A history of German : what the past reveals about today's language / Joseph Salmons.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Salmons, Joseph, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

German language--History.

German language.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (468 pages) : illustrations, maps

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Summary:

This textbook provides a detailed introduction to the development of the German language from prehistory to the present. This second edition has been extensively revised to include coverage of syntactic change, sociolinguistics, language variation, and language contact, as well as more detailed definitions and background information for beginners.

Contents:

Cover

A History of German: What the Past Reveals about Today's Language: Second Edition

Copyright

Short contents

Detailed contents

Preface to the second edition

Preface

List of maps

Guide to symbols

Abbreviations

1: Introduction: Aims and scope

2: The depths of prehistory: Up to Indo-European

2.0 Introduction

2.1 How do we know that languages are related?

2.2 Germanic's extended family: Indo-European

2.3 The breakup of IE: the road to Germanic

3: The dawn of history: Germanic up to the earliest direct attestation

3.0 Introduction

3.1 Indo-European accent and the Germanic accent shift

3.2 Consonants: Indo-European to Germanic

3.2.1 Grimm's Law

3.2.2 Fricative + stop clusters

3.2.3 Verner's Law

3.3 IE &gt

Germanic vowel changes

3.3.1 Vowel merger

3.3.2 Nasalschwund mit Ersatzdehnung

3.3.3 Anaptyxis

3.3.4 Prenasal raising

3.3.5 Diphthongs

3.4 Morphology

3.4.1 IE &gt

Gmc nominal morphology

3.4.2 Basic structure of IE words

3.4.3 Nominal categories

3.4.4 Major nominal classes and their Germanic forms

3.5 The verbal system

3.5.1 Inflectional categories

3.5.2 Inflected forms

3.5.3 The Germanic system of ablaut: 'strong verbs'

3.5.4 The dental preterit: 'weak verbs'

3.5.5 Classes

3.5.6 Endings

3.6 Die Ausgliederung: breaking up is hard to reconstruct

3.6.1 The early Runic evidence

3.6.2 Basic divisions: background and definitions

3.6.3 How do we determine subgroups within Germanic?

3.6.4 The migrations: some highlights

3.7 The earliest texts in Germanic

3.8 A note on early Germanic syntax

3.9 Conclusion

4: From Germanic to Old High German: Early textual evidence

4.0 Introduction

4.1 Sound changes from Germanic to Old High German

4.1.1 The consonant system

4.1.2 The vowel system.

4.1.3 Prosody and the Laws of Finals: IE &gt

OHG

4.2 Old High German dialects

4.3 Old High German morphology

4.3.1 Nominal morphology

4.4 Old High German syntax

4.5 The sociolinguistics of writing Old High German

4.6 Vocabulary

4.6.1 Loanwords into OHG

4.6.2 Borrowing in the other direction

4.6.3 Survival and adaptation of pre-Christian vocabulary

4.7 Conclusion

5: Middle High German: The High Middle Ages

5.0 Introduction

5.1 Periodization

5.2 Sound changes from Old High German to Middle High German

5.2.1 Introduction

5.2.2 Consonants

5.2.3 'Contractions': loss of b, d, and (especially) g intervocalically

5.2.4 Vowels

5.2.5 Summary of sound changes

5.3 Morphology: It's beginning to look a lot like German

5.3.1 An example of the effects of weakening on the case system

5.3.2 Base form versus stem inflection

5.4 Syntax

5.4.1 Configurationality

5.4.2 Verbal syntax: more on periphrasis

5.4.3 Word order and the verbal frame

5.4.4 Negation

5.4.5 Nominal syntax: case

5.5 Social and regional variation come into view

5.5.1 Sample texts

5.6 Vocabulary: lexical semantic change

5.7 Conclusion

6: Early New High German: Richer structural evidence and socio-historical context

6.0 Introduction

6.1 Sound changes

6.1.1 Vowels

6.1.2 Summary of vowel changes

6.1.3 Consonants

6.1.4 Lenition

6.2 Early New High German dialects

6.3 Morphology

6.4 Syntax

6.5 Pragmatics and discourse: language in use

6.6 The establishment of a (more) unified language

6.7 Prescriptivism

6.8 Vocabulary

6.9 Conclusion

7: New High German: Recent and ongoing change

7.0 Introduction

7.1 Sound change in contemporary German: still going

7.2 Morphological change at present

7.2.1 The nominal system

7.2.2 Reduction of case marking.

7.2.3 Extension of number marking

7.2.4 The continuing evolution of gender assignment and plural marking

7.2.5 Derivational morphology

7.2.6 The verbal system

7.2.7 Complementizer agreement: dramatically non-standard new inflection

7.3 Syntactic change today

7.4 Pragmatics

7.5 The sociolinguistics of contemporary German

7.6 Vocabulary: fear of an Anglophone planet

7.7 Conclusion

8: Conclusion: Interpreting the significance of the past for us

8.0 Introduction

8.1 Historical developments on today's map

8.2 The broad swath of German linguistic history

8.3 The theoretical basis of this book

8.4 Conclusion

References

Index of languages, language families, and dialects

Index of authors

Subject index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-19-256135-9

OCLC:

1048402983