Qobilova N.S.

Majidova Z.M.
Saidov X.Sh.

INTRODUCTION TO GERMANIC
PHILOLOGY

2021
QOBILOVA NARGISBEGIM SULAYMONBEGI QIZI
MAJIDOVA ZARNIGOR MAMADJONOVNA
SAIDOV XAYRULLO SHAVKATOVICH

INTRODUCTION TO GERMANIC
PHILOLOGY

Roman-German filologiyasiga kirish fanidan

O’QUV QO’LLANMA

BUXORO - 2021
Qobilova N.S., Majidva Z.M., Saidov X.Sh.

“Roman-German filologiyasiga kirish” fanidan o’quv qo’llanma. Buxoro,

2021-yil. – 100 b. –Ingliz tilida

Mazkur o’quv qo’llanma “Roman-German filologiyasiga kirish” fani

bo’yicha 5120112 –Filologiya va tillarni o‘qitish (ingliz tili) va 5111400 –
Xorijiy til va adabiyoti (ingliz tili) ta’lim yo’nalishlarida o’qiydigan talabalar
uchun mo’ljallangan bo’lib, u “Roman-German filologiyasiga kirish” fanidan
O’zbekiston respublikasi OO’MTVning 2019-yil 20-iyulida 654-sonli buyru’gi
bilan tasdiqlangan fan dasturi asosida tuzilgan.
O’quv qo’llanma talabalarni roman va german tillari kiruvchi tillarning
umumiy va farqli belgilari va shu asosida ularning guruhlanishi, tarixiy
taraqqiyotining umumiy qonuniyatlari, ushbu tillarning shakllanishi va rivojlanishi
jarayonlari, ularning fonetik-grammatik xususiyatlari va lug’at tarkibida sodir
bo’lgan asosiy voqealar va ularning tillar taraqqiyotiga ta’siri masalalari bilan
tanishtiradi.

Taqrizchilar:
Z.I.Rasulov – Ingliz tilshunosligi kafedrasi mudiri, f.f.n., dots.
Q.B.Shodmonov – BDTI Tillar kafedrasi mudiri, prof.

Ushbu “Introduction to Germanic philology” nomli o’quv qo’llanmasi

BuxDU Ingliz tilshunosligi kafedrasining 2021-yil 03 fevraldagii 23-yig’ilishida va
Xorijiy tillar fakultetining 2021-yil 02 martdagi 8-yig’ilishida muhokama qilingan.
BuxDU o’quv-metodik kengashining 2021-yil 10 apreldagi 13- yi’g’ilishida
muhokama qilinib nashrga tavsiya etilgan.
 Lecture 1: INTRODUCTION

1. Language Constantly Changing

2. Dialectal Differentiation
3. The Indo-European Family
Key words: gradual alteration, a general similarity in the speech, a close kinship
between English and German, common form, identity of the languages .

The word Philology is used to denote two disciplines; or aspects of human

activity.
1. The study of human records, the establishment of their authenticity and their
original form and determination of their meaning.
2. Linguistics. This word is from Greek and it means “love of learning and
literature”.
Linguistics is the branch of Philology which deals with the study of the
theoretical and practical problems of language functioning: system, structure and
usage. The discipline we are presenting you within the hours given for this subject
– that is “An Introduction to Germanic Philology” – deals with the problem of
working out common features of the Germanic group of languages related to each
other by the links of common origin. We’ll speak about the modern status of each
member of the Germanic group of languages in the modern world. These are the
following aspects: structural, functional, historical, typological, quantitative,
geographical, genetical, sociolinguistic, psychological and others. Let’s consider
some notions denoted by the above mentioned terms.
Genetically languages can be:
a) related languages: English, Russian, Persian etc.;
b) non-related: English, Uzbek, and Dravidian etc.
Geographically languages can be:
1. Endemic - Endemic languages function within the frontiers of one country;
2. Pandemic - Pandemic languages function as a means of communication in two
or more countries of the world.
Quantitative aspect - In this case we discuss the numerical volume of the speakers
in this or that language.
Typological aspect - Here we determine synthetic and analytic languages,
languages of the agglutinative and amorphous type and others.
Sociolinguistic aspect deals with the problems of functioning of certain in the
society. The following problems are discussed here: language situation, language
policy, language planning, register, marker, etc.
Language situation denotes the quantity and functional value of the languages
used in certain country or region.
Language planning is a notion which denotes a certain set of measures undertaken
by the state authorities in relation to the languages used in the country.
Language situation can be of three types:
1) Monolingual (unilingual) language situation is a situation in which one language
is used as a means of communication within the borders of a country.
2) Bilingual language situation. Bilingual language policy is such a policy in which
two languages are used as a means of communication in a country. There are two
of BLS: 1. Diglossia (from Greek đi (two) and glossa – language) 2. Bilingualism
proper (from Latin bi – (two) and lingua (language).In diglossia one of the two
languages used in the country is more prefferable than the second one and some
privileges are given to that language. In bilingualism the two languages used in the
country have got the equal social states and no privilege is given to any of them.
3) Polylingual (multilingual) language situation In polylingual language situation
more than two languages are used as a means of communication.
Language Policy can be of two types:
1) Constructive language policy
2) Destructive language policy
An example of language policy we can name the following items: Destructive
Language Policy is observed in the following is carried out in the state: closing
the school where the language is taught and where it is the language of teaching;
closing the papers; decreasing the Radio & TV programs; promoting the use of
other language; banning the use of this language in science; banning the language
as a language of Parliament debates and other political activities.
Constructive Language Policy is observed when the state authorities promote the
Language usage, increase, support and extend the language functions. There are
three types of language varieties: functional variety, social variety and territorial
variety.
Socio-functional variety has the following functional types of the languages of the
world: a) Official working language of UNO; b) Regional language; c) Official
language of a Country; d) Language of a Part of a Country; e) Language of science
and Technologies; h) Language of Prose and Poetry; i) Language of Teaching (or
Instruction); j) Language of Nearby Territories (Neighbourhood); k) Language of
Intercourse in the family; l) Language of Religion.
2) Social variety is observed in the following antinomies: men – women; old –
young; educated – uneducated; urban – rural; white – black; colonial –
Metropolitan
3) Territorial variety is observed in the functioning of the language in different
parts of the world: a) Britain (dialects: Northern, Kentish, Middlesex, Southern,
Cockney etc.); b) USA; c) Australia; d) Canada; e) South Africa; f) Ireland; g)
Scotland. Territorial variety of the language is such a variety which has developed
a certain overdialectal norm used in its territory of functioning.
Forms of Existence of the language
Language functions in the following forms:
1) Literary language. This has two forms: a) Literary bookish and b) Literary
colloquial
2) Vernacular speech
3) Dialect Functional-pragmatic variety is a variety which serves the aims of this
or that communicative act or has obtained corresponding structural features.
Linguistic changes
There are two tendencies in the process of a language development:
1) Integration. (Convergence) In integration dialects or languages develop
towards obtaining common features in phonetic, grammatical structures and
vocabulary.
2) Differentiation (or divergence). In differentiation dialects or languages
develop towards obtaining different features in phonetic, grammatical structures
and vocabulary to form new languages.
Causes of language changes
There are two types of factors of language change:
1) Extra linguistic factors: Extra linguistic factors of language change include: a)
Geographical factors; b) Social factors; c) Temporal factors.
2) Intra linguistic factors: Intra linguistic factors of language change include:
1) Phonetic changes Phonetic changes include all kinds of changes taking place in
the phonetic structure of a language like consonant and vowel changes, qualitative
and quantitative changes, positional and independent changes.
2) Spelling changes Spelling changes include all changes taking place in the
writing of words in different varieties of the language, like honour – honor, colour
– color etc.
3) Grammatical changes Grammatical changes include all changes taking place
in the grammatical structure of the language; like using one form instead of
another: have got – have, in the street – on the street.
4) Lexical changes Lexical changes include all changes taking place in the
vocabulary of the language. They are: widening, narrowing, metaphorical use,
connotative use, occasionalisms.
5) Stylistic changes Stylistic changes include all changes within the frames of
stylistics that is the use of the word of one style can be used in the other style, thus
becoming a stylistically marked form.
Rate of linguistic changes
Language changes are usually slow and gradual. They proceed in minor,
imperceptible steps unnoticed by the speakers. The rate of the language change is
restricted by the communicative function of language for a rapid change would
have disturbed communication between speakers of different generations. Unlike
human society, language undergoes no revolutions or sudden breaks. The slow rate
of linguistic change is seen in the gradual spread of new features in language
space. Different parts or levels of language develop at different rates.
Mechanism of language change
Any language change begins with the synchronic variation. Alongside with the
existing language units – words, forms, affixes, pronunciation patterns, spelling
norm, syntactic constructions – there spring up new units. They may be similar in
meaning but slightly different in form, stylistic connotation, social values,
distribution inn language space, etc.
Causes of Language evolution
The scholars give different explanations of the causes of language evolution.
1. J.G. Herder and W. Grimm show the Romantic tendencies as the principal
causes of the language development.
2. A. Schleicher proposed a naturalistic explanation of the language development
saying that “As the language is a living organism, at has got its birth, maturity, old
age and decay”.
3. W. Wundt and H. Paul explained the language development psychologically,
saying: “A change in the individual psychology causes a change in the language”.
4. J. Vendryes and A. Meillet explained the process of language development from
the point of view of the sociologic school in linguistics saying that Linguistic
changes are caused by social conditions and events in external history.
5. F. de Saussure, L. Hjelmslev, R. Jacobson, L. Bloomfield explained the
language development from the structuralist point of view, saying that the main
internal cause of the language change is the pressure of language system. When the
balance of symmetrical structural arrangement is disrupted, it tends to be restored
again under the pressure of symmetry.

In the mind of the average person language is associated with writing and
calls up a picture of the printed page. From Latin or French as we meet it in
literature we get an impression of something uniform and relatively fixed. We are
likely to forget that writing is only a conventional device for recording sounds and
that language is primarily speech. Even more important, we tend to forget that the
Latin of Cicero or the French of Voltaire is the product of centuries of
development and that language as long as it lives and is in actual use is in a
constant state of change. Speech is the product of certain muscular movements.
The sounds of language are produced by the passage of a current of air through
cavities of the throat and face controlled by the muscles of these regions. Any
voluntary muscular movement when constantly repeated is subject to gradual
alteration. The fact that this alteration takes place largely without our being
conscious of it does not change the fact or lessen its effects. Now any alteration in
the position or action of the organs of speech results in a difference in the sound
produced. Thus each individual is constantly and quite unconsciously introducing
slight changes in his or her speech. There is no such thing as uniformity in
language. Not only does the speech of one community differ from that of another,
but the speech of different individuals of a single community, even different
members of the same family, also is marked by individual peculiarities. Members
of a group, however, are influenced by one another, and there is a general
similarity in the speech of a given community at any particular time. The language
of any district or even country is only the sum total of the individual speech habits
of those composing it and is subject to such change as occur in the speech of its
members, so far as the changes become general or at least common to a large part
of it. Although the alteration that is constantly going on in language is for the most
part gradual and of such nature as often to escape the notice of those in whose
speech it is taking place, after a period of time the differences that grow up became
appreciable.
 As previously remarked where constant communication takes place among
the people speaking a language, individual differences become merged in the
general speech of the community, and a certain conformity prevails. But if any
separation of one community from another takes and lasts for a considerable length
of time, differences grow up between them. The differences may be slight if the
separation is slight, and we have merely local dialects. On the other hand, they may
become so considerable as to render the language of one district unintelligible to
the speakers of another. In this case, we generally have the development of
separate languages. Even where the differentiation has gone so far, however, it is
usually possible to recognize a sufficient number of features, which the resulting
languages still retain in common to indicate that at one time they were one. It is
easy to perceive a close kinship between English and German. “Milch” and “milk”,
“brot” and “bread”, “fleisch” and “flesh”, “wasser” and “water” are obviously only
words that have diverged from a common form. In the same way a connection
between Latin and English is indicated by such correspondences as “pater” with
English “father”, or “frāter” with “brother”, although the difference in the initial
consonants tends somewhat to obscure the relationship. When we notice that
“father” corresponds to Dutch “vader”, Gothic “fadar”, Old Norse “faðir”, German
“vater”, Greek “patēr”, Sanskrit “pitar”-, and Old Irish “athir”, we are led to the
hypothesis that the languages of a large part of Europe and part of Asia were at one
time identical.
Thus, the languages brought into relationship by descent or progressive
differentiation from a parent speech are conveniently called a family of languages.
Various names have been used to designate the family of languages to which the
Germanic languages belong. In books written a century ago, the term Aryan was
commonly employed. It has been generally abandoned and when found today is
used in a more restricted sense to designate the languages of the family located in
India and the plateau of Iran. A more common term is Indo-Germanic, which is
the most usual designation among German philologists, but it is open to the
objection of giving undue emphasis to the Germanic languages. The term now
most widely employed is Indo-European, suggesting more clearly the
geographical extent of the family. The parent tongue from which the Indo-
European languages have sprung had already become divided and scattered before
the dawn of the history. When we meet with the various peoples by whom these
languages are spoken, they have lost all knowledge of their former association.
Consequently, we have no written record of the common Indo-European language.
By a comparison of its descendents, however, it is possible to form a fair idea of it
and to make plausible reconstructions of its lexicon and inflections.
The surviving languages show various degrees of similarity to one another,
the similarity being a more or less direct relationship to their geographical
distribution. They accordingly fall into eleven principal groups: Indian, Iranian,
Armenian, Hellenic, Italic, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Hittite, and Tocharian.
These are the branches of the Indo-European family tree.

Self-control questions:
1. What is the relation between Sanskrit and Germanic languages?
2. What is the importance of the Discovery of Sanskrit in learning the
development of Germanic languages?
3. What is the essence of Grimm’s Law?
4. What hypothesis does Grimm’s explanation for the correspondence of
consonants prove?
5. Give more examples for the correspondence of consonants [p-f, t-th, k-h] in
Germanic and non-Germanic languages.
6. What is the essence of Verner’s Law? Search and find more examples for
Verner’s Law.
7. What were East Germanic languages?
8. What is the earliest record of a Germanic language came to our days?
9. What parts of the world are the North Germanic languages spoken?
10.To what branch of the Germanic languages does English belong?
11.What is the difference between Germanic and German?

