Variation and Change in Late Modern

English: the last lecture

Anni Sairio30 April, 2020

ZoomUniversity of Helsinki

https://laterbloomer.com/mary-granville-delany/

Topics today

• Your selected words• Dahat, Lotta, Sami, Markus, Leo and

Asma• Overview of LModE

• https://blog.britishmuseum.org/late-bloomer-the-exquisite-craft-of-mary-delany/

• Aged 72, Mary Delany started creating flower collages (“flower mosaicks”) out of paper, paint and flower parts

CORDIAL

Dahat Dara

Variation and Change in Late Modern English

April 30, 2020

OVERVIEW

• Several different meanings dating back to the 1400s > origin in heart (Lat. cor, cord; medieval Lat. cordiālis)

• Biology, medicine, liquor > A medicine, food, or beverage which invigorates the heart and stimulates the circulation; a comforting or exhilarating drink. Commerce. Aromatized and sweetened spirit, used as a beverage (OED)

• My previous understanding of cordial: close in meaning to polite?

• 1. Hearty; coming from the heart, heartfelt; sincere, genuine, warm; warm and hearty in a course of action or in behalf of a cause.

• > From Elegies (W. Shenstone, c. 1750): "Soon may thy breast the cordial wish resume."

• 2. Warm and friendly in manner.

• > From Joan of Arc (R. Southey, 1796): "By the gentle Queen With cordial affability received."

CORDIALS OF TODAY

LOTTA’S FINALASSIGNMENT

sugar

SUGAR- From Christian Barclay’s lemon cake recipe.

- Spelled sugger and shuger

- Old French çucre (12–14th cent.), çuquere, zuchre, sukere, north-eastern chucre , modern French sucre (from 13th cent.)

- = Provençal sucre , Italian zucchero- < (probably through Old High German) medieval

Latin zuccarum , succarum- < Arabic sukkar (with prefixed article assukkar , whence

Spanish azucar , Portuguese assucar )

- Introduced to the English language c. 1299 (zuker)- Spelling in C18: shugar, shuger, sugger, sugar…

Effervescence■ Latin

effervescens, -tispresent participle of effervesco'I begin to boil over', 'I begin to seethe’

■ Bonus analysis of Latin:e- ‘out of’ferveo ‘I am hot’-esco (inchoative affix)-ns (present participle)

■ Original meaning in Latin 'to begin to boil up', 'to begin to seethe’. Coined in C17. Now obsolete.

– ‘The effervescence of the Fever must be permitted.’ Bonet T. (1684) A Guide to the Practical Physician

■ Semantic shift during 18th century to mean the release of gas from liquid (as if boiling).

– [}A SALINE JULAP. }]Take two drams of Salt of Wormwood; three ounces fresh lemon juice, strained; when the effervescence is over, add four ounces of simple Cinnamon Water, and simple syrup or sugar about half an ounce; mix together, and take three or four table spoons full every three or four hours.

William Randall, 1795 - Medical Observations

■ Also became to mean something that is lively, vivacious.– The first effervescence of boyish passions.’

Macaulay T.B. (1849) History of England

■ Today: 'to fizz', 'to bubble'– Effervescence still in scientific discourse

sam

i

■ Age of Enlightenment – Truths about the world, religion and politics can be discovered by

human reasoning -> resulted in e.g. the American revolution– Scientific method evolved.

■ Rise of institutions, e.g. Royal Society– More widespread education, literacy rates rising

■ New concepts that had no words in English. ■ Borrowed or constructed from Latin and Greek

– Carl Linnaeus’ binomial nomenclature, e.g. rosmarinus officinalis ‘rosemary’.

■ word formation (classical compound)– 'biology', from Greek βίος 'life, way of living', -λογία 'branch of study'– 'molecule', new Latin from moles 'mass’, -cula (diminutive suffix)

honour / honor (n)”Great respect, esteem, or reverence received, gained, or enjoyed by a person or thing; glory, renown, fame; reputation, good name.” –OED

Partly a borrowing from French, partly from Latin; honore & honor.

