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A Short History of
Anglo-French Diglossia |
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The Short Word vs. the Long |
The etymological cleavage was further facilitated by the fact
that, in addition to distinctive stylistic properties ascribed
to the two lexical streams, they were also dissimilar in their
“physical” form and followed distinct syllabic patterns. In the
ME period, when English words had shed off most of their
grammatical inflexions, the overwhelming majority of native
Anglo-Saxon words had turned into monosyllables. By contrast,
French and Latin borrowings were typically longer than one
syllable and their prevalent polysyllabic structure came to be
regarded as one of the chief characteristics of the Romance
element within English.
The Elizabethans were well aware of this formal aspect of the
distinction. In his advice to poets (Certayne Notes of
Instruction, 1575) George Gascoigne advocates the use of
monosyllables on patriotic grounds:
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Here by the way I thinke it not amisse to forewarne you that you
thrust as few wordes of many sillables into your verse as may be...
the most auncient English wordes are of one syllable, so that the
more monosyllables that you vse the truer Englishman you shall seeme
and the lesse you shall smell of the Inkehorne.
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The “inkhorn controversy” inaugurated a long-lasting debate on the
desirability of the use of monosyllabic words versus polysyllabic
ones that was destined to turn into an ages-long argument about the
best functional balance between the two elements within English. The
argument is not yet over even to this day.
In as much as the Elizabethan writers and poets were primarily
concerned with promoting the vernacular as a literary medium, the
comparative stylistic potentialities of the two lexical elements of
English received much of their critical attention. By no means were
all of them swayed by Gascoigne’s patriotic argument, which
advocated the poetic use of monosyllables. On the contrary, the
prevailing view was that monosyllables were rather intractable in
poetry. For example, Nashe in his Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem
(2nd ed., Epistle to the Reader, 1594) vindicates his use
of polysyllabic compounds formed after the pattern of the Romance
loans by insisting, “they are growne in generall request with every
good poet.” He downgrades monosyllables by comparing them to small
change, which needs to be remelted into weightier coinages:
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Our English tongue, of all languages, most swarmeth with the single
money of monasillables, which are the only scandal of it. Bookes
written in them, and no other, seeme like shopkeepers boxes, that
contain nothing else save halfe-pence, three-farthings, and two-pences.
Therefore, what did me I, but having a huge heape of those
worthlesse shreds of small English in my pia mater’s purse,
to make the royaller shew with them to men’s eyes, had them to the
compounders immediately, and exchanged them foure into one, and
others into more, according to the Greek, French, Spanish, and
Italian.
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Nashe saw the main stylistic advantage of the longer words in the
fact that “they carrie far more state with them then any other,”
that is, are more elevated in terms of register.
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