Читать книгу A Book of Middle English - J. A. Burrow - Страница 11

The term ‘Middle English’ has its origins in nineteenth‐century studies of the history of the English language. German philologists then divided the history into three main periods: Old (alt‐), Middle (mittel‐), and New or Modern (neu‐). Middle English is commonly held to begin about 1100–50 and end about 1450–1500. Unlike periods in political history, many of which can be dated quite precisely if need be (by a change of monarch or dynasty or regime), linguistic periods can be defined only loosely. Languages change all the time in all their aspects – vocabulary, pronunciation, grammatical forms, syntax, etc. – and it is impossible to decide exactly when such changes add up to something worth calling a new period. Yet, for all this lack of precision, it seems clear that the language of a mid‐twelfth‐century writing such as our extract from the Peterborough Chronicle (text 1) differs sufficiently from Old English to count as belonging to a new period.