Lecture 1 Introduction

Vowels

Vowels undergo different types of changes:

1. 
   Qualitative change – affects the quality of a sound (e.g. [o  Λ]).
   
2. 
   Quantitative change – affects the length of a sound (e.g. [i  i:]).
   
3. 
   Dependent/positional change – a change that occurs in certain position or in certain phonetic conditions (e.g. bit_ – bite [bit  bait]).
   
4. 
   Independent/spontaneous change – affects a certain sound in all positions irrespective of phonetic conditions and serves to distinguish a grammatical phenomenon (ablaut) (more about it in Lecture 4).
   

Main tendencies in Vowel Changes in the Germanic Languages:

1. 
   Short vowels  become neutralized.
   
2. 
   Long vowels  become short and more open.
   

 become diphthongized and more closed.


Proto-Germanic Vowel System:

Short Vowels	i	e	a	o	u
Long Vowels	i:	e:	a:	o:	u:

Some vowel correspondences between Germanic and on-Germanic Languages:

Sound Correspondence	Non-Germanic		Germanic
	Latin	Русский	English	German	Swedish
[a:  o:]	mater	мать	mother	-	moder
[o  a]	nox	ночь	-	Nacht	natt
[e  i]	ventus	ветер	wind	Wind	vind
[u  o]	sunus	сын	son	Sohn	son

Consonants
The comparison of the Germanic and non-Germanic languages within the Indo-European family reveals regular correspondences between German and non-German consonants.
First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law) – in the 19^th Jacob Grimm, a German scholar, discovered the existence of regular correspondence between Indo-European (IE) and German consonants and subdivided them into 3 groups:

№	Consonant Correspondences		Examples
			Old		Modern
	IE	PG	Non-German (Latin)	German (OE)	Non-German (Italian, рус.)	German (English, German)
1	[bh,dh,gh]  aspirated voiced stops	[b, d, g] non-aspirated voiced stops	bhrāta (Hind)	brōþor	брат	brother, Bruder
			rudhira(Hind)	rēad	-	red
			hostis	giest	гость	guest, Gast
2	[b, d, g]  voiced stops	[p, t, k] voiceless stops/plosives	labare	pōl	болото	pool, Pfuhl
			decem	tīen	dieci, десять	ten
			genu	cnēo	ginocchio	knee, Knie
3	[p, t, k]  voiceless stops/plosives	[f, , h] voiceless fricatives	pedis	fōt	piedi	foot, Fuß
			tres	þrēo	tre, три	three
			cordis	heort	cuore	heart, Herz

Verner’s Law – Carl Verner, a Danish scholar (19^th c.), explained the consonant correspondences as a gradual historical process (a change takes place in the course of time):

Consonant Correspondences			Latin	OE	ModE
1. [p, t, k]  voiceless stops/plosives	[f, , h]  voiceless fricatives	[v, ð/d, g] voiced fricatives	septem	seofen	seven
			pater	fæđer	father
			socrus	swaiho(Gothic)	Schwager(Germ)
2. Rhotacism			ausis (Lithuanian)	Auso (Gothic)	ear, Ohr (Germ)
[s] 	[z] 	[r]

P.S.: these processes usually happened on condition that the consonants were situated between vowels and if preceded by an unstressed vowel.
Modern Examples: seethe – sodden, death – dead, was – were.


Second Consonant Shift – happened in the 9^th c. in Old High German and today we can observe it comparing English and German:

Consonant Correspondences		English	German
1. [t]  	[ts]	two	zwei
	[s]	water	Wasser
2. [] 	[d]	three	drei
3. [d] 	[t]	daughter	Tochter
4. [k] 	[h]	make	machen

H/w:
1. Ex. 3-5, p. 48-49 in “История английского языка” by Т.А. Расторгуева (copies).


Lecture 4
Linguistic Features of the Germanic Languages
Grammatical Features

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 declensions as 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: