Evolution of the literary english language

1. Introduction of printing.

2. The revival of learning in 16th c.

3. English as the all purpose prose medium in 17, 18th c.c.

4. Latin borrowings in New English.

The border between the Middle English and New English Periods was that last decade of 15th c. when the end of the War of Roses signified the consolidation of absolute monarchy and the decay of feudalism. The first stage, the Early New English Period, went on up to 1660, the year of the Restoration.

1. The last quarter of 15th c. witnessed introduction of Printing in England, a very important fact in the history of literary English. The printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1438. The first Englishman to master printing was William Caxton (1422 – 1491). A man of Kentish extraction Caxton went abroad to serve for the Duchess of Burgundy. He studied printing in Flanders and there he printed the first book in English “The Recuyeil of the Histories of Troye” in 1475. On the following year Caxton came back to London and built his printing press. It was in 1476 that the first book “The Dictes and Sayinge of the Philosophers” was published in England. The importance of Caxton’s activity is tremendous. Till then books had been copied by hand, a private library could be afforded by very rich people only. Though first books might be printed in the number of 100 copies, it was against one book in a year copied by hand. While a copyist wrote his own dialect, the printing pressers were bound to follow the norms of London dialect. Caxton stated in the preface to “The Histories of Troye” that he gave his manuscript to Princess Margaret and she handed it back with some corrections. Therefore there arose a feeling of correct and incorrect conformity to custom. The foundation of English spelling was laid in the first printed books and no subsequent phonetic changes have ever influenced it in any significant way. The written form was monopolized by the national language: state correspondence, documents, prose, and poetry – all printed matter in England. The dialect became oral: natives of various parts of the country might speak their dialect but had to write Standard English.

Since this time on the national language has been good, the dialect has not. As the national language gained in strength and importance the dialect occupied the background.

By the beginning of 16th c. the national language penetrated into major spheres of life.

2. The 16th century began as an age of novelty. Sir Thomas More thought over his Utopian schemes in Chelsea where Erasmus of Rotterdam found a warm welcome under his hospitable roof. The Great Discoveries had been made as that of the New World. English merchants were interested in exploration of overseas countries, which demanded the knowledge of astronomy, languages, flora and fauna – the knowledge was Latin.

The Revival of Learning sent men directly to the classics. Books were translated from Latin. To learn to read was to learn to read Latin. Grammar was Latin grammar. Latin became a second vernacular to educated men. Not only was it the language of the learned professions, but it long served as a means of communication among all but the positively illiterate. Legal documents, even of the most ordinary type were written in that language. All important accounts were also in Latin. Queen Elizabeth talked Latin with foreign ambassadors; Cromwell had Milton for his Latin secretary. The Classical Revival of 16th c. led to a wholesale importation of Latin words: it was the century of Latin borrowings - writers tried to use Latin words for every English word possible.

The purists headed by Sir John Cheke protested against the flood of Latin borrowings. Sir Thomas Wilson in “Art of Rhetorique” (1553) reprimanded those who “seek so far for outlandish English that they forget altogether their mothers language...The unlearned ... will so Latin their tongues, that the simple can not but wonder at their talk, and think surely they speak by some revelation”. At the same time Sir Thomas More wrote “Utopia” in Latin (1516); Francis Bacon published his more important treatises in Latin; the poet Edmund Waller said that to express oneself in English was “to write in sand”.

It was the time when English opposed Latin to assert itself as the language of science. The first person to write a scientific treatise in English was Sir Thomas Ellyot, the author of “The Governour” (1531). The task was not easy and Ellyot said in the preface that it would have been easier to write in Latin but he wanted to prove that English might be used for the purpose. It was necessary to evolve terminology so he took Latin words and changed them in conformity to existing models, then explained or described the meaning.

The very fact of writing science in English was opposed by some and greeted by others. Some men of letters protested that people not belonging to gentry should learn so easily. Theological discussions taking place in Latin, the clergy feared that the use of English might spread to heresies. The Reformation brought about the necessity to translate the Bible which was carried out by William Tyndale in 1525. He did much to create a simple all-purpose prose style. One third of the King James Bible of 1611, it has been computed, is worded exactly as Tyndale left it. This Authorized Version was translated by a group of scholars by the order of King James and expanded throughout the country.

The Elizabethan age (reign of Queen Elizabeth 1558 – 1603) was marked by the creative activity of William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) and his contemporaries Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593), Benjamin Jonson (1573 – 1637), John Fletcher (1579 – 1625), etc.

The critic John Saintsbury in his “History of Elizabethan Literature” declared: “The plays of Shakespeare and the English Bible are, and ever will be, the twin monuments not merely of their own period, but of the perfection of English, the complete expressions of the literary capacities of the language …”

3. In the first half of the 17 century thought, literature and language were influenced by Puritanism. The puritans brought theology and biblical turns of phrase into the common speech - they used a great number of religious words and made consonant appeal to the Bible, bringing to life archaic phraseology. It was supposed to make their speech sound solemn. The Restoration of 1660 was the end of puritan influence.

Coming back from France Charles II and his courtiers brought along many French words and expressions which entered various spheres of life. The influx of French borrowings caused opposition of those who considered it necessary to purify the language. The Royal Society for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy was founded in London, and in 1664 they elected a committee of twenty men “to improve the English tongue particularly for philosophic purposes”, and this committee included Dryden, Evelyn, Sprat and Waller in its number. Dryden, for once, declared that it was a scandal that the English people had no prosody nor so much as a tolerable dictionary or a grammar. Sprat hoped to witness the establishment of an “impartial Court of Eloquence according to whose censure all books or authors should either stand or fall”.

What was wanted was a fixed standard in English. Many grammarians and orthoepists, people studying the customary pronunciation, worked in 17, 18 c.c. to normalize the language. One of the first books in orthoepy, “Logonomia Anglica,” was published by Alexander Gill in 1621. Charles Butler issued his “English Grammar” in 1634 where he suggested that spelling should be reformed and uniform. William Lily’s “Introduction to Grammar” was written in 1645. The aim of the grammarians was to reduce the English language to rules, to improve it. English grammarians worked under the influence of Latin grammar, applied Latin patterns to the English language: that is why their books show a mixture of traditional Latin grammar and observations of characteristic features.

Of great interest was “Grammatica Anglicana” by the orthoepist Christopher Cooper (1685) who presented a serious study of English sounds. The Oxford professor of geometry John Wallis in his “Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae” (1653) tried to break entirely with the Latin tradition. He was the first to state the rule of use of the auxiliaries “shall” – “will”.

