19. Latin borrowing in Eng. Language

Among words of Romanic origin borrowed from Latin during the period when the British Isles were a part of the Roman Empire, there are such words as: street, port, wall etc. Many Latin and Greek words came into English during the Adoption of Christianity in the 6-th century. At this time the Latin alphabet was borrowed which ousted the Runic alphabet. These borrowings are usually called classical.

20. The linguistic situation in the Middle English period.

Two very important linguistic developments characterize Middle English:

1.in grammar, English came to rely less on inflectional endings and more on word order to convey grammatical information. (If we put this in more technical terms, it became less ‘synthetic’ and more ‘analytic’.)Change was gradual, and has different outcomes in different regional varieties of Middle English, but the ultimate effects were huge: the grammar of Englishc.1500 was radically different from that of Old English.Grammatical gender was lost early in Middle English. The range of inflections, particularly in the noun, was reduced drastically (partly as a result of reduction of vowels in unstressed final syllables), as was the number of distinct paradigms: in most early Middle English texts most nouns have distinctive forms only for singular vs. plural, genitive, and occasional traces of the old dative in forms with final -eoccurring after a preposition.In some other parts of the system some distinctions were more persistent, but by late Middle English the range of endings and their use among London writers shows relatively few differences from the sixteenth-century language of, for example, Shakespeare: probably the most prominent morphological difference from Shakespeare’s language is that verb plurals and infinitives still generally ended in –en (at least in writing).

2.in vocabulary, English became much more heterogeneous, showing many borrowings from French, Latin, and Scandinavian. Large-scale borrowing of new words often had serious consequences for the meanings and the stylistic register of those words which survived from Old English. Eventually, various new stylistic layers emerged in the lexicon, which could be employed for a variety of different purposes.

21. Anglo-Saxon conquest.

The Anglo-Saxons were the population in Britain partly descended from the Germanic tribes who migrated from continental Europe and settled the south and east of the island beginning in the early 5th century. The Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period of English history after their initialsettlement through their creation of the English nation, up to the Norman conquest; that is, between about 550 and 1066. The term Anglo-Saxon is also used for the language, today more correctly called Old English, that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England (and parts of south-eastern Scotland) between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century, after which it is known as Middle English. When Roman legions came back to Rome to defend it, Britain was left to defend and rule itself. The time had come for new rulers and new rulers came. They were Angles, Saxons and Jutes. They came from the territory of present Denmark and Northern Germany. The Germanic invaders first arrived in small groups throughout the fifth century. Being terrific warriors, they controlled most of the island by the seventh century A.D., ousted the British population to the mountainous parts of the Isle of Great Britain. Later, they united and became the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons controlled the central part of Britain which was called as England, while the Romanized Celts fled West, talking with them their culture, language and Christianity. England was a network of small kingdoms. That time there were seven kingdoms established: Essex (East Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons), Wessex (West Saxons), East Anglia (East Angels), Kent, Mersia and Northumbria, and the largest three of them – Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex – dominated the country at different time. The southern part of Britain became known as Angieland or England. That time the Anglo-Saxons followed their old Germanic religions. Pope Gregory 1 decided to convert the Anglo-Saxon population to Christianity. In 597 A.D. there was sent a mission of 41 monks under the leadership of the monk Augustine. By 700 A.D., all England was Christian. The Pope became a head of the Church. They built many monasteries in England and those monasteries became centers of religion and culture. The Anglo-Saxon kings were elected by the members of the Council and they ruled with the advice of the councilors, the great men of the kingdom. In time, it became the custom to elect a member of the royal family, and the power of the king grew parallel to the size and the strength of his kingdom. In return for the support of his subjects, - who gave him free labour and military service, paid taxes and duties – the King gave them his protection and granted lands.