Late Modern English (1650-Present)

The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is

vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors:

firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; secondly, the

British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth's surface, and the English language

adopted foreign words from many countries.

From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of

a distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words "froze" when

they reached America. In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare

than modern British English is. Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact

original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain

(for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn; another

example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies). Spanish

also had an influence on American English (and subsequently British English), with words like

canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English

through the settlement of the American West. French words (through Louisiana) and West

African words (through the slave trade) also influenced American English (and so, to an extent,

British English).

 

39. Feautures of the word. In linguistics, a word is the smallest element that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content (with literal or practicalmeaning). This contrasts deeply with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own. A word may consist of a single morpheme (for example: oh!, rock, red, quick, run, expect), or several (rocks, redness, quickly, running, unexpected), whereas a morpheme may not be able to stand on its own as a word (in the words just mentioned, these are -s, -ness, -ly, -ing, un-, -ed). A complex word will typically include a root and one or more affixes (rock-s, red-ness, quick-ly, run-ning, un-expect-ed), or more than one root in a compound (black-board, rat-race). Words can be put together to build larger elements of language, such as phrases (a red rock), clauses (I threw a rock), and sentences (He threw a rock too, but he missed).

The term word may refer to a spoken word or to a written word, or sometimes to the abstract concept behind either. Spoken words are made up of units of sound called phonemes, and written words of symbols called graphemes, such as the letters of the English alphabet.

Features

In the Minimalist school of theoretical syntax, words (also called lexical items in the literature) are construed as "bundles" of linguistic features that are united into a structure with form and meaning.^[5] For example, the word "koalas" has semantic features (it denotes real-world objects,koalas), category features (it is a noun), number features (it is plural and must agree with verbs, pronouns, and demonstratives in its domain),phonological features (it is pronounced a certain way), etc. In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example, love) may have a number of different forms (for example, loves, loving, and loved). However, for some purposes these are not usually considered to be different words, but rather different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes. In Indo-European languages in particular, the morphemes distinguished are

the root

optional suffixes

a desinence, or inflectional suffix.

Leonard Bloomfield introduced the concept of "Minimal Free Forms" in 1926. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves.^[2] This correlates phonemes (units of sound) to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written words are not minimal free forms as they make no sense by themselves (for example, the and of).^[3]

Some semanticists have put forward a theory of so-called semantic primitives or semantic primes, indefinable words representing fundamental concepts that are intuitively meaningful. According to this theory, semantic primes serve as the basis for describing the meaning, without circularity, of other words and their associated conceptual denotations

 

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Phraseology is the study of fixed sets of words or “phrases.” Generally, efforts inphraseology are related to explaining the meanings and histories of these sets of words. Linguists use this kind of research to know more about how speakers of a given language communicate to each other through multi-word sets, often called “lexical sets” or “lexical units.”

Generally speaking, phraseology developed in the 20th-century. This discipline helps academics and others to get a more thorough grasp of how a certain language is used. Much of the focus of phraseology involves considering the many colloquial or idiomatic elements of a language.

Phraseology (from Greek φράσις phrasis, "way of speaking" and -λογία -logia, "study of") is a scholarly approach to language which developed in the twentieth century.^[1] It took its start when Charles Bally's^[2] notion of locutions phraseologiques entered Russian lexicology and lexicography in the 1930s and 1940s and was subsequently developed in the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. From the late 1960s on it established itself in (East) German linguistics but was also sporadically approached in English linguistics. The earliest English adaptations of phraseology are by Weinreich (1969)^[3] within the approach oftransformational grammar, Arnold (1973),^[4] and Lipka (1992 [1974]).^[5] In Great Britain as well as other Western European countries, phraseology has steadily been developed over the last twenty years. The activities of the European Society of Phraseology (EUROPHRAS) and the European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX) with their regular conventions and publications attest to the prolific European interest in phraseology. European scholarship in phraseology is more active than in North America. Bibliographies of recent studies on English and general phraseology are included in Welte (1990)^[6] and specially collected in Cowie & Howarth (1996)^[7] whose bibliography is reproduced and continued on the internet and provides a rich source of the most recent publications in the field.

Thus in the issue of comparative analysis of phraseological units the system of specific images characteristic for English and Russian linguistic cultures were chosen; also sources of outward cultural interpretation of considered phraseological units were revealed. They are ritual forms of national culture, corpus of proverbs, images-standards, symbols, Christianity, literary works, country-specific information.

The analysis of gathered material enabled to distribute phraseological units to universal types of metaphoric models on their image base (anthropomorphic, naturemorphic, sociomorphic and artifact metaphors). Thus phraseological units with anthropomorphic images are widely spread in both traditions, the choice of naturemorphic and zoomorphic images is determined by geographic factor, phraseological units with sociomorphic images are more represented in English language, phraseological units with artifact images in English language are connected with legal category and specific food, and in Russian they are connected with stages of socialization and clothes.

he comparison of phraseological units with the meaning of lived time enabled to find out mismatches at verbal representation of life way: reflection of youth period, marriage, and also there are partial differences при designation of old age and the end of life. National cultural peculiarity of these phraseological units in English and Russian linguistic world pictures appears in the issue of different bases of dividing of temporal fragment of reality. Also different semantic filling of phraseosemantic groups and subgroups with the meaning «life stages in the development of human being» is observed.

