Renaissance and Early Modern English

Early Modern English (1500-1700)

• Early Modern English spans the period from 1500 to 1700.
• Key events like the introduction of the printing press in 1476 by Caxton made texts available to more people and the 1492 arrival of Columbus to the 'New World'.
• By 1500, Modern English speakers could generally understand Early Modern English without translation.
• The Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural movement initially inspired by the desire to revive Greek and Latin culture, learning, and indicated by its name which meant 'rebirth'.
• The period fostered scientific and scholarly inquiry and a humanistic worldview.
• It started at different times in Europe, with England a little before 1500.
• The Renaissance saw freedom in word creation and borrowing, making English more analytic.
• The Great Vowel Shift was largely complete by 1700, leading to relatively uniform spelling.
• However, the exact date for the completion of this period, 1500 or 1700, is somewhat disputed.

Printing, Literacy, & Texts

• A compositor selected and arranged letters to create pages.
• Following, ink was rolled over the frame before putting a sheet of paper against the letters.
• Printed pages were used for pamphlets, while books printed more than one page per sheet.
• Sets of sheets called quires were folded and bound to make books.
• A quarto involved printing four pages on each side before folding.
• Literacy in the 16th century most likely increased due to the publishing of numerous titles.

Printing, Literacy, & Texts (continued)

• Numerous attempts were made to print English versions of the Bible.
• In 1229 the Synod of Toulouse made it illegal for commoners to read the Bible, thus prohibiting translation into French, German, and English.
• In the 1370s John Wycliff began a reform movement in the church which resulted in a completed translation of the Bible finished by 1382, but it was subsequently banned in England.
• After English gained importance and Henry VIII reduced the Pope's power, English Bibles were no longer viewed as dangerous.
• By 1539, Miles Coverdale's translation of Tyndale's Bible had been published in more than 20,000 copies and was later decreed to be a staple in all english churches.
• The King James Version, or KJV, appeared in 1611, drawing largely from Tyndale's New Testament.

Printing, Literacy, & Texts (continued)

• Important works, including Shakespeare's plays (1590-1616), Thomas More's Utopia (written in 1515), and translated works such as the Iliad and Odyssey (1565) were published during the Early Modern English period.
• The increasing literacy fostered by the printing press allowed more works in English to be written and disseminated.

EME Spelling & Sounds

• Early Modern English spelling varied more than Modern English spelling, but showed signs of moving towards a 'modern' form.
• Sounds changed continually.
• In a 1623 excerpt from Richard II, there was a "u" where modern English uses a "v", showing a difference in pronunciation.
• Word-final -e, like "Moate", "farre", "ransome", and "Farme", represented a distinct spelling pattern. Additional features like the double -II in words such as "royal", "shamefull", and "scandall" were typical.
• The letter [s] often took on an f-like appearance, and was spelled as such depending on its position in the word.
• Capital letters were used more frequently than in Middle English. Shakespeare capitalized nouns and sometimes adjectives.
• The Great Vowel Shift (GVS). This shift affected vowel pronunciations. Vowels shifted in pronunciation but did not change overnight.
• Vowels that were yet to be shifted were still prevalent, pronounced with an [e] where modern English contains [i] .
• Some sound changes of GVS were interrupted before completion. This is evident in that some words, such as "see" and "sea", are pronounced differently in Shakespearean English.
• The GVS happened in stages, with certain changes occurring by 1700.

EME Spelling & Sounds (continued)

• Some sounds began their shift as early as Middle English and continued.
• The 'r' sound became less prevalent in certain words like bass and ass, which were derived from words like bærs and arse respectively.
• The loss of the 'h' at the start of certain words, such as in hand, and before vowels resulted from French influence.
• Certain pronouns such as [o] and [ð] were pronounced in a similar fashion to [t] and [d], respectively.

EME Morphology

• Early Modern English saw greater loss of inflection and an increase in prepositions and auxiliaries, a shift towards analytic characteristics.
• The loss of inflections was slowed down by grammarians, editors, and teachers during the following centuries.
• Case (like accusative) was merging with the dative.
• The second person pronouns thou/thee were used in similar situations. The plural nominative pronoun Ye(e) progressively disappeared which caused the shift from "thou" to "you"
• The neuter genitive (its) was a characteristic stylistic innovation that developed similarly to "yours", "hers", and "ours".
• Reflexive pronouns such as himself/myself gradually emerged, though simpler equivalents like my/thy where initially separate before becoming a unit.

