1

Lecture 1. Some Theoretical Aspects of Language History. Periods in the History of

the English Language.

1. The aim and the subject matter of the course. Diachronic and synchronic
approaches to the study of language
2. Causes of language change
3. Types and rate of linguistic changes
4. The origin of the English Language
5. Periodization of the History of English

The history of the English language is one of the fundamental courses forming
the linguistic background of a specialist in philology. It studies the rise and
development of English, its structure and peculiarities in the old days, its similarity to
other languages of the same family and its unique, specific features. It enables the
student to acquire a more profound understanding of present-day English.
So, the aim of the course is the investigation of the development of the system of
the English language, having a close look at the influence of various linguistic and non-
linguistic factors on the language.
The subject matter of the course is the changing nature of the language through
more than 15 hundred years of its existence.
It must be noted that there are two approaches to the study of language:
diachronic and synchronic. The diachronic approach deals with the change and
development of a language over a period of time. The synchronic approach is
concerned with a language at a given time. If we study the changes that have taken
place in English from Old English to Middle English and to Modern English, it is a
diachronic (or historical) study. If we study the structure of English as it exists today or
as it existed at one particular time (e.g. the English language of the age of Shakespeare
(16th-17th c.)) without reference to its previous stages and regardless of any historical
considerations, it is a synchronic study. The important thing is that, in fact, these
approaches are inextricably linked. Every linguistic structure and system exist in a state
of constant development so that the synchronic state of a language system is a result of
a long process of its historical development. So, we commonly resort to history to
explain current phenomena in Modern English. Likewise studying the evolution of
language involves the examination and comparison of distinct language stages and
systems, which may be profitably analysed using models and theories developed in
synchronic studies.
All languages change constantly, and do so in many and varied ways. Each
generation notes how other generations "talk funny". What causes language change?

Causes of Language Change

The causes or factors of language evolution can be divided into external (or
extralinguistic) and internal (or intralinguistic).
External factors include events in the history of the people relevant to the
development of the language, such as the structure of society, expansion over new
geographical areas, migrations, mixtures and separation of tribes, political and
 2
economic unity or disunity, contacts with other peoples, the progress of culture and
literature. These aspects of external history determine the linguistic situation and affect
the evolution of the language.
Internal factors of language evolution arise from the language system. They can
be subdivided into general factors or general regularities, which operate in all
languages as inherent properties of any language system, and specific factors operating
in one language or in a group of related languages at a certain period of time.
The most general internal factors of language evolution are:
1. Economy: Speakers tend to make their utterances as efficient and effective as
possible to reach their communicative goals. Speaking involves therefore a trade-
off of costs and benefits. These tendencies are displayed in numerous assimilative
and simplifying phonetic changes in the history of English (e.g. the consonant
cluster [kn] in know, and knee was simplified to [n]; [t] was missed out in often
and listen, etc.) To this group we can also refer the tendency to express different
meanings by distinct formal means and thus avoid what is known as "homonymy
clashes".
2. Analogy: An analogy can be the linguistic process that reduces word forms
perceived as irregular by remaking them in the shape of more common forms that
are governed by rules. For example, the English verb help once had the past tense
form holp and the past participle holpen. These obsolete (out of date) forms have
been discarded and replaced by helped by the power of analogy (or by widened
application of the productive Verb-ed rule.) This is called leveling. However,
irregular forms can sometimes be created by analogy; one example is the
American English past tense form of dive: dove, formed on analogy with words
such as drive: drove. Neologisms can also be formed by analogy with existing
words. A good example is software (the programs and other operating
information used by a computer), formed by analogy with hardware (the
machines and other physical components of a computer); other analogous
neologisms such as firmware (permanent software programmed into a read-only
memory) and vaporware (software or hardware that has been advertised but is not
yet available to buy) have followed. Another example is the humorous term
underwhelm (means fail to impress or make a positive impact on somebody),
formed by analogy with overwhelm (have a strong emotional effect).
3. Interdependence: The interdependence of changes within the sub-systems of the
language and the interaction of changes at different linguistic levels. This factor
can be illustrated by the history of noun morphology in English. In the course of
history nouns have lost most of their cases (in OE there were four cases,
nowadays — only two). The simplification of noun morphology involved
changes at different levels: phonetic weakening of final syllables, analogical
levelling of forms at the morphological level, and stabilization of the word order
at the level of syntax.
Specific internal factors are confined to a certain group of languages or to one
language only and may operate over a limited span of time. Since English belongs to the
Germanic group of languages, it shares many Germanic trends of development with
cognate languages. These trends were caused by common Germanic factors but were
 3
transformed and modified in the history of English, and were combined with other
trends caused by specifically English internal and external factors.

