The old Germanic langs, their classification and principal features.

The old Germanic langs, their classification and principal features.

PG is an entirely pre-historical language: it was never recorded in written form. English belongs to the Germanic group of languages & the history of this group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic (PG) language. OLDGERMANIC: East-germanic (Gothic Gothic Gostel is considered to be the first written text connected with Germanic languages and other European languages. has been preserved in written records of the 4^th – 6^th), Vandalic (similar features with Spanish) Burgudean x(withFrench)) North-germanic (O.Norwegian,O.Danish,O.Swedish,O.Icelandic) West-germanic (O.High German, O.English, O. Low Franconian, O. Saxon, Old Frisian) Gothic is extremely important as The

The second group (north-germanic) – was not until the 10^th cent, it was called “old Norse” (древне северный). After the 10^th cent. North split into O. Norwegian, O. Danish, O. Swedish, O. Icelandic. Historically the most important is O. Icelandic:

it had the largest body of written records, dated back to 12-13 c.

The third group (west-germanic) consists of 5 members: Old English → English;Old Frisian → survived in local dialects in Friesland (in the Netherlands);Old Saxon → also in local dialects to be found in Germany;Old Low Franconian → Netherlandish → Afrikaans;

Old High German → German → Yiddish

Principal features:

Old German languages show differences in comparison with other European Lang on 3 main linguistic levels: grammatical, phonetic and lexical.

Grammatical level – the most important innovation in G. was the emergence of the new types of verbs – “weak”, past tense with the dental suffix –d-: open – opened,

Phonetic peculiarities – 1) accent (word stress) in IE was free and musical; in protogerm. Accent become fixed on the root syllable and dynamic, 2) Grimm’s law. The Germanic langs in the modern world, their classification. Their common ancestor.

Germanic languages

1. English:

GB – Лондон; Ireland – Дублин; The USA – Вашингтон; Canada – Отава; Australia – Канберра; New Zealand – Веллингтон.

2. German:

Germany – Берлин; Austria – Вена; Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, part of Switzerland.

3. Netherlandish: The Netherlands & Belgium- Амстердам.

4. Danish: Denmark –Копенгаген.

5. Swedish:

Sweden – Стокгольм. Finland – Хельсинки.

6. Norwegian: Norway – Осло.

7. Ice Landic: Iceland – Рейкъявик.

8. Frisian:

The Netherlands; Germany

9. Faroese: The Faroe Islands

10. Yiddish: different countries.

11. Afrikaans: The SAR – Еханасбург.

 

The Scandinavian invasion and its effect on English.

By the end of the 8-th cent Britain was often invaded by Vikings (Danes from Denmark and Northmen from Scandinavia). England was invaded by Danes, Scotland and Ireland by Northmen. At first they came in small groups, than in large bands conquering territories one after another. Wessex kingdom under Alfred the Great began to struggle. But still Scandinavian invasion had made some effect on English:

1. words beginning on “sk” (sky, skirt, skin)

2. the system of personal pronouns (they, them, their)

3. the form ‘are’ of the verb to be/

4. the ending–s- for Present Simple, 3-rd person singular (in verbs) (he makes).

5. the system of personal names ending on –son-: Davidson, Richardson, Jefferson.

6. there are more then 1500 words of Scandinavian origin in ModE: sister, bad, fog, cake, get, again etc.

[sk’] → [s] NE Etymological doublets in

ME

→ [sk] Sc skjorte (Sc) – skirt (NE)

scierte (OE) – shirt (NE)

The influence was felt in 2 spheres

§ vocabulary – law, husband, loose, root, sky, smile, want;

§ morphology – the verb system was expanding.

 

Spelling changes in ME

Major spelling changes in ME.

1. Runic letters – thorn Þ, d, đ → digraph ‘TH’.

2. the rune ‘wynne’ → ‘double u’ – w;

3. the ligatures œ, æ fell into disuse.

4. the use of g, c as [dg], [s] – before

front vowel; [g], [k] – before back vowel.

5. sh, ssh, sch → [∫];

6. hw → wh: Eg: hwæt – what - replacement.

7. long sound – double letters. Eg: book.

8. gh [x], [x’] to distinguished between the fricatives; [xx’] and the aspirate [h] Eg: knyhte [knix’t], he [he].

9. o → [o],

[u] + n, m, v. Eg: OE munuc – ME monk.

10. y → [i] – eg: nyne, very, my.

[j] – at the beginning: eg: yet.

