Does anyone know about word frequency in Early Modern English?

Question

I was looking at word frequency in KJV bible and Shakespeare compared to modern English and found some surprises.

The verb "get" (get, gets, got, gotten, getting) is the 5th most common verb in present day use. Of course, archaic forms like "getteth" are in KJV.

But the frequency of appearance of this verb is very low in KJV. In particular "got",  does not appear once in 3/4 million words in KJV. But "gotten" appears 50 time,

Shakespeare was just the opposite. The word "got" appears 120 times, but "gotten" appears only 5 times.

It makes me think that "got" might have been considered poor English.

Other verbs like "think", "want", and "use" are also relatively rare in KJV, but very common in modern usage.

Jim · Accepted Answer

Google's ngram viewer is a good, but limited tool. It might be a good place to start an inquiry. It compares only written words and does not differentiate meaning. Some words have changed drastically from the1620s. Your word "get," is a good example. In the old days, "to get with child" could mean "to sire." It could also mean one's descendants. " Genghis Khan's get numbers many millions."

ngram only goes back to 1800, but here is the result comparing three words, get, father, sire. Get was always more frequent, Get and father were about equal in 1900. Now get is far away most common.

Have fun.

ngram only goes back to 1800, but here is the result comparing three words, get, father, sire. Get was always more frequent, Get and father were about equal in 1900. Now get is far away most common.

Have fun.

RAY G · Answer

You have to be cautious about sources with this kind of analysis.

One big problem is that the KJV translation was written in a deliberately archaic style - even for its time - to give it extra weight of authority as a 'venerable' text, so it's not really representative of any kind of conventional style for the period.

Your question really could only be answered with a vast corpus search across various styles of text.

Edit: Yes - good examples. The Wikipedia article has more on this:

=quote=
In a period of rapid linguistic change the translators avoided contemporary idioms, tending instead towards forms that were already slightly archaic, like "verily" and "it came to pass". The pronouns "thou/thee" and "you" are consistently used as singular and plural respectively, even though by this time "you" was often found as the singular in general English usage, especially when addressing a social superior (as is evidenced, for example, in Shakespeare). For the possessive of the third person pronoun, the word "its", first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1598, is avoided. The older "his" is usually employed, as for example at Matthew 5:13: "if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?"; in other places "of it", "thereof" or bare "it" are found. Another sign of linguistic conservativism is the invariable use of "-eth" for the third person singular present form of the verb, as at Matthew 2:13: "the Angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dreame". The rival ending "-(e)s", as found in present-day English, was already widely used by this time (for example, it predominates over "-eth" in the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe).
- Wikipedia / King James Version / Style and criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version#Style_and_criticism
=unquote=

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Does anyone know about word frequency in Early Modern English?

2 Answers