Linguistic History of English: PIE Roots, Periods, and Major Influences

Posted on Nov 15, 2025 in English Studies

The History of the English Language

Linguistic Background: Proto-Indo-European (PIE)

All the languages discussed are genetically related since they are all descendants of one parent language, Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Major branches include:

1. Germanic
2. Italic
3. Celtic

The lineage leading to English is: Germanic → West Germanic → Anglo-Frisian Group → English.

The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language was a synthetic language with a rich inflectional morphology.

The majority of roots of Proto-Indo-European words were probably monosyllabic and consisted of a sequence of three sounds: consonant + vowel + consonant (and possibly another consonant).

PIE Nominal and Verbal Systems

The Proto-Indo-European inflectional system of nouns included eight or nine cases and two basic types of declension (thematic and athematic). The nominal grammatical system included three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.

The main categories of Proto-Indo-European verbs distinguished according to their aspect were stative, imperfective, and perfective. The verbal system included several grammatical moods and voices and conjugation according to person, number, and tense.

Proto-Germanic Verbs

Proto-Germanic verbs can be divided into a small group of athematic verbs and a large group of thematic verbs. Thematic verbs were further divided into seven classes of strong and five classes of weak verbs, according to their preterite forms (only four of the five classes of weak verbs survived in attested languages).

• Strong verbs formed the preterite (originally the Proto-Indo-European perfect) form by means of ablaut or reduplication.
• Weak verbs used a dental suffix added to the root of the verb.

Old English Period (c. 449 AD – 1066)

Historical Context and Influences

The Old English period began with the arrival of Anglo-Saxon tribes in Britain in 449 AD. The term Anglo-Saxon is often used to refer to all the Germanic tribes who settled in Britain after this date. Before their arrival, they had already adopted a number of words from Latin (e.g., wine, cup, dish, cheese, or linen). Upon their arrival, Britain was inhabited by Celtic peoples.

Key developments:

• The 7th and 8th centuries were marked by the gradual Christianization of the country, resulting in the enrichment of Old English (OE) by another wave of lexical borrowings from Latin.
• The Scandinavian invasion started at the end of the 8th century and continued during the 9th century. Contacts between Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians brought about lexical enrichment and accelerated grammatical simplification of the English language.

Old English Dialects

The term Old English does not denote one homogeneous language. Four different dialects of Old English are usually distinguished:

• West Saxon
• Mercian
• Northumbrian
• Kentish

Old English Grammar

Old English was a synthetic language with rich inflectional morphology and a relatively flexible word order. Its morphological and syntactic systems were noticeably different from those of Modern English.

Nouns in Old English

OE nouns belonged to one of three grammatically determined genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. This enforced corresponding agreement on demonstratives, adjectives, and pronouns (e.g., weġ ‘way’ was masculine, sǣ ‘sea’ was feminine, and þing ‘thing’ was neuter).

When referring to human beings, however, pronouns were often used according to natural gender; for example, mǣden ‘maiden’ was neuter but was often referred to by hēō ‘she’. Forty-five percent of nouns were masculine, thirty percent feminine, and twenty-five percent were neuter. OE nouns had two morphological categories: number (singular and plural) and case.

Verbs in Old English

OE verbs included thematic and athematic types:

• In thematic verbs, the ending is added to the stem suffix—the theme (as in the Czech verb ber-e-me).
• In athematic verbs, the ending is added directly to the root (as in the Czech verb js-me).

Although athematic verbs and nouns are historically older than thematic verbs and nouns, they are very limited in number. There were only four athematic verbs in Old English: bēōn/wesan ‘be’, dōn ‘do’, gān ‘go’, and willan ‘will’.

Verbs were also categorized as strong or weak:

• Weak verbs are a specific Germanic innovation. They contain a dental suffix (-d or -t) in the preterite (e.g., dēman ‘to decide’ – dēm-de).
• Strong verbs (divided into classes I–VII), also denoted as irregular or vocalic verbs, form the preterite by means of changes in the root vowel (e.g., bītan ‘to bite’ – bāt).

Weak verbs were the most productive conjugation type in Old English: nearly all verbs which were formed or adopted during the Old English period were conjugated weak.

