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- [01-period-and-texts.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/01-period-and-texts/) — 1. The period, the register and the texts Mova reads
- [02-spelling-and-tokens.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/02-spelling-and-tokens/) — 2. Spelling, print conventions and tokens
- [03-pronouns.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/03-pronouns/) — 3. Pronouns
- [04-verb-endings.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/04-verb-endings/) — 4. Verb endings: -est, -st, -eth, -th
- [05-auxiliaries.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/05-auxiliaries/) — 5. Auxiliaries and modals
- [06-strong-verbs.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/06-strong-verbs/) — 6. Strong verbs, old pasts and participles, old plurals
- [07-do-and-negation.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/07-do-and-negation/) — 7. Do, its absence, and negation
- [08-word-order.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/08-word-order/) — 8. Word order and phrase structure
- [09-subjunctive.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/09-subjunctive/) — 9. The subjunctive, conditions and wishes
- [10-vocabulary.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/10-vocabulary/) — 10. Vocabulary: archaic words and false friends
- [11-biblical-style.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/11-biblical-style/) — 11. The biblical style
- [12-mova-pipeline.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/12-mova-pipeline/) — 12. How Mova reads this English today: pipeline, fixes, failures
- [13-improvements.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/13-improvements/) — 13. Concrete improvements for Mova's parser and lexicon
- [14-sample-texts.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/14-sample-texts/) — 14. Sample texts, read word by word
- [sources.md](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/sources/) — Sources

# Early Modern English and the biblical register (`en-x-emode`)

A reference manual of the English of about 1500–1700 and of the biblical register that continues it — the King James Bible (1611), the JPS 1917 Tanakh, Shakespeare, and the old voice of 19th-century fairy tales — written for Mova: what each feature is, how it differs from modern English, how Mova parses it today, where it fails (measured), and what to change.

The tag `en-x-emode` is a private-use BCP 47 subtag: English, variety «Early Modern».

## Chapters

| File | Contents |
| --- | --- |
| [1. The period, the register and the texts Mova reads](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/01-period-and-texts/) | dates and stages; the two registers; the line of Bibles from Tyndale to JPS 1917; a measured KJV / JPS comparison (JPS keeps *thou*, *-eth*, *shalt*, but writes *spoke*, *begot*, *its*); the corpora and how examples are cited |
| [2. Spelling, print conventions and tokens](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/02-spelling-and-tokens/) | u/v, i/j, long s, *ye* = *the*; what is left in JPS (*to-morrow*, *for ever*, *LORD*, divine capitals); quotation and verse marks; elision (*'tis*, *may'st*); normalisation and when it helps |
| [3. Pronouns](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/03-pronouns/) | *thou/thee/thy/thine/thyself*, *ye/you*; T/V use in Shakespeare vs number use in the Bible; *mine/thine* before vowels; *his* for *its*; relatives and indefinites; lemma and FEATS decisions; what the small model does |
| [4. Verb endings: -est, -st, -eth, -th](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/04-verb-endings/) | *-est/-st*, *-eth/-th*, plural *-s/-th/-en*; the 2nd person past; spelling rules; `morph::archaic` measured on 1 484 db tokens: three bugs and their fixes |
| [5. Auxiliaries and modals](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/05-auxiliaries/) | *shalt, wilt, hath, hast, doth, dost, didst, art, wast, wert, canst, mayest*; meanings (*shall* = law, *will* = want, *may* = purpose); *be*-perfect (*is come*); UD analysis; the gate |
| [6. Strong verbs, old pasts and participles, old plurals](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/06-strong-verbs/) | *spake, brake, bare, sware, wrought, smote, sod, digged, builded, holpen, quoth*…; old plurals *kine*, *brethren*; what the lemmatizer returns for each |
| [7. Do, its absence, and negation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/07-do-and-negation/) | *I know not*, *Fear not*, *Knowest thou*, *did eat*; the history of *do*-support; where Mova attaches postverbal *not* (72 errors) |
| [8. Word order and phrase structure](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/08-word-order/) | inversion after adverbs and fronted objects; dislocation; appositions (*the LORD thy God*); partitive *of*; *from off*; *unto*; ethical datives |
| [9. The subjunctive, conditions and wishes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/09-subjunctive/) | *if he be*, *lest ye die*, *until he come*, *Be it*, *cursed be*; *an* = *if*; how UD and the db mark the mood |
| [10. Vocabulary: archaic words and false friends](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/10-vocabulary/) | pro-adverbs (*thereof*, *wherewith*, *whither*…), discourse words (*behold*, *peradventure*…), ~50 false friends (*even* = evening, *corn* = grain, *suffer* = allow…), archaic nouns and verbs, with examples and Mova's tags |
| [11. The biblical style](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/11-biblical-style/) | and-chains; *it came to pass* (five analyses in the db); speech framing; Hebraisms as idioms; numbers; the register in the tales and the Sefer Yetzirah |
| [12. How Mova reads this English today: pipeline, fixes, failures](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/12-mova-pipeline/) | the Torah cycle stage by stage; the 17.10 fixes; refusals per round; the small model's errors by class; how wrong lemmas and features survive; the db audit (D1–D15); effects on pragmatics and the world |
| [13. Concrete improvements for Mova's parser and lexicon](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/13-improvements/) | 30 concrete changes (tables T1–T5, lemmatizer L1–L6, features F1–F3, syntax S1–S7, pragmatics P1–P4, world W1–W4, tokenizer K1–K2, training R1–R2), each with its count and negative control |
| [14. Sample texts, read word by word](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/14-sample-texts/) | Genesis 1:1–5 in KJV and JPS; Genesis 3 and 2:17 word by word (db vs small model); a Grimm tale; Shakespeare lines from the grammars; Westcott's Sefer Yetzirah |
| [Sources](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en-x-emode/sources/) | grammars, papers, texts, Mova's data and code, web pages, and the «wanted» list |

