The Appeal to Authority

1650 - 1800
 Slide 2

• In 1755 Samuel Johnson published his great two-volume

Dictionary of the English Language.
• The publication of Johnson’s Dictionary was certainly the
most important linguistic event of the eighteenth century,
not to say the entire period under discussion, for to a
large extent it “fixed” English spelling and established a
standard for the use of words.
• Double comparison: more fitter, more better, more fairer,
most worst, most stillest, and most unkindest.
• Uninflected plurals: deer, sheep, folk
• Irregular plurals: feet, geese, teeth, lice, mice, men, and
women
 Slide 3

Prescriptive Grammar: based on Latin  what is

correct, what is incorrect  related to a set of
rules in a language (sentence structure: verb,
noun, adjective)

Weaknesses of the early grammarians:

 Failed to recognize changes in the language
 Proscribed vocabulary (to purify the vocabulary)
 moved away “old” and “rude” words
 Refused to borrow words from other languages
and the existing loanwords