Morphology

The Early NE period witnessed the distinction in pronoun of the 2^nd p. sg thou, thee, thine vs. pl ye, you, your. Probably, under French influence, English speakers began to give preference to plural forms. Among the upper social classes plural forms indicated mutual respect, even in informal conversation. In time, singular forms fully disappeared, as well as the difference between ye in nominative case and you in dative, accusative, and instrumental. From 6-fold distinction of OE only 2 forms survived: you vs. your(s).

Of the 333 strong verbs, fewer than half are used today, and only 68 are inflected as strong. Among those that once being strong and have become weak are: brew, climb, help, walk. About dozen of weak verbs have become strong: wear, dig / dug, spit / spat. With few exceptions ME verbal inflexions faded.

Syntax

Deprived of its inflexional system, English has become an analytic language, rich in prepositional phrases and periphrastic verbal constructions. Do as auxiliary has been used in full only since the 17^th c. in questions, negative, and emphatic sentences. The progressive passive: whose upper grinder is being torn out, is the development of the late 18^th c. The agreement as a means of grammatical connection is limited to the demonstrative pronouns that preserve their plural forms. The predicate agrees with the subject when it is expressed by the verb to be in the 3^rd p. sg in the indefinite tenses. The noun in pre-position to the other noun plays a role of attribute: Get thee glass eyes (King Lear). The structure of the sentence becomes nominative, i.e. the subject is in the nom. case is a necessary part. Double negation is considered ungrammatical and is gradually driven out of language.

Lexicon

The NE Period began with the development of Renaissance (XIV – XVI) culture in England. The interest in classical learning resulted in mass borrowings from Latin and Greek vocabularies. The loan words were introduced into English following an established pattern of minimal orthographic adaptation. Latin words borrowed via medieval French were remade on Latin pattern, cf.:

ME parfit (Fr. parfait) → E perfect (Lat. perfectus).

As English displaced Latin in philosophy, science, and other areas, it was lexically deficient in terms which were borrowed to fill the gap. They are:

nouns: allusion, anachronism, antipathy, antithesis, appendix, atmosphere; appendicitis, aspirin (medicine); acid, alkali, valency (chemistry); airdrome, antenna, engine, biplane (technique).

adjectives: appropriate, audible, anonymous, analytic, global, legal;

verbs: to adapt, to assasinate, to calculate, to dominate, to illustrate, to operate, to select, to compute (1580-1590).

More than 10 000 words from 50 languages were borrowed in English in the 1^st 150 years of the NE period.

French borrowings were somewhat different from those of the ME Period. They did not longer belong to the winning nation and were taken freely. They comprised such semantic groups: literature and music: belle-lettre, brochure, ballet, conservatorie, piruette, vaudeville; leaisure, pastime, games, ballet, billiard, cricket, machine, ticket, to equip, picturesque; cuisine: chocolate, omelette, ragout, soup, to disgust; military terms: attack, battalion, cadet, campaign, fuselage, manouvre, platoon, regiment. French borrowings of the 18^th c. preserve their phonetic shape: amateur, bouquet, genre, garage, mirage, technique, restaurant, bourgeois.

Italian loans are explained by great influence of Italy in certain spheres of life, i.e. architecture, poetry, music, banking and military affairs: design, fresco, grotto, portico, stanza; canto, duet, libretto, opera, piano, violin; bank, bankrupt, manage; bastion, colonel, frigate, infantry.

Spanish borrowings are either of the native Spanish words, like trade terms: cargo, embargo; names of dances and musical instruments: guitar, habanera, rumba, tango; names of vegetables and fruit: apricot, ananas, cannibal, cigar, hurricane, mosquito, sombrero, or from Indian American languages via Spanish, like: banana, cocoa, condor, maize, moose, quinine, potato, tobacco, tomato, corral, hammock.

More than 2000 Dutch borrowings are traced in ME. Most of them are nautical terms acquired in the 14^th c., such as: deck, dock, freight, keel, leak, pump, reef, skipper.

Supremacy in trade and politics brought Britain in contact with other nations. Thousands of new words poured into English from different languages:

North American Indian – canyon, canoe, hickory (hazel nut), squash, squaw, tomahawk, toboggan, wigwam;

South American Indian – alpaca, llama, pampas, savannah, mustang, ranch, stampede (panic rout, retreat), vigilance (watch, alertness, med. insomnia), vigilant;

Indian – bungalow, cashmere, chintz, curry, khaki, pajama, shampoo;

African – chimpanzee, zebra, sago, bamboo, hoodoo (unluky thing or man), tattoo, voodoo (wizard), tote (load);

Australian – austrich, boomerang, kangaroo, barbecue.

Arabic loan words are not so numerous, e.g.: algebra, alcohol, lilac, sofa, dgakhad, Romodan.

*There are still elements of Early Modern English in some British dialects, e.g., thee & thou can be heard in the Black Country and Yorkshire; pronunciation of book, cook, look, etc. with long [u:] – in some areas of the North and the West of the country.

English shows openness to foreign words in the present century, borrowing from more than 75 languages. The principal donor is French, but other languages make valuable contribution, including Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Yiddish. Derivation and compounding have displaced borrowing as the favoured method of enlarging English word stock today. As a combined result of borrowing and creation of new words from existing elements, today’s lexicon has been estimated to 170,000 words (excluding proper nouns and specialized technical terms). There are some examples: Lat. charisma, stigma, C.V; Fr. force majeure, rapport, morale, clientиle, rйsumй, laissez-faire, coup d’étât; Finnish sauna; Indian guru; Japanese tycoon, sushi.

Some Americanisms that were preserved in colonies while lost in Britain are now re-imported into Britain via Hollywood movies. Among them there are: trash for rubbish, to loan insted of to lend, blockbuster, frame-up, spearhead, landing strip, etc. The burst of neologisms is the other source of enriching English vocabulary especially in the field of electronics: byte, cyber-, hard-drive, chip, hypertext, provider, on-line, hacker, spam.