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For a long time, historical linguists assumed that the English language underwent little change after the end of the Early Modern English period. While it generally holds true that the major grammatical changes were completed around 1700, recent research has shown that some highly frequent grammatical patterns of present-day English such as the progressive and phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. put up with) only emerged in the course of the nineteenth century. Not only grammatical innovations are of interest but English in the nineteenth century was also characterized by considerable lexical growth as well as phonological changes that, for example, led to the rise of Received Pronunciation (RP) as a prestige accent. The aim of this seminar is to focus on some of the above changes and discuss them in the context of major social transformations, such as industrialization, urbanization, innovations in mobility and communications etc. We will begin by examining British varieties of English but in the second half of the seminar we will also take into consideration the development of other varieties in this century, including the impact of political independence on the formation of American English and the emergence of new varieties in the Southern Hemisphere. This is a very hands-on seminar, and students will have numerous opportunities to engage with the above varieties through a range of text types, such as letters and trial records. |