Etymology: < (i) Anglo-Norman honore, honoure, honure, honneure, oner, Anglo-Norman and Old French honor, honur, onur, onour, Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French honour, Anglo-Norman and Middle French honneur, honeur, onneur, honnour (French honneur) mark of esteem (10th cent.), office, responsibility (10th cent.), esteem, respect, repute, renown (11th cent.), domain, feudal possession (c1100), dignity, dignified conduct (especially of a woman) (12th cent.),

A1200: onur | c1325: onour | c1475: onnere |

a1616 (Shakespeare): Honor |

1765 W. Blackstone Comm. Laws Eng. I. xviii. 467 The honour of originally inventing these political constitutions entirely belongs to theRomans.

Markus

I came across this word in Sairio’s article about Emin Joseph Emin’s letters. He used a couple of variations of the noun as well as derivations to adjectives and verbs. I chose the word because of its different variations, its French /Latin origin and its concept’s importance as a virtue in societies.

”Soul is to be honoured and talked in the presence of Kings.” (Emin to Montagu, September 14 1757; Apcar, 1918: 83)

“You honour me much in thinking so; for the Irish are a very brave nation, with deserved renown.” (Emin, 1792: 422)

Do not think I write this as a Hint, but beleive me as I am a man of Honour & Truth I will be as good as my word. (Emin to ‘all the Ladies, & Patroness of Joseph Emin’, 1757)

I am vexed at Heart that I cou’d not have the Honor to write this Letterfrom the Army of the King of Prussia (Emin to Lord Lyttelton, 1758)

Word of the day:

Humour

• Etymology: from Latin/French humor (with approximately the same meaning)

• Humoral theory: a medical theory that the body is governed by the balance of four bodily humours (fluids)

• Still a prevalent theory until the late 18th

century• Quality or state of mind• Appreciating what is funny; the quality of being

amusing

Leo

Why choose ‘humour’?

• Humoral theory is an interesting and old theory originating already in ancient Greece

• Quite a few different meanings with a lot of evolution throughout history

• A lot of information (perhaps even too much?) available

Word : ‘servant’

• Etymology: comes from Old French (and French) present participle verb servir < Latin servīre to be a servant or slave, to serve, < servus slave, servant. In modern French only the feminine servante has survived in this sense. In Old French the present participle had the same form in both genders; hence the English word has always been applied both to males and females, without any distinction of form. (OED)

• Definition: OED defines servant as a ‘person of either sex who is in the service of a master or mistress; one who is under obligation to work for the benefit of a superior, and to obey his (or her) commands

• Usage in C18 context: it often collocates with ‘ humble/obedient servant’This phrase is ‘used at the end of a letter in the past by someone who was writing to a more important person.’(MacMillan dictionary). Evidence of hierarchical features of language use.

Asma

• ‘your (humble, obedient) servant: one of the customary modes of subscribing a letter, or of addressing a patron in the dedication of a book. †(your) servant: a mode of expressing submission to another's opinion, often equivalent to ‘there is nothing more to be said upon the subject’; a form of greeting or leave-taking. ‘(OED)

• ‘To the Rev. Bulkeley Bandinel,..this volume is..dedicated, by his obedient and obliged servant.’ (William Macray 1845)

• ‘Your servant, ladies;—Sir Geoffrey, your servant.’ ( Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1851).• ‘Your sarvant, gen'l'men,’ said he, taking off his broad-brimmed.’ (1859 T. HUGHES)• In the North American colonies in the 17–18th c., and subsequently in the United

States, servant was the usual designation for a slave.• In the 16th c., certain companies of actors were permitted to describe themselves as the

‘servants’ of some noble patron, and in the 17th c. similar privileges were granted by the sovereign.

• Applied occasionally to any state official as expressing his relation to the Sovereign. • Rolf Boldrewood (1888): ’We hadn't been used to firing on the Queen's servants.’• a1616 Shakespeare Cymbeline (1623): ‘That man of hers, Pisanio, her old Seruant.’

images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/155093

Some key points about Late Modern English

• Timeline is the 18th and 19th centuries• LModE is not that different from present-day English compared to e.g.

