The role played by the german and scandinavian tribes on english language - Реферат

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………...………..2-4 CHAPTER I THE CONTACT OF ENGLISH WITH OTHER LANGUAGES………………..5-7 § THE CELTIC INFLUENCE § THE APPLICATION OF NATIVE WORDS CHAPTER II THE SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENE: THE VIKING AGE………………..….8-10 § THE SCANDINAVIAN INVASIONS OF ENGLAND § THE SETTLEMENT OF THE DANES IN ENGLAND CHAPTER III THE AMALGAMATION OF THE TWO RACES..........................................11-13 § THE RELATION OF THE TWO LANGUAGES § THE TESTS OF BORROWED WORDS CHAPTER IV THE SCANDINAVIAN PLACE NAMES…...................................................14-16 § THE EARLIEST BORROWING § SCANDINAVIAN LOAN-WORDS AND THEIR CHARACTER CHAPTER V CELTIC PLACE -NAMES…………………………….……………...…..…17-19 § CELTIC LOAN-WORDS § THE RELATION OF BORROWED AND NATIVE WORDS CHAPTER VI FORM WORDS………………………………….………………….………20-22 § SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENCE OUTSIDE THE STANDARD SPEECH § HISTORICAL BACKGROUND CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………….……23-28 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………….…………………………..……29 INTRODUCTION The essence of history is change taking place in time. Anything which endures in time has a history, because in this world of flux anything which endures in time suffers change. But if history is to be meaningful, there must also be continuity. A people, a nation, or a language may change over a long period so greatly as to become something vastly different from what it was at the beginning. But this great change is the accumulation of many small changes. At any stage in its history, the people, na­tion, or language is fundamentally the same entity that it was in the immediately preceding stage, albeit changed in detail. It has preserved its identity. The preservation of identity through continuity of change, then, characterizes things which have a history. It is easier to see this in the case of concrete objects, like the Great Pyramid or Keatss Grecian urn. Their continuity is physical; the actual stuff of which they are made has endured through centuries. Their history is primarily what has happened to them and around them; the change they have suffered has chiefly been change of environ­ment, rather than change of their own nature. Indeed, what fas­cinated Keats about the urn was its placid unchanging ness in the midst of changing generations of men. Its history is entirely what can be called outer history. According to the Bible: ’In the beginning was the Word’. By the Talmud: ‘God created the world by a Word, instantaneously, without toil or pains’. But I think whatever more mystical meaning these pieces of scripture might have, they both point to the primacy of language in the way human beings conceive of the world. I agree with the theory that language figures centrally in our lives. I think we discover our identity as individuals and social beings when we acquire it during childhood. It serves as a means of cognition and communication: it enables us to think for ourselves and to cooperate with people in our community. It provides for present needs and future plans, and at the same time carries with it the impression of things past. I want note in passing, incidentally, that it is speech that the ogre cannot master. Whether this necessarily implies that language is also beyond his reach is another matter, for language does not depend on speech as the only physical medium for its expression. Auden may not imply such a distinction in these lines, but it is one which, as we shall see presently, it is important to recognize. It has been suggested that language is so uniquely human, distinguishes us so clearly from ogres and other animals, that our species might be more appropriately named homo loquens than homo sapiens. But although language is clearly essential to humankind and has served to extend control over other parts of creation, it is not easy to specify what exactly makes it distinctive. If, indeed, it is distinctive. After all, other species communicate after a fashion, for they could not otherwise mate, propagate, and cooperate in their colonies. English belongs to the Anglo-Frisian group within the western branch of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages. It is related most closely to the Frisian language, to a lesser extent to Netherlandic (Dutch-Flemish) and the Low German (Plattdeutsch) dialects, and more distantly to Modern High German. Its parent, Proto-Indo-European, was spoken around 5,000 years ago by nomads who are thought to have roamed the _outh-east European plains. Three main stages are usually recognized in the history of the development of the English language. Old English, known formerly as Anglo-Saxon, dates from AD 449 to 1066 or 1100. Middle English dates from 1066 or 1100 to 1450 or 1500. Modern English dates from about 1450 or 1500 and is subdivided into Early Modern English, from about 1500 to 1660, and Late Modern English, from about 1660 to the present time. The long-term linguistic effect of the Viking settlements in England was thre