Special Philology, its Subject and tasks

Special Philology, its Subject and tasks

Special philology (Greek phileo, logos) is one of the subjects which establishes the back-ground of a specialist in philology. It used to be understood as a science studying all types of not only texts but also material remnants. Philology as a science appeared in antiquity in order to explain old texts, later its tasks and notions have been changed.

Now it is defined as a common name of subjects studying languages, literatures, and culture with the help of texts of literature, history etc.

Our branch of special philology is Germanic philology because the English language is a representative of the Germanic group of the Indo-European family of languages.

The SUBJECT MATTER of Germanic philology:

l it studies the languages of the Germanic group:

l  their origin, development and structure,

l  mutual connections, common laws,

l tendencies of development

l interconnections with the languages of other groups.

Its main tasks are to explain modern state of Germanic languages and to reconstruct their ancient forms. Modern state can’t be explained without studying ancient situation.

Special philology is connected with other sciences:

l general linguistics,

l  comparative linguistics,

l dialects, linguistic geography;

l history, archaeology, ethnography,

l history of art, religion etc. 

It is divided into German philology, English, Scandinavian etc. It gives the basis to study the history of the language, theoretical grammar, lexicology etc.

Вопрос 2

Comparative and Historical method

Linguistics uses various methods to study languages: descriptive, statistic, experimental etc. One of them is Comparative and historical method.

This is a scientific way of reconstruction of those language phenomena of the past, which were not fixed in written texts.

The reconstruction can be effected by means of comparing later facts of two or more languages which are known either from written texts or real speech. Sometimes only it works in studying language phenomena. 

Steps of the process of comparing language phenomena

l 1) to compare sounds and morphemes;

l 2) to establish common laws;

l 3) to establish chronological correspondences among them,

l 4) to reconstruct a primary form.

The method is not ideal, it has some drawbacks

l it can’t give the exact dates of this or that language change;

l it doesn’t explain several phenomena;

l it’s not suitable for all types of languages.

The usage of this method allowed to define the place of Germanic languages among other languages of the world, to trace historic changes in their phonetics, grammar and vocabulary, to explain important phenomena of their modern state.

This method is based on the following principles

l Genetic commonness of the compared units.

l Comparison of the meaningful units (not simply sounds);

l Regularity of correspondences;

l Phonetic laws;

l Semantic laws.

Various scientists who developed this method are William Jones (1746  – 1794) who began studying Sanskrit; Franz Bopp (1791 – 1867) - the founder of the method itself, who compared Indo-European languages; Rasmus Rask Christian(1787-1832) who used this method to study Germanic languages; A.Vostokov, an investigator of Slavonic languages (1781-1864); Jakob Grimm, the author of the first comparative grammar of Germanic languages (1785-1868); Karl Verner, an investigator of Germanic  phonetics(1846-1896); F. de Saussure, Antoine Meillet and many others.

Вопрос 3

Ancient Germans

Germanic tribes are great ethnic complex of ancient Europe, a basic stock in the composition of the modern peoples of Sweden, Norway, Den-mark, Iceland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, No-rthern Italy, the Nether-lands, Belgium, Luxem-bourg, Northern and Central France, Lowland Scotland and England.

Thus in the 1st century A.D. Germanic languages were only spoken in Germany and in territories adjacent to it and also in Scandinavia. It is considered that they lived in the territory between the rivers Elbe and Odra, on the peninsula Jutland and in the Southern Sweden.

At that time old Germanic tribes were passing through the stage of development which is marked by the term “barbarism”. From archaeology it is clear that the Germans had little ethnic solidarity; by the 7th cent. B.C. they had begun a division into many peoples. They did not call themselves Germans; the origin of the name is uncertain.

Their rise to significance (4th cent. B.C.) in the history of Europe began roughly with the general break-up of Celtic culture in central Europe. From these areas they spread out in great migrations southward, south-eastward, and westward.

Geography made it attractive to the Romans as a potential province to add to the already powerful Roman Empire.

The combination of natural resources, agriculture, and strategic value made the Romans eager to gain acquisition of this territory. The main resources that Germany had to offer came in the form of metals, more specifically, iron. Their iron was of such quality and was acquired in such abundance that it was exported to Rome for use in most everything that was created from iron.

The German agricultural system was vital to the economy in Germany. Most of the Germans were farmers but a large portion of the population was herders.

