History of English

1.According to English scientists Henry Sweet classified this periods are connected with the development of English endings. Henry Sweet classified them as

1. The Period of Full Ending.

2. The Period of Levelled Endings in reality contains the levelled vowel in the ending, but at the same time lots of endings were already lost;

3. The Period of Lost Endings - present-day language, as we know, is not totally devoid of endings, for some of the paradigmatic forms are still made by means of endings, scarce as they are.

Periodisation. The historical development of a language is a continuous uninterrupted process without sudden breaks or rapid transformations. The commonly accepted, traditional Periodisation divides English history into three periods: Old English (OE), Middle English (ME) and New English (NE). the following Periodisation of English history is based on the conventional three periods; it subdivides the history of the English language into seven periods differing in linguistic situation and the nature of linguistic changes.

There is a tradition of recognizing

1. The Old English period (449-1066), Early Old English may be taken separately, as the period of pre-written functioning of the language. The formation of kingdoms on the British territory transformed the tribal dialects into regional (local) dialects that took place during the later, Written Old English (or Anglo-Saxon period).

2. The Middle Eglish (1066-1475), the Early Middle English the writings of the period, represented mainly by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Peterborough Chronicle, such poems as Ormulum. Late Middle English which came to our times in writings of G. Chaucer already presents a paragon of speech. London dialect becomes more and more prestigious, and what is written in “The Canterbury Tales” is already almost understood by a reader without a special linguistic training.

3. New English 15th century. Early New English - known as Shakespeare’s English is represented by numerous writings of a whole bunch of prominent thinkers, writers, scientists. Late New English is established and reviewed, and that is what you are studying in the course of practical English. I-Mutation

I-MUTATION (also known as "i-umlaut") is the raising and fronting of a root vowel in anticipation of "i" or "y" sound in a suffix.

Think of the difference between the -o sound in the do of "How do you do?" and that of the last word in "How are you doing?" The last word of that sentence might be written *diwin if it were spelled phonetically the way the average modern American pronounces it. When that -o- shifts up to an -i-, that's i-mutation.

I-mutation turns up in an adjective formed from a noun by adding -ish in at least one important case: English (O.E. Englisc) from the people called AnI-mutation is particularly visible in the inflectional and derivational morphology of Old English, since it affected so many of the Old English vowels.

2. Word Formation

New words were formed in a variety of ways on OE. Below are listed some common suffixes, prefixes, and useful guidelines to being creative with your OE vocabulary in ways that can commonly be understood by other OE speakers. Contents [show]

Prefixes be-: often equals a sense of around or about: be-gān - surround; sometimes is a derivative: be-dǣlan - to deprive; sometimes makes intransitive verbs transitive or makes a transitive verb out of an adjective/noun: be-wēpan - to bewail

ġe-: often gives a sense of togetherness or a group of things: ġe-brōþor - brothers, ġe-fēran - to accompany; often does nothing to the meanings or sense of a word

Suffixes

-an: forms either strong verbs or verbs of weak verb classes 1 or 3

-ettan: forms class 1 weak verbs from nouns and adjectives: mūþettan - to speak about, to declare (secrets)

-rian: usually forms a subclass of class 1 weak verbs

Nouns

-cund: betokens strong neuter nouns which mean an entire kind of thing: hrefne-cund - raven-kind

-nis: makes nouns from adjectives or verbs, sometimes from other wordkinds, though.

Adjectives

-cund: makes adjectives usually formed from nouns and betokens a sense of being within the same kind as the word from whence it is formed: god-cund - divine ("god-kind")

-iġ: is equivalent to Modern English -y: blōd-iġ - bloody

-liċ: is equivalent to Modern English -like: god-liċ - divine, god-like

Ways of word-formation

OE employed two ways of word-formation: derivation and word-composition.

Word-derivation

Derived words in OE were built with the help of affixes: prefixes and suffixes; in addition to these principal means of derivation, words were distinguished with the help of sound interchanges and word stress.

Sound interchanges The earliest source of root-vowel interchanges employed in OE word-building was vowel gradation inherited from PG and IE. Ablaut was used in OE as a distinctive feature between verbs and nouns and also between verbs derived from a single root. e.g.:

a) nouns and verbs: fōd – fēdan (NE food – feed)

b) adjectives and verbs: full – fyllan (NE full – fill)

c) nouns and adjectives: long – lenзþu (NE long, length).

Prefixation Genetically, some OE prefixes go back to IE prototypes, e.g. OE un-, a negative prefix. Many more prefixes sprang in PG and OE from prepositions and adverbs, e.g. mis-, be-, ofer-. Prefixes were widely used with verbs but were far less productive with other parts of speech.

The prefix modified the lexical meaning of the word, usually without changing its reference to a part of speech, e.g. spēdiз – unspēdiз. Some prefixes, both verbal and nominal, gave a more special sense to the word and changed its meaning very considerably, e.g.: weorðan – for-weorðan v, forwyrð n (become, perish, destruction). Some prefixes had a very weak of general meaning bordering on grammatical

Suffixation Suffixation was by far the most productive means of word derivation in OE. Suffixes not only modified the lexical meaning of the word but could refer it to another part of speech. Suffixes were mostly applied in forming nouns and adjectives, seldom – in forming verbs. Etymologically OE suffixes can be traced to several sources: old stem-suffixes, which had lost their productivity, but could still be distinguished in some words as dead or non-productive suffixes; derivational suffixes proper inherited from PIE and PG; new suffixes which developed from root-morphemes in Late PG and OE in the course of morphological simplification of the word.

