- •1.The aim of the study of the subject ‘‘The History of the English Language’’.
- •2. Inner and outer history of the language ‘‘The History of the English Language’’.
- •4. Chief characteristics of the Germanic languages. Grammar. Alphabet.
- •5.Old English. Outer history. Principal written records.
- •6. Old English. Outer history. Dialectal classification.
- •7. Old English. Inner history. Phonetics. Spelling. Grammar. Vocabulary.
- •Vocabulary
- •1.2. Establishment of the literary norm
- •11.New English. Inner history. Phonetics. Grammar. Vocabulary.2. Inner history
- •12.Old English Phonetics. Origin of Old English vowel phonemes. Changes in Old English vowel phonemes. Breaking. Palatal mutation. Effect of palatal mutation upon grammar and word-stock.
- •2. Changes in Old English
- •Vowel phonemes
- •13. Old English consonants. Dependence of the quality of the consonant phoneme upon its environment in the word. Grimm's law, Verner's law.
- •14. Old English grammar. General survey of the nominal system. The noun. Gender. Number. Case.
- •15. Old English grammar. Declensions in Old English. Vowel-Stems. Declension of a-stem nouns. Consonant stems. Declension of n-stem nouns. Declension of root-stem nouns.
- •17. Old English grammar. The adjective. Declension of adjectives. Degrees of comparison of adjectives.
- •18. Old English grammar. General survey of finite and non-finite forms of the verb. Grammatical categories of the finite forms of the verb. Person. Number. Tense. Mood.
- •19. Old English grammar. Morphological classification of verbs. Strong verbs. Weak verbs.
- •20. Old English grammar. Morphological classification of verbs. Irregular verbs. Irregular weak verbs. Irregular strong verbs. Suppletive verbs.
- •Irregular verbs
- •Irregular weak verbs
- •Irregular strong verbs
- •21. Changes in the phonetic system in Middle English. Vowels in the unstressed position. Vowels under stress. Qualitative changes.
- •Vowels under stress
- •22. Changes in the phonetic system in Middle English. Vowels in the unstressed position. Vowels under stress. Quantitative changes.
- •Vowels under stress
- •23. Changes in the phonetic system in Middle English. Consonants.
- •24. Changes in the phonetic system in New English. Vowels in the unstressed position. Vowels under stress. Qualitative changes.
- •Vowels under stress
- •25. Changes in the phonetic system in New English. Vowels in the unstressed position. Vowels under stress. Quantitative changes.
- •Vowels in the unstressed position. Quantitative changes
- •26. Changes in the phonetic system in New English. Consonants.
- •28. General survey of grammar changes in Middle and New English. The noun. Middle English. Morphological classification. Grammatical categories.
- •In Middle and New English
- •Grammatical categories
- •29. New English. Morphological classification. Origin of irregular noun forms. Grammatical categories.
- •30. New English. The adjective. The pronoun. The article.
- •31. Old English. General characteristics. Means of enreaching vocabulary. Internal means. External means.
- •Vowel interchange:
- •32. Middle English. General characteristics. Means of enreaching vocabulary. Internal means. External means.
- •Internal means of enriching vocabulary
- •33. New English. General characteristic. Means of enriching vocabulary. Internal means.
- •34. New English. General characteristic. Means of enriching vocabulary. External means.
- •35. Ethymological strata in Modern English. General characteristic. Native elements in Modern English. Common Indo-European stratum. Common Germanic stratum.
- •36. Ethymological strata in Modern English. Foreign element in Modern English (borrowings). Latin element.
- •37. Ethymological strata in Modern English. Foreign element in Modern English (borrowings). Scandinavian element.
- •38. Ethymological strata in Modern English. Foreign element in Modern English (borrowings). French element.
- •39. Ethymological strata in Modern English. Word-hybrids.
- •40. Ethymological strata in Modern English. Ethymological doublets.
1.The aim of the study of the subject ‘‘The History of the English Language’’.
The aims set before a student of the history of the English language are as follows:
1. to speak of the characteristics of the language at the earlier stages of its development;
2. to trace the language from the Old English period up to modern times;
3. to explain the principal features in the development of modern language historically.
To achieve those aims a student will have to know the theoretical basis of the subject and to work with the text to apply the theoretical knowledge to the practical analysis of English texts at different periods of the language development.
The main purpose of studying the history of the English language is to account for the present-day stage of the language to enable a student of English to read books and speak the
language with understanding and due knowledge of the intricate and complicates "mechanism" they use.
2. Inner and outer history of the language ‘‘The History of the English Language’’.
The outer history of the language is the events in the life of the people speaking this language, affecting the language. The inner history of the language is the description of the changes in the language itself, its grammar, phonetics, vocabulary or spelling. The English language belongs to the Germanic subdivision of the Indo-European family of languages. The East Germanic group of dialects — Gothic, Vandalic, Burgundian; North Germanic group of dialects — Old Norwegian, Old Danish, Old Swedish, Old Icelandic; and the West Germanic group of dialects — the dialects of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians and others, originally spoken in western Europe.
The principal East Germanic language is Gothic. At the beginning of our era the Goths lived on a territory from the Vistula to the shores of the Black Sea. The Goths played a prominent part in European history, making extensive conquests in Italy and Spain. Gothic survived longest in the Crimea, where vestiges of it were noted down in the sixteenth century.
North Germanic is found in Scandinavia and Denmark.
Runic inscriptions from the third century preserve our earliest traces of the language. In its earlier form the common Scandinavian language is conveniently spoken of as Old Norse.
The Scandinavian languages fall into two groups: an eastern group including Swedish and Danish, and a western group including Norwegian and Icelandic.
West Germanic is the group to which English belongs. It is divided into two branches, High and Low German. This change, by which West Germanic p, t, k, d, etc. were changed into other sounds, occurred about A.D. 600 in the southern or mountainous part of the Germanic area, but did not take place in the lowlands to the north.
High German comprises a number of dialects and is divided into Old High German (before 1100), Middle High German (1100—1500), and Modern High German (since1500). High German, especially as spoken in the midlands and used in the imperial chancery, was popularized by Luther's translation of the Bible into it (1522—1532), and since the
sixteenth century has gradually established itself as the literary language of Germany.
3. Chief characteristics of the Germanic languages. Phonetics The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by a sizable population in Western Europe, North America and Australasia. The most widely spoken Germanic languages are English and German. The oldest Germanic languages all share a number of features, assumed to be inherited from Proto-Germanic. Phonologically, this includes the important sound changes known as Grimm's Lawand Verner's Law, which introduced a large number of fricatives; late Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had only one, /s/.
The main vowel developments are the merging (in most circumstances) of long and short /a/ and /o/, producing short /a/ and long /ō/. This likewise affected the diphthongs, with PIE /ai/ and /oi/ merging into /ai/ and PIE /au/ and /ou/ merging into /au/. PIE /ei/ developed into long /ī/. PIE long /ē/ developed into a vowel denoted as /ē1/ (often assumed to be phonetically [ǣ]), while a new, fairly uncommon long vowel /ē2/ developed in varied and not completely understood circumstances. Proto-Germanic had no front rounded vowels, although all Germanic languages except forGothic subsequently developed them through the process of i-umlaut.
Proto-Germanic developed a strong stress accent on the first syllable of the root (although remnants of the original free PIE accent are visible due to Verner's Law, which was sensitive to this accent). This caused a steady erosion of vowels in unstressed syllables. In Proto-Germanic this had progressed only to the point that absolutely final short vowels (other than /i/ and /u/) were lost and absolutely final long vowels were shortened, but all of the early literary languages show a more advanced state of vowel loss.