1.2. Development of the national literary english language

The outline of the problem discussed

1. Formation of the English national language.

2. Establishment of the literary norm.

3. Growth of the Spoken Standard.

1. We can speak about the English national language as a language

understood and mainly used throughout the country beginning with late

Middle English — Early New English.

The formation of the national literary English language covers the Early NE

period (c. 1475—1660). Henceforth we can speak of the evolution of a single

literary language instead of the similar or different development of the dialects.

The "national" language embraces all the varieties of the language used

by the nation including dialects; the ''national literary language" applies only to

recognized standard forms of the language, both written and spoken; for earlier

periods of history the term "literary language" may indicate the language of

9

writing in a wider sense, including chronicles, legal documents, religious

texts, etc. A mature national literary language is characterised by codified norms

or rules of usage and functional stylistic differentiation.

There were at least two major external factors which favoured the rise of

the national language and the literary standards: the unification of the country and

the progress of culture. Other historical events, such as increased foreign contacts,

affected the language in a less general way: they influenced the growth of the

vocabulary.

The end of the Middle English period and the beginning of New English is

marked by the following events in the life of the English people.

1) The end of the war between the White and the Red Rose — 1485 and the

establishment of an absolute monarchy in Britain with Henry Tudor as the first

absolute monarch — the political expression of the English nation.

2) The introduction of printing — 1477 by William Caxton (1422— 1490).

The appearance of a considerable number of printed books contributed to the

normalisation of spelling and grammar forms fostering the choice of a single

variant over others. Caxton, a native of Kent, acquired the London dialect and

made a conscious choice from among competing variants.

Since that time — the end of the 15th century the English language began its

development as the language of the English nation, whereas up to that time, beginning

with the Germanic conquest of Britain in the 5th century and up to the 15th century, what

we call the English language was no more than a conglomerate of dialects, first

tribal and then local. Indeed, a notable feature of the Middle English period is the

dialectical variety that finds expression in the written documents. It was only late in the

14th century that the London dialect, itself a mixture of the southern and south-eastern

dialects, began to emerge as the dominant type.

Thus, the English national language was formed on the basis of the London

dialect which was uppermost among Middle English dialects due to the political,

geographical, economic and "linguistic" position of London which became the

capital of England already in the 11t h century — before the Norman conquest and

which was in the 15th century a thriving economic centre and port of England due to

its geographical position near the estuary of the largest river in England. The

geographical position of London as a large port and city in the centre of the country

where people of the North mingled with people of the South, on the one hand,

enabled the Londoners to acquire features of both southern and northern dialects,

and on the other hand, the people coming to London helped to spread the London

dialect all over the country.

The importance of the London dialect as the foundation of the English

national language grew also because of the fact that many of the best writers of the 14th

—15th centuries, and Geoffrey Chaucer among them, whose poetry achieved

tremendous contemporary prestige and popularity, were Londoners or used the

London dialect in their writings. As it has been said, the 15th century is generally

referred to as the time of the beginning of the English national language. But the

literary norm of the language was established later, already in Early New English,

many English authors of the forthcoming centuries contributing to it, among them

10

such as Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson and, finally, William

Shakespeare.

2. As we have said, in New English there emerged one nation and one

national language. But the English literary norm was formed only at the end of

the 17th century, when there appeared the first scientific English dictionaries and

the first scientific English grammar. In the 17th and 18th centuries there appeared a

great number of grammar books whose authors tried to stabilise the use of the

language.

In the 17th and 18th century a great number of grammarians and

orthoepists appeared, who set as their task the establishing of correct language

forms.

The grammars of the 18th c. were influenced both by the descriptions of

classical languages and by the principles of logic. They wished to present language

as a strictly logical system (incidentally, it was at that time that many logical

terms, such as "subject" and "predicate", entered grammatical description). The

main purpose of these grammars was to formulate rules based on logical

considerations and to present them as fixed and obligatory; grammars were

designed to restrict and direct linguistic change. This type of grammars are

known as "prescriptive" or "normative" grammars.

The role of English dictionaries in this period of normalisation was equally

significant.

English lexicography made outstanding progress in the 18th c. Works

concerned primarily with the explanation of “hard words” continued to be brought

out in great numbers, e.g. DICTIONARY OF HARD WORDS by E. Coles in 1676.

The greatest achievement of the 18th c. English lexicography is connected with the

name of Dr. Samuel Johnson who expressed with great clarity the idea of a strict

norm in language in a preface to his famous Dictionary, published in 1755.

