101. Development of the articles.

The English definite article the, writtenþe in Middle English, derives from an Old English demonstrative, which, according to gender, was written se (masculine), seo (feminine) (þe and þeo in the Northumbrian dialect), or þæt (neuter).

The neuter form þæt also gave rise to the modern demonstrative that.

The ye occasionally seen in pseudo-archaic usage such as "Ye OldeEnglishe Tea Shoppe" is actually a form of þe, where the letter thorn (þ) came to be written as a y.

101. Strong verbs in the history of English.

The strong verbs are divided into seven classes depending on the character of the vowel gradation in the four main forms of the verb: (the infinitive, the form of the past tense singular, the form of the past tense plural and Participle II). The infinitive represented the first stem – e/i, the reduced grade of the ablaut, this stem also formed participle 1, the present tense paradigm in the indicative and subjunctive mood and the imperative mood. The past singular form represented the 2nd stem -a, the full grade of the ablaut, this stem was used for the past singular paradigm. The past plural form represented the 3rd stem, the zero grade of the ablaut, this stem was used for the past plural paradigm, the past singular 2 nd person forms and the Subjunctive Mood. The participle 2 represented the 4th stem, the zero grade of the ablaut. The first five classes of English verbs complied with the i/e-a-zero gradation of vowels, they were the variants of one system. The phonemes determining the type of vowel in them, apart from ablaut, were called complicators. The combination of an ablaut vowel (гласныйпоаблауту) and a complicator resulted in the appearnce of a long vowel or a diphthong. The complicator in Class 1 was –i- (i-class); Class 2 - -u- (u-class); Class 3 – a sonorant + a consonant; Class 4 – a sonorant (l,r); Class 5 – any consonant but n,w,r,l. Class 6 is made up of strong verbs with quantitative gradation (a-o:-zero). Class 7 includes strong verbs with reduplicated stems. Classes of Strong Verbs in the Old English Language Classes Infinitive Past Tense Sing. Past Tense Pl. Participle II Class I wri:tan ‘to write’ wra:twritonwriten Class II ceo:san ‘to choose’ cea:scuroncorenClass III findan ‘to find’ fandfundonfunden Class IV beran ‘to bear’ bærbæ:ronboren Class V sittan ‘to sit’ sætsæ:tonseten Class VI scacan ‘to shake’ sco:csco:conscacen Class VII ha:tan ‘to call’ he:the:tonha:ten