Bilet

A sentence is a group of words that forms a complete thought. A simple sentence is different from other sentence types because it contains only one independent clause and has no dependent clauses. An independent clause has one subject and one verb. An example of an independent clause is the sentence:

• I went to the beach.

which has one subject, the pronoun 'I,' and one verb, 'went.'

 

A dependent clause also contains a subject and a verb, but it can't stand alone because it doesn't form a complete thought:

• When I go to the beach

Simple sentences are called 'simple' because they contain only one subject and one verb, or predicate. What's a predicate? A predicate is the main verb in a sentence and any additional components related to the subject's actions.

Авообщеесли что Parts of sentence 5

The five main parts of a sentence are:

· Subject

· Predicate

· Clause

· Phrase

· Modifier

Subject

In general, the subject refers to the part of the sentence which tells whom or what the sentence is addressing. The subject is going to be either a noun or a noun phrase.

For example, "Kelly walked down the street." Kelly is the subject, because she is the actor, or subject, in the sentence.

There are a few different types of subjects. The underlined word is the subject.

· Simple subject: Kate is a thin girl.

· Full subject: Jeffrey's poem about his mother made the class cry.

· Compound subject: Paul and Tommy joined the soccer team at the same time.

Predicate

Let us return to our example "Kelly walked down the street." In this sentence, "walked" is the predicate because it is the verb that tells us what Kelly is doing. A sentence can have just a subject and a predicate. For example, you could just say "Kelly walked" and you have a complete sentence.

Here are the types of predicates.

· Simple predicate: Harry ate his apple.

· Full predicate: The mouse slowly ran towards the food.

· Compound predicate: She both laughed and cried at the film.

Clause

A clause is usually some sort of additional information to the sentence. We could say "They like ice cream." However, we could also say "They like ice cream on hot days." "They like ice cream" can stand by itself, but "on hot days" adds something extra to the sentence. Therefore, "on hot days" is a clause.

There are two different types of clauses:

· Dependent clauses - "On hot days" is an example of a dependent clause because it could not stand by itself as a sentence.

· Independent clauses - "Paul washed the dishes, but he didn't want to." "He didn't want to" could be a sentence by itself; however, here it is connected to the larger sentence.

Phrase

A phrase is sort of like a dependent clause. It is a group of words that cannot stand alone as a sentence, but it can be used to add something to a sentence. Thereare a fewdifferenttypesofphrases:

· A noun phrase acts as a noun. For example, "the hungry cat" is a noun phrase.

· An adjective phrase modifies a noun. The child playing hopscotch was happy.

· An adverb phrase begins with a preposition and acts as an adverb. "On a hotday" fromearlierisanexample.

· A prepositional phrase is made up of a preposition, its objects, and its modifiers. Thehouse onthecorner wasold.

Modifier

As you can see from above, there are many different types of ways to add additional information to a sentence. All of these examples are known under the general category of modifiers.

 

47)The Development of New Grammatical Forms and Categories in Modern English (FutureTense, Perfect, Continuous Forms, Passive Voice, etc.). I took the Lecture 13from Sagima, the question is complex, that’s why we need the whole lecture!

Problems for Discussion:1.Nouns and adjectives;2.Pronouns and determiners; 3.Verbs;4.Modal and auxiliary verbs;5.Gerunds, adverbs, and conjunctions

Nouns and adjectives

As in modern English,the only regular noun inflection was the -s ending of the genitive and plural: irregular plurals were mostly the same as those that have survived into recent English. The use of an apostrophe in the genitive singular was optional in the sixteenth century; it was frequent in the seventeenth, but only became established around 1700. In the genitive plural the apostrophe was not used in this period.

An alternative form of the genitive singular throughout the period was the so-called ‘possessive dative’ as in ‘Job’s Patience, Moses his Meekness, Abraham’s Faith’ (Richard Franck, 1694). This was most commonly used after nouns ending in -s referring to masculines, perhaps because it was practically identical in sound with the regular genitive ending in -(e)s. A parallel use with her, e.g. ‘The Excellency of our Church her burial office’, and with their, also occurred.

In Middle English the group genitive (i.e. the genitive of a complex noun phrase like the king of England) was a split construction, e.g. ‘the kingeswyf of England’: this construction was still found in early modern English but was replaced by the familiar constructions seen in ‘the wife of the king of England’ or ‘the king of England’s wife’.

Adjective gradation. All three alternatives easier, more easy, and more easier, were acceptable in this period. In standard English, the rule by which -er and -est are preferred in monosyllabic words and more and most are used in polysyllabic ones, with variation in disyllabic words, was established by the late seventeenth century. In regional dialects -er continued to be preferred in all words, however long. The double comparative was generally used for emphasis (and was praised by the dramatist Ben Jonson).