His DICTIONARY contained a special section devoted to grammar, which

deals with orthography and accidence. His well-known recommendation on

pronunciation runs as follows: "For pronunciation the best general rule is to

consider those the most elegant speakers who deviate least from written words."

The grammatical part proper is very short, since he confines his description to

inflections (hence, e.g. the verbs for him have only two tenses, past and present).

The weight of Johnson's authority was so great that later writers did not

dare to deviate from the spellings and meanings prescribed by the DICTIONARY;

even today some authors blame him for fixing English spelling and thus making it

conservative. The Dictionary passed through many editions and revisions and was

drawn upon freely by numerous successors.

The grammars and dictionaries of the 18th c. succeeded in formulating the

rules of usage, partly from observation but largely from the "doctrine of

correctness", and laid them down as norms to be taught as patterns of correct

English. Codification of norms of usage by means of conscious effort on the part of

man helped in standardising the language and in fixing its Written and Spoken

Standards.

11

3. The Written Standard had probably been fixed and recognised by the

beginning of the 17th c. The next stage in the growth of the national literary

language was the development of the Spoken Standard. The dating of this event

appears to be more problematic.

Naturally, we possess no direct evidence of the existence of oral norms,

since all evidence comes from written sources. Nevertheless, valuable information

has been found in private letters as compared to more official papers, in the

speech of various characters in the 17th and l8th c. drama, and in direct references

to different types of oral speech made by contemporaries.

The geographical and social origins of the Spoken Standard were in the main

the same as those of the Written Standard some two hundred years before: the

tongue of London and the Universities, which in the turbulent 17th c. — the age of

the English Revolution, further economic progress and geographical expansion —

had assimilated many new features from a variety of sources. Intermixture of people

belonging to different social groups was reflected in speech, though the rate of

changes was slowed down when the norms of usage had been fixed. The flourishing of

literature enriched the language and at the same time had a stabilising effect on

linguistic change.

Thus by the end of the 18th c. the formation of the national literary English

language may be regarded as completed, for now it possessed both a Written and a

Spoken Standard.

1.3. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANALYTICAL FORMS FROM OE TO NE (THE

FUTURE INDEFINITE TENSE, PERFECT FORMS, CONTINUOUS FORMS,

ETC.)

The outline of the problem discussed

1.The main trends in the development of the grammatical system from the 11th

to the 18th c.

2.The growth of new grammatical forms within the existing grammatical

categories.

2.1. The Future Tense.

2.2. Interrogative and negative forms with do.

2.3. Perfect forms.

1. In the course of language development the grammatical system of English

underwent profound alteration. Since the OE period the very grammatical type of the

language has changed; from what can be defined as a synthetic or inflected language,

with a well developed morphology English has been transformed into a language of

the “analytical type", with analytical forms and ways of word connection prevailing

over synthetic ones. This does not mean, however that the grammatical changes were

rapid or sudden; nor does it imply that all grammatical features were in a state of

perpetual change. Like the development of other linguistic levels, the history of

English grammar was a complex evolutionary process made up of stable and

changeable constituents. Some grammatical characteristics remained absolutely or

relatively stable; others were subjected to more or less extensive modification.

12

The division of words into parts of speech has proved to be one of the most

permanent characteristics of the language. Through all the periods of history English

preserved the distinctions between the following parts of speech: the noun, the

adjective, the pronoun, the numeral, the verb, the adverb, the preposition, the

conjunction, and the interjection. The only new part of speech was the article which

split from the pronouns in Early ME.

Between the 10th and the 16th c., that is from Late OE to Early NE the ways of

building up grammatical forms underwent considerable changes. In OE all the forms

which can be included into morphological paradigms were synthetic. In ME and

Early NE, grammatical forms could also be built in the analytical way, with the help

of auxiliary words. The proportion of synthetic forms in the language has become

very small, for in the meantime many of the old synthetic forms have been lost and

no new synthetic forms have developed.

In the synthetic forms of the ME and Early NE periods, few as those forms

were, the means of form-building were the same as in OE: inflections, sound

interchanges and suppletion; only prefixation, namely the prefix Ґe-, which was

commonly used in OE to mark Participle II, went out of use in Late ME.

Suppletive form-building was confined to a few words, mostly surviving from

OE and even earlier periods.

Sound interchanges, an important grammatical marker in the OE period, were

not productive any more, though they did not die out: they still occurred in many

verbs, some adjectives and nouns; moreover, a number of new interchanges arose in

Early ME in some groups of verbs. Nevertheless, their application in the language,

and their weight among other means was generally reduced.

