Periods in the history of the English Language.

Language is a variable social phenomenon. It changes through the time. It is a slow uninterrupted process. Changes are not evenly distributed in time: periods of intensive and vast changes may be followed by the periods of relative stability. Consequently, some changes may effect and even reconstruct the whole gr. type of a language, while others are contributing gradually to the trends existing in a language.

H. Sweet subdivided the history of the EL into 3 periods:

1. the period of full endings (Any vowel could be found in unstressed endings singan-sunu)

2. the period of leveled endings (All vowels in the unstressed endings were leveled under the letter e singen-sune)

3. the period of lost endings (Endings were lost all together sing-sun)

However, being a soc. phenomenon, serving for communication, language in its development is effected not only by its inner laws and principles, but by the changes in the society, by social life of the language community. RUS scholars take into consideration both extralinguistic and intralinguistic aspects. Ильиш the boundaries are attached to the dates of history

1. OE period (5 – 11 cent.)

germ. settlement of A, S, J. – 4 AD. or with the beginning of writing in the 7^th century. Ends with the Norman conquest 1066

2. MidE

Norman conquest – end of the war of Roses in the end of the 14^th century. 15^th century introduction of a printed book.

2.a EMidE 12-13

2.b.LMidE 14-15

3. ModE 15 – nowardays

a. EModE 1500-1700

b. LModE since 1700

some modern linguists distinguish Present day E., influenced by AE

The EModE was a time of great historical importance

 

 

O/E dialects and written records.

At its earliest stage ENG was represented by a number of disunited dialects.

With the growth of the feudal system tribal dialects, local, regional dialects

During the OE period there were 4 main dialects

1. Nothambrian – spoken by Angles living north of Hamba

2. Mercian – spoken by Angles between the Hamba and the Themes

3. West-Saxon – Saxons south of the Themes

4. Kentish – Jutes in the South-East of the Br. Isles

Each of the dialects represented by a number of written records

(1) runic texts of the “Ruthwell Cross”, “Frank’s Cuscet”, translations of the gospels, “Bede’s dying song”

(2) translation of the Psalter (9^th century), religious hymns

(3) King Alfred’s words (original & translations), A-S Chronicle, Work of Abbat Alfred (10 c.), Sermons of Wolfsten (early 11 c.)

(4) Translation of Psalm (L-XX) and old Charters (хартии)

As to the dialect of the OE poems “Beowolf”(Stories about the tribes life of ancient teutons), “Genesis”, “Exodus”, “Judith” and poems by the monk Synowolf (religious, heroic, lyrical. They tell the life of apostols and Sants or deal with the Gospels) the it is difficult to define their locality (anglian and saxon forms). Ильиш thinks they were written in the anglian dialect in the period of saxon supremacy.

West-Saxon dialect in the 9^th c. became the dominating literary language.

The earliest written records: inscription on a box called the “Frank’s Cascet”; short text on a stone cross near the village Ruthwell and it is known under the name “Ruthwell Cross”. Both of them are in the Northumbrian dialects. Also were wills, grants, different deals or purchase, agreements, lows etc (chaters).

 

OE alphabet and pronunciation.

In OE, as it is now, there were long and short vowels. Short: a, (э), e, i, o, u, y; long: a, (э), e, i, o, u, y. There was no reduction. The main principle of the orthography was the phonetic principle. There were some sounds which are not pronounced in the modern language. One of the other interesting features is complete parallelism (в староанглийском гласные образуют полноценные пары а-а..., тогда как в современном языке этого не наблюдается I не равно i: т.к. разница не только в долготе, но и в качестве гласного).

OE - modern English.

Общее: - деление на долгие/краткие;

- сохранение некоторых звуков.

Разница: - отсутствие параллелизма в современном English;

- исчезли некоторые звуки появились новые.

There were also diftongs, both long and short: ea, eo (not a single one is now preserved). Difference - there were long and shot diftongs (in ME only long diftongs)

- the second element sonorous than the glide in ME.

- the second element was broader (now narrower).

Consonants.

There were no affricates t, d, besides there were no fricatives,. There was no palatalisation, which is strictly forbidden in the modern language, in some positions. The sounds s-z, f-v, - were not different phonemes, they were positional variants of the phonemes. There was aspiration.

O/E vowel system.

