Modern English
What are the distinguishing characteristics (grammar, vocabulary and writing system of this period?)

Student : Dardan Palucaj

Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in
England, which began in the late 15th century and was completed in roughly 1550.
With some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of
William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern English, or more specifically, are referred to as using Early Modern English or Elizabethan English. English was adopted in regions around the world, such as North America, the Indian subcontinent, Africa,
Australia and New Zealand through colonization by the British Empire.
Modern English has a large number of dialects spoken in diverse countries throughout the world.
This includes American English, Australian English, British English, Canadian English,
Caribbean English, Hiberno-English, Indo-Pakistani English, Nigerian English,
Philippine English, Singaporean English, and South African English.

compounds formed from Greek & Latin elements:
The same method may be employed in forming words elements derived from Greek and Latin.
Eugenics is formed with 2 Greek roots, eu-meaning well, and yes-meaning to born. The world therefore means well born and is applied to the efforts to bring about well born offspring by the selection of healthy parents. prefixes and suffixes:
The addition in the start of word is called prefixes. Sub=substandard, extra=extraordinary. The addition in the end of word is called suffixes. Help=helpless, kind=kindness, love=loveable.

coinages:
A considerable number of new words must be attributed to deliberate invention or coinage. They are mostly the product of ingenuity and imitation, the two being blended in variable proportions.
Thus the trademark “Kodak” which seems to be pure invention was popularly used for years to refer to cameras of any brand.
5. common words from proper names:

Another source from which many English words have been derived in the past is the names of persons and places. Everyone is aware that morocco is derived from the corresponding proper name. 6. grammatical tendencies:
The substitution of “you were” for “you was” in singular occurs about 1820, and it is I is now often considered a social test where propriety is expected. Subjunctive mood in occasional use has disappeared except in conditions contrary to fact (if I were you).
7. verb-adverb combinations:
An important characteristic of the modern vocabulary is the large number like: set-out, gather up, put off, bring in, and made up of a common verb combined with an adverb.

Grammar
Nouns and adjectives
As in modern English, the only regular noun inflection was the -s ending of the genitive and plural: irregular plurals were mostly the same as those that have survived into recent English.
The use of an apostrophe in the genitive singular was optional in the sixteenth century; it was frequent in the seventeenth, but only became established around 1700. In the genitive plural the apostrophe was not used in this period.
An alternative form of the genitive singular throughout the period was the so-called ‘possessive dative’ as in ‘Job’s Patience, Moses his Meekness, Abraham’s Faith’ (Richard Franck, 1694).
This was most commonly used after nouns ending in -s referring to masculines, perhaps because it was practically identical in sound with the regular genitive ending in -(e)s. A parallel use with her, e.g. ‘The Excellency of our Church her burial office’, and with their, also occurred.
Adjective
All three alternatives easier, more easy, and more easier, were acceptable in this period. In standard English, the rule by which -er and -est are preferred in monosyllabic words and more and most are used in polysyllabic ones, with variation in disyllabic words, was established by the late seventeenth century. In regional dialects -er continued to be preferred in all words, however long. The double comparative was generally used for emphasis.

Pronouns and determiners
Personal pronouns. In the second person, by 1600 ye was a rare alternative to you; no case distinction remained (in earlier English, ye was the subjective case and you the objective). The use of you as a ‘polite’ form of address to a single person progressively encroached on thou
(originally the singular pronoun) until by 1600 thou (and its objective case thee) was restricted to
‘affective’ (both positive and negative) uses (i.e. so as to be intimate or disparaging). By the late seventeenth century you had become normal in almost all contexts and thou and thee were limited to the Bible and religious use, the Quakers, and regional dialects.
In the third person, the possessive of it was his until around 1600. Various alternatives arose, including it (‘it had it head bit off beit (= by it) young’, King Lear) and thereof (‘Sufficient into the daye, is the trauayle therof’, Great Bible, 1539); its first appeared in print in the 1590s and was rapidly accepted into the standard language.

Verbs
The present tense. The second person singular inflection -est naturally declined in importance as the use of thou declined, giving rise to the current arrangement whereby in the present tense only the third singular is marked and all other persons take the base form.
At the start of the period, the normal third person singular ending in standard southern English was -eth. The form -(e)s, originally from Northern dialect, replaced -eth in most kinds of use during the seventeenth century. A few common short forms, chiefly doth, hath, continued often to be written, but it seems likely that these were merely graphic conventions.
Forming the past tense and past participle. The class of ‘strong’ verbs (those which indicate tense by a vowel change and do not have a dental segment added) included a number of verbs which are now only ‘weak’
For example, write had the regular past tense wrote, but also found were writ (with the vowel of the past participle) and wrate (patterned on gave or brake); the participle was written or writ
(with loss of -en) and wrote (based on the past tense) was also found. Verbs like bear, break, speak, etc., regularly formed their past tenses with a (bare, brake, spake) and this pattern was even extended to other verbs (wrate, drave). Owing to the Great Vowel Shift these past forms lost their distinctiveness from the present stem (since in a widespread variety of pronunciation, the long a of the past became identical with the long open e of the present) and after 1600 forms with o from the past participle (bore, broke, spoke) became normal.
Regular ‘weak’ verbs in Middle English formed their past tense and past participles in -ed, pronounced as a separate syllable, as it still is in a few fossilized forms such as belovèd, blessèd.
During the sixteenth century the vowel was lost in this ending except where the preceding consonant was t or d (e.g. in hated) and the d of the ending was devoiced to [t] after a voiceless consonant (e.g. in locked as opposed to logged). Present English spelling does not regularly show these three variants [id], [d], [t] but in early modern English ‘phonetic’ spellings (’d, d, ’t, t) are quite often found. (This can lead to the obscuration of other distinctions; for example, it is sometimes unclear whether rap’t represents rapped or raped.)
There was an inherited class of verbs which end in a dental and do not add a dental ending to show the past (e.g. cast, set). This class was temporarily enlarged by the borrowing of Latin participles ending in –t used initially as participles and past tenses, e.g. ‘Moste playnly those thynges sem to be euydent, whiche of offyce and good maner be gyue and precept of them’
(Robert Whittinton, 1534), ‘That the pain should be mitigate’ (1560). These were subsequently used in other forms of the verb and developed regular past forms in -ed.
Modal and auxiliary verbs to be
The present tense of the verb to be has be-forms alongside the forms (am, are) used in current
English: I be, thou beest, we, you, or they be. These were quite common in the sixteenth century, but became rare in the seventeenth, and were ultimately limited to regional dialect. The perfect of intransitive verbs, especially verbs of motion, continued (as in Middle English) to be frequently formed with to be rather than to have. Shakespeare normally uses to be with creep, enter, flee, go, meet, retire, ride, and run.

Gerunds, adverbs, and conjunctions
The gerund (which has the capability of governing an object or complement) came in this period to be used alongside the verbal noun, giving rise to various mixed uses which are difficult to classify: ‘as in reciting of playes, reading of verses, &c, for the varying the tone of the voice’
(John Evelyn, 1665).
Adverbs without the ending -ly were much commoner in this period.
Vocabulary
The vocabulary of Modern English is approximately a quarter Germanic (Old English,
Scandinavian, Dutch, German) and two-thirds Italic or Romance (especially Latin, French,
Spanish, Italian), with copious and increasing importations from Greek in science and technology and with considerable borrowings from more than 300 other languages. Names of many basic concepts and things come from Old English or Anglo-Saxon: heaven and earth, love and hate, life and death, beginning and end, day and night, month and year, heat and cold, way and path, meadow and stream. Cardinal numerals come from Old English.