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The Roman conquest in ≈ 55-43 AD, the first written records of England’s history. Romanization:
1) the conquest of southern Britain
2) the conquest of northern Britain
3) the division of Britain into 2 province Anglo-Saxons received an enormous boost when Christianity brought its huge Latin vocabulary to England in AD 597. -
The invading Germanic tribes, including: Anglo-Saxons, Angles and Jutes
1) Destroying Roman civilization
2) Organization of society
3) English language -
≈ 450-1100 AD Old English – the earliest form of the English language – was spoken and written in Anglo-Saxon Britain from c. 450 CE until c. 1100 (thus it continued to be used for some decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066)
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1) Northumbrian - North of the Humber, Spoken by Angles
2) Mercian: Between the Humber and the Thames, Spoken by Angles
3) West Saxon
4) Kentish: Southeast of Britain, Spoken by Jutes -
Parts of Speech: Nominal Parts of Speech, Verbs
Peculiarities: Declension system, Present & Past Tenses,
Two Imperative Forms -
Anglo-Saxon chronicles (late 9th century)
The Ecclesiastical History of The English People (Venerable bede, 731 AD)
Beowulf (circa 1000) -
Grammar
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Phonetic peculiarities: Pronunciation (long vowels instead of diphthongs)
Spelling (some letters no longer existing – ð and Þ) -
Scandinavian invasion ≈ VIII-X centuries AD Vikings speaking Old Norse started changing the structure of the English language.
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≈ XI – XIV centuries AD
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Norman invasion → 1066: William the Conqueror Results: New nobility
Replaced positions in the church
French - language of upper classes 1362 Edward III Addressing Parliament in English -
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Synthetical language > Analytical language
Parts of Speech: Nominal Parts of Speech, Verbs
Peculiarities: Reduction in declension system, Reduction in number of strong verbs French borrowings
Situation with native words
Word-formation within the language -
The Canterbury Tales (by Geoffrey Chaucer, between 1387 and 1400)
Document Oxford Provisions (1258)
The Ormulum (12th century) -
∂ and Ө → th
ch → [ʃ] and [tʃ]
last consonants → not pronounced -
Northern: North of the Humber
East Midland: Between the Humber and the Thames
West Midland: Between the Humber and the Thames
Southern: South of the Thames
West Saxon + Kentish -
Renaissance (14th century to 17th century)
Reformation (1517)
Printing (1440)
Black Death (1346-1352) -
≈ XIV – XVII centuries AD
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Northern, West Midlands, East Midlands, Southern, Kentish -
Latin & Greek borrowings + elevated words
Printing → new terms: ≈1454 → Johannes Gutenberg
(Germany) ≈1470 → William Caxton (Britain) -
System of English pronouns → formed
Verbs → more auxiliary verbs
Nouns & adjectives → lost endings
Long vowels: long vowels & diphthongs [o:] → [u:]
e.g. boot, root
[ε:] → [i:]
e.g. meet, feet
[i:] → [ai]
e.g. bite, pile
[u:] → [aυ]
e.g. out, stout
[o:] → [oυ]
e.g. boat, road
[a:] → [ei]
e.g. name, flame -
the major phonetic change of the medieval period = 1300-1500
Otto Jespersen
Danish linguist
Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (1909), Vol.1
coined the term GVS -
John Milton William Shakespeare -
Enlightenment
Industrial Revolution
Growth of British Empire
American Revolution
Slave Trade -
≈ XVIII - XIX century – up to now The Industrial Revolution, which needed new terms for objects and concepts that did not previously exist, and the growth of the British Empire, during which time English absorbed numerous foreign words and made them its own, resulted in the accumulation of many additional words in Late Modern English.
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General American (Northern + Western)
Eastern type
Southern type -
Expansion factors: influence of other languages (colonialism), territorial segregation (American independence), need for new terms (industrial development)
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Prescriptive, Classical Scientific, Structural, Transformational , Cognitive
Should be logical, i.e. - no double negatives in one sentence - split infinitives, etc.
1762 → Robert Lowth, A Short Introduction to English Grammar -
British: English (northern, southern), Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland
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American based: American, canadian
English based: British, Irish, Australian, New Zealand
New Englishes: Asian, African, Austronesian -
1755 Samuel Johnson's dictionary
1783-1786 → Blue-Backed Speller
1828 → An American Dictionary of the English Language
1857, 1884, 1928, 1933, 1989 - The Oxford English Dictionary