Lecture 3 – Old Germanic tribes

1. First knowledge about Germanic tribes.

2. Classification of Germanic tribes.

3. Classification of Germanic groups of languages and their written records.

4. Germanic alphabets.

1. As far as the English language belongs to the Germanic group of languages, this group makes a part of the history of the English Language.

Our knowledge of old Germanic barbarian tribes (Teutons) is based on testimonies by Greek and Roman authors:

- Pytheas (4^th c. B.C.) – a Greek historian and geographer, the work “An Account of a Sea Voyage to the Baltic Sea”.

- Julius Caesar (1^st c. B.C.) – a roman Emperor, the work “Commentaries on the Gallic War”.

- Pliny the Elder (1^st c. A.D.) – a Roman scientist and writer, the work “Natural History” (contained the classification of the Germanic tribes).

- Tacitus (1^st c. A.D.) – a Roman historian, the work “Life and Customs of the Ancient Germans”.

At the beginning of the new era Germanic tribes occupied vast territories in Western, Central and Northern Europe.

The Roman general Julius Caesar devoted several chapters to the Germanic tribes in his “Commentaries on the war in Gall” (1044 B.C.). Caesar fought with them on the Rhine. He took two expeditions against the Germanic tribes and the Romans defeated the Germans in both expeditions. Caesar stated that the Germans lived in tribes and tribal unions. He also wrote that the Teutons were nomads.

One of the best-known descriptions about life of Germanic tribes is that written by Tacitus in AD 98, called Germania.

Tacitus describes the Germanic tribes as living in scattered settlements in the woody and marshy country of north-western Europe. He says that they do not build cities and keep their houses far apart, living in wooden buildings. They keep flocks, and grow grain crops, but their agriculture is not very advanced. The family plays a large part in their social organization. They have kings, chosen for their birth, and chiefs, chosen for their courage, but in major affairs the whole community consults together. In the head of each tribe there was a chief who was called ‘kuning’. The whole tribe had the name of the Chief. The physical type is everywhere the same: blue eyes, reddish hair and huge bodies. The normal dress is the short cloak, though the skins of animals are also worn. Very few of the men have breastplates or helmets, and they have very little iron. They worship Mercury, sometimes with human sacrifices, and sacrifice animals to Hercules and Mars.

2. The great historian Pliny spent many years in the Roman provinces of Low and High Germany. He wrote a book called “Natural History”. He was the first who enumerated and classified the military tribes. It was proved by many scientists. According to Pliny there were several Germanic tribes:

1. The Vindili. They lived in the eastern part of the territory inhabited by the Germanic tribes (GT – Germanic territory). They consisted of the Goths, the Burgundians and the Vandals.

2. The Ingvaeons. They lived in the north-western part of the GT. They inhabited the Jutland peninsula and the coast of the North Sea. The tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians were formed later of this group.

3. The Istkveoni. They lived on the Rhine. Later they formed a very powerful tribal union of Franconians. In the early Middle Ages they were powerful group of West Germans.

4. The Pekvini or Bastarni. They lived closed to the place, which is now called Ruminia. Mostly this group is included to the first group of Germanic tribes.

5. The Germioni. They lived in the centre of Germany and later the German nation was formed of these tribes.

6. The Gellivioni. They were isolated from other Germanic tribes. They inhabited Scandinavia.

3. Historically, all the Germanic languages originated from one ancestor language. It is called Proto-Germanic (PG). And Germanic group of languages has three branches: East Germanic (extinct), North Germanic (or Scandinavian), West Germanic.

If we compare the classification of Germanic tribes and languages we can see:

The Vindili – East Germanic;

The Hilleviones – North Germanic;

The Ingvaones, Istaevones and Herminones – West Germanic.

East Germanic languages have been dead for many centuries. All the North Germanic and West Germanic languages have survived until our own times.

East Germanic group of languages

The East Germanic subgroup was formed by the tribes who returned from Scandinavia at around 200 A.D. and settled in the east of Europe. The most numerous and powerful of them were the Goths. They were among the first Teutons to leave the coast of the Baltic Sea and start on their great migrations. The Goths were the first Germans to become Christians.

They spoke Gothic language. It is the only well-documented member of the extinct eastern branch. It had the oldest written records – 4th – 6th c. A.D. The Gothic, having the earliest written records among the Germanic Languages, is considered to be very close to the PG Language.

In the 4th c. A.D Ulfilas, a Gothic bishop, translated the Gospel from Greek into Gothic by using a modified form of the Greek Alphabet. “Ulfilas’ Gospels” is a manuscript of about 200 pages and are kept now in Sweden. It is written on red parchment with silver and golden letters and is known as the Silver Codex.

