Insights in Germanic Linguistics: II Classic and Contemporary 9783110886740, 9783110148541

Table of contents :
Contributors
Preface: The soul of Germanic linguistics
The putative strengthening of glides in Gothic
Latin influence on German word order: A discussion of Behaghel’s theory
Ambisyllabicity in Old English: A contrary view
Machds, daß-ds wegkummds! The mystery of inflected complementizers
On the Old High German Medienverschiebung
Underspecification and the Old High German monophthongization
The phrase structure of partitives in High German
The reaction of monosyllables to apocope in German dialects
Aspects of “headedness switching” in German, Dutch, and Danish verb complexes
Agreement and null subjects in Germanic and Romance
Articulatory phonology as a tool for explanation in historical phonology: The case of stop epenthesis in Germanic
The Germanic i-umlaut revisited
How Indo-European is Germanic?
Bag V: PC German
Thematic hierarchies and the argument-structure-syntax interface: Evidence from germanic ditransitive verbs
Against the notion “metrical grammar”
Two-domain conditionals: Verb-first, integration, politeness
Coordinate ellipsis in German: Old problems from a new (minimalist) perspective
The development of reduplicating verbs in Germanic
Causative psych-verbs in the history of English
Index

Citation preview

Insights in Germanic Linguistics II

W G DE

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 94

Editor

Werner Winter

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Insights in Germanic Linguistics II Classic and Contemporary

edited by

Irmengard Rauch Gerald F. Carr

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1997

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication-Data

Insights in Germanic linguistics : methodology in transition / edited by Irmengard Rauch, Gerald F. Carr. p. cm. — (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 83). Includes bibliographical references and index, (acid free paper) ISBN 3-11-014359-3 (Vol. I) ISBN 3-11-014854-4 (Vol. II) 1. Germanic languages-Grammar. 2. LinguisticsMethodology. I. Rauch, Irmengard. II. Carr, Gerald F. III. Series. PD101.I57 1995 430-dc20 95-4819 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Insights in Germanic linguistics / ed. by Irmengard Rauch ; Gerald F. Carr. - Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter. Literaturangaben NE: Rauch, Irmengard [Hrsg.] 2. Classic and contemporary. - 1996 (Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 94) ISBN 3-11-014854-4 NE: Trends in linguistics / Studies and monographs

© Copyright 1996 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting and printing: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin. Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Contents

Contributors

vii

Preface: The soul of Germanic linguistics Irmengard Rauch — Gerald F. Carr

ix

The putative strengthening of glides in Gothic Charles M. Barrack

1

Latin influence on German word order: A discussion of Behaghel's theory Diana Chirita

9

Ambisyllabicity in Old English: A contrary view Robert D. Fulk

29

Machds, daß-ds wegkummds! The mystery of inflected complementizers Michael Getty

47

On the Old High German Medienverschiebung Kurt Gustav Gobiirsch

63

Underspecification and the Old High German monophthongization Wayne Harbert

71

The phrase structure of partitives in High German Robert G. Hoeing

87

The reaction of monosyllables to apocope in German dialects Anatoly Liberman

99

Aspects of "headedness switching" in German, Dutch, and Danish verb complexes Erik J. Macki

135

Agreement and null subjects in Germanic and Romance Enrique ΜαΙΙέη

155

vi

Contents

Articulatory phonology as a tool for explanation in historical phonology: The case of stop epenthesis in Germanic B. Richard Page

175

The Germanic /-umlaut revisited Herbert Penzlf

189

How Indo-European is Germanic? Edgar Polome

197

Bag V: PC German Irmengard Rauch

207

Thematic hierarchies and the argument-structure-syntax interface: Evidence from germanic ditransitive verbs Rex A. Sprouse 227 Against the notion "metrical grammar" Robert P. Stockwell — Donka Minkova

243

Two-domain conditionals: Verb-first, integration, politeness Ilona Vandergriff

257

Coordinate ellipsis in German: Old problems from a new (minimalist) perspective John te Velde 275 The development of reduplicating verbs in Germanic Theo Vennemann gen. Nierfeld

297

Causative psych-verbs in the history of English Heidi Waltz

337

Index

345

Contributors

Charles Μ. Barrack Dept. of Germanics University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 Diana Chirita 64 Cobleigh Rd. Boxboro, MA 01719 Robert D. Fulk Dept. of English Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 Michael Getty Dept. of German Studies Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305 Kurt G. Goblirsch Dept. of Germanic, Slavic & Oriental Langs, and Lits. University of South Carolina Columbia, SC 29208 Wayne Harbert Department of Linguistics Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853-4701 Robert G. Hoeing Dept. of Modern Langs. & Lits. University at Buffalo State University of New York Box 604620 Buffalo, NY 14260-4620 Anatoly Liberman Dept. of German, Scandinavian and Dutch University of Minnesota Minneapolis, M N 55455-0124

Erik J. Macki Dept. of Germanics Box 35313C University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 Enrique Mallen Dept. of Modern & Classical Langs. Texas A & Μ University College Station, TX 77843-4238 B. Richard Page Dept. of German Pennsylvania State University S-323 Burrowes Building University Park, PA 16802-6203 Herbert Penzl | Dept. of German University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 Edgar C. Polome 2701 Rock Terrace Drive Austin, TX 78704-3843 Irmengard Rauch Dept. of German University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 Rex A. Sprouse Dept. of Germanic Studies Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 Robert B. Stockwell Donka Minkova Dept. of Linguistics University of California Los Angeles, CA 90095-1530

viii

Contributors

Ilona Vandergriff Dept. of Foreign Languages San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA 94132 John te Velde Foreign Languages and Literatures Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK 74078-0602

Theo Vennemann gen. Nierfeld Institut für deutsche Philologie Schellingstr. 3 80799 München Germany Heidi Waltz Dept. of Literatures and Languages University of California Riverside, CA 92521-0321

Preface: The soul of Germanic linguistics

The collection of research comprising Volume II of Mouton de Gruyter's Trends in Linguistics' subseries Insights in Germanic Linguistics II: Classic and Contemporary (IGL II) is actually the third such collection instrumental in establishing an identity for Germanic Linguistics as a "unified field of study" (1992: V) in analogy to, for example, Romance Linguistics or Slavic Linguistics. The 1992 On Germanic Linguistics: Issues and Methods (OGL), which represents the pilot volume toward establishing a unified Germanic Linguistics, was encouraging by its "productive melding of historical and contemporary language, [and] their mutual exploitation for the best possible linguistic theory to account for the data" (VI). The array of research topics represented in OGL as well as in the 1995 volume Insights in Germanic Linguistics I: Methodology in Transition (IGL I) and in the current IGL II is unencumbered by specific topical and/or theoretical guidelines, i.e., the volunteered topics discussed and the volunteered methods applied gauge well the research concerns of the current field of Germanic Linguistics. The open-topic solicitation of papers in all three of these volumes resulted in a fairly steady split between articles centered in historical Germanic and those concentrating on modern Germanic, thus 13 historical to 8 modern in OGL, 8 historical to 9 modern in IGL /, and 12 historical to 8 modern in the present volume. The division between phonology and morphology/syntax centered articles is respectively, 10 to 11 in OGL, 4 to 11 in IGL I, and 8 to 11 in the present IGL II. Of the total of 22 phonology articles, 20 speak to historical topics, while of the total 33 morphology/syntax articles, 11 concentrate on historical data, with 22 on modern data. Configurating these two parameters, we observe interesting defining characteristics of Germanic Linguistics which show it to be a research field that curently pursues, on the one hand, historical data ca. 24 per cent more than modern data, and, on the other hand, morphological/syntactical data ca. 33 per cent more than phonological data. Overwhelmingly, i. e., 20 to 2, the phonological articles are historical, and fully a third, i. e., 11 of 33 of the morphology/syntax papers, are historical. Just as topics are not predetermined, methods are also not prescribed in the collection of contributions to OGL, IGL /, and the present IGL II. Accordingly, the rich array of approaches found in the three volumes also reflects well the modi operandi of current Germanic Linguistics.

χ

Preface

Germanic linguists dealing with either or both historical and modern data employ various formal and informal approaches rooted in linguistic structuralism and developed throughout the twentieth century, e. g., typological methods such as syllable preference laws or syntactic univerals, neogenerative approaches such as government and binding or phonological feature geometry, holistic methods such as prototype grammar or linguistic semiotics, and, indeed, various offshoots of these, for example, the minimalist program, gestural phonology, and others. The present volume, IGL II, bears out the defining characteristics of current research in Germanic Linguistics which are observed of OGL and IGL /, viz. stronger pursuit of historical data but with preference for phonology, and stronger pursuit of morphology/syntax but with preference for modern data. The richness of approaches is likewise again evident in IGL II. Classic research problems of Germanic Linguistics are not abandoned; they are indeed avidly pursued in the light of a developing pluralism (cf. IGL I: 1) in contemporary methodological insights, hence the subtitle of IGL II. To be sure, it is a given that language data from East, North, and West Germanic languages circumscribe the field of Germanic Linguistics. However, the characteristic pursuit of historical data in Germanic Linguistics, whether for its own sake or whether for its contrastive and/or genetic value relative to contemporary data, brings with it other defining characteristics such as insistence on precise data and on the vast details of the Germanic data pool. This legendary contribution infused all of Germanic Linguistics over the centuries and it has never abated. OGL, IGL /, and IGL II derive from the fecund meetings of the Berkeley Germanic Linguistics Roundtable. The editors acknowledge the generous support of the University of California Berkeley's Chancellor for Research, its Center for German and European Studies, and the Max Kade Foundation, Inc.

The putative strengthening of glides in Gothic Charles M. Barrack

1. Introduction In most traditional accounts the palatal and labiovelar glides of ProtoGermanic remain unchanged in Gothic and are generally transliterated from the Wulfilian alphabet as j and w respectively. It has been argued by some, however, that the labiovelar glide had fricativized in pre-Wulfilian Gothic. The most detailed arguments to this effect have been provided by Theo Vennemann (1985: 206—217), who maintains that not only the labiovelar but also the palatal glide fricativized. In what follows I shall present Vennemann's main arguments followed by counter arguments, which, I believe, undermine the fricativization hypothesis.

2. Margins ending in j / w At the end of lines the Gothic scribes normally divided clusters ending in j or w before these segments (examples from Schulze [1908: 612-614]): (1)

a. idd/jedun '(they) went', waldufnlja 'power' (dat). b. waurst/wa 'work' (dat.), taihs/wons 'right hands'

Basing his conclusion on syllable preference laws, specifically the Syllable Contact Law, Vennemann argues convincingly (1985: 212—215; cf. Hooper 1976: 229-232) that the syllabification indicated by such word division is highly unusual because of the consonantal weakness, that is, high degree of sonority, of glides. In effect, such syllabification is almost as unnatural as setting a syllable boundary between a consonant and a following vowel. Vennemann concludes that this division supports his hypothesis of glide strengthening because syllabic division before obstruents - in this case putative fricatives — is much more likely than before glides.

2

Charles Μ. Barrack

2.1 Syllable weight However, Vennemann's proposed syllabification *-C$j-/*-C$w- (based on the assumption of the strengthening of head initial glides of pre-Gothic, viz., *-C$i-/*-C$u-) runs afoul of other preference laws.1 If Vennemann is correct that the scribal practice of dividing before j reflects Gothic syllabification pure and simple, then both Gothic and pre-Gothic syllabification must have been blind to syllable weight as the moraic analysis of the following divided words indicates (examples from Schulze 1908: 6 1 2 -

613): frajyljand '(they) think', wastljom 'clothing' (dat. pi.), waurst/wa 'work' (dat. sg,),fulhsnlja 'secret' (dat. sg.). (2)

a. Two moras

b. Three moras σ

μ

μ

μ

/ r ap/j

and

c. Four moras σ

μ μ μ μ

νν [ ο ] r s t / wa

μ μ

wast/

jom

d. Five moras σ μ μ μ μ μ

/ulhsn

/ja

But concluding that (pre-)Gothic syllabification was blind to syllable weight is tantamount to declaring that (pre-) Gothic deviated radically from the rest of Germanic taken as a whole. Indeed, very many languages (for example, the Romance group, Classical Arabic, Japanese) exhibit a preference for syllables of less than three moras, a fact reflected in Vennemann's formulation of the Weight Law by dint of which "the optimal stressed syllable is bimoric..." (1988: 30, cf. 57-64; see also Murray - Vennemann 1983: 525-526).

2.2 Diachronic considerations If one turns to diachronic developments, the assumption of pre-Gothic *-C$i- / *-C$u- becomes even more problematic. For example, Holtzmann's Law describes the strengthening (Verschärfung) of intervocalic glides in Proto-Germanic — perhaps as a result of suffixal accentuation. (See Kieckers 1960: 42-44; Voyles 1992: 25-26). The development into Gothic can be illustrated by the genitive of the numeral 'two':

The putative strengthening

(3)

of glides in Gothic

3

Pre-Gothic *twa(i)ie > Gothic twaddje

Now, if one accepts Vennemann's account of putative head-initial glide strengthening one must posit the following syllabification in prehistoric Gothic: (4)

Pre-Gothic *-dd$i- > Gothic *-dd$j-

But this development presupposes that the palatal glide either strengthened inexplicably to the stop d in the coda, one of the weakest positions in the syllable, or moved there inexplicably from the following onset position, a position of strength (cf. Hooper 1976: 209-210, 215-216; Vennemann 1988: 13-27). 2.3 Morphological

considerations

If word division between -Cj- / -Cw- by the Gothic scribes is blind to syllable weight and, hence, to principles of syllabification, what other basis could it have? Morphology may provide the answer: to my knowledge every medial glide in Gothic is preceded by a morpheme boundary save, perhaps, in the few cases of Verschärfung, represented by twaddje and triggwa 'covenant', and in the few cases of roots ending in gw from PIE *-ghw (for example, siggwan Isingwanf). Word division before glides may reflect these ubiquitous morphological boundaries. Since there are few examples of glides not preceded by morpheme boundaries, the scribes may have simply followed the general pattern in dividing before them also.

3. Loss of medial, cluster-final glides In their joint article, Murray - Vennemann (1983: 526) contend that the palatal glide, had it indeed been preserved in pre-Wulfilian Gothic, would have been lost medially in cluster-final position as was its fate in West Germanic. Note, for example, the fate of PGmc. *bidian-\ (5)

Go. bidjan to OE biddan, OHG bitten 'to ask, bid'

But this argument is based upon an illegitimate comparison: Murray and Vennemann are, in effect, comparing archaic fourth-century Gothic to the relatively innovative West Germanic of a period several centuries later. Furthermore, counter to Murray and Vennemann's contention, the

4

Charles Μ. Barrack

palatal did indeed remain in some West Germanic dialects, even as late as the ninth century. Witness the fate of PGmc. *sitian-\ (6)

Go. sitjan, OS sittean 'to sit'

Moreover, Murray and Vennemann's argument is also undermined from another direction: the historically attested dialect closest to Wulfilian Gothic is Crimean Gothic of the sixteenth century. It is noteworthy that Crimean Gothic evinces precisely the type of cluster-final glide deletion that Murray and Vennemann claim one should expect to encounter in Wulfilian Gothic had the Proto-Germanic glides preserved their sonority in that East Germanic dialect (see Stearns 1978: 143-144, 153-154): (7)

a. Wulf. Go. hlahjan : Crim. Go. lachen 'to laugh' b. Wulf. Go. siggwan /singwan/ : Crim. Go. singhen 'to sing'

4. Cluster-final, word-final w Finally, Vennemann (1985: 212-217) notes that contrary to expectations, the Proto-Germanic labiovelar glide, unlike the palatal, fails to nuclearize after apocope in cluster-final, word-final position in Gothic. (8)

Contrast PGmc. *kunia- > Go. kuni 'race' with PGmc. *uurst(u)ua- > Go. waurstw 'work'.

