2015-10-22
2926
Е. О. Кущ
ТЕКСТИ (конспект) лекцій з дисципліни
Історія англійської мови. Протогерманський
та давньоанглійський періоди.
для студентів спеціальності 6.030500 “Філологія”
Тексти (конспект) лекцій з дисципліни “Історія англійської мови. Протогерманський та давньоанглійський періоди” для студентів усіх форм навчання спеціальності 6.030500 “Філологія” /Укл.: доцент, к.філ.н., Е.О. Кущ. - Запоріжжя: ЗНТУ, 2013. – 60 с.
Укладач: Е.О. Кущ, доцент, к.філ.н.
Рецензент: Г.Б. Підгорна, доцент, к.філ.н.
Відповідальний
за випуск: Е.О. Кущ, доцент, к.філ.н.
Затверджено
на засіданні кафедри “Теорії і практики перекладу”
Протокол № 2
від “18” вересня 2013 р.
CONTENTS
1. Theoretical Aspects and Sources of the History of English Classification of Indo-European and Germanic Languages…………………4
2. The Earliest Period of Germanic History. Classification
of Ancient Germanic Tribes. Alphabets and Written Records
of Germanic Tribes.........................................................................................8
3. Linguistic Features of Germanic Languages. Phonetic
Pecularities of Germanic Languages……………………………………….13
4. Basic Grammatical Features of Germanic Languages.
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Principal Features of Germanic Vocabulary……………………………….17
5. Periods in the History of the English Language………………….20
6. Old English Period. Historical Background. Germanic Settlement
of Britain. Old English Dialects. Written Records and Manuscripts……....25
7. Old EnglishPhonology…………………………………….28
8. Old English Morphology. Old English Nouns………………...31
9. Old English Pronouns……………………………………………43
10 Old English Adjectives……………………………………45
11. Morphological Classification of Old English Verbs …………...46
12. Old English Vocabulary. Etymological composition……………47
13. Word-building in Old English…………………………………...52
14. Principal Features of Old English Syntax…..…………………..57
1. Theoretical Aspects and Sources of the History of English. Classification of Indo-European and Germanic Languages
A language can be considered from different angles. In studying Modern English we regard the language as fixed in time and describe each linguistic level synchronically, taking no account of the origin of present-day features or their tendencies to change. It has long been recognised that a living language can never be absolutely static. It develops together with the speech community, that is, with the people who speak it. That is why the synchronic approach should be contrasted to the diachronic. When considered diachronically, every linguistic fact is interpreted as a stage or step in the never-ending evolution of language.
The evolution or historical development of language is made up of diverse facts and processes. In the first place it includes the ‘internal’ or structural development of the language system, its various subsystems and component parts. The description of internal linguistic history is usually presented in accordance with the division of language into linguistic levels. The main commonly accepted levels are: the phonetic and phonological levels, the morphological level, the lexical level, the syntactical level.
The evolution of language includes also many facts which pertain to the functioning of language in the speech community. These functional aspects contribute what is known as the ‘external’ history of the language and embrace a large number of the matters: the spread of the language in geographical and social space, differentiation of language into functional varieties (geographical variants, dialects, standard and subsandard forms, etc.), contacts with other languages, the migration of tribes, economic and political events, the growth of culture and literature. Unlike human society, language undergoes no revolutions or sudden breaks. The slow rate of linguistuc change is seen in the gradual spread of new features in language space.
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Some factors and causes of language evolution are confined to a ceratin group of languages or to one language only and may operate over a limited span of time. These specific factors are trends of evolution characteristic of separate languages or linguistic groups, which distinguish them from other languages. Since English belongs to the Germanic group of languages, it shares many Germanic trends of development with cognate languages. These trends were caused by common Germanic factors but were transformed and modified in the history of English, and were combined with other trends caused by specifically English internal and external factors. The combination of all these factors and the resulting course of evolution is unique for every language; it accounts for its individual history which is never repeated by other languages. Thus English, like other Germanic languages, displayed a tendency towards a more analytical grammatical structure, but it has gone further along this way of development than most other languages, probably owing to the peculiar combination of internal and external conditions and interaction of changes at different linguistic levels.
The Germanic languages in the modern world are as follows:
English – in Great Britain, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the South African Republic, India and many other former British colonies and dominions;
German – in Germany, Austria, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, part of Switzerland;
Netherlandish – in the Nertherlands and Belgium;
Afrikaans – in the South African Republic;
Danish – in Demnark;
Swedish – in Sweden and Finland;
Norwegian – in Norway;
Icelandic – in Iceland;
Frisian – in some regions of the Nertherlands and Germany;
Faroese – in the Faroe islands;
Yiddish – in different countries.
It is difficult to estimate the number of people speaking Germanic languages, especially on account of English, which in many countries is one of two languages in a bilingual community, e.g. in Canada. The estimates for English range from 250 to 300 million people who have it as their mother tongue. The total number of speaking Germanic languages approaches 440 billion. To this rough estimate we could add an indefinite number of billingual people in the countries where English is used as an official language (over 50 countries).
Al the Germanic languages are related through their common origin and joint development at the early stages of history. The survey of their external will show where and when the Germanic languages arose and acquired their common features and also how they have developed in independent languages.
The history of the English language has been reconstructed on the basis of written records of different periods. The earliest extant written texts in English are dated back to the 7 th century, the earliest records in other Germanic languages go back to the 3rd or 4th century A.D. The development of English, however, began a long time before it was first recorded. In order to say where the English language came from, to what languages it is related, when and how it was acquired its specific features, one must get acquainted with of the prewritten history of the Germanic tribes. Certain information about the early stages of English and Germanic history is to be found in the works of ancient historians and geographers, especially Roman. They contain descriptions of Germanic tribes, personal names and place names. Some data are also provided by early borrowings from Germanic made by other languages. But the bulk of our knowledge comes from scientific study of extant texts.
Genetically, English belongs to the Germanic or Teutonic group of languages. Germanic group is one of the first major group of the Indo-European linguistic family, which consists of Indian, Iranian, Baltic, Slavonic, Germanic, Romanic, Celtic, Greek, Albanian, Armenian as well as Hettish and Tokharian languages. Germanic branch of Indo-European family of languages contains three subbranches: East Germanic, North Germanic, West Germanic.