11. w-interchangeable with ‘u’ in ‘ou’, ‘au’. Eg: ME down – down [dun];

how [hu].

12. th, s are voiced between vowels: eg:

worthy [wurđi];

are voiceless – initially, finally: less.

Rules of Reading: They resemble the modern rules, with several exceptions though:

1. g = [dζ] c = [s] before front vowels ([i,e]

g = [g]c = [k] before back vowels ([a, o, u]). 2. y = [j] – at the beginning of the word;

= [i] – in the cases when i stood close together with r, n, m and could be confused with one of these letters or could be lost among them, it was replaced with y, sometimes also for decorative purpose.(e.g. nyne [‘ni:nə], very [‘veri]). 3. th = [ð], s = [z] between vowels.

4. o = [o] – in most cases;

= [u] – in the words that have [Λ] sound in Modern English (e.g. some, love) 5. j = [dζ]

 

9.OE sound system. Vowel & consonant changes in OE.

The OE vowel system. Major changes during the OE period.

1)Short: [ĭ, ĕ, æﬞ, ŭ, ŏ, ă] - ĭ, ŭ – high, ĕ, ŏ – mid,

æﬞ, ă – low.

2)Long: [ī, ē, æ‾, ū, ō, ā]

This system existed before breaking took place in the 5^th cent. BREAKING is a process which led to the split of the short front vowels into diphthongs.

Early OE OE eg.

Before ll æﬞ → ea all → eall

h + other cons. æﬞ: → ea: nah → neah

r + other cons ĕ → eo herza - heorte

æ - ea arm - earm

Diphthongization: after the palatal consonant (k’), (sk’) and (j) short and long [e] and [æ] turned into diphthongs ie or ea (scal – sceal, jār - jēar);

I-MUTATION (i-umlaut) it took place in all Germanic languages in VI – VIII cent, except Gothic. It is a case of regressive assimilation with –i- or semivowel ‘j’. Eg: kuning – c y ning (король), fulljan – fūllan (fill – full). fōti – fōel (foot). We find traces of i-mutation in: foot – feet, goose – geese, blood – bleed. 4 new phonems appear y‾˘, œ‾˘ Palatal mutation led to the grouth of new vowel interchanges and to increase variability of the root morphemes. Back mutation (o, u, a –umlaud) took place in the 8^th cent. It influenced front short vowels → appearance of short diphthongs. Phonetically it’s regressive assimilation. I → io Eg: hefon → heofon (heaven). e → eo æ → æα

OE consonants underwent the following changes:

1)Hardening (the process when the soft cons becomes harder) – usual initially and after nasals [m,n] (ð-d, v-b, j-g) 2)Voicing (the proc. When a voiceless cons becomes voiced in certain position):- intervocally, - between a vowel and a voiced cons. and sonorant. [f,θ,h,s – v,ð,g,z]

3) Rhotacism (a pr. When [z] turns into [r] maize Goth – mara OE (more))

4) Gemination (a pr. Of doubling a consonant after a short vowel (as a result of palatal mutation)) settan OE – set, fullan – fill

5) Palatalization of consonants (a pr. when hard vowels become soft) – before a front vowel and sometimes after a front vowels [d,j,k,h – g’,j’,k’,h’]

6) Loss of consonants: The loss of nasals before fricatives:

Eg: fimf (OE)> fif (five); loss of [j] as a result of palatal mutation; fricatives between vowels and some plosives;

 

OE noun system

As it has been mentioned in Lecture 14, the Noun had the following categories in OE: Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl). Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc). Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N): 1)Originally (in PG) it was a semantic division (he/she/it – associated with the lexical meaning of a noun), but in OE this principle did not work any more; 2)In OE the nouns started to be groupped into genders according to the suffix. System of Declensions: Though the stem-suffixes merged with the root, declensions were still existent in OE and were based on the former IE stem-suffixes:

a-stem – the most numerous declension and proved to be productive (M, N).

Traces of a-stem in Modern English: -es (M, Sg, Gen) à ‘s (student’s book) – Possessive Case; -as (M, Pl, Nom) à -(e)s (watches, books) – plural ending for the majority of nouns; -  (N, Pl, Nom) à zero ending (deer, sheep) – homogeneous Sg and Pl.

n-stem (M, N, F): Traces of n-stem in Modern English: -an (M, Pl, Nom) à -en (oxen, children, brethren) – irregular plural ending.

root-stem – never had stem-suffix, words consisted of just a root(M, F): Traces of root-stem in Modern English: root-sound interchange (M, Pl, Nom) à root-sound interchange (men, geese, mice) – irregular Plural.