Inflections — or grammatical suffixes and endings - continued to be used in all

the inflected ("changeable") parts of speech. It is notable, however, that as compared

with the OE period they became less varied. As mentioned before, the OE period of

history has been described as a period of “full endings", ME —as a period of

"levelled endings" and NE – as a period of “lost endings" (H. Sweet). In OE there

existed a variety of distinct endings differing in consonants as well as in vowels. In

ME all the vowels in the endings were reduced to the neutral [c] and many

consonants were levelled under -n or dropped. The process of levelling — besides

phonetic weakening — implies replacement of inflections by analogy, e.g. -(e)s as a

marker of plural forms of nouns displaced the endings -(e)n and -e. In the transition

to NE most of the grammatical endings were dropped.

2. The analytical way of form-building was a new device, which developed in

Late OE and ME and came to occupy a most important place in the grammatical

system. Analytical forms developed from free word groups (phrases, syntactical

constructions). The first component of these phrases gradually weakened or even lost

its lexical meaning and turned into a grammatical marker, while the second

component retained its lexical meaning and acquired a new grammatical value in the

compound form.

The growth of analytical forms of the verb is a common Germanic tendency,

though it manifested itself a long time after Proto-Germanic split into separate

languages. The beginnings of these changes are dated in Late OE and in ME. The

13

growth of compound forms from free verb phrases was a long and complicated

process which extended over many hundred years and included several kinds of

changes.

A genuine analytical verb form must have a stable structural pattern different

from the patterns of verb phrases; it must consist of several component parts: an

auxilliary verb, sometimes two or three auxilliary verbs, e.g. NE would have been

taken – which serve as a grammatical marker, and a non-finite form – Infinitive or

Participle, - which serves as a grammatical marker and expresses the lexical meaning

of the form. The analytical form should be idiomatic: its meaning is not equivalent to

the sum of meanings of the component parts. The development of these properties is

known as the process of “grammatisation". Some verb phrases have been completely

grammatised, e.g. the Perfect forms. Some of them have not been fully grammatised

to this day and are not regarded as ideal analytical forms in modern grammars (for

instance, the Future tense).

In order to become a member of a grammatical category and a paradigm the

new form had to acquire another important quality: a specific meaning of its own

which would be contrasted to the meaning of its opposite member within the

grammatical category (in the same way as e. g. Past is opposed to Present or plural is

opposed to singular). It was only at the later stages of development that such semantic

oppositions were formed. Originally the verb phrases and the new compound forms

were used as synonyms (or “near synonyms”) of the old synthetic forms; gradually

the semantic differences between the forms grew: the new forms acquired a specific

meaning while the application of the old forms was narrowed. It was also essential

that the new analytical forms should be used unrestrictedly in different varieties of the

language and should embrace verbs of different lexical meanings.

The establishment of an analytical form in the verb system is confirmed by the

spread of its formal pattern in the verb paradigm. Compound forms did not spring up

simultaneously in all the parts of the verb system: an analytical form appeared in

some part of the system and from there its pattern extended to other parts. Thus the

perfect forms first arose in the Past and Present tense of the Indicative Mood in the

Active Voice and from there spread to the Subjunctive Mood, the Passive Voice, the

non-finite verb.

Those were the main kinds of changes which constitute the growth of

grammatical forms and new verbal categories. They are to be found in the history of

all the forms, with certain deviations and individual peculiarities. The dating of these

developments is uncertain; therefore the order of their description below does not

claim to be chronological.

2.1. In the OE language there was no form of the Future tense. The category of

Tense consisted of two members: Past and Present. The Present tense could indicate

both present and future actions, depending on the context. Alongside this form there

existed other ways of presenting future happenings: modal phrases, consisting of the

verbs sculan, wlllan, ma Ґan, cunnan and others (NE shall, will, may, can) and the

Infinitive of the notional verb. In these phrases the meaning of futurity was combined

with strong modal meanings of volition, obligation, possibility.

14

In ME the use of modal phrases, especially with the verb shall, became

increasingly common. Shall plus Infinitive was now the principal means of indicating

future actions in any context. (The Pres. Tense had to be accompanied by special time

indicators in order to refer an action to the future.) Shall could retain its modal

meaning of necessity, but often weakened it to such an extent that the phrase denoted

“pure” futurity. (The meaning of futurity is often combined with that of modality, as

a future action is a planned, potential action, which has not yet taken place.) In ME

texts shall was used both as a modal verb and as a Future tense auxiliary, though

discrimination between them is not always possible.

