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5.2.5 |
Elaboration of function |
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Caxton is often regarded as a linguistic innovator because there are many words in today’s vocabulary which were first recorded in his writings. Some examples are abandon (n1), abase, abolish, absorb and abstractive (see the Oxford English Dictionary, OED online). The first two were first attested in his Jason (c.1477) and the latter three in the Eneydos (1490). Not all of Caxton’s innovations were permanent additions to the English language: of the words listed here, only the words abandon, abolish and absorb are still current today. At the same time, Caxton has been accused of being a poor translator: he appears to have taken too little time to look for English equivalents for the words he translated. Some examples are fauell ‘fallow’ from French favel, and tattle, now meaning ‘prattle, tatter’, from Middle Flemish tatelen. And indeed, the concordance to his own prose (compiled by Mizobata, 1990) shows that about half the words in his vocabulary occur only once, and that many of them are words like bienfayttes, ospytal and reprehendat, which are direct transpositions from French or Latin into English. But Caxton was not alone in translating his texts in this way: other translators worked similarly (Elliott, 1974: 153 ff.; Hellinga & Hellinga, 1984). For one thing, many Latinate or Romance words may have lent greater prestige to a text, giving it a learned character. At the same time, it may often have been an easy option for a translator to adapt the form of a word slightly to give it an English appearance; after all, there were already many such words in the English language. But one important factor must have been that the English language simply lacked the equivalent terms for many French concepts. Functionally speaking, English still did not match up to Latin or French as a High language: Caxton’s decision to print his books in the vernacular acted as a strong impetus in bringing this about. Consequently, the functions of the English language were being elaborated at the expense of French and Latin, but the English language needed to adapt accordingly.
With Caxton the extension of the vocabulary was very likely largely an unconscious process; during the next two centuries, elaborating the functions of the language becomes a more conscious one, affecting not only vocabulary but also spelling and style. It might be argued that during this period a certain amount of linguistic experimentation was going on. In his study of early Modern English, Barber (1997: 53–70) distinguishes three movements which were concerned with the expansion of the English vocabulary: the Neologisers, the Purists and the Archaisers. The first movement was responsible for introducing many loanwords into the language simply by adopting them from Latin and Greek. Some examples are education, frugality and persist, but also adjuvate ‘to assist or aid’, compendious ‘profitable’ and obtestate ‘to beseech’. The other two movements turned to the English language itself, drawing on existing processes of word formation, as in the case of the Purists, or trying to revive old words. Examples of words coined by the Purists are biwordes ‘parables’, wasching ‘baptism’, moond ‘lunatic’ and witcraft ‘logic’. The Archaisers, of whom the poet Spenser was
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the main exponent, revived archaic words like algate ‘always’, sicker ‘certainly’ and yode ‘went’. That none of these words became permanent additions to the English language indicates the marginal nature of the latter two movements, yet they did serve an important function, i.e. to keep the Neologisers in check. For word borrowing soon led to excess, and the English language was in danger of being flooded with words which could only be understood by people with a classical education. That the use of the words compendious (third sense) and obtestate is illustrated in the OED by early seventeenth-century dictionary entries as quotations suggests that these words, and many like them, were not in common use. The excessive use of Latinate loanwords soon came to be ridiculed, and the words were referred to as ‘ynkhorne termes’, words ‘that smelled of the inkpot’. The character of Holofernes, the pedant in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, illustrates the controversy at its best when he utters the following speech:
He draweth out the thred of his verbositie, finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such phanaticall phantasims, such insociable and poynt deuise companions, such rackers of ortagriphie, as to speake dout fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he shold pronounce debt; d e b t, not det: he clepeth a Calf, Caufe: halfe, haufe: neighbour vocatur nebour; neigh abreuiated ne: this is abhominable, which he would call abhominable: it insinuateh me of infamie: ne inteligis domine, to make franticke, lunaticke? (First Folio, Act V, scene i)
Infamie should probably be read as insanie, in which case the gloss provided by Holofernes for to insinuate of insanie, ‘to make franticke, lunaticke’, makes sense.
