How has English Changed?

By Aleena Abid A2 14th July,2020.

Compare the 3 texts. In your comparison compare the fields of graphology, grammar, orthography,
pragmatics, morphology, semantics and syntax.

When you look at a piece of writing the first thing that you notice is the orthography and
graphology. In Text C, which is from the Early Modern English Era and is written by Shakespeare a lot
of things have changed throughout out the ages. If we talk about certain spellings of words such as
music was written as “musicke”, love was written as “loue”, capacity was written as “capacitie” etc.
Descending to the Late Modern English Era such words have changed very similarly to present day
English transitioning from these early spellings such as Thomas Hardy in Text D writes music the
same way we do in Present Day English. In Text C there is use of archaic words, for instance
“fantasticall” and “nought” which are no longer used in current day.

The snippet shown in Text C is from a Shakespearean play so it is written in poetic form and the
sentence structure is precise and short. The language although and the tone is very formal and
lyrical albeit very easy to understand. In Text C, Thomas Hardy, as he was famous for his elaborate
punctuation and extensive sentences uses complex grammar and long syntactical structures which
are a bit difficult to follow for a modern day reader.

From the Early Modern English to the Late Modern English the Great Vowel Shift happened, there
were phonological changes, and words and the syntax changed. Words such as loue and giuing
changed to love and giving; the v replaced the u and words such as vpon changed to upon; the u
replaced the v. Inflection of words took place, words ending in -th also shifted to the word ending –
ed or –s, receiueth changed to received. Certain articles also transitioned from “art thou” to are you
and “thy” to your. Also phonological alterations took place such as “ere” changed to here and “ ‘tis”
changed to it is.

Text C comes from the age of Late Modern English taken from a novel written by Thomas Hardy who
was inspired by Shakespeare and even the title of the novel “Under the Greenwood Tree” is inspired
from Shakespeare. Writers writing in this era were bound to have been inspired from Shakespeare.
The style of Text D is different from that of Text C, because it is written in prose form and Text C is
poetry. Thomas Hardy uses extensive syntactical structures to express his points. Even in Text d,
there are archaic words such as “bygone” and “shillings”.

Although both Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy write about music, the pragmatics change.
Shakespeare talks about music in a romanticised way whereas Hardy writes about it while narrating
the story of some musicians and how they made their money. The feeling one gets from both texts
are totally different and both leave effects contrary to each other. In Text C, the writer capitalises
certain common nouns such as “Loue” and “Odour” while in Text D this practice became obsolete
and only proper nouns were capitalised e.g. “Sunday” and “Christmas”.
Text E is an online article taken from a website. The genre of Text E is again different from Text C and
D, which were poetry and prose respectively. Online articles use persuasive language and usually
their tone is friendly and such that hooks the reader from the first line. Articles tend to have
headings as Text E: “Women Are The…… Century Pop” and they are bound to use online lexis. In the
modern age, life is fast paced and no one has much time to read through pages and pages of written
text so contemporary writers tend to use short syntactical structures and concise and to the point
language.

If we begin to discuss the orthography of Text E, I would say it is very similar to Text D as there are
no prominent changes. We still use the same orthographical rules as the Late Modern English in
Present Day English. This article starts using a metaphor as a heading which is basically a persuasive
technique to attract readers and the writer mentions a snippet from their own life. In the earlier
times, it was not normal for a writer to write excerpts from their own life with such informality but
today readers like such authors with whom they may be able to connect on a personal level. Again,
the pragmatics have changed. Music here is talked about on a personal level rather than narrating a
story or relating it to a complex feeling like love.

In Present Day English many slangs and abbreviated words are used such as in Text E the word “Pop
“which is short for popular music. Grammatical features like hyphens are constantly used to
separate sentence clauses and to connect words such as “after the song came out-just enough” and
“sleep-deprived”. There is use of italics to put emphasis on words: “great song” and metaphors such
as “on a whim” are also used. The tone of the passage is first pronoun “I” and the writer continually
connects their feelings with the readers by narrating personal experiences to describe nostalgia she
says “just enough time for it to be faded into …….. long-term memories” Notice again the hyphen.
There is also frequent us e of adverbials (deliriously thrilled) and adjectives (warm buzz of
excitement) and metaphors (lift everyone’s spirits).