| 55 BCE
| Roman invasion of Britain under Julius Caesar
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| 43 CE
| Roman invasion and occupation under Emperor Claudius. Beginning of Roman rule of Britain
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| Roman withdrawal from Britain complete
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| Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain begins
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| 450-480
| Earliest Old English inscriptions date from this period
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| St. Augustine arrives in Britain. Beginning of Christian conversion of the Anglo-Saxons
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| The Venerable Bede publishes The Ecclesiastical History of the English People in Latin
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| Viking raids and settlements begin
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| The Danes occupy Northumbria
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| Alfred becomes king of Wessex. He has Latin works translated into English and begins practice of English prose. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is begun
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| Charles II of France grants Normandy to the Viking chief Hrolf the Ganger. The beginning of Norman French
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| c.1000
| The oldest surviving manuscript of Beowulf dates from this period
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| The Norman conquest
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| c.1150
| The oldest surviving manuscripts in Middle English date from this period
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| Henry II conquers Ireland
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| King John loses the province of Normandy to France
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| English replaces Latin as the medium of instruction in schools, other than Oxford and Cambridge which retain Latin
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| 1349-50
| The Black Death kills one third of the British population
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| The Statute of Pleading replaces French with English as the language of law. Records continue to be kept in Latin. English is used in Parliament for the first time
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| Wyclif publishes his English translation of the Bible
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| c.1388
| Chaucer begins The Canterbury Tales
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| c.1400
| The Great Vowel Shift begins
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| William Caxton establishes the first English printing press
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| Caxton publishes Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur
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| Columbus discovers the New World
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| William Tyndale translates the New Testament
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| The first Act of Union unites England and Wales
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| First version of The Book of Common Prayer
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| Shakespeare born
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| Union of the English and Scottish crowns under James the I (VI of Scotland)
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| Robert Cawdrey publishes the first English dictionary, Table Alphabeticall
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| Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, established
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| The Authorized, or King James Version, of the Bible is published
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| Death of Shakespeare
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| Shakespeare's First Folio is published
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| The Great Fire of London. End of The Great Plague
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| Publication of the first daily, English-language newspaper, The Daily Courant, in London
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| Samuel Johnson publishes his dictionary
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| Cook discovers Australia
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| Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence
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| Washington defeats Cornwallis at Yorktown. Britain abandons the American colonies
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| British penal colony established in Australia
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| Act of Union unites Britain and Ireland
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| Noah Webster publishes his dictionary
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| Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick
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| British Broadcasting Corporation founded
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| The Oxford English Dictionary is published
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History of the English language is one of the fundamental courses forming the linguistic background of a specialist in philology. It studies the main events in the historical development of the English language.
The aim of the course is to have a close look at the major stages of the development of the English language from its earliest forms to the present, to trace the influence of various linguistic and extralinguistic factors on the development of the English language and changes in sounds, orthography, vocabulary, morphology and syntax throughout its development.
Course prerequisites: Introduction to General Linguistics, Latin, Theoretical Phonetics of the English Language, English Lexicology, Theoretical Grammar of the English Language, and Practical Courses in Grammar and Phonetics of the English Language.
The course consists of 7 lectures and 5 seminars. To pass the course students MUST attend lectures, take part in discussions at seminars, do the tasks suggested for individual work (write a report, answer the questions to one of the chapters from an audiobook on the history of the English language The Common Tongue and the questions to video materials, write progress tests and module tests successfully).