The East Germanic subgroup contains dead languages: Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic. Goths were the first tribes who returned from Scandinavia at the beginning of our era. They left the coast of the Baltic Sea and started on their great migrations. The Goths were the first of the Teutons to become Christian. In the 4th century Ulfilas, a West Gothic bishop, made a translation of the Gospels from Greek into Gothic. This was the Silver Codex, one of the earliest texts in the languages of the Germanic group. This document throws light on the pre-written stages of history of all the languages of the Germanic group, incuding English. The other East Germanic languages have left no written traces.
The Teutons who stayed in Scandinavia after the departure of the Goths gave rise to the North Germanic subgroup of languages. This subgroup contains dead and modern languages: Old Norse or Old Scandinavian (2-nd - 3-rd c.), Old Icelandic (12th c.), Old Norwegian (13th c.), Old Danish (13th c), Old Swedish (13th c.) as well as Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Faroese.
Around the beginning of our era the would-be West Germanic tribes dwelt between the Order and the Elbe. The dialectal differention of West German was quite distinct even at the beginning of our era. On the eve of their great migrations of the 4th and 5 th centuries the West Germans included different tribes, who speak Anglian, Frisian, Saxon, Jutish, Franconian, High German. The High German dialects consolidated into a common language known as Old High German. The first written records in Old High German date from the 8th and 9th centuries. Towards the 12 th century High German had intermixed with neighbouring languages and eventually developed into the literary German language.
At the later stage of the great migration period – in the 5 th century – a group of West Germanic tribes started out on their invasion of the British Isles. Their dialects in the British Isles developed into the English language.
The following table shows the classification of old and modern Germanic languages.
Table 1
Germanic Languages
| East Germanic | North Germanic | West Germanic | |
| Old Germanic languages (with dates of the earliest records) | Gothic (4 th c.) Vandalic Burgundian | Old Norse or Old Scandinavian (2-nd - 3-rd c.), Old Icelandic (12th c.), Old Norwegian (13th c.), Old Danish (13th c), Old Swedish (13th c.) | Anglian, Frisian, Saxon, Jutish, Franconian, High German, Old English (7 th c.), Old Saxon (9 th c.), Old High German (8 th c.), Old Dutch (12 th c.) |
| Modern Germanic languages | No living languages | Icelandic Norwegian Danish Swedish Faroese | English German Netherlandish Afrikaans Yiddish Frisian |
2. The Earliest Period of Germanic History. Classification of Ancient Germanic Tribes. Alphabets and Written Records of Germanic Tribes
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The History of the Germanic group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic (PG) language. PG is the linguistic ancestor of the parent-language of the Germanic group. It is supposed to have split from related IE lanuages sometime between the 15th and 10th c B.C. The would-be Germanic tribes belonged to the western division of the IE speech community. As the Indo-Europeans extended over a lаrger territory, the ancient Germans or Teutons moved and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in the region of Elbe a few hundred years before our era. This place is regarded as the most probable original home of the Teutons. It is here that they developed their first specifically Germanic linguistic features which made them a separate group in the IE family.
Our knowledge of the ancient Teutons is based on testimonies by Greek and Roman writes, who. The first mention about them was made by Pytheas from Massilia, a Greek historian and geographer of the 4th c. B.C., in an account of a sea voyage to the Baltic Sea. His work has not come doen to us; only a few fragments have been preserved by the Greek geographer Strabo (63 B.C. – 20 A.D.), the author of a large work ‘Geography’ (chapter ‘Teutons and Guttons’), and by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.)
In the 1st c. B.C. in ‘Commentaries on the Gallic War’ Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.) described some militant Germanic tribes – the Suevians – who bordered on the Celts of Gaul in the North-East. Caesar statement that the Germans lived in tribes and tribal unions is of great value for the historians. The tribal names Germans and Teutons, at first applied to separate tribes, were later extended to the entire group.
About a century later Pliny the Elder wrote about the Teutons in his great work ‘Natural History’. He gave a classification of Germanic tribes which has been basically accepted by modern historians. According to Pliny Germanic tribes in the 1st century A.D. consisted of the following groups:
1. the Vindili (the Goths, the Burgundians, the Vandals) – eastern Germanic tribes, who inhabited the eastern part of Germanic territory;
2. the Ingvaeones – western Germanic tribes, inhabited the north-western part of Germanic territory – the shores of the Northern Sea, including what is now Netherlands;
3. the Iscaveones (the Franks who eventually conquered Gaul and others) – western Germanic tribes, who occupied the western part of Germanic territory on the Rhine;
4. the Hermiones or the Herminones – western Germanic tribes, who inhabited southern part of Germanic territory (now southern Germany);
5. the Peucini and Bastrnae – eastern Germanic tribes, who live close to what is now Romania;
6. the Hilleviones – northern Germanic tribes,, who inhabited Scandinavia.
Germanic tribes were also mentioned by the great Roman historian Tacitus Cornelius (55-120 A.D). In his short work ‘Germania’ Tacitus characterized the social structure of the Old Germanic tribes around 100 A.D. The historian’s worj contains Pliny’s classification. Tacitus’ results were widely used by Friendrich Engles in his work ‘On the History of Ancient Germans’. Quoting Pliny’s classification of Germanic tribes. Engels introduced one amendment. He pointed out that group 5 (the Peucini and Bastarnae) should be included into group 1, just as they also lived in the east and Pliny didn’t denote it by a generalizing term, but merely gave the names of tribes which made it up. The following classification of the Germanic tribes was accepted: the Vindili - eastern Germanic tribes; the Ingvaeones, the Istaevones, the Herminones – western Germanic tribes; Hilleviones – northern Germanic tribes. In due course these groups split into separate subgroups.
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Eastern Germanic group of tribes was made of Goths, Visigoths (western Goths) and Ostrogoth (eastern Goths). Around 200 A.D. they moved south-east and some time later reached the lower basin of the Danube where they made attacks on the eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium. Their western branch the Visigoths invaded Roman territory, participated in the assault on Rome, moved on to southern Gaul and found the first barbarian kingdom – the Toulouse kingdom. It had being existed till the eight century and was absorbed by native population – Romanized Celts. Eastern Goths (Ostrogoths) consolidated into a powerful tribal alliance in the lower basin of the Dniester and set up a kingdom in Northern Italy with Ravenia as its capital. In the 5th c. their kingdom disappered.