Types of linguistic changes

Most linguistic changes involve some kind of substitution and can therefore be
called replacements. They are subdivided into different types or patterns. A simple
replacement occurs when a new unit merely takes the place of the old one, e.g. in the
word but, feet the vowels [u] and [e:] have been replaced by [Λ] and [i:]. Replacements
can also be found in the plane of content; they are shifts of meaning in words which
have survived from the early periods of history, e.g. OE feoh [feox] had the meaning
‘cattle’, ‘property’, its modern descendant is fee. Most linguistic changes, however,
both in the language system and language space, have a more complicated pattern. Two
or more units may fall together and thus may be replaced by one unit, or, vice versa,
two distinct units may take the place of one. These types of replacement are defined as
merging and splitting. The modern Common case of nouns is the result of the merging
of three OE cases – Nom., Dat. and Acc. Many instances of splitting can be found in the
history of English sounds, e.g. the consonant [k] has split into two phonemes [k] and
[tS].
Although many linguistic changes can be described in terms of replacements,
some changes are pure innovations or pure losses, which don’t replace anything. Thus
we should regard as innovations numerous new words which were borrowed or coined
to denote entirely new objects or ideas, such as high-jacking, baby-sitter and so on. On
the other hand, many words were lost (or died out) together with the objects or ideas
which have become obsolete. For example, numerous OE poetic words denoting
warriors, ships and the sea.
Linguistic changes are conveniently classified and described in accordance with
linguistic levels: we can speak of phonetic and phonological changes (also sound
changes), spelling changes, grammatical changes, including morphology and syntax,
lexical and stylistic changes. At these levels further subdivisions are made. For
example, phonetic changes include vowel and consonant changes, qualitative and
quantitative changes, positional and independent changes, and so on.

Rate of linguistic changes

Linguistic changes are usually slow and gradual. They proceed in imperceptible
steps unnoticed by the speakers. The slow rate of linguistic change is seen in the gradual
spread of new features in language space. It is important to note that different parts or
levels of language develop at different rates. It is often said that vocabulary of a
language can change very rapidly. This is true only if we compare lexical changes with
changes at other linguistic levels, e.g. grammatical. Lexical changes are quite
conspicuous and easy to observe, since new items spring into being before our very
eyes, though, as a matter of fact, they rarely amount to more than isolated words or
groups of words. The system of phonemes cannot be subjected to sudden or rapid
changes since it must preserve the oppositions between the phonemes required for the
distinction of morphemes. Likewise, the grammatical system is very slow to change.
 4
Being the most abstract of linguistic levels it must provide stable formal devices for
arranging words into classes and for connecting them into phrases and sentences.

