Regulating Early Modern
English:
Grammar and grammars
C18th
attention to English grammar (Tompson 1977)
|
|
to 1600 |
to 1700 |
1700-1709 |
1710- 1719 |
1720-1729 |
1730-1739 |
1740-1749 |
1750-1759 |
1760-1769 |
1770-1779 |
1780-1789 |
1790-1799 |
|
Alston new (rpt.) |
2 |
13 (37) |
2 (4) |
5 (9) |
2 (8) |
12 (15) |
7 (18) |
10 (25) |
21 (56) |
27 (78) |
32 (115) |
58 (165) |
|
Michael |
2 |
32 |
4 |
6 |
4 |
13 |
7 |
23 |
33 |
52 |
28 |
62 |
Inseparable
from the ‘status of English’
§
priorities
of vernacular speakers in a trading nation: relative utility of English over
Latin
o more subjects treated in the
vernacular, e.g. medicine, physics
o other subjects vernacular to
begin with, e.g. trade
§
English
taught in the schools as an end in itself by second half of seventeenth century
o Locke [1690]: “Can there be
anything more ridiculous, than that a father should waste his own money, and
his son’s time, in setting him to learn the Roman language when, at the same
time, he designs him for a trade?”
§
nationalist
sentiments
o vs. e.g. French
o vs. e.g. Hanoverian kings
1714- (George III the first native speaker of English)
“Cultural
insecurity” (McIntosh)
(remember English wasn’t yet a lingua franca!)
“For
who did ever in French authors see
The
comprehensive English energy?
The
weighty bullion of one sterling line,
Drawn
to French wire would through whole pages shine.”
Roscommon (quoted by Defoe)
"TALK of war with a Briton, he'll
boldly advance,
That one English soldier will beat ten of France;
Would we alter the boast from the sword to the pen,
Our odds are still greater, still greater our men;
In the deep mines of science though Frenchmen may toil,
Can their strength be compar'd to Locke, Newton, and Boyle?
Let them rally their heroes, send forth all their pow'rs,
Their verse-men and prose-men, then match them with ours!
First Shakspeare and Milton, like Gods in the fight,
Have put their whole drama and epick to flight;
In satires, epistles, and odes, would they cope,
Their numbers retreat before Dryden and Pope;
And Johnson, well-arm'd like a hero of yore,
Has beat forty French, and will beat forty more!"
Garrick, "On JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY.
Function
and status of ‘grammar’
§
rising
status of English: part of standardization process (Beal)
o after southern variety ‘selected’
and ‘elaborated’, need for ‘codification’ and ‘control’
o like the classics and the
European vernaculars, English should be codified
§
first
grammar of a European language was of Spanish (1492)
§
France
and Italy had academies (France’s registered in 1637)
o early aim: “assimilation of
English into Latin grammatical categories” (McIntosh)
§
habit
§
assumption
that you learned English grammar so that you could learn a foreign language
(another function)
o problem of using Latin as a
model
§
mismatch
of categories: Latin had no article; treated adjective and noun together
§
implications
of terms: ‘preposition’
§
Enlightenment ideals of ‘order’, ‘reason’, ‘regularity’
o (grammar a way of ordering
language)
o other things standardized in
the period too, e.g. measurement
§
1707:
Act of Union attempted to standardize weights and measures across England and
Scotland
§
1790:
the French National Assembly commissioned the Academy of Science to design a
simple, decimal-based system of units
[“based on a length from nature”]; ...the metric system.”
§
contemporary
functions of figurative ‘order’ (and ‘grammar’)
in “the eighteenth century, [the] ideology of
politeness was composed of the following values: decorum, grace, beauty,
symmetry, and order. These values were transformed into the social symbols
for membership in the class of the gentry that the upwardly mobile emergent
middle classes eagerly sought to attain. In a word, they became features of the
legitimate language, ‘standard English’.” (Watts)
§
assumption
that linguistic || social (dis)order (still around!)