Pronouns in Old English

Old English utilized personal, possessive, demonstrative, indefinite, and interrogative pronouns.

Possessive Pronouns

The forms of possessive pronouns are identical with the genitive forms of personal pronouns:

• mīn ‘my’
• þīn ‘thy’
• his ‘his’
• hire ‘her’
• his ‘its’
• ūre ‘our’
• ēōwer ‘your’
• hira ‘their’

A general 3rd person form sīn ‘his, her, its, their’ was mostly used in poetry.

Middle English Period (c. 1066 – 1500)

Historical Context: The Norman Conquest

The development of the English language was strongly influenced by political changes following the Norman Conquest in 1066. The Norman army, led by William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy), defeated the Anglo-Saxons. This event marked the end of the Old English period and the beginning of the Middle English period. The linguistic effects of the arrival of the Normans became apparent with considerable delay.

When William the Conqueror became King William I of England, the Normans (Norsemen who had previously conquered Northern France) seized political, economic, military, and religious power. They became the lords of the Anglo-Saxon population, who continued to speak English. The Normans spoke Norman French, and initially, most did not learn English, leading to a communication gap.

The situation changed gradually due to social and political factors:

• In the early 13th century, King John lost the province of Normandy.
• By the end of the 14th century, the Anglo-Normans lost all their properties in France.

The loss of ties with France resulted in the adoption of English as an official language by Anglo-Normans. However, the influence of the French language on English became noticeable only at the end of the 13th century.

Literary Tradition and Standardization

In the Old English period, there was a rich tradition of literature written in English, especially in the West-Saxon dialect. In the Early Middle English period, written English became scarce. Most documents were written in Latin (the language of religious and learned texts) and French (the language of law, administration, and literature). The authors of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Peterborough Chronicle), who continued to write in English after the Norman Conquest, had to abandon their work in 1154.

Due to the political changes after 1066, the West Saxon dialect lost its dominant position, and the literary tradition of the first standardized form of written English (the Winchester Standard) was interrupted. The political and cultural center moved from Winchester to London.

A new standard, the Chancery Standard, started taking shape in London after 1400. The London and the East Midland dialects became the basis for the development of Standard English. Important figures in this process included Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of The Canterbury Tales, and William Caxton, the first English printer, who published Chaucer’s works.

Middle English Dialects

Midland dialects were a continuation of Mercian dialects, which developed in close contact with Scandinavian dialects during the Old English period. Scandinavian influence continued to play an important role during the Middle English period. Most scholars distinguish the following Middle English dialects:

• East Midland
• West Midland
• Southern
• Northern
• Kentish

Middle English Grammar Changes

During the Middle English period, the English language underwent a number of phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic changes. Due to the reduction of unstressed syllables, the rich inflectional system of Old English was strongly simplified, and word order became less flexible.

English gradually moved from a synthetic language to an analytical language, using prepositions and relatively fixed word order patterns to indicate the meaning of the lost inflectional endings. Middle English is closer to Modern English and resembles modern West Frisian, one of the closest relatives of English.

Nouns in Middle English

The complex system of Old English inflection of nouns was reduced to only two distinct ending patterns: the vocalic declension and the consonantal N–declension. Differences in inflection between nouns of different gender disappeared. Grammatical gender was gradually replaced by natural gender.

Some Middle English nouns had no ending in the plural, e.g., folk, hors, pound, sheepe, swyn, yeer. These were monosyllabic neutral nouns with a long vowel or with a short vowel before a consonant cluster, which already had a zero plural ending in Old English. Another type of zero plural is the umlaut plural in nouns originally belonging to the athematic declension, e.g., foot – feet, man – men, goose – geese.

Verbs in Middle English

The conjugation of verbs underwent simplifying changes similar to those within the inflection of nouns. The simplification of the synthetic forms of verbs was accompanied by the development of new analytical forms and new grammatical categories; the ultimate result of these changes is the present system of tenses and aspects. One result of the simplification of verbal endings was the loss of the distinction between the indicative and the subjunctive forms.

