Languages & Linguistics
Modern English
Modern English refers to the form of the English language used from the late 15th century to the present day. It is characterized by significant changes in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, influenced by historical events, technological advancements, and cultural shifts. Modern English is the dominant global language, spoken by millions of people worldwide and serving as a lingua franca in many contexts.
Written by Perlego with AI-assistance
Related key terms
1 of 5
3 Key excerpts on "Modern English"
eBook - PDF- Thomas Kohnen(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
In fact, Early Modern English can be called the period of the (orthographic) standardisation of the written language. At the end of the seventeenth century the written (or rather: printed) language appears fairly homogenous, with only few spelling features that do not conform to the contemporary standard (for example, spellings like musick). However, there is no reason to assume that the spoken language showed the same standardising tendencies. On the contrary, there is ample evidence for the fact that the basic Middle English dialects were preserved in the spoken language (Görlach 1999a is a useful collection of evidence for and comments on regional and social variation). For example, the grammarian Alexander Gil gave in his (Latin) grammar of English (Logonomia anglica, 1619/21) a systematic treatment of the major dialect areas, distinguishing, apart from a general and a poetic dialect, a Southern, an Eastern, a Western and a Northern variety. The typical features he mentions (for example, the Southern voicing of initial fricatives, as in vox for fox and zong for song) point to the fact that these areas had preserved the distinctions between the major Middle English dialects (on southern voicing of fricatives in Middle English see Chapter 4.2.5.). In the section on Early Modern English phonology we saw that dialect distinctions were also reflected in ongoing sound changes, most prominently in the so-called Great Vowel Shift, many steps of which were not carried out in northern dialects (see Chapter 5.2.1.). Also, the split of Middle English /u/ into /U/ and /V/ did not spread to most northern dialects (that is, here /U/ was preserved in words like but and cut). Quite often dialect speech is associated with lower prestige and textbooks on the Early Modern English period typically include citations from prominent works which comment unfavourably on the “rude” and “uncivil” language of regional dialects.
eBook - PDF- Alexander Bergs, Laurel J. Brinton, Alexander Bergs, Laurel J. Brinton(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The first part (Section 2) will present the traditional view of the history of Standard English in the Late Modern English period, and the second part (Section 3) will be concerned with recent approaches to the study of the standardization processes of the English language, which partly challenge the traditional view of the history of the standard language. 2 Tracing the history of Standard English ( 1750 – 1920 ) In numerous descriptions of the history of the English language (see for instance Blake 1996; Baugh and Cable 2002; Watts and Trudgill 2002 for accounts of the history of the language; Milroy and Milroy 1991; Stein and Tieken-Boon van Ostade [eds.] 1994; Wright 2000, Crowley 2003 for specialized texts on standardization; and Beal 2004 for an account of the Late Modern English period up to 1945), the 18th century is de-picted as an age of standardization and prescriptivism, during which the English lan-guage was codified in the form in which we know it today. With respect to Haugen’s (1966) four-step concept of standardization, which entails (1) selection of norm, (2) cod-ification of form, (3) elaboration of function, and (4) acceptance by the speech commu-nity, and Milroy and Milroy’s (1991: 27) seven-step model, which comprises the additional stages of (5) maintenance, (6) prestige, and (7) prescription, the 18th century can clearly be labeled the codification stage, with the subsequent stages partly overlap-ping with the latter stage and also covering the rest of the Late Modern English period. For an account of the first stage, i.e. selection of norm, see Moessner, Chapter 44 on Early Modern English standardization. The written variety of English that had been established by the end of the 18th cen-tury was a taught standard “associated with a certain level of education and social posi-tion” (Blake 1996: 24).
eBook - PDF- Jan Svartvik, Geoffrey Leech(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
Some construc- tions, such as the passive, are typical of writing, whereas others, like tag questions and left- and right-dislocations, are highly characteristic of speech. More generally, in this chapter we have seen that standard English is no monochrome variety of the language, but accommodates a wealth of variation. The Standard Language Today 205 Time changes all things: there is no reason why language should escape this universal law. Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de Linguistique générale (1916) If you ask native speakers of English how the language is changing today, after hesitation they will probably mention new vocabulary, or possibly some changes in pronunciation, but it is unlikely that grammar will appear on the agenda. This is probably for two reasons. First, most native English speakers are ignorant about the grammar of their mother tongue. Ask them about a grammatical problem, and they will dissolve into joking embarrassment. Second, grammar is an aspect of language that changes slowly, so it is popularly assumed to be unchanging, its rules set in stone. No one who has read this book, we are sure, will make that mis- take. The grammar of standard English keeps changing, as it always has. However, within one generation there are likely to be few dramatic changes: what we can observe are changes of preference, of frequency. Interestingly, changes in recent English grammar tend to follow particular patterns, which we list as follows: ● Grammaticalization – Items of vocabulary are gradually getting subsumed into grammatical forms, a well-known process of language change. ● Colloquialization – The use of written grammar is tending to become more colloquial or informal, more like speech. ● Americanization – The use of grammar in other countries (such as the UK) is tending to follow US usage. Grammaticalization About 500 years ago, there developed a new class of English words, now known as modal auxiliary verbs (modals for short).
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
