Peculiarities of the Early Modern English period

The GVS is the major change in pronunciation of English vowels in the Medieval period (1350-1500). There are 2 hypothesis about the reasons of GVS:

1) influence of French (higher society);

2) Black Death (plague) that made people moving from North to the South-East trying to save themselves (lower society).

The 1^st person who investigated GVS and named this event was a Danish linguist Otto Jesperson (1860-1941). The main tendency of GVS was change of long vowels into other long vowels or diphthongs ([e:]-[ei] break, [i:]-[ai] nice, [o:]-[u:] look, [a:]-[ei] late, [e:]-[i:] feel, [u:]-[au] house, [o:]-[ou] hope; exceptions – dead, bread).

In the Early Modern English period (XIV-XVII centuries) there were big changes in English vocabulary connected with: 1) development of industry, inventing new devices, printing, travelling, and 2) changes in cultural life. The most important invention of that time was printing – J. Guttenberg (1454). William Caxton brought printing in England in 1470-s. Another factor that influenced English vocabulary was introduction of the Renaissance. It was revival of Ancient Greek and Roman culture. The main idea was placing a human being as a centre of the universe and admiration of a beauty of a human body. Owing to the Renaissance there was the 2^nd wave of Latin and Greek borrowings. There were the 1^st attempts to standardize English, e.g. in 1604 the 1^st English dictionary “The Table Alphabetical” was published. The most famous poets were William Shakespeare and John Millton.