101. Weak verbs in the history of English.

There are three classes of weak verbs in OE, corresponding to classes I – III of weak verbs in Gothic. Class IV of Gothic verbs (the type fullnan, fullnōda, fullnōdedum ‘get filled’) has no counterpart in other Germanic languages. Every weak verb is characterized by three forms: infinitive, past tense, and second participle. As the past plural can be derived from the past singular by replacing the -e-ending of the singular by the -on-ending of the plural, there is no need to quote the past plural as one of the main forms of verb. The stem of the second participle is always identical with that of the past tense.  Class I. Regular verbs.  The regular class I verbs always have mutation of their root vowel due to an original i-element in the suffix.  (I) Verbs with the long root vowel drop the -i- no matter what consonant followed the root vowel.  (II a) Verbs with the short root vowel followed by -r- keep the -i-, and the -r- is not lengthened. (II b) Verbs with a short root vowel followed by a consonant other than r drop the -i- and their consonant is lengthened (West Germanic consonant lengthening)  Infinitive  (I) dēman ‘judge’  hīeran ‘hear’  (II a) nerian ‘save’  styrian ‘stir’  (II b) fremman ‘commit’  cnyssan ‘push’ Past  dēmde  hīerde  nerede  styrede  fremede  cnysede Second participle  dēmed  hīered  nered  styred  fremed  cnysed  When the -d- of the suffix is preceded by a voiceless consonant it changes into -t-; in the second participle both -t and -ed are found.  cēpan ‘keep’ cēpte cēpt, cēped  rētan ‘greet’ rētte rēt, rēted  If the verb stem ends in “consonant + d” or “consonant + t” the second participle can end either in -d, -t or in -ded, -ted.  sendan ‘send’ sende send, sended  restan ‘rest’ restet rest, rested  Irregular verbs.  Irregular class I verbs had the -i-, which produced mutation, in the infinitive only. In the past and in the second participle there had not been any -i-, and so these forms have no mutation. As a result, the vowel of the past and the second participle differs from that of the infinitive. Besides, in these verbs the final consonant of the stem comes into immediate contact with the initial consonant of the suffix, and this causes some phonetic changes, which widen the difference between the infinitive and the past and participle still further. With some verbs, e.g. byc an ‘buy’ the difference goes so far that only the initial consonant remains as an element common to all forms of the verb. Consequences of this development make themselves felt in the language down to the modern period.  sellan ‘give’ sealed seald  tellan ‘tell’ tealde teald  cwellan ‘kill’ cwealde cweald  tæc(e)an ‘teach’ tāhte tāht  ræc(e)an ‘reach’ rāhte rāht  læcc(e)an ‘snatch’ læhte læht  byc (e)an ‘buy’ bohte both  sēc(e)an ‘seek’ sōhte sōht  wyrc(e)an ‘work’ worhte worth  ðenc(e)an ‘think’ ðōhte ðōht  ðync(e)an ‘seem’ ðūht ðūht  The verb brin an ‘bring’ stands apart from other verbs in that it is strong and weak at the same time. It belongs to class III strong verbs and has the alternation brin -/bran -, but its past tense and second participle are derived by means of the dental suffix. The resulting forms are those of class I weak verbs: brin an brōhte(<*branhte) brōht (<*branht). The verb būan ‘cultivate’, ‘inhabit’ also has a peculiar system of forms: its past tense is that of a weak verb, but its second participle takes the n-suffix, like a strong verb:  būan būde būn  Many class I verbs are causative, i.e. they are derived from strong verbs, and their meaning is ‘make somebody or something perform the action denoted by the strong verb’, e.g.: drenc(e)an ‘give to drink’ (<*drancion), from drincan ‘drink’; senc(e)an ‘plunge’ (<*sancian), from sincan ‘sink’; āswebban ‘make (somebody) sleep’, ‘kill’ (<*swæfian) from swefan ‘sleep’, lædan ‘lead’ (<*lāþian) from līþan ‘go’; ræran ‘raise’, ‘rear’ (<*rāsian) from rīsan ‘rise’. As will be seen from these examples, the root of causative verb corresponds, as far as gradation goes, to the past singular of the strong verb from which it is derived. Examples of class I weak verbs are: berian ‘beat’, derian ‘hat\rm’, erian ‘plough’, ferian ‘go’, heran ‘rraise’

101. Strong verbs in the history of English.

There were about three hundred strong verbs in OE. They were native words descending from PG with parallels in other OG languages; many of them had a high frequency of occurrence and were basic items of the vocabulary widely used in word derivation and word compounding. The strong verbs in OE (as well as in other OG languages) 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. Two of these markers – the zero-ending in the second stem and -en in Participle II – are found only in strong verbs and should be noted as their specific characteristics. The classes differ in the series of root-vowels used to distinguish the four stems. Only several classes and subclasses make a distinction between four vowels as marker of the four stems – see Class 2, 3b and c, 4 and 5b; some classes distinguish only three grades of ablaut and consequently have the same root vowel in two stems out of four (Class 1, 3a, 5a); two classes, 6 and 7, use only two vowels in their gradation series.

In addition to vowel gradation some verbs with the root ending in -s, -þ or -r employed an interchange of consonants: [s-z-r]; [0-ð-d] and [f-v]. These interchanges were either instances of positional variation of fricative consonants in OE or relics of earlier positional sound changes; they were of no significance as grammatical markers and disappeared due to levelling by analogy towards the end of OE.

