PERIODISATION OF THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH

The First – pre-written or pre-historical period, early OE, lasts from the West Germanic invasion of Britain till the beginning of writing, from the 5th to the close 7th c.It is the stage of tribal dialects of the Western Germanic invaders (Angles, Saxon, Jutes and Frisians), who were gradually losing contacts with the related mother tongues. THE TRIBAL DIALECTS were used for oral communication, there being no written form of E. The evolution of the 1-ge is hypothetical. It has been reconstructed from the written evidence of the Old Germanic 1-ges, esp. Gothic, and from later OE written records. It was the period of transition from PG to Written OE. Early OE ling. Ch-s, particularly numerous sound ch-s, marked OE off from PG and other OG 1-ges.

The second historical period extends from the beginning of the 8th c. till the end of the 11th c. The EL of that time is referred to as OE or Anglo-Saxon; it can also be called Written OE. The tribal dialects gradually changed into local or regional dialects. 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 other dialects (Kentish, Mercian and Nothumbrian). The prevalence of West Saxon in writing is tied up with the rise of the kingdom of Wessex to political and cultural prominence.

OE was a typical OG I-ge, with a purely Germanic vocabulary, and few foreign borrowings; it displayed specific phonetic peculiarities owing to extensive changes which took place in Early OE. As for grammar, OE was inflected or "synthetic" 1-ge with a well-developed system of morhp. categories, esp. the noun and adjective. H Sweet (19thc.) called OE the "period of full endings".

The third period, known as Early Middle E, starts after 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest, and covers the 12th, 13th and half of the 14th c. It was the state of the greatest dialectal divergence caused by the feudal system and by foreign influences - Scandinavian and French. The dialectal division of Present da E owe its in to this period of history. Under Norman Rule the official 1-ge in England was French, or rather variety called Anglo-French or Anglo- Norman; it was the dominant 1-ge of literature. The local dialects were mainly used for oral communication.

Early ME WAS A TIME OF GREAT CHANGES AT ALL LEVELS OF THE L-GE, ESP. IN LEXIS AND GRAMMAR. E absorbed two layers of lexical borrowings: the Scandinavian element in the North-Eastern area and the French element in speech of townspeople in the South-East, esp. in the higher social strata. Phonetic and grammar changes proceeded at a high rate, unrestricted by written tradition. Grammatical alterations were so drastic that by the end of the period they had transformed E from a highly inflected 1-ge to a mainly analytical one.

The fourth period - from later 14th c. till the end of the 15th c.- embraces the age of Chaucer. We may call it Late or Classical ME. It was the time of restoration of E lo the position of the state and literary 1-ge and the time of literary flourishing. The main dialect used in writing and literature was the mixed dialect of London. The written records of the late 14th and 15th c. testify to the growth of the E vocabulary and to increasing proportion of French loan-words in English. The phonetic and gram. Structures had incorporated the fundamental ch-s of the preceding period. Most of the inflections in the nominal system in nouns, adj-s, pronouns had fallen together. H. Sweet called ME the period of "levelled endings". The verb system was expanding, as many new analytical forms were used alongside old simple forms.

The fifth period – early New E – lasted from the introduction of printing to the age of Shakespeare that is from 1475 to c.1660. The 1-st printed book was published by William Coxton in 1475. It was a time of great historical consequence: under the growing capitalist 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 EL.

Due to these events the growth of the vocabulary was quite natural. New words from internal and external sources enriched it. Extensive phonetic ch-s were transforming vowel system, which resulted in the growing gap between the written and the spoken forms of the word (that is between pron. and spelling). The lost of most inflectional endings justifies the definition "period of lost endings" given by H. Sweet. The inventory of gram. Forms and syntactical construction was almost the same as in Mod. E, but their use was different.

The sixth period extends from the mid-17th c. to the close of the 18-thc. In the history of the 1- ge it is often called " the age of normalization and correctness". This age witnessed the establishment of "norms", which can be defined as received standard recognized as correct at a given period.

The neo-classical period discouraged variety and free choice in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. The 18th c. has been called the period of "fixing pronunciation" The great sound shifts were over and pronunciation was being stabilised. Word usage and grammatical construction were subjected to restriction and normalization. The verb system acquired a more strict symmetrical pattern. The formation of new verbal grammatical categories were completed. Syntactical structures were perfect and standardized.

The seventh period is represented by the 19th and the 20th c.; it is called Late New E or Modern E. By the 19th c. E achieved the relative stability typical of an age of literary florescence and acquired all the properties of a national 1-ge. The classical 1-ge of literature was strictly distinguished from the local dialects and the dialects of lower social ranks. The expansion of E overseas proceeded together with the growth of the British Empire in the 19th c. and with increased weight of the USA.

The 20th c. was the period of Standard English, the "best" form of E , the Received Standard, and also the regional modified standards are being spread through new channels: the press, radio, cinema and TV. In the 19th and 20 c. the E vocabulary has grown rapidly on an unprecedented scale reflecting the rapid progress of technology, science and culture. Linguistic changes in phonetics and grammar have been confined to alterations in the relative frequency and distribution of linguistic units: some pron-ns and forms have become old-fashioned or even obsolete, while other forms gained ground and have been accepted as common usage. Therefor we may be fully justified in treating the 19th and the 20th c. as one historical period in a general survey of the H of E. But in order to describe the kind of E used today and to determine the tendencies at work now, the scan of the last 30 or 40 years can be singled out as the final stage of development or as cross-section representing Present day E.