Grammatical Features
Linguistic Features of the Germanic Languages
Lecture 4
The Proto-Germanic and the Old Germanic Languages were SYNTHETIC, i.e. the relationships between the parts of the sentience were shown by the forms of the words rather than by their position in the sentence or by auxiliary words.
The grammatical forms of the words were built by means of:
1. Suppletion (inherited from Indo-European) – the usage of 2 or more different roots as forms of one and the same word:
| Part of Speech | Indo-European Non-Germanic Languages | Germanic Languages | ||
| Italian | русский | English | German | |
| Personal Pronouns | io, mio, mi/me | я, меня, мне | I, my, mine, me | ich, mich, mir |
| Adjectives | buono, migliore, ottimo | хороший, лучше, лучший | good, better, best | gut, besser, bester |
| Some Verbs | essere, sono, e`, ero, saro`, etc. | есть, был, будет | be, is, are, am, was, were | sein, bin, ist, sind, war, gewesen, etc. |
2. Inflections(inherited from Indo-European) – though in the Germanic languages inflections were simpler and shorter than in other Indo-European languages.
Let’s take the system of declensionsas an example.In PG it was well-developed but in the Old Germanic languages, due to the stress that was fixed on the root and the weakening of the end of a word as a result, the declensions started to disappear. While the nouns and adjectives still preserved stem-suffixes, they had declensions but once the stem suffixes started to weaken and disappear, the declensions were lost as well and the endings were simplified and got fewer:
| Word Structure | |||
| PG | mak-oj-an | root + stem-suffix(word-deriv.) | + gram. ending(form-marker) |
| Old Germanic Languages | mac-ian | stem(root melted with stem-suffix) | + gram. ending |
3. Sound Interchange –the usage of interchange of vowels and consonants for the purpose of word- and form-building (e.g.: English: bear – birth, build – built, tooth – teeth; German: gebären – Geburt)
Ablaut/Vowel Gradation – an independent vowel interchange, unconnected with any phonetic conditions (phonetic environment/surrounding) used to differentiate between grammatical forms of one and the same word. The Germanic ablaut was consistently used in building the principle forms of strong verbs.
Jacob Grimm has subdivided all the verbs into two groups according to the way they build their principle forms:
| Strong Verbs (irregular) | Weak Verbs (regular) | ||
| called so because they have preserved the richness of forms since the time of Proto-Germanic | called so because they have lost their old Proto-Germanic forms and acquired new ones | ||
| form-building | vowel interchange + gram. ending | suffix –d/t (a Germanic invention!!!) | |
| E.g. | OE | reisan – rais – risum – risans | macian – macode - macod |
| cepan – cepte - cept | |||
| ModE | rise – rose - risen | make – made – made | |
| keep – kept – kept |
H/w:1. Ex. 7-8, on p. 49 in “История английского языка” by Т.А. Расторгуева (copies).