The Germanic langs in the modern world, their classification. Their common ancestor.

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.

Proto-Germanic is the ancestor: it’s supposed to have split from related IE tongues sometime between 15-10^th cent BC.

Later it broke:

1. East Germanic;

2. North Germanic;

3. West Germanic.

EG was formed by the tribes who returned from Scandinavia → Gothic that’s dead now and this subgroup has no living languages. NG WG

Consonant changes in the history of English

The Development of Consonant System in ME and NE: English consonants proved to be more stable than vowels. Nevertheless, new sets of consonants started to appear.

Sibilants and Affricates: Sibilants – a type of fricatives, narrower and sharper than all other fricatives ([f, v, q, ð, h]) – [s, z, ∫, ζ]. Affricates – sounds consisting of a plosive immediately followed by a fricative – [t∫, dζ]. In OE there were only 2 sibilants – [s, z]. [∫] appeared in ME and [ζ] – in NE. Affricates [t∫, dζ] appeared both in ME and in NE. M E: New consonants developed from palatal plosives [k’], [g’] and the cluster [sk’]:

OE Sounds ME Sounds In Writing

[k’] à [t∫] tch, ch

[g’] à [dζ] g, dg

[sk’] à [∫] sh, ssh, sch

ME Sounds	NE Sounds
[sj] à	[∫]
[zj] à	[ζ]
[tj] à	[t∫]
[dj] à	[dζ]

NE: Palatalisation – as a result of reduction of unstressed vowels several consonants merged into one:

 

There were some exceptions though, e.g. mature, duty, due, suit, statue, tune, etc. Fricatives

Voicing – occurredin the 16^th c. (NE) to fricatives: 1) in functional words and auxiliaries that are never stressed; 2)when preceded by an unstressed and followed by a stressed vowel.

Loss of Some Consonants: In NE some consonants were vocalised or gave birth to diphthongs and triphthongs. 1) [r] was vocalised at the end of the word in the 16^th -17^th c. (see Lecture 11); 2) [j] disappeared as a result of palatalisation (see palatalisation in Lecture 12); [j] remained only initially (e.g. year, yard, etc.); 3) [х, х’] were lost (e.g. ME taughte [‘tau х tə] – NE taught [to:t], ME night [ni х’ t] – NE night [neit]; 4) [kn] à [n] (e.g. ME know [knou] – NE know [nou]); 5) [gn] à [n] (e.g. ME gnat [gnat] – NE gnat [næt]);

Vocalisation of [r]: It occurred in the 16^th – 17^th c. Sound [r] became vocalised (changed to [ə] (schwa)) when stood after vowels at the end of the word. Consequences: 1)new diphthongs appeared: [εə], [iə], [uə]; 2)the vowels before [r] were lengthened (e.g. arm [a:m], for [fo:], etc.); 3) triphthongs appeared: [aiə], [auə] (e.g. shower [‘∫auə], shire [‘∫aiə]).

Grimm’s law: The first Germanic consonant shifts took place in the V-II cent. BC. Jacobs Grimm’s Law. According to Grimm, he classified consonant correspondences between indoeuropean and germanic languages. There are 3 acts of this law:

4. IE plosive (stops) p, t, k correspond to G voiceless fricatives f, Ө, h. Eg: пламя – flame, пена – foam, колода – holt.

5. IE voiced plosives b, d, g, →G voiceless fricatives p, t, k. Eg: яблоко - apple, дерево – tree, ego(lat) – ic (OE).

6. IE aspirated voiced plosives bh, dh, gh →to voiced plosives without aspiration. Eg: bhrāta(sanscr.) – brother, rudhira – red, ghostis – guest.

The second consonant shift was Carl Verner’s law. According to C.Verner all the common Germanic consonants became voiced in intervocalic position if the preceding vowel was unstressed. p-f > v t-Ө > đ, d k-x > j, g

s-s > z/r Devoicing took place in early common germanic when the stress was not yet fixed on the root. A variety of Verner’s law is rhotacism (greek letter rho). [s] →[z]→[r] we find traces of this phenomenon in form of the verb to be →was – were, is – are; ist – sind – war. II consonant shift occurred in dialects of southern germanic. Eg: еда – eat – essen.

 

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).

 

The simplification of the noun declension in English

Most changes occurred to the Noun in ME. System of Declensions: In ME the declensions disappeared due to the reduction of endings. As far as the Case endings were reduced to one or two, there remained no distinction between the Case forms of different declensions and there was no necessity any more to distinguish these declensions.

Gender: The Gender in OE was not supported semantically. It was only a classifying feature for the declensions and as far as the declensions disappeared there was no necessity to preserve the Gender. It disappeared by the 11^th – 12^th c.

Number: The quantity of the Number endings was also reduced as far as the declensions disappeared. The markers of the Plural became more uniform (-s, -en, root-sound interchange). The preference of the consonantal endings can be explained by the fact that the vowels were more apt to change and reduction then the consonants that in general proved to be more stable.

Case: The Case system was contracted in ME due to the reduction of endings. As far as the Case endings were reduced to one or two, there remained no distinction between the Case forms and there was no necessity any more to distinguish 4 Cases. (Common, Genitive (Possessive))

Causes for Decay of Case System: 1) Influence of the Scandinavian Dialects that were grammatically simpler in comparison with OE Dialects and this influence led to the minimization of grammar. 2) Phonetic reduction of final unstressed syllables (inflections). Consequences of Case System Decay: 1) The number of prepositions started to grow to help to replace the former Case forms. 2)As far as there was no distinctions between the Cases, the distinction between the Subject and the Object of a sentence was lost à fixed word order appeared (The Subject almost always took the first place and was followed by the Object).

 

 

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 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.

Proto-Germanic is the ancestor: it’s supposed to have split from related IE tongues sometime between 15-10^th cent BC.

Later it broke:

1. East Germanic;

2. North Germanic;

3. West Germanic.

EG was formed by the tribes who returned from Scandinavia → Gothic that’s dead now and this subgroup has no living languages. NG WG