The old Germanic langs, their classification and principal features
OLD GERMANIC:
§ East-germanic (Gothic, Vandalic, Burgudean)
§ North-germanic (O. Norwegian, O. Fareese, 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 Gothic Gostel is considered to be the first written text connected with Germanic languages and other European languages.
The first group is dead, but vandalic had similar features with Spanish and burgudean with French.
The second group (north-germanic) – was not until the 10th cent, it was called “old Norse” (древне северный). After the 10th cent. North split into O. Norwegian, O. Danish, O. Swedish, O. Icelandic. Historically the most important is O. Icelandic:
1. it had the largest body of written records, dated back to 12-13 cent. (the Elder Edda, the Younger Edda, numerous sagas).
2. Icelandic had retained a more archaic grammar and vocabulary than many other G. Lang.
The third group (west-germanic) consists of 5 members:
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, work – worked.
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.
Proto-Germanic is the ancestor: it’s supposed to have split from related IE tongues sometime between 15-10th 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.
The common features of Germanic langs
All the Germanic Languages of the past and present have common linguistic features that are not shared by other groups of languages in the Indo-European family (Slavonic group, Romance group, etc.). These features are characteristic of the Germanic group only. They appeared during the period of the Proto-Germanм ic Language, before it split into a certain number of the Germanic languages. First of all we are going to discuss the common Germanic phonetic features: W ord Stress/Accent: Indo-European(Non-Germanic) 1. free stress (movable, i.e. can appear in any part of a word (root, prefix, suffix)); 2. pitch stress (musical)E.g.:русский б`елый
Proto-Germanic 1. fixed stress (can’t move either in form- or word-building and is usually placed on root or prefix); 2. dynamic stress (force, breath stress) E.g.: English `white
The Proto-Germanic type of stress led to the formation of the following peculiarities of the Germanic languages as compared to non-Germanic Indo-European languages: phonetic – as a result of the fixed position of the stress the unstressed syllables were becoming weaker and weaker, they got less distinct and neutral sounds (such as “schwa”) appeared; morphological – as a result of the fact that the stress was fixed on the root and the syllables following the root were always unstressed and weak, many Germanic languages began to lose suffixes and grammatical endings and became ANALYTICAL LANGS. Vowels: Vowelsundergo(подверглись) different types of changes: Qualitative change – affects the quality of a sound (e.g. [o à Λ]). Quantitative change – affects the length of a sound (e.g. [i à i:]). Dependent/positional change – a change that occurs in certain position or in certain phonetic conditions. Independent/spontaneous change – affects a certain sound in all positions irrespective (независимо) of phonetic conditions and serves to distinguish a grammatical phenomenon (ablaut). Main tendencies in Vowel Changes in the Germanic Languages: Short vowels à become neutralized. Long vowels à become short and more open. à become diphthongized and more closed.
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:
1. IE plosive (stops) p, t, k correspond to G voiceless fricatives f, Ө, h. Eg: пламя – flame, пена – foam, колода – holt.
2. IE voiced plosives b, d, g, →G voiceless fricatives p, t, k. Eg: яблоко - apple, дерево – tree, ego(lat) – ic (OE).
3. 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;. II consonant shift occurred in dialects of southern germanic. Eg: еда – eat – essen.
i-mutation (unmlaut) is a change of vowel caused by partial assimilation to the following vowel. Includes fronting & narrowing. Brought a complete change in vowel quality: one phoneme is replaced by another. The process began in the 5th or 6th c. As a result of it a new phoneme arose which was different from the original one. Interchanges in the root vowels are connected with this phenomenon. Traces of palatal mutation are preserved in many modern words & forms: mouse-mice.
3. The chronological division of the history of English. General characteristics of each period.
The division of the History of English into periods is based on 2 principles.
1. extra linguistic – cardinal changes in the history of people.
2. linguistic proper – cardinal changes in the structure and status of the language itself.
Roughly covers 12 centuries. It’s divided into 3 periods. The traditional division is based on the phonetics and grammatical principles (Henry Sweet)
1. Old English (500 – 1100) – no reduction of inflexion.
A. Early OE (prewritten OE) from 450 – 700.
B. OE (written OE) 700 – 1066.
2. Middle English (1100 – 1500) – reduced inflexions, unstressed endings.
a. Early ME 1066 – 1350
b. ME (classical) 1350 - 1475
3. Modern English (1500 -...) loss of inflexion.
A. Early New English 1476 – 1660
B. Normalization Period 1660 – 1800 (age of correctness, Neo-Classical period)
C. Late NE/Mod E (including 1800 – present day English)
OE was spoken on a small territory and number of speakers was ≈ 1 mln. There were 4 dialects of OE language. The tribal dialects gradually changed into local or regional dialects(Written OE).
OE was a typical OG l-ge, with a purely G vocab. and few foreign borrowings it displays specific phonetics pecularities; well-developed system of morphological categories.
In ME the nominal system was much simpler (2 tense forms), word order was not fixed. Early ME was a time of great changes at all the levels of the l-ge especially in grammar and lexis. Most of the inflections in the nominal s-m were fallen together. H.Sweet called ME the period of “levelled endings”.
