The Cambridge History of the English Language Volume 3 part 2 ppsx

were proper nouns or not. The custom probably grew up because printers themselves were uncertain about when capitals were appropriate, and so tended to capitalise all nouns without distinction, and purely for aesthetic reasons. As Jones remarks (1701: 19), ‘the Printers do now use great Letters for all, or most Nouns Substantives [. . .] for Ornament’s sake’. By mid- century, however, there was a sudden cessation of this trend; grammarians were already opposed because the failure of printers to distinguish partic- ular words by capitals ‘hinders that expressive beauty, and remarkable dis- tinction intended by a capital’ (Tuite 1726: 7). This change in the use of capitals has been fully charted by Osselton (1985). 2.5.5 The orthography of manuscripts Just before the beginning of this period, there is evidence that like Howell, not all writers were content to use irregular orthography in their private cor- respondence, but looked for a more standardised form of spelling. Charles Longland, for example, resident in Leghorn in the 1650s, wrote many letters to colleagues in Cromwell’s diplomatic service in what appears to be Howell’s reformed orthography, including forms like leav, fals, wil (rejecting final <e> and doubled consonants) and more ‘phonetic’ spellings, like siems, piple (Longland 1742 [1655–6]: IV 674ff.). Nevertheless, the orthography of private documents continued to differ from that used by printers, but begins to attract contempt: Cooper (1687: 79) remarked on the ‘unskilfulness’ of these authors; Care (1687: Preface) comments on the ‘Ridiculous Errors in Spelling’ – a defect which ‘exposes them to the Raillery of Others’; and he argues (1687: sig. A2 r.) that it is not necessary to know the classics, as some have claimed, in order to spell English correctly; he knows ‘diverse’ writers who have learnt to spell correctly, being ignorant of Latin, simply by observa- tion. An anonymous schoolmaster (Anon. 1704a: sig. A3 r.) notes that many ‘affect to Speak fine’, but is surprised that ‘so few should endeavour to Write English tolerably true’; they claim that they can write well enough to serve their turn. Nearly two decades later, Watts (1721: xvii) restricts his criticism to the spelling of the ‘unlearned’; partly because they are ‘utter Strangers to the Derivation of Words from foreign Languages’, they produce such a ‘hideous Jumble of Letters . . . that neither the Vulgar nor the Learned can guess what they mean’. A paraphrase appears in what Alston describes as undoubtedly the most popular and most frequently reprinted of eighteenth-century English spelling-books (Dilworth 1751 [1740]), although he does not restrict his censure to the ‘unlearned’. The raillery of grammarians seems to have had Orthography and punctuation 51 little effect; even the social disadvantages of poor spelling, stressed by Addison, Steele and Defoe, seemed to be no more effective. Defoe points out, however (1890 [1729]: 16–17), that although English gentlemen cannot spell ‘their mother tongue’, it is commonly argued that correct orthography is of no importance to elder sons, who will inherit the family estate. Only younger sons need concern themselves with it. Steele (1987 [1709]: 145) even draws attention to the practical problems of incorrect spelling on signposts: ‘Many a Man’, he says, ‘has lost his Way and his Dinner by this general Want of Skill in Orthography.’ Swift was particularly irritated by the use of contracted forms such as can’t, shan’t, didn’t (McKnight 1968 [1928]: 313–18); Haugland 1995). What is so extraordi- nary is that these critics, in their private correspondence, were guilty of similar errors (Neumann 1944), Defoe himself being a case in point. The manuscript of his Compleat English Gentleman (not published until 1890) was distinguished by many eccentric spellings, such as hormony, ecclypst, peice and propogate; the sixteen printed proof-pages which survive have been cor- rected in another hand to a more standard spelling. Even Johnson was content to use such unconventional forms as enervaiting, peny (Osselton 1963: 174). In spite of the grammarians’ objections, it seems that, as Chesterfield remarked in 1754, there are ‘two very different orthographies, the , and the ’. As far as women were concerned, their spelling continued to be neither pedantic nor polite but simply phonetic (McKnight 1968 [1928]: 311–12). 