Vennemann accounts for this differential development as follows: the palatal glide is more sonorous than the labiovelar glide. Accordingly, when forced into cluster-final position after apocope it was more likely to nuclearize before Vennemann's postulated period of fricativization. The labiovelar glide, on the other hand, was more easily tolerated in cluster-final position because of its greater consonantal strength and strengthened even further to a fricative, a development favored by its cluster-final, word-final position. 2 One can accept Vennemann's well-reasoned account of the nuclearization of the word-final palatal glide without assenting to his hypothesis of subsequent glide strengthening: after apocope one would indeed expect a glide to either nuclearize or be lost in cluster-final position. Hence the problematic status of cluster-final, word-final w in Wulfilian Gothic. (See [8])· But there is a third possibility not entertained by Vennemann: that the grapheme w represented not a segment in this position but secondary

The putative strengthening

of glides in Gothic

5

articulation of the preceding consonant. In other words, the word-final sequence of a consonant followed by w may have simply represented a labialized consonant. Ladefoged (1982: 211) attests to the fact that virtually all consonants can be labialized, and, indeed, Gothic provides independent evidence that it possessed word-final labialized consonants. Note the final labialized segments in the Gothic cognates to sank and saw: (9)

Go. sagq /sankw, Go. sah /sahw/

5. Further evidence of glide retention That the Proto-Germanic glides were retained in Gothic is confirmed by other considerations. 5.1 Intrusive j Gothic j often occurs optionally between i and a following vowel in both native words (10a) and loan words (10b). (See Kieckers 1960: 83). One would expect an optional intrusive glide in this environment but not a fricative: (10)

a. Go. sium, sijum '(we) are', fiands, fijands 'enemy' b. Go. Bepaniin, Bepanijin 'Bethany' (dat. sg.)

5.2 Alternation of initial j and i in loanwords More significantly, j occurs interchangeably with i in word-initial prevocalic position in the transliteration from the Greek of biblical names: (11)

Jaurdanus, laurdanus\ Judas, Iudas

Just as in (10), one would expect such variation if Gothic j represented a glide but not if it represented a fricative. 5.3 The new Latin loan, cautio In the Deed of Naples, the new Latin loan cautio 'care' appears six times in the stem kawtsjo-.

6

Charles Μ. Barrack

The Gothic spelling reflects late Latin affrication of t before the palatal glide. Compare Wulfilian laiktjo from earlier Latin lectio 'reading' which does not exhibit affrication. If j did indeed represent a fricative, as Vennemann contends, it is surprising that scribes should have resorted to employing a sequence of two obstruents, namely, s+j to capture the Latin obstruent + glide sequence. It would appear far more likely that the scribes would have simply transliterated the vowel sequence directly from Latin into Gothic as *-tsio. The use of w as a nuclear satellite in the first syllable of kawtsjo- may also be significant. The scribe did not have the Latin sequence au available to him since, as has been well established, this digraph represented a rounded monophthong for Wulfila in accordance with the Greek tradition from which he borrowed. Accordingly, the scribes employed the sequence aw instead to capture the Latin diphthong, an unlikely choice had w normally represented a fricative in the coda.

6. The enigma of sihw If my hypothesis is correct that the word-final sequence Cw represented a labialized consonant (see 4 above), it provides a possible solution to an old problem. In Ambrosianus Β there appears an undeciphered marginal note to 1 Cor 15, 57 identified by Streitberg (1919) as sihw. There is no plausible source for the orthographic sequence hw other than Proto-Germanic *xw, the same source of glide (h w ), transliterated in the present analysis as the character fv. Moreover, if Wulfila used the word-final sequence Cw to represent labialization, it is plausible that the scribe writing in Ambrosianus Β inadvertently used the digraph hw instead of k> to represent the labialized glottal approximant. To complete the identification of this puzzling sequence, one must bear in mind that not all varieties of Gothic exhibited breaking, that is, the lowering of high vowels before, among others, a following k>. This fact is attested to in Crimean Gothic. (See Stearns 1978: 185.) If one adjusts this form accordingly, it appears to be equivalent to Wulfilian saitv, the imperative, 'See!' It is quite possible that the scribe had begun to write a cross reference, delayed in order to check on the chapter and verse, and then forgot to enter it in the margin after sihw, attesting to one of the frailties of the academic mind, absentmindedness!

The putative strengthening

of glides in Gothic

7

Notes 1. The above excursus on the implications of the syllable preference laws on putative glide strengthening was not presented at the Roundtable because of time constraints. 2. At first glance it would appear that strengthening in cluster-final, word-final position runs counter to the tendency mentioned in 2.2 above, namely, that the coda is the weakest position for consonants. The apparent contradiction is resolved when the two tendencies are examined together in context: the coda position is indeed a weak position for consonants; the ultimate fate of such consonants is to be lost, a development probably attested to in every language family, especially in unstressed syllables. However, within the confines of this overarching tendency a subordinated tendency can be discerned: if a coda does in fact end with a consonant cluster, strength within the cluster will normally be graduated such that the weakest (most sonorous) consonant will directly flank the nucleus and the strongest consonant will terminate the cluster (/s/ forming an important exception). To employ a metaphor of Vennemann's (1982: 2 9 6 297), the syllable resembles a trough in which the bottom represents the nucleus and the slopes represent the gradually rising consonantal strength of the head and the coda. The significant difference between the head and the coda is that the former is favored by the syllable-preference laws whereas the coda, taken as a whole, is disfavored and tends to be lost. Note the rising strength within the third person plural termination in Latin am [ + ] ant '(they) love' and yet its subsequent weakening and loss in Romance: Spanish aman, French aiment ([?m(a)]).

References Gussmann, Edmund (ed.) 1985 Phono-morphology: Studies in the intersection of phonology and morphology. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Hooper, Joan B. 1976 An introduction to natural generative phonology. New York: Academic Press. Kieckers, Ernst 1960 Handbuch der vergleichenden gotischen Grammatik. München: Max Hueber Verlag. Ladefoged, Peter 1982 A course in phonetics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Murray, Robert W. - Theo Vennemann 1983 "Sound change and syllable structure in Germanic phonology", Language 59: 514-528. Schulze, Wilhelm 1908 "Wortbrechung in den gotischen Handschriften", Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1: 610 — 624. Stearns, MacDonald, Jr 1978 Crimean Gothic: Analysis and etymology of the corpus. Saratoga, California: Anma Libri. Streitberg, Wilhelm 1919 Die gotische Bibel. Part 1. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Vennemann, Theo 1982 "Zur Silbenstruktur der deutschen Standardsprache", in: Theo Vennemann (ed.), 2 6 1 - 3 0 5 .

8

Charles Μ. Barrack 1985

"Phonologically conditioned morphological change", in: Edmund Gussmann (ed.), 193-219. 1988 Preference laws for syllable structure and the explanation of sound change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Vennemann, Theo (ed.) 1982 Silben, Segmente, Akzente. (Linguistische Arbeiten 126.) Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Voyles, Joseph B. 1992 Early Germanic grammar: Pre-, proto-, and post-Germanic languages. San Diego: Academic Press.

Latin influence on German word order: A discussion of Behaghel's theory Diana

Chirita

1. Introduction Walter Hartmann's Heidelberg dissertation (1970), in which he investigated word-order patterns in five Early New High German Bible translations, showed clearly that a fundamental assumption of German syntax had to be revised. By comparing the German and the Latin, often line by line, Hartmann was able to show that Latin does not appear to have influenced the word order of the German translations. Thus a number of handbooks on the history of the German language (for example Bach 1965: 286;1 Waterman 1966: 21;2 Sperber - von Polenz 1966: 743), in which modern German word order was considered to have emerged under the influence of Latin, were proven to be wrong. Hartmann (1970) 6 - 7 ) criticized the authors of these handbooks and accused them of adopting without sufficient reflection what he considered an unfounded theory, i.e., Behaghel's theory of the Latin influence on German word order. 4 In Hartmann's opinion Behaghel's theory about the Latin influence on German word order would not have survived to this day if it had not been for Behaghel's extraordinary authority. 5 The same theory proposed by a lesser scholar would have passed unnoticed. Hartmann is not the only critic of Behaghel's theory; objections had been voiced before him, others followed. Fleischmann (1973) clearly attempted to refute Behaghel. Stolt (1964), Schildt (1968 and 1972), and Lühr (1985), although not aiming at disproving Behaghel, commented that their data did not support any claim of Latin influence on German word order. Surprisingly, however, the number of Behaghel critics remained small. Still it is most likely due to their efforts that in newer handbooks (e. g., Wells 1985; Ebert 1978 and 1986; and especially von Polenz 1991) the possibility of Latin influence is treated much more cautiously and Latin is no longer considered to have supplied the direct model for German word order. 6

10

Diana

Chirita

This paper will address the following issues: 1. A brief discussion of Behaghel's theory and its development by other scholars. 2. The arguments brought against Behaghel's theory, in particular those of Hartmann (1970), Fleischmann (1973), Lühr (1985), and to some extent Stolt (1964) and Schildt (1968 and 1972). 3. Some new ideas on the argument and an outline for future research.

2. Behaghel's theory 2.1 Behaghel

(1892, 1900,

1932)

The theory of the Latin influence on German word order was first formulated by Behaghel in 1892, in a two-page article published in Zeitschrift für den deutschen Unterricht. It was a response to his contemporary Ernst Wasserzieher, who had taken offense to writer Wilhelm Jordan's use of verb-second in subordinate clauses and had accused him of following foreign models in doing so (cf. Behaghel 1892: 265). Presenting several examples from older German texts and from modern dialects in which subordinate clauses do not show verb-last position, Behaghel (1892: 267) made the following, in Fleischmann's (1973: 35) opinion "völlig unbewiesene Behauptung" [completely unproved assertion], that these examples represent authentic German structures while "wir es lateinischem Einflüsse verdanken, wenn etwa seit der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts die Endstellung der Worte in derartigen Fällen streng durchgeführt wurde" [we owe it to Latin influence if the verb-last position of the words was strictly enforced in such cases since the second half of the 16th century]. In 1900 Behaghel published his second article about the influence of Latin on German word order. This time Behaghel used a large corpus of both older texts from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries and newer texts from dialects, and found ample support for his previous claim. Since the strict rules of New High German verb positioning do not apply to either of these two genuine text categories, they must have emerged under foreign influence — Latin being the only possible source. Being aware, however, that in Latin the verb is not always in last position, Behaghel modified his theory, suggesting that the Latin school grammars of the Middle Ages required the placement of the verb into

Latin influence on German word order

11

final position, and that this knowledge or rule would have had an influence on German word order (Behaghel 1900: 246). He is, however, unable to explain why one Latin model resulted in two German word-order types, since the following solution offered by him can hardly be considered satisfying: Im Hauptsatz hat man etwas der Endstellung des Zeitwortes Verwandtes dadurch zu erreichen gestrebt, daß man die Mittelwörter und Infinitive regelmäßig ans Ende stellte, während das mit der Endung behaftete Zeitwort seine angestammte zweite Stelle im Satze behielt. [In the main clause something similar was attempted by placing the infinitives and participles with regularity at the end while the inflected verb kept its inherited second position in the sentence.] (Behaghel 1900: 245)

This is essentially Behaghel's theory. It refers clearly to the formation of the New High German Standard language from the sixteenth century on and to the increase of verb-final sentences during this period. Behaghel has never claimed that the final position of the verb became the only acceptable one.7 Nor has he ever stated that in older Germanic dialects there was no difference in verb positioning between main and subordinate clauses; on the contrary, he was well aware of such a difference since the oldest attestations of Germanic.8 Behaghel never abandoned this theory; it is still present in the fourth volume of his syntax (1932: especially 17-22), but he never developed it any further. Two studies inspired by him, however, did so: Maurer (1926) and Hammarström (1923). 2.2 Maurer

(1926)

Maurer, who dedicated his book to his teacher Behaghel, is of little interest to this discussion, since besides a short chapter on word order in main clauses, he investigated only the ordering of finite and non-finite verbs in subordinate clause predicates formed with the auxiliaries haben and sein. Furthermore, Maurer based his study on very small text samples, a procedure unacceptable for a high-variation phenomenon like the one analyzed, one that might lead easily to unreliable results.9 Nevertheless, I would like to retain two of his concerns pertaining to Behaghel's theory. One is a renewed discussion of his teacher's claim that the investigation of Latin school grammars of the late Middle Ages might provide the answer to the problem of Latin influence on German word order (Maurer 1926: 180).10 The other is the observation that German humanists and other German writers well trained in Latin place inflected verbs even in

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main clauses frequently into final position, which suggests that they might be influenced by Latin word order (Maurer 1926: 191). 2.3 Hammarström

(1923)

Hammarström examines the verb position in two Volksbücher, the Eulenspiegel and Dr. Faust, and also in a large number of chancery documents of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. He finds that in chancery documents the verb-last position in subordinate clauses appears earlier and is used with higher frequency than in the Volksbücher. On the basis of these observations, he slightly modifies Behaghel's theory and proposes the following solution: in the popular language, for him the language of the Volksbücher, subordinate clauses were rare, short independent clauses being the dominant type. The chancery language on the other hand, under the strong influence of Latin, made wide use of subordination and borrowed the Latin word order just for this clause type, which had no tradition in the spoken language. The well-established word order of the main clause, however, could not be shaken by the Latin model. Chancery usage then, with its two word-order types, became the syntactic model for the emerging New High German word-order rules. No further attempts were made to explain German word order through the influence of Latin, although some studies on different aspects of Early New High German word order do take such a possibility into account (Wells 1985: 261; Ebert 1993: 435; Larsen 1987: 159; Burridge 1993: 115-117, and others).

3. Arguments against Behaghel The main critics of Behaghel's theory are, as already mentioned, Hartmann (1970) and Fleischmann (1973). Stolt (1964), Lühr (1985) and Schildt (1968 and 1972), as already indicated, do not attempt to contest Behaghel's theory, although data presented by them suggests that Latin influence on German word order is highly unlikely. 3.1 Fleischmann

(1973)

Fleischmann states that Behaghel's theory "stützt ... sich im wesentlichen auf einige Vermutungen und Kombinationen" [is essentially based on conjectures and combinations"] (1973: 42), that Behaghel gives no con-

Latin influence on German word order

13

crete examples, and that therefore his theory is difficult to contest. He himself, however, believes to have several strong arguments against Behaghel. One of his arguments refers to the following passage from Melanchthon's Latin grammar of 1570, as cited in Fleischmann (1973: 49). Orditur sententiam nominatiuus, aut quod uice nominatiui fungitur. Hunc proxime sequitur uerbum finitum, deinde adjicitur obliquus alicubi et adverbia, et attexunt saepe plura nomina praepositiones, saepe aut integra commata aut uerba singula coniunctiones. Hunc ordinem uerborum in interpretando utile est ä pueris exigere, ut animaduertant, quot uoces sententiam absoluant, quomodo singulis nominibus singula uerba respondeant. [The nominative or what functions as a nominative begins the sentence. The finite verb follows immediately thereafter, then the oblique cases and adverbials are placed and often prepositions attach several nouns, or commas and conjunctions attach single words. It is useful to request this order of words from pupils in expounding, so that they notice how many words accomplish the sentence, and how single verbs correspond to single nouns.] 11

Based on this quotation from Melanchthon's grammar, Fleischmann concludes that the word order of written Medieval Latin was SVO. 12 This conclusion, however, is unacceptable. The mention of "pueris" on the one hand indicates that Melanchthon refers to a classroom situation, that his intent is pedagogical. The mention of "interpretando", on the other hand, excludes the possibility that Melanchthon's indication refers to the process of learning how to construct (write, speak) correct Latin sentences. Although "interpretando" is to some extent ambiguous, it can only refer to such activities as understanding the Latin text, interpreting, translating, or explaining it, which are very different from learning how to produce a correct Latin sentence, a fact that Fleischmann neglected. The practice of reordering difficult Latin sentences in order to understand them has a long tradition in Latin classrooms. The word order chosen for this purpose had to be in accordance with the ordo naturalis 'the natural order' which is a philosophical and not a grammatical concept. Debates about the ordo naturalis go back to antiquity, when the order of the parts of speech according to their ontological importance was first discussed, and usually yielded subject — verb — oblique cases - adverbials as the natural order (Jellinek 1914: 426, 430).13 In the Middle Ages the earliest reference to this ordo naturalis is made in a ninth century manuscript from the monastery of St. Gall. Here the rearrangement of Latin texts according to the ordo naturalis is already recommended as a didactic device (Jellinek 1914: 426; Henkel 1988: 80). There are many medieval manuscripts that came to us in which single words or

