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Week 11: Early Modern English, Continued
I FROM LAST WEEK
I.A The Great Vowel Shift, Whatever That Was
Around 1350, some people start pronouncing the word tide without the final <e>, so [thid].
Around 1450, no one pronounces the final <e> any more, but people are starting to pronounce the
vowel as if it's a diphthong: [thIjd]
Think back to the Eekspeak Game, only this time you’re a child born in London around 1450…
You use your genetically endowed ability to statistically model the speech you hear around you, and
you notice that about three quarters of the time, you hear [thid], otherwise sometimes [thIjd].
o How do you construct your abstract mental representation of this word?
Is it /tid/ or /tIjd/?
o Definitely /tid/, with a rule thrown in to realize the vowel as /Ij/ every once in a while.
If you're a child born in the same place in 1475, you hear [thid] roughly half the time, [thIjd] the other
half. What abstract mental representation do you construct? Flip a coin, and throw in a rule to get you
the other variant.
Now it's 1500, and you're hearing [thIjd] about 75% of the time. Your abstract mental representation
will be /tIjd/, with a rule thrown in to realize the vowel as /i/ every now and then.
By 1555, only old people say [thid]. The Great Vowel Shift has begun.
Over the next two centuries, the first part of that diphtong, /I/, gets lower and lower and then more
central, first /ε/ then /e/ then /æ/ then /Λ/
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 1 of 17
In language after language, vowel inventories tend to
remain symmetrical. If a phoneme shifts out of its
place in the inventory, a neighboring phoneme tends
to shift in to replace it, creating another gap which is
then filled by a third shift …
This view only makes sense from a distance of three hundred years and with decades of academic research.
To the people on the ground at the time, it would simply have seemed that there were many different
pronunciations in play. The major shifts start happening around the time that people are starting to think
and write about what a standard English should look and sound like, but this massive reorganization of the
English phoneme inventory mostly escapes their attention.
Where we do find clues:
• Books about pronunciation. See Hart’s 1569 Orthography below
• Rhyming patters. If we notice poets and songwriters consistently rhyming pairs of words that now
sound different to us, we can build a case that they in fact sounded the same during the period in
which they appear. Examples from Millward’s Workbook p. 184f.:
Not that we think us worthy such a guest [ε]
But that your worth will dignify our feast (Ben Jonson, 1616)
To cross this narrow sea [ε]
And fear to launch away (Isaac Watts, 1707)
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil [Λj]
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile (Thomas Gray, 1751)
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 2 of 17
Their great Lord’s glorious name; to none [ ]
Of those whose spacious bosoms spread a throne (Richard Cranshaw, 1652)
Not all the tresses that fair head can boast [ ]
Shall draw such envy as the Lock you lost (Alexander Pope, 1712)
The soul, uneasy and confined from home [ ]
Rests and expatiates in a life to come (Alexander Pope, 1733)
How Shakespeare Probably Sounded
http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/media/mp3/reasons.html
Does this sound Irish to you? Or like a pirate (Arrr!)? Irish dialects of English, for reasons no one really
understands, have been very conservative over time, holding on to vowel and consonant pronunciations
that have since been lost in almost every other dialect. Here’s a sample from a popular BBC sitcom with
an Irish cast, Father Ted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iBCp9Oqu4A
Poins: Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.
Falstaff: What, upon compulsion? Zounds, and I were at the strappado or all the racks in the world,
I would not tell you upon compulsion. Give you a reason on compulsion? If reasons were as
plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.
(Henry IV, Part One, 2.4.246‐42)
I.B Grammatical Verbs
The mental ‘lexicon’ of a speaker of English (or any language) has three main compartments in it.
• An exclamatory compartment, used only for storing words like Ouch! Shit! Woah!
• A purely lexical compartment with words for objects, people, characteristics, ideas, etc: car, brother,
Snoopy, good, love, perplexing.
• There’s another compartment with words used in grammar: the, of, it, a, you, not, the ‘little words’ we
indicate when we play charades.
We know of these compartments because some people with brain injuries lose access to one
compartment but not the other two, or two compartments but not the other one.
All languages have grammatical words of one kind or another, but English is unlike many languages –
even many Indo‐European cousins – in that it has a specialized set of verbs that function as grammatical
words: be, can, could, do, have, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would and for some older speakers
dare. These are often called helping verbs or auxiliary verbs (from Latin auxilia ‘help’).
