The Early Modern English Period (1500-

1800): Society, Spellings, and Sounds

The early Modern period was transformative for both England and the language.
Beginning from the middle of the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth
century, changes in vocabulary and word meanings, syntax, and attitudes toward
language use, regional variation, and public idiom took place in English. Together with
the change in pronunciation, these features of the language transformed Middle
English into Early Modern English.

This is the period of English Renaissance, which roughly covers the sixteenth and
early seventeenth century and is often referred to as the “Elizabethan Era” or the “Age
of Shakespeare” after the most important monarch and most famous writer of the
period. The sixteenth to eighteenth centuries were a time of revolutionary
development, opening the way for English to become a world language.

English spelling used to represent speech sounds in a relatively simple way, but a
variety of changes have led to a much more complex system. Spelling has become
less phonemic over the years. A number of oddities in spelling were introduced by
Middle English scribes, particularly the Normans, and later by the early printers.
Etymological respellings have added to the number of 'silent letters'. English spelling
is complicated by the fact that it contains the spelling conventions of other languages.
Much of the apparent inconsistency in Modern English spelling is caused by the fact
that changes in the pronunciation of vowels were not matched by appropriate changes
in the spelling. English spelling has failed to match changes in pronunciation.
Beginning in the fifteenth century, a standard spelling system had fully evolved by the
eighteenth century. But spellings were fixed when great changes were occurring in
pronunciation.
 The Advent of the Printing Press

The first major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of the
printing press, one of the world’s great technological innovations, introduced into
England by William Caxton in 1476. Among the first books were Caxton's own
translations, such as The Collection (Recuyell) of the Histories of Troy, a French
courtly romance written by Raoul Lefèvre, and The Knight of the Tower. The
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer.

From the arrival of the Normans up until about 1430, all official documentation was
written in French or Latin. During the fourteenth century, the prestige of French
became somewhat reduced, at least amongst some sectors of the population, for
political reasons: from 1337, England had been engaged in the so-called 'Hundred
Years War' with France. Moreover, by the fifteenth century, the administrative system
needed an efficient medium for communication, not a language understood by a very
small elite. The Chancery or government scribes adopted a variety of English that was
based on London, but with some central Midland elements, and this variety has been
called the Chancery standard. The significance of this is that at that point we have an
institution producing masses of paperwork in one variety of English which is then sent
all over the country. Caxton set up his printing press in Westminster in 1476, close to
the government offices. His adoption of a London-based variety of English, including
some features of the English of official circles, was the obvious choice.

A standard form of English accompanied the rise of the institution known as

“Chancery.” Chancery comes from the word chancel, or chapel of the king, where the
chaplains, people responsible for religious needs of the court originally spent their
time between services, writing the king’s letters. By the end of the fourteenth century,
Chancery was the production house for official government documents. Chancery
established special forms of spelling and handwriting that were taught to scribes for
the production of official documents. William Caxton opened his print shop in
Westminster, the site of Chancery and the administrative seat of government, to
establish the idea that his documents were printed in “official” English (Chancery
English).
 By using Chancery English, William Caxton established a national literary standard
in print based on the written standard of official documentation. This was a radical
change in the notion of a standard and in the standard’s relationship to regional dialect
and official forms. Chancery English contributed to the development of a form of
writing that was a standard, irrespective of the speech or dialect of the writer. Spelling
was standardized without regard for pronunciation. The official language ceased to
represent any living spoken dialect. Writing became truly conventional and arbitrary,
not based on reason. Chancery was the first standard of writing in the vernacular in
England since Aethelwold’s school at Winchester 400 or so years before.

Printing did not create or increase national literacy overnight. Early printed books
were expensive, did not appear in large quantities, and were designed for a
readership of clerks and gentlemen. Printed books at first looked no different from
manuscripts; the typefaces were based on handwriting. However, later the books
became cheaper and as a result, literacy became more common. Publishing for the
masses became a profitable enterprise, and works in English, as opposed to Latin,
became more common. Finally, the printing press brought standardization to English.
Printing did foster the rise of Chancery standard English. The dialect of London, where
most publishing houses were located, became the standard. Spelling and grammar
became fixed, and the first English dictionary was published in 1604. Samuel
Johnson's Dictionary, published in 1755, became a cornerstone of the English
language. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary became a standard reference for private use.

