Language Era’s

Question 1

Periods of English

Answer 1

Old English (OE) 449-1100
Middle English (ME) 1100-1500
Early Modern English (EME) 1500-1800
Late Modern English (LME) 1800-Present Day
Present Day English (PDE) now

Question 2

English language context

Answer 2

English language is Germanic: Norway, Sweden, Germany
Old English words are said to be of muscular quality, short, direct, forceful

Question 3

Language contact

Answer 3

Process of language change whereby multiple language come into social contact and have linguistic influence on each other

Question 4

Disglossia

Answer 4

Term used mostly in socialinguistics, referring to a situation where two very different varieties of language exist alongside each other, each holding a distinct social function.

Question 5

EME Printing, dictionaries and grammar

Answer 5

• 1476 William Caxton’s printing press was established in London
  Caxton published using the dialect, grammar and spelling system of the capital city. This helped promote the idea of “standard English” - a benchmark to which all other varieties of English were compared.

Question 6

EME Dictionaries

Answer 6

• Helped standardise English.
• 1755 Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language consisting of 40,000 detailed entries. Johnson set out to fix what he saw as a chaotic and untidy language. He eventually realised language was always changing, his role was to describe rather than prescribe language.

Question 7

EME Literature

Answer 7

• 16th - 18th centuries is known as the ‘golden age’ of English Literature.
• Writers John Donne, John Milton and William Shakespeare all chose to use English rather than Latin/French which had been the language of the social elite/ educated classes.
• English took on an increased sense of gravitas and social status.
• Vocabulary size increased as writers created new word forms and experimented with word meaning.
• Increase in publications helped standardise the English language.

Question 8

EME Grammars

Answer 8

• 1762 Robert Lowth based rules for English on Latin in ‘A Short Introduction to English Grammar’
• Around 200 grammars were published in the EME era, most of which were highly prescriptive, arguing for a ‘correct way of using English and presenting themselves almost as a linguistic manual.
• The rise of prescriptivism was accentuated by people such as Jonathon Swift and John Dryden who called for the creation of an ‘English Academy’ a group to decide on correct usage and protect the English language.

Question 9

Standardisation

Answer 9

Process under which a language develops a standard ‘prestige’ variety.

Question 10

LME Industrial Revolution