ABSTRACT

All languages must have histories in so far as all languages have had some form of existence through time, but only a few languages have attested histories. When a language has no recorded history, the main way in which some information about its history can be recovered is by the comparative method, and this is in principle free of social evaluations. The standard view of the transition from Old to Middle English is that, although it appears in the texts to be abrupt, it was actually gradual, and this of course backs up the idea of the ancient language and unbroken transmission. Old English, however, is structurally very unlike Modern English or most of Middle English in a number of ways. In agreement with the conventional history, Roger Lass advocates a general late dating of changes in the history of English and hence a relatively slow development of the modern language; thus, Shakespeare’s pronunciation can be represented as relatively archaic.