REFERENCES:

1. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
2. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
3. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
4. Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
5. Schmidt I. The Relationships of the Indo-European languages. 2002
Lecture 2: THE EARLIEST PERIOD OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND
THEIR FORMATION

1. The Earliest and Modern Indian languages

2. Representatives of the modern Indian languages
3. The Relationships of the Indo-European Languages
Key words:gradual alteration, a general similarity in the speech, a close kinship
between English and German, common form, identity of the languages.

It has been estimated that there are more than 5,700 distinct languages to be
found in the world today, and all these fall into linguistic groups which are part of
linguistic families which may have appeared in different parts of the globe
simultaneously. It should be borne in mind that when people speak of linguistic
families they do not use the term "family" in the genetic sense of the word. The
fact that people speak the same, or related, languages does not mean that there is a
link of race or blood. It is therefore completely unscientific to establish any
connection between racial origin and language. It is often possible to show that
languages are historically or genetically related, i.e. they descend from a common
source, but when it comes to races we have no such evidence. We cannot say, for
instance, that the Mongolian race means the same as the Mongolian languages.
Furthermore, it is quite probable that no such thing as an Indo-European race
ever existed. In the course of the migrations of ancient peoples, numerous
linguistic and racial mixtures took place. The linguistic map of the world shows
that many non-Indo-European peoples of Europe and Asia abandoned their own
languages and adopted the Indo-European. The Basque language, which is spoken
in the north of Spain and the south of France, resisted the assimilation of Indo
European in the past and is not genetically related to the Indo-European languages.
On the other hand there is no racial difference between the Estonians, for instance,
who speak a Finno-Ugric language, and the Lets, who speak a language of Indo-
European origin. So all the attempts to draw a parallel between race and language
which were put forward at the end of the 19th century by chauvinistically-minded
linguists were sharply criticized by progressive thinkers. Indo- Iranian, which was
later, subdivided into: I. Indian (the oldest form is Sanskrit).
The main representatives of the modern Indian languages include Bengali,
Marathi, Hindi, Gipsy and some others). II. Iranian, which is represented by such
languages as Avestan or Zend (old form), the socalled Pahlavi (the middle form)
and Baluchi, Pushtu, Kurdish, Yagnobi, Ossetic, and some 58 other modern
languages. III. Baltic, which is divided into Lithuanian (the language spoken by
some three million people in the Lithuania the old texts of which go back to the
16th century, and Latish, spoken by 2 million people). IV. The Slavonic languages,
which are divided into three large groups: (1) Eastern Slavonic where we find three
languages: (a) Russian, spoken by more than 122 million people, the basis of a
common and a literary language; (b) Ukrainian, called Little Russian before the
1917 Revolution, spoken by some 40 million people; and (c) Byelorussian (white
Russian), spoken by 9 million people. (2) Southern Slavonic which include: (a)
Bulgarian, current mostly in Bulgaria among more than seven million people; (b)
Serbo-Croatian, the language of the Serbs and Croats, about 12 million people,
chiefly in Yugoslavia, whose oldest texts date from the 11th century; (c)
Slovenian, spoken by 2 million people, with its oldest texts dating from the 1Oth
century. (3) Western Slavonic, the main representatives of which are: (a) Czech,
used by about 10 million people in Czechoslovakia, with texts going back to the
13th century; (b) Slovakian; (c) Polish, spoken by about 35 million people, chiefly
in Poland. Polish has a rich literature, the texts of which reach back to the 14th
century. Baltic and Slavonic are very closely related, though not as closely as Indo-
Aryan and Iranian. There are some ancient divergences between them which make
it possible to reconstruct a primitive Baltic-Slavonic language. Nevertheless in
view of their many close resemblances it is convenient to group them together
under the common name of Baltic-Slavonic. V. Germanic has three distinct groups:
(1) North Germanic or Scandinavian which includes: (a) Danish, (b) Swedish, (c)
Norwegian, (d) Icelandic; the songs of Eddo written in Icelandic are important
landmarks in world literature; (2) West Germanic with (a) English, spoken to-day
by about 270 million people in Great Britain and abroad (USA, Australia, Canada),
(b) Frisian, spoken in the provinces of the Northern Netherlands, with their oldest
literary sources dating from the 14th century, (c) German (spoken by about 83
million people) with two dialects-Low German occupying the lower or northern
parts of Germany, and High German which is located in the mountainous regions
of the South of Germany-which have many peculiarities of pronunciation, (d)
Dutch, spoken by 12 million people, (e) Yiddish, now spoken by Jewish
population in Poland, Germany, Rumania, Hungary. It is based upon some middle
German dialects or a mixture of dialects blended with Hebrew, Slavonic and other
elements; (3) East Germanic which has Left no trace. The only representative of
this group is Gothic, whose written records have been preserved in the fragmentary
translation of the Bible by the bishop Ulfila. Some Gothic words spoken in the
Crimea were collected there in the 16th century. VI. Italo-Celtic with two large
groups: (1) Italic, the only language of which has survived is Latin; Latin has
developed into the various Romance languages which may be listed as follows: (a)
French, spoken by 60 million people in France and abroad (chiefly in Belgium,
Switzerland, Canada), (b) Provencal, of various kinds, of which the oldest literary
document dates from the 11th century, (c) Italian with numerous dialects, spoken
by 51 million people in Italy itself and abroad, (d) Spanish, spoken by 156 million
in Spain, the Filipina Islands, Central and Northern America (except Brazil), (e)
Portuguese, (f) Rumanian, (g) Moldavian, (h) Rhaeto-Romanic, spoken in three
dialects in the Swiss canton, in Tyrol and Italy. (2) Celtic, with its Gaelic sub-
group, including Irish, which possessed one of the richest literatures in the Middle
Ages from the 7th century, Scottish and the Briton subgroup with Breton, spoken
by a million people in Brittany and Welsh, spoken in Wales. VII. Greek, with
numerous dialects, such as Ionic-Attic, Achaean, Aeolic, Doric, etc. The literature
begins with Homer's poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, dating from the 8th century
B. C. Modern Greek is spoken in continental Greece, on the islands of the Ionian
and Aegean Seas and by Greek settlements. VIII. Armenian, spoken by three and a
half million people in Armenia and in many settlements of Armenians in Iran,
Turkey, etc. Literary Armenian is supposed to go back to the 5th century. Old
Armenian, or Grabar, differs greatly from Modern Armenian or Ashharabar. IX.
Albanian, spoken now by approximately two million people in Albania. The
earliest records of Albanian date from the 17th century A. D. Its vocabulary
consists of a large number of words borrowed from Latin, Greek, Turkish,
Slavonic, and Italian. Two main theories have been advanced concerning the
break-up of the original language into those separate languages. One is the
Stammbaumtheorie (the tree-stem theory), put forward by August Schleicher
(1821-1868), a famous German Indo-Europeist of the last century, in his book
Compendium der Vergleichenden Grammatik der indo-germanischen Sprachen
("Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages")
(1861). According to him, the original Proto-Indo-European splits into two
branches: Slavo-Germanic and Aryo-Greco- Italo-Celtic. The former branch splits
into Balto-Slavonic and Germanic, the latter into Arian and Greco-Italo-Celtic,
which in its turn was divided into Greek and ItaloCeltic, etc.
 The main fault of his theory was that he did not take into account other
causes for linguistic divergence than geographical distance from the parent
language, and it was not borne out by the linguistic facts. Later research has shown
that the Slavonic languages bear a striking resemblance to Indo-Iranian, so much
so that they were classified into the satem-languages group, while Italic and Celtic
have more in common with Germanic than Slavonic. Another weak point of
Schleicher theory is that he assumed the Indo-European parent language to be
monolithic, without any variety of dialect. At the same time, the process of the
formation of language families is oversimplified in this theory because he left out
of account the fact that side by side with the process of language differentiation,
there was a process of language integration too. Schleicher’s faults are typical of
many books 0on comparative linguistics in the second half of the 19th century.
Schleicher’s theory was so unsatisfactory even to his contemporaries that
they tried for a long time to correct his shortcomings and to put forward other
theories, among which the “wave” theory should be mentioned. The founder of this
theory, Iohannes Schmidt (1843-1901) argued in his book Die
Verwandtschaftsverhaltnisse der indo-germanischen Schprachen (“The
Relationships of the Indo-European Languages”, 1872) that new languages and
dialects started and spread like waves when you throw a stone into the water. He
suggested that dialect A has some features in common with dialects B and C, others
with dialects C and D but not with B, that dialect B, on the other hand, shares some
phenomena with dialects C and D, but not with dialect A, etc. Schmidt was right to
assume that the relationship between Indo-European languages could not .be
portrayed by means of a family tree. He clearly demonstrated the primitive and
abstract nature of Schleicher's view of the process of formation of language
families and the relations between them, but he himself failed to examine the
systematic process of the changes in the original language. Two major members of
the family which were discovered in the present century are missing in these
schemes. They are: X. "Tocharian", as it is called, which is preserved in
fragmentary manuscripts in Chinese Turkistan, dating from the 6th to the 10th
centuries A.D. It is divided into two dialects, which for convenience are termed A
and B. XI. Hittite, which survives in cuneiform tablets recovered from Boghazkoy
in Anatolia, the site of the capital of the ancient Hittite kingdom. Some think that
the Hittites or Hethites of the Bible (the Khatti mentioned in Egyptian records)
may have been the Indo-Europeans. The interpretation of this language and its
close relation to Indo-European was announced by Bedrich Hrozny in December,
1915.
The time covered by these records is from the 19th to the 12th century B. C.,
the bulk of them dating from near the end of this period. It is the oldest recorded
Indo-European language. Its discovery has raised many new and interesting
problems. In addition to the major languages listed above, there existed in antiquity
a considerable number of other Indo-European languages, which are known only
from scanty remains in the form of inscriptions, proper names and occasional
glosses. They are: XII. Thracian, a satem-language, which once extended over a
very wide area, from Macedonia to southern Russia. XIII. Phrygian, also a sattem-
language, introduced into Asia Minor about the 12th century B. C. and possibly
closely related to Thracian. XIV. Illyrian, with its South Italian offshoot
Messapian. XV. Osco-Umbrian, Italic dialects closely related to Latin, and
commonly grouped with it under the common name Italic. XVI. Venetic of North-
East Italy, a centum language of the West Indo-European group. XVII. To
complete the list, we should mention certain ancient languages of Asia Minor
which together with Hittite form a special group. The Hittite cuneiform texts
mention two such languages, Luwian and Palaean, and a little text material,
particularly of Luwian, is to be found in them. In addition there is the so-called
Hieroglyphic Hittite, the decipherment of which is now fairly advanced, and which
is considered to be of Indo-European origin, and Carian, the decipherment of
which has been recently done by the young linguist V. Shevoroshkin. Linguistic
evidence shows that close contact existed between the dialects of IndoEuropean.
From the point of view of vocabulary, for instance, Indo-Iranian shared with
Baltic and Slavonic a considerable number of words which may be found only in
these languages and they supply important clues of the connection between these
two linguistic families: the Sanskrit word suit "to be bright, white" has its cognate
in the Old Slavonic language in the form of suitlti "to dawn". Slavonic and Indo-
Iranian coincide in changing s to s in contact with the semi-vowels i and u, the
vibrant rand the velar occlusive k. Slavonic shows special affinities with Iranian in
its use of the word Bogii both for "god" and for "grain" or "wealth". During this
period the contacts between languages were so wide that it was not only languages
in the same family that had common elements, but non-Indo-European languages
borrowed words from Indo-European languages too: for example, the Finno-Ugric
mete "honey" was borrowed from the Sanskrit madhu, Finno-Ugric nime "name"
has its cognate form in the Sanskrit niiman. The prominent Russian linguist A. A.
Shakhmatov showed that the earliest Finno-Ugric borrowings from their neighbors
in south Russia show common Aryan rather than Iranian traits. The study of close
linguistic relations between the dialects of the Indo-European parent language is
well under way now and the decipherment of newly discovered languages will
contribute to the solution of this problem.
Self-control questions:
1. What is the number of the languages existing in the world?
2. How many Indo-European languages are there in the world?
3. How many Germanic languages are there in the world?
4. What groups of Germanic languages do you know?

REFERENCES:

1. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
2. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
3. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
4. Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
5. Schmidt I. The Relationships of the Indo-European languages. 2002
 Lecture 3: PHONETIC PECULIERITIES OF GERMANIC
LANGUAGES

1. The Discovery of Sanskrit

2. Grimm’s Law. Verner`s Law
3. Germanic Group of the Family

Key words: hypothesis, a common origin, correspondence, regularity for the

sound-changes, Common Germanic or Proto-Germanic, East Germanic, North
Germanic, and West Germanic.

