EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMISM OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM THE DIACHRONIC PERSPECTIVE

The article represents evolutionary trends of the English language from the diachronic perspective. Namely, it concerns interaction of sociolinguistic factors in historical circumstances. The study is of a review nature. It is aimed at explaining how the English language has become the dominant means of communication on a planetary scale since its emergence. The research is conducted on the basis of descriptive and comparative methods, as well as sociolinguistic analysis, which makes it possible to trace influence of external factors on development of the English language in the historical section. The English language dynamism is demonstrated on the traditional evolutionary scale by H. Sweet, where its development is classified into three periods: Old, Middle and New English. Within this periodization, simplification is described as the main evolutionary mechanism of the English language. It is regarded as implementation of processes to make language structures less complex at the phonetic, morphological, syntactic or lexical levels. In particular, the main attention is paid to phonetic and grammatical simplification: implementation of the Great Vowel Shift and the Verner-Grimm Law as well as compactification of part-speech paradigms (noun, pronoun, verb). Finally, the authors project evolutionary dynamism onto the globalization potential. They explain how the English language could encompass all aspects of society functioning and integrate states into a holistic world communication system. The English language role in political, economic, social, cultural and other spheres of life is analyzed.