The genealogical approach allows to divide languages into “families”, each family containing only languages that are supposed to have originated from one proto-lan guage. It is hard to believe, but very long ago there existed some Proto-Indo-European language of which have originated such languages as Greek, Latin, English, Russian, French and many other languages the genetic relations of which are difficult to suspect if you do not have special linguistic education. Big fami lies of languages are divided into groups. Finally, large groups are divided into subgroups.
The outstanding domestic historical linguists and culturologists Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov place the homeland of the Indo-European protolanguage more than 6,000 years ago in the Tran scaucasus, in eastern Anatolia. The landscape described by the protolanguage as now resolved must lie somewhere in the crescent that curves around the southern shores of the Black Sea, south from the Balkan peninsula, east across ancient Anatolia (today the non-European territories of Turkey) and north to the Caucasus Mountains.
Here the agricultural revolution created the food surplus that impelled the Indo-Eu ropeans to found villages and city-states from which, about 6,000 years ago, they began their migrations over the Eurasian continent and into history. Some daughter languages must have differentiated in the course of migrations that took them first to the East and later to the West. Some spread west to Anatolia and Greece, others southwest to Iran and In dia (Sanskrit).
The Essay on Samoan Language
Samoan is a rich language that remains the principal language of the people of Samoa. The Samoan language is exquisite and quite easy to learn and is similar to other languages in the pacific region. “Samoan is a branch of the Austronesian Language, formerly called Malayo-Polynesian language, one of the word’s largest language families, both in terms of numbers of languages-more than 700-and ...
Most Western languages stem from an Eastern branch that rounded the Caspian Sea.
Con tact with Semitic languages in Mesopotamia and with Kartvelian languages in the Caucasus led to the adoption of many foreign words. The following chart presents the family tree of Indo-European languages: Indo-European Family GROUPS AND LANGUAGES: 1. The Albanian language, the language of ancient Illyria. The oldest monuments belong to the seventeenth century, 2. The Armenian language, the oldest monuments of which belong to the fifth century A. D. 3.
The Baltic group, embracing (a) Old Prussian, which became extinct in the seventeenth century, (b) Lithuanian, (c) Lettic (the oldest records of Lithuanian and Lettic belong to the sixteenth century) 4. The Celtic [k] group, consisting of: (a) Gaulish (known to us by Keltic names and words quoted by Latin and Greek authors, and inscriptions on coins); (b) Britannic, including Cymricor Welsh, Cornish, and Bas-Breton or Armorican (the oldest records of Cymric and Bas-Breton date back to the eighth or ninth century); (c) Gaelic, including Irish-Gaelic, Scotch-Gaelic, and Manx.
The oldest monuments are the old Gaelic ogam 4 inscriptions, which probably date as far back as about A. D. 500. 5. The Germanic group, consisting of : (1) East Germanic – Gothic. Almost the only source of our knowledge of the Gothic language is the fragments of the biblical translation made in the fourth century by Ulfi las, the Bishop of the West Goths. See pp. 195-7. (2) North Germanic or Scandinavian — (a) called Old Norse until about the middle of the eleventh century; (b) East Scandinavian, including Swedish, Danish and Faroese; (c) West Scandinavian, including Norwegian and Icelandic.
The oldest records of this branch are the runic inscriptions, some of which date as far back as the third or fourth century. (3) West Germanic, which is composed of the following languages: (a) German 1 (b) English (c) Dutch2 (d)Frisian (e)Afrikaans (Boerish) (f)Yiddish (g) Luxembugian 6. The Greek language, with its numerous dialects. 7. The Indic group, including the language of the Vedas, classical Sanskrit, and the Prakrit dialects; 8.
The Iranian group, including (a) West Iranian (Old Persian, the language of the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, dating from about 520-350 B. C. ) ; (6) East Iranian (Avesta—sometimes called Zend-Avesta, Zend, and Old Bactrian—the language of the Avesta, the sacred books of the Zoroastrians).
The Term Paper on Changing Role Of Gender In Language
Examine the language in relation to gender, and observe its changing role in society. A businessman is aggressive; a businesswoman is pushy. A businessman is good on details; she is picky.... He follows through; she doesn t know when to quit. He stands firm; she is hard.... His judgements are her prejudices. He is a man of the world; she s been around. He isn t afraid to say what is on his mind; ...
9. The Italic group, consisting of Latin and the Umbrian-Samnitic dialects. From the popular form of Latin are descended the Romance languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Cata lan, Provenfal, French, Italian, Raetoromanic, Rumanian or Wallachian. 10. Slavonic, embracing: (a) he South-Eastern group, including Russian (Great Russian, White Russian, and Little Russian), Bulgarian, and Illyrian (Servian, Croatian, Slovenian); (b) the Western group, including Czech (Bohemian), Sorabian (Wendish), Polish and Polabian. Extinct Groups and Languages 11. Hittite [‘hitait] – хеттские, another group of extinct languages, which died out in the 2-1 millennium B. C. ; spoken on the territory of modern Turkey and Northern Syria. The Hittite language is very important for Indo-European reconstruction. 12. Tocharian [ka:] – тохарскиe, languages which died out after the 8 th century A.
D. ; spoken in oases of Eastern TurkestanTocharian, now extinct, represented by texts discovered in Chinese Turkestan, which are thought to be anterior to the tenth century A. D. 13. the Illiric(an) language(ancient Balcan) 14. the Phrygian language (2-1 mill. B. C. ).
15. the Thrakian (фракийский) language (6-3 c. B. C. ) 16. the Venetic language (6-1 c. B. C. ) It should be noted that alongside with large groups of languages, like Germanic, Italic or Slavic, the Indo-European family includes individual groups each of which consists of only one language, such as Al banian, Armenian and Greek.
It goes without saying that our chief interest will be with the Germanic (Teutonic) group, since it in cludes English and its nearest relatives. It is divided into three main subgroups: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic. The chief language of East Germanic was Gothic, now known mainly from fragments of the 4th century translation of the Holy Bible by Wulfila (Ulfilas), the Aryan bishop of the West Goths. In the following chart the group of Germanic languages is presented: Old German consists of two branches: High German, the oldest monuments of which belong to about the middle of the eighth century; Low German, with records dating back to the ninth century. 2 Old Dutch is called Old Low Franconian , until about 1200. Germanic Group North Germanic (Scandinavian) East Germanic West Germanic 5 Norwegian Icelandic Swedish Danish Faroese [fearouz]– фарерский, spoken on the Faroes (autonomous region of Denmark).
The Essay on A universal language
According to a biblical account found in the book of Genesis, people once spoke the same language. Then, because those people banded together to build a tower in Babylon that glorified their own achievements, rather than those of their deity, God punished them. He ensured that mankind spoke different languages so that they’d never be able to work together to dishonor God again. Was there ...
Gothic – the lan-ge of Goths (1B. C. – 6-8 A. D. Vandal – died out very early and practically left no traces Burgundian – died out very early and practically left no traces English Frisian – the language spoken in some regions of the Netherlands, Saxony, on the Frisian isles Dutch High German Low German Afrikaans, spoken in the SAR Yiddish, spoken in different countries. It is very important to determine genetic relations among the languages of the world as the literary monuments of the earliest period of the language are few and fragmentary.
To get the reliable data about the phonetics, word-stock and the grammatical structure of a language that existed many centuries ago it is necessary to take into consideration the facts of other languages belonging to the same family or group. It goes without saying that languages may effect each other by contact, whether they are related or not. In the times of social upheavals, wars and great migrations languages could be mixed, or some nations could borrow languages of other peoples.
That is why linguists usually emphasize that the genetic classification of languages should not be confused with ethno-geographic classifications: “The relations of languages are not based upon belonging of the nation speaking those languages to the same race” /Бруннер 1955, 44/. According to the classification presented above the English language belongs to the West Germanic subgroup of the Germanic group of the Indo-European family of languages. As we can see in the chart on Page 4, the group of Germanic languages is divided into three subgroups: (1) North Germanic, or Scandinavian, (2) West Germanic, (3) East Germanic.
English belongs to the West Germanic subgroup together with High German, Low German, Dutch and Frisian. The North Germanic (Scandinavian) subgroup includes Norwegian, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish and Faroese. The study of these languages is important for us as the Scandinavian dialects influenced the de velopment of the English language in the epoch of Scandinavian invasions into Britain. As for the languages of the East Germanic subgroup we can speak about them only in the past tense: they are all dead. Only about the Gothic language (records found from 1B. C. to 6 A. D. ) there is more or less complete information.
The Essay on English: West Germanic Language Originating in Anglo-Saxon England
English = West Germanic Language originating in Anglo-Saxon England lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the late 19th century onwards. used extensively as a second language official language in ...
Because of the peripheral settlement of Goths compared with the other Germanic tribes Gothic had preserved the greatest affinity with the Proto-Germanic language. , e. g. the ar chaism of the system of fricative and explosive consonants (no Verner’s Law), the absence of mutation of vowels, the presence of mediopassive and the dual number and underdevelopment of analytical structures in the system of verb. Thanks to this conservatism the Gothic Language is very important both for the Proto-Germanic reconstruction, for the comparative studies of the other Germanic Languages and for the reconstruction of Germanic languages.
Owing to Gothic material, forms which otherwise would have re mained quite hypothetical are unambiguously confirmed. This is true of ablaut, umlaut, declension and conjugation in Germanic languages. Among the written monuments in Gothic one should mention the translation of the Holy Bible which was made from the Greek by Bishop Wulfila (Ulfilas).
Wulfila’s translation refers to the 4 th century AD and is the earliest surviving Germanic text. This literary monument is extremely important for the study of Germanic languages and the history of English.
By comparing the structure of the Gothic and Old Eng lish languages we can better understand many phenomena in the development of the latter, and especially those of its pre-literary period. From the history of the Germanic tribes The first mention of Germanic tribes is made by Pitheas, a Greek historian and geographer of the 4 th c. B. C. Next comes the Roman general, statesman and writer Caius Julius Caesar (100-44 B. C. ) who gives several chapters to the Germans in his COMMENTARII DE BELLO GALLICO – “Commentaries on the War in Gaul”.
Julius Caesar described some militant Germanic tribes — the Suevians — who bordered on the Celts of Gaul in the North-East. The tribal names Germans and Teutons, at first applied to separate tribes, were later extended to the entire group. In the 1st c. A. D. Pliny the Elder, a prominent Roman scientist and writer, in NATURAL HISTORY (NATURALIS HISTORIA) made a classified list of Germanic tribes grouping them under six headings. A few decades later the Roman historian Tacitus compiled a detailed description of the life and customs of the ancient Teutons DE SITU, MORIBUS ET POPULIS GERMANIAE; in this work he reproduced Pliny’s classification of the Germanic tribes. F. Engels made extensive use of these sources in the papers ON THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT GERMANS and THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE STATE. Having made a linguistic analysis of several Germanic dialects of later ages F. Engels came to the conclusion that Pliny’s classifica tion of the Teutonic tribes accurately reflected the contemporary dialectal division. In his book on the an cient Teutons F. Engels described the evolution of the economic and social structure of the Teutons from Caesar’s to Tacitus’s time.
The Essay on Figurative Language God Milton Blindness
How do Textual Features Combine To Convey a Theme of the Poem? Milton wrote extensively throughout his life, and studied literature profoundly. His cunning ness and literary techniques were observed in all of his literature. However, at the prime of his life, his weak eyes gave as his intense work and studies caused his blindness. As a result of this tragedy, Milton created a sonnet about his ...
The Germanic tribes were classified into: Tribes: Vindili (Goths, Vandals and Burgundians) East Germanic Ingvaeones (Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians) Istaevones (Franks) West Germanic Herminones (modern Germans) Hilleviones (modern Scandinavians) North Germanic Historically, all the Germanic languages originated from the Proto-Germanic language, which, in its turn split from related Indo-European tongues sometime between the 15 th and the 10th c. B. C. The Ancient Germans, or Teutons, moved further north than other tribes and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in the region of the Elbe.
