12. Chronological division of the English language.

The commonly accepted traditional periodisation of the development of the English lang. consists of three main periods of Old (450-1066), Middle (1066-1475) & New English (1475-the 20^th cent.), or seven less periods. The history of Old English falls under Early or pre-written OE (5-8 c.) & OE or written OE (8-11 c.). The first pre-written period or Early Old English lasts from the West Germanic invasion of Britain in the 5^th c. till the beginning of writing in the 7^th c. cause there was no written form of the lang. before. It is the stage of tribal dialects of the West Germanic invaders (Angles, Saxons, Jutes & Frisians), which were used for oral communication. The English lang. of the second period lasted from the 8^th c. till the Norman invasion at end of the 11^th c. is Old English or Anglo-Saxon or Written OE period. The tribal dialects gradually changed into local or regional dialects. In the language of this period the word order was more or less free & the relations between words were mainly expressed by inflections. So, it was an inflected or "synthetic" lang. with a well-developed system of morphological categories, es­pecially in the noun & adjective which had the same cat-ries (2 numbers, 4 cases, 3 genders), but adjectives had also twofold declination (week/strong). The verb had Indic., Imper., Subjun. moods, Present & Preterit tenses, was strong or week. The Old Eng. alphabet of 24 letters (19 Latin letters & 2 runic symbols) was very similar to the one still in use. Its vocabulary was purely Germanic with a few foreign borrowings. It was a "period of full endings". The third period, known as Ear/y Middle English (1066- the mid. of the 14^th c.) was the stage of the greatest dialectal divergence caused by the feudal system & by foreign influences - Sc&inavian & French. The official & literary lang. was French (Anglo-French). But there was a struggle between French & English spoken by the majority of population. Early ME was a time of great changes at all esp. in lexis & grammar. English absorbed Sc&inavian & French borrowings. Phon. & gram. changes transformed English from a highly inflected lang. into a mainly analytical one (the nom­inal system). The fourth period (the later 14^th c.-the end of the 15^th) is Late or Classical Middle English), the age of Chaucer - the greatest English medieval writer & forerunner of the English Renaissance. It was the time of the restoration of English to the position of the state & literary lang., literary flourishing. Lang. became more or less fixed, linguistic changes was slowed down, the written forms developed & improved. The phon. & gram. str-re had been preserved & incorporated fundamental changes of the pre­ceding period. Most of the inflections in the nominal system (nouns, adject., pron.) had fallen together. It was the period of "levelled endings". The verb system was exp&­ing, new analytical forms were used alongside old simple forms. The fifth period is Early New English lasted from the in­trod. of printing in 1475 to c. to the age of Shakespeare (1660). It was the Lit. Renaissance, econ., polit., cult. & educating growing of the country accompanied by the formation of the national English lang. used the London dialect as its basis. This period is marked by great changes esp. in lexical & phonetic (the vowel syst.) levels, the growth of the vocab­ulary. The loss of most inflectional endings in the 15th c. justifies the definition of this period as the "period of lost endings". The inventory of grammatical forms & syntactical construc­tions was almost the same as in Mod E, but their use was different. The sixth period (the mid-17^thc.-close to the 15^th) is often called "the age of normalization & correctness”. The norms were fixed as rules & prescriptions of correct usage & published & spread in the numerous dictionaries & grammar-books. Lit. English differentiated into distinct style & the lang. extended its area far beyond the borders of the British Isles (North America). The great sound shifts were over & pronunciation was being stabilized. Word usage & grammatical construction were restricted, the morphol. system( the verb sys.) got a more strict symmetrical pattern. The formation of new verbal grammatical categories was completed. Syntactical structures were perfected & st&ardized. The English lang. of the 19th & 20th c. represents the seventh Late New English or Modern English period. . By the 19th c. English had achieved the relative stability & had acquired all the properties of a national language. English has spread to all the inhabited continents. English continues to grow & change.