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phrases are annotated with numbers or letters of the alphabet indicating the ordo naturalis (cf., for example, Henkel 1988: 133).14 Jellinek (1914: 426—427) points out that the ordo naturalis was by no means an instruction on how to write correct Latin, and he adds (1914: 27), "Daß die Humanisten den ordo naturalis von der wirklichen Wortstellung unterschieden, ist von vornherein klar." [That humanists differentiated between the real word order and the ordo naturalis is obvious.] There can be hardly any doubt about the fact that in the passage quoted by Fleischmann, Melanchthon refers to this ordo naturalis. A second of Fleischmann's arguments against Behaghel's theory refers to Stolt's (1964) study of the mixed German/Latin language in Luther's Tischreden. In German sentences introduced by daß, verb-last is dominant, while Latin sentences introduced by quod, ut, and ne show a higher incidence of verb-second placement (Stolt 1964: 161). Stolt (1964: 163) concludes that "für unseren Text gilt, dass ein Einfluss des lateinischen Nebensatzes auf die Wortfolge des deutschen ausgeschlossen ist" [for our text it holds that Latin influence on the word order of German is excluded]. Fleischmann (1973: 51, 63) considers this conclusion to be a clear argument against Behaghel's theory and he furthermore claims, based on Stolt's results, that spoken Late Medieval Latin was SVO and therefore, that Melanchthon's word-order rules were indeed followed in spoken Late Medieval Latin. 1 5 Considering, however, that Fleischmann's argument based on the excerpt from Melanchthon's grammar was invalidated, this second argument based on Stolt's study loses in importance. To base a conclusion on the word order of Medieval Latin on just Luther's mixed German and Latin Tischreden, and therefore on a highly irregular text type, seems hardly acceptable. Other elements like stylistic and discourse factors might influence the arrangement of elements in these mixed sentences and need to be investigated. For example, all but three of Stolt's fifty-nine Latin clauses introduced by quod, ut, and ne follow the main clause. The switch from German to Latin might occur in order to bring something into focus. Heavy elements or focus elements can follow the verb in both German and Latin and would account for the absence of verb-last in these constructions. Sentences like the following might indicate this: (1)

Sic was hat Maria dazu gethan, quod est facta mater For what has Mary for it done that is made mother Christi Christ-Gen (focus?) 'For what has Mary done to become the mother of Christ' (Stolt 1964: 190)

Latin influence on German word order

(2)

15

das ich den man sol glauben, quod sit Filius that I the-Acc. man should believe, that be son dei God-Gen (focus?) 'that I should believe the man to be the son of God' (Stolt 1964: 190)

In spite of these observations I do not believe that I can unequivocally contest Fleischmann's or Stolt's arguments about the word order of spoken Late Medieval Latin as evidenced by Luther's Tischreden. But I believe that a thorough syntactic and stylistic investigation of these texts is necessary before generalizing the word-order patterns in them for Medieval Latin as a whole. Fleischmann borrows a third argument, again aimed at proving that Medieval Latin was not SOV, from Weinrich: Darüber hinaus sprechen ja auch die Stellungsgewohnheiten der romanischen Sprachen gegen die These von der mittellat. Endstellung und ihrer Auswirkung aufs Dt. Nichts läge näher, als daß das Lat. dann die aus ihm entstandenen Sprachen ebenfalls in dieser Richtung beeinflußt hätte. Dies ist aber nicht der Fall. [Furthermore, the word order habits in the Romance languages are an argument against the thesis of Middle Latin final verb position and its influence on German. Nothing would be more likely than the assumption that Latin influenced the languages that developed out of it in the same way. This, however, is not the case.] (Fleischmann 1973: 64)

This is a most interesting remark. It cannot, however, be considered as a proof that Latin did not influence German since many other elements come into play in order to create an environment in which influence can take place. The fact that two languages are related is by no means a guarantee that they will influence each other at any point after they started to separate from each other. Historical, political, and sociocultural factors are more likely to play a role. We know that metalinguistic statements about the existence of Romance languages independent from Latin go back to the beginning of the ninth century (cf. Wolf — Hupka 1981: 17-18). Evidence on Late Antique and Early Medieval Latin word order in Koll (1965: 262) indicates that no significant changes took place between the first century B. C. and the ninth century A. D. With the exception of a few texts, OV dominates. Studies of medieval French texts indicate that SVO, although not obligatory, was the most common word order in the twelfth and thirteenth century, when according to Behaghel, Latin started to influence German. To answer the question why Latin did not have the same influence on, for example, French as on German (if indeed Behaghel were right), we would have to deter-

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mine the presence and status of Latin in sixteenth-century France. What seems to be clear is that the French national language based on the dialect of Paris developed much earlier than the German standard language (cf. Berschin et al. 1978: 203, 227). This might be significant. No doubt this interesting problem deserves further investigation. Another of Fleischmann's arguments against Behaghel is the presentation of a competing theory, his own "Relieftheorie" [back-grounding 16 theory]. 17 The details of this theory do not concern the matter at hand. What I would like to mention, however, is that the two theories do not exclude each other. The grammaticalization of the verb position for the purpose of "back-grounding" in subordinate clauses could take place even if the model for verb placement were borrowed from Latin. I would like to conclude on Fleischmann's attempt to refute Behaghel as follows: he brought forth a series of interesting arguments. His strongest argument, unfortunately, is based on a misinterpretation of an observation in Melanchthon's Latin grammar of 1570. Two other arguments are highly conjectural, while the proposal of an alternative theory aimed at explaining the functional differences between the two German wordorder types hardly concerns the issue of Latin influence. 3.2 Hartmann

(1970),

Lühr (1985),

and Schildt (1968 and 1972)

Hartmann, Lühr, and Schildt reach the same surprising conclusion in their studies on certain aspects of Early New High German word order: not only did Latin not supply the model for German word order but on the contrary it interfered with both the development of verb-last in subordinate clauses and the development of the sentence frame in the main clause, slowing them down. 3.2.1 Hartmann (1970) The main goal of Hartmann's dissertation of 1970 was to determine the structure of a certain type of Early New High German subordinate clauses (subordinate clauses in the syntactic function of accusative objects) within the framework of Heringer's (1970) dependency model. His comparison of Latin and German and his comments on the influence of Latin on German make up an important part of his study. Hartmann analyzed five Bible translations of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, among which Mentel's Bible, Eck's Bible, and Claus Cranck's bible excerpts are based on the Vulgate. In these three translations Hartmann compares the subordinate clauses of German and Latin line by line and

Latin influence on German word order

17

finds that in all three, even in Mentel's Bible, which most closely follows the original, the verb position of the Vulgate is often changed from initial or middle to final in the translation. He concludes that verb-last must have been more common in German than in Latin, and hence no influence of Latin on German was possible in this respect. 3.2.2 Lühr (1985) Lühr's (1985) work is a study of the syntax of subordinate clauses in Luther's language. In her discussion of word order in subordinate clauses in Luther's Bible translation, Lühr compares the text of the Vulgate, of Erasmus' bilingual Bible, as printed in 1519 by Frobenius in Basel,18 and of Luther's first two editions of the German New Testament, the September Bible and the December Bible of 1522. Her conclusions are similar to Hartmann's. While following the original closely in the September Bible, drastic changes in word order can be noticed already in the December edition of the same year: verbs that are in middle position in Latin are often placed into last position in German. Most interesting among Lühr's observations is the following: while in most of his texts Luther places the verb in subordinate clauses into last position or shows a development towards the New High German wordorder standard, his Bible translation is an exception. Here the finite verb is often placed in a middle position (Lühr 1985: 48). Lühr therefore concludes that in Luther's Bible translation, Latin interfered with the emerging use of verb-last in subordinate clauses. This is undoubtedly true. 3.2.3 Schildt (1968 and 1972) In both of these studies, Schildt investigated main-clause sentence frames in Early New High German Bible translations of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. Although this construction type increased in the period chosen by him, Schildt, too, seems to believe that Latin interfered with this development (Schildt 1968: 195; 1972: 240). He does not present any specific evidence to support his claim, but I assume that he bases his conclusion on his knowledge of other late medieval texts, and I trust his conclusion to be correct. 3.3 Critique of Hartmann (1970), and 1972)

Lühr (1985),

and Schildt

(1968

In spite of the observations made by Hartmann, Lühr, and Schildt, I do not believe that their studies are able to disprove Behaghel's theory. 19 The

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reason for this is that in all three of them, the same Latin text, the Vulgate, is compared with German texts. Word order in the Vulgate, however, can hardly be regarded as representative for Latin. St. Jerome, who had developed extremely modern translation principles for his translation work, did not follow them when translating the Holy Scriptures: Ego enim non solum fateor sed libera voce profiteor me in interpretatione Graecorum absque Scripturis sanctis, ubi et uerborum ordo mysterium est, non uerbum e uerbo sed sensum exprimere de sensu. [I do not just admit it, I acknowledge it openly that in the translation of Greek texts, with the exception of the Holy Scriptures in which even word order is holy, I have not translated a word by a word but expressed a meaning by a meaning.] (St. Jerome [1950]: 26)

St. Jerome's sources for the translation of the Bible were Hebrew and Greek. We must therefore expect to find word-order patterns typical for these languages in his Latin translation. The special status of the Vulgate is confirmed by Roll's (1965) study of Late Antique and Early Medieval Latin word order. Koll (1965: 246-247, 250-251) points to important deviations in the Vulgate from both earlier and later Latin texts. Some of these deviations are the postposition of the subject and the high incidence of verb-second position in both main and subordinate clauses. 20 In the sample analyzed by Koll the verb-subject sequence is more frequent than subject-verb, verb-object more frequent than object-verb. These findings are very unusual for Latin and must originate, according to Koll (1965: 250), in biblical Hebrew or Greek, in which the sequence v e r b subject is a pragmatic variant. 21 In the Early New High German translations, the switching of the sequence verb-subject into subject-verb is one of the most common changes. Sentences such as (3a), (4a), and (5a), in which the subject of the subordinate clause follows the verb, are very frequent in biblical Latin, but seem to disturb the German translator who changes the position of the subject while otherwise following the Latin word by word: (3)

a. ne videant oculi eorum that not see eyes-Nom theirs b. das ir augen nit gesechent that their eyes-Nom not see 'that their eyes don't see' (Hartmann 1970: 32)

(4)

a. ut non peccet justus that not sin [the] just-Nom

Latin influence on German word order

19

b. das der gerecht nit sünde that the just-Nom not sin 'that the just man should not sin' (Hartmann 1970: 32) (5)

a. quia vere complebuntur sermones that truly shall be fulfilled words-Nom b. das mein rede werdent derfullt that my words-Nom shall be fulfilled 'that my words shall stand against you' (Hartmann 1970: 35)

mei contra vos my against you wider euch against you

Cases like (3b) and (4b) account for an important number of the examples in which a German subordinate clause has the verb in last position while the Latin does not, thus possibly creating the impression that the position of the verb gets changed in the translation. However, in cases like (5a), the position of the prepositional object following the verb is rarely changed in the German translation, indicating that changes such as in (3b) and (4b) might occur according to a rule of subject placement rather than verb placement. It is the postposition of the subject inherited from Greek or Hebrew which seems to disturb the translator. And it might be the frequent change of this abnormal subject position, often producing verb-last in subordinate clauses, that leads to Hartmann's and Liihr's rejection of the hypothesis of Latin influence on German word order. I would like to sum up this part as follows: since the word order of the Vulgate cannot be considered as representative for Latin word order of any time period, the four studies discussed, Hartmann (1970), Lühr (1985), and Schildt (1968 and 1972) are not suited to disprove Behaghel's theory of the Latin influence on German word order. Their premise that the Vulgate represents Latin word order has been proven to be wrong.

4. Outline for future research None of the objections raised against the theory of Latin influence on German word order proved valid under closer inspection. However, the fact that most arguments against Behaghel were invalidated does not constitute a proof of his theory. This theory remains, as Fleischmann (1973: 42) had expressed it, one based essentially on conjecture and some combinations. Does this mean that Behaghel's theory is almost impos-

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sible to prove or to refute as Fleischmann (1973: 43) seemed to believe? This is unlikely. In order to solve the problem raised by Behaghel, answers to the following questions must be found: 1. What exactly is the word order of Latin? 2. Is the assumption of Latin influence plausible? Were the two languages connected closely enough to justify such an influence for the late fifteenth and the sixteenth century? Concerning the first question, I am not aware of any studies on Late Medieval Latin word order, but studies on Classical and Early Medieval Latin by authors such as Linde (1923), Koll (1965), Panhuis (1982), Pinkster (1988 and 1991) and others allow the following generalizations for the periods mentioned: a) In Classical and Early Medieval Latin OV dominates. The verb is generally placed at the end of a clause. Statistics for Classical and Early Medieval authors can be found in Linde (1923) and Koll (1965). Word order in Late Medieval Latin texts needs to be evaluated as well and compared with the findings existing for earlier periods. b) There is a fair amount of variation in Classical and Early Medieval Latin word order. Factors accounting for this variation are the sentence length, the sentence type, the syntactic and pragmatic function of constituents, style, text genre (for example, Pinkster 1988: 247; 1991: 74-80). Such factors account for word-order variation in a large number of languages, including Early New High German. A systematic evaluation of their presence and effect on word order in both Latin and German is needed. c) There is, and this is generally not acknowledged among scholars of German (including Behaghel), a fairly important difference between the verb placement in main and subordinate Latin clauses, subordinate clauses showing a higher incidence of OV and verb-final ordering (Pinkster 1991: 69; Koll 1965: 246-247; Linde 1923: 153-158). This difference needs to be evaluated, especially for Medieval German, and might constitute the strongest argument yet in favor of Behaghel. d) Koll (1965) investigated word order in Latin texts from the first century B.C. to the ninth century A . D . and could not find important changes in the positioning of subject, verb, and object. Merovingian Latin texts are very similar to Ciceronian texts in the ordering of these parts of speech (Koll 1965: 259).22 The translatio imperii, and the Carolingian Renaissance with a new awareness for correct Latin, must have

Latin influence on German word order

21

brought Classical and Medieval Latin even closer together. Here too further studies are needed. With regard to the second question, whether the two languages and cultures were closely enough connected to make Latin influence plausible, the following should be emphasized: a) Education was still entirely in Latin. Literate people read, wrote, and spoke Latin. The school curricula included a large number of classical Latin texts throughout the Middle Ages: Horace, Vergil, Cicero, Sallust, Ovidius are the most popular classical authors studied in Latin schools (Henkel 1988: 11, 56-64). b) "Das mittelalterliche Latein darf eben gerade in Hinsicht auf seine Syntax nicht an Cicero gemessen werden" [As regards especially syntax, Medieval Latin should not be compared with Cicero], claims Grosse (1970: 83). And many might share his opinion. Grosse, however, is incorrect. The only classical prose authors studied throughout the whole Middle Ages were Cicero and Sallust (Henkel 1988: 11). If Classical Latin influenced Medieval Latin and German word order, then Ciceronian texts must have played an important part. c) The fifteenth and sixteenth century were centuries of German Humanism. During this period the interest in classical antiquity and its languages is extraordinary. Erasmus and Celtis borrowed one of the fundamental beliefs from Lorenzo Valla, the belief that through the mediation of language the values, attitudes, and knowledge of the greatly admired antiquity could be acquired (Füssel 1986: 78). Celtis, who refused to use the "barbarian" German language in his writings, was convinced that a higher education and true humanization could only be achieved if the mother tongues were abandoned and perfect Latin was acquired (Füssel 1986: 84). Almost all authors of the fifteenth and sixteenth century were bilingual. As indicated by Maurer (1926: 191), humanists and other authors well trained in Latin placed the verb into final position even in German main clauses. Here, too, further investigations are necessary. Word order in Latin texts written by German humanists should be systematically compared with word order in their German texts. d) In chancery documents the emerging word-order rules of a sentence frame in the main clause, and verb-last positioning in the subordinate clause are followed much more closely and somewhat earlier than in any other text types (Hammarström 1923: 116-120; Ebert 1980: 383-385). As already mentioned, Hammarström (1923: 199) links these findings to the influence of Latin. Burridge (1993: 115—117) reaches the same conclusion as Hammarström in her investigation of Middle Dutch word or-

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der. In the Middle Dutch legal texts analyzed by her, "the rate of exbraciation is considerably lower" (Burridge 1993: 116) than in other texts, a fact that she too links to Latin or at least to Latinate style. Ebert (1980: 388), on the other hand, concludes in his study on the Early New High German city language of Nuremberg that "the results of the investigation of individuals' usage gives no support to a hypothesis of direct Latin influence...". Chancery usage, however, seems to supply the necessary model for the emerging New High German word-order rules. "How and why chancery usage itself became characterized by very high rates of full frames remains to be explored" (Ebert 1980: 386). Whether the two theories, the theory of Latin influence and the theory of chancery influence, are competing or compatible remains likewise to be explored. e) It is often mentioned that the production of German books increased enormously during the sixteenth century with the spread of printing, while the fact that the same development affected Latin text production as well is neglected. Latin books outnumber German books until the end of the seventeenth century (Stopp 1978: 251).

