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93-534: Captivity is the state of being captive, of being imprisoned or confined. The word derives from the late Middle English captivitas , and the Latin captivus and capere , meaning to seize or take, which is also the root of the English word, "capture". In humans, captivity may include arrest and detention as a function of law enforcement and a civilian correctional system , detention of combatants in

186-485: A time of war , as well as human trafficking, slave taking, and other forms of involuntary confinement, forced relocation, and servitude. In non-human animals, captivity may include confinement for the purpose of food production or labor , such as that done on a farm, confinement for the purpose of human recreation or education, such as that done at a zoo or aquarium, or confinement for the purpose of keeping domesticated pets , such as that commonly done with animals such as

279-504: A byproduct, but was also often a primary goal of conducting raids and warfare in small scale societies. According to some estimates of ancient societies, war captives and slaves may have at various points comprised as much as 20% of Roman Italy, 33% of Greece, 70% of Korea, 20% of some Islamic states, 40% of tropical American societies, and as much as half of some African societies. The practice of conducting raids for captive taking extended in some forms until modern times, for example, piracy in

372-738: A demonstrative ( þis , þat ), after a possessive pronoun (e.g., hir , our ), or with a name or in a form of address. This derives from the Old English "weak" declension of adjectives. This inflexion continued to be used in writing even after final -e had ceased to be pronounced. In earlier texts, multisyllable adjectives also receive a final -e in these situations, but this occurs less regularly in later Middle English texts. Otherwise, adjectives have no ending and adjectives already ending in -e etymologically receive no ending as well. Earlier texts sometimes inflect adjectives for case as well. Layamon's Brut inflects adjectives for

465-502: A largely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary (with many Norse borrowings in the northern parts of the country) but a greatly simplified inflectional system. The grammatical relations that were expressed in Old English by the dative and instrumental cases were replaced in Early Middle English with prepositional constructions. The Old English genitive - es survives in the -'s of the modern English possessive , but most of

558-494: A lengthened – and later also modified – pronunciation of a preceding vowel. For example, in name , originally pronounced as two syllables, the /a/ in the first syllable (originally an open syllable) lengthened, the final weak vowel was later dropped, and the remaining long vowel was modified in the Great Vowel Shift (for these sound changes, see Phonology , above). The final ⟨e⟩ , now silent, thus became

651-495: A lesser extent), and, therefore, it cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking sections of the population: English did, after all, remain the vernacular . It is also argued that Norse immigrants to England had a great impact on the loss of inflectional endings in Middle English. One argument is that, although Norse and English speakers were somewhat comprehensible to each other due to similar morphology,

744-511: A person is held captive under a fraudulent assertion of authority. For example, if a police officer were to detain a person in their patrol car for a short period of time without a legally justifiable reason, that brief captivity would still constitute false imprisonment. For individuals who are kidnapped or taken hostage, victims may experience effects similar to many other traumatic experiences, such as acute stress disorder and Posttraumatic stress disorder . One such condition unique to captivity

837-593: A process called apophony ), as in Modern English. With the discontinuation of the Late West Saxon standard used for the writing of Old English in the period prior to the Norman Conquest, Middle English came to be written in a wide variety of scribal forms, reflecting different regional dialects and orthographic conventions. Later in the Middle English period, however, and particularly with

930-412: A rhinoceros family kept in a thousand-acre enclosure within their normal area of habitation, for purposes of insuring their preservation, are really in captivity. Captivity may also be employed in more abstract or figurative senses, such as to captivate , meaning to subdue through charm, or to capture such as an artist attempting to "capture a mood", or "capture a scene". Humans are held captive under

1023-524: A variant of the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in northern England and spoken in southeast Scotland ). During the Middle English period, many Old English grammatical features either became simplified or disappeared altogether. Noun, adjective, and verb inflections were simplified by the reduction (and eventual elimination) of most grammatical case distinctions. Middle English also saw considerable adoption of Anglo-Norman vocabulary, especially in