The classes of strong verbs – like the morphological classes of nouns – differed in the number of verbs and, consequently, in their role and weight in the language. Classes 1 and 3 were the most numerous of all: about 60 and 80 verbs, respectively; within Class 3 the first group – with a nasal or nasal plus a plosive in the root(findan, rinnan – NE find, run) included almost 40 verbs, which was about as much as the number of verbs in Class 2; the rest of the classes had from 10 to 15 verbs each. In view of the subsequent interinfluence and mixture of classes it is also noteworthy that some classes in OE had similar forms; thus Classes 4 and 5 differed in one form only – the stems of P II; Classes 2, 3b and c and Class 4 had identical vowels in the stem of P II.

The history of the strong verbs traced back through Early OE to PG will reveal the origins of the sound interchanges and of the division into classes; it will also show some features which may help to identify the classes.

The gradation series used in Class 1 through 5 go back to the PIE qualitative ablaut [e–o] and some instances of quantitative ablaut. The grades [e–o] reflected in Germanic as [e/i–a] were used in the first and second stems; they represented the normal grade (a short vowel) and were contrasted to the zero-grade (loss of the gradation vowel) or to the prolonged grade (a long vowel) in the third and fourth stem. The original gradation series split into several series because the gradation vowel was inserted in the root and was combined there with the sounds of the root. Together with them, it was then subjected to regular phonetic changes. Each class of verbs offered a peculiar phonetic environment for the gradation vowels and accordingly transformed the original series into a new gradation series.

In Classes 1 and 2 the root of the verb originally contained [i] and [u] (hence the names i-class and u-class); combination of the gradation vowels with these sounds produced long vowels and diphthongs in the first and second stems. Classes 3, 4 and 5 had no vowels, consequently the first and second forms contain the gradation vowels descending directly from the short [e] and [o]; Class 3 split into subclasses as some of the vowels could be diphthongised under the Early OE breaking. In the third and fourth stems we find the zero-grade or the prolonged grade of ablaut; therefore Class 1 – i-class – has [i]. Class 2— [u] or [o]; in Classes 4 and 5 the Past pl stem has a long vowel [æ]. Class 5 (b) contained [j] following the root in the Inf.; hence the mutated vowel [i] and the lengthening of the consonant: sittan.

In the verbs of Class 6 the original IE gradation was purely quantitative; in PG it was transformed into a quantitative-qualitative series.

Class 7 had acquired its vowel interchange from a different source: originally this was a class of reduplicating verbs, which built their past tense by repeating the root. In OE the roots in the Past tense stems had been contracted and appeared as a single morpheme with a long vowel. The vowels were different with different verbs, as they resulted from the fusion of various root-morphemes, so that Class 7 had no single series of vowel interchanges.

Direct traces of reduplication in OE are rare; they are sometimes found in the Anglian dialects and in poetry as extra consonants appearing in the Past tense forms: Past tense ofhatan — heht alongside het ("call"). Past tense of ondrædan – ondred and ondreord (NE dread).

To account for the interchanges of consonants in the strong verbs one should recall the voicing by Verner"s Law and some subsequent changes of voiced and voiceless fricatives. The interchange [s–z] which arose under Verner"s Law was transformed into [s–r] due to rhotacism and acquired another interchange [s–z] after the Early OE voicing of fricatives. Consequently, the verbs whose root ended in [s] or [z] could have the following interchange:

ceosan [z] ceos [s] curon[r] coren [r] (NE choose)

Verbs with an interdental fricative have similar variant with voiced and voiceless [0, ð] and the consonant [d], which had developed from [ð] in the process of hardening:

sniþan [ð] snaþ [0] snidon sniden (NE cut) Class 1

Verbs with the root ending in [f/v] displayed the usual OE interchange of the voiced and voiceless positional variants of fricatives:

ceorfan [v] cearf [f] curfon [v] corfen [v] (NE carve) Class 3

Verbs with consonant interchanges could belong to any class, provided that they contained a fricative consonant. That does not mean, however, that every verb with a fricative used consonant interchange, for instance risan, a strong verb of Class 1, alternated [s] with [z] but not with [r]: risan – ras – rison – risen (NE rise). Towards the end of the OE period the consonant interchanges disappeared.

