Periodization of the history of English

Chomical divisions in the History of English.

Short survey of Periods/

Traditional periodisation divides English history into three periods:

- Old English;

- Middle English;

- New English.

OE begins with the Germanic settlement of Britain (5^th c.) or with the beginning of writing (7^th c.) and ends with the Norman Conquest (1066).

ME begins with the Norman Conquest and ends on the introduction of printing (1475)

Modern or NE – 1475 till our days.

H. Swect divided English into

- Early;

- Classical;

- Late.

Division into chronological periods should take into account both aspect: external and internal. The history of English language is divided into seven periods differing in linguistic situation and the nature of linguistic changes.

The first period Early Old English.

I from the West Germanic invasions of Britain till the beginning of writing, from 5^th to the clode of the 7^th c.

The evolution of the language in this period is hypothetical. It was the period of transition from PG to written OE.

II Historical period – from the 8^th c. till the end of 11^th (Old English or Anglo-Saxon or Writen OE)

The tribal dialects gradually changed into local or regional dialects.

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 language with a purely Germanic vocabulary and few foreign borrowings. It was synthetic language with a well-developed system of morphological categories.

III Period Early Middle English starts after 1066 (the Norm Conquest) and covers 12^th, 13^th and half of 14^th c. It was a stage of the greatest dialectal divergence cause by the feudal system and by foreign influences (Scandinavian and French).

Under Norman rule the official language in English was French. The local dialect were mainly used for oral communication.

Early ME was a time of great changes English absorbed two layers of lexical borrowings: Scandinavian and the French element in the speech of towns people.

IV period – Late of Classical ME from the later 14^th c. till the end of 15^th – embraces the age of Chaucer. 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 – mixed dialect of London.

V period – Early New English – from 1475 to 16⁶⁰ the age of Shakespeare.

The first printed book in English was published by William Caxton in 1475. It was a time of changes, especially lexical and phonetic.

VI period – “the age on normalization and correctness” – from the mid 17^th to the close of 18^thc.

This age witnessed the establishment of “norms”. The norms were fixed as rules and prescription of correct usage in the numerous dictionaries and grammar-books published at the time and were spread trough education and writing.

VII period – Late New English or Modern English 19^th-20^th c.

The classical languages of literature was strictly distinguished from the local dialects and the dialects of lower social ranks. The dialects were used in oral communication and, as a rule, had no literary tradition. English has spread to all the inhabited continents.