John Brightland’s English Grammar (1711) followed Wallis’s principles. He introduced four parts of speech and rejected traditional Latin terms using instead of them: “names”, “qualities”, “affirmations” and “particles”.

Along with the activities of the grammarians there was another sphere of studies: lexicography. First English dictionaries were English-Latin, English-French, etc. In the 17 century one-language dictionaries began to appear. They embraced some special spheres: difficult words, quotations, etc. Nathaniel Bailey published “A Universal Etymological English Dictionary” in 1721. It was an attempt to include all the words existing in English.

The first really important “Dictionary of the English language” was complied by Dr. Samuel Johnson “The Lexicographer” (1709 - 1784). In 1747 he published his plan and in 1755 the first edition was issued. Dr. Johnson was not interested in the improvement of English orthography; he did his best to abolish inconsistencies, but his attitude towards traditional spelling was one of conservation and piety. Still the great one-man Dictionary was not entirely free from inconsistencies itself: e.g. “moveable but immovable, downhill but uphi

l, deceit but receipt”, etc., some of which have remained up to this day.

It was in 17th, 18th c.c. that the English language may be said to attain full maturity. Bunyan, Swift and Defoe in their different ways, showed the powers of a mature and well-balanced English style. Since then the English language has grown in a hundred ways, but its fundamental and structural features, the patterns of its sentences and the forms of its words, have not materially changed.

As it was stated above the third layer of Latin borrowings came into English in the time of the classical Renaissance. Such strong groups might be pointed out as:

1. Verbs in -‘ate’ from participle II in -‘atum’ of the first Latin conjugation: dedicate, incarnate, frustrate, accumulate, translate, exaggerate, create, associate, and many others.

2. Verbs in -‘ute’ from participle II in -‘utum’ of the 3-d Latin conjugation: distribute, prosecute, attribute, constitute, execute, etc.

3. Verbs formed from infinitive of the 3-d Latin conjugation: permit, admit, expel, impel, produce, exclude, delude, etc...

4. Adjectives in -‘ant’, -‘ent’ from Latin participle I: arrogant, reluctant, obedient, patient. There are some nouns with these suffixes: accident, incident, occident, orient, etc...

5. Words taken from Latin with no change of the form: superior, interior, exterior, inferior, minimum, maximum, bonus, stimulus, animal, folio, item, recipe, veto, inertia, alibi, memorandum, via, pauper, simile, etc.

Since French is a Romance language it is often impossible to determine if a particular word was taken directly from Latin or via French. E.g., ‘figure’ is ultimately derived from the Latin ‘figura’, though it is probable that it was taken directly from the French ‘figure’. The same might be argued about many other words: e.g. consolation, gravity, infernal, infidel, position, solid, etc.

Some words were borrowed both directly from Latin and through French. These resulting doublets seldom remained synonymous: e.g. assoil - absolve, blame - blaspheme, chapter - capital, count - compute, frail - fragile, poor - pauper, ray - radius, reason - ration, strait - strict, sure - secure, treason - tradition, etc.

Some words were reshaped by Latin models: e.g.

Middle English		New English
descryve		describe
parfit		perfect
verdit		verdict
peyture		picture
avys		advice
avantage		advantage
avance		advance
aventure		adventure
dette		debt
doute		doubt
vittles		victuals

Some of the new spellings were based on misconceptions. Middle English ‘iland’ was erroneously associated with Latin ‘insula’ and was written and printed as “island”. ‘Sissors’, French, and ‘siþe’, OE, were wrongly connected with Latin ‘scindere’ - ‘to cleave’ and spelt ‘scissors’ and ‘scythe’.

Many Greek words came through Latin. The names of the seven liberal arts of the medieval trivium and quadrivium had all been Greek derived words: grammar, logic, and rhetoric; arithmetic, geometry astronomy and music. There are such Greek words in English as theatre and amphitheatre; comedy and tragedy; catastrophe, climax, episode, scene, dialogue, prologue, epilogue; gnostics, agnostics, diagnosis, prognosis; acrobat, atom, crisis, encyclopedia, cycle, etc.

Some Latin abbreviation are used in English ‘L’, ‘s’, ‘d’ clippings of “librae”, “solidii”, “denarii”, mean “pounds”, “shillings”, and “pence”. “Pp.” (paginae) means “pages” “i.e.” (id est) is read “that is”; “e.g.” (exempli gratiam), “for example”; “viz” (videlicet) “namely, to wit”; “etc.”, stands for “et cetera” and is read “and so forth”.

The extent of the second layer of Latin borrowings is difficult to underestimate. Its characteristic feature is that it served to be the foundation of English scientific terminology, English scientific prose.

CHANGES IN THE SYSTEM OF NEW ENGLISH PHONEMES

1. The Great Vowel Shift.

2. Other changes of vowels.

3. New English consonantism.

1. Quantitative changes of Middle English vowels stimulated the most significant phenomenon of New English vocalism - the Great Vowel Shift. Its general trend was narrowing of all long vowels, the most narrow being diphthongized.

ai←J	J	J			H	H→au
	↑	↑			↑
	e:	e:	ei	ou	o
		↑	↑	↑
		ę:	R	ọ:

1. The dating of the G.V.S. There is no uniformity as to the dating of the G.V.S. H. Sweet and O. Jespersen maintained that it went on from 16th through 18th c.c., while H.C. Wyld considered the G.V.S. to take place much earlier, in 15-16th c.c. The diversity of views depends on the diversity of approaches, of the matter studied.

O. Jespersen used treatises of orthoepists who tried to render the ways of pronunciation by spelling and presented lists of homonyms, rhymes, puns - the humorous use of words that sounded alike so as to play on the various meanings.

H.C. Wyld analyzed collections of private letters. Scribes were slaves of tradition but private people had no tradition behind them. They were literate to the extent of knowing letters but as to the spelling tradition they were not under its influence. Of these collections were: e.g. Margaret Paston’s letters, correspondence of the Cely family, of Sir John Shillingford.

Still the question of dating remains open and students of English are free to follow one or the other concept.

2. A matter of dispute is why and with what vowels the G.V.S. began. The French scholar Andre Martinet explains it as follows: in OE the quantity of vowels was a distinctive feature, i.e. a pair of long and short vowels presented different phonemes. In Middle English lengthening and shortening of vowels took place, after which a long vowel and its corresponding short vowel turned into variants of one and the same phoneme. The two vowels that were not affected in Middle English were short /i/ and short /u/, therefore short /i/ and long /i:/, short /u/ and long /u:/remained different phonemes, which was contrary to the vocalic system in Middle English when length and shortness of vowels were not phonological but positional. This inconsistency brought forward a necessity to reinforce long /i:/ and long /u:/. The resulting diphthongization proved to be an incentive to the G.V.S.

