Definition:
The English language since about 1500. See also: Key Dates in the History of the English Language.
Observations:
- "The early part of the modern English period saw the establishment of the standard written language that we know today. The standardization of the language was due in the first place to the need of the central government for regular procedures by which to conduct its business, to keep its records, and to communicate with the citizens of the land. Standard languages are usually the byproducts of bureaucracy . . . rather than spontaneous developments of the folk or the artifice of writers and scholars. John H. Fisher (1977, 1979) argues that standard English was first the language of the Court of Chancery, founded in the 15th century to give prompt justice to English citizens and to consolidate the King's influence in the nation. It was then taken up by early printers, who adapted it for other purposes and spread it wherever their books were read, until finally it fell into the hands of school teachers, dictionary makers, and grammarians.
Inflectional and syntactical developments in this early Modern English are important, if somewhat less spectacular than the phonological ones. They continue the trend established during Middle English times that changed our grammar from a synthetic to an analytic system."
(Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language. Harcourt, 1982) - "The printing press, the reading habit, and all forms of communication are favorable to the spread of ideas and stimulating to the growth of the vocabulary, while these same agencies, together with social consciousness . . ., work actively toward the promotion and maintenance of a standard, especially in grammar and usage."
(Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language. Prentice-Hall, 1978)