The Northern Germanic tribes lived in the southern coast of the Scandinavian peninsula and in Northern Denmark. They didn’t participate in migrations and were relatively isolated, though they they came into contacts with the western tribes after the Goths left the coast of the Baltic Sea. Their dialectical variation was little and old Scandinavian came down to us in runic inscriptions dated from the 3rd to the 9th c. After the 9th c. the Scandinavian started out on their sea voyage. The famous Viking age from about 800 to 1050 A.D. is the legendary age of Scandinavians raids and expansion overseas t the same period. Due to overpopulation they spread over inner Scandinavia.
West Germanic tribes dwelt in lowlands between the Oder and the Elbe bordering on the Slavonian tribes in the East and the Celtic tribes in the south. Under the pressure of Goths they went to the south and to the east. In the 4th and 5th century there were several tribes: the Franks, the High Germans, the Low Germans, the Angles and the Frisians, the Jutes, the Saxons. The Franks lived in the lower basin of the Rhine. In early Middle Ages they consolidated into a powerful tribal alliance. Towards the 8th c. their kingdom grew into one of the largest states in Western Europe. In 768-814 it embraced France and half of Italy and stretched up to the North and Baltic sea. Their empire broke into parts in the 9th c.The High German group of tribes didn’t go far in their migration. They lived in the mountanious southern region of Germany and expanded only to the east. Low Germans inhabited low-lying northern areas of Germany.
The Angles and the Frisians (the Anglo-Frisian group), the Jutes and Saxons inhabited the coastal area of the modern Nertherland, Germany and southern part of Denmark. In the 5th c. started out on their invasion of the British Isles. The invaders came from the lowlands near the North Sea: the Angles, part of the Saxon and the Frisian, and, probably, the Jutes. The Frisian and the Saxon didn’t take part in the invasion stayed on the continent. The area of Frisian which at one extended over the entirecoast of the North sea was reduced under the pressure of Low German tribes.
The ancient Germanic tribes used three different alphabets for their writings. These alphabets partly suceeded each other in time. The most ancient one was runic alphabet. The word rune originally meant ‘secret’, ‘mystery’ and hence came to denote inscriptions believed to be magic. The runic alphabet is a specifically Germanic alphabet, not to be found in languages of other groups.
Runes have a very peculiar look for eyes accustomed to modern European alphabets. The letters (runes) are angular; straight lines are preferred, curved lines avoided. For example the rune denoting the vowel e was Μ, the rune denoting the consonant s was Ѱ. Horizontal lines didn’t exist in this alphabet. They were substituted by broken lines. This is due to the fact that runic inscriptions were cut in hard material: stone, bone or wood. To this day the origin of runes is a matter of conjecture. Some scholars believe that it was derived either from Latin alphabet or from some other Italic alphabet close to the Latin.
Just when and where the Runic alphabet was created is not known. It is supposed that it originated at some time in the 2nd and 3rd century A.D., somewhere on the Rhine or the Danube, where Germanic tribes came into contact with Roman culture. The Runic alphabet was used by different Germanic tribes: Goths, Anglo-Sacons and Scandinavians. There are runic inscriptions on the Golden horn which was found in Denmark. The two best known runic inscriptions are the earliest ectant OE written records. One of them is an inscription on a box called “Franks Casket”, the other is a short text on a stone cross near the village of Ruthwell known as the “Ruthwell Cross”. The Franks Casket was discoivered in the early years of the 19th c. in France and was presented to the British Museum by a British archeologist A.W.Franks.The Ruthwell Cross is a 15 ft tall stone cross inscribed and ornamented on all sides. The principal inscription has been reconstructed into a passage from an OE religious poem “the Dream of the Rood”, which was also found in another version in a later manuscript. A lot of runic inscriptions were also found on movable objects: hemlets, rings, amulets, coins, etc.Eventually the Runic alphabet underwent changes with different Dermanic tribes: new letters were added, some of the original ones were dropped.It is customary, for this reason to distinguish between an older and a younger Runic alphabet.
Ulfila’s Gothic alphabet appeared in the 4th century. This is the alphabet of Ulfila’s Gothic translation of the Bible, a peculiar alphabet based on the Greek alphabet, with some admixture of Latin and Runic letters was created. It is known as the Silver Codex.
The latest alphabet to be used by Germanic tribes is the Latin alphabet. It is superseded both the Runic and the Gothic alphabet when a new technique of writing was introduced, namely that of spreading some colour or paint on a surface instead of cutting or engraving letters. The material used for witings was either parchment or papyrus. Introduction of the Latin alphabet accompanied the spread of Christianity and of Latin language Chrisitian religious texts. The Latin alphabet was certainly not adequate to represent all sounds of Germanic languages. That’s why letters and signs from runic alphabet were also used. Written records of Germanic tribes are given in the table 2:
Table 2
Written Records of Germanic Languages
| Manuscript | Period | Dialect |
| Silver Codex. Ulfilas’ translation of the Gospel | V-VI cc. | East Germanic: Gothic |
| Runic inscriptions (the Ruthwell Cross, the Franks | VIII c. | West Germanic: Northumbrian |
| The Insertions in Latin texts (“Bede’s Death Song Cadmon Hymn”) | VIII c. | |
| Anglo-Saxon Charters | VIII-IX cc. | West Germanic: Kentish, West Saxon, Mercian |
| The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles; King Alfred’s translation of Orosius World history with insertions | IX c. | West Germanic: West Saxon |
| King’s Alfred translation of Poper Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, a book of instructions for priest | IX c. | West Germanic: West Saxon |
| Beowulf, an epic of the VII or the VIII c., composed in Nothumbrian or Mercian dialect | X c. | West Germanic: West Saxon copy |
| Glosses to the Gospel | X-XI c. | West Germanic: West Saxon |
| The Elder Edda, a collection of heroic songs | XII c. | North Germanic: Old Icelandic |
| The Younger Edda; Shorri Sturluson’s prose text-book for poets | XIII c. | North Germanic: Old Icelandic |
3. Linguistic Features of Germanic Languages.
Phonetic Pecularities of Germanic Languages.
