This lecture dealt with the etymology of words and its subtopics like sound change (incl. Grimm's Law, High German Sound Shift, Great Vowel Shift), semantic change, word creation and borrowing/copying words from other languages

Homework

Borrowing/Copying in English and German:

see table here: Borrowing_Copying (html, 2 KB)

Etymologies of "husband","geil"

• husband: Old Norse: "husbondi" ("hus"="house" + "bondi"/"buandi" --> "householder") ---> Old English: "husbonda"---> Middle English: "huseband"
• geil: derives from "gaila" (Germanic) or "geiligr"/"gailan" (Nordic) meaning "beautiful"

Examples of OE and Old High German

Old High German: wazzar, finf, zunga
Old English: waeter, fif

Quiz 1

Why is a portfolio important?
What should a portfolio contain, and how are these
components defined?
Why should the portfolio be on a website?
How do you make a website?

This quiz has already been answered in this entry.

Quiz 2

What is a website?
What is a hypertext? Give examples! Google again
What is a text, what are its main properties?
How do these properties relate

• to the mind?
• to the world?

The answers are to be found as well.

Homework

Task: Prepare reports for discussion on ...

• What are the following, and how old are they ?

• Indo-European
• Proto-Germanic
• Old English
• Middle English
• Early Modern English

Indo-European:

• language family containing major European languages, languages of the Indian subcontinent, South-West asia, Central Asia; the Indo-Iranian languages form the largest sub-branch
• largest number of speakers (ca. 3 billion native speakers)
• Anatolian languages: earliest attended branch (ca. 4000-5000 BC); now extinct
• divided into the Satem Group (easterm languages) and the Centum group (western languages such as Germanic and Celtic)

Proto-Germanic:

• ancestor of the German language family
• spoken in North-West Europe in the later part of the 1_st millennium

Old English:

• "Anglo-Saxon"
• spoken in parts of England and Southern Scotland in 500/600 - 1100 AD
• influenced by Germanic languages, Latin, Scandinavian (due to the Vikings' invasion) and Celtic

Middle English:

• spoken from 1100-1500 AD
• language influenced by Norman French (because of the Norman Kingdom that establishes after the Battle of Hastings in 1066) until 1200
• after 1200: English is spoken again but is different from Old English
• ca. 10 000 French words are taken over into the vocabulary

Early Modern English:

• spoken in 1500-1800
• example: Shakespeare
• enlargement of vocabulary due to the introduction of printing and easier access to books

Examples:

The table with the examples is to be found here: Examples_table (html, 1 KB)

What are the main differences between English and German?

• cases (German: Akkusativ, Dativ,...; English: direct/indirect object)
• pronouns (German: "du", "Sie"; English: "you")
• conjugation of verbs (German: "ich mache", "du machst"; English: "I do", "you do")
• determiners (German: "der/die/das"; English: "the")
• adjectives (German: congruent with the noun: "blaue Hose", "blaues Auto"; English: non-congruent with nouns: "blue trousers", "blue car")
• spelling (German: nouns always are written with a capital initial letter)