- •3. The pg phonology. The consonants.
- •4.Grimm’s Law. (1822 was first published in “Deutch Grammar”)
- •5. Voicing of fricatives in pg (Vern’s l.) 1877
- •6. The West Germanic lengthening of consonants.
- •7.The second consonant-shifting.
- •8. The ablaut in the Indo –European l-ges & Germanic l-ges.
- •9.The vowels.
- •11. Inflectional system of pg.
- •12. Categories of verb in Old Germ.L.
- •13. Strong verbs n Gothic.
- •14. Weak verbs in Old Germ.L.
- •Fourth Weak Conjugation
- •15. Preterite-present verbs
- •16. Infinitive, Participle
- •17. Nominals, their categories.
- •18. Categories of noun.
- •20. Strong declension of noun.
- •21. Weak declension of nouns.
- •22. Adjectives: strong and weak declension.
- •23. Pronoun, morphological categories.
- •Demonstrative
- •24. The vocabulary of pg
- •25. The ie legacy, isogloss.
- •26. Common Germ. Stock.
- •27. Borrowings, substratum, superstatum.
- •28. Simple and composite sentences.
- •29. Comparative method.
- •30. The Indo-Europeans.
- •Proto-indo-european
- •Western branch
- •Eastern branch
- •31. Tree of ie lang. Proto-indo-european
- •Western branch
- •Eastern branch
- •32. The home of Indo-Europeans.
- •33. Kentum and Satem lang-es.
- •34. Pg: concept, division.
- •35. Old North Germ. Lang-es.
- •36. Old West Germ. Lang-es.
- •37. The West Germ. Tree-diagram of lang-es.
- •38. The East-Germ. Tree of lang-es.
- •39. North Germ. Lang-es.
- •40. Old Germ. Alphabet, written records.
- •41. The Runic alphabet, its origin.
- •42. Oe, its literary monuments.
- •43. Old Icelandic, literary monuments. Old Icelandic is usually called Old Norse. Old Norse
- •44. Old Saxon, its written records.
- •45. Pliny’s classification of the Germanic tribes.
- •46. Main sources of information about the Germ. Tribes. The Germ. Tribes in the ad 1.
- •47. The age of migrations: the Visigoths.
- •48. The Ostrogoths.
- •49. Division of Frankish Empire and its linguistic consequences
- •51. Gods, days of week, months.
- •52. The Epoque of Vikings
- •53. Old Frisian ethnic community.
- •54. Oe Heptarchy. Wessex.
- •55. Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians.
- •56. Paganism vs Christianity in og ethnic communities.
- •58. Material, spiritual culture.
34. Pg: concept, division.
The branch of Indo-European that English belongs to is called Germanic. Germanic languages are descended from one parent language, a dialect of Indo-European, called Proto-Germanic (PG). Round about the beginning of the Christian era, the speakers of Proto-Germanic still formed a relatively homogeneous cultural and linguistic group, living in the north of Europe. There are no records of the language of this period, but we know something about the people who spoke it, because they were described by Roman authors, who called them the Germani, which for convenience are translated as ‘Germans’. One of the best-known of these descriptions is that written by Tacitus in AD 98, called Germania.
The branches of Germanic
As a result of this expansion of the Germanic-speaking peoples, differences of dialect within Proto-Germanic became more marked, and we can distinguish three main branches or groups of dialects, namely North Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic.
Proto-Germanic
West Germanic North Germanic East Germanic
To North Germanic belong the modern Scandinavian languages – Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese and Gutnish (the language of the island of Gotland). The earliest recorded form of North Germanic (Old Norse) is found in runic inscriptions from about AD 300; and it is not until the Viking Age, from about AD 800 onwards, that it begins to break up into the dialects, which have developed into the modern Scandinavian languages. Here is the family tree for the North Germanic languages:
North Germanic (Old Norse)
West Scandinavian East Scandinavian
Icelandic Norwegian Faroese Danish Swedish Gutnish
The East Germanic dialects were spoken by the tribes that expanded East of the Oder around the shores of the Baltic. They included the Goths, and Gothic is the only East Germanic language of which we have any record. Round AD 200 the Goths migrated south-eastwards, and settled in the plains north of the Black Sea, where they divided into two branches, the Ostgoths east of the Dieper and the Visigoths west of it. The main record of Gothic is the fragmentary remains of a translation of the Bible into Visigothic, made by the Bishop Wulfila or Ulfilas in the middle of the forth century. The Goths were later overrun by the Huns, but a form of Gothic was being spoken in the Crimea as late as the 17th century. It has since died out, however, and no East Germanic language has survived into our own times. Here is the family tree for the East Germanic languages:
East Germanic
Burgundian Vandal Gothic
Visigothic Ostrogothic
To West Germanic belong the High German dialects of southern Germany, the Low German dialects of northern Germany (which in their earliest recorded form are called Old Saxon), Dutch, Frisian, and English. The language most closely related to English is Frisian, which was once spoken along the coast of North sea, from Northern Holland to central Denmark, but which is now heard only in a few coastal regions and on some of the Dutch islands. Before the migration of the Anglo-Saxons to England, they must have been near neighbours of the Frisians. Here is a family tree for the West Germanic languages:
West Germanic
Old High Old Saxon Old Low Franconian
German
High Low German Dutch Old English Old Frisian
German English Frisian