Lecture 2. The Periodisation of the History of the English Language.

Short
Survey of Periods. Old English: Historical background.
The periodisation of English history proposed by T.A. Rastorguyeva subdivides the
history of the English language into seven periods differing in linguistic situation and the
nature of linguistic changes.
The first – pre-written or pre-historical – period, which may be termed Early Old
English, lasts from the West Germanic invasion of Britain till the beginning of writing,
that is from the 5th to the close of the 7th c. It is the stage of the tribal dialects of the West
Germanic invaders (Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians). The tribal dialects were used for
oral communication, there being no written form of English.
The evolution of the language in this period is hypothetical. It has been reconstructed
from the written evidence of other Old Germanic languages, especially Gothic, and from
later Old English written records. It was the period of transition from Proto-Germanic to
Written Old English. Early Old English linguistic changes, particularly numerous sound
changes, marked Old English off from Proto-Germanic and from other Old Germanic
languages.
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 Anglo-Saxon; it can also be
called Written Old English as compared with the pre-written Early Old English period.
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 the other dialects (Kentish, Mercian
and Northumbrian). The prevalence of West Saxon in writing is tied up with the rise of
the kingdom of Wessex to political and cultural prominence.
Old English was a typical Old Germanic language, with a purely Germanic
vocabulary, and few foreign borrowings; it displayed specific phonetic peculiarities. As
far as grammar is concerned, Old English was an inflected or “synthetic” language with
a well-developed system of morphological categories. H. Sweet, a prominent English
scholar of the late 19th c., called Old English the “period of full endings” in comparison
with later periods. The decline of the morphological system began in the Northern dialects
in the 10th and 11th c.
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.
There is an obvious gap in the English literary tradition in the 12th c. The local dialects
were mainly used for oral communication and were but little employed in writing.
Towards the end of the period their literary prestige grew, as English began to displace
French in the sphere of writing, as well as in many other spheres. Dialectal divergence
and lack of official English made a favourable environment for intensive linguistic
change.
Early Middle English was a time of great changes at all the levels of the language,
especially in lexis and grammar. English absorbed two layers of lexical borrowings: the
Scandinavian element in the North-Eastern area (due to the Scandinavian invasions since
the 8th c.) and the French element in the speech of townspeople in the South-East,
especially in the higher social strata (due to the Norman Conquest). Phonetic and
grammatical 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
English from a highly inflected language into a mainly analytical one. Accordingly, the
role of syntactical means of word connection grew.
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 London dialect was originally derived from the Southern dialectal group,
but during the 14th c. the southern traits were largely replaced by East Midland traits. The
literary authority of other dialects was gradually overshadowed by the prestige of the
London written language.
In periods of literary efflorescence, like the age of Chaucer, the pattern set by great
authors becomes a more or less fixed form of language. Chaucer’s language was a
recognized literary form, imitated throughout the 15th c. Literary flourishing had a
stabilizing effect on language, so that the rate of linguistic changes was slowed down. At
the same time the written forms of the language developed and improved.
The written records of the late 14th and 15th c. testify to the growth of the English
vocabulary and to the increasing proportion of French loan-words in English. The
phonetic and grammatical structure had incorporated and perpetuated the fundamental
changes of the preceding period. Most of the inflections in the nominal system had fallen
together. H. Sweet called Middle English the period of “levelled endings”. The verb
system was expanding, as numerous new analytical forms were used alongside old simple
forms.
The fifth period – Early New English – lasted from the introduction of printing to the
age of Shakespeare, that is from 1475 to c. 1660. The first printed book in English was
published by William Caxton in 1475. This period is a sort of transition between two
outstanding epochs of literary efflorescence: the age of Chaucer and the age of
Shakespeare (also known as the Literary Renaissance).
It was a time of great historical consequence: 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 English language. The London dialect had
risen to prominence as a compromise between the various types of speech prevailing in
the country and formed the basis of the growing national literary language.
The Early New English period was a time of sweeping changes at all levels, in the
first place lexical and phonetic. New words from internal and external sources enriched
the vocabulary. Extensive phonetic changes were transforming the vowel system, which
resulted in the growing gap between the written and the spoken forms of the word (that
is, between pronunciation and spelling). The loss of most inflectional endings in the 15 th
c. justifies the definition “period of lost endings” given by H. Sweet to the New English
period. The inventory of grammatical forms and syntactical constructions was almost the
same as in Modern English, but their use was different.
