328 Study Questions: Baugh Chapter Eight: "The
Renaissance"
Vocabulary:
Renaissance, Reformation, vernacular, orthography, Cheke
system, typographical justification, Great Vowel Shift,
inkhorn terms, neologism, Dracula's Law, unrounding, his-genitive,
group genitive, comparative degree, superlative degree,
positive degree, familiar address, hypotaxis, parataxis,
restrictive clause, nonrestrictive clause, double negative
Identifications: William Caxton, Printing
Press, Sir John Cheke, Richard Mulcaster
Abbreviations: MnE, GVS
8.152 What date does Baugh give "conveniently"
as a starting boundary for Modern English?
In terms of who had access to books, what was the effect
of the printing press's introduction?
According to Baugh, about what percentage of
the London population was literate? (lowest estimate to
highest estimate)
How has the increasing ease of commerce, transportation,
and rapid communication contributed to the growth of English?
How
have alterations in social consciousness altered practices
of English usage?
8.153 In what way or in what linguistic
area were the change during the Renaissance "radical"
according to Baugh? In what way or in what linguistic area
were the changes "conservative" during the Renaissance?
What happened to vocabulary during the Renaissance?
What happened to the rules of grammar during the Renaissance?
How are the changes to English during modern times the
exact reverse of the changes to the language in the Middle
English period?
8.154 What three main problems faced english
in the sixteenth century?
8.155 What conditions or circumstances
strengthened the old tradition that favored Latin as the
language of science, knowledge, and literature?
What did the defenders of classical education fear would
happen if the current fad for vernacular publishing and
writing went too far?
Who was Richard Mulcaster and what did he champion?
How was the Protestant Reformation a factor in the increased
use of the vernacular rather than Latin?
Besides making an illegal translation of the Bible into
Latin, what is one thing Wycliffe did (or perhaps refused
to do) that ensured one of the strongholds of Latin would
be lost?
8.156 What is orthography?
Why was orthography such a pressing issue in the sixteenth
century? (I.e., what did English writing lack before the
1500s that we take for granted today?)
List an example or two of the confusions caused by scribal
practices for writing particular words in the Renaissance.
How did linguistic analogy result in the modern spellings
of delight and tight?
How did the printing practice of typographical justification
possibly result in new spellings in the Renaissance?
How do we know the problem of standardized spelling was
recognized as a problem in the Renaissance?
What is the most important and extensive treatise on English
spelling in the sixteenth century? Who wrote it? What famous
poet was taught by the author of this treatise?
What was Mulcaster's great virtue as an orthographer? I.e.,
where did Mulcaster fall on the spectrum of practicality
and an ideally phonetic system?
What did Mulcaster realize about pronunciation that many
of his contemporaries failed to realize?
For Mulcaster, what is the "final authority"
that will judge ease and convenience in writing?
In Mulcaster's system of spelling, why does he get rid
of double-letters like putt, grubb, and
ledd?
With the exception of -sse,
in Mulcaster's system of spelling, what does a final silent
letter -e indicate
about a preceding vowel when that -e
appears on the end of a word?
Most spelling in its modern form had been practically established
by what year?
8.157 Sir Thomas Elyot, in his 1531 work,
The Governour, was designed not only to provide a fiting
education for noble children, but to do what to the English
language?
The rediscovery of what two classical languages, and the
very act of translating them into English, revealed the
deficiencies of English vocabulary?
8.158 What was Sir John Cheke's, Sir Thomas
Chaloner's, Thomas Wilson's, and Ascham's attitude toward
borrowings from Latin?
What is an inkhorn term?
8.159 What are some of the Renaissance
arguments in favor of borrowing Greek and Latin vocabulary?
8.160 What was the usual compromise worked
out between Elizabethan writers who favored borrowing classical
vocabulary (or inventing variations on classical vocabulary)
and the more conservative writers who dismissed them as
"inkhorn terms"?
8.161 Before teh Renaissance, most Greek
words were introduced to English via what other two languages?
During the Renaissance, what led to the introduction of
Greek words firsthand--without an intermediary language?
