Lecture 3 linguistic features of germanic languages Plan

1. Phonetics: Word Stress. Vowels. Consonants. Proto-Germanic Consonant Shift. Interpretation of the Proto-Germanic Consonant Shift.

2. Grammar: Form-building means. Vowel gradation with special reference to verbs. Simplification of word structure in Late Proto-Germanic. Role of stem-suffixes in the formation of declensions. Strong and weak verbs.

3. Vocabulary

Literature:

1. Аракин И.Д. Очерки по истории английского языка. – М, 1955.

2. Бруннер К. История английского языка. Перев. с нем. – М.: Иностранная литература, т. I, II, 1956.

3. Верба Л.Г. Історія англійської мови. Посібник для студентів та викладачів вищих навчальних закладів. – Вінниця: НОВА КНИГА, 2006. – 296 с.

4. Введение в германскую филологию. Арсеньева М.Г., Балашова С.П., Берков В.П., Соловьева Л.Н. – М., 1980.

5. Иванова И. П., Беляева Т. М. Хрестоматия по истории английского языка. Л.,? 1973.

6. Иванова И.П., Чахоян Л.П. История английского языка. – М., 1976

7. Ильиш Б.А. История английского языка. – Л., 1973.

8. Расторгуева Т.А. История английского языка. – М., 2005.

9. Смирницкий А.И. История английского языка. Курс лекций. – М., 1965.

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 that 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.

Phonetics 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, prior to the separation of Germanic, 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 (cf. R дóмом, домá, домóвничать, дóма).

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.

These features of word accent were inherited by the Germanic lan­guages, and despite later alterations are observable today. In Mod E there is a sharp contrast between accented and unaccented syllables due to the force of the stress. The main accent commonly falls on the root-morpheme, and is never shifted in building grammatical forms. The following English and German words illustrate its fixed position in grammatical forms and derived words:

English: be'come, be'coming, over'come; 'lover, 'loving, be'loved;

German: 'Liebe, 'lieben ' liebte, ge'liebt, 'lieberhaft, 'Liebling.

(Cf. these native words with words of foreign origin which move the stress in derivation, though never in form-building: ex'hibit v, exhi'bi­tion n).

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. Cf., e.g., the reconstructed PG word 'fish', with its descendants in Old Germanic languages:

PG *fiskaz, Gt fisks, O Icel fiskr, OE fisc.

(The asterisk * is placed before reconstructed hypothetical forms which have not been found in written records; the words may be pro­nounced exactly as they are written; spelling in Old Germanic languages was phonetic).

Vowels

Throughout history, beginning with PG, vowels displayed a strong tendency to change. They underwent different kinds of alterations: qualitative and quantitative, dependent and independent. Quali­tative changes affect the quality of the sound, e.g.: [o>a] or [p>f]; quantitative changes make long sounds short or short sounds long, e.g.: [i>i:], [ll>l]; dependent changes (also positional or combinative) are re­stricted to certain positions or phonetic conditions, for instance, a sound may change under the influence of the neighbouring sounds or in a certain type of a syllable; independent changes – also spontaneous or regular – take place irrespective of phonetic conditions, i.e. they affect a certain sound in all positions.

From an early date the treatment of vowels was determined by the nature of word stress. In accented syllables the oppositions between vowels were carefully maintained and new distinctive features were introduced, so that the number of stressed vowels grew. In unaccented positions the original contrasts between vowels were weakened or lost; the distinction of short and long vowels was neutralised so that by the age of writing the long vowels in unstressed syllables had been shortened. As for originally short vowels, they tended to be reduced to a neutral sound, losing their qualitative distinctions and were often dropped in unstressed final syllables (see the example *fiskaz).

Strict differentiation of long and short vowels is commonly regarded as an important characteristic of the Germanic group. The contrast of short and long vowels is supported by the different directions of their changes. While long vowels generally tended to become closer and to diphthongise, short vowels, on the contrary, often changed into more open sounds. These tendencies can be seen in the earliest vowel changes which distinguished the PG vowel system from its PIE source. IE short [o] changed in Germanic into the more open vowel [a] and thus ceased to be distinguished from the original IE [a]; in other words in PG they merged into [o]. The merging of long vowels proceeded in the opposite direction: IE long [a:] was narrowed to [o:] and merged with [o:]. The examples in Table 1 illustrate the resulting correspond­ences of vowels in parallels from Germanic and non-Germanic languages (more apparent in Old Germanic languages than in modern words, for the sounds have been modified in later history).

Table 1