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. This age witnessed the establishment of “norms”,
which can be defined as received standards recognized as correct at the given period. The
norms were fixed as rules and prescriptions of correct usage in the numerous dictionaries
and grammar-books published at the time and were spread through education and writing.
It is essential that during the 18th c. literary English differentiated into distinct styles,
which is a property of a mature literary language. It is also important to note that during
this period the English language extended its area far beyond the borders of the British
Isles, first of all to North America.
The 18th c. has been called the period of “fixing the pronunciation”. Word usage and
grammatical construction were subjected to restriction and normalization. The formation
of new verbal grammatical categories was completed. Syntactical structures were
perfected and standardized.
The English language of the 19th and 20th c. represents the seventh period in the
history of English – Late New English or Modern English. By the 19th c. English had
achieved the relative stability typical of an age of literary florescence and had acquired
all the properties of a national language, with its functional stratification and recognized
standards. The 20th c. witnessed considerable intermixture of dialects. The “best” form of
English, the Received Standard, and also the regional modified standards are being spread
through new channels: the press, radio, cinema and television.
The expansion of English overseas proceeded together with the growth of the British
Empire in the 19th c. and with the increased weight of the United States. English has
spread to all the inhabited continents.
In the 19th and 20th c. 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 activities. Linguistic changes in phonetics and grammar
have been confined to alterations in the relative frequency and distribution of linguistic
units.
Old English. Historical Background.
Prior to the Germanic invasion the British Isles must have been inhabited for at least
50,000 years. Archeological research has uncovered many layers of prehistoric
population. The Celts came to Britain in three waves and immediately preceded the
Teutons. Economically and socially the Celts were a tribal society made up of kins,
kinship groups, clans and tribes; they practiced a primitive agriculture, and carried on
trade with Celtic Gaul.
The first millennium B.C. was the period of Celtic migrations and expansion. The
Gaelic branch has survived as Irish (or Erse) in Ireland, has expanded to Scotland as
Scotch-Gaelic of the Highlands and is still spoken by a few hundred people on the Isle of
Man (the Manx language). The Britonnic branch is represented by Kymric or Welsh in
modern Wales and by Breton or Armorican spoken in modern France (in the area called
Bretagne or Brittany, where the Celts came as emigrants from Britain in the 5 th c.);
another Britonnic dialect in Great Britain, Cornish, was spoken in Cornwall until the end
of the 18th c.
In the 1st c. B.C. Gaul was conquered by the Romans. Julius Caesar made two raids
on Britain, in 55 and 54 B.C. The British Isles had long been known to the Romans as a
source of valuable tin ore. Although Caesar failed to subjugate Britain, Roman economic
penetration to Britain grew. In A.D. 43 Britain was again invaded by Roman legions under
Emperor Claudius, and towards the end of the century was made a province of the Roman
Empire.
The Roman occupation of Britain lasted nearly 400 years; it came to an end in the
early 5th c. In A.D. 410, the Roman troops were officially withdrawn to Rome by
Constantine. After the departure of the Roman legions the richest and most civilized part
of the island, the south-east, was laid waste. Many towns were destroyed. Constant feuds
among local landlords as well as the increased assaults of the Celts from the North and
also the first Germanic raids from beyond the North Sea proved ruinous to the civilization
of Roman Britain.
The 5th c. was the age of increased Germanic expansion. The story of the invasion is
told by Bede (673 – 735), a monastic scholar who wrote the first history of England,
HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM. According to Bede the invaders
came to Britain in A.D. 449 under the leadership of two Germanic kings, Hengist and
Horsa; they had been invited by a British king, Vortigern, as assistants and allies in a local
war. The newcomers soon dispossessed their hosts, and other Germanic bands followed.
The invaders came in multitude, in families and clans, to settle in the occupied territories;
like the Celts before them, they migrated as a people.
