A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Chapter 1: Continuity and change

By origin, English is a Germanic language, like German or Dutch or the Scandinavian
languages such as Danish or Swedish. Its most common words as well as its fundamental
grammatical structure are similar to those of the other Germanic languages. But English has
undergone a number of more radical changes than the other Germanic languages, for instance
German, which makes it strikingly different from them.
The historical development of English reflects the internal history (sounds, inflections, etc)
as well as the external history, i.e. the political, social and intellectual forces that have
determined the course of the development at different periods. The history of the English
language is to a large extent the history of the foreign influences which have affected it.
Nevertheless, in spite of the extensive foreign influences, English has always remained a
Germanic language.
As A.Baugh and Th. Cable point out in their book, the History of the English Language is a
cultural subject and the soundest basis for an understanding of present day English is a
knowledge of the path it has followed in becoming what it is. (1978: 1)
It is important to study the history of the English language because the future specialists
of English should know something about the structure and evolution of the English language,
about the wealth of its vocabulary together with the sources from which the vocabulary has
been enriched and is being enriched.
It is also important to know something about the great social, political and cultural
factors which have influenced the English language: the English language of today reflects in
its entire development the social, political and cultural history of the English people.
More precisely, it is necessary to study the history of the English language in order to
understand certain phonetic, grammatical and lexical phenomena of the contemporary
language:
- It is only by studying the history of the English language that we can understand the
relation between pronunciation and spelling in contemporary English. It thus becomes clear to
us why certain letters have no corresponding sounds in words like knee, gnat, night, sign,
doubt, debt etc., or why certain letters are pronounced in different ways, e.g. the letter a, or
the digraph ea in words like hear, dead, great, bear, hard, heart. Or, further, why one and the
same sound can be represented by different letters, e.g. the sound [] can be represented by
the letter u in words like run, sun, or by the letter o in words like come, son. Certain sounds
can have an even more diverse representation, e.g. the sound [] can be represented by at least
eight spellings: ship, sure, tissue, moustache, ocean, conscience, motion, fuchsia.
- There are grammatical phenomena which become clear only when they are examined from
the point of view of their origin. For instance, irregular plurals like men, feet, geese, mice, or
nouns like deer, sheep which have the same form in the plural as in the singular; or modal
verbs like must, can, may which take no s in the 3rd person singular Present Tense Indicative.
- In the field of vocabulary, we are struck by the similarity between a large number of
English and German words. (house Haus, winter Winter, good gut, bring bringen,
have haben, etc), on the one hand, and between some English and French words (cousin
cousin, table table, village village, beauty beaut, change changer, etc), on the other
hand. The coexistence of Germanic and Romance elements within one and the same language
is explained by studying the history of the English language.
- The history of the English language is also of great help to us when studying the history of
England. Thus, for instance, it is extremely interesting to study such important historical
events as the introduction of Christianity, the Norman Conquest, the Renaissance, the
Industrial Revolution, the expansion of the British Empire, etc., in close connection with the
enrichment of the English vocabulary. Thus, the Christianizing of Britain in 597 brought

England into close contact with Latin civilization and made significant additions to the
English vocabulary.
The Scandinavian invasions resulted in a considerable mixture of the two peoples and their
language.
The Norman Conquest made English for two centuries the language mainly of the lower
classes while the nobles and those associated with them used French on almost all occasions.
And when English once again regained supremacy as the language of all elements of the
population, it was an English language greatly changed in both form and vocabulary from that
it had been in 1066.
In a similar way, the Hundred Years War, the Renaissance, the development of England as
a maritime power, the expansion of the British Empire, the growth of commerce and industry,
of science and literature, have each, in its way, contributed to make the English language what
it is today.
In short, the English language reflects in its entire development, the political, social,
cultural history of the English people.
- Moreover, a study of the evolution of English will enable us to grasp the full beauty and
significance of the important literary works of different periods, e.g. G. Chaucer in Middle
English, W. Shakespeare in Early Modern English, etc. As C. L. Wrenn puts it, the aesthetic
appreciation of Shakespeare and Milton is immensely quickened by an understanding of their
language; the exact shades of meaning of their words and phrases become clear only through
the consciousness of the semantic changes in the language. (cited from E. Iarovici, 1973: 6)

Course 2: English a Germanic language

2.1. Although the earliest inhabitants of Britain were not of Germanic origin, English
belongs to the Germanic languages which, in their turn, belong to the larger group of
languages known as Indo-European.
The Indo-European family is composed of the following main branches of languages:
Indian, Iranian, Albanian, Armenian, Hellenic / Greek, Italic, Baltic, Slavic / Slavonic,
Germanic, Celtic, Tocharian, Hittite.
The Indo-European languages have two main characteristics:
a) An inflectional structure, i.e. a grammatical system based on changes in the forms of
words by means of endings (inflections) and vowel modifications to indicate various
grammatical categories: case, number, mood, tense;
b) All Indo-European languages share a common word stock, i.e. words that resemble one
another in form and meaning (cognate words). This common word stock includes the names
of parts of the body, family relations, natural phenomena, plants, animals, the numerals from
one to ten, etc. We shall illustrate the common Indo-European vocabulary with two cognate
words from five Indo-European languages.
e.g. (night) OE niht, G. Nacht, L. noctis, Gk. nukts, Sl. o (noch)
(brother) OE broor, G. Bruder, L. frater, Gk. Phrater, Sl. m (brat)
2.2. The Germanic languages fall into three groups: East Germanic, North Germanic and
West Germanic. These Germanic languages must have originated in a language generally
called Common or Primitive Germanic which is not preserved in any document.
2.2.1. East Germanic
The chief representative of the East Germanic languages is Gothic. For a time, the Goths
played a prominent part in European history: thus, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths conquered
Italy and Spain.
The Gothic language has been preserved in a translation of the Bible made by the bishop of
the Visigoths called Wulfila, in the second half of the 4 th century. The translation is the oldest
Germanic document, three centuries older than any old English document, thus forming the
nearest approach one can have to Common (or Primitive) German. Besides Gothic, to this
branch also belonged Burgundian and Vandalic which disappeared a long time ago, leaving no
traces except a few proper names. All these languages are extinct now.
2.2.2. North Germanic
This branch, also known as Norse (or Scandinavian) includes Swedish, Danish, Norwegian
and Icelandic. The oldest North Germanic documents some runic inscriptions (in Old
Norse) date from the 4th or 5 th century.
2.2.3. West Germanic
The West Germanic languages were divided into two branches: High German and Low
German, according to their geographic position:
i. High German is now represented solely by German the literary language of Germany,
also spoken in Austria and a large part of Switzerland.
ii. Low German includes the following languages:
- Old Saxon, which has become the main component of modern Low German (or
Plattdeutsch);
- Old Franconian, which is the basis of modern Dutch (in Holland) and Flemish (in
northern Belgium);
- Old Fri(e)sian, which survives in the Dutch province of Friesland;
- Old English, which is the basis of modern English.

Because of their common ancestry, the Germanic languages are said to be genetically
related. Early forms of English and German were once dialects of a common ancestor
called Proto-Germanic, just as the Romance languages, French, Spanish, etc., were once
dialects of Latin spoken in the Roman Empire. A proto-language is the ancestral language
from which related languages have developed. (V. Fromkin: 451)
Both Latin and Proto-Germanic were themselves descendants of the older language
called Indo-European (see paragraph 2.1.)
Old English, therefore, belonged to the Low Germanic languages which were part of
the group of West Germanic languages. Old English was the result of a mixture of several
Germanic dialects brought to the British Isles by the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. As
English belongs to the West Germanic branch of the larger Germanic family, it shares
certain characteristics common to all the West Germanic languages. i. English, together
with other Germanic languages, shows the shifting of certain consonants. In 1820 the
German philologist Jacob Grimm following up a suggestion of a Danish contemporary, R.
Rask, formulated an explanation which systematically accounted for the correspondences
between certain consonants in the Germanic languages and those found in other IndoEuropean non-Germanic languages, for example in Latin and Greek. This is described as
Grimms law. Thus:
- The consonant p in the IE (non-Germanic) languages became f in the Germanic
languages;
- The consonant k in the IE (non-Germanic) languages became h in the Germanic
languages;
- The consonant d in the IE (non-Germanic) languages became t in the Germanic
languages;
- The consonant f in the IE (non-Germanic) languages became b in the Germanic
languages.
IE non-Germanic (Latin)
Germanic language
Latin
English
German

pf

pater
father
Vater
pisces
ish
Fisch
pes / pedem
foot
Fu
k h
centum
hundred
Hundert
dt
duo
two
Zwei
dens / dentem
tooth
Zahn
fb
frater
brother
Bruder
ii.
From the grammatical point of view there are some similarities between English and
the other Germanic languages:
a) In English, as well as in other Germanic languages, there are two large groups of verbs:
strong verbs, which form the Past Tense by internal vowel changes within its stem; and weak
verbs, which form the Past Tense by the addition of a suffix containing a dental consonant -ed
in English, -t(e) in German.
strong Vs: trinken trank-getrunken (drink - drank drunk)
weak verbs: fragen fragte - gefragt (ask asked asked)
The pattern of the strong verbs (with internal vowel change) was inherited from IndoEuropean, but that of the weak verbs was new and distinctly Germanic. Jacob Grimm called
them weak because, being unable to change the internal vowel, they had to resort to external
means, namely to suffixes.

b) There are grammatical similarities between English and other Germanic languages (in
particular German):
- in the conjugation of verbs:
Present Tense
I hear
Ich hre
Past Tense
I heard
Ich hrte
Present Perfect
I have heard Ich habe gehrt
(Present Tense of aux. haben have + Past Participle)
Past Perfect
I had heard Ich hatte gehrt
(Past Tense of aux. haben - have+ Past Participle)
- there were two types of adjective declension in Old English as well as in other
Germanic languages: the weak declension (when the adjective was preceded by a determiner)
and the strong declension (when the adjective was not). In the Nominative case there were
two forms:
weak decl. se goda mann (Germ. der gute Mann the good man )
strong decl. god mann (Germ. guter Mann good man)
- There are grammatical similarities between English and German in the inflections for
comparing adjectives:
e.g. Engl. loud louder the loudest
Germ. laut lauter der (die, das) lauteste
- the synthetic genitive in s:
e.g. Engl. the mans name
Germ. Der Name des Mannes; des Mannes Name (formal, obsolete)
iii. There are similarities in the vocabulary, especially in simple, everyday words between
English and other Germanic languages:
e.g. E. father/ G. Vater; brother / Bruder; sing / singen; good / gut; here / hier
2.3. The languages that preceded English in Britain
We are so accustomed to thinking of English as the language of the British Isles that we are
likely to forget that English has been the language of the British Isles for a comparatively
short period. The English language was introduced into the British Isles comparatively
recently about the middle of the 5th century. Yet, the British Isles have been lived by man for
about 50,000 years. During this long stretch of time the presence of a number of races can be
detected and each of the races had a language. Unfortunately, we know next to nothing about
the early languages of Britain.
2.3.1. Celtic
The earliest inhabitants of Britain about whose language we have reliable information are
the Celts. There were two main branches of Celts:
i. The Britannic Celts who lived in Britain;
ii. The Goidelic (Gaelic) Celts who lived at first in Ireland and then spread to the East and
South East.
Celtic was the first Indo-European language to be spoken in the British Isles and it is still
spoken in some parts of the island:
a) The language of the Britannic Celts is now represented in Britain by Welsh which is
spoken in Wales. Welsh is spoken by about one million people, most of whom are bilingual:
according to a census made in 1951 only 3% of the population in Wales did not know English.
Cornish, which had the same origin as Welsh, died out as a spoken language in Cornwall
towards the close of the 18th century.
b) The language of the Goidelic (Gaelic) Celts is now represented by Irish (spoken in
Ireland by about half a million people, most of whom are bilingual); Scots Gaelic (spoken in
the highlands of Scotland) and Manx (spoken in the Isle of Man).

2.3.2. Latin
The second language to be spoken in Britain was Latin which was introduced after the
Roman conquest of 43 AD when Britain became a province of the Roman Empire.
In fact, the attempt at conquering the island had started much earlier. In 55 BC, Julius
Caesar, having completed the conquest of Gaul, decided upon an invasion of Britain, but the
attack failed. The following year, 54 BC, he again invaded the island and this time he
succeeded in establishing himself in the south-east. J. Caesar exacted tribute from the Celts,
which was never paid, so he again returned to Gaul, and Britain was not troubled by the
Roman armies for nearly a hundred years. In 43 AD, the emperor Claudius decided to
undertake the conquest of the island. Within 3 years he subjugated the tribes of the south eastern and central regions. Subsequent campaigns brought almost the entire island under
Roman rule with the exception of some parts in Wales and Scotland where most of the Celts
had fled to. The military conquest was followed by the Romanization of the province:
highways, roads, well-planned towns with public buildings, amphitheatres, baths, etc., testify
to the introduction of the Roman way of life.
Latin was spoken for about four centuries, but it did not replace Celtic as it did in Gaul.
Latin was known to the upper classes and it was the language of civil administration, the
army, trade and, to a large extent, it was known by the inhabitants of the cities and towns.
However, its use began to decrease after the Roman troops were withdrawn at the beginning
of the 5th century and did not survive the Germanic invasion, leaving comparatively few
traces.
2. 3.3. The Germanic Conquest
After the year 449 an event occurred which profoundly affected the course of history.
In that year began the invasion of Britain by certain Germanic tribes that settled in
Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries and who are considered the founders of the English
nation.
A detailed account of the Germanic invasion is given by a monk and scholar, called the
Venerable Bede. In his chronicle Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in Latin
(Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum) and completed in 731, he tells us that the Germanic
tribes who conquered the island were the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.
In fact, Britain had been exposed to attacks from the Saxons much earlier than 449, from
as early as the 4th century, even while the island was under Roman rule. Two other Celtic
tribes, the Picts and the Scots had been attacking Britain from as early as 350. All these tribes
were kept out only at the price of constant vigilance. Against both of these sources of attack
the Roman military organization seems to have proved adequate. But the Celts who were not
warriors, had come to depend on the Roman army for their protection. Under Roman rule they
had settled down to a more peaceful way of life and had lost some of thew military skill.
Consequently, when the Romans withdrew in 407, the Celts found themselves unprotected
and were no longer able to keep out the Germanic bands.
The Angles occupied some parts of Britain north of the Thames and lowland Scotland.
The Saxons, who were closely akin to the Angles in speech and customs, occupied the
whole part of Britain south of the Thames; they also settled in some regions north of the
Thames such as Essex and Middlesex.
The Jutes had come to Britain to assist the Celts to drive away the invading Picts and
Scots. But they liked the country, so they decided to stay and began to settle down. They
settled in Kent, Southern Hampshire, the Isle of Wight.
Though the Saxons were numerically superior to the Angles, the latter were influential
enough to impose their name on the whole; after the year 1000 the country began to be called
Anglaland (>England), i.e. the land of the Angles and the language was called Anglisc
(>English).

The linguistic consequences of the Germanic Conquest were extremely important, for a
new language superseded Celtic and Latin a Germanic language (except in Scottish
Highlands, in Wales and Cornwall). This new language resulted from the fusion of the dialects
spoken by the Germanic tribes who had come from the continent. The speech of the Angles
cannot have differed very much from that of the Saxons or that of the Jutes, but those
differences that existed must account for the various English dialects.
2.4. The periods in the history of the English language
The history of the English language in England begins with the settlement of the Germanic
tribes - the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes in Britain in 449. The evolution of English in
the fifteen hundred years of its existence in England has been an unbroken one. Within this
steady development, however, it is possible to distinguish three main periods, each of them
having certain broad characteristics:
Old English lasted from 449 to about 1050 (1066 / 1100).
The English language spoken in Britain from the Germanic invasions of the 5 th century
(449) up to about the end of the 11th century (1050) is now usually called Old English, though
the term Anglo-Saxon is also in use. The name Anglo-Saxon was meant to distinguish the
Saxons who had come to Britain, from those who remained on the continent. The term is
often used now to refer to people of English descent. The term Old English has the advantage,
when used together with Middle English and Modern English, of pointing out the continuous
historical development of the English language.
Middle English lasted from about 1050 (1066 / 1100) to about 1500.
Modern English: from 1500 to the present time.
Like all divisions in history, these periods of the English language are matters of
convenience, and the dividing line between them is purely arbitrary, being marked by the
dates of events in English history, but each period has certain broad characteristics and certain
special developments that took place.
An examination of the changes that have occurred in English during the past 1,000 years
shows changes in the lexicon as well as the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and
semantic components of the grammar.
Old English is generally referred to as the period of full endings or full inflections;
Middle English as the period of levelled endings or levelled inflections and Modern English
as the period of lost endings or lost inflections.
As far as the inflectional system is concerned, Old English was a synthetic language, i.e.
one in which the relations between words are expressed by inflections, whereas Modern
English is an analytical language i.e. one in which such relations are expressed by form
words and fixed word order. In the course of its development, English has simplified its
inflectional system to a larger extent than all the other Germanic languages. Nevertheless, it
has not become poorer in means of expression, because the relations between words were
rendered by other means than inflections, viz. by form words and a fixed word order.
NOTES:
Rune(s): the characters of the alphabet used especially in carved inscriptions by the
Germanic peoples from the 3rd to the 13th century
Form words are also known as function words or grammatical words; The term is used for
a word whose role is largely or wholly grammatical, e.g. articles, prepositions, conjunctions;
they contrast with lexical words, which carry the main semantic content.

Chapter 3: OLD ENGLISH

3.1. Old English Dialects:
In the 6th century, the gradual change from clans to feudalism began and the English settled
down into a number of small kingdoms. There were seven kingdoms at the end of the 6 th
century: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, Wessex.
Old English was not an entirely uniform language. On the one hand, there were differences
between the language of the earliest written records (about 700 AD) and that of the later
literary texts; on the other hand, the language differed from one locality to another.
The manuscripts that have been preserved enable us to establish the chief dialects. There
were four dialects in Old English: Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, West Saxon.
i. The Northumbrian Dialect extended from the Humber into the Lowlands of Scotland. It
had been brought to Britain by Anglian tribes. The dialect is preserved mainly in charters,
runic inscriptions, some translations of the Bible. The most important manuscripts written in
the Northumbrian dialect are Caedmons Hymn, Bedes Death Song. Many manuscripts seem
to belong to the 9th century. This dialect has a descendant in Lowland Scots.
ii. The Mercian Dialect, also brought by the Angles was spoken between the Humber and
the Thames. As very few Mercian texts have been preserved, we know next to nothing about
the Mercian dialect whose descendant was to become the basis of the national language in late
Middle English.
iii. Kentish, the dialect of the Jutes, was spoken in the South-East (over an area slightly
larger than the present county of Kent). This dialect is known from very few remains, a few
glosses and charters.
iv. The West Saxon Dialect, which was spoken south of the Thames (Wessex) had been
brought to Britain by Saxon tribes.
Kent was the first to gain supremacy owing to the cultural superiority of its invaders and to
the continuous contact with the continent. In the early part of the 7 th century Northumbria
enjoyed political and cultural supremacy over the other kingdoms. But in the 9 th century this
leadership passed to Wessex. Under King Alfred the Great, who ruled between 871 889,
Wessex attained a high degree of prosperity and enlightenment. In the 9 th century, the West
Saxon dialect began to be used as a sort of common literary language owing to the hegemony
established by King Alfred the Great and to the influence of his writings. The major part of
Old English literature has survived in the West Saxon Dialect.
Old English Literature: The language of a past time is known by the quality of its
literature. It is in literature that a language displays its full power, its ability to convey in vivid
and memorable forms the thoughts and emotions of a people. The literature of the AngloSaxons is one of the richest and most significant of any literature preserved among the early
Germanic peoples. The oldest are several glosses and glossaries belonging to the 8th and 9th
centuries.
Old English Poetry is best represented by Beowulf. It is a long poem (some 3,000 lines)
relating the life and death of a great hero Beowulf. It is at the same time a very important
record of the language at that time.
Anglo-Saxon poets sang of the things that entered most deeply into their experience: they
sang of war, of exile, the sea with its hardships and its fascination, of minstrel life.
Old English poetry also comprised verse paraphrases of the Scripture (such as Genesis and
Exodus by Caedmon), sacred poems by Cynewulf, legends from the lives of the saints,
didactic poems, elegies.
Old English Prose: In the development of literature, prose generally comes late. Verse is
more effective for oral delivery because it is more easily retained in memory. It is, therefore, a
rather remarkable fact that English preserved a large body of prose literature in the 9th century.