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1116-617: Is Stockholm syndrome , wherein the captive comes to feel dependence on, and even affection for, their captor. These alliances, resulting from a bond formed between captor and captives during intimate time spent together, are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims. The FBI's Hostage Barricade Database System and Law Enforcement Bulletin shows that roughly 8% of victims show evidence of Stockholm syndrome. Swiss biologist Heini Hediger noted that "[m]an's first efforts to keep wild animals in captivity date back to prehistoric times". Hediger proposed that

1209-670: Is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with

1302-432: Is held against her will by another, the existence of captive children and animals makes it clear that the denial of autonomy as it is usually understood is not a condition for captivity". In some instances, the captivity of the subject is clear, as with an animal kept in a cage at a zoo. However, circumstances exist under which captivity is more amorphous. For example, it has been noted that it is hard to say whether members of

1395-437: Is not species-captive would not be a dog at all". They are a species so deeply domesticated that freedom has no meaning, and for whom their status as a captive species mitigates their captivity. Captivity "benefits the captor, and in almost all cases, harms the captive". The degree to which captivity affects animals is dictated in large part by whether they were born in wild and then captured, or born in captivity: "The problem of

1488-433: Is now rare and used only in oxen and as part of a double plural , in children and brethren . Some dialects still have forms such as eyen (for eyes ), shoon (for shoes ), hosen (for hose(s) ), kine (for cows ), and been (for bees ). Grammatical gender survived to a limited extent in early Middle English before being replaced by natural gender in the course of the Middle English period. Grammatical gender

1581-702: Is the Babylonian captivity of Judah, as described in the Bible. Attempts to escape from prison are a popular genre in prison films and prisoner-of-war films , with films in the genres often depicting the captive as a heroic figure, often an innocent person who is wrongly convicted and seeking to escape the evil or abuses of the captors. For example, the films are said to perpetuate "a common misperception that most correctional officers are abusive" and that prisoners are "violent and beyond redemption." Late Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME )

1674-522: Is the legal term for an instance of a person being held captive without the authority of the state. It includes kidnapping and hostage taking , practices which date at least to Biblical times, with an Old Testament formal prohibition given in Exodus 21:16. These practices continue to the modern day, and are a common tactic used by terrorist or criminal organizations as a means of gaining power or for monetary extortion. The majority of kidnappings occur among

1767-524: The Augustinian canon Orrm wrote the Ormulum , one of the oldest surviving texts in Middle English. The influence of Old Norse aided the development of English from a synthetic language with relatively free word order to a more analytic language with a stricter word order. Both Old English and Old Norse were synthetic languages with complicated inflections. Communication between Vikings in

1860-517: The Catholic League from 1628 to 1633 and was then taken by Lutheran Sweden. The peace negotiations had no exact beginning or end, because the 109 delegations never met in a plenary session. Instead, various delegations arrived between 1643 and 1646 and left between 1647 and 1649. The largest number of diplomats were present between January 1646 and July 1647. Delegations had been sent by 16 European states, 66 Imperial States representing

1953-597: The Danelaw and their Anglo-Saxon neighbours resulted in the erosion of inflection in both languages. Old Norse may have had a more profound impact on Middle and Modern English development than any other language. The effect of Old Norse on Old English was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Like close cousins, Old Norse and Old English resembled each other, and with some words and grammatical structures in common, speakers of each language roughly understood each other, but according to historian Simeon Potler

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2046-616: The Early Modern English and Modern English eras. Middle English generally did not have silent letters . For example, knight was pronounced [ˈkniçt] (with both the ⟨k⟩ and the ⟨gh⟩ pronounced, the latter sounding as the ⟨ch⟩ in German Knecht ). The major exception was the silent ⟨e⟩ – originally pronounced but lost in normal speech by Chaucer's time. This letter, however, came to indicate

2139-588: The First World War , the conditions of captivity were separated between camps for prisoners of war, and those for civilian internment. Some wars have seen mass wartime imprisonment. In addition to enemy military personnel, the Nazi regime imprisoned large numbers of private citizens based on their ethnicity, culture, or political views, as part of the regime's efforts to impose a vision of ethnic purity. Many millions were killed, or died of starvation or disease. In

2232-476: The High and Late Middle Ages . Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography . Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English literary variety broke down and writing in English became fragmented and localized and was, for