Early Modern English (1500-1700)• LModE coincides with important social phenomena:

• new social mobility and the rise of the middle classes• buzzword of politeness• population growth, urbanisation, industrialisation • rise of literacy, the age of the novel, the age of letter-writing• language standardisation reaching the final stages• rise of the British Empire, overseas travel, trade, colonisation

• Not many syntactic innovations in Late Modern English: the progressive passive is one of the few

• hated by the grammarians at the time – objected to change they noticed in written language• The progressive (be+ing, walking) increased in LModE and has continued to do so

• esp. the subjective progressive increased in C18: “Kitty is always complaining” vs the objective progressive “I am writing to your brother”

• Modal verbs (esp. must, should, may, shall) were used more in LModE than today• “I shall be happy in your company, if your doctor shall be of opinion that such waters may be

of service to you; which, I hope, will be his opinion”• In past participles, preterite verbs could be used instead of the participial form:

have ate, have wrote• The already archaic pronoun thou and the 3rdp singular -th suffix (hath) retained

in some regional usage

• Punctuation: the comma was used very frequently => long, complex sentences

• In C18 novels, the full stop functions almost like a paragraph marker

• LModE novels and letters are rich in modifiers (relative clauses, adjective clauses, adverbial phrases...)

• “The death of the Dean her uncle had, indeed, much alarmed him; he grieved at her leaving Suffolk, where he considered himself the first man, alike in parts and in consequence, and he dreaded her residing in London, where he foresaw that numerous rivals, equal to himself in talents and in riches, would speedily surround her; rivals, too, youthful and sanguine, not shackled by present ties, but at liberty to solicit her immediate acceptance.” – from Frances Burney’s Cecilia (1782)

• -ED variation was ongoing and the -ED variants had social meaning• -ed was the emerging standard and the only choice in print at the end of

C18• -’d was favoured by the printers in early C18: first signified learning and

sophistication, but became old-fashioned• -d was a feature of private informal writing

• Acceptance of two standards of spelling also by educated writers: one for private, one for public writing

• consider how you spell in informal social media platforms vs formal usage!• standard language ideology clashes with norms of online written language

that often allow greater variation• Written online vernaculars offer a possibility to make spelling choices from

a range of options – are we moving towards increasing variation again?

21stC

Patricia Friedrich and Eduardo H. Diniz de Figueiredo. 2016. The Sociolinguistics of Digital Englishes. Routledge.

• Politeness: conventions of pleasing and graceful behaviour• Language reflected social hierarchy much more strongly than today

• politeness norms and social status determined the use of address terms, letter-writing conventions and titles (My dear Duchess, Your Humble Servant)

• In addition to politeness, 1) a discourse of rudeness based on irony, satire and abuse and 2) more relaxed standards were allowed in the company of friends

• Letter-writers enjoyed using literary references • as a social practice, this is not different from cultural references we use today

From the Morning Herald, 24 April 1786:

The sale of the Duchess of Portland’s collection after her death in 1786 took 38 days

• Her collection reflected her keen interest in natural sciences• “a most copious and splendid collection” containing

“insects”, “corallines”, “petrifactions”, “snuff boxes”, “pictures and prints”, “old china” and Greek and Roman sculptures (the Morning Post, 1786)

• “shells, ores, fossils, birds’ eggs and natural history [...] hundreds of old-fashioned snuff-boxes that were her mother’s, who wore three different every week” (Horace Walpole in a letter to his cousin, 1786)

• Copies of the auction catalogue were included in the libraries of e.g. King George III and Queen Charlotte: a broad cultural legacy

Pelling, Madeleine. 2019. Selling the Duchess: Narratives of celebrity in A Catalogue of the Portland Museum (1786). Early Modern Women, Vol. 13 No. 2. pp 3-32.

And that’s it!

Thank you for taking this course!

Nupa says hi