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The Modern English Period (XVI – XX c.)

1. 
   Important Historic Events of the Period.
   
2. 
   Development of Literary Language.
   
3. 
   From Middle to Modern.
   
4. 
   The Great Vowel Shift.
   

Key words: the literary norm and popular speech, the formation of a national language, the normalization of spelling and grammatical forms, the Great Vowel Shift - the narrowing of all ME long vowels and diphthongization of the narrowest long ones.

In the course of the 15^th century, the London literary language gradually spread all over the country, superseding local dialects. Spoken English in various parts of Britain gradually approaches the literary norm and differences between the norm and popular speech tend to become obliterated. The formation of a national language was greatly fostered by two events of the late 15^th century. The most significant event of the period was the Wars of the Roses (1455 – 1485), which marked the decay of feudalism and the birth of a new social order. The political result was the rise of an absolute monarchy. A high degree of political centralization contributed to centralization in language as well, that is, to a predominance of the national language over local dialects. Another great event was the introduction of printing. Having acquainted with this art, the Englishman William Caxton (1422–1491) published the first English printed book, “THE RECUYELL OF THE HISTORIES OF TROY” (Сборник Рассказов о Трое) in Bruges, in 1475. The spread of printed books was bound to faster the normalization of spelling and also of grammatical forms. The growth of the national literary language and especially the fixation of its Written Standard is inseparable from the flourishing of literature known as the English Literary Renaissance. The most notable forerunners of the literary Renaissance in the first half of the 16^th century were the great English humanist Thomas More (1478 – 1535), translator of Utopia and William Tyndale, the translator of the Bible. The end of the 16^th century (the 80s and 90s) witnesses the rise of a great number of dramatists. The greatest of these was William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616).

The language of the 16^th and early 17^th century was bound to appear wild and clumsy. Publications of Shakespeare’s works appearing in the 18^th century are full of arbitrary changes designed to make Shakespeare’s text conform to the “correctness” of the 18^th century. In the 17^th and 18^th century a great number of grammarians and orthoepists appeared, who set as their task the establishing of correct language forms. About the middle of the 18^th century, there appears a tendency to limit the freedom of phonetic and grammatical variants within the national language. The idea of a strict norm in language was expressed with yet greater clarity in a preface appended by Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) to his famous “Dictionary of the English Language” (1755). Dr. Johnson preferred the “regular and solemn” pronunciation to the “cursory and colloquial”. This view is most characteristic of the mid 18^th century.
When we come to the vowel changes that English words underwent in passing from Middle to Modern English, we see the importance of the factors that determined the length of vowel in ME. All ME long vowels underwent extensive alteration in passing into MnE, but the short vowels, in accented syllables, remained comparatively stable. If we compare Chaucer’s pronunciation of the short vowels with ours, we note only two changes of importance those of a and u. By Shakespeare’s day (at the close of the 16^th century) Chaucer’s a had become [æ] in pronunciation (cat, thank, flax). In some cases this ME a represented an OE œ (at, apple, back), and the new pronunciation was therefore a return to approximately the form that the word had had in OE. It is the usual pronunciation in America and a considerable part of the Southern England today. The change the u underwent was what is known as unrounding. In Chaucer’s pronunciation this vowel was sounded as [u] in “full”. By the 16^th century it seems to have become in most words the sound [Λ] that we have in “but” (e.g., cut, sun). So far as the short vowels are concerned, it is clear that a person today would have little difficulty in understanding the English of any period of the language.
The most significant phonetic change of this period was the Great Vowel Shift, beginning in the 15^th century. It left its imprint on the entire vowel system of the MnE period. The essence of the shift was the narrowing of all ME long vowels and diphthongization of the narrowest long ones.
The separate items of the shift may be presented in the following way:

1. i: > ai time [t:mə] time; fīv [fi:f] five

2. e: > i: kepen [ke:pen] keep; mēde [me:də] meed
3. ε: > e: > i: street [strε:t] street; clēn [klε:n] clean
4. a: > ei maken [ma:ken] make; nāme [nα:mə] name
5. o: > u: mōn [mo:n] moon; rōte [ro:tə] root
6. o: > ou stone [ sto:n] stone; gōte [go:tə] goat
7. u: > au mous [mu:s] mouse; dūn [du:n] down

It should be obvious from the table that the Great Vowel Shift did not add any new sound to the vowel system; in fact, every vowel, which developed under the shift, can be found in Late ME. And nevertheless, the Great Vowel Shift was the most profound and comprehensive change in the history of English vowels: every long vowel, as well as some diphthongs, were “shifted” and the pronunciation of all the words with these sounds were altered. It is important to note that the Great Vowel Shift, unlike most of the earlier phonetic changes, was not followed by any regular spelling changes.