Old English prose is less interesting than Old English poetry. It is mostly a scholarly
production written by monks and scholars. Still, we must mention the name of The Venerable
Bede who left us many interesting data about the history of England down to 731 in his
Ecclesiastical History of the English People (written in Latin).
English preserved a considerable body of prose literature in the 9 th century also due to
King Alfred who made considerable efforts to promote learning. In order to spread culture
among his people he translated (or had scholars translate) several Latin works into the West
Saxon dialect. He translated historical works like Orosius Universal History or History of the
World (Historia Mundi) and moral treatises like Boethius Consolation of Philosophy (De
Consolatione philosophiae) in order to popularize them.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, started by Alfred the Great and continued after his death up to
1154 is a valuable historical and linguistic document of the Old English period.
Another scholar who promoted learning was the abbot Alfric. His works comprise a
collection of homilies, a translation of the first seven books of the Bible and religious
treatises. He also compiled a Latin Grammar in the vernacular.
Present-day knowledge of Old English is rather limited; most texts are written in the West
Saxon dialect. The vocabulary of the texts is either highly poetic or limited to religious terms.
It hardly contained any everyday words or phrases (what we might call colloquial English).
In the prose works, the construction of the sentence was very much influenced by the Latin
sentence.
3.2. Old English Spelling and Pronunciation
Like all the Germanic tribes (of Germany and Scandinavia) at a very early stage, the
English used certain angular letters called runes, for writing charms and inscriptions upon
monuments. The runes were angular and rectangular avoiding curves because of the writing
surface (stone, slips of wood, bark) and the writing instrument (knife).
After the introduction of Christianity (597), the English adopted a form of the Latin
alphabet. Spelling was phonetic in Old English, whereas nowadays it is etymological.
The main characteristics of the spelling system of Old English were the following:
i. The vowel sounds were represented by long and short monophthongs and long and short
diphthongs: long vowels were marked by an acute accent (macron) placed above a letter: e.g.
mtan (meet), hs (house), bc (book), stn (stone), c (cow)
ii. The digraph was a letter, not a phonetic symbol as it is now; it represented the sound
[], as in: bc (back), fder (father)
iii. Consonants were much the same as they are in Modern English. Nevertheless, a few
exceptions can be pointed out:
- The letter c stood for two sounds:
[k] before consonants or before back vowels (a, o): crft (craft), catt (cat), cl (cool)
[t] before front vowels (i, e): cld (child), cosan (choose)
- The digraph sc stood for [], as represented by sh in Modern English: e.g. scip (ship), fisc
(fish)
- The letter h represented two different sounds:
initially, before vowels, it was simply an aspirate, as it is now [h]: e.g. hs (house)
medially and finally (usually before consonants), it stood for the voiceless velar fricative
sound [] which we still find now in the Scottish dialect, i.e. a harsh, guttural fricative (e.g. in
the word loch): e.g. rht (right), loht (light), dohtor (daughter)
- The letter corresponded to two sounds:
[g] when it occurred initially and medially: e.g. ld (glad), do a (dog)
[i] when it occurred finally: d (day)

iv. Old English made use of two characters and to represent the sounds which are
now represented by the digraph th: e.g. anc (thank), t (tooth), baian (bathe)
By the year 900 these two characters had been replaced by means of the digraph th under
he influence of the Latin spelling of the Greek letter (theta)
v. There were no silent consonants in Old English: e.g. cniht (> knight)
vi. Double consonants usually occurred in the middle of the word: e.g. habban (have),
tellan (tell), sittan (sit)
3.3. Old English Vocabulary
The Old English vocabulary is almost purely Germanic. An Old English dictionary
contains about 20,000 words of which only a few hundred are not Germanic.
About 85 per cent of the Old English vocabulary have gone out of use now. Many of the
Old English words that have disappeared were replaced in Middle English by other words (of
French, Latin origin) or are now archaic, dialectal.
Nevertheless, the 15 per cent of the words that have been preserved constitute the basic
word stock and this is of Germanic origin.
Nowadays, although more than half of the words to be found in an English dictionary are
of Romance origin (French, Latin) the basic word stock of the English language has remained
mostly Germanic. Indeed, despite large-scale borrowings, the native element (i.e. Germanic)
forms the foundation of the Modern English vocabulary (it is at the core of the language). The
native word stock stands for fundamental things dealing with everyday objects: names of the
nearest family relationships, parts of the body, plants, animals, tools, colours, everyday
activities, etc. The native word stock includes auxiliary and modal verbs, pronouns, most
numerals, prepositions, and conjunctions, most verbs of the strong conjugation (irregular
verbs).
Means of Enriching the Vocabulary in Old English
To one unfamiliar with Old English, it might seem that a language which lacked the large
number of words borrowed from French and Latin, which now form such an important part of
the English vocabulary, such a language would be somewhat limited in resources. This is,
however, not so. The language at that early stage showed great flexibility, resourcefulness.
The principal means of enriching the vocabulary in Old English were word formation
(building) and borrowing, the former device being much more frequent than the latter.
3.3.1. Word formation (Building)
The main devices of word formation (building) were affixation and composition. The two
devices were sometimes intermingled.
Affixation
a) Prefixes
The use of prefixes was particularly an important feature in the formation of verbs. There
were about a dozen prefixes which occurred with great frequency, such as be-, for-, e-, mis-,
to-, wi-.
i. The prefix for- indicated destruction: fordn (kill, destroy), forsettan (obstruct). The prefix
is still found in a few verbs: forgo (give up, manage without), forsake (desert), etc.
ii. The prefix mis- had a negative meaning as in mislcian (dislike), mishyran (not to listen
to, to disobey). The prefix survives, but it is not so productive as it was in Old English:
mislead, misprint, mistake.
iii. The prefix to- has the same value as the German zer- (asunder), e.g. tobrecan (destroy,
break to pieces).
iv. The prefix wi- entered into more than 50 Old English verbs where it had the meaning of
against. Of the 50 verbs only a few are still in use now: withstand, withdraw, withhold (keep
back, refuse to give).

10

A very striking difference between Old English and Modern English vocabulary is the fact
that a large number of borrowings as well as Verb + adverbial particle combinations (phrasal
verbs) have replaced verbs which in Old English were derived from other verbs with the help
of prefixes. Thus, the verb settan gave birth to besettan (appoint), forsettan (obstruct),
unsettan (put down), wisettan (resist), etc.
b) Suffixes
Noun-forming suffixes were often closely linked with the grammatical category of
gender. Thus, the suffix ere was generally used to form masculine nouns denoting
profession, e.g. fiscere (fisher), wrtere (writer).
The suffix estre was used for feminine nouns denoting professions, e.g. spinnestre
woman who spins (Modern English spinster unmarried, single woman).
Certain words came to be used as suffixes: thus, we find hd (state, condition) in
words such as cldhd (childhood). The word scipe (from the verb scipan to shape, to
create) appears in words like freondscipe (friendship).
Adjective - forming suffixes:
The suffix -i was used to form adjectives from nouns: misti (misty) from mist; -si
(icy) from s (ice).
With the help of the suffix isc adjectives were formed from nouns: mannisc human,
mannish), folcisc (popular), Anlisc (English).
The suffix full was used to build adjectives from nouns: carefull (careful), synfull (sinful).
The suffix leas from the adjective leas (devoid of, without) served to form adjectives
from nouns: slpleas (sleepless), mdleas (spiritless)
Composition: Word composition was extremely productive in Old English, being based on
self-explaining compounds.
Self-explaining compounds are compounds of two or more native words whose meaning in
combination is self-evident. In Modern English steamboat or railway are examples of such
words. This type of composition was extremely prevalent in Old English as it is in Modern
German. Where Modern English has resorted to borrowings made up of elements derived
from Latin and Greek, Modern German still prefers self-explaining compounds. Thus,
German uses the compound (das) Fernsehen (far-see) for television, a word whose Greek
and Latin elements mean just what the German word does.
Compound nouns were generally formed of two nouns:
e.g. eorcrft (geometry), mdcrft (intelligence)
Sometimes the first word in the compound was in the Genitive case:
Anlaland, i.e the land of the Angles >England;
Mnand, i.e. the day of the Moon > Monday
There was a close connection between derivation and composition. Quite a number of
notions which are rendered in Modern English by means of Latin, French, Greek or other loan
words, were expressed in Old English by compounds and derivatives, such as iestlines
(iest = guest; li = gracious; -nes = -ness) = hospitality.
3.3.2. Foreign influences on Old English (Borrowings)
Old English was not merely the product of the dialects brought to England by the Angles,
the Saxons and the Jutes. These dialects formed its basis: the sole basis of its grammar and the
source of the largest part of its vocabulary. But there were elements of other languages which
entered into Old English vocabulary. In the course of its existence in England 700 years Old English vocabulary was brought into contact with three other languages, the languages of
the Celts, the Romans and the Scandinavians. From each of these contacts, it shows certain
effects, especially additions it its vocabulary.
Celtic loan words

11

From the fact that the original language of Britain was Celtic, it might be expected that
numerous Celtic elements would have become absorbed into Old English, but actually very
few were.
The relations between the Germanic invaders and the conquered Celts have been much
debated by historians. As very few words of Celtic origin seem to have been traced in the
English language, some historians assumed that the English invaders had killed all those
Britons (i.e. Celts) who had not run away into the mountainous districts. In fact, the Celts
were by no means exterminated except in certain areas and in most of England large numbers
of Celts were gradually absorbed by their Saxon conquerors. The supposition of total
extermination is ruled out from the distribution of Celtic place names: In the east, the bulk of
the population was English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) and the Britons who survived in that area were
enslaved. The further west we go (Wales, Cornwall), the greater becomes the number of
Britons in the population.
Celtic elements survive in place names, especially in the south - west, e.g. 80 per cent place
names in Cornwall are of Celtic origin. Thus, Kent, Devon, Dover, Cornwall, London are of
Celtic origin.
But the greatest number of Celtic names survives in the names of rivers and hills. Thus,
the Thames is a Celtic river name, and various Celtic words for river are preserved in the
name Avon (e.g. Stratford on Avon), in the name Aber (meaning the mouth of a river) as
found in Aberdeen (used as a prefix).
Apart from place names, the influence of Celtic upon Old English vocabulary was an
extremely slight one, probably because the Germanic conquerors had enough terms to denote
the various notions existing at the time.
Latin loan words
If the influence of Celtic upon Old English vocabulary was slight, it was doubtless because
the relation of the Celts to the Anglo-Saxons was that of a subjugated race and because the
Celts were not in a position to make any notable contribution to Anglo-Saxon civilization.
It was quite otherwise with the second great influence exerted upon English that of
Latin and the circumstances under which they met. Latin was not the language of a
conquered people. It was the language of a higher civilization, a civilization from which the
English had much to learn. Contact with that civilization extended over many centuries: it
began long before the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain and continued throughout the Old
English period.
There were two distinct occasions on which borrowings from Latin occurred in the Old
English period:
a) The first period of Latin borrowings during the Roman occupation (43 AD until the
middle of the 5th century). During the first period the contact was military and commercial.
b) The second period of Latin borrowings began with the introduction of Christianity into
Britain in 597. The contact was religious and intellectual. This was the most important
influence of Latin upon Old English. It lasted over 500 years and it brought a large number of
new words into the English language.
Even after the Danish invasion Latin remained the language of learning. This fact was
going to facilitate later Latin influences as well as French influences (in the Middle and
Modern English period).
The words borrowed from Latin may be subdivided into several categories:
i. Terms connected with military life (introduced during the first period of Latin borrowings):
e.g. wl (<L. vallum) wall
strt (<L. strata via) street, road
The Latin word castra (camp) acquired in Old English the meaning of town. It is to be
found in various Old English place names ending in -cster. In Modern English, in the North

12

and East of England, the term became spelled caster (as in Lancaster); in the Midlands it
became respelled cester (as in Leicester, Worcester); and in the South and West it became
respelled chester (as in Manchester, Dorchester).
ii. Terms connected with domestic life, clothes, food:
e.g. cese (<L. caseus) cheese; pipor pepper
butere (<L. butyrum) butter; wn wine
disc (<L. discus) dish
iii. Terms connected with trade:
e.g. pund pound, cap cheap, bargain
iv. Ecclesiastical, religious terms (introduced during the second period of Latin borrowings):
e.g. lmese alms; abbod abbot; biscop biscop;
candel candle; deofol devil; munuc monk;
nunna nun; preost priest
v. Terms connected with education, learning:
e.g. scl school; mister master; fers verse
The extent of the Latin influence.
To be sure, the extent of a foreign influence is most readily seen in the number of words
borrowed. The two periods of Latin borrowings introduced about 450 words into Old English.
About 100 of these were purely learned, but the rest about 350 may be really considered
part of the English vocabulary and most of them were fully accepted and assimilated. (The
real test of a foreign influence is the degree to which a word is assimilated, i.e. how
completely a word could be derived or could be converted, just like native words).
Most Latin borrowings could be converted into other parts of speech or could be
combined with native affixes, giving many hybrid derivatives. Thus, native suffixes such as
-hd, -dm were used to turn a concrete noun (of Latin origin) into an abstract one:
martyrhd, martyrdm.
The Latin influence of the second period was not only extensive but thorough as well and
marks the real beginning of the English habit of freely incorporating foreign elements into its
vocabulary.
Scandinavian loan words
Near the end of the old English period, the English language underwent another foreign
influence the result of the contact with another important language the Scandinavian
(Danish).
The Scandinavians were the Germanic inhabitants of the Scandinavian Peninsula and
Denmark, so they were closely related to the Anglo-Saxons in language and blood. For
centuries, the Scandinavians had lived quietly in their northern homes, but in the 8 th century
some changes possibly economic and possibly political ones occurred in that area ad
provoked among them a spirit of unrest and adventurous enterprise. They began a series of
attacks upon all the lands adjacent to the North Sea. The incursions of the Scandinavians or
Norsemen commonly known as Vikings started in the year 787, gradually developing
from pirate raids to campaigns of armies attempting to conquer territories and settle down.
King Alfred put up a brave struggle against them and in 878 an agreement was reached by
which England was divided into two halves. The north and the East were occupied by the
Danes a region which came to be known as Danelaw, that is, the country under the law of
the Danes. The South and West remained occupied by the Anglo-Saxons region known as
Saxon England. The Danes reached the peak of their conquest and achievement in 1016 when
the Danish king Canute became king of England. As he had also conquered Norway, from his
English capital, he ruled the whole Scandinavian world.

13

All these events had as an important consequence the settlement of numerous

Scandinavians (Danes and Norwegians) in England, which exerted a powerful influence and
left a lasting imprint on the Old English language.
The settlement of numerous Scandinavians accounts for the large number of places bearing
Scandinavian names. In England there are more than 1400 places bearing Scandinavian
names:
a) Thus, there are about 600 place names ending in by (the Danish word for town) such
as Derby, Whitby. There are also place names ending in bury (the Danish word for
borough) such as Canterbury; also in wich (the Danish term for creek) such as Ipswich,
Greenwich. Most of these places are, naturally, in the North and East of England, for it was
here that the majority of the invaders settled.
Besides place names, Scandinavian loan-words refer to:
b) War and especially to navy: most of the loan words have not been preserved in the
language because they were replaced by French words in Middle English after the Norman
Conquest.
c) Law: most Danish law terms were later replaced by French words. Some words which
have been preserved are: lau (law), rl (thrall).
d) The greatest number of Scandinavian loan-words refer to everyday life: commonplace
objects, customs, actions, feelings, etc. (examples in Modern English): anger, crop, guess,
scale, scar, skill, skin, want, window, happy, ill, wrong, law, ugly, to call, to die, to scare, to
scream, to take, etc.
In order to estimate the Scandinavian influence, it is important to remember how great the
similarity between Old English (abbreviated to OE) and Old Norse (abbreviated to ON) was.
The English and the Scandinavians were able to understand one another without the help of
interpreters because a large number of words were almost identical in form and meaning. A
very large number of words had the same root, only their endings were different, e.g. OE.
dm ON dmr; OE. oxa - ON. oxe, etc.
Many Scandinavian words that have been introduced into the language were in use side by
side with the corresponding English words. Eventually, one of the following phenomena
occurred:
a) In some cases, it was the Scandinavian word that prevailed; e.g. the Scandinavian word
syster (> sister) replaced the OE form sweostor. Also, the Scandinavian taka (> take) replaced
the OE nman (G.: nehmen); the Scandinavian angr (> anger) replaced the OE irre, etc.
b) In other cases, it was the English word that survived, while the Scandinavian word
finally disappeared or subsists only dialectally, e.g. O.N. kirk subsists as the dialectal Scottish
equivalent of church.
c) Sometimes, both the English and the Scandinavian word were retained, developing a
difference in meaning and / or use:
e.g. O.E. craft / O.N. skill; O.E. from / O.N. fro (in to and fro)
no / nay; whole / hale (hale and hearty);
blossom / bloom; hide / skin; evil / ill
The influence of Scandinavian was not confined to nouns, adjectives, verbs, but it
extended to pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs and even a part of the frequently
used verb be. Such parts of speech are not often transferred from one language to another.
Thus, the pronouns eir (they), eirra (their), eim (them) replaced the native forms hie,
hiera, him probably because of the ambiguity of these forms (they might have been confused
with forms of singular). The pronouns both and same are of Scandinavian origin, the
preposition fro, the conjunction though.
One of the most significant adoptions is the Present Tense plural form of the verb to be:
are, which replaced the native forms sind, sindon.

14

A certain number of inflectional elements have been attributed to Scandinavian influence,

among others the s of the 3rd person singular Present Tense, Indicative Mood.
The Scandinavian settlers, mainly Danes and Norwegians, came to live close together with
the English. The resulting mixture seems to have shed much of Old English morphology.
They also helped to speed up the process of wearing away and levelling the intricate system
of inflectional endings Old English had shared with the other West Germanic dialects.
Inflectional endings could become redundant because they had been losing their force and
significance, which had gradually been taken over by (fixed) word order and other syntactic
features, innovations (D. Giering, 1979: 12)
In syntax, the omission of the relative pronoun in Relative Clauses and the omission of the
conjunction that is in conformity with Danish usage. Also, the use of the preposition in
postposition is not to be found in the other Germanic languages, except in Danish.
e.g. The man I talked to.
3.4. Old English Grammar
Grammar is the most fundamental feature that distinguishes Old English from Modern
English. Old English was a synthetic language whereas Modern English is an analytic
language.
A synthetic language is one which indicates the relations of words in a sentence largely by
means of inflections. In its grammar, Old English resembles modern German: Old English
had a very rich inflectional system: the noun, the pronoun, the adjective were declined; the
verb had distinctive endings for different persons, numbers, tenses and moods; the adjective
had distinctive endings for each of the three genders.
Since, during the Old English period, the endings of the noun, the adjective and the verb
were preserved, Old English is generally referred to as the period of full endings or full
inflections. Middle English is referred to as the period of levelled endings, and Modern
English the period of lost endings.
We shall illustrate the nature of the Old English inflections in the following paragraphs.
3.4.1. The Noun
Number and case
The inflection of the Old English noun indicated distinctions of number (singular and
plural) and case (the Old English noun had four cases). The endings of these cases fall into
certain broad categories or declensions. There is a vowel declension (also called strong
declension) and a consonant declension (or weak declension) according to whether the stem
ended in a vowel or a consonant in Common Germanic and within each of these types there
are certain subdivisions. The stems of nouns belonging to the vowel declension ended in one
of four vowels: a, o, i or u and the inflection varies accordingly.
It is impossible here to present the inflections of the Old English noun in detail. Their
nature may be gathered from two examples of the strong declension: stn stone (masculine)
and word word (neuter):
Sg. N. stn (masculine)
word (neuter):
G. stnes
wordes
D. stne
worde
A. stn
word
Pl. N. stnas
word
G. stna
worda
D. stnum
wordum
A. stnas
word

15

It is apparent from these examples that the inflection of the noun was much more elaborate
in Old English than it is today. Even these few paradigms clearly illustrate the marked
synthetic character of English in its earliest stage.
The declension to which neuter nouns belonged in Old English differed from the declension
of masculine nouns only in the Nominative and Accusative plural (zero ending). Old English
nouns such as deer, swine, sheep have the same form for the singular and the plural because in
Old English they were neuter.
Some nouns formed their Nominative and Accusative plurals in Old English by changing
the vowel of the stem. Not very many Old English nouns belonged to this declension but about
half of them have kept this method of forming the plural until the present day, with the result
that we have the plural forms men(n) (sg. man(n)), ft (sg. ft), t (sg. t) etc.
Gender
Just as in Indo-European languages generally, the gender of Old English noun was not
dependent upon meaning or considerations of sex. While animate nouns designating males
were generally masculine (man(n), fder) and females were generally feminine (modor,
dohtor), those indicating objects (inanimate) were not necessarily neuter. Stn (stone) was
masculine (< G. der Stein), mna (moon) was masculine but sunne (sun) was feminine as in
German (in German (der) Mond (moon) is masculine, (die) Sonne (sun) is feminine.
Quite often the gender of Old English nouns was illogical. Words like mden (maiden,
girl), wf (wife), cld (child) which we should expect to be feminine or masculine, were in fact
neuter, while wfman (woman) was masculine because the second element of the compound
was masculine.
The simplicity of Modern English gender is one of the chief assets of the language. Gender
in Modern English is determined by meaning: all nouns naming living creatures (beings)
belong to the masculine or feminine gender, according to the sex of the individual and all
other nouns (inanimate) are neuter.
Attributive gender, as when we speak of a ship as feminine or the sun and moon as
masculine or feminine is personification and a matter of rhetoric not grammar.
3.4.2. The Adjective
The adjective was fully declined in Old English, having three genders, two numbers and
four cases (sometimes also a fifth case: the Instrumental).
There were two types of adjective declension; the strong and the weak declension. The
strong declension was used with nouns that were not accompanied by a determiner. The weak
declension was used with nouns that were preceded by a determiner, such as a definite article,
a demonstrative or a possessive adjective.
Strong declension
d man(n) good man
Weak declension se da man(n) the good man
The declension of the adjective d (good) in the singular:
Strong declension
Weak declension
M
F
N
M
F
N
N. d d
d
da
de
de
G. des dre des
dan
dan dan
D. dum dre dum dan
dan dan
Ac. dne de d
dan
dan de
I. de
de
As far as the comparison of adjectives was concerned, adjectives were compared by adding
ra for the comparative of superiority and est /-ost for the relative superlative: ld -ldra
-ldost

