Some aspects of the restructuring of the Germanic verb system (original) (raw)
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Zeitschrift für Rezensionen zur germanistischen Sprachwissenschaft, 2016
The past several years have seen something of a revival of interest in the verbal inflection of the Germanic languages. While the 'great past tense debate' of the 1990s was focused for the most part on the English language and synchronic psycholinguistic approaches, recent publications have shed more light on the history of strong and weak verbs in German, Dutch, Frisian, and the Scandinavian languages (see among others Dammel 2011). Building upon her earlier articles (e. g. Nowak 2010) this new book by Jessica Nowak is a welcome addition to this growing body of literature. The central topic of the book is the titular "eighth ablaut class" (henceforth S8), a term that refers to a few interrelated but slightly different phenomena in the three languages under scrutiny. In Dutch and German, it is used to describe the generalized ablaut pattern x-o-o, which is mainly represented by the patterns e-o-o and i-o-o (e. g. Dutch zenden-zond-gezonden). 1 The origins of this pattern lie in the Early Modern period, where the contrast between the singular and plural past tense vowels was neutralised. The change of the third ablaut class pattern from the earlier e/i-a-o-o to e/i-o-o is a significant one, as the shift from an overarching ABC(C) type to ABB may be seen as kind of partial regularisation that still maintains the hallmarks of strong inflection-note that weak verbs are also of the ABB type. As Nowak convincingly argues, for some verbs in Early Modern Dutch and Early Modern High German the x-o-o pattern forms an alternative to wholesale 'weakening', i. e. a shift to weak inflection. This illustrates how in these languages, irregular and regular are not discrete polar opposites; rather, there is a cline ranging from complete suppletion on the one end to only suffixation on the other. 2
Review of Kenneth Shields, A History of Indo-European Verb Morphology
Diachronica, 1994
Reviewed by MICHAEL WEISS, Yale University Kenneth Shields' new book follows firmly in the footsteps of his 1982 work, Indo-European Noun Inflection: A developmental history. As in that work, S offers a number of theories concerning the origin and evolution of various PIE categories and morphemes. And, as in that work, he does not maintain that his views are the only correct ones, but only one possible reconstruction out of a set of many conceivable and perhaps equally valid reconstructions. In the first part of the Chap.l (pp. 1-10), S sketches out his views on the methods of historical linguistics and responds to critics of his earlier work. On p.2, S writes that "historical linguistics appears to have its own constraints problem [...] diachronic theory and methodology are too powerful in the sense that they permit too many explanations of the same data." This is undeniably true. But, although S spends a few pages discussing the evaluation of reconstructions (4-10), he does not consider that historical linguistics has always had a rough and ready metric for the evaluation of competing accounts: the critical comparison of these accounts with regard to their descriptive adequacy and simplicity. In order for S to convince the reader that his own novel views are more likely than, or even as likely as, the communis opinio, he would have to show that they do, in fact, account for all the data just as well and involve no more steps or supplementary unproven hypotheses. One finds, however, that this vital work of critical comparison is left to the reader or to earlier scholars from whom S quotes extensively. For example, on p.46, in dealing with the origin of the Germanic rpreterites, S dismisses the widely held theory that they are relics of originally reduplicated perfects by quoting two rather weak objections from Lehmann (1952: 57) that "there is no evidence that any [...] verb forms [in these dialects] developed from reduplicated forms like *spespume", and that "the dissimilations are unusual". But Germanic clearly inherited reduplicated preterites which are well-attested in Gothic and some of these clearly survived into West Ger
Verbal Syntax in the Early Germanic Languages
This dissertation investigates the evidence for verb movement at the earliest stages of the Germanic languages. It is argued that already in the oldest documents of Germanic there are cases which must involve movement of the finite verb from the Verb Phrase to a functional head position higher up in the hierarchical structure. In a well-defined set of cases this is the Complementizer (C) position, but in other cases an IP-internal functional head position seems more likely as a landing-site for the verb. Moreover, it is argued that whereas in Gothic and Old English the verb does not move to C when complements are topicalized, in the other old Germanic languages, Old Norse, Old High German, and Old Saxon, V–to–C movement is obligatory in topicalizations. An examination of the runic inscriptions reveals that topicalized complements triggered movement of the verb to C already at the earliest stage in the northern part of the Germanic linguistic area.