A different explanation is presented by the Czech scholars B. Trnka and J.Vachek. Middle English vowels made correlating pairs of long and short variants:

i - e:		u - ọ:
e – ę:		o - ọ:
	a - a:

Only two of them, long /i:/ and long /u:/, were left single, therefore having no correlatives they became isolated and began moving from monophthongs to diphthongs.

Long /i:/ changed into /ai/; long close /e:/ changed into /i:/; long open /e:/ became close and changed into /i:/, etc. Thus the first phoneme leaves its former place empty and this fact drags the second phoneme into the place of the first, etc. so the whole process is “a drag-chain”.

3. The stages of the G.V.S. were as follows:

i: - ai		u: - au
ẹ: - i:		ọ: - u
: - ẹ: - i:		ọ: - ou
a: - ei

The changes were not spontaneous but gradual.

Table 17

ME	End of 15c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	NE spelling
i:	ii:	ei	xi	ai	time, mine, find, bite, like, high, sky, die, eye.
ẹ:	i:	i:	i:	i:	meet, see, heel, sleep, week, field, chief, me, be, deceive, receive.
:	e:	e:	i:	i:	meat, sea, heal, lead, weak, beat.
a:	x:	:	ẹ:	ei	take, make, stale, name, cake, blade, lake, table.
ọ:	o:	o:	ou	ou	road, toad, home, bone, stone, go.
ọ:	u:	u:	u:	u:	stool, spoon, food, moon, do.
u:	uu:	ou	qu	au	cow, how, down, out, house, ground.

In the 16th century - the former Middle English open [:] became close [ẹ:] and was spelt as ‘ea’ to differentiate it from the former Middle English [ẹ:] that changed into [i:] and was spelt as ‘ee’: meat - meet. In the late 17th century these two coincided and the difference in spelling lost its significance.

In the 16th century the former Middle English open [ọ:] became close and was spelt as ‘oa’ in some cases while the former Middle English [ọ:] changed into [u:] and was spelt as ‘oo’.

In a number of words Middle English open [ọ] developed through [ọ:] into [u:]: e.g. who, two. Occasionally [u:] subsequently developed through [u] into [A], e.g. one, struck.

Middle English [u:] did not diphthongize after ‘w’ and before labials. It is spelt as ‘o’, ‘oo’: e.g. room, loop, tomb, wound.

[i:] and [u:] did not diphthongize in NE loanwords while the spelling might or might not be brought in conformity with the established standard: e.g. esteem, canteen, police, machine, group, soup, rouge.

The Great Vowel Shift resulted in no new vowel but in eliminating Middle English long vowels and developing diphthongs. The distribution of long vowels became quite different.

4. When the long vowel was followed by the consonant ‘r’ there developed a neutral sound, a glide, between the vowel and ‘r’ and the resulting phoneme deviated from the general pattern. The ‘r’ consonant became vocalized. Vocalization began in 16th c. before consonants and in the final position and went on for several centuries though it was not absolute.

Table 18

ME	Standard shift	Before ‘r’	NE spelling
i:	ai mine	aiq (r)	fire, tire, expire.
ẹ:	i: sleep	iq (r)	beer, steer, here.
:	i: beat	Eq (r)	bear, wear, pear ear, rear, spear.
a:	ei make	Eq (r)	dare, mare, stare.
ọ:	ou road	oq (r) o: (r)	oar, more, boar.
ọ:	u: moon	oq (r) o: (r) uq (r)	floor, door poor, moor.
u:	au cow	auq (r)	flower, tower, power.

Consequently the new diphthongal phonemes [ie], [Eq], [uq] appeared. The triphthongs [aiq] and [auq] tend to diphthongize and monophthongize: e.g.

faiq(r)	– faq(r)	– fa:(r)	fire
flauq(r)	– flaq (r)	– fla:(r)	flower

2. a) The vocalization of ‘r’ preceded by short vowels resulted in a new phoneme.

i + r		bird, dirt, fir, first, sir.
e + r	gave [W]	berth, certain, her, deserve.
u + r		burn, curt, cur, fur, hurt.
o + r	gave [W] after ‘w’	work, word, worse.

The only exception is ‘sword’.

In some words

e: + r	gave [W]	learn, heard.
o + r	gave [o:]	port, lord, cord, report.
a + r	gave [a:]	bard, card, lard, part.

b) In 15th c. combination ‘er’ changed into ‘ar’: ferre - far, sterre - star, sterte - start, herte - heart, hervest - harvest. Sometimes the change is reflected in the spelling, though occasionally the pronunciation is changed but the spelling remains: clerk, sergeant, Derby.

The change is connected with social dialects. In Cockney they say: sarvant, cartainly, parfectly, etc though the change did not take place in these words. In the USA they pronounce 'clerk' and 'Derby' with [W] for 'er' did not change into 'ar'.

c) In the 15th c. [a] changed into [x]: hat, cat, that, mad, man. The change did not take place with ‘w’ preceding ‘a’. /w/ caused a labialised articulation of [a:] [wa - wo] e.g. want, water, wash, was, watch, quarter, quality. In the combination ‘wa’+ back consonant [a] normally changed into [x]: wag, whack, wax, quack.

d) In the 15th c. [a] before ‘l’ developed a labial glide and changed into the diphthong /au/ in such words as: all, ball, fall, talk [aul, baul, faul, taulk].

In the 16th c. the diphthong [au] changed into [o:], the spelling remained: e.g. author, cause, paw, all, walk.

(e). In 16th c. the vowel [a:] developed from [x]

1. before ‘th’, e.g. bath, lather, father, path. In the USA it is [x] in all words but ‘father’;

2. before ‘ss’, ‘st’, ‘sk’, ‘sp’, e.g. brass, class, glass, pass; cast, fast, blaster, past; ask, bask, basket, task; clasp, gasp, grasp, rasp.

Exceptions: lass, mass, passage, passenger, classic; elastic, mastiff, plastic, pilaster.

NOTE: it is [x] in the USA.

3. before ‘lm’, ‘lf’, ‘lv’, e.g. balm, calm, psalm; calf, half, to calve, to half.

4. before ‘m’ + consonant, ‘n’ + consonant, e.g. example, chance, advance, plant. But [x] in grand, scanty, pants, etc.

f) In the 17th c. [u] changed into [A], e.g. but, cut, hut, stump, come, dove, love, son. In some word [o: → u: → u →A], e.g. brother, mother, month, done; blood, flood.

