34.Scandinavian invasion and Norman conquest and their effect on the Eng.Lang.

Scandinavian invasion and the Norman conquest are two polotical events at the end of the OE period and the beginning of the ME. It was a long process embracing over two centuries since the end of the 8^th cent. Scandinavians invaders came to England, fought with the natives, robbed and plundered the country and began to settle on the lands. From the North-Eastern part they tried to conquer the whole country. Later the territory of the country was subdivided into two parts – the south-western part remained English under the rule of King Alfred and the north-eastern part was to be Scandinavian. The Scandinavians in England remained very strong through centuries. The contacts and intermixture of the English and the Scandinavians brought many changes in diff.spheres of the Eng.lang.- word-stock, grammar and phonetis.

The Norman conquest began in 1066. The Normans adopted the French lang.and culture, and when they came to Britain they brought with them the French lang. Thousands after thousands Frenchmen settled in Engl.and occupied all positions of prominence in the country, be it in court, Parliament, Church or school. The heritage of the Norman conquest was manifold. It united Eng.to Western Europe, opening the gates to European culture and institutions, theology, philosophy and science. For more than two cent.after the conquest the Eng.country was ruled by French-speaking kings, and the French lang.was the state lang. But after the struggle the Eng.got ascendance over French and again became the state. But its vocabulary was enriched by a great number of Fr.words.

The end of the 14^th cent.also saw the first “Eng” translation of the Bible, and Chaucer was writing his Engl.masterpieces. By the end of the cent.French had died out as a spoken lang.

35.The first Consonant shift. Grimm's law. Verner's law.

Grimm's law explains the correspondence between certain groups of Germanic and non-Germanic consonants. Those correspondences involve three sets of Germanic consonants. But only one stage is the simplest to explain and the most consistent – the Germanic consonants [f] [θ] [h] and the corresponding consonants [p] [t] [k] we find in similar phonetc environment. The essence of this stage of the first Germanic consonants shift is the following – The voiceless plosive consonants [p] [t] [k] of Indo-European languages other that Germanic shifted in Germanic lang.into the voiceless fricative consonants [f] [θ] [h]. It was non-assimilative change which affected Germanic lang.at the beginning of the first Millenium AD. Ex. Russian Пять — Old Eng. Fiv (five), три - θrie (three). But after the first consonant shift the voiced plosive consonants appeared in Germanic lang. The essence of this change was explained by Karl Verner – Verner's law. The Germanic voiceless fricative consonants [f] [θ] [h] later became voiced if they were found after unstressed vowels.

t> θ in accordance with Grimm's law, but as the stress in the word “fæder” in the prehistoric period was on the second syllable the voiceless fricative consonant [θ] became voiced [ð] underwent “hardening” and became [d].

[t] > [θ] > [ ð] > [d]

Grimm's law Verner's law hardening

The [s] was also voiced after unstressed vowels – [s] > [z], later the resulting consonant [z] became [r] – this change is called rhotacism.