2.5.6 Punctuation and capitalisation in manuscripts As in the previous period, punctuation and capitalisation continued to be largely idiosyncratic, although there was ample opportunity for writers to obtain guidance on ‘correct’ punctuation from the many grammarians who followed Lewis after his detailed discussion of the phenomenon in 1672. It is clear that, in manuscripts intended for publication, punctuation was largely left to the printer, since Moxon (1962 [1683–4]: 215), in advising the compositor how to punctuate, says that ‘the Rules for these [marks] having been taught in many School-books’ he need only refer his reader to them: this is further testimony to the influence of grammarians on the normal- isation of English orthography (cf. Dobson 1968: 187). Defoe provides a further illustration of the discrepancy between private and compositorial practice; as his editor notes (1890 [1729]: xix), Defoe hardly ever uses commas, and rarely a full stop, while capitals appear to be used at random – and not always even after a period. In brief, one can only say that it was Vivian Salmon 52 customary for individual writers to use far too many capitals and commas, and sometimes to replace a period by a comma where it would be incor- rect. 2.6 Conclusion In the development of a standard form of orthography and punctuation, these three centuries were undoubtedly the most important. Whether the development was a successful one is still open to question; if it is to be judged on its reflection of the spoken language, it is certainly not. The major difficulty is that twentieth-century spelling reflects the pronunciation of English in the fifteenth century, so that, while most of the vowel graphs (except, notably, <u> for / /) represent the spoken equivalent in the case of short vowels, they are quite inadequate in the case of long vowels, owing to the operation of the GVS while spelling was being standardised. The consonant graphs represent more adequately their related phonemes, but they are defective in so far as they reflect nothing more than the attempt of medieval scribes to provide a notation for phonemes not found in the French tradition, or already inadequately reflected there also (e.g. <th>, <ch>, <sh>). This conservative orthography also retains graphs repre- senting phonemes, such as / χ/, no longer in Southern English, and disap- pearing during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as in combinations now lost, e.g. initial / wr/, /n/, /kn/. Current English orthography does, however, benefit from the rules for marking long and short vowels by final <e> and doubled consonants, which were first clearly formulated by Mulcaster; and it also benefits from the rules for clarifying in handwriting morpheme junctions involving <v> and <i>. The rejection of comprehensive capitalisation in the eighteenth century has also been a boon in a language where the complexities of word order do not make it necessary to capitalise nouns in order to clarify the construction of a sen- tence, an advantage often claimed for such capitalisation in German.  Orthography Orthographia was the first of the four components of traditional grammars, and so named from at least the Middle Ages (Michael 1970: 35–6); it dealt with letters of the alphabet, syllables and spelling. It is first recorded in English in 1450 (OED) and first defined in 1616 as ‘the art of writing words truely’. It is practically synon- Orthography and punctuation 53 ymous with spelling, but refers more especially to the system as a whole rather than to the arrangement of letters of the alphabet in individual words. A more appro- priate term for the study would be graphology, parallel with phonology, but the term has been pre-empted for the study of handwriting, rather than for the study of the use of graphic symbols (but cf. McIntosh 1961). It has been suggested that orthog- raphy should be the superordinate term, with spelling and punctuation as subordinates. For a discussion of these and similar points, see Mountford (1990). Daines (1640: 69) makes the perceptive remark that ‘Orthographie and Orthoepie be necessarily so concomitant (as being impossible to be perfect in the one without the other)’.   2.1 A further discussion of possible relationships between spoken and written language appears in papers by Mountford (cited in the Bibliography), as well as in individual papers by Bolinger (1946) – still very valuable in spite of its date – and McIntosh (1961). Mountford (1976) deals especially with certain characteristic features of English orthography which developed in the six- teenth century, and are still operative, and general discussions over the whole area of present-day orthography appear in Venezky (1970) and Albrow (1972). Chomsky (1970) discusses some interesting theoretical questions relating to orthography and reading. 