16

As in other Indo-European languages the comparison of certain adjectives was based on

different roots, forming suppletive systems:
e.g. d betra betst (good better best)
yfel wyrsa wyrst (evil/bad worse worst)
micel mra mst (much more most)
3.4.3. The Pronoun: The Pronoun comprised several categories in Old English: personal,
possessive, demonstrative, relative, interrogative, indefinite.
The personal pronouns: The personal pronouns in Old English had distinctive forms for
persons, cases, gender (for the third person singular) and number. Besides the ordinary two
numbers singular and the plural there was a third number, the dual used for two persons or
two things (first and second person). The forms of the first person personal pronoun:
sg. N. ic (I)
Pl. N.
w (we)
G. mn (mine)
G.
re (ours)
Obj. m (me)
Obj. us (us)
Dual N. wit (we two)
G. uncer
Obj. unc
From the frequency if its use and the necessity for specific reference when used, the
personal pronoun has preserved the system of inflections in Modern English. The distinction
between the dual and the plural, which was an unnecessary complication in language, has
disappeared in Modern English.
The demonstrative pronoun: There were two fully developed demonstrative pronouns in
Old English: the Simple demonstrative and the Emphasized demonstrative.
a) The Simple demonstrative originally meant that. Its meaning was often weakened
expressing the function of the definite article. The forms of the Simple demonstrative for the
Nominative case were the following:
singular
.
plural
M.
F.
N.
(all genders)
s
so
t

For example: se grund the ground; so eore the earth; t land the land.
b) The Emphasized demonstrative corresponds to this. Its forms for the Nominative case
were the following:
singular
plural
M.
F.
N.
(all genders)
es
eos
is
s
3.4.4. The Verb
As in all Germanic languages, there were two large classes of verbs: the strong and the
weak verbs. These two classes of verbs were distinguished in the following way:
a) The Past Tense in strong verbs was formed by vowel gradation/change, while in weak
verbs was formed by adding a dental suffix (-de, -te) to the stem of the present.
e.g. strong verb: drincan dranc (drink drank)
weak verb: hlan hlde (heal healed)
b) The Past Participle of strong verbs was formed by adding on / -en, and that of weak
verbs by adding -ed.
e.g. strong verb: drincan dranc druncon (drink drank - drunk)
weak verb: hlan hlde hled (heal healed - healed)
c) The Past Tense, second person singular in strong verbs was marked by the ending e,
while in weak verbs it was marked by adding est:
e.g. strong verb: u nme (you took)

17

weak verb: u dmdest (you judged / thought)

In Modern English these characteristics partly persist:
a) The first one (Past Tense) has been preserved, but the final e of weak verbs has
disappeared, leaving no difference between the Past Tense and the Past Participle (both ended
in d).
b) The second characteristic (Past Participle) has been preserved, except that many of the
strong verbs have lost the ending on/-en.
c) The third characteristic (second person singular) no longer exists.
Moods
In Old English there were three finite moods (the Indicative, the Subjunctive and the
Imperative) and three non-finite moods (the Infinitive, the Present Participle and the Past
Participle).
The Subjunctive Mood, of which there are only a few traces left in Modern English, was
widely used in Old English, especially in subordinate clauses. The underlying principle,
which determined the use of the Subjunctive in Subordinate clauses in Old English, was that
the Subjunctive was required in all dependent statements which do not express a fact:
e.g. ic ascode hine hwt 3t wre
I asked him what that were (= was).
The Infinitive. There were two Infinitive forms in Old English:
a) The Simple Infinitive ending in an:
e.g. h onan sinan he began to sing
b) The Prepositional Infinitive was formed with the preposition to and the dative case of a
verbal noun ending in anne:
e.g. sele us flsc to etanne give us meat to eat
Both the an and the anne inflections were later levelled and lost and the preposition to
came to be used very frequently with the infinitive, gradually losing its initial meaning
(direction, purpose, intention). Eventually, to was no longer felt as a preposition, but as a
particle, a part of the so-called Long Infinitive. The Simple infinitive is still used with shall,
can, may, let, make, see, etc.
As far as tenses are concerned, the situation was rather different from what it is nowadays.
Thus, the Past Tense indicated a past action having no connection with the present (i.e.
corresponding to the Past Tense of Modern English), or a past action related to the present
(i.e. corresponding to the Present Perfect of Modern English).
On the other hand, a construction corresponding to the Present Perfect in later English was
sometimes used for expressing a past action that had no relation with the present. It was
formed with habban when the verb was transitive and with beon when the verb was
intransitive.
e.g. H is ecumen. (He is come)
In Old English there existed no special tense for denoting a past action completed before
another past action, i.e. there was no Past Perfect. The simple Past Tense was generally
resorted to, the context indicating the time of the action. Sometimes the construction hfde +
Past Participle was used to express a past action accomplished before another past action, but
the process was completed only in Middle English, when the construction became the Past
Perfect.
There was no Future Tense and the notion of futurity was either expressed by the Present
Tense, sometimes together with an adverbial modifier of time or, rather infrequently, by
means of the verbs sculan and willan in association with the Infinitive. The former verb
sculan - expressed the idea of obligation, the latter willan expressed the idea of wish or
intention.
e.g. se st e ic eow asendan wille (the spirit that I to you to send intend the spirit

18

that I intend to send to you)

The conjugation of the verb in Old English had twice as many forms as there are in Modern
English, owing to the well developed Subjunctive and especially to the fact that the forms of
the plural differed from those of the singular.
3.4.5. Syntax
In Old English, syntax was based on inflection. Very few grammatical relationships
depended on form words and none depended on word order.
In Old English word order was not very important as a means of denoting syntactic
relations, owing to the rich inflectional system of the language. As in Latin, the place of words
could be changed according to rhetorical purposes. It was equally possible to say:
Se man nam a bc. (The man took the book); Se man a bc nam; a bc nam se man.
The only difference between the sentences consists in the emphasis conferred on the words
in front position.
Sometimes the Object preceded the Subject followed by the predicate:
e.g. Fela worda sprc se enel. (Many words spoke the angel)
The order of the main parts of the sentence (Subject and Predicate) depended on the
presence and absence of a secondary part of speech at the beginning of the sentence. When
the sentence did not start with a secondary part of speech, the usual order was subject +
predicate.
When the sentence began with a secondary part of speech such as a (then), n (now),
ne (not), etc. the order was usually inverted.
e.g. Ne can ic nht sinan. (Cannot I nought sing > I cannot sing anything)
Chapter 4: MIDDLE ENGLISH
The transition period in the history of English between Old English and Modern English is
known as Middle English. Its chronological limits are, however, not easy to establish, because
the changes transforming any language are always gradual and conspicuous only after some
time. Nevertheless, it is often agreed that Middle English was the English spoken
between1100 1500.
4.1. Historical outline of the period
In order to understand the linguistic changes that took place in that period we shall outline
the most important historical events of that time.
4.1.1. The Norman Conquest and its Consequences (1060 1200)
Towards the end of the Old English period an event occurred, which had a very great effect
on the English language, mainly on its vocabulary. This event was the Norman Conquest in
1066.
The Normans who lived in Normandy, a district on the Northern Coast of France were
among the most advanced and progressive of the peoples of Europe. For some time before the
Norman Conquest, the relations between England and France had been fairly close. When in
1066 Edward the Confessor died childless, England was faced with the choice of a successor.
In the end, Harold, the son of a Saxon earl was elected king, but the election was challenged.
William, the duke of Normandy, a cousin to the late king, believing himself entitled to the
throne, decided to obtain the English crown by force. In September he landed on the southern
coast of England; the battle was fought at Hastings ending with the victory of the Normans.
On Christmas day 1066, William The Conqueror was crowned king of England.
The Norman Conquest was attended by several consequences:
a) At the time of the Conquest, the Normans had advanced feudal institutions and this fact
accelerated the full establishment of feudalism in Britain. One of the most important
consequences was the introduction of a new nobility. Many of the English higher class had
been killed on the battlefield at Hastings, those who escaped were treated as traitors and the

19

places were filled by Williams Norman followers and for several generations after the
Norman Conquest the important positions at the Court were almost always held by Normans.
b) The Norman clergy were given all the important positions in the Church.
c) Since the governing class in both State and Church was almost exclusively made up from
among Normans, their influence was enormous. They used their own language, i.e. French
and for 200 years after the Norman Conquest, French remained the language used among the
upper classes in England. At first, those who spoke French were of Norman origin, but soon,
social interests made the remnants of the English ruling class learn French. They realized that
it was to their own advantage to learn the new language and before long the distinction
between those who spoke English and those who spoke French was not ethnic, but largely
social. French was the language of the Court and the upper classes, while English remained
the language of the masses (of the lower classes). Thus, about 90 per cent of the population
(peasants, craftsmen, tradesmen) continued to speak English.
The situation in the Middle English period is summed up by D. Giering as follows: The
French-speaking Normans had consolidated their political power and introduced their
language into all important spheres of the feudal state. At court and in the church, in the lawcourts and the army, in the schools and in the arts, in the nobility down to the country squire,
everywhere a northern dialect of French (Norman), became the dominant language. For
almost three centuries English continued to be spoken only by the lower classes, the masses of
the people (Giering, 1979: 13).
After the Conquest, the Norman kings of England continued to be dukes of Normandy and
many noblemen had estates on both sides of the Channel. Thus, there were economic links,
which naturally implied the continued use of French.
Britain in the Middle Ages
Whereas the serfs had houses made of mud and timber, the knights, according to their
right to rule, considered themselves of blue blood and the their governing as being the rule
by the best people, therefore started building castles of stone beginning with 1066.
There was a code of chivalry but it did not involve the relations with the lower classes,
inequality was at the base of the social pyramid. There was no galantry or romance, as it
might appear, but a cast solidarity. The knights duty was to protect God and the king, give
feasts, hunt, terrorize peasants. Warfare was enobling: Edward, the Black Prince, was an
exponent of the sense of honor and duty but led ruthless campaigns in France. King John was
famous for slitting noses and plucking out eyes.
Gods intermediary is the archbishop of Canterbury and his retenue (suita). Pope was
the feudal overlord which led to an aristocratic rebellion in 1223 resulting in the drawing of
Magna Carta the source of western liberties.
There were three orders of the society: the clergy, the military aristocracy and the
working people.
In 1381 over 50,000 peasants led by the priest John Ball attacked London. The town
was set ablaze.
4.1.2. The Reestablishment of English (1200 - 1500)
Several factors led to the reestablishment of English:
i. The loss of Normandy: In 1204 King John lost Normandy because he did not accept the
king of France as his overlord. After the loss of Normandy, many noblemen had to give up
their estates in Normandy. Towards the middle of the century, when they no longer had any
economic interests in France, English began to come into general use again. They continued
to speak French, but instead of using French as their mother tongue inherited from Norman

20

ancestors, French became a fashionable language enjoying great prestige at most European
courts.
English won back its leading role as the official language of the country only towards the
end of the Middle English period. This was possible as a result of a gradual re-orientation on
the part of the Norman upper classes who wanted to take a firmer hold of their English
possessions and to unite with the remaining English nobility against their common feudal
enemy, the French king. With the shift of their economic and political interest from Normandy
to England, English became a patriotic symbol of their new identity as Englishmen. The first
English king of Norman descent to open Parliament in English (in 1363) was Edward III
(Giering, 1979: 13).
By the middle of the 13th century English became the language used among the upper
classes. It was at this time that the adoption of French words into the English language
assumed large proportions. While trying to express their ideas in English, all those who had
been usually speaking French, often simply had to transfer French words into English and the
outcome was a large scale borrowing of French words.
ii. Besides the loss of Normandy, there were other factors (social, political and economic
ones) which contributed to the disuse of French:
a) The Hundred Years War (1337 1453) between England and France;
b) The Peasants Rising of 1381;
c) The gradual decline of feudalism and especially the rise of two important English
speaking social strata: the small landowners and the town bourgeoisie, i.e. the rise of the
middle class (A. Baugh, & T. Cable, 1978: 141). The economic importance of these two
classes increased with it the importance of the language they spoke, i.e. English.
Such changes in the social and economic life enable us to understand the final triumph of
English. Towards the close of the 14 th century English was restored in law courts, in schools
and at Court.
The last step the English language had to make in its gradual ascent was its employment in
writing (literature), for here it had to meet the competition of Latin as well as French. It was
only in the second half of the 14th century that English succeeded in taking the place of French
and Latin in writing.
Middle English Literature
The literature written in England during the Middle English period reflects fairly accurately
the linguistic situation shown above. Three periods can be distinguished:
a) During the first period (1150 1250) polite literature was written in French, while
chroniclers and scholars used Latin. The only works written in English were almost
exclusively religious such as the Ormulum. The outstanding exceptions to this kind of
literature were Layamons Brut and The Owl and the Nightingale.
b) In the 13th century romances began to be translated and adopted from the French.
c) The second half of the 14th century is an outstanding period in Middle English literature
owing to Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland and John Wycliffe. G. Chaucer is important
not only as the founder of English poetry, but he is equally important because he firmly
established the English literary language. The most famous of his work is The Canterbury
Tales which, besides giving us in the General Prologue a matchless portrait gallery of
contemporary types, constitutes in the variety of the tales a veritable anthology of medieval
literature.
W. Langland is the author of a long social allegory, Piers the Plowman. J. Wycliff was the
first to attempt the translation of the Bible into English.
Besides their literary value, these works prove the secure position the English language had
attained in the 14th century.

21

4.1.3. The Establishment (formation) of the National Language. The Rise of Standard
English
One of the striking characteristics of Middle English was its enormous variety in the
different parts of the country. This variety was not confined to the forms of the spoken
language, as it is to a great extent today, but appeared equally in the written literature.
Nevertheless, four main dialects are generally distinguished in Middle English: Northern
(from the OE Northumbrian dialect), East Midland, West Midland (both coming from the OE
Mercian dialect) and Southern (from the OE West Saxon).
In the 15th century, from a country whose land was divided among great feudal lords,
England started to become a national state. Bourgeois relations were developing rapidly. The
economic relations between different parts of the country were getting stronger and it became
both necessary and possible to establish a national language that should be above all dialects
and should be understood all over the country.
Out of this variety of local dialects there emerged towards the end of the fourteenth
century a written language that in the course of the fifteenth century won general recognition
and has since become the recognized standard in both speech and writing.
Therefore, alongside the gradual victory of English in its struggle with French, another
important process took place - the establishment (formation) of the national language.
The part of England that contributed most to the formation of this standard was the East
Midland district, and it was the East Midland type of English that became its basis,
particularly the dialect of the metropolis, London.
Several factors contributed to the attainment of this result:
a) In the first place, as a Midland dialect, the English of this region occupied a middle
position between the extreme divergences of the north and the south. It was less conservative
that the southern dialect, less radical than the northern. In its sounds and inflections it
represents a kind of compromise, sharing some of the characteristics of both its neighbours
(A. Baugh: 192).
b) In the second place, the East Midland district was the largest and most populous of the
major dialect areas. The land was more valuable than the hilly country to the north and west,
and in an agricultural age this advantage was reflected in both the number and the prosperity
of the inhabitants.
c) A third factor was the presence of the universities, Oxford and Cambridge, in this
region. In the fourteenth century the monasteries were playing a less important role in the
dissemination of learning than they had once played, while the two universities had developed
into important intellectual centres.
d) The popularity of G. Chaucers and J. Wyclifs works supported the diffusion of standard
English.
e) A very important contribution to the spread of Standard English was the introduction of
printing in 1476. W. Caxton, the first English printer used the speech of London in all works
he printed.
f) By far the most influential factor in the rise of Standard English was the importance of
London as the capital of England. Indeed, it is altogether likely that the language of the city
would have become the prevailing dialect without the help of any of the factors previously
discussed. In doing so, it would have been following the course of other national tongues
French as the dialect of Paris, Spanish as that of Castile, etc. (Baugh: 194). London was, and
still is, the political and commercial centre of England. It was the seat of the court, of the
highest judicial tribunals, the focus of the social and intellectual activities of the country. The
history of Standard English is almost a history of London English.

22

4.2. The linguistic characteristics of Middle English

4.2.1. Middle English Spelling and Pronunciation
In the 14th and 15th centuries paper began to be used for manuscripts instead of
parchment which was very expensive. The growing number of schools implied an ever
increasing necessity of manuscripts. But since most of the texts were written in French or
Latin, whenever an English text was copied its spelling was influenced by these two
languages. As most of the scribes were Norman, the French methods of representing sounds
began to prevail. There were certain vowels and consonants which did not exist in French and
which the Norman scribes found rather difficult to represent. That is why certain symbols
which had existed in OE but did not exist in French spelling were discarded:
1. French had neither the symbol nor the sound []. That is why the symbol gradually
disappeared from texts and was replaced by a or e:
e.g. OE ld > Mi.E glad
OE slpan > Mi.E slepan (later on the vowel e was doubled)
2. The symbols and did not exist in French: these signs were replaced by th.
3. A new letter g was introduced at the beginning of the Middle English period
(abbreviated to MiE) to replace in initial and final position. e.g. OE od > Mi.E god
4. The group of consonants sc which rendered the sound [], in OE was replaced by sh in
Mi.E:
e.g. OE. scip > Mi.E. ship
5. A number of French representations of sounds were introduced:
ou, ow (in final position) for the sound [u:]
e.g. OE ld > MiE loud; OE c > MiE cow
OE c was replaced by k after n and before front vowels (i) e.g. OE drincan > MiE
drinkan
6. Long vowels were no longer indicated by a macron ( ) as they had been in Old English;
they began to be doubled:
e.g. OE s > MiE goos; OE ft > MiE foot
However, was not doubled because of the similarity of and , which would have brought
about misunderstanding. In the 15th century the scribes began to add a final e to the stem in
order to show that i was long:
e.g. OE. wf > MiE wife
By analogy with such spellings, other monosyllabic words such as goos, hors added a silent
e to their stems: goose, horse.
Most of these changes in spelling were due to the respelling of English by Norman scribes
according to French spelling traditions. Naturally, the falling out of use of special marks for
long vowels, the introduction of new symbols weakened the phonetic character of English
spelling: phonetic principles were mixed up with French spellings and with conservative Old
English spellings.
4.2.2. Middle English Grammar
The most important changes affecting the language during the Middle English period were
the further levelling and reduction of Old English inflectional endings (they were much
reduced both in number and complexity). Some were the result of the Norman Conquest and
the conditions which followed in the wake of that event. Others were a continuation of
tendencies that had begun to manifest themselves after the Scandinavian invasion.
It was in this period that the change from a predominantly inflectional (or synthetic) to a
more syntax-orientated (analytic) grammatical structure could be regarded as a breakthrough
(D. Giering, 1979: 13).
The Noun
23

The process of the decay of the inflectional system of the noun developed more rapidly in
the North, where it was supported by the mixing of English and Scandinavian dialects.
a) Gender. The inflections indicating the gender of a noun began to be discarded. In Middle
English we witness the elimination of Old English grammatical gender (the weakening of
inflections led to the loss of the old grammatical gender). In the North, where inflections were
weakened earlier, grammatical gender disappeared first; in the South it lingered longer
because the decay of inflections was slower.
b) Number. In early Middle English there remained only two methods of indicating the
plural: the (e)s for masculine nouns (strong declension) and the en for weak declension. In
late Middle English the (e)s plural spread quickly and it became the normal plural ending of
nouns, with a few exceptions: oxen, children, brethren and a few more which have changed in
the meantime: eyen.
c) Case. The masculine nouns (those belonging to the strong declension) were reduced to
two cases in Middle English: The common case (Nominative, Dative, Accusative) and the
Possessive (Genitive) case. The neuter nouns (weak declension) had no case forms at all. The
two main types of declension (strong and weak) of Middle English can be illustrated by two
nouns ston (stone), masculine and eye, neuter.
Strong Decl.
Weak Decl.
Sg.
pl.
sg.
pl.
Common case ston
stones
eye
eyen
Possessive
stones
stones
eye
eyen
(genitive)
The process of dropping the inflections was also due to the growth of other means of
indicating grammatical relations, i.e. of indicating the function of words in the sentence.
Prepositional phrases began to be used more and more often instead of case forms, namely
the to-phrase instead of the Dative and the of-phrase instead of the Genitive.
In Old English the preposition to had generally indicated direction and the preposition of
had meant from, out of. In Middle English the meaning of both prepositions was
weakened: to and sometimes for indicated the Indirect Object, i.e. the Object towards which
the action was directed and for which it was performed. Of frequently indicated possession.
It is difficult to know whether these prepositional phrases came into use in order to
compensate for the loss of inflections or just to make the meaning of cases clearer, thus
rendering their inflection unnecessary, levelling them and finally discarding them. What is
most probable is that at first, these prepositions began to be used to give more syntactic force
to the inflections and when, in Middle English the inflections were levelled and therefore lost
their distinctive power, the prepositions became absolutely necessary to show the respective
syntactic relations.
The Adjective
The adjective was influenced by the loss of grammatical gender and by the loss of most
case inflections of the noun. (In Old English the adjective had agreed with the noun in gender,
case, number).
There remained only a few traces of the number distinctions and the distinctions between
the strong and the weak declension. In Old English a weak adjective (i.e. an adjective
accompanied by a determiner) had five distinct singular and plural forms which indicated both
case and number by means of the endings: -a, -e, -an, -ene, -um. In Middle English all these
endings were levelled to e:
Strong declension
Weak declension
(Det + Adj + Noun)
Singular hard
harde
Plural
harde
harde

24

The result was that in the weak declension there was no longer any distinction between
the singular and the plural, since both ended in e. When in the 14th century final -e ceased to
be pronounced, it became a mere feature of spelling. The adjective had become an uninflected
word by the close of the Middle English period.
Besides the synthetic comparison (formed by means of the suffixes er, -est./ -ost) in the
14th century, adjectives were often compared analytically (with more and most):
e.gwhich partie is the bettre and more profitable. (G. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales)
The Pronoun
The Personal Pronoun In the Personal pronoun the losses were not so great. Here there
was greater need for separate forms for the different genders, cases and accordingly, most of
the distinctions that had existed in Old English were retained.
The Personal pronoun suffered the following changes in Middle English:
1. The dual number (wit = we two) disappeared in the 13th century.
2. The forms of the Dative and Accusative cases merged into one form called the Objective
case: me, him, her.
3. The forms they, them, which are due to the Scandinavian influence replaced the Old
English pronouns h, hem.
The Demonstrative Pronoun In Old English the Demonstrative Pronoun had two
numbers, three genders and four or five cases. In Middle English the simplification of the
inflectional system of the demonstrative pronoun consisted in the elimination of gender
distinctions and the reduction of the number of cases. Of the numerous forms of s (M), so
(F), t (N) for singular Nominative, we have only s > the, and t > that surviving
through Middle English and continuing in use today. The form s > the began to be used as a
definite article; that continued to be used in the function of demonstrative pronoun.
The Verb
Apart from some levelling of inflections and the weakening of endings in accordance with
the general tendency, the principal changes in the verb during the Middle English period were:
1. The conjugation of the verb was subjected to serious modifications in Middle English.
Thus, owing to the weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables, the difference between the
endings an (in the Old English Imperative and Infinitive), -on (Indicative past plural), -en
(Present and Past Subjunctive; also Past Participle of strong verbs) was lost. The final
consonant n was gradually weakened and lost in Middle English period, except in the Past
Participle of certain strong verbs.
2. The serious losses suffered by the strong conjugation. The number of weak verbs became
much larger than the number of strong verbs for the following reasons:
i. Nearly a third of the strong verbs in Old English died out in the Middle English period;
ii. The large number of French verbs which were borrowed during the Middle English period
reinforced the weak conjugation;
iii. The pattern of analogy, i.e. the tendency of language to adapt a more complex form to a
simpler one, is exemplified by the number of verbs which had belonged to the strong
conjugation in Old English but which became weak in Middle English: climb, help, walk, etc.
iv. In a number of cases, some verbs which had belonged to the strong conjugation in Old
English and which later became weak verbs, have preserved the strong form of Past Participle
(in (e)n ) only when they are used as adjectives: laden (<load), molten (<melt), rotten (<rot),
shaven (<shave), misshapen, cloven.
3. The Old English prefix to the Past Participle 1e- was reduced to y- in Middle English
(later on y- disappeared altogether leaving no traces of this prefix).
e.g. OE eson > Mi.E. yseon
4. The verbs shal and, to a certain extent, will were frequently used in Middle English to
denote a future action: e.g. of which I tolde yow and tellan shal.