We know these verbs belong to a separate class, distinct from purely lexical verbs like drive, tell, eat, or
recommend. We know this because they behave in very distinct ways.
The differences are scalar and developed over more than a thousand years from Old to Early Modern
English
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 3 of 17
(1) Order with respect to adverbs:
Grammatical verbs don’t generally appear after adverbs, though this tendency has been fading fast
even within my adult life.
a. I usually take the bus to work.
b. ? I usually can take the bus to work.
c. √ I can usually take the bus to work.
d. * I take usually the bus to work.
(2) Sentence‐Initial Inversion
a. * Take you the bus to work?
b. Can you take the bus to work?
(3) Phonological reduction:
a. I can [khæn] / *[kən] vegetables for a living.
b. I can *[khæn] / [kən] take the bus to work. (Non‐emphatic)
(4) Regular affixes don’t appear
a. Tom can take the bus to work.
b. *Tom cans take the bus to work.
(5) Loss of independent meanings: OE ancestors of ME and ModE auxiliaries
Old English Today
beon/wesan 'to be, exist' be
habban 'to have' have
magan ‘to be effective, to prevail’ may
onginnan 'to attempt, endeavor' (be)gin
sculan ‘to owe’ shall
willan ‘to want, desire’ will
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 4 of 17
I.C Grammatical Verbs and Modality
‘Modality’ is a relatively abstract notion that addresses a speaker’s attitude about what they are saying –
in other words, whether the proposition they are making with their words is obligatory, necessary, or
permitted by ability or rule.
Example Modality
a. Passengers must remain seated at all times. OBLIGATION
b. Drivers should exercise extreme caution when driving at night. NECESSITY
c. Customers can choose from many exciting options. ABILITY
d. The defendant may approach PERMISSION
These are examples of what we call root modality, in other words something basic to the root meanings of
the underlined verbs.
What develops in the course of the late Middle English period and into the modern era is another layer of
modality, called extrinsic or epistemic modality. It encompasses more slippery notions such as probability,
believability, desirability, or reality.
Example
a. You must be joking.
b. Roger should be home any minute now.
c. Tequila can really give you a rotten hangover.
d. Roger may have colon cancer.
I.D. The Rise of the Auxiliary Verb: DoSupport in Questions and Negation
Today’s English makes use of the grammatical verb do in sentences formed around negation, questions,
or negative commands. We call this dosupport. Take all the following variations on I speak French.
I don’t speak French Negative declarative (Neg. decl.)
Don’t I speak French? Negative question (Neg. quest.)
Do I speak French? Affirmative question (Aff. quest.)
What do I speak? Affirmative question (Aff. quest.)
Don’t speak French! Negative imperative (Neg. imp.)
(We also have an optional structure with do that we use to express emphasis or to contradict a negative: I
do speak French.)
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 5 of 17
The obligatory use of do has only been obligatory for about the last three hundred years. That’s recent
enough for us to have live cultural memories of the time before (setting Jedi Master Yoda aside for the
moment): What say you? How goes it? Fear not. They know not what they do.
The rise of dosupport from the late medieval to the early modern era was gradual and, from the point of
view of someone on the ground at the time, maybe even messy.
(9) a. Negative declaratives (Neg.decl.)
with do‐support: Christ dyd not praye for Iames and Iohan & for the other
without: What is that, I praie you, for I knowe not myne owne religion?
b. Negative questions (Neg.quest.)
with do‐support: Why do we not spede vs hastely to come vnto that rest...?
without: O mercyfull lorde ... why shewed thou not vengeaunce ...?
c. Affirmative questions (Aff.quest.)
with do‐support: How do they spende the afternoone, I pray you?
without: What meaneth hee by winkyng like a Goose in the raine ...?
d. Negative imperatives (Neg.Imp.)
with do‐support: Loke ye, do not lye; and thow do lye, I shal it knowe wele
without: Doute ye nat ye shall have al youre wylle
The dosupport pattern propagates through the language at a different pace in each of these
environments, eventually taking over by the 18th century, though not completely in the negative
declarative.
1.000
0.900
0.800
0.700
Aff.decl.
0.600 Neg.decl
Neg.quest.
0.500 Aff.Quest
Neg.Imp.