This is not to suggest that the early printers entirely agreed on what the standard
should be or were consistent in applying it. In some respects the printers added to the
oddities of spelling. Many of the early printers were Dutch. Sometimes Dutch spellings
influenced English words. For example, the word ghost in Old English was
spelt gast, but the Dutch printers added an h, presumably influenced by the Flemish
word gheest.

Printers often added a superfluous e (for example, Olde), doubled up consonants

(for example, Shoppe), or used y instead of i because they took up more space. This
was done in order to increase the length of a line so that it would match the others of a
text. All this added to the general variability in spelling. Line justification today, as in
this very text, is automatically achieved on a word processor without varying the
spelling.

There was a growing gap between educated writing and speech. As Chancery had
set up a system of spelling for official documents which could be learned by scribes
regardless of their regional backgrounds, spelling was gradually becoming
conventionalized and divorced from speech; it no longer represented pronunciation.

The Great Vowel Shift

The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) is the second most important change that separates
Middle English from Modern English. Being a relatively simple phenomenon, it had a
significant impact on the sound and shape of the English language between the time
of Chaucer and the time of Shakespeare. Indeed, it is because of the GVS that the
language of Chaucer was so different from the language of Shakespeare.

From a linguistic point of view, the terms “long” and “short” relate to quantitative
vowel length, that is, the period of time through which the vowel sound is held. This
length of time made a difference in meaning in Old and Middle English. For example,
in Old English, the word god could be pronounced “gode,” meaning God, or “gooade,”
meaning good. The length of time the vowel was held signaled a different meaning for
the word. This distinction was lost to Modern English during the GVS. There is no
difference in meaning if sat is pronounced “sat” or “saat.”

One striking difference between the Anglo-Saxon’s pronunciation and modern

English is that vowel length was a significant distinction in Old English: gōd ‘good’
versus god ‘god’. A further sound change which took place in the early Middle English
period explains another of the spelling conventions of Modern English - the
lengthening of short vowels in two-syllable words (1) before certain consonant
sequences mb, nd, ld: for example, cōld, ground; and (2) in open syllables: for
example, dōre 'door', tāle, hōpe. A large set of words became monosyllables in
pronunciation with the reduction of the second unstressed syllable, many of them
retaining the final letter <e> in spelling. Because the vowels were now long, they all
took part in the later GVS. Their spelling remained the same, however, and is another
example of the failure of the spelling system to mark change in pronunciation. Only
seven vowels were affected. These are long, stressed monophthongs: i:, e:, ε:, a:, ɔ:,
o: u:.

The following represents a scholarly reconstruction of the changes.

The low back vowel written in Middle English as a (/a/) rose to /ei/. Thus, a Middle
English word ma:ken became maken. The long, open o (/ɔ:/) was raised to the long o.
Thus, the Middle English word go:t came to be pronounced goat.

The mid vowels represented by the letters e (/e/) and o (/o/) were raised. Thus,
Middle English mε:t came to be pronounced as Modern English meat. Middle
English gre:n came to be pronounced as Modern English green, Middle
English fo:d as Modern English food.

Finally, the two high front vowels represented by the letters i (/i/) and u (/u/) in
Middle English became diphthongs. In other words, they were pronounced differently,
each as a cluster of two sounds: /i/ became /ai/, and /u/ became /au/. Middle
English, ti:de became Modern English tide, and Middle English hu:s became Modern
English house.

/ai/ and /au/ from /i/ and /u/ didn’t become full diphthongs overnight. The word my,
for example, would not have been pronounced as Middle English “me” but
“moy”; bite would be “boyte”; fight would be “foyt.” These interim pronunciations seem
to be the origin of “pirate English.” In other words, we might say that pirate English is a
form of the language in which the GVS hadn’t fully run its course, and the high front
monophthongs of Middle English hadn’t fully diphthongized.

A small group of words spelled with ea, such as steak, great, and break, did not
undergo the GVS. If they had, they would have been pronounced “steek,” “greet,” and
“breek.” As with other linguistic anomalies, we have no explanation for the fact that
these words didn’t change, while similar words did.

