- •Федеральное агентство по образованию
- •Contents
- •Introduction the subject of the history of the english language. The indo-european family of languages. Germanic languages. The periods in the history of english 5
- •Indo-European Language Family 6
- •Variant I 86
- •Causes of language changes
- •Historical Linguistics
- •Indo-European Language Family
- •Indo-European languages tree
- •Germanic Languages
- •Peculiarities of Germanic languages
- •Germanic people. Origin and culture
- •Germanic Alphabet
- •Periods in the History of English
- •The Old English period: brief outline and main features
- •The Middle English period: brief outline and main features
- •The Modern English period: brief outline and main features
- •The old english period Historical Background: Prehistoric Britain, Roman Britain, Anglo-Saxon Britain
- •Old English Writings
- •How Do We Know What Old English Pronunciation Was Like?
- •The Old English Sound System
- •Phonetic Changes in Old English
- •Vowel changes
- •Consonants changes
- •Old English Grammar The Old English Noun
- •The Old English Pronoun
- •Interrogative pronouns
- •Indefinite pronouns
- •The Old English Adjective
- •The Old English Verb
- •Irregular (anomalous) verbs.
- •The Old English Numeral
- •The Old English Adverb
- •The Old English Auxiliary Words
- •The Old English Syntax
- •Old English Vocabulary Composition
- •Word building
- •Foreign influences on Old English
- •The middle english period Historical background: Medieval Britain
- •Changes in Spelling
- •Phonetic Changes in Middle English
- •Vowel changes:
- •Changes in Middle English Grammar
- •Changes in Middle English Vocabulary
- •The modern english period Historical background: Tudor Britain, Stuart Britain
- •General Changes in Modern English Phonology
- •The Great Vowel Shift
- •Early Modern English Grammar Changes and features of ModE noun system
- •The Modern English Pronoun
- •Changes and features of Early ModE verbal system
- •Early Modern English Syntax
- •Features of Early ModE vocabulary:
- •Part II The Old English Period
- •Part III the Middle English period
- •Part IV The Modern English Period
- •Appendix 1: British History Timeline
- •Appendix 2: Control tests
- •Part III.
- •Task IV.
- •Instructions: Read the following extract from Hamlet by Shakespeare and do the tasks below.
- •Variant II
- •Instructions: Basing on the Grimm’s law, explain the correspondences of underlined sounds in the following words of the common root from Germanic and non-Germanic Indo-European languages.
- •Instructions: Provide grammatical analysis of the suggested elements from the sentence below:
- •Verbs — strong or weak type, define tense, aspect, mood, person, number.
- •Part III.
- •Instructions: Read the passage in Middle English, analyze the part in bold and do the tasks below.
- •Task IV.
- •Instructions: Read the following extract from Hamlet by Shakespeare and do the tasks below.
- •Variant III.
- •Part III.
- •Instructions: Read the passage in Middle English, analyze the part in bold and do the tasks below.
- •Task IV.
- •Instructions: Read the following extract from Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare and do the tasks below.
- •Variant IV
- •Part III.
- •Instructions: Read the passage in Middle English, analyze the part in bold and do the tasks below.
- •Task IV.
- •Instructions: Read the following extract from The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare and do the tasks below.
- •Variant V
- •Part III.
- •Instructions: Read the passage in Middle English, analyze the part in bold and do the tasks below.
- •Task IV.
- •Instructions: Read the following extract from the Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare and do the tasks below.
- •Related reading
- •Internet resources
- •Г. А. Васильцова история английского языка и введение в специальную филологию
Variant I 86
Variant II 91
Variant III. 95
Variant IV 99
Variant V 104
RELATED READING 109
Introduction THE SUBJECT OF THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES. GERMANIC LANGUAGES. THE PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH
Why learn History of English?
This course is a challenge for those who are curious about the past, who have deep interest in languages and look forward to experiencing new cultures through deciphering and analyzing fascinating and somewhat mysterious messages from the ancestors.
When studying this course, you will enjoy being given a window on the past, an enhanced understanding of language in general and of English in particular. Learning History of English requires a student to gain functional mastery of areas of grammar that either hardly exist in Modern English (for example, the case system), or that exist in Modern English but the fluent speaker never has to think about consciously. If you're planning a career where understanding of correct grammar will be important (e.g. translating, writing or teaching), you will find your understanding enhanced by this course even if you think you have a pretty strong mastery of grammar now. This course also provides good practice in analyzing language data, which is an essential skill for any translator/interpreter.
Causes of language changes
In studying the history of a language we are faced with a number of problems concerning the driving forces or causes of changes in the language. The causes can apparently be of two kinds: external and internal.
External causes: language is influenced by factors lying outside it, or extralinguistic factors. Such historic events as social changes, wars, conquests, migration, cultural contacts and the like strongly influence a language, especially its vocabulary.
Internal causes: many changes that occur in the history of language cannot be traced to any extralinguistic causes; the driving power in such cases is within the language itself. Most changes in the phonetic structure of a language, and also in its grammatical structure, are due to internal causes, for example due to the general tendency of language to economy: speakers tend to make their utterances as efficient as possible, they try to exert the least effort in communicating with language (thus making use of abbreviations, simple grammar structures in spoken language). Also, many changes are caused by analogy, when speaker tend to liken similar words and grammatical phenomena.
Historical Linguistics
The History of the English language is a subject and subdivision of historical linguistics, which attempts to understand the processes and principles by which languages change through time, and by which specific linguistic features come into existence. It also seeks to reconstruct extinct languages for which there are no written records, and to determine relationships among languages through the comparative method.
The comparative method (in comparative linguistics) is a technique used by linguists to demonstrate genetic relationships between languages. It aims to prove that two or more historically attested languages are descended from a single proto-language by comparing lists of cognate terms. From these cognate lists, regular sound correspondences between the languages are established, and a sequence of regular sound changes can then be postulated which allows the proto-language to be reconstructed from its daughter languages. Relation is deemed certain only if a reconstruction of the common ancestor (or at least a partial reconstruction) is feasible and if regular sound correspondences can be established with chance similarities ruled out.