The Germans were agriculturists from the beginning of their existence. They established agricultural villages based on land plots that were grouped around a central water supply. The main crops that they raised were cereal grains such as wheat, barley, oats, and rye.

Around the North Sea area there was an emphasis on cattle raising. Germany also had a great strategic advantage that was appealing to the Romans. First of all it could be used to protect Gaul north of the Danube which had already come under Rome influence. Germany also provided for a buffer from Gaul. The tribes that eventually settled in the Germanic area were tribes that had for the most part been migrating throughout Europe for many years.

The first testimonies

Our knowledge of the ancient Germans is based on the testimonies by Greek and Roman writers, who for certain reasons were interested in them.

The earliest of them was the Greek traveller and astronomer Pytheas from Massilia (now Marseiilles) who lived in the 4th century B.C. He sailed from his native town through the Gibraltar along the west coast of France to the Baltic. His book has not come down to us, only some pieces of it were preserved by the Greek geographer Strabo (63 B.C. – 20 A.D.).

Pytheas was the first who mentioned the Teutons.

The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.) wrote about the Teutons in his great work Natural History. He gave a classification of Germanic tribes.

Вопрос 4

Anglo-Saxon Invasion

The earliest mention of the British Isles is in the 4^th cent. B.C. by Pytheas. At that time Britain was inhabited by Celtic tribes. In the 5^th cent. A.D. Britain was conquered by three Germanic tribes the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. These tribes were included into the group of the Ingaevones according to the classification of Pliny the Elder. The Britons fought against the conquerors for about a century and a half. (According to legends, they were lead by a mysterious king Arthur). The Angles occupied most of the territory north of Thames, the Saxons – south to the Thames, the Jutes in Kent and in the Isle of Wight. 

Вопрос 7

Runic writing

Runic Alphabet.

The word “rune” is translated as “ secret ” (compare old Celtic “ run ”, middle Welsh “ rown ”, modern German “ raunen ”).

The most important sources about runic history are ancient texts of Scandinavian pagan religion – Old Edda by Brynolf Swesson and Lesser Edda by Snorri Sturlusson.

German runic writing was the letter system of peculiar look, accounted by the writing technique on bone, wood and metal.

Tombstones, altars, pagan pillars called “runic stones” are found with miscellaneous writings (Gothland, Upland, Norway). The most famous is Cilwer stone, which dates from the 5-th c. So we can find a lot of writings on jewels and weapon, for barbarians believed things had to possess their own names (breakteats).

The main runic alphabet consists of 24 signs, may be more, but other ones are regarded as variants or combined runes.

The whole system is divided into 2 parts – futarks (arises from the first symbols – F, U, Th, A, R, K: Old futark (runes of Old German origin – o.f.) and Late futark (modifications of o.f. in Northumbrian, Frisian and Anglo-Saxon alphabets).

Old Futark

24 signs traditionally gradate into 3 groups of 8 symbols called atts (“part of land “ or “kin” compare Scot. "airt”, Ireland “aird).

Nowadays we have the main runic alphabet, consisting of 24 signs, may be more, but other ones are regarded as variants or combined runes.

The first six runes of the alphabet spell out the word "FUTHARK".

The origin of futark remains the matter of severe debates between historians, linguists and philologists.

There are two main theories: 1) Runic writing appeared on the basis of Latin alphabet; 2) cradles of these signs are in Transalpine and North Italian scripts. Scientists have a lot of historical facts, approving that Etruscan merchants used this system. Probably they brought it to the North (6-th c. B.C.).

However some researchers think that runes cropped up in Germanic tribes from ancient Rome Latin writing. But the construction of runic alphabet (RA) is different from others – for example, order of the first letters.

Many runic symbols were used as icons, showing various things and animals. Some runologists suppose that even in the most developed variant they are close to pictures: rune “Fehu” f symbolizes cattle, Thurisaz – thorn, Wunjo w – weathercock, Algiz z – elk, Zin s– lightning, Yr u – bow, Edhwaz m – horse.

The top of development and complete formation of RA system was in the 1-2 c. AD.

28 sings appeared in the middle of the 6-th c. In Britain where German runes penetrated in the 5-th c. with Anglo-Saxon invasion, Frisian futark was improved by some additions and changes (mostly combined runes) and numbered 29 units.