Short [u] remained after labials, e.g. bull, bush, butcher,; pudding, pull, pulpit, put; full, wolf, but bulb, pulse, pulp. [A] was a new phoneme in English.

g) In the 15th c. the unstressed [q] disappeared in the final position but remained before dentals, sibilants and affricates where it developed into [I]. E.g. make, take, tables, loves, lived, stopped, walked: but passes, houses, washes, watches, badges, granted, flooded.

Generally the unstressed vowels in Modern English weaken into [q] and [I]: e.g. counter, about, formal, Northward; [I] actress, baggage, illness, fountain. Nevertheless there are cases when an unstressed vowel is not leveled: e.g. [x] doormat, syntax; [e] goose-step, doorbell; [ou] fellow, window, etc.

h). In the end of the 15th century the diphthongs [ai] and [ei] coincided as [xi] which later became more close [ei], and in its turn coincided with [eI] from [a:]. Consequently there appeared pairs of homophones: e.g. bate - bait; may - May; bale - bail; sale - sail, etc.

Many French loanwords contained the phoneme [ü] rendered as ‘eu’, ‘ew’, [ü] changed through [iu] into [ju:], e.g. dew, pure; [j] got lost after ‘r’ and ‘l’, e.g. rude, flew. After the initial ‘l’ both [ju:] and [u:] are possible, e.g. luminous [lju:minqs] and [lu:minqs].

i) Middle English long /e:/ shortened before front consonants, [d] and [T] thus falling out of the general trend of the G.V.S.: e.g. bread dead, death, head, breath, get, threat. The same refers to the words 'deaf' and ‘friend’.

Occasionally the shortening did not take place: e.g. lead, read, heath, beneath, etc.

3. a) The consonant [x] ‘gh’ disappeared before ‘t’ lengthening the preceding vowel: e.g. bright, light, night, bought, fought, thought, etc.

In the final position [x] changed into [f]: e.g. cough, enough, laugh, draughts; but in bough, dough though, through [x] disappeared. H.C. Wyld argued that [x] had already got lost in Middle English.

b) The [l] consonant dropped before ‘m ‘f’, ‘v’ and ‘k’: e.g. calf - calves, balm, palm, talk, walk. In Latin loanwords [l] remained before ‘v’: e.g. evolve, solve. [l] dropped before ‘d’ in ‘should’ and ‘would’. ‘Could’ began to be spelt with ‘l’ by analogy. Analogy accounts for ‘l’ in ‘fault’, L. falta, falcon, L. falco, etc.

c) The combination [mb] assimilated into [m]: e.g. lamb, climb, dumb, plumb. Analogy accounts for mute‘b’ introduced in the spelling of ‘limb’, ‘numb’, ‘thumb’ where this letter had never been.

The combination [mn] assimilated into [m]: e.g. autumn, column, condemn, damn.

The combination [ln] assimilated into [l] in the word ‘miln’ - ‘mill’.

The combination [stl], [stn], [ftn], [stm], [ktl] assimilated into [sl], [sn], [fn], [sm], [kl] respectively. E.g. castle, whistle; fasten, listen; often, soften; Christmas, postman; directly, exactly.

The combinations [dnz], [nds], [ndm], etc. lost the [d] phoneme: e.g. Wednesday, handsome, grandmother, handkerchief, landscape.

d) The phoneme [w] appeared in the words ‘one’ and ‘once’ [w] dropped before a consonant in the unstressed syllable: e.g. answer, liquor, Chiswick, Greenwich, conqueror, but conquest, language. It also dropped in the words ‘who’, ‘whom’, ‘whose’, ‘sword’, ‘two’.

e) Certain consonants voiced in NE. [s] - [z], e.g. dessert, resemble, possess, observe. [ks] – [gz], e.g. exhibit but exhibition, anxiety but anxious, luxurious but luxury. [C] – [G], e.g. Greenwich, knowledge, partridge, cf. Middle English knowleche, partriche. [f] – [v] the only example is ‘of’, cf. ‘off’.

The consonant [D] voiced in 15th c. in the words ‘that’, ‘than’, ‘there’, ‘the’, ‘though’, etc.

f) A very significant phenomenon was assibilation and affrication of [s], [z], [t], [d] followed by [j] if they stood after a stressed syllable, or did not precede a stressed syllable, [sj] – [S], e.g. pension, commission; ancient, social, ocean, conscience; nation, partial, militia, initiative (the spelling ‘ti’ was influenced by the Latin pattern); anxious, luxury. [zj] – [S], e.g. decision, pleasure, azure, usual. [tj] – [C], e.g. question, nature, nature, fortune, century. [dj] - [Z], e.g. soldier, verdure. In American English it is often [G] in ‘educate’ [eGukeit]; ‘How do you do’ [hau Ge du:].

Assibilation and affrication were not spontaneous but gradual. E.g. nature, [tiu] – [tju] – [Cq].

The phoneme [Z] was new in English but it fitted one opposition [S] – [Z]. Whenever there is a clear system of opposition and remains a vacant place there are favorable conditions for a new phoneme. [S], [C] and [G] had already existed in Middle English. Assibilation did not take place if the accompanying vowel was stressed: e.g. assume, suit, presume, tune, duty. The only exception is ‘sugar’. In these words the phoneme [j] remains, though it is not regular in American pronunciation.

[i] disappeared after [r]: e.g. bruise, crew, crude, fruit, rule.

g) [k] and [g] dropped before [n] in the initial position: e.g. knave, knight, knee, know (but acknowledge); gnat, gnarled, gnaw, gnome, gnosis (but diagnosis). [w] dropped before [r]: e.g. wretch, wring, write, wrong.

Middle English [hw] rendered as 'wh' changed into [w]: e.g. which, why, when, whether, though in American English [hw] is quite common. [h] dropped in medial position in some words: e.g. forehead, shepherd and place names: e.g. Durham, Boreham.

h) The phoneme [d] next to [r] changed into [D] in some words: e.g. father, mother, gather, whether, hither, whither, author.

The phoneme [t] appeared in the end of some notional and formal words: e.g. peasant, pleasant, tyrant; amongst, against, amidst, whilst.

It is little doubt that the initial ‘p’ before ‘s’, ‘n’, ‘t’ has never been pronounced: e.g. Psalter, pneumonia, Ptolemy; though there is a tendency to pronounce ‘Psyche’, ‘psychology’, ‘pseudonym’ with [p].