Analytical Forms

In OE there were no analytical forms. They appeared later:

ME – Future Tense, Perfect, Passive and Subjunctive forms;

NE – Continuous and Do-forms;

and had the following characteristics:

They consisted of 2 elements:

-a verb of broad semantics and high frequency: habben, beon (an auxiliary);

-a non-finite form (Infinitive, Participle 1, 2).

 

OE verbal system

Verbal Categories: Grammatical classificTense2(pr. Past),

Mood(indicative.imperative,subjunctive),

Person(1,2,3)consistently was shown only in the pres ind mood sg,in the past sg of the ind mood, the 1 &3 p coincided & the 2 p had a distinct form., p was not distinguished in the pl,&in the sudjunctive mood, Number(sg&pl), Voice, Aspect, Order, Posteriority.

According to morphological classif -Strong and Weak Verbs:Strong Verbs: Number(300), Type/Origin ( Indo-European (reveals suppletivity), Formation of Past Tense forms ( by changing the root-vowel (ablaut), Formation of Participle2 forms ( with the help of the suffix –en (+ sometimes root-vowel interchange), Derivation ( Strong verbs were root-words /non-derivatives (i.e. they were not derived from some other words/roots but were the words/roots from which other words were derived), Productivity ( unproductive type (no new words employed this type of form-building), Principle Forms ( Infinitive Past Sg Past Pl Participle 2), Classes ( subdivided into 7 classes). Weak Verbs: Number (900), Type/Origin ( Germanic (reveals dental suffix), Formation of Past Tense forms ( with the help of the dental suffix -t/-d), Formation of Participle2 forms ( with the help of the dental suffix -t/-d), Derivation ( Weak verbs were derivatives from nouns, adjectives, strong verbs), Productivity ( productive type (new words that appeared employed this type of form-building), Principle Forms ( Infinitive Past Sg Participle 2), Classes (Classes).

 

The old Germanic langs, their classification and principal features.

PG is an entirely pre-historical language: it was never recorded in written form. English belongs to the Germanic group of languages & the history of this group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic (PG) language. OLDGERMANIC: East-germanic (Gothic Gothic Gostel is considered to be the first written text connected with Germanic languages and other European languages. has been preserved in written records of the 4^th – 6^th), Vandalic (similar features with Spanish) Burgudean x(withFrench)) North-germanic (O.Norwegian,O.Danish,O.Swedish,O.Icelandic) West-germanic (O.High German, O.English, O. Low Franconian, O. Saxon, Old Frisian) Gothic is extremely important as The

The second group (north-germanic) – was not until the 10^th cent, it was called “old Norse” (древне северный). After the 10^th cent. North split into O. Norwegian, O. Danish, O. Swedish, O. Icelandic. Historically the most important is O. Icelandic:

it had the largest body of written records, dated back to 12-13 c.

The third group (west-germanic) consists of 5 members: Old English → English;Old Frisian → survived in local dialects in Friesland (in the Netherlands);Old Saxon → also in local dialects to be found in Germany;Old Low Franconian → Netherlandish → Afrikaans;

Old High German → German → Yiddish

Principal features:

Old German languages show differences in comparison with other European Lang on 3 main linguistic levels: grammatical, phonetic and lexical.

Grammatical level – the most important innovation in G. was the emergence of the new types of verbs – “weak”, past tense with the dental suffix –d-: open – opened,

Phonetic peculiarities – 1) accent (word stress) in IE was free and musical; in protogerm. Accent become fixed on the root syllable and dynamic, 2) Grimm’s law. The Germanic langs in the modern world, their classification. Their common ancestor.

Germanic languages

1. English:

GB – Лондон; Ireland – Дублин; The USA – Вашингтон; Canada – Отава; Australia – Канберра; New Zealand – Веллингтон.

2. German:

Germany – Берлин; Austria – Вена; Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, part of Switzerland.

3. Netherlandish: The Netherlands & Belgium- Амстердам.

4. Danish: Denmark –Копенгаген.

5. Swedish:

Sweden – Стокгольм. Finland – Хельсинки.

6. Norwegian: Norway – Осло.

7. Ice Landic: Iceland – Рейкъявик.

8. Frisian:

The Netherlands; Germany

9. Faroese: The Faroe Islands

10. Yiddish: different countries.

11. Afrikaans: The SAR – Еханасбург.