In Northumberland 33 rune system existed already, with the mixture of Celtic runes.

In the middle of the 7-th c. the tendency to simplification appeared – some runes changed in inscription, some were lost. To the middle of the 10-th c. the number of runes decreased to 16 units and late futark formed.

It was purely writing system, which wasn’t used for fortune telling. It got wide spreading not only in the territory of German Empire, but in the North too, for example in Denmark and Sweden.

The next step in development of RA took place in the middle of the 12-th c. by adding dots to 16 sign system (dotted alphabet). It was used along with Latin one till the 16-th c. We can find its variants in Slavonic manuscripts.

Вопрос 8

The Gothic alphabet was probably created by bishop Ulfilas who also translated the Bible into the "razda" (language).

Some scholars claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only, while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of runic or Latin origin. There are very few references to the Gothic language in secondary sources after about 800 AD, so perhaps it was rarely used by that date.

The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language. Before its creation, Gothic was written in Gothic runes.

Latin Alphabet

Latin was introduced into Germanic languages later in order to organise church service. First glosses appeared to render the names into Latin. The Latin alphabet of that time had only 23 letters (without J,W,V).

Historically there were the following types of Latin writing: scriptura capitalis, scriptura uncialis, and minusculis.

Вопрос 9

The most important sources about runic history are ancient texts of Scandinavian pagan religion – Old Edda by Brynolf Swesson and Lesser Edda by Snorri Sturlusson.German runic writing was the letter system of peculiar look, accounted by the writing technique on bone, wood and metal. Tombstones, altars, pagan pillars called “runic stones” are found with miscellaneous writings (Gothland, Upland, Norway). The most famous is Cilwer stone, which dates from the 5-th c. So we can find a lot of writings on jewels and weapon, for barbarians believed things had to possess their own names (breakteats).

Вопрос 10

Stress

Stress is the emphasis (shown by more forceful, louder, and higher-pitched voice) given to some syllables (usually no more than one in each word). In many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress. Some languages have fixed stress, i.e. stress is placed always on a given syllable, as in French (where words are always stressed in the last syllable) or Quechua (always on the penultima – the syllable before the last one). Other languages have stress placed on different syllables in a predictable way (they are said to have a regular stress rule), such as Latin.

There are also languages like English or Spanish, where stress is unpredictable and arbitrary, being lexical – it comes as part of the word and must be learned with it. In this kind of a language two words can differ only by the position of the stress, and therefore it’s possible to use stress as a derivative or inflectional device.

It is considered that in Indo-European the stress used to be musical and fixed. But in Germanic it became fixed on the root syllable and turned into the dynamic one.

The system of phonemes included consonants and vowels.

Ancient Germanic system of conso-nants was different from that of Indo-European in the number of stops and fricatives. Germanic languages had more fricatives than stops, Indo-European – v.v. Germanic consonants included labials p,b,f; dentals t,d,th; back sounds k,g,h; kw,gw,xw. These changes are explained by shifts.

Вопрос 11

System of vowels

Indo-European system of vowels included 5 short and 5 long ones (a, o, u, i, e). The first three were used in stressed syllables and are considered the basic ones.

The change of stress had a great influence on the vowel system. We observe the processes of Ablaut and Umlaut.

Ablaut

The process of ablaut (from German ab- «off» + laut «sound») is a vowel change accompanying a change in grammatical function. For example, the vowel change in English from i to a to u in sing (present tense), sang – (past), sung (past-participle).

Umlaut

The process of umlaut (from German um- «around», «transformation» + laut «sound») is a modification of a vowel which causes it to be pronounced more to the front of the mouth to accommodate a vowel in the following syllable. This process is found in many — especially Germanic — languages. Example – woman – women. Note that English, being a Germanic language, has preserved some of these changes in irregular inflected forms such as man/men, tooth/teeth, long/length, old/elders, etc., even though it has lost the suffixes that originally caused them, and has changed their spelling.

Вопрос 15

Nouns

Nouns were declined -- that is, the ending of the noun changed to reflect its function in the sentence.