§
writing
a grammar of the English language will restore the order of English society
Evelyn 1665: “I conceive the reason both of
additions to, and the corruption of, the English language, as of most other
tongues, has proceeded from the same causes; namely from victories,
plantations, frontieres, staples of com’erce, pedantry of schooles, affectation
of travellers, translations, fancy and style of Court, vernility & mincing
of citizens, pulpits, political remonstrances, theatres, shopps, &c.”
[cured by grammar!]
§
elementary
literacy texts often instil social values (not just C18th!)
Devis 1775: Accidence for young ladies
Judy and Patty are good
girls ; Demosthenes and Cicero were great orators
o higher cultural status of
the ‘general’ and the ‘abstract’ and the ‘theoretical’ and of ‘metalanguage’
o our composition texts tend
to begin with narrative and move up/on
o essays are ‘product’ rather
than ‘process’
Who
had the authority to codify English grammar?
An academy?
§
Académie Française had been established since 1630s (registered 1637, founded a bit
earlier) to “fix the standard language and keep it as pure as possible”
o “Il sera composé un
Dictionnaire (1694, 1718, 1740, 1762, 1798), une Grammaire, une Rhétorique et
une Poétique sur les observations de l’Académie” (Rickard)
§
[its
grammar appeared in 1932 “and satisfied no one”]
§
Vaugelas
1647: Remarques sur la langue françoise
§
Lancelot
and Arnauld 1660: Grammaire générale et raisonée, (Port-Royal)
§
Royal
Society subcommittee (“scientists and men of letters”)
o Evelyn 1665: first item on
his list was “a Grammar ... the rules, the sole meanes to render it a learned
& learnable tongue”
§
pamphlets
or essays: Defoe’s Essay
upon projects, Addison Spectator 135 (1711), Swift’s open letter to the
Lord High Treasurer, Proposal
for Correcting, Improving, and
Ascertaining the English Tongue (1712)
o self-serving: who would
serve on this committee?
§
Defoe:
“composed of none but persons of the first figure in learning; and it were to
be wished our gentry were so much lovers of learning that birth might always be
joined with capacity.”
§
Swift:
“a free judicious Choice should be made of such Persons,
as are generally allowed to be best qualified for such a Work, without any
regard to Quality, Party, or Profession ...Your Lordship, and other Persons in
great Employment, might please to be of the Number...”
o Why so much activity in the
1710s?
§
in
part political: assumption that linguistic || political stability
§
1707:
Act of Union with Scotland
§
1714:
Hanoverian succession to heirless, sickly Anne
§
in
part social: see below
In
practice: English grammar codified by individuals
§
polymaths:
o Wallis 1653, “mathematician
and cryptographer”
o Lowth 1762, “biblical critic
and Bishop of London” (though not yet)
o Priestley 1761 and 1768,
“theologian and natural philosopher”
o Murray 1795, “grammarian and
lawyer”
§
teachers (majority), e.g.
o Lane 1700: “long chain’d” to
the “Gallies” of the classroom ...
o Greenwood 1711, Mattaire
(“classical scholar and typographer”) 1712
o (Newcastle) Fisher: in the
1740s in Newcastle taught night school to “young ladies who chuse to learn the
English grammar”
o (Scottish) Buchanan 1761
o (dissenter) Priestley 1761,
1768: wrote his Rudiments while teaching at the Warrington academy
§
publishers alert to a willing market and the selling power of a school text
o Brightland (insurance
entrepreneur, vintner)-> Gildon (“writer”) (1711)
o Fisher (teacher) married
Slack (printer/publisher) [1745] 1750-
§
author
alert to the importance of book trade!?