0.400
0.300
0.200
0.100
0.000
1710
1390-1400
1400-1425
1425-1475
1475-1500
1500-1525
1525-1535
1535-1550
1550-1575
1575-1600
1600-1625
1625-1650
1650-1700
Years
TABLE 1 | DATA QUOTED FROM ELLEGÅRD [1953] BY OGURA [1993: 54])
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 6 of 17
II THIS WEEK: GETTING OUR HEADS IN THE RIGHT PLACE
II.A Dr. Getty Rides His Little Horse into the Modern Era
We’re entering the age of spelling, punctuation, and ‘grammar,’ in the sense that word applies to thinking
principally about how people should speak and write, not how they actually do.
The philosophy behind this movement is illustrated in the wordy titles of the era:
• Jeremiah Wharton 1654: The Englishgrammar, or, The institution of letters, syllables, and words in
the Englishtongue conteining all rules and directions necessary to bee known for the judicious
reading, rightspeaking, and writing thereof : very useful for all that desire to bee expert in the
foresaid properties, more especially profitable for scholars immediately before their entrance into the
rudiments of the Latinetongue
• Joseph Aickin, 1693: The English grammar: or, the English tongue reduced to grammatical rules
containing the four parts of grammar: viz. orthographie, etymology, syntax, prosody or poetry. Being
the easiest quickest and most authentick method of teaching it, by rules and pictures: adapted to the
capacities of children, youth and those of riper years; in learning whereof the English scholar may
now attain the perfection of his mother tongue, without the assistance of Latine; composed for the
use of all English schools. By Joseph Aickin M. A. and lately one of the masters of the FreeSchool of
London Dery. Licensed May the 24. 1692
These texts are at the beginning of what I am going to refer to as the English Grammar Industry. Because
it really is an industry – an organized human activity from which many thousands of people in the
English‐speaking world earn their living – academic researchers, authors, editors, publishers,
booksellers, and (in the closest analogy to an assembly line worker) teachers.
If you had to, you could attach a dollar figure to the resources used in any given year to codify, publicize,
enforce and reinforce uniformity in English usage as well as the revenue from these activities in the form
of book sales, salaries, consultant fees, and tuition.
Here’s Where I Stand
This industry earns its place to the extent it serves a number of strictly practical, utilitarian aims:
• Allowing people from different points in the the vast geo‐linguistic‐politico‐economic‐cultural
universe that is the English‐speaking world to communicate with each other as easily as possible.
• Providing a common language for commerce and diplomacy between English‐speaking
populations and everyone else on the planet.
• Providing a common and even neutral language for commerce and diplomacy among non‐English‐
speaking groups. Some hot examples: Global tourism, Diplomacy between Israel and Arabic‐
speaking countries, between India and Pakistan, within India (which has hundreds of languages,
fourteen of them with official status).
• Counteracting the forces of linguistic change in written language, thereby keeping historical texts
written in English more accessible to present‐day English speakers than they might otherwise be.
• Providing important cognitive stimulation for school‐aged children. Since it is different from what
pretty much everyone actually speaks, learning how to read, write, and speak a standardized form
of English develops crucial skills related to abstraction and analytical thinking as well as
awareness of and proficiency in form‐function mapping. This is especially true for students who
speak socially confined dialects or languages other than English.
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 7 of 17
The industry oversteps its bounds when it gets into the following areas or stands by silently as others do,
usually as a way to mask social bias:
• Elitism: Asserting or attempting to prove any inherent superiority (aesthetic, philosophical, racial)
of a standardized form of English over and above its strictly practical, utilitarian advantages
• Deliberate Archaism: Promoting or attempting to enforce usage of historical norms long after they
have dropped out of common usage. Examples: I shall as a future tense marker in American
English, archaic Latinate plural forms like cacti vs. cactuses
• Artificiality: Promoting or attempting to enforce the use of patterns made up by grammarians
from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries who tried to make English more like Latin:
penalizing sentences ending with a preposition, It’s me, to boldly go (the counterpart of to go in
Latin would have been itur, which couldn’t be split because it was a single word)
• Purism for its own Sake: Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: A ZeroTolerance Approach to
Punctuation vs. David Crystal, The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left.
For Our Purposes:
The industry focusses on what people have conscious access to – which, as I’ve shown you over and over,
is an infinitessimally small piece of what actually goes on between a person’s ears when they engage in
language. Along that line, purists and prescriptivists tend to focus mostly on what they don’t like, which
says more about them than it does about anything that’s really going on.
The greatest upheavals in the history of English – from the Great Vowel shift and the loss of overt case
marking to the shifts in vowel inventories and leveling of irregular verb forms underway today – almost
never get written about. This is because they tend to unfold over decades or centuries, but also because
people are too busy disapproving of other things to take notice.
