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Normalising Tendencies. Grammars and Dictionaries in the Late 17th and 18th c

 

The age of the literary Renaissance, which enriched the language in many ways and was marked by great linguistic freedom, was the period of "normalisation" or period of "fixing the language”. This age set great store by correctness and simplicity of expression. The language of Shakespeare and his contemporaries struck the authors of the late 17th c. as rude and unpolished, though the neo-classicists (the term applied to the writers of this period) never reached the heights of the Renaissance writers. John Dryden (1631-1700), a versatile writer and competent stylist of the time, acknowledged "the wit of predecessors» but explicitly disapproved of their language, saying that “there was ever something ill-bred and clownish in it and which confessed the conversation of their authors" (“ESSAYS ON THE DRAMATIC POETRY OF THE LAST AGE”). The great poet John Milton (1608-1674) noted «the corrupt pronunciation of the lower classes". Correct usage and protection of the language from corruption and change became the subject of great concern and numerous discussions. In 1664 the Royal Society appointed a special committee "for improving the English tongue”. The fixed structures of dead languages — Greek and Latin loomed in the mind of the neo-classicists and made them regard all linguistic change as corruption that ought to be checked.

The 18th c. is remarkable for deliberate attempts to fix the language and interfere with its evolution. Among the exponents of this were the writer Jonathan Swift (1667 — 1745), the founders of the first English newspapers R. Steele and J. Addison, the authors of prescriptive English grammars and the great 18th c. lexicographers.

The new journals issued at regular intervals, the TATLER and the SPECTATOR, published essays recommending simplicity in dress, in behaviour and particularly in discourse; language matters were among the most popular subjects. It was in the TATLER (N 230, 1710) that published his first article on language followed by longer treatises: “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue’'. J. Swift, like other purists, protested against careless and deliberate contractions and elisions in formal and informal speech. Leaving out vowels and consonants corrupted pronunciation; the persistent use of set words and fashionable phrases turned conversation into a string of clichés; affected imitation of "genteel" persons in speech spoiled the language. He drew up a detailed proposal that well-informed persons — scholars and men of letters — should be set up in order to fix the correct rules of usage. He was concerned that contemporary writings might become incomprehensible a hundred years hence, if the changes in the language were allowed to proceed at the same speed.

Many new grammars of English were compiled in the age of "fixing the language". J. Wallis's “GRAMMATICA LINGAE ANGLICANAE”, which was first published in 1653, won European fame and ran through many editions before the end of the century. He owed much to his predecessors, but was original in the treatment of most problems. He believed that "by reducing the English too much to the Latin norm the grammarians have taught too many useless things about the cases of Nouns, and about the Tenses, Moods and Conjugations of Verbs, about government of Nouns and Verbs, etc., matters absolutely foreign to language, producing confusion and obscurity rather than serving as explanations. Why should we introduce a fictitious and quite foolish collection of Cases, Genders, Moods and Tenses, without any need, 'and which there is no reason in the basis of the language itself?" (By that time the grammatical structure of the English language was very similar to that of present-day English.) The grammars of the 18th c. were influenced both by the descriptions of classical languages and by the principles of logic. They wished to present language as a strictly logical system (incidentally, it was at that time that many logical terms, such as "subject" and "predicate", entered grammatical description). The main purpose of these grammars was to formulate rules based on logical considerations to present them as fixed and obligatory; grammars were designed to restrict and direct linguistic change. This type of grammars are known as "prescriptive" or "normative" grammars.



One of the most influential prescriptive grammars was SHORT INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH GRAMMAR produced 1762 by Robert Lowth, a theologician and professor of poetry at Oxford. In the preface to his book R. Lowth agreed with the charge that ‘our language is extremely imperfect", that it "offends against every part of grammar" and remarked that the best authors commit "many gross improprieties, which ... ought to be corrected"; he complained that in spite of great achievements in literature and style, the English language had made "no advance in Grammatical Accuracy". "The principal design of a Grammar of any Language is to teach us to express ourselves with propriety in that Language; and to enable us to judge every phrase and form of construction, whether it be right or not. The plain way doing this is to lay down rules and to illustrate them by examples.”

The role of English dictionaries in this period of normalization was equally significant.

English lexicography made outstanding progress in the 18th c. Works concerned primarily with the explanation of "hard words" continued to be brought out in great numbers. But the greatest achievement of the 18th century lexicography is connected with the name of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

(Dictionary of the English Language, 1755).

 

 

LECTURE 5


Date: 2015-01-12; view: 1319


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