 Hi, this e-lecture outlines the development the English language underwent between 700 after Christ and today. In particular, we will look at the development the English language underwent the central cultural, political and linguistic aspects and will then focus on the main linguistic changes that affected the English language during that time. Let us look at the general development first. English is the language of the Anglo-Fryjean group of the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. Its origin goes back to the 5th century after Christ when Germanic tribes invaded Britain. Its development can be subdivided into a number of linguistically definable periods. For example, the first period is referred to as Old English, abbreviated OE, between 700 and 1100, followed by Middle English, the period between 1100 and 1500, then there is a relatively short period referred to as Early Modern English, E M N E, the period between 1500 and 1700 and last but not least the present day period is referred to as present day English or PDE. The difference between these periods is due to various linguistic changes ranging from phonological to lexical and is supported by sociocultural events such as the Norman Invasion in 1066. Let us look at the main linguistic and cultural properties of these periods. Old English is characterized by a series of invasions by Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes in the 5th century after Christ. It is from the language of the first two, the Angles and Saxons, that we have the term Anglo-Saxon to describe the people and from the first tribe the Angles that we have a word for their language, English and for their land Anglaland, the land of the Angles. From the 6th to the 8th century after Christ the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity and numerous Latin words came into the English language. The examples of these words are terms like altar, mass, priest, psalm, temple, kitchen, palm, pear, to name a few. From the 8th century onwards the Vikings came first to plunder and then to settle in parts of the coastal regions of Britain. Their language was Old Norse which left its mark on the English language. The Vikings occupied vast areas, especially north of the River Humber, the so-called Dane Law, the area here between these two lines, so that was the Dane Law area. And about 40 Scandinavian basically Old Norse words entered Old English. Words pertaining to the sea and battle were introduced first, shortly after the initial invasions, other words were taken over, for example law terminology and interestingly the verb form are and widely used forms such as take, cut, both ill and ugly, to name a few again. The period of Middle English can be taken to begin with the Norman invasion in 1066 and the subsequent conquest of the whole of England until last till about 1500. The arrival of the Normans in England following their victory at Hastings under William the Conqueror brought about imminent changes in the vocabulary of English. For about 200 years French was the language of the nobility, the government, the law and civilized behavior in England. As a consequence of this writing in English lost its position in society and only very slowly regained it. It was not until the late 12th century that works in English slowly began to appear again. And in the second half of the 15th century printing was introduced by William Caxton and became the single most important factor that led to the standardization of English based on the English spoken in London. The then center of the country. The Middle English period ends with Henry VIII's ascent to the throne in 1509. Due to Latin and French influences a new language had evolved by the middle of the 14th century. Middle English was Germanic at the core but it had now an extensive vocabulary or if you wish French extension a vocabulary extension. In fact two periods of French influence on Middle English can be distinguished. The Anglo-Norman French period up to the late 12th century and the Central French period from the 13th until the end of the 15th century. The adoption of words from two different kinds of French accounts for the differences in the pronunciation of French long words. In Middle English the structural complexity of old English had disappeared. The most significant development was phonological. The levelling of unstressed vowels led to a reduction of inflectional distinctions and thereby caused changes in the morphology and syntax of the English language. The early modern English period is taken to have begun with the introduction of printing by William Caxton in 1476. Furthermore it is commonly regarded as having lasted till about 1700 although there is no single internal or external event to justify that time span. This era is characterized by a large influx of words from classical languages such as Greek and Latin with a kind of climax at around 1660. The endeavors of conservative scholars to Latinize their English also included altered spellings which were supposed to render the Latin original recognizable in the English form. During the 16th and 17th centuries a need for new words arose because of the many discoveries and developments in the new sciences. English was said to be imperfect in contrast to Latin and Greek. One means of remedy was the borrowing of new words from these sources. These loans were not always welcomed by the literate public and the terms hard words or inkhorn terms were created to describe these borrowings. By about 1700 the English language differed only slightly from present day English. The main changes that had begun during the Middle English period were all completed. Second person verb forms along with the pronouns thou and thee had disappeared from ordinary educated speech and auxiliary do had come to be used as we use it today. The most important external development after 1700 concerned the position of the English language among the languages of the world. One had led to the spread of English around the globe. Today English constitutes the most widely used