All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common features. Some are shared by other groups in the IE family, others are specifically Germanic. The Germanic group acquired their specific distinctive features after the separation of the ancient Germanic tribes from other IE tribes and prior to their further expnsion and disintegration that is during the period of the PG parent languages. These PG features inheruted by the descendant languages, represent the common features of the Germanic group. Other common features developed later, in the course of the individual histories of separate Germanic languages, as a result of similar tendencies arising from PG causes. On the other hand, many Germanic features transformed and even lost in later history.
The peculiar Germanic system of word accentuation is one of the most important distinguishing features of the group. In early PG stress was movable. But in late PG the stress was fixed on the first syllable, which was usually the root of the word and rarely the prefix. Germanic languages inherited this phonetic features. We can observe it in the folowing words:
English – beˈcome, beˈcoming, overˈcome; ˈlover, ˈloving, beˈloved;
German – ˈlieben, ˈliebe, geˈliebt.
The fixed strong word stress has played an important role in the development of the Germanic languages and especially in phometic and morphologivcal changes. Due to the difference in the force of articulation the stressed and unstressed sylables were pronounced with great distincness and precision, while unaccented became less distincted and were phonetically weakened. Unaccented sounds were weakened and lost. Since the stress was fixed on the root, the weakening and loss of sounds mainly affected the suffixes and grammatical endings. Many endings merged with the suffixes and lost, for example:
PG fiskaz, Gt fisks, O Icel fiskr, OE fisc.
As all gramatical endings were unaccented it was the start for the process of reduction which stoped only in the 15th c.
Germanic languages also have some peculiarities in the sphere of vowels sound, which distinguish them from other IE languages. Throughout history, beginnig with PG, vowels displayed a strong tendency to change. They underwent different kinds of alteration: qualitative and quantitative, dependent and independent. Qualitative changes affect the quality of the sound, e.g.: o>a. Quantitative changes make long sounds short or short sounds long, e.g.: [i>i:]. Dependent changes (also positional or combinative) are restricted to certain positions or phonetic conditions, for instance, a sound may change under the influence of the neighbouring sounds or in a certain type of a syllable. Independent changes (also spontatneous or regular) take place irrespectively of phonetic conditions, i.e. they affect a certain sound in all positions.
From an early date the treatment of vowels was determined by the nature of word stress. In accented syllables the oppositions between vowels were carefully maintained and new distinctive features were introduced, so that the number of stressed vowels grew. In unaccented positions the original contrasts between vowels were weakened or lost; the distinction of short and long vowels was neutralised so that by the age of writing the long vowels in unstressed syllables had been shortened. As for originally short vowels, they tend to be reduced to a neutral sound, losing their qualitative distinctions.
The contrast of short and long is supported by the different directions of their changes. While long vowels generally tended to become closer and to diphtongise, short vowels, on the contrary, often changed into more open sounds. IE short [o], [a] appear as short [a] in Germanic languages, e.g.: IE (Lat.) noctem – Germanic (Gothic) nahts; IE (Russian) ночь – Germanic Nacht. IE long [o:], [a:]appear as long [o:] in Germanic languages e.g.: IE (Latin) māter – OE mōdor, Latin flos – OE flōma. This process is known as the Germanic vowel shift.
The quality of a stressed vowel is in some cases dependent on a following sound. The earliest manifestation of this principle has been termed as fracture or breaking. Germanic fracture concerns two pairs of vowels: pairs e – i and u – o. IE e in the root syllable finds its counterpart in Germanic i, if it followed by i, j or the cluster ‘ nasal plus consonant’. Otherwise in Germanic languages e is observed in corresponding words, e.g.: Lat. medius – OE midde, ME middle; Lat. ventus – OE wind, Lat. edere – OE etan.
The change of IE e into Germanic i can be explained by assimilation of the sound under the influence of the i, j. Changes of IE e into Germanic i under the influence of the cluster ‘ nasal plus consonant’ haven’t got appropriate phonological interpretation yet.
An IE u finds its counterpart in Germanic u if it followed by u or the cluster ‘ nasal plus consonant’. Otherwise the IE u finds its counterpart in Germanic o, e.g.: Sanskr. sunus – OE sune; Lat. iugu – OE. ӡeoc (yoke).
The Gothic language has some other peculiarities. Every IE e becomes i in Gothic, and only before the consonants r, h, ђ it remains as e. Every IE u preserved as u in Gothic and only before r, h, ђ it changes into o, e.g.: Lat. sedere – Goth. sitan (sit).
A special kind of vowel alternation, which is usually called gradtion or ablaut is not a specific feature of the Germanic languages. It was inherited by Germanic languages from ancient IE. The origin of gradation has n’t reflect any phonetic changes but was used as a special independent device to differentiate between words and grammatical forms built from the same root. Vowel gradation is found in the process of the today’s irregular verbs formation in English. It is observed in Russian: нести – ноша, гремит – гром, etc. Gradation is clearly seen in ancient Greek, more especially in conjugation: leipo (I leave) – elipon (past definite) – leloipa (perfect). So the root of the verb appears in three variants, distinguished by gradation: lip-leip-loip. Gradation is an independent vowel interchange unconnected with any phonetic conditions.
The principal gradation series used in the IE languages are qualitative gradation, when vowels differ only in quality (везу-воз) and quantitative one, that is interchange of short, long, zero vowels (Lat. lēgi – lego). The Germanic languages employed both types of ablaut – qualitative and quantitave and their combination, e.g.: Goth. itan – at (qualit.), can – cnawan (quant.), faran – fōr (qual.-quant). The system of gradation in Germanic languages is best seen in the so-called strong verbs of the Gothic languages: reisan – rise – rais – risum – risans (i: – ai – i – i), etc. Gradation occurs not only in root, but also in some grammatical endings of nouns and verbs.
After the changes, in Late PG, the vowel system contained the following sounds: short vowels i,e,a,o,u and long vowels i:, e:. a:, o:, u:. It is believed that in additionto these monophtongs PG had a set of dipthongs made up of more open nulei and closer glided ei, ai, eu, au and also iu. Nowadays, however, many scholars interpret them as sequences of twon independent monophtongs.