EME Morphology (continued)

• Loss of case, pronouns like "ye," and the third-person singular, were becoming less frequent in Early Modern English. In certain circumstances, the pronoun "ye" was preserved, but generally, the form "you" had greater use.
• Various instances where pronouns did not adhere to existing standard use were evident in quoted Shakespeare dialogue.
• Verbal endings, such as the distinctive second-person singular -st ending and the third person singular -th ending where losing ground in relation to the -s.
• Modal auxiliaries and infinitive complements were replacing Old and Middle English subjunctive verb forms.

EME Morphology (continued)

• Comparative and superlative adjectives frequently had double forms (ex. most unkindest).
• Adverbs often didn't end in -ly.

EME Syntax

• The transformation of English to an analytic language continued.
• Word-order became increasingly fixed.
• Grammatical words such as auxiliaries were introduced.
• Sentences were more complex, and embedded more often.
• The Subject-Object-Verb order was frequent but not universal.
• Yes/No questions still mostly preserved the original construction, using main verbs.
• Auxiliaries (such as Do) were introduced/expanded but were simpler in sequence compared to Modern English.
• The tense, mood, and aspect system was less developed compared to Modern English— although it was already very similar.
• Contractions of auxiliaries were noticeable from Middle English onwards
• The use of single negation ("not," "nothing," "neither") had become more common than earlier uses of double negation in Early Modern English.
• Preposition stranding was common, where the preposition occurs after its object in a question.
• Punctuation and capitalization were less common and often arbitrary, although this began to change in the 17th century.

EME Lexicon

• English increasingly borrowed words from Latin and Greek, mainly due to the expanding influence of the Renaissance.
• The "inhorn" debate focused on the use of Latinate or more complex words in a vocabulary.
• English became a standard language and the use of English gained popularity as a respectable medium for writing or scholarship and over 27,000 new words.
• Neologisms were introduced through various processes such as coining - which included combining existing words to create new ones (ex. lunetic, foresayer)
• Latin's influence on English was largely limited to vocabulary, not grammar. Latin's grammatical systems were not adopted.
• New words were frequently criticized , but this criticism subsided later in the 16th century. This period saw a rise in the use of slang or specialized jargon, often seen in various professions or trades along with a fear of the poor as the impoverished classes rose.
• Although some notable differences existed between Early Modern and Modern English spelling, the fundamental English spelling system was mostly established and the concerns shifted largely to standardization.

EME Lexicon (continued)

• Words were borrowed for practical or stylistic purposes.
• New words (often Latin/Greek derived) increased significantly by 1660.
• The "inhorn debate" emphasized whether English should borrow Latin words or keep primarily vernacular words. This influence was significant but did not lead to major grammatical change.
• Various foreign words entered English vocabulary, including many words stemming from French, Italian, and Spanish and borrowed from various parts of the world via Portuguese.
• Shakespeare was frequently praised for introducing new words and expressions with an elevated register.
• Malapropisms, the inappropriate use of long or complicated words, were sometimes used to characterize a person or to evoke a sense of heightened rhetoric or to mock certain characters.

Attitudes towards a standard

• Debates about vocabulary and spelling standardization were frequent before 1650, with attempts at establishing some standardization during the 1550s.
• Grammarians of the 16th century were less prescriptive than those in later centuries. Instead, grammars from this period focused on demonstrating usage and accounted for common usage rather than rigidly applying standardized rules to the Latin Grammar.
• As English grammar was no longer as heavily Latinate, the process of standardizing was somewhat in flux, with the need for an academy to formalize the processes of standardization still being debated.
• Word lists and dictionaries were made of foreign or difficult words and did not standardize Early Modern English spelling.
• Significant works regarding standardized spellings and dictionaries include those of John Hart, William Bullokar, and Richard Mulcaster.

Regional & Register Varieties

• Regional and register varieties, largely influenced by distinct dialects, often show up in different forms of vocabulary.
• Numerous specialized jargon dictionaries were published during the 17th century. These were used for specialized words within specific professions such as those involved in the seafaring industry.
• The concepts of jargon dictionaries and specialized vocabularies were used during the 17th century and beyond.
• The development of slang and cant occurred as the middle classes rose in influence and the differences between social classes were heightened.
• A concern regarding standardization of language use arose from the period in order to standardize the various forms of language used within a region.