## Quick reference

|  | Present | Past |
| --- | --- | --- |
| thou + lexical verb | thou lov**est**, thou se**est**, thou go**est** | thou lov**edst**, thou cam**est**, thou sa**idst** |
| he + lexical verb | he lov**eth**, he go**eth**, he **saith** | he loved, he came |
| be | I am, **thou art**, he is; subj. **be** | I was, **thou wast/wert**, he was; subj. **were** |
| have | **thou hast**, **he hath** | **thou hadst** |
| do | **thou dost**, **he doth** (aux); *doest*, *doeth* (lexical) | **thou didst** |
| modals | **thou shalt, wilt, canst, mayest** | **thou shouldest, wouldest, couldest, mightest** |

| Pronoun | Nom | Acc | Gen |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2 sg | thou | thee | thy / thine (before a vowel, and predicative) |
| 2 pl | ye | you | your / yours |

| Construction | Old | Modern |
| --- | --- | --- |
| negation | I know not | I do not know |
| question | Knowest thou? | Do you know? |
| negative imperative | Fear not | Do not fear |
| affirmative *do* | he did eat (= ate) | he ate |
| subjunctive | if he be, lest ye die | if he is, so that you do not die |
| perfect of motion | they are come | they have come |
| condition | an thou knowest | if you know |

## The state on 2026-10-17, in five numbers

- **1 087** distinct Torah sentences were refused at the annotation gate during the day because an archaic auxiliary kept its form as its lemma (`shalt` 969 refusals, `hath` 401, `hast` 167, `art` 141); after the two fixes of the evening (`3e639a08e`, `d3101c072`) the refusal rate fell from 28 % to 0.4 % of drafts.
- The small model `en-agreed.bin` agrees with the Torah db on **94.25 %** of UPOS; archaic tokens are 6 % of the text and 41 % of the disagreements; `-eth` and 2nd person `-est` verbs are wrong 90 % of the time.
- **2 242** of 6 013 Torah sentences have a tagging error that a closed table and an ending rule would fix (chapter 13, T1–T3).
- The db carries **400** verb tokens whose lemma is still the archaic form (`giveth`, `goeth`, `hath`) in 328 sentences, **98** sentences with a third-person `thou`, and **202** with `thee` lemmatized as *thee* — all repairable by deterministic rules (chapter 13, L5, L6, F1).
- **72** postverbal `not` are attached to the wrong word, which flips the polarity of the root in the pragmatic layer (chapter 7.4, rule S1).

## How the numbers were made

Paths: `$MOVA_DATA` is Mova's data directory (corpora, runs, models; outside the repo), `$RESEARCH_RAW` the raw folder of the shared research library (papers and public-domain grammars, one folder per work with a `SOURCES.md`), `$UD_ROOT` a checkout of Universal Dependencies 2.18.

Counts over text are whole-word matches over `torah.tsv` (6 105 sentences, 156 603 words), the KJV Torah (eBible 1769 text, brackets removed) and the tales pool. Counts over trees are over the 6 065 JPS sentences of current.conllu (2026-10-17 21:29). «SLM now» is `en annotate $MOVA_DATA/runs/mmm-parse-2026-10-15/en-agreed.bin` built from `main` at `f3e616747`, run twice with byte-identical output, aligned with the db by sentence id and token index where the forms agree (6 013 sentences, 180 871 tokens). The lemmatizer probe in chapters 4 and 6 is a throw-away Rust binary that links the `en` crate and calls `en::morph::archaic` and `Morph::lemmatize`; it is not part of the repo. The analysis scripts were one-off counts; any number here can be reproduced from the files named in the chapter.

## Scope and limits

- The manual covers the biblical register thoroughly (that is what Mova reads) and living EModE (Shakespeare, letters, EEBO) from the grammars only; none of the plays is in Mova's corpora yet.
- Pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift) is out of scope: Mova reads text.
- Dialect forms in the tales (*wuz*, *kin*, *twa*, *maun*) belong to other varieties.
- Nothing in this folder changes code. Chapter 13 is a list of proposals for separate, measured commits.
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