Though Middle English was widely spoken in fourteenth-century England, the English language was rarely employed in literature until poet Geoffrey Chaucer pioneered its literary use

Though Middle English was widely spoken in fourteenth-century England, the English language was rarely employed in literature until poet Geoffrey Chaucer helped pioneer its literary use. ______ his manuscripts contain the first documented uses of over 2,000 English words—like the word “princess” in his 1385 poem “The Knight’s Tale”—which led a contemporary to dub him “the first finder of our fair language.”23 Mark For ReviewWhich choice completes the text with the most logical transition?A) That being said,B) Indeed,C) However,D) Besides,

Chaucer as the creator of the English literary language.

Which literary format did Chaucer use to write The Canterbury Tales?

Read the text.Language Change1In some ways, it is surprising that languages change. After all, they are passed down through the generations reliably enough for parents and children to communicate with each other. Yet linguists find that all living languages change over time—albeit at different rates. For example, while Japanese has changed relatively little over a thousand years, English evolved rapidly in just a few centuries. Many present-day speakers find Shakespeare's sixteenth-century plays difficult and Chaucer's fourteenth-century The Canterbury Tales nearly impossible to read.2Languages change for a variety of reasons. Large-scale shifts often occur in response to social, economic, and political pressures, as there are many examples of language change fueled by invasions, colonization, and migration. Even without these kinds of influences, a language can change dramatically if enough users adopt a new way of speaking.Frequently, the needs of speakers drive language change. New technologies, industries, products, and experiences simply require new words. By using new and emerging terms, we all drive language change. But the unique way that individuals speak also fuels language change because no two individuals use a language in exactly the same way. The vocabulary and phrases people use depend on where they live, their age, education level, social status, and other factors. Through our day-to-day interactions, we pick up words and sayings from other people and integrate them into our speech. Teens and young adults, for example, often use different words and phrases from their parents. Some of them spread through the population and slowly change the language.The three main areas of language that change over time are vocabulary, sentence structure, and pronunciation. Vocabulary can change quickly as new words are borrowed from other languages, or as words get coined, combined, or shortened. Some words are even created through misinterpretation of form. As noted in the Linguistic Society of America's publication Is English Changing?, the word pea is one such example. Up until about four hundred years ago, pease could refer to either a single pea or many peas. At some point, people assumed that pease was the plural form of a new word, pea, based on the way pease sounded. While vocabulary can change quickly, sentence structure—the order of words in a sentence—changes more slowly. Changes in sound are somewhat harder to document, but just as interesting. For example, during the Great Vowel Shift five hundred years ago, the pronunciation of vowels in English changed dramatically. This shift represents the biggest difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English.For a language to change, speakers must adopt new words, sentence structures, and/or sounds; spread them through the community; and transmit them to the next generation. According to many linguists, children can serve as agents of language change: In the process of learning a language, children can acquire and internalize the sounds and structures differently from previous generations. Over time, children can propagate these variations in the language and potentially catalyze long-term language change.Adapted from the National Science Foundation, "Language and Linguistics: Language Change"What is the main focus of the text?how and why language changes over timewhy different languages evolve at different rateswhy the works of Shakespeare and Chaucer are difficult for modern readersSubmit

types of poetry in english