5.2
Periods in the history of English: Old, Middle and Modern English
-
The
division in Old, Middle and Modern English was first proposed by Henry Sweet in 1873.
-
Division
of the language is quite difficult because every language state is a
transitional state.
-
The
tripartite division is:
Old English (OE ) between ca.
450/700 and 1150:
Primitive Old English (POE): 449 – 700
Early Old English (EOE): 700-900
Late Old English (LOE): 900-1150
Middle English (ME) between ca. 1150 and 1500:
Early Middle English (EME): ca.1150-1300
Late Middle English (LME): 1300-1500
Modern English (ModE)
between 1500 and the present day:
Early Modern English (EModE): 1500-1700
Late Modern English (LModE): 1700-1900
Present Day English (PDE): 1900-until today
-
About
449 the variety of English could not have been different from other Germanic
languages on the Continent. During the sixth century, English was still part of
a West Germanic language continuum. (
languages of a geographical area, which show only slight differences between
them)
-
Old
English was the period when the language was most fully inflected and its
vocabulary was thoroughly Germanic.
-
The
end of Old English and beginning of Middle English is partly a consequence of
the Norman Conquest. Some important changes in the language, such as the loss
of inflections are observable in Early Middle English manuscripts.
-
In
Middle English is very important especially the influence of French and
Scandinavian.
-
The
beginning of Modern English is coincident with the invention of the printing
press and its introduction in
5.3
Pre-Old English: From Indo-European to Old English
Comparative diachronicians
have been able to prove that English, as well as most European languages, and
many Asian languages have a common ancestry, which is known as Indo-European family. It consists of ten principal groups: Albanian, Anatolian, Armenian, Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic,
Indo-Iranian, Italic and Slavic. These language had at one point in
pre-historical times a common language à Proto-Indoeuropean
(PIE)
- Latin à the main ancestor of the so-called Romance
languages such as French, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, Rumanian and Spanish.
-
Proto-Germanic is used to indicate the existence of a common ancestor or
parent, which in time involved into the Modern Germanic languages such as
English, Dutch, Icelandic, German, and Danish…
- 1786
Sir William Jomes discovered the similarities between
European languages and Sanskrit
The Germanic family:
-
English
is a Germanic language, deriving from a first North-West Germanic, second North
Sea Germanic, and third Anglo-Frisian.
-
Old
English shows greater affinities with Old Frisian
-
Grimm’s
Law is a change that has been dated between 1000 and 400 BC. It is a very
important innovation that affected PGmc.
-
In
the nineteenth century German scholar Jacob Grimm showed that there were highly
systematic similarities between certain consonants in the earliest attested
stages of Germanic languages and those of other members of the family such as
Sanskrit, Latin and Greek.
-
Grimm’s
law establishes is that :
- voiceless stop /p/, /t/, /k/ became voiceless
fricatives /f/, /Ө/ and /h/ in Germanic
- voiced stops /d/, /g/ became voiceless stops
/t/ and /k/
- voiced aspirated stops lost their aspiration:
/bh/, /dh/ and /gh/ became
/b/, /d/, and /g/
5.4 The Old English (OE) period
-
Old
English period is the period when the language was mostly inflected and the
vocabulary was thoroughly Germanic.
Romanic
invasion. (43 AD –
Emperor Claudius arrived to
Celts (also known as Britons) were the
earliest inhabitants of Britannia.
-
The most obvious legacy of their ancient culture :
- the survival of Celtic languages,
such as Welsh in
- Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic
language spoken in
- Continental
Celtic didn’t survive.
- Cornish, an early variety of Brythonic, closely related to Welsh, was lost during 18th
century
-
Influence in language:
- names of the rivers ( hydronyms
) à
- place names (toponyms)
à
-
Latin
à
must have been a lingua franca, used to interact with the Romans
-
Due
to contact with the Germanic invaders the variety of Goidelic
was lost.
