Qualitative vowel changes.

OE possessed a well developed system of diphthongs: falling diphthongs with a closer nucleus and more open glide arranged in two symmetrical sets – long and short: [ea:], [eo:], [ie:] and [ea], [eo], [ie]. Towards the end of the OE period some of the diphthongs merged with monophthongs. As a result of these changes the vowel system lost two sets of diphthongs, long and short. In the meantime anew set of diphthongs developed from some sequences of vowels and consonants due to the vocalization of OE [j] and [γ], that is to their change into vowels. These changes gave rise to two sets of diphthongs: with i-glides and u-glides. The same types of diphthongs appeared also from other sources: the glide -u developed from OE [w] as in OE snāw, which became ME snow [snou], and before [x] and [l] as in Late ME smaul and taughte.

in grammar, English came to rely less on inflectional endings and more on word order to convey grammatical information.The range of inflections, particularly in the noun, was reduced drastically (partly as a result of reduction of vowels in unstressed final syllables), as was the number of distinct paradigms: in most early Middle English texts most nouns have distinctive forms only for singular vs. plural, genitive, and occasional traces of the old dative in forms with final –e occurring after a preposition..

in vocabulary, English became much more heterogeneous, showing many borrowings from French, Latin, and Scandinavian. Large-scale borrowing of new words often had serious consequences for the meanings and the stylistic register of those words which survived from Old English. Eventually, various new stylistic layers emerged in the lexicon.

The chronological divisions in the history of English: the Early New English period.

Traditional periodization divides English into 3 periods – old English, middle English, new English.

1475(printing) - the start of the New English period

Early New English 1475- 1660 , first printed book by William Caxton in 1475 . Literary Renaissance. The growth of the great English Nation was accompanied by the formation of the English Language .

Early ME was a time of sweeping changes at all levels – lexical and phonetic. New bourgeois society was the reason for growth of vocabulary, new words from internal and external sources enriched vocabulary. Extensive phonetic changes were transforming the vowel system => gap between written and spoken forms. Grammatical forms and syntactical constructions were almost same with Modern E, but their use was different.

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