English in Modern Times: 1700-1945 (Hodder Arnold Publication)

281 Pages·2004·2.4 MB·English

by  Joan C. Beal

English in Modern Times
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English in
Modern Times
1700–1945
JOAN C. BEAL
Sheffield University, UK

A member of the Hodder Headline Group
LONDON
Distributed in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press Inc., New York
Published in Great Britain in 2004 by
Arnold, a member of the Hodder Headline Group,
338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH
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Distributed in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY10016
© 2004 Joan C. Beal
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or a
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are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency: 90 Tottenham Court Road,
London W1T 4LP.
The advice and information in this book are believed to be true and
accurate at the date of going to press, but neither the authors nor the publisher
can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 0 340 76117 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Typeset in 10/13pt Sabon by Phoenix Photosetting, Chatham, Kent
Printed and bound in Malta
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Contents
List of figures ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xv
1 Modern English and modern times 1
1.1 Introduction: Defining ‘modern times’ 1
1.2 Politics 2
1.3 Science 3
1.4 Society 4
1.5 Urbanization 6
1.6 Transport and communications 7
1.7 Communications 9
1.8 Britain and the British Empire 10
1.9 Modern times and Modern English 11

2 The vocabulary of Later Modern English 14
2.1 Introduction 14
2.2 Innovation and resistance, 1660–1800 16
2.3 Invention and innovation, 1800–1900 21
2.4 Wars and rumours of wars, 1900–1945 29
3 Recording and regulating the lexicon: dictionaries from
Dr Johnson to the Oxford English Dictionary 35
3.1 Dictionaries before Johnson 35
3.2 Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
the first ‘modern’ dictionary? 40
3.3 After Johnson: English dictionaries in the nineteenth
century 45
vi Contents
3.4 The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles/
Oxford English Dictionary 57
4 Syntactic change in Later Modern English 66
4.1 Introduction 66
4.2 Regulation of variants resulting from changes in
Early Modern English 68
4.2.1 Regulation of second-person pronouns 69
4.2.2 Regulation of the uses of do 72
4.2.3 Regulation of relativizers 75
4.3 Innovations of the later modern period 77
4.3.1 The be + -ing construction 78
4.3.2 Group-verbs 83
4.3.3 Decline of the subjunctive 85
4.3.4 Other changes 86
5 Grammars and grammarians 89
5.1 The ‘doctrine of correctness’ 89
5.1.1 Introduction 89
5.1.2 Standardization and codification 90
5.1.3 Social mobility and linguistic insecurity 93
5.1.4 ‘No enemy so formidable as the pen’: language
and politics 94
5.1.5 Grammars and the teaching of English 101
5.2 Models and theories of grammar 105
5.2.1 Prescriptive or descriptive grammars 105
5.2.2 The influence of Latin 107
5.2.3 The a pplication of logic to grammar 112
5.2.4 ‘Prejudice’ and ipse dixit statements 115
5.3 English grammars of the nineteenth century 115
5.4 Grammars in the early twentieth century 119
5.5 Conclusion 122
6 Phonological change in Later Modern English 124
6.1 Introduction 124
6.2 Evidence for Later Modern English pronunciation 126
6.2.1 Overview: types of evidence 126
6.2.2 The reliability of direct evidence for Later Modern
English pronunciation 127
6.3 Phonological change 133
6.3.1 Overview 133
Contents vii
6.3.2 The FACE and GOAT sets 136
6.3.3 The BATH and CLOTH sets 138
6.3.4 The FOOT and STRUT sets 142
6.3.5 Yod-dropping 145
6.3.6 Unstressed vowels 149
6.3.7 Weakening and loss of /r/ 153
6.3.8 H-dropping 157
6.3.9 The velar nasal 160
6.3.10Changes in the pronunciation of individual words 161
6.3.11Changes in twentieth-century English 165
6.4 Conclusion 166
7 Defining the standard of pronunciation: pronouncing
dictionaries and the rise of RP 168
7.1 Introduction 168
7.2 Defining ‘a proper pronunciation’ 169
7.2.1 Early definitions 169
7.2.2 Proper and polite speech: eighteenth-century
standards 170
7.2.3 Standards and shibboleths 178
7.3 Received pronunciation 183
8 Beyond standard English: varieties of English in the later
modern period 190
8.1 Introduction 190
8.2 Regional dialects of British English 192
8.2.1 ‘Marks of disgrace’: evidence from normative works 192
8.2.2 Diale ct literature and literary dialect 199
8.2.3 Dialect studies 205
8.3 Beyond the British Isles 209
8.3.1 An apology 209
8.3.2 ‘Divided by a common language’: American
English and British English 210
8.3.3 English transported: the development of Australian
English 215
8.3.4 Other varieties of English 218
References 221
Index 239
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Figures
2.1 Numbers of first citations in the SOED, by decade, 1661–1900 14
2.2 A page from the CED 15
2.3 Lexical innovation by year, 1741–1760 20
2.4 Sources of 350 words first recorded in 1835 (CED) 25
2.5 First attestations, 1900–1952 30
6.1 Transcriptions of ‘The North Wind and the Sun’, according to
Walker (1791) and Jones (1937) 134
7.1 A page from Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary 176
7.2 The ‘New Alphabet’ from Spence’s Grand Repository of the
English Language 178
7.3 The first page of Spence’s Grand Repository of the English
Language 179