III. Germanic group, its branches
The Germanic branch of languages includes English, German, Dutch, Frisian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and some more which descended from one parent language - a dialect of IE, which we call Proto-Germanic. Round about the Christian era the speakers of PG formed a homogeneous cultural and linguistic group, living in the north of Europe. There is some information about these people thanks to Roman authors, who described their society, and called them Germani.
Historical linguistics distinguishes Modern and Old classification of Germanic languages. The Old one presupposes 3 branches: North, West, and East (where Gothic, Vandalic, Burgundian belonged). Today the East languages are not spoken (they are dead l-ges), so the Modern classification includes 2 branches: West: English, German, Flemish, Frisian, Yiddish, Africaans, Dutch.
North: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese, Gutnish.
IV. Features of early Germanic society
Tacitus described the Germans as a tribal society living in the scattered settlements in the woody and marshy land of the North-West Europe. They grew grain crops, but their agriculture was not advanced. They changed their ploughlands yearly, and distributed the land in order of rank.
The family played a big part in their social organization, and the more relatives a man had the greater was his influences in his old age.
They had kings chosen for their birth, and chiefs chosen for their valour. But in major affairs the whole community consulted together.
The Germans were the most famous warriors in those times. They disliked peace, because there was no fame and booty in it.
They worshipped Mercury (Woden), and sacrified animals to Hercules and Mars (Thor and Tiw).
Before 300 B.C. they had been confined between Elbe and Oder, but later they began to expand in all directions, perhaps, because of the overpopulation and the poverty of natural resources.
V. Proto-Germanic Morphology
PIE was a highly inflected language, that is it made great use of endings. Not much of IE system of inflections is left in ModE, which prefers other grammatical devices like prepositions and word order. If we compare PG and Latin, for example, we’ll see, that Latin inherited PIE system of gase inflections and a similar system was inherited by PG (5 cases: Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc., Instr.).
Also in PG there were some declensions of nouns. All nouns had grammatical gender, that is every noun had to be either masculine, or feminine, or neuter. This grammatical gender had no necessary connection with sex or with animacy, which means that the names of inanimate objects could be masculine or feminine, and the names of sexed creatures could be neuter.
Similar considerations apply to adjectives. In PG they developed 2 declensions, which has not survived in ModE, but can be found in some other Germanic languages (for ex. in Swedish the weak form is used after the definite article, or after words like this, that, my, your, in other cases the strong adjective is used. In OE gōd mann – strong, sē gōda mann – weak).
PG had only two tense forms of the verb – present and past, plus different endings for different persons and numbers.
From PIE it inherited a set of verbs which showed change of tense by the change of the root-vowel (in ModE sing-sang-sung). These were Strong Verbs. The gradation of vowels for grammatical purpose was highly characteristic of the IE languages. Accordingly, in PG there was a large number of strong verbs. But, alongside, PG developed a new type, called Weak Verbs.
VI. Proto-Germanic Phonology
6a. The accent on a syllable depended partly on stress (acoustic loudness), partly on intonation (musical pitch), but some languages relied more on stress than on intonation.
PIE probably made great use of free (i.e. could fall either on the root syllable, or on the suffix, or on the inflexion) accent, but in PG the stress accent starts to become predominant. At the same time, there was a strong tendency in PG to adopt a uniform position for the stress on a word by putting it on the 1st syllable, except verbs (at the time when the stress became fixed a syntactic combination of prepositional adverb with the verb was not yet a single word, so such combination developed into compound words with the second element stressed). The role of the dynamic stress grew. It meant that in PG there existed more stressed and less stressed syllables.
The tendency to stabilize the accent on the first syllable together with the adoption of a stress type of accent had profound consequences: it all led to a weakening and loss of unstressed syllables, especially at the end of the word. This trend continued in Germanic languages throughout their history (ex. OE beran > ME bere, ber > ModE bear).
6b. 1. The phoneme system was reconstructed by some 19th century scholars, who claimed that in PIE there was a rich amount of stop consonants. In PG this system underwent great changes. The most important series of changes is called “the 1st consonant shift” or “Grimm’s law” (after Jacob Grimm, 19th cent. philologist).
The consonant shift is meant by the complex of phonetic processes, the essence of which is the change of the type of articulation of IE voiced stops (with the simultaneous retaining of the place of articulation). The shift is considered to have started some centuries B.C and finished (approx.) in the 5th-6th cent. A.D.
Modern Germanic linguistics states that the 1st Consonant Shift includes several changes within a definite group of consonants.
