the early printers for their type fonts from the

Continent, where the letter þ was not normal. So they substitutes for þ the

closest thing they found in the foreign fonts, namely y. Thus “the and thee”

were both sometimes printed “ye” (piccola). The plural pronoun meaning “you

all” was written “ye”. The abbreviation yt (piccola) stands for “that”.

The present use of “i” for a vowel and “j” for a consonant was not established

until the 17° century. In the King James Bible and the First Folio of Shakespeare,

i is used for both values.

It was similar with the curved and angular forms of “u” – that is u and v – they

too were originally used more or less indiscriminately for either vowel or

consonant. The matter was purely graphic: no question of pronunciation was

involved in the substitution.

The sound indicated by “h” had been lost in Late Latin. The influence of

Classical Latin had caused French scribes to restore the “h” in the spelling of

many words (habit, home) – though it was never pronounced. During the

Renaissance, h was inserted after “t” in a number of foreign words. The French

word is from Latin “thronus”, borrowed from the Greek, th was the normal

Roman transliteration of GreeK 0.

Other Renaissance respellings also affected changes in traditional

pronunciations. An example is “schedule”, originally cedule from Old French. Its

historically expected pronunciation would being with (s), but the sch- spelling, a

16°-century innovation, changed that. It was recommended the American

pronunciation with initial (sk), as if the word were a Greek loan.

Debt and doubt were etymological respellings of det and dout (both Middle

English from Old French), the b having been inserted because it was perceived

that those words were ultimately derivates of Latin debitum and dubitare.

Another such change has result from the insertion of l in “fault”, a spelling

suggested by vulgar Latin “fallita”: but the word continued to be pronounced

without l. Another and more important one is the change in the pronunciation

of the tense vowels that helps to demank Middle from Mordern English. This

change, the most salient of all phonological devel