Pros And Cons Of Purifying English Language

The linguists felt the need of purifying English language because of the intrusion of foreign language words. They assumed their role the role of an authority to perfect the language by giving logical rules. ‘By seventeenth century Grammarian and lexicographer, Elisha Coles compiled An English Dictionary (1692) by assuming that words can be defined according to the principle that all language has common elements. For example, he explains difficult terms from divinity, husbandry, philosophy, law, and mathematics, and he records thousands of hard words excluded in other dictionaries. He defines words by looking at universal language in the following ways: etymological derivation, rules of grammar, and pronunciation. Coles had previously discussed

In fact, some 200 works on grammar and rhetoric were published between 1750 and 1800, and no less than 800 during the 19th Century. Most of these works, Lowth’s in particular, were extremely prescriptive, stating in no uncertain terms the “correct” way of using English. Lowth was the main source of such "correct" grammar rules as a double negative always yields a positive, never end a sentence with a preposition and never split an infinitive. A refreshing exception to such prescriptivism was the “Rudiments of English Grammar” by the scientist and polymath Joseph Priestley, which was unusual in expressing the view that grammar is defined by common usage and not prescribed by self-styled

‘Lexicographer Nathan Bailey uses drawings to illustrate words in Dictionarium Britannicum (1730)’ Lexicographers used to teach some of the pedagogical practices, which were previously done by only grammarians. The eighteenth century interest in systematic principles found its expression in methodological reflections on diachrony and its study. Only few authors in the seventeenth century had been able to formulate methodological reservations as did Jan de laet in 1642, with respect to be lexical correspondences abducted by Hugo between European and American Indian Languages. Eighteenth century authors, however showed themselves more critical and methodologically more constructive. Lowth(1762) is a very influential grammar which, appearing at much the same time as Priestly (1761), considers aspects of the relative clause system discussed in the Grammaire generale et raisonnee(1600), and being conservative, dismisses it. When looking into the eighteenth century grammar books, numbers of example sentences were copied from one grammar to