25

5. The Continuous Aspect appeared in Middle English but it was not often resorted to.
Syntax
1. The decay of inflectional endings had an extensive influence on syntax, in particular on
word order.
So long as inflections served to indicate the case of nouns (their function in the sentence),
word order was comparatively unimportant, but when, for example, the Nominative and the
Accusative came to be identical in form, a fixed word order was necessary as a means of
denoting syntactic relations.
The subject generally preceded the predicate except when the sentence began with an
adverbial modifier, e.g. Wel coude he sittan on hors. (Well could he sit on the horse)
The pressure exerted by the more and more rigid character of word order accounts for
certain changes connected with impersonal verbs: the former indirect objects preceding them
became subjects:
OE Me ws eiefan a bc Late MiE I was given a book
2. In Middle English it was still possible to use several negative words in the same sentence:
e.g. Ye neshulen habben no best bute cat one. (You should have no animal but one
cat)
The negative words no, noht (nought) which were placed after the verb and emphasized
the negative particle ne- preceding the verb, gradually became independent of the particle and
ousted it completely.
4.2.3. Middle English Vocabulary
The development of the vocabulary in Middle English is due to the inner resources of the
language, as well as to the borrowing of words from other languages.
4.2.3.1. The inner resources of the language in Middle English
They were represented by a) Affixation; b) Composition; c) Changes of meaning.
a) Affixation
Old English had enlarged its vocabulary chiefly by a rich use of prefixes and suffixes. In
the Middle English period there is a visible decline in the use of these old methods of word
formation. Many of the Old English prefixes and suffixes gradually lost their productivity
(partly or completely) because of the large influx of French words.
i. Prefixes. For example, the prefix for- (corresponding to the German ver-) which was
used to intensify the meaning of a verb or to add the idea of something detrimental,
destructive became obsolete in Middle English. The only verbs in which for- occurs had their
origin in Old English: forgive, forget, forsake, forswear, forbid, forgo.
The prefix to- (corresponding to the German zer-) has left no traces at all.
Other prefixes have lost their productivity: be-, mis-, un-. Thus, the negative prefix un-,
found in words such as unable, unbold (timid), unfrend (hostile), unhonourable
(dishonourable), unmovable (immovable) began to share its productive power with prefixes
of French or Latin origin such as dis-, in-, re-.
ii. Suffixes. A similar decline is observable in the formative power of certain suffixes which
were widely used in Old English. The loss here is perhaps less distinctly felt because some
important suffixes remained in full force in Middle English, such as:
-er(e): formed agent nouns from verbs or other nouns: baker, fisher; -ness(e): formed nouns
from adjectives: brihtnesse (brightness), frelnesse (frailty); -ful: was used to form adjectives
from nouns and verbs: forgetful, rihtful (rightful, just).
But other suffixes, equally important were lost (e.g. end which was used to form agent
nouns from verbs) or were diminished in productivity: -dom, -hood, -ship.
b) Composition

26

Not only affixation but also composition lost some of its productive power in Middle
English. The practice of combining native words into self-interpreting compounds was not
abandoned in Middle English, but in many cases where a new word could have been easily
formed on the native model, a ready-made French word was borrowed instead. For instance,
in Middle English compound nouns were of two types:
- endocentric (one element of the compound determines another): rainbowe (rainbow),
alehs (alehouse), hangeman (hangman);
- exocentric (none/neither of the elements determines another): pickepurse (pickpocket),
redbrest (redbreast).
c) Changes of meaning
Another important means of enriching the vocabulary was Change of meaning. The
meanings of words are not fixed, they are liable to change. There are several causes for
changes of meaning: some social, some psychological, some purely linguistic. It has been
observed that, in their development of meaning words often pursue certain tendencies. The
chief trends of semantic change are: extension of meaning, narrowing of meaning, elevation
of meaning, degradation of meaning.
i. Extension of meaning (or Generalization) refers to the phenomenon when the meaning
is widened, generalized from one narrow field to a wider one: e.g. husband originally meant
master of a house; in Middle English it began to be used with the meaning of a man to
whom a woman is married.
The word holiday originally meant holy day, a day of religious significance. But in
Middle English semantic change extended the meaning of holiday to what it is in Modern
English: any day on which we do not have to work.
Quarantine once had the restricted meaning of forty days isolation.
ii. Narrowing of meaning (or Specialization) refers to the case when the word acquires a
more restricted, specialized sense.
e.g. meat originally meant any kind of food. Thus, in the Bible, God says of the herbs
and trees, to you they shall be for meat (Genesis 1: 29, cited from Fromkin & Rodman,
1998: 463). To a speaker of Old English meat meant food while flesh meant meat.
But in Middle English semantic change narrowed the meaning of meat to what it is in
Modern English: it began to refer to one special type of food edible flesh. The earlier
meaning still survives in the compound sweetmeat (a sweet or cake), also in the saying one
mans meat is another mans poison.
Wade in Old English meant to go but in Middle English it began to be used with the
meaning of to walk through water, mud
iii. Elevation of meaning implies the process by which the new meaning of a word acquires
a higher status in comparison with the initial one.
e.g. knight (OE cniht) originally meant a boy, a servant; in Middle English it began to
be used with the meaning of man raised to honourable military rank.
iv. Degradation of meaning refers to the process when a neutral word becomes deprecating
in meaning. Thus, cnafe (< G. Knabe) originally signified a boy but in Middle English it
began to be used with the meaning of knave.
4.2.3.2. Borrowings
The greatest number of words borrowed in the Middle English period came from French
and Latin.
The French influence on the vocabulary
The end of the Middle English period witnessed an enormous influx of thousands of French
words. Since that time borrowing has won a favourite place in English word-formation.

27

French influence did not begin immediately after the Norman Conquest when there was a
well-marked separation between the two languages. This influence was strongest in the years
1250 1400, i.e. after the loss of Normandy and the reestablishment of English.
French has enriched the English vocabulary by about ten thousand words, three quarters of
which are still in current use. Besides, the importance of the French influence is not to be
judged only by the number of the words borrowed, but also by their frequency of use and by
their degree of assimilation.
Many of the words borrowed from French were connected with the development of
feudalism, and with the life, ideas, customs and tastes of the Norman nobility. The French
loan words may be divided into the following groups according to the main spheres of activity
they belong to:
a) Words reflecting feudal administration: state (< tat), mayor (< maire), realm, govern,
government, court, prince, noble, duke, sovereign, majesty, reign, royal, revenue, etc.
b) Words connected with law. As French was the language of the law courts for a very long
time, most legal terms are of French origin: justice, sentence, prison, defence, defendant,
crime, accuse, plea, to plead, judge, judgment.
c) Words connected with army and military life. The important part played by war in
feudalism, the control of the army and the navy by the French-speaking aristocracy, the wars
waged with France, all these factors contributed to the adoption of numerous French military
terms, such as: captain, lieutenant, spy, army, battle, siege, enemy, regiment, combat, etc.
d) Religious, ecclesiastical terms. The fact that the major part of the higher clergy were of
Norman origin accounts for a large number of French words such as: religion, sermon, saint,
miracle, clergy, friar, pray, baptism, hermit.
e) Terms connected with art, literature, science. The cultural and intellectual interests of the
ruling class are reflected in words pertaining to the arts, architecture, science, medicine, etc:
art, paint(ing), prose, pain, poison, ointment, logic, grammar, etc.
f) Terms reflecting fashion, meals, social life: dress, garment, robe, button, fashion, dinner,
appetite, taste; beef, veal, mutton, pork, joy, pleasure, leisure, dance, music, ease, etc.
Many of the French words that were borrowed had a meaning already expressed by an
English word. In such cases two linguistic phenomena happened: i. one of the two words
disappeared; ii. where both survived, they were differentiated in meaning.
i. One of the two words (French or English) disappeared:
- Sometimes, after a time, it was the French word that went out of use:
e.g. OE amity was used for some time in MiE alongside friendship but was finally replaced by
friendship; amity is now used in very formal style.
OE moiety (<F. moiti) was finally replaced by half.
- In a great many cases it was the Old English word that died out:
e.g. The O.E. ele was replaced in Mi.E. by the French word noble, and eling
became nobleman.
OE oldhord was replaced in Mi.E by the French word tresor> treasure (Mod.E).
Although the compound went out of use, the separate words have been retained: gold, hoard
(pile).
OE erihte was replaced in MiE by the French word justice.
The O.E. dm was replaced in Mi..E. by the French word judgment. But the O.E.
word has survived in some special senses: the day of doom or doomsday (= the day of
judgment); to be doomed to oblivion (= to be condemned by fate to), or to meet ones
doom.
The O.E. dman was replaced in Mi.E. by the French word to judge. The O.E. word
has survived in some special senses: to deem it right / proper (= to think / to hold an
opinion).

28

ii. When both the English and the corresponding French words survived, they were
maintained and they were generally differentiated in meaning. Thus, there appeared stylistic
differences justifying the retention of both words in the language. As a rule, the native word English - had a concrete character, it referred to everyday life and therefore it was preferred in
informal style, having a more emotional sense; the loan-word - French - had a more bookish,
more abstract character and it was preferred in formal style.
There are numerous examples of two lexical items, one Germanic and one Romance, for one
single concept in English: hearty / cordial, help / aid, deep / profound, begin / commence,
ask / demand, hide / conceal, wedding / marriage, wish / desire, freedom / liberty, child /
infant, work / labour, life / existence, etc.
Referring to the pair of words hearty and cordial, A. Baugh & Th. Cable write: In the
fifteenth century hearty and cordial came to be used for feelings which were supposed to
spring from the heart. Etymologically they are alike, coming respectively from the Old
English and the Latin words for heart. But we have kept them both in the language because
we use them with a slight difference in meaning, hearty implying a certain physical vigour, as
in a hearty dinner, cordial a more quiet or conventional manifestation, as in a cordial
reception. (1978: 180) Because of the concrete value, the English word has a stronger
emotional colouring than the French one. Thus, hearty welcome is warmer than cordial
welcome (O. Jespersen, 1955: 104).
Also, referring to the difference between help and aid, Otto Jespersen writes: Help
expresses greater dependence and deeper need than aid. In extremity we say God help me!
rather than God aid me! In time of danger we cry help! help! rather than aid! Aid
[]Help includes aid, but aid may fall short of the meaning of help. (1955: 103)
In the same way, the English have kept a number of words for smell. The common word in
Old English was stench. During the Middle English period this was supplemented by the word
smell (of unknown origin) and the French words aroma, odour, and scent. To these the
English have since added stink (from the verb) and perfume and fragrance, from French. Most
of these have special connotations and smell has become the general word. Stench now always
means an unpleasant smell (Baugh & Cable, 1978: 180).
Very often, the difference in origin has developed into a difference in meaning. An
interesting group of words illustrating the principle is ox, sheep, swine, and calf beside the
French equivalents beef, mutton, pork, and veal. The French words primarily denoted the
animal, as they still do, but in English they were used from the beginning to distinguish the
meat from the living beast.
Alongside of French words, many French word-building elements entered the English
language:
Prefixes: dis- / des- (disdain, destroy; disown, dislike (with English roots); en- (enjoy,
encircle).
Suffixes: -ence/ -ance (defence, obedience; ignorance, arrogance); -tion (corruption,
attraction);-ment (treatment, government; fulfilment (hybrid); -ess (princess, goddess
(hybrid); -able/ -ible: admirable, terrible, readable (hybrid).
It must not be thought that the extensive modification of the English language caused by
the Norman Conquest had made of it something else than English. The language had
undergone much simplification of its inflections, but its grammar was still English. It had
absorbed several thousand French words as a natural consequence of a situation in which
large numbers of people were for a time bilingual and then gradually turned from the habitual
use of French to the habitual use of English. It had lost a great many native words and
abandoned some of its most characteristic habits of word-formation. But great and basic
elements of the vocabulary were still English. As A. Baugh and Th. Cable rightly point out,
While we are under the necessity of paying considerable attention to the large French

29

element that the Norman Conquest brought directly and indirectly into the language, we must
see it in proper perspective. The language which the Normans and their successors finally
adopted was English, and while it was an English changed in many important particulars from
the language of King Alfred, its predominant features were those inherited from the Germanic
tribes that settled in England in the fifth century (1978: 185).
The Latin influence on the vocabulary
A great number of words were borrowed from Latin in the 14 th and 15th centuries. This is
quite natural, for Latin was the language of theology and learning. Besides, the influence of
French words facilitated the adoption of Latin words. The new borrowings were learned
words and they penetrated into the language through literature, especially through the
numerous translations from Latin made at that time. Latin borrowings in Middle English
belong to different spheres, mainly social life, law, medicine, science, religion / theology,
literature.
It is unnecessary to attempt a formal classification of these borrowings. Some idea of their
range and character may be gained from a selected but miscellaneous list of examples:
e.g. abject, allegory, conspiracy, custody, homicide, immune, incredible, incumbent, index,
infancy, inferior, infinite, innate, intellect, legal, promote, prosecute, prosody, rational, script,
scripture, secular, solar, submit, summary, testify, testimony, tract, etc.
Many of these borrowings introduced into the language suffixes and prefixes which
began to be used for forming derivatives (some of these affixes reinforcing the corresponding
French ones):
Prefixes: ab-, ad-, con-, dis-, im- / in-, pro-, re-, subSuffixes: -able / -ible, -ent, -al, -ous, -ive.
Synonyms at three levels
The richness of the English language in synonyms is largely due to the mingling of
English (native), French and Latin elements. This may be seen in the groups of synonyms
where a difference between colloquial, literary and learned terms is quite apparent. The
English term is more colloquial in style, the French term is literary; the Latin term is generally
more learned or bookish:
e.g. English
rise
ask
fast
fire
holy

French
mount
demand / question
firm
flame
sacred

Latin
ascend
interrogate
secure
conflagration
consecrated

Chapter 5: MODERN ENGLISH

This period falls into three stages:

30

1. Early Modern English: the 16th and 17th centuries

2. The 18th century
3. Late Modern English: the 19th and 20h centuries
5.1. Early Modern English
The beginnings of the modern period are, at the same time, the beginnings of the
Renaissance in England: the 16th century was the period of magnificent flourishing of science,
art and literature.
In the 16th century, the English language faced a number of problems, the most important
of which was the struggle with Latin in science and literature, i.e. the struggle for recognition
in the fields where Latin had, for centuries, been supreme.
Although towards the end of the Middle English period the English language had attained
an established position as the language of literature, there was still a strong tradition according
to which Latin was used in all fields of knowledge. This idea was strengthened by the revival
of Greek and Latin learning. According to this tradition, it was considered that English was
not fit to express serious thought and it was used only for light literature.
Here are a few examples of writers or scientists who thought that their writings would last
only if they were written in Latin: Th. More wrote his Utopia in Latin in 1516, and the book
was translated into English only 35 years later, long after his death. Fr. Bacon published his
philosophical work De Augmentis in Latin. This work was an expanded version of The
Advancement of Learning.
However, as we approach the end of the 16 th century we see that English had slowly
won recognition as a language of serious thought. A number of factors contributed to this
victory:
- the rising bourgeoisie defended the national language;
- the Reformation contributed to the victory of English;
- the struggle between English and Latin had a commercial aspect, as well: the market for
English books was much larger than the market for Latin books.
In the 16th century there is a considerable body of literature defending the English
language against those who compared it unfavourably to Latin or other modern tongues,
patriotically recognizing its position as the national speech, considering that it was fit for
literary use.
The proof that English was fit for literary use came from a large number of remarkable
literary works, written in the 16th and 17th centuries. The works written by W. Wyatt, Surrey,
E. Spenser, Ch. Marlowe, B. Jonson, W. Shakespeare in the 16 th century; by J. Milton, J.
Dryden, W. Congreve in the 17th century show, indeed, that English has won recognition as a
language of serious thought.
5.1.1. Spelling in Early Modern English
In the 16 th century, spelling was extremely complicated. It was no longer phonetic and it
was not yet fixed. In Middle English the Norman scribes had introduced a great deal of
confusion which was increased because certain spellings became conventional, while
pronunciation went on changing. In a number of cases the discrepancy between sounds and
their graphic representation became even more striking when certain etymologists inserted
letters in words where they were not pronounced.
Thus, the Mi E dett, borrowed from F. dette was respelt in EME as debt, i.e. the consonant
b was introduced, so that the word could be traced back to Latin debitum.
The Mi E dout, borrowed from F. doute(r) was respelt in EME as doubt, i.e. the consonant
b was introduced, so that the word could be traced back to Latin dubitare.
Many of the new spellings were wrong even from the etymological point of view. Thus,
many words were respelt on account of analogy. The Mi E sent (derived from L. sentire or F.
sentir) was respelt in EME as scent, i.e. the consonant c was introduced on account of the