2325-585: The Norman Conquest , had normally been written in French. Like Chaucer's work, this new standard was based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Clerks using this standard were usually familiar with French and Latin , influencing the forms they chose. The Chancery Standard, which was adopted slowly, was used in England by bureaucrats for most official purposes, excluding those of

2418-662: The Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster . They ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire , closing a calamitous period of European history that killed approximately eight million people. Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III , the kingdoms of France and Sweden , and their respective allies among the princes of the Holy Roman Empire, participated in

2511-414: The gravitational pull of another, or a " captive balloon " which is tethered to the ground by a rope or string. In a philosophical sense, captivity may refer not simply to confinement or lack of individual freedom, but also to the nature of a relationship between the captive and the captor, characterized by a lack of self-direction and autonomy. "Although the paradigm case of captivity is a free person who

2604-922: The internment of the Navajo in the American southwest in the 1860s, in part to force a transition to the life of sedentary Christian farmers. In modern times, in what has been termed the prison–industrial complex , inmates, otherwise already subjected to captivity in terms of restriction of movement, may also be subjected to economic exploitation, through forced labor at little or no compensation. Alternatively, as Karen M. Morin examines, undocumented immigrants , neither prisoners nor slaves, have in instances been historically subjected to similar conditions, both in terms of freedom of movement as well as freedom of labor. Others have examined economic captivity as it related to varying levels of inequality in developed societies. For example, George P. Smith II and Matthew Saunig examined

2697-771: The papal brief Zelo Domus Dei . The main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia were: The treaties did not entirely end conflicts arising out of the Thirty Years' War. Fighting continued between France and Spain until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. The Dutch-Portuguese War that had begun during the Iberian Union between Spain and Portugal , as part of the Eighty Years' War, went on until 1663. Nevertheless,

2790-645: The 12th century, incorporating a unique phonetic spelling system; and the Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group , religious texts written for anchoresses , apparently in the West Midlands in the early 13th century. The language found in the last two works is sometimes called the AB language . Additional literary sources of the 12th and 13th centuries include Layamon's Brut and The Owl and

2883-422: The 13th century and was replaced by thorn. Thorn mostly fell out of use during the 14th century and was replaced by ⟨th⟩ . Anachronistic usage of the scribal abbreviation [REDACTED] ( þe , "the") has led to the modern mispronunciation of thorn as ⟨ y ⟩ in this context; see ye olde . Wynn, which represented the phoneme /w/ , was replaced by ⟨ w ⟩ during

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2976-409: The 13th century. Due to its similarity to the letter ⟨p⟩ , it is mostly represented by ⟨w⟩ in modern editions of Old and Middle English texts even when the manuscript has wynn. Under Norman influence, the continental Carolingian minuscule replaced the insular script that had been used for Old English. However, because of the significant difference in appearance between

3069-473: The 14th century, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the English monarchy . In the aftermath of the Black Death of the 14th century, there was significant migration into London , of people to the counties of the southeast of England and from the east and central Midlands of England, and a new prestige London dialect began to develop as a result of this clash of

3162-604: The 1540s after the printing and wide distribution of the English Bible and Prayer Book , which made the new standard of English publicly recognizable and lasted until about 1650. The main changes between the Old English sound system and that of Middle English include: The combination of the last three processes listed above led to the spelling conventions associated with silent ⟨e⟩ and doubled consonants (see under Orthography , below). Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from

3255-572: The Church and legalities, which used Latin and Law French respectively. The Chancery Standard's influence on later forms of written English is disputed, but it did undoubtedly provide the core around which Early Modern English formed. Early Modern English emerged with the help of William Caxton 's printing press, developed during the 1470s. The press stabilized English through a push towards standardization, led by Chancery Standard enthusiast and writer Richard Pynson . Early Modern English began in

3348-681: The Holy Roman Empire and France, as well as between the Dutch Republic and Spain who on 30 January 1648 signed a peace treaty ending the Eighty Years' War that was not part of the Peace of Westphalia. Münster had been, since its re-Catholicism in 1535, a strictly mono-denominational community. It housed the Chapter of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster . Only Roman Catholic worship was permitted, while Calvinism and Lutheranism were prohibited. Sweden preferred to negotiate with

