论文：英语发展历史简要
别妄想泡我
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2020年07月30日 23:20
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引导英文-鄙见
Class4 Duan Dengting
Abstract:English is the most widely used language in the world,and the development of English reflects the development of native social history and culture,which went through three periods of time:old English,middle English and modern English. So it is significant for us to research it deeply.
Key words:English history;Old English;Middle English;Modern English.
英语的发展变迁
4班 段登婷
摘要：英语是当今世界上使用最广泛的语言，英语的发展变化反映了本民族社会历史和文化的发展和变迁，它的发展经历了古英语、中古英语和现代英语三个时期。因此，深入研究其发展对我们有重大的意义。
关键词：英语史；古英语；中古英语；现代英语。
1 Division of English history
The development of English has a long history,which is generally divided into 3 periods:Old English,Middle English,Modern English.
2 Old English (450-1100)
After the Anglo-Saxon invasion, the Germanic language displaced the indigenous Brythonic languages and Latin in most of the areas of Great Britain that later became England. The original Celtic languages remained in parts of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall , although large numbers of compound Celtic-Germanic placenames survive, hinting at early language also remained in these areas as the language of the Celtic Church and of higher education for the nobility. Latin was later to be reintroduced to England by missionaries from both the Celtic and Roman churches, and it would, in time, have a major impact on English. What is now called Old English emerged over time out of the many dialects and languages of the colonising then, Old English continued to exhibit local variation, the remnants of which continue to be found in dialects of Modern most famous surviving work from the Old English period is the epic poem Beowulf composed by an unknown poet.
Old English varied widely from modern Standard English. Native English speakers today would find Old English unintelligible without studying it as a separate language. Nevertheless, English remains a Germanic language, and approximately half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words be, strong and water, for example, derive from Old English. Many non-standard dialects such as Scots and Northumbrian English have retained features of Old English in vocabulary and pronunciation. Old English was spoken until some time in the 12th or 13th century.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Old English was strongly influenced by the North Germanic language Old Norse, spoken by the Norsemen who invaded and settled mainly in the North East of England. The Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians spoke related languages from different branches of the Germanic family; many of t
heir lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammars were more divergent.
The Germanic language of the Old English-speaking inhabitants was influenced by extensive contact with Norse colonizers, resulting perhaps in cases of morphological simplification of Old English, including the loss of grammatical gender and explicitly marked case . English borrowed approximately two thousand lexical items from Old Norse, including anger, bag, both, hit, law, leg, same, skill, sky, take, and many others, possibly even including the pronoun they.
The introduction of Christianity late in the sixth century encouraged the addition of over 400 Latin loan words, such as priest, paper, and school, and fewer Greek loan words. The Old English period formally ended some time after the Norman conquest , when the language was influenced to an even greater extent by the Normans, who spoke a French dialect called Old Norman. The use of Anglo-Saxon to describe a merging of Anglian and Saxon languages and cultures is a relatively modern development.
3 Middle English (1100-1500)
For centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Norman kings and high-ranking nobles spoke one of the French langues ,which we call Anglo-Norman,a variety of Old Norman used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period and originating from a northern langue . Merchants and lower-ranked nobles were often bilingual in Anglo-Norman and English, while English continued to be the language of the common people. Middle English was influenced by both Anglo-Norman and, later, Anglo-French .
Even after the decline of Norman-French, standard French retained the status of a formal or prestige language—as with most of Europe during the period—and had a significant influence on the language, which is visible in Modern English today (see English language word origins and List of English words of French origin). A tendency for French-derived words to have more formal connotations has continued to the present day. For example, most modern English speakers consider a "cordial reception" (from French) to be more formal than a "hearty welcome" (from Germanic). Another example is the rare construction of the words for animals being separate from the words for their meat, e.g., beef and pork being the products of "cows" and "pigs"—animals with Germanic names.
English was also influenced by the Celtic languages it was displacing, especially the Brittonic substrate, most notably with the introduction of the continuous aspect—a feature found in many modern languages but developed earlier and more thoroughly in English.
While the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued until 1154, most other literature from this period was in Old Norman or Latin. A large number of Norman words were taken into Old English, with many doubling for Old English words. The Norman influence is the hallmark of the linguistic shifts in English over the per
iod of time following the invasion, producing what is now referred to as Middle English.
English literature reappeared after 1200, when a changing political climate and the decline in Anglo-Norman made it more respectable. The Provisions of Oxford, released in 1258, was the first English government document to be published in the English language after the Norman Conquest. In 1362, Edward III became the first king to address Parliament in English. By the end of the century, even the royal court had switched to English. Anglo-Norman remained in use in limited circles somewhat longer, but it had ceased to be a living language.
Geoffrey Chaucer is the most famous writer from the Middle English period, and The Canterbury Tales is his best-known work. Although the spelling of Chaucer's English varies from that of Modern English, his works can be read with minimal assistance.
The English language changed enormously during the Middle English period, both in grammar and in vocabulary. While Old English is a heavily inflected language, an overall diminishing of grammatical endings occurred in Middle English. Grammar distinctions were lost as many noun and adjective endings were leveled to -e. The older plural noun marker -en largely gave way to -s, and grammatical gender was discarded. Approximately 10,000 French (and Norman) loan words entered Middle English, particularly terms associated with government, church, law, the military, fashion, and food.
English spelling was also influenced by Norman in this period, with the /θ/ and /e/ sounds being spelled th rather than with the Old English letters t (thorn) and e (eth), which did not exist in Norman. These letters remain in the modern Icelandic alphabet, having been borrowed from Old English via Western Norwegian.
4 Modern English (1500-)
Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift, which took place mainly during the 15th century. English was further transformed by the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in government and administration and by the standardising effect of printing. Consequent to the push toward standardization, the language acquired self-conscious terms such as "accent" and "dialect". By the time of William Shakespeare, the language had become clearly recognisable as Modern English. In 1604, the first English dictionary was published, the Table Alphabeticall.
Increased literacy and travel have facilitated the adoption of many foreign words, especially borrowings from Latin and Greek since the Renaissance. . As there are many words from different languages and English spelling is variable, the risk of mispronunciation is high, but remnants of the older forms remain in a few regional dialects, most notably in the West Country. During the period, loan words were borrowed from Italian, German, and Yiddish. British acceptance of and resistance to Americanisms began during this period.
5 Conclusion
From the view of its historical deve
lopment and current situation of English as a major international language,no matter in the past, present or future,it was,is and will be still playing an important role , so in order to master it,I think it is necessary to understand the history of its development.
Referances
[1]陈欣.英语的世界性及其历史文化特征探析.江西社会科学，2006.
[2]张丽.英语词汇的发展变迁.安徽工业大学学报，2009.
[3]赵英敏.英语语言史点滴.长春教育学院学报，2008.