Билет №19

Билеты по истории английского языка (The history of the English language)

1. Periods in the history of English.

The history of English обложки roughly 1200 лет.

The commonly accepted, традиционные periodisation divides English history into three periods:

The Old English period (OE) begins about 700. d. (it's the time to which the рано writings in English belong), and lasts till about 12^th century.

The Middle English period (ME) lasts from about the beginning of the 12^th century till 15^th century.

The Modern English period (Мне) begins at about 15^th century and lasts to the present day.

Within the Modern English period it's customary to distinguish between Early Modern English - 1500 - 1660, and Late Modern English - 1660 - ...

2. Synchronic and Diachronic Aspects.

Before embarking on a study of the historical development of the English language we will briefly считаю the two aspects of such study now commonly called the synchronic and the diachronic.

We would get описательные grammar of the language of the period. Таким образом, a study of the language of Чосер and his contemporaries would yield system of Middle English grammar. A study of the language of King Alfred's works and translations of Old English poems, and other texts of the period would be synchronic as a study of 20^th- century language.

A different kind of study is that which seeks to establish the changes which occurred in this or that sphere of the language; this would yield a diachronic результат.

Let us illustrate this statement by one, например.

The study of the system of substantives in the 9^th c. leads to the к такому выводу that in Old English the substantives had four cases: the именных, genitive, dative, and accusative. In a similar way, the study of the system of substantives in the 14^th c. leads to the к такому выводу, что в Middle English the существительных had two cases: the common and the genitive. Both these conclusions имеет строго synchronic. But when we compare the results obtained by the study of the 9^th and of the 14^th c. and draw the к такому выводу that during the intervening centuries the number of cases of substantives was reduced from four to two, this is a diachronic заявление. Такие reasoning of course applies to many other phenomena.