3441-560: The Holy Roman Empire in Osnabrück, which was controlled by Protestant forces. Osnabrück was a bi-denominational Lutheran and Catholic city, with two Lutheran churches and two Catholic churches. The city council was exclusively Lutheran, and the burghers mostly so, but the city also housed the Catholic Chapter of the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück and had many other Catholic inhabitants. Osnabrück had been subjugated by troops of

3534-609: The Holy Roman Empire negotiated a preliminary peace in December 1641. They declared that the preparations of Cologne and the Treaty of Hamburg were preliminaries of an overall peace agreement. The main peace negotiations took place in Westphalia , in the neighbouring cities of Münster and Osnabrück . Both cities were maintained as neutral and demilitarized zones for the negotiations. In Münster, negotiations took place between

3627-615: The Institute for Criminal Policy Research at the University of London , as of 2016 an estimated 10.35 million people were imprisoned worldwide. Throughout human history, the practice of "captive taking" during war was commonly practiced. Those taken from the defeated group, most often women and children, would typically be enslaved, sold into slavery to others, forced to marry members of the victorious group, or held in permanent sexual captivity. The first Roman gladiators , for example, were prisoners of war. The taking of captives may have been

3720-561: The Mediterranean Sea and the taking of captives to be sold as slaves continued until the 19th century, when it eventually culminated in the Barbary Wars . Over time, nations found it to be in their interests to agree to international standards regarding the treatment of captured soldiers. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia , which ended the Thirty Years' War , established that prisoners of war should be released without ransom at

3813-557: The Nightingale . Some scholars have defined "Early Middle English" as encompassing English texts up to 1350. This longer time frame would extend the corpus to include many Middle English Romances (especially those of the Auchinleck manuscript c.  1330 ). Gradually, the wealthy and the government Anglicised again, although Norman (and subsequently French ) remained the dominant language of literature and law until

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3906-591: The Norse speakers' inability to reproduce the ending sounds of English words influenced Middle English's loss of inflectional endings. Important texts for the reconstruction of the evolution of Middle English out of Old English are the Peterborough Chronicle , which continued to be compiled up to 1154; the Ormulum , a biblical commentary probably composed in Lincolnshire in the second half of

3999-544: The Old English -eþ , Midland dialects showing -en from about 1200, and Northern forms using -es in the third person singular as well as the plural. The past tense of weak verbs was formed by adding an -ed(e) , -d(e) , or -t(e) ending. The past-tense forms, without their personal endings, also served as past participles with past-participle prefixes derived from Old English: i- , y- , and sometimes bi- . Strong verbs , by contrast, formed their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e.g., binden became bound ,

4092-713: The Old Norse influence was strongest in the dialects under Danish control that composed the southern part of the Northern England (corresponding to the Scandinavian Kingdom of Jórvík ), the East Midlands and the East of England , words in the spoken language emerged in the 10th and 11th centuries near the transition from Old to Middle English. Influence on the written languages only appeared from

4185-456: The Peace of Westphalia did settle many outstanding European issues of the time. Some scholars of international relations have identified the Peace of Westphalia as the origin of principles crucial to modern international relations , including the inviolability of borders and non-interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. This system became known in the literature as Westphalian sovereignty . Most modern historians have challenged

4278-530: The Third Geneva Convention protects captured military personnel , some guerrilla fighters, and certain civilians . It applies from the moment a prisoner is captured until he or she is released or repatriated. One of the main provisions of the convention makes it illegal to torture prisoners and states that a prisoner can only be required to give their name , date of birth , rank and service number (if applicable). In some wars, such as

4371-559: The Thirty Years' War alone, and decades of constant warfare, the need for peace became increasingly clear. Peace negotiations between France and the Habsburg Emperor began in Cologne in 1636. These negotiations were initially blocked by Cardinal Richelieu of France, who insisted on the inclusion of all his allies, whether fully sovereign countries or states within the Holy Roman Empire . In Hamburg , Sweden, France, and

4464-776: The Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire, with the Habsburgs (rulers of Austria and Spain) and their Catholic allies on one side, battling the Protestant powers (Sweden and certain Holy Roman principalities) allied with France (though Catholic, strongly anti-Habsburg under King Louis XIV ). Several scholars of international relations have identified the Peace of Westphalia as the origin of principles crucial to modern international relations, collectively known as Westphalian sovereignty . However, some historians have argued against this, suggesting that such views emerged during

4557-622: The United States, citizens of Japanese descent were imprisoned out of fear that their loyalty would be to the Japanese enemy. Humans have historically been subjected to a range of economic based captivity. In the extreme are various forms of slavery, such as the chattel slavery of the Americas, which utilized a monopoly of violence along with the power of the government to commandeer the labor of African Americans, Native Americans, and

4650-710: The abundance of Modern English words for the mechanisms of government that are derived from Anglo-Norman, such as court , judge , jury , appeal , and parliament . There are also many Norman-derived terms relating to the chivalric cultures that arose in the 12th century, an era of feudalism , seigneurialism , and crusading . Words were often taken from Latin, usually through French transmission. This gave rise to various synonyms, including kingly (inherited from Old English), royal (from French, inherited from Vulgar Latin), and regal (from French, which borrowed it from Classical Latin). Later French appropriations were derived from standard, rather than Norman, French. Examples of

4743-455: The animal bred in captivity is in one respect obviously simpler than that of one born wild; the abrupt, decisive change from freedom to captivity is absent. No rupture with an existing environment, entailing laborious re-creation of a fresh One, arises". Captivity and efforts to endure or escape it are popular themes in literature. The captivity narrative is a genre of stories about people being captured by "uncivilized" enemies. A famous example

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4836-494: The areas of politics, law, the arts, and religion, as well as poetic and emotive diction. Conventional English vocabulary remained primarily Germanic in its sources, with Old Norse influences becoming more apparent. Significant changes in pronunciation took place, particularly involving long vowels and diphthongs, which in the later Middle English period began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift . Little survives of early Middle English literature , due in part to Norman domination and

4929-462: The association of this system with the Peace of Westphalia, calling it the 'Westphalian myth'. They have challenged the view that the modern European states system originated with the Westphalian treaties. The treaties do not contain anything in their text about religious freedom, sovereignty, or balance of power that can be construed as international law principles. Constitutional arrangements of

5022-402: The authority of their own government for a number of different reasons. Under certain circumstances, a person suspected of committing a crime is subject to detention for a period of time while awaiting trial for that crime. In some cases, a person may be detained and then released without being charged with criminal wrongdoing. Persons convicted of a crime may sent to a prison . According to

5115-583: The beginning of the 13th century, this delay in Scandinavian lexical influence in English has been attributed to the lack of written evidence from the areas of Danish control, as the majority of written sources from Old English were produced in the West Saxon dialect spoken in Wessex , the heart of Anglo-Saxon political power at the time. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 saw the replacement of

5208-414: The clergy for written communication and record-keeping. A significant number of Norman words were borrowed into English and used alongside native Germanic words with similar meanings. Examples of Norman/Germanic pairs in Modern English include pig and pork , calf and veal , wood and forest , and freedom and liberty . The role of Anglo-Norman as the language of government and law can be seen in

5301-507: The comparative and superlative (e.g., greet , great; gretter , greater). Adjectives ending in -ly or -lich formed comparatives either with -lier , -liest or -loker , -lokest . A few adjectives also displayed Germanic umlaut in their comparatives and superlatives, such as long , lenger . Other irregular forms were mostly the same as in modern English. Middle English personal pronouns were mostly developed from those of Old English , with

5394-732: The concept of economic captivity as it related to housing discrimination. Globally, it has been estimated that between 21 and 35.8 million people are victims of trafficking for sexual or labor exploitation, around two-thirds of them women and girls. The issue has been addressed variously at the national level, and internationally with the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children . However, many countries have no standing laws against trafficking, and of those that do, an estimated 16% of those studies had no convictions under their laws. False imprisonment