More than one explanation exists for the GVS. Dialects in England during the
fifteenth and seventeenth centuries were in contact in new ways. Migrations from the
north and the midlands into London brought speakers into contact. This mix of dialects
created social pressures to develop or select a set of pronunciations that would have
new social status or prestige. The sounds that were chosen or developed appear, in
retrospect, as the sounds of the GVS. Of course, people did not consciously decide to
change their pronunciation according to the GVS. There were many ways of
pronouncing vowels, some regional and some historical, but over time, a particular
system of pronunciation arose as an accepted standard form. An additional
explanation is that, with the change in the social status in English itself and with the
loss of French as the prestige language, the need was felt to fill the social gap with a
new form of speech.

It’s also true that the GVS had not fully run its course as late as the early 18th
century. There survives a large body of letters from the fifteenth and seventeenth
centuries, mostly family correspondence, that provides evidence of the GVS in
process. The Paston Letters. In this correspondence, we see people with varying
degrees of education writing to each other. Some of them used Chancery forms; some
used older Middle English spellings; and some used spellings that reflected their
speech habits. Old spelling conventions are often used in these letters to indicate new
sounds. For example, meet would have been pronounced “mayt” in Middle English but
is spelled myte or mite in fifteenth and seventeenth century writing to reflect its new
pronunciation, “meet.” Many of these created spellings indicate changes in the vowels
to diphthongs.

The “Inkhorn terms” and etymological respellings

During the period of the GVS, the English language vocabulary was also changing
dramatically, with words coming in from science, colonial exploration, and philosophy,
and from all languages of the world. The next wave of innovation in English
vocabulary came with the revival of classical scholarship known as the Renaissance,
which makes the third factor that separates Middle English from Modern English.
There were no words in the language to talk accurately about the new concepts and
inventions which were coming from Europe, so writers began to borrow them. Most of
the words which entered the language at the time were taken from Latin.
 The additions to English vocabulary during the period were deliberate borrowings.
Latin was still very much considered the language of education and scholarship at this
time, and the great enthusiasm for the classical languages during the English
Renaissance brought thousands of new words into the language, peaking around
1600. A huge number of classical works were being translated into English during the
sixteenth century, and many new terms were introduced where a satisfactory English
equivalent did not exist.

Some scholars adopted Latin terms so excessively and awkwardly at this time that
the derogatory term “inkhorn” was coined to describe pedantic writers who borrowed
the classics. Such words were perceived to come right from the inkhorn, or inkwell,
and thus were a mark of reading and writing rather than of speech. Some examples of
inkhorn terms still in the language
include allurement, anachronism, autograph, capsule, dexterous, disregard, erupt,
and meditate.

The idea of “correct spelling” is an invention of the pedagogues and pedants of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The issue of spelling was a major problem for
schoolmasters of the Renaissance. Under the influence of teachers and scholars,
literary writers and translators began to respell certain native or long-accepted loan
words in new ways—ways that were not really etymological or historical but pseudo
etymological. Here are some examples. Such words as debt and doubt came into
Middle English from French forms and were never spelled with what we might call a
silent “b.” But these words came to be respelled to look like the Latin
words debitum and dubitare. Such silent letters are the “fantasies” of schoolteachers.
The word adventure came into Middle English as aventure (with no “d” in the spelling),
also by way of French. The “d” was later added to reflect an imagined etymology from
the Latin advenire, “to enter into,” “to journey into.” The same is true of the
words perfect (from French parfait) and verdict (from French voir dit); in Middle
English, neither was spelled with a “c.” Both were respelled to resemble Latin. For the
same reason, island gained its silent “s”, scissors its “c”, anchor, school and herb their
“h”, people its “o” and victuals both a “c” and a
“u”, faute and assaut became fault and assault. However, this attempt to bring logic
and reason into the apparent chaos of the language has actually had the effect of just
adding to the chaos.

Spelling became a mark not of pronunciation—or in cases such as these, not even
of word history—but of learning itself. Those who could not spell well were considered
illiterate. The equation of spelling with a moral or ethical, as well as an educational,
level of accomplishment is the legacy of the Renaissance schoolroom.

If spelling represented an ideal of education, the idea of “educated speech” also

emerged at this time. Old criteria for a standard form of speech, such as region, class,
or official affiliation with religion, gave way to a new criterion: education, which effaced
regional and class boundaries.

