historical background of british and american english the history of the english language is divided into three periods: the period from 450 to 1150 is known as the old english. it is described as the period of full inflections(词尾变化), since during most of this period the case ending of the noun, the adjective and the conjugation(结合) of the verb were not weakened. old english was a highly inflected language. it had a complete system of declensions(变格) with four case and