§
London
editions made their textbooks more marketable in the south
o Dodsley -> Johnson
(1755), Lowth (1762)
§
Ingrid
Tieken has revised the stereotype of Lowth’s grammar as the
autocratic/authorized production of a bishop: she (Beal:) “argues that the
success of Lowth’s grammar was due to Dodsley’s entrepreneurial skills rather
than Lowth’s authority as a ‘religious leader’”
·
commissioned
by Dodsley
·
Lowth
wasn’t yet a bishop
Why was grammar
so desirable?
o grammar “Latin grammar”
o e.g. Lily’s A short
introduction to grammar “Latin grammar”
§ gateway to Latin language
§
gateway therefore to all other arts and sciences
·
elite
boys only
· instrument and symbol of
social empowerment and exclusion
· taught by violence (at least stereotypically!)
o vernacular grammar was therefore
extraordinarily empowering, at least in theory
§
from
a symbol of exclusion to an instrument of agency and empowerment
§
but
it remained second-class relative to the classics
·
Beal:
“mainly advocated for those who were deemed not to need a classical education:
women, dissenters, and the middle classes.”
§ popularity of politeness
generally at this time
o
Klein:
“purveyed to non-elite individuals in an array of manuals and encyclopedia
guides, ... [esp.] between 1660 and 1730, the period during which
'politeness' rose to prominence in English discourse.”: not just grammars but
all sorts of ‘manuals’ linking knowledge and social status
§ polite = not vulgar, not
rustic
§ polite = not useful, but
supplemental to it
· You don’t need to know how
to parse a sentence (i.e. apply concepts and terms) in order to construct an
acceptable one
· making money: merchants
motivated to be able to speak well to genteel customers
· crafting an image: educated
but impoverished “proto-white collar population”, “pen-pushers and pedagogues”
“striving valiantly to retain some dignity” on meagre incomes
Social
prestige of ‘politeness’ and ‘polite conversation’ especially as represented
in writing in Addison and Steele’s periodicals the Tatler and the Spectator
§
authors
and readers represented as a sociable community united by ‘politeness’ of
“manners, dress, and conversation”
o public invited to contribute
letters to the periodicals
o Mr Spectator a model for his
readers
o [if it helps to make this
real for you, contemporary young guys hoped not just to impress fellow men with
their polite conversation but to pick up girls...]
I don't know how, I am the worst
person in the world to entertain a lady in conversation. Though I can be free
with Mrs Lee yet I cannot tell how to maintain an agreeable discourse with her:
I am presently at a stand and at a loss what to say. Went with Mrs Lee to
Watford, when the coach was got just into the inn before us. I wish I could
arrive at the talent of appearing indifferent in the company of the ladies. It
is this that chiefly gives that life and spirit to a conversation which is
agreeable and which the women especially universally like, and indeed what
enters very much into the modern character of a gentleman. (1715)
§
there
was some metalinguistic commentary in the periodicals, e.g.
o attacks on contractions
o which is right, which
or who or that?
§
need
for an academy ->
This
often perplexes the best Writers, when they find the Relatives whom, which, or that
at their Mercy whether they may have Admission or not; and will never be
decided till we have something like an Academy,
that by the best Authorities and Rules drawn from the Analogy of Languages
shall settle all controversies between Grammar and Idiom. (Spectator 135)
§
but
the periodicals furnished relatively few specific rules for polite writing
o this lack of
explicit/comprehensive codification would have been unnerving, since there was
still a great deal of variation
By
the mid-century, things looked different
§
McIntosh:
goals had changed “from the assimilation of English into Latin grammatical
categories, to the polishing and improvement of the English language”
§
English
had a nice fat expensive dictionary (1755)
§
English
book reviews (Critical Review founded by anxious Scots in 1756) applied
grammar rules monthly and publicly
§
grammar
books contained more and more explicit ‘dos and don’ts’
Overview
of grammatical “prescriptivism”
§
in
Fisher 1750: “Exercises of Bad English’ to correct
o “In the manner of Clark’s
and Bailey’s Examples for the Latin, to prove our Concord by” [lots of
subsequent imitators]
§
from
1750s onwards: savage application of (not necessarily codified) rules in book
reviews
§
in
Lowth 1762: Examples of grammatical errors in literary writing
o cf. Johnson’s use of
literary quotations in his 1755 dictionary
§
in
these and many other texts: linguistic and social correlations
Examples
Fisher ([1745] 1750-), A
(practical) new grammar, with Exercises of Bad English
Rule
IV: Two or more Names Singular, having a Conjunction Copulative coming between
them, will have a Verb Plural
George and Daniel has been fighting. – Honour and
Renown attends virtuous Actions.
