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Early Modern English, an Introduction To 116544 english-EUP 10/11/2005 11:17 am Page 1 EDINBURGH TEXTBOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Early Modern English to An Introduction Series Editor: Heinz Giegerich This new textbook series provides introductions to the main areas of English Language study. Volumes cover aspects of the history and structure of the language such as: syntax, phonology, morphology, regional and social variation, Old English, Middle English and international Englishes. An Introduction to Early Modern English TERTTU NEVALAINEN An introduction to Early Modern English, this book helps students of English and linguistics to place the language of the period 1500–1700 in its historical context as a language with a common core but also as one which varies across time, regionally and socially, and according to register. The volume focuses on the structure of what contemporaries called the General Dialect – its spelling, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation – and on its dialectal origins. The book also discusses the language situation and linguistic anxieties in England at a time when Latin exerted a strong influence on the rising standard language. The volume includes: • The major changes in English from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century • Emphasis on long-term linguistic developments • Sources for the study of Early Modern English • Illustrations ranging from drama and personal letters to trials and early science TERTTU NEVALAINEN TERTTU • Exercises encouraging further exploration of the changing English language. Terttu Nevalainen is Professor of English Philology at the University of Helsinki, and has taught the history of English in Finland and in England. An Introduction to Early Modern English ISBN 0-7486-1524-5 Cover design & illustration: River Design, Edinburgh Terttu Nevalainen Edinburgh University Press Edinburgh 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF ISBN 0 7486 1524 5 www.eup.ed.ac.uk 9 780748 615247 An Introduction to Early Modern English Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language General Editor Heinz Giegerich, Professor of English Linguistics, University of Edinburgh Editorial Board Laurie Bauer (University of Wellington) Derek Britton (University of Edinburgh) Olga Fischer (University of Amsterdam) Norman Macleod (University of Edinburgh) Donka Minkova (UCLA) Katie Wales (University of Leeds) Anthony Warner (University of York) An Introduction to English Syntax Jim Miller An Introduction to English Phonology April McMahon An Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy An Introduction to International Varieties of English Laurie Bauer An Introduction to Middle English Jeremy Smith and Simon Horobin An Introduction to Old English Richard Hogg An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics Patrick Griffiths An Introduction to Early Modern English Terttu Nevalainen Edinburgh University Press © Terttu Nevalainen, 2006 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 10.5/12 Janson by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 1523 7 (hardback) ISBN 0 7486 1524 5 (paperback) The right of Terttu Nevalainen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents List of figures and tables viii To readers ix 1The Early Modern English period 1 1.1 Periods of English 1 1.2 Shakespeare – our contemporary? 4 1.3 Evolution and standardisation 7 1.4 Summary 9 Note 9 Exercises 10 Further reading 10 2 Sources for the study of Early Modern English 12 2.1 Range of evidence 12 2.2 Comments on varieties of English 13 2.3 Early grammars 16 2.4 Texts and genres 20 2.5 Corpus resources 23 2.6 Summary 26 Exercises 26 Further reading and study resources 27 3Towards a standard language 29 3.1 Middle English legacy 29 3.2 Fixing the form: spelling standardisation 31 3.3 Elaborating the functions: borrowing and codification 37 3.4 Summary 42 Exercises 42 Further reading 43 vi AN INTRODUCTION TO EARLY MODERN ENGLISH 4Old words and loan words 45 4.1 Continuity and change 45 4.2 Borrowing 50 4.3 Summary 56 Exercises 57 Further reading 58 5Word-formation and semantic change 59 5.1 Word-formation 59 5.2 Semantic change 65 5.3 Summary 70 Exercises 71 Further reading 71 6 Nouns and pronouns 73 6.1 Word classes 73 6.2 Nouns 74 6.3 Pronouns 77 6.4 Summary 86 Note 87 Exercises 87 Further reading 88 7Verbs, adjectives and adverbs 89 7.1 Verbs 89 7.2 Adjectives and adverbs 98 7.3 Summary 100 Note 101 Exercises 101 Further reading 102 8 Syntactic structures 103 8.1 Larger structures 103 8.2 Noun phrases 104 8.3 Verb phrases 107 8.4 Changing syntactic patterns 111 8.5 Summary 115 Notes 116 Exercises 116 Further reading 117 CONTENTS vii 9 Changing pronunciation 118 9.1 Surprising and confusing? 