Cases

n The nominative case indicated the subject of the sentence (eg " cyning " means "king").

n The genitive case indicated possession (eg the " cyninges scip" is "the ship of the king" or "the king's ship ").

n The dative case indicated the indirect object of the sentence (eg "hringas cyninge" means "rings for the king" or "rings to the king").

n The accusative indicates the direct object of the sentence (eg "Æþelbald lufode cyning" means "Æþelbald loved the king", where Æþelbald is the subject and the king is the object).

n The instrumental case indicates the agency whereby something was done, eg " lifde sweorde", "he lived by the sword", where "sweorde" is the instrumental form of "sweord").

Gender and Number

There were different endings depending on whether the noun was in the singular (eg "hring", one ring) or plural (" hringas", many rings).

Nouns are also categorized by grammatical gender – masculine (cyning), feminine (cwene), or neuter (maegden). Masculine and neuter words generally share their endings. Feminine words have their own subset of endings

There were 9 classes of noun stems in Germanic languages according to the stem-forming suffix. These suffixes were lost long ago, so this division is a historical one. There were the following classes:

· with the stem in –o-, e.g. daeg (day);

· with the stem in -a-, e.g. giba (give);

· with the stem in -i-, e.g. gasts (guest);

· with the stem in -u –, e.g. handus (hand);

· with the stem in -n-, e.g. nama (name);

· with the stem in -r-, e.g. fadar (father);

· with the stem in -s-, e.g. agis (awe);

· without suffixes –, e.g. nahts (night);

· with the stem in -nt-, e.g. freond (friend);

 

Here we can see one example of Noun declension:

Wuldor ('glory', n.)

Nominative wuldor(s)  wuldor(pl)

Genitive wuldres wuldra

Dative wuldre   wuldrum

Accusative wuldor  wuldor

Вопрос 17

Adjectives

Old Germanic Adjectives were declined like nouns.

They fall under the same categories (strong or weak, masculine or feminine or neuter, singular or plural) and have the same number of cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental).

Degrees of comparison were formed by means of suffixes -iz, oz; -ista, osta, e.g. Long – lengra – longest.

The difference between the Nouns and the Adjectives was as follows: every Adjective is declension both according to the strong and to the weak declension. Weak declension forms are used when the Adjective is preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or the definite article; they are associated with the meaning of definiteness. In all other contexts forms of the strong declension are used.

Degrees of comparison were formed by means of suffixes –iz, oz; -ista, osta, e.g., long – lengra – longest. The comparatives were declined as strong adjectives; the superlatives rarely took the forms of strong declension and mostly follow the weak declension. Several adjectives have suppletive forms of comparison or were derived from adverbs.

Examples of Adjectives and how they were declined in Gothic (Masculine Gender):

o Strong

Nom. midjis (middle)

Gen. midjis

Dat. midjamma

Instr. midjana

o Weak

Nom. blinda

Gen. blindins

Dat. blindin

Instr. Blindan

Вопрос 18

PRONOUNS

Most pronouns are declined by number, case and gender.

In the plural form most pronouns have only one form for all genders.

Germanic pronouns reserve the dual form (which is specifically for talking about groups of two things, eg "we two" or "you two»).

There were such classes of Pronouns as personal, interrogative, indicative and reflexive in some languages. They had the same categories as Nouns.

For example

1st person

     Sing./ Pl. /Dual

Nom. ic, íc/ Wé/ wit

Gen. mín/ Úre/ uncer

Dat. mé/ Ús/ unc

Acc. mec, mé/ úsic, ús/ uncit, unc

Many of the forms above bear strong resemblances to their contemporary English language equivalents: for instance in the genitive case eower became «your», ure became «our», min became «mine».

Вопрос 19

Numerals

Numerals were also a part of nominal group. They were divided into such types as cardinal and ordinal.

We can illustrate them by the examples from Old English: an, twegen, thrie, feower, fif, siex, seofon, eahta, nigon, tien, endleofan, twelf + 10 feower-tien; ty-+ tegund.

Some Numerals had the forms of cases – Nominative, Genitive and Dative.

In Gothic the word AINS (1) was declined as a strong Adjective. Numerals from 4 had no changes.

Ordinary numerals were derived from cardinals with the help of suffixes tjo-to.

The numeral FIRST derived from the preposition fore and got the form fyrst; the number SECOND derived from the word ander.

The cardinal numerals were declined as weak adjectives.