The idea that an individual’s birth did not determine uniquely or irrevocably his or
her class was an important change in the court and diplomatic life of Renaissance
England. The result can be seen in the figure of Shakespeare, the son of a glover,
who rose in society through education, however, he didn't have higher education.

The influence of Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was the canonical writer of the English

language. He is believed to have contributed, perhaps more than any other writer, new
words and idioms to English. Many familiar words and phrases were coined or first
recorded by Shakespeare, some 2,000 words and countless catch-phrases are his.
Newcomers to Shakespeare are often shocked at the number of clichés contained in
his plays, until they realize that he coined them and they became clichés
afterwards. In one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, love is blind, it’s Greek to me, a
tower of strength, cruel only to be kind and flesh and blood are all Shakespeare’s.
Words he bequeathed to the language include barefaced, critical, leapfrog,
monumental, majestic, obscene, dwindle, gloomy and pedant.

Using the resources of historical linguistics, the sound of Shakespeare’s language

has been reconstructed. Given that the GVS had not completely run its course in the
seventh century, certain vowel sounds would not be pronounced as they are in
Modern English. For example, tǝid for ‘tide’, me:t for ‘meat’, mε:k for ‘make’, hǝus for
‘house’. Moreover, there are many aspects of his grammar that may strike us as
archaic. He used, for example, multiple negatives and comparatives: “The most
unkindest cut of all.” He used older endings for the second-person and third-person
singular forms of verbs (for example, thou doest or he doth). He used two different
pronouns for the second person: thou forms for the singular and informal
and you forms for the plural and formal.

The early Modern period was transformative for both England and the language.
The sixteenth to eighteenth centuries were a time of revolutionary development,
opening the way for English to become a world language.
The Early Modern English Period (1500-
1800): Forms, Syntax, and Usage
The Early Modern English Period is the period of unprecedented new inventions
and the discovery of America. The English language attained its definitive structure in
the sixteenth century, when spelling began to be standardized and grammar acquired
the characteristics known today. The major shifts in English grammatical structure
were over by the time of the Renaissance; but many important changes were
continuing to take place.

The Bible in English

Next to Shakespeare, the King James Bible (or the Authorized version), printed in
1611, was perhaps the most important influence on subsequent speakers, readers,
and writers of English mostly through its idioms. It is said to have exercised enormous
influence on the development of the language.

The King James Bible is not a translation into the everyday speech or written
communication of 1611 but a deliberately archaic form of the language that maintains
distinctive syntactic and verbal features that can be traced back to earlier translations.
54 translators, who were university scholars, were carrying out the translation for more
than four years. They were trying to reflect biblical tradition of the past. As the
translators say in their Preface, their aim was not to make a new translation, 'but to
make a good one better'. The King James Bible was influenced by the previous bibles
by Wycliff (1384) and Tyndale (1525). It has been estimated that about 80 per cent of
the text of the Authorized Version shows the influence of Tyndale.

There are many phrases in the King James Bible which have entered the general
idiom of the language. David Crystal claims that he has counted all of them, reading
the Kings Jame's Bible twice from cover to cover. According to David Crystal, there
are 257 of them (18 of them are unique, others were introduced in previous bibles by
Wycliff and Tyndale, or they were already in English). King James didn't originate
them but popularized them. Here are some of them: I'm not my brother's keeper; eye
for eye; the apple of his eye; the root of the matter; the skin of my teeth; go from
strength to strength; at their wit’s end; can the leopard change his spots?; sour
grapes; the salt of the earth; cast your pearls before swine; in sheep’s clothing; in the
twinkling of an eye; the straight and narrow; money is the root of all evil; rule with a
rod of iron.

Early Modern English Syntax and Grammar

By the time of the Renaissance, the major shifts in English grammatical structure
were over. However, many important changes were continuing to take place. The
most dramatic change in English grammar has been the loss of inflections. This has
been counter-balanced by a rise in the use of auxiliary verbs.