2.2 An interesting historical account of English orthography, as it developed in its social context, is in Scragg (1974), and is recommended to all students of the subject as a useful introduction to more detailed accounts or to individual texts (but see Kniezsa’s 1992 critique of histories of orthography). Sixteenth- century ideas on English orthography are treated, as a concomitant to their analysis as phonological evidence, in Dobson (1968), and specific authors (Smith, Hart, Bullokar and Gil) should be consulted in the editions cited in the Bibliography. The work of other early linguistic scholars may most conven- iently be studied in the facsimiles selected by Alston and published by him at the Scolar Press in the series English Linguistics (cited in the Bibliography as EL with the series number). For information about the location and availabil- ity of texts not in this series, readers should consult Alston’s splendidly com- prehensive and detailed bibliography (1974) of writings on the English language, 1500–1800. For theories of punctuation, part of Treip (1970) is rel- evant; for an account of the development of one specific feature see Salmon (1996 [1982]), and for a general account of punctuation theory 1500–1800 see Salmon (1988). See also Little (1984), Nunberg (1990), Parkes (1992) and Brutiaux (1995). 2.3 The state of English orthography when Caxton set up his press is exemplified in Davis (1959) and Lucas (1973), drawing on individual authors, while general accounts (which are essential reading) are provided in Fisher (1977, 1979). On Caxton himself see Blake (1965, 1973, 1976); and on the views of the printer Vivian Salmon 54 John Rastell, some forty years after Caxton’s death, see Salmon (1989). Alston (1974) gives detailed bibliographical information about the works printed in ‘reformed’ spelling in the 1570s. 2.4 Mulcaster’s Elementarie is essential reading for the specialist, supplemented by Coote (1596) and any other writers on orthography (e.g. Daines 1640), whose works may be available. Partridge (1964) offers a helpful account of Elizabethan orthography and punctuation, and Salmon (1988 [1962]) exam- ines in detail the characteristics of two texts, one a scholarly work and the other the Shakespeare Folio of 1623. In this period the rules which should govern English orthography (e.g. at morpheme junctions) were taking shape; for their final form see especially Vallins rev. Scragg (1965). 2.5 The outstanding growth of literacy in this period depended on the continual publication of spelling-books, readers and spelling dictionaries, all listed in Alston (1974), with several discussed in Michael (1987). Attitudes to ‘correct’ spelling are described and exemplified by McKnight (1968). Most valuable are the papers by Osselton, cited in the Bibliography, since his conclusions are based on detailed statistical analysis of specific texts. 2.5 Much research needs to be done in this area; there is, for example, no detailed study of the development of English punctuation, in theory or prac- tice, nor any detailed account of the gradual introduction of standard spelling in printed books. Blake (1965: 63) has drawn attention to the fact that few scholars have made any study of the language of early printers (other than that of Caxton) to determine how a trend to orthographical conformity devel- oped. He points out, however, that such a study is ‘fraught with difficulties’, and that an ‘enormous amount of work remains to be done’ (77). What is lacking, perhaps most of all, is any account of spelling reformers like Hart as theoreticians; their work has been used as evidence in phonological studies, but little attention has been paid to their often brilliant insights as linguists (but see Salmon 1994). This criticism may be extended generally to current linguis- tic scholarship, and it is time to examine in detail theories of writing as applied to the history of English orthography. Orthography and punctuation 55  PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY Roger Lass 3.1 Introduction 3.1.1 Overview and prospect The period 1476–1776 covers the end of Middle English, what is generally known as Early Modern English, and the early stages of indisputably ‘modern’, if somewhat old-fashioned, English. At the beginning, the language looks more Middle than Modern, and sounds partly both; at the end it looks and sounds quite, if not fully, modern. I illustrate with two short texts and some comment: A. Letter of Sir Thomas Wyatt to his son, 1532 I doubt not but long ere this tyme my lettres are come to you. I remem- ber I wrate you in them that if you read them oftin it should be as tho I had written oftin to you: for al that I can not so content me but stil to cal apon you with my lettres. I wold not for al that that if any thing be wel warnid in the other, that you should leaue to remember it becaus of this new, for it is not like with aduertisements as it is with apparel that with long wering a man castith away when he hath new. Honest teching neuir were onles they were out of his remembrans that shold kepe and folow them to the shame and hurt of him self. (Muir 1960: 248ff) B. Letter of Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, 1774 I am ashamed to think that since I received your letter I have passed so many days without answering it. I think there is no great difficulty in resolving your doubts. The reasons for which you are inclined to visit London, are, I think, not of sufficient strength to answer the objections. I need not tell you what regard you owe to Mrs. Boswell’s entreaties; or how much you ought to study the happiness of her who studies yours with so much diligence, and of whose kindness you enjoy such good effects. Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions. She 56 permitted you to ramble last year, you must permit her now to keep you at home. (Boswell’s Life, Saturday 5 March 1774) The roughly similar orthographies conceal some major phonological changes. Using Chaucer to represent a late ME ‘standard’ of roughly the same geographical provenance as Wyatt and Johnson (though Wyatt was Kentish and Johnson from Warwickshire, their speech is still basically London standard), we can single out some exemplary changes: (1)   e.g.  e.g. iithis  this eεlettres ε letters oɔnot ɒ not i εi I, time  I, kindness a a shame e shame u ɔu out u now (Some of these values are controversial; see 3.4.1 and 3.2.) Two major splits have taken place by Johnson’s time. ME / a/ gives isola- tive [ ] v. [a] before /f, θ, s, r/; ME /u/ has lowered and unrounded in many contexts to [ ], but keeps its seventeenth-century value [υ] in others. So for ME / a/, where Wyatt has [a] in both that, castith,Johnson would have [ ] in that,[a] in last (back /ɑ/ develops in the nineteenth century). For ME / u/, where Wyatt has [u] (but, come), Johnson has []. Unshifted ME / u/ happens not to occur in the Johnson text (e.g. in words like wool, full); but both texts have ‘secondary’ ME / u/ from ME /o/ that has shortened in certain words after raising to [ u] (see 3.4.1.6): e.g. good < ME /od/, later / ud/, where Wyatt would have [u] and Johnson [υ]. To summarise: (2) Wyatt Johnson ME /a/ that a last aa ME /u/ but u full uυ Wyatt’s /r/ <r> was pronounced in all positions: (read, wering, warnid, neuir). By Johnson’s time the distribution of / r/ was approaching the modern: full consonantal realisation only before vowels, but (variably) weakened or lost elsewhere. Morphologically, little of interest is directly apparent in this tiny sample, except for the present 3 sing.: Wyatt’s hath, castith v. Johnson’s studies.But Wyatt’s you represents a choice of one term of a potential opposition: in certain registers thou, thee would have been available. Phonology and morphology 57 In at least two cases there has been little change since the sixteenth century: both Wyatt and Johnson would have [ i] for ME /e/ (be) and [u] for isolative ME / o/ (to). Since the eighteenth century the long vowels from ME / a/ (shame) and /ɔ/ (so) have diphthongised, the second more noticeably than the first: shame now has [ e] or something similar, so [əυ] or [ υ] < earlier [oυ]. Altogether the English of the third quarter of the eighteenth century is structurally and phonetically quite modern; most of the changes since then have been relatively small-scale. 3.1.2 Sources and evidence 3.1.2.1 The orthoepists: direct phonetic description The historian of post-sixteenth-century English has a resource lacking for earlier periods: the usual textual and comparative evidence, rhymes, spellings, etc. are for the first time supported by contemporary phonetic description. During the late Renaissance a vernacular Western European phonetic tradition was emerging, providing information of a kind quite new for the post-classical languages. Obviously any historian would (if with trepidation) give a couple of teeth for a recording of a dead language; pho- netic descriptions of any kind, while less than optimal, are still very welcome. Unfortunately phoneticians before the later nineteenth century did not use modern phonetic theory or metalanguage; they are a rich but problematical source, requiring detailed and sophisticated intepretation, supported by historical, theoretical and comparative argument. Though their testimony is of inestimable value, they can be ambiguous, mistaken, or plain incomprehensible. Still, the best are superb observers; and the scholarship devoted to them since the late 1860s first revolutionized and then became the implicit basis of much of the conventional wisdom about the history of English phonology. These sources are not usually discussed in detail except in the technical literature. Historians may tell us that ‘ME / a/ had become [ε] by 1650’, but rarely how they know (or, better, why they choose to believe it). This is pardonable: even in this chapter, based largely on a return to these early sources, there is room for detailed interpretation only in a few exemplary cases. But the material is important, and unfamiliar except to professional historians; and it is pivotal, since it serves not only for its own period, but as a base for projecting back into the past. I will briefly illustrate its varied Roger Lass 58 excellences and problems, and some of the interpretive techniques, subsidiary arguments and evidence we use. The early phoneticians are conventionally and somewhat misleadingly lumped together as ‘orthoepists’ (practitioners of ‘the science of (correct) pronunciation’, as the Concise Oxford puts it). Indeed many use this term themselves (e.g. Simon Daines’s Orthoepia anglicana 1640, Robert Nares’s Elements of Orthoepy 1784). I stick to tradition; but we must note that not all of these writers were concerned merely (or even at all) with ‘correctness’. Though – and this is both a strength and a weakness – all were concerned with describing or teaching the southern British prestige dialect of their times. The true orthoepic impulse shows up for instance in some parts of John Wallis’s Grammatica linguae anglicanae (1653); he claims to be describing ‘puram et genuinam pronunciationem linguae anglicanae’ [the pure and genuine pronunciation of the English language], not ‘singulas . . . variorum locorum dialectos, aut affectatas muliercularum ineptias, aliosve barbaris- mos’ [individual local dialects, or the absurdities affected by flighty women, or other such barbarisms]. Another work with a puristic impulse, Alexander Gil’s Logonomia anglica (1619), devotes considerable energy to condemning not only provincial and vulgar pronunciations, but also the new-fangled and affected, and those of his colleagues who appear to promote the latter. But Wallis is also a serious phonetician, and prefaces his grammar with a general treatise on speech sounds; and other writers were concerned with general phonetics as much as English, like Robert Robinson (The Art of Pronuntiation, 1619), or William Holder (The Elements of Speech, 1669). Still others had (partly) different purposes: John Hart, in his Orthographie (1569), proposed a new phonetically based orthography designed to bring spelling into line with pronunciation (see below). Other sources include manuals of English for foreigners, like Jaques Bellot’s Le maistre d’escole anglois (1580), or Mather Flint’s Prononciation de la langue angloise (1740). Our worst problems stem from the standard phonetic theory and terminology (indeed the anatomy and physiology of speech were not well understood until much later). And we also have to discriminate between intelligent writers and second-raters, those who understood the difference between sound and spelling and those who didn’t, those whose normative biases led them to propose purely ‘theoretical’ and non-existent pronunci- ations and more objective observers, etc. Vowels are a special problem. Since the modern high/low, back/front grid had not been developed, we may be faced with nearly uninterpretable Phonology and morphology 59 articulatory descriptions, or impressionistic terms like ‘thin’, ‘clear’, etc. Many writers in particular were unaware of the role of the back of the tongue in vowel formation, which led to much clearer descriptions of front than back vowels (I discuss an example below). A case-study will illustrate the spectrum of orthoepic merits and demerits, and strategies of interpretation. My text is John Hart’s Orthographie (1569), probably the most important of the sixteenth-century witnesses, and one of the monuments of English descriptive phonetics. Hart’s purpose is not normative, but analytic and reformist; every word, he says, ‘is to be vndone into those voices [sounds] only whereof it is made’. Since letters ‘are the figures and colours wherewith the image of mans voice is painted . . . the writing should haue so many letters as the speach hath voyces, and no more nor lesse’ (9a). Hart also insists that spelling should keep pace with language change (13a): Tongues haue often chaunged . . . then if occasion in the fancies of men, haue had power to chaunge tongues, much more Reason should correct the vicious writing of the speach, wherein (as in all thinges) vse should none otherwise take place, than experience proueth it to be reasonable and profitable . . . The best of his actual descriptions are as good as anything modern: thus he says of the letters <t, d> that the sounds they represent are made ‘bei leing ov iur tung full in ðe palet ov iur mouθ, and tuing hardest of iur for- ti θ’ [by laying of your tongue full in the palate of your mouth, and touching hardest of your fore-teeth]. (This part of the book is in his own phonetic transcription, which should be interpretable; I provide a translation for this first example just in case. Some symbols are adjusted to conform to available type.) These are unambiguously dentals. This is important (and not usually noted in the standard histories): a century later Holder (1669: 3) says that his / t, d/ are made ‘by the end of the Tongue to the Goums’, and calls them ‘gingival’. This suggests a (normally ignored) dental-to-alveolar shift some- where between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. Hart also gives the first unambiguous description of aspirated voiceless stops in English: he says (48b–49a) that in words like pipe, apple, plum ‘ui br eððe h, softli, and se: p-heip, ap-hel, p-hlum’. That these are voiceless is clear from his distinction between ‘dumbe or dul sounds . . . comming from the brest with a breath as it were groningly’, and those (among them <p, t, k>) ‘differing only by leauing of the inward sound, & vse but of the breath’ (36a–36b). Only much later do we get more precise descriptions: Cooper Roger Lass 60 [...]