THEME 1.
HISTORICAL CONDITIONS OF THE
DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH
§ 1. ENGLISH AS A GERMANIC LANGUAGE OF
THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY
 Old
English developed from the Germanic language
which in its turn goes back to the Indo-European
language.
 The common Proto-Indo-European language existed
in the 5-2 millennia B.C.
 In the second millennium B.C. Indo-European split into
a number of new languages which gave rise to 12
branches of the Indo-European family: Germanic,
Slavic, Baltic, Celtic, Romanic, Greek, Albanian,
Armenian, Iranian, Indian, and other extinct
languages.
 Germanic split into the languages of three groups:
East-Germanic, North-Germanic and West-Germanic.
 The East-Germanic group includes only dead
languages: Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic.
 Gothic is of great importance for the students of
Germanic philology since the oldest Germanic texts
were written in this language. It disappeared in the
17th century.
 The North-Germanic group comprises Swedish,
Danish, Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic.
 The West-Germanic group includes English, German,
Dutch, Frisian, Flemish, Yiddish, and Afrikaans
spoken in South Africa.
The history of English began in the 5th century when
the Anglo-Saxon tribes invaded the British Isles.
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE OLD ENGLISH
VOCABULARY
The vocabulary spoken by Anglo-Saxons during the Old
English period reflects the stages of the prehistoric
development of English.
The word-stock of that period consists of three
layers: Indo-European, Germanic, and Old English.
 The words of the Indo-European layer can be found
in other Indo-European languages, e.g. Latin,
Russian, Ukrainian.
 The words of the Germanic layer are found in other
Germanic languages, e.g. German.
 The words of the Old English layer appeared in
English and cannot be traced to any other IndoEuropean or Germanic language.
2.1. Indo-European layer
The words of this layer denote the most basic things of
everyday life:
terms of kinship, e.g. mother – Ukr. матір; sister – Ukr.
сестра; son – Ukr. син;
body parts, e.g. back – Ukr. бік; beard – Ukr. борода;
brow – Ukr. брова; tooth – Lat. dens, cf. Ukr. дантист;
heart – Lat. cor, cf. Ukr. кардіолог; lip – Lat. labium;
animals, e.g. swine – Ukr. свиня;
plants, e.g. birch – Ukr. береза; tree – Ukr. дерево;
colours, e.g. brown – Ukr. брунатний; red – Ukr. рудий
2.1. Indo-European layer
verbs, e.g. call – Ukr. голос; eat – Ukr. їсти; sit –
Ukr.сидіти; stand – Ukr. стояти; sleep – Ukr.
слабий; smile – Ukr. сміятися;
separate objects, e.g. field – Ukr. поле; hammer – Ukr.
камінь; milk – Ukr. молоко;
prepositions, e.g. to – Ukr. до;
numerals: ān – Ukr. один; twā, tū, twēgen – Ukr. два;
þrī, þrēo, þrīe – Ukr. три; fēower – Ukr. чотири; fīf –
Ukr. п’ять; siex, syx – Ukr. шість; seofon – Lat.
septem(ber); æht, eaht – Lat. octo(ber); nigon – Lat.
novem(ber); tÿn,tien – Ukr. десять, Lat. decem(ber);
thousand – Ukr. тисяча.
SOME TYPOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE
GERMANIC LANGUAGES:
 The levelling of the IE tense system into past
and present.
  The use of a dental suffix (/d/ or /t/) instead of
vowel alternation (ablaut) to indicate past tense.
  The presence of two distinct types of verb
conjugation: weak (using dental suffix) and
strong (using ablaut).

SOME TYPOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE
GERMANIC LANGUAGES (continuation):
 The
use of strong and weak adjectives.
 The consonant shift known as Grimm’s Law.
 A number of words (called Common Germanic)
with etymologies that are difficult to link to other
Indo-European families, but variants of which
appear in almost all Germanic languages.
 The shifting of stress onto the root of the stem.
Additional information.
The study of the Indo-European layer of the
vocabulary helps to determine where the Indo-European
people lived. In the 19th century it was customary to assume
an Asiatic home for the Indo-European family which was the
result of the biblical tradition that placed the garden of Eden in
Mesopotamia.
However, the facts of various Indo-European
languages prompt that the original home for the family was
Europe because the languages of this group have common
words for ‘winter’ and ‘snow’ which means that the family was
in a climate that at certain seasons was at least partly cold.
Therefore a European home for the languages of the IndoEuropean family has come to be considered more probable.
Most of the proposed locations can be in the district of the
Germanic area stretching from central Europe to the steppes of
southern Russia and Ukraine.
2.2. Germanic layer
The vocabulary of this layer can be divided into two
subgroups:
- expanding the Indo-European word classes;
- names of new phenomena.