The most important discovery leading to the hypothesis that the languages of a
large part of Europe and part of Asia were at one time identical, was the
recognition that Sanskrit, a language of ancient India, was one of the languages of
the group. This was suggested in the latter part of the 18 th century and fully
established by the beginning of the 19th. The extensive literature of India, reaching
back further than that of any of the European languages, preserves features of the
common language much older than most of those of Greek or Latin or German. It
is easier, for example, to see the resemblance between the English word brother
and the Sanskrit bhrātar- than between brother and frāter.
But what is even more important, Sanskrit preserves an unusually full system of
declensions and conjugations by which it became clear that the inflections of these
languages could likewise be traced to a common origin. Compare the following
forms of the verb to be:

MnE OE Gothic Latin Greek Sanskrit

am eom im sum eimi asmi
are eart is es ei asi
is is ist est esti asti
are sindon sijum sumus semen smas
are sindon sijub estis este stha
are sindon sind sunt eisi santi

The material offered by Sanskrit for comparison with the other languages of
the group, both in matters of vocabulary and inflection, was thus of the great
importance. When we add that Hindu grammarians had already gone far in the
analysis of the language, had recognized the roots, classified the formative
elements and worked out the rules according to which certain sound-changes
occurred, we shall appreciate the extent to which the discovery of Sanskrit
contributed to the recognition and determination of the relation that exists among
the languages to which it was allied.
 A further important step after the Discovery of Sanskrit was taken in 1822.
A German philologist, Jacob Grimm, following up a suggestion of a Danish
contemporary, Rasmus Rask, formulated an explanation that systematically
accounted for the correspondences between certain consonants in the Germanic
language and those found, for example, in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin. His explanation,
although subsequently modified and in some of the details of its operation still a
subject of dispute, is easily illustrated. According to Grimm, a p in Indo-European,
preserved as such in Latin and Greek, was changed to an f in the Germanic
languages. Thus we should look for the English equivalent of Latin piscis or pes to
begin with f, and this is what we actually find, in fish and foot, respectively. What
is true of pis true also of t and k: in other words, the original voiceless stops (p, t,
k) were changed to fricatives (f, þ, h). So Latin tres = English three, Latin centum
= English hundred. A similar correspondence can be shown for certain other
groups of consonants, and the formulation of these correspondences is known as
Grimm’s Law. The cause of the change is not known. It must have taken place
sometime after the segregation of the Germanic from neighboring dialects of the
parent language. There are words in Finnish borrowed from Germanic that do not
show the change and that therefore must have resulted from a contact between
Germanic and Finnish before the change occurred. There is also evidence that the
shifting was still occurring as late as about the fifth century B.C. It is often
assumed that the change was due to contact with a non-Germanic population. The
contact could have resulted from the migration of the Germanic tribes or from the
penetration of a foreign population into Germanic territory. Whatever its cause, the
Germanic sound-shift is the most distinctive feature marking off the Germanic
languages from the languages to which they are related.
Certain apparent exceptions to Grimm’s Law were subsequently explained by
Karl Verner and others. It was noted that between such a pair of words as Latin
centum and English hundred the correspondence between the t and d was not
according to rule. The din the English word should have been a voiceless fricative,
that is, a þ. In 1875 Verner showed that when the Indo-European accent was not on
the vowel immediately preceding, such voiceless fricatives became voiced in
Germanic. In West Germanic the resulting ðbecame a d, and the word hundred is
therefore quite regular in its correspondence with centum. The explanation was of
importance in accounting for the forms of the preterite tense in many strong verbs.
Thus in Old English the preterite singular of cweþán (to say) is ic cwæþ but the
plural is we cweǽdon. In the latter word the accent was originally on the ending,
as it was in the past participle (cweden), where we also have a d. The formulation
of this explanation is known as Verner’s Law, and it was of great significance in
vindicating the claim of regularity for the sound-changes that Grimm’s Law had
attempted to define.
The common form that the languages of the Germanic branch had before
they became differentiated is known as Common Germanic or Proto-Germanic.
It antedates the earliest written records of the family and is reconstructed by
philologists in the same way as is the parent Indo-European. The languages
descended from it fall into three groups: East Germanic, North Germanic, and
West Germanic.
The principal language of East Germanic is Gothic. By the third century the
Goths had spread from the Vistula to the shore of the Black Sea and in the
following century they were Christianized by a missionary named Ulfilas (311-
383), whose father seems to have been a Goth and his mother a Greek
(Cappadocian). Our knowledge of Gothic is almost wholly due to a translation of
the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament made by Ulfilas. Except for
some runic inscriptions in Scandinavia it is the earliest record of a Germanic
language we possess. For a time the Gothic played a prominent part in European
history, including in their extensive conquest both Italy, by the Ostrogoths, and
Spain, by the Visigoths. In these districts, however, their language soon gave place
to Latin, and even elsewhere, it seems not to have maintained a very tenacious
existence. Gothic survived longest in the Crimea, where vestiges of it were noted
down in the sixteenth century. To the East Germanic branch belonged also
Burgundian and Vandalic, but our knowledge of these languages is confined to a
small number of proper names.
North Germanic is found in Scandinavia, Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroe
Islands. Runic inscriptions from the 3rd century preserve our earliest traces of the
language. In its earlier form, the common Scandinavian language is conveniently
spoken of as Old Norse. From about the 11th century on, dialectical differences
become noticeable. The Scandinavian languages fall into two groups: an eastern
group including Swedish and Danish, and a western group including Norwegian
and Icelandic. Norwegian ceased to be a literary language in the 14th century, and
Danish (with a Norwegian elements) is one written languages of Norway. Of the
early Scandinavian languages Old Icelandic is by far the most literary. Iceland was
colonized by settlers from Norway about A.D. 874 and early preserved a body of
heroic literature unsurpassed among the Germanic peoples. Among the more
important monuments are the Elder or Poetic Edda, a collection of poems that
probably date from the 10th or 11th century, the Younger or Prose Edda compiled
by Snorry Sturluson (1178-1241), and about forty sagas, or prose epics, in which
the lives and exploits of various traditional figures are related.
West Germanic is of chief interest to us as the group to which English belongs. It
is divided into two branches, High and Low German, by the operation of a Second
(or High German) Sound-Shift analogous to that described above as Grimm`s Law.
This change, by which West Germanic p, t, k, d, etc. were changed into other
sounds, occurred about A.D. 600 in the southern or mountainous part of the
Germanic area but did not take in the lowlands to the north. Accordingly in early
times we distinguish as Low German tongues: Old Saxon, Old Low Franconian,
Old Frisian, and Old English. The last two are closely related and constitute a
special or Anglo-Frisian subgroup. Old Saxon has become the essential constituent
of modern Low German or Plattdeutsch; Old Low Franconian, with some mixture
of Frisian and Saxon elements, is the basis of modern Dutch in the Netherlands and
Flemish in the northern Belgium; and Frisian survives in the Netherland province
of Friesland, in a small part of Schleswig, in the islands along the coast, and other
places. High German comprises a number of dialects (Middle, Rhenish, and East
Franconian, Bavarian, Alemannic, etc.). It is divided chronologically into Old High
German (before 1100), Middle High German (1100-1500), and Modern High
German (since 1500). High German, especially as spoken in the midlands and used
in the imperial chancery, was popularized by Luther`s translation of the Bible
(1522-1532) and since the sixteenth century has gradually established itself as the
literary language of Germany.
Self-control questions:
1. In what way do the changes occur in the structure of a language?
2. Explain how the local dialects appear from the same language.
3. Is it possible to recognize common features of different languages? What
does this recognition indicate? Give examples to prove that.
4. What languages of Europe and Asia show identity in their structure?
5. What is meant by “a family of languages”? Can English, German, Greek and
Sanskrit be brought into relationship? Why?
6. Why does the Indo-European family of languages have different names
before? Why were not they suitable to designate the family?
7. What are the branches of the Indo-European family of languages?

REFERENCES:
1. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
2. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
3. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
4. Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
5. Schmidt I. The Relationships of the Indo-European languages. 2002
Lecture 4: GRAMMATIC PECULIERITIES OF GERMANIC LANGUGES

1. Modern Germanic Languages

2. The Earliest Period of Germanic languages

Key words: genealogical classification, Teutonic, common origin, Proto-

Germanic, methods of comparative linguistics, the River Elbe, the Vistula basin.

Most of the languages spoken in Europe belong to the Indo-European family

of languages. It consists of several branches, of which the Germanic languages are
one. Languages can be classified according to different principles. The historical,
or genealogical classification, groups languages in accordance with their origin
from a common linguistic ancestor. Most of the area of Europe and large parts of
other continents are occupied today by the Indo-European languages, Germanic or
Teutonic group being one of their major groups. The Germanic languages in the
modern world are as follows:
English – in Great Britain, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the
South African Republic and many other countries of British Commonwealth;
German – in Germany, Austria, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, part of Switzerland;
Netherlandish – in the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium);
Africaans – in the South African Republic;
Danish – in Denmark;
Swedish – in Sweden and Finland;
Norwegian – in Norway;
Icelandic – in Iceland;
Frisian – in some regions of the Netherlands and the northern coasts of Germany;
Faroese – in the Faroe islands;
Yiddish – in different countries.
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a contemporary West Germanic language developed from seventeenth
century Dutch. It is one of the eleven official languages of the Republic of South
Africa. "Although Afrikaans derives from Dutch, it was also influenced by Malay
(spoken by the slaves in the 17th century) and the indigenous African languages.
The first recognizable form of Afrikaans was apparently spoken by the Malay
people of the Cape in the 17th/18th century." - Johan Viljoen.
Dutch- Flemish
Dutch or Flemish is the contemporary descendent of Middle Dutch. With slight
differences, the same language is called Dutch in the Netherlands and Flemish in
Belgium. It is one of the two official languages of the Netherlands and one of the
three official languages of Belgium. Number of Speakers (1988): 21 million.
Faroese
Faroese is a contemporary Western North Germanic language spoken in the Faroe
Islands. It is a descendant of Old Norse. Number of Speakers (1988): 41,000.
Frisian
Frisian is a contemporary West Germanic language spoken in the Netherlands and
Germany. It is one of the two official languages of the Netherlands. Of all
Germanic languages, Frisian is most closely related to English. Frisian from the
earliest records of about 1300 until about 1575 is called Old Frisian. Subsequently
Frisian is known as New Frisian. Some Frisian scholars also identify a Middle
Frisian period from about 1600 to about 1800. Frisian exists in three major
divisions, each of which is subdivided into dialects. The two dialects of East
Frisian have been largely replaced by dialects of New Low German which are
called East Frisian. North Frisian is divided into about ten dialects. Nearly all
modem Frisian literature is in West Frisian which has about six dialects. About 80
percent of Germanic roots are non-Indo-European.
Gutnish
Gutnish is a contemporary Eastern North Germanic language spoken on the island
of Gotland. It is first attested in Legal documents of the fourteenth century C. E.
Some authorities consider Gutnish to be merely a dialect of Swedish.
Icelandic
Icelandic is the contemporary language of Iceland. It is a very conservative
descendent of Old Norse. It is said that many Icelandic readers are able to read the
Norse Sagas, written in Old Norse, without much difficulty. Number of Speakers
(1988): 250,000
New Danish
New (or Modern Danish) is the contemporary descendent of Old Danish. It is the
official language of Denmark. Number of Speakers (1988): 5 million
New English
New (or Modem) English is the contemporary descendent of Middle English. It is
the official language of Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom; it is the
standard language of the United States. It is one of the official languages of
Canada, India, the United Nations, and many other nations. New English is
characterized by a very large vocabulary, nonphonetic spelling, an almost total lack
of inflection (most plurals of nouns are indicated), a syntax almost totally
dependent on word order, and a very complicated periphrastic verb system.
Number of speakers (1988): 431 million
New High German
New (or Modem) High German is the contemporary descendent of Middle High
German. It is the official language of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. There
are multiple extant dialects of High German. High German partakes of the so-
called second sound shift. Number of Speakers (1988): 118 million
New Low German (Plattdeutsch)
New (or Modem) Low German (Plattdeutsch) is the contemporary descendent of
Middle Low German. It is spoken on the North German plain in Germany and the
Netherlands. The name Low Saxon is preferred in the Netherlands. There are
multiple extant dialects of Low German. Number of Speakers: 1.5 to 2.0 million
New Swedish
New Swedish is a contemporary Eastern North Germanic language, a descendent
of Old Swedish. It is the official language of Sweden and is spoken in Finland.
Number of Speakers (1988): 9 million
North Germanic
The North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages is spoken by the Germanic
speaking people who stayed in northern part of the Germanic homeland. Between
about 800 c. E. and 1000 C. E., the dialects of North Germanic diverged into West
and East North Germanic. Old West Germanic is known as Old Norse; Old East
Germanic is known as Old Danish or Old Swedish. A characteristic of the North
Germanic languages is the use of a post posed definite article.
Norwegian
Norwegian, a contemporary Western North Germanic language, is the official
language of Norway. It has two major dialects: Nynorsk and Bokmal. Nynorsk is
the contemporary descendent of Old Norwegian. Bokmal, also called Dano-
Norwegian or Riksmal, is really a form of Danish. Nynorsk is more prevalent in
rural areas; Bokmal in the cities. Since 1951 there has been a concerted effort to
effect a merger of the two dialects. Number of Speakers (1988): 5 million
Lists of Germanic languages given in manuals and reference-books differ in
some points for the distinction between separate languages and also between
languages and dialects varies. Until recently Dutch and Flemish were named as
separate languages; Frisian and Faroese are often referred to as dialects, since they
are spoken over small, politically dependent areas; the linguistic independence of
Norwegian is questioned for it has intermixed with Danish; British English and
American English are sometimes regarded as two independent languages.
It is difficult to estimate the number of people speaking Germanic languages,
especially on account of English which in many countries is one of two languages
in a bilingual community, e.g. Canada. The total number of people speaking
Germanic languages approaches 440 million.
All the Germanic languages are related through their common origin and
joint development at the early stages of history. The survey of their external history
will show where and when the Germanic languages arose and acquired their
common features and also how they have developed into modern independent
tongues.

