b) Slovakian;
c) Polish, spoken by about 35 million people, chiefly in Poland. Polish has a rich literature, the texts of which reach back to the 14th century.
Baltic and Slavonic are very closely related, though not as closely as Indo-Aryan and Iranian. There are some ancient divergences between them which make it possible to reconstruct a primitive Balto-Slavonic language.
Nevertheless in view of their many close resemblances it is convenient to group them together under the common name of Balto-Slavonic.
V. Germanic languages (see p. 26 )
VI. Italo-Celtic with two large groups:
1. Italic, the only language of which has survived is Latin; Latin has developed into the various Romance languages which may be listed as follows:
a) French, spoken by 60 million people in France and abroad (chiefly in Belgium, Switzerland, Canada);
b) Provencal, of various kinds, of which the oldest literary document dates from the 11th century;
c) Italian with numerous dialects, spoken by 51 million people in Italy itself and abroad;
d) Spanish, spoken by 156 million in Spain, the Fillipine Islands, Central and Northern America (except Brazil);
e) Portuguese;
f) Rumanian;
g) Moldavian;
h) Rhaeto-Romanic, spoken in three dialects in the Swiss canton, in Tyrol and Italy.
2. Celtic, with its Gaelic subgroup, including Irish, which possessed one of the richest literatures in the Middle Ages from the 7th century, Scottish and the Briton subgroup with Breton, spoken by a million people in Britanny and Welsh, spoken in Wales.
VII. Greek, with numerous dialects, such as Ionic-Attic, Achaean, Aeolic, Doric, etc. Literature begins with Homer's poems “the Iliad” and “the Odyssey”, dating from the 8th century B. C. Modern Greek is spoken in continental Greece, on the islands of the Ionian and Aegean Seas and by Greek settlements on the territory of Russia.
VIII. Armenian, spoken by three and a half million people in Armenia and in many settlements of Armenians in Iran, Turkey, etc. Literary Armenian is supposed to go back to the 5th century. Old Armenian, or Grabar, differs greatly from Modern Armenian or Ashharabar.
IX. Albanian, spoken now by approximately two million people in Albania. The earliest records of Albanian date from the 17th century A. D. Its vocabulary consists of a large number of words borrowed from Latin, Greek, Turkish, Slavonic, and Italian.
Two major members of the family which were discovered in the present century, are missing in these schemes. They are:
X. "Tocharian", as it is called, which is preserved in fragmentary manuscripts in Chinese Turkestan, dating from the 6th to the 10th centuries A. D. It is divided into two dialects, which for convenience are termed A and B.
What has just been said may be summed up on the following diagram:
Linguistic evidence shows that close contact existed between the dialects of Indo-European. From the point of view of vocabulary, for instance, Indo-Iranian shared with Baltic and Slavonic a considerable number of words which may be found only in these languages and they supply important clues of the connection between these two linguistic families: the Sanskrit word svit "to be bright, white" has its cognate in the Old Slavonic language in the form of sviteti "to dawn".
During this period the contacts between languages were so wide that it was not only languages in the same family that had common elements, but non-Indo-European languages borrowed words from Indo-European languages too: for example, the Finno-Ugric mete "honey" was borrowed from the Sanskrit madhu, Finno-Ugric nime meaning "name" has its cognate form in the Sanskrit naman.
The prominent Russian linguist A. A. Shakhmatov showed that the earliest Finno-Ugric borrowings from their neighbours in south Russia show common Aryan rather than Iranian traits.
The study of close linguistic relations between the dialects of the Indo-European parent language is well underway now and the decipherment of newly discovered languages will contribute to the solution of this problem.
2. General characteristics of Germanic languages
The Germanic languages represent one of the branches of the vast Indo-European family of languages. Nowadays Germanic languages are spoken in many countries: German (in Germany, Austria, and in Switzerland), Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic, English (spoken, besides England, in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and partly elsewhere). In India English is considered the second official language.
In ancient times the territory of Germanic languages was much more limited. Thus, in the 1st century A. D. Germanic languages were only spoken in Germany and in territories adjacent to it, and also in Scandinavia.
Germanic has three distinct groups:
1. North Germanic or Scandinavian which includes:
a) Danish, b) Swedish, c) Norwegian, d) Icelandic; the songs of Edda written in Icelandic are important landmarks in world literature;
2. West Germanic with
a) English, spoken today by about 270 million people in the UK, the USA, Australia, Canada;
b) Frisian, spoken in the provinces of the Northern Netherlands, with their oldest literary sources dating from the 14th century;
c) German (spoken by about 83 million people) with two dialects—Low German occupying the lower or northern parts of Germany, and High German which is located in the mountainous regions of the South of Germany—which have many peculiarities in pronunciation;
d) Dutch, spoken by 12 million people;
e) Yiddish, now spoken by Jewish population in Poland, Germany, Rumania, Hungary. It is based upon some middle German dialects or a mixture of dialects blended with Hebrew, Slavonic and other elements;
3. East Germanic which has left no trace. The only representative of this group is Gothic, whose written records have been preserved in the fragmentary translation of the Bible by the bishop Ulfila. Some Gothic words spoken in the Crimea were collected there in the 16th century.