The Origin of the English Language

Genetically, English belongs to the Germanic group of languages, which is one
of the groups of the Indo-European linguistic family (IE). It is the family of
languages with the greatest number of speakers, spoken in most of Europe and areas of
European settlement and in much of southwestern and southern Asia. They are
descended from a single unrecorded language believed to have been spoken more than
5,000 years ago in the steppe regions north of the Black Sea (in what is now Ukraine)
and to have split into a number of dialects by 3000 BC. Carried by migrating tribes to
Europe and Asia, these developed over time into separate languages. [Have a look at
the chart which presents the family tree of the Indo-European Languages.]
The family tree is divided into branches: Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Venetic,
Albanian, Greek, Baltic, Slavonic, Anatolian, Armenian, Iranian, Indic, Tocharian.
The study of Indo-European began in 1786 with Sir William Jones's proposal
that Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Germanic, and Celtic were all derived from a “common
source.” In the 19th century linguists added other languages to the Indo-European
family, and scholars such as Rasmus Rask established a system of sound
correspondences. Proto-Indo-European has since been partially reconstructed via
identification of roots common to its descendants and analysis of shared grammatical
patterns. The influence of the original Indo-European language can be seen today, even
though no written record of it exists. The word for father, for example, is vater in
German, pater in Latin, and pita in Sanskrit. These words are all cognates, similar
words in different languages that share the same root.
The Indo-European is the most widely studied language family in the world.
There are a number of reasons for this:
1. Many of the most important languages of the world are Indo-European. These
languages are official or co-official in many countries and are important in academic,
technical and world organisations.
Examples: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian.
Indeed, more than half the world's population speak one or more of these
languages either as a mother tongue or as a business language.
2. Languages that are essential in multinational contexts or with large numbers of
speakers.
Examples: Portuguese, Hindi, German, Bengali.
3. Some of the great classical languages of religion, culture and philosophy were
Indo-European.
Examples: Latin, Greek, Persian, Sanskrit.
4. Languages that are scattered around the world as their speakers are part of
diasporas.
Examples: Greek, Yiddish, Polish, Armenian, Romany, Kurdish, Italian, Punjabi,
Gujarati.
Germanic is one of the major branch of the Indo-European language family.
Scholars often divide the Germanic languages into three groups: West Germanic,
 5
including English, German, and Dutch; North Germanic, including Danish, Swedish,
Icelandic, Norwegian; and East Germanic, now extinct, comprising only Gothic.
In numbers of native speakers, English, with 450 million, clearly ranks 4th
among the languages of the world (after Mandarin, Hindi, and Spanish); German, with
some 98 million, probably ranks 10th (after Bengali, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, and
Japanese). To these figures may be added those for persons with another native
language who have learned one of the Germanic languages for commercial, scientific,
literary, or other purposes. English is unquestionably the world’s most widely used
second language, which functions as a lingua franca. A lingua franca (from Latin,
literally meaning Frankish language) is a language systematically used to communicate
between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language,
distinct from both persons' mother tongues. Lingua franca is a functionally defined
term, independent of the linguistic history or structure of the language.
The earliest historical evidence for Germanic is provided by isolated words and
names recorded by Latin authors beginning in the 1st century BC. From approximately
200 AD there are inscriptions carved in the 24-letter runic alphabet. The earliest
extensive Germanic text is the (incomplete) Gothic Bible, translated about 350 AD by
the Visigothic bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila) and written in a 27-letter alphabet of the
translator’s own design. Later versions of the runic alphabet were used sparingly in
England and Germany but more widely in Scandinavia—in the latter area down to early
modern times. All extensive later Germanic texts, however, use adaptations of the Latin
alphabet.
See table for the names and approximate dates of the earliest recorded Germanic
languages.
Earliest recorded Germanic languages
approximate dates, AD
early runic 200–600
Gothic 350
Old English (Anglo-Saxon) 700–1050
Old High German 750–1050
Old Saxon (Old Low German) 850–1050
Old Norwegian 1150–1450
Old Icelandic 1150–1500*
Middle Netherlandic 1170–1500*
Old Danish 1250–1500*
Old Swedish 1250–1500*
Old Frisian 1300–1500*

*Standard cutoff date for beginnings of modern Germanic languages.

The Germanic languages are related in the sense that they can be shown to be
different historical developments of a single earlier parent language. Although for
some language families there are written records of the parent language (e.g., for the
Romance languages, which are variant developments of Latin), in the case of Germanic
no written records of the parent language exist. Much of its structure, however, can be
deduced by the comparative method of reconstruction (a reconstructed language is
 6
called a protolanguage; reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk). For
example, a comparison of Runic -gastiz, Gothic gasts, Old Norse gestr, Old English
giest, Old Frisian iest, and Old Saxon and Old High German gast ‘guest’ leads to the
reconstruction of Proto-Germanic *ǥastiz. Similarly, a comparison of Runic horna,
Gothic haurn, and Old Norse, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Old High
German horn ‘horn’ leads scholars to reconstruct the Proto-Germanic (PG) form
*hornan.
Such reconstructions are, in part, merely formulas of relationship. Thus, the
Proto-Germanic *o of *hornan in this position yielded au in Gothic and o in the other
languages.
Thus the Germanic group acquired their specific distinctive features after the
separation of the ancient Germanic tribes from other IE tribes and prior to their further
expansion and disintegration, that is during the period of the PG parent language. These
PG features inherited by the descendant languages represent the common features of the
Germanic group. Other common features developed later, in the course of the individual
histories of separate Germanic languages, as a result of similar tendencies arising from
PG causes. On the other hand, many Germanic features have been disguised,
transformed and even lost in later history.