In Caesar’s time, land tenure did not involve private property; instead, fields were divided annually among clans. By the time of Tacitus, however, land was distributed annually to individuals according to social class. The basic sociopolitical unit was the pagus (clan).
In Caesar’s period, some pagi had military leaders as chiefs, but only during wartime. By Tacitus’s time, however, several pagi, at least, had fulltime, elected chiefs. These leaders did not have absolute power but were limited by a council of nobles and an assembly of fighting men.
Military chiefs had groups (comitium) of men who swore allegiance to them in both peace and war. Germanic Mythology The Scandinavian legends and myths about ancient heroes, gods, and the creation and destruction of the universe developed out of the original common mythology of the Germanic peoples and constitute the primary source of knowledge about ancient German mythology. Because Scandinavian mythology was transmitted and altered by medieval Christian historians, the original pagan religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices cannot be determined with certainty.
The Term Paper on Female Body Atwood Language Words
Language is a nuisance. It can humiliate, irritate, aggravate, frustrate, and manipulate. Language is a friend. It can advocate, accommodate, cooperate, alleviate, and mitigate. Language is clarification. It can illustrate, demonstrate, elucidate, illuminate, and commentate. Language is an arbiter. It can mediate, consummate, consulate, adjudicate, and negotiate. Language is strong, influential, ...
Clearly, however, Scandinavian mythology developed slowly, and the relative importance of different gods and heroes varied at different times and places. Thus, the cult of Odin, chief of the gods, may have spread from western Germany to Scandinavia not long before the myths were recorded; minor gods—including Ull, the fertility god Njord, and Heimdall—may repre sent older deities who lost strength and popularity as Odin became more important. Odin, a god of war, was also associated with learning, wisdom, poetry, and magic.
Besides Odin, the major deities of Scandinavian mythology were his wife, Frigg, goddess of the home; Thor, god of thunder, who protected humans and the other gods from the giants and who was especially popular among the Scandinavian peasantry; Frey, a god of prosperity; and Freya, sister of Frey, a fertility goddess. Other, lesser gods were Balder, Hermod, Tyr, Bragi, and Forseti; Idun, Nanna, and Sif were among the goddesses. The principle of evil among the gods was represented by the trickster Loki. Many of these deities do not seem to have had special functions; they merely appear as characters in legendary tales.
The Valkyries, a band of warrior-maidens that included Svava and Brunhild, served Odin as choosers of slain warriors, who were taken to reside in Valhalla. There the warriors would spend their days fight ing and nights feasting until Ragnarok, the day of the final world battle, in which the old gods would perish and a new reign of peace and love would be instituted. Ordinary individuals were received after death by the goddess Hel in a cheerless underground world. The Scandinavian gods were served by a class of priest-chieftains called godar.
Worship was originally conducted outdoors, under guardian trees, near sacred wells, or within sacred arrangements of stones. Lat er, wooden temples were used, with altars and with carved representations of the gods. The most impor tant temple was at Old Uppsala, Sweden, where animals and even human beings were sacrificed. Germanic alphabets 1. Runes, characters in the ancient alphabet used by Germanic peoples. Runic inscriptions have been found all over Western Europe, on stone monuments and on such objects as metal spearpoints and amulets; the greatest concentrations are in England and Scandinavia.
The runic alphabet, called futhark after the sounds of the initial letters, originally had 24 characters. In English versions the number was eventually increased to 33, whereas in Scandinavia it was reduced to 16 and later expanded to 26. 7 It is believed that runes are derived from a northern Etruscan alphabet used among Italic tribes in the Eastern Alps, and that they were developed in the 2nd or 3rd century ad by a Germanic people living in the region of modern Bohemia. The earliest surviving inscription is from the mid-3rd century.
Runes were in wide use from the 4th to the 12th century. A form of runes was used in Scandinavia throughout the Middle Ages as an alternative to the Latin alphabet used by the clergy, and runes survived in occasional use in rural Sweden at least until the 17th century. Runes were also used to augment the Latin alphabet for certain sounds, notably the thorn (? , th) used in Anglo-Saxon England and modern Iceland. 2. During the decline of the Roman Empire and the ensuing ages of turmoil, the Christian church was the principal guardian of Western culture.
Monasteries became centers of learning, establishing libraries and copying chambers. Monks copied mostly religious books, as well as some ancient texts; many pro duced decorated books called illuminated manuscripts. The Merovingian, or pre-Carolingian, script written in France during the 7th and 8th centuries was reformed during the reign of the emperor Charlemagne, when much attention was given to copying earlier manuscripts. Scribes, writing in a plain, simple, and beautiful script strongly influenced by the earlier half-uncial characters, produced a new hand known as the Carolingian minuscule.
During the 11th centu ry Carolingian minuscule began to assume an individual form in the various nations of western Europe. In the 12th century the so-called Gothic script, or black letter, writing came into use; it was a modifica tion of the Carolingian minuscule with angles replacing the curves. Excessive angularity and compression, and the use of numerous contractions and abbreviations, made the Gothic script difficult to read. Once the prevalent form for printed material in Germany, it is now rare.
A renaissance of the Carolingian style took place in Italy in the 14th century, where an extremely regu lar and beautiful style developed, leading to the so-called Humanistic script of the 15th century. This style served as the model for the first typesetters of Italy, and thus the clear and simple Roman letters that go back through the Carolingian script to the half-uncials of the earlier period were preserved. These minus cule letters were the ancestors of the lowercase letters of the modern Roman type.
The Gothic monuments, as handed down to us, are written in a peculiar alphabet which, according to the Greek ecclesiastical historians Philostorgios and Sokrates, was invented by Ulfilas (Wulfila), the Aryan bishop of the West Goths, who in the 4th c. AD translated of the Holy Bible (Codex Argenteus).
But Wimmer’ and others have clearly shown that Ulfilas simply took the Greek uncial alphabet (20 letters) as the basis for his, and that in cases where this was insufficient for his purpose he had recourse to the Latin (u, o, q, r, s, f) and runic alphabets (2 letters – thyth and ezec – z).
The alphabetic sequence of the letters can be determined with certainty from the numerical values, which agree as nearly as possible with those of the Greek. General features of the Germanic languages Word stress. As far as word stress is concerned, one of the most important features of the Germanic languages is that both historically and synchronically they have some certain peculiarities. It is believed that in Indo-European language(s) there were two types of stress: musical pitch and force (dynamic) stress. Besides in Indo-European the word stress was free.
In the Germanic languages it is fixed. So we come to the conclusion that since in Indo-European there was free stress and in the Germanic languages it was fixed some time there happened fixation of stress. It was discovered that in the course of the Common Germanic Period word stress came to be fixed on the first meaningful part of the word – e. g. Goth. skalki non ‘to serve’, frodaba ‘cleverly’. Usually the prefix in nouns was stressed (Goth. afar-dags – ‘the next day’, anda-waurdi ‘answer’), and in verbs – unstressed – the stress fell on the first root syllable (Goth. ndhafjan ‘to answer’, gagatilon ‘unite’).
The word stress in the Germanic languages is interesting itself, but it is also important that this fixed stress couldn’t but result in weakening of unstressed positions which in its turn resulted in neutralization of certain vowels, dropping, change of quality and quantity. The structure of the word. It is believed that in Indo-European the words were three-morphemic, that is root, suffix and flexion (ending) – Scr. varta-ya-ti ‘he is turning’. In the Germanic languages words regularly came to be two-morphemic: Goth. un-u ‘son’, f ? der-as ‘fathers’, ea? e-lic ‘difficult’.. Many notional words, mostly nouns, lost their suffixes ? root + ending. However, in old Germanic languages the suffixes remained in verns, some adjectives and adverbs. The sound system Vowels. The old Indo-European distinction between the long and the short vowels was in the main preserved. A peculiar feature of the Germanic vowels is their instability. They have always been unstable, li able to different positional changes, mostly of assimilative character. Also: lengthening, shortening, neu tralization, dropping.
There are certain correspondences btw the Indo-European and the Germanic vowels, which mainly con cern the short and long [a] and [o]. They are as follows: in the IE languages there are pairs of long and short ‘a’ and ‘o’, while in the Germanic languages there are only a short ‘a’ and a long ‘o’. They have the following correspondences: Lat. noctem, Rus. ночь – Goth. nahts (IE o – Germ. a) – IE o = Germ. a 8 Skr. bhra:ta, Lat. fra:ter – OE bro:? or (IE a: – Germ. o:) (Залесская, Матвеева, 1984: с. 11) – IE a: = Germ. o. The short o and long a: evolved when the Common Proto-Germanic Language split into several lan guages.
Besides, IE e: – Goth. e:, OE ? , OHG a: Lat. se:men – Goth. se:? s, OE s? d, OHG sa:t. IE u – Germ. u and o: Skr. su:nu – Goth. su:nus Skr. jugam – OE geoc ( ? : dtfferent sources i: u: E:2 I: u: Gothic a i i u a: o: e:1 e:2 i: u: Old English ? e i u (o) a: o: ? :; o: (before nasals) – Lat. mena ‘moon’ – OE m o:na e: i: u: Another important phonetic feature of vowels, common to all the Germanic languages is the so-called German Brechung or Fracture (общегерманское преломление).
The fracture concerns two pairs of vowels: the pair e-i and u-o.
The Indo-European e in the root syllable finds its counterpart in Germanic i, if it is followed by i, j, or the cluster ‘nasal+consonant’. Otherwise the Germanic languages have in the corresponding words an – e-. Lat. medius ‘middle’ – OE middle Lat, ventus ‘wind’ – OE wind Lat. edere ‘eat’ – OE etan Lat. ferre ‘carry’ – OE beran The IE u finds its counterpart in Germanic u, if it is followed by u or by the cluster ‘nasal+consonant”; otherwise the IE u finds its counterpart in Germanic o. Sanskr. sunus ‘son’ – OE sunu Lat. iugum ‘yoke’ – OE geoc ( ? u:hede > ? o:hte O. E. uns > u:s O. E. fimf > fi:f O. E. on? r > o:? er Consonants. Many old German consonants have also developed from the corresponding Indo-European consonants. However if we consider the old Indo-European roots in the Germanic languages we find that the position of the sounds is different. They are as if were shifted in relation to the original Indo-European 9 basis. The scholars long ago discovered these discrepancies but the great scholar who explained it was Ja cob Grimm. He discovered the regularity of the correspondences. He found three groups of correspon dences and since his time they are referred to as three acts or as Grimm’s Law (Consonant Shift).
He discovered that in Indo-European basis the voiceless plosives became voiceless fricatives in all the Germanic languages (p – f; penta – five).
According to the second act a voiced plosive became voiceless (slabare – sleep).
According to the third act aspirated voiced plosives lost their aspiration (bh – b; bhrata – brother).
According to J. Grimm’s law, the Common Germanic Consonant Shift, which took place in the 4-2. c. B. C. – 3-4. c. A. D. , included several stages: the Indo-European (non-Germanic) voiceless explosives [p], [t], [k] correspond to the Germanic voiceless fricatives [f], [? , [h] (Рус. полный – full; Lat. pater – father; Lat. cordia – heorte), this is the first act of the shift3; the Indo-European voiced explosives [b], [d], [g] correspond to the Germanic voiceless explosives [p], [t], [k] (Рус. болото – pool; рус. еда – eat; рус. иго – yoke), the second act of the shift, which took place much later; the Indo-European aspirated voiced explosives [bh], [dh], [gh] found in Sanscrit correspond to the Ger manic voiced explosives without aspiration [b], [d], [g] (Sanscr. bhrata, Lat. rater – Gothic brother; San scr. madhu (honey) – O. E. medo; Lat. hostis (=reconstructed Sanscr. * gh) (enemy) – Gothic gasts/Ильиш 1968, 25 – 28/4. As to the origin of the consonant shift there are several theories explaining the shift. One of the most current is the influence of the so-called substratum (underlayer) of a language of a different type. There is another theory according to which the reasons for the shift should be found in the peculiarities of the lan guage itself, in some inner laws.
