The changes in the development of the English

Germanic languages, their classification and main features

Historically, all the Germanic languages originated from one ancestor language. It is called Proto-Germanic. It developed from P-I-E spoken in pre-historic times. Speaking about the date. Archeological findings provide data that I-E tribes came to Europe in 3000-2500 B.C. (Northern part of Europe). Before that time the coasts of the Baltic and the North Seas were inhabited by a different group. I-E newcomers mixed with this group and formed the tribes that later became known as Germanic tribes. The Germanic group of languages developed its specific trades during the first millennium B.C. At about this time the Germanic tribes separated from other west I-E tribes. In the course of many centuries radical developments occurred in the P-I-E spoken by those I-E tribes who lived in Denmark and origins there. The result of these developments was that P-G became a separate language between the 15^th - 10^th centuries B.C. P-G was distinctive in many of its sounds, inflections, stress patterns and vocabulary. The ancient Germans moved further than other tribes and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in the region of the Elbe. Southern Scandinavia including Jutland peninsula is the probable homeland of P-G. It was only a spoken language. P-G was most probably spoken just before the beginning of the Christian era. The forms of P-G can only be reconstructed. This was done in the 19^th century by methods of comparative linguistics. The Germans didn't lose touch with other I-E languages. They migrated and these migrations caused new contacts. This was reflected in the speech. The Germanic tribes came into contact with East European tribes, and the languages later formed the Baltic and Slavonic groups. The Germanic tribes also had contacts with Italian tribes that lived in southern Europe. Thus, Latin language influenced the language of Germanic tribes. These contacts found reflections in the borrowings into the languages of these nations. Most important are the borrowings into the Finnish language in the beginning of our era. The borrowings were well preserved in the Finnish language. They had the ancient type of morphological structure that can hardly be found in the forms of the verbs in the earliest documents written in Germanic languages. Suffixes and inflections are used in their full forms that were lost by the time the Germans had their first written documents. By the third and the 4^th centuries suffixes and inflections had undergone the process of reduction. Modern Germanic languages

Genetically, English belongs to the Germanic or Teutonic group of languages, which is one of the twelve groups of the I-E linguistic family. 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 former British colonies;

German - in the Germany, Austria, Luxemburg, part of Switzerland; Netherlandish - in the Netherlands and Belgium (known also as Dutch and Flemish respectively); Afrikaans - 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 Germany; Faroese - in the Faroe Islands; Yiddish - in different countries. Lists of Germanic languages given in 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; Br E and Am E are sometimes regarded as two independent languages. All the Germanic languages are related through their common origin and joint development at the early stages of history.

Main changes in the English vocalic System

Changes of stressed vowels in Early Old English

The development of vowels in Early OE consisted of the modification of separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire sets of vowels. The change begins with growing variation in pronunciation, which manifests itself in the appearance of numerous allophones: after the stage of increased variation, some allophones prevail over the others and a replacement takes place. It may result in the splitting of phonemes and their numerical growth, which fills in the “empty boxes” of the system or introduces new distinctive features. It may also lead to the merging of old phonemes, as their new prevailing allophones can fall together.

Independent changes. Development of monophthongs

The PG short [a] and the long [a:], which had arisen in West and North Germanic, underwent similar alterations in Early OE: they were fronted, and in the process of fronting, they split into several sounds. The principal regular direction of the change - [a] > [ж] and [a:] > [ж:] - is often referred to as the fronting or palatalisation of [a, a:]. The other directions can be interpreted as positional deviations or restrictions to this trend: short [a] could change to [o] or [в] and long [a:] became [o:] before a nasal; the preservation of the short [a] was caused by a back vowel in the next syllable.

Development of diphthongs

The PG diphthongs - [ei, ai, iu, eu, au] - underwent regular independent changes in Early OE; they took place in all phonetic conditions irrespective of environment. The diphthongs with the i-glide were monophthongised into [i:] and [a:], respectively; the diphthongs in -u were reflected as long diphthongs [io:], [eo:] and [ea:].

