Comparative Grammar of the Germanic Languages

1st Lecture

Exam on the last Wednesday before the exam session.

Topics this term:

1. Introduction
a. Overview of the history of comparative grammar;
b. The difference between comparative grammar and contrastive grammar.
2. The Modern Germanic Languages
a. The geographical distribution;
b. The number of speakers;
c. Status.
i. Whether they are official languages;
ii. Whether they are national languages;
iii. Whether they are regional languages;
iv. Whether they are minority languages;
v. Whether they are literary languages;
vi. Whether they are standardized languages.
vii. Some peculiarities of some modern Germanic languages.
1. Writing systems used by the various Germanic languages
3. Accents, dialects, language
a. Accents;
b. Dialects;
i. Types of dialect
1. Social dialects
2. Regional dialects
a. Characteristics of regional dialects
c. Distinction between dialects and languages.
i. Criteria
1. Linguistic criteria
2. Non-linguistic criteria (= extra-linguistic criteria)
4. Comparing languages
a. Criteria
b. The sources of evidence
c. Types of admissible evidence in comparative grammar (e.g. loan words are not
admissible evidence)
5. Language change (= totality of changes affecting languages in their history)
a. Types of language change
i. Sound change
ii. Phonological change
iii. Morphological change
iv. Syntactic change
v. Grammaticalization (= the building of grammar; how do languages
acquire grammar and from what source)
1. Sources of grammaticalization
2. Results of grammaticalization
vi. Vocabulary change
1. Increasing the size of vocabulary (e.g. via loan words)
 2. Losses in vocabulary (some words may become archaic,
obsolete)
vii. Semantic change (= meaning change)
It is not the size of vocabulary which is affected, the words stay
in the language, but change their meaning.
1. Types of semantic changes
2. The distinction between semantic shift and semantic extension
a. Semantic shift = the word’s meaning changes completely
b. Semantic extension = in addition to the original meaning,
which is preserved, a word acquires another meaning as
well. The result of semantic extension is polysemy.
6. Comparative reconstruction
a. Principles
b. Methods
i. Reconstruction by comparison of an unknown parent language
7. The Representation of Linguistic Families
a. Family tree of languages
b. Components
c. Types of information that can be read off a family tree of languages
d. Limitations of family trees of languages