West Germanic

West Germanic tribes dwelt in the lowlands between the Oder and the Elbe. They spoke Old High German (8^th c.), Old English (7^th c.), Old Saxon (9^th c.), Old Dutch (12^th c.)

Linguistic Peculiarities of Germanic Languages

Word Stress

In ancient IE the position of the stress was free and movable, it could fall on any syllable of the word. It could be shifted (e.g. R. домом, дома, дома). In early PG word stress was still movable but in late PG its position in the word was stabilized. The stress was fixed on the first syllable, other syllables - suffixes and endings – were unstressed. The stress was no longer movable. In Modern English there is a sharp contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables. The main stress falls on the root-morpheme and is never shifted in building grammatical forms:

Be'come be'coming over'come

The fixing of word stress played a very important role in the development of the Germanic languages. Unstressed syllables were phonetically weakened and lost. This weakening affected mostly suffixes and endings. Many suffixes merged with endings, they were weakened and dropped.

PG * fiskaz

Gt fisks

OIcl fiskr

OE fisc

The Germanic Vowel Shift

Throughout history vowels showed a strong tendency to change. They underwent

· qualitative change

· quantitative change

· dependent change

· independent change

IE short [o] > in Germanic more open [a] and in PG they merge into [o].

R. могу, мочь OE maZan, mxZ