Without a broad view, the study of language degenerates into obsessive arcanery and trivia hounding.
Just more information in a world already drowning in it. But knowledge, understanding, insight, and
perspective are in critically short supply.
Grammar, spelling, and punctuation just aren’t that interesting:
• More interesting than the spelling and grammar rules that arise during this period are the
workings of the minds that created them.
• More interesting than the rarified, refined language of the period are the fleeting glimpses of
marginalized, non‐standard speech we see recorded from time to time.
• More interesting than what people thought about their language is what we can observe in it using
computational and statistical methods they did not have.
But at the Begnning of the Story, the Equation is a Little Different:
What the Grammar Industry gave people:
• Certainty in a time of chaos
• Cultural legitimacy from a (mostly imagined) connection to Rome and Greece
• Practical means of social advancement
• Concrete symbols of national unity and commonality
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 8 of 17
II.B. EVENTS ON THE GROUND
II.B.1 The Renaissance:
• Rediscovery of the humanistic cultures of Rome and Greece from ca. 700 BCE to ca. 300 CE
• Neglected and supressed in the Middle Ages but reintroduced and rekindled in no small part by
the Muslim and Jewish presence in Europe from ca. 750 to ca. 1450
• Rekindled ideas of logic, rational order, and critical inquiry
• Classical language study: Greek and Roman thought on rhetoric and discourse
• Areas of knowledge in which neither English nor French had a thoroughly developed vocabulary.
English speakers of the Renaissance revived old Greek and Latin words and cobbled together new
ones from Greek and Latin roots. These words took up residence next to the more generic Latin
and Greek loans brought over by the Normans in the 11th through 13th centuries.
II.B.2 What the Renaissance Did
This was the third major wave of imported words to wash over English since the settlement of England in
the 5th century, and even though the language and its speakers were, on the whole, very receptive.
But the rate and scope of importation in the Renaissance went too far for some people; the issue became
a point of heated public disagreement (known as the ‘Inkhorn Controversy’) from about 1550 to about
1650:
Thomas Elyot, 1531 (author of The Boke Named the Governor from Week 10):
I am constraind to vsurve a latine word calling it Maturitie: which word though it be strange and
darke / yet by declaring the vertue in a few mo wordes / the name ones brought in custome / shall
be as facile to vndersande as other wordes late commen out of Italy and France / and made
denizins amonge vs … And this I do now remembre for the necessary augmentation of our langage
(Source: Crystal p. 61)
Thomas Wilson, 1553
Among all other lessons this should first be learned, that wee never affect any straunge ynkehorne
termes, but to speake as is commonly received: neither seeking to be overfine, nor yet living
overcarelesse, using our speeche as most men doe, and ordering our wittes as the fewest have
done. Some seek so far outlandish English, they they forget altogether their mothers language. And
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 9 of 17
I dare sweare this, if some of their mothers were alive, thei were not able to tell what they say…
(Source: Crystal p. 61)
Alexander Gil, Logonomica Anglica, 1621 (Translated from Latin)
Such is the stupidity of the uneducated masses that they admire most what they least comprehend
… for since everyone wishes to appear as a smatterer of tongues and to vaunt his proficiency in
Latin, French (or any other language), so daily wild beasts of words are tamed, and horrid evil‐
sounding magpies and owls of unpropitious birth are taught to hazard our words. Thus today we
are, for the most part, Englishmen not speaking Englihs and not understood by ears … we have
exiled that which was legitimate – our birthright – pleasant in expression, and ackowledged by our
forefathers. O cruel country!
(Source: Lerer p. 148)
Words that survived Words that didn’t
dismiss, disagree, disabuse disadorn, disaccustom
commit, transmit, admit demit
impede expede
dullard, drunkard stinkard /
conclusion endsay
condition ifsay
schoolfellows condisciples
(Source: Crystal p. 61)
Shakespeare (1564‐1616) was a player in the Inkhorn debates and contributed to both sides
Words that survived Words that didn’t
accommodation, assassination, abruption, appertainments, persistive,
dislocate, eventful, premeditated, protractive, soilure, vastidity
submerged
Barefaced, countless, laughable, lack‐
lustre, fancy‐free
(Source: Crystal p. 61)
Crashing into English at just the same time are two forces that open the gates even wider:
Words entering English from European colonies as well as expanded continental trade
• bazaar, caravan (Persian, via India)
• coffee, kiosk, yoghurt, horde (Turkish)
• curry, pariah, pajamas (Tamil)
• guru, thug (Hindi)
• anchovy, aprioct, armada, cannibal, canoe, mosquito, negro, potato, tobacco
(Spanish and Portugese)
• balcony, ballot, carnival, design, fuse, lottery, opera, sonnet, stanza, violin, volcano (Italian)
II.B.3 The Protestant Reformation
• Long‐festering reaction concentrated in Northern Europe to conspicuous corruption and abuse of
power by the Church
• At first violently suppressed in England by Henry VIII, then embraced when it gave him a way to
defy the Pope and divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry his lover Anne Boleyn,
whom he later had beheaded.
