25. Spread of the London dialect in the 15th century. Formation of the literary language.

In the 15^th century the London dialect gradually spread all over the country, superseding local dialects. Spoken English in various parts of the Britain gradually approached the literary norm, and differences between the norm and popular speech disappeared.

The formation of a national language was greatly influenced by two events which took place in the 15th century:

1.The Wars of Roses (1455-1485) marked the decay of feudalism and the rise of an absolute monarchy. This meant a high degree of political centralization and thus it contributed to a predominance of the national language over local dialects.

2.The Introduction of Printing. Printing was invented in Germany by Johann Gutenberg in 1438 and gradually spread to the other places. The Englishman William Caxton (1422-1491) became acquainted with this art. He published the first English printed book, but it was not in England, it was in Bruges.

Later (in 1476) he founded the first English printing office in London and still later (in 1477) the first book, printed in England, appeared. It was called “The Dicties and Sayings of the Philosopher” (dicta- от латинского dictum (ед. ч.)- изречение).

The spread of printed books influenced the normalization of spelling and grammatical forms.

Existence of a language norm becomes evident in the 16^th century. The literary language is understood as a model which must be followed. On the entire territory of the country only literary English is used. All other dialects were reduced to oral languages.

After introduction of printing each vowel letter acquired different sound values depending on its environment.

The period from 1350 to 1400 has been called the Period of Great Individual Writers. The chief name is that of Geoffrey Chaucer.

All written documents of the 15th century can be classified into three types:

· those written in the London literary language

· those written basically in the London literary language but bearing some traces of local dialects

· those written in a more or less pure local dialect.

26. The Great Vowel Shift.

The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1450 and 1750.[1] The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term.[2]

The Great Vowel Shift involved six vowels: all were long, stressed monophthongs -- vowels in stressed positions which were pronounced long and had a pure sound. For the non-linguist, what I have just written probably sounds like academic gobbledygook, so let’s look at some specific examples.

The vowel “i” as in “mice” is a high front vowel. In Middle English “mice” would have been pronounced “mees”.

The modern word “mouse” would have been pronounced “moos” in Middle English. It then evolved into “mah-oose” and then finally into the dipthong which we have today in “mouse”.

The vowel “e” as in “feet” is considered a mid-vowel. In Middle English “feet” would have been pronounced “fate”.

Another mid-vowel is “o” as in “do” which would have been pronounced “dough” in Middle English.

The vowel “a” is a low back vowel. The modern word “name” would have been pronounced “nahm” in Middle English.

The long open “o” which was pronounced “aw” became the long “o”. Thus the modern English word “so” would have been pronounced “saw” in Middle English.

Linguists summarize that in the Great Vowel Shift: (1) front vowels were raised and fronted; (2) back vowels were raised and retraced; and (3) high vowels were made into diphthongs.

Linguists have documented the fact that the Great Vowel Shift happened, but the intriguing question is why did it happen? In answering this question, linguists offer two non-exclusive hypotheses.