Rules
for Polite and Useful Conversation, in a Praxis for Orthography, as well as
Syntax
By obsarving the laws of poleitness, tho you are not
Master Enough of Youmer and abundence of Words, so as to say witte Things, and
tel an Agreable storie, you may carrey
yourself so Oblegingley to the cumpanie, as to plese: and whatever a Mestakein
vanety may suggest, I will dare to say, that it is more Advantagious to a mans
reputasion, for a parson to plese in convarsation, then to Shine in it.
Maxims
for the Ladies, in a Praxis of Bad Grammar [from the Spectator]
That no wimen can be handsom by the forse of featers
alone, any more then she can be wittey Onley by the Help of speach. ...
A
few examples of linguistic variation from the Monthly Review, a
book review founded in 1749
§
past
participle wrote used by some reviewers in the 1750s and 1760s
o e.g. “This comes very
ungracefully from an author who is, by no means, a master of the language in
which his satire is wrote”
o "language of this
pamphlet...differs both from the true idiom and grammar of the English wrote
and spoke in Middlesex"
o "had he lived and wrote
in these more polished times, in which accuracy of composition, and neatness of
expression are more attended to than they were in Butler's days" [correct
= modern]
§
but
censured by others at the same time, e.g.
o "theatrical declamation
of the ancients was composed and wrote, (we should rather say, written)."
o another reviewer cites some
ungrammatical phrases, eg wrote for written
Codification
of (e.g.) irregular verbs not consistent in grammar books
o for an overview of prescript
and practice relating to the verb write, see Oldireva Gustafsson’s online article
o early editions of Fisher’s
grammar (1750 through 1775 at least) list
o past tense of ‘to write’: wrote,
writ
o past participle of ‘to write’:
written, writ
o Samuel Johnson’s 1755
dictionary among a few texts still to recommend wrote as a past
participle
o many other grammars
recommend only written
Buchanan,
The British grammar (1762)
“Note,
a ridiculous Solecism has been very prevalent of late, I mean the using the
Preter-Time after the Verbs have and am, instead of the Passive
Participle; as, I have wrote, for I have written ... in all which examples a
Verb, without the least Necessity, is absurdly used to supply the proper
Participle. Females and mean Authors first introduced these Absurdities,
and even Writers of Note (or the Printers for them) have sometimes
inadvertently copied after them: But it is to be wished, that those who are
studious of correct Composition, would for the Future be exemplary in rejecting
such Barbarisms ; otherwise the few Traces of Analogy that are to be
found in our Language will, in a little Time, be utterly annihilated. For some perhaps,
from a fond Regard to Novelty, may hereafter introduce, with equal Barbarity,
I have saw, for I have seen ...
Lowth¸
A short
introduction to English grammar (1762)
“This
general inclination and tendency of the language, seems to have given occasion
to the introducing of a very great Corruption ; by which the Form of the
Past Time is confounded with that of the Participle in these Verbs ... This
confusion prevails greatly in common discourse, and is too much authorized by
the example of some of our best Writers. Thus it is said, He begun for he
began ; he run, for he ran ... the Participle being used
instead of the Past Time. And much more frequently the Past Time instead of the
Participle: as, I had wrote, it was wrote, for I had written,
it was written ...”
“Mr. Misson has wrote.” – Addison, Preface to
his Travels. “He could only command his voice, broke with signs and
sobbings, so far as to bid her proceed.” Addison, Spect. No. 164.
Addison
and The Spectator a favourite target! (Fitzmaurice)
Prescriptive
or descriptive? (Beal)
Did
the grammar rules
§
describe
the existing usage of model writers and speakers?
§
prescribe
rules according to other criteria, e.g.Latin or logic?