However, even after Grimm’s explanation there remained several cases when Grimm‘s Law didn’t work or there was some change which couldn’t be explained through Grimm’s Law. For instance, in the position where according to Grimm’s Law the voiceless sound [? ] was expected there appeared the voiced [? ] (Pater – Father).
It was explained by another Danish linguist Carl Verner (he worked a bit later than Grimm).
He came to the conclusion that voicing took place if the consonant vowel was preceded by an unstressed vowel (Verner’s Law).
This fact testifies to the existence of a free stress. The Grammar System Among the common grammatical features of the Germanic languages it is necessary to mention: a)the division of verbs into “strong” and “weak” ones according to the formation of the past tense and Participle II, (with the help of the dental suffix or the ablaut (gradation); b)the opposition of the present and past tense in the system of the forms of the verb, c)2 declensions of adjectives – strong and weakю The weak declensions of the adjectives were always marked by the suffix -n-.
The weak declension marked the definitiveness of the nouns d)the use of different case forms of the adjective depending on the syntactic conditions of the agreed noun and some others. The importance of word order. In Indo-European as it was a highly inflected language word order was free. In the Germanic languages word order gradually became fixed. In some languages like English it resulted in the fixation of the position of each member of the sentence. Sometimes it also resulted in the frame constructions and inversions.
Word formation and vocabulary. Like any other Indo-European language the Germanic languages have always employed three main word-building devices: affixation, word composition, sound changes (nonproductive).
Considering Germanic word stock we usually distinguish two main layers: native words and borrowings. As to the native words we distinguish three subgroups: Indo-European words, words typical of Germanic Group, German proper Group. 2. Beginnings of English Where and when did the English language originate?
This question may be answered exhaustively: English appeared in Britain in the 5 th century AD on the basis of the dialects of Germanic tribes – Angles, Saxons and Jutes. If the sound ‘t’ had been preceded by a voiceless fricative (e. g. h, s) it had not changed into [? ], but remained [t] to avoid the cluster of 2 voiced fricatives (Lat. noctem – Goth. nahts, Lat. stare (stand) – Goth. standan).
4 The Germanic voiced explosives b, d, g which are the reflexes of IE bh, dh, gh correspond to the Russian б, д – beran – брать, d? :lan – делить. In Latin *bh > *b > f: beran – Lat. ero; *dh> *d> f: Skr. rudhira – Lat. rufus. THE LAW OF SATEM-KENTUM: Rus. з – IE k, g (знать – Lat. gnosco; князь – Germ. kyning; зерно – Germ. grain).
3 10 The first population of Britain were the Iberians, the non-Indo-European tribe, belonging to the ne olithic age (late Stone Age, 3-1 millenniums BC).
It was at that time that the great stone monument of Stonehenge was built. Round the 7th c. BC the IE tribes of Celts invaded Britain. The Celtic tribe of Britts came there in the 5 th c. BC, and in the 1st BC so did the Belgians (белги).
In the 500-600 BC Britain was a wooded country inhabited by various Celtic tribes – Britts, Scots, Picts. The broad Channel separating Britain from the Con tinental Europe kept it isolated from the historic events that were taking place on the Continent. At first Celts had a tribal order, but soon there began the stratification of tribes into the classes of landlords, free tillers and serfs. In the 1st BC first towns appeared in Britain where crafts and trade began to thrive As early as in the 1 st (55 BC) century BC The Roman Empire headed by Julius C? ar (see Who’s Who in This History) invaded the British Isles. Later that expedition found reflection in C? sar’s famous book “Commentarii de bello Gallico”. The first Roman troops withdrew soon, but in 54 BC they came again, conquered Britts and reached as far as the Thames. However, the actual Roman conquest of Britain began in 43 AD uunder Emperor Claudius. The resistance which the Celtic tribes offered to the invaders was ruthlessly choked down: the poorly armed and badly organized Celts could not oppose the powerful military machine of the Romans.
One of the most famous revolts (59-61 A. D. ) was headed by the queen of celts Boadicea. The rebels razed the towns of London and St Albans and were fought off by the Roman Governor of Britain Suetonius. By the end of the 1st century AD Britain had been conquered by the Romans and for about 400 years re mained a province of the Roman Empire. Establishing the Roman order in Britain by force and fire, the invaders built fortresses, towns, roads, two huge walls: the Wall of Adrian and the Wall of Antonine. The British colony was very important to Rome, as it was its main supplier of grain crop.
The Romans implanted their culture and the Latin language. It is natural that during several centuries the local population was subjected to a strong influence of the Roman civilization and the language of the Celts acquired many elements from Latin. Not much is left from Celtic languages in English. Though many place names and names for rivers are surely Celtic (like Usk – from Celtic *usce “water”, or Avon – from *awin “river”), the morphology and phonetics are untouched by the Celtic influence. Some linguists state that the word down omes from Celtic *dun “down”; other examples of Celtic influence in place names are tne following: cothair (a fortress) – Carnarvon uisge (water) – Exe, Usk, Esk dun, dum (a hill) – Dumbarton, Dumfries, Dunedin llan (church) – Llandaff, Llandovery, Llandudno coil (forest) – Kilbrook, Killiemore kil (church) – Kilbride, Kilmacolm ceann (cape) – Kebadre, Kingussie inis (island) – Innisfail inver (mountain) – Inverness, Inverurie bail (house) – Ballantrae, Ballyshannon, and, certainly, the word whiskey which means the same as Irish uisge “water”. But this borrowing took place much later.
At the beginning of the 5 th century the Roman power in Britain came to an end. The Empire suffered decay, Rome’s walls were shaking under the assaults of the “barbarians”, and in 408 AD the legions dislocated in Britain were called back to Rome to defend it from Goths. However, the latter still succeeded in occupying Rome in 410 AD. The further events in the history of Britain are well described by Bede the Venerable (see Who’s Who in this History) in his “Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum”. In the middle of the 5th century (as early as 449 AD), as Bede narrates, Britain was conquered by Angles, Saxons and Jutes.
Those were Germanic tribes belonging to the Ingvaeone group. According to Bede, in 449 AD the Germanic tribes headed by the chieftains Hengist and Hors landed on the island of Tanet in the Thames estuary. The transmigration of these tribes lasted for 150 years and ended in their oc cupation of most English territory. The territory of Britain was divided as follows: the Saxons and the Angles (who came from the European coast of the North Sea) occupied the territories south and north off the Thames; the Jutes (who came from the Juteland Peninsula in Europe) settled on the Peninsula of Kent and the Isle of White.
The Britons fought against the conquerors till about 600. It is to this epoch that the leg endary figure of the British king Arthur belongs. The Celtic tribes were eventually done to the world (wide) and retreated to the north and to the west – to Cornwall and Wales. By the end of the 7 th century the invaders had conquered the territory which was later named the King dom of Anglia (under King Egbert of Wessex, who united England in one feudal state in the 9 th c. ).
Moving northward they reached Fort-of-Firth and in the West they got as far as Cornwell, Wales and Cumbria /Barlow 1982, 49 – 50/.
Angles, Saxons and Jutes spoke similar West Germanic dialects. The similarity of the of the dialects helped them to understand each other very easily. Close contacts of the tribes and their isolation from oth – 11 er Germanic tribes living on the Continent resulted in the penetration of the dialects into each other and, finally, the formation of a new language community – the English language. The Germanic tribes who settled in Britain in the 5 th century originally had no state unity and perma nently waged wars..
In the 6 th century there were nine small kingdoms in Britain: Deira, Bernicia (Angles), East Anglia (Angles), Mercia (Angles in the north, Saxons in the south), Essex, Middlesex, Sussex, Wessex (Saxons), and Kent (inhabited by Jutes) /Barlow 1982, 50/. Later Deira and Bernicia were united and named Northumbria. There was no concord among the kings, and no peace among the king doms. Each ruler desired to gain the supreme power and subordinate the others. At the end of the 6 th c. there were 7 kingdoms: Northumbria, East Anglia, Wessex, Essex, Sussex, Kent and Mercia. Later they united into the 4 kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex and Kent.
Northumbria which appeared as a result of the forcible unification of Deira and Bernicia in the 7 th century gained the dominating position /Blair 1969, 197 – 198/. Edwin, the King of Northumbria, enlarged the borders of his kingdom and built the citadel Edinburgh /Halliday 1983, 31/. In the 8 th century Mercia became the most powerful kingdom. The zenith of her power is associated with the name of King Offa /Halliday 1983, 32/. At the beginning of the 9 th century the dominating position passed over to Wessex. This kingdom domi nated and united nearly all the territory of Britain, its capital Winchester becoming the capital of Britain.
The Wessex king Alfred the Great (849-901), the enlightened monarch, played an important role in the strengthening of the Wessex position, as he increased the fleet, strengthened the army, built new fortresses and forts, set up the England’s first school for feudal lords, invited scholars and writers to England and himself translated from Latin. In the 9th AD Egbert , the King of Wessex, defeated Mercia’s troops and became the first king of all all England (the Kingdom of Anglia).
The country was divided into the administrative units, the counties, headed by King’s officers – sheriffs.
Several counties were united under the power of earls, who became major feudal lords. 12 English history and the development of the English language were greatly influenced by Scandinavian invasions. The first incursion of the Vikings in England took place in the 8 th century /Ильиш 1958, 146/. By the end of the 9 th century the Scandinavians had occupied a considerable part of the country to the North of the Thames. The king of Wessex Alfred the Great (849 -99) is renowned for his defence of England against the Danes and for his encouragement of learning.
The Danish invasion of Wessex in 871 ended in inconclu sive peace, and in 876 the Danes struck again. Based at Athelney, Alfred harassed the enemy until winning, in 878, the great victory at Edington. It is to this period that the probably apocryphal story (told in the 12th-century Chronicle of St. Neot’s) of Alfred burning the cakes relates. The subsequent peace with the Danish leader Guthrum gave the Danes control over much of eastern England (Danelag), but by 890 Alfred’s authority was acknowledged over all the remainder of England.
In the years that followed Edington, Alfred reorganized the fyrd, strengthened the system of burhs (fortresses), and developed a fleet, which enabled him to repel further Danish invasions in the 890s. Alfred is largely responsible for the restoration of learning in England after the decay in scholarship, which the Norse raids had accelerated. By the end of the 10 th century, however, the contradictions between the Scandinavians and the English crown had become aggravated, and a new war resulted in the Scandinavians’ conquest of the whole coun try.
Thus in 1013 England became a part of the large Scandinavian state. The English King ? thelred II (968 – 1016), a weak and cruel man,who got the name of ? thelred the Unready (deriving from the Old English Redeless, devoid of counsel), bought the Danes off with money several times and finally fled to France (Normandy) and the Danish King Cnut (Kanute) became the official ruler of England. But the sit uation did not last long, the Danish power failed in 1042. The Scandinavian dialects spoken by the invaders were well understood by the people of England /Смирницкий 1965, 10/.
And as early as in Old English one can observe the impact of the Scandinavian dialects. It goes without saying that that impact was especially strong in the North where the main Scandinavian settlements were situated. In 1042, when the power of the Anglo-Saxon nobility was restored, ? thelred’s son Edward the Confes sor (called so because he grew in a monastery and cared more for quiet, learned life) was summoned from Normandy and became the new King of England. Edward the Confessor remained the ruler of the country for about a quarter of a century – until his death in 1066.
The year of Edward’s death was to appear a turn ing point in the English history. 1066 has entered the annals as the year of the Norman Conquest, which for the history of the English language was the event marking the transition to a new period – Middle English. It is said that Edward promised his cousin, William of Normandy, who visited him in 1051, that the lat ter would be King of England. Normans were descendants of vikings, to be more exact, of Danes, who had settled in the 9th century (after King Alfred victory over them in 896) on the territory of France (the lower Seine) later called Normandy.
