Linguistic features of germanic languages word stress

1.
Phonetics:
Word
Stress. Vowels. Consonants. Proto-Germanic Consonant Shift.
Interpretation of the Proto-Germanic Consonant Shift.

2.
Grammar: Form-building
means. Vowel gradation with special reference to verbs.
Simplification of word structure in Late Proto-Germanic. Role of
stem-suffixes in the formation of declensions. Strong
and
weak
verbs.

3. Vocabulary

Literature:

1. Аракин
   И.Д. Очерки по истории английского
   языка. –
   М, 1955.

2. Бруннер
   К.
   История английского языка. Перев. с
   нем. – М.:
   Иностранная литература, т. I,
   II,
   1956.

3. Верба
   Л.Г. Історія
   англійської мови. Посібник для студентів
   та викладачів вищих навчальних закладів.
   –
   Вінниця: НОВА КНИГА, 2006. – 296 с.

4. Введение
   в германскую
   филологию.
   Арсеньева М.Г., Балашова
   С.П., Берков В.П., Соловьева Л.Н. – М.,
   1980.

5. Иванова И. П.,
   Беляева Т. М. Хрестоматия по истории
   английского
   языка. Л.,? 1973.

6. Иванова
   И.П., Чахоян Л.П. История английского
   языка. –
   М., 1976

7. Ильиш Б.А. История
   английского языка. – Л., 1973.

8. Расторгуева Т.А.
   История английского языка. – М., 2005.

9. Смирницкий
   А.И. История английского языка. Курс
   лекций. –
   М., 1965.

All the
Germanic languages of the past and present have common linguistic
features; some of these features are shared by other groups in the IE
family, others are specifically Germanic.

The
Germanic group acquired their specific distinctive features after the
separation of the ancient Germanic tribes from other IE tribes and
prior to their further expansion and disintegration that is during
the period of the PG parent-language. These PG features inherited by
the descendant languages represent the common features of the
Ger­manic group. Other common features developed later, in the
course of the individual histories of separate Germanic languages, as
a result of similar tendencies arising from PG causes. On the other
hand, many Germanic features have been disguised, transformed and
even lost in later history.

Phonetics Word Stress

The peculiar Germanic system
of word accentuation is one of the most important distinguishing
features of the group; it arose in PG, was fully or partly retained
in separate languages and served as one of the major causes for many
linguistic changes.

It is known
that in ancient IE, prior to the separation of Germanic, there
existed two ways of word accentuation: musical pitch and force
stress. The position of the stress was free and movable, which means
that it could fall on any syllable of the word – a root-morpheme,
an affix or an ending – and could be shifted both in form-building
and word-building (cf. R
дóмом,
домá,
домóвничать,
дóма).

Both these
properties of the word accent were changed in PG. Force or expiratory
stress (also called dynamic and breath stress) became the only type
of stress used. In Early PG word stress was still as movable as in
ancient IE but in Late PG its position in the word was stabilised.
The stress was now fixed on the first syllable, which was usually the
root of the word and sometimes the prefix; the other syllables –
suffixes and endings – were unstressed. The stress could no longer
move either in form-building or word-building.

These features of word accent
were inherited by the Germanic lan­guages, and despite later
alterations are observable today. In Mod E there 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. The following English
and German words illustrate its fixed position in grammatical forms
and derived words:

English:
be’come,
be’coming, over’come; ‘lover, ‘loving, be’loved;

German:
‘Liebe,
‘lieben ‘ liebte, ge’liebt, ‘lieberhaft, ‘Liebling.

(Cf. these
native words with words of foreign origin which move the stress in
derivation, though never in form-building: ex’hibit
v, exhi’bi­tion
n).

The heavy fixed word stress
inherited from PG has played an important role in the development of
the Germanic languages, and especially in phonetic and morphological
changes. Due to the difference in the force of articulation the
stressed and unstressed syllables under­went widely different
changes: accented syllables were pronounced with great distinctness
and precision, while unaccented became less distinct and were
phonetically weakened. The differences between the sounds in stressed
position were preserved and emphasised, whereas the con­trasts
between the unaccented sounds were weakened and lost. Since the
stress was fixed on the root, the weakening and loss of sounds mainly
affected the suffixes and grammatical endings. Many endings merged
with the suffixes, were weakened and dropped. Cf., e.g., the
reconstructed PG word ‘fish’, with its descendants in Old Germanic
languages:

PG *fiskaz,
Gt fisks,
O Icel fiskr,
OE fisc.

(The asterisk * is placed
before reconstructed hypothetical forms which have not been found in
written records; the words may be pro­nounced exactly as they are
written; spelling in Old Germanic languages was phonetic).

Vowels

Throughout
history, beginning with PG, vowels displayed a strong tendency to
change. They underwent different kinds of alterations: qualitative
and
quantitative,
dependent
and independent.
Quali­tative changes affect the quality of the sound, e.g.: [o>a]
or [p>f]; quantitative changes make long sounds short or short
sounds long, e.g.: [i>i:], [ll>l]; dependent
changes (also positional
or combinative)
are re­stricted to certain positions or phonetic conditions, for
instance, a sound may change under the influence of the neighbouring
sounds or in a certain type of a syllable; independent
changes – also spontaneous
or regular
– take place irrespective of phonetic conditions, i.e. they affect
a certain sound in all positions.

From an
early date the treatment of vowels was determined by the nature of
word stress. In accented syllables the oppositions between vowels
were carefully maintained and new distinctive features were
introduced, so that the number of stressed vowels grew. In unaccented
positions the original contrasts between vowels were weakened or
lost; the distinction of short and long vowels was neutralised so
that by the age of writing the long vowels in unstressed syllables
had been shortened. As for originally short vowels, they tended to be
reduced to a neutral sound, losing their qualitative distinctions and
were often dropped in unstressed final syllables (see the example
*fiskaz).

Strict
differentiation of long and short vowels is commonly regarded as an
important characteristic of the Germanic group. The contrast of short
and long vowels is supported by the different directions of their
changes. While long vowels generally tended to become closer and to
diphthongise, short vowels, on the contrary, often changed into more
open sounds. These tendencies can be seen in the earliest vowel
changes which distinguished the PG vowel system from its PIE source.
IE short [o] changed in Germanic into the more open vowel [a] and
thus ceased to be distinguished from the original IE [a]; in other
words in PG they merged into [o]. The merging of long vowels
proceeded in the opposite direction: IE long [a:] was narrowed to
[o:] and merged with [o:]. The examples in Table 1 illustrate the
resulting correspond­ences of vowels in parallels from Germanic
and non-Germanic languages (more apparent in Old Germanic languages
than in modern words, for the sounds have been modified in later
history).

Table 1

Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]

• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #

Слайды презентации