Language Change Over Time

EME period

1500-1700

LME period

1900-2000

PDE period

2000-

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary

1755

Mulcaster’s Elementarie (grammar)

1582

Lowth’s grammar

1762

conduct literature

literature that attempts to educate the reader on social norms and ideals

optative

mood expressing wish or ‘if only’

dummy auxiliary

verb performing grammatical function with no meaning

appended

added

negator

a word expressing negation (not)

predicator

the verbal element of a sentence

proclitic

word with so little emphasis that it is added to the following word

‘affective’ use

to create a feeling/ emotion

archaic

old-fashioned

obsolete

no longer in use

subordination

the use of subordinate clauses

random capitalisation

capitalising words other than proper nouns

standardisation

the process whereby the written form was made uniform

lexicon

the active vocabulary of a language

french influence

Norman invasion 1066

Christianity

7th century

Caxton's printing press

1476

Great Vowel Shift

15th century

end of ‘thou’

17th century

2nd person ‘ye’ disappeared

late 17th century

silent appended final -e

Mulcaster 1582

King James Bible (English)

1610

Education Act

1870

BBC formed

1922

ModE period

1700-1900

unmarked adjective flat form

adjective root with no adverb inflection

line justification

the lengthy language employed by journalists during the period when they were paid by the amount they wrote

chancery

the location of official document production in the middle ages