2.2.1. Words expanding the Indo-European classes:
- terms of distant kinship, e.g. uncle – Germ. der Onkel,
aunt – Germ. Die Tante;
- body parts, e.g. arm – Germ. der Arm; finger – Germ.
der Finger; hand – Germ. die Hand; head – Germ. das
Haupt;
2.2. Germanic layer
- animals, e.g. bear – der Bär; fox – der Fuchs; calf –
das Kalb;
- plants, e.g. oak – Germ. die Eiche; lime – Germ. Die
Linder (a tree under which trials took place); beech
tree – Germ. das Buch (originally pieces of writing
were scratched on beechen boards, hence ModE
book);
- colors, e.g. green – Germ. grün; blue – Germ. blau;
- verbs, e.g. drink – Germ. trinken.
2.2.2. Names of new phenomena:
spatial terms, e.g. earth, ground, land, sand;
temporal names, e.g. week;
names of days: Anglo-Saxons were pagans, i.e.
they believed in many Gods,
and gave their names to days of the week:
Sunday – Sun’s day;
Monday – Moon’s day;
Tuesday – the day of Tiw (the god of war);
Wednesday – Woden’s day (the god of wind);
Thursday – Thor’s day (the god of thunder, cf.
Germ. der Donner “thunder” – Donnerstag);
Friday – Frige’s day (the goddess of love, cf. ModE
friend);
Saturday – Saturn’s day (Roman god of agriculture).
Additional note.
To be more exact, names of the days of the week
should be treated as translation loans, i.e. units
created on the pattern of Latin words as their
literal translations.
They were formed by the substitutions of the
name of the corresponding Germanic god for the
god of the Romans. For example, Monday, i.e.
Moon’s day = Lat. Lunae dies; Tuesday, i.e. Tiw’s
day = Lat. Martis dies since the Teutonic God Tiw
corresponds to Roman Mars.
2.3. Old English layer
These words appeared in Old English and cannot
be found in other Indo-European languages though
some of them were borrowed by other languages
later.
The specifically Old English words are bird (OE
brid), lord (OE hlāford = hlāf ‘loaf’ + weard ‘keeper’),
woman (OE wīf-man) etc.
2.4.1. Latin borrowings comprise
three groups:
1) the words introduced by Roman traveling merchants into
the common Germanic language;
2) the words adopted during the Roman occupation of the
British Isles;
3) the units connected with the introduction of Christianity.
Latin borrowings of the common Germanic period
denote measures, e.g. pound, mile, money, fruit, e.g. pear,
plum, cherry, vegetables, e.g. beet, plant, drinks, e.g. beer,
wine, food, e.g. butter, pepper.
The words connected with the fortifications built by
the Romans are wall, street, port, etc. The Latin borrowings
brought with the introduction of Christianity (7th century) are
alter, angel, anthem, candle, devil, pope, school etc.
2.4.1. Celtic borrowings
Celtic borrowings are very few (about a dozen
words): ass, bin, clan, down, iron, tory, whiskey,
place-names, e.g. Avon, Dover, Kent, Thames, York,
perhaps, London, names of persons, e.g. Arthur
(noble), Kennedy (ugly head).
The name of the British capital London originates
from the Celtic compound noun Llyndūn meaning “a
fortress on the hill over the river” (Celtic llyn, “a river”
+ dūn, “a fortified hill”).
§ 3. FIRST GERMANIC
CONSONANT SHIFT:
GRIMM’S LAW
Many words of the Indo-European layer have different
consonants in related units, cf. tree – Ukr. дерево, to –
Ukr. до, call – Ukr. голос; tooth – Lat. dens, cf. Ukr.
дантист; heart – Lat. cor, cf. Ukr. кардіолог; hammer
– Ukr. камінь.
These differences were explained in 1822 by a German
philologist, Jacob Grimm. Therefore this set of changes
is often called Grimm’s law.
Grimm’s law
The changes are systematically revealed if we compare
Ukrainian and English numerals:
два – two: d → t;
три – three: t → θ;
п’ять – five: p → f.
The comparison of два and two suggests that the IndoEuropean voiced
plosives (stops) d, b, g developed into the Germanic
voiceless plosives t, p, k, e.g. два – two, яблуко –
apple, голос – call. It is the first act of Grimm’s law.
Grimm’s law
The comparison of три – three and п’ять – five
reveals that the Indo-European voiceless plosives t, p,
k became Germanic fricatives θ, f, h, e.g. три –
three, п’ять – five, корова – horn. It is the second act
of Grimm’s law.
The third act of Grimm’s law is not reflected in modern
languages. It concerns the development of the IndoEuropean aspirated voiced plosives bh, dh, gh into
the Germanic voiced plosives b, d, g, e.g. Skrt.
bhratar – ModE brother.
These developments explain similar consonants in
the English and Ukrainian words back and бік; beard
and борода; brow and брова etc.