Periodisation of English

ПЛАН ЛЕКЦИИ
Traditional Periodisation of English Languages History.
Professor Rastorguyeva’s Periodisation.
Old English.
Middle English:
4.1 Early Middle English
4.2 Classical Middle English.
New English:
5.1 Early New English
5.2 the age of Normalization and Correctness
5.3 Modern English.

Traditional Periodisation of English Languages History
The commonly accepted, traditional periodisation divides English language history into three periods:
Old English (OE);
Middle English (ME);
New or Modern English (NE, Mod E).

Professor Rastorguyeva’s Periodisation
This periodisation of English language history is partly based on the conventional three periods.
It subdivides the history of the English language into seven periods.

Traditional Periodisation of English Languages History

English language
development started with
the West Germanic (WG)
Invasion by the Angles,
the Saxons, the Jutes
and the Frisians
in the 5th century (449 A.D.).

Old English
At the begging it was the stage of tribal dialects of the WG invaders, which were gradually losing contacts with the related continental languages.
The tribal dialects were only used for oral communication.
The 7th century is the beginning of writing, the tribal dialects gradually changed into local or regional dialects.

Old English
OE was a typical OG language, with a purely Germanic vocabulary, and few foreign borrowings. As far as grammar is concerned, OE was an inflected or “synthetic” language with a well-developed system of morphological categories.

Middle English Period
starts
with the Norman Conquest
in 1066

Early Middle English

Classical Middle English
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, which arose in the 14th c.

New English period
starts with the
introduction of printing
in 1475 by William Caxton.

Early New English
A time of progress in culture, education and literature.
The formation of the national English language.
A time of sweeping changes at all levels.
The period of variety and free choice in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.

The Age of Normalisation and Correctness
Establishment of “norms”, which were fixed as rules in the numerous dictionaries and grammar-books published at the time.
The 18th c. literary English differentiated into distinct styles.
“Fixing the pronunciation”, and normalisation and restriction of word usage and grammatical construction.

Modern English
By the 19th c. English had achieved the relative stability and had acquired all the properties of a national language, with its recognised standards.
The expansion of English overseas proceeded together with the growth of the British Empire in the 19th c.

Modern English
The 20th c. witnessed considerable intermixture of dialects. The local dialects are being displaced by Standard English. The “best” form of English, the Received Standard, is being spread through new channels: the press, radio, cinema and television.

The last 30 or 40 years
can be singled out
as the final
stage of development,
representing
Present-day English.

Контрольные вопросы
How many periods is the history of English traditionally divided into? What are they? What are their boundaries?
How many periods does Pr. Rastorguyeva subdivide the history of English language into?
What do the following dates stand for: the 7th c.; 1475; the 5th c.; 1066; the 11th c. – the 15th c.; the 5th c. – the 11th c.
Characterise the main periods in the history of English.