There are two Italo-Celtic large groups:
1. Italic, the only language of which has survived is Latin, although now it’s a dead language; Latin has developed into various Romance languages which may be listed as follows:
a) French, spoken by 60 million people in France and abroad (chiefly in Belgium, Switzerland, Canada);
b) Provencal, of various kinds, of which the oldest literary document dates from the 11th century;
c) Italian with numerous dialects, spoken by 51 million people in Italy itself and abroad;
d) Spanish, spoken by 156 million in Spain, the Fillipine Islands, Central and Northern America (except Brazil),
e) Portuguese,
f) Rumanian,
g) Moldavian.
2. Celtic, with its Gaelic subgroup, including Irish, which possessed one of the richest literatures in the Middle Ages from the 7th century, Scottish and the Briton subgroup with Breton, spoken by a million people in Britanny and Welsh, spoken in Wales.
Aids to study the text:
I. Answer the following questions:
1. What do we mean by a linguistic family?
2. On what principles are world languages divided into certain linguistic families and groups?
3. Is it possible and reasonable to draw a parallel between race and language?
4. What is the original home of the Indo-European language family and how did it spread?
5. What can be said about the vocabulary and the grammatical structure of the Proto-Indo-European language?
6. Will you draw a vivid image of the Indo-Europeans as a race?
7. What branches of languages can be singled out within the Indo-European family?
8. What place do Germanic languages occupy within the Indo-European family?
9. Could you illustrate the origins of Germanic languages and their present status?
10. Would you point out the distinct branches within the group of Germanic languages?
II. Study the scheme of languages in the Indo-European family (p.29) and do the following tasks:
1. Illustrate the long way the Indo-European languages have come up to modern times.
2. Discuss whether linguists give a univocal point of view concerning the number of branches and groups of languages within the Indo-European family? Compare the information given in the present chapter and the illustration presented by the authors of the Macmillan School Dictionary (see the scheme, p.29).
3. Dwell on the birth of the English language and trace its development.
4. Enumerate modern languages which originated from the same Indo-European parent-language. Discuss to what extent they have already drifted apart and whether it is easy enough to state their common routs today.
Chapter 3. History of the English Vocabulary
1. The Periods in the History of the English language
The history of the English language covers roughly 1200 years, comprising several distinct periods marked by different features, which might be taken as a ground for the division into periods.
The English scholar Henry Sweet (1845—1912), author of a number of works on the English language and on its history, proposed the following division of the history of English according to the state of unstressed endings:
The 1st period, Old English, is the time of full endings. This means that any vowel may be found in an unstressed ending. For example, the word sinzan 'sing' has the vowel a in its unstressed ending, while the word sunu 'son' has the vowel u in a similar position.
The 2nd period, Middle English, is the period of leveled endings. This means that vowels of unstressed endings have been leveled under a neutral vowel (something like [a]), represented by the letter e. Thus, Old English sinzan yields Middle English singen, Old English sunu yields Middle English sune (also spelt sone).
The 3rd period, Modern English, represents the period of lost endings. This means that the ending is lost altogether. Thus, Middle English singen transformed into Modern English 'sing'. Middle English sone became Modern English 'son'.
This division is based on a feature both phonetic (weakening and loss of unstressed vowel sounds) and morphological (weakening and loss of grammatical morphemes).
Now we must define the chronological limits of each period. These are approximately the following: the OE period begins about 700 A.D. (the time to which the earliest writings in English belong) and lasts till about 1100. The ME period lasts from about 1100 till about 1500. The MnE period begins at about 1500 and lasts well into our own times. Within the MnE period it is customary to distinguish between, Early MnE (approximately 1500 — 1660) and Late MnE (approximately from 1660 till our own times).
It is easy to see that the approximate dates fixing the boundaries between the periods are very close to important events in the social and political life of the country: 1100 follows close upon 1066, the year of the Norman conquest, and 1500 is close to 1485, the year when the Wars of the Roses came to an end, which marked the decay of feudalism and the rise of capitalism in England. The end of the 15th century is also the time when the English nation arises. Thus division into periods based on a phonetic and morphological feature fits quite well into a conception of English history.