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 10 of 17
• Protestant theology values private, individual religious devotion and Bible study, which fueled an
entire industry of translation, authoring, and publishing for English‐reading audiences.
II.B.4 What the Protestant Reformation Did: Bible Translation
Prior to the Reformation, most Bibles in Europe were in Latin and were guarded rather jealously by the
clergy. Soon after the commercialization of the printing press, consumer demand and gathering anti‐
clerical sentiment led to a blossoming of Bible translations and printed editions in German, French,
English, and other local languages.
The Latin Bibles of the Middle Ages were translations of translations and copies of copies:
• Hebrew scriptures: Hebrew > Koiné Greek > Latin
• Christian scriptures: Greek > Latin
The Protestant translators went back to the original Hebrew and Greek texts, though to a large extent
they cribbed from the available Latin texts and from each other.
The ‘King James Bible’ was the result of a petition to King James in 1603 by 750 progressive clergymen in
the Church of England for a new translation; James agreed, and the translation was authored by more
than fifty clergymen and scholars working in a deliberative committee structure.
The King James version (better known as the Authorized Version in its time) was a careful balancing act
between earthy, folksy style and deliberately archaic, decorous language.
• Distinguishes between the subject pronoun ye and the corresponding object pronoun you: Ye
cannot serve God and Mammon. Therefore I say unto you …
• Possessive his instead of its: If the salt has lots his flavor
• Consistent third‐person singular –eth, a southern form which was being displaced by a northern
import, ‐s.
• Older noun and verb forms which were already on their way out: holpeninstead of helped,
spakeinstead of spoke, kine instead of cows, brethren instead of brothers
Nonetheless, the King James/Authorized version is more recognizeably modern in its use of spelling and
punctuation, having fallen mostly in line with the evolving norms of its time.
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 11 of 17
Exodus Chapter 10
John Wycliffe 1384 William Tyndale 1534 Authorized Version 1611
1: And the Lord seide to Moises, 1:The Lorde sayde vnto Moses: goo vnto 1: And the LORD said unto Moses, Go
Entre thou to Farao, for Y haue Pharao, neuerthelesse I haue hardened in unto Pharaoh: for I have
maad hard the herte of hym, and of his harte and the hertes of his hardened his heart, and the heart
hise seruauntis, that Y do these servauntes, that I mighte shewe these of his servants, that I might shew
signes of me in hym; my sygnes amongest the these my signs before him:
2: and that thou telle in the eeris 2: and that thou tell in the 2: And that thou mayest tell in the
of thi sone and of `thi sones audience of thy sonne and of thy ears of thy son, and of thy son's
sones, how ofte Y al to-brak sonnes sonne, the pagiantes which I son, what things I have wrought in
Egipcians, and dide signes in hem; haue played in Egipte ad the Egypt, and my signs which I have
and that ye wyte that Y am the miracles which I haue done amonge done among them; that ye may know
Lord. them: that ye may knowe how that I how that I am the LORD.
am the Lorde.
3: Therfore Moises and Aaron 3: Than Moses ad Aaron went in vnto 3: And Moses and Aaron came in unto
entriden to Farao, and seiden to Pharao and sayde vnto him: thus Pharaoh, and said unto him, Thus
hym, The Lord God of Ebrews seith sayth the Lorde God of the Hebrues: saith the LORD God of the Hebrews,
these thingis, How long `nylt thou how longe shall it be, or thou wilt How long wilt thou refuse to humble
be maad suget to me? Delyuere thou submyt thy selfe vnto me? Let my thyself before me? let my people
my puple, that it make sacrifice to people goo that they maye serue me. go, that they may serve me.
