Lecture 1.

Indo-European Family of languages English as a Germanic Language

Outline

1. Theoretical background

2. Branches of IE family

3. Germanic group, its branches

4. Features of early Germanic society (classification of tribes, social background, alphabets)

5. PG Morphology

6. PG Phonology:

6a. peculiarities of stress

6b. system of consonants (1. Consonant Shifts, 2. Gemination, 3. Rhotacism)

6c. system of vowels (1. Germanic Vowel Shift, 2. Ablaut, 3. Umlaut).

I. Theoretical background

The present theoretical course deals with the history of English from the settlement of Britain by Germanic tribes in the 5^th century A.D. down to the present day.

What is the most characteristic feature of any language? The basic feature of a language is its constant change, which may occur at any period of its development. These changes are very slow, but in some areas, and under some circumstances the changes of a language structure may be faster, though they are not catastrophic.

Why does a language change? What are the reasons for linguistic change? Linguists have singled out such principle factors for language change as: the principle of least effort, imperfect language learning, process of analogy, process of borrowing, and the tendency to preserve symmetry in the language system.

Thus, the subject matter of the history of English is the account of all the changes in the structure of the language in a wider context of historical, political, and social events over the last 15 hundred years.

II. Branches of ie family

In order to better understand the evolution of English we must first see what position it occupies within the family of related languages. In fact, English belongs to a very extensive language family with many branches. This family includes most of the languages of Europe and India, so it is called Indo-European.

Branches of IE:

1. Indo-Iranian, or Aryan, which includes Indian and Iranian. (Indic(Indian) includes a number of l-ges spoken in India. The most ancient is Sanskrit. The modern l-ges are Hindi (official l-ge of India), Urdu (spoken in Pakistan), Romany is related to them (the l-ge of Gypsies)).

2. Greek (from the 7^th c. B.C.) includes various ancient Greek dialects, and from one of these – Attic – Modern Greek is descended.

3. Italic: ancient dialects of Italy, including Latin (3 c. B.C.). Includes: Italian, French, Spanish, Portugese, Rumanian, dialects of Provencal, Catalan, Sardinian< Romance dialects of Switzerland

4. Celtic (3 groups): Gaulish, Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish), and Gaelic (Irish, Scotch, Manx).

5. Baltic descends from Old Prussian. The modern l-ges are Lettish and Lithuanian.

6. Slavonic (Slavic) are divided geographically. The southern: Macedonian, Slovene, Serbian, Croatian; the western: Polish, Check, Slovakian, Wendish; the eastern: Ukrainian, Russian, Belorussian.

7. Germanic (old 3 branches).

8. Albanian.

9. Armenian descends from Old Armenian, and divides into eastern and western branches.

10. Tocharian.

11. Anatolian (Hittite).

Altogether, a thousand million people speak an IE language as their mother tongue, and of these over 3 hundred million speak a Germanic language.

The Indo-European family of languages has developed out of some single language, which must have been spoken thousands of years ago by a comparatively small group of people in a relatively restricted area. This original language was called Proto-Indo-European, and people who spoke that language we call (Proto-)-Indo-Europeans. The questions here are: where did they live? How did they spread all over the world? (самост. опрацювання).