31.General characteristic of the Old English period

The English lang.belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The closest living relatives of the Eng.are Scots and Frisian. The history of the Eng.lang.has traditionally been divided into 3 main periods – OE (450-1100AD), ME (1100-circa 1500AD), NE (since 1500). Over the centuries, the Eng.lang.has been influenced by a number of other lang.

Early Old Eng.lasts from the West Germanic invasion of Britain till the beginning of writing (5-7). It is the stage of the tribal dialects of the West Germanic invaderes. The tribal dialects were used for oral communication, there being no written form on Eng.

In the Old Eng.period (from 8^th till the end of the 11^th ) the tribal dialects changed into local or regional dialects. The differences between the dialects grew and their relative position altered. They were equal as a medium of oral communication. But the West Saxon dialect had gained supremacy over the others. The lang.of this period is usually described synchronically and is treated as a more or less stably system.

Written records. The greates poem of that time was Beowulf, an epic of the 7^th or 8^th and it was composed in the Mercian or Northumbrian dialect. It is valued both as a source of linguistic material and as a work of art. The phonetics of the OE period was characterised by a system of dynamic stress. The fixed stress fell on the first root syllable. The spelling was mainly phonetic, each letter denoted one sound in every environment. The principal grammatical means were suffixation, vowel interchange and supplition. There was no fixed word-order in OE. As regards vocabulary, almost all of it was composed of native words or there were few borrowings from Latin. New words appeared as a result of two processes – word derivation (ex.fish-fisher), word composition (moon*day=Monday)

32.General characteristics of the Middle English period

The end of the OE period and the beginning of the ME is marked by two outstanding political events – the Scandinavian invasion and the Norman conquest. At the beginning of the 11^th cent.England came under the Scandinavian rule. The Scandinavians brought many changes in Eng.lang. - word-stock, grammer and phonetics. The Norman Conquest began in 1066. The heritage of the Norman Conquest ws manifold. It united England to Western Europe, opening the gates to European culture and institutions, theology, philosophy and science. 13^th cent. - the appearance of the first Parliament. The Norman Conquerors were French by their language, habits and customs. For more than two centuries the Eng.country was ruled by French-speaking kings, and the French lang.was the state lang.of the country. But aftera prolonged struggle the Eng.lang.got ascendance over French and again became the state. The end of the 14^th cent.saw the first “Eng.”translation of the Bible, and Chouser was writing his English masterpieces.

Inner history. Phonetics. The stress is dynamic and fixed in the native words. But in the borrowed French words the stress was on the last syllable. Ex. licour, nature. New consonant sounds developed – [ϛ] ship, [tϛ] child, [dʒ] bridge

Vowels in unstressed position were reduced

OE – a,o,e,u ME e[ə]

OE sing. Fisces – ME fishes

OE plur. Fiscas – ME fishes

Grammar the ME was an analytical lang. The analytical means are – 1.analytical verb forms 2.the use of prepositions for gram.purposes 3.a fixed word-order began to develop.

Word-stock. There were many borrowing. The principal sources of them were – 1.Scandinavian – over 500 words (take, give, sky) 2.French – over 3500 words (government, army, battle).