Peculiarities of the Middle English period
Основы теории изучаемого языка
History of the English language. Periodization. Genealogical classification of languages. Prehistoric English
The Celtic language – Brythonic language – was spoken on the territory of modern Britain before Germanic tribes came there. It still remains in some parts of Britain nowadays. With the invasion of Germanic tribes the English language appeared made of several Germanic dialects. Indo-European language family is subdivided into Baltic, Celtic, Roman, Slavic and Germanic. Germanic group is subdivided into East, North and West subgroups. West: English, German, Dutch (Holland), Flanish (Belgium), Frisian (dead language). In 1786 sir William Jones discovered that Sunscrit has a lot in common with modern European languages, and he came to comclusion that they had the same protolanguage. Periodization: Old English – 450-110 AD, Middle English – XI-XIV centuries, Early Modern English – XIV-XVII centuries, Late Modern English – 1800-up to present.
Peculiarities of the Old English period
The most important historical event of the Old English period was Scandinavian invasion. In 8th century they brought peculiarities of their own language, Old Norse, to English. The main aspect of the language influenced by Scandinavians was grammar. Vikings simplified the English grammar and made it lose grammatical gender and case (the system of declination). The influence on vocabulary was not so considerable, but there were some words borrowed from Old Norse and used nowadays (leg, law, anger, all nouns beginning with “sk”, and personal pronoun “they”). In the Old English period there was the 1st wave of Latin and Greek borrowings to English owing to introduction of Christianity. They were mostly of religious content (e.g. mission). One of the main records is “Beowulf” epic poem written by an unknown author in IX-X century. The end of the Old English period is connected with Norman Conquest in 1066.
Peculiarities of the Middle English period
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, French became official language in Britain for 2 centuries and was spoken by government, court and noble people. Lower social classes continued speaking English considerably changed under the French influence. There were the following changes:
1) Changes in vocabulary, a lot of French borrowings (beef-cow, mutton-sheep, etc).
2) Changes in spelling and pronunciation (ð, Þ –> th). Consonants in the end of the words were not pronounced (comb, autumn).
3) Changes in grammar. Developing from synthetical language to analytical one continued during this period. The system of declination of English pronouns was almost formed, but in general changes in grammar were not so considerable.
The most famous writer is Geoffrey Chausser (XIV century) and his most famous work “The Canterbury tales”. 1258 – the 1st official document in English was published (“Provisions of Oxford”). 1362 – Edward III addressed to the Parliament in English, and since then English returned its position as the official language. The Middle English period finished with the Great Vowel Shift.