Download The Proto-Germanic Language

HISTORY
OF THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE
LEXICOLOGY
STYLISTICS
THEORETICAL GRAMMAR
(30 h. – lectures, 10 h. - seminars)
HISTORY
OF THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE
1.1. The Indo-European Language
Family
1.2. The Proto-Germanic Language
1.3. Periods in the History of English
 English
is a member of the Germanic
family of languages;
 The Germanic family is a branch of the
Indo-European language family;
 The other branches of the IndoEuropean language family: IndoIranian, Armenian, Anatolian, Albanian,
Tocharian, Greek, Italic, Baltic, Celtic,
and Slavic.
 Proto-Germanic
(Primitive Germanic or
Common Germanic), the parent language. It
was split from the related Indo-European
languages(15th – 10th BC).
 Proto-Germanic language underwent changes
and branched into three speech communities,
which further separated into distinct
Germanic languages:



North Germanic (Danish, Swedish,
Norwegian, Icelandic);
East Germanic (Gothic-extinct),
West Germanic (High German, Low
German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and
English).
 Proto-Germanic
was distinguished from the
other Indo-European languages by
innovations at different levels: phonological,
morphological, and syntactic.
 It was characterised by numerous additions
to its lexicon: it contained some words
which cannot be found in the other IndoEuropean languages. These words might
have been lost there, adopted from nonIndo-European languages, or invented in
Germanic.
SOME FEATURES:
 The
stress in Germanic normally fell on
the first syllable (except for prefixes).
 One of the main phonological and
morphological instruments was the
ablaut (gradation), i.e. the vowel
interchange in the root of nouns and
verbs. It was sometimes used instead
of verb endings and noun inflections.
 Grimm’s
Law (after Jacob Grimm) or the First
Consonant Shift.
According to the law:
1. IE aspirated voiced stops lost aspiration in
Germanic:
e.g bh > b Skt bhrātār > Goth. broþor
(brother)
2. IE voiceless stops became fricatives in Germanic:
e.g. t > þ Lat. trēs > Goth. þreis (three)
3. The IE voiced stops became voiceless in
Germanic:
e.g. b > p Rus. болото > ModE pool (pool)
 Proto-Germanic
nouns, pronouns, and adjectives
were declined. The noun had three genders
(masculine, feminine, neuter); two numbers:
(singular, plural), a reduced case system. Also,
there were several types of noun declension
depending on the type of the stem: -a-, -ō-, -i-, u- , -n-.
 The adjective → an independent part of speech
with new inflectional pattern. The adjective
developed two declensions: strong (used when
the noun modified was preceded by a determiner)
and weak (used in other situation).
 Nouns,
pronouns, and adjectives were declined.
The noun had three genders (masculine, feminine,
neuter); two numbers (singular, plural), and a
reduced case system. Also, there were several
types of noun declension depending on the type
of the stem: -a-, -ō-, -i-, -u- , -n-.
 Adjective turned into an independent part of
speech with new inflectional pattern. The
adjective developed two separate declensions:
strong (used when the noun modified was
preceded by a determiner) and weak (used in
other situation).
 It
had only two tenses: present and past
(preterite); three moods (indicative,
subjunctive, and imperative), and two
voices (active and passive).
 Verbs were divided into two major groups,
strong and weak. Strong verbs used either
an internal vowel change (ablaut) or
reduplication, while weak verbs used the
dental suffix -d.
 Verbs and pronouns had three numbers:
singular, dual, and plural.
 Proto-Germanic
like other old IndoEuropean languages had a synthetic
type of form-building, which means
that the grammatical meaning was
expressed by changing the forms of
the word itself with the help of
inflections, sound interchange and
suppletion.
 The
history of the English language starts
with the arrival of three Germanic tribes
(the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes) that
invaded Britain during the 5th century AD.
 The tribes migrated from the continent (the
territory of today’s northern Germany and
Denmark).
 At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke
a Celtic language.
Three periods:
 Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) (450 –
1100 AD);
 Middle English (the 12th century to
1475);
 Modern English (since 1475).
THANK YOU
FOR ATTENTION