scholarly journals Germanic Preterite-Present Verbs and their Morphological and Semantic Peculiarities

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-88
Author(s):  
Andriy Botsman ◽  
Olga Dmytruk
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Characteristics ◽  
Morphological Features ◽  
The West ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Semantic Aspect

The purpose of this article is to give detailed description to all possible semantic and morphological features of Germanic preterite-present verbs. Some research has dealt with the problem of preterite-present present verbs; however, semantic and morphological functions of these verbs were studied only by singling out verb characteristics, peculiarities, potential possibilities in different Germanic languages without any alignment of the obtained results. There is little information available on preterite-present verbs within the west Germanic and North Germanic (Scandinavian) subgroups. Semantic aspect of these verbs was analysed by some scholars, but it is still unknown how these verbs were formed in other Indo-European languages (Baltic, Slavonic, Romantic). The contradicting point of the available research is how those verbs are reflected in Latin and Greek. In spite of the fact that preterite-present verbs were studied in detail in terms of phonological characteristics, their morphological and semantic peculiarities were not taken into account and compared. Special attention should be given to the functioning and correlation of phonological and morphological peculiarities of those verbs. This paper offers the results of a detailed and consistent analysis of phonological and morphological peculiarities of preterite-present verbs. The paper aims at determining the morphological characteristics of preterite-present verbs, which were formed under the influence of phonological processes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the connection of Germanic preterite-present verbs with possible sources in other Indo-European languages. The authors define a set of characteristics peculiar of preterite-present verbs semantics. The functions of these verbs are analysed in detail. The authors attempt to analyse the nature of these verbs. The attention is paid to the functions of preterite- present verbs not only in the Germanic languages, but in other Indo-European languages, too. The comparative historical method is used here as the main one. The authors see this valid way of investigation as reliable and appropriate for the preterite-present verb analysis.

scholarly journals The development of Germanic analytical tenses

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
Andriy Botsman ◽  
Olga Dmytruk ◽  
Tamara Kozlovska
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Future Tense ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Germanic Languages

The stages that encompass the future tense development are singled out as discrete phenomena within the process of the Germanic language development. The Gothic verb system can serve as the background for the investigation of the tense transformations in question. The difficulties of tense examination in the Old Germanic languages were connected with some conceptions about the Indo-Iranian and Greek languages that used to dominate in the scientific circles for a long time. Those conceptions were based on Latin and Greek patterns and postulated the use of present, past and future tenses in all Indo-European languages. The above conceptions were ruined when the study of Tokharian and Hittite demonstrated the use of the present tense for the description of future actions. The idea of losing “the protolanguage inheritance” was proved wrong, and it was incorrect to transfer the complex tense system of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin to other Proto-Indo-European languages. The examination of the tense differentiation in Gothic (as the main source of the Old Germanic language) demonstrates that the Gothic infinitive functioned as a no-particular-time unit, while personal verb forms were involved in performing tense functions. The Gothic present tense verbs represented present and future tenses and no-particular-time phenomena. Some periphrastic forms containing preterite-present verbs with the infinitive occurred sporadically. The periphrastic forms correlated with Greek and Latin patterns of the same future tense meaning. The periphrastic future forms in Gothic often contained some modal shades of meaning. The Gothic present tense functioned as a colony-forming archi-unit and a pluripotential (temporal) precursor. The periphrastic Gothic future forms are recognised as a monopotential (temporal) precursor with some modal meaning. The key research method used in the present article is the comparative historical method. The authors viewed it as the most reliable and appropriate for the study of tense forms.