TRANS-GERMANIC PECULIARITIES OF PRETERITE- PRESENT VERBS
Актуальні проблеми української лінгвістики: теорія і практика, 2020
This article contains systematic and detailed analysis of morphological and semantic parameters of Germanic preterite-present verbs, dividing them into major and minor subgroups. The development of both preterite-present subgroups and their steady transformation into the modal verbs is a specific feature of all Germanic languages. Since the modal verbs of the Modern Germanic languages are morphologically defective, it is commonly assumed that preterite-present verbs of the old Germanic languages lost some of their morphological features in the process of turning into modal verbs. The semantic aspects of this process are rather obscure. All Germanic languages were losing some preterite-present verbs in the process of transformation from the Gothic language, which had fourteen preterite-present verbs. In OE there were twelve preterite-present verbs. Six of them survived in NE. The morphological description focuses on the finite and non-finite forms of the preterite-present verbs, which belong to the minor subgroup. The detailed description helps to see the origin and development of the minor subgroup in the new light. The description encompasses the data of classical Indo-European languages and Old Germanic languages. The authors emphasize the expediency of turning to the theory of preterite/strong verb origin, the verbs in question may be regarded as inter-group, hybrid units. In order to gain insight into the origin of the Germanic languages it is necessary to look into the history of the Gothic and West Germanic and North Germanic languages. The authors find it useful to compare common and different phenomena, highlighting individual specific processes taking place in the process of development of the Germanic languages. These languages are analyzed on different stages of their development, but inline with the view that the languages cooperated and coexisted in the same area. The data given in the article are used to analyze the problem implementing comparative grammar tools. The authors were particularly careful to take all grammatical forms into consideration while working with the lexical units from the ancient sources. Some additional information was taken from Greek, Latin and Sanskrit to produce reliable and consistent comparison of the German language with the rest of Indo-European languages.
KGAA 121 151ff. on the history of complex verbs in Scandinavian languages
(in cooperation with St. Höder): “The history of complex verbs in Scandinavian languages revisited: only influence due to contact with Low German? Contact between Low German and Scandinavian in the late Middle Ages. 25 years of research (E. H. Jahr / L. Elmevik, eds.) Uppsala: 2012, pp. 151 - 169.
This monograph attempts a new historical and comparative analysis of Old English (OE) preterite-present verbs. Preterite-present verbs show morphological peculiarities: their present singular typically exhibits the o-grade radical vocalism, to conform with the preterite singular of a strong verb, whilst their preterite is augmented with a dental suffix, which accords with the preterite formation of a weak verb. Traditionally, English and Germanic philologists have construed these characteristics as the result of an original o-grade perfect having been reinterpreted as the new present, along with the suppression of the original e-grade present, and of the Germanic (Gmc.) dental or weak preterite having been newly adopted for the preterite formation; this standpoint may be labelled the ‘strong verb origin’ theory. The present work calls this view into question by focusing on the difficulties inherent in this conventional approach. Authentic Indo-European comparative linguistic studies have considered that (the present tense formations of) the OE or Gmc. preterite-present verbs are reflexes of the archaic Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stative perfects, though the dental preterites are an independently Germanic innovation. Whilst this understanding, which may be dubbed the ‘stative perfect origin’ theory, seems to provide a far better explanation than the ‘strong verb origin’ theory, there also remain several significant issues to be resolved. First, how did the Gmc. preterite-present verbs lose their original reduplication if they go back to the PIE perfect? Second, does the Indo-European comparative evidence guarantee that all the preterite-present verbs unequivocally refer back to a PIE stative perfect alone? Third, how can the third person plural ending *-un in the present tense formation of the Gmc. preterite-present verb be explained, given that the third person plural termination of the PIE perfect should develop into *-ur in Germanic? Fourth, which PIE formation should the peculiar morphology of the infinitive of a Gmc. preterite-present verb reflect? This monograph claims that these important problems are not resolved if we merely assume that the PIE stative perfect continued into the Gmc. preterite-present by losing its original reduplication due to morphological haplology. These matters are interconnected to a remarkable extent, and a systematic account can be offered only if we recognize that the OE or Gmc. preterite-present verbs are in essence a historical product within the Germanic branch, resulting from the morphological conflation of the PIE stative perfect active and a PIE athematic present tense middle formation which can convey a present stative meaning; this perspective may be tagged as the ‘morphological conflation’ theory. This monograph adopts the ‘h2e-conjugation theory’ advocated recently by Jay H. Jasanoff and demonstrates that the same theory, remarkable in the very high level of explanatory power it achieves in treating the origin of the Anatolian ḫi-conjugation verbs, is also effective when attempting to give a historical account of the present tense formation of the OE or Gmc. preterite-present verbs. The core members of the preterite-present group have arisen from what is called a PIE stative-intransitive system within the framework of the h2e-conjugation theory, whilst there are also other preterite-present members which to some extent deviate from this pattern. In this way, the present work focuses on the historical and comparative analysis of the present tense formation of the preterite-present verb; accordingly, the origin and development of the Germanic dental preterite, another important issue concerning preterite-present morphology, is left open for future research.