Student: Jo’rayeva Nilufar

Midterm Exam paper E

History of the English Language

(O’rganilayotgan til tarixi)

Year 4 students

Group 409

Student: Jo’rayeva Nilufar

Exam rules to be followed:

1. All rules must be observed throughout the entire test.

2. The answers to the questions should reflect originality. No plagiarism is allowed.

3. A student will be given “0” if he or she has the same or similar submission as another student.

4. If a student has not been granted permission to take the exam, it is highly recommended to consult with the subject teacher to participate.

Total: _______________/ 30 points

Please submit your responses to the following questions. Each complete answer gets 10 points

Q1. Describe the system of vowel phonemes in Common German languages. (Write your response in no less than 100 words)

The German language contains eight vowels, but of course more than eight vowel phonemes! In addition to the five vowels included in the English language, German has “three umlaut vowels ä, ö and ü – and they each have a “long” and a “short” variant” (“German for English Speakers, n.d.). Umlaut refers to how short or long the vowel is held out. “German syllables that begin with a vowel are led off by a glottal stop” (“German for English Speakers, n.d.). Because there are many glottal stops, German can sound harsh or choppy. Essentially, vowels appear long when followed by one consonant; they appear short when followed by multiple consonants. Monophthong vowel phonemes include what is shown on the following chart:

Q2. How would you define dialectal differentiation of Proto Indo-European languages? Illustrate your answer with examples. (Write your responses in no less than 100 words)

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the theorized common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations, the regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws), morphology, and vocabulary. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages. Today, the descendant languages of PIE with the most native speakers are Spanish, English, Portuguese, Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, Persian, French, Marathi, Italian, and Gujarati.

The phonology of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) has been reconstructed by linguists, based on the similarities and differences among current and extinct Indo-European languages. Because PIE was not written, linguists must rely on the evidence of its earliest attested descendants, such as Hittite, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin, to reconstruct its phonology.

Between PIE and the various dialects the system undergoes further changes. Many of the changes extend over only a part of the IE speech area.

General changes:

1. 
   the laryngeals are lost as phonemes. Reflexes of them survive in various environments.
   
2. 
   the allophones of the resonants become phonemic.
   
3. 
   reflexes of /_e/ fall together with the short vowels. (Restricted change: over an east-central innovating area the back vowels /a/ and /o/ coincide. Allophones of velar stops become phonemes over this area, and beyond it.)
   
4. 
   diphthongs develop when vowels followed by resonants occur between consonants.
   

After changes 2 and 4 the phonemic system is made up of two classes:

• 
  vowels—any phoneme that may be syllabic;
  
• 
  consonants—the non-syllabics.
  

A complete description of the extent of these and less general developments would be a description of the phonological characteristics of the various dialects. Such descriptions would be moderately complex, and would be analyses of the phonological structure of the various dialects rather than of Proto-Indo-European.

TASK. List all the West Germanic languages you know from your reading and class discussions using one of the listing, diagram, cluster, mapping methods.