31

analogy with words that were pronounced in the same manner (e.g. science). Therefore, the
introduction of the consonant c was not correct from the etymological point of view.
In the first half of the 16 th century spelling was so unstable that it varied from one writer
to another and, sometimes, one and the same writer spelt certain words in several ways. Thus,
Matthew Green wrote: felow, felowe, fellow, fellowe. (cited from Iarovici, 1973: 151)
Therefore, the important problem in the 16th century was to bring about greater agreement
in the writing of English: numerous attempts were made to draw up rules and to simplify the
very complicated spelling. As a result of these attempts:
- certain unnecessary letters were eliminated, such as final e: e.g. faerie queene (Mod.E.
fairy queen)
- or, it became the custom to use i initially and medially and y finally. That accounts for the
spellings: beauty beautiful; dry drier.
By 1650 English spelling, in its modern form, had been practically established. But
pronunciation went on changing. The numerous and important phonetic modifications that
occurred later are not reflected in spelling (which had become fixed by that time).
Therefore, the main causes of the discrepancy between spellings and pronunciation are:
a) the arbitrary modifications brought about by certain etymologists and scribes; b) the fact
that spelling had become fixed by 1650 but pronunciation went on changing.
5.1.2. Pronunciation in Early Modern English
The most striking changes undergone by the sounds of the English language were the
following:
a) The complete alteration of most vowel sounds in stressed syllables. All long stressed
vowels came to be pronounced with a greater raising of the tongue and closing of the mouth,
e.g. e > i; o > u; those vowels in which the tongue could not be raised without becoming
consonantal, i.e. i, u became diphthongs: i > [ai], u > [au]. The major change in the history
of English that resulted in new phonemic representations of words and morphemes took place
approximately between 1500 and 1600. It is known as The Great Vowel Shift. Thus, the five
long or tense vowels of Middle English underwent the following change:
Shift
Example
Middle
Modern
Middle
Modern
English
English
English
English
[i:]
[ai]
[mi:s]
[mais]
mice
[u:] [au]
[mu:s]
[maus] mouse
[e:] [i:]
[ge:s]
[gi:s]
geese
[o:] [u:]
[go:s]
[gu:s]
goose
[:] [e:]
[n:m] [ne:m] name
These changes are among the most dramatic examples of regular sound shift. The
phonemic representation of many thousands of words changed. Today, some reflection of this
vowel shift is seen in the alternating forms of the morphemes in English: please pleasant,
serene serenity, sane sanity, crime criminal, sign signal, and so on. Once, the vowels
in each pair were the same. Then the vowels in the second word of each pair were shortened
by a rule called the Early Middle English Vowel Shortening rule. As a result The Great Vowel
Shift, which occurred later, affected only the first word in each pair. The second word, with its
short vowel, was unaffected. This is why the vowels in the morphologically related words are
pronounced differently today, as shown in the table below (Fromkin & Rodman, 1998: 456):
Effect of the Vowel Shift on Modern English
Mi. E. Shifted Short
Word with
Word with
Vowel Vowel Counterpart Shifted Vowel Short Vowel

ai
i
divine
divinity

au
u
profound
profundity

32

serene
serenity

u
o
fool
folly

sane
sanity
The Great Vowel Shift is a primary source of many of the spelling inconsistencies of
English because the spelling system still reflects the way words were pronounced before the
Great Vowel Shift took place.
The vowels of unstressed syllables had a tendency to weaken and often to disappear in
pronunciation:
different [`difrnt], medal [`medl], etc.
b) Among the changes that appeared in consonant sounds the most important are the partial
or total silencing of certain consonants:
i. the gradual silencing of [r]; it had been rolled in Middle English (as it still is at present in
Scotland); in EME it acquired a dull sound at the beginning of words and in the middle of
words between two vowel sounds (e.g. rat, Mary); in the middle and at the end of words it has
been completely silenced (e.g. arm, far).
ii. The weakening of consonant groups:
- [w] was silenced in the group wr; wrong, write, wring;
- [h] was silenced in the group wh: where, which, whip;
- [k] was silenced in the group kn: know, knife, knot;
- [l] was silenced in the group lk, lm, lf: walk, calm, half.
- Very often when a word ended in a combination of two consonants (mb, mn) the second one
was dropped: climb, comb, autumn, column;
- When a word contained a combination of three consonants the one in the middle was
sometimes dropped: bustle, castle, handsome, grandmother, handkerchief, etc.
Such phonetic changes widened even further the discrepancy between spelling and
pronunciation.
5.1.3. Grammar in Early Modern English
After the essential grammatical changes that had occurred in Middle English, the evolution
of Modern English grammar seemed rather uneventful. Grammar underwent few changes in
Early Modern English. A very important characteristic of Early Modern English grammar was
lack of stability; certain old forms survived while certain new ones came into use.
There were very few inflections left.
The Noun
The only inflections retained in the noun were those marking the category of number (the
plural) and case (the possessive singular).
a) Number. The plural in s has become the only regular form. Certain nouns, probably due
to their frequent use maintained their old plurals. Some in (e)n maintained their old weak
(neuter) plural, e.g. ox oxen, child children; also, those based on internal vowel change,
e.g. foot feet, tooth teeth, man men, etc; the invariable nouns (with unchanged plurals)
from the OE neuter ones: sheep, deer, swine.
Nouns which had been borrowed from other languages in Old English and Middle English
had generally taken the inflections characteristic of English words. But loan - words
belonging to the modern period often retain their original (foreign) plural: axes, phenomena,
stimuli, etc. Nevertheless, in contemporary English there is a tendency to regularize some
foreign plurals (e.g. symposia or symposiums) or to maintain the foreign plurals only as
scientific terms (e.g. formulas used in everyday language while formulae is restricted to
scientific usage).
b) Case. The system of declension which had gradually narrowed to two case forms by the
th
15 century (Objective and Possessive), maintained itself in Early Modern English and it has
survived down to our days. Nevertheless, an important change occurred little by little, namely

33

the narrowing of the sphere of the inflected Genitive (in es) to nouns denoting living beings.
Towards the end of the 17th century the Genitive singular ending in es began to be replaced
by s and about a century later, the apostrophe came to be used for the Genitive plural.
The Adjective
By the end of the Middle English period, the adjective had already lost all its endings, so
that it no longer expressed distinctions of gender, number and case.
The chief interest of this part of speech in the modern period is in the forms of the
comparative and superlative degrees. The two methods commonly used to form the
comparative and superlative (the synthetic and analytical comparison), with the endings er
and est and with the adverbs more and most, had been customary since Old English times.
But there was much variation in their use: in the sixteenth century these were not always
precisely those now in use. Comparisons found in Shakespeares works like certainer,
honester, famousest, honourablest, are now replaced by the analytical forms. On the other
hand, monosyllabic adjectives often formed their comparative and superlative analytically,
e.g. Ingratitude more strong than traitors arms.
Double comparatives or double superlatives were quite frequent in Early Modern English.
e.g. Im more better than Prospero. (The Tempest)
Let not my worser spirit tempt you again. (K. Lear)
in the calmest and most stillest night. (Henry IV)
The chief development affecting the adjective in modern times has been the gradual
settling down of usage so that monosyllables take er and est while most adjectives of two
or more syllables take more and most.
The Pronoun
The pronoun underwent certain rather important changes.
The personal pronoun
The sixteenth century saw the establishment of the personal pronoun in the form which it has
had ever since.
In attaining this result three changes were involved: a) the disuse of thou, thy, thee; b) the
substitution of you for ye as a nominative case; c) the introduction of its as the possessive of
it.
a) The forms of the personal pronoun: ye, you, your(s) had begun to be used as a mark of
respect in addressing a superior, maybe under the influence of French usage in court circles.
The old forms thou, (Nom.), thee (Obj.), thy (poss. Adj.), thine (Poss. Pron.) were used as
expressions of intimacy or for addressing social inferiors. Little by little, the forms ye, you,
your(s) became the usual pronouns of direct address irrespective of rank or intimacy. It was
only in the 168h century that the forms thou (Nom.), thee (Obj.), thy (Poss. Adj.), thine (Poss.
Pron.) disappeared completely, they fell into disuse, except in certain dialects and in poetry.
b) At first, there had existed a clear distinction between ye (used only as Subject in the
sentence = Nominative) and you (used as Object = Dative or Accusative). In the 16th century
the two forms began to be used rather indiscriminately, until ye eventually disappeared and
you became generalized as the Nominative and Accusative form. Thus, we find in the literary
works of the time examples of fluctuation between ye and you.
e.g. Therein, ye Gods, you make the weak most strong. (Shakespeare, J. Caesar)
Stand sirs, and throw us that you have about ye. (Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen
of Verona)
c) An interesting development in the pronoun at this time was the formation of a new
possessive neuter, its. The personal pronouns of the third person singular, he, she, it, had a
distinctive form for each gender in the nominative and objective cases. A need seems to have
been felt for a distinctive form in the possessive case as well: his, her, its.

34

The personal pronoun they began to be used indefinitely (i.e. as the subject of an indefinite
impersonal sentence) instead of the Old English and Middle English man, mon.
e.g. They say if ravens sit on hens eggs, the chickens will be black.
The reflexive pronoun
The reflexive pronouns appeared in the 16th century and they began to replace the personal
pronouns in those constructions in which the pronouns were co-referential. But in Early
Modern English the reflexive pronouns were not consistently used; therefore, we still find
personal pronouns in cases in which we would use reflexive pronouns in Contemporary
English: e.g. How she opposes her against my will. (Shakespeare)
The relative pronoun
Another important development was the use of who as a relative pronoun. Refinements in
the use of subordinate clauses are a mark of maturity in style. As the loose association of
clauses (parataxis) gives way to more precise indications of logical relationship and
subordination (hypotaxis), there is need for a greater variety of words effecting the union
(Baugh: 244). Old English had no relative pronoun proper. It made use of the definite article
s (M), so (F), t (N), which, however it was felt in Old English times, strikes us as having
more demonstrative force than relative.
Early in the Middle English period t (that) became the almost universal relative
pronoun, used for all genders. In the fifteenth century which begins to alternate fairly
frequently with that. At first it referred mostly to neuter antecedents, although occasionally it
was used for persons, a use that survives in the Lords Prayer Our father, which art in heaven.
But the tendency to employ that as a universal relative has never been lost in the language.
It was not until the sixteenth century that the pronoun who as a relative came into use. The
earlier use of who as an interrogative in indirect questions appears to have been the important
source of the new construction: the sequence Whom do you want? (direct question) , They
asked whom you wanted (indirect question), I know the man whom you wanted (relative) is
not a difficult one to assume. In any case, our present-day widespread use of who as a relative
pronoun is primarily a contribution of the sixteenth century to the language (Baugh: 244).
Omission of the relative pronoun: In Early Modern English the relative pronoun was
frequently omitted, even when it had the syntactic function of subject.
e.g. I have a brother is condemned to die. (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure)
Theres somebody wants to see you.
The indefinite pronoun
There were some old forms of indefinite pronouns that were used in Early Modern English.
Aught (something, anything), which survives today only in phrases such as for aught I know,
was frequently used during the Renaissance:
e.g. If thou rememberst aught ere thou comest here. (The Tempest)
Nought or Naught (nothing) was still in current use up to the middle of the 17th century.
The compound indefinite pronouns somebody, anybody, nobody, something, anything,
nothing appeared in Early Modern English.
The Verb
Some important changes occurred in the conjugation of the verb.
The inflection for the 3rd person singular Present Indicative had been (e)th in the South
and South East of England all through the Middle English period. In the 15 th century, in the
North, forms ending in s had appeared from time to time and their number increased in the
16th century, especially in colloquial use. During the first half of the 17 th century (e)th
continued to be used quite often in writing, but s became universal in the spoken language.
For a time, the two endings (in eth and s) were indiscriminately used, sometimes in one and
the same text. It has been observed that in the prose parts of Shakespeares plays, -s prevails
and th generally seems to belong to solemn speeches rather than to everyday talk.

35

e.g. Lady Macbeth: He has almost suppd: why have you left the chamber?
Macbeth:
Hath he asked for me?
Lady Macbeth: Know you not he has?
Similar fluctuations can be seen in the form of the second person singular, Present
Indicative ending in st (or art for be). Such forms normally occurred with the pronoun thou:
e.g. If thou rememberst aught ere thou comest here. (Shakespeare The Tempest)
The form in st was gradually replaced by the form of the second person plural (without
any ending) used with the pronoun you. Instances of both forms are sometimes found in one
and the same text:
Thou art the truest friend in the worldYou wrong her. (Congreve)
Such fluctuations illustrate the gradual disappearance of the category of number in the
second person of the verb in Modern English.
In Early Modern English the tenses of the verb were generally the same as they are today.
However, intransitive verbs of motion usually formed the Present Perfect with the
auxiliary be instead of have:
The deep of night is crept upon our talk. (Shakespeare - J. Caesar)
Whither are they vanished? (Shakespeare Macbeth)
The present distinctions between the Past Tense and the Present Perfect were not yet very
clear in Early Modern English, as one can see in:
You spoke not with her since. (Shakespeare King Lear)
I have drunk poison while he utterd it. (Shakespeare)
As far as the Future was concerned, we notice that the weakened lexical meaning of shall
and will was more obvious than it had been in Middle English.
e.g. He that questioneth much, shall learn much. (F. Bacon)
The grammars written in the 16 th century do not mention any differences of use between
shall and will for expressing future time.
The Continuous Aspect developed very slowly in Modern English. Its forms were more
frequent in Shakespeares works than they had been in Chaucers but they were still very rare.
Thus, addressing Hamlet, Polonius asks, What do you read my lord? (and not What are you
reading?). The extension of the progressive forms to the passive (The house is being built)
was an even later development. It is only since the 19 th century that the Continuous Aspect has
come into wide use.
The use of do as a dummy auxiliary in Interrogative and Negative sentences.
Towards the close of the 15 th century the verb to do had begun to be used as a dummy
auxiliary in Interrogative and Negative sentences. This tendency grew stronger in the 16th and
17th centuries. It was probably due to the fact that to do was to be found quite often in
affirmative sentences with an emphasizing function:
If you do meet Horatio andbid them make haste (Shakespeare Hamlet)
Although in Early Modern English we still find constructions of Interrogative and
Negative sentences formed without the auxiliary do, from time to time we come across the
new forms with do.
e.g. Goes the king hence today? (Shakespeare Macbeth)
They perceive not how time moves. (Shakespeare - As You Like It)
What do you read my lord? ? (Shakespeare Hamlet)
Oh, my lord, dost thou lie so low? (Shakespeare J. Caesar)
The number of verb adverbial particle combinations began to grow in Early Modern
English. The few verb adverb combinations that had existed in Middle English had
expressed a concrete, spatial meaning. In other words, they had preserved both the meaning
of the verb and that of the adverb. The meaning of the phrasal verb is the fairly literal sense of
the verb and the adverbial particle in combination, the particle merely implying a certain

36

intensification of the idea conveyed by the verb, e.g. to climb up, to fall down. But in Early
Modern English these combinations grew more and more numerous and their meaning
became less and less self-evident.
e.g. Nor am I yet persuaded to put up in peace what already I have foolishly suffered.
(Shakespeare - Othello)
Thus the group put up was passing from the notion of space to the present-day meaning of
tolerate. They suggest comparison with verbs having separable prefixes in German, and to a
smaller extent with English verbs like withstand, overcome. The latter were much more
common in Old English than they are today, their gradual disuse being one of the
consequences of the Norman Conquest.
Syntax
In the sphere of syntax, we find certain important changes, some of which are connected
with the evolution of the morphological structure of the language. Thus, the complete
disappearance of agreement is due to the fact that the adjective has become an invariable part
of speech, as well as to the loss of nearly all the personal inflexions of the verb.
In Early Modern English we still find instances of two or even more than two negations in
one and the same sentence:
e.g. Yet, t was not a crown neither. (Shakespeare J. Caesar)
In the 16 th century impersonal sentences were still frequent, but they began to be
superseded by personal sentences. Thus, we find sentences such as It likes me well.
(Shakespeare The Taming), alongside of I do not like this tune. (Shakespeare The Two
Gentlemen of Verona)
A phenomenon which belongs both to morphology and syntax, as well as to lexicology,
and which became very frequent in Early Modern English is conversion or functional shift.
Conversion (or zero-morpheme derivation) is the process whereby one word is created
from another without any change of form (Bolton, 1993: 257). Conversion became quite
frequent in Early Modern English owing to the loss of most endings and inflections. Thus, the
OE verb andswarian and the OE noun andswaru became in MiE answeren (v.) and answere
(n.); In EME they merged into one and the same form answer (verb and noun). Also:
OE
MiE
EME
Verb
lufian
loven
love
Noun
lufu
love
love
On the analogy of such examples there appeared in Early Modern English numerous
shifts from verb to noun and from noun to verb.
The fact that the adjective had lost all its case, number and gender inflexions accounts for its
being turned more and more often into a noun. This happened not only with words of Old
English origin, but also with those borrowed from other languages (especially French and
Latin), e.g. effective from French; abstract, from Latin.
Shakespeare resorted to conversion very frequently, for example, he often turned nouns
into verbs: cudgelling one's brains; beggaring all description, etc.
The further loss of inflectional endings had as an important consequence a greater
dependence on fixed word order. The main sentence pattern consists of Subject Verb
Object. This has come to be regarded as the natural word order in declarative sentences.
Stuart Robertson rightly points out that through the function of inflection, the word was
generally autonomous in Old English, while in Modern English grammatical autonomy has
shifted to the word-group. We are more dependent upon context than King Alfred was; for us
the order of words indicates more indeed, sometimes everything about their grammatical
function, whereas in Old English that was implicit in the form of the word. Thus, as the
language has changed from inflectional or synthetic structure to analytic structure, individual
words have gained simplicity of form or flexibility of function; but within the sentence they

37

have lost freedom of movement, and have become more dependent upon one another (1958:
145)
5.1.4. The Enrichment of the Vocabulary in Early Modern English
The Renaissance was a period of increased activity in all fields. The flourishing of classical
studies, the extensive study of Latin and Greek authors, the ample use of Latin as the
international language of science, introduced into English a large number of Latin and Greek
borrowings.
The closer contact with Italian arts and literature, the connection with the New World all
these factors opened up new horizons, also bringing along large-scale borrowings from
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese.
Many of the new words were absolutely necessary, for the vernacular was not adequate to
meet the ever growing demand of the economic, political, scientific and cultural life of the
time. New words were particularly needed in various technical fields in which English was
poor. By far the greater part of the additions to the English vocabulary in the period of the
Renaissance was drawn from sources outside of English.
Latin and Greek borrowings
It was particularly during the time of the Renaissance or the age of new learning that the
influence of Latin and Greek reached unprecedented heights. Much more than French, Latin
left its imprint not only on the vocabulary, but also on English grammar. Latin syntax is
reflected in complex structures (absolute constructions) with participles, infinitives and
gerunds as components. Certain writers of that time tried in an exaggerated manner, to imitate
Latin patterns, e.g. Sydney in his Arcadia:
But then, Demagoras assuring himself, that now Parthenia was her own, she would never
be his, and receiving as much by her own determinate answere, not more desiring his own
happiness, [] the wicked Demagoras desiring to speak with her, with unmerciful force,
rubbed all over her face a most horrible poison: the effect whereof was such that never leper
looked more ugly than she did: which done, having his men and horses ready, departed away
in spite of her servants.
Sydney used as many as four participial constructions in ing before the main verb
(rubbed). The final part of the sentence begins with a Latinized passive absolute
construction (which done) with the personal pronoun he omitted before departed in the
truly Latin fashion. (D. Giering, 1979: 14).
The major part of Latin and Greek terms were and have remained learned words, but
many of them are quite indispensable today. They have generally entered the language
through the medium of writing. Here are some examples of Latin and Greek loan words (the
latter having come in through Latin): allusion, animal, apology, apparatus, appropriate,
atmosphere, autograph, axis, climax, conspicuous, crisis, drama, emphasis, exert, expensive,
genius, insane, junior, omen, parenthesis, pathetic, pauper, pneumonia, scheme, skeleton,
system, tactics, etc.
Words like anonymous, catastrophe, polemic, tantalize, thermometer, tonic, etc. were taken
straight from Greek.
On penetrating into the English language some words maintained their original form, e.g.
climax, appendix, axis, delirium.
Other words underwent changes:
a) Some words cut off their ending, e.g. to consult (< L. consultare), to permit (<L.
permittere), exotic (< L. exoticus)
b) a great number of words changed their endings:
- the Latin ending us in adjectives became ous:
conspicuus > conspicuous
- the Latin ending tas in adjectives became ty:

38

brevitas > brevity

Sometimes the same word was borrowed more than once in the course of time:
a) Some words had been borrowed in Old English and again later in Early Modern English:
e.g. Latin discus appeared in OE as disc > dish and was again borrowed later in EME as
discus (in sports discus throwing and disc record).
b) A large number of Latin words penetrated into the English language in Middle English (in
a Norman French form) and they were reintroduced in Early Modern English (in a Latin form)
sometimes with a different meaning. Two or more words that have come from the same
source but that followed different routes of transmission are called doublets. Here are a few
examples of such doublets:
Latin word
Middle English Early Modern English
(French form)
(Latin form)
abbreviare
abridge
abbreviate
corpus
corps (group)
corpse (dead body)
exemplum
sample
example
factum
feat
fact
fragilem
frail
fragile
historia
story
history
radius
ray
radius
pauperum
poor
pauper
majorem
mayor
major
securum
sure
secure
As may be seen from these examples, the difference in meaning is sometimes a rather slight,
insignificant one, the more recent borrowing merely having a more learned or more abstract
character, e.g. in pairs like ray and radius, poor and pauper. But the difference in meaning is
quite often a very important one, e.g. corps and corpse, mayor and major.
There were also cases of Greek doublets such as the following:
Greek word
Borrowed in
Borrowed in Early
Middle English
Modern English
adamanta
diamond
adamant
phantasia
fancy
fantasy
phantasma
phantom
phantasm
paralysis
palsy
paralysis
The abundance of French words borrowed during the Middle English period made the
adoption of Latin words in Early Modern English easier and it is often very difficult to know
whether a word introduced during the Renaissance was borrowed straight from Latin or
through French. Verbs like consist or explore could have come either from the Latin
consistere and explorare or from the French consister and explorer.
A certain number of Latin abbreviations penetrated into the English language: a.m. (L. ante
meridiem = before noon); e.g. (L. exempli gratia = for example); i.e. (L. id est = that is to
say); p.m. (L. post meridiem = after noon); viz. (L. videlicet = namely); etc. (L. et cetera =
and so on).
Latin technical terms and phrases were also adopted, and some of them later passed into a
wider circulation. Others have remained part of the special terminology of law, trade,
medicine, etc. Here are some such words and phrases: ad hoc, alter ego, corpus delicti, in
memoriam, non compos mentis, per annum, per diem, sine die, sine qua non, etc.
Other borrowings

39

During the Renaissance foreign borrowings were not limited to words taken from Latin and
Greek. The major part of the loan - words adopted during the Renaissance were besides
Latin and Greek French, Italian and Spanish.
In Early Modern English many of the French words were borrowed after 1600, especially
after the Restoration. The Restoration brought back the feudal aristocratic culture alongside
a new wave of French influence.
The French borrowings belonging to the Early Modern English period are different from
those adopted during the Middle English period.
a) Most of them are restricted to particular categories of words, i.e. they reflect the
preoccupations of the aristocracy and of the educated people, or else they are technical terms.
b) Unlike the French words borrowed during the Middle English period which were
completely assimilated, the new loans were not fully assimilated and are still felt as aliens:
- They often have the stress on the last syllable, as in French (whereas the older borrowings
had the stress on the first syllable): e.g. ambuscade [mbs`keid], bizarre [bi`z:], genteel
[den`ti:l]
- They have frequently preserved the French pronunciation of their vowels and consonants:
e.g. nave [n:`i:v], machine [m`i:n], champagne [m`pein], bourgeois [`buw:],
prestige [pres`ti:] (pronunciation of the groups ch , ge); ballet (final t is not pronounced)
[`blei], debris (final s is not pronounced) [`deibri:],
-They keep the diacritic marks, e.g. caf, clich, fianc.
A number of Italian words were adopted, mostly terms related to arts and literature: canto,
cupola, fresco, sonnet, stanza, violin, etc.
The total number of words added to the English language during the Renaissance amounts
to about 10,000. Many of them died out sooner or later, but about half of them became a
permanent part of the English language. Although not all borrowings were absolutely
necessary, they have contributed to the wealth of synonyms that we find in English. This
wealth of synonyms enriches the language and helps writers to avoid repetition on the one
hand, and to emphasize certain ideas, on the other. Thus, in Richard III Shakespeare speaks
of blind forgetfulness and dark oblivion.
In conclusion, the Old English element (the Germanic words) forms the foundation and
framework of the English language. The Latin and Greek element has improved and enriched
the scientific terminology of the language, its power of expressing abstract thoughts, as well
as its synonymy.
NOTES:
The Reformation was a religious movement for reform of the Roman Catholic Church,
resulting in the establishment of Reformed or Protestant Churches (The movement was begun
by M. Luther in Germany, J. Calvin in France).
The Restoration = the period of the reestablishment of the monarchy in England after 1660
when Charles II became king.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. How do Early and Present-day English differ in the form and use of pronouns?
2. Cite a few adjectives that still fluctuate between inflectional and analytical comparison in
current English, as they did in Early Modern English.
5.2. The 18th century
From the linguistic point of view, the 18 th century was characterized by attempts made to
standardize, improve (refine) and fix the English language. Such intellectual tendencies are
seen quite clearly in the following directions.