Вопрос 20

The main grammar categories of Germanic verbs were:

l Tense (Present and Past);

The Germanic verb system carried two innovations over the previous Proto-Indo-European verb system:

Simplification to two tenses: present (also conveying future meaning) and past (sometimes called "preterite" and conveying the meaning of all of the following English forms: "I did, I have done, I had done, I was doing, I have been doing, I had been doing").

Development of a new way of indicating the preterite and past participle, using a dental suffix.

l Person – the 1st, 2nd, 3rd   

l Number – Singular and Plural (+ Dual in Gothic);

l Voice – Active, Passive, (Medio-passive in Gothic);

l Mood – Indicative, Optative and Imperative.

l Non-Finite Forms – Infinitive and Participles.

Types of Verb

All verbs were divided into:

l Strong,

l Weak,

l Preterite-present,

l Atypical.

 

Вопрос 21

Strong verbs

Strong verbs use the Germanic form of conjugation(known as Ablaut). In this form of conjugation, the stem of the word changes to indicate the tense: “scriban - screib – scribum - giscrban."

The root portion of the word changes rather than its ending. In Old Germanic there were 7 major classes of strong verb; each class has its own pattern of stem changes.

Stem Changes in Strong Verbs

Class/Infinitive/1st Preterite/2nd Preterite/Past Participle

I i: writan a: wrat writon writen (E)

II e:o or u: krjupa e:a kraup U krupum O kr opinn (Icel.)

III e: Helpan e:a      healp

u: hulpon o: holpe n

IV E niman A nam A: nemum O numans

V E giefan Æ geaf æ: gaefon E giefen

VI A faran o: for o: forum A farans

VII –a(e) hatan e: or e:o het e: or e:o heton - a(e) haten

Вопрос 22

Weak verbs

Weak verbs are formed principally by adding endings to past and participles.

There were only 3 classes of weak verbs:

1) –j- stem – nerian – nerede – nered;

2) - o- stem – endian – endode – endod;

3) – ai– stem – habban – haefde – haefd

4) na/no fulls – fullnan gafullan (Goth).

 In Gothic there were 4 classes of weak verbs.

Preterit e -Present Verbs

were a very ancient group. Their root of the present form derived from the Past form, and the Past tense was formed by means of the dental suffix –D (-T).

Examples:

  sculan – skal – skulda (shall); magan – maeg – meahta (may); cunnan – cann, cuthe (can) etc

Kunnum – kuntha - kunthedjau (Goth)

Atypical Verbs

Additionally there is a group of four verbs which are anomalous, the verbs " will", "do", "go" and "be".

They have their own conjugation schemes to make them as distinct as possible, to reduce the possibility that a listener will mishear the word.

wesan (to be) - has got only the Present tense forms, uses the verb béon in the Past

gán (to go)

Pres.                            Past

Sg.1 gá                 -           éode

 2 gæ'st                       éodest    

 3 gæ'þ             -      éode

dón (to do)

 Pres.                    Past

Sg. 1 dó        -     dyde

    2 dést } dó - dydest  } dyde

   3 déþ        -     dyde

Вопрос 23

The Verbals included Infinitive, Participle 1 and Participle 2. Infinitive originated from Verbal Nouns just naming the action but not showing its characteristics. It included an Indo-European suffix –N- e.g.- berenne, etannne (Dative case). It used to be declined as a Noun.

Participle

Participle 1 was formed from the present stem by means of suffix -ND

– e.g. berende; Goth. nasjands (saving).

Participle 2 had suffix –D or N

– e.g. boren; Goth nasiths (saved).

Participle 1 denoted action. Participle 2 of transitive verbs had passive meaning, non-transitive – active meaning. They were used in descriptive verb constructions.

 

 

Вопрос 24

Celtic loanwords

The number of Celtic loans is of a much lower order than ei-ther Latin or Scandinavian. Most are names of geographical features, espe-cially rivers.