Assimilative vowel changes: Breaking and Diphthongization

The tendency to assimilative vowel change, characteristic of later PG and of the OG languages, accounts for many modifications of vowels in Early OE. Under the influence of succeeding and preceding consonants some Early OE monophthongs developed into diphthongs. If a front vowel stood before a velar consonant there developed a short glide between them, as the organs of speech prepared themselves for the transition from one sound to the other. The glide, together with the original monophthong formed a diphthong. The front vowels [i], [e] and the newly developed [ж], changed into diphthongs with a back glide when they stood before [h], before long (doubled) [ll] or [l] plus another consonant, and before [r] plus other consonants, e.g.: [e] > [eo] in OE deorc, NE dark. The change is known as breaking or fracture. Breaking produced a new set of vowels in OE - the short diphthongs [ea] and [eo]; they could enter the system as counterparts of the long [ea:], [eo:], which had developed from PG prototypes. Breaking was unevenly spread among the OE dialects: it was more characteristic of West Saxon than of the Anglian dialects. Diphthongisation of vowels could also be caused by preceding consonants: a glide arose after palatal consonants as a sort of transition to the succeeding vowel. After the palatal consonants [k'], [sk'] and [j] short and long [e] and [ж] turned into diphthongs with a more front close vowel as their first element, e.g. OE scжmu > sceamu (NE shame). In the resulting diphthong the initial [i] or [e] must have been unstressed but later the stress shifted to the first element, which turned into the nucleus of the diphthong, to conform with the structure of OE diphthongs. This process is known as “diphthongisation after palatal consonants”.

Palatal mutation

Mutation is the change of one vowel to another through the influence of a vowel in the succeeding syllable. The most important series of vowel mutations, shared in varying degrees by all OE languages (except Gothic), is known as “i-Umlaut” or “palatal mutation”. Palatal mutation is the fronting and raising of vowels through the influence of [i] or [j] in the immediately following syllable. The vowel was fronted and made narrower so as to approach the articulation of [i]. Due to the reduction of final syllables the conditions which caused palatal mutation, that is [i] or [j], had disappeared in most words by the age of writing; these sounds were weakened to [e] or were altogether lost. The labialized front vowels [y] and [y:] arose through palatal mutation from [u] and [u:], respectively, and turned into new phonemes, when the conditions that caused them had disappeared (cf. mыs and mўs). The diphthongs [ie, ie:] were largely due to palatal mutation and became phonemic in the same way, though soon they were confused with [y, y:]. Palatal mutation led to the growth of new vowel interchanges and to the increased variability of the root-morphemes: owing to palatal mutation many related words and grammatical forms acquired new root-vowel interchanges. We find variants of morphemes with an interchange of root-vowels in the grammatical forms mыs, mўs (NE mouse, mice), bфc, bзc (NE book, books), since the plural was originally built by adding -iz. (Traces of palatal mutation are preserved in many modern words and forms, e.g. mouse - mice, foot - feet, blood - bleed; despite later phonetic changes, the original cause of the inner change is i-umlaut).

Quantitative vowel changes in Early ME

In Later OE and in Early ME vowel length began to depend on phonetic conditions. The earliest of positional quantitative changes was the readjustment of quantity before some consonant clusters:

1) Short vowels were lengthened before two consonants - a sonorant and a plosive; consequently, all vowels occurring in this position remained or became long, e.g. OE wild - ME wild [wi:ld] - NE wild.

2) All other groups of two or more consonants produced the reverse effect: they made the preceding long vowels short, and henceforth all vowels in this position became or remained short, e.g. OE cзpte > ME kepte [ґkept?] - NE kept.

3) Short vowels became long in open syllables, e.g. OE nama > ME name [na:m?] - NE name. In spite of some restrictions no lengthening occurred in polysyllabic words and before some suffixes, OE bodiз > ME body [ґbodi] - NE body.

Borrowings from other languages as a diachronic process in the evolution of the English vocabulary

The OE vocabulary was almost purely Germanic; except for a small number of borrowings, it consisted of native words inherited from PG or formed from native roots and affixes. Native words

Native OE words can be subdivided into a number of etymological layers from different historical periods. The three main layers in the native OE words are: a) common IE words; b) common Germanic words; c) specifically OE words. Words belonging to the common IE layer constitute the oldest part of the OE vocabulary. Among these words we find names of some natural phenomena, plants and animals, agricultural terms, names of parts of the human body, terms of kinship, etc.; this layer includes personal and demonstrative pronouns and most numerals. Verbs belonging to this layer denote the basic activities of man; adjectives indicate the most essential qualities. The common Germanic layer includes words which are shared by most Germanic languages, but do not occur outside the group. Being specifically Germanic, these words constitute an important distinctive mark of the Germanic languages at the lexical level. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of common IE words. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with the sea and everyday life.