They had sworn allegiance to the French king Karl (Charlemagne? ), adopt ed Christianity, took on the French language and Romanic customs. In 1066, with the backing of the papacy, William claimed his right and landed an invasion force at Pevensey, Sussex. He defeated and killed his rival, King Harold, at Hastings in October 1066 and then formally accepted the kingdom at Berkhamsted before being crowned in Westminster Abbey at Christmas Day. The Norman conquest was not, however, complete. William faced a number of English revolts during the years 1067 to 1071, which he effectively, if ruthlessly, crushed.
Furthermore, the subjection of the new kingdom involved the introduction of Norman personnel and social organization (feudalism), as well as administrative and legal practices. The effect of the conquest on English culture was considerable. William’s reign witnessed reforms in the church under his trusted adviser Lanfranc, who became arch bishop of Canterbury in 1070, and, most notably, the compilation of the Domesday Book (1086) – the book containing lists of population of Britain. 1066 shook Britain. After the Norman Conquest English was no longer the state language of England.
At court, in the universities, in all the official spheres English was superseded by French, the language of the conquerors. English remained the language of the peasantry and the urban poor. English was chang ing under the influence of French soaking up French words and morphemes. Of course it took time for the new elements to get absorbed in the English language. 3. Periods of the History of the English Language There are no jumps and leaps in the life of the language. Phonetic, lexical and grammatical changes are accumulated gradually, developing as variants and coexisting forms.
This gradual accumulation finally changes the shape of the language so much that one can hardly recognize it. Indeed, if the original of the Old English epic poem “Beowulf”, Chaucer’s poetry and a contemporary English text were shown to “a man in the street”, he would say that they were written in different languages, while in fact it is the same English language but the texts refer to different periods. 13 Traditionally the history of the English language is divided into three periods: Old English, Middle English and New English.
The transition from Old English to Middle English is usually associated with the date of the Norman Conquest (1066); the transition from Middle English to New English is often connected with the consolidation of the monarchy, the end of the Wars of the Roses 1455-1485 or with the introduction of printing in the country. The New English period is traditionally defined as starting with the 15th and lasting till now. Within it scholars specify the Early New English period (16 th, 17th till the Epoch of Restoration 5).
Of course, one should not look upon those dates as absolute. It would be absurd to think that for instance for instance in 1065 Old English was spoken in Britain and in 1067 – Middle English. It is only natural to admit that in the depth of Old English there appeared and developed the features that finally made Middle English; and in the structure of Middle English so features of Old English coexisted with the new phenomena. It is not by chance that some scholars relegate the border between Old English and Middle English to a later period. E. g. , A. I.
Smirnitsky is of opinion that 1075 should be considered, though relatively, as the date separating Old English and Middle English /Смирницкий 1955, 19/. B. A. Ilyish insists on 1100 /Ильиш 1968, 50/; A. Baugh and T. Cable put up this border as late as to 1150 /Baugh, Cable 1978, 51 – 52/. M. Schlauch, though recognizing 1066 (the year of the Norman Conquest) as the conventional border between Old English and Middle English, still marks that in the Middle English language some principal features of Late Old English remained up to 1200 /Schlauch 1959, 38 – 39/. J. Fisiak introduces intermediate sub-periods into A.
Baugh and T. Cable’s classification: 1150 – 1250 is regarded as a transi tional sub-period between Old English and Middle English and 1450 – 1500 as a transitional sub-period between Middle English and New English /Fisiak 1968, 9/. Periodization of the English language may be based on various grounds a) on purely linguistic data; b) on the blend of historical and linguistic facts; c) on the literary monuments earmarking this or that period. It goes without saying that first of all we should take into account the characteristics that may found in the language itself, its phonetics, lexicon and grammar.
The traditionally accepted division of the history of the English language was formulated by H. Sweet (1845-1912).
The division into Old English, Middle English and New English reflects important points of difference in the phonetic system, morphology and vocabulary. ? The Old English language is characterized by full endings (which means that various vowels could be used in an unstressed position – e. g. , singan; sunu), a developed system of cases and the predominance of original (non-borrowed) words. 700 A. D. (the earliest English writings) – 1100 A. D. The Middle English language is characterized by weakened and leveled endings (which means that the former variety of vowels in the unstressed endings was mainly reduced to two sounds – [e] and [i], e. g. singen; sune, sone), the degradation of the case system and the penetration of a great number of loan-words, chiefly from the Scandinavian dialects and French. 1100 – 1500 A. D. ? The Modern English is the period of lost endings (sing; son).
The period of the loss of grammati cal morphemes. 1500 – 1600 – Early Mn E period; 1600 – well into our own times – Late Mn E peri od.
This division is based both on phonetic features (weakening and loss of unstressed vowel sounds) and morphological (weakening and loss of grammatical morphemes).
The chronological limits of each period (700 (the earliest writings) – 1100; 1100-1500; 1500-1600, 1600-…. The approximate dates fixing the boundaries between the periods are: 1066 – the year of the Norman Conquest; 1475 – the introduction of printing in England by W. Caxton or 1485 – the end of the Wars of the Roses, the decay of feudalism, the rise of the English nation; William Shakespeare (1564 1616).
A more detailed classification of the periods to a certain extent related to the traditional triple one is proposed in T. A. Rastorguyeva’s book. This classification reckons with more historical events and lan guage characteristics. The author suggests seven periods: ? Early Old English (450 – 700), the prewritten period of tribal dialects; ? Written Old English (700 – 1066), when the tribal dialects were transformed into local, or region al, dialects, the period signified by the rise of the kingdom of Wessex (King Alfred) and the suprema cy of the West Saxon dialect; ?
Early Middle English (1066 – 1350), the period beginning with the Norman Conquest and marked with the dialectal divergence caused by the feudal system and by foreign influences – the Scandinavian and Norman French languages (Anglo-Norman); Resroration – the period of Britain following the return of Charles II as king in 1660 after the English Civil War (1642-1660).
It was characterized by advances in trade, opposition to the Roman Catholic Religion, the establishment of the Whig and Tory political parties, and new developments in poetry and the theatre. 5 14 ?
Classic Middle English (1350 – 1475) – Restoration of English to the position of the state and lit erary language. The main dialect is the London dialect. The age of Geoffrey Chaucer, the period of literary efflorescence. The pattern set by Chaucer generated a fixed form of language, we may speak about language stabilization. This period corresponds to H. Sweet’s “period of levelled endings”. ? Early New English (1476 – 1660), the first date is earmarked by the introduction of printing as the first book was printed by William Caxton. This is the age of W.
Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), of the literary Renaissance. The country is unified, so is the language. The 15 th c. – the period of lost endings and loss of freedom of grammatical construction (H. Sweet).
? Neoclassic period (1660 – 1800), the period of language normalization. Differentiation into dis tinct styles, fixation of pronunciation, standardization of grammar. ? Late New English (1800 – the present time).
The Received Standard of English appears. Within the latter period T. A. Rastorguyeva specifies Contemporary English – from 1945 to the present time /Rastorguyeva 1983, 54/.
B. Strang, rejecting the traditional classification, suggests a retrospective division of the history of the English language into 200-year long cuts. The scholar proceeds from the assumption that 200 years is a period within which the physical contacts between the generations cease and the language acquires new features. In B. Strang classification she proposes the following periods: 1970 – 1770, 1770 – 1570, 1570 1370, 1370 – 1170 and so on ending with the year 370 /Strang 1979/. 4. Old English Literary Documents
The oldest documents of English literature are represented by inscriptions on pieces of handicraft and cult objects. Among the oldest inscriptions of this kind it is necessary to mention first of all the famous Frank’s box and the Ruthwell cross. Frank’s box is made of whale bone and has the following alliterated rhyme on it: hron? s ban fisc flodu ahof on ferg-enberi war? gastri grorn he on greut giswon which has been deciphered by R. Page as follows: “The fish beat up the sea(s) on the mountainous cliff. The king of terror became sad when he swam of the shingle. ” /Blair 1977, 308/.
Frank’s box belongs to the middle of the 7 th century; the Ruthwell cross is of later origin /Аракин 1965, 21/. The inscriptions on both of them are referred to the Northumbrian dialect and are written in the Runic alphabet. The Runic alphabet was used by different Germanic tribes. The letters of that alphabet, called Runes, have peculiar form: they are sharp-shaped signs deprived of rounded or horizontal lines. The first six letters of it form another name of the Runic alphabet – FUTHARK: The Runic inscriptions, though having great historic importance, can hardly give a clear notion of the structure of Old English.
Chronologically, the first fuller document of Old English literature is the epic poem “Beowulf”, which consists of more than 3000 lines. The poem is supposed to have been originally writ ten in the Mercian or Northumbrian dialect /Rastorguyeva 1963, 66/, but the surviving copy was written in the Wessex dialect and is dated by the 10 th century. In spite of the fact that the poem contains a fantastic, fairy-tale element, that is narrates about monsters and dragons, it quite clearly depicts the court habits of the medieval times, creates the image of a brave warrior-hero. Beowulf”, as J. C. Anderson marks, is by all means the most important document of Old English epic literature. Its importance is not only in the characteristic incarnation of the ideal of the Germanic warrior, it is the only sample of the Old English heroic epic poetry which has survived in the complete form /Anderson 1966, 63 – 64/. Another oldest literary document written in the Northumbrian dialect is the text of C? dmon’s hymn found on a page of an 8 th century manuscript /Sweet 1957, 148/.
The documents belonging to the same period are Cynewulf’s poetic works such as “The Traveler’s Song”, “The Wanderer of the Seas” and “The Pilgrim”. Cynewulf’s works full of deep feelings may be not only of historic interest to us, they may be re garded as genuine masterpieces of poetry. The dialect which is very well represented in Old English literature is the Wessex dialect, on the basis of which the all-national literary language (koine) began to develop in the 9 th century. Of greatest historic value are King Alfred’s works. King Alfred (see Who’s Who in This History) was an educated Wessex monarch who lived in 849 – 901.
Among the most important works by King Alfred are: the translation of Pope Gregory the First’s “Cura Pastoralis” from Latin, the translation of Bede the Venerable’s works, the translation of “The World History” by the Spanish monk Orosius and also the rendering of “The Consola tion of Philosophy” by the Roman philosopher Boetius. King Alfred’s translations have a remarkable pe culiarity: we can find in them original fragments written by Alfred himself. Thus, in the translation of 15 “The World History” we can see Alfred’s own stories about the trips of Ohthere and Wulfstan, Scandina vian travelers.
In those stories we can read about customs and traditions of the peoples who lived in the North of Europe, that is why those fragments are important not only as language samples but also as the sources of historic information. The Wessex dialect is also represented by the works of Bishop ? lfric who lived on the verge of the 10 th and 11th century. Alongside with spiritual literature (like homilies, the translation of the “Old Testament” and “The Lives of the Saints”) ? lfric wrote some works of secular character. For a philologist, ? fric’s “Grammar” and “Glossary of the English Language” are sure to be of special interest. A work which is very important for the study of the history of English is “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”. The first surviving fragments of the Chronicle belong to the 7 th century, the last to the middle of the 12th century. The oldest part of “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” was written in the Early Wessex dialect /Смирницкий 1955, 29/. The Mercian and Kentish dialects are represented in Old English literature by fewer works. In the Mercian dialect there survived some spiritual hymns and a number of glosses, i. . Old English notes on the pages of Latin books. Such notes were made to clear up some difficult expressions in the reli gious texts. The oldest Mercian glosses belong to the 8 th century /Смирницкий 1955, 30/. The Kentish dialect is represented by old official documents referring to the 7 th century, glosses and two poetic works – a hymn and a psalm. Questions and Assignments to Chapter 1 1) How many people speak English in the contemporary world? 2) Why is English sometimes spoken of as the “20th century Latin”? 3) In how many countries is English the official language? ) What is the genealogical classification of languages? 5) Name the groups of the Indo-European family of languages. 6) Which languages make separate groups in the Indo-European family of languages? 7) Name the subgroups of the Germanic group of languages. 8) Which languages belong to the West Germanic subgroup? 9) Are the relations of languages based upon belonging of the nations speaking those languages to the same race? 10) Give the formulation of J. Grimm’s law. 11) Explain the relation between the Russian word болото and English pool from the point of view of J. Grimm’s law. 2) Explain the relation between the Lithuanian word pirmas ‘first’ and English first from the point of view of J. Grimm’s law. 13) Explain the relation between the Latin word duo ‘two’ and English two from the point of view of J. Grimm’s law. 14) Explain the relation between the Russian word три and English three from the point of view of J. Grimm’s law. 15) Why is the Gothic language of special interest for linguists? 16) When did the English language originate? 17) Name the Celtic tribes that inhabited Britain before the Roman period. 18) Name the Germanic tribes on the dialects of which the English language was based? 9) How long did the Roman reign in Britain last? 20) Why did the Roman have to leave Britain in the 5 th century? 21) How did the Roman colonization influence the language of the Celts? 22) Who described the Conquest of Britain by the Germanic tribes? 23) What group did the dialects of Angles, Saxons and Jutes belong to? 24) What helped the formation of the English language on the basis of the dialects of An gles, Saxons and Jutes? 25) What was the political situation in Britain after the Germanic Conquest? 26) Name the nine Germanic kingdoms which existed on the territory of Britain in the 6 th century. 7) Which kingdom had the dominating position in the 7 th century? 28) Which was the most powerful kingdom in Britain in the 8 th century? 29) Explain the meaning of “Danelag”. 30) When did the Scandinavian invasions begin? 31) How long did Britain remain a part of the Danish Empire? English 32) 33) 34) 35) 36) 37) 38) 39) 40) 16 Who became the king of England after the fall of the Danish power? When was the Anglo-Saxon power restored? Name the periods of the history of the English language. Calculate which is the shortest and which is the longest period in the history of the language.