Holofernes not only illustrates the ‘inkhorne controversy’ but also what Scragg (1974) refers to as the etymologising movement. Debt and doubt (v) were spelled with a <b> in the sixteenth century as a result of Latin influence on the spelling. Though the words had been borrowed from French as dette and doute, they came to be reinterpreted as having had their origin in Latin debitum and dubitare. While the spelling of these words was permanently affected, their pronunciation was not, despite Holofernes’ injunction that the <b> should be pronounced. Words which underwent the same treatment are salmon, from French saumon but Latin salmo, and victuals, from French vitaille but Latin victualia. The other words mentioned by Holofernes, calf, half, neighbour as well as abominable, belong to two different categories: while Holofernes’ comment suggests a discrepancy between the pronunciation and the spelling of -alf and neigh- due to a change in pronunciation which occurred after the spelling of these words had already become more or less fixed, the spelling of abominable as abhominable represents a popular but mistaken etymology. Many scholars at the time believed that the word derived from the Latin ab homine (from homo) instead of ab omine (from omen). The spelling with <h> occurs eighteen times in Love’s Labours Lost, which indicates that the compositor of the text had failed to see the intended pun in the above passage. The effect of the pun evidently depended on the actor. At times, the etymologising movement produced unetymological spellings, such as
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the words scissors and scythe, which are not related to Latin scindere ‘cut’ but to cisorium ‘cutting instrument’, and island, which derives from the native English ie lond rather than Latin insula, Old French ile, isle. The new spellings led to a phenomenon known as ‘spelling pronunciation’, a process according to which the pronunciation of a word is affected by its changed spelling. Examples are adventure (French aventure, Latin adventura) and apothecary (Middle English apotecarie, while the Greek word has <th>). The phenomenon was on the one hand influenced by a popular conviction at the time among spelling reformers and pedants like Holofernes that all letters in a word should be pronounced; at the same time, it would occur in words that were of low frequency, when people had as it were forgotten the original pronunciation of a word. A modern candidate for the process would be the word victuals, which is so rare that its original pronunciation, /vItlz/, may be in danger of being forgotten.
Scragg argues that the etymologising movement was the result of the introduction of large numbers of loanwords in English from the classical languages due to the revival of learning during the Renaissance. In the context of the standardisation process which was going on, however, we may reinterpret the movement as an effort on the part of scholars and other writers to give greater status to the language: by showing through the spelling that English words were related to their Latin and Greek counterparts, the high status of these languages might rub off on English. In this we can see a clear attempt at elaborating the function of English. That the attempts to raise the status of English in this way were not uncontroversial is clear from Shakespeare’s parody in Holofernes of the spelling reformer Mulcaster.
Another way in which attempts were made to make English more suitable to take the place of Latin was in the field of style. Gordon (1966), gives an overview of the different styles of writing he identified for the early modern period. Many of these styles were modelled on classical authors, such as Cicero, Tacitus and Seneca, while from these styles others evolved, what he refers to as ‘the loose and free’ and the Baroque. In analysing seventeenth-century prose we can see writers experimenting with these styles, trying to suit the Latin-based medium to the English language. By modern standards these attempts were not always successful, and it is easy to ridicule contemporary efforts to write scholarly prose in single sentences consisting of three hundred words or so. The attempts, however, were serious, and the three-hundred-word sentence referred to here was, according to Gordon, ‘for [Milton] the proper way in which English prose should be written’ (1966: 107). As with the experiments with the vocabulary of English, there were also attempts to explore the possibilities of the native language, and Gordon reports on ‘the persistent pressure of speech-based prose on prose of more obvious literary pretensions’ (1966: 120). At the same time, specific registers developed, such as the language of science and medical prose (see Taavitsainen & Pahta, 1997, and Section 5.3.5). It was with the foundation of the Royal Society in 1660 that the advantages of this native prose style won out; it became the prescribed style of the Society. As Thomas Sprat wrote in his
History of the Royal Society (1667):
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They have therefore been most rigorous in putting in execution the only Remedy, that can be found for this extravagance: and that has been, a constant Resolution, to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver’d so many things, almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from all their members, a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness; bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits, or Scholars. (as quoted in Gordon, 1966: 127)
It is interesting to notice that here, too, we have an example of the importance of institutional support by which a particular change can be put into effect. As a result, we first see an awareness of a distinction between literary and scientific styles of writing.