Here are some examples of grammatical differences from today. 'My life is run his
compass', says Cassius (Julius Caesar), where today we should say has run – and
this sentence also illustrates one of the pronoun uses typical of the time.
Constructions involving a double negative (I cannot go no further) were commonplace;
double comparison (more better, most unkindest); there are still signs of impersonal
verbs (me thinks he did); and during the period a number of verb inflections (such
as pleaseth, know'st) fell out of standard use.
 In Early Modern English there coexisted two competing grammatical forms of the
third person singular: with the ending -th under the influence of the Southern dialects
and with the ending -s under the influence of the Northern dialects, which is a
Scandinavian borrowing. The ending -th disappeared from the usage in the eighteenth
century. Shakespeare used both forms – loves and loveth. 's for plural are used both
in King James Bible and Shakespeare.

Two little words, do and will, and a suffix, “-ing,” changed their function and
meaning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so radically that we might say the
very shape of modern spoken idiomatic English hinges on their changes.

Proponents of the Celtic substrate argue that these features are so unusual that
they could only have been borrowed into English from Celtic languages. John
McWhorter explains the theory in his ‘Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold
History of English’, 2008. He says that English grammar is weird. Some ordinary
aspects of English do not exist in other Germanic languages, such as the use of do in
questions and negative sentences and using -ing in the present tense. These
elements may have entered Old English through Celtic languages.

The development of the auxiliary verb do represents one of the most important
changes in the English language. Today, it can be used as an auxiliary in a variety of
ways: for emphasis in statements (e.g. They do look for trouble), to form a negative
statement (e.g. They do not look for trouble), and in questions (e.g. Do they look for
trouble?). In Old English the use of do (ġe)dōn was somewhat different. As a main
verb, it seems to have originally meant ‘to put or place something somewhere’.

As a full verb, do means to perform an action: “I did this.” This usage appears in
Old English; it is the oldest and most sustained use of the verb. Do can also be used
as a replacement verb: “I went to the store, and having done that …” Here, the
verb do replaces the verb go in the second part of the sentence; this usage developed
in the Middle English period. In the Early Modern English period, do also came to be
used as a periphrastic, or place-holding verb, in questions: “Do you know the way?”
This represents a change from the earlier inversion of word order to ask a question:
“Know you the way?” The typical way of forming questions in Old English had been to
reverse the normal subject-verb order. This question-forming method was still used in
Early Modern English. Thus, Shakespeare could write ‘Spake you of Caesar?’. But by
Shakespeare's time questions were being formed simply by placing do before the
subject: 'Do you see this?' (Hamlet).

In Old English, negative statements could be formed by supplying the

word ne (usually before the verb). They could also be formed by adding ne before the
verb and not after: ‘Ne con ic noht singan’ (King Alfred, Caedmon’s Hymn, ninth
century) (= I know not [how] to sing). The principle of 'double' or 'triple' negatives
shown in the earliest English texts is simple: extra negative words increase the
emphasis, making the negative meaning stronger. In Middle English multiple negation
was quite common: They kan nat seen in that noon avantage, Ne in noon oother wey,
save mariage (they can not see in that any advantage, or in any way, except
marriage). Later ne ceased to be used, leaving just not. In Early Modern English we
also find do being used: Or never after look me in the face. Speak not, reply not, do
not answer me.

From Late Middle English do became popular as a ‘dummy’ auxiliary, that is to say,
an empty or meaningless auxiliary, it served no particular function. Shakespeare and
other literary writers often used do if they needed an extra syllable to make a metrical
line. Finally, do emerged in the sixteenth century as an emphatic modal, or helping,
verb: “I do know the answer.” In Irish English such grammatical constructions are used
as do and be to indicate a habitual action: 'He does work', 'He bees working,' and 'He
does be working'.

In addition to these changing forms of do, there were also changes in the forms of
the suffix -ing. Old English had words that ended in -ing or -ung (as did all Germanic
languages) to indicate, in nouns, ownership or genealogy, or to turn a verb into a
noun. For example, Hrunting is the name of a sword; in Beowulf, the Scyldings are a
clan or a family. Further, in the Middle English period, -ing forms as participles (for
example, going, having, doing) were used only in Southern dialects. In Northern and
Midland English dialects, participles were formed with -ende or -ande (e.g., lovande,
loving). From the sixteenth century, it can be seen wide extension of the use of
progressive forms:

• Expressions such as “The house being on fire, he ran out”.

