-
500
Celtic influence (continued)
A ‘cleft sentence’ is a complex sentence that could be expressed by a simple sentence. For example ‘It was John that she heard the news’ consisting of the independent clause ‘It was John’ and the dependent clause ‘that she heard the news’. This sentence could be expressed simply as ‘She heard the news from John’. -
Aug 11, 600
Christianity (continued)
This was due to the writing of extensive Christian texts on parchment rather than short inscriptions on wood or stone. Default word order for sentences is verb second rather than verb first. E.g. the modern English ‘playing football’ would be typically ordered as ‘football playing’. -
Aug 6, 1000
Beowulf
Only surviving manuscript of the Old English poem Beowulf dated from now. However it is unknown when it was composed. It was one of the first stories to be recorded in Old English during the Anglo-Saxon time period and one of the first to combine the many dialects (namely West Saxon and Anglian) into a written form. -
Aug 6, 1066
Battle of Hastings
William the Conqueror invades England winning the battle of Hastings. England is transformed linguistically as French becomes the prime language spoken officially by those in power. Latin and French are official languages now, but English is still spoken by commoners. -
Aug 6, 1337
A Hundred Years' War
The Hundred Years’ War results in development of English identity as France became the enemy. Upper class starts to adopt English. -
Aug 6, 1342
Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer is born, author of The Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury Tales demonstrated how poetic and elegant English could be, reinventing how the language could be seen as an art form. -
Aug 6, 1348
Black Death
The Black Death comes to England. Many people died especially those in communities such as churches, diminishing prevalence of Latin. Shortage of labourers leads to increased wages for lower class pushing them up into the middle class, bringing their English with them. -
Aug 7, 1362
Statute of Pleading
Statute of Pleading is put into place. English is recognised officially in England, first use in Parliament occurs this year. -
Aug 7, 1476
Printing press
Printing press invented by William Caxton, allows for written form of English to be easily accessible. -
First British settlement in America
The first permanent settlement is established in Jamestown, Virginia. New lexemes ‘borrowed’ from natives such as ‘racoon’ and ‘teepee’ -
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare dies, Shakespeare wrote many plays introducing new expressive lexemes such as ‘caked’, ‘dawn’ and ‘critic’. -
First English daily newspaper produced
London’s First Daily Newspaper produced (The Daily Courant). -
First true dictionary
Samuel Johnson publishes his Dictionary of the English Language, a basis for all dictionaries created afterwards. -
First American dictionary
Noah Webster publishes first American English Dictionary believing it has a different identity to the English traditionally spoken in Britain. This accelerates divergence between the languages. -
BBC
BBC is founded broadcasting programs in British English -
Internet
Inception of the internet revolutionises and globalises the use of English, leaning towards American English especially. -
Arrival of Christianity
Christian missionaries led by St. Augustine converts Pagans into Catholicism, Latin is pushed into the language as it is the language of the Church. Latin alphabet eventually replaces runic alphabet allowing for a variety of syntactic changes from sentences consisting of a single phrase in the runic period, to the modern sentence structures of compound, complex and compound-complex. -
Danish occupation
Danes occupy Northumbria and York. -
King Alfred
King Alfred of Wessex defeats the Vikings using the English language to bring a sense of national identity. England split into two, one kingdom ruled by Alfred and one ruled by the Vikings. -
Anglo-Saxon invasion
Germanic tribes invade Britain consisting of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, Celts are pushed west and north into Scotland and Wales. Celts leave a small amount of trace in the language especially evident in the later use of cleft sentences. -
Viking invasion
Vikings invade Eastern England raiding and pillaging. Semantically lexemes begin focus on battle and violence, for example the noun ‘knife’, the verbs ‘ransack’ and ‘scathe’ which have all been borrowed from Old Norse. -
Danish assimilation
Danish settlers in the North and East of England begin to convert to Christianity and assimilate into the Anglo-Saxon culture, allowing for new Scandinavian influence on English. Scandinavian suffixes such as ‘-thorpe’ ‘-thwaite’ and ‘-toft’ are evident in the place names of these areas. The prefix ‘sk-‘ becomes prevalent, for example in the noun ‘sky’.
