№ 1. Germanic languages: their history & classification

(the common ancestor, old Germanic languages & their classification, Germanic languages in the modern world).

On the whole languages can be classified according to different principles but as far as we deal with the history of the language we’ll consider genealogical or historical classification. This classification points out that all the languages can be classified according to their origin from a common linguistic ancestor. Genetically English belongs to the Germanic group of languages & the history of this group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic (PG) language. PG is the linguistic ancestor or the parent-language of the Germanic group. It’s supposed to have split from related IE tongues sometime between the 15^th & 10^th c. B. C. PG is an entirely pre-historical language: it was never recorded in written form. It was reconstructed by methods of comparative linguistics from written evidence in descendant languages. It’s believed that PG was fundamentally one language, though dialectally colored. Then dialectal differences grew so that towards the beginning of our era Germanic appears divided into dialectal groups & tribal dialects. Further these dialectal differentiations increased.

The Germanic languages can be described under three headings: East Germanic, North Germanic & West Germanic.

1. East Germanic. This subgroup was formed by the tribes who returned from Scandinavia at the beginning of our era. The most numerous & powerful of them were the Goths. The Gothic language, now dead, has been preserved in written records of the 4^th – 6^th c. In the 4^th c. Ulfilas, a West Gothic bishop, made a translation of the Gospels from Greek into Gothic. Parts of Ulfilas’ Gospels (made in the 5^th or 6^th c) have been preserved & are kept now in Sweden. The other East Germanic languages (Vandalic, Burgundian), all of which are now dead, have left no written records.

2. North Germanic. Until the 9^th c. A. D. the speech of the North Germanic tribes showed little dialectal variations & there was a sort of common language called Old Norse or Old Scandinavian. It has come down to us in runic inscriptions dated from the 3^rd to the 9^th c. which were carved on objects made of hard material. On the one hand it’s very valuable (because of its age), but these inscriptions are not texts but isolated words. After the 9^th c. Old Norse divided into 4 languages: Old Swedish, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, Old Icelandic. The most interesting & valuable for historians is Old Icelandic which presents a large body of texts which date back to 12^th – 13^th c. It has retained a more archaic vocabulary & grammatical system. The most important records are: the ELDER EDDA (a collection of historic songs of the 12^th c.), the YOUNGER EDDA (prose) & the Old Icelandic sagas.

3. West Germanic. This group consists of 5 members. Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old Low Franconian (= Old Dutch), Old High German (OHG). Here the oldest written records are to be found in Old English (the 7^th c.) & in Old High German (the 8^th c.).

• Old English → English;

• Old Frisian → survived in local dialects in Friesland (in the Netherlands);

• Old Saxon → also in local dialects to be found in Germany;

• Old Low Franconian → Netherlandish → Afrikaans;

• Old High German → German → Yiddish.

Table. The classification of old & modern Germanic languages.

	East Germanic	North Germanic	West Germanic
Old Germanic languages	Gothic (4th c) Vandalic Burgundian	Old Norse (2nd – 3rd c.) Old Icelandic (12th c.) Old Norwegian (13th c.) Old Danish (13th c.) Old Swedish (13th c.)	Old English (7th c.) Old Saxon (9th c.) Old High German (8th c.) Old Dutch (12th c.)
Modern Germanic languages	No living languages	Icelandic – archaic, the most difficult Norwegian Danish (Denmark, Greenland) Swedish Faroese (Faro islands, 50.000 people)	English German Netherlandish Afrikaans (south Africa, Namibia) Yiddish (appeared on the basis of the German dialect) Frisian (part of Netherlands and Germany, islands of the North Sea)

2. The common features of germanic languages

Old German languages show differences in comparison with other European Lang on 3 main linguistic levels: grammatical, phonetic and lexical.

