Language Change

Question 1

William Caxton

Answer 1

• Put together a 700-page history of Troy - the first book to be printed in English
• The press allows one form of English to spread across the country
• There were no real negative views on Caxton at the time, though we know that his decisions would isolate certain social groups

Question 2

William Caxton’s necessary choices

Answer 2

• Foreign words without translation
• Variety of English
• Literary style
• The spelling of unstandardised words

Question 3

The influence of Shakespeare

Answer 3

-Not the first to use certain words, but the first to popularise them

Mainly influenced the areas of:

• vocabulary
• lexis
• grammatical conversation
• idiomatic expressions

Question 4

Mulcaster

Answer 4

Wrote one of the first grammars:

• Vowels spelt more predictably, eg. “oo” in “soon”
• “u” and “v” phonetically fixed
• short vowels followed by consonants, eg. “full”, “well”, “glass”
• school books begin to contain lists of homophones

Question 5

Orthography

Answer 5

• Another term for spelling
• Renaissance - no standard writing form
• Blamed on the idiosyncrasy of printers
• Printers often added “-e” if they wanted to justify a line of text (to justify the length of a sentence in a frame or page)

Question 6

John Hart

Answer 6

Suggested that capitals should be used at the start of sentences

Question 7

Use of capital letters

Answer 7

• John Hart suggests the use of capitals at the start of sentences
• By early 17th century, capital letters were used in titles and personified nouns
• Emphasised words and phrases were also capitalised, though 18th century grammarians later put a stop to this

Question 8

Inkhorn Controversy

Answer 8

• Increasing the influx of borrowed words vs stopping it

- First example of academic groups attempting to standardise and halt language change (prescriptivism)

Question 9

Theorists involved in the Inkhorn Controversy

Answer 9

• Thomas Elyot - went out of his way to “enrich” the language
• Edmund Spencer - preferred to revive obsolete and old English terms

Question 10

Borrowed foreign terms - Latin and Greek

Answer 10

• adapt
• agile
• delirium
• pathetic
• relevant

Question 11

Borrowed foreign terms - French

Answer 11

• alloy
• anatomy
• duel
• shock
• grotesque

Question 12

Borrowed foreign terms - Italian

Answer 12

• balcony
• cameo
• lottery
• carnival
• concerto

Question 13

Robert Cawdrey

Answer 13

• Wrote the first dictionary

- Standardised spelling

Question 14

Samuel Johnson

Answer 14

• Wrote a dictionary stabilising word meanings and spellings

- Idiosyncratic

Question 15

Bishop Robert Lowth

Answer 15

• “A Short Introduction to English Grammar”

- Still used in the modern day

Question 16

Origin of The age of Bibles

Answer 16

• 16th century - England experiences religious controversy

- Many wanted the Bible printed in their own languages

Question 17

Miles Coverdale

Answer 17

1535 - Translates the Bible to German

Question 18

King James Bible

Answer 18

• Appointed to every church in the land
• Composed by a team of scholars that looked at other versions
• Idioms - “the apple of his eye”, “the straight and narrow”, “the signs of the times”
• Second person pronoun
• “An” used before words starting with “h”

Question 19

Great Vowel Shift

Answer 19

• Not entirely uniform - inconsistencies across the country where some changed and some didn’t
• The speed and cause of the shift still have no real explanation as to why the happened

Question 20

Theories behind the cause of the Great Vowel Shift

Answer 20

• The Black Death resulted in accent levelling as people around the country in attempts to escape it
• Accents levelled and pronunciation became similar to that of France as it was considered to be more “in fashion”
• Accents and pronunciation moved away from the French style due to anti-French sentiment and Francophobia of the time