Constructional change in Germanic

This chapter tracks several of the major changes in English and German word order and accounts for them in terms of constructional change as formulated in Chapter 3. It argues that the changes are relatively simple in constructional terms, although the superficial results are quite dramatic. Topics include clause-initial position, V2, VP-initial and VP-final verb position, the loss of V2 and case marking in English, and verb clusters in Continental West Germanic.

Notes on three Proto-Slavic borrowings

The Proto-Slavic etyma *dъska, *misa, and *bļudo (*bļudъ), which are semantically related, are generally regarded as borrowings, but there is no consensus on the exact origins of these nouns. Following surveys of the Old Church Slavic and Gothic evidence as well as of the distribution of the etyma in Slavic, the article discusses the merits and drawbacks of the various existing views. It is argued that *dъska, *misa are best regarded as borrowings from Vulgar Latin or Early Romance, while *bļudo (*bļudъ) must have been borrowed from Germanic, but not from Gothic or West Germanic.

Regional differences in the evolution of the merger of /ʃ/ and /ç/ in Luxembourgish

The merger of post-alveolar /ʃ/ and palatal /ç/ into alveolopalatal /ɕ/ has recently gained growing interest in sociophonetic research, especially in the Middle German dialect area. In Luxembourgish, a Continental West Germanic language, the sound change has been linked to age differences, while its origins remain unclear. Two studies with a regional focus are presented in this paper. The first study examines the merger in the Centre and the South of Luxembourg. The acoustic examination of both the spectral peak and the centre of gravity of a spoken data set of five minimal pairs embedded in read and orally translated sentences from 48 speakers (three generations (old generation, 65–91 years; middle generation, 40–64 years; young generation, 20–39 years; each generation, n = 16), men and women) reveals interesting results related to their regional background. In the old generation, the merger is further advanced in the speech of old men from the former mining region in the South compared to their peers in the Centre, the former leading this sound change. On the other hand, young speakers in both regions produce only alveolopalatal /ɕ/, the merger being complete in this generation. The second study presents exploratory data from the East and the North of the country. The analysis of this smaller sample (n = 6 speakers) reveals patterns similar to the central region. Pointing to language contact with Romance in the South as cradle and/or catalyser of the merger, these results not only give further clues as to the development in Luxembourg, but also add to a deeper understanding of sound changes in process in complex sibilant systems.

The acquisition of prosodic marking of narrow focus in Central Swedish

We investigated how Central Swedish-speaking four to eleven-year-old children acquire the prosodic marking of narrow focus, compared to adult controls. Three measurements were analysed: placement of the prominence-marking high tone (prominence H), pitch range effects of the prominence H, and word duration. Subject-verb-object sentences were elicited in sentence-medial and sentence-final focus conditions via a semi-spontaneous elicitation task. The children largely performed in an adult-like manner already at four to five: they predominantly added prominence H to focal words and avoided this tone post-focally in both sentence-medial and sentence-final position. The placement or avoidance of prominence H had largely the same effects on pitch range for children and adults. Finally, the four to eight-year-olds also increased the duration of the focal word, similar to adults. Hence, Central Swedish-speaking children master the use of prosody for focus marking at an earlier age, compared to children acquiring a West Germanic language.

Lenition in North Sea Germanic

Lenition, or postvocalic weakening of obstruents, occurred in several languages in North Sea Germanic. Although the main centers of Germanic lenition lie outside this region, in High German and Danish, systemic lenition took place in Low German, North Frisian, and Dutch. Lenition in northern Low German is completely independent of lenition in High German, but the area does, however, border on Danish, which has the most far reaching of the Germanic lenitions. Lenition in mainland North Frisian is also in an area adjacent to Danish, but it displays a modified and rather unique form. In Dutch, there are only two small isolated areas with systemic lenition, one in Groningish and one in East Flemish. In general, lenition is attributed to the establishment of complementary length and the correlation of syllable cut in accented syllables. There are several convincing arguments to support this claim. Lenition is considered a Germanic trend, which is present only in its nascent form in other areas of West Germanic.

Die frühe voraltsächsische und voraltfriesische Runenüberlieferung

This paper deals with two runic inscriptions that are highly relevant to language history. 1. The runic sequences on the three Weser rune bones, which date to the first half of the 5th century, are not entirely clear. However, West Germanic (Pre-Old Saxon) linguistic features such as gemination by j (kunni ‘kin, clan’) and loss of -a < *-az (hari ‘army’) are obvious. By far the most interesting linguistic form is the preterite deda ‘did’ that reflects PGmc. *-dai (cf. PNorse talgi-dai ‘carved’ on the Nøvling fibula) as opposed to PGmc. *-dǣ(d) (PNorse -da, OHG -ta etc.). Apparently, we are dealing with two distinct endings, *-dai deriving from an PIE middle in *-(t)ó(i̯). 2. The legend ska 2 nomodu (a 2 = ᚪ) on a solidus of unknown provenance (ca. 600) renders the dithematic anthroponym Skānɔmōdǝ̣ (or *Skānɵmōdǝ̣), presumably the name of the moneyer. It seems that medial o stands for [ɔ] or [ɵ], an allophonic variant of the linking element /a/ before a labial consonant; parallels can be found in Old Germanic naming. Two linguistic features, viz. ā < WGmc. au and the nominative ending -ǝ̣ < WGmc. -a < PGmc. *-az, indicate that the language of the inscription is Pre-Old Frisian.

Null subjects in Middle Low German

Middle Low German (MLG) syntax is still relatively underresearched. One blank spot on the map is whether MLG allowed null arguments, in particular null subjects, and if so, of what kind. As recent research (Volodina 2009, 2011, Volodina & Weiß 2016, Walkden 2014, Kinn 2015) demonstrates that languages closely related to MLG did have null subjects in a form that no longer exists in Modern Germanic languages (Rosenkvist 2009), the current paper positions MLG in this respect. Updating Farasyn & Breitbarth (2016), we present novel data showing that MLG distinguished two different kinds of referential null subjects (RNS). We argue that MLG, while preserving the null-subject property from Old North-West Germanic to a high degree, was already in the transition to a topic-drop language of the modern V2-Germanic type. This paper provides an analysis of the licensing of RNS in MLG and of the factors influencing their occurrence.

The Realization of West Germanic +[sk] in Low German

The present study investigates the multiple reflexes of historical +[sk] clusters in Low German (Westphalian/Northern Low German) dialects. Original descriptions of over thirty varieties of those dialects spoken between the end of the 19th century to the present day reveal that there are a number of realizations of [sk] (e. g. [sk], [sx], [sç], [ʃx], [ʃç], [s]), whose occurrence depends on both the position within a word (initial, medial, final) and geography (the location of the dialect within a broad region in northwest Germany). The synchronic patterns are argued to reflect a series of diachronic stages: The change from any one of those stages to the next is shown to involve either the emergence of a new sound change (rule addition) or the extension of a preexisting change to a new context (rule generalization). A secondary goal of the present contribution is to show how the treatment of Low German sheds light on the change from historical +[sk] to [ʃ] in High German. In particular, it is argued – contrary to the position taken by the overwhelming majority of Germanicists – that the High German change involved the coalescence of two sounds into one without any intermediate stages.