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Teacher
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CIGNI Costanza
(syllabus)
Course presentation
This module provides both an historical and cultural framework of the Germanic tribes in the Middle Ages and a synchronic description of the Common Germanic and its later linguistic developments, with particular regard to the early varieties of West Germanic (Old English and Old High German dialects). It also offers an introduction to the philological and linguistic analysis of the earliest Germanic texts and to useful operational tools in this field of study.
Lesson plan
First part
Germanic Philology: subject, method and field of application; the comparative method in historical linguistics; Germanic and concept of proto-language reconstruction; trees vs waves: two models of language diversification; phonological and morphological development from Indo-European to Proto-Germanic and to medieval Germanic languages; linguistic interference: Germanic-Romans contacts in Antiquity and in the Early Middle Ages; Germanic tribes and writing.
Second part
Practical comparative-contrastive analysis of some Lord’s Prayer versions in Gothic, Old English and Old High German.
(reference books)
-Orrin W. Robinson, Old English and its closest relatives. A survey of the earliest Germanic Languages, Stanford University Press, 1992
Moreover, it is required to study all the supporting materials of lectures (further reading, written assignments, including short-answer to a question), which are available on the UniTusMoodle learning platform (folder “International”).
For information or to be given access to the Moodle course page please contact the course teacher.
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