What was the linguistic situation in England after the Norman Conquest? Name the most important Old English literary documents. What did the letters of the Runic alphabet look like? What is “Beowulf”? Which dialect had become the most important by the end of the Old English period? Chapter 2. The Phonetic Structure and Spelling in the Old English Language 1. The Phonetic Structure of Old English In Old English, like in other languages, there were vowels and consonants. The Old English vowels differed from each other not only by quality (i. e. by articulation), but also by quantity (i. e. by length).
The length of vowels is denoted by a line above the corresponding letter, e. g. : a, e, o. You know that in modern English it is also important to distinguish long and short vowels, but such a sound as, for instance, [? ] has no long correspondence in today’s English, like there is no corresponding short vowel to [a:]. The situation in Old English was different: all vowels existed in pairs, i. e. alongside with every short vowel there was a long one having the same articulation. That is why the Old English system of vowels is spoken of as symmetric. As a whole the system of monophthongs in Old English looks like this: [a] [? [e] [i] [o] [u] [y] [a/o] [a:] [? :] [e:] [i:] [o:] [u:] [y:] This vowel was a positional variant of the short [a] and was pronounced before the consonants [n] and [m]. The vowel [a/o] was articulated as a sound intermediate between [a] and [o]. That is why in the Old English texts we can see the same words spelt in different variants: land vs. lond, man vs. mon, and vs. ond, etc. Besides the monophthongs, there were four pairs of diphthongs in the vowel system of Old English: [ea] [eo] [ie] [io] [ea:] [eo:] [ie:] [io:] The Old English diphthongs were descending, i. . the first element was the strong, accented one. The peculiarity of the Old English diphthongs was also in the following: their second element was wider than the first. The system of consonants included the following sounds: ? labial [p], [b], [m], [f], [v] ? front-lingual [t], ]d], [? ], [n], [s], [r], [l] ? velar [k], [g], [h], [? ], [? ’], [х] The signs ? (thorn) and ? (eth) denoted the voiceless or voiced interdental sound (like in Modern English ‘thing’ or ‘this’).
The letter g (yogh) had several meanings; it denoted the hard [g] (like in Modern English ‘good’, the palatalized [g’] (like in Russian гиря), the velar fricative [gh] (like the Ukrainian [г]), and finally [j] (like in Modern English ‘yes’) (see OE spelling).
Correspondencies between the Common Germanic and the Indo-European Phonemes OE vowels were largely of common Germanic origin [Иванова, Чахоян, Беляева 1999: 59]: Gothic [i] – fisks [i] – stilan [a] dags [a] dagos Old High German short vowels [i] – fisc [e] – stelan [a] tac [a] taga OE [i] fisc ‘fish’ [e] stelan ‘steal’ [? d? g ‘day’ [a] dagas ‘days’ 17 [a] manna [u] stulans [u] fulls [i:] lei? an [e:] sle:pan [ai] stains [o:] bro: ? ar [u:] tu:n ‘settlement’ [au:] auk ‘for, bcs’ [iu] diups [a] mann [o] gistolen [u] fol long vowels [i:] li:dan ‘to suffer’ [a:] sla:fan [ei] stein [uo] bruodar [u:] zu:n diphthongs [ou:] ouch ‘also’ [io] tiof [o] ma(o)nn, m? nn [o] stolen ‘stolen’ [u] full ‘full’ [i:] li:? an ‘to travel’ [e:] (Angican dialect) [? :] (West Saxon dialect) sle:pan, sl? :pan [a:] sta:n ‘stone’ [o:] bro: ? or [u:] tu:n ‘town’ [ea:] ea:c ‘also’ [eo:] deo:p ‘deep’ 2. Ablaut
The term ‘ablaut’ is used to denote the gradation of vowels in the root which “functions as the inner in flection” /Ахманова 1966, 28/. We can find ablaut in many Indo-European languages. For instance, in Russian we can see that in the forms беру – поборы – брал there is gradation -e-/-o-/zero. There was qualitative gradation, whereby the root vowel changed its quality and quantitative gradation, whereby the root vowel changed its length. Qualitative gradation (степени качественного аблаута) o – the full grade, a fully stressed vowel; e – the reduced grade, a weakly stressed vowel; zero – the zero grade, an unstressed vowel.
In the Indo-European languages the most widespread was the gradation e-o, e. g. Greek lego ( говор? ) – logos (слово), Lat. tego: (покрыва? ) – toga (одежда); Rus. беру – собор – брать; бреду – брод, беру – собор. Quantitative gradation (степени количественного аблаута) e /o– the full grade; e:/o: – the prolonged grade; zero – the zero grade E. g. Greek pate’rizo ‘to call a father’ – the full grade; vocative case pa’ter – the prolonged grade; genetive pat’ros – the zero grade. Being a phonetic process, ablaut was most associated with the formation of the basic forms of Indo-Eu ropean strong verbs.
Thus it came to be understood and employed as a grammatical means of the form-biulding in verbs. In the Germanic languages the Indo-European gradation e-o-zero corresponded to the gradation e-a-ze ro, because I. -E. o = Germ. a; the Indo-European e corresponded in some Germanic languages, O. E. among them, to i: i-a-zero. For the Germanic languages, including Old English, the ablaut is very important, as it is a means of word-change and word-building. Ablaut is used in the forms of the so called strong verbs.
Let us compare the four basic forms (the in finitive, the past tense singular, the past tense plural and Participle II) of the Old English verb WRITAN ‘to write’. They are as follows: (1) WRITAN ‘to write’, (2) WRAT ‘(he) wrote’, (3) WRITON ‘(they) wrote, (4) WRITEN ‘written’. We can see that besides different endings in the forms given above there is gradation of vowels in the root: -i-/-a-/-i-/-i- (-zero-zero).
Now let us take another verb DRINCAN ‘to drink’ and consider its forms: (1) DRINCAN ‘to drink’, (2) DRANC ‘(he) drank’, (3) DRUNCON ‘(they) drank’, (4) DRUNCEN ‘drunken’.
The vowel gradation is different here: -i-/-a-/-u-/-u-(-zero-zero).
If we take the corresponding forms of the verb BERAN ‘to bear’ we shall find a different pattern of gra dation: -e-/-? -/-? -/-o-(-zero-zero) (BERAN ‘to bear’ – B? R ‘(he) bore – B? RON ‘(they) bore’ – BOREN ‘borne’).
The different patterns of vowel gradation in the four principle forms give the basis for the classification of the strong verb which we are going to discuss later. Ablaut may be also seen in the formation of the degrees of comparison in some adjectives; e. g. : 8 STRA(O)NG ‘strong’ – STRENGRA ‘stronger’ – STRENGEST ‘strongest’ 6 LA(O)NG ‘long’ – LENGRA ‘longer’ – LENGEST ‘longest’ EALD ‘old’ – IELDRA ‘older’ – IELDEST ‘oldest’ In some cases ablaut is used as a means of word-building /Ильиш 1968, 60/; e. g. : BELIFAN ‘to leave’ – LAF ‘remainder’ FORLEOSAN ‘to lose’ – LEAS ‘deprived’ BERAN ‘to bear’ – B? R ‘stretcher’ FARAN ‘to travel’ – FOR ‘journey’ RIDAN ‘to ride’ – RAD ‘road’ SINGAN ‘to sing’ – SONG ‘song’ In spite of the fact that the English language has changed tremendously for the centuries of its exis tence, some traces of the Old English ablaut still may be found in Modern English.
It is ablaut that can help us explain such a phenomenon as the so called ‘irregular’ verbs. The conventional term ‘irregular’ does not seem quite correct if we look upon the phenomenon from the historic point of view. Historically, the verbs which form their past tense and Participle II by way of vowel change in the root are quite REGULAR. The traces of ablaut may be also found in the pairs of such words as STRONG – STRENGTH, LONG – LENGTH, SING – SONG, etc. Knowing what ablaut is you will be able to establish the relations between similar words which are not very evidently connected semantically, e. g. : RIDE and ROAD. 3.
Phonetic Changes of the Old English Period The phonetic system never remained unchanged during the Old English period. There were nine main phonetic changes in the Old English language: (1) Old English fracture, (2) diphthongization of the monophthongs under the influence of the preceding palatal consonants, (3) umlaut, (4) lengthening of vowels under certain conditions, (5) voicing and unvoicing of fricatives, (6) palatalization of consonants and development of sibilants, (7) metathesis (метатеза – взаимная перестановка звуков или слогов в пределах слова), (8) assimilation of consonants, (9) doubling and falling out of consonants.
Let us discuss each phenomenon in detail. VOWEL CHANGES: 1) The Old English fracture is a change of the short vowels [? ] and [e] into diphthongs before some groups of consonants, when [? ] turned into the diphthong [ea] and [e] into the diphthong [eo]. Such diphthongization took place when [? ] or [e] was followed by the combination of [r], [l] or [h] with any other consonant or when the word ended in [h]. E. g. : *? rm > earm ‘arm’, *? ld > eald ‘old’, *? hta > eahta ‘eight’, *s? h > seah ‘saw’, *herte > heorte ‘heart’, *melcan > meolcan ‘to milk’, *selh > seolh ‘seal’, *feh > feoh ‘property. ) Diphthongization of the monophthongs under the influence of the preceding palatal con sonants or PALATALIZATION of vowels took place when the vowel was preceded by the initial /j/ or /k’/ and /sk’/: g-, c-, sc-. It had two stages /Смирницкий 55, 122/. Originally as a result of the palatalization of the consonants there appeared an ascending diphthong (i. e. a diphthong with the second element stressed), and then, according to the English phonetic norm, the ascending diphthong turns into a usual descending one; e. g. : /e/ > /ie/ > /ie/; /o/ > /eo/ > /eo/.
If we drop the transitional stage (the ascending variant of the diphthong), the general process of diphthongization may be presented as follows: [a] > [ea] [e:] > [ie:] [a:] > [ea:] or [eo:] [o] > [eo] [? ] > [ea] [o:] > [eo:] [? :] > [ea:] [u] > [io] (in the 9th c. [io] > [eo]) [e] > [ie] [u:] >[io:] (in the 9th c. [io:] > [eo:]) As a result of this change new words with diphthongs appeared in the Old English language ; e. g. : *scacan > sceacan ‘to shake’, *scawian > sceawian ‘to see’, *scamu > sceamu or sceomu ‘shame’, *g? > geaf ‘gave’, *g? r > gear ‘year’, *sceld > scield ‘shield’, *ge > gie ‘you’, *scort > sceort ‘short’, *scop > sceop ‘created’, *gung > giong > geong ‘young’, *gutan > giotan > geotan ‘to pour’. 3) Umlaut is a change of the vowel caused by partial assimilation with the following vowel in the word /Ильиш 1973, 48/. Umlaut, as V. M. Zhirmunsky writes, is a Germanic, but not proto-Germanic phenomenon: we do not see it in the oldest documents of Germanic languages /Жирмунский 1960, 314/.
