Glossary

Diachrony– a specific approach towards of a language when phenomena are studied through time, the development of a language is the object of such investigation.

Dynamics– the changes of the system.

Evolution - gradual development.

External (extra-linguistic) factors– the changes of a language, which are connected with the life of human society.

Internal (intra-linguistic) factors– the development of a language due to the linguistic laws.

Language units– the single language wholes, e.g. phonemes, words, affixes, syntactic constructions.

Linguistic change– the process of transformation, replacement and conversion of language units.

Linguistic levels– language subsystem forming the hierarchical structure of the language, e.g. phonemic level, morphemic, lexical, syntactical, super-syntactical and the level of the text.

Merging– the process when two or more units fall together and are replaced by one unit.

Replacement– the process when one unit is used instead of the other.

Revolution– a far-reaching and drastic change.

Splitting– the process when two distinct units take the place of one.

Synchronic variations- the co-existence of two or more forms of a language unit at the same time.

Synchrony– a specific approach towards a language when phenomena are studied at a particular period without considering historical changes.

Literature

A) Principal:

1. Історія англійської мови / Навчальний посібник для самостійної роботи студентів-філологів, що вивчають англійську мову як фах. – Полтава, 2002. – C. 3-9.

2. Rastorgueva T.A. A History of English. M., 1983. – Chapter 1 (P.14 - 24), Chapter 2 (P.24-33).

B) Supplementary:

1. Аракин В.Д. История английского языка. – М., 1985. – C. 9-15.

2. Иванова И.П., Чахоян Л.П., Беляева Т.М. История английского языка. – СПб., 1999. – С. 41-45.

3. Tokareva E. Pages of History. Great Britain, the USA. – M., 1985.

Sources and Origin of English.

1. Proto-Germanic and Its Principal Linguistic Features.

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.

The Germanic group acquired their specific distinctive features after the separation of the ancient Germanic tribes from other IE tribes and prior to their further expansion and disintegration, which is during the period of the PG parent language. These PG features inherited by the descendant languages represent the common features of the Germanic group. Other common features developed later, in the course of the individual histories of separate Germanic languages, as a result of similar tendencies arising from PG causes. On the other hand, many Germanic features have been disguised, transformed and even lost in later history.

The history of the Germanic group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic (PG) language (also termed Common or Primitive Germanic, Primitive Teutonic and simply Germanic). PG is the linguistic ancestor or the parent language of the Germanic group. It is supposed to have split from related IE tongues sometime between the 15th and 10th c. B.C. and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in the region of the Elbe. This place is regarded as the most probable original home of the Teutons. PG is a pre-historical language: it was never recorded in written form. In the 19th c. it was reconstructed by methods of comparative linguistics from written evidence in descendant languages.

It is believed that at the earliest stages of history PG was fundamentally one language, though dialectally coloured. In its later stages dialectal differences grew, so that towards the beginning of our era Ger­manic appears divided into dialectal groups and tribal dialects.

1. Word Stress.

The peculiar Germanic system of word accentuation is one of the most important distinguishing features of the group; it arose in PG, was fully or partly retained in separate languages and served as one of the major causes for many linguistic changes.

It is known that in ancient IE 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 — a root-morpheme, an affix or an ending — and could be shifted both in form building and word-building. Both these properties of the word accent were changed in PG. Force or expiratory stress (also called dynamic and breath stress) became the only type of stress used. In Early PG word stress was still as movable as in ancient IE but in Late PG its position in the word was stabilised. The stress was now 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. The stress could no longer move either in form-building or word-building.

The heavy fixed word stress inherited from PG has played an important role in the development of the Germanic languages, and especially in phonetic and morphological changes. Due to the difference in the force of articulation the stressed and unstressed syllables underwent widely different changes: accented syllables were pronounced with great distinctness and precision, while unaccented became less distinct and were phonetically weakened. The differences between the sounds in stressed position were preserved and emphasised, whereas the contrasts between the unaccented sounds were weakened and lost. Since the stress was fixed on the root, the weakening and loss of sounds mainly affected the suffixes and grammatical endings. Many endings merged with the suffixes, were weakened and dropped.