Chapter 17: history of english CoMMentary on aCtiVities

activity 17.3

This commentary does not comment on every word in the text.Words from Old English include: daughter, father, good, had, her, in, least, life, locking, mother, no,

one, seen, temper, the, was, who, without (originally two words, and different in meaning from outwith which often is used to mean ‘outside’), woman. Most of the function words (➔ 5) in current use in English date from this period.

Words from Middle English include: beside (in this form – in OE it had been two words), character, considerable, constitution, disposition, infancy, living, person, plain, poor, sense, situation, suppose, useful.

Words from (early) Modern English include: addicted, clergyman, handsome, heroine, independ-ence, neglected, remarkable, respectable.

Some words, like many others, have changed their meaning or referent over a period of time:

• living only acquired this meaning (an office or a job in the church that provides an income for the person holding the post) in the 1500s, having been used only as a part of the verb to live in OE

• addicted in this context will surprise many modern readers

• handsome is now mainly used to describe men but was earlier used to describe all people.

Some points may simply be incomprehensible – there is no known reason why Jane Austen appeared to dislike the name Richard or to be dismissive of men with that name.

Given that each period lasts about 500 years, it should not be expected that the divisions between the periods are watertight, nor that the English language is unchanging throughout the period. An clearly comes from OE but the entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) continues with explanations of changes that occurred in both ME and early ModE. It should also be remembered that any word in the dictionary will probably have been used orally for some considerable time before it is listed. New editions of any dictionary, but particularly of the OED, can provoke outrage and dismay as new words (e.g. muggle in Chapter 9) are included and newly-obsolete terms dropped.

Having read the commentary, compare the proportions of OE/ME/ModE words in the Northanger Abbey passage with your guess. Were you right? Are you surprised?

activity 17.5

The spelling differences are obvious and for the most part it is clear to see how the ModE spelling develops from this ME form. The noun-forming morpheme {-cioun} (L25) becomes {-tion} in ModE and the use of <y> for ModE <i> in besyde (L15) and lye (L27) are but two examples. Other words, e.g. never (L10), wedding (L11), sharp (L14), and word (L14), have not changed in spelling. The spelling of axe (L21) for ‘ask’ suggests a pronun-ciation change has occurred.

Chapter 17: history of english CoMMentary on aCtiVities2

Thilke (L18) does not appear in ModE in this form but the word ilk is still used in Scotland and some northern English dialects in the phrase of that ilk with the meaning ‘of the same kind’. Glosen (L26) can be understood as ‘to gloss’ in the sense of ‘to explain’, a word that seems to be being increasingly used in ModE, especially in textbooks!

The third person singular masculine appears in nominative case as he. The second person singular forms thou (L17), thee (L18) and thyn (L19), have now dropped out of use other than in religious texts and in some ModE dialects. In modern Standard British English the form you is used for singular and plural, formal and informal. Pronouns in ModE are the clearest descendants of the case system of OE and ME though the case endings on nouns are beginning to be lost in ME (➔ 7.3.2, Table 7.2).

Forms of the verb have appear throughout the text: hast (L17), hath (L18) are inflected to agree with the Subject of the clause; have is the base form of the verb (L23) and the past participle (➔ 7) of the verb y-had appears in L17. Forms of the verb be include was (L9) and is (L9). The past tense alveolar plosive ending appears in seyde (L19), herde (L24) and myghte (L23). Spak (L16) is the past tense form from speke.

The word order (e.g. L12, L24) shows some of the flexibility that is possible when case endings on nouns indicate the function of the noun in the clause though it must be remembered that word order in verse is more flexible than in prose.

The double negative of L10 is maintained in many dialect forms of ModE but is no longer accepted (and is often stigmatized) in modern Standard British English.

activity 17.6

Old Norse (ON) appears in place names through the use of forms such as by, thorpe, booth, lathe, garth, thwaite. OE appears in place names through the use of forms such as borough, ton, ham, leigh, toft. Roman place names are often indicated by {-cester}. Some place names indicate the merging of the two languages e.g. Askrigg (OE + ON). Crystal (2003) and Cameron (1996) will provide more examples.

activity 17.7

Early Latin calendars contained ten months and November and December were the names of the last two months in that calendar. Sometime in the period 800–400BC as calendars were adjusted to ensure that the calendar remained in synchrony with the natural rhythms of the rotation of the earth, two months, January and February, were added at the begin-ning of the year but the names of other months were not changed to allow for their ‘numbering’ in the new calendar. Type early calendars or Gregorian calendars into a search engine for more information – or Wikipedia is a good starting point.