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Indo-European and Germanic English’s Ancestors The Indo-European Language Families • 1786: Sir William Jones (judge, philologist) announces to the Asiatick Society of Calcutta that Sanskrit had to be related to Greek and Latin • cultural anxiety for European colonial power • based on cognates (related words in different languages) • PIE = Proto-Indo-European Sanskrit Greek Latin Gothic English PIE pita pater pater fadar father pəter- patam poda pedem fotu foot ped- bhratar phrater frater fotu brother bhrater- bharami phero fero baira bear (= “carry”) bher- Migration and development • • • • • human speech: 100,000 to 20,000 BCE common IE language spoken ca. 5000-3000 BCE migrations ca. 3000 BCE in-law words: patriarchal society common words for horses, dogs, sheep, pigs, wheeled vehicle, body parts, farming, tools, weapons, law, religion, social status, numerals to 100 • shared words for cold, winter, honey, wolf, snow, beech, pine • but not: ocean, palm, elephant, camel • near Black Sea? Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia Indo-European Language Families The Germanic language family • late records (ca. 300 CE: Scandinavian inscriptions, Gothic Bible) – rely on historical reconstruction of Proto-Germanic (common Germanic original) Distinctive features of Germanic: 1. First-syllable stress • Indo-European: moveable stress (compare MnE photograph/photographer, Shakespeare/Shakespearean) • Germanic: stress on first syllable whenever possible: seven, mother, forehead, hollow • see both in MnE (explain, avoid – loanwords) 2. Two-tense verb system (verbal inflection in past tense only) • (unique to the Germanic branch of IE):I talk, I talked • other tenses require a verb phrase: I will talk, I would talk; cf. French je parlerai (I will talk), je parlerais (I would talk), Latin dicebatur (it was being said) = synthetic verb forms (one word) 3. Dental suffix for past tense (of most verbs) • talked, bragged, boasted • past participle: I have talked • (German ic glaube “ I believe,” ic glaubte “I believed”) • new verbs in English also add –ed: I spammed the list, I texted him 4. Words unique to Germanic language family • some words common to Germanic and other IE languages (mother, Latin mater, Italian madre) • some words common to Germanic branch only: earth, loaf, meat, drink, begin, bed • some words common to West Germanic languages: ghost • some words common to English and Frisian only: key • some words in English only: dog, log, pig • (reasons unknown) 5. Grimm’s and Verner’s Laws (sound changes from IE to Germanic) • some related words in English: • tooth, toothy, dental • heart, hearty, cordial, cardiac • lip, labial • foot, pedal • genuflect, knee • choleric, gall, cholesterol, melancholy, cholera • thyroid/door Grimm’s Law (1) b f p Latin lubricus, English slippery Latin pes, English foot Latin frater, English brother Grimm’s Law (2) d θ t Latin decem, English ten Latin tertius, English third Latin thyroid, English door Grimm’s Law (3) g h k Latin genus (knee), OE cneo, MnE knee Latin canis, English hound Ancient Greek χήν, English goose • NB This is not about borrowing from Latin into English! • Latin preserves the IE consonants • Grimm’s Law happened shortly after Germanic broke away (~2000 years ago) Verner’s Law (not on test) • in certain stress environments: f>b θ > d (death/dead) s > z (was/were) h>g