As the Indo-Europeans extended over a large territory, the ancient Germans

or Teutons moved further north than other tribes and settled on the southern coast
of the Baltic Sea in the region of the Elbe. This place is regarded as the most
probable original home of Teutons. It is here that they developed their first
specifically Germanic linguistic features, which made them a separate group in the
Indo-European family.
The external history of the ancient Teutons around the beginning of our era is
known from classical writings. The first mention of Germanic tribes was made by
Pitheas, a Greek historian and geographer of the 4th c. RC., in an account of a sea
voyage to the Baltic Sea. In the 1st c. B.C. in COMMENTARIES ON THE
GALLIC WAR (COM-MENTARII DE BELLO GALL ICO) Julius Caesar
described some militant Germanic tribes - the Suevians - who bordered on the
Celts of Gaul in the North-East. The tribal names Germans and Teutons, at first
applied to separate tribes, were later extended to the entire group. In the 1st c. A.
D. Pliny the Elder, a prominent Roman scientist and writer, in NATURAL
HISTORY (NATURALIS HISTORIA) made a classified list of Germanic tribes
grouping them under six headings. A few decades later the Roman historian
Tacitus compiled a detailed description of the life and customs of the ancient
Teutons DE SITU, MORIBUS ET POPULIS GERMANIAE; in this work he
reproduced Pliny's classification of the Germanic tribes. F. Engels made extensive
use of these sources in the papers ON THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT
GERMANS and THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY AND
THE STATE. Having made a linguistic analysis of several Germanic dialects of
later ages F. Engels came to the conclusion that Pliny's classification of the
Teutonic tribes accurately reflected the contemporary dialectal division. In his
book on the ancient Teutons F. Engels described the evolution of the economic and
social structure of the Teutons from Caesar's to Tacitus's time. Towards the
beginning of our era the common period of Germanic history came to an end. The
Teutons had extended over a larger territory and the PG language broke into parts.
The tri-partite division of the Germanic languages proposed by 19th c. philologists
corresponds, with a few adjustments, to Pliny's grouping of the Old Teutonic
tribes. According to this division PG split into three branches: East Germanic
(Vindili in Pliny's classification), North Germanic (Hilleviones) and West
Germanic (which embraces Ingveones, Istvones and Hermino-nes in Pliny's list). In
due course these branches split into separate Germanic languages. The traditional
tri-partite classification of the Germanic languages was reconsidered and corrected
in some recent publications. The development of the Germanic group was not
confined to successive splits; it involved both linguistic divergence and
convergence. It has also been discovered that originally PG split into two main
branches and that the tri-partite division marks a later stage of its history. The
earliest migration of the Germanic tribes from the lower valley of the Elbe
consisted in their movement north, to the Scandinavian Peninsula, a few hundred
years before our era. This geographical segregation must have led to linguistic
differentiation and to the division of PG into the northern and southern branches.
At the beginning of our era some of the tribes returned to the mainland and settled
closer to the Vistula basin, east of the other continental Germanic tribes. It is only
from this stage of their history that the Germanic languages can be described under
three headings: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic.
The history of the Germanic group begins with the appearance of what is
known as the Proto-Germanic language. It is the linguistic ancestor of the
Germanic group. Proto-Germanic is an entirely pre-historical language: it was
never recorded in written form. In the 19th century it was reconstructed by methods
of comparative linguistics from written evidence in descendant languages. It is
believed that at the earliest stages of history Proto-Germanic was fundamentally
one language, though dialectally colored. In its later stages dialectal differences
grew, so that towards the beginning of our era Germanic appears divided into
dialectal groups and tribal dialects. Dialectal differentiation increased with the
migration and geographical expansion of the Teutons caused by overpopulation,
poor agricultural technique and scanty natural resources in the areas of their
original settlement.
Toward the beginning of our era, the common period the Germanic history
came to an end. The Teutons had extended over a larger territory and the Proto-
Germanic language broke into parts. The earliest migration of the Germanic tribes
from the lower valley of the Elbe consisted in the movement to the north, to the
Scandinavian Peninsula, a few hundred years before our era. This geographical
segregation must have led to linguistic differentiation and to the division of Proto-
Germanic into northern and southern branches. At the beginnings of our era, some
of the tribes returned to the mainland and settled closer to the Vistula basin, east of
the continental Germanic tribes. It is only from this stage of their history that the
Germanic languages can be described under three headings: East Germanic, North
Germanic and West Germanic, which will be the main points in the next lecture.
Self-control questions:
1. Explain why the following proper names are important in studying the
Germanic languages:
the Baltic Sea
the Elbe
the Tuetons
Proto-Germanic
the Vistula basin
2. According to what principle are the languages united under certain groups?
3. What are modern Germanic languages?
4. Are all the Germanic languages spoken in Europe?
5. Approximately how many people speak Germanic languages?
6. What is the earliest name for ancient Germans?
7. What is Proto-Germanic?
8. When must the dialectal differences have begun to appear in Proto-Germanic?
9. What kind of geographical picture did the Germanic tribes have at the
beginning of our era?
10. What are the three branches of the Germanic languages?

REFERENCES:

1. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
2. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
3. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
4. Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
5. Schmidt I. The Relationships of the Indo-European languages. 2002
 Lecture 5: THE VOCABULARY SYSTEM OF GERMANIC
LANGUAGES

1. The Origin and Diffusion of Indo-European

2. Language Groups of Germanic Branch

Key words: colonization, dispersion, establish, foundation, postulating, branch,

diffusion, subsequent

Indo-European is a family of languages that first spread throughout Europe and

many parts of South Asia, and later to every corner of the globe as a result of
colonization. The term Indo-European is essentially geographical since it refers to
the easternmost extension of the family from the Indian subcontinent to its
westernmost reach in Europe. The family includes most of the languages of
Europe, as well as many languages of Southwest, Central and South Asia. |The
Indo-European language family has the largest number of speakers of all language
families as well as the widest dispersion around the world.

It would not have been possible to establish the existence of the Indo-European
language family if scholars had not compared the systematically recurring
resemblances among European languages and Sanskrit, the oldest language of the
Indian subcontinent that left many written documents. The common origin of
European languages and Sanskrit was first proposed by Sir William Jones.
Systematic comparisons between these languages by Franz Bopp supported this
theory and laid the foundation for postulating that all Indo-European languages
descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European (PIE), thought to have
been spoken before 3,000 B.C. It then split into different branches which, in turn,
split into different languages in the subsequent millennia.

Since PIE left no written records, historical linguists construct family trees, an idea
pioneered by August Schleicher, on the basis of the comparative method. The
comparative method takes shared features among languages and uses procedures to
establish their common ancestry. It is not the only method available but is one that
has been most widely used. The examples below show how this method actually
works with some Indo-European languages.

PIE *dekm>Proto-Germanic *texun > Old English teon > Modern English ten

Proto-Italic *dekem > Latin decem > Modern Italian dieci

Old Church Slavonic desenti > Modern Bulgarian deset

Sanskrit dáça > Hindi/Urdu das

Greek deka

From the middle of the 1st millennium BC, there is evidence of Germanic
populations in southern Scandinavia and northern Germany. Their migrations from
the 2nd century BC onwards are recorded in history. The linguistic and
archaeological data seem to indicate that the last linguistic changes affecting all of
the Germanic languages took place in an area which has been located
approximately in Southern Sweden, Southern Norway, Denmark, and the lower
Elbe. The Proto-Germanic language had split into three daughter languages:

 North Germanic, ancestor of today’s Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and

Danish;
 West Germanic, ancestor of today’s English, Dutch, Africans and German
 East Germanic, ancestor of several extinct languages, such as Gothic.

Although no written documents in Proto-Germanic have survived, the language has

been substantially reconstructed by using the oldest existing records. Compared to
Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic had a relatively simpler nominal
morphology. For instance, it dropped the dual number, and reduced the number of
cases from eight to four. On the other hand, the verbal morphology of Proto-Indo-
European survived relatively intact in all modern Germanic languages, although
there are fewer strong (irregular) verbs today.
Self-control questions:

1. According to what principle are the languages united under certain groups?
2. What are modern Germanic languages?
3. Are all the Germanic languages spoken in Europe?
4. Approximately how many people speak Germanic languages?
5. Where and when did the Germanic languages arise and acquire their
common features?
6. What is the earliest name for ancient Germans?
7. What is Proto-Germanic?
8. When must the dialectal differences have begun to appear in Proto-
Germanic?
9. What kind of geographical picture did the Germanic tribes have at the
beginning of our era?
10.What are the three branches of the Germanic languages?

REFERENCES:

1. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
2. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
3. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
4. Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
5. Schmidt I. The Relationships of the Indo-European languages. 2002
 Lecture 6: CLASSIFICATION OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES

1. Ancient Germanic Tribes

2. East Germanic. Gothic language
3. North Germanic
4. West Germanic
Key words:testimonies, Ulfilas’ translation of the Gospels, the pre-written
stages, Old Norse, independent national language, High German, Low German .

The external history of the ancient Germans or Teutons around the

beginning of our era is known from classical writings. Our knowledge of the
ancient Teutons is based on testimonies by Greek and Roman writers, who for
some reason or other were interested in them. The earliest of these was made by
Pytheas, a Greek geographer of the 4th century B.C., in an account of a sea voyage
through the straits of Gibraltar, along the West of Gaul (France), along the Channel
till the Baltic sea. Next comes the Roman general, statesman, and writer Julius
Caesar. In the 1st century B.C. in his “Commentaries on the Gallic war” Caesar
gives several chapters to Germans, whom he combated and dealt with on Rhine.
Caesar’s statement that the Germans lived in tribes and tribal unions is of
particularly great value for the historians. In the 1st century A.D. Pliny the Elder, a
prominent Roman scientist and writer, in “Natural History” made a classified list
of Germanic tribes grouping them under six headings. A few decades later the
Roman historian Tacitus compiled a detailed description of the life and customs of
the ancient Teutons in his short work “Germania”.
According to Pliny, Germanic tribes in the 1st century A.D. consisted of the
following groups:
1. the VINDILI (among them were the Goths and the Burgundians). They
inhabited the eastern part of Germanic territory.
2. the INGAEONES. These inhabited the north-western part of the Germanic
territory – the shores of the Northern sea, including what is now the
Netherlands.
3. the ISCAEVONES. These inhabited the western part of Germanic territory,
on the Rhine. Among them were the Franks, who eventually conquered
Gaul.
4. the HERMIONES. These inhabited the southern part of Germanic territory,
i.e. what is now southern Germany.
5. the PEUCINI and BASTARNAE. They lived close to the Dacians, close to
what is now Rumania.
6. the HILLEVIONES, who inhabited Scandinavia.
The mutual relation between classification of Germanic tribes based on
Pliny’s work and that of Germanic languages based on analyses made by 19 th
century linguists appears in the following shape:
Tribes: Languages:
Vindili Eastern Germanic
Ingaevones
Istaevones Western Germanic
Herminones
 Hilleviones Northern Germanic

