From Middle to Early Modern English:

 

 

Middle English:

 

Chaucer (1400, handwritten manuscript)

 

William Caxton (1490, early printed text)

 

 

Early Modern English:

 

King James Bible (1611, Preface, Genesis 1)

 

William Shakespeare (First Folio, 1623)

Lear Hamlet

 

BUT…archaic

 

Everything had settled down pretty good

 

Strong Standardized Dialect

 

London

 

Nationalism

 

Church of England (1534)

 

 

Orthography: settling down

 

based heavily on Chancery and Printing (Caxton)

and Chaucer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Vowel Shift

 

 

An unconditioned sound change where all long vowels from Middle English shift one position

 

 

 

All the long vowels in Middle English moved up a position

/i/ and /u/ (already at the top, diphthongize!

 

 

 

 

Another way:

 

 

 

With sound effects!

 

 

The short vowels did not shift in the same way, thus we lose the old system of long vs. short vowels:

 

one based on quantity, now based on quality

 

(i.e., they’re really different sounds)

 

                        god vs good

 

                        kit vs kite

 

 

Consonant Changes:

 

           

loss of [x] and [ç] > unpronounced ‘gh’

 

with compensatory lengthening of preceding vowel

light, right, knight, night

 

 

            Dialect variant of [x] was [f]

hence: rough, enough, draught, trough

 

 

            unetymological / artificial respelling: 

 

‘gh’: delight (< ME delit < OF. delit)

haughty (< Fr haut)

 

 

 

            Consonant clusters totally reduced

(pronunciation changes, but not spelling!)

 

Loss of /w/ before /r/

 

write, wrong

 

 

Loss of /g/ and /k/ before /n/

 

gnaw, gnash, gnarl

knot, knock, knit

 

Loss of /b/ after /m/

 

dumb, plumb

 

AND:

 

unetymological insertion of ‘b’s:

 

limb, thumb, crumb, numb

 

 

 

in unstressed syllables, /in/ was standard for ‘ing’

 

            later enforced spelling pronunciation

 

                        brewing / ruin

                        picking / chicken

                        smelling / dwell in

 

 

 

Palatalization:

 

/t + j/ > /č/ :    posture, digestion, Christian

/d + j/ > /j’/ :   individual, grandeur, residual

/s + j/ > /š/ :    passion, occasion, mission

/z + j/ > /ž/ :    derision, leisure

 

ž is a new phoneme for English

 

 

GHOTI

            laugh, women, nation

 

 

 

 

 

RESPELLINGS!

            a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing

 

Investigations into the histories of words, and increased knowledge of Classical Greek and Latin leads to all sorts of nonsense

 

Unetymological spellings:

a super fancy type of hypercorrection?

 

Restoring ‘H’ where justified and not (humor < L umor)

imposing Latin spelling on French words

later spelling pronunciations based on reformed spellings

they’re not even trying to help, they’re just making it worse!

heir vs. heritage

herb vs. herb

 

TH reinserted to Greek words for THETA:

trone > throne

teme > theme (why not thema?)

 

PH without spelling pronunciation (phantom)

some fancifications : nephew, Ralph (< OE nefa, Rolf)

 

 

CH for CHI

schedula > sedula > schedule > sk- / sh-

 

 

 

Changes in Nominal Inflectional forms

 

His –genitive

misanalysis of  analogical –es genitive ending as is reduced form of “his”

                        Bill his book = Bill’s book

                                    hyper-corrected, as if it were real

This is the true origin of the ‘s, as the genitive was construed as a contraction

 

 

Group Genitive:

            Archbishop of York’s pencil

                        (Archbishop’s pencil of York)

            This man I know’s wife

cf. group plurals: “attorneys general”

 

Pronouns

Some differences in use of demonstratives and articles

(but all their examples are from Shakespeare? Poetry)

Personal Pronouns:

Starting to look okay

my and mine, based on presence of following vowel

(like a and an)

then indiscriminately

then, on usage: my comes before a noun, mine comes after

 

Second person honorifics

“polite” plural: thou vs. you

never as strict as other languages, though can be enlightening

HAMLET handout

accelerates the loss of “thou” as stigmatized?

(retention among Quakers)

Verb agreement: “you was”?

Cases:

Ye vs. You: indiscriminate, ultimately

King James maintains distinction

Shakespeare doesn’t pay attention

 

 

            After AND or BUT, tend to use NOM

                        “between you and I”

                        “Here’s none but thee and I”

                                    in modern English this is hypercorrection: true?

            After as or than, expect objective: “as tall as me”

                        Mod English: analyzed as elliptical, but is it true?

            Objective as subject complement

                        It is me!          

 

 

VERBS

Some weak become strong:

                        hide/hid, spit/spat, dig/dug, stick/stuck, (sneak/snuck)

 

 

Loss of verb inflections

already archaic in Shakespeare / KJB

            2nd: es, -st (is lost with thou)

            3rd: eth, ES