HEL Midterm

Imperative

a grammatical mood in which the speaker exerts control over an outside agent, for example a command

Subjunctive

a grammatical mood that refers to situations that the speaker asserts as hypothetical, probable, or contingent

Indicative

a grammatical mood that refers to situations that the speaker asserts as true in the real world

Optative

a grammatical mood used to make a wish (e.g. "May all your wishes come true.")

Runes

a set of symbols that was employed throughout the Germanic world; runic inscriptions survive from as early as the second century CE (p. 94)

Aorist

a verbal category that places a verb in the past without regard to its beginning, end, or other relations of temporal relevance (p. 75) - more popular in Greek and Turkish

Old English Vocabulary

Rich Old English vocabulary (roughly 24,000 words) 85% of OE words are no longer in use 3% of words in OE were loan words (taken from other languages), compared with over 70% today Over half of PDE vocabulary comes from Latin or French (mostly borrowed in ME period)

Affricate

combination of a stop and a fricative (ex. "ch")

Middle voice

conceptualizes the action as a process and makes the affected entity into the subject (e.g. "The window broke.") - some consider the middle voice to be in ModE but some don't (p. 74)

Bilabial

consonant sounds that involve both lips (p, b, m, w)

Alveolar

consonant sounds which have the alveolar ridge as its place of articulation (t, d, s, z, r, n, l)

Palatal

consonant sounds with the palate as their place of articulation ("y" in yard)

Interdental

consonants that are produced with the tongue located between the teeth as its place of articulation (th)

Velar

consonants which have the velum as their place of articulation (k, g, ng)

Glottal

consonants with have the glottis as their place of articulation; before each vowel, the glottis closes off the flow of air, creating a subsequent burst

Fricative

constriction of the flow of air (ex. the "f" in "fish")

Vowels

contrast with consonants in that they are produced with little obstruction of the vocal tract (to put it briefly)

Phonology

deals with the sounds of the language for which conventional orthographic systems cannot provide adequate description

Place of articulation

describes consonants; where the vocal tract is closed or constricted

Voicing

describes consonants; whether or not a sound is voiced or unvoiced (ex. "z" is voiced, "s" is unvoiced); +v indicates voiced, -v indicates unvoiced

Manner of articulation

describes consonants; whether the flow of air is stopped or constricted

Latin

several hundred loanwords borrowed into Common Germanic: belt, cheese, copper, linen, pole borrowed into West Germanic: butter, cheap, dish, mile, pit, plum, shrive, sickle, stop, street, tile, wine "Christian" loans examples: Fers: verse Candel: candle

First Germanic Sound Shift (Grimm's Law)

p > f t > θ k > h

Dual nouns (PIE)

referring to two and only two of something (the three numbers: singular, plural, dual)

Grimm's Law

set of Germanic sound changes - certain consonants in IE changed in Germanic; allows us to connect cognates between non-Germanic and Germanic languages

Deletion

the loss of some sound Example: /n/ is lost between a short vowel and a voiceless fricative Gothic "uns" → OE "us"

Approximant

the production of sounds in which the articulators approach one another but with minimal constriction of air; more open air flow compared to fricatives (w, "y")

Phonetics

the study of human speech sounds

Morphology

the way that words and their parts are composed

Labiodental

when a consonant sound has the upper row of teeth and the lower lip as its place of articulation (f, v)

Dipthong

when two vowel sounds occur in a single syllable (ex. boy, right, house - symbols on p. 90)

Orthography

writing system of a language in the period under investigation

Know the distribution of voiced and unvoiced fricatives in OE

/s/ is voiced [z] when it occurs between voiced sounds /f/ is voiced [v] when it occurs between voiced sounds /θ/ is voiced [ð] when it occurs between voiced sounds /s/, /f/, and /θ/ are voiceless everywhere else (beginning of words, end of words, next to voiceless sounds - including when [s, f, θ] are doubled)

Phonology of consonants and vowels

<sc> represents the sound [ ʃ ] <cg> represents the sound [dʒ] <cw> represents the sound [kw] (like qu- in PDE) <g> can be [g], [ɣ], and [ j ] In book, <ġ> is [ j ] <c> can be [k] or [ tʃ ] In book, <ċ> is [ tʃ ] Two diphthongs on p. 128: eo and ea. <eo> represents sound [eo] <ea> represents sound [æα]

Celtic

Germanic/Celtic contact on Continent Contact in England after Anglo-Saxons came, but only a handful of Celtic loans: Cross < late OE cros < OIr cross < Lat crux OE rice (kingdom) borrowed on Continent Words borrowed after Anglo-Saxons came: bin, hog, dun (grayish-brown) Place-names: Thames, Dover, London, Cornwall, Avon

5 Distinct Features of Germanic Languages

Grimm's Law Fixed initial stress on the root 2-tense system Strong and weak adjectives Strong and weak verbs

