3. Chief characteristics of the Germanic languages

The barbarian tribes — Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Franks, Frisians, Teutons, Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Scandinavians — lived on the fringes of the Roman Empire. All these spoke Germanic languages, which had distinctive characteristics of structure and pronunciation which are reflected in its descendants.

3.1. Phonetics

One of the most important common features of all Germanic languages is its strong dynamic stress falling on the first root syllable. The fixed stress emphasised the syllable bearing the most important semantic element and to a certain degree later contributed to the reduction of unstressed syllables, changing the grammatical system of the languages.

The most important feature of the system of Germanic vowels is the so-called Ablaut, or gradation, which is a spontaneous, positionally independent alteration of vowels inhabited by the Germanic languages from the Common Indo-European period, This ancient phenomenon consisted in alteration of vowels in the root, suffix or ending depending on the grammatical form or meaning of the word.

There are two types of Ablaut: quantitative and qualitative.

The qualitative Ablaut is the alteration of different vowels, mainly the vowels [e] / [a] or [e] / [o]

Old Icelandic bera (to give birth) — barn (baby) Old High German stelan (to steal) — stal (stole)

Quantitative Ablaut means the change in length of qualitatively one and the same vowel: normal, lengthened and reduced. A classic example of the Indo- European Ablaut is the declension of the Greek word "pater" (father): [e:] [e] [-]

pater pater patros

(nominative case, (vocative case, (genitive case,

lengthened stage) normal stage) reduced stage)

Ablaut in Germanic languages is a further development of Indo-European

alterations. Here we often find cases with both the quantitative and qualitative

ablaut. It should be also mentioned that in the zero stage before sonorants an extra-

; short vowel [u] was added: •

quantitative ablaut

Goth¹ qiman (to come) — qums (the arrival)

qualitative ablaut

OHG stelan (to steal) — stal (stole) quantitative-^•qualitative ablaut OE findan (to find) — fand (found, — fundan (found,past tense) past part.)

Ablaut as a kind of an internal flexion functioned in Old Germanic languages both in form- and word-building, but it was the most extensive and systematic in the conjugation of strong verbs.

We shall use the following abbreviations for the names of the languages: Gk-Greek" Old - Old Icelandic

Goth - Gothic OSc - Old Scandinavian

Lat - Latin OSx - Old Saxon

OE - Old English Rus - Russian .

OHG - Old High German Snsk - Sanskrit

Another phenomenon common for all Germanic languages was the tendency of phonetic assimilation of the root vowel to the vowel of the ending, the so-called Umlaut, or mutation. There were several types of mutation, but the most important one was palatal mutation, or i-Umlaut, when under the influence of the sounds [i] 9r [j] in the suffix or ending the root vowels became more front and more closed.

This process must have taken place in the 5^th —6^th centuries and can be illustrated by comparing words from the language of the Gothic bible (4^th century) showing no palatal mutation with corresponding words in other Germanic languages of a later period:

Goth harjis , OE here (army); Goth domjan OE deman (deem); Goth kuni OE cynn (kin);

Traces of this tendency can be seen both in word-building and form-building as a kind of an internal flexion: OHG ,gast (guest) — gesti (guests) man. (man) — mennisco (human)

Speaking about Germanic consonans, we should first of all speak of the correspondence between Indo-European and Germanic languages which was presented as a system of interconnected facts by the German linguist Jacob Grimm in 1822. This phenomenon is called the First Consonant Shift, or Grimm's law.

Karl Verner explains the changes in the Germanic voiceless fricatives f p h resulting from the first consonant shift and the voiceless fricatives depending upon the position of the stress in the original Indo-European word.

According to Verner's law, the above change occurred if the consonant in question was found after an unstressed vowel. It is especially evident in the forms of Germanic strong verbs, except the Gothic ones, which allows to conclude that at some time the stress in the first two verbal stems fell on the root, and in the last two — on the suffix