An essential feature of Germanic languages is their consonantial system. Germanic consonants are differentiated according to the place and manner of articulation. According to the place of articulation they are subdivided into labial (p, b,f), labio-dental (t, d, ƀ ) back-lingual pure (k, g, h) and back-lingual labio velar kʷ, gʷ, hʷ. According to the manner of articulation they can be noise and sonorants. Noise are plosives subdivided into voiced (b, d, g, gʷ), voiceless (p, t, k, kʷ) and fricatives subdivided into voiced (ƀ, v g, j, gʷ) and voiceless (f, þ, h, hʷ, s). Sonorants are j, w, n, l, m, n.
Comparison with other languages within the IE family reveals regular correspondence between Germanic and non-Germanic consonants. The consonants of Germanic look ‘shifted’ as compared with the consonants of non-Germanic alnguages. The alteration of the consonants took place in PG, and the resulting sounds were inherited by the languages of the Germanic group.
The changes of consonants in PG were first formulated in terms of a phonetic law by Jacob Grimm in the early 19th c. and are often called Grimm’s law. It is also known as the First or Proto-Germanic consonant shift (to be distinguished from the 2nd which took place in OHG in the 9th c.) By the terms of Grimm’s Law voiceless plosives p, t, k developed in PG into voiceless fricatives f, h, ƥ (Act I); IE voiced plosives b, d, g were shifted to voiceless plosives p, t, k (Act II) and IE voiced aspirated plosives bh, dh, gh were reflected as pure voiced plosives b, d, g (Act III), e.g.: Lat. pater –Goth. fadar, Lat. tres – Angl three, Lat. noctem – Goth. nahts (Act I); Rus. cлабый – Goth. slepan (sleep) Rus. болото – OE pol, ME pool, Lat. decem – OE tien, NE ten, Lat. granum – Goth. kaurn, ME corn (Act II); Sanscr. bhratar – OE broƥar, Sanscr. madhu – OE medu (honey), Lat. hostis – Goth. gast, O Ind vaha – Goth wiga (way) (Act III).
Another important series of consonant changes in PG was discovered in the late 19th by a Danish scholar Carl Verner. They are known as Verner’s law. Verner’s law explains some correspondences of consonants which seemed to contradict Grimm’s law and were for a long time regarded as exceptions. It refers to Act I. The voiceless plosives p, t, k became voiceless fricatives f, h, ƥ only in case unstressed vowels preceeded them. Otherwise they became voiced plosives b, d, g., e.g.: Lat. caput – O Sax habid, Greek deka – Goth tigus, O Ind matar – O Sax modru.
One more voiceless fricative consonant is affected by Verner’s law, the consonant s. Preceeded by the unstressed vowel it became voice and changed into z in Germanic languages. Eventually this z became r in Western and Northern Germanic languages (not in Gothic). The latter change z – r is called rhotacism, e.g.: Goth kiusan – OE curon (NE choose), Goth. hausjan – OE hieran (NE hear), Goth. was, wesum OE was, waron (was, were).
In the conjugation system one form may have its stress on one syllable, while another form of the same verb has it on another syllable. In this way alternations within the verbal system arise, which have been named grammatical alternation.
West-Germanic languages show a peculiar phenomenon in the sphere of consonants. Every consonant (with the single exception of r) is lenghtened if it preceded by a short vowel and followed by the consonant j, e.g.: Goth. satjan – OE settan (set), Goth. framian – OE fremman (fulfil). This process is known as West Germanic lenghtening of consonants or West Germanic gemination of consonants.
Another process peculiar to Germanic languages was the process of disappearing of nasal ŋ before voiceless fricatives f, h, ƥ, e.g.: Sanscr. ƥoŋh – O. Icel. ƥohrte (to think), Sanscr. bronhte – OE brōhte (brought).
4. Basic Grammatical Features of Germanic Languages.
Principal Features of Germanic Vocabulary.
Like other old IE languages both PG and OG languages had a synthetic grammatical structure, which means that the relationships between the parts of the sentence were shown by the forms of the words rather than by their position or auxiliary words. In later history all the Germanic languages developed analytical forms and ways of word connection. In the early periods of history the grammatical forms were built in the synthetic way: by means of inflections, sound interchanges and suppletion. The suppletive way of form-building was inherited from ancient IE. The principal means of form-building were inflections. The inflextions found in OG written records correspond to the inflections used in non-Germanic languages, having descended from the same original IE prototypes. Most of them, however, were simplier and shorter, as they had been shortened and weakened in PG. The wide use of sound interchanges has always been a c characteristic feature of the Germanic group. This form-building (and world-building) device was inherited from IE and became very productive in Germanic, e.g.: Goth. bairan, O Icel bera, OE beran, NE bear. In various forms of the word and in words derived from one and the same root, the roo-morpheme appeared as a set of variants. The consonants were relatively stable, the vowels were variable.
In early PG words consisted of 3 main components: the root, the stem-suffix and the grammatical endin. The stem-suffix was a means of word derivation, the ending – a marker of the grammatical form. In late PG the old stem-suffixes lost their derivational force and merged with other components of the word, usually with the endings. The word was simplified: the three-morpheme structure was transformed into a two-morpheme structure, for example: PG fisk-a-s, Goth. fisk-s (English fish). The simplification of the word structure and the loss of stem-suffixes as distinct compomemts was facilitated or caused by the heavy Germanic word stress fixed on the root.
Most nouns and adjectives in PG and also many verbs had stem-forming suffixes. According to them they fell into groups or classes: a-stem, i-tem, ō-stem. This grouping accounts for the formation of different declensions in nouns and adjectives, and some differences in conjugation of verbs.
Groups of nouns with different stem-suffixes made distinct types of declension. So there were the following types of substantive stems in Old Germanic languages:
1. vocalic stems (-a, -ō, -i, u);
2. -n/-r/-nt-stems;
3. stems in other consonants (-s and –r stems);
4. root stems.
Declension of substantives with vocalic stems has been called strong declension. Declension of substantives with n-stems was called weak declension. Consonantal declension was presented by substantives with -n/-r/-nt-stems. Substantives with root declension never had a stem-building suffix, so their stems always coincided with their roots.
