Traditionally, the history of the English language is divided into 3 periods, which were originally suggested by the English scholar Henry Sweet, author of a number of works on the English language and its history. They are Old English, Middle English and Modern English. His division was not arbitrary, of course as he took into consideration both intra- and extralinguistic factors, namely, phonetic and morphological, on the one hand, and sociocultural, on the other. Modern linguists, however, disagree with this division (V. Arakin, T. Rastorgueva, Ivanova) accounting for their disagreement by the following considerations.
For example, V. Arakin maintains, that the Old English period needs to be subdivided into 2, the Early Old English period and the Late Old English period, as the changes that had taken place from the beginning till the end of the period were very much pronounced and the language at its earlier stage was a lot different from its final stage. Rastorgueva extends this idea to the other periods and Ivanova, generally satisfied with the extralinguistic factors taken into consideration while dividing English into historical periods, argues whether phonetic and morphological criteria are sufficient for this purpose.
pronounced-
very great or noticeable
The table below illustrates the division proposed by Henry Sweet.
Periods
Intralinguistic factors
Extralinguistic factors
1st period
Old English/ OE
700AD - 1100
period of full endings; any vowel can be found in an unstressed ending
singan ( a unstressed)
sunu (u unstressed)
2 period
Middle English/ ME
1100 - 1500
period of leveled endings; vowels of unstressed endings were leveled under a neutral vowel something like[ə], represented by the letter e.
singen ( a ® e)
sone [su:nə] (u ® e)
1066, the year of Norman conquest
1485, the end of the War of Roses, the decay of feudalism the rise of capitalism
3 period
Modern English /MdE
1500 – nowadays
Early MdE:1500 – 1660/1700
Late MdE: 1660/1700 – present day
Period of lost endings
sing
son
The rise of the English nation and the national language
As is seen from the table, the division is based on both phonetic and morphological features: weakening and loss of unstressed vowels and weakening and loss of grammatical morphemes.
It should be emphasized that the dates are but a mere convention as they cannot be taken literally. They simply signify the fact the by these periods the changes in the language had become so prominent that they could identify a new period in its history.
literally -according to the most basic or original meaning of a word or expression
The Role of the Discipline in Training the Teacher of a Foreign Culture
Learning the history of English will enable the student to give answers to a considerable number of practical and theoretical questions. (See Section 1). At the same time, this discipline is not limited to only mere statements of linguistic facts as it is believed to be able to explain them. In studying the history of the English language students are faced with problems concerning the driving forces or causes of language evolution. These causes are believed to be of two kinds, external and internal or extralinguistic and purely linguistic. As for the former, they may include such historic events as social changes, wars, conquests, migrations, cultural contacts and the like. In other words, changes in society or cultural changes are always reflected in the language proving once again the idea that language and culture are inseparable as, on the one hand, language is a part of culture, but, on the other, culture as a whole is transmitted very largely through language. Therefore, knowledge of cultural backgrounds in the language evolution is essential for the student as a translator of a foreign culture in general.
