Modern English reflects many centuries namely 15. It’s not long and English history has marked the transition from dialectical forms of English to the modern global variant, when English has stopped borrowing from other languages and has penetrated into even not closely related languages. History of any language reflects political, social, cultural, economical event that have profoundly effected the people and the language. E.g., 597 is the year of Christianization of British. This year brought England into contact with Latin civilization for the second time and English vocabulary was enriched by hundreds of words (religion, church, abbey etc.) 1066 – Norman invasion started the new period in the English history and brought into it several thousands of new words. English occupation and modern communication can be explained by several reasons: 1. The mixed character of English vocabulary. English belongs to the West-Germanic subgroup of Germanic group of the Indo-European family. It shares with German, Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian similar grammatical structure and many common words. On the other hand English has more 50% of its vocabulary namely Latin and French. 2. Grammatical simplicity. The evolution of English is a story of progressive simplification and in simplify English has gone further than any other language is Europe. E.g. the system of OE has 4 cases: Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc and sometimes Voc. In ME the number of cases reduced to two: Nom and Gen. In EME the existence of cases is a vexed question. The same simplification is true the system of adjectives and verbs whose paradigm. On other hand endings disappeared in the majority parts of speech but complex analytical forms developed to compensate the loss of endings. The parallel development accounts for the changes on the English structure from synthetical to analytical. The category o gender is lost in MnE while in OE there were 3 genders: m, f, n. 3. Archaic character of the English spelling and the absence of correlation between spelling and pronunciation. This is not simple for the learners and native speakers. But all attempts to simplify English spelling resulted in a few tendencies to drop double consonants and to simplify suffixes. History of English is not homogeneous. It consists of historical phonetics, syntax, lexicology. History of English studies the development and change of the particle language from the earliest times of it’s existed till the present day. The starting point of English history is the first written text in English or dating of the Anglo-Saxon invasion on the British Isles which approximately connected with the year 449. The history of a language is governed by several principles: - Synchronous and diachronous approaches. - Connection with the people who speak this language - Irregularity of language levels development. E.g. vocabulary changes because it’s necessary to note new realities. During Scandinavian invasion common Germanic verb ‘nimman’ was superseded ‘takan’. Phonetical changes are longer than lexical. E.g. OE ‘dæg’ → ME ‘day’ → MnE ‘day’. The 1st took about 2 centuries. Changes in grammar are the longest. E.g. transition from synthetic to analytic took 15 centuries and isn’t completed. Several linguistic laws that determining it’s development: 1. The law of concreting. E.g. IE aspects categories is more abstract than more categories, but Germanic concrete tense developed from aspects. 2. The law or abstraction. E.g. some formal elements (^, ¬ ) which are general, abstract in meaning, developed from concrete names as a result of abstraction. OE ‘līc’ abstracted to formal element ‘ly’. 3. The law of analogy. It can be illustrated by the modal verb ‘could’. This ‘l’ appeared by the analogy with ‘should’, ‘would’. 4. The law of differentiation. The reflects of development of English out of Germanic from the Anglo-Frisian dialects of West-Germanic group. The English scholar Henry Sweet (1845 – 1912). 1. OE (700 AD – 1100) – the period of full endings. This means that any vowel may be found in an unstressed ending. The word ‘sing’ has the vowel a in its unstressed ending, while the word sunu ‘son’ has the vowel u. 2. ME (1100 – 1500) – the period of leveled endings. OE yields ME singen, OE sunu - sune. 3. MnE – the period of lost endings. Early MnE (1500 – 1660), Late MnE (1660 - ∞)