me; ellis sotheli if thou
ayenstondist,
4: and nylt delyuere it, lo! Y 4: Yf thou wilt not let my people 4: Else, if thou refuse to let my
schal brynge in to morewe a locuste goo: beholde, tomorow will I brynge people go, behold, to morrow will I
in to thi coostis, greshoppers in to thy lande, bring the locusts into thy coast:
5: which schal hile the hiyere part 5: and they shall couer the face of 5: And they shall cover the face of
of erthe, nether ony thing therof the erth that it can not be sene, the earth, that one cannot be able
schal appere, but that, that was ad they shall eate the residue to see the earth: and they shall
`residue to the hail schal be etun; which remayneth vnto you and eat the residue of that which is
for it schal gnawe alle the trees escaped the hayle and they shall escaped, which remaineth unto you
that buriounnen in feeldis; eate all youre grene trees vpon the from the hail, and shall eat every
felde, tree which groweth for you out of
the field:
Matthew Chapter 5
John Wycliffe 1384 William Tyndale 1534 Authorized Version 1611
11 Ye schulen be blessid, whanne 11 Blessed are ye when men reuyle 11: Blessed are ye, when men shall
men schulen curse you, and you and persecute you and shall revile you, and persecute you, and
schulen pursue you, and shulen falsly say all manner of yvell shall say all manner of evil against
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 12 of 17
seie al yuel ayens you liynge, saynges agaynst you for my sake. you falsely, for my sake.
for me.
12 Ioie ye, and be ye glad, for 12 Reioyce and be glad for greate is 12: Rejoice, and be exceeding glad:
youre meede is plenteuouse in youre rewarde in heven. + For so for great is your reward in heaven:
heuenes; for so thei han pursued persecuted they ye Prophetes which for so persecuted they the prophets
also profetis that weren bifor you. were before youre dayes. which were before you.
13 Ye ben salt of the erthe; that 13 ye are ye salt of the erthe: but 13: Ye are the salt of the earth:
if the salt vanysche awey, and yf ye salt have lost hir saltnes but if the salt have lost his
whereynne schal it be saltid? To what can be salted ther with? It is savour, wherewith shall it be
no thing it is worth ouere, no thence forthe good for nothynge but salted? it is thenceforth good for
but that it be cast out, and be to be cast oute and to be troade nothing, but to be cast out, and to
defoulid of men. vnder fote of men. be trodden under foot of men.
14 Ye ben liyt of the world; a 14 Ye are ye light of the worlde. A 14: Ye are the light of the world. A
citee set on an hil may not be cite yt is set on an hill cannot be city that is set on an hill cannot
hid; hid be hid.
15 ne me teendith not a lanterne, 15 nether do men lyght a cadell and 15: Neither do men light a candle,
and puttith it vndur a busschel, but put it vnder a busshell but on a and put it under a bushel, but on a
on a candilstike, that it yyue liyt candelstick and it lighteth all that candlestick; and it giveth light
to alle that ben in the hous. are in the house. unto all that are in the house.
16 So schyne youre liyt befor 16 Let youre light so shyne before 16: Let your light so shine before
men, that thei se youre goode men yt they maye se youre good men, that they may see your good
werkis, and glorifie youre fadir workes and glorify youre father works, and glorify your Father which
that is in heuenes. which is in heven. is in heaven.
17 Nil ye deme, that Y cam to 17 Thinke not yt I am come to destroye 17: Think not that I am come to
vndo the lawe, or the profetis; Y the lawe or the Prophets: no I am nott destroy the law, or the prophets: I
cam not to vndo the lawe, but to come to destroye them but to fulfyll am not come to destroy, but to
fulfille. them. fulfill.
Sources:
Wycliffe: http://wesley.nnu.edu/biblical_studies/wycliffe/Exo.txt
Tyndale: http://wesley.nnu.edu/biblical_studies/tyndale/exo.txt
Authorized Version: http://etext.virginia.edu/kjv.browse.html
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 13 of 17
III The Nitty Gritty
One of the first attempts at a phonemic alphabet…
John Hart, 1569
(Source: Lerer p. 155)
More Phonological and Morphological Change
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 14 of 17
One of the first attempts at an authoritative dictionary of new loan words (Cawdrey):
(Source: Crystal p. 72)
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 15 of 17
Various other interesting bits (Millward workbook p. 193):
1540: Doth any of both these examples prove that …?
1581: I fear me some will blushe that readeth this, if he be bitten
1617: They are so proud, so censorious, that it is no living with them.
1659: Presuming on the Queen her private practice?
1726: We must not let this hour pass, without presenting us to him.
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 16 of 17
(Source: Crystal p. 70)
ENG4820 | Week 11 | Page 17 of 17