3. The English language we now know would not have been the same if it was not for the events that happened in 1066. In 1066, the Duke of Normandy, William sailed across the British Channel. He challenged King Harold of England in the struggle for the English throne. After winning the battle of Hastings William was crowned king of England and the Norman Kingdom was established. Norman-French became the language of the English court. At the beginning French was spoken only by the Normans but soon through intermarriage

One of the most obvious changes that occurred after the Norman conquest was that of the language: the Anglo-Norman. When William the Conqueror was crowned as king of England, Anglo-Norman became the language of the court, the administration, and culture.

In vocabulary, about 10000 words entered the English language at this stage, and more than a third of today’s PdE (Present-day English) words are related to those Anglo-Norman ME (Middle English) words.

English pronunciation also changed. The fricative sounds [f], [s], [Ɵ] (as in thin), and [ʃ] (shin), French influence helped to distinguish their voiced counterparts [v], [z], [] (the), and [ƺ] (mirage), and also contributed the diphthong [oi] (boy).

English has also added some words and idioms that are purely French, and that are used nowadays.

Thus, the linguistic situation in Britain after the Conquest was complex. French was the native language of a minority of a few thousand speakers, but a minority with influence out of all proportion to their numbers because they controlled the political, ecclesiastical, economic, and cultural life of the nation.

4. The most widely studied language family in the world is the Indo-European. There are a number of reasons for this:

Examples: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian.

The Indo-European languages tend to be inflected (ie verbs and nouns have different endings depending on their part in a sentence). Some languages (eg English) have lost many of the inflections during their evolution.

The Indo-European languages stretch from the Americas through Europe to North India.

The Indo-European Family was originally thought to have originated in the forests north of the Black Sea (in what is now Ukraine) during the Neoloithic period (about 7000BC). Modern research appears to indicate an origin in Anatolia (Modern Turkey). Either way, the people bagan to migrate between 3500BC and 2500BC, spreading west to Europe, south to the Mediterranian, north to Scandinavia, and east to India.

The Indo-European Family is divided into twelve branches, ten of which contain existing languages. I will describe each of these branches separate The Germanic Branch

These languages originate from Old Norse and Saxon. Due to the influence of early Christian missionaries, the vast majority of the Celtic and Germanic languages use the Latin Alphabet.

They include English, the second most spoken language in the world, the most widespread, the language of technology, and the language with the largest vocabulary. A useful language to have as your mother tongue.

Dutch and German are the closest major languages related to English. An even closer relative is Frisian.

Flemish and Afrikaans are varieties of Dutch while Yiddish is a variety of German. Yiddish is written using the Hebrew script.

Three of the four (mainland) Scandinavian languages belong to this branch: (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish). Swedish has tones, unusual in European languages. The fourth Scandinavian language, Finnish, belongs to a different family.

Icelandic is the least changed of the Germanic Languages - being close to Old Norse. Another old language is Faroese.

Gothic (Central Europe), Frankish (France), Lombardo (Danube region), Visigoth (Iberian Peninsula) and Vandal (North Africa) are extinct languages from this branch.

German has a system of four cases and three genders for its nouns. Case is the property where a noun takes a different ending depending on its role in a sentence. An example in English would be the forms: lady, lady's, ladies and ladies'. The genders are masculine, feminine and neuter. German has three dialects spoken in northern Germany, southern Germany and Austria, and a very different form spoken in Switzerland.

English has lost gender and case. Only a few words form their plurals like German (ox, oxen and child, children). Most now add an s, having been influenced by Norman French.ly.

Theor phonetics

1. American-Based Pronunciation Standards of English

The development of American Engl has short history. The eng lge of the 17th century was brought to America by first settlers.

Generally speaking, the situation in the USA may be characterized as exoglossic, i.e. having several languages on the same territory, the balance being in favour of American English. However, time has passed, American English has drifted considerably from English English though as yet not enough to give us ground to speak of two different languages. Thus we speak of the national variant of English in America. American English shows a lesser degree of dialect than British English due to some historical factors: the existence of Standard English when first English settlers came to America, the high mobility of population, internal migrations of different communities and so on.

In the USA three main types of cultivated speech are recognized: the Eastern type, the Southern type and Western or General American.

The Eastern type is spoken in New England, and in New York City. It bears a remarkable resemblance to Southern English, though there are, of course, some slight differences.

The Southern type is used in the South and South-East of the USA. This type includes Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Lousiana, Texas ans parts of Maryland, West Virginia and Oklahoma. It possesses a striking distinctive feature – vowel drawl, which is a specific way of pronouncing vowels, consisting in the diphthongization.

The third type of educated American speech is General American (GA), also known as Northern American or Western American spoken in the central Atlantic States: New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin and others. GA pronunciation is known to be the pronunciation standard of the USA. There are some reasons for it. GA is the form of speech used by the radio and television. It is mostly used in scientific, cultural and business intercourse.

Non-systematic Differences between General American and Received Pronunciation

A. 1. Many differences involve the pronunciation of individual words or groups of words.

1. In words of French origin GA tends to have stress on the final syllable, while RP has it on the initial one:frontier ['fr٨ntiə] [fr٨n'tiɔr]composite ['kɔmpəzit] [kəm'pa:zət]primarily ['praimərfli] [prai'merfli]

2. Some words have first-syllable stress in GA whereas in RP the stress may be elsewhere. 3. Some compound words have stress on the first element in GA and in RP they retain it on the second element: weekend, ice-cream, hotdog, New Year.

C. Intonation DifferencesGA intonation on the whole is similar to that of RP. But there are, of course, some differences .

The main differences in intonation concern the direction of the voice pitch and the realization of the terminal tones. In GA the voice doesn't fall to the bottom mostly. This explains the fact that the English speech for Americans sounds "affected" and "pretentious" or "sophisticated". And for the English, Americans sound "dull", "monotonous", "indifferent". It should also be mentioned that the distribution of terminal tones in sentence types is also different in both variants of English.