Significantly, the elaboration of function stage in the standardisation process affected the English language at various levels, those of vocabulary, spelling and style of writing. Only at the stylistic level do we see any imposition from above; the attempts at expanding the vocabulary took place largely at the level of the individual writer, and they led to violent public debate resulting in what we now look upon as the inkhorn controversy. As far as spelling changes are concerned, although there was no official body advocating a particular series of changes, the role of the seventeenth-century printers may be taken as equivalent to some extent. The standardisation of English spelling, or rather its ‘stabilisation’ as Scragg calls it, was more or less completed by the end of the century, that is to say in formal, printed texts. The medium of the private letter remained unaffected for some time to come (see Section 5.3.3), though the effect of education on the part of the letter writer was most apparent. Syntax is an area which similarly underwent a lot of influence from Latin (see e.g. Johnson, 1944; Sørensen, 1957). Van der Wurff (1989), for example, argues that constructions of the type It is my will, the which if thou respect,/ Show a fair presence and put off these frowns (Shakespeare,
Romeo and Juliet, I.v.75f.) arose out of a need to imitate similar sentences in Latin. Such sentences were primarily attested between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, and they appear to have functioned, along with other ‘Latinate features such as loan-words, extensive rhetoric, syntactic complexity and references to the classical world’, as markers of stylistic formality (van der Wurff, 1989: 141). It is striking that at all four levels at which the elaboration of function stage had its effect it was to Latin that speakers and writers of English turned as their model, despite the fact that the language was emancipating itself from Latin. But then Latin was the only example available.
5.2.6 |
Codification |
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Latin also provided an important point of reference in the next stage of the standardisation process, codification. When applied to a linguistic
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standardisation process, codification involves the laying down of rules for the language in grammars and dictionaries which would serve as authoritative handbooks for its speakers. In several countries this phase was in the hands of an official body, an academy, such as the Accademia della Crusca (founded in 1582) in Italy, the Acad´emie Fran¸caise (1635) in France and the Academia Real (1713) in Spain. Though there were frequent calls for an academy in England, too, by well-known men of letters such as Dryden, Defoe, Swift and Addison, an English Academy never came about. In the abortive attempts at founding an English Academy we can also see the importance of institutional support in a standardisation process: an early project, according to Baugh & Cable (2002: 264), ‘died with James I’, and as for the early decades of the eighteenth century, when renewed attempts were made, it seems that especially Swift’s Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue (1712) had the support of the Queen. Baugh & Cable (2002: 268) quote an opponent of the idea, the Whig John Oldmixon, as saying that:
It is well known . . . that if the Queen had lived a year or two longer, this proposal would, in all probability, have taken effect. For the Lord Treasurer had already nominated several persons without distinction of quality or party, who were to compose a society for the purposes mentioned by the author; and resolved to use his credit with her Majesty, that a fund should be applied to support the expence of a large room, where the society should meet, and for other incidents. But this scheme fell to the ground, partly by the dissensions among the great men at court; but chiefly by the lamented death of that glorious princess.
Despite the fact that no official body came into being which would have been responsible for the production of an authoritative grammar and dictionary, such works came into being of their own accord. The first dictionaries were direct products of the previous stage in the standardisation process, as so many unfamiliar words had come into the language that dictionaries were needed to explain them to the common user, even to those who were fairly well educated. Consequently, the early dictionaries were ‘hard word dictionaries’, which, unlike users’ dictionaries today, did not list the common everyday words of the language. The decision to include all words in the language must be attributed to Nathan Bailey at the beginning of the eighteenth century, whose Dictionarium Britannicum (1730) was used as a source by Johnson for his Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Johnson’s dictionary was so popular that it came to function as a standard reference work. In an argument with his printer Robert Dodsley over the spelling of the word bull ‘papal edict’, Robert Lowth (1710–87), author of one of the most influential grammars of English produced in the eighteenth century (see Section 5.3.8), for instance, refers to the authority which Johnson’s dictionary had as little as two years after its appearance:
Observe, that I spell Bulle always with an e at the end, as being more regular & agreable to the geniology, & also to distinguish it from that other word