It should be emphasized that such dates as 1100 or 1500 cannot be taken literally: they are merely a convenient means of expressing the statement that by the end of the 11th and again by the end of the 15th century changes in the language have accumulated to an extent which makes it possible to state the beginning of a new period in its history.
2. Origins of the English language
The English language originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects, which made part of the West Germanic language group. The Germanic tribes which conquered Britain in the 5th century belonged, as ancient historians say, to three tribes, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. These tribes poured in floods from the continent: the Angles came from Southern Sleswick, north of the Schlei River; the Saxons used to live to the South of the Angles, in modern Holstein; the Jutes lived to the North of the Angles, in Northern Sleswick, which is now part of Denmark. Closely connected with these tribes were the Frisians, who occupied the coast of the German Ocean between the Rhone and the Ems (now part of the Netherlands); and the Hauks, who lived between the Ems and the Elbe.
About the 4th century A.D. these tribes began spreading westwards; the Saxons appeared on the northern cost of Gaul (modern France), and some of their troops even penetrated as far as the mouth of the Loire, on the Atlantic coast.
The earliest mention of the British Isles dates to the 4th century B.C., when the Greek explorer Pytheas, of Massilia (now Marseilles), sailing round Europe, landed in Kent.
It was about mid-5th century when Britain was conquered by the Germanic tribes. An old saying names the year 449 as the year of the conquest, and Hengest and Horsa as the two leaders of the invaders. The Britons fought against the conquerors for about a century and a half— until about the year 600. It is this epoch that the legendary figure of the British king Arthur belongs to. The Angles occupied most of the territory north of the Thames up to the Firth of Forth; the Saxons, the territory south of the Thames and some stretches north of it; the Jutes settled in Kent and in the Isle of Wight. Since the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain the ties of their language with the continent were broken, and in its further development it went its own ways. If is at this time, the 5th century, that the history of the English language begins. Its original territory was England (in the strict sense) except Cornwall, Wales, and Strathclyde (a region in the north-west). These western regions the Britons succeeded in holding, and they were conquered much later: Cornwall in the 9th, Strathclyde in the 11th, and Wales in the 13th century.
The Scottish Highlands, where neither Romans nor Teutons, had penetrated, were inhabited by Picts and Scots. The Scots language, belonging to the Celtic group, has survived in the Highlands up to our own days. Ireland also remained Celtic: the first attempts at conquering it were made in the 12th century.
3. The Celtic element in the English Vocabulary
When the Germanic tribes arrived at Britain, it was already inhabited be the Celtic tribes, who had invaded the country some centuries earlier. The time period from 8th – 7th cc. to the 1st century B.C. in the English history are marked by the invasion of the tribes generally known as Celtic tribes. The first Celtic tribes were the Gaels, but the Brythons arrived some two centuries later and pushed the Gaels to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall taking possession of the south and east. Then, after a considerable lapse of time somewhere about the 1st c. B.C. the most powerful tribe, the Belgae, claimed possession of the south and East while part of Brythons was pushed on to Wales though the rest stayed in what is England now, and probably gave their name to the whole country.
Accordingly various Celtic languages and dialects were introduced in the Indo-European vocabulary on the Isles. Celtic languages are divided into two main groups: the Gallo-Breton and the Gaelic. The Gallo-Breton group comprises Gallic, which was spoken in Gaul (modern France), and British, represented by Welsh (or Cymry) in Wales, Cornish in Cornwall (became extinct in the 18th century), and Breton in Brittany. The Gaelic group comprises Irish, Scots, so-called Erse, Manx, on the isle of Alan, between Scotland and Ireland. There are, however, very few Celtic loan-words in the OE vocabulary for there must have been little intermixture between the Germanic settlers and the Celtic in Britain. Though in some parts of the island the Celts population was not exterminated and Celtic influence can be clearly felt. In other parts of the country it is quite meager.
Abundant borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names. The OE kingdoms Kent, Deira and Bernicia derive their names from the names of Celtic tribes. The name of York, the Downs and perhaps London have been traced to Celtic sources (Celtic dun meant 'hill'). Various designations of 'river' and 'water' were understood by the Germanic invaders as proper names: Ouse, Exe, Esk, Usk, Avon, Evan go back to Celtic amhuin 'river', uisge 'water'; Thames, Stour, Dover also come from Celtic. Some elements frequently occurring in Celtic place-names can help to identify them:
-comb 'deep valley' in Batcombe, Winchcombe;
-ton 'high rock' in Ton, Torcross;
-llan 'church' in Landaff, Llanelly;
-pill 'creek' in Pylle, Huntspill.