The New English PeriodBegins in the 15 c. and continues up to the present times. It is subdivided into: EARLY New English Period (15-17 c.c. up to the age of Shakespeare) and Modern New English Period The division into periods is conventional because the transition from one period to another is always slow and gradual and no sharp dividing lines can be drawn between the periods. The 3 periods are simply more distinctly marked, changes are greatly accelerated..
The Old English Period In this period the area where English was spoken was rather small. The number of English speaking people was limited. English was spoken in a considerably small part of the British Isles, the rest of the Island being inhabited by the Celts who spoke various Celtic dialects As the Germanic settlers of Britain represented different tribes their language represented tribal dialects, more or less diverse. There was no literary language common for the whole country. The Old English word stock was in the main homogeneous, its foreign elements were rather few, the majority of words being purely Germanic native words from Proto-Germanic or formed from native roots and affixes. (30 000 – 100 000 words).. The Old English grammatical structure was characterized by a highly developed inflectional system, the latter being especially characteristic of the O.E. declension of nouns and adjectives. Old English was an inflected or synthetic language with a well-developed system of morphological categories. Henry Sweet called this period the period of full endings The peculiarities of the phonetic system are connected with unstressed vowels: at that time any vowel could occur in an unstressed ending of the word. Thus, unstressed vowels had their own phonetic value, i.e. the forms of words were differentiated by contrustive vowelsin unstressed syllables. O.E. N/A. – fisc fiscas. Land land Dat.- fisc e fiscum lande landum Gen.- fisces fisca landes landa The Middle English Period (11 – 15 c.c.) The number of the English speaking people increased. English spread almost all over the British Isles and penetrated into Ireland. Early M E starts after 1066 and covers 12-13 and half of the 14 c. The dialectal division of the language caused by the feudal system and by the foreign influences (Scandinavian and French) remained, the dialects being characterized as local dialects in distinction to tribal dialects of the O.E. period. The dialectal division of Present-day English owes its origin to this period of history. Still there is no common tongue, no literary standard. The existence of French beside English (Anglo-French, Anglo-Norman) is characteristic of this period. Under Norman rule French was the official language of the country, it was also the dominant language of literature. The local dialects were mainly used for oral communication and were but little employed in writing. Towards the end of this period English began to displace French in the sphere of writing and in many other spheres. M. E. period was a time of great changes at all the levels of language, especially in the vocabulary and grammar. The vocabulary was increased and enriched by a considerable number of loan words from French, Latin and Scandinavian dialects.. Grammar: the highly developed inflectional system began rapidly breaking down, this calling forth the development of the analytical forms. Grammatical changes were so drastic that by the end of this period they had transformed English from a highly inflected synthetic language into an analytical one. For the most part they affected the nominal system (noun, adjective). As a result of this the English word order became fixed. The most important change in the phonetic system in M.E. was the destruction of differences in the unstressed vo wels. The O.E. unstressed vowels weakened, underwent the process of levelling fusing into a reduced, neutral vowel. Thus, the unstressed vowels lost their phonemic value. This resulted in the confusion of many O.E. grammatical forms. O.E. Gen. sg –. fisces N./Ac pl.- fiscas M.E. fisces (fishes) Henry Sweet called this period the period of levelled endings.
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