This document provides an overview of the development of the English language from Old English to Modern English. It discusses the key periods - Old English from 600-1100 AD, spoken by Anglo-Saxons; Middle English from 1100-1500, following the Norman conquest; and Modern English from 1500 onward. It also covers concepts in phonetics like vowels, consonants, and articulation points. Major linguistic terms are defined, such as loan words, hedges, communication competence, diglossia, and lingua franca.

1. Language & Phonetics
Prepared by Megha Trivedi
Teaching Assistance
Department of English, MKBU

2. Periods in the Development of the English Language
Old English or
Anglo-Saxon
Middle English
Period
Modern English
Period

3. The Old English Period
• It is an early form of the English language.
• It was spoken and written by the Anglo–Saxons and their descendants
in certain areas which is now England and southern and eastern
Scotland.
• The period began with the arrival of Germanic tribes.
• It is extended from 600 to 1100 AD.
• Old English Dialects: Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, Kentish.
• Old English Grammar, pronunciation, Spelling, and Vocabulary.

4. Middle English Period
• It begins with the Norman Conquest of 1066.
• Period extends from 1100 – 1500.
• Middle English Dialects: Northern, The Midland group, and The
Southern group
• Middle English Grammar, Pronunciation and Spelling.

5. Modern English Period
• Period from 1500
• Influence of Renaissance scholarship
• Religious controversies of the Reformation
• Translation of Bible
• Introduction of printing press
• Growth of Vocabulary
• Sematic changes
• Great Vowel Shift

6. Phonetics
• Branch of linguistics dealing with the study of speech sounds.
• Air – Stream Mechanism
• The Organs of Speech
• Vowels
• Consonants
• Points of Articulation
• Articulators
• Manner of Articulators

7. • Phonology – Deals with distinctive sounds and their specific
patterning in English
• Phoneme – The smallest distinctive unit of sound in the sound system
of a language.
• Syllable – Natural division of speech
• Stress – Degree of the force of utterance
• Rhythm – stress-timed rhythm
• Pitch – Frequency of vibration of vocal cords
• Intonation – Signification changes of pitch and stress in relation to
utterances.
• Assimilation – The way in which sounds influence each other.
• Morpheme - A minimal unity of meaning or grammatical function

8. Major Terms In Linguistics
• Loan words: A loan word is that which has been borrowed from another
language in order to fill a lexical gap in the borrowing language. A large
proportion of the English vocabulary is made up of loan words.
• Hedge: It is a device of spoken discourse that uses in order to mitigate the effect
of what they have to say, to make it sound less forceful and more polite. Hedge
includes expressions like perhaps, maybe, to a certain extent, etc.
• Communication competence: The ability to take part in interaction within a
speech community, which implies knowing more than the language, including
norms of interaction, when it is appropriate to speak and to keep silent, the rules
for turn-taking, how to be polite, and so on.

9. • Diglossia: A society where there are two language varieties, one of
high prestige and one of lower prestige, they are usually varieties of
the same language.
• Lingua franca: The language of communication between persons
who have different first languages.

10. Thanks