• The basis of Standard English had emerged by 1500

• However, the clear-cut distinction between 'correct' and 'incorrect' did not exist in late Middle English

• There was much greater flexibility over the range of forms which educated people were able to use

• A great deal of variation, a legacy of earlier Middle English, was still in evidence

• A standard language presupposes a certain amount of stability. This was still lacking in the late Middle English

• The language was still experiencing the consequences of the period of radical grammatical change which had begun at the end of the Old English period

• In the fifteenth century it was undergoing a major shift in pronunciation norms (the Great Vowel Shift)

• Its lexicon was continuing to grow rapidly through the introduction of large numbers of loanwords

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