1. Lecture 5. Linguistic Features of Germanic Languages. Morphology. Plan Morphological system of nouns. Types of stemsand declensions. Adjectives. Declensions of adjectives Classes of pronoun Verbal system in Old Germanic languages Groups of verbs: main characteristic features Germanic vocabulary

2. A synthetic language is a language which uses inflectional forms, such as endings, to indicate the relationships between the parts of the sentence. The opposite of a synthetic language is an analytic language, in which the word forms are mostly or totally fixed, and grammatical functions are indicated through the use of helper words and word order. Modern E is an example of an analytic language.

3. 1. Morphological system of nouns The structure of a noun in PIE consisted of three elements: the root, 2) a stem-building suffix, 3) a case inflexion. But the originally three-part structure of the nouns changed into a two-part structure in the earliest documents of Old Germanic languages. This process is called the simplification of a stem or simplification of word structure.

4. Types of Stems and declensions In Old Germanic languages there are the following types of noun stems: 1) vocalic stems: -a-, -o-, -i-, -u- stems. Declension of these substantives has been called strong declension. 2) -n- stems. Declension of these is called weak declension. 3) Stems in other consonants: -s-, and -r- stems. 4) Root - stems. This is a peculiar type.These substantives never had a stem-building suffix, so that their stem had always coincided with their root.

6. 2. The Adjective Adjectives and nouns were morphologically similar in PIE and had only 2 aspects of differentiation: the category of gender was a grammatical category for adjectives and lexico-grammatical – for nouns. Adjectives had the degrees of comparison.

7. Every adjective in OG was declined according to the strong declension (with a vocalic stem) and to the weak declension (with an -n- stem). Weak declension forms are used when the adjectives is preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or the definite article, they are associated with the meaning of definiteness.

8. Degrees of comparison We distinguish 3 degrees of comparison in OG: positive, comparative, superlative. The main form-building means was suffixation. Comparative degree of adjectives in Early Germanic languages was formed with the help of suffixes –iz(a); -oz(a) (in Gothic), in Western and Northen Germanic languages the rhotacism took place, due to this fact the suffixes of comparative degree changed their form into -ir(a), or(a). Superlative degree was formed with the help of suffixes –ist, - ost. Gthhauhs –hauhiza - hauhist

9. 3. The Pronoun Old Germanic pronouns fell roughly under the same main classes as modern pronouns: personal, possessive, demonstrative, interrogative, indefinite, definite, negative, and relative. In OE, as in Gothic, there are besides singular and plural personal pronouns, also dual pronouns for the 1st and 2nd persons.

10. 4. Verbal system in Old Germanic languages The verb system of Old Germanic languages underwent significant changes. The system of OG verbs consisted of Strong verbs Weak verbs These two types of verbs represented the main mass of verbs. Weak verbs were specifically Germanic in the type of conjugation. Besides these two large groups, there are also the preterit-present verbs, with a peculiar system of forms, and a few irregular verbs, which do not have any similarity with any of the preceding groups.

12. 5. Groups of verbs: main characteristic features Strong verbs J. Grimm called the verbs strong because they had preserved the richness of form since the age of the parent-language and in this sense weak verbs had not such variety of form. The system of strong verbs is based on vowel gradation (Ablaut), which is also found in verbs of other IE languages, especially in Ancient Greek.

13. Forms of the strong verbs Every strong verb is characterised by four basic forms: the infinitive, the past singular, the past plural, the second participle. All strong verbs fall into seven classes according to the type of gradation. The first five classes have been discussed in connection with gradation. The main type of vowel gradation of first 5 classes was e – a – Ø – Ø. Class VI is built on a principle different from the first five. Here the gradation is a-ȱ-ȱ -a. Verbs of class VII (haitan) type have no vowel alternation. Verbs of class VII (letan) type have an alteration - e -, - o -, which is, among long vowels, apparelled to the IE, short vowel alteration - e -, - o -.

14. Weak verbs Weak verbs derive their past tense and second participle by means of a dental suffix –d-, -t-. These verbs are peculiar to Germanic languages.We can’t witness the same type of conjugation in any other IE language. In all Germanic languages except Gothic there were three classes of weak verbs, which were distinguished by their stem-building suffixes.

15. 6. Germanic Vocabulary The examples of Germanic words, whose roots have not been found outside the group:

16. SEVEN DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF GERMANIC Germanic became different from the other Indo-European language groups in seven main ways: The Indo-European verbal system was simplified. Indo-European distinctions of tense and aspect (indicates whether an action or state is viewed with regard to beginning, duration, incompletion, etc.) were lost except for the present and preterite (past) tenses. These two tenses are still the only ones indicated by inflection in Modern English; future and perfect tenses are expressed in phrases--e.g., I will have gone, etc. Germanic developed a preterite tense (called weak or regular) with a dental suffix, -d or -t (e.g. fish, fished, etc.). Germanic languages thus have two types of verbs, weak (regular) and strong (irregular). Strong verbs indicate tense by an internal vowel change (e.g. swim, swam, swum). The weak form is the living method of inflection, and many originally strong verbs have become weak.

17. Germanic developed weak and strong adjectives. The weak declension was used when the modified noun was preceded by another word which indicated case, number, and gender. The strong declension was used in other situations. These declensions are no longer found in modern English, but compare these examples from Old English: þageonganceorlas 'the young fellows' and geongeceorlas 'young fellows.' (The weak adjective ends in -an while the strong adjective ends in -e.) The Indo-European free accentual system allowed any syllable to be stressed. In Germanic the accent (or stress) is mainly on the root of the word, usually the first syllable. Several Indo-European vowels were modified in the Germanic languages. For example, Indo-European /a:/ became /o:/. Compare Latin mater and Old English modor.

18. Two consonant shifts occurred in Germanic. In the First Sound Shift (commonly known as Grimm's Law) the Indo-European stops bh, dh, gh, p, b, t, d, k, and g underwent a series of shifts. The Second Sound Shift (also known as the High German Sound Shift) affected the high but not the low Germanic languages, so English was not affected. Germanic has a number of unique vocabulary items, words which have no known cognates in other Indo-European languages. These words may have been lost in the other Indo-European languages, borrowed from non-Indo-European languages, or perhaps coined in Germanic. Among these words are Modern English rain, drink, drive, broad, hold, wife, meat, fowl.

19. Questions for self-control How many tenses had the system of OG verbs ? How many classes had weak verbs in Germanic languages ? What kind of words appeared in the later history of languages from purely Germanic roots? How many elements did the structure of a substantive in Germanic consist of