Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T21:38:02.722Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Early modern English contractions and their relevance to present-day English

English contractions have their own history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2011

Denis Gailor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Are contractions like don't and it's typical of ‘modern’ English? To what extent were they present in early modern English? This paper endeavours to answer these questions. However, it also sets out to answer another one: early modern English had a set of contractions of its own, and the question is why they disappeared and whether they are still in any way relevant to contemporary English.

Type
Original Article
Information
English Today , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 10 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bond, D. F. (ed.). 1965. The Spectator, Volume II. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Bond, Donald F. (ed.). 1987. The Tatler, Volume III. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Leech, G. N., Rayson, P. and Wilson, A. 2001. Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus. Harlow: Pearson.Google Scholar
Partridge, A. C. 1964. Orthography in Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama. A Study of Colloquial Contractions, Elision, Prosody and Punctuation. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Smith, J. L. 1999. Essentials of Early English. An Introduction to Old, Middle and Early Modern English. 2nd ed.London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Swift, J. 1964. A Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue, Polite Conversation, Etc. Edited by Davis, Herbert with Landa, Louis. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar