101-738: Uniformed services is an abstract term that are generally bodies of people in employment of a state who wear a distinct uniform that differentiates them from the public and private sector . Their purpose is to maintain the Equality , security , safety , and health of the people they serve. Examples include military personnel, police officers, corrections and firefighters . Some uniformed services carry weapons and ammunition on duty. They include: Depending on role and assignment, members of: Unarmed uniformed services carry or operate other equipment to perform their duty. Such uniformed services may include: State (polity) A state
202-467: A directly democratic form of government that was to have a long afterlife in political thought and history. During Medieval times in Europe, the state was organized on the principle of feudalism , and the relationship between lord and vassal became central to social organization. Feudalism led to the development of greater social hierarchies. The formalization of the struggles over taxation between
303-468: A federal union . A federated state is a territorial and constitutional community forming part of a federation . (Compare confederacies or confederations such as Switzerland.) Such states differ from sovereign states in that they have transferred a portion of their sovereign powers to a federal government . One can commonly and sometimes readily (but not necessarily usefully) classify states according to their apparent make-up or focus. The concept of
404-441: A certain range of political phenomena . According to Walter Scheidel, mainstream definitions of the state have the following in common: "centralized institutions that impose rules, and back them up by force, over a territorially circumscribed population; a distinction between the rulers and the ruled; and an element of autonomy, stability, and differentiation. These distinguish the state from less stable forms of organization, such as
505-738: 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
606-815: 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 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
707-426: A given territory." While defining a state, it is important not to confuse it with a nation; an error that occurs frequently in common discussion. A state refers to a political unit with sovereignty over a given territory. While a state is more of a "political-legal abstraction," the definition of a nation is more concerned with political identity and cultural or historical factors. Importantly, nations do not possess
808-402: A government and its state is one of representation and authorized agency. Charles Tilly distinguished between empires, theocracies, city-states and nation-states. According to Michael Mann , the four persistent types of state activities are: Josep Colomer distinguished between empires and states in the following way: According to Michael Hechter and William Brustein , the modern state
909-502: 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
1010-494: 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
1111-495: 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,
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#17327733871291212-491: 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 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
1313-616: A political philosophy of the state, and to have rationally analyzed political institutions. Prior to this, states were described and justified in terms of religious myths. Several important political innovations of classical antiquity came from the Greek city-states and the Roman Republic . The Greek city-states before the 4th century granted citizenship rights to their free population, and in Athens these rights were combined with
1414-536: A privileged and wealthy ruling class that was subordinate to a monarch . The ruling classes began to differentiate themselves through forms of architecture and other cultural practices that were different from those of the subordinate laboring classes. In the past, it was suggested that the centralized state was developed to administer large public works systems (such as irrigation systems) and to regulate complex economies. However, modern archaeological and anthropological evidence does not support this thesis, pointing to
1515-529: 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
1616-458: A slightly different definition of the state with respect to the nation: the state is "a primordial, essential, and permanent expression of the genius of a specific [nation]." The definition of a state is also dependent on how and why they form. The contractarian view of the state suggests that states form because people can all benefit from cooperation with others and that without a state there would be chaos. The contractarian view focuses more on
1717-408: A specific state. In the classical thought, the state was identified with both political society and civil society as a form of political community, while the modern thought distinguished the nation state as a political society from civil society as a form of economic society. Thus in the modern thought the state is contrasted with civil society. Antonio Gramsci believed that civil society
1818-571: 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 a variant of the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in northern England and spoken in southeast Scotland ). During
1919-407: A state faces some practical limits via the degree to which other states recognize them as such. Definitions of a state are disputed. According to sociologist Max Weber : a "state" is a polity that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence , although other definitions are common. Absence of a state does not preclude the existence of a society , such as stateless societies like
2020-431: Is a political entity that regulates society and the population within a territory . Government is considered to form the fundamental apparatus of contemporary states. A country often has a single state, with various administrative divisions . A state may be a unitary state or some type of federal union ; in the latter type, the term "state" is sometimes used to refer to the federated polities that make up
2121-402: Is composed of a specialized and privileged body of individuals, who monopolize political decision-making, and are separated by status and organization from the population as a whole. States can also be distinguished from the concept of a " nation ", where "nation" refers to a cultural-political community of people. A nation-state refers to a situation where a single ethnicity is associated with
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#17327733871292222-420: Is considered by some such as Adam Smith as a central function of the state, since these goods would otherwise be underprovided. Tilly has challenged narratives of the state as being the result of a societal contract or provision of services in a free market – he characterizes the state more akin as a protection racket in the vein of organized crime. While economic and political philosophers have contested
2323-433: 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
2424-414: Is the primary locus of political activity because it is where all forms of "identity formation, ideological struggle, the activities of intellectuals, and the construction of hegemony take place." and that civil society was the nexus connecting the economic and political sphere. Arising out of the collective actions of civil society is what Gramsci calls "political society", which Gramsci differentiates from
2525-469: The Amazon rainforest , which are uninhabited or inhabited solely or mostly by indigenous people (and some of them remain uncontacted ). Also, there are so-called " failed states " which do not hold de facto control over all of their claimed territory or where this control is challenged. Currently the international community comprises around 200 sovereign states , the vast majority of which are represented in
2626-523: The Andes . It is only in relatively modern times that states have almost completely displaced alternative " stateless " forms of political organization of societies all over the planet . Roving bands of hunter-gatherers and even fairly sizable and complex tribal societies based on herding or agriculture have existed without any full-time specialized state organization, and these "stateless" forms of political organization have in fact prevailed for all of
2727-616: 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
2828-703: The Haudenosaunee Confederacy that "do not have either purely or even primarily political institutions or roles". The degree and extent of governance of a state is used to determine whether it has failed . The word state and its cognates in some other European languages ( stato in Italian, estado in Spanish and Portuguese, état in French, Staat in German and Dutch) ultimately derive from
2929-541: 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
3030-777: 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 the beginning of the 13th century, this delay in Scandinavian lexical influence in English has been attributed to
3131-571: 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 the High and Late Middle Ages . Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography . Writing conventions during
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3232-549: The United Nations . For most of human history, people have lived in stateless societies , characterized by a lack of concentrated authority, and the absence of large inequalities in economic and political power . The anthropologist Tim Ingold writes: It is not enough to observe, in a now rather dated anthropological idiom, that hunter gatherers live in 'stateless societies', as though their social lives were somehow lacking or unfinished, waiting to be completed by
3333-564: The federation , and they may have some of the attributes of a sovereign state , except being under their federation and without the same capacity to act internationally. (Other terms that are used in such federal systems may include " province ", " region " or other terms.) For most of prehistory people lived in stateless societies . The earliest forms of states arose about 5,500 years ago. Over time societies became more stratified and developed institutions leading to centralised governments. These gained state capacity in conjunction with
3434-517: The growth of cities , which was often dependent on climate, and economic development , with centralisation often spurred on by insecurity and territorial competition. Over time, a variety of forms of states developed, which used many different justifications for their existence (such as divine right , the theory of the social contract , etc.). Today, the modern nation state is the predominant form of state to which people are subject. Sovereign states have sovereignty ; any ingroup 's claim to have
3535-655: The prehistory and much of human history and civilization . The primary competing organizational forms to the state were religious organizations (such as the Church), and city republics . Since the late 19th century, virtually the entirety of the world's inhabitable land has been parcelled up into areas with more or less definite borders claimed by various states. Earlier, quite large land areas had been either unclaimed or uninhabited, or inhabited by nomadic peoples who were not organised as states . However, even within present-day states there are vast areas of wilderness, like
3636-472: The " status rei publicae ", the "condition of public matters". In time, the word lost its reference to particular social groups and became associated with the legal order of the entire society and the apparatus of its enforcement. The early 16th-century works of Machiavelli (especially The Prince ) played a central role in popularizing the use of the word "state" in something similar to its modern sense. The contrasting of church and state still dates to
3737-422: The "repressive state apparatus" (such as police and military) in reproducing social relations. Jürgen Habermas spoke of a public sphere that was distinct from both the economic and political sphere. Given the role that many social groups have in the development of public policy and the extensive connections between state bureaucracies and other institutions, it has become increasingly difficult to identify
3838-645: 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
3939-422: 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
4040-409: 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
4141-527: 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
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4242-604: 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
4343-471: The 16th century. The North American colonies were called "states" as early as the 1630s. The expression "L'État, c'est moi" (" I am the State ") attributed to Louis XIV , although probably apocryphal, is recorded in the late 18th century. There is no academic consensus on the definition of the state. The term "state" refers to a set of different, but interrelated and often overlapping, theories about
4444-572: 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
4545-569: 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 the most marked Danish influence. The best evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in extensive word borrowings; however, texts from
4646-480: The Latin word status , meaning "condition, circumstances". Latin status derives from stare , "to stand", or remain or be permanent, thus providing the sacred or magical connotation of the political entity. The English noun state in the generic sense "condition, circumstances" predates the political sense. It was introduced to Middle English c. 1200 both from Old French and directly from Latin. With
4747-418: 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 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,
4848-675: 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 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
4949-557: 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
5050-644: 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
5151-544: 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 ,
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#17327733871295252-413: The alignment and conflict of interests between individuals in a state. On the other hand, the predatory view of the state focuses on the potential mismatch between the interests of the people and interests of the state. Charles Tilly goes so far to say that states "resemble a form of organized crime and should be viewed as extortion rackets." He argued that the state sells protection from itself and raises
5353-427: The archaeological record as of 6000 BC; in Europe they appeared around 990, but became particularly prominent after 1490. Tilly defines a state's "essential minimal activities" as: Importantly, Tilly makes the case that war is an essential part of state-making; that wars create states and vice versa. Modern academic definitions of the state frequently include the criterion that a state has to be recognized as such by
5454-549: The boundaries of the state. Privatization , nationalization , and the creation of new regulatory bodies also change the boundaries of the state in relation to society. Often the nature of quasi-autonomous organizations is unclear, generating debate among political scientists on whether they are part of the state or civil society. Some political scientists thus prefer to speak of policy networks and decentralized governance in modern societies rather than of state bureaucracies and direct state control over policy. The earliest forms of
5555-507: 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
5656-486: 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
5757-495: 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
5858-531: 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
5959-476: The emergence of a social class of people who did not have to spend most of their time providing for their own subsistence, and writing (or an equivalent of writing, like Inca quipus ) because it made possible the centralization of vital information. Bureaucratization made expansion over large territories possible. The first known states were created in Egypt , Mesopotamia , India , China , Mesoamerica , and
6060-468: 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
6161-455: The evolutionary development of a state apparatus. Rather, the principal of their socialty, as Pierre Clastres has put it, is fundamentally against the state. During the Neolithic period, human societies underwent major cultural and economic changes, including the development of agriculture , the formation of sedentary societies and fixed settlements, increasing population densities, and
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#17327733871296262-418: 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
6363-412: The exercise of chiefly power." The most commonly used definition is by Max Weber who describes the state as a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory. Weber writes that the state "is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within
6464-562: The existence of several non-stratified and politically decentralized complex societies. Mesopotamia is generally considered to be the location of the earliest civilization or complex society , meaning that it contained cities , full-time division of labor , social concentration of wealth into capital , unequal distribution of wealth , ruling classes, community ties based on residency rather than kinship , long distance trade , monumental architecture , standardized forms of art and culture, writing, and mathematics and science . It
6565-619: The fore: note the res publica of ancient Rome and the Rzeczpospolita of Poland-Lithuania which finds echoes in the modern-day republic . The concept of temple states centred on religious shrines occurs in some discussions of the ancient world. Relatively small city-states , once a relatively common and often successful form of polity, have become rarer and comparatively less prominent in modern times. Modern-day independent city-states include Vatican City , Monaco , and Singapore . Other city-states survive as federated states, like
6666-437: The government is the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy that controls the state apparatus at a given time. That is, governments are the means through which state power is employed. States are served by a continuous succession of different governments. States are immaterial and nonphysical social objects, whereas governments are groups of people with certain coercive powers. Each successive government
6767-412: 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,
6868-626: The international community. Liberal thought provides another possible teleology of the state. According to John Locke, the goal of the state or commonwealth is "the preservation of property" (Second Treatise on Government), with 'property' in Locke's work referring not only to personal possessions but also to one's life and liberty. On this account, the state provides the basis for social cohesion and productivity, creating incentives for wealth-creation by providing guarantees of protection for one's life, liberty and personal property. Provision of public goods
6969-411: The lack of war which European states relied on. A state should not be confused with a government; a government is an organization that has been granted the authority to act on the behalf of a state. Nor should a state be confused with a society; a society refers to all organized groups, movements, and individuals who are independent of the state and seek to remain out of its influence. Neuberger offers
7070-583: 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 the top levels of the English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies by Norman rulers who spoke
7171-760: The language of government and law can be seen in 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
7272-403: 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 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
7373-417: 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
7474-473: The monarch and other elements of society (especially the nobility and the cities) gave rise to what is now called the Standestaat , or the state of Estates, characterized by parliaments in which key social groups negotiated with the king about legal and economic matters. These estates of the realm sometimes evolved in the direction of fully-fledged parliaments, but sometimes lost out in their struggles with
7575-450: The monarch, leading to greater centralization of lawmaking and military power in his hands. Beginning in the 15th century, this centralizing process gives rise to the absolutist state. Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME ) 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
7676-552: The monopolistic tendency of states, Robert Nozick argues that the use of force naturally tends towards monopoly. Another commonly accepted definition of the state is the one given at the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States in 1933. It provides that "[t]he state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with
7777-427: 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
7878-460: 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 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
7979-692: The nation-state, theoretically or ideally co-terminous with a "nation", became very popular by the 20th century in Europe, but occurred rarely elsewhere or at other times. In contrast, some states have sought to make a virtue of their multi-ethnic or multinational character ( Habsburg Austria-Hungary , for example, or the Soviet Union ), and have emphasised unifying characteristics such as autocracy , monarchical legitimacy , or ideology . Other states, often fascist or authoritarian ones, promoted state-sanctioned notions of racial superiority . Other states may bring ideas of commonality and inclusiveness to
8080-439: The notion of the state as a polity. He stated that politics was not a "one-way process of political management" but, rather, that the activities of civil organizations conditioned the activities of political parties and state institutions, and were conditioned by them in turn. Louis Althusser argued that civil organizations such as church , schools , and the family are part of an "ideological state apparatus" which complements
8181-693: 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
8282-475: The organizational characteristics like geographic boundaries or authority figures and officials that states do. Additionally, a nation does not have a claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over their populace, while a state does, as Weber indicated. An example of the instability that arises when a state does not have a monopoly on the use of force can be seen in African states which remain weak due to
8383-423: 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
8484-433: The other states." And that "[t]he federal state shall constitute a sole person in the eyes of international law." Confounding the definition problem is that "state" and "government" are often used as synonyms in common conversation and even some academic discourse. According to this definition schema, the states are nonphysical persons of international law , governments are organizations of people. The relationship between
8585-521: 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 the Old Norse influence was strongest in the dialects under Danish control that composed the southern part of
8686-404: The present day German city-states , or as otherwise autonomous entities with limited sovereignty, like Hong Kong , Gibraltar and Ceuta . To some extent, urban secession , the creation of a new city-state (sovereign or federated), continues to be discussed in the early 21st century in cities such as London . A state can be distinguished from a government . The state is the organization while
8787-497: The question about why people should trust a state when they cannot trust one another. Tilly defines states as "coercion-wielding organisations that are distinct from households and kinship groups and exercise clear priority in some respects over all other organizations within substantial territories." Tilly includes city-states, theocracies and empires in his definition along with nation-states, but excludes tribes, lineages, firms and churches. According to Tilly, states can be seen in
8888-569: 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
8989-472: The revival of the Roman law in 14th-century Europe, the term came to refer to the legal standing of persons (such as the various " estates of the realm " – noble, common, and clerical), and in particular the special status of the king. The highest estates, generally those with the most wealth and social rank, were those that held power. The word also had associations with Roman ideas (dating back to Cicero ) about
9090-740: 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
9191-458: 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
9292-486: The state emerged whenever it became possible to centralize power in a durable way. Agriculture and a settled population have been attributed as necessary conditions to form states. Certain types of agriculture are more conducive to state formation, such as grain (wheat, barley, millet), because they are suited to concentrated production, taxation, and storage. Agriculture and writing are almost everywhere associated with this process: agriculture because it allowed for
9393-409: 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
9494-461: The use of pottery and more complex tools. Sedentary agriculture led to the development of property rights , domestication of plants and animals, and larger family sizes. It also provided the basis for an external centralized state. By producing a large surplus of food, more division of labor was realized, which enabled people to specialize in tasks other than food production. Early states were characterized by highly stratified societies, with
9595-481: Was differentiated from "leagues of independent cities, empires, federations held together by loose central control, and theocratic federations" by four characteristics: States may be classified by political philosophers as sovereign if they are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Other states are subject to external sovereignty or hegemony where ultimate sovereignty lies in another state. Many states are federated states which participate in
9696-425: 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
9797-520: 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
9898-417: 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"),
9999-475: 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
10100-411: 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 the main difference lied on their inflectional endings, which led to much confusion within the mixed population that existed in
10201-594: Was the world's first literate civilization, and formed the first sets of written laws . Bronze metallurgy spread within Afro-Eurasia from c. 3000 BC , leading to a military revolution in the use of bronze weaponry, which facilitated the rise of states. Although state-forms existed before the rise of the Ancient Greek empire, the Greeks were the first people known to have explicitly formulated
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