- •Lecture 1 history of language as a linguistic discipline
- •Sources Used for Studying Language History
- •Periods in the History of English
- •The Role of the Discipline in Training the Teacher of a Foreign Culture
- •Lecture 2 germanic languages Classification of Modern Germanic Languages and their Distribution
- •Table 1 Germanic Languages
- •Old Germanic Languages and their Classification
- •Earliest records of Germanic tribes
- •Table 2 Classification of Ancient Germanic Tribes
- •Material Culture
- •Warfare
- •Form of Government
- •Conversion to Christianity
- •Germanic Alphabets and Old Germanic Writings
- •Linguistic Features of Germanic Languages Phonetic peculiarities of Germanic Languages. Word Stress and its role in further development of Germanic languages
- •The First or Proto-Germanic Consonant Shift (Grimm's Law)
- •Verner’s Law
- •Old English Kingdoms and Dialects
- •Scandinavian Raids
- •King Alfred and His Literary Activity
- •The Middle English Period The Norman Conquest and its Influence on the Linguistic Situation in England
- •Middle English Dialects. Growth of Dialectal Differences
- •The New English Period The XVI century – the Period of the Development of the National Literary Language
- •Economic and Political Unification. Conditions for Linguistic Unity
- •Progress of Culture. Introduction of Printing
- •Foreign Contacts in the Early New English Period
- •Expansion of English over the British Isles
- •Flourishing of Literature in Early New English (Literary Renaissance)
- •New Sources of Information about the Language. Private Papers and Didactic Compositions
- •Normalising Tendencies. Grammars and Dictionaries in the Late 17th and 18th c
- •Word Stress
- •Old English Vowel System
- •Changes in the system of vowels:
- •Middle english period
- •Word Stress
- •Vowel Changes in MdE and Early MnE Unstressed vowels
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Monophthongization of oe Diphthongs
- •Quantitative vowel changes
- •Modern english period
Periods in the History of English
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Traditionally, the history of the English language is divided into 3 periods, which were originally suggested by the English scholar Henry Sweet, author of a number of works on the English language and its history. They are Old English, Middle English and Modern English. His division was not arbitrary, of course as he took into consideration both intra- and extralinguistic factors, namely, phonetic and morphological, on the one hand, and sociocultural, on the other. Modern linguists, however, disagree with this division (V. Arakin, T. Rastorgueva, Ivanova) accounting for their disagreement by the following considerations. For example, V. Arakin maintains, that the Old English period needs to be subdivided into 2, the Early Old English period and the Late Old English period, as the changes that had taken place from the beginning till the end of the period were very much pronounced and the language at its earlier stage was a lot different from its final stage. Rastorgueva extends this idea to the other periods and Ivanova, generally satisfied with the extralinguistic factors taken into consideration while dividing English into historical periods, argues whether phonetic and morphological criteria are sufficient for this purpose. |
pronounced- very great or noticeable
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The table below illustrates the division proposed by Henry Sweet.
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Periods |
Intralinguistic factors |
Extralinguistic factors |
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1st period Old English/ OE
700AD - 1100 |
period of full endings; any vowel can be found in an unstressed ending singan ( a unstressed) sunu (u unstressed)
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2 period Middle English/ ME
1100 - 1500 |
period of leveled endings; vowels of unstressed endings were leveled under a neutral vowel something like[ə], represented by the letter e. singen ( a e) sone [su:nə] (u e)
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1066, the year of Norman conquest
1485, the end of the War of Roses, the decay of feudalism the rise of capitalism |
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3 period Modern English /MdE
1500 – nowadays
Early MdE:1500 – 1660/1700 Late MdE: 1660/1700 – present day
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Period of lost endings
sing son |
The rise of the English nation and the national language |
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As is seen from the table, the division is based on both phonetic and morphological features: weakening and loss of unstressed vowels and weakening and loss of grammatical morphemes. It should be emphasized that the dates are but a mere convention as they cannot be taken literally. They simply signify the fact the by these periods the changes in the language had become so prominent that they could identify a new period in its history.
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literally -
according to the most basic or original meaning of a word or expression
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