Modern English

Modern English

17th Century to Present Days

The uncertainties of the 16th and 17th centuries about the suitability of English as a language of science and learning led to quite massive borrowing from classical languages. It also engendered a frame of mind where people thought English was deficient and this in its turn gave rise to many musings in print about just what constitutes correct English. With this one has the birth of the prescriptive tradition which has lasted to this very day. Much of this was well-meaning: scholars of the time misunderstood the nature of language variation and sought to bring order into what they saw as chaos. Frequently this merged with the view that regional varieties of English were deserving of disdain, a view found with many eminent writers such as Jonathan Swift who was quite conservative in his opinions. The difficulty which present-day linguists see in the prescriptive recommendations of such authors is that they are entirely arbitrary.

The eighteenth century is also a period when grammars of English were written – by men and women. This tradition of grammar writing goes back at least to the 17th century in England. The playwright Ben Jonson was the author of a grammar and John Wallis published an influential Grammatica linguae Anglicanae in 1653. This led to a series of works offering guidelines for what was then deemed correct English. The eighteenth century saw more grammars in this vein such as Joseph Priestley’s The rudiments of English grammar (1761). Bishop Robert Lowth (1710-1787) who published his Short introduction to English grammar in 1762. This work was influential in school education and enjoyed several editions and reprints. It is held responsible for a series of do’s and don’ts in English such as using whom as the direct object form of who or not ending a sentence with a preposition as in The woman he shared a room with. Lowth also formulated a rule for future tense shall and will in English which has been reiterated since but which does not hold for many speakers (the reduced form ’ll [l] is normal and the full form will [wɪl] is used for emphasis while shall is often neglected). Other influential authors of grammars are Lindley Murray (1745-1826) who produced an English grammar in 1794 and William Cobbett whose English grammar appeared in 1829.

Prescriptive authors are responsible for perennial issues in English prescriptive grammar. Apart from the disapproval of prepositional-final sentences mentioned above one has the prohibition on the split infinitive, as in to angrily reply to a question. The list with time grew longer and longer and today includes many elements which stem from current changes in English, for instance the indecisiveness about the preposition with the adjective different (from, as or to depending on speaker) and the condemnation of less for fewer with plural nouns as in prescribed He has fewer books than she rather than He has less books than she. Another evergreen is the demand for I as first-person pronoun. English usage today is that I only occurs in immediately pre-verbal position; in all other instances me occurs: I came but It’s me, Who’s there? Me. Prescriptivists often insist that I be used on such occasions and even ask for it in phrases like between you and me, i.e. between you and I where it never occurred anyway as here the pronoun is in an oblique case whose form was never I.