ALTERATIONS IN NEW ENGLISH GRAMMAR

1. The nominal parts of speech.

2. Strong and weak verbs in NE.

3. Auxiliaries and modal verbs.

4. Complex formations.

1. In NE parts of speech underwent modifications which have made them what they are now.

1. The Noun. The group of nouns that did not change in the plural was limited for many of them had followed the general rule: e.g. year, horse, month. Such nouns as e.g. deer, fish, swine, remained unchangeable.

The group of root declension nouns constituted of the same words it does in Modern English: e.g. foot - feet, goose - geese, mouse - mice, etc.

The plural ending - ‘en’ was ousted by the standard ‘-s’ in literary English: e.g. eyen, shoen - eyes, shoes. Exceptions: brethren, children, oxen.

The ‘s’ ending of the plural began to be pronounced in various arrangement due to phonetic rules of New English.

The genitive case was being ousted by the combination “of + noun” though it still existed and was expressed by the ending - ‘s’. In 17 c. it was mistaken for a contracted for of the possessive pronoun ‘his’, and the apostrophe was introduced. Cf. Othello: ‘Gainst the count his galleys I did some service (the count’s galleys).

The apostrophe in the plural was used much later. The so-called group - genitives were used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries (the apostrophe is linked to a group of words): e.g. the Duke of Gloucester’s daughter; the Queen of England’s throne speech.

2. The Pronoun. New English pronouns but slightly differed from those of Middle English. The pronoun of the second person form ‘thou’ was addressed to people who were younger or of lower social standing. In the 17th c. some political events decided the fate of ‘thou’. The Puritans were a leading power of the Revolution. They considered it immoral to address any human person as ‘you’, but when the Restoration came, the use of ‘thou’ was cancelled as the Puritans were denounced. ‘Thou’ disappeared in towns and altogether in polite speech under the influence of French. It still remains in dialects and prayers.

The objective case ‘you’ began to appear instead of the nominative case ‘ye’. This trend exists in Modern English: It’s me (him), (her, them), though it has been considered ungrammatical.

The possessive neuter ‘its’ ousted ‘his’ and it began to be used in the masculine only since 17th c.

New compound indefinite and negative pronouns appeared: e.g. somebody, anybody, nobody, which could be used in the possessive case with the apostrophe‘s’: e.g. somebody’s. Other compound pronouns were unchangeable: e.g. something, anything, nothing. The definite pronoun ‘that ilke’ came out of use; in Modern English it is used in the set combination ‘of that ilk’. The relative pronoun ‘which’ was limited to inanimate things, while ‘who’ alone could now refer to persons. The article ‘the’ was no longer used before relatives (the which, the who). The indefinite pronoun ‘other’ achieved a plural form like one: e.g. others, ones. Shakespeare used ‘other’ in the plural both with or without ‘s’.

3. The Adjective. The ending ‘-e’ of the Plural was lost in NE, and the adjective became changeable only by the degrees of comparison. The mutated forms, e.g. ‘lenger’, ‘lengest’, were ousted by the analogous forms, e.g. ‘longer’, ‘longest’, but ‘elder’ and ‘eldest’ remained along with ‘older’ and ‘oldest’, their meaning having differentiated. Analytical degrees of comparison with ‘more’ and ‘most’ were typical for polysyllabic and some bi-syllabic words. Shakespeare and his contemporaries widely used combinations of the type: more braver, more richer; the most heaviest, the most unkindest. Cf. Russ. Более лучший, самый лучший.

This usage was eliminated in 17, 18th cc. Logic was invoked to fortify the regulations forbidding double comparatives and superlatives as well as double negatives. Just as the addition of two negatives gives a positive value in algebra, so, two negatives were said to cancel each other in speech. Double negation is still a mark of ungrammatical usage in Modern English.

2. a) The Verb. The first person singular present form lost its ending - ‘e’. the - ‘th’ ending in the third person singular present was replaced by the Northern - ‘s’. Shakespeare used - ‘s’ or - ‘th’ indiscriminately, the former being much more frequent. E.g.

Io, here is the gentle lerk, weary of rest,

From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,

And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast

The sun ariseth in his majesty. /Venus and Adonis, 1593/

The ending ‘st’ of the second person singular was connected with the pronoun ‘thou’.

E.g. If thou couldst answer...

This were to be new made when thou art old,

And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

/Shakespeare, Sonnet 2/

In the 17, 18th cc. forms in - ‘th’ and ‘st’ were lost except for Biblical style, e.g. as that used by the Quakers. Therefore ‘(e)s’ for the third person singular of the present tense became the only suffix in the entire verbal system to indicate person and number.

b) The most important change in the system of strong verbs was merging of the two Middle English forms of the preterite into one. Modern English preterite comes from the second or third basic form.

Table 19

		Present	Preterite	Participle II
Class 1	ME	drīven drive ride bite abide shine	drōv - driven drove rode bit abode shone	driven driven ridden bitten abode shone
Class 2	ME	chesen choose freeze	ches - chosen chose froze	chosen chosen frozen
Class 3 with lengthened vowels.	ME	binden bind find	bond - bounden bound found	bounden bound found
with short vowels		singen sing spring sling win	sang - sungen sang sprang slung won	sungen sung sprung slung won
Class 4	ME	beren bear tear	bar - beren bore tore	boren born torn
			(Influenced by Participle II)
Class 5	ME	eten eat see get	at - eten ate saw got	eten eaten seen got
			as in (class 4)
		sit	sat	sat
				(Influenced by preterite singular)
Class 6	ME	shaken shake take draw stand	shok - shoken shook took drew stood	shaken shaken taken drawn stood
Class 7	ME	fallen fall blow know hold	fell - fellen fell blew knew held	fallen fallen blown known held
				(Influenced by preterite singular)

During the 18th century there was a tendency to limit the basic forms of the strong verbs to two instead of three, e.g. has wove (woven), has rose (risen), be wrote (written), have stole (stolen). But this tendency was checked by prescriptive grammarians, so that most strong verbs have three different forms today.

Strong verbs continued to shift into the weak system; e.g. Class 1, glide, grip, writhe; Class 2, chew, fleet, lie, suck; Class 3, climb, help, swallow , melt, milk, starve; Class 5, weigh, knead, fret; Class 6, bake, gnaw, laugh, shape, shave, wake; Class 7, leap, sleep, weep, walk, fold, flow. As Charles Fries maintains there remain only 66 of those originally strong verbs in Modern English.

The reverse process was very scarce, very few Middle English weak verbs became strong; e.g. ‘hide - hid - hidden’ entered Class 1; ‘dig - dug - dug’ and ‘stick - stuck - stuck’ entered Class 3; ‘wear - wore- worn’ entered Class 4. Some verbs could have weak forms along with strong forms; e.g. wake - waked - waked and wake - woke - woken; shave - participle II shaved and shaven (clean - shaven).