• Expressions such as “the mowing of the grass,” “the growing of the grain”, an
idiom that did not appear until the late sixteenth century.
• Expressions such as “don’t blame me for having done it.” Shakespeare was
really the first writer to use this form.
• New ways of expressing perfect tenses: “I have been waiting; I had been
waiting.” Note that these examples express the past in different ways. In the
first, the action began in the past and continues into the present. In the second,
the action began in the past, continued for some time, then ended in the past.
• New ways of expressing the future: “I am going to get something to eat.”
Although this last form appeared by the late 16th century, it did not gain
currency until the 19th.
• The extension of progressive forms to the passive: “the house is being built”
was even later development. It belongs the the end of the eighteenth century.
Old English had no progressive passive.

The wide extension of the use of progressive forms is one of the most important
developments of the English verb in the modern period. In Old English such
expressions as he wœs lœrende (he was teaching) are occasionally found. But we
must credit their development mainly to the period since the sixteenth century.

The main source for the important group of modal verbs in Modern English is the
group of preterit-present verbs. Although not a part of this group in Old English, the
verb willan 'wish, want,' whose preterite was wolde, also became a part of the present-
day modal system as will and would. A group of the Old English preterite-present
verbs was transformed into a special group of modal verbs which was fully established
in Early Modern English. The composition of the group changed with the loss of five
verbs in Middle English and was rebuilt with the inclusion of the Middle English
verb willen 'will' (OE willan) which did not originally belong to that group of verbs.
Modal verbs, or helping verbs, include shall, will, can, may, and ought. These verbs
can modify the tense or mood of a main verb but cannot by themselves be the only
verb in a sentence. In Modern spoken English, they are not transitive verbs because
they cannot take an object alone. Originally, these modals were full verbs. In the
seventeenth century, for example, it would be grammatical to say, “I can music,”
meaning “I have a certain skill in music.” In the fourteenth century, Chaucer wrote, “I
shall to God and you,” meaning “I am indebted to God and you.”

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these verbs changed usage and
meaning. The distinctions between shall/should, will/would, may/might, and can/
could arose during this period to create a subjunctive mood in English comparable to
that in Latin. English grammars were based much on Latin grammars. Latin language
was regarded as real, correct, perfect. The subjunctive in Latin was used to express
the counterfactual (something that hadn’t happened) and the optative (desire): “O, that
she would love me.” This usage was deliberately designed in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries to evoke a Latin grammatical category. The subjunctive mood
in Old English was used differently.

Shall/will came to be restricted for forms of the future, losing their full verbal sense
by the end of the sixteenth century. Shall was no longer used as a form of obligation,
and will no longer expressed an individual’s will or desire. In Bible translation, will was
used to translate Latin volo, the verb meaning desire or volition; shall came to be used
for a general future tense. In everyday speech, the distinction came to be one of
emphasis. Schoolchildren were once taught that I shall, you will, he will were the
standard, non-emphatic forms of expressing futurity; I will, you shall, he shall were
considered emphatic. Idiomatic Modern English is founded on changes such as these.

The main factors that worked in shaping a Modern English tense-aspect system in
Middle and Modern English were the leveling of old inflectional endings as a result
of reduction, the operation of analogy and the rise of the analytical forms as a result
of the process of grammaticalization of some free word combinations (future,
passive, perfect, continuous).
 According to George Yule, grammaticalization is the process by which a form with
lexical meaning (a lexical morpheme) develops into one with grammatical function (a
grammatical or inflectional morpheme). The grammaticalization process made it
possible for the English verb forms go and will to be used in sentences such as I’m
gonna be late and I’ll be at work until six. Well-documented examples in English are
the auxiliary verbs. In Shakespeare’s time, will was a verb with a lexical meaning
similar to want, as in What wilt thou? (= “What do you want?”). In the development of
modern English, will became an auxiliary verb, generally used to mark future
reference for the main verb, and mostly lost its former lexical meaning, as in I will be
at work until six, which doesn’t mean “I want to be at work until six.” The existence of a
contracted form, as in I’ll, is a further common stage in the grammaticalization
process. Another example is the grammaticalization of the verb go from having a
lexical meaning of “movement” (I’m going to school) to being a grammatical auxiliary
in I’m going to be late for school. We can still use go as a lexical verb expressing
movement, but not in the contracted form associated with the auxiliary (I’m gonna be
late. *I’m gonna school.) The development of auxiliary verbs from lexical verbs through
the process of grammaticalization, often with contracted forms (e.g. I’ll, I’m gonna),
can be found in many languages. To illustrate one more example of
grammaticalization, Old English could form verb phrases by combining the verbs for
'have' and 'be' with participles (as in Modern English has run and is running).

