THE IRREGULARITY OF WEAK VERBS WITHOUT VOWEL ALTERNATIONS IN MODERN ENGLISH (original) (raw)
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New Goals in Teaching the History of the English Language
This paper uncovers phonetic and grammatical similarities between Old English and Old Kartuli (Georgian) languages. It demonstrates that the Old Georgian material is the source of certain unresolved issues on all the levels of Old Englishof Old English: phonetic, morphological, syntactic.
Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 2003
This book, which was written as a Habilitationsschrift, began as a study of the so-called Saxon genitive (prenominal genitive) in German, but has come to encompass all the diachronic changes that have occurred in the German nominal system, especially to the left of the noun. The study attempts to give a synchronic analysis of the relationships within the noun phrase from a diachronic perspective. Moreover, data from other Germanic languages are taken into account, especially from English and the Scandinavian languages. All the changes in the German NP are attributed by Demske to a single change in the relationship between articles and nouns, from semantic to a morphologically motivated relationship (320). After the introductory chapter 1, chapter 2 deals with agreement within the nominal system, chapter 3 with possessive pronouns, and chapter 4 with the attributive genitive. The book concludes with some general implications for diachronic syntax. Chapter 1, "Einleitung," gives an overview of previous analyses of the German nominal system, pointing out some of the problems with the NP analysis. Demske assumes the DP hypothesis, which claims that nominal phrases are not projections of nouns but rather of the functional category D(eterminer). The DP analysis overcomes the limitations of the NP analysis and is especially attractive for German, since case, number, and gender are primarily realized on the article rather than on the noun itself. Chapter 2, "Grammatische Merkmale und Relationen," deals with the marking of the features case, number, gender, and definiteness on nouns, adjectives, and articles. First, Demske outlines the inflectional and agreement properties of the noun phrase in New High German (NHG), especially the problems of adjective inflection. Then she discusses some previous approaches within both the generative and the HPSG (head-driven phrase structure grammar) frameworks. Demske brings historical data from Old High German (OHG) and Early New High German (ENHG) into this discussion.
IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2013
The term grammar has been derived from the Greek word 'grammatica or grammatika techne' which means 'the art of writing'. The Greeks considered grammar to be a branch of philosophy concerned with the art of writing. In the middle ages grammar came to be regarded as a set of rules, usually in the form of text book, dictating correct usage. So in the widest and the traditional sense, grammar came to mean a set of normative and prescriptive rules in order to set up a standard of 'correct usage'. The earliest reference of any grammar is to be found in 600 B.C.. Panini, in 600 B.C., was a Sanskrit grammarian from Pushkalvati, Gandhara, in modern day Charsadda District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Panini is known for his formulation of 3959 rules of Sanskrit morphology, syntax, semantics in the grammar known as Ashtadhyayi meaning eight chapters. After Panin observations on Language are found in the records we have of pre-Socratic philosophers, the fifth century rhetoricians, Plato and Aristotle. The sources of knowledge of the pre-Socratic and the early theoraticians are fragmentary. It would be wise therefore to begin with Plato. The earliest extinct document in Greek on the subject of language is Cratylus, one of Plato's dialogues. Plato was the first philosopher who took up the subject of grammar seriously. The History of the traditional classification of words into parts of speech begins with him. Plato's definition of nouns and verbs are different from the ones we are familiar with. Nouns for him are words that can function as terms in proposition and the verbs are words which can function as the predicate in a proposition. What interests us is the fact that Plato used illogical criteria to define his categories. Aristotle maintained his teacher's distinction but added a third class which covered conjunctions, articles, pronouns and prepositions. The early stoic philosophers went still further and proposed a classification of words into four categories: Nouns, verbs, conjunctions and articles. The adjective was classified with the noun. The system of eight parts of speech first appeared in the work of the great Alexandrian grammarian, Dionysius Thrax(Late 2 nd century B.C.), who is reputed to have written the first comprehensive and systematic description of a language to be published in the western world. In addition to the four parts of speech , Dionyssius recognized also adverbs, participles, pronouns and prepositions. All parts of speech classification of traditional grammar since then have been based more or less on the system derived by Dionysius. It was Protagoras, a fifth century Greek philosopher, who first made the distinction of the three genders in Greek. An important contribution from Aristotle was the recognition of tense. The discovery of inflections is credited to the stoic philosophers. It was they who gave the term case the sense which it had in traditional grammatical descriptions ever since. Further the stoics distinguished between the transitive and intransitive. The Romans had been in contact with the Greek civilization for a long time, and they accepted the Greeks as their superiors in intellectual and artistic achievements. The Latin grammarians depended upon the Greek model for the description of Latin. The first important Latin grammar was written by Varro (116-27 B.C.). The other grammarians of this period were Quintillian and Donatus. With the collapse of Rome, most of the Roman scholars took refuge in Constantinople. It was here that Priscian (512-60 A.D.) wrote his 'Grammatical Categories', which was used for teaching Latin throughout the middle ages and as late as the seventeenth century. The thirteenth century was the period of the great Scholastics who under the influence of Aristotle's logic, tried to reduce all sciences to the principles of logical deduction. Grammarians of the period are known as speculative grammarians. (The word speculative comes from speculum which means mirror. The term refers to the view that language reflects the reality underlying the phenomena of the physical world). If all the languages reflect the underlying reality, then all languages must be structured the same way. The speculative grammarian s were preoccupied with formulating the essential universal features for all languages. The ideals of the speculative Grammarians were revived in the 17 th century by the Port Royal Grammarians in France. Thebook 'Grammaire Generale at Raisome' is commonly known as the Port Royal Grammar. They held that the structure of language is the product of reason and that different languages of men are but varieties of the same universal and rational system.
Morphological Change of Verb and Noun in Old, Middle, and Modern English
Eltics Journal, 2014
This library research aims to (1) identify effects of various colonialism on the change of morphological aspects of English Language and (2) explore the morphological change of verb and noun. Those two aims will give the readers a perspective of how language changes through the time. This is a library research which is conducted by collecting and processing data of various lexicons from a book entitled 'A History of English Language'. The data processing is entirely based on some rules in a book entitled 'Sejarah Bahasa Inggris' written by Tarjana (1991). From the data processing, it is revealed that various colonizers 'demand' a language change, especially morphological aspect, in order a language understanding between colonizers and the colony will grow. Besides, morphological change will give us a clear description about natural characteristics that a language will always experience a change to accomodate the need of communicating effectively and efficiently.