- •The Proto-Germanic language (pg).
- •Three branches of splitting in pg
- •The common linguistic features of Germanic languages.
- •The main historical events of the ancient period.
- •6.What are the Celtic tribes and languages in British Isles?
- •7.What Celtic languages in modern Britain can you regard?
- •8. What can you tell about the Roman occupation of Britain?
- •9. What do you know about Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain and formation of English language?
- •10.What can you tell about the Scandinavian conquest of Britain?
- •11.What do you know about North –Sea Germanic tribal dialects?
- •12)What is the influence of Scandinavian vocabulary on the English language ?
- •13.14.15) What are the main three periods in the history of the English language?
- •16. Give the full form of the following abbreviations. Define acronyms read as ordinary words and acronyms with alphabetical reading.
- •17.Group the words formed by sound-interchange into those formed by : 1) vowel-interchange 2)consonant-interchange 3) combining both means , vowel and consonant –interchange .
- •18) Write the compound words in four columns :
- •19) Define the types of non-productive ways of word-building :
- •20) Write which words have combined to form the following terms .
- •21. Give the complete classification of the following words
- •28. Give American English equivalents.
- •30. Define the difference in meaning of the given compounds possessing the change of distributional patterns.
- •31.What is the aim of Lexicology? What are the main Methods of Research?
- •35.What is the type of Word-building: affixation? Give its semantic classification
- •36What is the characteristic feature of Conversion?
- •37 What is an abbreviation? What is the characteristic feature of Initial addreviation?
- •38 What are the main characteristics of word-composition?
- •39 What types of classification of English Compounds do you know?
- •40 What is the type of word-building:Sound and Stress Interchange? Give the full analysis
- •41. What is Blending or Blends? What are the main ways of forming blends?
- •42. What events and conditions can stimulate the borrowing process? What do you know about Borrowings in the English Language?
- •What are the main types of classification in Borrowings?
- •What is Semasiology? What are the main objectives of semasiological study? What types of meaning can you analyze?
- •Semantic Structure of English words. What are the main distinguishes between two levels of analysis: the radial polysemy and the chain polysemy?
- •What can you tell about the Nature of Semantic Changes: Metonymy and Metaphor?
- •The main semantic aspects of Compounds. What do we have in a result of rearrangement of distributional pattern of compounds? Into what semantic groups can compounds be divided?
- •Whai is Homonyms? What types of Classification of Homonyms do you know?
- •What is the defenition of Synonyms? What types of Classification of Synonyms do you know?
- •What is the Euphemism? Euphemisms. Do you use Euphemisms in your everyday speech? Tell about the evolution of euphemisms.
- •51 Сlassification of antonyms is given by в.Комиссаров
- •53 Phraseological units. What are the main principles of classification of pu?
- •Principles of Classification.
- •Semantic Classification of Phraseological Units.
- •Syntactical Classification of Phraseological Units.
- •54. What Classification of phraseological units was suggested by V.V. Vinogradov?
- •55 What classification of phraseological units was given by I.V.Arnold?
- •56. What are the differences between American and British English?
- •57. How can you explain Formal and Informal Types of Speech?
- •58. What is Lexicography? What are the related disciplines in Lexicography?
- •59. What do you know about encyclopedic and linguistic dictionaries?
- •60. What are the main characteristics of Specialized dictionaries?
English is a Germanic language. What are the main features of Germanic languages?
English is a Germanic language which belongs to the Indo-European languages. The Germanic languages in the modern world are as follows: English, German, Netherlandish (known also as Dutch and Flemish), Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Frisian, Faroese, Afrikaans (in the South African Republic) and Yiddish.
Nowadays the Indo-European family is divided into North Germanic (Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) and West Germanic (English, Frisian, Flemish, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Yiddish). The now defunct East Germanic branch consisted of Gothic, which is extinct.
The other principal European language family is the Italic (popularly called Romance). This consists of the modern languages derived from Latin: Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Provençal, French, Italian, Rhaeto-Romance, and Romanian.
The history of the Germanic group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic language (PG). PG is the linguistic ancestor or the parent language of the Germanic group. It is supposed to have split from related Indo-European languages sometimes between the 15th and 10th century B.C.