118 9.2 Some general features 119 9.3 Developments in the vowel system 120 9.4 Developments in the consonant system 126 9.5 Stress and prosody 129 9.6 Summary 131 Note 131 Exercises 131 Further reading 132 10 Language in the community 134 10.1 Widening perspectives 134 10.2 Printing and literacy 134 10.3 Social variation 137 10.4 Urbanisation and dialect levelling 140 10.5 Expansion of English 143 10.6 Summary 147 Exercises 148 Further reading 148 Appendices 1–2: Early Modern English texts 149 References 161 Index 171 List of figures and tables Figure 2.1 The dialects of Early Modern English according to Gil (1619) Figure 2.2 The Scholemaster by Roger Ascham (1570) Figure 3.1 Some consonant symbols proposed by John Hart (1570: Bij) Figure 4.1 Early Modern English loans from Latin and French Figure 8.1 Sentence structure Figure 10.1. Anglicisation of five Scots-English forms by date Table 6.1 Early Modern English personal pronouns Table 6.2 Early Modern English relativisers Table 7.1 Early Modern English verbs Table 10.1 Titles and social status in Tudor and Stuart England Table 10.2 Population growth, 1500–1700 viii To readers This book is designed for undergraduates in English, who probably all have some previous knowledge of Early Modern English through their familiarity with Shakespeare. The book may be used on a ten-week course focusing on English from 1500 to 1700 which introduces the lan- guage of the period in general. It will also be of interest to linguistics undergraduates studying the structural development of the English lan- guage. The organisation of the book loosely follows the other history of English volumes in the ETOTEL series. The order of presentation is cumulative. It starts by looking at the linguistic evidence available from the Early Modern period, and provides a short introduction to electronic collections of Early Modern English texts. Chapters on spelling and vocabulary follow. These areas of the language are easily accessible to most readers, and they were also of particular concern to speakers of Early Modern English. The next two chapters on morphology, nouns and verbs, feed into the discussion of syntax. Phonology comes last, after vocabulary and grammar, in order to minimise the amount of new infor- mation and allow reference to concepts relevant to pronunciation, such as native and borrowed lexis. The final chapter examines the socio- linguistics of Early Modern English: how it varied socially, and how it spread in the British Isles and was transported to North America. The reader is expected to have some basic linguistic terminology, but all the key terms are defined and illustrated as they appear. The chapters begin by placing the issues to be discussed in a wider context, and end with exercises based on the preceding text, texts in the Appendixes or other easily available sources such as The Oxford English Dictionary. Straightforward questions for review have also been included. All the exercises can be used in class, as essay topics or homework assignments. Many people have helped me in this textbook project. I would like to thank Heinz Giegerich for inviting me to embark on it in the first place, ix x AN INTRODUCTION TO EARLY MODERN ENGLISH and Sarah Edwards at Edinburgh University Press for her support and patience during the writing process. At an early stage Jeremy Smith kindly gave me access to the typescript of the Middle English volume, and later I was able to benefit from the other volumes published in the ETOTEL series. Over the years, my students of the History of English in Helsinki and Cambridge have provided me with feedback on many of the ideas and exercises included in this book. My warmest thanks go to Helena Raumolin-Brunberg and Matti Rissanen for their comments on various parts of the draft version, and to Derek Britton for his careful reading of the phonology chapter. I owe a special debt to Sylvia Adamson for reading through and commenting on the first complete draft of the volume. Rod McConchie and Mark Shackleton made the text more readable, and Reijo Aulanko and Samuli Kaislaniemi helped me with the refer- ences. Last but not least, my gratitude to the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English, funded by the Academy of Finland and the University of Helsinki, for providing me with both financial assistance and a busy but stimulating working environment. 1 The Early Modern English period Historical development proceeds not by stages but by overlaps. (Wrightson 2002: 24) 1.1 Periods of English The English language has been greatly transformed over the centuries. Three major periods are usually distinguished in its history: Old English (before c. 1100), Middle English (c. 1100–1500) and Modern English (after c.
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