40

a) The English made attempts to establish an English Academy (to follow the example of
the French Academy) in the effort to set up a standard of correctness.
b) English lexicography made a substantial contribution towards standardizing the language.
The earliest dictionaries were etymological dictionaries. It was Dr. Samuel Johnsons
Dictionary of the English Language (1755) that was the landmark in the development of
English lexicography. In this dictionary, lexicographical technique approaches contemporary
standards.
c) In the first treatises on English grammar the early grammarians had the following aims:
- To stabilize English by setting up certain rules which should govern the language. They did
not recognize the importance of usage as the basis of correctness.
- To point out errors in order to correct and improve the language.
- They based their methods of approach on reason, etymology and the example of Latin.
The achievements of the 18 th century grammarians were enormous because they attempted
to give order to a body of linguistic material which had not been systematized or arranged
until then. They settled a large number of disputed points. On the other hand, their greatest
weakness, drawback was their failure to recognize the importance of usage in language. In
other words, they did not realize that changes in language could not be checked by linguistic
decrees.
Many of the rules that are now accepted were first set down in the grammars of the
eighteenth century, e.g.:
- The interdiction of the double negation. Robert Lowth stated the rule that we are now
bound by: Two negatives in English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an affirmative.
-The interdiction of the double comparative or the double superlative
- The use of the comparative rather than the superlative where only two things are involved
(the larger, not the largest, of two)
- Non-gradable adjectives, such as perfect, round, chief, should not be compared (more
perfect, etc)
- The differentiation of between and among, etc.
- The proper case after than and as was a question that troubled the eighteenth century
grammarians greatly (He is taller than I, or me). But Robert Lowth expressed the view that
has since been accepted, that the pronoun is determined by the construction to be supplied or
understood (He is older than she; He likes you better than me).
- It was not until the second half of the eighteenth century that the prescriptions governing
the use of shall and will were explicitly defined: simple futurity is expressed by shall in the
first person, by will in the second and third.
In the 18 th century the stream of English may be said to have become fixed in its
permanent course. Writers beginning with Defoe, Swift, Steele, Addison, and Pope, continued
by Johnson, Fielding, Sterne, Goldsmith and Hume set down standards of clarity and ease of
comprehension still respected today.
NOTES:
Robert Lowth, Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), quoted in A. Baugh: p. 278)
Ungradable: in grammar, the term is used to refer to various items which do not show the
ability to take comparison. See R. Quirk: 234
5.3. Late Modern English
The 19th century and after (the first half of the 20th century)
The events of the nineteenth century and twentieth centuries affecting the English-speaking
countries have been of great political and social importance, but in their effect on the language
they have not been of a revolutionary character. The success of the British on the sea in the

41

course of the Napoleonic Wars, culminating in Nelsons famous victory at Trafalgar in 1805,
left England in a position of undisputed naval supremacy and gave her control over most of
the worlds commerce.
The great reform measures the reorganization of parliament, the revision of the penal
code and the poor laws, the restrictions placed on child labour, and the other industrial
reforms were important factors in establishing English society on a more democratic basis.
The establishment of the first cheap newspaper (1816) and the improved means of travel
and communication brought about by the railway, the steamboat and the telegraph had the
effect of uniting more closely the different parts of England and of spreading the influence of
the standard speech.
5.3.1. Spelling
Present-day spelling is very complicated. The causes of this situation may be summed up in
the following way, now that the stages of the development of the English language have been
studied in turn:
1. Present-day spelling generally represents the pronunciation of Late Middle English;
therefore, it does not reflect the important sound changes that occurred in Early Modern
English and even later.
2. Besides certain Old English spelling conventions which have been preserved, others
have been adopted, especially French and to a certain extent, Latin and even Greek ones. That
is why there are different spellings for one and the same sound and, on the other hand, one
spelling for different sounds.
5.3.2. Grammatical tendencies
The several factors already discussed as giving stability to English grammar the printing
press, popular education, improvements in travel and communication, - have been particularly
effective in the century just passed.
Very few changes in the grammatical forms are to be observed:
a) In colloquial speech there is a certain tendency towards an even further loss of
inflections:
The use of who instead of whom in the function of Object in the interrogative:
e.g. Who do you want to see? (in colloquial speech instead of: Whom do you want to see?
- This tendency is also seen in the fact that the Genitive (the Analytical genitive, in
particular) is often replaced by the Implicit Genitive (the meaning of the Genitive is expressed
just by word-order).
e.g. Cuts in Government expenditure; The United
Nations Organization; The 20th century
literature; A ten per cent wage increase, etc.
In informal colloquial speech, the tendency to use me, him, her, us, them in emphatic
position instead of I, he, she, we, they is even stronger than it was before. One frequently
hears sentences like Whos there? Its me. / Its only us. Thats him all right. According to S.
Robertson, the phenomenon is due to the fact that the sense of case has become so weakened
in Modern English and the force of word order so dominant, that the latter overrides the
former. [] The objectives of the personal pronouns have been gaining at the expense of the
nominatives, which tend more and more to be used only when they are immediately followed
by a predicate. (1979: 295)
b) Among the major changes in the grammar of English are those concerning the comparison
of adjectives. Referring to these, Ch. Barber writes The tendency has been for more / most to
encroach on er/ -est, and it is now normal to say Its more common than I thought, and He is
the most clever of the three. Among the younger generation, it is even becoming normal to use
more/ most with monosyllables, and you hear things like He was more rude than I expected.
The trend from er/ -est, to more/ most is in line with the broad development of English over

42

the last thousand years: it is a change from the synthetic to the analytic, from the use of
inflections to the use of grammatical words and word - order. (: 283 - 4)
c) As far as the verb is concerned, the following tendencies can be mentioned:
i. The process of regularizing strong verbs, which has been going on for centuries,
continues to replace irregular forms by more regular ones. The tendency of strong verbs to
develop weak forms is to be seen in such recent formations as thrived (instead of throve,
thriven); beseech has two forms in use now: the irregular form besought and the regular one:
beseeched (Macmillan: 116).
Newly formed verbs (converted from nouns) have continued to join the weak conjugation.
e.g. to welcome: They welcomed us with open arms.
The announcement will be widely welcomed.
The forms broadcast and broadcasted are to be found side by side in Macmillan dictionary
(2002: 170); also forecast and forecasted (op. cit.: 552)
ii. The Subjunctive Mood is not so extensively used as it was in Old English. The Present
Subjunctive has been growing more and more obsolete, surviving only in poetry, high prose
and official documents:
It was decided that the meeting be reconvened.
In many cases the Present Subjunctive is replaced by the Present Indicative or by a
Subjunctive equivalent (auxiliaries such as should, may, might, would).
It was decided that the meeting should be reconvened.
There is an increasing tendency to replace the Subjunctive form were by the form was in
the first and third person singular, on the analogy of all other verbs in which The Past
Subjunctive is homonymous with the Past Indicative:
e.g. If I was not ill I should go to the concert. (instead of: If I were not ill)
I wish I was (instead of I wish I were )
What was left of the Subjunctive Mood in occasional use has disappeared except in
conditions contrary to fact: If I were you
iii. There is a well-marked tendency to generalize the use of will (in the Future Indicative)
and that of would (in the Present Conditional or Future in the Past) in the first person singular
and plural, a tendency which is perhaps partly due to American influence.
e.g. I will / shall stay.
If I wanted your help I would / should come to you at once.
iv. A wide extension of the use of progressive forms is one of the most important
developments of the English verb in the modern period. The chief factor in their growth is the
use of the ing form as a noun governed by the preposition on, e.g. He burst out on laughing
- This weakened to
He burst out a-laughing - and finally to He burst out laughing.
In the same way, He was on laughing became He was a-laughing and finally: He was
laughing.
Today such forms are used in all tenses (is laughing, will be laughing).
The extension of such forms to the passive (the house is being built) was an even later
development. It belongs to the very end of the 18th century. At first, the phrase the house is
being built for the house is building was condemned, being considered an awkward
neologism (cf. A. Baugh & T. Cable, 1978: 293),
v. A very important tendency in Late Modern English is the extension of Verb - adverb
combinations.
An important characteristic of the modern vocabulary is the large number of expressions
like set out, put off, bring in, made up of a common verb, often of one syllable combined with
an adverb.

43

Unlike the Middle English Verb - adverb combinations, whose meaning clearly reflected
both that of the verb and that of the adverb (e.g. climb up, fall down), many Modern English
combinations have a meaning which cannot be derived from that of their component parts.
One of the most interesting features of such combinations in modern times is the large
number of figurative and idiomatic senses in which they have come to be used. For example,
bring about (cause or accomplish), come round (recover normal state), catch on
(comprehend), give out (become exhausted), keep on (continue), hold up (rob), lay off (cease
to employ), turn over (surrender), size up (estimate), let up (cease), put up with (tolerate), etc.
It will be noticed that many Verb - adverb combinations are substitutes for single verbs
such as comprehend, continue, surrender, etc., of more learned or formal character. They
often convey a shade of meaning that cannot be expressed in any other manner and they have
greatly increased the flexibility of the English language.
The interesting observation has been made that the vocabulary has thus been pursuing a
development similar to that which took place in English grammar at an earlier period and
which changed the language from a synthetic to an analytic one (Baugh & Cable, 1978: 338).
c) Certain trends in the use of prepositions have become apparent in the last century and a
half. The most important trend refers to the position of the preposition in the sentence. In spite
of the protest of many 19th century grammarians, prepositions are more and more frequently
placed at the end of sentences in colloquial speech in interrogative sentences and in attributive
clauses:
e.g. What are you speaking about?
The man I spoke to / about is a lawyer.
d) In the sphere of syntax there are two important characteristics of Late Modern English:
i. A rather striking phenomenon is the fact that, in the press and, to a certain extent, in
colloquial speech, the rules concerning the sequence of tenses are not always observed.
There are certain situations in which, to the speakers mind, the main clause does not
express the min idea, which in fact is to be found in the subordinate clause. Thus, in
He made it plain yesterday that he accepts the agreement.
what is essential is the acceptance of the agreement, and not the fact that it was made plain.
Also, in:
It was not disclosed when the test will be conducted.
the carrying out of the test is far more important than the disclosure of the time at which it
will take place. Therefore, the speaker or the writer bears in mind, first and foremost, the main
idea, not the tense of the predicate in the main clause. What is essential and significant is not
the fact of reporting somebodys words, but the contents of the latter (E. Iarovici, 1973: 255).
ii. Another striking characteristic of the period we are dealing with is the growing
importance of word order. It does away with the difficulties caused by the reduction of
inflexions, by the rapid development of conversion, and by the concentrated, often elliptical
way of expressing ideas both in everyday speech and in the press (especially in headlines).
In conclusion, present-day grammatical trends seem to point to certain new synthetic
features such as the frequent formation of compounds, but especially to an accentuation of the
analytical character of the English language, and this tendency is expressed first of all by the
ever growing importance of word order. There are certain factors which entitle us to speak
about the progress achieved by the English language. This is reflected in the formation - by
internal means of many new words, including numerous general and abstract terms which
enable the speakers to express even the most complex ideas; the strengthening of the
systematic character of the English language; its tendency towards simplification and
economy of effort.
5.3.3. The enrichment of the vocabulary

44

The events of the 19 th and 20h centuries (the two world wars, the growth in importance
of some of Englands larger colonies, their eventual independence, the rapid development of
the United States) have exerted a certain influence upon the development of the English
language, especially on its vocabulary. The vocabulary has been considerably enriched owing
to the modifications of the economic, social, political, cultural life. In the past century and a
half, numberless new terms have appeared in every field of science and technology. Most of
the terms are known only to specialists, but a comparatively large number have passed into
general use and have gained a more general currency, like gene, oxygen, molecule,
metabolism, etc.
Most of the new words coming into English since 1800 have been derived from the same
sources or created by the same methods as those that have long been familiar. It should be
remembered that the principles are not new, that what has been going on in the last century
and a half could be paralleled from almost any period of the language.
Thus, the word stock has been expanded by means of the inner resources of the language
and by means of borrowings from other the languages.
5.3.3.1. Inner resources of the language
New words have been mainly formed by means of affixation, conversion, composition
and changes of meaning (of existing words).
i. Affixation
Word building by means of affixation (the making of words by the use of prefixes and
suffixes) has been important throughout the history of English. It is still predominant in
coining new words in Later Modern English.
Some of the most active prefixes are anti-, de-, dis-, mis-, out-, over- pre-, pro-, un-, Recent
additions to the list include post-. super-, trans-. For example, anti-hero, counter-attack,
decode, misprint, output, overact, preview, postgraduate, superstructure, transcontinental.
Some active suffixes are: -ize, -tion, -er, -eer, -ee, -ist, -ism, For example, industrialize,
mechanization, cutter, profiteer, nominee, capitalism, etc.
ii. Conversion
Conversion, the process of transferring a word from one grammatical category to
another, now seems to be the most frequently used method of forming new words. The most
frequent types of conversion are:
- From Noun to Verb. Quite a large number of nouns are converted into verbs: to feature, to
audition, to park, to process, to service. Little by little, most parts of the body have come to
be used as verbs: to head (a group of people, a list), to eye (a person with dislike or
suspicion), to elbow (ones way through a crowd), to finger (a knick-knack), to face (a
danger), etc.
- From Verb to Noun. A comparatively large number of verbs have been converted into
nouns. People who are energetic and acquisitive are said to be on the go and on the make.
Those who are well-informed are in the know. Verbs of motion such as jump, leap, run,
stroll, walk can be used as nouns. Some nouns converted from verbs have a rather colloquial
colouring, e.g. catch, find, hit, kick, buy, must, etc. Thus, a bargain is a good buy; articles of
food are eats; technical skill is the know-how; A good dictionary is a must for a student.
There are more and more numerous the cases of conversion from verb + adverbial
particle. These combinations are frequently used as nouns, especially in colloquial speech.
Thus, a place of concealment is a hide-out; an economic recession is a slow-down; any
arrangement or establishment is a set-up; a re-shuffle of staff is a shake-up; a meeting of any
kind is a get-together; a quick escape is a get-away.
Such cases of conversion are very numerous, probably because the nouns thus obtained are
concise and expressive.
iii. Composition

45

The practice of making self-explaining compounds is one of the oldest methods of wordformation in the language. Composition is, therefore, another widely used means of forming
new words in English, although the proportion of compounds to the mass of the vocabulary is
far smaller than it was in Old English.
Nevertheless, there are certain types of compounds that are still very productive:
The type Noun + Noun: spaceman, season - ticket, identity - card, fingerprint, jet lag, lifestyle, fire-extinguisher, steam-roller, etc.
The type of Adjective formed of a Noun + Adjective: colour blind, snow white, pitch
black, life - long
The type of Adjective formed of a Noun / Adjective + V-ing: peace-loving, breath-taking,
skydiving, good- looking, etc.
Many of these betray their newness by being written with a hyphen or as separate words.
They give unmistakable testimony to the fact that the power to combine existing words into
new ones expressing a single concept, a power that was so prominent a feature of Old
English, still remains in the language.
Long, compound adjectives are extremely numerous now (Composition + Conversion),
e.g. all-the-year-round programme, ban-the-bomb march.
iv. Changes of meaning (see Changes of Meaning in Middle English)
As a rule, the changes of meaning are due to the ever-growing need of denominations for
new objects, phenomena, abstract notions. When words develop new meanings they
sometimes lose their old meaning. For instance, when the word wan came to mean pale it
did not retain its earlier meaning of dark and the reason for this is obvious, since the coexistence in one word of such contradictory meanings could lead to misunderstandings. In
other cases, however, the old meaning continues to co-exist with the new one and we get the
phenomenon of multiple meaning or polysemy.
It has been observed that in their sense development, words often pursue certain wellmarked tendencies. The chief trends of semantic change are extension of meaning, narrowing
of meaning, elevation / regeneration of meaning, degradation / degeneration of meaning.
a) Extension of meaning (or Generalization) refers to the phenomenon when the meaning
is widened, generalized from some narrow field to a wider one: e.g.
season first meant sowing time; now it is used with the meaning of a period of the
year.
journey: The original meaning of journey was a days walk or ride, but now we can
speak without incongruity of a weeks journey. It implies a widening of the scope of
reference.
b) Narrowing of meaning (or Specialization) refers to the case when the word acquires a
more restricted, specialized sense. It implies a narrowing of the scope of reference. cf. meat in
Middle English.
Also: to starve, like German sterben simply meant to die but in Modern English (E.M.E.
16th century) it became specialized in the sense of to die of hunger. In Modern Yorkshire
dialect one can hear to starve of cold.
Room once meant space. This old meaning is preserved in phrases like: to make room,
plenty of room, no room for, etc. Since the 16th century this word has come to have the modern
narrow meaning section of space in a building.
Deer used to mean animal, wild beast as its German cognate Tier still does. This
meaning is found in Shakespeares mice and rats and such small deer. Latin animal and
French beast have taken its place as the general words and the meaning of deer has been
narrowed to denote a particular kind of animal wild ruminant of a particular (antlered)
species .

