Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages
Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages

Author: Peter Schrijver

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-04

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1134254490

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History, archaeology, and human evolutionary genetics provide us with an increasingly detailed view of the origins and development of the peoples that live in Northwestern Europe. This book aims to restore the key position of historical linguistics in this debate by treating the history of the Germanic languages as a history of its speakers. It focuses on the role that language contact has played in creating the Germanic languages, between the first millennium BC and the crucially important early medieval period. Chapters on the origins of English, German, Dutch, and the Germanic language family as a whole illustrate how the history of the sounds of these languages provide a key that unlocks the secret of their genesis: speakers of Latin, Celtic and Balto-Finnic switched to speaking Germanic and in the process introduced a 'foreign accent' that caught on and spread at the expense of types of Germanic that were not affected by foreign influence. The book is aimed at linguists, historians, archaeologists and anyone who is interested in what languages can tell us about the origins of their speakers.

Early Germanic Languages in Contact
Early Germanic Languages in Contact

Author: John Ole Askedal

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-06-15

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9027268231

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This volume contains revised and, in some cases, extended versions of twelve of the fourteen lectures read at the conference on “Early Germanic Languages in Contact” held at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense on 22-23 August 2013 – with a paper and a review article added at the end on themes pertaining to the aim and scope of the symposium. All papers cover central aspects of the early contact between Germanic and some of its Indo-European and non-Indo-European linguistic neighbours; and, in certain cases, aspects involving internal Germanic language contact.

The Germanic Languages
The Germanic Languages

Author: Ekkehard Konig

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-16

Total Pages: 648

ISBN-13: 1317799585

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Provides a unique, up-to-date survey of twelve Germanic languages from English and German to Faroese and Yiddish.

The Germanic Languages
The Germanic Languages

Author: Wayne Harbert

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-12-21

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 1139461524

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Germanic - one of the largest sub-groups of the Indo-European language family - comprises 37 languages with an estimated 470 million speakers worldwide. This book presents a comparative linguistic survey of the full range of Germanic languages, both ancient and modern, including major world languages such as English and German (West Germanic), the Scandinavian (North Germanic) languages, and the extinct East Germanic languages. Unlike previous studies, it does not take a chronological or a language-by-language approach, organized instead around linguistic constructions and subsystems. Considering dialects alongside standard varieties, it provides a detailed account of topics such as case, word formation, sound systems, vowel length, syllable structure, the noun phrase, the verb phrase, the expression of tense and mood, and the syntax of the clause. Authoritative and comprehensive, this much-needed survey will be welcomed by scholars and students of the Germanic languages, as well as linguists across the many branches of the field.

Germanic Language Histories 'from Below' (1700-2000)
Germanic Language Histories 'from Below' (1700-2000)

Author: Stephan Elspaß

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-07-26

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 311092546X

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Focusing on the sociolinguistic history of Germanic languages, the current volume challenges the traditional teleological approach of language historiography. The 30 contributions present alternative histories of ten ‘big’ as well as ‘small’ Germanic languages and varieties in the last 300 years. Topics covered in this book include language variation and change and the politics of language contact and choice, seen against the background of standardization processes of written and oral text genres and from the viewpoint of larger sections of the population.

A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages
A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages

Author: R.D. Fulk

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2018-09-15

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 9027263132

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Fulk’s Comparative Grammar offers an overview of and bibliographical guide to the study of the phonology and the inflectional morphology of the earliest Germanic languages, with particular attention to Gothic, Old Norse / Icelandic, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Old High German, along with some attention to the more sparsely attested languages. The sounds and inflections of the oldest Germanic languages are compared, with a view to reconstructing the forms they took in Proto-Germanic and comparing those reconstructed forms with what is known of the Indo-European protolanguage. Students will find the book an informative introduction and a bibliographically instructive point of departure for intensive research in the numerous issues that remain profoundly contested in early Germanic language history.

Language Contact at the Romance-Germanic Language Border
Language Contact at the Romance-Germanic Language Border

Author: Jeanine Treffers-Daller

Publisher: Multilingual Matters

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9781853596278

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The current volume brings together sociolinguistic analyses of language contact along the Romance Germanic Language Border, shedding more light on the variable and the universal elements in language contact and shift. It covers the whole range of the border, from French Flanders through South Tirol. Every part of it has been treated by outstanding experts. They describe the current state of the art in 'their' portion of the language border and include information on the legal and/or practical status of the language border and the status and function of all languages concerned. Attitudinal and language planning initiatives as well as the standardisation status of the regionally official and minority languages are discussed. Language borrowing, code switching and other language contact phenomena are analysed in detail.

Germanic Heritage Languages in North America
Germanic Heritage Languages in North America

Author: Janne Bondi Johannessen

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-08-15

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 9027268193

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This book presents new empirical findings about Germanic heritage varieties spoken in North America: Dutch, German, Pennsylvania Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, West Frisian and Yiddish, and varieties of English spoken both by heritage speakers and in communities after language shift. The volume focuses on three critical issues underlying the notion of ‘heritage language’: acquisition, attrition and change. The book offers theoretically-informed discussions of heritage language processes across phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics and the lexicon, in addition to work on sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and contact settings. With this, the volume also includes a variety of frameworks and approaches, synchronic and diachronic. Most European Germanic languages share some central linguistic features, such as V2, gender and agreement in the nominal system, and verb inflection. As minority languages faced with a majority language like English, similarities and differences emerge in patterns of variation and change in these heritage languages. These empirical findings shed new light on mechanisms and processes.

Old English and its Closest Relatives
Old English and its Closest Relatives

Author: Orrin W. Robinson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-09-02

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1134848994

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This accessible introductory reference source surveys the linguistic and cultural background of the earliest known Germanic languages and examines their similarities and differences. The Languages covered include:Gothic Old Norse Old SaxonOld English Old Low Franconian Old High German Written in a lively style, each chapter opens with a brief cultural history of the people who used the language, followed by selected authentic and translated texts and an examination of particular areas including grammar, pronunciation, lexis, dialect variation and borrowing, textual transmission, analogy and drift.