Future happenings were also commonly expressed by ME willen with an

Infinitive, but the meaning of volition in will must have been more obvious than the

modal meaning of shall. It has been noticed that the verb will was more frequent in

popular ballads and in colloquial speech, which testifies to certain stylistic

restrictions in the use of will in ME.

In the age of Shakespeare the phrases with shall and will, as well as the Present

tense of notional verbs, occurred in free variation; they can express “pure” futurity

and add different shades of modal meanings. Phrases with shall and will outnumbered

all the other ways of indicating futurity.

The rules concerning shall and will were repeated in many grammar books in

the 18th and 19th c and were taught at school as obligatory. Probably, that was the

reason why in British English they were observed throughout the 19th c.; the

complementary distribution of the two auxiliaries — shall for the 1st p., will for the

2nd and 3rd — became a mark of the British Standard. With other persons shall was

used in more official forms of discourse: in religious writings, in high poetry and in

documents. Will has ousted shall completely in Am E, and together with –‘ll, is now

ousting the auxiliary shall from Br E.

2.2. The Early NE period witnessed the development of a new set of analytical

forms which entered the paradigms of the Present and Past Tense of the Indicative

Mood: interrogative and negative forms with the auxiliary verb do. These forms are

known in English grammars as the “periphrasis with do’” or “do-periphrasis”.

In ME the verb don was commonly used together with an Infinitive to express

a causative meaning.

In Early NE the causative meaning passed to a similar verb phrase with make,

while the periphrasis with do began to be employed instead of simple, synthetic

forms. Its meaning did not differ from that of simple forms.

At first the do-periphrasis was more frequent in poetry which may be attributed

to the requirements of the rhythm: the use of do enabled the author to have an extra

syllable in the line, if needed, without affecting the meaning of the sentence. Then it

spread to all kinds of texts.

In the 16th and 17th c. the periphrasis with do was used in all types of sentences

– negative, affirmative and interrogative; it freely interchanged with the simple

forms, without do.

Towards the end of the 17th c. the use of simple forms and the do-periphrasis

became more differentiated: do was found mainly in negative statements and

questions, while the simple forms were preferred in affirmative statements. Thus the

15

do-periphrasis turned into analytical negative and interrogative forms of simple

forms: Present and Past.

2.3. Like other analytical forms of the verb, the Perfect forms have developed

from OE verb phrases.

The main source of the Perfect form was the OE “possessive” construction,

consisting of the verb habban (NE have), a direct object and Participle II of a

transitive verb, which served as an attribute to the object. The other source of the

Perfect forms was the OE phrase consisting of the link-verb b ‘on and Participle II of

intransitive verbs. In these phrases the participle usually agreed with the subject.

Towards ME the two verb phrases turned into analytical forms and made up a

single set of forms termed “perfect”. The Participles had lost their forms of

agreement with the noun (the subject – in the construction with ben and the object in

the construction with haven). In the Perfect form the auxiliary have had lost the

meaning of possession and was used with all kinds of verbs, without restriction. Have

was becoming a universal auxiliary, whereas the use of be grew more restricted.

1.4. DEVELOPMENT OF NON-FINITES FROM OE TO NE (INFINITIVE,

GERUND, PARTICIPLE I, II)

The outline of the problem discussed

1.Growth of analytical forms and new grammatical categories of the verbals.

1.1. The Infinitive.

1.2. The Participle.

1.3. The Gerund.

In the course of language development the grammatical system of English

underwent profound alteration. Since the OE period the very grammatical type of the

language has changed; from what can be defined as a synthetic or inflected language,

with a well developed morphology English has been transformed into a language of

the “analytical type”, with analytical forms and ways of word connection prevailing

over synthetic ones. This does not mean, however that the grammatical changes were

rapid or sudden; nor does it imply that all grammatical features were in a state of

perpetual change. Like the development of other linguistic levels, the history of

English grammar was a complex evolutionary process made up of stable and

changeable constituents. Some grammatical characteristics remained absolutely or

relatively stable; others were subjected to more or less extensive modification.

The development of analytical forms and new grammatical categories has

transformed not only the finite verb but also the verbals.

A comparison of the verbals in OE and in ME and NE shows that the number

of verbals in OE was less than that in ME and NE. At the end of the ME period a new

verbal developed – the Gerund, in addition to the Infinitive and the Participle existing

already in OE. The Gerund appeared as a result of a blend between the OE present

Participle ending in ‘-ende’ and the OE Verbal noun ending in ‘-inge’. From the

verbal noun the Gerund acquired the form (the ending ‘-ing(e)’), but under the

influence of the Participle it became more “verbal” in meaning.