The division of nouns into declensions basing on the stem-suffixes is not peculiar to Germanic alone. It is also found in other IE languages. The Germanic languages preserved the old classification of nouns with great accuray, added other distinctive features to the noun paradigm and, as a result, had a complicated system of noun declensions in the early periods of history.
Declension of adjectives differed from that of substantives. Every adjective was declined both according to the strong declension (with vocalic stem) and to the weak declension (with n-stem). Weak declension forms were used when the adjective was preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or the definite article. In all other cases forms of the strong declension were used. Strong declension of adjectives didn’t completely coincide with strong declension of substantives. Forms of several cases corresponded to declension of pronouns. So the strong declension of adjectives as a whole was a combination of substantival and pronominal forms.
The system of verbs in old Germanic languages consists of strong and weak verbs. The terms strong and weak verbs were proposed by J. Grimm. He called the verbs strong because they had preserved the richness of form since the age of the parent-language and in this sense could be contrasted to weak verbs lacking such variety of form. The main difference between these groups lies in the means of building of principal forms: the Present tense and Participle II. The strong verbs built there principal forms with the help of root vowel interchanges plus certain grammatical endings; they made use of IE abaut with certain modifications due to phonetic changes and environment. Weak verbs derived these forms by means of dental suffixes –d, -t, ƀ. These suffixes were inserted between the root and the ending. The weak verbs are a specifically Germanic innovation.
The Old Germanic languages have a system of two tenses, present and past. Originally the distinction was not between tenses, but between aspects, that is between forms characterizing the way the action is developing. Every strong verb is characterized by four basic forms: the infinitive, the past singular, the past plural, the second participle. All strong verbs fall into seven classes according to the type of gradation: reisan-rais-risum-risans; kuisan-kaus-kusum-kusans; bindan-band-bundum-bundans; stilan-stal-stelum- stuland; giban-gaf-gebum-gibans; faran-fōr-fōrum-farans; haitan-haihait-haihaotum-haitans / letan-lailōt-lailōtum-letans.
The weak verbs are a specifically Germanic innovation, for the device used in building their principal forms is not found outside the Germanic group. They built the Past tense and Participle II by inserting a special suffix between the root and the ending. So suffixes d, -t, ƀ were the markers of the Past and Participle II. Weak verbs in Germanic languages except Gothic had 3 classes. They derived their past tense and second participle by means of a dental suffix. So suffixes d, -t, ƀ were the markers of the Past and Participle II, gor example: O Icel kalla – kallaƀa - kallaƀr (call-called), OE macian – macode –macod (make–made).
The most ancient etymological layer in the Germaniс vocabulary is made up of words and roots shared by most IE languages. They refer to a number of semantic spheres: natural phenomena, plants and animals, terms of kinship, verbs denoting basic activities of man, some pronouns and numerals. In addition to roots the common IE elements include other component of words: word-building affixes and grammtical inflexions. Words which occur in Germanic alone and have no parallels outside the group constitute the specific features of the Germanic languages. They appeared in PG or in later history of separate languages form purely Germanic roots. Semantically they also belong to basic spheres of life: nature, sea, home life. The specifically Germanic layer includes not only roots but also affixes and word-building patterns: Gt. hus, drigkan, land O Icel hûs, Drekka, land, OE hŭs, drincan, land, Germ. Haus, trinken, Land.
Both etymological layers of the vocabulary – the IE and the specifically Germanic layer – are native words. In addition to native words the OG languages share some borrowings. Probably they were made at the time when the Germanic tribes lived closed together as a single community, that is in late PG, for example: Celt. isarno, Goth. eisarn, O Icel isarn, OE iren (iron). It is known that the Teutons may have learnt the processing of iron from the Celts. A large number of words must have been borrowed from Latin prior to the migration of West Germanic tribes to Briatin. These words reflec the contacts of the Germanic tribes with Rome and the influence of the Roman civilization on their life; they mostly refer to trade and warfare, for example: L pondō, prunus O Icel pund, ploma, OE pund, plume NE pound, plum.
5. Periods in the History of the English Language
The historical development of a language is a continius uninterrupted process without sudden breaks or rapid transformations. The commonly accepted traditional periodization divides English into three periods: Old English (OE), Middle English (ME) and New English (NE). OE begins with the Germanic settlement of Britain (5th c.) or with the beginning of writing (7th c.) and ends with the Norman Conquest (1066); ME begins with the Norman conquest and ends on the introduction of printing (1475), which is the start of Modern English or New English period; the New period lasts to the present day.
Each periods is marked by a set of specific features of phonology, grammar and vocabulary. The English scholar Henry Sweet (1845-1921), author of a number of works on the English langauge and on its history, proposed the following division of the history of English according to the state of unstressed endings:
1st period, Old English – the period of full endings (any vowel may be found in an unstressed ending);
2nd period, Middle English – the period of levelled endings (vowels of unstressed endings have been levelled under a neutral vowel);
3rd period, New English – the period of lost endings (endings are lost).
Sweet’s classification is based on both phonetic (weakening and loss of unstresse vowel sounds) and morphological (weakening and loss of grammatical morphemes) features. Anyhow it is considered to be arbitrary by some scholars. It is true that in OE period any vowel could be found in the ending and the majoruty of the parts of speech are connected with the other words in the sentences by means of endings. The period of levelled endings in reality contains the levelled vowel in the ending, but at the same time lots of endings were already list. The period of lost endings – present-day English is not totally devoid of endings, some paradigmatic forms are still made by means of endings, scarce as they are.
Division into chronological periods should take into account external and internal (extra- and intralinguistic) factors. The following periodization of English history is partly based on the conventional three periods; it subdivided the history of the English language into seven periods taking into account differing in extra- and intralinguistuic factors.