Thus, Germanic languages are classified into 3 group: East Germanic, North
Germanic, West Germanic.
The East Germanic subgroup was formed by the tribes who returned from
Scandinavia at the beginning of our era. The most numerous and powerful of them
were the Goths. Their western branch, the Visigotæ, invaded Roman territory and
found one of the first barbarian kingdoms lasted until the 8 th century though
linguistically the western Goths were soon absorbed by the native population, the
Romanised Celts. The Gothic language, now dead, has been preserved in written
records of the 4th – 6th centuries. The Goths were the first of the Teutons to become
Christian. In the 4th century Ulfilas, a West Gothic bishop, made a translation of
the Gospels (Bible) from Greek into Gothic using a modified form of the Greek
alphabet. Ulfilas’ Gospels were first published in the 17 th century and have been
thoroughly studied by the 19th and 20th century philologists. It is one of the earliest
texts in the languages of the Germanic group; it represents a form of language very
close to Proto-Germanic and therefore throws lights on the pre-written stages of
history of all the languages of the Germanic group including English. The other
East Germanic languages, all of which are now dead, have left no written traces.
THE GOTHIC LANGUAGE
The Gothic language, now dead, was spoken by a group of Old Germanic tribes,
known in history as Gothic tribes. Where the Goths first came from is not
definitely known. There were stories told by their old men of a time when their
people had dwelt far to the north, on the shores and islands of what is now Sweden.
Then had come long, slow wanderings through the forests of western Russia, until
they reached the shores of the Black Sea. In time they overran the once mighty
Roman Empire to the south. The first of these northern barbarians to conquer
Rome were the Visi-goths, or West Goths. Another tribal union of the Goths, the
Ost-rogoths, or East Goths, inhabited the Black Sea shores. For a time the Goths
ruled a great kingdom north of the Danube river and the Black Sea. Then, in A.D.
315, the Huns, a savage people, swept into Europe from Asia. They conquered the
Ostrogoths and forced the Visigoths to seek refuge across the Danube within the
boundaries of the Roman Empire. In a battle fought near the city of Adrianople, in
378, the Visigoths defeated and slew Emperor Valens. For a time they lived
peaceably on Roman territory. In 395 they rose in rebellion under their ambitious
young king Alaric and overran a large part of the Eastern Empire. In 410 Rome fell
into the hands of the Visigoths. Alaric led the attack. Alaric's successors Led their
people out of Italy and set up a powerful kingdom in Spain and southern Gaul. In
the year 507 the Visigoths in Gaul were defeated by the Franks and were forced
beyond the Pyrenees. For 200 years their kingdom in Spain flourished. It did not
come to an end until 711, when the Moors crossed over from Africa and in a
terrible eight-day battle destroyed the Visigothic kingdom. And that was the end of
the Visigoths as an independent people. The Ostrogoths for a time formed part of
the vast horde which followed the king of the Huns, Attila. They settled in the
lands south of Vienna when the Hunnish kingdom fell apart. Their national hero
was Theodoric the Great, a powerful and romantic figure who became king in 474.
In 488 he invaded Italy. Theodore’s reign was one of the best but his kingdom was
one of the great "might-havebeens" of history. He failed largely because no
permanent union was affected between the barbarians and the Christian-Roman
population. It was during his reign that many manuscripts of Gothic which have
come down to us written. After his death in 526 the generals of the Eastern
Empires reconquered Italy. After fighting a last battle near Mount Vesuvius in
553), the Ostrogoths marched out of Italy. They merged with other barbarian
hordes north of the Alps and disappeared as a people from history.
THE GOTHIC WRITTEN LANGUAGE AND MONUMENTS
These earliest monuments of the Old Germanic written language, which give
us the possibility of speaking on the structure and the vocabulary of the languages,
were written in Gothic. The written records of other Old Germanic languages
appeared much later, several centuries after. The monuments of the Gothic
language reflect the stage in its development when it is still possible to reveal to a
certain extent the main peculiarities which characterize Old Germanic languages as
a whole. Later on, when written monuments of other Old Germanic languages
appeared, these peculiarities had become obliterated or changed considerably, so
that only a comparison with Gothic makes it possible to reconstruct the earliest
stage in their development or at Least to understand the origin of the phenomenon
under review. The early appearance of monuments in Gothic is due to the activities
of Ulfilas (in Gothic Wulfila), a Gothic bishop and scholar (311-383). For more
than 40 years he labored, first making a Gothic alphabet so that he could translate
the Bible and then teaching his people the new faith. This Bible translated by
Ulfilas is centuries older than the earliest writing which we have in any other Old
Germanic languages, so its historical value is very great. The manuscripts
containing the fragments of the biblical translation which have come down to us,
are not contemporary with Ulfilas, they were written in the West Gothic dialect in
Italy about the year 500. The monuments are the following:
1. Codex Argenteus, in the University library of Uppsala (Sweden). This codex
contained originally on 330- Leaves the four Gospels in the order Matthew, John,
Luke and Mark. At present only 187 Leaves are still preserved. The manuscript
was written on a purple parchment, the letters were silver and golden. It was first
published in 1665.
II. Codex Carolinus. It consists of 4 leaves containing a fragment of the Epistle to
the Romans. The manuscript is bilingual; the same text is given in Gothic and in
Latin. It was first published in 1762.
III. Codices Ambrosiani, 5 fragments in the Ambrosian library in Milan.
Codex A contains on 95 leaves some fragments or St. Paul's Epistles; and a small
fragment of a Gothic Calendar.
Codex B contains on 77 leaves fragments of some other Epistles.
Codex C consisting of 2 leaves only, and containing fragments of St. Matthew
Gospal.
Codex D consists of 3 leaves containing fragments of the books of Old Testament.
Codex E consisting of 8 leaves (3 of them are in the Vatican at Roma), and
containing a fragment of commentary on St. John.
IV. Codex Turinensis, in Turin, consisting of 4 damaged leaves, and containing
fragments of two Epistles. All these manuscripts were first published in 1819-
1839. All the manuscripts but Codex Argenteua are palimpsests (i.e. manuscripts
the original text on which has been effaced to make room for a second). There are
some other, smaller monuments of the Gothic language; they are short inscriptions
on a ring and a spear, a few Gothic glosses and words in Latin texts, and others. At
the same time there appeared some innovations characteristic of the Gothic
language only, such as Class IV of weak verbs in -non, the optative and imperative
forms in -au. On the other hand, the Gothic language has lost some forms retained
by other Old Germanic languages, among them the Instrumental case, the
declension in considerable changes appeared in different word-former under the
influence of reduction of unstressed syllables; the beginning of this process goes
back to the period of Common Germanic. This accounts for the absence of the
personal index-p in the 3 person singular optative (nimai), of the personal index -e
in the 3 person singular preterit indicative (nam), of the Dative case ending -i
(gumin* guminii) .which were lost in Common Germanic or probably when Old
Germanic languages on1y began to separate from one another. The reduction of
unstressed syllables caused the three-part structure of the word (root + stem-
forming suffix +ending) to be brought to two parts (root + ending) or eyen to one
part only (cf. the Dat. sing. of degs. "day" :dag: * a3-a-a). Dead language
belonging to the now extinct East Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of
the Indo-European family of languages. Gothic has special value for the linguist
because it was recorded several hundred years before the oldest surviving texts of
all the other Germanic languages (except for a handful of earlier runic inscriptions
in Old Norse). Thus it sheds light on an older stage of a Germanic language and on
the development of Germanic languages in general. The earliest extant document
in Gothic preserves part of a translation of the Bible made in the 4th cent. A.D. by
Ulfilas, a Gothic bishop. This translation is written in an adaptation of the Greek
alphabet, supposedly devised by the bishop himself, which was later discarded.
The Gothic language is known to us by a translation of the Bible known as Codex
Argenteus ("The Silver Bible") dating from the 4th century AD, of which some
books survive. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by
people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The language used is
Germanic but has major differences from other known Germanic languages. It all
appears that the Gothic Bible was used by the Visigoths in Spain until 700 AD, and
perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans and what is now the Ukraine. Apart from
the Bible, the only other Gothic document is a few pages of Commentary on the
Gospel of John. This document is usually called the "Skeireins".
In addition, there are numerous short fragments and runic inscriptions that
are known to be or suspected to be Gothic. Some scholars believe that these
inscriptions are not at all Gothic. The Gothic Bible and Skeireins were written
using a special alphabet. The Gothic alphabet was probably created by bishop
Ulfilas who also translated the Bible into the "razda" (language). Some scholars
(e.g. Braune) claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only, while others
maintain that there are some Gothic Letters of runic or Latin origin. There are very
few references to the Gothic language in secondary sources after about 800 AD, so
perhaps it was rarely used by that date. In evaluating medieval texts that mention
the Goths, it must be noted that many writers used "Goths" to mean any Germanic
people in eastern Europe, many of whom certainly did not use the Gothic language
as known from the Gothic Bible. Some writers even referred to Slavicspeaking
people as Goths. There is also the case of the "Crimean Goths". A few fragments
of their language dating to the 16th century exist today. Assuming those fragments
are genuine, it appears to be a different language from the one used in the Gothic
Bible.
Principal features of Gothic
 As all the Germanic languages Gothic also has the stress on the first
syllable.
Noun and Adjectives:
Gothic has five cases:
• Nominative:for nouns acting as the subject of the sentence
• Genitive: expresses possessive relationships
• Dative: for nouns acting as the indirect object
• Accusative: for nouns acting as the direct object
• Vocative:for the person addressed (it is usually the same form as the
Nominative).
Nouns: The inflectional ending depends on: ▪the stem of the word: The
stems include a-, ia-, 0-, i-, u- and n-stems. These terms refer to the reconstructed
Primitive Germanic (eg bird: "fug/s" is an a-stem, cf the Primitive Germanic word:
*fuglaz). ▪the gender of the word: Gothic has masculine, feminine and neuter
nouns. ▪whether the word is singular or plural.
Adjectives: The adjective takes the same gender, number and case as the noun.
The endings also vary according to: - The stem to which the adjective belongs (as
for the nouns above). - Inflection: weak inflection (for the vocative and after a
definite article) and strong inflection (in all other situations).
Articles and demonstrative pronouns
The definite article is an important new development in Germanic. It arose from
the demonstrative pronoun and still has the same form in Gothic (sa = 'the' or 'that'
masculine, pata neuter, so feminine). It is only the context which enables its use as
an article to be recognized. The indefinite article does not yet exist. The possessive
pronouns are inflected according to the strong inflection of the adjective. Gothic
uses the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person and a three-fold number division. Alongside
singular and plural there is also a dual which indicates two people (eg wit = 'the
two of us'). The familiar and polite forms of "you" use the same form of the second
person, as in English, but unlike most other modern Germanic languages. (see also
The Middle Dutch case system)
Verbs
The form of the verb indicates:
- The person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and the number (singular, dual, plural) A personal
pronoun is used when needed for emphasis or contrast. I n other cases Gothic
suffice with the verb on its own. 55
- The mood: Gothic uses the indicative, imperative and subjunctive.
- The tense: There are only two forms, the present tense for the present and future,
and the preterite for the past tenses (there are as yet no analytical compound verb
forms such as "have done"). The preterite can be formed in various ways:
a) by a vowel change (strong verbs) - this method goes as far back as Indo-
European.
b) by adding a dental suffix (weak verbs) with the sounds /d/ (as in English then)
or f'p/ (as in English thin). Weak verbs are an innovation of the Germanic
languages.
c) by reduplication, eg sleep: slEpan - salslep - salslepum). Strong and weak
verbs are a typical feature of all modern Germanic languages. (See also
characterization of the Germanic language family) - active and passive: there are
active and passive verb forms except for the passive preterite which is expressed
by means of a different verb (wisan = 'to be' or wairpan = 'become') and a perfect
participle (eg daupips was = 'he was baptised'). Here we can see the beginnings of
the development from a synthetic to an analytical language, which is typical of all
WestGermanic languages. (see also Middle Dutch verbs). The principal
developments from a language state with these features to the modern West-
Germanic languages are the erosion of the differences between the stems of the
nouns as a result of the heavy initial stress (see also loss of inflection in Middle
Dutch), and the development towards an increasingly analytical language, the early
stages of which we see in the formation of the passive preterite.
The North Germanic subgroup of the languages was spoken by the Teutons
who stayed in Scandinavia after the departure of the Goths. The speech of the
North Germanic tribes showed little dialectal variation until the 9 th century and is
regarded as a sort of common North Germanic parent-language called Old Norse
or Old Scandinavian. After the 9th century, when the Scandinavians started out on
their sea voyages, the disintegration of Old Norse into separate dialects and
languages began: Old Danish, Old Norwegian and Old Swedish. In the later
Middle Ages, with the growth of capitalist relations and the unification of the
countries (Sweden, Denmark, and Norway), Danish and Swedish developed into
national literary languages. Nowadays Swedish is spoken not only by the
population of Sweden; the language has extended over Finnish territory and is the
second state language in Finland. Norwegian was the last to develop into an
independent national language, intermixed with Danish.
In addition to the three languages on the mainland, the North Germanic
subgroup includes two more languages: Icelandic and Faroese. Faroese is
developed from the West Norwegian dialects brought by the Scandinavians,
spoken in the Faroe Islands. Iceland was practically uninhabited at the time of the
first Scandinavian settlement. Their West Scandinavian dialects eventually grew
into an independent language, Icelandic. At present Icelandic is spoken by over
200000 people and Faroese is spoken by about 30000 people.
West Germanic tribes who lived in the beginning of our era dwelt in the
lowlands between the Oder and the Elbe bordering on the Slavonian tribes in the
East and the Celtic tribes in the South. On the eve of their “great migrations” of the
4th and 5th centuries, West Germans included several tribes. The Franconians (or
Franks) occupied the lower basin of the Rhine. The Angles and the Frisians, the
Jutes and the Saxons inhabited the coastal area of the modern Netherlands, the
western part of Germany and the southern part of Denmark. A group of tribes
known as High Germans lived in the mountainous south-western part of Germany.
Accordingly, Low Germans lived in the low-lying northern areas.
The Franconian dialects were spoken in the extreme North of the Holy
Roman Empire; in the later Middle Ages they developed into Dutch – the language
of the Low Countries (the Netherlands) and Flemish – the language of the
Flanders. The modern language of the Netherlands is now treated as a single
language – Netherlandish.

Towards the 12th century High German had intermixed with neighboring
tongues and eventually developed into the literary German language. Another
offshoot of High German is Yiddish. It grew from the High German dialects,
which were adopted by numerous Jewish communities, scattered over Germany in
the 11th and 12th centuries.
At the later stage of the great migration period – in the 5th century, a group
of West Germanic tribes started out on their invasions of the British Isles. They
were: the Angles, part of the Saxons and Frisians and probably, the Jutes. Their
dialects in the British Isles developed into the English language.

Self-control questions:
1. What is meant by specifically Germanic linguistic features?
2. What innovations in the word-accent were introduced in Common
Germanic?
 3. Analyse the changes in the place of stress in form-building and word-
building, and point out the words which have retained the original Germanic
stress system:
a) read, reads, reader, readable, reread;
b) bear, bearing, unbearable, bearer;
c) satisfy, satisfaction, dissatisfy, satisfactory
d) circumstance, circumstantial, circumstantiality.
4. In what senses did the historical changes of Germanic vowels depend on
position?
5. Explain the sound correspondences in the following parallels form Germanic
and non-Germanic languages (the sounds are italicized).
R. боль ОЕ. balu ‘mischief’
R. соль G. Salz ‘salt’

REFERENCES:

1. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
2. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
3. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
4. Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
5. Schmidt I. The Relationships of the Indo-European languages. 2002
 Lecture 7: PECULIARITIES OF EAST GERMANIC AND ROMAN
LANGUAGES: VOWEL SYSTEM AND STRESS

1. Stress in Germanic Languages

2. Vowels. Tendencies of Vowel Development
3. Gradation
Key words: word accentuation, movable word stress, fixed word stress,
accented and unaccented syllables, vowel changes: qualitative and quantitative;
dependent and independent, alter(n)ation

All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common linguistic
features; some of these features are shared by other groups in the Indo-European
family, others are specifically Germanic. The Germanic group acquired their
specific distinctive features after the separation of the ancient Germanic tribes from
other Indo-European tribes and prior to their further expansion and disintegration.
The peculiar Germanic system of word accentuation is one of the most
important distinguishing features of the group and served as one of the major
causes for many linguistic changes. In Early Proto-Germanic word stress was still
as movable as in ancient Indo-European, but in Late Proto-Germanic its position in
the word was stabilized. The stress was now fixed on the first syllable of root
morpheme. These features of word accent were inherited by the Germanic
languages and despite later alterations are observable today. In Modern English
these is a sharp contrast between accented and unaccented syllables due to the
force of the stress. The main accent commonly falls on the root-morpheme and is
never shifted in building grammatical forms.
English: `come, be`come, be`coming, over`come
German: `liebe, `lieben, `liebte, ge`liebt
The heavy fixed word stress inherited from Proto-Germanic has played an
important role in the development of the Germanic languages, and especially in
phonetic and morphologic changes.
It has been found, however, that the Germanic stress was of even greater
consequence as a factor of historical development than as a trait of modern
Germanic languages or Old Germanic dialects considered synchronically. The two
properties of Germanic stress can be regarded as the initial cause for many other
specifically Germanic features and tendencies of evolution, both in the
phonological and other linguistic levels.
As mentioned before, the dynamic stress employed in Germanic was a very
heavy stress. Gradually it led to a marked contrast between the two kinds of
syllables and between the sounds in stressed and unstressed position. The historical
changes of those sounds proceed in basically different directions and thus the
evolution of the sound system as a whole was affected by the stress.
Since it was the first syllable or the root-morpheme that bore the heaviest
stress, the suffixes and endings were gradually weakened; in the process the
morphological structure of the word was simplified and the grammatical endings
weakened or lost.
The main characteristic feature of Germanic languages in the vowel system
is the treatment of the Indo-European short vowel o and a and the long vowel ō
and ā.Indo-European short o and a appear as short a in Germanic languages, e.g.:
Indo-European Germanic
Lat.noctem, Russ. ночь Goth. nahts, Germ. Nacht, Swedish natt
 Russ. могу Gt. magan, OHG magan
Indo European long ō and ā appear as long ō in Germanic languages, e.g.:
Indo-European Germanic
Lat. mater, Russ.мать OE mōdor, Swedish moder
O.Ind. bhrāta, Russ. брат Goth. brōþar, O.E. brōðor

The development of Germanic languages from the Common Germanic

period to the present day has shown that the vowels in Germanic languages were
on the whole very unstable. In all periods they underwent different changes:
qualitative and quantitative; dependent and independent. Sometimes only a few
isolated vowels were altered, at other times groups of vowels were modified. This
can be easily from comparing the same word in different periods of history:

IE Common Germanic languages in later periods

Germanic
-oi- stainaz [ai] OE stān [α:] ME stone [o:] NE stone [ou]
OHG stein [eı] German Stein [ai]

The most important feature of Germanic vowel development at all times was
its dependence on the Germanic word-stress. As stated, the stressed syllables in
Germanic presented a striking contrast to the unstressed ones: they were
emphasized and pronounced more distinctly, while the unstressed syllables tended
to become less distinct. The difference in the development of the two kinds of
syllables is first of all seen in the treatment of vowels.
In the stressed position the differences between vowels were strictly
preserved and emphasized: the contrast of long and short vowels (opposition
through quantity) was maintained; as to quality, new qualitative differences
developed and thus the total number of vowels occurring in stressed syllables
gradually increased.
In unstressed position the original contrasts between vowels were weakened
and many of the former distinctions lost: the opposition of long vowels to short
ones was neutralized as both long and short vowels appeared as short. In final
unstressed syllables some short vowels were altogether dropped. The qualitative
differences between vowels were reduced as most vowels developed in the neutral
sound.
These developments began in the Common Germanic period and continued
in the separate Germanic languages. The difference between the treatment of
vowels in stressed and unstressed position in relation to quality and quantity can be
shown in the following scheme:
Stressed position Unstressed position
Long ↔ Short Long → Short
Short → zero
New qualitative differences arising Qualitative distinctions reduced
or in each set. lost.