Weak verbs lost their division into classes because of the reduction of unstressed ‘-e-’ in the suffix ‘ed’. Irregular weak verbs kept their internal vowel changes: e.g. tell - told - told; think - thought - thought, etc.

Phonetic development resulted in the appearance of a number of unchangeable verbs that originally had had the final root consonant ‘t’ or ‘d’: e.g. from Middle English weak verbs ‘cut - cut - cut’, ‘hurt - hurt - hurt’, ‘put - put - put’; from Middle English strong verbs ‘burst - burst - burst’, ‘let - let - let’; from Scandinavian ‘cast - cast - cast’, ‘hit - hit - hit’; from French ‘cost- cost - cost - cost’.

3. Treatment of auxiliaries was standardized. The usage of ‘shall’ and ‘will’ was subjected to rules. It was stated in a Latin grammar of the English language (1653) that ‘shall’ in the first person has the meaning of someone simply foretelling, and ‘will’, of someone promising or threatening. But in actual usage the preference for 'will' was as high as 90%, as compared with 10% for ‘shall’ about 1680. The shift to the latter form is attributed to the teaching of schoolmasters.

The auxiliary ‘do’ was generally established in the conversional pattern of usage. In affirmative sentences it either did or did not express emphasis:

e.g. The thirst that from the soul doth rise

Doth ask a drink divine; /Ben Jonson, 1616/

....he did ordained the interdicts and prohibitions. /Francis Bacon, 1624/.

‘Do’ was used to introduce questions and negative statements, to substitute for the notional verb. In the late 17th century, however and even somewhat later, the use of ‘do’ as an auxiliary for question and negation was still not universal:

e.g. Whence came you?

How got you into the way?

What meaneth this? /John Bunyan/.

All of which Dee accepted not. /John Aubrey/.

I say not; if I lose not. /John Dryden/.

In 18th c. this usage became archaic.

Of the forms of the auxiliary ‘be’ Northern present plural ‘are’ replaced ‘be(n)’. occasionally the forms ‘wert’ and ‘wast’ were used where ‘t’ was added by analogy to ‘art’, ‘shalt’, ‘wilt’ to express the second person singular in the past; e.g. thou wert born a fool; I think thou never wast where grace was said. /Shakespeare/.

The auxiliary ‘be’ was often used in perfect constructions instead of ‘have’ with intransitive verbs of motion; e.g. were gone, were departed, were come. By the 19th c. ‘to have’ had become the universally used auxiliary for the perfect.

Preterite - present or modal verbs underwent due phonetic changes and continued to constitute a special group. The verb ‘owe’ became regular ‘owed - owed’; it was used in the meaning to ‘possess’, ‘to be indebted'. Its Middle English participle I became the adjective ‘own’. Its preterite form ‘ought’ began to be used in the present. The same happened to the verb ‘must’, Middle English moste. As compared to ‘can - could’, ‘may - might’, ‘ought’ and ‘must’ have no past form in Modern English because they are fundamentally past. In the history of these verbs the change from the past to the present took place twice. (See OE preterite - present verbs). The verbs ‘deh - dowen’, ‘an - unnen’, ‘tharf - thurfen’ were no longer used in NE. The verb ‘dare’, along with this unchangeable present form, began to be used as a regular verb, e.g. dares, dared, daring. The verb ‘shall - should’ was to be used both as a modal and auxiliary verb.

4. In the late 18th century passive continuous forms were introduced. The nearest approach to them had been a verbal noun preceded by the preposition ‘on’ in its weakened form ‘a’ - : e.g. the house is a- building. Here is an indication that the subject undergoes a progressive action. Before 1800 the passive continuous began to appear in expressions such as: the book is being written; the treaty was being discussed. The construction is avoided in the future and in all perfect tenses.

The subjunctive mood lost ground steadily. the only forms that remained of old were Subjunctive I ‘be’ and Subjunctive II ‘were’ as well as absence of the - ‘s’ ending in the 3-rd person singular present. They persisted longest in conditional clauses: e.g. if any judgment be made; if anything were wanted; if confidence presage a victory. Analytical subjunctive evolved with the mood auxiliaries ‘should’, ‘may’ and forms analogous to those of the past indicative.

In ENE the past perfect richly developed. A very important reason for it was the evolving and differentiated usage of complex sentences directly connected with the development of scientific language. The main sphere of the past perfect was extremely long sentences, hard to disentangle.

Conjunctive combinations like, e.g. the which that; whensoever that; for because that; etc., were simplified to single words that became the standard forms.

Dryden and his contemporaries frequently introduced a dependent relative clause with ‘and who’ or ‘and which’, though it was not parallel with any preceding clause, e.g. “Great masters of our language, and who saw much farther... than those who immediately followed them.” /Dryden, The Tables/.

Such non-parallel relative constructions could be observed as late as 18th c., but they are avoided today.

In general, 17, 18th c.c. was the time when regularity and standard were cultivated in pronunciation, grammar and choice of words. Double negatives, comparatives and superlatives were eliminated from general usage. An editor of Shakespeare in the early 18th century used to correct instances of abnormal cases, disagreements between the subject and the predicate. Thus Hamlet’s question “Between who?” was corrected to “Between whom?” “Here is more of us” was corrected to “Here are more of us”. That was the epoch of neo-classicism, and its style combined clear and disciplined order with ease and flexibility of expression signifying that important stage in the evolution of the English language that has led it to its modern standards.

REGIONAL VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

1. Variants and dialects of English.

1. The expansion of the English language.

2. The linguistic situation in Scotland.

3. The dialects of English.

4. English in Ireland.

5. English in Canada and Australia.

2. American English.

Distinctive features of

1. pronunciation,

2. spelling,

3. grammar,

4. vocabulary.

1. The expansion of the English language beyond its boundaries into many parts of the world continued from the age of discovery and exploration (the 16th and 17th centuries) into 18 and 19th c.c. In 1620 a group of English puritans reached the New World on board the “Mayflower” and founded the first American colony. They were followed by settlers of various social strata, who drove the native Indians off their land and compelled them to move westwards. The Indians were reduced to a number of scattered communities living in reservations while the territory of the present-day United States was being occupied by the English. After the war of 1756 - 1763 French Canada became a British colony, English being spoken in vast lands of North America. In the middle of 18th c. the conquest of India began; in the late 18th century English settlers appeared in Australia; in the early 19th century the English language penetrated into South Africa. The 19th century witnessed an incomparable and practically unimpeded expansion of British rule over India, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. In the pre-industrial era lands were simply annexed as colonies, seized from natives living on a less advanced level of social and economic development. Britain sent governors, administration, military forces to control new lands while the native peoples were subject to the colonizers’ linguistic and general cultural influence.