 

101. Irregular verbs in the history of English.

Most English irregular verbs are native, originating in Old English (an exception being "catch" from Old North French "cachier".) They also tend to be the most commonly used verbs. The ten most commonly used verbs in English are all irregular.

Steven Pinker's book Words and Rules describes how mistakes made by children in learning irregular verbs throw light on themental processes involved in language acquisition.

Nearly all loan-words from foreign languages are regular, as are verbs that have been recently coined, and all nouns used as verbs have the standard suffixes. Nearly all of the least-commonly used words are also regular, even though some of them may have been irregular in the past.

Most irregular verbs exist as remnants of historical conjugation systems. What is today an exception actually followed a set, normal rule long ago. When that rule fell into disuse, some verbs kept the old conjugation. An example of this is the word kept, which before the Great Vowel Shift fell into a class of words in which the vowel in keep (then pronounced kehp) was shortened in the past tense. Similar words, such as peep, that arose after the Vowel Shift, use the regular -ed suffix. Groups of irregular verbs include:

• The remaining strong verbs, which display the vowel shift called ablaut, and which sometimes have their past participles end in -en or -n: e.g., ride/rode/ridden.This verb group was inherited from the parent Proto-Germanic language, and before that from the Proto-Indo-European language. This was originally a system of regular verbs. In Old English, and still in modernGerman, this system is more or less regular, but in Modern English the system of strong verb classes has nearly vanished. For the history of these verbs, see the article Germanic strong verb.

• Weak verbs that have been subjected to sound changes over the course of the history of English that have rendered them irregular. Many of these acquired a long vowel in their present-tense stems, but they kept the short vowel in the preterite and the past participle - for example, in hear/heard/heard.

• Weak verbs that show the vowel shift are sometimes called "Rückumlaut" in the present tense e.g. think/thought. For these, see the articles Germanic umlaut and Germanic weak verb.

• Weak verbs that end in a final -t or -d that made the addition of the weak suffix -ed seem redundant - for example, in cost/cost/costand burst/burst/burst.

• A handful of surviving preterite-present verbs. These can be distinguished from the rest because their third person simple present singular (the he, she, or it form) does not take a final -s. These are the remnants of what was once a large Indo-European class of verbs that were conjugated in the preterite or perfect forms with present tense meaning. All of the surviving verbs of this class aremodal verbs. These are a class of auxiliary verbs or quasi-auxiliaries; e.g., can/could/-.

• Verbs that contain suppletive forms, which form one or more of their tenses from an entirely different root. Be is one of these, as isgo/went/gone (where went is originally from the verb to wend). For the history of their paradigms, see: go (verb) and Indo-European copula.

There are fewer strong verbs and irregular verbs in Modern English than there were in Old English. Slowly the number of irregular verbs is decreasing. The force of analogy tends to reduce the number of irregular verbs over time. This fact explains the reason that irregular verbs tend to be the most commonly used ones. Verbs that are more rarely heard are more likely to switch to being regular verbs. For instance, the verb chide was once irregular (chid), but today chided is the standard usage. Today irregular and standard forms often coexist, a sign that the irregular form might be on the wane. For instance, seeing spelled instead of spelt or strived instead of strove is very common.

On the other hand, contraction and sound changes can increase the number of irregular verbs. Most of the strong verbs were regular, in that they fell into a conventional plan of conjugation in Old English. There are so few of these left in Modern English that they can seem to be irregular.

In common with most Indo-European languages, the most common English verbs such as to be, to go, to do, and to have are quite irregular. Many of these also have pronunciations that are not predictable from their spelling.