To put it differently, we may also say that in Germanic languages there

gradually developed two distinct subsystems of vowels: one functioning in stressed
syllables, the other – in unstressed ones, each characterized by its own distinctive
features and tendencies of evolution.
In Indo-European languages there is a special kind of vowel alternation,
usually called gradation or ablaut. This is found, for example, in Russian in such
pairs as вез-у/воз, грем-ит/гром, вы-бер-у/вы-бор. The system of gradation in
Germanic languages is best seen in the so-called strong verbs of the Gothic
language. In the Bible of the 4th century, the system of gradation appears in a very
clear shape. F.e., reisan ( infinive), rais (past singular), risum ( past plural), risans
(second participle).

Self-control questions:
1. Which subsystems of consonants were affected by the Common Germanic
consonant shift?
2. Try to determine the origin of some Modern English words (Germanic or
not) on the basis of consonant correspondences (each pair of words descends
 from the same root): pedestrian – foot; cordial – hearty, labial – lip, twofold
– double.
3. Analyze the consonant correspondences in the following groups of words
and classify the words into Germanic and non-Germanic: brotherly,
fraternal; tooth, dental, dentist; three, trinity; decade, decimals, ten;
agriculture, acre; tame, domestic.
4. Explain the sound correspondences in the following parallels form Germanic
and non-Germanic languages (the sounds are italicized).
L. gena OE. cin ‘chin’
L. pecus Gt. faihu, OE. feoh ‘fee’
R. нагой MnE. naked, G. nackt
R. приятель MnE friend
R. дерево Gt. triu, MnE tree
L. domare MnE tame

REFERENCES:

1. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
2. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
3. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
4. Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
5. Schmidt I. The Relations
6. hips of the Indo-European languages. 2002
 Lecture 8: PECULIARITIES OF NORTH GERMANIC AND ROMAN
LANGUAGES: CONSONANT SYSTEM, SOUND LAWS

1. Consonants. The First Consonant Shift.

2. West Germanic Lengthening of Consonants.
3. The Second Consonant Shift

Key words: Grimm’s law, Verner’s law, consonant shift, lengthening of

consonants

The specific peculiarities of consonants constitute the most remarkable

distinctive feature of the Germanic linguistic group. Comparison with other
languages within the IE family reveals regular correspondences between Germanic
and non-Germanic consonants. The changes of consonants in PROTO-
GERMANIC were first formulated in terms of a phonetic law by Jacob Grimm and
are often called Grimm’s Law.
 Another important series of consonant changes in PROTO-GERMANIC was
discovered in the late 19th century by a Danish scholar Carl Verner. They are
known as Verner’s Law.
 West Germanic languages show a peculiar phenomenon in the sphere of
consonants, which has been called “West Germanic lengthening of consonants”. Its
essence is this. Every consonant ( with the single exception of “r”) is lengthened if
it is preceded by a short vowel and followed by the consonant [j], for example, in
OE sætian → settan “set”. The phonetic essence of lengthening appears to be
assimilation: the consonant [j] is assimilated to the preceding consonant.
Examples of Consonant lengthening in OE:
sætian> settan (set)
stæpian>steppan (step)
sæ3ian>sec3an (say)
framian>fremman (fulfil)
The first consonant Shift is called the first, to distinguish it from a second
consonant shift, which occurred in High German dialects (that is, dialects of
Southern Germany).
The Common Germanic voiced stop d corresponds to High German
voiceless stop t : Goth. Badi> H.G. bett (bed).
The common Germanic voiceless stop p corresponds to the voiceless
fricative f after a vowel: O.E. hopian>H.G. hoffen (hope).
The voiceless stop k corresponds to the voiceless fricative ch [x] after a
vowel: O.E. macian>H.G. machen.
However, the second consonant shift is not fully reflected in Mn. literary
German. The Second consonant shift occurred between the 5 th and 7th centuries
A.D., gradually spreading from South to North. A few hundred years later,
between the 8th and 12th centuries, one more change took place, which gave the
German consonant system its present shape.
As we have seen, the common Germanic d developed into t in H.G.; as a
result the German consonant system had no d-sound. Now a new d appeared,
coming from the common Germanic þ. Examples:
Common Germanic High German
Gothic: þreis, O.E. þriedrei (three)
Gothic: brōþar, O.E. broþorbruder (brother)
In this way the gap left in the H.G. consonant system by the change of d into
t in the second consonant shift was filled. Modern literary German again has a
complete system: p/b, t/d, k/g.

Self-control questions:
1. Speak about the grammatical structure of Proto-Germanic and Old Germanic
languages.
2. What are the principal means of form buildings?
3. What is sound interchange?
4. The original structure of a substantive in Germanic languages.
5. The verb system of Old Germanic languages.
6. Give some examples illustrating Germanic words.

REFERENCES:

1. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
2. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
3. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
4. Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
5. Schmidt I. The Relationships of the Indo-European languages. 2002
 Lecture 9: BASIC GRAMMATICAL FEATURES OF WEST GERMANIC
AND ROMAN LANGUAGES

1. Nouns
2. Adjectives
3. Pronons

Key words: synthetic grammatical structure, inflections, sound interchanges and

suppletion, the root, a stem-building suffix, a case inflexion, preterit-present verbs

Like other old IE languages both PROTO-GERMANIC and the OG

languages had a synthetic grammatical structure, which means that the
relationships between the parts of the sentence were shown by the forms of the
words rather than by their position or by auxiliary words. In later period of their
development all the Germanic languages were characterized by analytical forms
and ways of word connection. In the early periods the grammatical forms were
built in the synthetic way: by means of inflections, sound interchanges and
suppletion. The suppletive way of form building was inherited from ancient IE, it
was restricted to a few personal pronouns, adjectives and verbs. The following
forms of pronoun in Germanic and non-Germanic languages show us the fact
stated above.
Latin French Russian Gothic Old English Modern English
ego je я ik ic I
mei mon меня meina min my, mine
mihi me,moi мне mis mē me

The principal means of form buildings were inflections. The inflections

found in O.G. written records correspond to the inflection used in non-Germanic
languages, having descended from the same original IE prototypes. The wide use
of sound interchanges has always been characteristic feature of the Germanic
group. This form IE and became very productive in Germanic. In various forms of
the word and in words derived from one and the same root, the root morpheme
appeared as a set of variant. The consonants were relatively stable, the vowels were
variable.
German nouns inflect into:
- one of four declension classes - one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or
neutral. Word endings indicate some grammatical genders; others are arbitrary and
must be memorised. - two numbers: singular and plural - four cases: nominative,
genitive, dative, and accusative case. Although German is usually cited as an
outstanding example of a highly inflected language, it should be noted that the
degree of inflection is considerably less than in Old German, or in Icelandic today.
The three genders have collapsed in the plural, which now behaves, grammatically,
somewhat as a fourth gender. With four cases and three genders plus plural there
are 16 distinct possible combinations of case and gender/number, but presently
there are only six forms of the definite article used for the 16 possibilities.
Inflection for case on the noun itself is required in the singular for strong
masculine and neuter nouns in the genitive and sometimes in the dative. This
dative ending is considered somewhat old-fashioned in many contexts and often
dropped, but it is still used in sayings and in formal speech or written language.
Weak masculine nouns share a common case ending for genitive, dative and
accusative in the singular. Feminines are not declined in the singular. The plural
does have an inflection for the dative. In total, six inflectional endings (not
counting plural markers) exist in German: -s, -es, -n, -en, -ns, -e In the German
orthography, nouns and most words with the syntactical function of nouns are
capitalized, which makes it quite easy for readers to find out what function a word
has within the sentence. On the other hand, things get more difficult for the writer.
This spelling convention is almost unique to German today (shared perhaps only
by the closely related Luxembourgish language), although it was historically
common in other languages (e.g., Danish), too. Like most Germanic languages,
German forms left-branching noun compounds, where the first noun modifies the
category given by the second, for example: Hundehutte (eng. doghouse). Unlike
English, where newer compounds or combinations of longer nouns are often
written in open form with separating spaces, German (like the other German
languages) always uses the closed form without spaces, for example: Baumhaus
(eng. tree house). Like English. German allows arbitrarily long compounds, but
these are rare. {See also English compounds.) The longest official German word is
Rindflcischetiketticrungsuberwacluingsaufgahcnubertragungsgcsetz. There is even
a child's game played in kindergartens and primary schools where a child begins
the spelling of a word (which is not told) by naming the first letter. The next one
tells the next letter, the third one tells the third and so on. The game is over when
the a child can not think of another letter to be added to the word (see Ghost).

The original structure of a substantive in Germanic, as well as in other Indo-

European languages, presents itself as follows. A substantive consists of 3
elements: the root, a stem-building suffix, a case inflexion. The meaning of the
root is clear: it is the lexical meaning of the substantive. A case inflexion
expresses the relation between the thing denoted by the substantive and other thing,
or actions and also the category of number. The meaning of the stem-building
suffix is much more difficult to define. It would appear that originally stem-
building suffixes were a means of classifying substantives according to their
meanings. There is only one type of substantive in Gothic which is characterized
by a distinct semantic feature. These are substantives denoting relationship and
derived by means of the stem-forming suffix -r, e.g.: fadar( father ), brōþar
(brother), swistar (sister). For all other types it has not proved possible to discover
a common feature of meaning.
The verb system of Old Germanic languages consist of different elements.
The main masses of verbs are strong verbs, which derive their past tense and
second participle by means of gradation; and weak verbs, which derive these
forms by means of a suffix -d- (-t-). Besides these two large group, there are also
preterite-present verbs, with a peculiar system of forms, and a few irregular
verbs, which do not belong to any of the preceding groups. The weak verbs are a
specifically Germanic innovation, for the device used in building their principal
forms is not fount outside the Germanic group. They built the Past tense and
Principle II by inserting a special suffix between the root and the ending. The
suffix- PROTO-GERMANIC -ð- is referred to as the dental suffix, as [ð] is an
interdental fricative consonant. The use of the dental suffix is seen in the following
forms of weak verbs in O.G. languages:

Infinitive Past tense Part II MnE

domjan domida[ð] domiþs deem, deemed
kalla kallaða kallaðr call, called
macian macode macod make, made

As it is shown in the examples, the dental suffix [ð,Ө,d] is marker of the Past
and Participle II.
Verb inflection

Standard German verbs inflect into: - one of two conjugation classes, weak
and strong (like English). (Note: in fact there is a third class, called "gemischte
Verben", which can be either weak ("active meaning") or strong ("passive
meaning"). There are about 200 strong or irregular verbs.)

- three persons: 1st, 2nd, 3rd.

- two numbers: singular and plural

- three moods: Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative

 - two general verb: active and passive; the passive being composed and
dividable into static and dynamic.

- two non-composed tenses (Present, Preterite) and four composed tenses

(Perfect.Plusquamperfect, Future I, Future II)

- no distinction between grammatical aspects (in English, perfect and

progressive; in Polish between completed and incompleted form; in Turkish
between first-hand and second-hand information) There are also many ways to
expand, and sometimes radically change, the meaning of a base verb through
several prefixes. Examples: haften=to stick, verhaften=to imprison; kaufen=to
buy, verkaufen-to sell; horen=to hear, aufhoren=to cease. The word order is much
more flexible than in English. The word order can be changed for subtle changes of
a sentence's meaning. In normal positive sentences the verb always has position 2,
in questions it has position 1. Most German vocabulary is derived from the
Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, although there are
significant minorities of words derived from Latin. French, and most recently
English (which is known as Germish).
Self-control questions:
1. Explain why the names of following people are important in studies of the
Germanic languages: Pytheas, Julius Caesar, Pliny the Elder, Ulfilas
2. How does the mutual relation between classification of Germanic tribes
appear made by the 19th century linguists?
3. What centuries do the written records of the Gothic language antedate?
4. Is there any East Germanic language spoken nowadays?
5. What are the North Germanic languages?
6. What is the earliest name of the North Germanic languages and when did its
disintegration begin?
7. Where were the West Germanic languages spoken on the eve of the “great
migrations” of the West Germanic tribes?
8. Which group of tribes spoke English according to Pliny’s classification?
9. What is the origin of modern German?
10.Where and by whom is Yiddish spoken?

REFERENCES:

1. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
2. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
3. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
4. Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
5. Schmidt I. The Relationships of the Indo-European languages. 2002
 Lecture 10: THE MAIN TANDENCIES IN DEVELOPMENT OF ROMAN
AND GERMANIC LANGUAGES

1. Alphabets Germanic tribes

2. Vocabulary
Key words:gradual alteration, a general similarity in the speech, a close kinship
between English and German, common form, identity of the languages .