5. Conclusion Latin is present and in close contact with German throughout the Middle Ages. This contact increases during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and therefore during the period which was most important for the formation of the German standard language. This is also the period to which Behaghel referred when he proposed the discussed explanation for German word order. A certain influence of Latin seems undeniable. However, factors such as those mentioned above need to be taken into account and all problems arising need to be evaluated carefully. Behaghel's theory can be discussed satisfactorily and exhaustively if the sociolinguistic, sociocultural, and historical contexts and their implications are understood. Notes 1. Cf. Bach (1965: 286): "Unter der Einwirkung des Lat. ergab sich die Regelung, daß das Verbum an das Ende des Nebensatzes tritt... Im 16./17. Jh. wird dann nicht selten auch im Hauptsatz die lat. Wortstellung nachgeahmt..." [Under the influence of Latin the rule was formed to place the verb at the end of the dependent clause. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Latin word order is often used in main clauses as well.] 2. Cf. Waterman (1966: 121): "Perhaps the most notorious of Latin syntactic borrowings from this era is reflected in the practice of transposing the verb to the end of a clause introduced by a subordinating conjunction or by a relative pronoun."

Latin influence on German word order

23

3. Cf. Hartmann's (1970: 6) discussion of Sperber - von Polenz (1966: 74). 4. As a consequence of Hartmann's observations, von Polenz (1970: 95) changed the part about the Latin influence substantially in the seventh edition of the History of the German Language. Cf. Hartmann (1970: 6). Cf. also von Polenz (1991: 231): "Der lateinische Einfluß auf den deutschen Satzbau ist in der älteren Forschung überschätzt worden." [Latin influence on the German clause structure has been overestimated in earlier research.] 5. Cf. Hartmann (1970: 7): "Dabei war Behaghels Meinung nie unangefochten; eine Erklärung für die dennoch erfolgte einhellige Übernahme seiner These durch unsere modernen Sprachgeschichten mag in Behaghels übermächtiger Autorität liegen, deren Wirkung treffend in der Einleitung eines Aufsatzes von W. Preusler, der sich gegen eben jene These vom lateinischen Einfluß wendet, beschrieben ist." [And still Behaghel's opinion was not unchallenged; a possible explanation for the unanimous acceptance of his thesis in our modern language histories is his extraordinary authority, whose effect is well described in the introduction of an article by W. Preusler in which he contests the exact same thesis of the Latin influence.] 6. In the following passage by von Polenz (1991: 201) it becomes clear that the reasons for his change of mind are due in part to Stolt (1964) and Fleischmann (1973): " D a s früher angenommene direkte lateinische Vorbild wird widerlegt durch lateinische Grammatiken des Mittelalters und der Humanistenzeit, in denen im Nebensatz durchaus nicht Endstellung des Verbs gefordert wird, sondern Zweit- oder Mittelstellung [one of Fleischmann's arguments], auch dadurch, daß in Luthers mischsprachigen Tischreden absolute Verbendstellung in seinen deutschen daß-Sätzen zu 72% vorherrscht, in seinen lateinischen Nebensätzen mit quod, ut, ne dagegen mit 27% in der Minderheit ist (Stolt 1964)." [The previously assumed direct influence of Latin is disproved by Latin grammars of the Middle Ages in which it is not the verb-last position that is required for subordinate clauses but the verb-second or middle position, also by the fact that in Luther's mixed German-Latin Tischreden the verb-last position predominates with 72 per cent in German ifo/J-clauses, while its occurrence in his Latin clauses with quod, ut, ne is of only 27 per cent.] 7. Behaghel (1900: 2 4 6 - 2 5 1 ) gives numerous examples of postposed constituents in both independent and subordinate clauses in selected literary examples from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. 8. Cf. Behaghel (1932: 11): "Ich habe es ZsfvglSprf. 56,276 wahrscheinlich gemacht, d a ß bereits das Igm. im Hauptsatz in weitaus überwiegendem Maße dem Verbum die Mittelstellung (Zweitstellung) zuweist. ... Das geht im Germanischen und Deutschen weiter bis auf den heutigen Tag." [I have indicated in ZsfvglSprf. 56,276 that probably already in Indo-European verb-middle (verb-second) was predominant in the main clause. This tendency continues in Germanic and German to this day.] Cf. also Behaghel (1932: 44): "Im Nebensatz kommt dem Verbum finitum im allgemeinen Nichtzweitstellung, d. h. Stellung später als das zweite Satzglied zu." [In subordinate clauses the verb generally does not appear in second position, i. e., it is used in a position later than the second.] 9. Fleischmann (1973: 52) discusses and criticizes Maurer's book with arguments I consider valid. Härd (1981: 157—165) showed that variation in subordinate clause predicates with more than two elements persists to this day even among highly-trained language professionals. His informants were journalists of East and West German, Swiss, and Austrian magazines and newspapers.

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10. Maurer does not offer any proof for this renewed claim. Behaghel (1932: 87) is the only one to substantiate this claim. He quotes six Latin school grammars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century containing rules about the placement of the verb into the last position. 11. It is most likely to this passage that von Polenz refers when he claims that medieval Latin grammars require the placement of the verb into second position. 12. Just before quoting Melanchthon, Fleischmann (1973: 4 7 - 4 8 ) briefly discusses Priscian's comments about the importance of the "partes orationes" [the parts of speech] in which he states that the noun comes first and the verb second. But cf. Luhtala (1993: 146-147): "Interestingly, the two new aspects of linguistic study introduced by Priscian's Institutiones, the philosophical implications of grammatical concepts and the study of syntax, are closely associated in early medieval analysis. The very definitions of the noun and the verb, based on the notions of substance and action, impose an order on the principal parts of speech: the noun, the substance, precedes the verb, the action, which is one of the accidents of the substance." 13. According to Jellinek (1914: 429-430), the earliest reference to this theory can be found in the first century B.C. in Dionysius of Halicarnassus' De compositione verborum, chapter 5. 14. Henkel (1988: 133-136) presents a very compelling example of a fifteenth-century translation exercise. The pupil marks the text according to the ordo naturalis, but does not necessarily arrange his German sentences according to it, often choosing to follow the order of the Latin original. 15. Cf. Fleischmann (1973: 63): "Dies zeigt einerseits, daß Melanchthons grammatische Regel auch tatsächlich damals im gesprochenen Lat. eingehalten wurde, und andererseits, daß eine etwaige unbewußte Übernahme aus dem Lat. ebenfalls auszuschließen ist." [This shows on the one hand that Melanchthon's grammar rule was indeed followed in the Latin spoken back then, and on the other hand it shows that a mechanical borrowing from Latin is equally out of the question.] 16. Author's translation 17. Fleischmann (1973: 43) considered the absence of an alternative theory the main reason why Behaghel could not be refuted. 18. This is the second edition of Erasmus' Bible, the first having been printed by Frobenius in 1516. 19. As already mentioned, only Hartmann is really interested in disproving Behaghel. 20. Cf. H o f m a n n - Szantyr (1965: 402): "Die Endstellung des Subj. ist selten und erfolgt nur in bestimmten Fällen." [The final position of the subject is rare and is used only in particular cases.] Cf. also Hofmann - Szantyr (1965: 403): "Die nüchtern-sachliche Sprache der Fachschriftsteller (Cato, Gaius) und der Historiker (Caes., Sali., Liv., Tac., auch noch lust, al.) bevorzugt im Hauptsatz, mehr noch im Nebensatz die E[ndstellung] [des Verbs], so ζ. B. Caes. Gall. II zu 84 bzw 93%." [The matter-of-fact language of treatise authors (Cato, Gaius) and of historians (Caes., Sail., Liv., Tac., and even lust, al.) favor the verb-final position in the main clause, and even more in the dependent clause, for example, Caes. Gall. II at 84 per cent respectively 93 per cent.] 21. Hawkins (1983: 322) lists VSO as the basic word order for biblical Hebrew. Givon (1977: 181) characterizes biblical Hebrew as a language in which "the subject's position relative to the verb is highly flexible and most commonly determined by pragmatic considerations such as relative topicality of the subject vis-a-vis the predicate." Hawkins (1983) does not list koine but cf. Kieckers (1926: 133): "Ein überaus häufiger Stellungs-

Latin influence on German word order

25

typ war, wenn das Object den Ausgangspunkt der Äußerung bildete, Objekt—VerbSubjekt (sog. 'Inversion')." 22. Cf. Koll (1965: 259): "Bei den von Rohlfs ausgewählten Schriftstellern des merowingischen Frankenreiches wird ganz betont die klass. Stellung] bevorzugt, und zwar mit einer Strenge, die fast an den Analogisten Cäsar erinnert. Sowohl die Inversion des S[ubjekts] wie die rom. V—O—Stellung] sind nur in geringem Maß vertreten." [The writers of the Merovingian Frankish kingdom selected by Rohlfs clearly preferred the classical order and implemented it so strictly that we have to think of the analogist Caesar. The inversion of the subject as well as Romance VO ordering occur rarely.]

References Bach, Adolf 1965 Geschichte der deutschen Sprache. (8th edition.) Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer. Behaghel, Otto 1892 "Zur deutschen Wortstellung", Zeitschrift für den deutschen Unterricht 6: 265-267. 1900 "Zur deutschen Wortstellung", Wissenschaftliche Beihefte zur Zeitschrift des Allgemeinen Deutschen Sprachvereins 17/18: 233 — 251. 1932 Deutsche Syntax. Vol. 4. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Berschin, Helmut - Josef Felixberger - Hans Goebl (eds.) 1978 Französische Sprachgeschichte, München: Hueber. Burridge, Kate 1993 Syntactic change in Germanic. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 89.) Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ebert, Robert Peter 1978 Historische Syntax des Deutschen. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung. 1980 "Social and stylistic variation in Early New High German word order: The sentence frame (> Satzrahmen feos; *feorhes > feores; and *lcehnij- > Ictne. Suzuki argues instead that h was lost wherever it was ambisyllabic. This, he explains, is the best way to account for the preservation of h after unstressed prefixes, as in behindan 'behind', behealdan 'behold', and gehwä 'each one'. The preservation of h here cannot be due to the morpheme boundary before it, given that there is loss of h adjacent to a morpheme boundary (though of course on the other side) in examples like heanes 'height' < *heah#nes and wölic 'wrong' < *wöh#lic. Instead, says Suzuki, h is not ambisyllabic, and is therefore undeleted, in words like behindan because ambisyllabicity is possible only in the coda of stressed syllables. Of course it might be said that ambisyllabicity is an inessential part of the argument if the ultimate cause is stress, which, after all, is what is usually assumed. And this treatment of behindan and such seems uncon-

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vincing because morpheme boundaries do seem to affect syllable division in compounds (see note 2). But more important, some counterexamples can be proposed to Suzuki's rule. He says that h is ambisyllabic and so deleted in eorod 'cavalry' < *eoh-räd because hr- is a possible syllable onset in Old English, as in hreow 'sorrow'; but it is not deleted in dohtor because h here is not ambisyllabic, there being no words in Old English that begin with the sequence *ht~. Yet it should be pointed out that h is lost in some words in which it could not be ambisyllabic, such as eofot 'crime' < *eb-hät and Tfig 'ivy' < *ib-hTej-. In these h can only belong to the onset of the second syllable. There is loss of h also in words like headeor 'stag' < *heah-deor and Heaberht (man's name) < *heah-berht, even though here h can only belong to the coda of the first syllable, since -hd- and -hb- cannot be syllable onsets. Moreover, since Suzuki argues that ambisyllabicity is possible only after stressed vowels, we should assume that h would not be lost in unstressed syllables. Due to a lack of clear cognates, it turns out not to be possible to offer any indisputable evidence for the loss of h in unstressed syllables. But it is peculiar that h never does in fact appear between unstressed vowels. This is remarkable because it is found in this position in the two Germanic languages that do not generally lose intervocalic h, Gothic (e. g., bairgahei 'hill country') and Old High German (e. g., gifesahi 'chaff'). In a more recent formulation Suzuki (1994) says that h is lost anywhere in the coda of a syllable, as long as it stands before a voiced sound. His rule is as follows: /h/ > 0 /

[+ voice] C I Coda

This formulation obviates counterexamples like headeor and Heaberht, but not those like eofot and Tfig. Also, it still predicts that h should not be lost between unstressed vowels. The really interesting aspect of Suzuki's proposal is that he applies a very similar rule to the voicing of intervocalic fricatives, bringing the two processes under one rubric (a connection made earlier by Colman [1983]). It is easy to imagine that the Old English voicing of fricatives and the loss of h are different surface manifestations of the same phonological process. They occur in very much the same environment, which under the usual analysis is said to be the position between voiced sounds. And they can both be seen as varieties of conso-

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nant weakening. That h should have suffered a different fate from the fricatives that were voiced seems plausible, too, since the distinction between /x/ and /g/ was phonemic {heard 'hard': geard 'enclosure'), while, for example, that between [s] and [z] was not. Rather, the weaker allophone of /x/ was [h], occurring word-initially. But in actuality the connection between fricative voicing and loss of h turns out to be a weakness of the proposal, because however inviting it might appear to connect the two, historically the two processes cannot have been contemporaneous. Fricative voicing is older, as it affects Old Frisian and Old Saxon in the same way, while loss of h is younger, being still in process in Old Saxon. Fricative voicing at any rate seems to antedate syncope of high vowels in Old English, as illustrated by forms like llesde 'released' < *lausidai. Had voicing not occurred before syncope, we should expect *lleste: cf. cyste 'kissed' < *kussidä (Luick [1964]: §639 Anmerkung 4). Similar forms are encountered in Old Saxon ( l ö s d a ) and Old Frisian (lesde), and so this syncope is certainly a prehistoric change. On the other hand, loss of h is a recent change, not yet having been completed in the earliest Old English records. 3 It in any case is later than the syncope of high vowels, as evidenced by forms like WS föhpu 'hostility' < *fäxipö and fllehp 'flees' < *fliuhi£>. And so the motivation for the form of Suzuki's rule of h-loss is weak. Moreover, the specification that h must stand before a voiced sound deprives Suzuki's proposal of most of its originality: although it is necessary to indicate one way or another that the change does not take place at the beginning of a word, this can be accomplished with more consistency under the standard interpretation of the change. This is because Suzuki's revised rule frankly admits that the voicing of a flanking sound is essential to the operation of the change, and if it is the case that the process must rely in part on voicing, the simplest rule will condition the change only on the basis of voicing: any other rule will predicate the change on two separate conditioning factors. And so the condition on syllable structure seems excessively elaborate. In fact, it seems the only real purpose of the coda condition is to indicate parallelism with the voicing of fricatives. In any case, Suzuki's rule makes wrong predictions about the loss of h, and it is not clear how this can be remedied without rendering superfluous the conditioning on the basis of syllable structure. Still, Suzuki's proposal in regard to the fricatives is elegant. Under the standard view that fricatives are voiced simply between voiced sounds it is not clear why voicing should be restricted to the environment after a stressed vowel. By contrast, as Suzuki shows, position within the coda of

Ambisyllabicity

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a stressed syllable may affect consonantal strength. The two analyses make different empirical claims — for example, they agree that there should be no voicing of the last consonant in seofofaa 'seventh', but they make different predictions about fracupne (masc. acc. sg.) 'bad' — yet there is no way to determine whether the ft in the second word was or was not voiced. 4 The assumption of ambisyllabicity in this process is essential to Suzuki's argument, since it is required to explain the voicing in forms like wulfas 'wolves' and ceosan 'choose'. But there is a problem. Suzuki insists that the rule should exclude reference to any preceding segment, and yet because of the general prohibition in Old English against voicing disagreement in obstruent clusters, this is hardly possible. If location in the coda of a stressed syllable, without reference to the voicing of the preceding sound, were sufficient to produce voicing, we should expect voiced fricatives in words like weaxan 'grow' and oxa 'ox'. 5 This is clearly not the case. And so the rule does seem to require reference to the voicing of the preceding segment; and if that requirement were incorporated into Suzuki's rule, the rule would not really be a simplification in comparison to the standard view. All in all, then, although there does not appear to be firm evidence against Suzuki's rule, it does not seem to offer any distinct advantages on an empirical basis, and so a good case for ambisyllabicity has not been made here. Brief mention may be made of the other sound change that Suzuki argues is simplified by the assumption of ambisyllabicity, that is, breaking of front vowels before /r, 1, h/. 6 He contends that breaking before /r, 1/ takes place only when the resonant is in pre-final position in the coda, as in weordan 'become' < *werpan and healdan 'hold' < *hceldan, and not in final position in the coda, as in wer 'man' and wcel 'slaughter'. In weras (nom. pi.) 'men' and wcele (dat. sg.) 'slaughter' the resonant is ambisyllabic, and so partly in final position, and thus unaffected by the change. His explanation is that the pre-final position in the coda is the weakest in the syllable, and so it is precisely here that we should expect the resonant qualities of these consonants to be highlighted, and thus to produce breaking. Final position, on the other hand, is one of relatively greater consonantal strength. Yet if this is true, it undermines his arguments about fricative voicing and the loss of intervocalic /h/, since it requires that these changes occur just where consonantal strength is greatest, as in wulfas, ceosan, and slean 'strike' < *sleahan\ and conversely it requires that loss of /hi be prevented precisely where /hi ought to be weakest, as in eahta 'eight' and beorht 'bright', if the change is really conditioned by syllable structure rather than the voicing value of