Dialectal differences existed in the form of the present participle:

• The OE ending -ende changed into -inde/-ende in the Southern and Midland dialects.
• It changed into -ande in Northern and North Midland dialects (very likely under the influence of the Old Norse ending -andi).

The system of strong and weak verbs was completely rearranged and broken up. Old English possessed about 300 strong verbs. About one hundred of these verbs were lost in the transition period between Old English and Middle English, and about eighty became weak and ‘regular’.

Pronouns in Middle English

In Chaucer’s time, gender was already a lexical category because the weakened and leveled endings of nouns and adjectives ceased to indicate gender. Therefore, he and sche referred to human beings, and hit/it referred to inanimate objects and animals. The OE pronoun of the 3rd person plural hīē, hī, hēō was replaced by the Scandinavian loan they.

Possessive Pronouns

The ME system of possessive pronouns was very similar to the modern English system: my/myn(e); þy/thy/þyn(e)/thyn(e); your/your; his, her, his; our/ours; your/yours; her(e)/their(e). The forms her(e) and their(e) co-existed till the 15th century. The former comes from the OE pronominal forms hira, hiora, heora, while the form their(e) is (like they and them) a Scandinavian loan.

Demonstrative Pronouns and Articles

In Middle English, demonstrative pronouns ceased to express gender and to distinguish cases. A new pattern based on the OE neuter forms þæt and þis developed. The plural form those is a descendant of the OE þās (plural of þēs, þēōs, þis), and these developed from the OE singular forms þis/þes to which the plural -e was added.

Relative Pronouns

The OE relative particle þe disappeared completely by 1250, and the OE demonstrative þæt began to be used in its place. Other relative pronouns developed from the OE interrogatives whā and whilċ.

Early Modern English Period (c. 1500 – 1700)

Historical Background

The Early Modern English (EModE) period coincides roughly with the reign of the House of Tudor (1485–1603) and the House of Stuart (1603–1714). The establishment of the Tudor dynasty under Henry VII in 1485, after the Battle of Bosworth, resulted in a greater centralization of government in England.

The EModE period concluded with:

• The religious and political settlement of the Glorious Revolution (1688).
• The rise of Augustan literature during the reign of Queen Anne (1702–14).
• The adoption of the Act of Union between England and Scotland (1707), which established political unity within the British Isles.

This period was also marked by a rapid growth of the printing press.

Sound Changes from Old English to Early Modern English

Vowel Changes in Old English

During the Old English period, several complex changes within the system of vowels took place. The most influential change affecting stressed vowels was the palatal umlaut, which is responsible for various alternations within different forms of Modern English nouns, verbs, and adjectives, for example:

• mouse – mice
• foot – feet
• tooth – teeth
• brother – brethren
• strong – strength
• food – feed
• old – elder

Influence of Nasals

Nasals prevented the fronting of Proto-Germanic (PG) a into æ (e.g., OE cann). They also nasalized and rounded the preceding a, which explains the variation in spelling in such words as manig – monig, cann – conn, swamm – swomm.

Vowel Changes from Late Old English to Middle English

Diphthongs

Diphthongs underwent monophthongization:

Lengthening and Shortening of Stressed Vowels

In Late Old English and Early Middle English, short stressed vowels were lengthened and long stressed vowels were shortened in certain positions. Lengthening took place especially in open syllables and in closed syllables before lengthening consonant clusters (e.g., ld, rd, nd, mb). Other clusters (e.g., st, ft) caused shortening. Unstressed vowels underwent reduction into a mixed vowel and disappeared completely in final positions.

Examples of Lengthening:

• OE bacan > ME bāken
• OE nama > ME nāme
• OE ċild > ME ċīld ‘child’

Formation of New Diphthongs

The monophthongization of OE diphthongs was accompanied by the development of new diphthongs in the Middle English period. After the reduction of endings, new diphthongs developed from vowels followed by ġ [j], w [w], and ʒ [ɣ], which changed into corresponding vowels. Another type of diphthong developed from vowels followed by h (later spelled gh).

Vowel Changes from Late Middle English to Early Modern English

Short Vowels

Long Vowels: The Great Vowel Shift

The system of Middle English long vowels underwent a complex of changes denoted as the Great Vowel Shift. These changes shaped the pronunciation of Modern English and are responsible for the discrepancy between Modern English pronunciation and spelling.

