4. Vocabulary

As the result of their common descent, the IE languages have preserved many common features in their vocabularies.

The most ancient etymological layer in the Germanic vocabulary consists of words (more precisely roots) shared by most IE languages. They refer to natural phenomena, plants and animals, terms of kinship, verbs denoting basic activities of man, some pronouns and numerals.

There is no doubt that the OE word brōþor, Gt brōþar, G bruder is allied to Skt bhrātar, L frāter, R брат.

The OE word ʒiest, Gt gasts, G. Gast is related to L hostis, R гость.

The OE verb sittan, Gt sitan, G sitzen is kindred to Skt sīdati, L sedere, R сидеть.

The Gt numeral þreis [θri:s], E. three, G drei is of the same IE root as Skt tri, L tres, R три. Besides the roots, the common IE element includes other components of words: word-building and form-building affixes and grammatical inflections, e.g. the stem-building suffix -r denoting relationship.

The Germanic vocabulary contains also words that have no parallels outside the Germanic group.

The OE word «hūs» has its counterpart in Gt hus, Dutch huis, Swedish hus, Danish huus, OIcel hús.But this root is not found anywhere outside the Gc languages. Similarly, the OE finʒer (E finger) is cognate with G Finger, Dutch vinger, Icel finger, Danish finger, Swedish finger. The OE verb drincan (E drink) is cognate with Gt drigkan, G trinken, Dutch drinken. The word «land» is shared by Gothic, Old English, Old Icelandic, Swedish and German. In non-Germanic languages these words are not represented. It follows that the Germanic languages differ from other IE languages with regard to some part of their vocabularies.

One of the theories accounting for these (and other) innovations of the Germanic languages is the so-called substratum hypothesis. The Germanic tribesmen, probably, were not the first inhabitants of Northwest Europe. They had to subjugate some aboriginal people in order to settle in those places. The usual process of language crossing followed, as the result of which, the victorious Germanic dialects borrowed many words from the speech of the subject people. Some of these borrowings proved to be most essential and became a typical feature of the Germanic vocabulary.

Part 2

Old english

2.1. Periods in the History of English

It is customary to divide the history of the English language into 3 periods: Old English (further OE), Middle English (further ME) and New English (further NE). For the sake of convenience, very important events (which had a great influence on the history of English) are accepted as landmarks separating the 3 periods.

The Anglo-Saxon invasion of the V century is regarded as the beginning of the OE period, which covers V-XI cc. It ends with the Norman Conquest (1066). According to some other scientists, OE begins with the beginning of writing (VII c.).

The Norman Conquest of the XI c. is regarded as the beginning of the ME period, which covers XI-XV cc. It ends on the introduction of printing (1475).

The introduction of printing in the XV c. is considered to be the beginning of the NE period.

The NE period is subdivided into early NE (1500-1660) and late NE (from 1660 to our times).

The English linguist Henry Sweet characterizes the 3 periods of the history of English on the basis of unstressed endings (phonetic and morphological principle): OE is the period of full endings: sunu, writan. ME is the period of levelled endings: sone, writen. NE is the period of lost endings: son, write.

The chronological periodisation of the history of English reflects the connection between the history of the English people and the history of the English language, as it would be impossible to understand many facts of the language, e.g., the abundance of Latin, French or Scandinavian words in English, the oddities of English spelling.

At the same time, it is important not to exaggerate the influence of the history of a people on the history of its language. It would be absurd to try to explain every change in the language by some changes in the history of the people.

It is the opinion of some scholars that the traditional periodisation needs amendments. A. Baugh believes that ME really began at a later date (1150), for the effect of the Norman Conquest on the language could not have been immediate. M. Schlauch prefers a division of history by centuries while B. Strang insists on a division into periods of two hundred years. Henry Sweet suggests that we should single out periods of transition and subdivide the three main periods into early, classical and late.