HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEXICOLOGY STYLISTICS THEORETICAL

�HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE �LEXICOLOGY �STYLISTICS �THEORETICAL GRAMMAR (30 h. – lectures, 10 h. - seminars)

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

1. 1. The Indo-European Language Family 1. 2. The Proto-Germanic Language 1. 3. Periods in the History of English

�English is a member of the Germanic family of languages; �The Germanic family is a branch of the Indo-European language family; �The other branches of the Indo. European language family: Indo. Iranian, Armenian, Anatolian, Albanian, Tocharian, Greek, Italic, Baltic, Celtic, and Slavic.

� Proto-Germanic (Primitive Germanic or Common Germanic), the parent language. It was split from the related Indo-European languages(15 th – 10 th BC). � Proto-Germanic language underwent changes and branched into three speech communities, which further separated into distinct Germanic languages: � � � North Germanic (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic); East Germanic (Gothic-extinct), West Germanic (High German, Low German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and English).

� Proto-Germanic was distinguished from the other Indo-European languages by innovations at different levels: phonological, morphological, and syntactic. � It was characterised by numerous additions to its lexicon: it contained some words which cannot be found in the other Indo. European languages. These words might have been lost there, adopted from non-Indo -European languages, or invented in Germanic.

SOME FEATURES: �The stress in Germanic normally fell on the first syllable (except for prefixes). �One of the main phonological and morphological instruments was the ablaut (gradation), i. e. the vowel interchange in the root of nouns and verbs. It was sometimes used instead of verb endings and noun inflections.

� Grimm’s Law (after Jacob Grimm) or the First Consonant Shift. According to the law: 1. IE aspirated voiced stops lost aspiration in Germanic: e. g bh > b Skt bhrātār > Goth. broþor (brother) 2. IE voiceless stops became fricatives in Germanic: e. g. t > þ Lat. trēs > Goth. þreis (three) 3. The IE voiced stops became voiceless in Germanic: e. g. b > p Rus. болото > Mod. E pool (pool)

� Proto-Germanic nouns, pronouns, and adjectives were declined. The noun had three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter); two numbers: (singular, plural), a reduced case system. Also, there were several types of noun declension depending on the type of the stem: -a-, -ō-, -i-, u- , -n-. � The adjective → an independent part of speech with new inflectional pattern. The adjective developed two declensions: strong (used when the noun modified was preceded by a determiner) and weak (used in other situation).

� Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives were declined. The noun had three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter); two numbers (singular, plural), and a reduced case system. Also, there were several types of noun declension depending on the type of the stem: -a-, -ō-, -i-, -u- , -n-. � Adjective turned into an independent part of speech with new inflectional pattern. The adjective developed two separate declensions: strong (used when the noun modified was preceded by a determiner) and weak (used in other situation).

� It had only two tenses: present and past (preterite); three moods (indicative, subjunctive, and imperative), and two voices (active and passive). � Verbs were divided into two major groups, strong and weak. Strong verbs used either an internal vowel change (ablaut) or reduplication, while weak verbs used the dental suffix -d. � Verbs and pronouns had three numbers: singular, dual, and plural.

�Proto-Germanic like other old Indo. European languages had a synthetic type of form-building, which means that the grammatical meaning was expressed by changing the forms of the word itself with the help of inflections, sound interchange and suppletion.

� The history of the English language starts with the arrival of three Germanic tribes (the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes) that invaded Britain during the 5 th century AD. � The tribes migrated from the continent (the territory of today’s northern Germany and Denmark). � At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language.

Three periods: �Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) (450 – 1100 AD); �Middle English (the 12 th century to 1475); �Modern English (since 1475).

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