On the British Isles the English language virtually ousted Celtic tongues: Cornish in Cornwall, Walsh in Wales, and Gaelic in Scotland though the tendency to revive them has been very intense since the late 19th century.

2. Scotland was an independent state at the time when the English language was evolving. Its own national language, literary Scots, developed from the OE Northern dialect. The first literary records in Scots were “Bruce”, a poem by John Barbour in the late 14th century, and “The Kinges Quhair”, a book of verses by James 1 in the early 15^th century. In more recent time Robert Burns (1759 - 1796) employed literary Scots. Today Standard English is officially used and taught in Scotland while many people speak various forms of the native Lowland tongue, Lallans, the descendant of medieval Scots. In the Highlands the Gaelic language is spoken. Modern Scots is very close to the Northern dialect. OE u has remained unchangeable and is written ‘oo’, e.g. oot ‘out’, aboot ‘about’, OE o has been rounded and sounds like [ü], e.g. puir ‘poor’, stude ‘stood’. Such words as ‘mother’, ‘honey’ are pronounced as ‘mither’ and ‘hinney’. Long [i:] does not diphthongize before ‘nd’, e.g blind, find, behind. The suffix - ‘ed’ is devoiced, e.g. theekit ‘thatched’, restit ‘rested’. The phoneme [x] rendered as ‘ch’ is preserved, e.g. micht ‘might’, tocht ‘thought’. The phoneme [r] is strongly trilled and kept in all positions. In general, Modern Scots seems rather conservative and possesses a great number of archaic features and forms as compared to Modern English.

3. Unlike Scots the dialects of England proper have never been a medium of literary prose since Middle English. When a standard national language is established dialects become more and more restricted to rural areas. Today there are Northern dialects, descendants of the ME Northern dialect; West Midland, Midland and East Midland, from ME Midland; Southern dialects from ME Southern. Each of these has its distinctive features of pronunciation and vocabulary. Thus the Northern dialects are in many respects similar to Scots: e.g. there is the same tendency to drop final consonants in monosyllabic words: wi’ for with, i’ for in, gie’ for give, stoo’ for stool. [l] vocalized after [o:]and a diphthong has developed: owd for old, cowd for cold, [s] is often pronounced instead of [S], the phoneme [r] is very strong. The present participle ending is ‘-in’ instead of ‘-ing’. The pronoun ‘thou’ or ‘thoo’ is kept.

In Southeast, the dialect which has attracted much attention in literature is that aspect of London speech known as Cockney. According to H.C. Wyld this dialect exists on two levels: as spoken by educated lower classes it is marked by some deviations in pronunciation but few in vocabulary or syntax; as spoken by the uneducated it noticeably deviates in pronunciation as well as in morphology and in the use of a special slang as part of its vocabulary. Thus, there is the interchange of labial and labio-dental consonants: werry for very, vell for well. [h] is dropped in head, have; but pronounced in art, apple. The diphthong [eI] is pronounced as [aI] in face, make. The ‘-s’ ending is freely extended to other persons: e.g. I asks. G.B. Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” presents remarkable illustrations of Cockney.

A detailed treatment of dialects is given in Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary, with its associated English Dialect Grammar.

4. In the neighboring Island of Ireland the English Language has had a special history. The original Celtic speech survived here long after the triumph of Anglo-Saxon in England. In the early 17th century Ireland was reduced to the status of an English colony, being politically and economically oppressed. The language of state, school and church was English, the native Irish or Gaelic language was an outlaw. Thus in Ireland the struggle for independence combined with the struggle for preservation of their national language and culture. In late 19th c. and early 20th cc. the cultural and political movement was fortified by organized labor. Their joint efforts led to the rebellion of 1916 and the complete independence of Eire (as it is officially called) in 1922. Ulster in the North remained British because its population had been modified by numerous immigrations from Scotland, its predominant religion being protestant in contrast with the Catholic South. Though the Irish language has been gaining strength, still many Irishmen keep speaking English.

5. The English language in Canada and Australia had some distinctive features of pronunciation. E.g. in Canada the first element of the diphthongs [xI] and [xu] tends to shift to [EI] and [Eu] as in ‘light’, ‘down’. A neutral vowel develops in the interconsonant position before [l], [m], [n] as in [relqm] realm, [rJzqn] reason. [r] is always pronounced. In Australia [aI] is pronounced instead of [eI] in ‘make’ ‘face’. Long [i:] and [u:] tend to diphthongize, e.g. [hijl] heel, [lqup] loop. The vocabulary reflects local notions and objects of reality, e.g. kangaroo, boomerang, duck - mole, dingo, stock (cattle), station (farm), etc. in Australia. Canadian English is extensively influenced by American English (see below).

A curious mutation of the English language has evolved as a means of communication between natives and English-speaking traders in the Far East, the islands of the Pacific and elsewhere. This is Pidgin English (‘pidgin’ being a corruption of the word ‘business’). It is believed to have resulted from the putting together of uninflected English words as they would appear in the sequence of a native sentence structure. Instances of other mutations of the English language are Beach-la Mar in the Western Pacific, Croo English in West Africa. All these are a system of garbled speech with ultimately simplified grammar and vocabulary.

2. The English language in North America has been going its particular way since 17th c. The expansion of English colonists southwards along the Eastern coast and westwards through the Allegheny Mountains to the Pacific brought them into contact with other European languages: Dutch in New York and German in Pennsylvania; French along Mississippi valley in Canada and Louisiana; Spanish in Florida, California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. The cultural and linguistic contacts between the European settlers and the Indians were negligible.

In 18th c. emigrants from Scotland and Ireland came in plenty. About 1750 Benjamin Franklin estimated that one-third of the population of Pennsylvania was English, one-third - Scotch, and one - third German.

The influx of emigrants from Western, Central and Eastern Europe never stopped in 19th and early 20th c.c. There is not a single European country that has not added its people to the human conglomeration of the United States.