The third etymological layer of native words can be defined as specifically OE, that is words which do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages. These words are few, if we include here only the words whose roots have not been found outside English: OE clipian `call', OE brid (NE bird) and several others. However, they are far more numerous if we include in this layer OE compounds and derived words formed from Germanic roots in England, e.g. OE wоfman or wimman (NE woman) consists of two roots which occurred as separate words in other OG languages, but formed a compound only in OE.

Foreign elements in the OE vocabulary

Although borrowed words constituted only a small portion of the OE vocabulary - all in all about six hundred words, - they are of great interest for linguistic and historical study. OE borrowings come from two sources: Celtic and Latin.

Borrowings from Celtic

There are very few Celtic loan-words in the OE vocabulary, for there must have been little intermixture between the Germanic settlers and the Celtic in Britain. Though in some parts of the island the Celts population was not exterminated during the WG invasion, linguistic evidence of Celtic influence is meager. Abundant borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names. The OE kingdoms Kent, Deira and Bernicia derive their names from the names of Celtic tribes. The name of York, the Downs and perhaps London have been traced to Celtic sources. Various Celtic designations of `river' and `water' were understood by the Germanic invaders as proper names: Ouse, Esk, Exe, Avon; Thames, Stour, Dover also come from Celtic. Many place-names with Celtic elements are hybrids; the Celtic component, combined with a Latin or a Germanic component, makes a compound place-name, e.g.: Celtic plus Latin: Man-chester, Win-chester, Lan-caster; Celtic plus Germanic: York-shire, Corn-wall, Devon-shire, Canter-bury.

Latin influence on the OE vocabulary

Latin words entered the English language at different stages of OE history. Chronologically they can be devided into several layers.

The earliest layer comprises words which the WG tribes brought from the continent when they came to settle in Britain. Contact with the Roman civilization began a long time before the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Early OE borrowings from Latin indicate the new things and concepts which the Teutons had learnt from the Romans. They pertain to war, trade, agriculture, building and home life. Among the Latin loan-words adopted in Britain were some place-names made of Latin and Germanic components, e.g. Portsmouth, Greenport, Greenwich. The next period of Latin influence on the OE vocabulary began with the introduction of Christianity in the late 6^th c. and lasted to the end of OE. Numerous Latin words which found their way into the English language during these five hundred years clearly fall into two main groups: 1) words pertaining to religion

2) words connected with learning.

The Latin impact on the OE vocabulary was not restricted to borrowing of words. There were also other aspects of influence. The most important of them is the appearance of the so-called “translation-loans” - words and phrases created on the pattern of Latin words as their literal translations. The earliest instances of translation-loans are names of the days of the week found not only in OE but also in other Old Germanic languages. OE Mфnan-dїз (Monday) `day of the moon', L Lunae dies.

Main changes in the development of the English Pronoun

OE pronouns fell under the same main classes as modern pronouns: personal, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite. As for the other groups - relative, possessive and reflexive - they were as yet not fully developed and were not always distinctly separated from the four main classes. Personal pronouns In OE, while nouns consistently distinguished between four cases, personal pronouns began to lose some of their case distinctions: the forms of the Dat. case of the pronouns of the 1^st and 2^nd p. were frequently used instead of the Acc. It is important to note that the Gen. case of personal pronouns had two main applications: like other oblique cases of noun-pronouns it could be an object, but far more frequently it was used as an attribute or a noun determiner, like a possessive pronoun, e.g. sunu mоn.

Demonstrative pronouns There were two demonstrative pronouns in OE: the prototype of NE that, which distinguished three genders in the sg. And had one form for all the genders in the pl. and the prototype of this. They were declined like adjectives according to a five-case system: Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc., and Instr. Demonstrative pronouns were frequently used as noun determiners and through agreement with the noun indicated its number, gender and case.

Other classes of pronouns

Interrogative pronouns - hwв, Masc. and Fem., and hwжt, Neut., - had a four-case paradigm (NE who, what). The Instr. case of hwжt was used as a separate interrogative word hwў (NE why). Some interrogative pronouns were used as adjective pronouns, e.g. hwelc.

Indefinite pronouns were a numerous class embracing several simple pronouns and a large number of compounds: вn and its derivative ?niз (NE one, any); nвn, made up of вn and the negative particle ne (NE none); nвnюinз, made up of the preceding and the noun юinз (NE nothing).