Germanic tribes used 3 (three) different alphabets for their writings. These
alphabets partly succeeded each other in time. The earliest of these was the runic
alphabet, each separate Letter being called Rune. Runes have a very peculiar look
for eyes accustomed to modern European alphabets. Next comes Ulfila's Gothic
alphabet (4th century). This is the alphabet of Ulfila's Gothic translation of the
Bible, a peculiar alphabet based on the Greek alphabet, with some admixture of
Latin and Runic Letters. In editions of the Gothic text a Latin transcription of the
Gothic alphabet is used. The latest alphabet to be used by Germanic tribes is the
Latin alphabet. It superseded both the Runic and Gothic alphabet when a new
technique of writing was introduced. The material now used for writing was either
parchment or papyrus. Introduction of the Latin alphabet accompanied the spread
of Christianity and of Latin language Christian religious texts. From ancient times
mankind was appealed by unknown writings: half-forgotten antique languages,
Egypt hieroglyphs, Indian inscriptions... The fate of runes was much happy - their
sense wasn't lost in the course of time, even when Latin alphabet became
dominating one in Europe. For instance, runes were used in calendars till the end
of the 18-th c. Modern linguists think that runes posses another kind of meaning,
which we cannot find in ideograms, hieroglyphs or in modem exotic alphabets -
this meaning exists in subconsciousness level.
Runes were the personification of the surrounding world, essence of outlook.
With the help of special links between runes a man could express nearly
everything, compiling them (so called combined runes). In different times runes
could change their meaning, so we can say this adjusting system created dozens of
meanings of one and the same symbol. (Linguists find confirmation of this theory
in the following example - every rune in different languages had separate and
original meaning, which didn't fully coincide with another one in the second
language. Like all others components of language, runes endured numerous
changes: in form, style of writing, system of sounds and Letters, which expressed
them. We can say that these alphabets took wide spreading not only among
Scandinavian and German tribes, but we can also trace its penetration in Celtic and
Slavonic languages. Now runes keep their main original meaning - in the
beginning they were the symbols of fortunetelling lore with sacred sense and
mystic signs (The general matter why they didn't get wide diffusion before AD).
Even the word "rune" corresponds as "secret" (compare old Celtic "run", middle
welsh "rown", modem German "raunen"). The last 1000 years in Iceland runes
have been used for divination. In Anglo-Saxon England the hours of king council
were called "runes”. The most important sources about runic history are ancient
texts of Scandinavian pagan religion - Old Edda by Brynolf Swesson and Lesser
Edda by Snorri Sturlusson. They were two missionaries who discovered these
manuscripts in the time of Christian expansion. Another documents containing the
information about runes origin are Northern king sagas "Red Leather" and
Icelandic kin chronicles. Tombstones, altars, pagan pillars called "runic stones"
played quite catholic role in scientific researches - usually they are found dappled
with miscellaneous writings (Gothland, Upland, Norway). The most famous is
Cilwer stone, which dates from the 5-th c. So we can find a lot of writings on
jewels and weapon, for barbarians believed things had to posses their own names
(breakteats).
German and Slavonic runic writing was the Letter system of peculiar look,
accounted by the writing technique on bone, wood and metal. Nowadays we have
the main runic alphabet, consisting of 24 signs, may be more, but another ones are
regarded as variants or combined runes. Letters of any language can have several
sources of origin, for a taste Greek language, which gave the birth to North Italian
writing, had a good many of meaning for every sign. This tradition was inherited
by Etruscan alphabet and later by runic one. However, Christian chronicles of 9-
12c, known as «songs», revealed information about rune names and their
meanings. Every rune in it conforms to one strophe, which begins with this rune
and its name. In its turn, the name begins with its sound. The whole system is
divided into 2 parts - futarks (arises from the first symbols - F, U, Th, A, R, K: Old
futark (runes of Old German origin - o.f.) and Late futark (modifications of o.f. in
Northumbrian, Frisian and Anglo-Saxon alphabets). 24 signs traditionally gradate
into 3 groups of 8 symbols called atts ("part of land" or "kin" compare Scot. “lairt”,
Ireland “aird”). The origin of futark remains the matter of severe debates between
historians, linguists and philologists. There are two main theories: 1) Runic writing
appeared on the basis of Latin alphabet; 2) cradles of these signs are in transalpine
and North Italian scripts. Scientists have a lot of historical facts, approving that
Etruscan merchants used this system. Probably they brought it to the North (6th c.
RC.).
However some researchers think that runes cropped up in German tribes
from ancient Rome Latin writing. Comparing 3 letter types we have: 10 runic
Letters in Etruscan language, which absolutely coincide each other; 5 coinciding
runic Letters and 8 resembling ones in Latin. Latin, Etruscan and some symbols
from Greek originate from Akhiram alphabet (lOc. RC). But the construction of
runic alphabet (RA) different from others - for example, order of the first Letters.
The main period of development is one, when occult signs, used in Alpine region
and in the North, became combine sole system. Many runic symbols were used as
icons, showing various things and animals. Some runologists suppose that even in
the most developed variant they are close to pictures: rune "Fehu" f symbolizes
cattle, Thurisaz q 1, - thorn, Wunjo w - weathercock, Algiz z - elk, Zin xxs-
lightning, Y r u - bow, Edhwaz m - horse.The top of development and complete
formation of RA system was in 1-2 c. AD.
The number of runes in alphabet varied in the course of time. 28 sings
appeared in the middle of the 6-th c. In Britain where German runes penetrated in
the 5-th c. with Anglo-Saxon invasion, Frisian futark was improved by the some
additions and changes (mostly combined runes) and numbered 29 units. In
Northumberland 33 rune system existed already, with the mixture of Celtic runes.
Whilst on the Continent of went through the number of other changes. In the
middle of the 7-th c. the tendency to simplification appeared - some runes changed
in inscription, some were lost. To the middle of the 10-th c. the number of runes
decreased to 16 units and late futark formed. It was purely writing system, which
wasn't used for fortune telling. It got wide spreading not only on the territory of
German Empire, but in the North too, for example in Denmark and Swiss. The
difference between them was in writing technology - Swiss ones were simpler,
with short branches. Apparently it can be explained that it gained everyday using.
This system, if not take notice of its disadvantages, was in circulation till 12-th c.
The next step in development of RA took place in the middle of the 12-th c. by
adding dots to 16 sign system (dotted alphabet). It was used along with Latin one
till the 16-th c. We can find its variants in Slavonic manuscripts. Ripped and
branchy RA weren't alike to dotted one. Combined (constrained) runes. They
attract attention by their unusual form - it is too difficult to regard it as ordinary
symbol. Their use is quite miscellaneous: in amulets, braketeats, and everywhere
when difficult magic formulas were necessary.
Runes are bind on the strength of common line. We cannot leave unnoticed
such important stage of RA development as Ulfila's Gothic alphabet. It has got
nothing in common with "gothic" variants of Romanticism period: The real Gothic
writing system was used by the Goths on Gothland Island and later on the territory
of Poland, Lithuania and even North Black Sea coast. In the 6-th c. gothic bishop
Ulfila invented parallel variant of gothic alphabet. Creating it, Ulfila took the range
of common Greek Letters and perfected some runic sings, which existed already,
with the aim to paint them with brush. During 5 following centuries it was used by
west Goths in Spain and in the South of France. But in 1018 Toledian counsel
decreed to prohibit all runic alphabets as vane and pagan ones. It is clear from
Letter names and their order that UA is younger than other RA. So we can trace
Greek and Latin influence in the system. For example, futark structure was
changed by adding 2 symbols to the first att. So UA contains 12 signs, which do
not have analogs in Old Gothic: Q, D, A, B, G, and E, X, K, L, N, P, and T. But,
knowing all these peculiarities, we still can't answer to the question, from where
runes came. So, a few scientists suppose that German and Slavonic RA had the
same roots and originated from a same proto-language, for Etruscan theory is
rather imperfect - Scandinavians couldn't borrow it, because Etruscan writings
were used too far away from the North and in quite small territory. The following
theory is closely connected with national migrations and mythology. One of the
legendary Scandinavian tribes - vanes or veneds - came to the North from the East,
where they set up Slavonic tribe - Vyatichi. We haven't got any historical
confirmations, that Slavonic people didn't have writing systems before Cyril and
Mefodius coming, so hypothetically we can believe that such system existed.
Moreover, archeological researches showed that there were some traces of
RA on the territory of ancient Russia. So we can say that when Slavonic tribes
divided into nonrelative kins, RA went through changes of different kind. In the
end of the 1st millennium BC veneds were vanished by Germanic barbarian hordes
and proto runic system spread rapidly on the territory from the Black sea to Gaul.
As it is follow from archeological discoveries RA can be found on the Slavonic
jewels dated from 10-th c. AD, but it is difficult to say if they were originally
Russian or Scandinavian ones - perhaps, runes on the jewelries were regarded as
the part of design and in was copied blindly.

VOCABULARY

Until recently it was believed that the Germanic languages had a large
proportion of words, which have no parallels in other groups of the IE family.
Recent research, however, has revealed numerous non-Germanic parallels for
words formerly regarded as specifically Germanic. It appears that Germanic has
inherited and preserved many IE features in lexis as well as at other levels. The
most ancient etymological layer in the Germanic vocabulary is made up of words
(or, more precisely, roots) shared by most IE languages. They refer to a number of
semantic spheres: natural phenomena, plants and animals, terms of kinship, verbs
denoting basic activities of man, some pronouns and numerals; in addition to roots,
the common IE element includes other components of words: word-building
affixes and grammatical inflections. Numerous examples of parallels belonging to
this layer were quoted above, to show the sound correspondences in Germanic and
non-Germanic languages. Words which occur in Germanic alone and have no
parallels outside the group constitute the specific features of the Germanic
languages; they appeared in PG or in later history of separate languages from
purely Germanic roots. Semantically, they also belong to basic spheres of life:
nature, sea, home life. Like the IE layer the specifically Germanic layer includes
not only roots but also affixes and word-building patterns. The examples in
illustrate Germanic words, whose roots have not been found outside the group, and
some word-building patterns which arose in Late PG.
Germanic has inherited and preserved many IE features in lexis as well as at
other levels. The most ancient etymological layer in the Germanic vocabulary is
made up of words roots shared by most IE languages, in addition to roots, the
common IE elements includes other components of words: word – building, affixes
and grammatical inflections. Word, which occur in Germanic alone and have no
parallels outside the group constitute the specific features of the Germanic
languages. They appeared in PROTO-GERMANIC or in later history of separate
languages from purely Germanic roots. Semantically, they also belong to basic
spheres of life: nature, sea, home, life. Like the I.E. layer the specifically Germanic
layer includes not only roots but also affixes and word-building patterns.
Following examples illustrate Germanic words, whose roots have not been
found outside the group, and some word-building pattern which arose in Late
PROTO-GERMANIC. Those are instances of transitions from compound words
into derived word; they show the development of new suffixes – from root-
morphemes – at the time when many old derivational stem-suffixes had lost their
productivity and ceased to be distinguished in the word structure. The new suffixes
made up for the loss of stem-suffixes.
OHG OE G MnE
hūs hūs haus house
trinkan drincan trinken drink
fiandscaft feondscipe fiendschaft hostility (c.f friend)

REFERENCES:

1. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
2. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
3. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
4. Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
5. Schmidt I. The Relationships of the Indo-European languages. 2002
 SELF-CONTROL ACTIVITIES
TESTS
1. Who was the first to recognize the relationship between the language now
called Germanic?
A) R. Rask
B) J. Grimm
C) K. Verner
D) A. Scaliger
2. Who proclaimed the principle that phonetic laws admit of no exceptions.
A) Traditionalist
B) Structuralism
C) Young grammarians
D) Rationalists
3. The work (Essay) which was supported to be the beginning of comparative
grammar belonged to :
A) J. Grimm
B) F. Bopp
C) H. Paul
D)B. Delbrucke
4. Who established close lies between Baltic and Slavic languages?
A) M.V. Lomonosov
B) A.K. Vostokov
C) V. Buslaev
D)F.F. Fortunatov
5. Who translated the Hititte cuneiforms found in Boghazkoy in Asia Minor?
A) F. De Saussure
B) A. Meillet
C) E. Benvenist
D) B. Hrozny
6. Who is the founder of glottochronology in linguistics?
A) M. Swadesh
B) F. De Saussure
C) A.V. Baudoin de Courtenay
D) N.Y. Marr
7. When did the occupation of France and the British Isles by Celts from
Central Europe take place?
A) about 1st century
B) about 500 c. BC
C) the 5th century BC
D) the 10th century BC
8. Who was the author of the book “Commentaries on the Gallic war”?
A) Pliny the Elder
B) J. Caesar
C) Strabo
D) Platon
9. Who was the author of the book “De situ moribus et populis Germania”?
A) Tacitus
B) Pliny the Elder
C) Strabo
D) Julius Caesar
10. Who was the author of the Gothic Translation of the Bible?
A) King Arthur
B) King Alfred
C) Ulfilas
D) Pliny the Elder
QUESTIONS AND TASKS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What can you say about the prehistory of the tribes or peoples who spoke Gothic
language?
2. Describe the borders of the linguistic space where the Gothic language was
used?
3. What are the main features of the phonetic structure of the Gothic language?
4. What are the essential features of the grammatical structure of the Gothic
language?
5. What main events in the social history of the peoples speaking the Gothic
language can you name?
6. What can you say about the earliest written records in Gothic language?
7. How are the linguistic data belonging to the earliest stages of the Gothic
language reconstructured?
8. What phonetic laws can you illustrate from the linguistic facts of the Gothic
language?
9. What can you say about the chronological limits of the periods in the history of
the Gothic language?
10. What can you say about the features of the periods in the history of the Gothic
language?
11. What are the main principles of the periodisation of the history of the Gothic
language?
12. Name the authors whose works made a great contribution to the development
of the literary norm of the Gothic language?
13. Give instances illustrating the processes of integration and differentiation in the
development of the Gothic language?
14. What can you say about the future of the Gothic language?
TESTS
This is a general quiz on Indo-European language families. I hope you find it fun
and informative!
Average score for this quiz is 6 / 10.
1. Two languages, A and B, are said to be mutually intelligible if a native speaker
of A can understand most of what a native speaker of B says, and vice versa, with
no special training outside of their native language. For instance, Spanish and
Portuguese are considered to be mutually intelligible, but Italian and German are
not. Which of these languages is mutually intelligible with English?
a) Frisian
b) Dutch
c) German
d) None of the above; there is no language that is mutually intelligible with
English
2. English is a member of the language family known as Germanic languages.
What is the closest linguistic relative to modern English?
a) German
b) Frisian
c) Danish
d) Dutch
3. Which of the Indo-European languages below is still being learned as a
native language in the 21st century? (That is, it is used for daily conversation, not
just studied and used on certain occasions.)
a) Gothic
b) Welsh
c) Old Slavonic
d) Latin
4. Romany, the language of the Rom people or Gypsies, is most closely related to
which of these modern languages?
a) Panjabi
 b) Romanian
c) Yiddish
d) Russian
5. Finnish is not an Indo-European language. True or False?
a) true
b) false
6. Hungarian is related most closely to which of the following languages?
a) Serbo-Coratian
b) Romanian
c) Yiddish
d) Russian
7. Of the following Indo-European language families, which of the following has
NO modern living descendant?
a) Hellenic
b) Anatolian
c) Albanian
d) Germanic
8. For the last three questions, I will give the name of a language group. Of the
choices given, pick the language that does NOT belong in the group.
Which of the following does NOT belong to the Germanic language group?
a) Czech
b) English
c) Icelandic
d) Norwegian
9. Which of the following does NOT belong to the Slavic language group?
a) Polish
b) Kurdish
c) Ukranian
d) Russian
 o Catalan
o Polish
o Latvian
o Czech

o Bulgarian
o Slovenian
o Romanian

TRUE OR FALSE
1. The Indo-European migrations took place from 1500 BC until 500 AD.
o True
o False
2. At that time they spread from Italy to India.
o True
o False
3. Their posited homeland was in Siberia.
o True
o False
4. The Indo-European language was spoken 5,000 years ago.
o True
o False
5. Sanskrit is one of the main branches of the Indo-European tree.
o True
o False
6. Balto-Slavic is one of the main branches of the Indo-European tree.
o True
o False
7. Indo-European is the biggest family of languages in the world.
o True
 o FalsE