• be (pronounced /biː/)

  • Present: 1sg am (/æm/), 3sg is (/ɪz/), others are (/ɑr/)

  • Past: 1sg, 3sg was (/wʌz/), others were (/wɜr/)

  • Past participle: been (/bɪn/)

• go (/ɡoʊ/)

  • Present: 3sg goes

  • Past: went

  • Past participle: gone (/ɡɒn/)

• do (/duː/)

  • Present: 3sg does (/dʌz/)

  • Past: did (/dɪd/)

  • Past participle: done (/dʌn/)

• have (/hæv/)

  • Present: 3sg has (/hæz/)

  • Past: had (/hæd/)

  • Past participle: had (/hæd/)

• say (/seɪ/)

  • Present: 3sg says (/sɛz/)

  • Past: said (/sɛd/)

  • Past participle: said

101. Change of English from synthetic language into analytical.

Synthetic and analytic languages[edit]

Synthetic languages are frequently contrasted with analytic languages. It is more accurate to conceive of languages as existing on a continuum, with the analytic pole (consistently one morpheme per word) at one end and highly polysynthetic languages (in which a single inflected verb may contain as much information as an entireEnglish sentence with various words such as a noun, an adjective, and an adverb) at the other extreme. Synthetic languages tend to lie around the middle of this scale.

Examples[edit]

Synthetic languages are numerous and well-attested. Most Indo-European languages, all Kartvelian languages such as Georgian, some Semitic languages such as Arabic, and many languages of the Americas, including Navajo, Nahuatl, Mohawk and Quechua are synthetic.

More specifically, this includes Indo-European languages of the Romance family (Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Spanish etc.), of the Germanic family (German, Dutch language etc.), of the Slavic family (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian etc.), of the Indo-Iranian family (Sanskrit, Hindi, Persian etc.) as well asGreek, Albanian, Armenian, Latvian and Lithuanian.

However, some languages belonging to these families have become more analytic over time, like English, the Romance languages, Afrikaans and Hebrew.

101. Word order in English.

English word order is strict and rather inflexible. As there are few endings in English that show person, number, case and tense, English relies on word order to show relationships between words in a sentence.
In Russian, we rely on word endings to tell us how words interact in a sentence. You probably remember the example made up by Academician L.V. Scherba in order to show the work of endings and suffixes in Russian. (No English translation for this example.) Everything we need to know about the interaction of the characters in this Russian sentence, we learn from the endings and suffixes.
English nouns do not have any case endings (only personal pronouns have some case endings), so it is mostly the word order that tells us where things are in a sentence, and how they interact. Compare:
The dog sees the cat.
The cat sees the dog.
The subject and the object in these sentences are completely the same in form. How do you know who sees whom? The rules of English word order tell us about it.
Word order patterns in English sentences
A sentence is a group of words containing a subject and a predicate and expressing a complete thought. Word order arranges separate words into sentences in a certain way and indicates where to find the subject, the predicate, and the other parts of the sentence. Word order and context help to identify the meanings of individual words.
English sentences are divided into declarative sentences (statements), interrogative sentences (questions), imperative sentences (commands, requests), and exclamatory sentences. Declarative sentences are the most common type of sentences. Word order in declarative sentences serves as a basis for word order in the other types of sentences.
The main minimal pattern of basic word order in English declarative sentences is SUBJECT + PREDICATE. Examples: Maria works. Time flies.
The most common pattern of basic word order in English declarative sentences is SUBJECT + PREDICATE + OBJECT, often called SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT (SVO) in English linguistic sources. Examples: Tom writes stories. The dog sees the cat.
An ordinary declarative sentence containing all five parts of the sentence, for example, "Mike read an interesting story yesterday", has the following word order:
The subject is placed at the beginning of the sentence before the predicate; the predicate follows the subject; the object is placed after the predicate; the adverbial modifier is placed after the object (or after the verb if there is no object); the attribute (an adjective) is placed before its noun (attributes in the form of a noun with a preposition are placed after their nouns).
Verb type and word order
Word order after the verb usually depends on the type of verb (transitive verb, intransitive verb, linking verb). (Types of verbs are described in Verbs Glossary of Termsin the section Grammar.)
Transitive verbs
Transitive verbs require a direct object: Tom writes stories. Denis likes films. Anna bought a book. I saw him yesterday.
Some transitive verbs (e.g., bring, give, send, show, tell) are often followed by two objects: an indirect object and a direct object. For example: He gave me the key. She sent him a letter. Such sentences often have the following word order: He gave the key to me. She sent a letter to him.
Intransitive verbs
Intransitive verbs do not take a direct object. Intransitive verbs may stand alone or may be followed by an adverbial modifier (an adverb, a phrase) or by a prepositional object.
Examples of sentences with intransitive verbs: Maria works. He is sleeping. She writes very quickly. He went there yesterday. They live in a small town. He spoke to the manager. I thought about it. I agree with you.
Linking verbs
Linking verbs (e.g., be, become, feel, get, grow, look, seem) are followed by a complement. The verb BE is the main linking verb. It is often followed by a noun or an adjective: He is a doctor. He is kind. (See The Verb BE in the section Grammar.)
Other linking verbs are usually followed by an adjective (the linking verb "become" may also be followed by a noun): He became famous. She became a doctor. He feels happy. It is getting cold. It grew dark. She looked sad. He seems tired.
The material below describes standard word order in different types of sentences very briefly. The other materials of the section Word Order give a more detailed description of standard word order and its peculiarities in different types of sentences.
Declarative sentences
Subject + predicate (+ object + adverbial modifier):
Maria works.
Tom is a writer.
This book is interesting.
I live in Moscow.
Tom writes short stories for children.
He talked to Anna yesterday.
My son bought three history books.
He is writing a report now.
(See Word Order in Statements in the section Grammar.)
Interrogative sentences
Interrogative sentences include general questions, special questions, alternative questions, and tag questions.
General questions
Auxiliary verb + subject + main verb (+ object + adverbial modifier):
Do you live here? – Yes, I do.
Does he speak English? – Yes, he does.
Did you go to the concert? – No, I didn't.
Is he writing a report now? – Yes, he is.
Have you seen this film? – No, I haven't.
Special questions
Question word + auxiliary verb + subject + main verb (+ object + adverbial modifier):
Where does he live? – He lives in Paris.
What are you writing now? – I'm writing a new story.
When did they visit Mexico? – They visited Mexico five years ago.
What is your name? – My name is Alex.
How old are you? – I'm 24 years old.
Alternative questions
Alternative questions are questions with a choice. Word order before "or" is the same as in general questions.
Is he a teacher or a doctor? – He is a teacher.
Does he live in Paris or in Rome? – He lives in Rome.
Are you writing a report or a letter? – I'm writing a report.
Would you like coffee or tea? – Tea, please.
Tag questions
Tag questions consist of two parts. The first part has the same word order as statements; the second part is a short general question (the tag).
He is a teacher, isn't he? – Yes, he is.
He lives here, doesn't he? – No, he doesn't.
You went there, didn't you? – Yes, I did.
They haven't seen this film, have they? – No, they haven't.
(For more on questions, see Word Order in Questions in the section Grammar.)
Imperative sentences
Imperative sentences (commands, instructions, requests) have the same word order as statements, but the subject (you) is usually omitted.
Go to your room.
Listen to the story.
Please sit down.
Give me that book, please.
Negative imperative sentences are formed with the help of the auxiliary verb "don't".
Don't cry.
Don't wait for me.
Requests
Polite requests in English are usually in the form of general questions using "could, may, will, would". (SeeWord Order in Requests in the section Grammar.)
Could you help me, please?
May I speak to Tom, please?
Will you please ask him to call me?
Would you mind helping me with this report?
Exclamatory sentences
Exclamatory sentences have the same word order as statements (i.e., the subject is before the predicate).
She is a great singer!
It is an excellent opportunity!
How well he knows history!
What a beautiful town this is!
How strange it is!
In some types of exclamatory sentences, the subject (it, this, that) and the linking verb are often omitted.
What a pity!
What a beautiful present!
What beautiful flowers!
How strange!
Simple, compound, and complex sentences
English sentences are also divided into simple sentences, compound sentences, and complex sentences.
Simple sentences
A simple sentence, or independent clause, has a subject and a predicate and other necessary parts of the sentence.
Life goes on.
She works in a hotel.
You don't know him.
He wrote a letter to the manager.
Compound sentences
A compound sentence consists of two (or more) simple sentences connected by a coordinating conjunction (e.g., and, but, or). Each simple sentence has a subject and a predicate.
Maria lives in Moscow, and her friend Elizabeth lives in New York.
He wrote a letter to the manager, but the manager didn't answer.
Her children may watch TV here, or they may play in the yard.
Simple sentences connected by "and" may be connected without a conjunction. In such cases, a semicolon is used between the sentences in a compound sentence.
Maria lives in Moscow; her friend Elizabeth lives in New York.
Complex sentences
A complex sentence consists of the main clause and the subordinate clause connected by a subordinating conjunction (e.g., that, after, when, since, because, if, though). Each clause has a subject and a predicate.
I told him that I didn't know anything about their plans.
Betty has been working as a secretary since she moved to California.
Tom went to bed early because he was very tired.
If he comes back before ten, ask him to call me, please.
(Different types of subordinate clauses are described inWord Order in Complex Sentences in the section Grammar.)