After the thirteen original colonies obtained their independence of Great Britain in 1776 there appeared a tendency to show that English in the United States was something special. The recognized spokesman for American as contrasted with British English was Noah Webster (1758 - 1843). While admitting the basic identity of the language spoken in the two countries, he maintained that differences in vocabulary and pronunciation should be treated as standards of speech. His most important work was an American Dictionary of the English language (1828). The outright tendency to exaggerate these differences found its champion in H. L. Mencken (The American Language, 1919) who did much to propagate the idea of the American language as distinctly new and different from the English language. Mencken and his apologists neglected the fact that the divergences were too insufficient to make American English a new language. Ukrainian and Russian scholars treat American English as the American variant of the English language.

1. Specific features of American English are generally considered in various aspects: pronunciation and spelling, grammar and vocabulary. The American pronunciation is not uniform. It is customary to divide the USA into three main areas: Northeast or Eastern (all of new England and the New York area along the Hudson River); Southern (the old slave territory extending on the East of the Mississippi River from Virginia and Kentucky southwards, and on the West of it, into Louisiana and parts of Texas, Arkansas and Missouri); and finally what has been called General American, including the Middle Atlantic area of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, and all the Middle and Far West. The Eastern dialect has remained closest to Standard English.

Table 20

Standard English		Eastern	Southern	General
a:	class, fast, path, dance	x:	x	x
o	pot, hot, frog, cop	o	a	a
ju:	duty, tune, student, new	u:	ju:	u:/ju:
‘r’ omitted before consonants and in final position. turn, fir, farm, port				‘r’ preserved

Of other features there is a tendency to pronounce [hw] in ‘white, ‘when’, ‘why’ etc.; [wa] is pronounced in ‘water’, ‘watch’; [t] is often omitted in ‘twenty’; intervocalic voiceless consonants [p], [t], [k] are often voiced after stressed vowels so as to become half-voiced [b], [d], [g]: e.g. capital, city, second, etc. Nasalization of vowels, the so-called nasal twang, is also characteristic of General American speech, especially in the Western areas. The American intonation seems monotonous as compared to British. It begins on a lower level and remains close to that level. The American stress differs from British particularly in polysyllabic words.

British		American
`temporary		`tempo`rary
`literary		`lite`rary
`restaurant		`restau`rant

2. There are certain specific traits of the American orthography:

British	American
-our	-or
colour, honour, labour	color, honor, labor
-ce	-se
defence, offence, practice	defense, offense, practise
-ll-	-l-
councillor, jewellery	councilor, jewelry
marvellous	marvelous
travelled	traveled
woollen	woolen
(but pro'peller, an'nulled)
-l	-ll
enrol, enthral, fulfil,	enroll, enthrall, fulfill,
instil, skilful, wilful	instill, skillful, willful.
en-	in-
enfold, encase	infold, incase
catalogue	catalog
cheque	check
gramme	gram
programme	program
through	thro
though	tho
-ae-	-e-
encyclopaedia	encyclopedia
aesthete	esthete
-re	-er
theatre, centre, metre	theater, center, meter

3. Americanisms in grammar are not very numerous. Participle II ‘gotten’ is used instead of ‘got’, e.g. They had gotten together. ‘Proven’ is occasionally used instead of ‘prove’, e.g. He has proven to be a great help.

Subjunctive I is used instead of ‘should’, e.g. The mate insisted that he not be in on the discussion; I suggest that he go. ‘Will’ is universally used to form the future, e.g. I will see him; we will not be a part of this.

In colloquial speech ‘have’ is generally omitted in perfect forms: e.g. I been doing; he taken; you seen Barney?

The infinitive is used without ‘to’ after ‘help’: e.g. That was what helped bring him to his sad end.

‘Go’ + Infinitive without ‘to’ corresponds to the English ‘go and do something’, e.g. Shouldn't we go have a glass of champagne?

Prepositions are occasionally omitted in colloquial speech: e.g. He jumped the ship; I climbed the roof.

4. Differences in American vocabulary are most significant and obvious. Lexical Americanisms may be classified as either having or not having equivalents in Standard English.

1) Non-equivalent Americanisms are words and word-combinations denoting notions and objects of reality which do not exist in Britain: they refer to the sphere of politics and administration, everyday life, sports, American flora and fauna, etc., e.g. gerrymander - to divide a voting area so as to give unfair advantage to one political party; caucus - meeting of a party to decide choice of policy; selectman - one of the board of governing officers in New England towns; drug-store - a store selling medical supplies and various other commodities; ranch - a large farm for raising cattle, horses or sheep; drive-in - a place where people can be served food, see a motion picture, etc. while seated in their cars; barbecue - a hog roasted whole over an open fire, an entertainment at which such meat is served; rodeo - a public exhibition of the skills of cowboys, as horsemanship, lassoing, etc; pitcher - a player who pitches the ball to the batteries in baseball; huddle - in football, a grouping of a team to get signals before a play; alfalfa - a plant of the pea family used for fodder, pasture, and as a cover crop; coyote - a small wolf of the prairies of North America; prairie - a large area of level or rolling grassy land without trees.

Many Americanisms have equivalents in Standard English, e.g.

Standard English	American English	Standard English	American English
biscuit	cracker	smoking	tuxedo
to book	to reserve, to order	postbox	mailbox
braces	suspenders	public-house, pub	saloon
goods wagon	freight car	sweets	candy
ironmongery	hardware	barman	bartender
newcomer	tenderfoot	pavement	sidewalk
lorry	truck

Some words have undergone semantic changes and obtained new meanings in American English, e.g. fall - autumn, corn - maize, break - a change, tube - a value, butcher - a peddler in trains, pants - trousers.

A great number of loanwords have come into English in America, e.g. Spanish: savvy - understand, chili - red pepper, chinch - a small bug that damages grain plants, maize, ranch, peccadillo - a minor or petty sin. Indian: chipmunk - a squirrel, pemmican - a concentrated dry food; pecan - an edible nut, squaw - a women, moccasin - a heelless slipper, succotash - a dish of beans and corn kernels. There are some translation - loans from Indian, e.g. to bury the hatchet - to make peace; to put on war paint, to go on the war-path; to scalp, to be after one’s scalp - to attack vengefully.

Certain word-building means are characteristic of American English, e.g. so-called block compounds: ‘pupil activities’, ‘child guidance’, ‘sex appeal’; a free use of converted nouns and verbs: ‘check-off’, ‘feed-back’, ‘show-down’, ‘walk-up’, ‘brush-off’, ‘set-back’, ‘to chair’, ‘to author’, ‘to vacation’, ‘to radio’, ‘to pressure’; portmanteau words: ‘catalo’, ‘shamateur’, ‘slanguage’, ‘yellocution’.

No matter how important all these distinctions of American English may seem they do not break the basic identity of the English language in the USA and Britain, and give no ground to estimate it as any other than the American variant of the English language.