Exploring the history of a language in stages

Normalizing Tendencies

• The role of English grammars and dictionaries in the period of normalization was very significant.
• The greatest achievement of the 18th c. English lexicography is certainly connected with the name of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who believed that the English language should be purified and corrected.

Dr. Samuel Johnson
"Johnson's writings had, in philology, the effect which Newton's discoveries had in mathematics" (Webster).
Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language.

• The principal distinction between early- and late-modern English is vocabulary. Pronunciation, grammar, and spelling are largely the same, but Late Modern English has many more words. These words are the result of two historical factors. The first is the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the technological society. This necessitated new words for things and ideas that had not previously existed. The second was the British Empire. At its height, Britain ruled one quarter of the earth’s surface, and English adopted many foreign words and made them its own.

Late Modern English (1800-Present)
The last 30 or 40 years can be singled out as the final stage of the development, presenting the present-day English.
English nowadays