Phonetic approach

Trying to explain the loss of inflections of E-sh. “The theory of young grammarians” (Prominent representatives: Herman Paul, Fortunatov). They used psycholinguistics & phonetic factors to account the loss of inflections. Originally in all Germanic languages the position & the stress of a word was free but ancient Germans understood that in the process of communication the root of the word was the most important because it contained the lexical meaning as a result it began to be pronounced more energetically than other parts of the words & the stress gradually became fixed on the root & the final inflections became unstressed & as a result they became weakly pronounced & finally they were completely dropped. These scholars connected the loss of inflections with the fixation of the stress upon the root. At first sight this theory seems to be quite logical but there are facts destroying this conviction. E.g. in Finno-Ugric languages the stress is also fixed on the root but there are 14 cases in Finish. Secondly the system of function words began to be used instead of lost of inflections had appeared in the O.E. period when inflections were still in full blossom. E.g. of stones—камня (род. п.). Due to these contradictions the theory of Young Grammarians is unsatisfactory.

The Theory of Substratum

This theory is also known as the theory of mixture of languages. In case of foreign invasions when invadors submit the native tribes & settle on the conquered territory it is necessary to work out means of communication which would be understandable both for the invadors & for the submitted tribes. In the process of working out these means of communication one of the 2 languages spoken by the communicating sides serves as the substratum (основа) upon which the new language is developed.

During the 8-9^th centuries AD the northern east part of Britain was conquered and inhabited by the Scandinavian tribes which were mainly represented by the Danes. The O.E. of the original population which was represented by the Anglo-Saxons came into contact with the Danes & in the process og their communication the OE language served as the substratum upon which a new system communication began developing. OE & Danish were related languages because both belonged to the group Germanic languages it means a great number of words in those languages had the same root but different endings. E.g. OE—sunu; wind. Danish—sunr; windr.

The similarity of roots meet the process of communication easy & possible in many cases even without interpreting. But the difference of inflections prevented the speakers from proper understanding. For this reason as the authors of this theory believed, the endings began to be weakly pronounced, then reduced & finally dropped.

The theory was developed by comparativists who studied related languages. Among the authors we can mention A Meillet. There is no doubt common sense in this theory because languages in their development are regulated not only by inner linguistics facts & reasons but extraling factors of politic, economic & cultural life. The result of foreign invasion is especially obvious in E-sh which is connected with the Norman conquest but after contact with other languages. It is usually vocabulary or word stock of the language which is most strongly affected by the invasion (70% of E-sh words are of French origin). As for grammar it can’t be so easily penetrated by foreign influences that’s why the reasons which reconstructed the E-sh grammatical type should be booked for in the language itself. This is done by the representatives of the 4^th theory which is called the functional theory.