Major changes in the development of the Noun

Grammatical categories. The use of cases

The OE noun had two grammatical categories: number and case. Also, nouns distinguished three genders, but gender was not a grammatical category; it was merely a classifying feature accounting for the division of nouns into morphological classes. The category of number consisted of two members: singular and plural. The noun had four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative.

The Nom. can be defined as the case of the active agent, for it was the case of the subject mainly used with verbs denoting activity; the Nom. could also indicate the subject characterized by a certain quality or state; could serve as a predicative and as the case of address.

The Gen. case was primarily the case of nouns and pronouns serving as attributes to other nouns. The meanings of the Gen. case were very complex and can only be grouped under the headings “Subjective” and “Objective” Gen. Subjective Gen. is associated with the possessive meaning and the meaning of origin. Objective Gen. is associated with what is termed “partitive meaning” as in sum hund scipa `a hundred of ships'.

Dat. was the chief case used with prepositions, e.g. on morзenne `in the morning'

The Acc. case was the form that indicated a relationship to a verb. Being the direct object it denoted the recipient of an action, the result of the action and other meanings.

Morphological classification of nouns. Declensions

Historically, the OE system of declensions was based on a number of distinctions: the stem-suffix, the gender of nouns, the phonetic structure of the word, phonetic changes in the final syllables. In the first place, the morphological classification of OE nouns rested upon the most ancient IE grouping of nouns according to the stem-suffixes. Stem-suffixes could consist of vowels (vocalic stems, e.g. a-stems, i- stems), of consonants (consonantal stems, e.g. n-stems), of sound sequences, e.g. -ja-stems, -nd-stems. Some groups of nouns had no stem-forming suffix or had a “zero-suffix”; they are usually termed “root-stems” and are grouped together with consonantal stems, as their roots ended in consonants, e.g. OE man, bфc (NE man, book). Another reason which accounts for the division of nouns into numerous declensions is their grouping according to gender. OE nouns distinguished three genders: Masc., Fem. and Neut. Sometimes a derivational suffix referred a noun to a certain gender and placed it into a certain semantic group, e.g. abstract nouns built with the help of the suffix -юu were Fem. - OE lenзюu (NE length), nomina agentis with the suffix -ere were Masc. - OE fiscere (NE fisher `learned man'). The division into genders was in a certain way connected with the division into stems, though there was no direct correspondence between them: some stems were represented by nouns of one particular gender, e.g. ф-stems were always Fem., others embraced nouns of two or three genders. Other reasons accounting for the division into declensions were structural and phonetic: monosyllabic nouns had certain peculiarities as compared to polysyllabic; monosyllables with a long root-syllable differed in some forms from nouns with a short syllable. The majority of OE nouns belonged to the a-stems, ф-stems and n-stems.

The OE Gender, being a classifying feature, disappeared together with other distinctive features of the noun declensions. Division into genders played a certain role in the decay of the OE declension system: in Late OE and Early ME nouns were grouped into classes or types of declension according to gender instead of stems. In the 11^th and 12^th c. the gender of nouns was deprived of its main formal support - the weakened and leveled endings of adjectives and adjective pronouns ceased to indicate gender. Semantically gender was associated with the differentiation of sex and therefore the formal grouping into genders was smoothly and naturally superseded by a semantic division into inanimate nouns, with a further subdivision of the latter into males and females.

The grammatical category of Case was preserved but underwent profound changes.

Main changes in the development of the English verb system

Grammatical categories of the Finite Verb. The verb-predicate agreed with the subject of the sentence in two grammatical categories: number and person. Its specifically verbal categories were mood and tense. Finite forms regularly distinguished between two numbers: sg and pl. The category of Person was made up of three forms: th 1^st, the 2^nd and the 3^rd. The category of Mood was constituted by the Indicative, Imperative and Subjunctive. The category of Tense in OE consisted of two categorical forms, Present and Past. The use of Subj. forms conveyed a very general meaning of unreality or supposition. In addition to its use in conditional sentences and other volitional, conjectural and hypothetical contexts Subj. was common in other types of construction: in clauses of time, clauses of result and in clauses presenting reported speech. The meanings of the tense forms were also very general, as compared with later ages and with present-day English. The forms of the Present tense were used to indicate present and future actions. The Past tense was used in a most general sense to indicate various events in the past. In addition to Mood and Tense we must mention Aspect and Voice.

