1. Chronological Divisions in the History of English

2. The brief characteristics of the periods in the development of the EL

3. The British Isles before the Anglo-Saxon invasion

4. The Anglo-Saxon invasion

Old English

Early OE (Pre-written OE)

c. 450 - c. 700

OE (Written OE)

c. 700 - c.1066

Germanic invasion in the fifth century A. D.

Latin, Old Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), especially the Anglo-Norman French of the dominant class after the Norman Conquest in 1066

1. Henry Sweet: “full endings”2. Spelling was phonetic3. Þ (thorn), ð (eth) and æ (ash);

the Anglo-Saxons didn’t use v and j.

4. There were long and short vowels and long and short consonants (geminates)

5. OE was an inflected language….9. No article, its function was

performed by the demonstrative pronoun seō (that)

Beowulf , a mythological poem the floating legends of those times

in one epic whole. Grendel Grendel’s mother (a water-troll) Dragon.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, starting in 787.

Orosius, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Cura Pastoralis

The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis, a tenth century book of Anglo-Saxon poetry.

MiddleEnglish

and

Early NewEnglish

Early ME 1066 – c. 1350ME(Classical ME)

c. 1350 - 1475

Early NE 1476-c.1660

Early ME starts with the Norman Conquest

Classical ME was the time of the restoration of English to the position of the state and literary language.

1. This period is often referred to as ‘the period of leveled endings’.

2. …3. New vowels and consonants

appeared :[ʧ,ʃ,ʤ]

4. Spelling was changed via the traditions of French scribes:

sc sh, c[k’] ch, Þ, ð th.

5. The noun had only two cases – the common case and the possessive case. The adjective lost its case-system altogether.

6. There appeared some new analytical verb forms: Perfect, Continuous and Future.

7. The non-finite form of the Gerund appeared.

G. Chaucer : Canterbury Tales

John Wyclif

NewEnglish(ModernEnglish )

Normalization period

(Age of Correctness,Neo-Classicalperiod)

c. 1660 – c. 1800

Late NE or Mod E(including Present-

day English)c. 1800……since 1945…

1. A lot of borrowed words from Latin, French, Italian in the Renaissance period.

2. ….3. “the period of lost endings” - a

further tendency to unify different forms of flexions:

the plural of nouns is generally formed by adding –es

the third person singular of the verbs in the Present rather takes –es than –eth,

more and more strong verbs take the endings –ed in the Past Indefinite and Past Participle, etc.

the categories of noun and verb take their modern shape

4. The neutral vowel of unstressed endings was lost:

sorwe –sorw – sorrow.

5. As the result of the Great Vowel Shift modern long vowels and diphthongs appeared

e.g. bite Chaucer’s pronunciation: [bi:t], Shakespeare’s pronunciation [beit], Present-day pronunciation [bait].

take MidE pronunciation [‘ta:ke], ModE [teik]

6. Spelling and pronunciation

W. Shakespeare Among the most famous of his plays are

tragedies of Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth Hamlet,  

the comedies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, the Twelfth Night, and historical plays Richard III, and Henry V.

Works of Milton (1608–1674) Allegory The Pilgrim’s progress by John

Bunyan. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755).

1. What did the type of declension in Germanic languages depend on?

2. What groups of Germanic nouns belonged to strong declension?

3. What group of Germanic nouns belonged to week declension?

4. What are the root-stem nouns?5. How was the case system of the

Germanic noun different from the IE one?

6. There existed two types of declension of adjectives in Germanic: … …

1. What is rhotacism?2. What are the three groups of Germanic

consonants that were changed, according to Grimm’s Law? (give their phonetic classification)

3. When does the Old English period start?4. When does the Old English period end?5. According to K. Verner, what were the

reasons for the “exceptions” in Grimm’s Law?

6. What are the characteristics of a synthetic language?

Geoffrey ChaucerWilliam Caxton

Iberians Mediterranean

Claudius

Gaelic: Irish Scotch-Gaelic

Bretonic:Wales Brittany

Hadrian’s Wall

Manchester Lancaster Rochester Leicester Derby Grimsby Whitby