Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages

Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages
Title Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages PDF eBook
Author Peter Schrijver
Publisher Routledge
Pages 244
Release 2013-12-04
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 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
Title Early Germanic Languages in Contact PDF eBook
Author John Ole Askedal
Publisher John Benjamins Publishing Company
Pages 316
Release 2015-06-15
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 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
Title The Germanic Languages PDF eBook
Author Wayne Harbert
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 482
Release 2006-12-21
Genre Foreign Language Study
ISBN 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)
Title Germanic Language Histories 'from Below' (1700-2000) PDF eBook
Author Stephan Elspaß
Publisher Walter de Gruyter
Pages 532
Release 2011-07-26
Genre Foreign Language Study
ISBN 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.

When Languages Collide

When Languages Collide
Title When Languages Collide PDF eBook
Author Brian D. Joseph
Publisher Ohio State University Press
Pages 396
Release 2003
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 9780814209134

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The Germanic Languages

The Germanic Languages
Title The Germanic Languages PDF eBook
Author Ekkehard Konig
Publisher Routledge
Pages 648
Release 2013-12-16
Genre Foreign Language Study
ISBN 1317799585

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

Germanic Heritage Languages in North America

Germanic Heritage Languages in North America
Title Germanic Heritage Languages in North America PDF eBook
Author Janne Bondi Johannessen
Publisher John Benjamins Publishing Company
Pages 426
Release 2015-08-15
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 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.