ENG 121: The Germanic Languages

September 10 & 12, 1997

    
                                    				Sept 10, 1997
								Sept 12, 1997

ENG 121: The Germanic Language: Barber, Chap 4


 I. First some general business:  QUIZ #2 is on Friday (Barber 1-99).  
	You must turn in your study group names by this Friday. 

 II. My comments on Friday quiz format.

 III. I will finish up comments on Indo-European Languages.


 IV. Germanic Languages

	A. We know of Germanic being a major language group of Northern Europe 
		by the records of the Romans at around 1 AD.  Those are our 
		first records.  From 300 BC to 500 AD they spread across 
		Northern and Western Europe and through the northern part of 
		Eastern Europe.  Typically they displaced Celtic people in the 
		west, who had migrated westward at an earlier time.

	B. Early Germanic Society: Tribal, warlike, early agricultural society.

	C. Branches of Germanic: Western, Northern, and Eastern.

		1. Northern: Old Norse to West and East Scandinavian; Western 
			Scandinavia to Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian.  
			Eastern Scandinavian to Danish, Swedish, Gutnish (most 
			changes brought on by Viking Age 700-1000 AD).

			Changes: Some loss of word-initial /j/ and /w/ (year 
			and wolf).  Postposes and attaches definite articles. 
			Can have definite article marking both before and 
			after the noun in Swedish! 
				(den stora hunden, the big dog) 
 
		2. Eastern Germanic: Burgundian, Vandal, and Gothic; Gothic 
			might have lasted until the 18th century in Eastern 
			Europe (Ukraine).

		3.  Western Germanic: Old High German, Saxon, Frankish, 
			Anglo-Frisian; changing to High German, Low German, 
			Dutch, English, Frisian.

		4. The Germanic tribes invaded all of Europe at different times.  
			In spite of these conquests, Gothic, Burgundian, 
			Vandal, and Frankish all died out.  The rest took hold, 
			mostly in their own ancestral lands.  



  V. The inflectional system of Proto-Germanic

	A. Many inflections appeared at the ends of words as affixes.  These 
		inflection systems appeared on nouns, verbs and adjectives, and 
		they were reflected as well in the pronoun and determiner 
		systems.

	B. Nouns had case inflections (indicating what is the subject or the 
		object of a sentence; see Latin example on Barber page 88).  
		Number was also indicated on nouns (typically singular and 
		plural).  Making matters confusing, different sets of nouns 
		had differing sets of endings to indicate case and number 
		information; there were different noun declensions.  Also, 
		all nouns had grammatical gender.  One had to know if the word 
		form was masculine, feminine, or neutral.

	C. Adjectives had the same complex systems that had to be used, with 
		differing endings themselves, to match up with the noun for 
		case, number, and gender (see simple Latin example in Barber at 
		bottom of 89).  Adjectives also broke into two declension 
		systems for different subsets.	

	D. Verbs had tense systems with past and present tenses, two mood 
		systems (indicative and subjunctive), and verb classes that 
		varied with different groups of verbs.  A major verb-class 
		distinction was between strong and weak verbs.  Weak verbs are 
		regular; strong verbs have distinct patterns.  For example: 
			Weak verbs                 Strong verbs
			walk, walked               begin, begun, began
			start, started             put, put, put
			please, pleased            think, thought, thought
			consider, considered       break, broken, broke

		Weak verbs now predominate.  Many strong verbs in Old English 
		have shifted to weak verbs (to help), and borrowed verbs are 
		given weak inflections (to invite).



 VI. The Phonology of Proto Germanic

	A. The placing of stress on first syllables in Germanic languages led 
		to a gradual de-emphasis of word endings because they were not 
		stressed, and "ease of effort" led to weaker inflectional 
		systems (particularly in English, Barber 92-93).

	B. Grimm's Law: The first sound shifting from PIE to Germanic (500 BC?). 
		(see examples on page 94-95.)
			bh -- b,  b -- p,  p -- f
			dh -- d,  d -- t,  t -- 0
			gh -- g,  g -- k,  k -- h 
		Don't worry about the /hw/, /kw/ change.
		Don't worry about Verner's Law.
 
 

VII. Proto-Germanic Vowel System

	A. Some useful vowel changes that can be traced to modern English:
		1. PIE /o/ to G /a/ (to English /e:/) (96)
			Latin   OHG    English
			octo -- ahto -- eight
		2. PIE /a/ to G /o/ (to English /  /) (96)
			Latin   ONorse   English
			mater -- moter -- mother
		3. Vowel gradation (or Umlaut) in verbs and in related verb-noun 
			pairs.  Vowel sounds are used in sequence from front 
			to back (so /e/ and /o/ form a pairing), or low to high 
			(so /e/ and /i/ form a pairing), and these pairs influence 
			each other in different ways historically.  
				English: sing, sang, sung
					 ride, rode,
					 learn, lore

	B. Good summary of important changes on page 98 of Barber (at top).



 VIII. Vocabulary of Proto-Germanic

	Few words that were specific to Germanic only (and not from PIE) are 
		left in modern English: ship, sail, keel, float, sea.  Early 
		Germanic already was borrowing from Celtic and Latin because 
		these groups had more advanced social systems than the 
		Germanic conquerors.