16

In the process of English history the Verbals are gradually shifting from the

system of declension into the system of conjugation. Thus in OE the verbals existing

at the time: the infinitive and the participle could be declined. In the course of history

the Infinitive (already at the end of the OE period) and the Participle (in ME) lost

their declension. And at the end of the ME and in NE they acquired elements of

conjugation – the grammatical categories of order, voice and aspect (the infinitive)

and the grammatical categories of order and voice (the participle and the gerund).

The OE preposition tЗ preceding the Dative case of the infinitive loses its

independent meaning and functions simply as a grammatical particle showing that the

Verbal is an Infinitive.

The Infinitive. The OE dative infinitive with the preposition to, which was

used to express direction or purpose, lost its final –e in ME; the preposition to

became a particle, which could now be used without any meaning of direction or

purpose. Sometimes, however, the infinitive without to can also be found.

The infinitive as subject can be used with or without to, the infinitive as

adverbial modifier of purpose is accompanied by to.

Compound forms of the infinitive appeared at a very early date: the Passive

Infinitive, consisting of b ‘on plus Participle II, is found in OE texts. In ME texts we

find different types of compound Inf.: the Passive Infinitive., the Perfect Infinitive in

the Active and Passive forms.

In the texts of the 16th and 17th c. we find the same compound forms of the

Infinitive and also new Continuous and Perfect Continuous forms, e.g. irst to correct

him for grave Cicero, and not for scurril Plautus whom he confesses to have been

reading not long before. (J. Milton)

Evidently in the 17th c. the Infinitive had the same set of forms as it has in

present-day English.

The Participle. The analytical forms of Participle I began to develop later than

the forms of the Infinitive. It was not until the 15th c. that the first compound forms

are found in the records, e.g.

The seid Duke of Suffolk being most trostid with you... (Paston Letters)

(The said Duke of Suffolk being most trusted by you.)

In the 17th c. Participle I is already used in all the four forms which it can build

today: Perfect and non-Perfect, Passive and Active, e.g.

Now I must take leave of our common mother, the earth, so worthily called in

respect of her great merits of us; for she receiveth us being born, she feeds and

clotheth us brought forth, and lastly, as forsaken wholly of nature, she receiveth us

into her lap and covers us. (Peacham, 17th c.)

Julius Caesar, having spent the whole day in the field about his military affairs,

divided the night also for three several uses ... (Peacham)

The forms of Participle I made a balanced system: Passive versus Active,

Perfect versus non-Perfect. Participle II remained outside this system, correlated to

the forms of Participle I through formal differences and certain semantic affinities

and oppositions.

17

The Gerund. The gerund, which came into being in ME, developed further in

NE. It was gradually more and more clearly separated from the verbal substantive in

–ing.

Compound forms of the -ing-form used in the functions of a noun, that is the

Gerund, were the last to appear. The earliest instances of analytical forms of the

Gerund are found in the age of the Literary Renaissance, — when the Infinitive and

Participle I possessed already a complete set of compound forms. The formal pattern

set by the Participle was repeated in the new forms of the Gerund. The following

quotations illustrate compound forms of the Gerund in the texts of the 17th and 18th

c.:

To let him spend his time no more at home,

Which would be great impeachment to his age

In having known no travel in his youth. (Shakespeare)

Yet afraid they were, it seemed: for presently the doors had their wooden ribs

crushed in pieces by being beaten together. (Th. Dekker, early 17th c.).

This man, after having been long buffeted by adversity, went abroad. (Smollett,

18th c.).

The formal distinctions which had developed in the system of the verbals

towards the 17th and 18th c. are practically the same as in NE. The forms of the

Infinitive and the -ing-form (Participle I and Gerund) make up grammatical

categories similar to those of the finite verb: Voice, Time-Correlation and Aspect. It

may be assumed that the relations between the members of these grammatical

categories in the verbals roughly corresponded to those of the finite forms, both

semantically and formally. It should be noted though that sometimes the semantic

oppositions were less strict or, perhaps, they were more often neutralised. For

instance, the Active Infinitive could still express a passive meaning:

His noble free offers left us nothing to aske. (Bacon, 17th c.)

The non-Perfect forms in many contexts acquired the meaning of the perfect

form, e. g.:

And so, giving her sufficient means and money, for his own reputation sake, to

rid her from Bristol and ship her for London, on his wife he bestowed all those

jewels. (Dekker) (giving is equivalent here to having given).