Вопрос №3 Phonetic features common to the Germanic languages
Вопрос №1
The Ind.-Eur family of languages. Features common to most of the IE languages
The Indo-European Family
The langs brought into relationship by recent or progressive differentiation from their parent lang are called a family of langs.
The term Indo European (IE) suggests the geographical extent of the family. The parent tongue, from which the IE langs sprang had become scattered and divided before the dawn of history. The surviving langs show different degrees of similarity. They fall into 11 groups.
1) Balto-Slavic ['bôltō 'slävik]
2) Indian['ɪndɪən]
3) Iranian[ɪ'reɪnɪən]
4) Hellenic[he'lenɪk]
5) Germanic[ʤɜː'mænɪk]
6) Italic[ɪ'tælɪk(s)]
7) Celtic['keltɪk]
8) Armenian[ɑː'mi:nɪən]
9) Albanian[æl'beɪnɪən]
and 2 dead langs
10) Tocharian (Тохарский) [tə'kɛːrɪən,
11) Hittite (Хеттский) [hɪ'taɪt]
The Celts at the beginning of our era formed one of the most extensive groups of the IE family. They were found in Gaul, Spain, Northern Italy, Western Germany and British Isles. They occupied the greater part of the Western Europe and today they are found in the remoter parts of France and the British Isles, where we find Gaelic, spoken in the highlands, Irish, spoken in Ireland, Welsh, spoken in Wales and Manx, which was used in the Isle of Man before the WW2.
The main lang of the Italic group – Latin (the lang of Rome). As Romans colonized Gael, Spain, Northern Africa, Islands in the Mediterranean, Latin spread into that regions. The native population adopted Latin and modified it in accordance with their speech habits. Today the various langs that had developed from Latin are called Romanic.
- Portuguese
- French
- Italian
- Spanish
II. Indo European Features (IEFs)
Every group of langs shares some linguistic features with related groups and also has its own specific features. Thus Common Germanic (CG) Has IEFs and specifically Germanic features. And in its turn Eng has IEFs, CGFs and specifically Eng features.
The earliest IE langs display an identical gram structure. All of them were synthetical inflectional langs. There appeared in them identical fundamental ws which are not likely to be picked up in the course of migration. They are:
- words of family relations (módor, bróðor, fæder)
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- names of plants, animals and parts of the body (дерево – trec, cordis - heart)
- basic numerals (three - три)
- certain ws, though with considerable change in mean (sittan – sit, etan – eat, witen - ведать)
Вопрос №2 The Germanic languages and their classification
The common point which the lang of the Germanic group had had before they were differentiated is known as Proto-Germanic (PG) or Common Germanic. At that time the last few centuries BC the Germanic tribes inhabited the western coast of the Baltic Sea and the southern part of the Scandinavian Peninsulas. The languages that descended from PG fall into 3 groups:
- East Germanic,
- North Germanic,
- West Germanic.
The East Germanic Languages
The principal lang is Gothic. By the 3d century of our era, it had left the region of Vistula and moved to the shore of the Black Sea. There in the 4th century they were christianized by a missionary called Ulfilas. For that purpose he translated into the Gothic lang the gospels and some other parts of the New Testament. And our knowledge of the Gothic lang is almost holy due to this translation. It is of great importance to the study of the German langs, it helps to reconstruct the PG langs.
For a time Goths played a very important part in the history of Europe. When the great migration of people began they moved to the west, conquered Italy and founded a kingdom there, reached Spain. But in those countries they were absorbed by the native population and their lang gave way to Latin.
The Gothic lang survived the longest in the Crimea where some traces of it were noted down in the 16th century. Some of the EG tribes are: Vandalic, Burgundian
But our knowledge of these dialects is confined to some place names only.
The North Germanic Languages
NG langs are found in Scandinavia and Denmark. Runic inscriptions of the 3d century of our era preserve the earliest traces of the lang. In its oldest form the early Scandinavian lang is known as Old Norse (ON). From the 11th century dialectal differences became noticeable and today NG langs are represented by:
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- the Swedish language,
- the Norwegian language,
- the Icelandic language,
- the Danish language,
- the Faeroes language.
The most interesting is Old Icelandic lang, which appeared as a result of the colonization of Ireland by Norwegians in the 9th century. It is important because it has preserved heroic literature, which is considered unsurpassed (непревзойденный) among Germanic people. The most important are: “Edda” – 9th – 10th centuries; “Eofa” – a collection of poems that describes exploits of some traditional heroes.
The West Germanic Languages WG languages are divided into:
- low languages and high languages.
In old times as Low German we distinguish
- Old Saxon
- Old Franconian
- Old Frisian
- Old English
Old Saxon became the main constituent part of modern Low German. Old Franconian became the basis of modern Dutch (spoken in Holland) and Flemish (spoken in Belgium). These 2 are treated now as the Netherlandish. Its offshoot is Africaans. Frisian survived in the Dutch province of Friesland and some islands along the coast. As to High German it is the literal lang of Australia, German, Switzerland, Luxemburg. From High German dialects there developed Yiddish.
Вопрос №3 Phonetic features common to the Germanic languages
Word Stress
In the IE parent lang the stress was musical and was not fixed. In Germanic langs it became force or expiratory and it became fixed on the 1st root syllable. Thus in Modern Eng (ME) we have: ‘like, ‘likeness, dis’like, un’like. Other syllables of the w remained unstressed and as a result were gradually weakened and even lost. This led to the simplification of w-structure and the shortening of the w.
The process, which began in PG, continued through the history of the Eng lang and resulted in the considerable simplification of the structure of ws.
Vowels
The quality and quantity of the vowels depended on the stress. In stressed position there was an opposition of vowels in quantity and quality, that is long and short vowels were possible in stressed position.
Cynin – king
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Mys – mice
In an unstressed position this opposition was lost. Long vowels became short and short vowels were reduced and very frequently lost. But the contrast between long and short vowels was supported by the different directions of their changes. The original IE long vowels tended to become closer and short vowels tended to become more open.
| Мать | Módor | |||
| Брат | Bróðor | |||
| IE sound | merged into | PG sound | ||
| a | > | o | ||
| o | > | a | ||
| ночь | > | naht | ||
| мочь | > | Ma an | ||
Тот - ata > ðæt
| IE | merged into | PG |
| a | > | o |
| o | ||
| a | > | a |
| o |
This merging (of IE a, o) also occurred in diphthongs
| IE | merged into | PG | ||
| ai | > | ai | ||
| oi | ||||
| au | > | au
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