46

Similarly, the word hound used to be the general term for dog, like the German Hund.
Today hound means a special kind of dog, one used for hunting.
Disease: earlier discomfort, absence of ease (dis-ease), later malady, morbid physical
condition.
Fowl, like German Vogel, denoted bird in general, as in biblical fowls of the air. Now
fowl normally means barnyard fowl.
Ghost: earlier soul, spirit, later soul of a dead man as manifested to the living.
c) Elevation of meaning (amelioration) implies the process by which the new meaning of
a word acquires a higher status in comparison with the initial one. It implies a raising of value
judgements involved in the reference.
See knight in Middle English.
Also: minister once meant a servant, an attendant; now it means person at the head of a
department of State, government official.
d) Degradation of meaning (degeneration) refers to the process when a neutral word
becomes deprecating, less favourable in meaning. It implies a lowering of value judgements
involved in the reference.
cf. knave (OE cnafe) in Middle English.
Other words which have undergone this type of change:
Villain initially meant a farm labourer; later on it became a term of contempt in the
speech of the noblemen one who did not belong to the gentry, and in later use a scoundrel.
Churl initially meant a peasant, a serf; today it means one who is rude in manners.
Boor (< G. Bauer) originally meant a farmer, and gradually came to mean an illmannered, ill- bred person.
Impertinent: earlier not pertinent, unrelated, later presumptuous, insolent.
Crafty: earlier skilful, clever, later cunning, wily.
Smirk: earlier smile, later simper, smile in a way that looks silly and is not sincere.
Notorious: earlier widely known, later widely and unfavourably known.
v. Slang
All the types of semantic change discussed in the preceding paragraphs could be
illustrated from that part of the vocabulary which at any given time is considered slang.
Slang is an important source of the enrichment of the vocabulary. David Crystal defines
slang as follows: Informal, non-standard vocabulary, usually intelligible only to people from
a particular region or social group; also, the jargon of a special group, such as doctors,
cricketers, or sailors. Its chief function is to mark social identity to show that one belongs
but it may also be used just to be different, to make an effect, or to be informal. Such ingroup language is subject to rapid change. (1994: 355-6)
While at an earlier period slang was very coarse and sometimes limited, being generally
confined to nicknames and to terms connected with stealing, the sphere of the influence of
slang has been growing at an ever-increasing rate since the 18th century.
Naturally, most slang words do not pass into the literary language. They are adopted by
the latter being taken over from colloquial speech - only when they fill a real gap and when
they are more expressive than their synonym existing in it.
Thus, many slang words have lost their vulgar and disreputable character, gradually
becoming part of the literary language: kid (child), fun (amusement), shabby
(much worn, poorly dressed), etc. Also, words such as dwindle, freshman, glib and mob are
former slang words that in time overcame their unsavoury origin.
On the other hand, some slang words seem to hang on and on in the language, never
changing their status from slang to respectable. Shakespeare used the expression beat it to
mean scram (or more politely, leave), and beat it would still be considered by most English

47

speakers to be a slang expression. Similarly, to use of the word pig for policeman goes back
as far as the 18th century (V. Fromkin, R. Rodman, 1998: 427).
There are two large groups of slangy words:
a) general slang, i.e. universally understood words and phrases, e.g. nuts (crazy, insane),
dough (money), etc.
b) special slang is represented by:
- words and phrases belonging to a certain professional vocabulary, e.g. the slang of sailors,
soldiers, students, etc.
- words belonging to certain social groups, e.g. cockney (the speech characteristic of a native
of the East End of London). Referring to this type of slang, Simeon Potter points out that it is
sometimes confined to a particular geographical community and thus acquires features which
are local and regional. That is why boundaries between slang and dialect are often uncertain
and vague. Slang and dialect meet and mingle in London Cockney, that racy, spontaneous,
picturesque, witty, and friendly English spoken not only by Londoners born within the sound
of Bow Bells [....] but also by millions of Londoners living within a forty-mile radius of the
mother of cities. (1990: 134)
Slang words are frequently based on metaphor. We shall illustrate the numerous
metaphorical slang creations by means of several examples, most of them taken from S.
Robertson (1958: 261). Some of these examples belong to American slang which is even more
prolific than British slang.
For the word head there are several slang creations: block, upper storey, nut, as in:
Ill knock your block off; to be wrong in the upper storey (be mentally disturbed); to be
off ones nut (be insane)
For money: dough, bean(s), bread (old fashioned) e.g. not to have a bean (without any
money).
For nonsense: bilge, tripe, stuff, bullshit (vulg.).
For drunk: three sheets in the wind, stewed, tanked up, loaded (mainly A.E), pie-eyed,
tight, pickled.
Slang often consists of ascribing totally new meanings to old words. Grass and pot widened
their meaning to marijuana; pig is used as an insulting word for a police officer. Other
slang words - rap, cool, dig, stoned, bread, split have all extended their semantic domain.
Slang results from an instinctive desire for freshness and novelty of expression. To
criticize seems to the man in the street tame and colourless, if not stilted, so he substitutes to
bad-mouth. Since novelty is a quality which soon wears off, slang has to be constantly
renewed. Vamoose, skedaddle, beat it, scram, buzz off have all had their periods of popularity
as expressions of roughly the same idea, usually in imperative form (Fromkin & Rodman,
1998: 427).
Many slang words have been introduced by journalists, writers who want their style to be
interesting, racy, striking, vivid.
5.3.3.2. Borrowings
Borrowing of words from other languages is still an important method of enriching the
vocabulary. As is to be expected in the light of the English disposition to borrow words from
other languages in the past, many of the new words have been taken over ready-made from
the people from whom the idea or the thing designated has been obtained. Thus, a large
number of words have been borrowed without changing their sound and spelling. There are
many loan words of French, Italian, Russian, German origin.
French has remained the most popular source for borrowings, especially for words
connected with the following fields: the arts (critique, connoisseur, montage), clothes and
fashion (rouge, blouse, chiffon, suede, haute couture), cooking (souffl, consomm, aperitif),

48

social life (etiquette, parvenu, elite), and more recently, motoring and aviation (garage,
hangar, chauffeur, fuselage).
From Italian come words connected with the arts: studio, replica, scenario, fiasco, etc.
Russian loan words are: borsch, vodka, samovar, troika, steppe, tundra, sputnik,
intelligentsia, etc.
German has given the words rucksack, zeppelin, zither, blitz, pretzel, etc.
In the present-day technical and scientific language Latin and Greek are the source of
numberless new coinages. As Simeon Potter rightly points out, The language of science and
technology is now being constantly extended and enriched by the creation of numerous
compounds and derivatives that soon become part of the so-called international scientific
vocabulary. [] If you examine these words you will find that they are nearly all made up of
Greek and Latin components. Far from being dead or dying, the languages of Demosthenes
and Cicero are thus promised immortality in this future world vocabulary of science. (: 177)
Thus, the loan words that English has borrowed from Latin can be conveniently divided
into four periods: 1. Words borrowed during the Roman conquest; 2. Words borrowed during
the Old English period; 3. Words borrowed in Middle English times; 4. Words borrowed in
Modern English.
The cosmopolitan character of the English vocabulary, already pointed out, is thus being
maintained, and we shall see in the next chapter (Chapter 6) that America has added many
other foreign words, particularly from Spanish and the languages of the American Indian.
In conclusion, the basic word-stock has remained Germanic, but the mass of the
vocabulary now contains only about 35 per cent Germanic elements, the Romance element
amounting to approximately 55 per cent and the rest of 10 per cent coming from various other
languages. Of these, the Old English element is the most important (an Englishman can
express most of what he wants to say by means of the Old English vocabulary). Yet, the
vocabulary borrowed from the other languages has contributed to what might be termed
specialization, i.e. shades of meaning, synonymy, technical terms.
5.4. Dialects
5.4.1. General characteristics
All speakers of English can pretty much understand each other; yet no two speak exactly
alike. Some differences are due to education, age, sex, personality and personal
idiosyncrasies. The unique characteristics of the language of an individual speaker are
referred to as the speakers idiolect. Beyond these individual differences, the language of one
group of people may show regular variations from that used by other groups of speakers of
that language. When the language spoken in different geographical regions and social groups
shows systematic differences, the groups are said to speak different dialects of the same
language. The dialects of a single language may thus be defined as mutually intelligible forms
of a language that differ in systematic ways from each other (Fromkin & Rodman, 1998: 400).
Regional dialects develop and are reinforced because languages change, and the changes
that occur in one group or area may differ from those that occur in another.
5.4.2. English Dialects
In addition to the educated standard in each major division of the English-speaking world
there are local forms of the language known as regional dialects.
In the newer countries where English has spread in modern times these are not so
numerous or so pronounced in their individuality as they are in the British Isles. The English
introduced into the colonies was a mixture of dialects in which the peculiarities of each were
fused in a common speech. Except perhaps in the United States, there has scarcely been time
for new regional differences to grow up, and although one region is sometimes separated from
another, the improvements in transportation and communication have tended to keep down
differences which might otherwise have arisen.

49

But in Great Britain such differences are very great. They go back to the earliest period of
the language and reflect conditions which prevailed at a time when travel was difficult and
communication was limited between districts.
There were four dialects in Old English: Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, West Saxon.
The same number of dialects was preserved in Middle English: Northern (from the OE
Northumbrian dialect), East Midland, West Midland (both coming from the OE Mercian
dialect) and Southern (from the OE West Saxon).
In the course of the Modern English period local dialects have been gradually superseded
by the literary language: dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of
standard English taught at school and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television,
cinema. However, dialects have not disappeared altogether and they still are a means of
communicating in the respective territories.
Dialect differences include phonological or pronunciation differences (often called accents)
and vocabulary distinctions. The grammar differences between dialects are not as great as the
similarities that are shared, thus permitting speakers of different dialects to communicate with
each other.
There are six groups of dialects in Modern English: Scottish, Northern, Western, Central,
Eastern and Southern. The Scottish and the Northern dialect correspond to the Middle English
Northern dialects; the Western, the Central and the Eastern dialects correspond to the Middle
English Midland dialects; the Southern dialect corresponds to the Middle English Southern
dialect.
Each group has its peculiarities, mainly in the phonetic and lexical spheres.
A. The Phonetic characteristics of English dialects:
i i. The Scottish dialect:
a) Middle English [u:] has not been subjected to the Great Vowel Shift, i.e. it has remained
unchanged: house [hu:s], now [nu:].
b) Long [:] developed only before m and f (calm, half), but in all other cases [] is
pronounced: chance, dance, glance.
c) The postvocalic [r] is pronounced: pour, sort, bird.
d) The guttural spirant [] is preserved in the Scottish dialect: sought, brought, loch.
ii. The Northern dialect:
a) and b) The first two pronunciation characteristics of the Scottish dialect are also found in
the Northern dialect
c) The consonant [h] is dropped at the beginning of a word,
e. g. He helps her [i `elps r]
d) In Northhumberland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, short u has not become [] but it has been
maintained in words such as cut, must, much.
iii. The Western, iv. Central, v. Eastern dialects
a) The consonant [h] is dropped in initial position
b) Middle English short a has not become []. Words like hat, cat, hand are pronounced:
[ht], [kt], [hnd].
c) Short u has not become [] but it has been maintained in words such as cut, must, much.
(See d) in the Northern dialect)
vi. The Southern dialect:
The consonant [h] is dropped in initial position
B. The Vocabulary of English Dialects
The vocabulary of English dialects is extremely rich. The best proof of this is the fact that
Joseph Wrights English Dialects Dictionary (6 volumes) contains 100,000 entries. The
dialect vocabulary is remarkable for its conservatism: many words that have become obsolete
in Standard English are still kept in dialects. Quite a number of dialectal words and phrases

50

reflect the life and the activities of the respective places: thus, there are many names for
different kinds of animals, plants, clothing (spud, kilt, tartan, etc).
There is sometimes a difficulty in distinguishing dialectal words from colloquial words.
Some dialectal words have become so familiar in colloquial English that they are universally
accepted as recognized words of standard colloquial English. For example, lass girl or
beloved girl, lad a young man, daft silly, aye yes, nay no, bonny attractive, wee
very small, bairn child (dialectal words in the Scottish dialect).
Still, dialectal words have not lost their dialectal associations and are used in literary
English with the stylistic function of characterization: e.g. dialectal words are meant to
characterize a speaker as a person of a certain locality, breeding, education.
Dialectal elements are to be found in certain well-known literary works. Thus, the
characteristics of the Scottish dialect are known to most people through the novels written by
W. Scott and the poetry of Robert Burns.
The Northern dialect is found in Emily Bronts Wuthering Heights (Yorkshire) as well as
in Elizabeth Gaskells Mary Barton. The poet Alfred Tennyson wrote several poems in the
Northern dialect, such as The Northern Cobbler.
Elements of the Southern dialect (that of Dorset) are to be found in the novels written by
Th. Hardy. One of the best known Southern dialects is Cockney, the regional dialect of
London. G. B. Shaws Pygmalion renders some features of this dialect in point of
pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.
5.4.3. Multilingual Britain Wales, Scotland and Ireland
Britain (or The British Isles) is a multilingual society within which several indigenous
languages are in use today, and which, as we have seen have existed for many hundreds of
years. The living languages of The British Isles - Gaelic, Irish and Welsh - operate as markers
of ethnic identity, surviving in the face of competition from English. They are referred to as
older mother tongues because they pre-date English. (N. Townson, 1995: 53)
In Ireland, the Irishspeaking communities are known as the Gaeltacht. The area
covered by the Gaeltacht is scattered over the West coast of Ireland. Language comprehension
is more widespread because of school language programmes and the status of Irish as the first
official language of the country.
Gaelic is used to refer to the Celtic language spoken in Scotland, more precisely in the
Highlands and Western Isles (for instance, the Isle of Man). Figures show that Gaelic is
spoken by only 80,000 out of a population of just over 5 million.
In Wales, figures are considerably higher: in 1981 there were still half a million speakers
of Welsh, representing almost 20% of the population. The highest concentration of
Welsh speakers is in the north of the country, although there are speakers of the language
spread throughout most of the regions. After having once declined, the speaking of Welsh is
now re-gaining ground (N. Townson, 1995: 55).
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. Old English spelling was a reasonably good representation of the sounds of the language
while Modern English spelling is notoriously bad in this respect. What causes for the widened
gap between English sound and spelling can you suggest?
2. What is the basis for determining the gender of a noun in Modern English, and how
many genders are there? How would you explain the gender relationship between noun and
pronoun in these sentences?
Thats a lovely baby. Whats its name?
Somebody telephoned you. What did they want?
I saw his new boat. Shes a beauty.

51

3. Which of the processes of word making described in this chapter seem to have been the
most productive in English?
4. What language has had an influence on the English vocabulary over the longest period
of time? Why has that language, more than any other, had such an influence?
Chapter 6: AMERICAN ENGLISH
The English language was brought to America by masses of Englishmen (colonists from
England) who settled along the Atlantic coast in the 17 th century. Even earlier than that, the
American continent had begun to be invaded by Spanish, Portuguese, French and other
immigrants, who were trying to escape from feudal exploitation and religious persecutions, as
well as by adventurers in search of riches (E. Iarovici, 1973: 270)
The territory which now forms the U.S.A. witnessed three great periods of immigration:
a) The first period began in 1607 with the settlement of Jamestown in Virginia and ended in
1787 when the 13 colonies ratified the Federal Constitution after the war of Independence
(also known as the American Revolution). The 13 colonies comprised four million Englishspeaking people, most of whom lived east of the Appalachian Mountains. During this period
90 per cent of the population came from Britain.
b) The second period, which closed with the Civil War, in 1865, covered the expansion of
the 13 colonies west of the Appalachian Mountains as far as the Pacific Coast. During this
period a great number of immigrants came from Ireland owing to the British oppressive
policy and to the potato famine of 1845. About the same number came from Germany, after
the European Revolution of 1848 was crushed.
c) The third period, from the end of the Civil War to the present day, was marked
ethnographically by the arrival of Scandinavians, Slavs, and Italians. They were soon
followed by immigrants from Eastern Europe. Also, Chinese and Japanese settled on the
Pacific Coast, so that the cosmopolitan character of the United States became more and more
accentuated. Further, Negroes from Africa have come to number over twelve million.
At present, the U.S.A. is a federal state consisting of 50 states.
From the linguistic point of view, the first period of immigration is the most important
because it brought to North America the language that is spoken by the majority of its
population. The colonists who came later from other countries were soon largely assimilated
and their language exerted a rather unimportant influence.
In spelling, in pronunciation, in vocabulary or lexis, and in the syntax of colloquial speech,
divergences persist between American English and British English, but they are unessential.
The Preface to Websters New World Dictionary of the American Language rightly points out
that formal American English and formal British English, although they are separated by
3,000 Atlantic miles vary far less than the local dialects of Yorkshire (cited from Iarovici,
1973: 296). The literary language of America, indeed, is not very different from that of
England.
Certain divergences remain only in spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, and in the syntax
of the lower levels of speech.
6.1. Spelling
American spelling often differs in small ways from that customary in England.
a) The spelling or has been introduced for the British our (without u) at the end of French
and Latin words, e.g. honor, labor, color, favor, humor, odor, etc.
b) The spelling er stands for the British re, e.g. center, theater, fiber, caliber, etc.
c) The spelling se stands for the British ce, e.g. offense, defense, pretense, etc.

52

d) Simple l- is used instead of double -ll- before ing, -ed or before adjectival suffixes, e.g.
traveling, traveled, jewelry, woolen, marvelous, etc.
e) Other American simplifications of spellings are ax (for British axe), plow (plough), tire
(tyre), story (storey), program (programme), catalog (catalogue), etc.
6.2. Pronunciation
From the time when the early colonists came, divergence in pronunciation (distinguishing it
from the language of British English) began gradually to develop.
The pronunciation of American English as compared with that of British English is
somewhat old-fashioned. It has qualities that were characteristic of English speech in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The pronunciation of American English differs from that of British English in point of
intonation and rhythm.
The main characteristics of American intonation are the following:
a) Both sentence stress and word stress is weaker, less forceful in American than in British
English and intonation is more level. Consequently, American speech is more monotonous,
but at the same time it is generally more distinct in its division of syllables. Unstressed
syllables are pronounced with more measured detachment and therefore with greater clarity.
b) Americans speak more slowly than Englishmen and with less variety of tone. The
Southern drawl lengthens all stressed syllables, often turning vowels into diphthongs. On
account of this prolongation of the stressed vowels, final consonant groups are weakened
losing the last consonant.
c) Another characteristic is the nasal twang which is to be heard especially in the Middle
West.
d) As far as word stress is concerned, the tendency to stress the first syllable is more marked
in American English than in British English: address, research, locate, dictate, resource,
corollary, romance.
Among the more outstanding features of American pronunciation a few may be noted.
a) [] in words such as fast, path, dance, grass, cant, half corresponds in British English to
the broad [:] which developed in the second half of the 18 th century and even later. It
therefore represents the preservation of an older feature of the language.
b) In American English a sort of [] is to be heard in words like hot, not, crop, frog.
c) [r], which has disappeared in the Received Pronunciation of Britain except before
vowels, is sounded in all positions in the greatest part of the United States, e.g. car [k:r],
farm, door, lord.
d) In American English l is always velar. In British English it is clear before a vowel and
velar before a consonant, e.g. large, help.
e) Another specifically American development is the frequent change of t to a kind of d,
sometimes called the voiced t. It is generally to be heard between two vowels, e.g. better,
butter, water.
f) There are a few words with different pronunciation in American English: (n)either
[(n)i:r], ate [eit], clerk [kl:rk], tomato [t`meitou], schedule [`skedju:l], laboratory
[`lbrto:ri], etc.
6.3. Vocabulary
The most numerous and striking differences belong to vocabulary. As the English language
was spreading to America, it was but natural that local peculiarities should arise. As soon as
the settlers landed in America, they found objects, such as plants and animals which were
new to them. Even the landscape was different from the English countryside. The land was
inhabited by people who spoke a strange language and who lived by customs different from
anything the English had ever seen. Names had to be provided for all these aspects of their
new life.

53

Americanisms, i.e. words characteristic of the USA can be divided into the following
categories:
6.3.1. Words based on changed meanings (as compared to those of the respective
words in British English). Under new natural, economic and political conditions, it was rather
difficult for settlers to provide names for the numerous formerly unknown objects they came
across, so they used old words in order to name the new concepts. That is why changes of
vocabulary occurred in their language from the very beginning:
a) The word corn was transferred to an entirely new cereal: in British English it means crops
such as wheat and barley. In American English it means maize.
b) Clerk in British English is an official but in American English it has a wider meaning, that
of a shop - assistant (extension of meaning).
c) Rock in British English means a large mass of stone. In American English it means a
small piece of stone, e.g. Protesters threw rocks at the police.
d) To figure in American English means not only to calculate, to compute, but also to
think, to consider, e.g. I figured youd be late (= I thought).
6.3.2. Words borrowed from the Indians or from other settlers
Another means of naming the unknown objects such as plants, animals, natural phenomena
found in America, was to borrow their names from the Indians or, sometimes, from other
settlers.
Contact with the Indians brought into English a number of words having particular
reference to the Indian way of life. Thus, they borrowed wigwam (= a hut of the American
Indians); squaw (Indian woman, wife), canoe, toboggan, moccasin, tomahawk, hominy
(ground maize prepared as food by boiling with water, corresponding to the Romanian
mmlig), to scalp, etc.
From the Indians the American settlers also borrowed names for certain animals such as:
moose, raccoon (a flesh-eating animal with a bushyringed tail), skunk (a black and white
striped animal, which protects itself with a foul-smelling spray} (fig. a despicable person);
opossum (a nocturnal marsupial animal that lives in trees and that carries its young in a
pouch);, chipmunk, etc.
Certain Indian words and phrases were translated into English: big chief, pale face (white
person), pipe of peace (to smoke the pipe of peace), to bury the hatchet (to settle a
disagreement, to become reconciled), medicine man.
From the very beginning of English colonization in America, the settlers borrowed words
not only from the Indians, but also from colonists of various nationalities.
The English took a large number of words from the French colonists. Thus, they borrowed
the words bureau, prairie (an extension area of grassland), depot (railway station), cache (a
place where things are hidden), crevasse (a deep crack split or gap in the ice or a mountain),
levee (a wall of soil built along the side of a river), bayou {marshy offshoot of river), etc.
A number of words were taken from the Dutch settlers: boss, dope, cookie, coleslaw
(cabbage salad), Yankee (a native or inhabitant of the United States), to snoop.
A large number of Spanish words have been adopted especially since the 19th century:
canyon (valley with high steep cliffs on either side and through which a river usually runs);
patio (inner courtyard); ranch (a very big farm); fiesta (a festival, celebration), adobe (unburnt
sun-dried brick), mustang (wild horse), etc.
A small number of words were taken from the German immigrants: pretzel, noodle,
hamburger (minced/ground meat that is fried or grilled); frankfurter (kind of sausage),
sauerkraut (cabbage fermented in brine), delicatessen, etc.
Also, the word dumb in the sense of stupid seems to come both from the German dumm
and the Dutch dom. The American use of fresh in the sense of impudent is probably to be

54

accounted for by the German frech cheeky. The well-known Americanisms loafer (tramp)
and bum (loiterer, loafer) seem to be of German origin.
6.3.3. Archaic features in American English
Another quality often attributed to American English is archaism, the preservation of old
features of the language which have gone out of use in the standard speech of England.
An important number of Americanisms are in fact words which have either become
obsolete in England except in certain dialects or have lost in England a meaning which is
maintained in the United States. From the point of view of British English, these
Americanisms are therefore archaisms and provincialisms.
Thus, what is called now The Government in Britain, was known there as The
Administration, down to the middle of the 19 th century. The term Administration has been
preserved in America.
Baggage in the sense of luggage occurred in Britain in the 17 th and 18th centuries. It is
still in current use in the United States, whereas in Britain it refers only to portable army
equipment, or to someones emotional problems.
The verb to guess in the meaning of to suppose, to think occurred in Britain in the 14 th
and 15th centuries. G. Chaucer, describing the young squire writes Of twenty years of age he
was, I gesse. This sense is extremely frequent in the United States: e.g. I guess youre right.
= I suppose youre right.
To quit is rarely used in England now. In the United States it is in everyday use, in the
meaning of to give up, to leave, to stop: to quit a job; Quit making that noise!
Sick underwent a change of sense in Britain (it is restricted to nausea) that was not carried
over to America. Shakespeare uses it in the modern American sense in his play Henry V: e.g.
He is very sick and would to bed. (The British use ill)
The picturesque old word fall has been kept in America as the natural word for the season
autumn (used in England).
The fact that numerous Americanisms are actually words which in Britain have become
archaisms in the meantime or are just provincialisms has resulted in the assertion that
American English is more conservative than British English.
Indeed, American English has preserved certain older features of the language which have
disappeared from Standard English in England. But it has also introduced a large number of
innovations equally important, which we shall discuss in the following section.
6.3.4. Words formed in America are another category of Americanisms.
Besides resorting to borrowing from other languages and changing the meaning of existing
words, the settlers introduced a large number of innovations, resorting to composition,
affixation or conversion.
a) Composition
The first settlers often made up descriptive compounds for naming the unknown plants,
animals and natural phenomena they came across in their new homeland.
E.g. blue-grass (grass with bluish-green stems)
back-country (district not yet populated)
Little by little, composition was also resorted to for naming less concrete, abstract notions,
qualities, etc. Many of the later compounds are based on metaphor:
Disk - jockey (an employee of a broadcasting station who conducts a programme of
recorded music); hard - boiled (= callous, tough, shrewd: a hard-boiled detective); drive in movie (a cinema where you can see a film without getting out of your car); sky-scraper (a
very tall building); hot-dog (hot sausage in a long bread roll); horse-sense (common sense).
Whereas early America compounds were often self-explanatory, recent ones are frequently
rather elliptical. Thus, soap opera is a television or radio series about the imaginary lives of a
group of people.

