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CONTENTS

I. HISTORY OF ENGLISH 4

1.1. Chronological division in the history of English 4

1.2. Development of the national literary English language 8

1.3. Development of the analytical forms from OE to NE (the Future

Indefinite Tense, Perfect forms, Continuous forms, etc.) 11

1.4. Development of non-finites from OE to NE (Infinitive, Gerund,

Participle I, II) 15

1.5. Development of Subjunctive Mood forms from OE to MnE 17

1.6. The role of foreign element at different stages of the English language

development 21

II. THEORETICAL PHONETICS 26

2.1. The concept of phoneme, its distinctive and redundant features 26

2.2. The notion of phonological opposition 32

III. THEORY OF GRAMMAR 39

3.1. General peculiarities of Modern English structure 39

3.2. The English noun, its semantic and grammatical properties 43

3.3. The case problem in Modern English 48

3.4. Semantic and grammatical peculiarities of the English verb 51

3.5. Non-finite forms of the verb, their nominal and verbal features 55

3.6. Predicative complexes in Modern English 57

IV. LEXICOLOGY 60

4.1. Etymological survey of the English vocabulary 60

4.2. Regional varieties of the English vocabulary 65

4.3. The problem of the change of meaning in English: its causes,

nature and results 69

4.4. Semantic similarity and polarity of words within the lexical

system of Modern English (synonyms and antonyms) 73

4.5. Homonymy in English: sources of homonymy; classification of English

homonyms 78

4.6. Ways of word-formation in Modern English 82

4.7. English phraseology: structural and semantic peculiarities of

phraseological units, their classification 90

V. STYLISTICS 93

5.1. Stylistic stratification of the English vocabulary 93

5.2. Expressive means and stylistic devices in MnE 95

5.3. Understanding as a linguostylistic problem 97

VI. LINGUISTIC COUNTRY STUDY 101

6.1. The system of education in Great Britain 101

6.2. The state and political structure of Great Britain 107

VII. METHODS OF TEACHING 111

7.1. Aims, content and principles of foreign language teaching

at secondary school 111

7.2. Listening comprehension (methods of teaching) 114

7.3. Speaking skills (methods of teaching) 119

7.4. Reading skills (methods of teaching) 124

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I. History of english

1.1. Chronological division in the history of english

The outline of the problem discussed

1. Traditional chronological divisions in the history of English.

2. Henry Sweet’s approach to the history of English.

3. Seven chronological periods in the history of English and their short survey.

The history of the English language is generally divided into three periods:

Old English (OE): the 5th – 11th cc., since the time of invasion of the

Germanic tribes into the British Isles till the Norman Conquest (1066);

Middle English (ME): the 11th – 15th cc., till the introduction of printing in

England (1477) and the end of the Wars of the Roses (1485);

New English (NE): the 15th c. – till our own times. Within this period one

can point out Early New English – the 16th – 17th cc., till the Restoration period

(1660).

Thus, OE begins with the Germanic settlement of Britain (the 5th c.) or

with the beginning of writing (the 7th c.) and ends with the Norman Conquest

(1066); ME begins with the Norman Conquest and ends on the introduction of

printing (1475), which is the start of the Modern or New English period; the New

period lasts to the present day.

It should be pointed out, however, that the traditional chronological

division of the history of English was not universally accepted. There were

amendments that proposed to shift the boundary lines or envisage other

subdivisions within the main periods: it has been suggested that ME really began

at a later date, c. 1150 (A. Baugh), for the effect of the Norman Conquest on the

language could not have been immediate; another suggestion was that we should

single out periods of transition and subdivide the three main periods into early,

classical, and late (H. Sweet). Some authors prefer a division of history by

centuries (M. Schlauch) or a division into periods of two hundred years (B.Strang).

The English scholar Henry Sweet (1845—1912), author of a number of

works on the English language and on its history, proposed the following

division of the history of English according to the state of unstressed endings:

The 1st period, Old English — the period of full endings. This means, that

any vowel may be found in an unstressed ending. For example, the word

sin Ґan ‘sing’ has the vowel a in its unstressed ending, while the word sunu

‘son’ has the vowel u in a similar position.

The 2nd period, Middle English — the period of levelled endings. This

means that vowels of unstressed endings have been levelled under a neutral

vowel, represented by the letter e. Thus, Old English sin Ґan yields Middle

English singen, Old English sunu yields Middle English sune.

The 3rd period, Modern English — the period of lost endings. This

means that the ending is lost altogether. Thus Middle English singeng became

Modern English 'sing'. Middle English sone became Modern English 'son'.

