Phonetic Features

Linguistic Features of the Germanic Languages

Lecture 3

West Germanic Languages

The West Germanic tribes lived between the Oder and the Elbe and they never left the mainland.[A19] They were[A20] :

· the Franconians(Low, Middle and High Franconians) – settled the lower basin of the Rhine and with time began to speak the language of the Romanised Celts, apart from Low Franconians who spoke Old Low Franconianthat later developed into à Dutch;

· the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes and the Frisians– settled the coastal territories of the Netherlands, Germany, the south of Denmark and the British Isles. The languages they spoke were:

Old English– later developed into à English (national language – 16th c.; first

written records – 7th c.);

Old Saxon – later developed into a territorial dialect in Germany;

Old Frisian– later developed into à Frisian

· High Germans – settled the southern mountainous areas of Germany and spoke Old High German[A21] that later developed into two distinctive languages:

à German:

– is known for great dialectal diversity;

– first written records – 8th – 9th c.;

12th c. – literary form of the language appears.

à Yiddish(see classification of the Germanic Languages, Lecture 1.)

H/w:

1. Ex. 2, 6; p. 48, 49 in “История английского языка” by Т.А. Расторгуева (copies) (see also lectures on the history on the British Isles (The British Cultural Studies)).

All the Germanic Languages of the past and present have common linguistic features that are not shared by other groups of languages in the Indo-European family (Slavonic group, Romance group, etc.). These features are characteristic of the Germanic group only. They appeared during the period of the Proto-Germanic Language, before it split into a certain number of the Germanic languages. First of all we are going to discuss the common Germanic phonetic features.[A22]

Word Stress/Accent

Indo-European (Non-Germanic) Proto-Germanic
1. free stress (movable, i.e. can appear in any part of a word (root, prefix, suffix)); 1. fixed stress (can’t move either in form- or word-building and is usually placed on root or prefix);
2. pitch stress (musical) 2. dynamic stress (force, breath stress)
E.g.: русский E.g.: German English
б`елый `Liebe `white
белизн`а `lieben `whiteness
белов`атый `lieberhaft `whitish
бел`ить ge`liebt `whitewash

 

The Proto-Germanic type of stress led to the formation of the following peculiarities of the Germanic languages as compared to non-Germanic Indo-European languages:

· phonetic – as a result of the fixed position of the stress the unstressed syllables were becoming weaker and weaker, they got less distinct and neutral sounds (such as “schwa”) appeared;

· morphological – as a result of the fact that the stress was fixed on the root and the syllables following the root were always unstressed and weak,[A23] many Germanic languages began to lose suffixes and grammatical endings and became ANALYTICAL LANGUAGES.

E.g.: Old English (OE) [`sunu]

Middle English (ME) [`sunə]

New English (NE) [`sun]

Modern English (ModE) [`sΛn] (the word “son”)