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Robert D. Fulk

the flanking segments. So, too, this explanation does not account very well for the fact that breaking occurs before /h/ regardless of its position in the syllable, unlike /r, 1/, demanding that /h/ be highly "sonorous" in all environments. The usual explanation, that breaking is the result of the backness of the conditioning consonants, seems preferable, since it may simply be assumed that the place of articulation for /h/ is invariant (as it appears to have been in the Anglian dialects, though as a front variety, since this seems the best explanation for Anglian smoothing: see Campbell [1959: §§222-223]), while that of /r, 1/ changes according to whether or not a consonant follows, similar to the way the articulation of l\l varies in Modern English, depending on whether a vowel follows in the same word. In uninflected words like wer and wcel the value of III might have alternated, depending on whether the next word began with a consonant, but we may assume that a single value was generalized, the one that did not produce paradigm allomorphy. 7 Colman (1986), pursuing a suggestion first proposed and rejected (1979: 108) and subsequently accepted (1992: §2.81) by Hogg, has argued that the forms ccege (dat sg.) 'key' < *käjä < *kaijai and dcege (dat. sg.) 'day' < *dceji? < *dq^ai prove ambisyllabicity in Old English. In the word ccege the front glide has caused umlaut in the root vowel, while there is no umlaut in the form dcege: the form would be dege if it were umlauted. The difference, she says, is that umlaut is caused only by a segment in the following syllable, while in dcege ambisyllabicity puts the umlauting segment partly into the first syllable. If she is right, then ambisyllabicity occurs only after short vowels, and Suzuki's rules for /z-deletion, fricative voicing, and breaking cannot be correct. But it seems impossible to prove or disprove this explanation. For one thing, it is unknown whether g, the palatalized form of the voiced velar spirant, coalesced with j, the front glide inherited from Germanic, early enough to cause umlaut. 8 After all, umlaut is an early change - Luick (1914-1940: §291) would locate it most likely in the first half of the sixth century. There do not seem to be any definitive forms in which g arose in the onset of the second syllable without the aid of an umlauting vowel, and so it cannot be proved that g itself causes umlaut. Conversely, because of the Verschärfung there are no forms in Old English to prove whether or not Gmc. j could cause umlaut immediately after a short vowel. And if g did not cause umlaut, then it cannot even be proved that a segment must not be in the same syllable to cause umlaut. On the contrary, it is certain that a variety of palatalized consonants in the same syllable could affect a preceding vowel, as in tellan < *taljan (without breaking because / is palatalized),

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35

and in early ccempa, cande, celdra, later cempa, cende, eldra (Campbell 1959: § 192). And so while Colman's account is possible, so are alternative explanations, which are perhaps more plausible. A large part of the justification for Lass's and Suzuki's views stems from their insistence that the standard interpretation creates impossible syllable structures (see also Colman [1983: 34, 39]). In Germanic there is a prohibition against stressed monosyllables that end in a short vowel: this is why, for example, the stressed forms of personal pronouns, such as pü and me, originally short, have lengthened vowels. If a single consonant between short vowels is heterosyllabic, the preceding syllable must end in a short vowel, violating the pattern established by monosyllables. By and large it is doubtless true that a stressed syllable ending in a short vowel would be anomalous, and yet it should be clear that such syllables did in fact exist in Old English. Old English meter shows that the verbs dön and gän must be scanned as uncontracted, dissyllabic sequences with short first syllables, and there are perhaps some other words of this type. 9 In fact, Suzuki seems to violate the principle of equivalence between word and syllabic structure when he analyzes intervocalic geminate fricatives as monosegmental, in order to prevent his rule from voicing them. Since such a monosegmental geminate would be ambisyllabic, it would create a syllabic equivalent to a word ending in a phonologically geminate consonant, and this is clearly impermissible in Old English (Brunner 1965: §231). Moreover, this insistence on ambisyllabicity obscures what seems the most plausible explanation for metrical resolution and the apocope of high vowels. In Old English, final i and u are lost after heavy syllables but not light ones, as in nom. pi. scipu : word < *wordu. Lass (1984: 250-254; cf. McCully 1992: 120) attempts to explain this development under the assumption that ρ in scipu is ambisyllabic; but in fact if the first syllable is closed, then the most obvious way to differentiate the two structures has been discarded. That is, if ρ is ambisyllabic, then neither syllable is light, and the reason for the preservation or loss of -u is obscured. Rather, if ρ belongs to the second syllable, then it may be said that -u is preserved precisely because sei- is an anomalous structure: the -u provides the second mora that is necessary to fill out the structure and make it equivalent to a stressed monosyllable. This is the same process we see in metrical resolution: just as a stressed syllable ending in a short vowel is phonologically anomalous, so is it metrically, since a lift normally is restricted in the same way a stressed monosyllable is — that is, it must be long. Or as Dresher and Lahiri (1991) elegantly put it, the

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Robert D. Fulk

strong branch of the Germanic foot (rather than the stressed syllable) is bimoric. Kurylowicz (1970: 8—9; 1975: 150—151) in fact pointed out long ago that resolution as a metrical phenomenon is motivated by the same principles that forbid stressed monosyllables ending in short vowels. Hayes (1995: 111, and cf. 117-118) offers a similar account of "unstressable" words in Latin and some other languages. Resolution then is not just a metrical device, but a principle of equivalence that is also active in the phonology of the language. But this explanation makes sense only if ρ in scipu is heterosyllabic; without the assumption of heterosyllabicity, Kurylowicz' explanation for resolution fails, and there does not seem to be any very compelling hypothesis to replace it. This is no small consideration, since the connection he draws offers distinct advantages, elegantly explaining why resolution is compulsory under full stress and suspensible under secondary: the Germanic prohibition on monosyllables ending in short vowels is also limited to fully stressed words. If in fact the optimal syllable rime comprises two morae, no more or less, as Murray and Vennemann argue (1983: 526), then in conjunction with Kurylowicz' and Dresher and Lahiri's extension of syllable patterns to metrical structure it may be possible to account phonologically for the conditions under which resolution is suspended. Under secondary stress, resolution is avoided when the second of the resolved syllables comprises more than one mora. This is particularly clear in regard to Kaluza's law, which permits resolution in a pattern like brimclifu blTcan (Beowulf 222a), where the ending on the first word is etymologically short, but forbids it in verses like beaghroden cwen (623b) and mundbora wees (2779b) because the endings are etymologically long (Kaluza 1896; Bliss 1967: §§34-37). At least in relatively early verse a similar constraint applies to medial syllables, so that resolution is compulsory in säfarode sand (Daniel 322a), where the third syllable is open, but avoided in eordcyninges {Beowulf 155b), where the third syllable is closed (Fulk 1992: §§271-278). Murray and Vennemann's Stressed Syllable Law ("The preferred stressed syllable (in Germanic) has exactly two morae" [1983: 526]) may account for these restrictions on resolution, but only if a single intervocalic consonant is heterosyllabic, playing no role in the mora count of the preceding syllable. Lass (1985: 246-247), building on the conclusions of Minkova (1982), argues that ambisyllabicity is essential to an adequate understanding of Middle English Open Syllable Lengthening (MEOSL). This argument does not demand the assumption of ambisyllabicity in Old English Minkova herself regards it as having arisen at a later date (Minkova and

Ambisyllabicity

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Stockwell 1994) - yet I think it is not even necessary for this stage of Middle English. Minkova (1982) shows conclusively that lengthening in forms like bere 'bear' and bede 'bead' must have been contemporaneous with loss of the final vowel. In that event it is certainly true, as Lass says, that the change cannot be adequately accounted for in autosegmental terms, but can only be described in terms of syllable structure. Yet this does not entail the assumption of ambisyllabicity. Assuming heterosyllabicity instead, for example, since vowels are longer in open syllables than in closed ones (i. e., phonetically though not phonemically longer in bede than in bed), it might be supposed that loss of the final vowel merely phonemicized the greater length in the root vowel, reidentifying the vowel with /ε:/ rather than Id. The change might then be regarded as a conversion of syntagmatic information to paradigmatic information such as Erdmann (1972: 234) describes, and accomplished in a manner analogous to Penzl's (1944) well-known account of the phonemicization of Old English umlaut vowels only upon the loss of the conditioning sounds. 10 Jones (1989: 182—190) argues that ambisyllabicity may explain developments in some Middle English consonant clusters. These are mostly outside the purview of this survey of Old English data, but his claims do extend to Old English when he discusses brcembel, brembel, ModE bramble. In such forms the b is epenthetic, and Jones would link its intrusion to its ambisyllabic status. Unlike Jones, Luick (1914-1940: §675) assumes that the epenthesis originated in inflected and syncopated forms like bremlas, so that it occurred at first only between consonants. To be sure, the forms attested in Old English do not support Luick's view: forms with and without the b, regardless of whether syncope has taken place, are both common. Yet Luick is surely right. The words punor 'thunder' and spinel 'spindle' occur dozens of times in the Old English records, early and late, inflected and uninflected, and yet for each word only once is there a spelling with an epenthetic consonant: cf. pundorlic in the Alfredian translation of Boethius' Consolatio, and spindel is a gloss in a tenth-century manuscript (British Library, Cotton Cleopatra A. iii). The reason the incidence of epenthesis is so slight must be that syncope after short syllables (as in punres and spinle) is late and sporadic. On the other hand, syncope after long syllables is early and regular: thus *brämilas > brecemlas > breämblas > bremblas, with shortening of the root vowel before the triconsonantal cluster (Campbell 1959: §§ 193(d), 285). At any rate, Jones's assumption that epenthesis might occur phonologically in an unsyncopated forms like breämel leaves unexplained why the change should occur at all. If Luick is right, and the epenthesis is analogi-

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Robert D. Fulk

cal except in syncopated forms, ambisyllabicity need not be considered the likeliest explanation. Although Luick himself notes that this epenthesis occurs in groups that cannot be tautosyllabic (suggesting perhaps that epenthesis prevents ambisyllabicity of m from creating a disallowed syllable-initial cluster like -ml-), the phonological explanation he derives from Sievers does not demand the assumption of ambisyllabicity: in a heterosyllabic cluster like -ml- the nasal articulation of m is cut off before the onset of /, and in the interval the result is denasalized m - that is, b. Hogg (1992: §§2.81, 5.124, 5.130), following Colman's lead, assumes ambisyllabicity only after short vowels, and thus explains the compensatory lengthening in Anglian *sihip > sT-ip (?) 'sees' (cf. dissyllabic Northumbrian gesiid). In actuality, it cannot be determined with certainty whether this lengthening ever took place. Most commentators assume that lengthening occurred not with the loss of h, but with the later contraction of the two vowels. Poetic meter indicates short vowels in such forms when they are uncontracted (Fulk 1992: § 101), but this is inconclusive, since this may represent mere preservation of the older metrical value, before loss of h, in conservative poetic tradition. This is what we find, for instance, in the metrical treatment of final syllabic consonants, which are frequently treated as nonsyllabic in the meter, even though they probably became syllabic long before any surviving Old English poem was preserved on parchment (Fulk 1992: §§94—98). Moreover, even if it can be proved that spellings like Northumbrian gesiid do contain a long root vowel followed by a vowel in the suffix, I have argued elsewhere that this situation might be expected as the result of analogy (1992: § 126). Hogg (1979: 104, 108) offers some strong evidence against ambisyllabicity between short vowels. He points out that already in the earliest Old English records there are spellings like dcei 'day' < dceg, in which palatalized g has become a glide, and apparently forms a diphthong with the preceding vowel. By contrast, internally the sound is still usually spelt g. The distribution, for instance, is rigid in the word grctg or greg 'grey', since the spelling with i occurs only in uninflected forms. And inflected dceges is spelt dceies is just one text, and a very late one (the Peterborough Chronicle). Subsequently, however, Hogg (1992: §7.69) has indicated he is persuaded by Colman's (1983) counterarguments. She asserts that a diphthong could not have formed here because there was no "template" in Old English for such a diphthong, all Old English diphthongs being back diphthongs. This, for instance, is why in West-Saxon words like wän 'wagon' < wcegn and bredan 'move' < bregdan, g causes compensatory lengthening and is lost, rather than forming a diphthong. Her explana-

Ambisyllabicity

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tion for the distribution of i and g in such a word as dceg is that i here merely represents the syllable-final, vocalic allophone of the palatal glide. This analysis faces some difficulties. Since purely allophonic variation is unconscious, it generally goes unrecognized by native speakers, and thus remains unexpressed in orthography. Moreover, it cannot be true that diphthongs could not be formed for which there was no template. If this were so, it would be impossible for new diphthongs ever to arise, or for this very diphthong to have arisen later in Middle English. Even if it were true that WS wärt is the result of avoidance of a diphthong for which there was no template, this does not prove that ceg, when a vowel does not follow, does not represent a diphthong in other dialects, or even in other environments in the same dialect. But lack of a template is not a dependable explanation for the West-Saxon development, since the change occurs only when the sequence is followed by another consonant. This is not the only Old English sound change to be limited by this condition — it also applies, for instance, to breaking before /r, 1/. Apparently it is the following consonant that conditions the change, since the development is limited to occurrence before p, d, and n, not occurring before r or 5, and rarely before / (Campbell 1959: §§243-244). If lack of a template were the reason for the change, it would have to be explained why it does not normally occur in snegl 'snail', egsa 'terror', and so forth. By the time of Orm, writing before 1180, the distribution of such apparently diphthongal forms has changed, at least in his northeast Midland dialect. Orm usually writes a single intervocalic consonant as a nongeminate, regardless of the length of the preceding vowel. So, for instance, although the uninfected form Godd is written with a final geminate, inflected forms almost always have a medial nongeminate, as in gen. Godess (but once nom. pi. Goddess). By contrast, the postvocalic reflex of Old English palatal g is always written double, regardless of whether a vowel follows, as in nom. we%e 'way' and nom. dcQj 'day', gen. dqfiess and dcghess (the latter analogical, reflecting the stem of OE dat. pi. dagum). This is true even in a word such as nom. e^e 'awe' < OE ege, which had no uninfected forms in Old English (see note 10 above). In addition, the spelling eige is found several times in the Wintney Version of the Benedictine Rule, preserved in a manuscript written for a convent in Hampshire "probably soon after 1200" (Ker 1957: xix). The process by which palatal g combined with a preceding vowel to form a diphthong thus seems to have been completed by about 1180. Yet undoubtedly this diphthongization began in uninflected forms: regardless of whether i in OE dcei and such represents part of a diphthong or merely

40

Robert D. Fulk

a palatal allophone of g, it is surely in such forms, rather than in dceges or dagum, that the diphthong arose, whether in Old English or later. It is not impossible that both the rise of the diphthong and its analogical spread should have taken place in the course of the twelfth century, but given the incidence of spellings like dcei and grei in Old English, it is surely likelier that they represent the former of the two developments. And so Colman's explanation of the Old English alternation as merely allophonic seems less plausible, and given these considerations, the clearcut distribution of i and g in words like OE dceg and grceg still appears to be good evidence against ambisyllabicity in Old English. Some particularly telling evidence against ambisyllabicity is to be found in the correlation between syllable division and word division at the end of the line in OE manuscripts. In a corpus of over 30,000 word divisions involving a single intervocalic consonant, Wetzel (1981: 129132) finds that in all but 188 instances (or 99.3 per cent) the scribe divides the word before the consonant. This might be considered merely a scribal convention, except that in the case of orthographic (representing [xs] or [ks]) the division follows the consonant in 46 of 54 instances (or 85.2 per cent). Similarly, analyzing Wetzel's corpus of approximately 30,000 divisions of biconsonantal intervocalic clusters in simplices, Lutz (1986) finds that in most cluster types the division falls almost exclusively between the two consonants (e. g., wor-dum). The most prominent exceptions are in words with clusters like -pr- and -fl- (that is, clusters that are also found word-initially), which the scribes frequently (roughly half the time) divide before the cluster. In both Wetzel's and Lutz's findings, the differential treatment demands the conclusion that there is a relationship between syllable division and scribal word division. It might be argued that in wor-dum the d is ambisyllabic, and that it was merely scribal convention to write ambisyllabic consonants with the following syllable. But Wetzel's evidence in regard to tells against that assumption; and if there were such a convention it would be difficult to explain why roughly half the instances of -pr- and -fl- are still divided in the middle, considering that p and / must be ambisyllabic in these groups if there was ambisyllabicity in Old English. Rather, these data suggest that if there was a scribal convention at all it must have been to divide biconsonantal clusters in the middle (considering that roughly half the instances of -prand -fl- are still divided that way). Yet the assumption of such a scribal convention clearly will not suffice to explain Wetzel's and Lutz's findings, since, for example, the ratio of total instances of divided to undivided -pr- is 108:181, or approximately 1:2, while in inflected forms of bröpor,

Ambisyllabicity

in Old English

41

that is after a long vowel, the ratio changes to 22:104, or approximately 1:5 (Lutz 1986: 203). Vowel length clearly affects word division in this instance, and contradicts the assumption of a scribal convention that dictates dividing clusters in the middle regardless of syllable division. In sum, none of the evidence for ambisyllabicity in Old English adduced so far explains the phonological processes of the language better than the usual assumption of heterosyllabicity. Moreover, many of the specific arguments advanced in favor of ambisyllabicity face seemingly insuperable philological difficulties. And finally, there seems to be some sound evidence for heterosyllabicity, in regard to diphthongization in forms like < daei > while < g > is preserved in < dseges >, and in regard to scribal practice in word division at the end of the manuscript line. The Old English system of syllabification was, then, significantly different from the Modern English one, and this helps to explain why metrical resolution, which is difficult to account for without the assumption of heterosyllabicity, seems mysterious to some modern observers. 11 Notes I wish to thank Seiichi Suzuki for sharing with me some of his work that has not yet appeared in print. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Charles Barrack, Angelika Lutz, D o n k a Minkova, and Robert Stockwell for invaluable comments and suggestions. 1. All citations of Old English verse are from Krapp and Dobbie (1931-1953). Macrons have been added to indicate vowel quantities. Words like scipa may be unresolved only at the end of the verse, and then a light drop may not precede: an example is fordweard scipes (Genesis A 1436b). For a defense of the principle of resolution see Suzuki (1995). 2. Lass himself (1985: 2 5 9 - 2 6 1 ) pointed out his own error the same year Suzuki's critique appeared, but he went on to argue that the weight of - V C # cannot be determined because the sequence can never be examined outside of any context. So it might be argued that in the sequence -VC#V-, even if the first syllable is "actually" light, perhaps it counts metrically as heavy because the word-initial vowel is preceded by a glottal stop, or because the word boundary functions the same way as a consonant. In other words, a sequence like God is is structurally equivalent to wordes, and the contrast wordes : Godes does not prove where the syllable boundary fell in the latter, since d might be ambisyllabic in the former. It should be noted that the presence of juncture in compounds seems to have affected syllable division: see Wetzel (1981: 4 2 - 1 0 0 ) and Lutz (1985), and see further below on Lutz (1986). 3. Elsewhere (1992: §§395-397) I have argued that the preservation of intervocalic h in the earliest glossaries must not be assumed to be phonological, since in one instance h is unetymological, and so can only represent hiatus. Yet even if no instance of preserved h is phonological (the material in these glossaries is of diverse origins), the loss of h in these texts must at least be assumed to be relatively recent. 4. In seofopa the last consonant is not ambisyllabic, according to Suzuki, because ambisyllabicity is realized only after stressed vowels; and since it is not ambisyllabic, it is not

42

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Robert D. Fulk in the coda. In fracupne, on the other hand, p is in the coda even though the preceding vowel is unstressed. Under the standard interpretation, all fricatives after unstressed vowels remain unvoiced. This assumption is based in part on developments like *fülipu > fylp > filth and O E eahtopa > eighth; and in part on internal evidence, such as bletsian 'bless' < *blödisöjan and ofermetto 'pride' < *-mödipu. There are several unexplained exceptions (Luick [1964]: §639.2). Campbell (1959: §416) notes that the sounds represented by the graph < x > in these words still had the value [xs] at least late enough to cause breaking. A frequent orthographic variant of < x > in early West Saxon is < h s > , as in weahsan. Suzuki (1994) includes /w/ among the consonants that can cause breaking, rejecting my suggestion (1992: §162 note 2; 1993a: 350 note 6) that what appears to be breaking before /w/ can consistently be explained as back mutation, since breaking before /w/ fails when a front vowel follows in the next syllable. The issue seems impossible to settle, yet the argument against breaking before /w/ that Suzuki calls the least substantive still seems to me the strongest: since back mutation before /w/ is required by the very nature of the process of mutation, while breaking before /w/ is not required (the "breaking" in forms like cneow actually being an analogical process: see Fulk [1993a: 344]), it is a simplification of the grammar to discard the idea of breaking before /w/. Suzuki responds, "The criterion of simplicity in evaluating competing analyses takes on significance when the analyses make equal empirical claims, which is obviously not the case here" (1994: 67). But the only way to test the competing claims of the two analyses is in regard to forms like gesewen, which Suzuki dismisses, regarding them as analogical formations. Once this evidence is discarded there is no difference in the testable claims of the two analyses, and so the simpler of the two ought to be preferred. This variation is also found in Modern English, since the articulation of IM is different in Bill came and Bill is. But in pausa the velar variety has been generalized in Modern English, while the other was generalized in Old English. Hogg (1979: 107) argues that the two sounds must have been so similar that both would have caused umlaut, but he concedes (1979: 103) that the two sounds are known to contrast in some languages. See Fulk (1993b: 241-242). Subjunctive sie seems another probable example, as does the plural dryas in the verse scegde hy dryas wäron (Juliana 301b; cf. Celtic drui), which the meter indicates has a short root vowel. Sievers (1885: 480) would read contracted drys for dryas here, though in recorded forms contraction is found only in the genitive and dative singular - that is, the forms with inflections beginning with front vowels. A form such as Orm's e%e 'awe' < OE ege might seem to demand the assumption of ambisyllabicity, since there were no uninfected forms in the Old English paradigm of this word from which a diphthong formed phonologically could spread analogically (see below). And yet there is precedent for assuming that even in a language in which the syllabification was consistently heterosyllabic, the front glide could create exceptions. This is true, for example, in Modern Icelandic, a language showing strict avoidance of ambisyllabicity, given the pronunciation of forms like segi [sei:ji] '(I) say' (not the expected *[se:ji]; cf. lift [1ι:νι] '(I) live') and jceja [jai:ja] 'well, all right' < ja ja. The idea of resolution is rejected, for instance, by Baum (1948-1949), Keyser (1969), Kerling (1982) and Hoover (1985: 119-138). Suzuki (1995: 2 0 - 2 9 ) responds to their objections.

Ambisyllabicity in Old English

43

References Baum, Pauli F. 1948-1949 "The meter of Beowulf', Modern Philology 46: 73-91, 145-162. Bliss, A. J. 1967 The metre of'Beowulf'. (Revised edition.) Oxford: Blackwell. Brogyanyi, Bela - Reiner Lipp (eds.) 1993 Comparative-historiallinguistics: Indo-European andFinno-Ugric. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Brunner, Karl 1965 Altenglische Grammatik nach der angelsächsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers. (3rd edition.) Tübingen: Niemeyer. Campbell, A. 1959 Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon. Colman, Fran 1983 "'Vocalisation' as nucleation", Studia Linguistica 37: 3 0 - 4 8 . 1986 "A cäg to Old English syllable structure", in: Dieter Kastovsky - Aleksander Szwedek (eds.), 225-230. Colman, Fran (ed.) 1992 Evidence for Old English: Material and theoretical bases for reconstruction. (Edinburgh Studies in the English Language 2.) Edinburgh: John Donald. Curme, George O. 1970 A grammar of the German language. (2nd edition.) New York: F. Ungar. Dresher, B. Elan — Aditi Lahiri 1991 "The Germanic foot: Metrical coherence in Old English", Linguistic Inquiry 22: 251-286. Erdmann, Peter 1972 Tiefenphonologische Lautgeschichte der englischen Vokale. Frankfurt: Athenäum. Fulk, Robert D. 1992 A history of Old English meter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1993a "Paradigm regularization and the Verschärfung", in: B. Brogyanyi - R. Lipp (eds.), 341-351. 1993b "Old English dön, dyde, and the verba pura in Germanic", Indogermanische Forschungen 98: 241-251. Hayes, Bruce 1995 Metrical stress theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hogg, Richard M. 1979 "Old English palatalization", Transactions of the Philological Society 77: 8 9 113. 1992 A grammar of Old English, I: Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell. Hoover, David L. 1985 A new theory of Old English meter. New York: Peter Lang. Jones, Charles 1989 A history of English phonology. London: Longman. Kaluza, Max 1896 "Zur Betonungs- und Verslehre des Altenglischen", in Festschrift zum siebzigsten Geburtstage Oskar Schade [no editor], 101 — 134. Königsberg: Härtung.

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Kastovsky, Dieter - Aleksander Szwedek (eds.) 1986 Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries, I. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Ker, N. R. 1957 Catalogue of manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Clarendon. Kerling, Johan 1982 "Sievers and scops: A revaluation of Old English poetic techniques", Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo-American Letters 12: 125 — 140. Keyser, Samuel Jay 1969 "Old English prosody", College English 30: 331-356. Krapp, George Philip - Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie 1931-1953 The Anglo-Saxon poetic records, 6 vols. New York: Columbia University Press. Kurylowicz, Jerzy 1970 Die sprachlichen Grundlagen der altgermanischen Metrik. (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Vorträge 1.) Innsbruck: Institut für Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. 1975 Metrik und Sprachgeschichte. (Prace J?zykoznawcze 83.) Wroclaw: Polska Akademia Nauk, Komitet Jfzykoznawstwa. Lass, Roger 1983 "Quantity, resolution, and syllable geometry", Folia Lingusitica Historica 4: 151-180. 1984 Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985 "Minkova noch einmal: MEOSL and the resolved foot", Folia Lingustica Historica 6: 245-266. 1992 "Phonology and morphology", in: Roger Lass (ed.), 23 — 155. Lass, Roger (ed.) 1992 The Cambridge history of the English language, II: 1066—1476. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luick, Karl 1914—1940 Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. Leipzig: Tauchnitz. [1964] [Reprinted Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.] Lutz, Angelika 1985 "Die Worttrennung am Zeilenende in altenglischen Handschriften: Phonologische Betrachtungen zu Claus-Dieter Wetzeis gleichnamigen Buch", Indogermanische Forschungen 90: 227—238. 1986 "The syllabic basis of word division in Old English manuscripts", English Studies 87: 193-210. McCully, C. B. 1992 "The phonology of resolution in Old English word-stress and metre", in: Fran Colman (ed.), 117-141. Minkova, Donka 1982 "The environment for open syllable lengthening in Middle English", Folia Linguistica Historica 3: 29-58. Minkova, Donka - Robert P. Stockwell 1994 "Syllable weight, prosody, and meter in Old English", Diachronica 11: 3 5 64.

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in Old English

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Murray, Robert W. - Theo Vennemann 1983 "Sound change and syllable structure in Germanic phonology", Language 59: 514-528. Penzl, Herbert 1944 "A phonemic change in early Old English", Language 20: 8 4 - 8 7 . Sievers, Eduard 1885 "Zur Rhythmik des germanischen Alliterationsverses", P B B 10: 2 0 9 - 3 1 4 , 451-545. Suzuki, Seiichi 1985 "The role of syllable structure in Old English poetry", Lingua 67: 9 7 - 1 1 9 . 1994 "Breaking, ambisyllabicity, and the sonority hierarchy in Old English", Diachronica 11: 65—93. 1995 "In defense of resolution as a metrical principle in the meter of Beowulf English Studies 76: 20—33. Wetzel, Claus-Dieter 1981 Die Worttrennung am Zeilenende in altenglischen Handschriften. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

Machds, daß-ds wegkummdsI The mystery of inflected complementizers Michael

Getty

1. Introduction 1 Certain dialects of Dutch and German have come to the attention of reseachers for the fact that they allow what seems to be verbal inflection on complementizers (COMPs). The title of this paper contains an illustrative example from Bavarian, where second-person plural (henceforth: 2pl.) inflection can be observed on the imperative, machds, the complementizer daß, and on the embedded finite verb, wegkummds. In fact, similar phenomena have been reported in more than a dozen nonstandard dialects spoken throughout Southern Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, and the Low Countries. 2 Examples from some of these dialects are given below. Crucial here is the variation in the forms of the complementizers (West Flemish da, Bavarian ob, Frisian dat, South Hollandic of): (1)

West Flemish (Haegeman 1992)3 a. 'k peiz'n da Marie noa Gent goa-t I think that Marie to Gent goes Ί think that Marie is going to Ghent.' b. 'k peiz'n da-n Jan en Marie noa Gent goa-n I think that Marie and Jan to Gent go Ί think that Marie and Jan are going to Ghent.'

(2)

Bavarian (Bayer 1984) a. Du sollsd song ob der Hans kummd You should say whether Hans is coming 'You should say whether Hans is coming.' b. Du sollsd song ob-sd (du) kumm-sd You should say whether (you) are coming 'You should say whether you are coming.' c. Ihr solids song ob-ds (ihr) kumm-ds You (pi) should say whether (you (pi)) are coming 'You all should say whether you are coming.'

48

Michael Getty

(3)

Frisian (van der Meer 1991) a. Ik leau dat wy lis fer sine I believe that we ourselves mistake Ί believe that we are mistaken.' b. Ik leau dat-st-o dy fersinst I believe that-2sg.-you(cl.) yourself mistake Ί believe that you are mistaken.'

(4)

South Hollandic (Goeman 1980) a. Ik weet niet of ze komt I know not whether she comes Ί don't know whether she'll come.' b. Ik weet niet ov-e ze komme I know not whether they come Ί don't know whether they'll come.'

The purpose of the present investigation is to offer a unified account of complementizer inflection as it appears in these languages. Such a statement presupposes that the material affixed to COMP in the examples above is indeed verbal inflection, and that it is syntactically and morphologically distinct from pronoun cliticization, a much broader process to which the COMP position in these dialects is host. There is already considerable research on the topic of COMP-inflection, most notably by Zwart (1993a, 1993b), Haegeman (1990, 1992), and Hoekstra and Maräcz (1989). What is missing in this research, however, is a consistent distinction between inflection and pronoun cliticization onto COMP: in what follows I will demonstrate that this distinction is crucial to a proper understanding of COMP inflection. The framework I employ here is that of conventional Government and Binding Theory with a sentence structure dominated by the projection of INFL, which in turn is dominated by a complementizer phrase (CP). I will proceed on the assumption that all the languages above have underlying SOV word order, whereby complementizers and finite verbs occupy the head of CP in complementary distribution:

The mystery

(5)

of inflected complementizers

49

The view of sentence structure from Government and Binding Theory CP Spe

AdvP

V e

Marie;

da goat;

Marie e;

noa noa

Gent Gent

goat

While this framework does not encompass some very important issues in Government and Binding Theory such as subject/object asymmetry or the form of functional projections, the bulk of my account rests not on the phrase structure behind C O M P inflection, but on its identity as genuine verbal inflection.

2. The mechanics of COMP inflection There are a number of criteria which one can employ to make this distinction. Below are illustrative patterns for each of these criteria, using examples from the dialects which best exhibit them. Much of the discussion which follows will revolve around West Flemish, as this dialect shows highly intricate patterns of inflection and pronoun cliticization onto the COMP node.

2.1 Identity

with verbal

inflection

Bavarian allows for the affixation of pronoun clitics onto the C O M P position. But "COMP-affixes", aside from the second-person markers in (lb) and (lc) above, are morphologically distinct. In the forms which follow, note that the elements attached to C O M P no longer resemble the inflection on the embedded verb.

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Michael Getty

COMP-affixes versus inflectional markers a. First person singular (lsg.) I woaß ned ob-e kumm I know not whether-lsg. come Ί do not know whether I am coming.' b. Third person singular (3sg.) I woaß ned ob-a kumm-d I know not whether-3sg. comes Ί do not know whether he is coming.'

