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Фоминых Елена ( 9 класс)
Научный руководитель: учитель английского языка
Рябухина Мария Валерьевна
THE HISTORU OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
STAGES OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
There are three main stages in the history of the development of the English language that
are usually recognized by the scientists.
1. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, dates from AD 449 to 1066 or 1100.
2. Middle English dates from 1066 or 1100 to 1450 or 1500.
3. Modern English dates from about 1450 or 1500 and is subdivided into Early Modern
English, from about 1500 to 1660, and Late Modern English, from about 1660 to the present
time.
OLD ENGLISH PERIOD
Old English was a variant of West Germanic language and was spoken by Germanic
peoples — Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who lived in present-day southern Denmark and northern
Germany. They invaded Britain in the 5th century AD. The Jutes were the first to arrive, in 449.
They all settled in Britain.
Old English was an inflected language having strong and weak verbs. It had two different
declensions of adjectives, four declensions of nouns, and grammatical distinctions of gender.
These inflections meant that word order was much freer than in the language today. There were
two tenses in Old English: present-future and past.
Old English was rich in word-building possibilities but it was poor in vocabulary. Scholars
believe that ten common nouns in Old English are of Celtic origin; among these are bannock,
cart, down, and mattock.
The number of Latin words introduced during the Old English period has been estimated as
140. Many of them were derived from the Greek. Typical of these words are altar, mass, priest,
psalm, temple, kitchen, palm, and pear. A few were probably introduced through the Celtic;
others were brought to Britain by the Germanic invaders, who previously had come into contact
with Roman culture. By far the largest number of Latin words was introduced as a result of the
spread of Christianity. Such words included not only church terms but also many others of less
significance.
Norsemen or Vikings, who invaded Britain periodically from the late 8th century on,
introduced about 40 Scandinavian (Old Norse) words into Old English. First were Introduced
words pertaining to the sea and battle.
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MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD
Middle English period began with the Norman Conquest in 1066. The language was still
inflectional and the relationship between the words in the sentence depended basically on word
order.
Also there were a lot of changes in the system of spelling. It was the French influence. Some
of them reflected the sound changes which had been completed or were still in progress.
Others were graphic replacements of Old English letters by new letters and diagraphs.
In Middle English runic letters passed put of use. And were displaced by the diagraph th,
which retained the same sound value [Ө] or [ð]. The letter 3 was replaced by g or j.
The long period of Norman domination (from 10th up to 11th century) is reflected in the
language of writing.
There were many innovations in Middle English spelling. The diagraph ou, ie, ch which
occurred in many French words were adapted.
The letters j, k, v and q were also probably first used in imitation of French manuscripts.
The two use of g,c were also taken from French.
Before letters of vertical strokes the letter u was replaced by o.
For ornamental reasons i at the end of the words was replaced by y.
In the early period of Middle English, a number of utilitarian words came into the language
from Old Norse, such as egg, sky, sister, window, and get. The Normans brought other additions
to the vocabulary. Before 1250 about 900 new words had appeared in English, mainly words,
such as baron, noble, and feast, that the Anglo-Saxon lower classes required in their dealings
with the Norman-French nobility. Finally, the Norman nobility and clergy introduced the French
words pertaining to the government, the church, the army, and the fashions of the court, arts,
scholarship, and medicine. Norman scribes write Old English y as u and u as ou. Cw was
changed to qu, hw to wh, and ht to ght.
MODERN ENGLISH PERIOD
The early period of the Modern English is characterized by the growth vocabulary — due to
the use of one part of speech for another (conversion), and due to greater than before borrowings
from other languages. The interest in Latin and Greek during the Renaissance brought new
words into English from those languages. English travelers and merchants introduced other
words after their return from journeys on the Continent. From Italian came cameo, stanza, and
violin; from Spanish and Portuguese, alligator, peccadillo, and sombrero. During its
development, Modern English borrowed words from more than 50 different languages.
Many new words entered the English language as a result of colonial expansion in North
America and in other countries of the world. From the aboriginal peoples of North America, the
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words raccoon and wigwam were borrowed; from Peru, llama and quinine; from the West Indies,
barbecue and cannibal; from Africa, chimpanzee and zebra; from India, bandanna, curry, and,
punch; and from Australia, kangaroo and boomerang. In addition, thousands of scientific terms
were developed to denote new concepts, discoveries, and inventions. Many of these terms, such
as neutron, penicillin, and supersonic, were formed from Greek and Latin roots; others were
borrowed from modern languages, as with blitzkrieg from German and sputnik from Russian.