PG is an entirely pre-historical language: it was never recorded in written form. It is believed that at the earliest stages of history PG was fundamentally one language, though dialectically coloured. In its later stages dialectal differences grew, so that towards the
beginning of our era Germanic appears divided into dialectical groups and tribal dialects.
All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common linguistic features. They preserved many IE features in lexis as well as at other levels. The most ancient etymological layer in the Germanic vocabulary is made up of words shared by most IE languages. They refer to a number of semantic spheres: natural phenomena, plants, animals, terms of kinship, family relations, parts of the human body, verbs, denoting basic activities of man, some pronouns and numerals.
The Proto-Germanic language (pg).
The Proto-Germanic is the assumed common ancestor of all the Germanic languages, which include, among others, modern English and German. As a hypothetical, reconstructed language all knowledge of Proto-Germanic is obtained by application of the comparative method.
A few surviving inscriptions in a runic script from Scandinavia dated to c. 200 are supposed by many to represent a stage of Proto-Norse immediately following the “Proto-Germanic” stage. Some loanwords from early Germanic which exist in neighboring non-Germanic languages are believed to have been borrowed from Germanic during the Proto-Germanic phase; an example is Finnish and Estonian kuningas “king”, which closely resembles the reconstructed Proto-Germanic *kuningaz.
Proto-Germanic itself descended from Proto-Indo-European. (PIE).
Proto-Germanic had only two tenses (past and present), compared to the six or seven in Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.
Three branches of splitting in pg
Toward the beginning of our era the common period of Germanic history came to an end. The Teutons has extended over a larger territory and the PG language broke into parts. PG split into three branches: East Germanic (Vindili among them were the Goths, the Vandals and the Burgundians in Pliny’s classification), North Germanic (Hilleviones) and West Germanic (which embraces Ingveones, Istaveones and Herminones in Pliny’s list). Then these branches split into separate Germanic languages: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic.
East Germanic. Old: Gothic (4th c.), Vandalic, Burgundian. Modern: No living languages.
North Germanic. Old: Old Norse or Old Scandinavian (2nd-3rd c.), Old Icelandic (12th c.), Old Norwegian (13th c.), Old Danish (13th c.), Old Swedish (13th c.). Modern: Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Faroese.
West Germanic. Old: Anglian, Frisian, Jutish, Saxon, Franconian, High German (Alemanic, Thuringian, Swavian, Bavarian), Old English (7th c.), Old Saxon (9th c.), Old High German (8th c.), Old Dutch (12th c.). Modern: English, German, Netherlandish, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Frisian.
All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common linguistic features. They preserved many IE features in lexis as well as at other levels. The most ancient etymological layer in the Germanic vocabulary is made up of words shared by most IE languages. They refer to a number of semantic spheres: natural phenomena, plants, animals, terms of kinship, family relations, parts of the human body, verbs, denoting basic activities of man, some pronouns and numerals.
The common linguistic features of Germanic languages.
All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common linguistic features. They preserved many IE features in lexis as well as at other levels. The most ancient etymological layer in the Germanic vocabulary is made up of words shared by most IE languages. They refer to a number of semantic spheres: natural phenomena, plants, animals, terms of kinship, family relations, parts of the human body, verbs, denoting basic activities of man, some pronouns and numerals.
All Germanic languages have strong and weak verbs; that is, they form the past tense and past participle either by changing the root vowel in the case of strong verbs (as in English lie, lay, lain or ring, rang, rung; German ringen, rang, gerungen) or by adding as an ending -d (or -t) or -ed in the case of weak verbs (as in English care, cared, cared or look, looked, looked; German fragen, fragte, gefragt). Also typically Germanic is the formation of the genitive singular by the addition of -s or -es. Examples are English man, man's; Swedish hund, hunds; German Lehrer, Lehrers or Mann, Mannes. Moreover, the comparison of adjectives in the Germanic languages follows a parallel pattern, as in English: rich, richer, richest; German reich, reicher, reichst; and Swedish rik, rikare, rikast. Lastly, vocabulary furnished evidence of a common origin for the Germanic languages in that a number of the basic words in these languages are similar in form; however, while word similarity may indicate the same original source for a group of languages, it can also be a sign of borrowing.