- •Subject and Aims of the History of English. Its Ties with Other Disciplines. Germanic Language in the System of Indo-European Family of Languages
- •1. History of English in the systemic conception of English
- •1.1. The aims and the purpose of the study of the subject
- •1.2. Connection of the subject with other disciplines
- •2. Sources of Language History
- •2.1. Writings in early English
- •3. General notes on the language study
- •3.1 The definition of the language
- •3.2 The functions of the language
- •3.3 The structure of the language
- •3.4 The language classification principles
- •3.5 Synchrony and diachrony in the language study
- •4. The comparative-historical method
- •4.1 The stages of the comparative-historical method
- •4.2 The principles of the comparative-historical method
- •4.3 The drawbacks of the comparative-historical method
- •5. The Germanic group of languages
- •The Formation of the English National Language. Periods in the History of the English Language
- •1. Territorial dialects of the period of the Anglo-Saxon invasion
- •2. The dialects of the period of the Norman Conquest
- •3. The development of the dialect of London into a national language
- •Periods in the History of the English Language
- •1. Henry Sweet and his division of the history of English
- •2. Historical periodization as offered by b. Khaimovich
- •3. T. Rastorguyeva’s periodization of the English language
- •4. The division of the history of English as suggested by V. Arakin
- •5. The periods of the development of English as offered by a. Markman and e. Steinberg
- •6. David Burnley’s periodization of the history of English
- •Common Linguistic Features of Germanic Languages
- •1. Phonetic peculiarities of the Germanic languages
- •1.1. The First Consonant Shift
- •1.2. Vowels
- •1.3. The doubling of consonants
- •1.4. Rhotacism
- •1.5. Germanic fracture (or breaking)
- •1.6. The second consonant shift
- •2. Some common grammatical features of Germanic languages
- •2.1. Form-building Means
- •2.1.1. Ablaut
- •2.1.2. Word-structure
- •2.1.3. Types of Stems
- •2.1.4. Strong and Weak Verbs
- •3. Germanic Vocabulary
- •Phonetic Changes in the Old English Period
- •The Main Features of Old, Middle, and Modern English
- •2. Old English Phonetics
- •2.1. Oe Consonants
- •2.2. Vowels
- •2.2.1. Changes of stressed vowels
- •2.2.2. Changes of unstressed vowels
- •Changes in the Middle English Orthography and Phonology
- •1. Changes in the Orthographic System
- •2. Major Changes in the Sound System
- •2.1. The Consonants
- •2.2. Consonant Changes from Old to Middle English
- •2.3. Vowels in Stressed Syllables
- •2.4. Vowels in Unstressed Syllables
- •2.5. The Formation of Middle English Diphthongs
- •The Old English Morphology
- •1. The Old English Noun.
- •2. The Old English Pronoun
- •3. The Old English Adjective
- •4. The Old English Adverb
- •5. The Numeral in Old English
- •6. The Old English Verb.
- •The Middle English Morphology
- •1. Middle English as a Period of Great Change.
- •2. The Middle English Noun.
- •3. Articles.
- •4. The me Adjective.
- •5. The me Adverb
- •6. The me Pronoun
- •7. The me Verb
- •7.1. Strong and weak verbs
- •The New English Morphology and Changes in the System of English Syntax
- •1. New English Morphology
- •2. Old English Syntax.
- •3. Middle English Syntax
- •4. New English Syntax
2. Some common grammatical features of Germanic languages
2.1. Form-building Means
Like other old IE languages, both PG and the OG 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. In later history all the Germanic languages developed analytical forms and ways of word connection.
In the early periods of history the grammatical forms were built in the synthetic way: by means of inflections, sound interchanges and suppletion.
The suppletive way of form-building was inherited from ancient IE, it was restricted to a few personal pronouns, adjectives, and verbs.
The principle means of form-building were inflections.
The wide use of sound interchanges has always been a characteristic feature of the Germanic group. This form-building (and word-building) device was inherited from IE and became very productive in Germanic. In various forms of the word and in words derived from one and the same root, the root-morpheme appeared as a set of variants. The consonants were relatively stable, the vowels were variable.
2.1.1. Ablaut
Ablaut or vowel gradation is an independent vowel interchange unconnected with any phonetic conditions; different vowels appear in the same environment, surrounded by the same sounds.
Vowel gradation did not reflect any phonetic changes but was used as a special independent device to differentiate between words and grammatical forms built from the same root.
Ablaut was inherited by Germanic from ancient IE. The principal gradation series used in the IE languages – [e ~ o] – can be shown in Russian or Ukrainian examples: нести ~ ноша. This kind of ablaut is called qualitative, as the vowels differ only in quality. Alternation of short and long vowels, and also alternation with a “zero” (i.e. lack of vowel) represent quantitative ablaut.
The Germanic languages employed both types of ablaut – qualitative and quantitative – and their combinations.
2.1.2. Word-structure
Some changes in the morphological structure of the word in Late PG account for the development of an elaborate system of declensions in OG languages, and for the formation of grammatical endings.
Originally, in Early PG the word consisted of three main component parts: the root, the stem-suffix, and the grammatical ending. The stem-suffix was a means of word derivation, the ending – a marker of the grammatical form. In Late PG the old stem-suffixes lost their derivational force and merged with other components of the word, usually with the endings. The word was simplified: the three-morpheme structure was transformed into a two-morpheme structure. The original grammatical ending, together with the stem-suffix formed a new ending.
The simplification of the word structure and the loss of stem-suffixes as distinct components was facilitated or, perhaps, caused by the heavy Germanic word stress fixed on the root.