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The Early Modern English (EModE) period is when English transformed from a language of enormous dialectal variation into one approaching a recognisable standard. It is the period of Shakespeare, the King James Bible, the first dictionaries and grammars, and intense debate about what English should be. For A-Level English Language, this period is crucial because it illuminates the processes of standardisation and codification that produced the language we use today.
The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) was a systematic change in the pronunciation of long vowels that occurred between approximately 1400 and 1700, fundamentally altering the sound system of English.
The GVS is the single most important phonological change in the history of English. During the shift, all long vowels moved their place of articulation upward in the mouth, and the two highest vowels (/iː/ and /uː/) "broke" into diphthongs:
| ME Pronunciation | Modern Pronunciation | Example Word |
|---|---|---|
| /iː/ (as in French si) | /aɪ/ | time, wife, life |
| /uː/ (as in French nous) | /aʊ/ | house, mouse, out |
| /eː/ (close to French é) | /iː/ | meet, see, feet |
| /oː/ (close to French eau) | /uː/ | moon, food, boot |
| /ɛː/ (open e) | /iː/ | meat, beat, sea |
| /ɔː/ (open o) | /oʊ/ | boat, goat, road |
| /aː/ (long a) | /eɪ/ | name, make, take |
The GVS explains one of the most frequently asked questions about English: why doesn't English spelling match its pronunciation? The answer is that spelling was largely fixed by printing during the 15th century, while pronunciation continued to change through the 16th and 17th centuries. The result is that Modern English spelling often reflects ME pronunciation rather than current speech.
The causes of the GVS remain debated among historical linguists. Proposed explanations include:
Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), the Danish linguist who first described the GVS systematically, remains the key figure associated with this change.
William Caxton's introduction of the printing press in 1476 (discussed in the previous lesson) set in motion a process of standardisation that accelerated throughout the EModE period.
Early printed books showed considerable spelling variation — even within a single text, the same word might be spelled differently. Gradually, printers' conventions became more consistent. Key developments included:
| Date | Development |
|---|---|
| 1476 | Caxton's press established; spelling highly variable |
| Early 1500s | Printers begin adopting more consistent conventions |
| 1582 | Richard Mulcaster's Elementarie — the first systematic attempt to establish English spelling rules |
| Late 1500s–1600s | Spelling largely stabilised, though some variation persists |
Richard Mulcaster (c. 1531–1611), headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School and teacher of Edmund Spenser, argued in The First Part of the Elementarie (1582) for a systematic approach to spelling based on reason, custom, and sound. He proposed standardised spellings for thousands of words and is an important figure for understanding the codification of English.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is often cited as the greatest innovator in the history of the English language, credited with coining approximately 1,700 words and phrases still in use today.
While Shakespeare's exact contribution to the English lexicon is debated (some words attributed to him may have existed in spoken English before he recorded them in writing), his linguistic creativity is undeniable. His innovations include:
| Process | Examples |
|---|---|
| Conversion (changing word class) | elbow (noun → verb), champion (noun → verb), lonely (noun → adjective) |
| Affixation | uncomfortable (un- + comfort + -able), dishearten (dis- + heart + -en) |
| Compounding | eyeball, bedroom, birthplace, bloodstained |
| Semantic shift | generous (originally "of noble birth" → "giving freely") |
Shakespeare frequently exploited the grammatical flexibility of EModE, using words in unexpected grammatical categories. In King Lear, he writes "He childed as I fathered" — using nouns as verbs. This kind of creative conversion was more common in EModE than in Modern English because grammatical rules were not yet codified.
Assassination, bedazzle, circumstantial, cold-blooded, dauntless, eventful, fashionable, generous, gloomy, laughable, lonely, majestic, obscene, radiance, swagger, undress, worthless, zany.
The inkhorn controversy was a debate in the 16th century about whether English should borrow learned words from Latin and Greek (termed "inkhorn terms" because they were associated with scholars' ink) or should rely on its native Germanic resources.
The rapid expansion of learning during the Renaissance created a need for new vocabulary to express new concepts. Writers and scholars responded in three ways:
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