HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE A COURSE OF

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE A COURSE OF LECTURES FOR CORRESPONDENCE DEPARTMENT STUDENTS Department of English Grammar and History of English

Lecture 1 English as One of the Germanic Languages Books to read T. A. Rastorguyeva “A History of English” B. Ilyish “History of the English Language” Аракин В. Д. “История английского языка” Смирницкий А. И. “Лекции по истории английского языка” Щука Е. К. , Мальцева В. А. , Олейник С. Е. “Хрестоматия по истории английского языка”

The Germanic languages in the modern world (11 languages) 1) English over 400 mln in Great Britain, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, the Republic of South Africa and others; 2) German ≈ 100 mln in Germany, Austria, part of Switzerland, Luxemburg, Lichtenstein; 3) Netherlandish (known as Dutch and Flemish) ≈ 21 mln in the Netherlands, part of Belgium (Flanders) 4) Afrikaans ≈ 6 mln in the South African Republic 5) Frisian ≈ 400, 000 in Friesland (the Netherlands), in 2 regions of Germany and some islands of Denmark in the North Sea 6) Yiddish in different countries (by the Jewish population in Europe, the USA and the CIS) (arose in the 11 -12 th centuries on the basis of South German dialects, incorporating also Hebrew & Slavonic elements)

The Germanic languages in the modern world (11 languages) 7) Swedish ≈ 9 mln in Sweden and Finland (where only about 6% of the population use it) 8) Danish ≈ 5 mln in Denmark and Greenland 9) Norwegian ≈ 4 mln in Norway 10) Icelandic ≈ 270, 000 in Iceland (the most archaic of all Germanic languages) 11) Faroese ≈ 50, 000 in the Faroe Islands (the islanders are bilingual (+Danish))

Chronological divisions in the history of English Three periods: 1) Old English (OE): 5 th century – 1066, 2) Middle English (ME): 1066 -1475, 3) New English (NE): lasts to the present day

Old Germanic languages 1) 2) 3) The linguistic ancestor of the Germanic group of languages is the Proto-Germanic (PG) language. It is supposed to have split from related Indo-European (IE) tongues between the 15 th and 10 th c. BC. Towards the beginning of our era the PG language broke into three branches: East Germanic West Germanic North Germanic

East Germanic The Gothic Language (now dead) has been preserved in written records of the 4 th-6 th c. Ulfilas, a West Gothic bishop, made a translation of the Gospels from Greek into Gothic. Parts of Ulfilas’ Gospels, probably made in the 5 th ot 6 th c. are kept in Uppsala (Sweden). It is known as the SILVER CODEX. Significance: 1) The significance of this monument and other minor records lies in the fact that being the oldest in Germanic languages, they are believed to show features close to those in Common German. 2) The analysis of it makes it possible to determine tendencies of the development of Germanic languages.

North Germanic Old Germanic languages Modern Germanic languages Old Norse or Scandinavian Old Icelandic Old Norwegian Old Danish Old Swedish Icelandic Norwegian Danish Swedish Faroese The most interesting is Old Icelandic, because 1) it shows the largest body of written records dated back to the 12 th and the 13 th centuries. (main records are the Elder Edda (Старшая Эдда), the Younger Eddа (Младшая Эдда) and Sagas (исландские саги); 2) Icelandic has retained more archaic grammatical system and vocabulary than the other Germanic languages. But the earliest records in this group are much older than the 12 th century. These are runic inscriptions (рунические надписи), they date back from the 3 rd to 9 th c.