In Old English it is necessary to distinguish the front-lin gual umlaut (the change of the vowel under the influence of the following [j]) and the velar umlaut (the change of the vowel under the influence of the following [u], [o] or [a]).
A phenomenon similar to umlaut takes place as well before the consonant /h/ /Ильиш 1973, 50/. Here we deal with the quantitative ablaut or the common IE ablaut. Or as Prof. Mezenin maintains, here we have i-mutation. 6 19 In the i-umlaut (i-mutation, front-lingual umlaut, палатальная или переднеязычная перегласовка) both monophthongs and diphthongs are involved.
This phenomenon implies the fronting and narrowing of back vowels under the influence of the following [j]. The change of the vowels in that case is as follows: [a] > [e], e. g. : *sandian > sendan ‘to send’ [a] > [? ], e. g. : *larian > l? ran ‘to teach’ [? ] > [e], e. g. : *t? lian > tellan ‘to tell’ [o] > [e], e. g. : *ofstian > efstan ‘to hurry’ [o] > [e], e. g. : *wopian > wepan ‘to weep’ [u] > [y], e. g. : *fullian > fyllan ‘to fill’ [u] > [y], e. g. : *ontunian > ontynan ‘to open’ [ea] > [ie], e. g. : *hleahian > hliehhan ‘to laugh’ [ea] > [ie], e. . : *hearian > hieran ‘to hear’ [eo] > [ie], e. g. : *afeorian > afierran ‘to move’ [eo] > [ie], e. g. : *getreowi > getriewe ‘true’ The mechanism of the front-lingual umlaut can be seen very well in the examples above: the vowel [i] in the ending of the word influences the root vowel in such a way that the latter becomes narrower, while the sound [i] itself as a rule disappears. The velar umlaut means the diphthongization of front vowels under the influence of back vowels in the following syllable. In case of the velar umlaut the following changes take place: [a] > [ea], e. g. *saru > searu ‘armour’ [e] > [eo], e. g. : *hefon > heofon ‘heaven’ [i] > [io], e. g. : *sifon > siofon ‘seven’ The phonetic changes before the consonant /h/ are characterized, as some scholars notice, by certain ambiguity /Ильиш 1973, 50/. As a result of this change the Old English word *n? ht, for instance, develops the following variants: neaht, nieht, niht, nyht; the past form of mag (may) – meahte – miehte, mihte, myhte. 4) The lengthening of vowels: a) before the homorganic clusters (гоморганные согласные, образу? щиеся одним и тем же произносительным органом) nd, ld, mb took place in the 9 th century.
The cause of this phenomenon is not clear enough. The scholars write about its unusual, even enigmatic character /Плоткин 1967, 62; Мифтахова 1964, 6 – 9/. Such words as BINDAN ‘bind’, BUNDEN ‘bound’, CILD ‘child’ began to be pronounced as BI:NDAN, BU:NDEN, CI:LD. But in case there was a third consonant after nd, ld or mb no lengthening took place, e. g. , in the plural form CILDRU ‘children’ the short [i] remains. Vowels were also lengthened when certain consonants following them dropped out: b) when ‘m,n’ dropped out before ‘f, s, [thorn]’, and ‘n’ dropped out before ‘h’ (the Ing vaeone lengthening of vowels).
E. g. , *fimf > fi:f, *uns > u:s, *on? er > o:? er, *? onhte > ? o:hte c) g before ‘d, n’. E. g. *s? gde > s? :de; *frignan > fri:nan d) the lengthening of vowels and syllabic contraction due to the falling out of intervocalic [х] and [х’] is a phonetic phenomenon which consists in the elimination of the consonant [h] in the position between two vowels, while those vowels form one phoneme, mainly a long diphthong: [a] + [h] + vowel > [ea], e. g. : *slahan > slea:n ‘to kill’ [e] + [h] + vowel > [eo], e. g. : *sehan > seo:n ‘to see’ [i] + [h] + vowel > [eo], e. g. *tihan > teo:n ‘to accuse’ [o] + [h] + vowel > [o], e. g. : *fohan > fo:n ‘to catch’ As a result of the contraction, as it can be seen in the examples, the syllable structure of the word changes: disyllabic words become monosyllabic. The dropping out of ‘h’ between l and a vowel also caused the diphthongization and lengthening: *seolhas > seo:las ‘seals’. CONSONANT CHANGES: 5) The voicing of fricatives /f – v, ? – ? , s – z/ in the intervocalic positionconsists in following: in the final position voiceless consonants are fixed, and the in the position between two vowels (the intervocalic position) – voiced ones.
For example, in the word WIF ‘woman’ the final consonants was voiceless, but in the same word in the form of the genitive case the letter f expressed the voiced sound [v] (wifes).
Similarly in the infinitive form of the verb WEOR? AN ‘to become’ the letter ? denoted the voiced sound [? ], while in the past tense form WEAR? the same letter denoted the voiceless sound [? ]. Likewise the letter s in the infinitive form of the verb CEOSAN ‘to choose’ was read as the voiced [z], and in the form of the past tense CEAS – as the voiceless [s].
It should be noted that no voicing took place at the morphemic seams (if a consonant is between two vowels belonging to different morphemes, e. g. ?. 6) Palatalization of consonants and development of sibilants (assibilation) could be observed already in the earliest stage of the Old English language /Ильиш 1958, 54/. 20 The consonant [k’] – in spelling cg – in the position before or after the front- lingual vowel changes into the affricate [tS]. The combination [sk’] in spelling sc changes into the sibilant [S] in any position. In the intervocalic position after a short vowel [sk’], as G.
Kurath believes, changes into the long sibilant [SS], in other situations – into the usual [S] /Kurath 1956, 439/. The consonant [g’] – in spelling g – in the position before or after a front-lingual vowel changes into the affricate [dZ]. In spelling these phonetic changes found expression only in the Middle English language: CILD > CHILD ‘child’, SCIP > SHIP ‘ship’, BRYCG > BRIDGE ‘bridge’. 7) Metathesis – this term denotes such a phonetic phenomenon when sounds (consonants and vowels) and sometimes even syllables in a word exchange their places , e. . : THRIDDA > THIRDA ‘third’, RYNNAN >IERNAN, IRNAN, YRNAN ‘to run’, ASCIAN> AXIAN ‘to ask’, WASCAN> WAXAN ‘wash’, etc. 8) Assimilation of consonants, i. e. full or partial likening of the consonant to the next consonant in the word is observed in the Old English language rather frequently. Full assimilation can be observed, for instance, in the words WISTE > WISSE ‘knew’, WIFMAN> WIMMAN ‘woman’. Partial assimilation takes place in the following words: STEFN > STEMN ‘voice’, EFN > EMN ‘level’. ) The lengthening and doubling of consonants; the falling out of consonants a) the lengthening and doubling of consonants is connected with i-mutation: the stem-building ‘i’ or ‘j’ fell out and the consonant doubled (*T? LIAN > T? LLAN) b) the falling out of consonants is connected with the lengthening of vowels (*S? GDE [j] > S? :DE).
4. Old English Spelling As you remember, in the inscriptions found in the Old English language the Runic alphabet (futhark) was used. Frisian and Anglo-Saxon runes were 29-33 in number, they were used to designate one letter or a whole word, e. . ‘day’(dagaz), a ‘man’ (manna) In later and larger documents the alphabet on the Latin basis was used. As the phonetic structure of the Old English language was considerably different from the Latin phonetic structure, in order to express the sounds which did not exist in Latin some additional signs were introduced into the alpha bet. As a whole the Old English alphabet looked like this: a? bcdefghIlmno prst?? u? wxy 21 The letters a, ? , e, i, o, u, y denoted short and long vowels, and also elements of the diphthongs ea, eo, ie, io. The letter ? which denoted the sounds [? and [? :] is a ligature, i. e. it was formed by the fusion of the letters a and e. The letter c (‘cen’) unlike in Latin and Modern English denoted the hard consonant /k/ or the palatal ized /k’/. The modern reading [si:] of this letter and its reading before front vowels reflects the graphic norms of Old French. The letter f denoted the voiceless /f/ or the voiced /v/. The voiced consonant /v/ was also denoted by the letter u. The letter g, called ‘yogh’, is of Irish origin /Williams 1975, 315/. It designated the sounds [g], [укр. ?], [укр. ?’] [j] or [x]. This letter sounded like [g] in the initial position before back vowels (GAN), before and after consonants (GL? D), after the nasal ‘n’ (GEONG, SINGAN); ? it sounded like the Ukranian [? ] between back vowels (DRAGAN) and after ‘r’ and ‘l’ (SORG); ? it sounded like the Ukranian [? ‘] if it was not in the initial position before a front vowel (FOL GIAN, HALGA – saint) or if it was after a front vowel (D? G); ? it sounded like [j] in the initial position before front vowels (GEAR); in some cases in the initial position it reflected the common German [j] (GUNG).
it sounded like [х] in the final position after a back vowel (BEAG) The combination cg designated the geminate or long consonant 7 [gg’] and in Late Old English as [d ], like in the word BRYCG ‘bridge’. The letter h denoted the sounds /x/, /x’/ or /h/. The letter s denoted the voiceless /s/ or the voiced /z/. The letters ? and ? were equivalent. The letter ? , called ‘thorn’, was borrowed from the Runic alphabet to designate the voiceless interdental / / or the voiced / /. Later in the same meaning the letter ? , called ‘eth’ was used. The letter ? is a modification of the Latin d. Another letter borrowed from the Runic alphabet was P (? . It was called ‘wynn’ and denoted the bilabial sound [w]. In the XI c. this sound was denoted by the double letter uu by Norman scribes which was later transformed into the letter w (that is why it is called in English ‘double u’).
It should be also marked that the letters u and v were not distinguished until the 16 th century. The letter x denoted the consonant cluster [ks] was used mainly in borrowed words. In individual manuscripts the letters q, z and the ligature oe could be found, but the occasional character of these signs does not give us any ground to include them into the Old English alphabet.
In contemporary editions of the Old English texts some additional signs are also used (diacritic marks).
The letter with the diacritic mark a denotes a short vowel intermediate in articulation between /a/ and /o/. This sound appeared before the nasal consonants, e. g. : MANN ‘man’, NAMA ‘name’. The length of the vowel is denoted by the sign _ above the letter, e. g. : WRITAN ‘to write’; its shortness may be denoted by the sign , e. g. : WRITON ‘(they) wrote’. In the original manuscripts the length of vowels was denoted by the sign ‘ (‘accent’) or ^ (‘circumflex’).
Instead of the ligature ? the sign a was also used.
Questions and Assignments to Chapter 2 How many vowel monophthongs were there in Old English? What does it mean when we say that the Old English system of vowels was symmetric? Explain the fact that in Old English texts we come across such spelling variants as man -mon, land – lond, etc.? 4) How many diphthongs were there in Old English phonetic structure? Name them. 5) Give the definition of ablaut. 6) Write out the four basic forms of the verb writan ‘to write’. 7) Give the forms of the comparative and superlative degrees of the adjectives strong, long, eald in Old English. Explain them. ) Is there historic relation between the modern words road and to ride? 9) Name the nine principal phonetic changes that took place in Old English. 10) What is the Old English fracture? 11) Explain the change *herte > heorte. 12) Explain what is diphthongization of the monophthongs under the influence of the preceding palatal consonant. There were geminates or long consonants in OE which were designated by double consonant letters (offrian – to offer, o?? e – or) or by ‘cg’. 7 1) 2) 3) 22 13) 14) 15) 16) 17) 18) 19) 20) 21) 22) 23) 24) 25) 26) 27) 28) 29) 30) 31) 32) 33) 34) 35) 36) 37) 38) 39) 40) 41)
Explain the change *scacan > sceacan. Explain the change *scamu > sceamu. Explain the change *scort > sceort. What is umlaut? Explain the change *sandian > sendan. Explain the change *wopian > wepan. Explain the change *fullian > fyllan. What is velar umlaut? Explain the change *slahan > sleon. Explain the change *sehan > seon. Explain the change *tihan > teon. Explain the change *fohan > fon. Explain what is lengthening of vowels before the homorganic clusters. Why do you think the root vowels in modern forms child and children differ? In what instances did voicing and unvoicing of fricatives take place?