8.162 To adapt Latin word into English,
what would English writers do if the Latin word had a Latin
ending not normally used in English?
8.163 During the mania for borrowing Greek
and Latin words in the Renaissance, many Latin words that
had already been borrowed once were borrowed a second time
and given a new meaning. Be able to explain this process
using pairs such as bisho and episcopal or dish and discus.
8.164 Give any one example of a perfectly
good inkhorn term that has not survived in modern usage?
8.165 It is clear that many Latin words
were adopted directly from Latin texts in the Renaissance.
However, some of them may have come into English usage indirectly
through what language?
8.166 Sixteenth-century purists objected
to what three classes of strange words?
Give any one example of a word introduced from another
Romance language (i.e., not Latin)?
8.167 Most Latin words were introduced
by what medium (i.e, as opposed to speech)?
8.168 What is a "Chaucerism"?
Give one example of a useful Chaucerism that surives in
Modern English?
8.169 When an inkhorn term was unlikley
to be understood by the reader, what was a common strategy
writers used to make sure the reader undertood?
8.170 As early as 1582, Mulcaster had
proposed the creation of what sort of useful book?
8.171 What is the Latin Influence of the
Fourth Period?
8.172 According to A. C. Baugh, what writer
in the Renaissance had the largest vocabulary?
What does Shakespeare and his contemporaries' use of certain
terms like expect, atone, enlargement,
communicate, and other words reveal about how Renaissance
writers used these words?
8.173 List one difference in Shakespeare's
pronunciation than in modern pronunciation?
Lecture Question: What is Dracula's
Law?
8.174 In terms of sound changes, over
the last thousand years, which has changed more--short vowels
or long vowels?
What is the Great Vowel Shift?
In what region of England did the Great Vowel Shift not
take place?
8.175 When compared the Great Vowel Shift
that separates Middle English and Modern English, the changes
in pronunciation from Old to Middle English were
(a) qualitatively rather light, (b) comparatively huge,
(c) about the same.
8.176 How many of the Middle English long
vowels underwent extensive alteration in passing into Modern
English? (Trick question!)
How many of the Middle English short vowels underwent
alteration when they passed into Modern English. Explain
unrounding.
8.177 When did the Great Vowel Shift take
place?
How does the Great Vowel Shift contribute to the unorthodox
use of the vowel symbols in English spelling?
8.178 What tends to happen to the vowels
in unstressed syllables?
Like most Germanic languages, English tends to accent which
syllable in a two syllable word? How is this similar or
different than in French words?
How does the word Monday illustrate the weakening
of unaccented vowels?
8.179 (none)
8.180 What are the only inflections retained
in nouns from the old days of Anglo-Saxon?
What happened to the Middle English plural words fleen,
kneen, eyen, shoon, and kine?
(i.e., what became the plural form for these words in the
Renaissance?)
The surviving plurals of this kind (children,
brethren, oxen) come from where?
What is the his-genitive? What is a group genitive?
8.181 What are some unusual comparative
and superlative forms Shakespeare?
8.182 In Old English, what was the original
difference between (a) thou [∂u]
and (b) ye? In the thirteenth and fourteenth century,
what was the difference between (a) thou, thy,
thee and (b) ye, your, and you?
By the sixteenth century, what had happened to the distinction
between the familiar/singular form of the second person
pronoun and the formal/plural form?
By the sixteenth century, what new possessive form appeared
via linguistic analogy appeared that had never existed before?
By the sixteenth century, what new use appeared for the
word who?
Lecture: What do many modern grammarians
advocate concerning the use of that and which in restrictive
and nonrestrictive clauses?
8.183 What note does Baugh make about
how common progressive forms are in Shakespeare's time?
What note does Baugh make about impersonal constructions?
What note does Baugh make about the changing frequency
of -eth endings on verbs versus -s endings
for verbs in the third person?
8.184 What was the Shakespearean attitude
to double negatives? What was often (by modern standards)
unusual abou the placement of the negative in relation to
the verb?
8.185 [summary of earlier material]
What was the attitude of English speakers toward the English
Language in the Renaissance?
What effect did the Great Vowel Shift have on English?