Вопрос 28

Linguists reconstructed a family tree for the Germanic languages. It has three main groups:

· Eastern (now extinct and represented only by texts in Gothic)

· Northern (the Scandinavian languages)

· Western, which in turn has two main groups: German and Anglo-Frisian

 

Distribution of Germanic Languages

West Germanic

· English – about 443 Million Speakers (Great Britain, Ireland, The United States. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Philippines)

· German – 118 Million Speakers (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, parts of Alsace-Lorraine)

· Dutch (including Flemish) – 21 Million Speakers (Netherlands and Belgium)

· Afrikaans – 10 Million Speakers (South Africa)

· Yiddish – 5 Million Speakers (East and South Europe, the United States)

· Frisian - ½ Million Speakers (North Sea Coast-Holland to Schleswig-Holstein)

 

North Germanic

· Swedish – 9 M.Sp. (Sweden, Finland)

· Danish – 8 M.Sp. (Denmark)

· Norwegian – 5 M.Sp. (Norway)

· Icelandic – 251,000 Sp. (Iceland)

· Faeroese – 47,000 Sp. (Faeroes Islands)

 

East Germanic

· Gothic

· Vandalic

· Burgundian

· Rugian

· Heruler

 

Вопрос 29

A brief sketch of history of the English language Old English (500-1100 AD)

West Germanic invaders from Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles (whose name is the source of the words England and English), Saxons, and Jutes, began populating the British Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. The invaders pushed the original, Celtic-speaking inhabitants out of what is now England into Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland, leaving behind a few Celtic words.

The Norman Conquest and Middle English (1100-1500)

William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England and the Anglo-Saxons in 1066 AD. The new overlords spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman. This mixture of the languages is known as Middle English. The most famous example of Middle English is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The Middle English period came to a close around 1500 AD with the rise of Modern English.

Early Modern English (1500-1800)

The next wave of innovation in English came with the Renaissance. Words and phrases were coined or first recorded by Shakespeare, some 2,000 words. The last major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of the printing press. William Caxton brought the printing press to England in 1476. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the first English dictionary was published in 1604.

Late-Modern English (1800-Present)

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. The second was the British Empire. Finally, the 20th century saw two world wars, and the military influence on the language during the latter half of this century has been great.

Вопрос 30

It is a Germanic language known to us by a translation of the Bible dating from the 4th century. The language is Germanic but has major differences from other known Germanic languages.

Geographically Goths were originally located in Southern Scandinavia, in the 3rd century AD moved to Europe and settled on the territory of modern Romania, Bulgaria, later Ukraine.

After dividing into two main parts: Ostrogoths and Wisigoths, the former settled in Italy, the latter moved to Spain and Southern France.

It is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable corpus; the others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names.

Gothic is important for the understanding of the evolution of Proto-Germanic into Old Norse. For instance, the final -n in North Germanic languages, such as navn and namn (name) is explained by referring to Gothic in which namo had its plural genitive namne. Sometimes, Gothic explains forms of words found on the oldest runestones.

A rather archaic phonetic system: Germanic stops were preserved here together with their specific fricative allophones; the Common Germanic *e also remained in Gothic, though disappeared in all other Germanic languages. Vowel mutations are exceedingly frequent in morphology. The Verner's Law is absent in Gothic.

Gothic contains no morphological umlaut. Gothic retains a passive voice inherited from Indo-European, but unattested in all other Germanic languages. Gothic preserves several verbs that display reduplication (haitan, "to be called" > haihait) in the formation of the preterit; it had dual number in pronouns and Verbs.

Lexicon. Though the sources of the Gothic language are rather scarce, there are a great lot of archaic terms which make the language most useful for comparative studies.

 

 

 

 

 

Special Philology, its Subject and tasks

Special philology (Greek phileo, logos) is one of the subjects which establishes the back-ground of a specialist in philology. It used to be understood as a science studying all types of not only texts but also material remnants. Philology as a science appeared in antiquity in order to explain old texts, later its tasks and notions have been changed.

Now it is defined as a common name of subjects studying languages, literatures, and culture with the help of texts of literature, history etc.

Our branch of special philology is Germanic philology because the English language is a representative of the Germanic group of the Indo-European family of languages.

The SUBJECT MATTER of Germanic philology:

l it studies the languages of the Germanic group:

l  their origin, development and structure,

l  mutual connections, common laws,

l tendencies of development

l interconnections with the languages of other groups.

Its main tasks are to explain modern state of Germanic languages and to reconstruct their ancient forms. Modern state can’t be explained without studying ancient situation.

Special philology is connected with other sciences:

l general linguistics,

l  comparative linguistics,

l dialects, linguistic geography;

l history, archaeology, ethnography,

l history of art, religion etc. 

It is divided into German philology, English, Scandinavian etc. It gives the basis to study the history of the language, theoretical grammar, lexicology etc.

Вопрос 2