The Making of English: Where It had been and Where It is headed

Abstract

Linguists concerned with diachronic research of English have established several main periods of development of the English language: Old–English (450-1100); Middle English (1100-1500) and Modern English which is further subdivided into Early Modern English (1500-1700) and Late Modern English (1700 - ). The aim of the paper is to explore the most important social, political and cultural factors that marked all these three major periods, as they undoubtedly exerted heavy influence on the making of today’s English. In fact, the paper attempts to follow closely the intricate and extraordinary story of the development and evolution of the English language since its inception to date. It traces some of the major ups and downs of the language and their correlation with particular historic events primarily (but not exclusively) from Britain’s great and turbulent historic past and present. The paper tries to demonstrate how all of that has been manifestly reflected in the language at various levels – pronunciation, morpho-syntax, lexis, and spelling.