Until recently it was believed that in OE the category of aspect was expressed by the regular contrast of verbs with and without the prefix зe-; verbs with the prefix had a perfective meaning while the same verbs without the prefix indicated a non-completed action, e.g. feohtan - зefeohtan `fight' - `gain by fighting'. In some recent explorations, however, it has been shown that the prefix зe- in OE can hardly be regarded as a marker of aspect, it could change the aspective meaning of the verb by making it perfective, but it could also change its lexical meaning, e.g. beran - зeberan `carry' - `bear a child'. It follows that the prefix зe- should rather be regarded as an element of word-building, a derivational prefix of vague general meaning, though its ties with certain shades of aspective meaning are obvious. It is important to note that in OE texts there were also other means of expressing aspective meanings: the Past or Present Participle. The phrases with Participle I were used to describe a prolonged state or action, the phrases with Participle II indicated a state resulting from a previous, completed action. The category of voice in OE is another debatable issue. The passive meaning was frequently indicated with the help of Participle II of transitive verbs used as predicatives with the verbs beфn `be' and weorрan `become'.

Grammatical categories of the Verbals.

In OE there were two non-finite forms of the verb: the Infinitive and the Participle. The Infinitive had no verbal grammatical categories. Being a verbal noun by origin, it had a sort of reduced case-system: two forms which roughly corresponded to the Nom. and the Dat. cases of nouns -beran - uninflected Infinitive (“Nom.” case) tф berenne or tф beranne - inflected Infinitive (“Dat.” case). Like the Dat. case of nouns the inflected Infinitive with the preposition tф could be used to indicate the direction or purpose of an action. The uninflected Infinitive was used in verb phrases with modal verbs or other verbs of incomplete predication. The Participle was a kind of verbal adjective which was characterized not only by nominal but also by certain verbal features. Participle I (Present Participle) was opposed to Participle II (Past Participle) through voice and tense distinctions: it was active and expressed present or simultaneous processes and qualities, while Participle II expressed states and qualities resulting from past action and was contrasted to Participle I as passive to active, if the verb was transitive. Participle II of intransitive verbs had an active meaning; it indicated a past action and was opposed to Participle I only through tense. Participles were employed predicatively and attributively like adjectives and shared their grammatical categories: they were declined as weak and strong and agreed with nouns in number, gender and case. The verbal system in Old English (morphological classification) The majority of OE verbs fell into two great divisions: the strong verbs and the weak verbs. Besides these two main groups there were a few verbs which could be put together as “minor” groups. The main difference between the strong and weak verbs lay in the means of forming the principal parts, or “stems” of the verb. The strong verbs formed their stems by means of ablaut and by adding certain suffixes; in some verbs ablaut was accompanied by consonant interchanges. The strong verbs had four stems, as they distinguished two stems in the Past Tense - one for the 1^st and 3^rd p. sg Ind. Mood, the other - for the other Past tense forms, Ind. and Subj. the weak verbs derived their Past tense stem and the stem of Participle II from the Present tense stem with the help of the dental suffix -d- or -t-; normally they did not interchange their root vowel, but in some verbs suffixation was accompanied by a vowel interchange. Minor groups of verbs differed from the weak and strong verbs. Some of them combined certain features of the strong and weak verbs in a peculiar way (“preterite-present” verbs); others were suppletive or altogether anomalous.

Strong Verbs The strong verbs in OE are usually divided into seven classes. Classes from 1 to 6 use vowel gradation which goes back to the IE ablaut-series modified in different phonetic conditions in accordance with PG and Early OE sound changes. Class 7 includes reduplicating verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of repeating the root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of root-vowel interchange.

The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class: -an for the Infinitive, no ending in the Past sg stem, -on in the form of Past pl, -en for Participle II.

Weak Verbs

The number of weak verbs in OE by far exceeded that of strong verbs.

The verbs of Class I usually were i-stems, originally contained the element [-i/-j] between the root and the endings. The verbs of Class II were built with the help of the stem-suffix -ф, or -фj and are known as ф-stems. Class III was made up of a few survivals of the PG third and fourth classes of weak verbs, mostly -?j-stems.

Minor groups of Verbs

The most important group of these verbs were the so-called “preterite-presents” or “past-present” verbs. Originally the Present tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new Past Tense forms built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles and Infinitives. In OE there were twelve preterite-present verbs. Six of them have survived in Mod E: OE вз; cunnan; cann; dear(r), sculan, sceal; maзan, mжз; mфt (NE owe, ought; can; dare; shall; may; must). Most preterite-presents did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive which followed the preterite-present. In other words they were used like modal verbs, and eventually developed into modern modal verbs.