GLOSSARY OF TERMS

 

ablaut (gradation ) – a kind of vowel interchange which is (as well as affixation) a way of word- and form-building: IE e / o / ø > PG i / a / u: ModE sing – sang – sung.

Anglo-Saxon – a collective term usually used to describe the culturally and linguistically similar peoples living in the south and east of the island of Great Britain from around the mid-5^th century AD to the Norman conquest of 1066; also the early form of the English language now usually termed Old English (s.).

assimilation – a phonetic process of alteration of speech sounds as a result of which one of the sounds becomes fully or partially similar to the  adjoining sound.

cognate (word) – derived from the same word in the parent-tongue, e. g. ModE dance and ModG tanzen are cognate words.

dialect – a variant, a particular form of a language spoken by some subgroup of the speech-comunity.

dual (number) – a unit of the grammatical category of number which distinguishes two objects and is opposed to singular and plural. In the Old English language dual existed only in the paradigm of personal pronouns (see Survey of Old English Grammar in Tables).

etymology – 1) branch of linguistics which studies origin and history of words and morphemes;

2) origin and history of words and morphemes.

Germanic – a collective term usually used to describe the culturally and linguistically branch of Indo-European peoples, originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Germanic languages that are descended from Proto-Germanic.

gemination (West Germanic lengthening of consonsnts) – doubling of consonants due to assimilation: Goth. saljan – OE sellan ‘give’, [j] > [l].

gradation s. ablaut

grade – any one of a series of vowels for ablaut (s.), e. g. a-grade is presented in the past tense form sang of the verb sing.

Great Vowel Shift – series of changes in the Middle English and Early Modern English periods which affected long vowels.

Grimm’s law – a change that took place in the Proto-Germanic system of consonants; according to this shift the Indo-European aspirated voised stops changed to voiced stops, voiced stops to voiceless stops, voiceless stops to voiceless fricatives.

 

First Consonant Shift s. Grimm’s law

inflexion – a word-changing affix bearing the grammatical meaning of the word and expressing the relation of the word to other words in the sentence.

irregular verbs – a group of the Germanic verbs, which used inflections and suppletion to build their forms.

Indo-European – one of the largest language families, includes 12 groups of languages now spoken throughout the world: Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Tocharian, Greek, Anotolian, Indian, Slavonic, Baltic, Albanian, Armenian, Iranian. Of the top 20 contemporary languages in terms of speakers 12 are Indo-European: English, Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish, Bengali, Russian, German, Marathi, French, Italian, Punjabi and Urdu, accounting for over 1.6 billion native speakers.

Kentish – a dialect of Old English spoken in the south-eastern region of England, originally the dialect of Jutes.

Mercian – a dialect of Old English spoken between the Humber river and the Thames, originally the dialect of Angles.

Middle English – a form of the English language from about 1100 to 1500.

Northumbrian – a dialect of Old English spoken to the north of the Humber river, originally the dialect of Angles.

Old English – the early form of the English language from the time of the first Anglo-Saxon settlement (the 5^th c.) to about 1100.

Old Norse – the early form of the North Germanic languages, it is often considered to be the parent-language of Old Icelandic, Old Swedish, Old Danish and Old Norwegian; the same as Old Scandinavian

Old Scandinavian s. Old Norse

preterite-present verbs – a peculiar group of verbs which form the present tense forms by means of sound interchange and past tense forms with the help of the dental suffix

root – the basic morpheme in a word that bears the lexical meaning and remains unchangeable in derivation, e. g. the root econom- in the words economy, economist, economise, economic.

runes – the early Germanic alphabet used since the 2^nd – 3^rd c. BC; the technique of writing was carving letters into wood, stone, bone.

stem – the kernel part of the word which does not include inflections, e. g. the stem of Rus. имени is имен-.

strong verbs – the numerous group of the Germanic verbs which used ablaut to form the four principle forms (Present tense, Past tense singular, Past tense plural, Past Participle), e. g. ModG finden – fand – gefunden.

stem-building suffix – a morpheme which is placed after the root and is used to form the stem of the word; originally could serve as a means of classifying words into semantic gpoups, e. g. in ModE child-r-en -r- was a stem-building suffix,

suppletion – a means of form-building using a different (not cognate) root, e. g. go – went, am – was.

Verner’s law – a change that took place in Late Proto-Germanic and affected voiceless fricatives which became voiced if the were preceded by a non-stressed short vowel

weak irregular verbs – a group of Germanic verbs that used the dental suffix to form the Past tense and Past Participle but underwent some phonetic changes in the Proto-Germanic period, e. g. bring – brought (with the vowel interchange, the loss of [n], the change of [g] into [x] and [ø].

weak verbs – a group of the Germanic verbs which formed the Past tense forms and Past Participle by means of the suffix which contained [d], [t], [þ], [ð], e. g. MidE kepen – kepte, ModG machen – machte.

West-Saxon – a dialect of Old English spoken to the south of the Thames, originally the dialect of Saxons.