TESTS
1. We're at about 4,000 BC, looking for the original speakers of Indo-European.
Now, we don't actually know where they were living, but what area would be the
best place to look? I know, I'm your tour guide, I ought to know, but we just don't.
Sorry!
a) Iberian Peninsula
b) Anatolian plateau
c) Eurasian steppes
d) Northern India
2. Do we, um, actually have any written record of Proto Indo-European?
a) yes
b) no
3. Are you wondering why all these Indo-Europeans sound like they're speaking,
well, Klingon? It's because the Indo-European language had a set of sounds that
were lost in some later languages. What is the name for this set of sounds?
a) Palatal stops
b) Sibilants
c) Labial stops
d) Laryngeals
4. Those Indo-Europeans sure had one swell language, but high culture they were
not. So, we're hitching up our chariot and riding south to Hattusa, the capital of the
Land of Hatti. In the 21st century, we would call it Turkey, but this is the 17th
century BC. King Hattusili shows us around his newly-built city and introduces us
to a number of professional scribes under his employment, all skilled at writing
cuneiform on clay tablets. Which language would this be?
a) Akkadian
b) Hittite
c) Sumerian
 d) Babylonian
5. Having had our fill of rituals, chants, and mythology, we head east through
Mesopotamia and across the Hindu Kush mountains. This necessitated ditching the
chariot, unfortunately. But the pack animals aren't so bad, right? We encounter,
well, more rituals, chants, and mythology. Here in northern India in the 13th
century BC, most of the people speak Vedic, an earlier form of what famous Indian
literary language?
a) Tamil
b) Hindi
c) Sanskrit
d) Urdu
6. Rather than repeat that rather arduous overland journey, we've taken a boat
through the Gulf of Aden, into the Red Sea, and across the Aegean. This is better
than climbing mountains, right? Oh. And why are you looking so, er, green all of a
sudden?
Well, now in the 13th century BC, we can admire the red-columned palaces of the
Mycenaean civilization. A short hop forward in time to the 5th century BC, we can
view the Parthenon, debate philosophy with Socrates, and listen to the plays of
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. What language would this be?
Your answer: __________________________________________________
(One word, five letters, starts with a G)
7. Well, we've arrived in Italy, but a tad too early for mainstream Latin and the
good ol' Forum Romanum. Italy was actually home to a number of Indo-European
languages closely related to Latin, at least until the Romans decided to conquer the
world. Which of these is NOT generally considered to be an Indo-European
language?
a) Oscan
b) South Picene
c) Umbrian
d) Etruscan
8. I'm really sorry the "navus" lost your "vestimenta," but you really should go buy
yourself a new "toga" in the "forum." I know, "scio," as your guide, I'm fully...
Look! Over there! It's the "imperator"! What language?
Your answer: __________________________________________________
(One word, five letters, starts with an L)
9. One Indo-European language was discovered relatively recently, and that's
Tocharian. It's now recognized to be two languages, which we uncreatively deem
Tocharian A and Tocharian B. Geographically, its location is something of a
surprise. In modern-day terms, where are we located now?
a) Vietnam
b) China
c) Greenland
d) West Africa
10. Listening to lays about Odin, Thor and his faithful hammer Mjolnir, and the
rest of those wonderful Norse gods and goddesses, you wonder: Is Old Norse a
Celtic language?
a) yes
b) no
11. We are making a stop, in India again, to honor the founder of our field. Sir
William Jones, a British lawyer working in India, discovered that Sanskrit bore a
strong resemblance to Greek and Latin. He made this discovery at about the same
time as what other major event in world history?
a) The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
b) The American Declaration of Independence
c) Gandhi's Salt March
d) Columbus' discovery of America
12. Now, even though a Grand Tour of Europe is really out of the scope of this
travel experience (We were going for a grand tour of the WORLD, right?), I
should note that three language families widely spoken in Europe are really part of
the Indo-European family of languages. Which of these is NOT one?
a) Slavic
b) Finno-Ugric
d) Romance
c) Germanic
13. Before we proceed to our next stop, I should note that there are some languages
that you would probably never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER think of as being
related to English in any way at all. Yet, these are Indo-European languages
indeed. As an exercise to twist your mind, which of the following languages is
NOT an Indo-European language?
a) Tajik
b) Tibetan
c) Farsi
d) Armenian
14. Now back in the 21st century, we travel to the country with what's considered
to be the most conservative Indo-European language. It still has seven noun cases,
and words are accented by pitch, not stress. Lounging in a "restoranas" in Vilnius,
in what language would we be struggling to order "pietus"?
a) Latvian
b) Estonian
c) Belorussian
d) Lithuanian
15. From Vilnius we jet over to the United States, or maybe Great Britain, for a
conference about Indo-European linguistics. All the world's best Indo-Europeanists
are here, and we can look forward to a lovely few days of talks and conversation.
But I should point out that the language spoken here is an Indo-European language.
What language would this be, spoken by over 300 million people worldwide?
Your answer: __________________________________________________
(One word, starts with an E...The obvious one.)
 BRAIN STORM

Why?
Causes and Factors

 Intercultural (language contact)

What happens when different languages come into contact?

 System –based
How is present day word –order related to changes of pronunciation and
subsequent changes of inflection?

 Social (class and language)

What was the influence of social changes on English?

 Political
What political decisions have influenced the shape of present day English?

 Geographical
How do geographical factors influence the development of language?

 Cognitive
To what extent did English change due to people interpreted certain words
and constructions?

 Emotional/ Attitudinal
How was English influenced by views of proper English?

ANSWER THE QUESTIONS:

1.What is the oldest Germanic language?

2.What language did the Germanic tribes speak?

3.Why is it called Germanic language?

4.How similar are Germanic languages?

 GLOSSARY

1. Gradual – moving or changing in small amounts; happening in a slow way

over a long period of time
2. Alteration – the act, process, or result of changing or altering something
3. Kinship – a feeling of being close or connected to other people
4. Identity – the qualities, beliefs, etc., that make a particular person or group
different from others
5. Dialect – a form of a language that is spoken in a particular area and that
uses some of its own words, grammar and pronunciation
6. Designate – to be used as a name for (someone or something)
7. Passage – a long, narrow space that connects one place to another
8. Restricted – having definite rules about what or who is allowed and not
allowed
9. Merely – used to say that something small is important or has a big effect or
influence
10. Sufficient – having or proving as much as is needed
11. Hypothesis – an idea or theory that is not proven but that leads to further
study or discussion
12. Correspondence – the activity of writing letters or e-mails to someone
13. Regularity – the quality or state of being regular
14. Runic – any of the characters in the alphabets that were used in ancient times
by people of Northern Europe
15. Inscription – words that are written on or cut into a surface
16. Tenacious – not easily stopped or pulled apart: firm or strong
17. Conquest – the act of taking control of a country, city, etc., through the use
of force
18. Preserve – to keep (something) in its original state or in good condition
19. Distinctive – having a quality or characteristic that makes a person or thing
different from others: different in a way that is easy to notice
20. Fricative – the sound made by forcing air out of your mouth through a
narrow opening that is made using the lips, teeth, or tongue
21. Genealogy – the history of a particular family showing how the different
members of the family are related to each other
22. Classification – the act or process of putting people or things into groups
based on ways that they are alike
23. Teutonic – Germanic; relating to ancient people who lived in northern
Europe relating to Germany, Germans, or the German language
24. Comparative - seeming to be something when compared with others
25. Branch – to divide into smaller parts: to separate into branches
26. Basin – the amount contained in a basin
27. Mainland – a large area of land that forms a country or a continent and that
does not include islands
28. Colonization – an act or instance of colonizing
29. Dispersion –the act of dispersing (to spread apart)
30. Establish – to cause to be widely known and accepted
31. Foundation – something that provides support for something
32. Postulate – to suggest (something, such as an idea or theory) especially in
order to start a discussion
33. Diffusion – the state of being spread out
34. Subsequent – happening or coming after something else
35. Accentuation – to make (something) more noticeable
36. Movable – able to be moved; happening on a different date each year
37. Stress – to pronounce (a syllable or word) in a louder or more forceful way
than other syllables or words
38. Accent – to say (part of a word) with greater stress or force
39. Qualitative – of or relating to how good something is
40. Quantitative – of or relating to how much there is of something
41. Dependent – decided or controlled by something else
42. alter(n)ation – the act, process, or result of changing or altering something
43. Testimony – something that someone says especially in a court of law while
formally promising to tell the truth; proof of evidence that something exists
or is true
44. Capitalist – a person who has a lot of money, property, etc., and who uses
those things to produce more money
45. Unification – the act, process, or result of unifying
46. Statesman – a usually wise, skilled, and respected government leader
47. Extreme – very great in degree
48. Departure – the act or an instance of departing
49. Barbarian – of or relating to a land, culture, or people alien and usually
believed to be inferior to another land, culture, or people
50. Constitute – to make up or form something
51. Remarkable – unusual or surprising: likely to be noticed
52. Distinctive – having a quality or characteristic that makes a person or thing
different from others: different in a way that is easy to notice
53. Brotherly – shoving or suggesting the love and closeness of a brother
54. Fraternal – of or relating to brothers
55. Decimals – mathematics: based on the number 10
56. Acre – a measure of land area in the US and Britain that equals 4,840 square
yards (about 4,047 square meters)
57. Cordial – politely pleasant and friendly
58. Synthetic – made by combining different substances: not natural
59. Structure – the way that something is built, arranged, or organized
60. Inflection - a change in the form of a word that occurs when it has a
particular use
61. Interchange – the act of sharing or exchanging things
62. Suppletion – the occurrence of phonemically unrelated allomorphs of the
same morpheme (as went as the past tense of go or better as the comparative
form of good)
63. Root – something that is an origin or source (as of condition or quality)
64. Stem – a line of ancestry: stock; especially: fundamental line from which
others have arisen
65. Gradual – moving or changing in small amounts; happening in a slow way
over a long period of time
66. Alteration – the act, process, or result of changing or altering something
67. Kinship – a feeling of being close or connected to other people
68. Identity – the qualities, beliefs, etc., that make a particular person or group
different from others
69. Dialect – a form of a language that is spoken in a particular area and that
uses some of its own words, grammar and pronunciation
70. Designate – to be used as a name for (someone or something)
71. Passage – a long, narrow space that connects one place to another
72. Restricted – having definite rules about what or who is allowed and not
allowed
73. Merely – used to say that something small is important or has a big effect or
influence
74. Sufficient – having or proving as much as is needed
75. Hypothesis – an idea or theory that is not proven but that leads to further
study or discussion
76. Correspondence – the activity of writing letters or e-mails to someone
77. Regularity – the quality or state of being regular
78. Runic – any of the characters in the alphabets that were used in ancient times
by people of Northern Europe
79. Inscription – words that are written on or cut into a surface
80. Tenacious – not easily stopped or pulled apart: firm or strong
81. Conquest – the act of taking control of a country, city, etc., through the use
of force
82. Preserve – to keep (something) in its original state or in good condition
83. Distinctive – having a quality or characteristic that makes a person or thing
different from others: different in a way that is easy to notice
84. Fricative – the sound made by forcing air out of your mouth through a
narrow opening that is made using the lips, teeth, or tongue
85. Genealogy – the history of a particular family showing how the different
members of the family are related to each other
86. Classification – the act or process of putting people or things into groups
based on ways that they are alike
87. Teutonic – Germanic; relating to ancient people who lived in northern
Europe relating to Germany, Germans, or the German language
88. Comparative - seeming to be something when compared with others
89. Branch – to divide into smaller parts: to separate into branches
90. Basin – the amount contained in a basin
91. Mainland – a large area of land that forms a country or a continent and that
does not include islands
92. Genealogy – the history of a particular family showing how the different
members of the family are related to each other
93. Classification – the act or process of putting people or things into groups
based on ways that they are alike
94. Teutonic – Germanic; relating to ancient people who lived in northern
Europe relating to Germany, Germans, or the German language
95. Comparative - seeming to be something when compared with others
96. Branch – to divide into smaller parts: to separate into branches
97. Basin – the amount contained in a basin
98. Mainland – a large area of land that forms a country or a continent and that
does not include islands
99. Capitalist – a person who has a lot of money, property, etc., and who uses
those things to produce more money
100. Unification – the act, process, or result of unifying
101. Statesman – a usually wise, skilled, and respected government leader
102. Extreme – very great in degree
103. Departure – the act or an instance of departing
104. Barbarian – of or relating to a land, culture, or people alien and usually
believed to be inferior to another land, culture, or people
105. Synthetic – made by combining different substances: not natural
106. Structure – the way that something is built, arranged, or organized
107. Inflection - a change in the form of a word that occurs when it has a
particular use
108. Interchange – the act of sharing or exchanging things
109. Suppletion – the occurrence of phonemically unrelated allomorphs of the
same morpheme (as went as the past tense of go or better as the comparative
form of good)
110. Root – something that is an origin or source (as of condition or quality)
111. Stem – a line of ancestry: stock; especially: fundamental line from which
others have arisen
 REFERENCES:

1. Арсеньева В.С. и др. Введение в германскую филологию. -М.: Изд.

ОСИ, 1982.
2. Гухман М.М. Готский язык. –М., 1957.
3. Прокош Р. Сравнительная грамматика германских языков. –М.,1957.
4. Хлебникова О.С. Введение в английскую филологию. -М.: ВШ,1992.
5. Чемоданов Н.С. Введение в германскую филологию. –М.: ВШ, 1994.
6. Campbell. Old English Grammar. Oxford. 2001.
7. Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004.
8. Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2005.
9. Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books,
New York, 2004.
10.Nielsen H.F. The Germanic languages: Origins and early dialectal
interrelations. University of Alabama Press. Tuscaloosa. AL., 1989.
11.Schmidt I. The Relationships of the Indo-European languages. 2002