Germanic
invasion: ( 449 AD à first mentioned by the monk Bede in
his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum )
- 410
- last Roman legions left Britannia in the hands of local Celts, who had to
struggle with other indigenous people, the Picti (North of Irish) and Scotti (West)
- Count on the Saxon Shore à established by Romans in order to defend the
east coast of
- 5th
century à three Germanic nations located in
the area across the North Sea à Angles
à Saxons
àJutes
-
Between 7th and 8th
centuries, a political division known as the Heptarchy arises: Northumbria,
-
Four
different dialects found here à Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon (the best documented; became a standard for
Late Old English) and Kentish
-
Christianization of Germanic
invaders:
-
597
beginning of Christianization;
-
Latin influence in English vocabulary:
a) Latin during Germanic invasion à adoption of common words such as cat, butter,
cheese, kitchen, street, mile
b) Latin during Christianization à especially words referred to religion,
education and learning such as angel, apostle, chalice, creed, disciple...
Scandinavian
Invasion: (787)
-
Danish and Norwegians started to raid
-
“winter quarters” – longer periods of occupation which led to settlements throughout
the North and East of England à wars against Anglo-Saxons
-
878 –
treaty of Wedmore à signed by the Scandinavian leader Guthrum and the king of Wessex Alfred the Great à Scandinavians would rule the territory north
of the river
-
Scandinavian influence in English:
a)
suffixes in place-names: - by with
meaning “farm” or “town”
- thorp(e) with meaning of “village”
- thwaite with meaning of “isolated piece of land”
b)
the initial cluster [sk]
in words like skill, skin, sky
- Scandinavian items which have become part of
the common stock: sister, anger, neck, window, give, get, call, die, take,
they, them, their, though, again(st), wrong....
Some linguistic features of Old English
-
the
adjective English was originally
used to refer to the original Germanic
invaders, the Angelcym
-
in
the 11th century it referred to the whole population of
-
Morphology
and syntax:
1. Old English is an inflected language
and its words are typically polymorphemic; the last
morpheme shows the inflection.
2. OE is more flexible than ModE
3. in the OE text was observed that the
object follows the verb (O+V rather than S+V+O)
4. OE morphology was very rich
5. Nouns and adjectives showed à three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter
à two numbers : singular and plural
6. Gender was determined by the
declension of each noun
1. All verbs distinguished two numbers,
three persons, two tenses, three moods
2. OE didn’t distinguish the three
persons of the plural
3. No distinction between the
demonstrative that and the definite
article the
5.5 The Middle English (ME) period
-
The
end of Old English and beginning of Middle English is partly a Norman Conquest
-
1066-
-
-
Three
languages: French à used by nobility, clergy
Latin
English à used by common people
-
1204
– King John lost
-
13547
– 1351 à Black Death
-
After
1349 English is used in schools
-
No
standard formà five different dialects: Northern,
East-Midland, West-Midland, Southern and Kentish
-
1476
– Introduction of printing press by William Caxton à milestone in the standardization of English
Some
linguistic features of Middle English:
-
Middle
English is better documented than Old English
Orthography and phonology:
-
Lost
of /h/ in cluster [hl], [hr], [hn]
à OE hlāf
-> ME lōf
( bread)
-
OE
/f/ -> ME /f/ and /v/
-
/d/ turned to / /
à fader-> father
Morphology and syntax:
-
dependence
of word order
-
loss
of adjectival inflections
-
loss
of great part of conjugations
Middle English vocabulary:
-
most
prominent feature was importing of words
-
OE
preffixes such as a-,
ge-, to- or -ymb fell
out
-
New
prefixes like mis-
ACTIVITIES:
Activity 5.5
Old English: The
Beowulf
History of the
Middle English: The
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Bruce
King Horn (Early Middle English)
The Lay of Havelok
the Dane
Piers Plowman
Modern Eglish: Early Modern English - Moll
Late Modern English - Gulliver’s
travels
Moby Dick
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Present Day English – Ulysses
The Remains of
the Day
* (http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/boswell/
)