Dr. Fee's Introduction to Germanic

English 209: Introduction to Germanic

· Define prosody (rhythmic alterations of strong/weak accented syllables, differences in stress or pitch, or both; CIE=accent based on pitch differences/Germanic=strong stress accent based on loudness rather than pitch)
· What do we mean by Germanic “fixed stress”? (Stress accent on initial syllable, unless weak prefix, then on following syllable)
· Grimm’s law:
· IE voiceless stops > Gmc voiceless fricatives
· IE voiced stops > Gmc voiceless stops
· IE voiced aspirated stops > Gmc voiced stops
· Verner’ law: worked on the series of unvoiced fricatives which were the output of Grimm’s law, but ONLY when the immediately preceding vowel did not carry principle stress, and NOT on initial consonants
· Define “First Consonant Shift” (G+V)
· Define Ablaut (changes in the vowels of roots indicates tense, number, part of speech, etc.; sing, sang, sung/song; location of stress example: catastrophe vs. catastophic)
· Nouns: number, case, gender
· Stong and weak adjectives
· Three persons in pronouns
· Verbs: aspect (tense), voice, mood