North Germanic groups of languages

The Teutons who stayed in Scandinavia after the departure of the Goths gave rise to the North Germanic subgroup of languages. They lived on the southern coast of the Scandinavian peninsula and in Northern Denmark (since the 4th c. A.D.).

They lived relatively isolated and showed little dialectal variation at that time. There existed one common language – Old Norse/Old Scandinavian, later Old Danish, Old Swedish and Icelandic. Division of Old Norse into separate dialects and languages began after the 9^th c., when the Scandinavians started out on their sea voyages.

Old Norse was the common Scandinavian language. Its earliest runic inscriptions date from the 3^rd century. Among the most important monuments is Old Icelandic ‘Older Edda’, a collection of epic songs dating from the 10th or 11th century.

West Germanic group of languages

The West Germanic tribes lived between the Oder and the Elbe and they never left the mainland. On the eve of their “great migrations” of the 4^th and 5^th c. the West Germans included several tribes. The Franconians occupied the lower basin of the Rhine. The Angles and the Frisians, the Jutes and the Saxons inhabited the coastal area of the modern Netherlands, Germany and the southern part of Denmark. The languages they spoke were Old English, Old Saxon, Old Frisian and Old German.

At the later stage of the great migrations period – in the 5^th c. – a group of West Germanic tribes started out on their invasion of the British Isles. The invaders came from the lowlands near the North Sea: the Angles, the Saxons, Frisians and the Jutes. Their dialects in the British Isles developed into the English language.

The most important work of literature in Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) is an epic poem ‘Beowulf’ (was written in the late 10th century on the basis of an 8th century poem).

4. Germanic tribes used three alphabets. The earliest known was the runic alphabet, the letters of which were called runes (separate words written/carved on objects made of wood, stone, metal). The first runic inscriptions appear about the 2nd or 3rd century A.D.

The second Germanic alphabet was Ulfilas’ Gothic (4th century; based on the Greek alphabet with mixture of Latin and runic letters).

With the spread of Christianity (7th century) the Germanic tribes borrowed the Latin alphabet. It superseded both the Runic and 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 the letters.

Names:

Teutons – Тевтоны (тевтонцы)

Pytheas – Пифей

Julius Caesar – Юлий Цезарь

“Commentaries on the Gallic War” – “Записки о Галльской войне”

Pliny the Elder – Плиний

Tacitus – Тацит

The Rhine - Рейн

The Vindili – Виндилы

The Ingvaeons – Ингвеоны

The Istkveoni – Иствеоны

The Pekvini or Bastarni – Певкины и бастарны

The Germioni – Герминоны

The Gellivioni – Гиллевионы

Ulfilas – Вульфила (Ульфила)

Glossary:

Ancestor – ['ænsəstə] – прародитель, предок

Bishop – ['bɪʃəp] – епископ

Branch – [brɑːnʧ] – ветвь, отрасль

Extinct – [ɪk'stɪŋkt ] – вымерший

Flock – [flɔk] – стадо, стая

Gospel – Евангелие

Inscription – [ɪn'skrɪpʃ(ə)n] – надпись

Nomad – ['nəumæd] – кочевник

Scattered – ['skætəd] –редкий, расположенный на расстоянии друг от друга

Testimony – ['testɪmənɪ] – доказательство, свидетельство

To supersede – [ˌs(j)uːpə'siːd] – заменять, смещать, вытеснять

Questions for discussion:

1. Who gave us the testimonies of old Germanic tribes?

2. Why did Caesar write several chapters about the Germanic tribes in his “Commentaries on the war in Gall”?

3. How did Tacitus describe the Germanic tribes?

4. Who was the first to classify the Germanic tribes?

5. Where did the Vindili live?

6. What tribes were formed from the Ingvaeons?

7. What tribes inhabited Scandinavia?

8. What were the branches of Germanic groups of languages?

9. What do you know about East Germanic subgroup?

10. Who did Ulfilas do?

11. What do you know about North Germanic subgroup?

12. What do you know about West Germanic subgroup?

13. How many alphabets did Germanic tribes use? What were they?

Additional sources:

1. “Введение в германскую филологию” М.Г. Арсеньева; стр. 7-28.

2. “The English language. A historical introduction” Charles Barber: стр. 85-91.

3. “История английского языка” Б.А. Ильиш; стр. 18-24

4. “A history of the English language” Р.В. Резник; стр. 17-21

Lecture 4 – Germanic languages and their peculiarities

1. Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic languages.