IE/Germanic words in OE

IE vocabulary: numbers (1-10), kinship terms of nuclear family, sun, water, eat, head, tree, high, cold, flat, red, stand, have, run, laugh Germanic vocabulary: back, bone, folk, ground, rot, sick, swell, weary, wife West Germanic vocabulary: brook, crave, idle, knight, soon, weed

Kurgan hypothesis

In early 1970s, Marija Gimbutas linked the Indo-Europeans with the culture of the Kurgans - congruency between the cultural and technological life of the Kurgan people and the words shared in the languages descended from their supposed language, Indo-European (p. 64)

Strong and weak adjectives

Lost in most modern Germanic languages (including English) Weak: generally used when the noun phrase was definite such that the adjective forms came to be used after the definite article, a possessive or demonstrative, but not an indefinite article Strong: generally used in indefinite contexts and thus were used when there was no determiner and eventually with the developing indefinite article (p. 103)

Scandinavian (ON = Old Norse)

Lots of contact (invasions, settlements, eventual peaceful coexistence) between English and Norse, but few loans in OE texts - why? OE and ON so close that they were hard to spot No prestige attached to ON words Always a lag between contact and assimilation E.g. orrest (battle), ran (plunder) Extensive ON borrowing didn't happen until ME period

Compounding

Nouns: noun + noun sunbeam (sunbeam) adj + noun heahsynn (high sin, crime) adv + noun eftbot (again-healing = recuperation) Triple winterrædingboc (lectionary for the winter) Adjectives: noun + adj isceald (ice-cold) adj + adj deadboren (stillborn) adv + adj upland (upright) adj + noun glædmod (happy-heart = cheerful)

OE poetry

One reason for the large vocabulary: needed alliterating words Most "poetic" words were compounds (individual elements also used in prose): E.g. freomæg (free kinsman) only in poetry, but in prose, freo (free), freolæta (freedman), freodom (freedom); mæg (male kinsman), mægburg (family, tribe), mægmyrðra (kinsman-slayer)

Syntax

Sentence structure

Proto-Indo-European (PIE)

The single ancestor of most of today's languages of Europe and India

Factors affecting the inflections of OE verbs, personal pronouns, nouns, definite articles, and adjectives

Verbs: strong/weak, tense, mood, aspect Personal pronouns: number, case, gender Nouns: number, case, gender Definite articles: number, case, gender Adjectives: strong and weak

Strong and weak verbs

Weak verbs: "regular" past tense (i.e. add "-ed") - e.g. walk > walked Strong verbs: "irregular" past tense - e.g. sit > sat (historically how the verbs changed in older English) ablaut: switching the vowel in past tense (e.g. run > ran) (p. 104)

Special characters in old English

Wynn - ᚹ represents sound [w] Thorn - þ represents sound [th], either voiced or unvoiced Eth - ð represents same as thorn (note: not the same as IPA symbol) Ash - æ represents same as IPA symbol <æ>

Affixing

forming abstract nouns from concrete nouns: -nes, ung, -dom, -scipe, -aþ, -had, -lac, -ræden, -ness, -dom, -hood and -scip still productive in MnE: craziness, kingdom, knighthood, headship adjective suffixes: -ig (speedy), -lic (manly), -ful (bountiful), -leas (mindless), -ed (bowlegged), -isc (childish), -sum (handsome), -cund, -fæst, -wende prefixes: gan 'go' þurhgan 'go through'; familiar prefixes: un-, in-, ofer-, (over-), æfter-, fore-, mis-, under-, up-, ut- (out-)

Liquids

made by bunching up the tongue and constricting the larynx, while lifting the tip of the tongue; can be central or lateral (r = central; l = lateral)

Nasal

made by raising the velum such that the flow of air through the mouth is closed off, thus forcing air through the nasal cavity (m, n, ng)

Kennings

metaphorical phrases or compound words used to name a person, place, things or event indirectly Ban-hus: body (bone house) Ban-helm: skull (bone helmet) Heofon-candel: sun (sky-candle)

Sir William Jones

most often cited as the first scholar to propose that modern European and Indian languages share a common ancestor language (mid-late 1700s)

Karl Verner

showed that a voiceless stop between vowels became a voiced fricative in Germanic when the stress did not precede the stop (i.e. Grimm's Law operated predictably when the stress in the word followed the sound in question, but did not operate in the same way if the stress preceded the sound in question)

Consonants

sounds that are produced by stopping or constricting the flow of air through the vocal tract

Stop

stopping the flow of air (ex. the bilabial sound in "about")

Case in PIE

system in which a noun or pronoun changes form according to whether it is used to show a noun phrase as the subject, direct object, object of a proposition, etc.

Passive voice

the affected entity of an active sentence is transformed into the subject of the passive verb form

Genetic model

the dominant metaphor for discussing languages that develop from a common source - language is said to descend from a parent language

Assimilation

two sounds becoming more alike Example: "tissue" goes from [tɪsju] to [tɪʃ ju]

Active voice

typically the subject is the doer of an overt action upon some affected entity

Labial

when a consonant has the lips as its place of articulation