OLD ENGLISH NOUNS
Grammatical categories are usually subdivided into nominal categories, found in nominal
parts of speech (Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, numerals) and verbal categories found chiefly in the
finite verb.
There were 5 nominal grammatical categories in Old English: number, case, gender, degrees
of comparison and the category of definiteness/indefiniteness.
The noun had only 2 grammatical categories proper. They are inflected for number and
case. In addition nouns distinguished 3 genders.
It’s interesting to know that sometimes male beings need not necessarily be denoted by
nouns of the masculine gender. The same applies to nouns denoting female beings.
Old English word wĪf is Neuter and wĪfman is Masculine.
Sometimes a word could be in two genders
Very often however Old English gender corresponds to natural sex division
In late Old English the gender of nouns tended to adjust in most cases: for example, wĪfman
began to be treaded as Feminine instead of Masculine.
The category of number consisted of 2 members: singular and plural, which were well
distinguished in all declensions with very few homonymous forms.
The noun had 4 cases (Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative).
The Nominative case is the case of an active agent.
Nouns in the Genitive case served as attributes to other nouns.
Dative could convey an instrumental meaning, indicated the means and manner of the
action.
The Accusative case was used with nouns as direct object denoting the recipient of an action
The most remarkable feature of Old English nouns was their elaborate system of
declensions, which is a sortal morphological classification. The total number of declension
exceeded 25.
There were two respective principal groups of declensions in Old English: the vowel
declension (“strong” declension) and consonant declension (“weak” declension). The vowel
declension comprises 4 main paradigms a-stem, ō-stem, u-stem and i-stem.
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The consonant declension comprises nouns with the stem originally ending in –n, -r, -s. The
majority of the nouns of consonant declension ended in –n, that’s why it is sometimes called ndeclension. And besides by the end of Old English period r, s-stems were declined by analogy of
a-stems. In some cases the new form is constructed by adding the ending directly to the root.
These words formed the so-called root-declension.
In Old English there was also a group of -es-stems denoting children.
NOUN IN MIDDLE ENGLISH
The grammatical category of gender was lost in Middle English. In Chaucer’s time gender
was a lexical (semantic) category, like in Modern English.(nouns are referred to as “he” or “she”
if they denote human beings and as “it” if they denote animals and inanimale thing).
The categories of case and number were presented in a modifical shape.
In Middle English the number of cases reduced from 4 to 2. The syncretism of cases (when
one and the same form denotes different cases) lasted for many years.
In Middle English the system of declension became more regular and uniform.
Homonymous forms in Old English noun paradigms caused neutralization of the grammatical
oppositions; similar endings, employed in different declensions, disrupted the group of nouns
into morphological classes. Even in Old English the endings used in ā-stems, ō-stems, and nstems were added to the same gender. This is how the noun declension tended to be re-arranged
on basic of gender.
The grammatical category of Number proved to be the most stable of all nominal categories.
Two numbers have been preserved through all historical periods.
MODERN ENGLISH NOUNS
In late modern English the ending –es was the prevalent marker of nouns in the plural. In
early New English it extended to more nouns- to the new words appearing in English
vocabulary, to many words of other way of plural formation or which employed –es as just of the
variant endings.
Thus, we see that the complicated noun paradigm that existed in Old English was greatly
simplified in Middle English, which is reflected in the following:
1. reduction of the number of declensions.
2. reduction of the number of grammatical categories
3. reduction of the number of categorial forms within one of two remaining
grammatical categories- the category of number.
The plural ending –es underwent several phonetic changes: the voicing of fricatives and the
loss of unstressed vowels in the final syllables.
The Middle English plural ending –en lost its former productivity and is found nowdays
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only in oxen, children and brothren, poetic kine (cow). (Children and brothren in Old English
belonged to the es-stems with –ru in the plural.)
The small group of Middle English nouns with homonymous forms of the singular and
plural has been reduced to three “exceptions” in Modern English: deer, sheep, and swine.
The group of former root-stems has survived as exceptions man, tooth and the like.
The nouns wife-wives and the like have retained consonant interchange.
Now a few words about exception tooth- teeth. In Old English plural ending was –i: tōptōp+i. Letter ō compared to the ending –i: top > tēp > tēth > teeth
Also the words foot- feet, goose- geese.
All modern irregular noun forms are according to their origin.