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Provides a unique, up-to-date survey of twelve Germanic languages from English and German to Faroese and Yiddish.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Germanic language family ranges from national languages with standardized varieties, including German, Dutch and Danish, to minority languages with relatively few speakers, such as Frisian, Yiddish and Pennsylvania German. Written by internationally renowned experts of Germanic linguistics, this Handbook provides a detailed overview and analysis of the structure of modern Germanic languages and dialects. Organized thematically, it addresses key topics in the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of standard and nonstandard varieties of Germanic languages from a comparative perspective. It also includes chapters on second language acquisition, heritage and minority languages, pidgins, and urban vernaculars. The first comprehensive survey of this vast topic, the Handbook is a vital resource for students and researchers investigating the Germanic family of languages and dialects.
This unique reference volume covers the 18 dialects of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Alsace and Luxembourg. Each section discusses the status of dialect in the region concerned together with the historical and geographical background. Then follows a description of the dialect structure of the region, copiously illustrated with phonological, grammatical and lexical examples in IPA transcription. The phonology, grammar and vocabulary of one typical dialect are presented together with a commentary. All examples are given with English glosses. The volume will be of most interest to Germanists with some knowledge of the linguistics and history of German, wishing to deepen their knowledge of German dialects. General linguists and sociolinguists who wish to know about German dialects will also find it useful. It can serve as an intermediate level textbook for any course on German dialects which builds on a linguistics or history of German course.
The present study examines the problem of fortis and lenis in approximately 150 dialects of southern Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, Alsace, and the German-speaking minorities in Italy, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The Upper German dialects are of particular interest from this point of view, because voice and aspiration, the features traditionally associated with strength, are generally absent. Changes related to strength such as lenition, vowel lengthening, simplification of geminates, and sandhi phenomena receive special attention. The findings are put into their appropriate context by comparison to the results of research on the status of strength in standard German and the modern Germanic languages. Although the realization of strength is language-specific and varies according to word-position, it can be equated with consonant length in standard German and Upper German dialects.