22. Old Germanic strong and weak declension of adjectives.

In the parent PIE language nouns and adjectives were declined alike without any distinction in endings, as in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. The major innovation in the Germanic adjectives concerns the rise of a 2 felt declensions which is usually referred to as the strong and weak declensions. They have three genders and the same cases as nouns. They also have degrees of comparison.

The strong ( or займенникові) adj can be projected back to the IE stems in –o- ( masculine and neutral) and –a- ( feminine). The –u- stems also provided a considerable number of adj there were probably fewer –i- stems. But the –a-, -o- stems were more productive. The strong declension was used when the noun was not qualified by the demonstrative pronoun. (this declension has mixed case endings: the ending of the strong declension + the endings of the demonstrative pronoun).

The so-called weak declension of adjectives is a special Germanic formation by means of the suffixes –en-, -on-, which were originally used to form nomina agentis, and attributive nouns as Lat. ēdo “glutton”. The weak adj in Germ was an innovation. Morphologically *blindan/ *blindon clearly followes the pattern of *guman/tuggan (n-stem nouns). So weak adj were declined as n-stems nouns. The weak adj form was used when the aadj was preceded by the demonstrative pronoun or the genitive case of personal pronouns.

+ SUPPLETIVE ( good, bad, little…) p. 75

23. The pronoun in Old Germanic languages: its morphological categories.

Categories.

Number: singular, plural, dual.

Cases: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative.

Gender: masculine, feminine, neuter.

PG pronouns fell roughly under the same main classes as modern pronoun:

• Personal(особові)

• Demonstrative(вказівні)

• Reflexive(зворотні)

• Interrogative(питальні)

• Possessive(присвійні)

• Indefinite(неозначені)

Personal pronouns

PG personal pronouns had 3 persons(1-st, 2-nd,3d), 3 numbers(sg, pl, dual) in the first and second persons and 3 genders(m,f,n) in the third person, 2 Cases (Nom, Gen,Dat,Acc)

Reflexive pronouns

The reflexive pronoun originally referred to the chief person of the sentence irrespectively as to whether the subject was the first, second or third person singular and plural. Declined as Strong Adj

Demonstrative

The simple demonstrative sa, þata, sō was used both as demonstrative pronoun this, that, and as definite article, the.

24. The vocabulary of Proto-Germanic. (p 101-103)

The sources of information about the oldest vocabulary of Germ. Lang-es were: runic inscriptions, toponymy, texts of literary monuments and modern vocabulary of Germ. Languages, which are examined with the help of the comparative-historical method.

Common IE vocabulary includes terms of relationship, numerals and names of some plants and animals. The vocabulary of unknown origin forms 30% of the vocabulary of PG. the oldest borrowings were from Celtic and Latin. We also distinguish prattle words borrowed from childish lang., so called traveling words borrowed from unknown lang. and attested in many Germ. lang-es, folk words used in everyday speech and having special semantic meanings.

According to lexical meanings of the words (semantic field) we distinguish a) natural phenomena; b) industrial terms; c) cultural terms, d) animals, e) plants, f) actions

According to stylistics we distinguish neutral, common used and stylistically coloured (poetic, official, bookish and professional vocabulary) vocabulary. Common used words are the names of things which surround us. They are used in everyday speech and are stylistically neutral: OHG ackar (поле), leban (жити), OE bringan (приносити), wind (вітер).

Bookish lang. appeared in Late CG and is connected with the development of science and culture. A lot of such words were borrowed from Latin and Greek: L credo> OE creda; L regula> OE regol.