Chronological division in the history of English: the Early New English period.

Traditional periodization divides English into 3 periods – old English, middle English, new English. 1475(printing) - the start of the New English period Early New English 1475- 1660 , first printed book by William Caxton in 1475 . Literary Renaissance. The growth of the great English Nation was accompanied by the formation of the English Language . Early ME was a time of sweeping changes at all levels – lexical and phonetic. New bourgeois society was the reason for growth of vocabulary, new words from internal and external sources enriched vocabulary. Extensive phonetic changes were transforming the vowel system => gap between written and spoken forms. Grammatical forms and syntactical constructions were almost same with Modern E, but their use was different.