In what positions did the palatalization of [k’] take place? In what positions did the palatalization of [sk’] take place? Explain the change cild > child. Explain the change scip > ship. What is metathesis? Explain the change yrnan > rynnan. Explain the change ascian > axian. What is the assimilation of consonants? Explain the change wiste > wisse. Explain the change wifman > wimman. What sounds did the letter F denote in Old English? How were the interdental consonants denoted in Old English? Why do you think the letter Z was not used in Old English? Chapter 3.
Lexicon and Word-building in the Old English Language 1. Classification of the Old English Lexicon Have you ever asked yourself how many words there in the language? Of course, it is impossible to give an exact answer to this question. The matter is new words appear in the language actually every day. The biggest dictionary in the English speaking world – Oxford Dictionary – publish in 1928 included about half a million words. But only in five years its compilers had to publish an amendment to the dictionary as the process of the creation of new word never stopped. In the spring of 1985 a new amendment was completed.
It included the words which have appeared in the English lan guage in the second half of the 20 th century. The total number of those newest English words exceeds 60,000. It is still more difficult to say how many words there were in the Old English language as the surviving documents present only a small part of the Old English lexicon. According to A. I. Smirnitsky’s evaluation “the word-stock of the Old English language consisted of several tens of thousands units. Thus, the vocabulary of Old English was approximately ten times less than that of modern English / Смирницкий 1955, 159/.
The study of the lexicon of any language starts with its classification. The principles of classification may be different. For our material, i. e. for the word-stock of the Old English language, it is expedient to use classification according to three principles: morphological, stylistic and etymological. The morphological classification is based on the study of the structure of the word. From this point of view words are divided into simple, or non-derivative, words, which consist only of the root, derivative words, which have in their structure a morphological affix, and compound words, which contain two or more roots.
Thus, the words FISC ‘fish’, MYCEL ‘big’, HEAFOD ‘head’ are simple ones. The word FISC-ERE ‘fisherman’ is a derivative one: in its morphological structure there is a suffix with a meaning of the doer of action -ER(E).
The word MYCEL-HEAFD-ED-E ‘big-headed’ is compound as two roots are connected in its structure. 23 The stylistic classification is based on the division of words into stylistically neutral and stylistically marked. Stylistically marked vocabulary includes learned words, words the use of which is limited by a definite sphere, for instance, church words or military terms, poetic words, etc.
Thus, the words MANN ‘man’, D? G ‘day’, LAND ‘land’, FARAN ‘to travel’, SEON ‘to see’, DRINCAN ‘to drink’, SCEORT ‘short’ are stylistically neutral. The words FERS ‘verse’, CIRCUL ‘circle’, DECLINIAN ‘to decline’ belong to the learned words (it may be noticed that all of them are borrowed words).
The words BISCOP ‘bishop’, CLERIC ‘clergyman’, DEOFOL ‘devil’ belong to the church sphere. The poetic vocabulary is richly presented in the poem ‘Beowulf’, e. g. : BEADO-RINC ‘hero-warrior’, HELM-BEREND ‘bearing a helmet’, GLEO-BEAM ‘tree of joy, harp’ etc. The etymological classification is based on the origin of words.
From the point of view of this classification it is important to know whether the word belongs to the original, long-standing, vocabulary in the language or whether it is a loan-word, i. e. was borrowed from another language. If it is a loan-word it is necessary to establish from what language and at what historic period it was borrowed. If the word belongs to the original vocabulary it is important to establish whether it has parallels in other Germanic or other Indo-European languages. Examples of words belonging to different etymological groups are given below.
Indo-European Words. F? DER ‘father’, MODOR ‘mother’, NEOWE ‘new’, SITTAN ‘to sit’. Germanic Words. EORTHE ‘earth’, LAND ‘land’, EARM ‘poor’, FINDAN ‘to find’. Specific English Words. CLIPIAN ‘to call’, BRID ‘nestling’. Borrowed Words. STR? T ‘road’, WEALL ‘wall’, MYLN ‘mill’, BISCOP ‘bishop’. 2. Indo-European Vocabulary in the Old English Language Many words in different Indo-European languages originate from the common Proto-Indo-European root. Among such words we can very often find words denoting family relation (mother, brother, daugh ter, etc. , numerals, words denoting day and night and others /Rozendorn 1967, 83/. Here also belong the words which denote vitally important processes (to eat, to sleep, etc. ).
It is only natural that the words ascending to the same Indo-European root for an inexperienced person are not easy to identify. Compare, for example, the modern English word FIRST and Lithuanian PIRMAS, or English SLEEP and Russian СЛАБЫЙ. The outward similarity of those words may be not very evident but still their relation is an established fact.
To judge about the belonging of these or those words to the Indo-European vocabulary, one has to trace the history of the words taking into account all the changes that took place in different periods of the language evolution. To find the scientific grounds of the genetic relation of words linguists use the comparative-historic method. This method which was worked out in the 19th century is a reliable insurance against various errors that may happen for the simple reason that words in different languages have external similarity.
L. Bloomfield in his book “Language” gives an interesting example. In the New Greek language the word /’mati/ means ‘eye’; in the Malayan language the word /mata/ has the same meaning. The common meaning and the outward similarity of the form seem to testify the relation of those words. But the historic analysis indicates that any genetic relation be tween those words is impossible /Bloomfield 1968, 328 -329/. Let us discuss several examples of words belonging to the Indo-European vocabulary in the Old English language. The word F?
DER ‘father’ has the following parallels in Indo-European languages: Latin PATER, Greek PATER, Sanskrit PITAR. We know now that the correspondence of the Germanic [f] to the IndoEuropean (non-Germanic) [p] has a regular character (J. Grimm’s law).
So the phonetic identity and common meaning testify that the word F? DER belongs to the Indo-European vocabulary. To the same category we can refer the word MODOR. In Latin its correspondence is the word MATER, in Greek METER, in Sanskrit MATA (the stem of the oblique cases is MATAR-).
We can notice that the Russian word МАТЬ is closer to the phonetic structure of the corresponding words in other Indo-European languages in the forms of the oblique cases too: МАТЕРИ, МАТЕРЬ? , etc. The Old English adjective FUL ‘full’ and the verb derived from the latter FYLLAN ‘to fill’ has relation with the Latin adjective PLENUS, Greek PLEOS and also with the Russian ПОЛНЫЙ (here, like in case with the word F? DER, we can observe the effect of Grimm’s law).
The word STEORRA ‘star’ also belongs to the Indo-European vocabulary. In Latin its correspondence is STELLA, in Greek ASTER. 3.
Words of the Germanic Vocabulary and Specific Old English Words The Germanic vocabulary in Old English includes the words which have parallels in other Germanic languages but have no correspondences in other Indo-European (non-Germanic) languages. These words are fewer in number than the Indo-European words, as the researchers state. According to T. A. Ras torguyeva’s evaluation the ratio of the Germanic and Indo-European vocabulary in the Old English lan guage is 1 : 2 /Rastorguyeva, 1983 , 132/. The Germanic vocabulary originated in the period when the Teutonic tribes dwelt on the Continent and spoke the same language.
The words of the common Germanic 24 vocabulary are easy to recognize. In the following table you can see some Old English words belonging to the Germanic vocabulary and their parallels in the Old-High-German, Gothic and Old Icelandic lan guages. Table # 1 Common Germanic Vocabulary Old English earthe ‘earth’ fox ‘fox’ hand ‘hand’ sand ‘sand’ sceap ‘sheep’ scip ‘ship’ stan ‘stone’ word ‘word’ Old High German erda fuhs hant sant scaf scif stein wort Gothic airtha handus – skip stains waurd Old Icelandic jorth – hond sandr – skip steinn orth Words belonging to the specific Old English vocabulary, i. . words having no etymological parallels ei ther in Germanic or in other Indo-European languages, are not numerous. As examples we may consider the verb CLIPIAN ‘to call’ which went out of use in the Middle English period and the noun BRID ‘nestling’ from which the modern word bird developed. The list of these words will be enlarged though if derivative and compound words formed on the bases of Germanic and Indo-European elements are includ ed into it /Rastorguyeva 1983, 133/. Thus, the word WIFMAN ‘woman’ (WIMMAN being the later form of it) was formed of the Germanic roots WIF ‘wife’ and MANN’.
The word HLAFORD ‘lord’, which developed into the contemporary lord, includes the Indo-European root HLAF ‘bread’ and the Germanic root ascending to the verb WEARDAN ‘to keep’. The word HL? FDIGE ‘lady’ has a similar origin. In its morphological structure we can distinguish the root HLAF mentioned above and acquiring the form HL? F as a result of umlaut and the Germanic verbal stem DIG(AN) ‘to mix bread’. Besides the linguistic interest, which the origin of the words lord and lady presents, it is very interesting to consider the oldest social background which may be discovered in studying the etymology of those words. . Borrowed Words The main source of borrowed word for the Old English language was Latin. The ways of English and Latin often crossed in various historic circumstances. For the Old English period three moments were suf ficient. Firstly, the tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes had different relations with the Romans who spoke Latin before their invasion into Britain in the 5 th century. Secondly, after they had conquered Britain, Angles, Saxons and Jutes communicated with the Celtic population who, as you are sure to remember, had been influenced by the Roman culture and the Latin language.
Thirdly, since the end of the 6 th century Britain has been a Christian country, and Latin was language of church and theology in Western Europe. The three moments mentioned above determine the three layers of Latin borrowings in the Old English language which differ in time and the character of the borrowed words. The first layer belongs to the period when the Old English language did not yet actually exist. The Latin words that had taken root in the dialects of Angles, Saxons and Jutes later naturally passed in into the new language community which we call now Old English after the Germanic tribes had settled in Britain.
What kind of words were they? First of all those were names of objects of material culture and names of goods that the Germanic people bought from Romans on the Continent /Ильиш 1968, 79/. From the Latin expression strata via ‘cobbled road’ the first element was borrowed, and the word STR? T acquired the meaning ‘road’ (of any kind).
We can notice that in New English the word street which developed from the Old English STR? T has changed its meaning. The Latin vallum ‘fortress wall’ gave birth to the Old English WEALL ‘wall’. The Latin coquina ‘kitchen’ was borrowed in the Old English form CYCENE (with the same meaning).
The Latin molinum ‘mill’ was transformed in Old English as MYLN. Names of many goods in Old English were of Latin origin, e. g. : Latin vinum ‘wine’ > Old English WIN ‘wine’ Latin piper ‘pepper’ > Old English PIPOR ‘pepper’ Latin ceresia ‘cherry’ > Old English CYRSE ‘cherry’ Latin sinapi ‘mustard’ > Old English SENEP ‘mustard’ Latin caseus ‘cheese’ > Old English CYSE ‘cheese’ Latin caulis ‘cabbage’ > Old English CAWL ‘cabbage’ Many words which denote things of household and everyday life also have come from Latin, e. g. Latin discus ‘disc’ > Old English DISC ‘dish’ Latin cuppa ‘cup’ > Old English CUPPE ‘cup’ Latin catillus ‘pot’ > Old English CYTEL ‘pot, kettle’ 25 Latin amphora ‘bowl’ > Old English AMBOR ‘bucket’ Latin saccus ‘sack’ > Old English S? C ‘sack’ Latin cista ‘chest’ > Old English CISTE ‘chest, box’ It is interesting to consider how the Latin word uncia ‘1/12 part of the measure’ was transformed in the process of borrowing in Old English. In the Old English language that word appeared in the form YNCE and had two meanings: ‘ounce’ and ‘inch’.