Latin
§
certainly
the basis for categories and terminology:
o hard to break away from
established practice
o assumption that learning
English was a step on the way to learning Latin
§
some
grammarians certainly bashed English into inappropriate categories
o Jane Gardiner (teacher)
demonstrates the ‘ablative case’ of the English adjective and noun with “from,
by, with, or in a young girl”
§
in
the early 18th century, some grammarians (including Gildon, Fisher)
tried to use more ‘native’ categories and terms,
o e.g. “Name” rather than
“Noun”, “Quality” rather than “Adjective”
o Fisher and others celebrated
the distinctive features of English: “Thus by the Use of these Helping Verbs
... we are entirely freed from the various Endings of Verbs, in the past Times,
or the preterimperfect and preterpluperfect Tenses of the Latin, also from
those of the several Moods in both Voices; which produce near 200 Variations
...”
Have
Latin rules been imposed on English? (This from Beal)
§
idiomatic
preposition-stranding (“up with
which I will not put”)
o Dryden had criticized it in
Jonson’s writing and removed it from his own
o Lowth describes it as “an
idiom which our language is strongly inclined to; it prevails in common
conversation, and suits very well with the more familiar style in writing; but
the placing of the Preposition before the Relative is more graceful, as well as
more perspicuous.”
§
split infinitive: Latin infinitives are single-word and can’t be split, amare
‘to love’
o wikipedia blames Lowth for
it
o but it’s not proscribed
until 1834
What
about rules based on logic rather than contemporary custom? (Beal)
o Lowth tries to restore the
historical past participle sitten on the analogy of other past
participles in –en (but unsuccessfully)
o the grammarians seem to have
embraced written before educated users
§
it took a long time for written
to establish itself
o grammarians also blamed for
exterminating the double negative (Greenwood, Fisher, Lowth)
o Lowth: “two Negatives in
English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an Affirmative” [1763]
§
included
in the second edition only after readers wrote in
o recent research makes it
pretty clear that the double negative had receded from educated usage (Beal
citing Tieken and Austin)
§
less
common in EmodE lawyers’ and merchants’ language
§
playwrights
put them in the mouths only of vulgar speakers
§
in
‘real’ C18th usage, informal / lower-class / speech-based writing
§
o the ‘double comparative’ (more
fairer) seems also to have been recessive in educated usage (Beal citing
Rodriguez-Gil)
And
it was Fisher who first codified the ‘sexist’ grammar rule (Tieken) that
“The
Masculine Person answers to the general Name, which comprehends
both Male and Female; as, Any Person who knows what he says.”
o in an empowering context
o don’t impose modern
sensibilities on historical texts
Result
of explicit codification of rules?
More
inclusive for authors marginalized by region or class?
§
Boswell 1776: I began today a curious bargain
which I made with the Hon. Henry Erskine in order to acquire correctness in
writing. We were to give to each other a copy of every one of our printed papers,
and each was to be censor on the other. For every ungrammatical expression and
every Scotticism except technical phrases, a shilling was to be incurred; ...
Each was to keep an account of debit and credit, and nothing was to be charged
but what was acknowledged by the writer of the paper to be just. Erskine had
many objections to a paper of mine today. Lord Hailes was at once appealed to
and gave it for me. Erskine was too nice; for it was not inelegance but
incorrectness that was liable to a fine. The former was very arbitrary. The
latter, Johnson and Lowth could determine. He had three shillings against me
today. I am persuaded that this will do me much good...
§
Beal:
linguistic texts written by authors like Thomas Spence and William Cobbett
exemplify “link between grammar and the emancipation of the lower orders”...
§ Cobbett 1796 (cited by
McIntosh): “I procured me a Lowth’s grammar, and applied myself to the study
of it with unceasing assiduity, and not without profit; for, though it was a
considerable time before I fully comprehended all that I read, still I read and
studied with such unremitting attention, that at last I could write without
falling into any very gross errors. The pains I took cannot be described: I
wrote the whole grammar out two or three times: I got it by heart;I repeated it
every morning and evening”
More
excluding?
§
Fitzmaurice:
“Far from being the sign of good manners and social mobility, ‘polite English’
had become the means by which the society could be stratified: sorted into its
different levels.”