2. Old Germanic languages and their development into Modern Germanic languages and their spread.

3. Peculiarities of Germanic languages.

1. When there are no documents of language to be traced, the pre-written history of any language is studied by methods of comparative linguistics. It is 200 years old. It all started with a publication of an article by Franz Bopp (1816). The article was about the so-called Indo-European (I-E) language. It is now well-supported with evidence from many languages that there was a language spoken by people in pre-historic times. It was given a name Proto-Indo-European (P-I-E). The time can hardly be accurately dated. It is dated far back 10000 B.C. – 4000 B.C. P-I-E developed in different ways in the various parts of the world to each its speakers traveled. At the beginning of historical times languages that derived from it were spoken from Europe in the west to India in the east. P-I-E was the ancestor language of most of the Europe languages and many of those in South Asia.

Historically, all the Germanic languages originated from one ancestor language. It is called Proto-Germanic (P-G). It developed from P-I-E. Indo-European tribes came to Europe in 3000-2500 B.C. (Northern part of Europe). Before that time the coasts of the Baltic and the North Seas were inhabited by a different group. I-E newcomers mixed with this group and formed the tribes that later became known as Germanic tribes.

At about first millennium B.C. the Germanic tribes separated from other west I-E tribes and P-G became a separate language between the 15^th – 10^th centuries B.C. P-G was distinctive in many of its sounds, inflections, stress patterns and vocabulary. Southern Scandinavia including Jutland Peninsula is the probable homeland of P-G. It was only a spoken language. The Proto-Germanic Language has never been recorded in written form. In the 19^th c. it was reconstructed by means of comparative linguistics. The Germans didn’t lose touch with other I-E languages. They migrated and these migrations caused new contacts and it was reflected in the speech.

2. Later, when some tribes migrated to Scandinavian Peninsula and some returned to the mainland, the P-G language split into tree branches: East (those who returned and settled in the east), North (those who moved northwards, to the Scandinavian Peninsula, and stayed there); and West (those who never left the mainland).

The following table shows the classification of old and modern Germanic languages.

	East Germanic	North Germanic	West Germanic
Old Germanic languages (with dates of the earliest records)	Gothic (4th c.) Vandalic Burgundian	Old Norse or Old Scandinavian (2nd – 3rd c.) Old Icelandic (12th c.) Old Norwegian (13th c.) Old Danish (13th c.) Old Swedish (13th c.)	Anglian, Frisian, Jutish, Saxon, Franconian, High German Old English (7th c.) Old Saxon (9th c.) Old High German (8th c.) Old Dutch (12th c.)
Modern Germanic languages	No living languages	Icelandic Norwegian Danish Swedish Faroese	English German Netherlandish Afrikaans Yiddish Frisian

Spread of Germanic languages:

- Icelandic (spoken in Iceland by 250 thou. people)

- Norwegian (spoken in Norway by 5 mill. people)

- Danish (spoken in Denmark by 5 mill. people)

- Swedish (spoken in Sweden and Finland by 9 mill. people)

- Faroese (spoken in the Faroe Islands (north-east Atlantic) by 40 thou. people)

- English (spoken by 300 mill. people as a mother tongue + millions speak it as a second language in Great Britain, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the South African Republic, and many other former British colonies)

- German (spoken by 100 mill. people in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Lichtenstein)

- Dutch/Netherlandish (spoken by 20 mill. people in the Netherlands and some parts of Belgium)

- Afrikaans (spoken by 3 mill. people in the South African Republic, combines English, Dutch and African elements)

- Yiddish (spoken by Jews in different countries in Europe and America)

- Frisian (spoken by 400 thou. people in some parts of the Netherlands and Germany and some islands in the North Sea)

3. All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common linguistic features; some of these features are shared by other groups in the IE family, others are specifically Germanic.

- Word Stress

It is known that in ancient IE language there existed two ways of word accentuation: musical pitch and force stress. The position of the stress was free and movable, which means that it could fall on any syllable of the word. Both these properties of the word accent were changed in PG language. There used force and expiratory stress. In Late PG language the stress was fixed on the first syllable, which was usually the root of the word and sometimes the prefix; the other syllables – suffixes and endings – were unstressed.

Word Stress/Accent

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)

Examples:

Русский	German	English
б`елый белизн`а белов`атый бел`ить	`Liebe `lieben `lieberhaft ge`liebt	`white `whiteness `whitish `whitewash

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 language.

- Changes in the system of consonants in the Germanic languages

The changes of consonants in PG language were first formulated in terms of a phonetic law by Jacob Grimm in the early 19^th c. and are often called Grimm’s Law. It is also known as the First or Proto-Germanic consonant shift.

Grimm’s Law had three acts:

1) IE aspirated voice stops [bh], [dh], [gh] became PG voiced stops [b], [d], [g] without aspiration.