Old English Period
The first pre-written or pre-historical period which may be termed Early Old English, lasts from the West Germanic invasion of Britain till the beginning of writing, that is from the 5th c. to the close 5th c. It is the stage of tribal dialects of the West Germanic invaders (Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians), which are gradually losing contacts with the related continental tongue. The tribal dialects were used for oral communication, there being no written form of English
The second historical periods extends from the 8th century till the end of the 11th (Old English or Anglo-Saxon). It can also be called Written OE as compared with the pre-written Early OE period. The tribal dialects gradually changed into local or regional dialects. Towards the end of the period the differences between the dialects grew and their relative position altered. They were probably equal as a medium of oral communication, while in the sphere of writing one of the dialects, West Saxon, had gained supremacy over the other dialects (Kentish, Mercial and Northumbrian). The prevalence of West Saxon in writing is tide up with the rise of kingdom of Wessex to cultural and political prominence.
In general Old English was a typical Old Germanic language, with a purely Germanic vocabulary and a few foreign borrowings; it displayed specific peculiarities, owing ti intensive changes which took place in Early Old English. As far as grammar is concerned, OE was an inflected or “synthetic” language with a well-developed system of morphological categories, especially in the noun and adjective, and with an elaborate grouping of all inflected parts of speech into morphological classes.
Middle English Period
Middle English period is subdivided into Early Middle English (1066-1350) and Late or Classical Midlle English period (1360-1475), Early New English period (1475-1660).
The third period, known ad Early Middle English, starts after 1066, the year of Norman Conquest, and convers the 12th, 13th and half of the 14th century. It was the stage of the greatest dialectical divergence caused by the feudal system and by foreign influences- Scandinavian and French. The dialectical division of present-day English owes its origin to this period of history.
Under Norman rule the official language in England was French, or rather its variety called Anglo-Norman or Anglo-French; it was also the dominant language of literature. There is an obvious gap in the literary tradition in the 12 c. The local dialects were mailnly used for oral communication and were but little employed in writing. Towards the end of the period their literary presige grew, as English began to displace French in the sphere of writing, as well as in many other spheres.
Early ME was a time of great changes at all levels of the language, especially in lexics and grammar. English absorbed two layers of lexical borrowings: the Scandinavian element in the north-tastern area (due to the Scandinavian invasion since the 8th c.) and the French element in the speech of townpeople in the south-east, especially in the higher social strata (due to the Norman Conquest). Phonetic and grammatical changes proceeded at a high rate, unrestricted by written tradition. Grammatical alterations were so drastic that by the end of the period they had transforned English from a highly inflected language into mainly analytical one; for the most part, they affected the nominal system. Accordingly, the role of syntactical means of word connection grew.
Classical Midlle English period (1360-1475) embraces the age of Chaucer, the greatest English medieval writer and forerunner of the English Renaissance. It was the time of restoration of English to the position of the state and literary language and he time of literary flourishing. The main dialect used in writing and literature was the mixed dialect of London. Chaucer’s language was a recognised literary form, linguistic changes slowed down. The written records of the late 14th and 15th c. testify to the growth of the English vocabulary and to the increasing propotion of French loan-words in English. Most of inflections in the nominal system – in noun, adjectives, pronouns – had fallen together. The verb systen was expanding, as numerous new analytical forms and verbal phrases on the way to becoming analytical forms were used alongside old simple forms.
The fifth period Early New English lasted from the introduction of printing to the age of Shakespeare, that is from 1475 to 1669. The first printed book in English was published by William Caxton in 1475. It was a time of great historical consequences: under growing capitalistic system the country became economically and politically unified; the changes in the political and social structure, the progress of culture, education and literature favoured linguistic unity. The growth of the English nation was accompanied by the formation of the national English language.
The Early NE period was a time of sweeping changes at all levels, in the first place lexical and phonetic. The growth of the vocabulary was a natural reflection of the progress of culture in the new, bourgeois society and of wider horizons of man’s activity. Extensive phonetic changes were transforming the vowel system, which resulted, among other things, in growing gap between the written and spoken forms of the word. The inventory of grammatical forms and syntactic constructions was almost the same as in Modern English.
New English or Modern English Period
New English period comprises Normalization Period (1660-1800) and Late New English or Modern English (since 1800) including present-day English (since 1945).
Normalization period is the age of establishment of norms, which can be defined as received standards recognised as correct at the given period. The norm were fixed as rules and prescriptions of correct usage in the numerous dictionaries and grammar-books published at the time and were spread through education and writing. During this period the English language extended its area far beyond the borders of the British Islaes, first of all to North America.
Unlike the age of Shakespeare, this period discouraged variety and free choice in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. The great sound shift were over and pronunciation was being stabilized. Word usage and grammatical construction were subjected to restriction and normalization. The morphological system, particularly the verb system, acquired a more strict symmetrical pattern. The formation of new verbal grammatical categories was completed. Syntactical structures were perfected and standardised.
The English language of the 19th and 20th century represents the sevent period in the history of English – Late New English or Modern English. By the 19th century English had achieved the relative stability typical amd acquired all the properties of a national language, with its functional stratification and recognised standards. The classical language of literature was strictly distinguished from the local dialects and the dialects of lower social ranks. The 20th century witnessed considerable intermixture of dialects. The local dialects are now retreating, being displaced by Standard English. The best form of English, the Received Standard and also the regional modified standards are being spread through new channels: the press, radio, cinema and television.
The expansion of English overseas proceeded together with the growth of the British Empire in the 19 th and with the increased weight of the United States after the War of Independence and the Civil War. English has spread to all the inhabited continents.
In the 19th and 20th c. the English vocabularly has grown on an unpredented scale reflecting the rapid progress of technology, science and culture and ohe multiple changes. In all spheres of man’s activities. Linguistic changes in phonetics and grammar have been confined to alterations in the relative frequency and distribution of linguistic units: some pronunciations and forms have become old-fashioned or even obsolete, while other forms have gained ground and have been accepted as common usage.
Though most of these changes are difficult to notice and to define, its apparent that an English speaker of the 1950s or 1980s uses a form of language different from the used by the characters of Dickens and Thackerey. Therefore it may be fully justified in treating the 19th and 20th centuries as one historical period in a general survey of the history of English. But in order to describe the kind of English used today and to determine the tendencies of its develoment scholars singled out the present-day English period.