The paradigms of full pronouns versus clitics are listed below. For comparison, the verbal inflection paradigm is included as well. Note that only the 2sg. and 2pl. forms bear a more than superficial resemblance to the corresponding verbal inflection. (7)

Bavarian subject pronouns versus clitics. Verbal inflection Full Pronouns

1st 2nd 3rd

COMP-Affixes

kumma 'to come'

sg·

pi.

sg·

pi.

sg·

pi.

i du erlsieles

mir ihr sie

-e -sd -al-sl-s

-ma -ds -s

kumm kummsd kummd

kumma kummds kumma

Identical conditions obtain in all of the remaining dialects under consideration, 4 as can be seen in examples (1) through (4) above. 2.2

Doubling

In dialects such as Bavarian 5 which do not otherwise allow for pronoun doubling (as West Flemish does, see section 2.2 below), only COMP inflection can co-occur with subject pronouns. (8)

Bavarian a. ... wenn-sd du kummsd ... when-2sg you-sg come '...when you come' b. ...wenn-ds ihr kummds ...when-2pl. you-pl come '... when you all come'

The mystery

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51

c. *... wenn-a er kummd ...when-3sg he comes '...when he comes' 2.3 Linear

ordering

In dialects such as West Flemish and Frisian which allow both inflection and clitic pronouns to affix to the COMP node, inflection markers always occur preceding clitic pronouns. (9)

West Flemish 'Κ peiz'n da-n-me miender noa Gent goan I think that-2pl-we(cl) we to Gent go-2pl. Ί think that we are going to Ghent.'

(10)

Frisian Ik leau dat-st-o dy fersinst I believe that-INFL-you(cl.) yourself mistake Ί believe that you are mistaken.'

2.4

Non-optionality

COMP inflection appears to be obligatory in the dialects under consideration here (aside perhaps from circumstances in which speakers wish to conform to a standard, non-COMP-inflecting dialect), whereas pronoun cliticization onto COMP can be suspended given contrastive stress, as West Flemish demonstrates: (11)

West Flemish a. 'Κ peiz'n da-n Marie en Jan noa Gent goan I think that-pl Marie and Jan to Gent go Ί think that Marie and Jan are going to Ghent.' b. *K peiz'n da Marie en Jan noa Gent goan I think that Marie and Jan to Gent go Ί think that Marie and Jan are going to Ghent.' c. 'Κ peiz'n da-se noa Gent goat I think that-she(cl) to Gent goes Ί think that she is going to Ghent.' d. 'Κ peiz'n da zie noa Gent goat I think that she to Gent goes Ί think that she is going to Ghent.'

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2.5

Michael

Getty

Frisian a. Ik hoopje dat-st-o komst I hope that-2sg.-you(cl) come-2sg. Ί hope that you come.' b. *Ik hoopje dat do komst I hope that you come Ί hope that you come.' Non-adjacency

West Flemish allows not only for COMP inflection and pronoun cliticization, but also for doubling of subject pronouns, as seen in examples (14) and (16) below. In the unmarked case, though, an embedded clause is introduced by a complementizer (with or without inflection), accompanied by a cliticized subject pronoun: (13)

'K peiz'n da-n-me noa Gent goan I think that-lpl.-we(cL) to Gent go-lpl. Ί think that we are going to Ghent.'

Whereas COMP inflection relies only on the inflectional features of an embedded clause, pronoun clitics in COMP can often be accompanied by an immediately adjacent full pronoun. In most cases these pronoun clitics correspond with the person features of the embedded clause, as with the lpl. clitic in the following example: (14)

'Κ peiz'n da-n-me miender noa Gent goan I think that-lpl-we(cl.) we to Gent go-lpl. Ί think that we are going to Ghent.'

Both Haegeman (1992) and Zwart (1993a, 1993b) see patterns such as this as a highly robust manifestation of subject agreement, with no crucial distinction between the inflectional marker and the pronoun clitic. For clauses introduced by complementizers as above in (14), this process is thought to bring about an agreement chain between the complementizer, the subject, and the embedded finite verb. Among other considerations, Haegeman favors this analysis as a means of accounting for the lack of full pronouns in other sentences such as (15). As in the following example, the presence of COMP inflection and clitic pronouns is thought to allow for referential pro-drop, that is, the recovery of features from omitted full pronouns:

The mystery

(15)

of inflected complementizers

53

'K peiz'n da-n-me 0 noa Gent goan I think that-2pl-we(cl.) to Gent go-2pl. Ί think that we are going to Ghent.'

A number of theoretical and empirical considerations can be brought to bear against this analysis. Pronoun clitics in C O M P encompass not only the features of person and number normally associated with subj e c t - v e r b agreement, but also gender, as the following examples demonstrate: (16)

a. 'Κ peiz'n da-se zie noa Gent goat I think that-she(cl) she to Gent goes Ί think that she is going to Ghent.' b. 'Κ peiz'n da-t-ie6 ie noa Gent goat I think that-he(cl) he to Gent goes Ί think that he is going to Ghent.'

It is unclear why West Flemish should instantiate gender as an agreement factor in instances such as these when this factor is absent from subject verb agreement paradigms in all other Germanic languages. In addition, it is difficult to maintain that pronoun clitics are an instantiation of some sort of agreement chain given the fact that these clitics are patently ungrammatical in the presence of a full Noun Phrase in subject position: (17)

*... da-se Marie noa Gent goat ... that-she(cl) Marie to Gent goes '... that Marie is going to Ghent'

More importantly, though, my informant and I discovered patterns in West Flemish which make an agreement analysis of pronoun clitics in COMP untenable. It seems that clitic doubling in C O M P relies on the immediate adjacency of a full pronoun. Observe the alternation in the coordinate subject between (18a) and (18b) and notice that a pronoun clitic in COMP arises only when it is brought into proximity with a full pronoun: (18)

West Flemish a. 'Κ peiz'n da-n [Jan I think that-pl Jan Ί think that Jan and I b. ' Κ peiz'n da-n-k I think that-pl-I(cl) Ί think that I and Jan

en ik] noa and I to are going to [ik en Jan] I and Jan are going to

Gent goan Gent go Ghent.' noa Gent goan to Gent go Ghent.'

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Michael

Getty

Strong ungrammaticality arises if we affix a clitic pronoun onto COMP which has the same inflectional features as the coordinate subject and finite verb of the embedded clause. (19)

*'K peiz'n da-n-me [ik en Jan] noa Gent goan I think that-pl-we(cl) I and Jan to Gent go Ί think that I and Jan are going to Ghent.'

I take these examples to demonstrate that pronoun clitics in West Flemish are not a manifestation of agreement but rather a form of pronominal "echo". Indeed, this pattern presents a key characteristic of true COMP inflection versus pronoun cliticization: COMP inflection does not rely on any immediate environment but rather on the inflectional features of embedded clauses. This holds true for all the COMP-inflecting dialects I have examined thus far. There are, however, additional complications for such an analysis of West Flemish. It seems that phonological adjacency is not an absolute requirement, as the following examples from Haegeman (1992) show: (20)

a. ...da-se '/ zie gekocht eet ... that-she(cl) it she bought has '... that she has bought it' b. ...da-n-me 't ze wlender gezeid een ... that-lpl.-we(cl) it them-DAT we said have '... that we have said it to them'

Other more distressing examples abound, especially in main clauses in the repertoires of older speakers: (21)

a. 'K werken k-ik I(cl) work I(cl)-I Ί work.' b. Z ' ee-se zie gewerkt she(cl)-has-she(cl) she worked 'She has worked.'

I can offer no definitive explanation for these sentences except to point out two observations which I believe support an echo analysis, albeit as a kind of "disjunctive echo". First, pronoun clitics in sentence-initial environments as in (21a) and (21b) are still illicit if they are co-referential with a full NP, suggesting that some duplicative process is still at work. (22)

*Z'ee Marie gewerkt She(cl)-has Marie worked 'Marie has worked.'

The mystery

of inflected complementizers

55

Second, I have found at least one instance of what I believe to be disjunctive echo in twelfth-century Eddie verse. Both prose and verse sources in Old Norse show a tendency for doubling of subject pronouns in the COMP position; in the example below, however, this appears to take place across an intervening segment: (23)

Gylfaginning (Faulkes 1982: 48) Kyks ne dauds naut-k-a ek alive-GEN neither dead-GEN benefited(lsg)-I(cl)-neg I Karls sonar Karl-GEN sons-GEN 'Either alive or dead, I have not benefited from Karl's sons.'

With this I wish to maintain that disjunctive echo — which in all the examples above takes place only on or across the COMP node, with or without attendant clitics — might indeed be a possibility. Indeed, examples such as (18b) and (19) above make this analysis all the more appealing. 2.6 Restrictions

on COMP

inflection

2.6.1 Restriction on 3sg. inflection Whereas pronoun cliticization onto COMP is generally restricted only by the phonological capacities of the dialects under consideration here, inflectional markers in COMP, without exception, are marked relative to the third person singular (default) inflection. Despite the considerable variation which exists in other aspects of this phenomenon (cf. section 2.6.2 below), the restriction on 3sg. inflection appears to be universal and no doubt is related to the nature of 3sg. inflection as the default. We know, for example, that 3sg. inflection often arises as the result of a default-specification rule, suggesting that its features are not present beyond a rather "surfacy" derivational level. This is evident in German, for example, in sentences with oblique or sentential subjects or in agentless passives: (24)

Default inflection a. Michfrier-t b. Den Kindern wurd-e geholfen c. Daß er zu spät kommt, wunder-t mich nicht

56

Michael

Getty

2.6.2 Distinctiveness

in

COMP-inflection

Aside from this restriction, there exists a looser requirement whereby inflectional markers in C O M P must allow, through morphological distinctiveness, for a minimal number of interpretations outside the Spechead configuration in which a subject is normally available to secure the interpretation of less distinct endings. Recall the verbal inflection paradigm for Bavarian: (25)

Bavarian sg· 1st kumm 2nd kummsd 3rd kummd

plkumma kummds kumma

Notice that in isolation, as when an inflectional marker is attached onto COMP, the Bavarian inflectional ending -a would be subject to differing interpretations. (26)

Inflectional ending

Possible interpretations

-fl

[Ipl·] [3pl·]

The interpretation of this element is secured, however, if it is c-commanded by a nominal element in [Spec, IP]. The case is different, in turn, with the second person inflectional endings. Outside of a Spec-head configuration, second person inflectional markers are subject to only one interpretation each: (27)

Inflectional ending -sd -ds

Possible interpretations [2sg.] [2pl.]

I propose that these endings are the only ones allowed onto Bavarian C O M P precisely because of their distinctiveness, a condition which holds equally true for the 2sg. ending which appears on C O M P in the Frisian examples discussed thus far. This condition is entirely congruous with Principle A of the Binding Theory, which normally applies to reciprocal and reflexive pronouns but allows us to capture this facet of C O M P inflection succinctly and in terms of pre-existing components of linguistic theory. Cross-linguistically, however, the criterion of maximal distinctiveness offers only a limited account of the restrictions on C O M P inflection.

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In the Dutch dialects under consideration here, the inflectional markers allowed on COMP correspond to lpl. and 3pl. and are not in themselves maximally distinctive. Consider the inflectional paradigm of South Hollandic: (28)

South Hollandic: komme 'to go' sgpl1st komm komme 2nd komt komt 3rd komt komme

Given that 3sg. inflection is never a candidate for affixation onto COMP, one sees that the affix -e is no more distinctive than the 2sg. and 2pl. -t\ each are subject to two interpretations. 7 Zwart (1993a: 161) cites data from Luxembourgish which may shed light onto this question. Luxembourgish appears to represent a middle point between the types of COMP inflection exhibited by Bavarian and Frisian on the one hand and the Dutch dialects on the other. Specifically, Luxembourgish COMP allows the 2sg. inflection ending -s. This ending is maximally distinctive in that it is not repeated elsewhere in the verbal inflection paradigm. (29)

Luxembourgish 2sg. COMP inflection ob-s du wells if-2sg. you want '...if you want'

However, this dialect also allows for what appears to be lpl. inflection, along the line of West Flemish and South Hollandic: (30)

Luxembourgish lpl. COMP inflection datt-e mir wellen that-lpl. we want 'that we want'

I wish to propose, then, that two distinct patterns of COMP inflection exist, with Luxembourgish occupying a hybrid state between them: (a) Bavarian and Frisian, for which the criterion of maximal distinctiveness applies, and (b) the Dutch dialects, which for reasons not entirely clear prefer the plural inflection in COMP. This latter fact relates no doubt to the relative poverty of Dutch verbal inflection paradigms in comparison to Frisian or German dialects.

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3. Conclusion We have seen that the COMP node in the languages under consideration here is host to two distinct phenomena: on the one hand, affixation of inflectional markers corresponding to the inflectional features of an embedded clause and on the other, cliticization and sometimes duplication of pronominal elements onto the COMP position. The conclusion that COMP can in fact be host to inflectional material brings up an interesting issue: is there some parametric variation between COMP-inflecting and non-COMP-inflecting dialects? It should be pointed out in this respect that aside from the presence of COMP inflection (and resultant phenomena such as pro-drop), the syntactic rules in the nonstandard dialects under consideration here do not differ in any crucial way from those of standard dialects (cf. Zwart [1993a: 164-172]), such that it would be illogical to assume any formal split in West Germanic based on the presence or absence of COMP inflection. Indeed, to posit such a formal split would bring us no further understanding of this phenomenon given its fairly random geographic and typological distribution within the West Germanic dialects. In addition, syntactic research in German and Dutch has long been aware of the close morphosyntactic relationship between complementizers and finite verbs. This relationship is characteristic of asymmetric verbsecond (V2) order, that is, disparate positions for finite verbs based on the presence of a lexical complementizer. In fact, the suggestion that inflectional features might be present on the COMP node itself has been present in the literature at least since Olsen (1985). Given these considerations, I wish to maintain, along with Zwart (1993b: 172) that the agreement features of embedded clauses are present on the COMP node in all West Germanic dialects which show asymmetric verb-second word order. Their overt realization, in turn, should be considered a sociolinguistic matter: it can be no accident that contemporary COMP inflection is attested only in nonstandard dialects. Indeed, Goeman (1980) indicates that COMP inflection is attested in Middle Dutch from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, at which time it dropped out of written documents, presumably to live on in various nonstandard dialects. Aside from these considerations, however, one must also confront the issue of a formal explanation of COMP inflection. Recent work by Zwart (1993a, 1993b) and Hoekstra and Maräcz (1989) has suggested that COMP inflection is the result of movement of a functional head, whether

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INFL or AgrS, to the COMP node. My own thinking on this issue has led me to lean towards yet another approach, the details of which I wish to sketch here briefly. My proposal draws on Anderson's (1993) work on verb-second and second-position clitics. Specifically, Anderson seeks to conflate these two phenomena by pointing out that both processes involve the realization of syntactic features with whole clauses in their scope. In the case of V2 languages, these involve tense, agreement, and often other verbal features such as aspect or mood. In a number of other languages, clitics which correspond to similar, clause-level features (such as subject/object agreement, tense, aspect, etc.) are consistently realized in second position, that is, as clitics affixed onto the first constituent or first phonological word of their clause. (31)

a. Ngiyambaa (Anderson 1993: 82) njuntu-ka-rna-ngku kuyu-ku yilya-mi you-PRES-1SUBJ-20BJ meat-JUS send-NONPAST Ί am sending you for meat.' b. Icelandic Ver köllu-d-um-st konungar we call-PAST-lpl-REFL kings 'We called ourselves kings.'

Out of these observations, Anderson postulates a universally available rule mandating the realization of a clause's "relational features" (encompassing features such as tense, mood, aspect, subject/object agreement, etc.) on some constituent in clause-second position, with no crucial requirements on the syntactic processes by which this realization comes about. The reasoning behind this approach is twofold. On the one hand, Anderson notes that movement-based accounts of V2 require a finite verb to move out of an underlying position in order to satisfy some set of morphological or syntactic requirements which usually lack independent motivation. 8 On the other hand, this approach relates to the observation that V2 order and second position clitics are attested in a number of widely distributed and largely or wholly unrelated languages, among them members of the Germanic family, Old French (Adams 1987), SerboCroatian (Progovac 1993), Kashmiri (Hook 1984), members of the Kru family spoken on the Ivory Coast (Koopman 1984), and in certain Austronesian languages (Warepiri, Ngiyambaa, cf. Anderson [1993]). According to Anderson's approach, V2 is the expression of the following

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universally available rule, only minimally different from the rule which encompasses second-position clitics: (32)

Anderson's rule of V2 (Anderson 1993: 86): Realize the inflectional features of a clause by (a) locating its first constituent and (b) copying the features of Tense, Mood, and Agreement onto a word immediately following this anchor point.

