Конспект лекций по дисциплине «История языка (англ.)» для студентов специальности «Иностранная филология»

Periodisation of the History of English

The ancient Germans moved further north and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. It is believed that at the earliest stages of history Proto-Germanic was fundamentally one language, though it was dialectally colored. By the beginning of our era it was divided into dialectal groups and tribal dialects. Dialectal differentiation grew with the migrations and geographical expansion of the Teutons.

The 1^st mention of Germanic tribes was made by Pitheas, a Greek historian who made a sea voyage to the Baltic sea in the 1^st century BC and described some Germanic tribes. In the 1^st century AD Pliny the Elder, a Roman scientist, made a classified list of Germanic tribes grouping them under six headings. Then the Roman historian Tacitus compiled a detailed description of the customs and traditions of the ancient Teutons.

Towards the beginning of our era the common period of Germanic history came to an end. The Teutons had extended over a larger territory and the Proto-Germanic language broke into parts. There are 3 branches in this division: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic. In due course these branches split into separate Germanic languages.

The traditional classification of the Germanic languages was reconsidered and corrected because a few hundred years before our era Germanic tribes moved to the North, to the Scandinavian peninsula. Their migrations caused some changes. At the beginning of our era some of the tribes returned to the mainland and settled there. And only from this stage of their history the Germanic languages can be described under 3 headings: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic.

The East Germanic group was formed by the tribes who returned from Scandinavia at the beginning of our era. The most powerful of them were the Goths. Around 200 AD they moved south-east and some time later they made attacks on the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium [bi’zæntiəm]. There were two branches of the Goths:the Eastern and the Western. The former assaulted Rome and founded the Toulouse kingdom which lasted till the 8^th c. The Eastern Goths were subjugated by the Huns, traversed the Balkans and set up a kingdom in Northern Italy. In the 5^th-6^th centuries their culture came to an end with the fall of the kingdom.

The Gothic language ,now dead, has been preserved in written records of the 4^th-6^th centuries. They were the first Teutons to become Christians. In the 4^th c. Ulfilas (Вульфила), a West Gothic bishop made a translation of the Gospels from Greek into Gothic using a modified form of the Greek alphabet. Parts of it is a manuscript made in the 5^th-6^th centuries and it is known as “the Silver Codex”. The other East Germanic languages, all of which are now dead, have left no written records. Some of their tribal names have survived: Burgundy, Andalusia, Lombardy.

After the 9^th century the disintegration into separate dialects began when the Scandinavians started out on their sea voyages. It was called Viking Age (800 to 1050 A.D.). The principal linguistic differentiation in Scandinavia corresponded to the political division into Sweden, Denmark and Norway. And these 3 countries fought for power. For several hundred years Denmark was the most powerful kingdom:it embraced Southern Sweden, the greater part of the British Isles, the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. By the 14^th century Norway fell under Danish rule too. Sweden got free in the 16^th century, when Norway remained a colony of Denmark up to the 19^th century. The earliest written records in Old Danish date from the 13^th century. In the later Middle Ages Danish and then Swedish developed into national literary languages. Norwegian was the last to develop into an independent national language. Because of the Danish regime there were 2 varieties of the Norwegian language: the state or bookish riksmal (later bokmal )and landsmal-a rural variety. At the present time two varieties tend to be considered a single form of language nynorsk (New Norwegian).

In addition to these three languages on the mainland the North Germanic subgroup includes two more languages: Icelandic and Faroese.

Old Icelandic written records date from the 12^th-13^th century. The most important records are: the Elder Edda- a collection of heroic songs of the 12^th century, the Younger Edda-13^th century.