West Germanic Old Germanic languages Modern Germanic languages Anglian, Frisian, Jutish, Saxon, Franconian, High German Old English Old Saxon Old High German Old Dutch English German Netherlandish Afrikaans Yiddish Frisian

Main features of Germanic languages Points of difference between the Germanic languages on the one hand the other IE languages can be found at all 3 levels: phonetic, grammatical and lexical. All the Germanic languages of the past have common linguistic features: 1) dynamic stress on the first (root) syllable 2) the First Germanic consonant shift (Grimm’s Law) 3) the weak type of verbs with the dental suffix in the past 4) 2 types of declension in adjectives 5) a significant layer of Germanic words in their vocabulary All the characteristics are kept in Modern English except for 4)

1. Word stress IE accent: movable (or free) PG accent: fixed, dynamic Ru. водá вóды водянóй Eng. waters watery A far-reaching consequence: the stress on the root syllable Led to the gradual weakening of the other syllables in the word, and the final stage of this reduction was the loss of numerous endings. This loss of endings, in its turn, contributed to the transformation of English from a highly inflected language to an analytical one. OE súnu ME śune [śunə] [ sun] NE son Note: Swedish & Icelandic were least affected by the reduction

2. 1. The First Germanic Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law) The essence of Grimm’s Law (1822) is as follows: it establishes regular correlations between IE plosives and the corresponding consonants in Gmc. The change started in the first millennium BC and ended at the beginning of the new era, i. e. in PG. Nevertheless its results are well kept in Mod. E native words. IE plosives Germanic I p t k (voiceless) II b d g (voiced) III bh dh gh (voiced aspirated) I f Ѳ h (fricatives) II p t k (voiceless) III b d g (non-aspirated)

2. 1. The First Germanic Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law) In all the above mentioned changes we observe the change in the manner of articulation, not its place. To be just we should mention the name of Rasmus Rask discovered and described the changes earlier than Grimm in 1818. Grimm did the same in 1822. But Rask described the change in Danish – his native language. It has never been popular even among scholars, and his discovery remained unknown to most linguists. Grimm did his description in German. Act III пять – five, три – three, cardia – heart яблоко – apple, болото – pool, слабый – sleep, десять – ten, ego – Ic (OE) bhrätä – brother, rudhira - red

2. 2. Voicing of Fricatives in PG (Verner’s Law) PIE PG p L caput f>v OE heafod t θ>ð, d NE hundred OE fæder R cто L pater k R свекровь s L auris x>γ, g Gt swaihro s>z Gt auso NE ear Another important series of consonant changes in PG was discovered in the late 19 th c. by a Danish scholar, Carl Verner. They are known as Verner’s Law. According to it al the early PG voiceless fricatives [f, θ, x] which arose under Grimm’s Law became voiced between vowels if the preceding vowel was unstressed. In the absence of these conditions they remained voiceless. The voicing occurred in early PG at the time when the stress was not yet fixed on the root-morpheme.

2. 3. Rhotasism PG [z] underwent a phonetic modification into [r] and this became a sonorant which merged with the older IE [r] Gt wasjan, OE werian, NE wear This process is characteristic of WG (not in Gothic)

3. Weak Verbs This was another Germanic innovation, this time in grammar; namely, the new way of forming the past tense by adding the dental suffix -d-/-t OE lufian- lufode-lufod (love) OE macian – macode – macod (make) The term weak was introduced by J. Grimm

4. 2 types of declension in adjectives, traditionally, again after Grimm are called weak and strong. The modern linguists prefer here the opposition definite/indefinite (the first set of adjective forms were used with definite Nouns, the second in case they modified indefinite Nouns) Ru: Он добрый человек Этот добрый человек часто помогал мне. OE: Þa menn sindon blinde þæt wēste land

5. Vocabulary The IE and the specifically Germanic etymological layers: 1) The IE layer of the vocabulary (the Germanic vocabulary shared by most IE languages). fæder, mōdor, sunu, heorte… 1) The specifically Germanic layer (have no parallels outside the Germanic group) hand, hūs, rum, sprecan, andswarian… Note: Speaking about OE in particular: 3) The specifically OE layer (no parallels in the other Germanic languages) wimman, hlāford…

Conclusion All the above characteristics make it reasonable and convincing enough to single out the Germanic languages as a separate group within the IE family alongside Slavonic, Celtic, etc. And to single out the English language a one of the Germanic languages.