individual language of our time with more than 300 million native speakers and about 1.5 billion official users and its main branches as you know are British and American English. Let's now look at the major changes in detail. Now as you know languages are always in a state of flux. All living languages undergo constant changes in which all aspects of language structure are affected. The English language has changed enormously from old English to its present day form. Over and above the numerous lexical changes English underwent a large number of phonological changes resulting in drastic morphological and syntactic changes. The most obvious of these changes is the change in the whereas the word order in old English could vary considerably most notably between SVO and SOV. The order in present day English is relatively fixed. Let us look at these changes in detail. Numerous phonological changes have affected the sound system of English from its beginnings to the present day. The most important of these sound changes are among others assimilation, dissimulation, mergers, splits and losses that affected the English language as I said from the very beginning until the present day and still going on. By the beginning of the 12th century and continuing until the 18th century but with its main effects in the 15th and early 16th centuries the sounds of the long stressed vowels in English changed their places of articulation. This chain shift has been referred to as the great vowel shift or abbreviated GVS, the great vowel shift. Now in the great vowel shift five of the seven monophones of middle English were raised and two of them were diphthongized. Today chain shifts occur in many present day English varieties, a well known one is the so-called northern city shift or abbreviated NCS which is currently affecting the low vowels of particular parts of the North American variety of English. The development of the English morphology can generally be described as a process from synthesis to analysis. Inflectional suffixes take the Latin word amabo were increasingly replaced by periphrastic forms such as I will love. Three words in present day English, one word with two suffixes in Latin. The system of declension underwent several processes of paradigmatic levelling. The case system changed from a complex case system, here you see the old English case system where you could argue that the dative and the instrumental case had already merged to a slimline case system in present day English. Well and this weakening of the case system was accompanied by and large by a weakening of the pronominal system as you can see very briefly over here. The morphological changes were mainly the results of phonological processes that led to a reduction of inflectional endings. Some striking differences and now we are concerned with syntactic changes between the structure of sentences in old English and present day English involve word order. In old English we generally find the order SVO that is also common in present day English but there are other different orders that cannot be found in present day English. For example the subject can follow the verb or the object can be placed before the verb or at the very beginning of a sentence. From middle English onwards the word order gradually changed to SVO and by the end of the early modern English period it was almost fixed to SVO as it is today. Also noteworthy is the fact that present day English has lost a large number of inflectional affixes from many parts of speech. As in Latin nouns, pronouns, adjectives, articles and adverbs all took different inflectional endings according to their syntactic function in old English but these are now gone. Let's finally look at lexical change. Britain was invaded by different tribes which brought along different languages. As a consequence many words were borrowed from the Scandinavian invaders here expressed by the Norwegian flag as well as from Latin, Celtic and most importantly after 1066 from French. Lexical change that is change that concerns the vocabulary of a language is perhaps the most obvious area of linguistic change and for many people the most fascinating. It is profoundly connected with the life, the literature and the culture of a community. One of the types of lexical change are semantic widening. It takes place when a lexeme acquires additional meanings while still retaining the original meanings as part of the new meaning. That is a lexeme widens its meaning. For example the old English word bridge meant young bird. The general term for a bird was furrol, fowl. In Middle English bird generalized its meaning to include fowl of any age. Semantic narrowing takes place when a lexeme comes to refer to only part of the original meaning that is a lexeme becomes more specialized in its meaning. The original meaning of present-day meat was food in general. Today however the meaning has narrowed to a specific kind of food as you all know. Semantic shift is a process where a word completely loses its original meaning and acquires a new meaning. In other words a lexeme moves from one set of circumstances to another. For example when Middle English acquired the word boy the old English form knicht present-day knight shifted its earlier meaning of boy male youth to the much narrower meaning youthful gentleman soldier. If a shift in the meaning of a lexeme is based on analogy or likeness between things a process of figurative use is involved. The example that I'm using here illustrates the use of the word crane in its original biological sense and its analogical use to denote a certain vehicle. Let us summarize. In this e-lecture we have outlined the main development, the English language underwent between 700 after Christ and today. We looked at the central periods of the development in English and related the main linguistic changes to them. Further details about each of these periods can be found in our History of English e-lectures about Old English, Middle English and so on. So if you wish we meet again in one of these, see you there.