The Germanic LanguagesGermanic - one of the largest sub-groups of the Indo-European language family - comprises 37 languages with an estimated 470 million speakers worldwide. This book presents a comparative linguistic survey of the full range of Germanic languages, both ancient and modern, including major world languages such as English and German (West Germanic), the Scandinavian (North Germanic) languages, and the extinct East Germanic languages. Unlike previous studies, it does not take a chronological or a language-by-language approach, organized instead around linguistic constructions and subsystems. Considering dialects alongside standard varieties, it provides a detailed account of topics such as case, word formation, sound systems, vowel length, syllable structure, the noun phrase, the verb phrase, the expression of tense and mood, and the syntax of the clause. Authoritative and comprehensive, this much-needed survey will be welcomed by scholars and students of the Germanic languages, as well as linguists across the many branches of the field. |
Contents
Section 15 | 270 |
Section 16 | 283 |
Section 17 | 321 |
Section 18 | 330 |
Section 19 | 331 |
Section 20 | 353 |
Section 21 | 367 |
Section 22 | 369 |
Section 9 | 152 |
Section 10 | 153 |
Section 11 | 172 |
Section 12 | 209 |
Section 13 | 246 |
Section 14 | 248 |
Section 23 | 379 |
Section 24 | 383 |
Section 25 | 389 |
Section 26 | 392 |
Section 27 | 408 |
Section 28 | 415 |
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Common terms and phrases
adjectives adverbs affixes agreement alternations antecedent appears argument auxiliary Bandle C-relatives clausal negator clitic clusters co-occur complementizer consonant constituent contexts continental Scandinavian contrast dative definite article dialects discussion distinction early GMC element example expletive fact finite forms fricatives front gemination gender genitive GMC languages grammatical Haugen Hinchcliffe 1994 Holmes and Hinchcliffe infinitival infinitive inflectional Ingvaeonic lexical verb main clause marker modal modern GMC languages morphemes morphology negative neuter nominal nonfinite notes noun phrases object obstruents occur original OV languages paradigms participle passive periphrastic personal pronoun pied-piping plural polarity items position possible precede predicate preposition present perfect pronominal question referred reflexive relative clause relative construction relative pronoun relativization restricted Scandinavian languages Section semantic sentences sentential negation singular sonority stranding stress subjunctive subordinate clause suffix syllable syntactic syntax third person umlaut verbal Vikner voice vowel West Flemish West GMC languages