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This division is based on a feature both phonetic (weakening and loss of

unstressed vowel sounds) and morphological (weakening and loss of grammatical

morphemes).

T.A.Rastorgueva emphasizes that division into chronological periods should

take into account both aspects: external and internal (extra- and intralinguistic), and

proposes the following periodisation of English history partly based on the conventional

three periods; it subdivides the history of the English language into seven periods

differing in linguistic situation and the nature of linguistic changes.

The first - pre-written or pre-historical — period, which may be termed Early Old

English, lasts from the West Germanic invasion of Britain till the beginning of writing that

is from the 5th to the close of the 7th c. It is the stage of tribal dialects of the West

Germanic invaders (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians), which were gradually losing

contacts with the related continental tongues. The tribal dialects were used for oral

communication, there being no written form of English.

The evolution of the language in this period is hypothetical. It has been

reconstructed from the written evidence of other Old Germanic (OG) languages,

especially Gothic, and from later OE written records. It was the period of transition

from Proto-Germanic (PG) to Written OE. Early OE linguistic changes, particularly

numerous sound changes, marked OE off from PG and from other OG languages.

The second historical period extends from the 8th c. till the end of the 11th. The

English language of that time is referred to as Old English or Anglo-Saxon; it can also

be called Written OE as compared with the pre-written Early OE period. The tribal

dialects gradually changed into local or regional dialects. Towards the end of the period

the differences between the dialects grew and their relative position altered. They were

probably equal as a medium of oral communication, while in the sphere of writing one of

the dialects, West Saxon, had gained supremacy over the other dialects (Kentish,

Mercian and Northumbrian). The prevalence of West Saxon in writing is tied up with

the rise of the kingdom of Wessex to political and cultural prominence.

OE was a typical Old-Germanic language, with a purely Germanic

vocabulary, and few foreign borrowings; it displayed specific phonetic peculiarities,

owing to intensive changes which took place in Early OE. As far as grammar is

concerned, OE was an inflected or “synthetic” language with a well-developed

system of morphological categories, especially in the noun and adjective, and with an

elaborate grouping of all inflected parts of speech into morphological classes.

The third period, known as Early Middle English, starts after 1066, the year of

the Norman Conquest, and covers the 12th, 13th and half of the 14th c. It was the

stage of the 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.

Under Norman rule the official language in England was French, or rather its

variety called Anglo-French or Anglo-Norman; it was also the dominant language of

literature. There is an obvious gap in the English literary tradition in the 12th c. The

local dialects were mainly used for oral communication and were but little employed

in writing. Towards the end of the period their literary prestige grew, as English

began to displace French in the sphere of writing, as well as in many other spheres.

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Dialectal divergence and lack of official English made a favourable environment for

intensive linguistic change.

Early ME was a time of great changes at all the levels of the language,

especially in lexis and grammar. English absorbed two layers of lexical borrowings:

the Scandinavian element in the North-Eastern area (due to the Scandinavian

invasions since the 8th c.) and the French element in the speech of townspeople in the

South-East, especially in the higher social strata (due to the Norman Conquest).

Phonetic and grammatical changes proceeded at a high rate, unrestricted by written

tradition. Grammatical alterations were so drastic that by the end of the period they

had transformed English from a highly inflected language into a mainly analytical

one; for the most part, they affected the nominal system. Accordingly, the role of

syntactical means of word connection grew.

The fourth period - from the later 14th c. till the end of the I5tn - embraces the

age of Chaucer, the greatest English medieval writer. We may call it Late or Classical

Middle English. It was the time of the restoration of English to the position of the state

and literary language and the time of literary flourishing. The main dialect used in

writing and literature was the mixed dialect of London.

Chaucer’s language was a recognised literary form, imitated throughout the 15th c.

Literary flourishing had a stabilising 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.

The written records of the late 14th and 15th c. testify to the growth of the

English vocabulary and to the increasing proportion of French loan-words in English.

The phonetic and grammatical structure had incorporated and perpetuated the

fundamental changes of the preceding period. The verb system was expanding, as

numerous new analytical forms and verbal phrases on the way to becoming

analytical forms were used alongside old simple forms.

The fifth period — Early Near English — lasted from the introduction of

printing to the age of Shakespeare, that is from 1475 to c. 1660. The first printed

book in English was published by William Caxton in 1475. This period is a sort of

transition between two outstanding epochs of literary efflorescence: the age of

Chaucer and the age of Shakespeare (also known as the Literary Renaissance).

