Lecture 1

1. Historical Linguistics. The Comparative method.

2. The Concept of Proto-Germanic (PG)

3. Grimm’s Law. Verner’s Law.

4. Periods in the History of English.

5. The earliest inhabitants of the British Isles

6. OE Heptarchy. OE Dialects.

7. Christianity and writing

1. Historical Linguistics. The Comparative method.

Throughout the ancient and medieval periods language was studied as part of logic, rhetoric, and philosophy. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, linguistic studies became comparative and historical in nature, focusing on the origin and evolution of language [rajend, p. 36].

In late 18^th and 19^th c. researchers started reconstructing long-lost languages and began piecing together a history of human migration and conquest that had never been written down. It began with Sir William Jones, the highly influential English scholar (1746-1794).

The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy, learning Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew ]and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age. By the end of his life he knew thirteen languages thoroughly and another twenty-eight reasonably well, making him a hyperpolyglot. He graduated from University College, Oxford in 1768 and became M.A. in 1773.

Jones was a judge in the English colonial administration in India and became fascinated by the cultures he encountered there.

He studied Sanskrit (the ancient Indian language) and recognized that it must be in some way related to Latin and Greek, and also to Persian, Gothic and Celtic languages. Sir William Jones asserted that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin developed from a common source [marcel, pg. 2]. He announced to the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic and Celtic seemed to have the same origin. In particular, he noticed certain words, like Sanskrit raj, Latin rex, German reich, and Celtic rix, that seemed similar in sound and meaning (they were all words for king or ruler). Jones posited that these various languages must have descended from an original tongue. In 1799, he identified the tongue as Sanskrit, thus subscribing to the myth of language decay [Sehr].

Jones’s work implied that all of the languages he had mentioned had once been connected, and he inspired subsequent researchers to attempt to deduce the relationships of the languages and the form of the language that must have been their common ancestor.

Interest in the discovery mounted and, early in the nineteenth century, Sanskrit was being studied in the West. The linguistic study of this language set in motion the comparison of Sanskrit with languages of Europe, forming the first period in the growth of historical linguistics and setting comparative linguistics on a firm footing. Meanwhile, systematic etymological studies helped clarify and cement the family ties of the Indo-European languages. The modern era of historical linguistic studies can be said to have been launched at this point [kirsten, 226].

It is generally accepted that the nineteenth century is the era par excellence of comparative-historical linguistics, led (in the main) by German scholarship [kirsten, 226].

The comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor.

A few of the best-known historical linguists of the early nineteenth century are the Dane Rasmus Rask and the Germans Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm.

The German scholar Franz Bopp was the first to work out some of the relationships between the languages, showing how they were related.

The Danish scholar Rasmus Rask recognized that there were regular sound shifts between languages, but it was left to a German scholar Jacob Grimm who deduced regular rules of sound change.

In the mid-nineteenth century, one of the most influential linguists, August Schleicher 1821–68), set about reconstructing the hypothetical parent language from which most European languages were derived – the protolanguage. He also devised the genealogical family-tree model of the Indo-European languages [kirsten, 227-228].

Through years and years of painstaking work, scholars were able to figure out how most European languages related to each other and what their ancestors must have been.

2. The Concept of Proto-Germanic (PG)

The comparative scholars were able to reconstruct some of the history of dark prehistoric period in Europe. From their language, scholars have deduced that they lived in or near forests of beech, oak, pine and birch trees, encountered beers, wolves, and deer, raised pigs, goats, and sheep, and searched the forest for honey from bees. They mostly used stone tools, but they cultivated land and raised cattle in addition to hunting. They had kings, and they believed in supernatural things and gods. Over the next millennia, these Indo-Europeans spread throughout Europe, setting in different areas (from ca. 4000 to 1000 BC). Over time, their languages changed and diversified into those we have today.

Because of Indo-European migration, the Indo-European family could be broken into two large groups, the “Satem” languages and the “Centum” languages. This terminology is based on the words for “one hundred” in the various languages and indicates a very early consonant shift. These two large groups probably indicate an original divide of the Indo-Europeans in two large groups.

The Satem Group includes:

• The Indo-Iranian;

• Armenian

• Albanian

• Balto-Slavic families

The Centum Group includes:

• The Tocharian

• Anatolian

• Hellenic ] (Greek)

• Italic ] (Latin)

• Celtic

• Germanic

The branch of Indo-European that English belongs to is called Germanic, and includes German, Dutch, Frisian, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian

The Indo-European family of languages, with its numerous branches and its millions of speakers, has developed out of some single language, which must have been spoken thousands of years ago by some comparatively small body of people in a relatively restricted geographical area. This original language we can call Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The prefix proto- was introduced to indicate a hypothetical language that had left no documentation, but which could be reconstructed by the method of comparison [marcel, p. 3].

