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The many ways English flouts its own rules can be confusing even to those who speak it as a first language. English, the language of Shakespeare and the internet, is often touted for its flexibility and adaptability. But with great flexibility comes great inconsistency.
Here are some ways the English language gleefully breaks its own rules, leaving both native speakers and new learners scratching their heads. “So this guy walks into a bar …” We know a story is coming, and it’s clearly a story about something from the past—and yet, the word walks is in the present tense.
This technique, known as the historical present, adds immediacy and drama to the narrative; it’s as if the storyteller is reliving the moment, pulling you into the scene.…Continue reading…
By: Brett Reynolds
Source: 5 Ways the English Language Breaks Its Own Rules
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The earliest varieties of an English language, collectively known as Old English or “Anglo-Saxon”, evolved from a group of North Sea Germanic dialects brought to Britain in the 5th century. Old English dialects were later influenced by Old Norse-speaking Viking settlers and invaders, starting in the 8th and 9th centuries.
Middle English began in the late 11th century after the Norman Conquest of England, when considerable Old French, especially Old Norman French, and Latin-derived vocabulary was incorporated into English over some three hundred years.
Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the start of the Great Vowel Shift and the Renaissance trend of borrowing further Latin and Greek words and roots, concurrent with the introduction of the printing press to London. This era notably culminated in the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare.
The printing press greatly standardised English spelling, which has remained largely unchanged since then, despite a wide variety of later sound shifts in English dialects. Modern English has spread around the world since the 17th century as a consequence of the worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States.
Through all types of printed and electronic media in these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation, and law. Its modern grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent-marking pattern with a rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection and a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order.
Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses, aspects and moods, as well as passive constructions, interrogatives, and some negation. By the late 18th century, the British Empire had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance.
Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language. English also facilitated worldwide international communication. English was adopted in parts of North America, parts of Africa, Oceania, and many other regions.
When they obtained political independence, some of the newly independent states that had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as the official language to avoid the political and other difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others.
In the 20th century the growing economic and cultural influence of the United States and its status as a superpower following the Second World War has, along with worldwide broadcasting in English by the BBC and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster.
In the 21st century, English is more widely spoken and written than any language has ever been. As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage were published, and spread through official media such as public education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755 Samuel Johnson published his A Dictionary of the English Language, which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms.
In 1828, Noah Webster published the American Dictionary of the English language to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain, non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of the prestige varieties among the middle classes.
In modern English, the loss of grammatical case is almost complete (it is now only found in pronouns, such as he and him, she and her, who and whom), and SVO word order is mostly fixed. Some changes, such as the use of do-support, have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the word “do” as a general auxiliary as Modern English does; at first it was only used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory.Now, do-support with the verb have is becoming increasingly standardised.)
The use of progressive forms in -ing, appears to be spreading to new constructions, and forms such as had been being built are becoming more common. Regularisation of irregular forms also slowly continues (e.g. dreamed instead of dreamt), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g. more polite instead of politer).
British English is also undergoing change under the influence of American English, fuelled by the strong presence of American English in the media and the prestige associated with the United States as a world power.
Prepositional phrases (PP) are phrases composed of a preposition and one or more nouns, e.g. with the dog, for my friend, to school, in England. Prepositions have a wide range of uses in English. They are used to describe movement, place, and other relations between different entities, but they also have many syntactic uses such as introducing complement clauses and oblique arguments of verbs.
For example, in the phrase I gave it to him, the preposition to marks the recipient, or Indirect Object of the verb to give. Traditionally words were only considered prepositions if they governed the case of the noun they preceded, for example causing the pronouns to use the objective rather than subjective form, “with her”, “to me”, “for us”.
But some contemporary grammars such as that of Huddleston & Pullum (2002:598–600) no longer consider government of case to be the defining feature of the class of prepositions, rather defining prepositions as words that can function as the heads of prepositional phrases. English verbs are inflected for tense and aspect and marked for agreement with present-tense third-person singular subject.
Only the copula verb to be is still inflected for agreement with the plural and first and second person subjects. Auxiliary verbs such as have and be are paired with verbs in the infinitive, past, or progressive forms. They form complex tenses, aspects, and moods. Auxiliary verbs differ from other verbs in that they can be followed by the negation, and in that they can occur as the first constituent in a question sentence.
Most verbs have six inflectional forms. The primary forms are a plain present, a third-person singular present, and a preterite (past) form. The secondary forms are a plain form used for the infinitive, a gerund-participle and a past participle. The copula verb to be is the only verb to retain some of its original conjugation, and takes different inflectional forms depending on the subject.
The first-person present-tense form is am, the third person singular form is is, and the form are is used in the second-person singular and all three plurals. The only verb past participle is been and its gerund-participle is being.
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