IE G
Aspirated Voiced
voiced stops stops
bh > b (Sanskr. bhrāta – Goth. brōþar; OInd sabha плем’я – OE sib, G Sippe, OInd bharet – E bear)
dh > d (OInd. madhyas – Goth. midjis, E middle; OInd bandhu родич – E bind)
gh > g (*IE ghostis – Goth. gasts)
IE G
Vioced Voiceless
stops stops
b > p (Ukr. болото – E pool; Lat. labi – Goth. slepan, E sleep, G. schlafen)
d > t (Lat. duo, Ukr. два - Goth. twai, E two; Lat. videre – OE witan)
g > k (Lat. iugum, Rus. иго – E yoke; Lat. gelidus – Goth. kalds, E cold; Lat. genu – Goth kniu, E knee)
IE G
Voiceless Voiceless
stops fricatives
p > f (Sanskr. pitár –Goth. fadar; Lat.pedem \Gr. poda – Goth fotus, OE fōt; Lat. piscis – OE fisc)
t > þ (OInd. trayas, Ukr. три – Goth. þreis, E three; Lat. tenius – E thin)
k > h (Lat. octo – Goth. ahtau, E.eight; Lat. decem, Welsh deg – Goth. taihun, E ten, OHG zehan)
K.Verner, a Danish linguist, in 1877 noticed and analyzed the development of IE voiceless stops in the intervocal position, and in the position at the end of the word after a vowel. Old IE stress doesn’t fall on the preceding vowel. Under such conditions these sounds appeared in Germanic as voiced stops. This addition came to be called as “Verner’s Law”. (Note: if the old IE stress fell on the preceding vowel Germanic voicless stops remained voiceless).
Ex. OInd mátar, Rus. мать(тери) – OSax. modar;
Goth. maiza – OE māra
Such gradation of consonants was mostly vividly seen in the system of strong verbs. It influenced the development of verb-forms and was also called “grammatical gradation”.
Ex. OE was (sing., past) – weron (plur., past)
OE frēosan (inf.) – gefroren (Part.II).
As a result of the first consonant shift the PG consonant system was formed, different from PIE consonants.
Only one language, Old High German (especially its Southern dialects), continued the shift of consonants. It was called Oldhighgerman or Second Consonant Shift, and it ended in the 8th century. Two groups of consonants participated: voiceless stops p, t, k, and voiced stops b, d, g.
G OHG G OHG
b > p p > ph > pf > ff, f (E sleep – G schlafen, Goth greipan – G greifen хапати)
d > t (E day – G Tag) t > th > tz > zz, z (E water – G Wasser: E eat – G essen, E white – G weiß)
g > k (E Guest – G Kast) k > kh > kh > hh, h (E make – G machen, E break – G brechen)
As a result of the Second Shift the system of German consonants became distinguished from Common Germanic, and West Germanic languages.
There existed the Third or Danish consonant shift, which led to the development of affricates from voiceless stops at the beginning of the word before stressed vowel.
6b. 2. Germanic consonants (except r) are lengthened if they are followed by j, w, r, l, m, n, and are preceded by a short vowel. This process is also called “doubling” or “gemination”. After a long vowel the lengthening didn’t occur. The most frequent cases occurred before j, less frequent before m. The lengthening of consonants was probably caused by the divion of words into syllables.
E.g. Goth. bidjan (просити) – OE biddan.
Goth baitrs – E bitter
OIcl sitja – OE sittan
6b. 3. In PG voiced variant of s [z] was seldom used, mostly before voiced consonant. As a result of the Verner’s Law its sphere widened. Later in North and West Germanic (independently) this development continued to r. This process was called rhotacism. Perhaps, phonetically this development went through some intermediate steps: s > z > ž > ř > r.
Eg. OE ceosan – curon (to choose)
OE wœs – weron
In West Germanic final r was gradually lost. Such clusters as zd, zn in West Germanic shifted into rd, rn, in North Germanic they were doubled into dd, nn.
6c. 1. In PIE the opposition between short and long vowels could be reduced or even lost, but in Proto-Germanic this opposition was very strict. The Germanic Vowel Shift reflected as the following:
IE short vowels G short vowels IE long vowels G long vowels
a (Lat. ager поле) > a (Goth. akrs) i (Lat. svīnus) > i (OE svīn)
o (Lat. hostis гість) > a (Goth. gasts) ū (Lat. m ūs) > ū (OE m ūs)
i (Lat. piscis риба) > i (OE fisc) ō (Lat. pōs) > ō (OE fōt)
(Lat. vir чоловік) > e (OIcl verr) ā (Lat. m āter) > ō (OE m ōdor)
e
(Lat. edere їсти)
>
e
(OE etan)
Goth. ē
(became front)
(Lat.
medius середній)
>
i
(OE midd) ē
(complex > æ
u
(OInd upa на)
> u
(OE uppe)
development) West G., North.G ā
(became back)
( Lat. iugum ярмо) > o (OE eok)
West G. æ/ ē (became front)
Thus, we have the opposition of “short – long” vowels in PG completed.
6c.2. In the domain of vowels the most important property of the Germanic languages is Ablaut or Gradation. This is a spontaneous vowel variation mostly inside a root which is common to all Indo-European languages. Germanic Ablaut goes back to some regular changes inherent in IE parent language. This vowel variation became a very important grammatical means especially in the verb system where it is employed for making past verb-forms of strong verbs. The old system of gradation is vividly seen in Gothic:
Goth.: reisan-rais-risum-risans
OE: rīson-rās-rison-risen
ModE: rise-rose-risen
Ablaut is also used in Germanic as a word-forming means: faran їхати– fōr мандрівка, length – long. Other IE languages also possess features of Ablaut: укр. віз – возити – везу.
6c. 3. The term Umlaut was introduced by J.Grimm for marking a regressive assimilation of a vowel which aquires articulation of the following vowel. In Germanic languages there were 2 types of umlaut: i-umlaut, and u-umlaut. The most widely used was the first type.
So, we came to know that English belongs to IE family, Germanic group, Westgermanic branch. All Germanic languages have specific grammatical and phonetic features as compared with other IE languages.