OE vowels made a symmetrical system where short monophthongs were opposed to long ones, and short diphthong were opposed to long diphthongs

 

monophthongs	diphthongs
a æ e I o u y	ea eo ia io
a: æ: e: I: o: u: y:	ea: eo: ia: io:

OE vowels had regular correspondence in other GLs which can be reflected in the following table

	Gothic	OE	OHG
short monophtongs	/i/ fisks	/i/ fisk	/i/ fisc
/i/ stilan красть	/e/ stelan	/e/ stelan
/a/ dags	/æ/, /a/ dæʒ, daʒas	/a/ tac
/u/ fulls	/u/ full	/u/ ful
long monophthongs	/i:/ leiþan странствовать	/i:/ līþan	/i:/ lēda
/e:/ slēpan	/a:/, /æ:/ Merc slēpan, WS slǣpan	/a:/ slāfan
/ai/ stains камень	/a:/, /æ2/ (I-mut) stān, stǣ	/ei/ stein
/o:/ brōþan	/o:/ brōþor	/uo/ bruodar
/u:/ tūn поселок	/u:/ tun	/u:/ zun
diphthongs	/au:/ auk иго	/ea:/ ēāc	/ou:/ ōūch
/iu:/ diups	/eo:/ dēōp	/io:/ tīōf

As it is seen from the table, OE shows certain phonological development of its own compared with other GLs. Thus, OE has stān and hām where Gothic has stains (stone) and haims (home).

In prehistoric OE a number of combinative sound changes had taken place after which phonemic and phonetic peculiarity of ENG increased considerably.

In general the length of OE vowels was their phonemic feature, but in few cases it could develop as a result of positional change of sounds.

1. the dropping of nasals: m, n were dropped before h, f, s, θ which caused lengthening of the preceeding vowel by compensation

// Goth uns – OE ūs; fimf – fīf

2. contraction: dropping of /h/ in the intervocal position

// *fohan  fōn; *hohan  hōn

Quite often contraction might produce a long diphthong

// *slahan  *sleahan  sēān; *sehan  *seohan  sēān; *tihan  *teohan tēōn

3. nasalisation: narrowing of a vowel before the following nasal, which characteristic of West Saxon dialect

// land  lond; mann  monn (also lånd, månn as graphical variants)

 

I-mutation

It is impossible to state the exact time of I-mutation. Still taking into consideration the fact that no traces of I-mutation could be found in Gothic texts (4^th c. AD), but its results were reflected in the earliest OE texts (7 AD). Thus, we may suppose that I-mutation might have taken place in the period between 4-7 centuries. If we take into consideration that the history of the EL begins in the middle of the 5^th century, we could restrict the periodasatoion of I-mutation.

The essence of I-mutation is the fronting and narrowing of the root vowel under the influence of i/j in the immediately following syllable.

Since these sounds are very common in suffixes and word endings, I-mutation was a frequent and a systematic change. It effected the whole system of OE vowels. But for the narrowest ī and ē, both long and short vowels diphthongs and monophthongs were effected by this change.

Short monophtongs

aæe //*taljantæljantellan

ooee //*ofstianefstan (спешить)

uy //*fuljanfyllan (наполнять)

Long monophthongs

ā  æ2 //*lārian  lǣrian (учить)

ō  oe:  ē //*fōri  foet  fēt (нога)

ū  ÿ //*ontūnjan  ontÿnan (открывать)

Short diphthongs

ea  ia //*hleahian  hliehhan (смеяться)

eo  ie //*heordija  hierde (пастух)

Long diphthongs

ea:  ie: //*ʒelēāfian  ʒeliefan (верить)

io  ie: //*ʒetreowe  ʒetriewe (правдивый)

If the root vowel was short, the following consonant was doubled.

//*cnusian  cnyssan (толкать)

// *framian  fremman

NO DOUBLING IF

1) the root vowel was long

2) it was followed by a cluster of consonants

3) it was followed by r. In this case i was preserved too.

// Goth dōmjan - OE dēman (судить)

// Goth sandjan – OE sendan (посылать)

// Goth ga-sturian – OE styrian (шевелиться)

In general, I-mutation enriched the system of OE vowels, /y/ and /ÿ. being new phonemes in it /u/,/u:/. As to /oe/, /oe:/, they turned to be very unstable and soon merged with /e/ and /e:/ respectively.

