Chronological Divisions in the History of English.

Origins of the English language.

Commonly accepted traditional periodisation. Early Old English and Anglo-Saxon. Early Middle English and Middle English. Early New English, Normalisation Period and Modern English. Henry Sweet’s phono-morphological periodisation.

Pre-Germanic Britain. The Celts on the British Isles. Celtic languages: the Gaelic and Britonnic branches. The Roman occupation in Britain.

Germanic settlement of Britain. Formation of Germanic states. The beginning of English. Economic, historic and cultural situation from the 5^th till the 11^th century. A transitional period from the tribal and slave-owning society to feudalism. Rise of Wessex. The role of the West Saxon dialect in IX - XI centuries. Scandinavian invadors. The introduction of Christianity.

Old English dialects. Kentish, West Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian.

Writings in Old English. Runic inscriptions. Old English manuscripts.”Anglo-Saxon Chronicles”, King Alfrred’s translations, “Pastoral Care”, Aelfric’s works, Wulfstan’s homilies.. Old English poetry. “Beowulf”.

Old English alphabet and pronunciation.

 

Old English Phonetics

Hours

Word stress: dynamic and fixed. Accentuation in polysyllabic words and compounds. The position of stress in the words with prefixes.

Old English vowels. Changes of stressed vowels. Independent changes. Fronting or palatalisation of [a] and [a:]. Positional deviations or restrictions to this rule. Old English reflections of PG diphthongs. Assimilative vowel changes. Breaking and diphthongisation. Palatal mutation. Appearance of new vowels, growth of new vowel interchanges and increased variability of the root-morphemes. Changes of the unstressed vowels. Old English vowel system.

Old English consonants. Treatment of fricatives. Hardening. Rhotacism. Voicing and devoicing of fricatives. West Germanic gemination of consonants. Palatalisation of velar consonants in Old English. Loss of consonants in some positions. Metathesis. Old English consonant system.

 

Old English Grammar

Hours

Morphology

Form-building. Parts of speech and grammatical categories.

The Noun. Its grammatical categories. The use of cases. Morphological classification of nouns. Declensions. Weak and strong declensions. Root stems. Types of plural forms.

The pronoun. Personal pronouns. Their categories. Demonstrative pronouns. Declensions of the demonstrative pronouns sē and þes. Other classes of pronouns.

The adjectives. Grammatical categories. Weak and strong declension. Degrees of comparison. Positive, comparative, superlative degrees. Means of forming the degrees of comparison: suffixation, suffixation plus vowel interchange, suppletion.

Numerals. Cardinal and ordinal numerals.

The verb. Grammatical categories of the finite verbs. Conjugation of verbs. Grammatical categories of the verbals. Participles. Morphological classifications of verbs.

Strong verbs. The classes of strong verbs.

Weak verbs. The classes of weak verbs. Class 1: regular, irregular verbs.

Preterite-present or past-present verbs. Anomalous verbs. Suppletive verbs.

Syntax

Ways of expressing syntactical relations: agreement, government, joining.

The sentence. The simple sentence. The main parts, the secondary parts. Word order. Multiple negation. Compound and complex sentences. Connectives.

 

Old English Vocabulary

Hours

Etymological survey of the Old English Vocabulary. Native words. Common Indo-European words, common Germanic words, specifically English words. Foreign element in the Old English vocabulary. Borrowings from Celtic. Latin loan-words.

 

MIDDLE AND NEW ENGLISH PERIODS

Historical Background from the 11^th to 15^th century

Hours

Economic and social conditions. Period of established feudalism. Natural economy. Tools, local feuds, travel restrictions.

Effect of the Scandinavian invasions. “Danelaw”. Political annexation of England by Denmark under Canute. The impact of the Scandinavian element on the linguistic situation. The increased regional differences.

The Norman conquest. The battle of Hastings (1066). Effect of the Norman conquest on the linguistic situation. The origin of the Normans. Norman domination in Britain. The decline of the written form of English. Official recognition of English.

Early Middle English dialects. Southern (Kentish and South-Western), Central (West Midland ahd East Midland) and Northern. Extension of the English territory.

Early Middle English written records. Peterborough Chronicles.

Late Middle English. Reestablishment of English as the language of state and literature. Dialects in Late Middle English. London dialect. The inhabitants of London throughout its history. The Age of Chaucer.

Development of the national literary language in the 16^th – 19^th centuries. Economic and political unification. Development of the capitalist mode of production. The end of the Hundred Year’s War. The War of Roses. Establishment of the absolute monarchy of Tudors. Conditions for linguistic unity. Consolidation of the English nation, formation of the national language. Progress of culture. Introduction of printing. W. Caxton and his spelling.

Expansion of English over the British Isles. Flourishing of literature in Early New English (Literary Renaissance). The age of Shakespeare. Establishment of the Written Standard. Normalising tendencies. Growing of the Spoken Standard. Varieties of English in Britain. Geographical Expansion of English outside the British Isles.

Spelling changes in Middle English. Rules of reading.