Consonant Changes from Old English to Middle English

The following are some of the most important consonant changes that took place in Late Old English and during the Middle English period:

Consonant Changes from Middle English to Early Modern English

Disappearance of [x]

The sound [x] changed into [f] or disappeared in final positions and before final t.

Disappearance of [b] from [-mb]

The final [b] disappeared in pronunciation after [m] in Early New English but was preserved in spelling (e.g., climb, comb, dumb, lamb, womb). In some cases, the letter b was added in spelling to words where its presence is not etymologically justified (e.g., crumb (OE crūma), limb (OE lim), thumb (OE þūma)).

Major Lexical Influences on English

Celtic Influence

Although Anglo-Saxons were in contact with Celtic tribes both on the Continent and after their arrival in Britain, the lexical influence of Celtic languages on English is limited to place names (e.g., Avon, Devon, Dover, Thames, York) and a small number of common nouns. An important word that entered English via the Celtic Old Irish language (Old Gaelic) is the word cross (of Latin origin).

Latin Influence

Old English was influenced by Latin in three stages:

1. First Stage (Continental): Latin words were taken over when the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians were still on the continent, before the beginning of the development of Old English.
2. Second and Third Stages (On English Soil): These stages occurred on English soil and were connected with the arrival of Christianity and the Benedictine reform.

The borrowings in the OE period were motivated by the need for the denotation of new concepts. This differs from Latin borrowings in the Middle English and Early Modern English periods (during the revival of learning), in which Latin words were often taken over even when adequate native words were available.

Scandinavian Influence

The most interesting case of a Scandinavian loan is the pronoun they, which replaced the Old English pronoun hīē/hī during the Middle English period. This loan is especially noteworthy: it happens very rarely that a personal pronoun is taken over from another language, as personal pronouns usually belong to the most stable component parts of the grammatical system. However, some forms of the Old English 3rd person plural pronoun were similar to or even identical with some of the 3rd person singular forms, which may have been one of the causes of the replacement. The takeover of the Scandinavian they supplies convincing evidence of the degree of domestication of the Scandinavian nationality in the English ethnic environment.

Most Scandinavian words were adopted during the Middle English period, particularly in central and northern dialects of English. An important element of the Scandinavian influence is the introduction of non-palatalized pronunciations in words like skirt, kettle, dike, give, or egg.

Norman and French Influence

During the Middle English period, the English language was strongly influenced by Norman French (in the initial stage) and Central French (from circa 1250). After the arrival of the Normans (a Germanic tribe speaking a variety of French) in 1066, the roles of English, Norman French, and Latin were dictated by the official policy of the court.

The kings and feudal lords were all speakers of French. Legal documents were prepared in French. Monastic life was dominated by French speakers, although the language of the liturgy and written documents was Latin. Chronicles were mostly written in Latin.

The differences between the two phases of French influence can be shown in the following pairs of words (the first word is Norman French, the second is Central French):

• capital – chapter
• catch – chase
• cattle – chattel
• launch – lance

In the Modern English pairs ward – guard, warranty – guarantee, war – guerrilla, the words with the initial w- were taken over from Norman French, while the words with the initial g- come from Central French. Examples related to dressing include: costume, dress, garment.

Phonemic Aspect of the French Influence

In Old English, the voiceless spirants [f], [s], [θ] and the voiced spirants [v], [z], [ð] were variants (allophones) of the phonemes f/v, s/z, θ/ð. In Middle English, borrowings from French introduced words like vēle ‘veal’ and zēle ‘zeal’, with voiced pronunciations in initial positions, contrasting with Anglo-Saxon words fēlen ‘feel’ and sēl ‘seal’.

As a result, the allophones f/v and s/z split into separate phonemes: f and v; and s and z.

During the Middle English period, two new diphthongs of French origin were added to those already existing in English: oi and ui. These diphthongs are reflected in Modern English words like choice, cloister, employ, noise, or rejoice (originally [oi]); and boil, point, joint (originally [ui]).