But later the word developed in two variants with each of which a separate meaning was associated. The second layer of Latin borrowed words in Old English is connected with the interception of some language elements by Angles, Saxons and Jutes from conquered Celts. As an example of such a borrowing we can consider the word CROSS from the Latin crux /Rastorguyeva 1983, 134/. A considerable number of toponyms adopted by the Germanic invaders from Celts included the element CEASTRE or CESTRE from the Latin castra ‘camp, military settlement’ and PORT from the Latin portus ‘port, harbour’.
These toponyms survive in modern English, e. g. : Davenport, Gloucester, Lancaster, Manchester, Winchester, Worcester, etc. The third layer of Latin borrowings which is connected with the introduction of Christianity in Britain is naturally limited semantically: it comprises the words having relation to religion, theology, the Holy Bible and the life of the church. The peculiarity of those words is that they are mainly of Greek origin, but it is important to keep in mind that all those words have entered the Old English lexicon through Latin, that is why they should be considered borrowings from the Latin language.
Some examples of those words are given below: Greek aggelos ‘messenger’ > Latin angelus ‘angel’ > O. E. ANGEL ‘angel’ Greek diabolos ‘devil’ > Latin diabolus ‘devil’ > O. E. DEOFOL ‘devil’ Greek episkopos ‘bishop’ > Latin episcopus ‘bishop’ > O. E. BISCOP ‘bishop’ A special group of borrowings includes the so called loan translations, or calques. Calques are words and word-combinations that preserve the structure of the original but the elements of which were translat ed into the Old English language. In this respect it is interesting to consider the Old English names of the days of the week.
The Latin names of the days of the week were devoted to the Sun, the Moon or the gods of the Gr? co-Roman Olympus. The word consisted of the name of the god in the Genitive case and the word dies ‘day’. In the Old English language the same pattern was used, with the exclusion that the names of Roman gods were replaced by the names of god of the Germanic mythology, as can be seen in the table below: Table # 2 Names of the Days of the Week Latin Monday Lun? dies Tuesday Martis dies Wednesday Mercuri dies Thursday Iovis dies Friday Veneris dies Saturday Saturni dies Sunday Solis dies
Day of Moon Day of Mars Day of Mercury Day of Jupiter Day of Venus Day of Saturn Day of Sun Old English Monan-d? g Tiwes-d? g Wodnes-d? g Thunres-d? g Frige-d? g S? tern-d? g Sunnan-D? g Day of Moon Day of Tiu Day of Woden Day of Thuner Day of Friya Day of Saturn Day of Sun Words borrowed from other languages (besides Latin) were not many in the Old English language. A limited number of words entered the Old English language from the Celtic language, e. g. : BINN ‘manger’, BRATT ‘cloak’, DUN ‘grayish-brown’. The modern adverb down is also of Celtic origin. The Old English word DUN ‘hill, dune’ was borrowed from the Celtic language.
The expression OF DUNE had the meaning ‘down the hill, downwards’. Later this expression developed into the contemporary adverb. . 5. Word-building. Derivative Words . In the Old English language two main means of word-building may be distinguished: (1) affixation word-building, i. e. the formation of words from the roots existing in the language with help of suffixes and/or prefixes; (2) the formation of new words by merging two or more roots (stem-combination).
Words 26 produced by the first means are called derivative. Words formed by the second means are called compound.
Let us first consider the main suffixes of nouns in the Old English language. The suffix -ere was used to denote a man’s occupation, e. g. : FISCERE ‘fisherman’ from the word FISC ‘fish’. The suffix -estre was used in the words denoting a woman’s occupation, e. g. : B? CESTRE ‘cook’ from the verb B? CAN ‘to cook, to bake’. The suffix -nd had the broad meaning of a doer, e. g. : FREO:ND ‘friend’. The suffix -ing was used for the formation of nouns denoting belonging to a kin, e. g. : CYNING ‘king’. The original meaning of this word as we can see was ‘one of the kin, belonging to the kin’ – from the common Germanic root *cun- ‘kin’.
The suffix -ling was used as diminutive, e. g. : DEO:RLING ‘darling’. With the help of the suffix -en nouns of the feminine gender could be formed. For example, it was possible to produce the noun of the feminine gender GYDEN ‘goddess’ from the noun of the masculine gender GOD ‘god’. The suffix -nis, -nes was used for the formation of abstract nouns from adjectives, e. g. : GO:DNIS ‘goodness’ from the adjective GO:D ‘good, kind’. The suffix -u had a similar meaning, e. g. : LENGU ‘length’ from the adjective LONG ‘long’. The suffixes -? , -u? , -o? was used to form nouns denoting abstract notions and also different kind of human activity, e. . : FISCO? ‘fishing’. The suffix –do:m was used in the structure of some nouns of abstract semantics denoting state, e. g. : WISDO:M ‘wisdom’, FREO:DO:M ‘freedom’. The suffix -had was used in words denoting state or title, e. g. : CILDHAD ‘childhood’. Let us further consider the main suffixes of adjectives. The suffix -ihte was used to produce adjectives from the substantive stem and denoted incomplete quality, e. g. : ST? NIHTE ‘stony’ from the noun STAN ‘stone’. The suffix -ig was also used to form an adjective from the substantive stem, e. g. : MISTIG ‘misty’ from the noun MIST ‘mist’.
The suffix -en was used to produce adjectives of material meaning, e. g. : GYLDEN ‘golden’ from the noun GOLD ‘gold’. The suffix -isc was used in words denoting belonging to a nationality, e. g. : ENGELISC ‘English’, FRENCISC ‘French’. The suffix -sum had a very broad meaning and was used in adjectives formed from the substantive stem, e. g. : SIBSUM ‘peaceful’ from the noun SIBB ‘peace’. The suffix -feald denoted multiplication, e. g. : SEOFONFEALD ‘sevenfold’ from the numeral SEOFON ‘seven’. The suffix -full denoted the completeness of the quality, e. g. SYNNFULL ‘sinful’ from the noun SYNN ‘sin’, CARFULL ‘careful’ from the noun CARU ‘care’. The suffix LEAS had negative meaning, e. g. : SL? PLEAS ‘sleepless’. With the help of the suffix -lic it was possible to produce various adjectives from substantive stems, e. g. : FREONDLIC ‘friendly’, LUFLIC ‘lovely’. The suffix -weard denoted direction, e. g. : HAMWEARD ‘directed to or facing the house’. Now let us consider the suffixes of verbs. Compared with the suffixes of nouns and adjectives they are not numerous. The semantics of the verbal suffixes is not always clear enough, sometimes it is difficult to determine.
For the sake of convenience we shall consider the suffixes of the verbs together with the inflection of the infinitive. The suffix -sian had causative meaning, e. g. : CL? :NSIAN ‘to clean’ from the adjective CL? NE ‘clean’. The semantics of the suffix -l? can was vague. Here is an example with this suffix: NEA:L? CAN ‘to approach’ from the word NEA:H ‘near’. The suffix -ettan was used to denote the repeated character of the action, e. g. : BLICCETTAN ‘to sparkle’, SPORETTAN ‘to spur’, COHHETTAN ‘to cough’, CEAHHETTAN ‘to caw’. Finally let us consider prefixes in the Old English language.
The prefix a:- was used with the verbal stems and denoted transition into a different state, e. g. : A:WACAN ‘awake’. The prefix a-, homonymous to the latter, was used with adverbial stems and had collective meaning, e. g. : AHW? R ‘everywhere’ from the word HW? R ‘where’. The prefix be- had the meaning of the concentration of the action around a particular object, e. g. : BETHENCAN ‘to think over’. The prefix ge- denoted the collective character of the action GEFERA ‘fellow traveler’. The homonymous prefix ge- used with verbal stems had an aspective meaning and denoted the completion of the action, e. g. : GESEON ‘to see (to have seen)’.
The prefix for-was associated with the meaning of destruction or loss, e. g. : FORWEORTHAN ‘to perish’. 27 The prefix mis- expressed negation, e. g. : MISLICIAN ‘to dislike’. The prefix of- intensified the meaning of the verb, e. g. : OFSLEAN ‘to murder’ from the word SLEAN ‘to kill’. The prefix on- was used to denote bringing back to the previous state, e. g. : ONBINDAN ‘to untie’. The prefix to:- was used in the structure of the verbs with the meaning of destruction, e. g. : TO:BRECAN ‘to break’. The prefix un- expressed negation, e. g. : UNCU:? ‘unknown’. The prefix wan- also had negative meaning, e. g. : WANHAL ‘unhealthy’.
In adverbs one should mention the suffix –li:ce: FREO:NDLICE; EORNOSTLI:CE (серьезно).
Word-building. Compound Words The main types of compound words in the Old English language could be formed according to the following patterns: 1) Noun stem + noun stem > noun. For example, as a result of combination of the substantive stems BOC- ‘book’ and CR? FT ‘art’ there appeared the word BOC-CR? FT ‘literature’. The complex word EORTH-CR? FT ‘geography’ has a similar structure, its first element EORTH- having the meaning ‘earth’. The word GAR-WIGA ‘lance-carrier’ is composed of the stems GAR- ‘lance’ and WIGA ‘warrior’.
Complex words of this type are numerous: GIMMSTAN ‘precious stone’, GU? -GEWINN ‘competition of warriors’, GU? -RINC ‘warrior’, GU? WINE ‘companion’, HEAFOD-MANN ‘chief’, HYRN-WIGA ‘warrior’, LEO? -CR? FT ‘poetry’. 2) Noun stem with a case inflection + noun stem > noun. As the first component of the complex words of this type a case form of the noun (mainly the Genitive case singular or plural) was used. Thus, in the name of the city BIRMINGAHAM ‘Birmingham’ (which literally means ‘home of Birmings’) the first element BIRMINGA- is the form of the Genitive case plural. In the word D?
GES-EAGE ‘daisy’ the component D? GES- is the form of the Genitive case singular of the noun D? G ‘day’. So the literal meaning of the name of this flower is ‘the eye of the day’. (See also the Old English names of the days of the week in Section 4).
3) Noun stem + adjective stem > adjective. Thus, the complex word CILD-GEONG ‘childish’ consists of the substantive stem CILD- ‘child’ and the adjective stem GEONG ‘young’. In the word DOM-GEORU ‘ambitious’ it is easy to differentiate the substantive element DOM‘dignity, honour’ and the adjective element GEORU ‘wishing, eager’.
The word GOLD-FAH ‘shot with gold’ consists of the stem GOLD- ‘gold’ and FAH ‘parti-colored’. Here are some examples that are clear enough: HAM-CYME ‘one who returned home’, IS-CEALD ‘ice-cold’, MODCEARIG ‘sad’. 4) Adjective stem + noun stem > noun. As examples of the words produced in this pattern we can consider the nouns CWIC-SEOLFOR ‘quicksilver, mercury’, GOD-D? D ‘feat, deed’ (literally: ‘good doing’), HALIG-D? G ‘holiday’ (literally: ‘holy day’).
This group also includes such words as NEAH-GEBUR ‘neighbour’ (literally: ‘living nearby’) and WID-S? ‘open sea, ocean’ (literally; ‘wide sea’).
) Adjective stem + noun stem > adjective. Alongside with the nouns formed from adjective and substantive stems there were adjectives produced in the same pattern in Old English. Thus, from the stems FAMI- ‘foamy’ and HEALS ‘neck’ the complex adjective FAMI-HEALS ‘foaming the waters’ (literally: ‘with foam around the neck’) was produced. From the adjective stem MILD- ‘mild’ and the substantive stem HEORT ‘heart’ the complex adjective MILD-HEORT ‘mild-hearted’ was formed. As a result of connection of the stems STI? – ‘strong’ and MOD ‘character’ there appeared the word STI? -MOD ‘brave’. 6) Adjective stem + noun stem + suffix -EDE >