The first wave of the invaders, the Jutes or the Frisians, occupied the extreme south-
east: Kent and the Isle of Wight. The second wave of immigrants was largely made up of
the Saxons, who had been expanding westwards across Frisia to the Rhine and to what is
now known as Normandy. The final stage of the drift brought them to Britain by way of
the Thames and the south coast. They set up their settlements along the south coast and
on both banks of the Thames and, depending on location, were called South Saxons, West
Saxons and East Saxons. The Saxons consolidated into a number of petty kingdoms, the
largest and the most powerful of them being Wessex, the kingdom of West Saxons. Last
came the Angles from the lower valley of the Elbe and southern Denmark; they made
their landing on the east coast and moved up the rivers to the central part of the island, to
occupy the districts between the Wash and the Humber, and to the North of the Humber.
They founded large kingdoms which had absorbed their weaker neighbours: East Anglia,
Mercia, and Northumbria.
After the settlement West Germanic tongues came to be spoken all over Britain with
the exception of a few distant regions where Celts were in the majority: Scotland, Wales
and Cornwall. The Germanic settlement of Britain can be regarded as the beginning of
the independent history of the English language.
The period from the 5th till the 11th c. was a transitional period from the tribal and
slave-owning system to feudalism. The relative weight of the Old English kingdoms and
their influence was variable. Four of the kingdoms at various times secured superiority in
the country: Kent, Northumbria and Mercia – during the Early Old English, pre-written
period, and Wessex – all through the period of Written Old English.
In the 8th c. raiders from Scandinavia (the “Danes”) made their first plundering
attacks on England. The struggle of the English against the Scandinavians lasted over 300
years. The Scandinavians subdued Northumbria and East Anglia, ravaged the eastern part
of Mercia, and advanced on Wessex. They founded many towns and villages in northern
England; in many regions there sprang up a mixed population made up of the English and
the Danes. Their linguistic amalgamation was easy, since their tongues belonged to the
same linguistic group.
Wessex stood at the head of the resistance. Under King Alfred of Wessex, one of the
greatest figures in English history, by the peace treaty of 878 England was divided into
two halves: the north-eastern half under Danish control called Danelaw and the south-
western half united under the leadership of Wessex. The reconquest of Danish territories
was carried on successfully by Alfred’s successors but in the late 10 th c. the Danish raids
were renewed again; they reached a new climax in the early 11th c. headed by Sweyn and
Canute. The attacks were followed by demands for regular payments of large sums of
money (called Danegeld “Danish money”), which was collected from many districts and
towns; about one eighth of Danegeld came from London, the largest and wealthiest of
English towns. In 1017 Canute was acknowledged as king, and England became part of
a great northern empire, comprising Denmark and Norway. On Canute’s death (1035) his
kingdom broke up and England regained political independence; by that time it was a
single state divided into six earldoms.
A most important role in the history of the English language was played by the
introduction of Christianity. In 597 a group of missionaries from Rome dispatched by
Pope Gregory the Great (“St. Augustine’s mission”) landed on the shore of Kent. They
made Canterbury their centre and from there the new faith expanded to Kent, East Anglia,
Essex, and other places. The movement was supported from the North; missionaries from
Ireland brought the Celtic variety of Christianity to Northumbria. (The Celts had been
converted to Christianity during the Roman occupation of Britain). In less than a century
practically all England was Christianised. The strict unified organization of the church
proved a major factor in the centralization of the country.
The introduction of Christianity gave a strong impetus to the growth of culture and
learning. Monasteries were founded all over the country, with monastic schools attached.
Religious services and teaching were conducted in Latin. A high standard of learning was
reached in the best English monasteries, especially in Northumbria, as early as the 8 th and
9th c. There was the famous monastery of Lindisfarne, founded by Aidan, who had come
with the Irish priests; the monastery of Jarrow, where the Venerable Bede, the first
English historian, lived and worked. During the Scandinavian invasions, the
Northumbrian culture was largely wiped out. The monastery at Lindisfarne was destroyed
by the Danes in one of their early plundering attacks. English culture shifted to the
southern kingdoms, most of all to Wessex, where a cultural efflorescence began during
the reign of Alfred (871 – 901); from that time till the end of the Old English period
Wessex, with its capital at Winchester, remained the cultural centre of England.