It was a time of great historical consequence: the country became

economically and politically unified; the changes in the political and social

structure, the progress of culture, education, and literature favoured linguistic

unity. The growth of the English nation was accompanied by the formation of the

national English language.

Caxton’s English of the printed books was a sort of bridge between the

London literary English of the ME period and the language of the Literary

Renaissance. The London dialect, a compromise between the various types of

speech prevailing in the country, formed the basis of the growing national literary

language.

The Early NE period was a time of sweeping changes at all levels, in the

first place lexical and phonetic. The growth of the vocabulary was a natural

reflection of the progress of culture in the new society, and of the wider

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horizons of man's activity. New words from internal and external sources

enriched the vocabulary. Extensive phonetic changes were transforming the

vowel system, which resulted, among other things, in the growing gap between

the written and the spoken forms of the word (that is, between pronunciation and

spelling). The inventory of grammatical forms and syntactical constructions was

almost the same as in Mod E, but their use was different. The abundance of

grammatical units occurring without any apparent restrictions, or regularities

produces an impression of great "freedom of grammatical construction".

The sixth period extends from the mid-17th c. to the close of the 18th c. In

the history of the language it is often called "the age of normalisation and

correctness", in the history of literature — the “neo-classical” age. This age

witnessed the establishment of "norms", which can be defined as received standards

recognised as correct at the given period. The norms were fixed as rules and

prescriptions of correct usage in the numerous dictionaries and grammar-books

published at the time and were spread through education and writing.

It is essential that during the 18th c. literary English differentiated into

distinct styles, which is a property of a mature literary language. It is also

important to note that during this period the English language expanded its area

far beyond the borders of the British Isles, first of all to North America.

Unlike the age of Shakespeare, the neo-classical period discouraged variety

and free choice in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. The 18th c. has been

called the period of "fixing the pronunciation". The great sound shifts were over and

pronunciation was being stabilised. Word usage and grammatical construction were

subjected to restriction and normalisation. The morphological system, particularly

the verb system, acquired a stricter symmetrical pattern. The formation of new

verbal grammatical categories was completed. Syntactical structures were perfected

and standardised.

The English language of the 19th and 20th c. represents the seventh period in the

history of English — Late New English or Modern English. By the 19th c. English had

achieved the relative stability typical of an age of literary florescence and had acquired

all the properties of a national language, with its functional stratification and

recognised standards (though, like any living language, English continued to grow and

change). The classical language of literature was strictly distinguished from the local

dialects and the dialects of lower social ranks. The local dialects are now retreating,

being displaced by Standard English. The "best" form of English, the Received Standard,

and also the regional modified standards are being spread through new channels: the

press, radio, cinema and television.

The expansion of English overseas proceeded together with the growth of the

British Empire in the 19th c. and with the increased weight of the United States (after

the War of Independence and the Civil War). English has spread to all the inhabited

continents. Some geographical varieties of English are now recognised as independent

variants of the language.

In the 19th and 20th c. the English vocabulary has grown on an

unprecedented scale reflecting the rapid progress of technology, science and culture

and other multiple changes in all spheres of man's activities. Linguistic changes in

8

phonetics and grammar have been confined to alterations in the relative frequency and

distribution of linguistic units: some pronunciations and forms have become oldfashioned

or even obsolete, while other forms have gained ground, and have been

accepted as common usage.

Though most of these changes are difficult to notice and to define, it is

apparent that an English speaker of the 1950s or 1980s uses a form of language different

from that used by the characters of Dickens or Thackeray one hundred and fifty years

ago. Therefore we may be fully justified in treating the 19th and 20th c. as one historical

period in a general survey of the history of English. But in order to describe the kind

of English used today and to determine the tendencies at work now, the span of the

last thirty or forty years can be singled out as the final stage of development, or as a

cross-section representing Present-day English.

The following table gives a summary of the periods described above; the right

column shows the correlation between the seven periods distinguished in the

present survey and the traditional periods.

Table 1

Periodisation of the History of English

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Early OE (also: Pre-written OE)

OE (also: Written OE)

Early ME

ME (also: Classical ME)

Early NE

Normalisation Period (also: Age

of Correctness, Neo-Classical

period)

Late NE, or Mod E (including

Present-day English)

c. 450 —c. 700

c. 700—1066

1066— c. 1350

c. 1350—1475

1476 — c. 1660

c.1660—c. 1800

c. 1800 . . . . .

since 1945 ...

OLD ENGLISH

MIDDLE ENGLISH

EARLY NEW

ENGLISH

NEW ENGLISH

(also: MODERN

ENGLISH)