Early Latin loan-words in Old English

1993 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred Wollman
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Complete List ◽  
The West ◽  
Loan Words ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Celtic Languages ◽  
Germanic Languages

It is a well-known fact that Old English is rich in Latin loan-words. Although the precise number is not yet known, it is a fairly safe assumption that there are at least 600 to 700 loan-words in Old English. This compares with 800 Latin loan-words borrowed in different periods in the Brittonic languages (Welsh, Cornish, Breton), and at least 500 early Latin loan-words common to the West Germanic languages. These rather vague overall numbers do not lend themselves, however, to a serious analysis of Latin influence on the Germanic and Celtic languages, because they include different periods of borrowing which are not really comparable to each other. The basis of these estimates, moreover, is often not stated very clearly. Although the establishment of a complete list of Latin loan-words in the various Germanic languages is a desideratum, it can only be achieved in a later stage of our studies.

scholarly journals On the Distribution and Acquisition of the West Germanic ‘Need’-Verbs: German between Dutch and English

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-369
Author(s):  
Jing Lin
Keyword(s):  
Similar Pattern ◽  
Child Language ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Input Frequency ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
The West ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Germanic Languages

This paper investigates three verbs expressing necessity in the three West Germanic languages: Dutchhoeven, Englishneed, and Germanbrauchen. These three verbs are all categorized as negative polarity items(npis). However, there are differences in their distribution as NPIs, which posit Germanbrauchenbetween Englishneedand Dutchhoeven.By analyzing two factors that may influence acquisition, namely, opacity and input frequency, this paper moreover presents a similar pattern for the acquisition of these NPIs: The Dutch NPIhoevenemerges earlier in child language than its German counterpart, which in turn arises earlier than the English NPIneed.

Episodic versus generic eventualities and nominals

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-482
Author(s):  
Meng-Chen Lee ◽  
Werner Abraham
Keyword(s):  
Specific Reference ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Bare Nouns ◽  
Nominal Declension ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Inflectional Paradigms

AbstractThis paper proposes an analysis of the DP structure of Chinese in comparison with German and other West Germanic languages, particularly English. The analysis is linked to sentence structure, particularly event structure of the respective languages and the relation between nominal classifiers and sentential tense. Chinese is a language without nominal declension; German is not as other Indo-European languages. Among the inflectional paradigms, German has retained from earlier periods, and developed further, the coding of topicality in terms of familiarity and anaphoricity. While Chinese shares with German clause syntactic topicality, it does so purely in terms of clause-early and clause-late word order. German, by contrast, involves specific positions in the serial middle field to code referential familiarity, anaphoricity, and, above all, weak versus strong referential weight to distinguish, among other functions, specific versus unspecific reference. The categories involved in coding such properties in German are determiners and the declensional morphology of attributes (‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ inflection providing specific reference). This paper investigates the regularities of weak and strong reference in Chinese. The discussion yields insight into the structural coding that Chinese provides instead of what is encoded in German in morphological terms on adjectival attributes and in terms determiners ((in)definite articles and bare nouns). In the course, the discussion around mass versus count nouns and the role of classifiers is brought up and newly evaluated on the basis of the new referential distinctions.

A case study in grammaticalized inflectional morphology

Diachronica ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugen Hill
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
The West ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
The Common ◽  
Germanic Languages

This paper deals with one of the oldest and most controversial problems in the historical morphology of the Germanic branch of Indo-European: the origin and historical development of the so-called ‘weak preterite’. In Germanic, the weak preterite is the only means of forming the preterite tense of a derived verb. In spite of two hundred years of research into the weak preterite and a large number of hypotheses concerning its origin, it is not even securely established how the inflectional endings of this formation should be reconstructed for the common prehistory of the attested Germanic languages. Traditionally the inflectional endings of the weak preterite are conceived of as reflecting free inflectional forms of the verb “do”, only recently having been grammaticalized as inflectional morphology for derived verbs. But it has never been possible to identify the inflectional forms in question satisfactorily within the paradigm of “do”. This paper reconsiders the evidence of the Germanic daughter languages by taking into account West Germanic irregularities previously neglected or viewed as irrelevant. It is shown that the West Germanic evidence provides a key to understanding the origin and the later developments of the weak preterite inflectional endings.

