The Adjective in Common Germanic period

The adjectives in Common Germanic was also inflected for case, number and gender, and were declined according tostrong and weak declension, which was preserved in Old English.The adjectives belonging to the weak declension were declined after n-stem declension of nouns, and those belonging to the strong declension were declined after a-stem declension of nouns.

The verb in Common Germanic

The finite forms of the verb showed agreement with the subject through the categories of number, person. The moods were: the indicative mood, the imperative mood and the subjunctive mood. Aspectwas not a grammatical category, so aspect distinction was shown by lexical means. Voicedid not exist in the opposition of active to passive and the passive meaning was expressed by means of prefixes or suffixes. For example, Gothic: wasja – I dress, wasjada – I am dressed. There were two non-finite forms in Common Germanic: Participle I and Participle II. In later ages the verbal system in Germanic languages, unlike the nominal one, became more complicated, the number of grammatical categories grew and the number of forms, making each category, also grew.

Strong and weak verbs. All the forms of the verb in Common Germanic were built from 3 stems:

v The present tense stem

v The past tense stem

v The Participle II stem

In the course of development when the Germanic group split into separate languages and each language developed its own peculiarities, some languages underwent simplifications of the verbal system and other languages underwent the process of becoming more complex. In English some parts of the verbal system underwent simplification (the system of the weak verbs) while the number of the verbal categories and the forms making each category grew. The former IE endings gradually wore off, they were not sufficient indicators of differences in tense.as a result of it ablaut (gradation of the root vowel) was felt more and more as a real indication of tense. But neither gradation nor the remaining endings were fit to make patterns for the formation of tenses consequently we see very few additions to the word stock of strong verbs and a new type of weak verbs is constantly gaining ground. The dental suffix forming the past tense of the weak verbs is extensively used in Old Germanic languages and this suffix is indeed one of the characteristic features of inflexional system of Germanic languages.

Phonetic system in Common Germanic

The Parent Germanic language (Common Germanic) goes back to (Indo-European parent language, though it has its own peculiarities in consonants, vowels and accentuation (stress). In later ages the development of separate languages proceeded on different lines. The languages have lost some of their common features and developed new individual peculiarities.

The most important phonetic changes which greatly affected the whole look of the Germanic languages were the Consonant Shiftand the Stress Shift.

Word accent in Common Germanic

In the end of the Indo-European at the time when the Germanic group separated from other dialects there existed free or movable word stress. It could fall on different syllables of the word irrespective (независимо) of the fact whether this syllable was a root morpheme or an affixational one. The stress could be shifted (передвигаться) from one syllable to another both in form–derivation and in form–inflexion. Both these properties (free stress and movable stress) were changed. Force stress or dynamic stress became the most important kind of word stress in Germanic languages. Some time later the place of the stress became fixedon the first syllable of the word, which was usually the root, i.e. the place of the stress became stable, fixed. The root morpheme became the bearer of the heaviest stress, while other syllables, suffixes or prefixes, remained unstressed or weakly stressed. The stress was no longer shifted from one syllable to anotherand all modern Germanic languages employ this heavy stress, which results in the sharp contrast between the stressed and unstressed syllables.

For example, in modern English in the words like love, loves, loving with the inflexional suffixes the stress is always on the root.

In borrowings from non-Germanic languages the stress is shifted in word building,i.e. derivational affixes and remains fixed in inflexions.

For example, exhibition, obligation (< French) the stress is on the third syllable “exhibition”, but the verbs are to exhibit and to oblige.

The historical changes that took place in the system of accentuation or stress, affected the whole phonetic system and even the grammatical system of English. Since it was the first syllable or root morpheme that bore the heaviest stress, the suffixes and endings were gradually weakened and consequently the morphological structure of a word was simplified because the grammatical endings were weakened or altogether lost. Thus, the change is accent, in stress affected the development of grammatical structure of Germanic languages. Namely, the reduction (сокращение) of case inflexions and of the number of declensions took place.

Consonants in Common Germanic

Common Germanic was very rich in stops or plosives(взрывные), but poor in fricatives (щелевые), the only fricative being the sound [s] with its allophone [z]. The comparison of Germanic and non-Germanic words going back to the same Indo-European root shows that Germanic consonants did not correspond to the same consonants in other, non-Germanic, languages. Thus, whenever we have the sound “[p]” in Latin or in Russian, which are non-Germanic languages, we find in Germanic languagesthe sound[f]in its place. For example, Latin “pater” – English “father”. During the Common Germanic period almost all the IE consonants were altered. The most important of these changes is known as the first consonant shift (первое передвижение согласных) in Germanic languages. This shift was first formulated in 1822 by the German phonetician Jacob Grimm(1785 – 1863), and therefore it is often referred to as Grimm’s law.

The First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s law)

Three rows of Indo-European stop consonants (plosives) were shifted in Common Germanic:

1.I-E voiceless plosives (взрывные) shifted into Germanic voiceless fricatives [p, t, k]> [f, þ, λ]

2.I-E voiced plosives shifted into Germanic voiceless plosives

[b, d, g] > [p, t, k]

3.I-E voiced aspirated (с придыханием) consonants shifted into Germanic voiced fricatives [bh, dh, gh] > [b, d, g]

Indo – European	Germanic
p, t, k	f, p, h
b, d, g	p, t, k
bh, dh, gh	b, d, g

 

We can illustrate some of the correspondences between IE (non-Germanic) and Germanic consonants with examples from Modern English alone: English words borrowed from non-Germanic languages show the original IE consonants, while native English (Germanic) words coming from the same common IE root exemplify the shifting:

[p] / [f] paternal – father

[k] / [h] canine – hound

[d] / [t] dentist – tooth

[g] / [k] agriculture – a

This consonant shift is called the first to be distinguished from the second consonant shift that took place in Old High German (OHG) in the 9th century A.D.