101. The development of Germanic languages.

The family of Germanic languages is a branch of the Indo-European language family (see the table below: Indo-European language tree). All languages within this family are derived from a parent Indo-European language of early migrants to Europe from southwestern Asia. The major subdivisions within the present day Indo-European languages spoken in Europe are Romance, Germanic, Slavic, Celtic (Breton, Welsh, Irish, Scottish) and Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian) languages.

The Germanic languages

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.

During their expansion, the Germanic tribes, who spoke an Indo-European language, mixed with other European tribes whose language is unknown. About 80 percent of Germanic word roots are of non-Indo-European origin.

The Germanic languages are organized into three groups, North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic. Gothic, an East Germanic language, is the oldest Germanic language of which much is known. The main text corpus is a Bible translation by the bishop Ulfila from the 4th century C.E. (Common Era, also known as AD). The East Germanic languages (Gothic, Vandalic, Burgundian, Lombardic, Rugian, Herulian, Bastarnae, and Scirian) do not have present-day descendants.

Modern North-Germanic languages

The North Germanic languages are modern Danish, Swedish, Norwegian (with two written variants, Bokmål or Dano-Norwegian and Nynorsk or New Norwegian), Icelandic, and Faroese, as well as the various dialects of these languages. Here you will find some discussion of Gutnish and Dalska. North Germanic is historically divided into an East Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) and a West Scandinavian (Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese) group.

Modern West Germanic languages

Out of the many West Germanic dialects, the following six present-day languages have distinctive written standards: Afrikaans, Dutch (Dutch-Flemish), English, Frisian, German, and Yiddish. Some discussion is also included here of Low German, Pennsylvanian German, Scots, and Black English Vernacular.

The Germanic Branch of the Indo-European languages

101. Classification of Germanic languages.

North Germanic Languages	West Germanic Languages	East Germanic Languages
1. Swedish (spoken in Sweden and Finland by 9 mill. people)	1. English(spoken by 300 mill. people as a mother tongue + millions speak it as a second language	1. Gothic (dead)
2. Norwegian (spoken in Norway by 5 mill. people)	2. German(spoken by 100 mill. people in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Lichtenstein)
3. Danish (spoken in Denmark by 5 mill. people)	3. Dutch/Netherlandish (spoken by 20 mill. people in the Netherlands and some parts of Belgium)
4. Icelandic(spoken in Iceland by 250 thou. people)	4. Frisian(spoken by 400 thou. people in some parts of the Netherlands and Germany and some islands in the North Sea)
5. Faroese(spoken in the Faroe Islands (north-east Atlantic) by 40 thou. people)	5. Luxemburgish(spoken by 350 thou. people in Luxemburg and some parts of Germany and France)
	6. Yiddish(spoken by Jews in different countries in Europe and America, is actually a mixture of the Southern Germanic Dialects, Hebrew and Slavonic elements)
	7. Afrikaans(spoken by 3 mill. people in the South African Republic, combines English, Dutch and African elements)