The inflectional complexity of the past has its legacy in (1) irregular plurals: sheep,
deer (uninflected plural, fish has uninflected plural by analogy), children (-n
plural); feet, geese, mice, men (mutated-vowel plurals). (2) Genitive and plural
ending -s and the apostrophe -s of written English, the group-genitive constructions
(e.g. the little boy that lives down the street's dog). Old English noun inflection -s is
now used with a phrase.

Today, personal pronouns are almost as complex as they were in Old English.
Second-person pronouns used to be more complex, and in the Early Modern English
period were used to signal social information. The th- forms of the singular (thou, thee,
thy, thine) were regularly used by persons of higher rank addressing an inferior, by
parents speaking to a child, and by lovers. The y- forms (you, your, yours) were used
by persons of lower rank to a superior and by children to a parent. Interestingly, in
King James's version of the Bible God is addressed informally.

In Modern English, there is one remaining inflection for person, the -s. The Anglo-
Saxon inflection used in Old English, the -eth, lingered on until the eighteenth century.

Eighteenth-century attitudes towards grammar and usage

The Early Modern English period saw the establishment of the standard written
language we know today. After the introduction of the printed press, a standard
language has to be described. This can be done with the dictionary and the grammar
book. Dictionaries focus on the words of a language; grammar books, on how words
relate to one another in a sentence. The writing of dictionaries and of grammar books
for English began during the Early Modern English period.

There were some attempts to impose order on the English grammar. The dramatist
Ben Jonson wrote An English Grammar … for the Benefit of all Strangers, out of his
Observation of the English Language now Spoken and in Use, which was published in
1640. John Wallis's Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (Grammar of the English
Language, 1653) was written 'because there is clearly a great demand for it from
foreigners, who want to be able to understand the various important works which are
written in our tongue' (which is why he, as others of his time, wrote in Latin).

Over 200 works on grammar and rhetoric appeared between 1750 and 1800. The
most influential was Bishop Robert Lowth's Short Introduction to English
Grammar (1762). This book inspired another grammar Lindley Murray's English
Grammar (1794), which was widely used in English schools in the early
19th century. This was the period which gave rise to the concept of 'traditional
grammar' and in which the rules of 'correct' grammatical usage were first drawn up. In
1774 John Walker published his idea for a Pronouncing Dictionary of English, with the
aim of doing for pronunciation what Johnson had done for vocabulary and Lowth for
grammar.
 The second half of the eighteenth century differs fundamentally from our age in its
attitudes towards English. The earliest English grammarians tried to force the
language into Latin's shoes. Latin was regarded as a 'perfect' language. When English
grammars came to be written, they were based on Latin grammar. The aims of the
grammarians was to prescribe, to make a rule and to proscribe, to forbid. Many of the
conventions now accepted and held up as preferable in our handbooks were first
stated in this period. This was the prescriptive era in which the recommendations of
such writers were seen as authoritative. Only by following their rules would speakers
be perceived to be educated.

The prescriptive tradition has been perpetuated till the recent times. Modern
linguists understand that a language is a living and hence changing thing. English
grammar did not stand still during the twentieth century. Geoffrey Leech and Christian
Mair in their book 'Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study' outline the
following modern trends in English grammar: rise of semi-modals (as be going to and
have to); rise of progressive (or continuous) verbs; decline in passive forms; rise in the
genitive and decline in of-phrases; rise in that relative and zero relative (as someone I
spoke to).

Although the GVS had changed pronunciation from Middle English, and the influx of
words in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is still represented in its vocabulary
today, the English of this period is not Modern English. That said, however, the
highly idiomatic quality of Modern spoken English is a legacy from the time of
Shakespeare. A large part of the idiomatic quality of English comes from
developments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including changes in the
verb do. Just the reverse of what was true in the Middle English period, in modern
English times changes in grammar have been relatively slight and changes in
vocabulary extensive.