§
Watts:
“it is ... hardly surprising that those in control of that discourse, paying
lip-service to the aspirations of the middle classes, presented it as an
attainable goal whilst at the same time doing everything they could to thwart
those ambitions.”
§
Book
reviewers ‘infer’ social status from language, e.g. l-c women
An insipid, flimsy,
uninteresting tale; which, were it not that a scrap or two of Latin seems to
contradict the supposition, one might suspect to be the work of some novel-struck
chamber-maid: for such, it seems are now become free of the worshipful company
of Adventurer-makers. We are led into this conjecture by the inaccuracy of the
Writer's language; which, though not in general contemptible, is here and there
sprinkled with vulgarisms, only to be expected from a scribbling female: such
as,... “I "laid" in the same room with my benefactress”, by which it
might possibly be understood, that the young lady who tells the story, had
gracelessly "laid" an "egg" in the chamber of her
benefactress. Nor is this an accident or error of the press; but the common
language of the narrative; for we find the same impropriety in other parts of
the book.
(gives exx).
"The inaccuracies which
we have noticed, are not indeed, many or important; but we cannot attribute to
Lord Mansfield [judge presiding over divorce proceedings of which this is a
transcript] such vulgarisms as... [improper use of ‘lay’, profusely
exemplified]. The reviewer also criticizes "that vile contraction
‘don't' for ‘do not’: which would be rather expected from the mouth of a hair
dresser, or a milliner's apprentice".
“Vulgar
language” used to disqualify petitions to parliament
§
Cobbett,
Political register 1817 (cited by Beal):
The present project ... is
to communicate to all uneducated Reformers, a knowledge of Grammar. The
people, you know, were accused of presenting petitions not grammatically
correct. And those petitions were rejected, the petitioners being ignorant:
though some of them were afterwards put into prison, for being ‘better
informed’. ... There was only one thing in which any of you were deficient, and
that was in the mere art of so arranging the words in your Resolutions and
Petitions as to make these compositions what is called grammatically correct.
Hence, men of a hundredth part of the mind of some of the authors of the
Petitions were enabled to cavil at them on this account, and to infer from this
incorrectness that the Petitioners were a set of poor ignorant creatures,
who knew nothing of what they were talking; a set of the ‘Lower classes’,
who ought never to raise their reading above that of children’s books,
Christmas Carrols, and the like. For my part, I have always held a mere
knowledge of the rules of grammar very cheap. It is a study, which demands
hardly any powers of mind.”
Sources
Beal, Joan C. English in modern times 1700-1945. London: Arnold, 2004.
McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Fitzmaurice, Susan. "The Commerce of Language in the Pursuit of Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England," English Studies 79:4 (1998). 309-328.
Klein, Lawrence E. "Politeness for Plebes: Consumption
and Social Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England," The
Consumption of Culture 1600-
1800. Image, Object, Text, ed. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. 362-382.
McIntosh, Carey. The evolution of English prose 1700-1800: style, politeness, and print culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Rickard, Peter. A history of the French language. 2nd ed. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade. "John Kirkby and The Practice of Speaking and Writing English: Identification of a Manuscript." Leeds studies in English
23 (1992). 157-179.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. "Robert Dodsley and the Genesis of Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar." Historiographia Linguistica
27:1 (2000). 21-36.
Tompson, Richard S. "English and English Education in the Eighteenth Century," Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century 167 (1977). 65-79.
Watts, Richard. “From polite language to educated language: the re-emergence of an ideology.” Alternative histories of English. Ed. Richard Watts and
Peter Trudgill. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. 155-172.
Further reading
Finegan, Edward. “English grammar and usage.” The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume IV 1776-1997. Ed. Suzanne Romaine.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Sundby, Bertil et al. A Dictionary of English Normative Grammar 1700-1800. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1991.
[Useful but hard to use.]
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. "Normative Studies in
England." History of the Language Sciences ... An International
Handbook on the Evolution
of the Study of Language From the Beginnings to the Present, ed. Sylvain Auroux et al. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000.