Exam Prep: History Of English

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Indo-European familytree

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Germanic languages:

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English, Dutch,Icelandic, German, Yiddish, Frisian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Faroese.There is no earlier documented language.

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Germanic languages – Features Nr 1:

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(1) small number of tense and aspect distinctions of Proto-Germanic

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Germanic languages – Features Nr 2:

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(2) the presence of regular verbs (so-called weak verbs) with a {-d} or {-t} ending in the past (“dentalsuffix”/dentalstop)

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Germanic languages – Features Nr 3:

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(3) the presence of weak adjective endings

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Germanic languages – Features Nr 4:

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(4) the shift of word stress to the root syllable (First Germanic consonant shift)

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Germanic languages – Features Nr 5:

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(5) the presence of a fairly large number of wordswhich do not seem to be derived from IE sources

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Germanic languages – Features Nr 6:

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(6) and the effects of Grimm’s andVerner’s Laws.

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Grimm’s Law:

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The first part of the Germanic Sound Shift which; describes the systematic shift in the way people pronounced certain consonants.

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Grimm's Law (Detailed Answer) :

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The voiced stopes, the sounds /b/, /d/, and /g/,lost their voicing in Germanic and became /p/, /t/, and /k/.

This means that IE /b/ represented by Latin lubricus underwent a change to/p/ as seen in English slippery. Likewise /d/ became /t/ as in the pair Latin ad and English at. Finally, /g/ as in jugum became/k/ as in yoke. This would have led to a merger with words that already had /p/, /t/, and /k/ except thelatter three themselves changes into the corresponding fricatives /f/, /θ/, and /h/.

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Verner’s Law:

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The Second part of the First Germanic Sound Shift contains what is known as Verner’s Law; points out the effect of word stress.

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Verner's Law (Detailed Answer) :

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According to Verner both pater and father originally carried their stress on the second syllable, as did IE phadēr. Verner discovered that voiceless fricatives (/f, s, θ, ʃ/) became voiced in Germanic if the preceding syllable was unstressed.

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Basic language external history (Germanic migrations):

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The speakers of the various Germanic languages stood, in a close relationship to the Roman Empire, which exercised a great deal of influence on the lives of the Germanic peoples, including borrowing into their languages.

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Pre-Old English (how loans transfered):

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The Romans took over some of the Celtic words which then became Roman loan words, which then became old Irish and which then became old English.

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Early Latin loans (Pre-Old English) :

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In further Latin borrowings (circa OE period) such as {portus} “harbour” (Portsmouth), {strata} “road, street” (Stratford), or {vīcus} “farm or village”.

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Early Latin loans (Direct borrowings) :

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Direct borrowings from Latin (and possibly Scandinavian) to OE:

mile `mile´ L. Caupo > OE. Ceap > Cheap

pil `spear´ . Mynet > OE. Myntt > “Coin”

pytt `pit´

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Case system:

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Case is a special grammatical category whose value reflects the grammatical function performed by a noun or pronoun in a phrase, clause, or sentence.

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OE: case system;

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Old English case system:

Nominative (Agent/subject)

Accusative (Patient/ “book”)

Genitive (“possessive”)

Dative (Indirect object/ “him”)

Instrumental (Case/ manner ofaction/ “stone”)