5. Periods in the History of the English Language

The historical development of a language is a continius uninterrupted process without sudden breaks or rapid transformations. The commonly accepted traditional periodization divides English into three periods: Old English (OE), Middle English (ME) and New English (NE). OE begins with the Germanic settlement of Britain (5^th c.) or with the beginning of writing (7^th 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 Modern English or New English period; the New period lasts to the present day.

Each periods is marked by a set of specific features of phonology, grammar and vocabulary. The English scholar Henry Sweet (1845-1921), author of a number of works on the English langauge and on its history, proposed the following division of the history of English according to the state of unstressed endings:

1^st period, Old English – the period of full endings (any vowel may be found in an unstressed ending);

2^nd period, Middle English – the period of levelled endings (vowels of unstressed endings have been levelled under a neutral vowel);

3^rd period, New English – the period of lost endings (endings are lost).

Sweet’s classification is based on both phonetic (weakening and loss of unstresse vowel sounds) and morphological (weakening and loss of grammatical morphemes) features. Anyhow it is considered to be arbitrary by some scholars. It is true that in OE period any vowel could be found in the ending and the majoruty of the parts of speech are connected with the other words in the sentences by means of endings. The period of levelled endings in reality contains the levelled vowel in the ending, but at the same time lots of endings were already list. The period of lost endings – present-day English is not totally devoid of endings, some paradigmatic forms are still made by means of endings, scarce as they are.

Division into chronological periods should take into account external and internal (extra- and intralinguistic) factors. The following periodization of English history is partly based on the conventional three periods; it subdivided the history of the English language into seven periods taking into account differing in extra- and intralinguistuic factors.

Old English Period

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 5^th c. to the close 5^th c. It is the stage of tribal dialects of the West Germanic invaders (Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians), which are gradually losing contacts with the related continental tongue. The tribal dialects were used for oral communication, there being no written form of English

The second historical periods extends from the 8^th century till the end of the 11^th (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, Mercial and Northumbrian). The prevalence of West Saxon in writing is tide up with the rise of kingdom of Wessex to cultural and political prominence.

In general Old English was a typical Old Germanic language, with a purely Germanic vocabulary and a few foreign borrowings; it displayed specific peculiarities, owing ti intensive changes which took place in Early Old English. 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.

Middle English Period

Middle English period is subdivided into Early Middle English (1066-1350) and Late or Classical Midlle English period (1360-1475), Early New English period (1475-1660).

The third period, known ad Early Middle English, starts after 1066, the year of Norman Conquest, and convers the 12^th, 13^th and half of the 14^th century. It was the stage of the greatest dialectical divergence caused by the feudal system and by foreign influences- Scandinavian and French. The dialectical 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-Norman or Anglo-French; it was also the dominant language of literature. There is an obvious gap in the literary tradition in the 12 c. The local dialects were mailnly used for oral communication and were but little employed in writing. Towards the end of the period their literary presige grew, as English began to displace French in the sphere of writing, as well as in many other spheres.

Early ME was a time of great changes at all levels of the language, especially in lexics and grammar. English absorbed two layers of lexical borrowings: the Scandinavian element in the north-tastern area (due to the Scandinavian invasion since the 8^th c.) and the French element in the speech of townpeople 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 transforned English from a highly inflected language into mainly analytical one; for the most part, they affected the nominal system. Accordingly, the role of syntactical means of word connection grew.

Classical Midlle English period (1360-1475) embraces the age of Chaucer, the greatest English medieval writer and forerunner of the English Renaissance. It was the time of restoration of English to the position of the state and literary language and he 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, linguistic changes slowed down. The written records of the late 14^th and 15^th c. testify to the growth of the English vocabulary and to the increasing propotion of French loan-words in English. Most of inflections in the nominal system – in noun, adjectives, pronouns – had fallen together. The verb systen 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 New English lasted from the introduction of printing to the age of Shakespeare, that is from 1475 to 1669. The first printed book in English was published by William Caxton in 1475. It was a time of great historical consequences: under growing capitalistic system 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.

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, bourgeois society and of wider horizons of man’s activity. Extensive phonetic changes were transforming the vowel system, which resulted, among other things, in growing gap between the written and spoken forms of the word. The inventory of grammatical forms and syntactic constructions was almost the same as in Modern English.

New English or Modern English Period

New English period comprises Normalization Period (1660-1800) and Late New English or Modern English (since 1800) including present-day English (since 1945).

Normalization period is the age of establishment of norms, which can be defined as received standards recognised as correct at the given period. The norm 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. During this period the English language extended its area far beyond the borders of the British Islaes, first of all to North America.

Unlike the age of Shakespeare, this period discouraged variety and free choice in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. The great sound shift were over and pronunciation was being stabilized. Word usage and grammatical construction were subjected to restriction and normalization. The morphological system, particularly the verb system, acquired a more strict symmetrical pattern. The formation of new verbal grammatical categories was completed. Syntactical structures were perfected and standardised.

The English language of the 19^th and 20^th century represents the sevent period in the history of English – Late New English or Modern English. By the 19^th century English had achieved the relative stability typical amd acquired all the properties of a national language, with its functional stratification and recognised standards. The classical language of literature was strictly distinguished from the local dialects and the dialects of lower social ranks. The 20^th century witnessed considerable intermixture of dialects. 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 19 ^th 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.

In the 19^th and 20^th c. the English vocabularly has grown on an unpredented scale reflecting the rapid progress of technology, science and culture and ohe multiple changes. In all spheres of man’s activities. Linguistic changes in phonetics and grammar have been confined to alterations in the relative frequency and distribution of linguistic units: some pronunciations and forms have become old-fashioned 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, its apparent that an English speaker of the 1950s or 1980s uses a form of language different from the used by the characters of Dickens and Thackerey. Therefore it may be fully justified in treating the 19^th and 20^th centuries 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 of its develoment scholars singled out the present-day English period.