In phonetics:

• accent (word stress) in IE was characterized by free and musical accent (fixed & unfixed) ; in PG accent became fixed on the root syllable and dynamic, strong (силовое); characteristics of musical accent disappeared in Gmc languages

Indo-European (Non-Germanic)	Proto-Germanic
1. free stress (movable, i.e. can appear in any part of a word (root, prefix, suffix));	1. fixed stress (can’t move either in form- or word-building and is usually placed on root or prefix);
2. pitch stress (musical)	2. dynamic stress (force, breath stress)
E.g.: русский	E.g.: German	English
б`елый	`Liebe	`white
белизн`а	`lieben	`whiteness
белов`атый	`lieberhaft	`whitish
бел`ить	ge`liebt	`whitewash

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:

1. 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;

2. 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 (all the vocalic endings) and became ANALYTICAL LANGUAGES.

• Grimm’s and Verner’s laws.

Grimm’s law: The first Germanic consonant shifts took place in the V-II cent. BC. Jacobs Grimm’s Law in 1822. According to Grimm, he classified consonant correspondences between indoeuropean and germanic stops (plosives).

There are 3 acts of this law:

1. IE voiceless plosives p, t, k correspond to Gmc voiceless fricatives f, Ө, h. Eg: пламя – flame, три – three, кардио – heart.

2. IE voiced plosives b, d, g, →Gmc voiceless fricatives p, t, k. Eg: болото - pool, kardia – heart, ego – ic (ik).

3. IE aspirated voiced plosives bh, dh, gh →to voiced plosives without aspiration b d g. Eg: bhrāta – brother, rudhira – red, ghostis – guest.

The second consonant shift was Carl Verner’s law (only in Old High German). According C.Verner all the common Gmc consonants became voiced in intervocalic position if the preceding vowel was unstressed (a change takes place in the course of time).

p-f > v septem

t-Ө > đ, d сто – hund (OE)

k-x > j, g

s-s > z/r auris – ēare

Consonant Correspondences			Latin	OE	ModE
1. [p, t, k]  voiceless stops/plosives	[f, , h]  voiceless fricatives	[v, ð/d, g] voiced fricatives	septem	seofen	seven
			pater	fæđer	father
			socrus	swaiho(Gothic)	Schwager(Germ)
2. Rhotacism			ausis (Lithuanian)	Auso (Gothic)	ear, Ohr (Germ)
[s] 	[z] 	[r]

Devoicing took place in early common Gmc 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 occurd in dialects of sothern Gmc. Eg: еда – eat – essen, вода – water – wasser, hope – hoffen, bed – bett.

Ch (G) → C (OE) : reich – ricostan.

• Palatal Mutation/i-Umlaut

Mutation – a change of one vowel to another one under the influence of a vowel in the following syllable.

Palatal mutation (or i-Umlaut) happened in the 6^th -7^th c. and was shared by all Old Germanic Languages, except Gothic. I-mutation is a change of root back vowels to front ones or root open vowels to closer ones under the influence of i/j in the next syllable.

Palatal mutation – fronting and raising of vowels under the influence of [i] and [j] in the following syllable (to approach the articulation of these two sounds). As a result of palatal mutation:

• [i] and [j] disappeared in the following syllable sometimes leading to the doubling of a consonant in this syllable;

• new vowels appeared in OE ([ie, y]) as a result of merging and splitting:

before palatal mutation	after palatal mutation	Gothic	OE
a  o  æ 	e	badi	bedd (bed)
a: 	æ:	dails	dælan (deal)
ŏ/ō 	ĕ/ē	mōtjan	mētan (meet)
ŭ/ū 	ŷ/ỹ (labialised) (new!)	fulljan	fyllan (fill)
ĕă/ēā  ĕŏ/ēō 	ĭě/īē (new!)	eald (early OE)	ieldra (late OE)

Traces of i-Umlaut in Modern English:

1. irregular Plural of nouns (man – men; tooth – teeth);

2. irregular verbs and adjectives (told ←tell; sold ←sell; old – elder);

3. word-formation with sound interchange (long – length; blood – bleed).