- •Contents
- •Unit 2: The Comparative Method ………………………..8 Unit 3: The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law ………………………10
- •Unit 1 The Indo-European Family
- •Centum and Satem Groups of ie Languages
- •Unit 2 The Comparative Method
- •Unit 3 The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law
- •Exceptions to Grimm’s law:
- •Unit 4 The Accent Shift and Verner’s Law
- •Rhotacism
- •The Palatal Mutation
- •Unit 6 The Early Germans
- •The Life and Social Organization of the Germans
- •The Great Migration
- •Unit 7 Ancient Germanic Tribes and Their Classification
- •The Proto-Germanic Language
- •Unit 8 The East Germanic Group The Goths
- •Ulfilas and the Gothic Bible
- •Unit 9 The North Germanic Group
- •Unit 10 Northern Mythology
- •The Joys of Valhalla
- •Thor and the Other Gods
- •The Death of Balder
- •Unit 11 The West Germanic Group
- •Unit 12 Old English
- •Three Periods of the History of English
- •Unit 13 Old English Alphabet and Pronunciation
- •Diphthongs
- •Consonants in Old English
- •Unit 14 Some Phonetic Changes of the Old English Period
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Oe Fracture, or Breaking
- •II. Unstressed Vowels
- •III. Consonants
- •Palatalization of Velar Consonants
- •Voicing and Unvoicing of Fricatives
- •Metathesis
- •IV. Word Stress
- •Unit 15 The Noun Grammatical Categories
- •Declensions
- •Unit 16 The Adjective
- •The Weak Declension
- •D. Other classes of pronouns
- •Unit 18 The Verb
- •Mutation or Umlaut
- •The Grammatical Forms and Categories of the Verb
- •Unit 19 Strong Verbs
- •Weak Verbs
- •To Class III belong only four verbs:
- •Preterite-Present Verbs
- •Irregular Verbs
- •Unit 20 The Middle English Period Early Middle English
- •Changes in the Orthographic System
- •Unit 21 Middle English Phonetic Changes
- •Consonants
- •Unstressed Vowels
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Quantitative Changes
- •Qualitative Changes
- •Monophthongs
- •New Diphthongs
- •Unit 22 Middle English Morphology Nouns
- •Articles
- •Pronouns
- •Adjectives
- •Unit 23 The Formation of the National English Language
- •The Great Vowel Shift (gvs)
- •Unit 25 The Mood
- •Conjugation of Strong Verbs
- •Conjugation of Weak Verbs
- •Unit 26 Development of the System of Verbids and Their Grammatical Categories
- •Unit 27 Syntactic Structure
- •Unit 28
- •Varieties of English
- •Unit 29 Etymological Composition of the English Vocabulary
- •Unit 30 The connection of the history of the English language with the history of the English people
D. Other classes of pronouns
1. Interrogative pronouns: hwā (M/F), hwæt (N). They had a four-case paradigm (sg).
-
Nom.
hwā (who)
1) hwæt (what)
Gen.
hwæs
2) hwæs
Dat.
hwæm, hwām
Ace.
hwone, hwænne
3) hwæt
Instr.
4) hwӯ, hwon, hwī
The Instr. case of 'hwæt' was used as a separate interrogative word 'hwӯ (why).
The interrogatives 'hwā', 'hwæt' were also used indefinitely, with the meaning 'any, anyone, anything'.
2. Indefinite pronouns were a numerous class: ān > ænig (any); nān > ne + ān (none); nānping; nāwiht/nōwiht/nōht (nothing > not); hwæt-hwege/hwugu (something), hwilc-hwēne/hwugu (someone), ǣʒ-hwā (everyone), ǣʒ-hwær (everywhere), ǣʒ-hwæt (whatever), etc.
3. The weak unstressed form man, men, me was used as an indefinite personal pronoun: His broður Horsa man ofslōg. “They killed his brother Horsa” [Ivanova, p. 123].
4. Simple personal pronouns were used in the reflexive function as there were no special reflexive pronouns in OE: hē hine werede (he defended himself), hīe gesamnodon hīe (they collected themselves).
5. Pronouns of different classes (personal, demonstrative) could be used in a relative function, as connectives.
Unit 18 The Verb
In IE languages there is a special kind of vowel alternation. It is called gradation. This is found, for example, in Russian in such pairs as брести – брод, беру – выбор – брать.
The term ablaut (from German ab- in the sense "down, reducing" + Laut "sound") was coined in the early 19th century by the linguist Jacob Grimm. However, the phenomenon itself was first observed more than 2,000 years earlier by the Sanskrit Grammarians.
As to the origin of gradation, some linguists believe that the three variants of a root, distinguished by gradation, are due to stress conditions:
full stress brings about the high degree – o,
weakened stress – the medium degree – e,
and unstressed position – (zero).
In Germanic languages gradation can be found both in word-formation and form-building.
Word-formation: |
OE þencan (думать) |
- þanc (мысль): |
ĕ – ă |
Goth. drigkan (пить) |
- dragk (питьё): |
ĭ – ă (< ĕ – ă) |
The system of gradation in Germanic languages is best seen in the so-called strong verbs. In Gothic, the system of gradation is very clear, whereas in other Germanic languages, including English, it has undergone such changes that its original laws are hard to discover.
The main Germanic gradation is ĕ – ă – ,
Gothic – ĭ – ă – .
Class I |
i + i |
a + i |
+ i |
+ i |
reisan – rais – risum – risans |
Class II |
i + u |
a + u |
+ u |
+ u |
kiusan – kaus – kusum – kusans |
Class III |
i + n |
a + n |
(u)n |
(u)n |
bindan – band – bundum – bundans |
Class IV |
i |
a |
ē |
(u) |
stilan - stal- stēlum – stulan |
Class V |
i |
a |
ē |
i |
qiþan – qaþ — qēþum – qiþans |
Class VI |
a |
ō |
ō |
a |
faran – fōr– fōrum – farans |
Class VII |
|
|
|
|
haitan – haihait – haihaitum –haitans letan – lailōt – lailōtum – letans |
Six different ablaut series exist in the Germanic languages. These are referred to as the six classes in which the strong verbs can be subdivided. It should be noted that the first 3 classes actually show an identical ablaut and root shape, e.g.: Gothic – ĭ – ă – + R, where R is a resonant (i in Class 1, u in Class 2, and n in Class 3). Classes 4 and 5 don’t reveal the zero grade positions. Thus Classes 1-5 contain qualitative ablaut, that is, the alternation of different vowels.
Class 6 is considered to be a typical exampe of quantitative ablaut, though it presents the interchange of short ă and long ō. That fact makes Germanic quantitative ablaut a poorly understood phenomenon [Wiese]. But since Germanic *ă partly goes back to IE short ŏ, the quantitative pattern here is easily discernible, even though Germanic has transformed the purely quantitative alternation into a quantitative *and* qualitative one.
The 7th class contains reduplication, that is, addition of an extra syllable consisting of the initial consonant and the vowel [e] (spelt ai) in the past tense, sg/pl.,e.g.: slēpan – saislēp (to sleep), fahan – faifah (to catch). Some verbs of this class contain ablaut, e.g.: letan – lailōt (to let), tekan – taitōt (to touch).
Reduplication can be found in many IE languages (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit). The origin of reduplication was probably emphatic repetition meant to stress the completion of the action (IE perfect forms).