33. National el & London dialect.

In the 14^th century there developed the process of the rise of the national language. This language was based on the London dialect. Its cause was the great shift in social structure which characterized the English that period. It was the time when new elements made themselves felt inside the feudal society. These elements were the town merchants, who were the bearers of a new social structure, which was to replace feudalism. Growth of commerce, industry, development of many circulations. In the 14^th century there ere 3 main groups of dialects in English: northern (from Northumbrian), midland (west- and east-, from Mercian), southern (Kentish, West-Saxon, East-Saxon). The dialects differed from each other by essential phonetic and morphological features. These differences corresponded to the territorial position among the dialect belonged to the London dialect. After the Norman conquest London became the capital of England. It lays on the boundary between the midland and the southern dialect. In 13^th century it already showed a mixture of midland and southern elements. To the end of the 14^th century London dialect became influential in other parts o the country. That was to the growth of its importance as economical and political center. London’s geographical position was extremely favorable for the quick growth of its political importance and its role as the birthplace of a national language. Many roads along which England in trade was conducted crossed in London. Thanks to the great depth of the Thames sea ships could be easily reach London and it became the center of national trade. London’s role as a trade center attracted people from every part of the country and that’s why elements of other dialects penetrated into London English dialect. Thus, the London dialect, which became the base of the national language, was a complex formation, which reflected different influences connected with the social and political life of that period. It contain alongside east midland, south-eastern elements and partially south-western elements. The London dialects of those centuries is represented by several important documents: the proclamation of Henry III, poems by Adam Devy, Geoffrey Chauser.

34. The rise of the earliest linguistic disciplines.

The orthoepist at the end of the 16th century Richard Malcaster in his book “Elementary” stated the orthographical norms for teaching at school. At the same time scholar began to work under the description of Grammatik. The first grammarians tried to describe not only the grammar of the language, but also orthoepy. That means that, they described the rules of reading, the correlation of writing and pronunciation. Some book were devoted to orthoepy; Hart “Orthography of English speech”, William Boolocar “book at large for the amendment of orthography of English speech”. Early grammatists. First their books were written like Latin books. The example is a book by Lilly Joe. It was the first half of the 15th century. Some grammarians tried to retain Latin traditions, some of them were more progressive. The main difference in their approaches was the number of the parts of speech, a number of cases, tenses. There were 2 tendencies: some grammarians consider that the language should be based on reason (на логике), that means, that phenomenon that can’t be understood should be taken away from the language. The author of such book was R. Lowth. It was called “Short introduction to English grammar”. Another group of grammarians insisted that the language should be based on usage. J. Prestly “the rudiments to English grammar”. He wrote about the traditions and he insisted on a completed grammar. In 1975 Lindley Murray published his book “English grammar”. His book was successful. At the same time lexicographists began to work at the dictionaries. They tried to fix the voc-ry. The first dictionary was Latin-English. And then appeared new dictionaries of difficult words by Robert Cowdrey and Cokerman. The most famous was the dictionary by national Bible. It was called “Universal etiological English dictionary”. In 1755 Johnson published “A dictionary of the English language” in which the words are deduced from their originals and illustrated in the different significations by examples from the best writers. It was large Oxford dictionary.

35. Struggle between 2 languages for supremacy lasted all through all 3 centuries. To the end of this period the path for the formation of a national language began to empire. The situation was still more complicated by the fact that alongside the 2 languages the third language excited namely Latin as an international language of church and medieval church science. In the later half of the 14th century victory of English became evident. French lost its position one after another, but only in the 15th century French at last disappeared from the social life of the country. In this struggle there are some important dates: the first English kings after the conquest didn’t know English at all. Hanry IV was the first king whose mother tongue was English, after the conquest Anglo-Saxon laws were first translated into Latin, then French. French was the language for teaching at school. Official documents, private letters, agreements were written in Latin. And in the 13th century there appeared letter written in French. Isolated letters in French are dated 1440. A symptom of a rise of English came in 1258, when Henry IV addressed the population of the country in a proclamation written in English. In the middle of the 14th century the influence of English rose. In 1362 parliament acting on a petition of the city of London ruled that court of law should their business in English, because French was too little known. In the same year English was used in parliament itself. The victory of English was due to the rise of social layer which spoke English. They were the gentry, the town citizens, town merchants.