• Proto-Indo-European (PIE) - some single language, which must have been spoken thousands of years ago by some comparatively small body of people in a relatively restricted geographical area

• Proto-Germanic (PG) - a dialect of Indo-European all Germanic languages are descended from;

We have no records of the PG language from which all these languages are descended. We can reconstruct it by comparing the various daughter languages, especially valuable are languages with early literary records, Gothic in particular. We can also learn a great deal by comparing our reconstructions with the forms found in the other branches of Indo-European.

Proto-Germanic

West Germanic North Germanic East-Germanic

North Germanic

(Old Norse)

West Scandinavian:

• Icelandic

• Norwegian

• Faroese

East Scandinavian:

• Danish

• Swedish

• Gutnish

East Germanic:

• Burgundian

• Vandal

• Gothic:

Visigothic

Ostrogothic

The principal language of East Germanic is Gothic, which is extinct now. In the 4^th c. Goths were Christianized by a missionary named Ulfilas (311–383). Our knowledge of Gothic is almost wholly due to a translation of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament made by Ulfilas. Except for some runic inscriptions in Scandinavia it is the earliest record of a Germanic language we possess. Gothic is important in giving info about early forms of Germanic.

To the East Germanic branch belonged also Burgundian and Vandalic, but our knowledge of these languages is confined to a small number of proper names.

West Germanic

• Old High German High German

• Old Saxon Low German

• Old Low Franconian Dutch

• Old English English

• Old Frisian Frisian

One important aspect of PIE is that it was an inflected language. In all modern languages this inflexion system has broken down to a greater or lesser extent, and this is particularly true of English.

PG is a highly inflected language, like PIE.

In pronunciation, PIE underwent considerable changes in developing into PG. One big change is in the matter of accent. In PG the stress was put on the 1^st syllable (fixed accent), in PIE – it could fall on any syllable (free accent). The tendency in PG to stabilize the accent on the 1^st syllable had profound consequences. It led to a weakening and often loss of unstressed syllables, especially at the end of the word, e.g.

PIE verb “bheronom” – PG beranan – OE beran – ME beren, bere – ME bear

3. Grimm’s Law. Verner’s Law.

In PIE there was a rich array of stop (взрывной согласный) consonants. This system underwent great changes in PG. The most important series of changes is called “the 1^st sound-shifting” or Grimm’s Law, after the early 19^th c. philologist Jakob Grimm, who analysed it. [Barber Ch. The English Language: a historical introduction. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. – 299 p. (pg. 67-)]. It consists of 3 major consonant changes [Blake N. F. A history of the English language, London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1996. – 382 p.]

Jacob Grimm himself didn’t call the consonant shift that he had explained the LAW. The German word he uses “regel” means “rule”, and could easily mean correspondence. Grimm began with the assumption that Sanscrit, Greek, Latin and other European languages had a common ancestor. This common ancestor, which we will call Proto-Indo-European, can be reconstructed by examining its descendants. Those elements that appeared in the majority of the descendant languages were assumed to be more likely to have appeared in the original language.

So, for example, we examine the words for “father” and “foot” in a variety of Indo-European languages:

FATHER

Sanskrit – pitar

Latin – pater

Ancient Greek – pāter

English – father

FOOT

Sanskrit – pad

Latin – ped

Ancient Greek – pūs

English – foot

Because the “p” sound appears in a wider variety of languages, it is assumed to be ancestral and the “f” in English to be derived from a consonant shift. Grimm concluded, that the ancestral forms were p, t, k, d, b, g, bh, dh, gh. They shifted in the Germanic languages in the following manner:

The main features are shown here:

1. PIE aspirated voiced stops > Gmc voiced stops

Bh > b cf. Sans. bharami – ModE bear

Dh > d Sans. rudhiras – ModE red

Gh > g Gr. chen – Ger Gans

2. PIE voiceless stops > Gmc voiceless fricatives

P > f L. pater – ModE father

T > th L. dentis – ModE tooth

K > h L. cornu – ModE horn

3. PIE voiced stops > Gmc voiceless stops

b > p L. turba – ModE thorp

d > t L. dens – ModE tooth

g > k L. ager – ModE acre