55

Other terse metaphors are: wire pulling, to have an ax to grind, to be on the fence. The
Americans early manifested the gift, which they continue to show, of the imaginative, slightly
humorous phrase: to bark up the wrong tree, to face the music, fly off the handle, go the whole
hog, paint the town red, and many more.
b) Affixation has not been quite as productive as composition in American English.
Prefixes have been resorted to far less often than suffixes, with a few exceptions, such as:
anti-, de-, re-, semi-, up-: anti-federalist, to debunk, to revamp (to arrange things, to
improve), semi-centennial, to update.
As far as suffixes are concerned, the most frequent are
-ize, -ate, -ify, -acy, ee, -ery, -teria: to computerize, candidacy, trainee, cafeteria, etc.
c) Conversion is another means of forming new words. It is very frequent in British English
too, but in England conversion is not carried to such extremes as in American English.
While composition and affixation have given American English numberless nouns,
conversion has provided American English mostly with verbs derived from nouns. Practically
speaking any noun may be converted into a verb: e.g. to boom (to increase in trade); to
contact, to style, to engineer (to act as an engineer, to arrange something skilfully, such as to
engineer a plot).
Even compounds have often been converted into verbs:
e.g. to weekend, to lobby-display (to influence members for or against a measure).
OK (also spelled okay) is the most grammatically versatile of words, able to serve as an
adjective, a noun or interjection: e.g. Lunch was OK. (adjective); I need your OK on this.
(noun); We seemed to manage okay (adverb); His doctor wouldnt OK the trip (verb); OK, Ill
help you. (interjection).
Phraseological units: A large number of phraseological units or idioms have been coined
in the United States. Some of them are bold, racy, vivid, full of imagination and - often - of
humour (E. Iarovici, 1973: 290). For example, to look like a million dollars, to lose ones shirt
(to lose ones temper; to lose a lot of money that you have invested); canned music
(gramophone record), hes so dumb you can sell him the Brooklin Bridge (hes a perfect fool)
There are a number of variations between the everyday vocabulary of Britain and that of
American English. This is due to certain differences between the economic, social, political,
cultural conditions in the United States and those existing in Britain, as well as to certain
American linguistic peculiarities (such as the preservation of words now obsolete in Britain,
the acquiring of new meanings).
The main terms that differ are:
a) In the sphere of home-life: apartment (flat), elevator (lift), first floor (ground-floor),
package (parcel), faucet (tap), waste-basket (wastepaper basket)
b) In the sphere of food(stuffs): candy (sweets), broil (to grill or barbecue food), molasses
(treacle), rare (underdone meat), can (tin), pitcher (jug)
c) In the sphere of clothing: pants (trousers), tuxedo (dinner jacket), vest (undershirt,
waistcoat), suspenders (braces), sneakers (trainers), derby hat (bowler hat)
d) In the sphere of travelling: baggage (luggage), railroad (railway), truck (lorry),
automobile (motor car), freight train (goods train), vacationer (holiday maker), baby carriage
(pram), gasoline (petrol), hood (of a car) (bonnet), muffler (on a car) (silencer)
e) In the sphere of education: faculty (staff), recess (break), grade (form, class), grade
school (primary school)
f) In the sphere of business, trades and occupations: raise (in pay, salary) (rise), bill
(banknote), billfold (wallet), druggist (chemist), silent partner (sleeping partner)
g) Other variations: fall (autumn), sidewalk (pavement), vacation (holiday), movie (film),
mail (post), mailbox (letterbox, postbox), subway (underground)

56

The difference between British and American vocabulary today is lessened by the fact that
many American words have made their way into English use, and their number appears to be
increasing rather than diminishing.
6.4. Grammar
As far as grammar is concerned, the differences between American English and British
English are neither very important, nor very numerous.
Very often a British form, which fell into disuse long ago or may still be heard in a dialect
or in substandard speech, is fully accepted as best American usage.
For example, the verb help occurs without to in informal British English and in a
number of dialects, whereas in American it is perfect literary standard. Compare the
use of the Short Infinitive instead of the Long Infinitive after the verb help:
This syrup will help cure your cold. (American)
This syrup will help to cure your cold. (British)
The Short Infinitive (the Infinitive without to) is also common American usage in
sentences such as:
Look at him run; Listen to him talk.
where British English will more usually have ing forms or other constructions:
Look at him running; Look how he runs.
The indefinite article precedes half before hour, minute, dozen:
e.g. Ill expect you back in a half hour. (W. Saroyan)
A half dozen policemen emerged out of the darkness. (J. Thurber)
Pronouns with indefinite reference: Americans use the impersonal pronoun one, and then
continue with he and his, as in If one loses his temper, he should apologize, One should
always look after his money where the English would replace his and he by ones and one. If
one loses his temper, one should apologize. One should always look after ones money.
In American English the Past Simple is often preferred to the Present Perfect in British
English with the adverbs just, yet, already:
e.g. Lucy just called. Did your friends arrive yet?
Did you already finish those letters?
In American English the Synthetic Subjunctive has been preserved to a greater extent than
in British English. American sources abound in Subjunctive forms depending upon a main
clause expressing will, wish, suggestion, or order. e.g. Im only demanding that you do your
duty. The Minister insisted that he leave the country immediately.
In British English the forms would be that you should do or that he should leave the
country.
The auxiliaries will and would are generalized, being also used in the first person (singular
and plural):
e.g. I will be back later.
Sometimes the Past Participle of a verb is maintained in a form that is obsolete in
England, e.g. gotten, proven.
e.g. When she had gotten safely into the street, she could scarcely restrain her tears.
(Th. Dreiser)
The following verbs: burn, dream, lean, learn, smell, spell, spill, and spoil are all regular in
American English. In British English, they can be regular, but irregular past tenses and
participles with t are more common (burnt, dreamt, leant, learnt, smelt, spelt, spilt, spoilt)
Another area of contrast is the use or non-use of the preposition to before the indirect
object (The Retained Indirect Object) in passive sentences. The passive without to is standard
in American English: A letter was sent him (in British English: A letter was sent to him).
The For- to construction, i.e. the Infinitival construction after nouns, adjectives, and verbs
which can be followed by the preposition for is used in a larger number of contexts in

57

American English than in British English. In addition to such constructions which occur both
in British and American English (She waited for him to leave; Its bad for her to smoke), the
For- to construction is extended in American English to verbs and adjectives that do not
normally take for:
Id like for you to go.
Wed be proud for you to be our guest.
A characteristic of American English is represented by the frequency of ly-less adverbs.
That is to say, adjectives are often used as adverbs in colloquial American English:
e.g. If you cant sleep any this pill will help you some. (= somewhat, to some extent)
Its real good. (= really); Drive slow.
It sure will help.
Prepositions are not always used in the same way as in Britain.
- The preposition on is dropped before the names of days of the week.
e.g. See you (on) Sunday.
Sundays we go into the country.
- In British English fromto are used to identify a period by its beginning and end: from
June to December; In American English fromthrough are used to make clear that the whole
period includes the second period named. Thus, from June through December means up to
and including December.
- About and around in informal British English often have the vague meaning of in the
area of or in various positions in: There arent many shops about / around here.
In American English about is rarer and more formal in this sense than around.
Other prepositions which differ in American English are:
Its ten after 5 oclock. (past); out the window (out of); on the sky (= in)
6.5. American English dialects
American English itself is not uniform. Dialect differences in America include
phonological or pronunciation differences (often called accents), vocabulary distinctions, and
syntactic rule differences. The grammar differences between dialects are not as great as the
similarities that are shared, thus permitting speakers of different dialects to communicate with
each other.
American English is divided into three main dialects:
The most widely spoken dialect (viewed as the standard) is known as Standard or General
American English. It includes the Middle Atlantic States (New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware) and New York State, as well as the Middle and Western States. The General
American dialect thus comprises two thirds of the whole population and four fifths of the
land surface of the United States reaching from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific
Ocean in the west.
The other two dialects, New England and Southern, are important and significant, but
they are more limited geographically.
The New England dialect is spoken in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, Connecticut. It is more like British English in many respects. For example, the
rounded vowel is kept in dock, the long low back vowel is retained in dance, and the r is
completely lost in dark. At the same time this dialect is less homogeneous than General
American (S. Potter, 1990: 167).
The Southern dialect includes Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia,
Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas.
In spite of countless smaller variations in pronunciation, vocabulary, and idiom, the three
American dialects do not greatly differ. S. Potter points out that For three centuries American
families have been constantly on the move and speech communities have seldom remained
isolated for more than one generation. It would be no exaggeration to say that greater

58

differences in pronunciation are discernible in the north of England between Trent and Tweed
than in the whole of North America. (: 168)
______
NOTES:
For an informative discussion of English and American spellings see. H.L.Mencken, The
American Language, ch..8.
There are three theories as to its origin: 1. It comes from someones initials; 2. It is
adopted from some dialect; 3. It is a contraction of the expression All correct.
3. Received Pronunciation (RP) the name given to the regionally neutral accent in British
English.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. In what respects is American English more conservative than British English and in what
respects is it less so?
2. List the important differences between British English and American English. Which of
the differences is most significant?
3. Describe five of the most important general differences between American and British
pronunciation.
Chapter 7: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE SPOKEN IN CANADA, AUSTRALIA AND
SOUTH AFRICA
In the various parts of the former British Empire, as in the United States, the English
language has developed differences which distinguish it from the language of England. In
Australasia, Africa, South Asia and Canada, peculiarities of pronunciation and vocabulary
have grown up which mark off national and areal varieties from the dialect of the mother
country and from one another. These peculiarities are partly such as arise in communities
separated by time and space, and are partly due to the influence of a new environment. In
some countries the most striking changes are the result of imperfect learning and systematic
adaptations by speakers of other languages.
Differences of nature and material civilization, and generally contact with some foreign
tongue, are clearly reflected in the vocabulary.
7.1. CANADA is officially a bilingual country, because approximately one-third of the
population is of French descent. Speakers of French are most numerous in Quebec and the
English spoken there contains many French borrowings. The first big group of Englishspeaking settlers came during and after the War of Independence. During the century that
followed there was a constant flow of immigration into Canada, especially from Britain,
including a high number of Scotsmen and Irishmen (the influence of Scottish English is to be
felt in Ontario).
The densely populated areas in Canada are very close to the border of the United States and
that is why Canadian English resembles American English very much.
7.2. In the 18th century English settlers appeared in Australia. During the 19th century the
whole of AUSTRALIA and also NEW ZEALAND were colonized. In Australian English
there are a number of words that have been borrowed from the native (aboriginal) languages
of Australia and New Zealand (for example, kangaroo, koala, boomerang, etc.).
Some of these are old words which have acquired new meanings by being applied to new
things. Thus, the word jackass (shortened from laughing jackass) means a bird whose cry is
like a donkeys bray. Where an Englishman talks of a farm, and an American of a ranch, the
Australian speaks of a station (and, he distinguishes between a sheep station and a cattle
station).
The English spoken in Australia differs from that spoken in England not only in
vocabulary, but also in pronunciation. Australian speech is remarkably uniform. The accent of

59

the majority of Australians has characteristics often associated with Cockney, especially in the
quality of certain vowels and diphthongs (e,g. the diphthong [ei] is pronounced [ai]: say [sai]).
The distinctive characteristics of general Australian pronunciation and the uniformity of
the dialect throughout the continent are attributed to the circumstance that the early settlers
were deported prisoners and adventurers drawn from the lower classes of England.
7.3. SOUTH AFRICA
The same thing is true in a somewhat different way of Africa, the most multilingual
continent on earth. The present Republic of South Africa had been occupied successively by
the Bushmen, Hottentots, Bantus, Portuguese, and Dutch before the English settlers came.
From all these sources, but especially from Dutch and its South African development,
Afrikaans, the English language has acquired elements. A few words, which occurred earlier
in peculiarly South African contexts, have passed into the general English vocabulary. In
addition to apartheid and veldt (or veld), which retain their original associations, British and
American speakers use commando, commandeer, and trek in contexts that no longer reflect
their South African history.
In other parts of sub-Saharan Africa that were once British colonies and are now
independent countries, the English language has a complex relationship to the many African
languages. Unlike South Africa, where English and Afrikaans are the European languages of
the ruling minorities, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Uganda, and other former
colonies have a choice of retaining their colonial linguistic inheritance or rejecting it. In
Nigeria, three main African languages and scores of languages spoken by smaller groups exist
alongside English. Although only a tiny minority of the population speaks English, almost
always as a second language, it is the official language of the country. Ethnic jealousies that
would arise from the selection of one of the African languages, and the advantages of English
for communication both internally and internationally, are sufficient to overcome the
reluctance towards using a colonial language.
7.4. Further aspects of language in society
In areas where many languages are spoken, one language may become a lingua franca to
ease communication among the people.
English has been called the lingua franca of the whole world. French, at one time was the
lingua franca of diplomacy, and Latin and Greek were the lingua francas of Christianity in
the West and East, respectively, for a millennium.
In other cases, where traders or missionaries or travellers need to communicate with people
who speak a language unknown to them, a pidgin based on one language may develop, which
is simplified lexically, phonologically, and syntactically. There are a number of English-based
pidgins. One such pidgin, called Tok Pisin, is widely used in Papua New Guinea.
When a pidgin comes to be adopted by a community as its native tongue, and children
learn it as a first language, that language is called a creole. The pidgin has become creolized.
Creoles often arose on slave plantations in certain areas where Africans of many different
tribes could communicate only via the plantation pidgin. Haitian Creole, based on French,
developed in this way, as did the English spoken in parts of Jamaica. Gullah is an Englishbased creole spoken by the descendants of African slaves on islands off the coast of Georgia
and South Carolina. Louisiana Creole, related to Haitian Creole, is spoken by large numbers
of blacks and whites in Louisiana.
Creoles become fully developed languages, having more lexical items and a broader array
of grammatical distinctions than pidgins.
Chapter 8. ENGLISH AS A TOOL OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION

60

Although the statement English is the worlds most important language may be taken as a
truism, it answers some objective criteria of importance. R. Quirk (1972: 2) suggests four
such criteria.
One criterion is the number of native speakers that a language happens to have. From this
point of view, English comes second after Chinese, which has double the number of speakers.
A second criterion is the extent to which a language is geographically dispersed: in how
many continents and countries is it used? This criterion makes English a front runner.
A third is its vehicular load: to what extent is it a medium for science or literature or other
highly regarded cultural manifestation including way of life? English scores as being the
primary medium for twentieth century science and technology.
A fourth is the economic and political influence of those who speak it as their own
language. English is the language of the United States which has a larger Gross National
Product (both in total and in relation to the population) than any other country in the world.
What emerges strikingly about English is that by any of the criteria it is prominent, by some
it is pre-eminent, and by a combination of the four it is superlatively outstanding.. As Quirk (:
3) points out, no claim has been made of the importance of English on the grounds of its
quality, such as the size of its vocabulary, the alleged flexibility of its syntax. It has been
rightly said that the choice of an international language, or lingua franca, is never based on
linguistic or aesthetic criteria but always on political, economic and demographic ones.
English is the worlds most widely used language. There are three primary categories of
use: It is used as a native language, as a second language, and as a foreign language.
English is spoken as a native language, or mother tongue, by nearly three hundred million
people in countries such as Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the
Caribbean and South Africa, without mentioning smaller countries or smaller pockets of
native English speakers (for example in Rhodesia and Kenya).
As a second language, English is used chiefly for certain official, social, commercial or
educational activities within several countries: within the French-speaking Quebec province
of Canada, within the Afrikaans-speaking South Africa. This second language function is
more noteworthy, however, in a long list of countries where only a small proportion of the
people have English as their native language: India, Ghana, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya and
many other Commonwealth countries and former British territories. Thus, several decades
after independence, India maintains English as a medium of instruction for approximately half
of its total higher education. English is one of the two working languages of the United
Nations.
As a foreign language, English is used for international communication, i.e. the medium of
communication with speakers from other countries.
But many more use it as an international means of communication, because English has
become a truly international language meeting more than just national needs. science, trade,
sport, and international relations of various kinds have given the English language the status
of one of the worlds most important languages. Many scientific and technical journals are
written in English although they are not necessarily published in England or other Englishspeaking countries. At numerous international meetings and conferences English is the main
language. The Olympic Games and other multinational sports events are presented in English.
The role English plays today is the result of historical processes which affected large parts
of the world and are, to some extent, reflected in the language itself. Thus, the English
language, in the course of its historical development, has met with so many influences from
abroad that its very structure, both lexical and grammatical has come to reflect in many ways
its international use. What we call English words are very largely, by more than two-thirds,
French, Latin, Greek and other words in origin. In effect, the power of the English language to

61

take up elements from other languages has become almost limitless. This capacity of
assimilation is one of the key features of English as an international language.
The inflectional system of modern English, using analytical rather than synthetic means, is
extremely simple. There are no more than a handful of grammatical endings. The -s denoting
the plural and possessive of nouns and the third person singular Present Tense of main verbs;
the -er/ -est used for the degrees of comparison of adjectives, the -ed forming the Past
Tense and ed participle of regular verbs, the -ing making up the -ing participle and the
gerund, and finally the -ly of adverbs are the only endings left of the highly inflected
language spoken a thousand years ago.
Along with this simplification of the grammatical form has come a much greater ease in
using the same word in more than one word-class. answer, for example, can occur as a verb
and a noun. round may even be used in no fewer than five different word-classes. It can be
an adjective in A round table will seat more people than a square one; a preposition in We
travelled round the country; an adverb in He turned round and ran back to the house; a
noun in The next round of peace talks will be held in Rome; a verb in The van had just
rounded the corner when it was hit by a lorry. Thus, a very large number of English words
are used in at least two word-classes, usually as nouns and verbs or nouns and adjectives.
Thus, English words are very flexible and may be put to a great variety of uses within the
sentence.
The structure of English sentences, in contrast to the relative uniformity of the word forms,
is very complex, not to say complicated, as is evident from its difficult phraseology, and its
complicated syntactic structure. English syntax seems to be making up for what the language
has lost in morphological richness. Thus, English, by virtue of its vast stock of words and its
highly productive grammatical structure, is indeed able to cope with the most diverse tasks of
international communication (D. Giering, 1979: 11).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Algeo, John 1972 Problems in the Origins and Development of the English Language,
second edn., Harcourt Brace New York
2. Baugh, Albert, Cable, Thomas 1978 - A History of the English Language, 3rd edition
revised, Redwood Press Limited, New York
3. Bolton, F.W., Crystal, David 1993 - The English Language. Volume 10 of the Penguin
History of Literature, Penguin Books, England
4. Burnley, David 1992 The History of the English Language, Longman Group U.K.
Limited
5. Crystal, David 1985 - A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 2nd edition, Basil
Blackwell, Oxford
6. Crystal, David 1993 The English Language, Penguin Books, England
7. Crystal, David 1994 An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language and Languages.
Blackwell, Oxford
8. Fromkin, V., and Rodman, R., 1998 - An Introduction to Language, sixth edition,
Thomson and Heinle
9. Giering, D., et al., - 1979 A University Handbook, VEB Verlag Enzyklopdie Leipzig
10. Greenbaum, S., and Quirk, R., 1990 A Students Grammar of the English Language,
Longman
11. Howard, Philip 1984 The State of the Language Pelican Books, London
12. Iarovici, Edith 1973 - A History of the English Language, E. D. P, Bucharest
13. Iarovici, Edith 2002 Engleza americana, Ed.Teora, Bucuresti
14. Jespersen, Otto 1955 - Growth and Structure of the English Language, Doubleday &

62

Company, New York

15. Leech, G., Svartvik, Jan 1975 A Communicative Grammar of English, Longman
Group U.K. Limited
16. Macmillan 2002 English Dictionary for Advanced Students, International Student
Edition, Oxford, London
17. Mencken, H.L. 1955 - The American Language, New York
18. Potter, Simeon 1990 Our Language, Pelican Books, London
19. Pyles, Th., 1971 - The Origins and Development of the English Language, 2nd. ed.,
Harcourt Brace New York
20. Quirk, Randolph, et al.,- 1972 - A Grammar of English, Longman Group U.K. Limited
21. Quirk, Randolph and Stein, Gabrielle 1994 English in Use, Longman Group U.K.
Limited, England
22. Robertson, Stuart 1958 - The Development of Modern English, New Jersey
23. Swan, Michael 1980 - Practical English Usage, Oxford, Oxford University Press
24. Townson, A. Nigel 1995 Language and Languages in Contemporary Britain,
Clusium, Cluj-Napoca.

63