5487-486: The development of the Chancery Standard in the 15th century, orthography became relatively standardised in a form based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Spelling at the time was mostly quite regular . (There was a fairly consistent correspondence between letters and sounds.) The irregularity of present-day English orthography is largely due to pronunciation changes that have taken place over

5580-495: The different dialects, that was based chiefly on the speech of the East Midlands but also influenced by that of other regions. The writing of this period, however, continues to reflect a variety of regional forms of English. The Ayenbite of Inwyt , a translation of a French confessional prose work, completed in 1340, is written in a Kentish dialect . The best known writer of Middle English, Geoffrey Chaucer , wrote in

5673-531: The double consonant represented a sound that was (or had previously been) geminated (i.e., had genuinely been "doubled" and would thus have regularly blocked the lengthening of the preceding vowel). In other cases, by analogy, the consonant was written double merely to indicate the lack of lengthening. The basic Old English Latin alphabet consisted of 20 standard letters plus four additional letters: ash ⟨æ⟩ , eth ⟨ð⟩ , thorn ⟨þ⟩ , and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ . There

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5766-594: The end of hostilities and that they should be allowed to return to their homelands. Chapter II of the Annex to the 1907 Hague Convention IV – The Laws and Customs of War on Land covered the treatment of prisoners of war in detail. These provisions were further expanded in the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War and were largely revised in the Third Geneva Convention in 1949. Article 4 of

5859-468: The end of the Middle English period only the strong -'s ending (variously spelled) was in use. Some formerly feminine nouns, as well as some weak nouns, continued to make their genitive forms with -e or no ending (e.g., fole hoves , horses' hooves), and nouns of relationship ending in -er frequently have no genitive ending (e.g., fader bone , "father's bane"). The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form

5952-418: The exception of the third person plural, a borrowing from Old Norse (the original Old English form clashed with the third person singular and was eventually dropped). Also, the nominative form of the feminine third person singular was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into sche (modern she ), but the alternative heyr remained in some areas for a long time. As with nouns, there

6045-417: The house cat or the dog. In relation to non-living objects, captivity may describe the state of having control, whether that be control of one person over an object, such as " capturing a piece " in the game of chess , the control of a group over an area, such as the "capture" of a fort or city during a time of war, or control exercised by one object over another, such as one celestial body being "captured" by

6138-848: The human captivity of the dog over the course of tens of thousands of years has designed a species where there is no longer any natural state other than captivity. While there may be free-ranging dogs or feral dogs, there is no longer any truly wild dog belonging to the species Canis familiaris . For the domesticated dog, many breeds are captives of their own bodies, often designed through selective breeding to achieve human objectives not related to well-being or health, and which may result in disfiguring, painful, or fatal diseases. Individual dogs are also captive to humans in terms of restrictions to their physical freedom of movement, their freedom of sexuality and reproduction, as well as limited self-direction in terms of diet, socialization, and elimination. However, Horowitz writes, dogs are species -captive, and "a dog who

6231-410: The human practice of keeping animals in activity went through three stages, with the first stage having religious motivations, the second being for utility and entertainment, and the third being for scientific study. In examining domesticated pets, researcher Alexandra Horowitz describes the plight of dogs as being constitutionally captive . That is, in comparison with the captivity of wild species ,

6324-412: The indicator of the longer and changed pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ . In fact, vowels could have this lengthened and modified pronunciation in various positions, particularly before a single consonant letter and another vowel or before certain pairs of consonants. A related convention involved the doubling of consonant letters to show that the preceding vowel was not to be lengthened. In some cases,

6417-512: The indigenous people of Latin America and the Caribbean. Beyond but in many ways similar to slavery, many in colonial times regardless of ethnicity found captivity in the form of indentured servitude , impressed into forced labor until their debts could be paid. Alternatively, although the practice of slavery had since been abolished, many natives found themselves otherwise held captive, such as

6510-466: The interests of 140 Imperial States, and 27 interest groups representing 38 groups. Two separate treaties constituted the peace settlement: The power asserted by Ferdinand III was stripped from him and returned to the rulers of the Imperial States . The rulers of the Imperial States could again choose their own official religions. Catholics and Lutherans were redefined as equal before

6603-473: The law, and Calvinism was given legal recognition as an official religion. The independence of the Dutch Republic, which practiced religious toleration, also provided a safe haven for European Jews. The Holy See was very displeased at the settlement, with Pope Innocent X calling it "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time" in

6696-486: The local populations in developing countries, with the majority occurring in Latin America. According to estimates in 2001 and 2005, global prevalence of kidnapping may be as many as 10,000 instances annually, and revenue gained from kidnapping world wide may be as much as $ 500 million. The definition of false imprisonment also goes beyond kidnapping and hostage taking situations, to include circumstances under which

6789-561: The main difference lied on their inflectional endings, which led to much confusion within the mixed population that existed in the Danelaw, this endings tended gradually to become obscured and finally lost, "simplifying English grammar" in the process. In time, the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. Viking influence on Old English is most apparent in pronouns , modals, comparatives, pronominal adverbs (like hence and together ), conjunctions, and prepositions show

6882-417: The masculine accusative, genitive, and dative, the feminine dative, and the plural genitive. The Owl and the Nightingale adds a final -e to all adjectives not in the nominative, here only inflecting adjectives in the weak declension (as described above). Comparatives and superlatives were usually formed by adding -er and -est . Adjectives with long vowels sometimes shortened these vowels in

6975-427: The more complex system of inflection in Old English : Nouns of the weak declension are primarily inherited from Old English n -stem nouns but also from ō -stem, wō -stem, and u -stem nouns, which did not inflect in the same way as n -stem nouns in Old English, but joined the weak declension in Middle English. Nouns of the strong declension are inherited from the other Old English noun stem classes. Some nouns of

7068-490: The most marked Danish influence. The best evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in extensive word borrowings; however, texts from the period in Scandinavia and Northern England do not provide certain evidence of an influence on syntax. However, at least one scholarly study of this influence shows that Old English may have been replaced entirely by Norse, by virtue of the change from Old English to Norse syntax. While

7161-551: The most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470), and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, a standard based on the London dialects (Chancery Standard) had become established. This largely formed the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by Early Modern English , which lasted until about 1650. Scots developed concurrently from

7254-593: The nineteenth and twentieth century in relation to concerns about sovereignty during that time. Europe had been battered by both the Thirty Years' War and the overlapping Eighty Years' War (begun c. 1568), exacting a heavy toll in money and lives. The Eighty Years' War was a prolonged struggle for the independence of the Protestant-majority Dutch Republic (the modern Netherlands), supported by Protestant-majority England, against Catholic-dominated Spain and Portugal. The Thirty Years' War

7347-693: The old insular g and the Carolingian g (modern g ), the former continued in use as a separate letter, known as yogh , written ⟨ȝ⟩ . This was adopted for use to represent a variety of sounds: [ɣ], [j], [dʒ], [x], [ç] , while the Carolingian g was normally used for [g]. Instances of yogh were eventually replaced by ⟨j⟩ or ⟨y⟩ and by ⟨gh⟩ in words like night and laugh . In Middle Scots , yogh became indistinguishable from cursive z , and printers tended to use ⟨z⟩ when yogh

7440-423: The other case endings disappeared in the Early Middle English period, including most of the roughly one dozen forms of the definite article ("the"). The dual personal pronouns (denoting exactly two) also disappeared from English during this period. The loss of case endings was part of a general trend from inflections to fixed word order that also occurred in other Germanic languages (though more slowly and to

7533-403: The prestige that came with writing in French rather than English. During the 14th century, a new style of literature emerged with the works of writers including John Wycliffe and Geoffrey Chaucer , whose Canterbury Tales remains the most studied and read work of the period. The transition from Late Old English to Early Middle English had taken place by the 1150s to 1180s, the period when

7626-569: The resulting doublet pairs include warden (from Norman) and guardian (from later French; both share a common ancestor loaned from Germanic). The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not result in immediate changes to the language. The general population would have spoken the same dialects as they had before the Conquest. Once the writing of Old English came to an end, Middle English had no standard language, only dialects that evolved individually from Old English. Early Middle English (1150–1350) has