6. Old English Period. Historical Background. Germanic Settlement of Britain. Old English Dialects. Written Records and Manuscripts
The history of the English language begins with the invasion of the British Isles by Germanic tribes in the 5th c. of our era. Prior to the Germanic invasion the British Isles must have been inhabited for at least fifty thousand years. Archeological research has uncovered many layers of prehistoric population. The earliest inhabitants of the British Isles were Iberian people. They were not Indo-Europeans. In the eight century B.C. the Gaels from the Celtic tribes appeared in Britain. Other Celtic tribes (the Gaels, the Britons, the Belgae) came to Britain in three waves and immediately preceded by Teutons. Economically and socially Celts were a tribal society made up of kins, kinship groups, clans and tribes. They practised a primitive agriculture and carried on trade with Celtic Gaul.
The first millenium B.C. was the period of Celtic migrations and expansion. Traces of their civilization are still found all over Europe. Traces of their civilization are still found all over Europe. Celtic languages were spoken over extensive parts of Europe before our era. Later they were absorbed by other IE languages.
In the 1st century B.C. Gaul was conquered by the Romans. Having occupied Gaul Jukius Caesar made two raids on Briatin, on the 55 and 54 B.C. The British Isles had long been known to the Romans as a source of valuable tin ore. Caesar attacked Britain fir economic reasons – to obtain tin, pearls and corn, - and also for strategic reasons, since rebels and refugees from Gaul found support among their British kinsmen. Although Caesar failed to subjugate Britain, Roman economic penetration to Britain grew: traders and colonists from Rome came in large numbers to settle in the south-eastern towns. In 45 A.D. Britain was again invaded by Roman legions under Emperor Claudius and towards the end of the century was made a province of the Roman Empire. A great number of military camps were established. They eventually developed into English cities (Man chester, Win chester).
The Roman occupation of Briatin lasted nearly 400 years; it came to an end in the early 5th c. A.D. In 410 A.D. the Roman troops were oficially withdrawn to Rome by Constantine. This temporary withdrawal turned out to be final, for the Empire was breaking up due to internal and external causes, particularly the attacks of barbarian tribes (including Teutons) and the growth of independent kingdoms on former Roman territories. The expansion of Franks to Gaul in the 5th c. cut off Briatin from the roman world.
After the departure of the Roman legions the richest and most civilised part of the island, the south-east, was laid waste. Many towns were destroyed. Constant feuds among local lanlords as well as the increased assaults of the Celts from the North and also he first Germanic raids from the North Sea proved ruinous to the civiliation of Roman Britain.
Undoubtedly, the Teutons had made piratical aids on the British shores long before the withdrawal of the last Roman legions. The Britons fought among themselves. The 5th c. A.D. was the age of increased Germanic expansion. About the middle of the century several West Germanic tribes overran Briatian and, for the most part, had colonised the island by the end of the century, though the invasion lasted in the 6th century.
Reliable evidence of the period is extremely scarce. The story of the invasion is told be Bede (673-735), a monastic scholar who wrote the first history of England. According to Bede the invaders came to Briatian in 449 A.D. under the leadership of the Germanic kings, Hengist and Horsa. The invaders came in multitude, with families and clans, to settle in the occupied territories like Celts before them. The Germanic invasion was different from the Roman military conquest, although it was by no means a peaceful affair.
The invaders of Briatin came from the western subdivision of the Germanic tribes. The newcomers were of the three strongest races of Germany, the Saxon, the Angles and the Jutes. The first wave of the invaders, the Jutes or the Frisians, occupied the extreme south-east: Kent and the Isle of Wight. The second wave of immigrants was largely made up of the Saxons, who had been expanding westwards across Frisia to the Rhine and to what is now known as Normandy. The final stage of the drift brought them to Britain by way of the Thames and the south coast. They set up their settlements along the south coast and on both banks of the Thames and depending on location were called South Saxons, West Saxons and East Saxons. The Saxons consolidated into a number of petty kingdoms, the largest and the most powerful of them being Wesswx, the kingdom of West Saxons.
Last came the Angles from the lower valley of Elbe and southern Denmark. They made their landing on the east coast and moved up the rivers to the central part of the island to occupy the districts between the Wash and the Humber and to the north of the Humber. They founded large kingdoms which had absorbed their weaker neighbours: East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria.
There were probably little intermixture between the newcomers and the Celtic aborigines. The invadres certainly prevailed over the natives so far as language was concerned. After the settlement West Germanic tongues came to be spoken all over Britain. The migration of the Germanic tribes to the British Isles and the resulting separation from the Germanic tribes on the mainland was a decisive event in their linguistic histiry. Geographical separation as well as mixture and unification of people are major factors in linguistic differentiation and in the formation of languages. Being cut off from related Old Germanic languages the closely related group of West Germanic dialects developed into a separate Germanic language – English. That is why the Germanic settlement of Britain can be regarded as the beginning of the independent history of the English language.
The history of Anglo-Saxon Briatin form the 5th to the 11th c has been reconstructed from multiple sources: Bede’s History, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon historical chronicles some legal documents. According to Bede the invaders came to Briatin in 449 A.D. under the leadership of two Germanic kings, Hengest and Horsa. Vortigen invited them because he wanted then to help in the local war. The first wave of newcomers occupied the extreme south-east Kent and the Isle of Wight.
The period from the 5th till 11th was a transitional period from the tribal and slave-owning system to feudalism.The basic economic unit was a feudal manor, it was a self-contained economic unit as it grew its own food and carried on some small industries to cover its needs. Consequently there was little intercourse between population of neighbouring areas. Tribal and clan division was gradually supressed by townships. These conditions were reflected in the development of the West Germanic tongues brought to Britain. The economic isolation of the regions as well as the political disunity of the regions led to the formation of new geographical boundaries between the speech of different localities.
7. Old EnglishPhonology
Apart from the differences in consonants we may see that vowels і similar words are different too. Especially prominent are the instances of numerous diphthongs in Old English replacing simple vowels as in eahta jooc, meolc, heard (eight, yoke, milk, hard), or when vowels change their I quality in certain positions as in waster, stdn, fyllan (water, stone, fill). Some I sounds merge, some get doubled - all these are to be studied among Old English sound changes.
The system of vowels in Old English included seven long and eight short vowels (monophthongs) (aaeeiouya –ааёёу) and four short and four long diphthongs (ea eo ie io - ёа eo j). The length of the vowel was a pho
