A History of English Language

The renaissance, 1500-1650 189
being fueled by naive beliefs about the nature of language and the determinants of
linguistic change. 1
153. Effect upon Grammar and Vocabulary.
The forces here mentioned may be described as both radical and conservative—radical in
matters of vocabulary, conservative in matters of grammar. By a radical force is meant
anything that promotes change in language; by conservative, what tends to preserve the
existing status. Now it is obvious that the printing press, the reading habit, the advances
of learning and science, and all forms of communica tion are favorable to the spread of
ideas and stimulating to the growth of the vocabulary, while these same agencies,
together with social consciousness as we have described it, work actively toward the
promotion and maintenance of a standard, especially in grammar and usage. They operate
both singly and in combination. Education, for example, exerts its influence not only
through formal instruction in language—grammar, spelling, pronunciation, etc.—but also
by making possible something more important, the unconscious absorption of a more or
less standard English through books, magazines, and newspapers. We shall accordingly
be prepared to find that in modern times changes in grammar have been relatively slight
and changes in vocabulary extensive. This is just the reverse of what was true in the
Middle English period. Then the changes in grammar were revolutionary, but, apart from
the special effects of the Norman Conquest, those in vocabulary were not so great.
154. The Problems of the Vernaculars.
In the Middle Ages the development of English took place under conditions that, because
of the Norman Conquest, were largely peculiar to England. None of the other modern
languages of Europe had had to endure the consequences of a foreign conquest that
temporarily imposed an outside tongue upon the dominant social class and left the native
speech chiefly in the hands of the lower social classes. But by the close of the Middle
English period English had passed through this experience and, though bearing deep and
abiding marks of what it had gone through, had made a remarkable recovery. From this
time on the course of its history runs in many ways parallel with that of the other
important European languages. In the sixteenth century the modern languages faced three
great problems: (1) recognition in the fields where Latin had for centuries been supreme,
(2) the establishment of a more uniform orthography, and (3) the enrichment of the
vocabulary so that it would be adequate to meet the demands that would be made upon it
in its wider use. Each of these problems received extensive consideration in the England
of the Renaissance, but it is interesting to note that they were likewise being discussed in
much the same way in France and Italy, and to some extent in Germany and Spain. Italy
1
See the history of attitudes toward English traced by Richard W.Bailey, Images of English: A
Cultural History of the Language (Ann Arbor, MI, 1991).