8.The Anglo –Saxon conquest and its historical and linguistic importance.

The Anglo-Saxons were a people who inhabited Great Britain from the 5th century. They comprised people fromGermanic tribes who migrated to the island from continental Europe, their descendants, and indigenous British groups who adopted some aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and language. The Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period of British history between about 450 and 1066, after their initial settlement and up until the Norman conquest.

It was about the middle of the fifth century that these tribes first began to desert their continental homes, for new settlements in the British Isles. TheAnglo-Saxons were Germanic tribes who migrated to Britain from Jutland and Northern Germany beginning in the early 5th century. The Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period of English history after their initial settlement through their creation of the English nation. 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 Eastern Scotland between at least the mid 5th century and the mid 12th century, after which it is known as Middle English.

The Benedictine monk Bede, writing in the early 8th century, identified the English as the descendants of three Germanic tribes:

· the Angles, who probably came from Angeln (in modern Germany): Bede wrote that their whole nation came to Britain, leaving their former land empty. The name England (Old English: Engla land or Ængla land) originates from this tribe;

· the Saxons, from Lower Saxony (in modern Germany; German:Niedersachsen) and the Low Countries;

· the Jutes, possibly from the Jutland peninsula (in modern Denmark; Danish:Jylland).

Their language, Anglo-Saxon or Old English, which derived from Ingvaeonic West Germanic dialects, transformed into Middle English from the 11th century. The language was divided into four main dialects: West Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian and Kentish.

The term Anglo-Saxon can be found in documents produced in the time of Alfred the Great, who seems to have frequently used the titles rex Anglorum Saxonumand rex Angul-Saxonum (king of the English Saxons).[7] The terms ænglisc('Angle-kin') and Angelcynn ('gens Anglorum') had already lost their original sense of referring to the Angles, as distinct from the Saxons, when they are first attested. In their earliest sense they referred to the nation of Germanic peoples who settled eastern Britain from the 5th century.[citation needed] The indigenous Britons, who wrote in both Latin and Welsh, referred to these invaders as 'Saxones' or 'Saeson' – the word Saeson is the modern Welsh word for 'English people';[8] the equivalent word in Scottish Gaelic is Sasannach and in the Irish language, Sasanach.

9.The historical background of Middle English.

The historical development of a language is a continuous, uninterrupted process without sudden breaks or rapid transformations. Therefore any periodisation imposed on language history by linguists, with precise dates, might appear artificial. There are some periodizations of the history of English language. The author of the first scientific historical phonetic and grammar of En. Language. H. Sweet suggested the periodization that corresponds to the morphological structure of different centures. He called the Old English Period – ‘The period of full endings ‘, the M. E. P. – ‘The period of reduced endings’ , the New En. P. – ‘The period of lost endings.’ But this periodization is not full because it is not quite right to devide the logical features, but phonological or syntactical ones (they were not mentioned in the periodization.) So, thus I consider that any periodization is based on some principles, but can’t touch all the sides of the language.

Early Middle English covers the main events of the 14^th century. It is the stage of greatest dialectal divergence caused by the feudal system and by foreign influences-Scandinavian and French. The dialectal division of present-day English owes its origin to this period of history. Great changes of the language took place at all the levels, especially in lexis and grammar.

Later 14^th till the end of the 15^th century is a time known as Late or Classical Middle English. This period umbra’s the age of Chaucer, the greatest English medieval writer and forerunner of the English Renaissanu, and is characterized by restoration of English to the position of the state and literary language and by literary flourishing, which has a stabilizing effect on language, so that the rate of linguistic changes was slowed down. At the same time the written forms of the language developed and improved.

Later 14th till the end of the 15th century is a time known as Late or Classical Middle English. This period umbra’s the age of Chaucer, the greatest English medieval writer and forerunner of the English Renaissanu, and is characterized by restoration of English to the position of the state and literary language and by literary flourishing, which has a stabilizing effect on language, so that the rate of linguistic changes was slowed down. At the same time the written forms of the language developed and improved.