Germanic alphabets and Germanic vocabulary

1. Runes and their origin

2. Wulfila’s Gothic alphabet

3. Introduction of the Latin alphabet

4. Native components of Germanic vocabulary

5. Borrowings

6. Ways of word-formation

Key-words: rune, FUTHARK, Danish Futhark, Latin hypothesis, Greek hypothesis, North-Italic hypothesis, Greek cursive, uncial alphabet, rustic capitals, written records, inscriptions, carvings, Wulfila, Franks Casket, Ruthwell Cross, Codex Argentus, loan-translation, ablaut, word-composition, affixation, kennings, cognates, etymological layer, native/borrowed words (loans).

Questions and tasks:

1. Study the rules of Gothic texts reading (clusters, diphthongs pronunciation) (see: Zhluktenko, Yavorska 1986)

2. Using the On-line Dictionary of Etymology find out the origin of the following words: gospel, Friday, bird, call, egg, sky, take, cherry, stone, beard, eye, day, water, fox, eat, wax, yew, warm, cold, Sabbath, silk, timber, town, oak, nail, wind. Define the etymological layer of Germanic lexicon they belong to.

3. The following words have cognates in other Germanic and Indo-European languages: hand, make, wolf, eye, head, heart, tree, free, see, winter, bee, welkin, owl, snow, dear, red, yellow, nail, cold, light, adj., bear, brown, ship, love. Find out the languages they have cognates in. Find among them the words that have cognates in Ukrainian and Russian and write them out.

4. Find out the source the following words were borrowed from: port, window, cup, fork, tiger, camel, fever, dish, offer, master, pit, shrive, scuttle, pit, angel, ginger, devil, elm, cap, pound, oil, plum, cheese, pepper, lily, rose. Find the primary meaning of these words in the source language.

5. Look through the words: bridegroom, lord, gossip, lady, gospel, walnut, werewolf, mulberry, worship, daisy, mildew, spinster, husband. Using the data of the etymological dictionary find out which of these words are the products of word composition.

6. Among the means of word-formation was there conversion? Explain your answer. If not, how can you explain the formation of bath, n from bathe, v and breath, n from breathe, v.?

7. Find the examples of kennings in Old English.

8. Which among Old Germanic ways of word-formation was the most productive and why?

9. Which way of word-formation was used to create the following words in Gothic: galaubeins, barnilo, motareis, frawaurhts, wajamerjan, waldufni, mikiljan, unhaili, atgaggan, bruþ faþ s, þ anuh, armahairtiþ a.

10. Comment on the vowels in stressed and unstressed positions of the following Gothic words and read them: baurg, usliþ in, barnilo, bokarje, jus, mitoþ, hairtam, sunus, lekeis, managai, weis, unte, bruþ fadis, ohtedun.

11. Define the role of the first component in semantic and morphological structure of the following Gothic verbs and comment on the influence of its semantics: atsteigan, afletan, urreisan, ufarleiþ an, galeiþ an, usstandan, ganiman, afniman, usgutnan, fraquistnan, distaurnan, gabairgan.

12. Analyze the semantic correspondence between the following Gothic words: skauts, swiltan, arman, meriþ a and their cognates in other Germanic languages.

13. Comment on morphological structure and the way of words-formation of the following Gothic words: aftaro, galaubeins, haurnja, haurnjan, meriþ a, unhulþ o, uskunþ s, gaqumþ s, sauhts, unhaili, hairdeis, waurstwja, þ iudangardi.

Read the following citations of acknowledged linguists. Make your comments and remember:

1. “Why all languages drop some perfectly good words and replace them by others? ” (Myers L.M. The Roots of Modern English. Boston. 1966. P.57).

2. “The English vocabulary contains a nucleus or central mass of many thousand words (core vocabulary) whose ‘Anglicity’ is unquestioned… There are parts of body, natural landscape, domestic life, calendar, animals, common adjectives, common verbs.” (Murrey J. (ed.) Oxford English Dictionary. 1888).

3. “… basic vocabulary tends to resist change more successfully, even in the face of heavy prestige” (Lass R. Historical Linguistics and Language Change. CUP. 1997. P.186).

4. “There are no fewer than 51 words which are a) ancient enough Germanic heritage to be attested in Old English; b) Have at least 1 cognate elsewhere in Germanic; c) are relatively ‘core’ or at least not arcane or specified lexis; d) have no visible cognates elsewhere in Indo-European and e) are not loans form any other known languages.” (they are usually marked in the dictionary with ‘etymology is obscure’). (Lass R. Historical Linguistics and Language Change. CUP. 1997. P.209).

5. “… linguistic inheritance – large number of words with the same or nearly the same meanings and quite similar phonetic shapes” (Lass R. Historical Linguistics and Language Change. CUP. 1997. P.104).

6. “Why languages borrow? Languages borrow words from other languages primarily because of need and prestige… because the foreign term form some reason is highly estimated… (they are called ‘luxury’ loans)”. (Campbell L. Historical Linguistics. An Introduction. Edinburgh. 1998. P.59).

7. Compare the points of view on different periods of English lexicon evolution: “Old English depended on one’s own resources to enlarge vocabulary”. “English was hospitable to foreign words and less prone to use its own resources for word-creation”. (Baker Ch. The English Language: A Historical Introduction. CUP. 2000. P. 120, 149).

8. “There are time-stable words, they change slowly and are lexicalized as nouns. The least time-stable percepts events, actions, which involve rapid change in the universe, are lexicalized as verbs”. (Aitchison J. The Seeds of Speech. Language Origin and Evolution. CUP. 1996. P.111).

9. “Despite the loans, Old English was quite resistant to borrowing. In this respect it was rather more like modern German which frequently avoids classical learned terms and remakes vocabulary out of native resources”. (Lass R. The Shape of English: Structure and History. Lnd. 1987. P.34).

10. Speaking about semantic change, A. Blank termed this way of word-formation as the change that occurs due to “linguistic conservatism” (Blank A. Why do new meanings occur? In: Historical Semantics and Cognition. Berlin, NY. 1999. P.84).

11. “Languages are rare to borrow basic (core) vocabulary” (Aitchison J. Language Change: Progress or Decay? CUP. 1998. P.114).