Chronological division in the history of English

Lecture 3, History of the English language

Languages change through time, they have the development in their grammatical system, spelling, vocabulary, phonetic structure, but the development of language is an interrupted process without sudden breaks or rapid transformations.

The commonly accepted periodisation divides English history into 3 periods: Old English, Middle English and New English.

Old English begins with the Germanic settlement of Britain (5^th century) 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). And this is the beginning of the Modern or New English period which lasts to the present day. A lot of subdivisions have been suggested.

Sweet suggested 3 main periods: early, classical and late. Schlauch preferred a division of history by centuries. Strang: into periods of 200 years. But we will study Rastorgueva’s division:

1) pre-written period or Early OE lasted from the 5^th to the close of the 7^th c. It is the stage of tribal dialects of the West Germanic invaders (Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians). The tribal dialects were used for oral communication, there was no written form of English

2) OE or Anglo-Saxon; also written OE from the 8^th up to the 11^th c. The tribal dialects changed into local or regional dialects, they are;Kentish, Mersian, Nothumbrian and West Saxon. In writing sphere West Saxon had gained the supremacy over the rest, it is connected with the rise of the kingdom of Wessex in political and cultural way.

3) Early ME- lasts from 1066 to 1350.. It was the stage of the greatest dialectal divergence caused by the feudal system and by foreign influences – Scandinavian and French. There was a high rate of phonetic and grammatical changes. By the end of the period English transformed into an analytical language.

4) Late or Classical ME- from 1350 to 1475- embraces the age of Chaucer ( the greatest English medieval writer). The time of the restoration of English to the position of the state language and it is the time of literary flourishing. . The main dialect used in writing was the mixed dialect of London. It derived from the Southern dialectal group but during the 14^th c. it was partially replaced by East Midland traits.

5) Early New English- from the introduction of printing to the age of Shakespeare (from 1475 to 1660). The first book was published in 1475 by William Caxton. It was the time of sweeping changes at all levels: lexical, phonetic,grammatical. The country became economically unified. This period is known as a period of formation of the National English language.

6) Normalisation Period (Age of Correctness or Neo-Classical Period) – from 1660 to1800. It’s the time of the establishment of “norms” of the language that were fixed as rules of correct usage. During the 18^th c. literary English differentiated into distinct styles. The 18^th c. is called the period of “fixing the pronunciation”. Word usage and grammatical construction were subjected to normalization as well. The formation of new verbal grammatical categories was completed. Syntactical structures were standardized.

7) Late New English or Modern English- from the 19^th- till nowadays. English has acquired all the properties of the national language. The local dialects were replaced by Standard English.The “best” form of English is the Received Pronunciation..

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