7719-807: The second half of the 14th century in the emerging London dialect, although he also portrays some of his characters as speaking in northern dialects, as in " The Reeve's Tale ". In the English-speaking areas of lowland Scotland , an independent standard was developing, based on the Northumbrian dialect . This would develop into what came to be known as the Scots language . A large number of terms for abstract concepts were adopted directly from scholastic philosophical Latin (rather than via French). Examples are "absolute", "act", "demonstration", and "probable". The Chancery Standard of written English emerged c.  1430 in official documents that, since

7812-458: The second person singular in -(e)st (e.g., þou spekest , "thou speakest"), and the third person singular in -eþ (e.g., he comeþ , "he cometh/he comes"). ( þ (the letter "thorn") is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think", but under certain circumstances, it may be like the voiced th in "that"). The following table illustrates a typical conjugation pattern: Plural forms vary strongly by dialect, with Southern dialects preserving

7905-409: The strong type have an -e in the nominative/accusative singular, like the weak declension, but otherwise strong endings. Often, these are the same nouns that had an -e in the nominative/accusative singular of Old English (they, in turn, were inherited from Proto-Germanic ja -stem and i -stem nouns). The distinct dative case was lost in early Middle English, and although the genitive survived, by

7998-440: The top levels of the English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies by Norman rulers who spoke a dialect of Old French , now known as Old Norman , which developed in England into Anglo-Norman . The use of Norman as the preferred language of literature and polite discourse fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration, even though many Normans of this period were illiterate and depended on

8091-477: The treaties. The negotiation process was lengthy and complex. Talks took place in two cities, because each side wanted to meet on territory under its own control. A total of 109 delegations arrived to represent the belligerent states, but not all delegations were present at the same time. Two treaties were signed to end the war in the Empire: the Treaty of Münster and the Treaty of Osnabrück. These treaties ended

8184-425: Was indicated by agreement of articles and pronouns (e.g., þo ule "the feminine owl") or using the pronoun he to refer to masculine nouns such as helm ("helmet"), or phrases such as scaft stærcne (strong shaft), with the masculine accusative adjective ending -ne . Single-syllable adjectives added -e when modifying a noun in the plural and when used after the definite article ( þe ), after

8277-543: Was not available in their fonts; this led to new spellings (often giving rise to new pronunciations), as in McKenzie , where the ⟨z⟩ replaced a yogh, which had the pronunciation /j/ . Peace of Westphalia The Peace of Westphalia ( German : Westfälischer Friede , pronounced [vɛstˈfɛːlɪʃɐ ˈfʁiːdə] ) is the collective name for two peace treaties signed in October 1648 in

8370-520: Was not yet a distinct j , v , or w , and Old English scribes did not generally use k , q , or z . Ash was no longer required in Middle English, as the Old English vowel /æ/ that it represented had merged into /a/ . The symbol nonetheless came to be used as a ligature for the digraph ⟨ae⟩ in many words of Greek or Latin origin, as did ⟨œ⟩ for ⟨oe⟩ . Eth and thorn both represented /θ/ or its allophone / ð / in Old English. Eth fell out of use during

8463-417: Was ousted by it in most dialects by the 15th. The following table shows some of the various Middle English pronouns. Many other variations are noted in Middle English sources because of differences in spellings and pronunciations at different times and in different dialects. As a general rule, the indicative first person singular of verbs in the present tense ended in -e (e.g., ich here , "I hear"),

8556-475: Was some inflectional simplification (the distinct Old English dual forms were lost), but pronouns, unlike nouns, retained distinct nominative and accusative forms. Third person pronouns also retained a distinction between accusative and dative forms, but that was gradually lost: The masculine hine was replaced by him south of the River Thames by the early 14th century, and the neuter dative him

8649-635: Was the most deadly of the European wars of religion , centred on the Holy Roman Empire. The war, which developed into four phases, included a large number of domestic and foreign players, siding either with the Catholic League or the Protestant Union (later Heilbronn League ). The Peace of Prague (1635) ended most religious aspects of the war, and the French–Habsburg rivalry took over prominence. With between 4.5 million and 8 million dead in

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