 

OE breaking 6^th c.

e  eo или æ  ea

IF 1) followed by r, l, h + consonant

or 2) h in the final position

//*ærm – earm (рука); *æhta  eahta (восемь); æld  eald (старый)

The OE breaking was a phonemic change, characteristic of the W-Saxon dialect while in the Anglean dialects (Mercian and Nothambrian) cases of it were rare.

Consequently in many W-S words containing a short diphthong Anglean dialects had a short monophthong in the same words.

WS Merc

eachte æhte

eald ald (старый)

seoh seh (увидел)

 

 

Palatal diphthongization 6^th c.

The diphthongization is caused by the preceding palatal consonant

After /k’/, /sk’/, /j/ short and long e and ǽ turned into diphthongs with a more front close vowel as their first element.

e  ie // ʒefan  ʒiefan (давать)

æ  ea // *ʒæf  ʒeaf (дал)

a  ea // *scacan  sceaco

o  eo

æ:  ea:

NB// The consonants /k’/ and /j’/ influenced only the front vowels, while the cluster /sk’/ effected also back vowels /o/, /a/.

Like OE Breaking, this change was characteristic of the WS dialect, while in the Anglean dialects, as a rule, the same words had monophthongs

WS Merc

ʒiefan ʒefan (давать)

ceaster cæster (замок)

 

The system of OE consonants

In the history of the EL consonants turned out to be far more stable than vowels and some of them remained unchanged through the whole period of their existence

// h and, c all, foa m

OE consonants can be described on the following grounds

1) place of articulation

- labial /p, b, m, f, v/

- dental /t, d, þ, ð, n, s, r, l/

- media-lingual /k’, g’, Ɣ’, x’/

- back-lingual (velar) /k, g, x, Ɣ/

- pharyngeal /h/

2) the manner of articulation

- stops /p, b, t, d, k, g, k’…./

- fricatives /f, v, θ, ð, s, z, x, x’, Ɣ’, Ɣ…/

3) voice

- voiced /b, d, g, ð, v, z…/

- voiceless /p, t, k, θ, f, s…/

4) length

- short (single) consonants /s, t, f, g…/

- long consonants (geminates) /ss, ff, tt, gg/

manner of articulation	length	voice	place of articulation
labial	dental	back- and medio-lingual	pharyngal
non-palatal	palatal
stops	short	voiceless	/p/	/t/	/k/ c	/k’/ c
voiced	/b/ /m/	/r/ /d/ /l/ /n/	/g/
geminates	voiceless	pp /p:/	tt /t:/	/k:/ cc	/k’:/ cc
	voiced	bb, mm	dd /d:/	/g:/ cʒ	/g’:/ cʒ
fricatives	short			<f-v>	<θ –ð> <s – z>	<x – x’> h <Ɣ – Ɣ’> ʒ	/h/
	geminates	voiceless	/f:/ ff	/θ:/ þþ /s:/ ss	<x: - x’:> hh

In the system of stops voiced consonants are opposed to the voiceless ones, which means that voice made a phonemic feature of stops: p-b, t-d, k-g etc.

In the system of fricatives voiced and voiceless consonants were in the relations of complementary distribution, that is in allophonic relations

System of geminates is a peculiar feature of OE consonants. Doubled cons-ts were opposed in the length to the single cons-ts.

Among stops there existed both voiced and voiceless geminates while among fricatives only voiceless geminates were resisted.

Being opposed to single cons-ts geminates participated in meaning distinguishing which proves their phonemic status in OE

// scota – шотландец, scotta – человек

The main sourse of geminates in OE was I-mutation.

ссылка // Under certain conditions I-mutation effected not only the root vowel, but the following consonant too. If the root vowel was short, the following consonant was doubled.

//*cnusian  cnyssan (толкать) // *framian  fremman

NO DOUBLING IF

4) the root vowel was long

5) it was followed by a cluster of consonants

6) it was followed by a r. In this case i was preserved too.

However geminates turned out to be rather unstable. Having appeared at the beginning of the OE period, they disintegrated at the end of it. In ModE doubling of cons-ts doesn’t indicate length of a sound. It’s rather a graphical device used to denot shortness of the preceding vowel (potter, kiss)

In OE there also was an opposition of palatal conts-tsto non-palatal ones: /k/ - /k’/; /g/ - /g’/; /x/ - /x’/; /Ɣ/ - /Ɣ’/ which disintegrated during the MidE period.