2) IE voiced stops [b], [d], [g] became Germanic voiceless stops [p], [t], [k]

3) IE voiceless stops [p], [t], [k] became Germanic voiceless fricatives [f], [th], [x]

№	Consonant Correspondences		Examples
			Old		Modern
	IE	PG	Non-Ger (Latin)	Ger (OE)	Non-Ger (Italian, рус.)	German (Engl, Ger)
1	[bh,dh,gh]  aspirated voiced stops	[b, d, g] non-aspirated voiced stops	bhrāta rudhira hostis	brōþor rēad giest	брат - гость	brother, Bruder red guest, Gast
2	[b, d, g]  voiced stops	[p, t, k] voiceless stops/plosives	labare decem genu	pōl tīen cnēo	болото dieci, десять ginocchio	pool, Pfuhl ten knee, Knie
3	[p, t, k]  voiceless stops/plosives	[f, , h] voiceless fricatives	pedis tres cordis	fōt þrēo heort	piedi tre, три cuore	foot, Fuß three heart, Herz

Another important series of consonant changes in PG was discovered in the late 19^th c. by a Danish scholar, Carl Verner. They are known as Verner’s Law. He explained the consonant correspondences as a gradual historical process.

According to Verner’s Law all the early PG voiceless fricatives [f, th, x] and also [s] became voiced between vowels if the preceding vowel was unstressed; in the absence of these conditions they remained voiceless. The sound ‘z’: z→r. This process is known as Rhotacism.

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]

- Changes in the system of vowels in the Germanic languages

Proto-Germanic Vowel System:

Short Vowels	i	e	a	o	u
Long Vowels	i:	e:	a:	o:	u:

In all IE languages there is a system of vowel change which is known as Ablaut. The term is introduced by J. Grimm. “Ab” means reducing, “laut” – sound. Ablaut can also be called vowel gradation. This phenomenon consisted in change of vowels mostly in the root.

There are two types of Ablaut: quantitative and qualitative.

The qualitative Ablaut is the alteration of different vowels, mainly [e]/[a], [e]/[o].

Examples: Old Icelandic: bera (to give birth) – barn (baby); Old High German: stelan (to steal) – stal (stole); Latin tego (to cover, to cloth) – toga (clothes).

Quantitative Ablaut means the change in length of qualitatively one and the same vowel: normal, lengthened and reduced. A short [e] could be replaced by a long [e:], a short [o] could be replaced by a long [o:], or it could be omitted.

Another phenomenon common for all Germanic languages was so-called Umlaut, or mutation. The most common mutation was under the influence of the sounds [i] and [j].

- Grammar characteristics common to the Germanic languages

PG 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 by auxiliary words.

The Germanic nouns had a well-developed case system with four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative) and two number forms (singular and plural). They also had a category of gender (feminine, masculine and neuter).

The Germanic verbs are divided into two groups: strong and weak verbs, depending on the way they formed their past tens form.

The past tense of strong verbs was formed with the help of Ablaut, qualitative or quantitative. Weak verbs expressed past tense with the help of suffix -d/-t. There was also a small group of verbs forming their forms from different roots (to be).

		Strong Verbs (irregular)	Weak Verbs (regular)
form-building		vowel interchange + gram. ending	suffix -d/-t
E.g.	OE	reisan – rais – risum – risans	macian – macode - macod
			cepan – cepte - cept
	ModE	rise – rose - risen	make – made – made
			keep – kept – kept

Glossary:

To derive – [dɪ'raɪv] – получать, происходить

To split – [splɪt] – раскалываться, делиться на части

Glossary of Terms:

Analytical language – those languages, in which grammatical relations between words in a sentence are expressed by auxiliary words, word order, and intonation – аналитические языки

Expiratory stress — экспираторное, силовое, динамическое ударение

Inflection – [ɪn'flekʃ(ə)n] – окончание, флексия (изменяемая часть слова)

Pitch stress – тоновое, мелодическое ударение

Syllable – ['sɪləbl] – слог

Word stress – ударение в слове (syn. word accentuation – [əkˌsenʧu'eɪʃ(ə)n] )

Questions for discussion:

1. What is Proto-Indo-European language?

2. What is the difference between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic languages?

3. When did Indo-European tribes come to Europe?

4. When did Proto-Germanic language become a separate language?

5. What is a probable homeland of Proto-Germanic language?

6. Did Proto-Germanic language have a written form?

7. What branch of linguistic helped to reconstruct Proto-Germanic language?

8. Why did Proto-Germanic language split into the parts?

9. What are the most spoken Germanic languages?

10. Word stress in Proto-Germanic languages.

11. Changes in system of consonants in the Germanic languages.

12. Changes in system of vowels in the Germanic languages.

13. Grammar characteristics of Germanic nouns.

14. Grammar characteristic of Germanic verbs.