The Old English dialects and formation of the English language.
Old English language, also called Anglo-saxon, language spoken and written in England before 1100; it is the ancestor of Middle English and Modern English. Scholars place Old English in the Anglo-Frisian group of West Germanic languages.
Four dialects of the Old English language are known: Northumbrian in northern England and southeastern Scotland; Mercian in central England; Kentish in southeastern England; and West Saxon in southern and southwestern England. Mercian and Northumbrian are often classed together as the Anglian dialects. Most extant Old English writings are in the West Saxon dialect; the first great period of literary activity occurred during the reign of King Alfred the Great in the 9th century.
Билет № 15
1. Characteristic features of Germanic languages.
2. Strong evidence for the unity of all the modern Germanic languages can be found in the phenomenon known as the first Germanic sound shift or consonant shift (also calledGrimm's law), which set the Germanic subfamily apart from the other members of the Indo-European family. Consisting of a regular shifting of consonants in groups, the sound shift had already occurred by the time adequate records of the various Germanic languages began to be made in the 7th to 9th cent. According to Grimm's law, certain consonant sounds found in the ancient Indo-European languages (such as Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit) underwent a change in the Germanic tongue. For example, the sounds p, d, t, and k in the former became f, t, th, and h respectively in the latter, as in Latinpater, English father; Latin dent, English tooth; and Latin cornu, English horn.
3. Before the 8th cent. a second shift of consonants took place in some of the West German dialects. For instance, under certain circumstances, d became t, and t became ss or z, as in English bread, Dutch brood, but German Brot;English foot, Dutch voet, but German Fuss; and English ten, Dutch tien, but German zehn. The dialects in which this second consonant shift took place were the High German dialects, so called because they were spoken in more mountainous areas. Standard modern German arose from these dialects. The West Germanic dialects not affected by the second shift were the Low German dialects of the lowlands, from which Dutch and English evolved.
4. Also peculiar to the Germanic languages is the recessive accent, whereby the stress usually falls on the first or root syllable of a word, especially a word of Germanic origin. Another distinctive characteristic shared by the Germanic languages is the umlaut, which is a type of vowel change in the root of a word. It is demonstrated in the pairs foot(singular), feet (plural) in English; fot (singular), fötter (plural) in Swedish; and Kampf (singular), Kämpfe (plural) in German.
5. All Germanic languages have strong and weak verbs; that is, they form the past tense and past participle either by changing the root vowel in the case of strong verbs (as in English lie, lay, lain or ring, rang, rung; German ringen, rang, gerungen ) or by adding as an ending -d (or -t ) or -ed in the case of weak verbs (as in English care, cared, cared or look, looked, looked; German fragen, fragte, gefragt ). Also typically Germanic is the formation of the genitive singular by the addition of -s or -es. Examples are English man, man's; Swedish hund, hunds; GermanLehrer, Lehrers or Mann, Mannes. Moreover, the comparison of adjectives in the Germanic languages follows a parallel pattern, as in English: rich, richer, richest; German reich, reicher, reichst; and Swedish rik, rikare, rikast.Lastly, vocabulary furnished evidence of a common origin for the Germanic languages in that a number of the basic words in these languages are similar in form; however, while word similarity may indicate the same original source for a group of languages, it can also be a sign of borrowing.
2. Semantic classification of lexical units. Synonyms. Classification of synonyms.
The term unitmeans one of the elements into which a whole may be divided or analysed and which possesses the basic properties of this whole. The units of a vocabulary or lexical units are two-facet elements possessing form and meaning. The basic unit forming the bulk of the vocabulary is the word. Other units are morphemesthat is parts of words, into which words may be analysed, and set expressions or groups of words into which words may be combined.
Set expressions are word groups consisting of two or more words whose combination is integral so that they are introduced into speech as ready-made units with a specialised meaning of the whole that is not understood as a mere sum total of the meanings of the elements.
Words are the central elements of language system, they face both ways: they are the biggest units of morphology and the smallest of syntax", and what is more, they embody the main structural properties and functions of the language. Words can be separated in an utterance by other such units and can be used in isolation. Unlike words, morphemes cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units and are functioning in speech only as constituent parts of words. Words are thought of as representing integer concept, feeling or action or as having a single referent. The meaning of morphemes is more abstract and more general than that of words and at the same time they are less autonomous.
The morpheme is the smallest meaningful language unit. Morphemes are divided into two large groups: lexical morphemes and grammatical (functional) morphemes. Both lexical and grammatical morphemes can be freeand bound.
Free lexical morphemes are roots of words, which express the lexical meaning of the word; they coincide with the stem of simple words.
Free grammatical morphemes are function words: articles, conjunctions and prepositions ( the, with, and).
Bound lexical morphemes are affixes: prefixes (dis-), suffixes (-ish) and also blocked (unique) root morphemes (e.g. Fri-day, cran-berry).
Bound grammatical morphemes are inflexions (endings), e.g. -s for the Plural of nouns, -ed for the Past Indefinite of regular verbs, -ing for the Present Participle, -er for the Comparative degree of adjectives.
Synonyms are words different in their outer aspects, but identical or similar in their inner aspects. In English there are many synonyms, because there are a lot of borrowings: hearty (native) – cordial (borrowing). After a word is borrowed it undergoes desynonymization, because absolute synonyms are unnecessary for a language. However, there are some absolute synonyms in the language, which have exactly the same meaning and belong to the same style: to moan, to groan; homeland, motherland. In cases of desynonymization one of the absolute synonyms can specialize in its meaning and we get semantic synonyms: city (borrowed) – town (native). The French borrowing city is specialized in its meaning.
Sometimes one of the absolute synonyms is specialized in its usage and we get stylistic synonyms: to begin (native) – to commence (borrowing). Here the French word is specialized.
Stylistic synonyms can also appear by means of abbreviation: exam (colloquial), examination (neutral).
Among stylistic synonyms we can point out euphemisms: the late (dead), to perspire (to sweat).
On the other hand, there are slang synonyms. They are expressive, mostly ironical words serving to create fresh names for some things that are frequently used.: mad – daft, potty, balmy, loony, bonkers, touched, nutty.
There are also phraseological synonyms, these words are identical in their meanings and styles but different in their combinability with other words in the sentence: to visit museums but to attend lectures; teachers question their pupils, judges interrogate witnesses.
There are also contextual synonyms which are similar in meaning only under some specific distributional conditions: buy and get are not synonyms out of context but they are synonyms in the following examples: I‘ll go to the shop and buy some bread and I‘ll go to the shop and get some bread.
In each group of synonyms there is a word with the most general meaning, which can substitute any word in the group. Such words are called synonymic dominants: piece is the synonymic dominant in the group slice, lump. morsel. Very many compound nouns denoting abstract notions, persons and events are correlated with phrasal verbs. We have such synonymous pairs as: arrangement – layout, reproduction – playback.