... period of the fteenth century, and new developments The most far-reaching of these aected the vowel system, and included: (a) A major shift of the long vowels, with articulatory change in every ME category (3. 3) Changes in the short vowels, resulting in the genesis (or re-genesis, since it occurred in Old English) of [ ] (bat); the rise of the /u/ / / (put:cut) contrast through a partial split of ME... (join), /iu/ (new), /u/ (dew: 3. 4 .2. 13. 4 .2. 2, 3. 4 .2. 4, 3. 4 .2. 6) (b) (c) (d) (e) These changes require some historical context; it may be helpful to look back briey at the Old and Middle English systems, and ahead to the modern one First the vowel systems of pre-Alfredian Old English (c 800), and a late London Middle English (c 1400): (6) Old English i e a y ứ eo u o i e a Middle English y ứ u o i u e o ... Time t1 t2 t3 t4 At t1 we have 100 per cent old [o ], no new [u ]; as the change proceeds, the percentages of the new form increase, while those of the old drop At t2 there is still a preponderance of [o ], but [u ] is increasing; at t3, a notional midpoint, old and new are roughly in balance; t4 is the inverse of t1 The closer our sampling point to the beginning, the scarcer examples of the new state;... ( 13) is now traditionally called the Great Vowel Shift (henceforth GVS); the events constituting it are taken as a kind of watershed in the history of English Later developments have obscured this pretty shape; merger of ME /e , / in /i /, lowering of the rst elements of the diphthongs from ME /i , u /, etc The name GVS is often applied (misleadingly) to the whole Middle English- to-Present-Day English. .. within the word (3. 4 .3. 3) 71 Roger Lass 3. 3 The Great Vowel Shift 3. 3.1 What, if anything, was the Great Vowel Shift? By the late nineteenth century, historians had worked out the basic phonetic correspondences between earlier and Present-Day English The picture that emerged relating the Middle English long vowels c 1400 and the modern ones has not required extensive revision (though our understanding of. .. long after 1500 The rest of the long vowels raised considerably later, and reached their nal values only around 1650 So despite sporadic intimations of some subshifts as early as the rst decades of the fourteenth century, the central or active GVS belongs rmly to the fteenth to seventeenth centuries 3. 3 .3 The ner anatomy of the GVS The GVS seems to have had at least two phases Phase I is the early push... sayde for the a, and turning the lippes rounde as a ring, and thrusting forth of a sounding breath, which roundnesse to signie the shape of the letter, was made (of the rst inuentor) in like sort : For the ft and last, by holding in lyke maner the tongue from touching the teeth (as is said of the a, and o) and bringing the lippes so neare togither, as there be left but space that the sound... retention (murthered: dead, widowed: bed; Cusack 1970: 10f and 3. 8.4.4 below) After this long (but I think necessary) survey of evidence and interpretation, we can embark on the history proper 3. 2 Phonology: the Middle English inputs 3. 2. 1 The vowel system The sixteenth to eighteenth centuries saw a burst of phonological activity; both the owering and completion of tendencies rooted in the transitional... least part of) the GVS this way is justied; it arises from a consideration of problems in chronology or the relations of particular changes that under any interpretation surely did occur The schematic ( 13) suggests a question: how did the GVS start? In the vast earlier literature (and still) there are two main positions, one associated with Jespersen and the other with Luick Both were convinced of the. .. with wyde opening the mouth, as when a man yauneth : The seconde, with somewhat more closing the mouth, thrusting softlye the inner part of the tongue to the inner and vpper great teeth [molars] : The thirde, by pressing the tongue in like maner, yet somewhat more foreward, and bringing the iawe somewhat more neare . : The fourth, by taking awaye of all the tongue, cleane from the teeth or gummes, . the scholarship devoted to them since the late 1860s first revolutionized and then became the implicit basis of much of the conventional wisdom about the history of English phonology. These sources are. most of the changes since then have been relatively small-scale. 3. 1 .2 Sources and evidence 3. 1 .2. 1 The orthoepists: direct phonetic description The historian of post-sixteenth-century English. detailed bibliography (1974) of writings on the English language, 1500–1800. For theories of punctuation, part of Treip (1970) is rel- evant; for an account of the development of one specific feature