scholarly journals LATIN BORROWINGS DENOTING AN INHABITED PLACE IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN: HISTORICAL ASPECT

2018 ◽  
pp. 61-66
Author(s):  
Oksana Kodubovska
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Lexical Semantics ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
The West ◽  
Historical Aspect ◽  
Middle French ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Contrasting Method ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Development And Evolution

The article deals with Latin borrowings denoting an inhabited place and the ways they enter the West Germanic languages, namely English and German. The notion of an inhabited place reflects the realia, which is connected with the compact living of a group of individuals on a certain territory. The research is based on the principles of anthropocentrism, lexical semantics, etymology and historical linguistics. The paper argues that etymological aspect is one of the most important in understanding the development and evolution of the lexeme. The paper aims at singling out and classifying Latin borrowings with the seme ‘inhabited place’ in the West Germanic Languages. Etymological analysis used in the research helped to characterize borrowed appellatives. Contrasting method singled out common and divergent features in the development of Latin borrowings in English and German. It is stated that English and German are prominent for the enriching their vocabulary due to borrowings from Latin. A great deal of Latin elements entered the languages at different historical stages. Several groups of Latin borrowings were singled out in the research according to their evolution in the analyzed languages and the period they were borrowed. These groups combined borrowings with the following features: Common Germanic lexemes which show both the modification of form and meaning saving the seme ‘inhabited place’ in one of the languages at present; early Latin borrowings which lose the meaning of an inhabited place in both languages; words which demonstrate the different evolution of their semantic structure and develop the meaning of an inhabited place in one of the languages; borrowings which save the seme ‘inhabited place’ with certain modifications of meaning in both English and German; lexemes which have the seme at the time of borrowing but lose it later in one of the languages; appellatives which enter German directly and English via French; English appellatives that do not have correspondences in German and enter the language via Old and Middle French.

Gallo-Romance lenition in Germanic loanwords

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michiel de Vaan
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The West ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Germanic Languages

Abstract One of the earliest changes affecting Western Romance before the end of the Roman Empire was the lenition of intervocalic *p, *t, *k to *b, *d, *g. We find its effects in a number of Romance loanwords in West Germanic. The word for ‘market’ has not played a role in this discussion because it is often attested with t in the West Germanic languages. Still, there are strong indications that the word was borrowed into Germanic as *markadu after the lenition of intervocalic t in Romance. Its phonological make-up is comparable to that of Latin vocatus, which was borrowed into Germanic as *fogadu.

West Flemish Negation and the Derivation of SOV-Order in West Germanic

2002 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liliane Haegeman
Keyword(s):  
Movement Analysis ◽  
Canonical Projection ◽  
The West ◽  
Surface Distribution ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Sentential Negation ◽  
Final Sentence ◽  
West Flemish ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Better Than

This paper focuses on the expression of sentential negation in West Flemish (WF), which it examines with respect to competing theories for deriving the West Germanic verb-final sentence pattern. The empirical adequacy of three hypotheses proposed to account for the verb-final order in the West Germanic languages is tested: (i) the ‘traditional’ OV analysis with head-final base structures; (ii) an antisymmetric approach with only head-complement order and without V-to-I movement; (iii) an antisymmetric approach with head-complement order, but with V-to-I movement and remnant movement of the projection containing the trace of V. Specifically, the question is asked to what extent these analyses capture the surface distribution of WF negation markers (niet, en and negative quantifiers). The paper shows that the traditional OV analysis is certainly adequate for the description of the data concerned. As far as antisymmetric approaches are concerned, a double movement analysis fares better than antisymmetric approaches without V-to-I movement. The paper also shows that, contrary to what has often been assumed, the WF morpheme en is not necessarily analysed as the head of NegP, the canonical projection to encode sentential negation, but that it could also plausibly be analysed as the head of PolP, a higher functional projection which encodes polarity.

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