24. Velar umlaut

Umlaut – is a modification of the vowel which causes it to be pronounced more to the front of the mouth to accommodate (вмещать) a vowel in the following syllable, especially when it’s an inflectional suffix: woman-women; long-length; old-elders. Umlaut may be derived into two kinds: front mutation, velar umlaut. Velar umlaut is a type of assimilation, caused by back vowels u, o, a of the following syllable:

I > io sifon-siofon

e > eo hefon-heofon

a > ea saro-seary

25. The structure of a substantive in the Germanic Languages

The morphological system of substantives in Germanic Languages as well as other Indo-European languages is based on the common principles. The substantive consists of three main elements: root, stem-building suffix, case inflection.

The ‘’root’’ of the word keeps lexical meaning. The case inflection expresses number and case. But the role of a stem-building suffix is quite unclear. It posses not to keep a lexical meaning. The only suffix which had definite meaning was the one found in the substantives which had common semantics of kinship (родство). All this substantives were built with the help of stem-building r: trodar modar Goth. fadar swistar Comp. Lat. mater, Russ. матери дочери (examples)

In the earliest documents of the Germanic languages this original three element structure began to change. The stem-building no had definite meaning was united with the root of a word, building up a common element-the stem (основа).

26. Morphological classification of nouns

Proto-Germanic language did not have any fixed system or set of case-inflexions used for all nouns. Some nouns followed one pattern and others another pattern that is why they were different declensions. The type of declension was based on the Indo-European grouping of nouns according to the stem-building suffix.

Strong declension it combined the nouns with vocalic stems –a-long o-i-u this words belongs to strong declension. Weak declension united substantives with –n- in the stems. Stems in other consonants -r -stems possessed a small number of nouns denoting family relationship. Another small group of nouns is known as -s-- stems. In OE this -s- changed into-r-(rhotacism). Root declension The first type of declension was characterized by absents of stem-building suffix. It means that the case inflexion was added immediately to the root this fact explains the difference between the type of building plural in the majority of nouns and those like goose‚ mouse (mice), man – men (manni-menn)

Proto-Germanic nouns unlike Modern English had the system of gender: masculine‚ feminine‚ neuter. Masculine and neuter words generally share their endings. Feminine words have their own subset of endings. The main thing about Proto-Germanic gender is that it never corresponded to the semantics of the word.

Gender and number there were different endings depending on whether the noun was in the singular (one ring) or plural (many rings).

Types of nouns. Old Germanic nouns were divided as either strong or weak. Weak nouns have their own endings. Weak nouns are easier than strong, since they had begun to lose their declensional system. There are nine classes of noun stems in Germanic languages according to the stem-building suffix. These suffixes were lost long ago, so this division is a historical one. There were the following classes

with the stem in -o -day

with the stem in -a- give

with the stem in -i - guest

with the stem in -u -sun

with the stem in -n-name

with the stem in -r-father

with the stem in -nt- friend

with the stem in -s-egg

without suffixes-,night