Periodization of the History of English

The English language has a long and eventful history. Different features might be
taken as a ground for the division of the history of English into periods.
The commonly accepted, traditional or classical periodization divides the history
of English into three periods: Old English (OE), Middle English (ME) and New
English (NE) or Modern English (Mod E). This periodization is based on some
linguistically relevant events in the history of the English people.
I. The Old English Period embraces the form of the language spoken from the
middle of the 5th century (Anglo-Saxon Invasion) to the middle of the 11 th century (the
Norman Conquest).
II. The Middle English Period embraces the form of the language used from the
middle of the 11th century (the Norman Conquest) to the 15th century (the introduction
of printing).
III. Modern English is the name given to the language spoken from the 15th
century to the present time.
The English scholar Henry Sweet proposed the division of the history of English
according to the state of unstressed endings. He characterized Old English as The
Period of Full Endings. It means that any vowel could be found in the ending (for
example nama). Middle English was called The Period of Levelled Endings. During
this period vowels of unstressed endings have been leveled to a neutral vowel (for
example name [na:mǝ]). Modern English is The Period of Lost Endings, a large part of
the original system of endings disappeared entirely (for example name [neim]).
Scholars have also tried to view the history of the language in terms of linguistic
situation and the nature of linguistic changes; the more detailed classification here
will be:
 7
1. Early Old English may be taken separately, as the period of pre-written
functioning of the language. It lasts from the West Germanic invasion of Britain till the
beginning of writing, that is from the 5th to the close of the 7th century. It is the period
of the tribal dialects of the West Germanic invaders, which were gradually losing
contacts with the related continental tongues. The tribal dialects were used for oral
communication, there being no written form of English.
2. The second historical period extends from the 8th c. till the end of the 11th.
The English language of that time is referred to as Old English or Written Old English
as compared with the pre-written Early Old English The tribal dialects gradually
changed into local or regional dialects. Towards the end of the period the differences
between the dialects grew and their relative position altered. 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 the other dialects. The language of this period
is usually described synchronically and is treated as a more or less stable system.
3. The third period, known as Early Middle English, starts after 1066, the year of
the Norman Conquest, and covers the 12th, 13th and half of the 14th c. It was the stage
of the greatest dialectal divergence caused by the feudal system and by foreign
influences – Scandinavian and French. The dialectal division of present-day English
owes its origin to this period of history. Under Norman rule the official language in
England was French, or rather its variety called Anglo-French or Anglo-Norman; it was
also the dominant language of literature. Dialectal divergence and lack of official
English made a favourable environment for intensive linguistic changes at all the levels
of the language, especially in lexis and grammar.
4. The fourth period – from the later 14th c. till the end of the 15th – embraces the
age of Chaucer, the greatest English medieval writer and forerunner of the English
Renaissance. We may call it Late or Classical Middle English. It was the time of the
restoration of English to the position of the state and literary language and the time of
literary flourishing. The main dialect used in writing and literature was the mixed
dialect of London. The literary authority of other dialects was gradually overshadowed
by the prestige of the London written language.
5. The fifth period is called Early New English, lasted from the introduction of
printing to the age of Shakespeare. The growth of the English nation was accompanied
by the formation of the national English language. This period was also a time of
sweeping changes at all levels, in the first place lexical and phonetic. The growth of the
vocabulary was a natural reflection of the progress of culture in the society.
6. The sixth period extends from the mid-17th c. to the close of the 18th c. In the
history of the language it is often called “the age of normalization and correctness”, in
the history of literature – the “neoclassical” age. It is essential that during the 18th c.
literary English differentiated into distinct styles, which is a property of a mature
literary language. The 18th c. has been called the period of “fixing the pronunciation”.
The great sound shifts were over and pronunciation was being stabilized. Word usage
and grammatical construction were subjected to restriction and normalization.
7. The English language of the 19th and 20th c. represents the seventh period in
the history of English. It is called Late New English or Modern English. The classical
language of literature was strictly distinguished from the local dialects and the dialects
 8
of lower social rank. The dialects were used in oral communication and, as a rule, had
no literary tradition. The 20th c. witnessed considerable intermixture of dialects. The
local dialects were retreated and displaced by Standard English. The English vocabulary
has grown on an unprecedented scale reflecting the rapid progress of technology,
science and culture and other multiple changes in all spheres of man’s activity.