Pronouns and determiners

Personal pronouns. In the second person, by 1600 ye was a rare alternative to you; no case distinction remained (in earlier English, ye was the subjective case and you the objective). The use ofyou as a ‘polite’ form of address to a single person progressively encroached on thou (originally the singular pronoun) until by 1600 thou (and its objective case thee) was restricted to ‘affective’ (both positive and negative) uses (i.e. so as to be intimate or disparaging). By the late seventeenth centuryyou had become normal in almost all contexts and thou and thee were limited to the Bible and religious use, the Quakers, and regional dialects.

In the third person, the possessive of it was his until around 1600. Various alternatives arose, including it (‘it had it head bit off beit (= by it) young’, King Lear) and thereof (‘Sufficient vnto the daye, is the trauayletherof’, Great Bible, 1539); its first appeared in print in the 1590s and was rapidly accepted into the standard language.

Reflexive pronouns. The earlier use of the simple objective pronouns me, thee, us, and so on, became restricted largely to poetic use during the period, as in this example from Milton’s Paradise Lost: ‘Take to thee from among the Cherubim Thy choice of flaming Warriours’. Forms in -self (which early had been restricted to emphatic use) now became the usual ones; plurals—with -selves(replacing -self) after plural pronouns—made their appearance in the early sixteenth century.

Relative pronouns. The relative pronoun that remained common (as it still is), but a number of alternatives existed during the period. the which was inherited from Middle English but became rare by the mid-seventeenth century. which could be used for both persons and things but became rare for persons after 1611. who as a relative pronoun was rare in the fifteenth century and gradually became commoner in the period. The use of the so-called ‘zero relative’ (i.e. no pronoun at all) arose in Middle English but was rare in the sixteenth century. In the early modern period it could be used where the relative was the subject of its clause as well as object (now largely non-standard or poetic), e.g. ‘Life it self..is a burden [zero relative] cannot be born under the lasting..pressure of such an uneasiness’ (John Locke, 1694).

The co-occurrence rules for determiners were somewhat different from those in later modern English. Notably common was the sequence of demonstrative + possessive + noun (‘this your son’).

Verbs

The present tense. The second person singular inflection -est naturally declined in importance as the use of thou declined, giving rise to the current arrangement whereby in the present tense only the third singular is marked and all other persons take the base form.

At the start of the period, the normal third person singular ending in standard southern English was -eth. The form -(e)s, originally from Northern dialect, replaced -eth in most kinds of use during the seventeenth century. A few common short forms, chiefly doth, hath, continued often to be written, but it seems likely that these were merely graphic conventions.

Forming the past tense and past participle. The class of ‘strong’ verbs (those which indicate tense by a vowel change and do not have a dental segment added) included a number of verbs which are now only ‘weak’

Examples include: creep: crope, cropen; delve:dolve, dolven; help: holp, holpen; melt: molt, molten; seethe: sod, sodden.

A few ‘weak’ verbs moved into the strong class during the period, including dig, spit, and stick.

The formation of the past tense and past participle of strong verbs showed more variation in early modern English than today. There were a number of changes which began in Middle English and whose results have now been fossilized in present English but which produced a variety of forms in this period.

These were:

i. patterning the past tense on the past participle (as in tore after torn);

ii. adapting the past tense or past participle to verbs with a different pattern (as in slung after sung, etc.);

iii. patterning the past participle on the past tense (as in sat)

iv. dropping the –en suffix of the past participle (as in sung as opposed to ridden).

For example, write had the regular past tense wrote, but also found were writ (with the vowel of the past participle) and wrate (patterned on gave or brake); the participle was written or writ (with loss of -en) and wrote (based on the past tense) was also found. Verbs like bear, break, speak, etc., regularly formed their past tenses with a (bare, brake, spake) and this pattern was even extended to other verbs (wrate, drave). Owing to the Great Vowel Shift these past forms lost their distinctiveness from the present stem (since in a widespread variety of pronunciation, the long a of the past became identical with the long open e of the present) and after 1600 forms with o from the past participle (bore, broke, spoke) became normal.

Regular ‘weak’ verbs in Middle English formed their past tense and past participles in -ed, pronounced as a separate syllable, as it still is in a few fossilized forms such as belovèd, blessèd. During the sixteenth century the vowel was lost in this ending except where the preceding consonant was t or d (e.g. in hated) and the d of the ending was devoiced to [t] after a voiceless consonant (e.g. in locked as opposed to logged). Present English spelling does not regularly show these three variants [id], [d], [t] but in early modern English ‘phonetic’ spellings (’d, d, ’t, t) are quite often found. (This can lead to the obscuration of other distinctions; for example, it is sometimes unclear whetherrap’t represents rapped or raped.)

There was an inherited class of verbs which end in a dental and do not add a dental ending to show the past (e.g. cast, set). This class was temporarily enlarged by the borrowing of Latin participles ending in –t used initially as participles and past tenses, e.g. ‘Mosteplaynly those thyngessem to be euydent, whiche of offyce and good maner be gyue and precept of them’ (Robert Whittinton, 1534), ‘That the pain should be mitigate’ (1560). These were subsequently used in other forms of the verb and developed regular past forms in -ed.