101. The East, The North, The West Germanic languages.

The Germanic languages are divided into three subgroups: East, North and West Germanic languages.

The East Germanic languages are dead nowadays. The most important East Germanic language was Gothic, which has left the oldest written monuments in the Germanic languages, referred to the 4-5th centuries. Records of a Germanic language not belonging to the northwest continuum have survived from the 4th century AD. Excepting a certain runic inscription, the Gothic language is first attested as the literary legacy of the Arian bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila). His fourth-century translation of the Bible from Greek into Gothic -- which, notably, predates the Latin Vulgate of Jerome -- inestimably furthered the Christianizing mission to the pagan Goths. Wulfila rendered his work, not in runes, but in a new alphabet based primarily upon that of Greek. Of his complete translation we possess only extensive sections of the New Testament, and little aside from this remains of "Gothic" literature. After centuries of expansion and conquest, the fortunes of the Goths succumbed to disasters that saw their seats in Italy and Spain destroyed in turn by Justinian and the Umayyad Caliphate, making the Goths a historical non-entity in Europe by the mid-eighth century. In the East, a community of Goths apparently survived into the early modern era, dwelling in the region of Crimea. A letter has been preserved from the 16th century recording a brief list of words that seem to be Gothic: tentatively its final attestation.

Philologists have traditionally connected Gothic with two other Germanic languages, Vandalic and Burgundian, forming an East Germanic family. However, the latter are so marginally attested that there is not enough evidence to justify committing them to a particularly close relationship with each other or with Gothic. Regarding any association of the three, we may only say with certainty that they are "not Northwest Germanic."

The North Germanic languages are spoken in Scandinavia. They go back to Old Norse, which was the language of the Vikings. Nowadays the North Germanic languages are Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic. Linguistically the most important North Germanic languages are Icelandic which has left ancient written monuments – the Icelandic Sagas (11-12th c.c. A.D.) and Danish which has influenced other Scandinavian languages. The later runic inscriptions in Scandinavia reflect changes specific to Old Norse in its earliest attestations, whence derive the modern North Germanic languages of the region. By the High Middle Ages a dialect division had appeared, splitting Old Norse into East Norse, spoken in Sweden and Denmark, and West Norse, spoken in Norway and Iceland after it was colonized in the 9th century. A vast literature of poetry, histories, and sagas has been preserved in Old Norse, most of it composed by Icelanders. Modern North Germanic languages include Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Faeroese, and the extinct Norn.

The West Germanic languages are of social interest for us because English belongs here. These languages are represented by several ancient tongues such as Anglo-Saxon, Franconian and Old High Germanic. The modern West Germanic languages are subdivided into High: German & Yiddish, and Low: Dutch, Afrikaans, Flemish, Friesian and English. Relatively few runic writings were composed in West Germanic languages. North Sea Germanic is a dialect grouping which includes Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon. Old English is attested from the second half of the first millenium AD with a literature comparable in size to that of Old Norse. Old Frisian is most closely related to Old English but is not attested until the 13th century, eventually transitioning into modern Fries. Old Saxon is attested from the 9th century in such works as the Heliand, a Germanic poetic remix of the New Testament. This language interacted with Old Low Franconian (attested from the 10th century) and other dialects in the Low Countries to yield modern Dutch. Finally, Old High German is attested from the 8th century, giving rise to Middle High German by the High Middle Ages and modern German by the Early Modern Era.