It is this context in which COMP inflection has particular relevance. Within an approach to V2 such as the one I have just outlined, the fact of V2 asymmetry in West Germanic dialects becomes difficult to handle. In other words, the verb-final or verb-later syntax of embedded clauses in these dialects might lead one to question the generality of Y2 as such a universally available and broadly general principle. Consider my conclusion, however, that the agreement features of an embedded clause are encoded into the COMP node in all asymmetric V2 languages (as the data from these COMP-inflecting dialects strongly suggest) and that their overt realization is constrained by sociolinguistic factors along with the grammatical principles I outlined above. If this is indeed the case, then I suggest that the presence of inflectional features in COMP, as demonstrated by COMP-inflecting dialects, might enable languages with V2 asymmetry to satisfy a positional constraint on the realization of agreement features in embedded clauses while preserving a structurally driven dichotomy between matrix and embedded clause word order. Notes 1. This project owes much of its present form to a number of people, most importantly to my West Flemish informant, Inge van der Cruysee. Heartfelt thanks go out as well to Henry Smith, C. Jan Wouter Zwart, Rex Sprouse, Michael Mudrow, and Monika Dressler. Any errors are of course my own. 2. Constraints on space warrant a restriction to a smaller number of COMP-inflecting dialects; see Zwart (1993a) for data from dialects not discussed here, including Brabantish, East Netherlands, the Groningen dialect, and Luxembourgish. 3. For West Flemish I have also relied both on Haegeman's data and on examples provided by my informant. Both speakers grew up in and around the city of Bruges: their dialects differ here only in the forms of the full pronouns. The examples printed in this paper adhere to the orthography and pronoun forms which my informant found preferable. 4. Zwart (1993a: 1 7 9 - 1 8 3 ) discusses data from East Netherlandic in which COMP inflection for a 1 pi. subject resembles only one of two verbal inflection markers to which a lpl. subject corresponds, depending on whether the subject precedes or follows the verb.

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5. Bayer (1984: 251) discusses examples from a dialect he labels "Upper Bavarian" in which sentences showing doubling of the 1 pi. pronoun appear licit: (i) (ii)

... daß-ma (mir) noch Minga fahrn Mir fahr-ma (*mir) noch Minga

In lieu of any other explanation, I take this pattern to be an instance of pronoun doubling on par with West Flemish, cf. section 2.5. 6. The -/-infix in this example is epenthetical (notice its absence in [16a]) and should not be mistaken for the 3sg. inflectional ending, as Zwart (1993b: 318) maintains. Haegeman (1990: 336) initially maintained that the underlying form of the complementizer 'that' in West Flemish was dat, whereby the final -t was deleted in all but intervocalic environments. Haegeman's later work on West Flemish (Haegeman 1992) seems to have departed from this viewpoint, holding da for the underlying form of the complementizer. My informant also insisted that da was preferable, the consonant-final form being seen as a sign of conformity to Standard Dutch. As Haegeman (1990: 338) points out, however, the presence of an underlying voiceless segment in dat does provide a satisfactory explanation for the initial devoicing of the 3sg. feminine clitic pronoun: (i) a. Full pronouns b. Clitic pronouns on C O M P 1st 2nd 3rd

sg. 'k gie ie/zie/'t

pi. wiender giender ziender

1st 2nd 3rd

sg-k

Pi-me

-j -jl-sel-'t

-j -ze

7. West Flemish presents an even greater puzzle, given the peculiar syncretism in the lsg. ending: (i)

West Flemish: goan sg1st goan 2nd goat goat 3rd

'to go' Pigoan goat goan

In this paradigm, the 2sg. and 2pl. form is the most distinctive, yet does not appear on COMP. 8. Anderson refers here to a number of stipulations in earlier approaches to Y2 within Government and Binding theory that the inflected verb move to C O M P in order, for example, (a) to act as a host for features such as tense and agreement thought to be structurally encoded onto the C O M P node or (b) to assign Nominative case to a preceding constituent in [Spec,CP]. See Weerman (1989: 3 3 - 4 3 ) for discussion. Recent advances in Minimalist Theory look somewhat more promising, though, in that V2 order seems to fall out from independent requirements on the structure of functional projections and the licensing of morphological features. Zwart (1993b: 3 2 2 - 3 2 8 ) contains a concise discussion of this approach.

References Adams, Marianne 1987 "From Old French to the theory of pro-drop", Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5: 1 - 3 2 . Anderson, Stephen 1993 "Wackernagel's revenge: Clitics, morphology, and the syntax of second position", Language 69: 6 8 - 9 8 .

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Bayer, Joseph 1984 "COMP in Bavarian syntax", The Linguistic Review 3: 209-274. Faulkes, Anthony (ed.) 1982 Snorra Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning. Oxford: Clarendon. Goeman, Ton 1980 "COMP-Agreement?", in: Wim Zonneveld (ed.), 291-300. Haegeman, Liliane 1990 "Subject pronouns and subject clitics in West-Flemish", Linguistic Review 7: 333-363. 1992 Theory and description in generative syntax. A case study in West Flemish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoekstra, Eric - Laszlo Maracz 1989 "On the position of inflection in West Germanic", Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax44: 75-88. Hook, Peter Edwin 1984 "Further observations on Kashmiri word order", in: Omkar Koul - Peter Edwin Hook (eds.), 133-142. Koopman, Hilda 1984 The syntax of verbs: from verb movement rules in the Kru languages to Universal Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris. Koul, Omkar - Peter Edwin Hook 1984 Aspects of Kashmiri linguistics. New Delhi: Bahri Publications. van der Meer, Geart 1991 "The 'conjugation' of subclause introducers: Frisian -st", North-Western European Language Evolution 17: 63 — 84. Olsen, Susan 1985 "On deriving V-l and V-2 structures in German", in: Jindrich Toman (ed.), 133-163. Progovac, Ljiljiana 1993 Serbian/Croatian clitics: Comp as the second position. Paper delivered at the Ohio State Workshop on Second Position Clitics. July 10, 1993. Toman, Jindrich 1985 Studies in German grammar. Dordrecht: Foris. Zonneveld, Wim - Fred Weerman 1980 Linguistics in the Netherlands. 1977-1979. Dordrecht: Foris. Zwart, C. Jan Wouter 1993a Dutch syntax: A minimalist approach. [Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Groningen.] 1993b "Verb movement and complementizer agreement", MIT Working papers 18: 297-341.

On the Old High German Medienverschiebung Kurt Gustav Gobiirsch

1. Introduction In the research on the High German consonant shift, the Tenuesverschiebung, or shift of the voiceless stops, has received a great deal of attention at the expense of the Medienverschiebung or shift of voiced stops. The shift of voiceless stops to affricates and spirants is arguably a much greater phonetic change than the shift of b, d, g to p, t, k. There is no agreement as to what the intermediate stages of the shift of the voiceless stops were: Do p, t, k first become aspirated? Did the spirants pass through a stage of affrication? If so, what phonetic mechanism is involved in the last stage of the process? Despite the seeming simplicity of the Medienverschiebung, the phonetic process involved is no more clear than that of the TenuesverSchiebung. Nor is its phonological content entirely clear. All that is known for certain are the New High German reflexes of Gmc. b, d, g; the rest is open to speculation. It is assumed that Germanic mediae have been shifted to fortes. But a complete shift to fortes is contradicted by the great variation in Old High German orthography and the reflexes in the modern High German dialects.

2. Two views of the

Medienverschiebung

According to the traditional view of the shift of voiced stops as expressed by Eduard Prokosch (1917) and William Moulton (1954; 1969), the Germanic mediae were shifted to fortes. Germanic b, d, g, which were presumably stops in Upper German before the shift, were first devoiced to voiceless lenes and then strengthened, selectively, to fortes. In descriptions of the shift by these and other linguists it is presumed that strengthening involves an increase in air pressure and tension. In fact, most take it for granted that consonant strength and consonant strengthening may be equated with air pressure and tension, without any general discussion of the terms fortis 'strong' and lenis 'weak'. Only Prokosch discusses in any detail what the actual phonetic mechanism of

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strengthening may be. But such features as air pressure and tension are of little use in phonological description. They are not readily perceived by the human ear and cannot even be measured instrumentally with consistency. They are not applicable to all languages with fortis/lenis opposition, let alone all Germanic languages. In Icelandic and Danish, aspiration is clearly the feature responsible for the fortis/lenis opposition, while higher tension is said to be characteristic of the lenis rather than the fortis stops (Bothorel-Witz — Petursson 1972; Fischer-Jorgensen 1966), which is contradictory. In Swedish and Norwegian a combination of features — voice, aspiration, and length - together constitute the difference between fortis and lenis (Goblirsch 1993). If one looks at Old High German orthography, one finds that Gmc. d is consistently written as < t > , while great variation in the representation of Gmc. b and g becomes readily apparent. Gmc. b is rendered and Gmc. g as . The spellings , which could indicate a shift to fortes, are relatively consistent in the oldest Upper German, i. e., Alemannic and Bavarian documents. A very few examples can give some idea of the situation. Compare the following from the "Benedictine Rule", an Alemannic text from the early ninth century: pirumes, pezzirun, kescribaw, tod, truhtines, fater, uuort; cot, kehuckan, eklisöm, pikinnun, taga and from 'Exhortatio ad plebem christianam", a Bavarian text also from the early ninth century: potöm, liupostun, häpen, capaupa\ truhtine, gaotes, uuorV, cotes, casezzit, gabete, sonatage, purgeo. In the East Franconian "Tatian" from the mid-ninth century, the Germanic voiced stops are spelled as in the modern literary language, with only d shifted to t: bist, bigriffun, scriben, lib', teta, zfti, fater, got, anaginne, gisahun, tagun. Most modern Upper German dialects, like most modern Middle German ones, have voiceless lenes in all word positions for Gmc. b, d, g, in so far as they have not been spirantized or lost. This is said to be the result of a reversal of the shift to voiceless stops. The reversal seems to be supported by the tenth-century Old High German manuscript tradition, and by the binnendeutsche Konsonantenschwächung, or German consonant lenition, whose exact date is open to question, but occurred sometime after open-syllable lengthening. The tenth-century reversal posits the return of p, k to b, g as in the following examples from the St. Gall scriptorium of Notker Labeo, covering the period from the late tenth to the early eleventh century: biten, habeta, urlub; geuualt, begondi, manige and from the "Prayer of Otloh", written in a Bavarian dialect in the mid-eleventh century: pist, bidurfti, giloubant, gib', guoti, gidult, chlagen, euuigin. The German lenition posits the weakening of t to d as part of a

On the Old High German Medienverschiebung

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general lenition of fortis obstruents. Compare transcriptions from a modern Swabian dialect däg 'Tag', rQch 'raten', grbdd 'Arbeit'. Some, like Moulton, concede that only OHG t was fortis and that the shift from Gmc. d is connected by a push chain mechanism to the change of Gmc. /> to a voiced stop, which is not part of the High German shift. The closure of spirant to stop is not reflected in the orthography of "Isidor" (Rhine Franconian?) from the late eighth century: dhaz, uuerdhant, dodh; only medially and finally in the East Franconian "Tatian" from the mid ninth century: thing, quedan, hold, but in all positions already in early Upper German documents like the "Benedictine Rule" (Alemannic, early ninth): daz, qhedan; and the "Exhortatio" (Bavarian, early ninth): daz, demo, quidit. The possible fortis character of OHG / may be reflected by the great consistency in the rendering of Gmc. d as < t > in most Upper German manuscripts and the value of < t > in the modern Hochsprache. Yet the Hochsprache is based on Theodor Siebs's replacement of the High German phonetic values with the Low German ones, which can give no testimony to Old High German pronunciation. Be that as it may, one may ask if the posited strengthening of d to t is part of the second consonant shift at all. Others, like Louis Hammerich (1955), argue that the result of the shift of voiced stops is voiceless lenes. Jean Fourquet (1954) saw the change as part of a Merkmalwechsel, or exchange of distinctive features. The opposition of voice was replaced by the opposition of aspiration: when the voiceless stops became aspirated, the voicing of the opposing series became superfluous and was lost. Voiceless p, t, k versus voiced b, d, g became aspirated ph, th, kh versus unaspirated p, t, k. The aspiration of the old voiceless stops would later lead to affrication and spirantization. As far as the simple Germanic voiced stops are concerned, no further change such as strengthening or aspiration need be assumed to explain their development in Old High German. The loss of phonological voice can also explain the shift of the Germanic geminated voiced stops to pp, tt, kk. They, too, have merely been devoiced, not strengthened.

3. The opposition of strength in Old High German The final result of the Old High German shift is, as Moulton (1954; see also Lerchner 1971: 146—148) points out, an obstruent system based primarily on the opposition stop/spirant, secondarily on tense/lax. But, partly for reasons mentioned earlier, I think that phonological length

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rather than tension is the secondary opposition among the obstruents in Old High German, at least in Upper German, and modern standard German (Goblirsch 1994). In most of modern Middle and Upper German, length is the only stable difference between fortis and lenis obstruents where they remain opposed. Voice is inconsistently present. It occurs sporadically and potentially only in intervocalic position in words like leben, baden, fragen. Aspiration in native words is largely restricted to initial unshifted Gmc. k- in words like Kind, kochen. The members of the fortis/ lenis opposition in Old High German are then not p, t, k and b, d, g, but rather, in general terms, the geminated and nongeminated obstruents. After the High German shift, stops and spirants occurred long and short in Upper German. Short stops appear in all positions, but were opposed to long (geminated) stops only in intervocalic position: sippa 'Sippe' / haben 'haben', bitten 'bitten' / biotan 'bieten', rucci 'Rücken' / sagan 'sagen'. Short spirants also appear in all positions and were opposed to long (geminated) spirants in medial and final position where the latter occurred following short vowels: offan 'offen' / släfan 'schlafen', ezzan 'essen' / bizan 'beißen', sahha 'Sache' / spräha 'Sprache'; seif 'Schiff' / släf 'Schlaf', haz 'Haß' / fuoz 'Fuß'. Unfortunately, we must rely on the length of the preceding vowel to determine the length of the Old High German final spirants derived from Gmc. p, t, k: long follows short and short follows long. While the result of the shift of voiceless stops was long spirants, they have generally been shortened following long vowels. Sequences of long vowel plus long consonant remain only in modern South Alemannia The assumption that final obstruents were always short (Moulton 1969; Lerchner 1971: 136-142) is based upon the fact that Old High German orthography does not double obstruents in final position. I believe that simple for Gmc. p, t, k stand for nongeminated consonants, and that in final position, they can represent long spirants, not only short ones. Fortis/lenis equals long/short in Old High German, as it does in modern standard German. Affricates, which I consider to be unit phonemes rather than clusters, also occurred in long and short variants. Short affricates appear initially, medially in postconsonantal position and finally, while the long (geminated) affricates appear only medially in intervocalic position, where Germanic geminated pp, tt, kk had been present. In contrast to stops and spirants, long and short affricates thus stand in complementary distribution in Old High German. The gemination of affricates was sometimes indicated in orthography. Compare the following spellings of affricates:

On the Old High German Medienverschiebung

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uuipphe, giscepphes, scepphion but scimphen, helphan; sezzen, hizza but smelzen, smerzan; pocches, decchan, zucchen but gidanchen, starche. Although the orthographic treatment is different for the dental affricate than for the labial and velar, it is the stop portion of each which was geminated in all three cases.

4. Changes related to the Medienverschiebung If the Medienverschiebung is viewed as the loss of relevant voice, which allows for optional voicing in a voiced environment, it can explain other changes posited for Old High German like the Spirantenschwächung, or spirant lenition. This so-called weakening of spirants is related to similar phenomena in the other old Germanic languages. Such a change in spirants is attested more consistently in modern Low German than in modern Middle and Upper German. It assumes the lenition of the Germanic spirants / , />, s to voiced lenes, which is reflected in the Upper German orthography only by the alternations , as in the following examples: faran/varan 'fahren', zuuifal/zuuival 'Zweifel', thuld.hu 'du', uuerthan/uuerdhan 'werden'. But < s > , the symbol representing the Germanic spirant that was probably more palatal than dental in character, remained in spelling, since was used for the new dental affricate and the new dental spirant; cf. sunu 'Sohn', bläsan 'blasen', wizzan 'wissen', daz 'daß'; zit 'Zeit', sizzan 'sitzen', skaz 'Schatz'. The spirant lenition must be considered a pseudochange. If voice has become irrelevant in Old High German, at least in Upper German, and fortis and lenis are equated with long and short in Old High German, then we begin with lenes and not fortes in this case; the simple Germanic voiceless spirants are already short. A close examination of Old High German orthography reveals what one would expect, if we are dealing with optional voice in a voiced environment: the change took place first and more often medially, following sonorants and in intervocalic position, later and less often initially. Another change to be reconsidered in light of the proposed evaluation of the shift of voiced stops, is the posited shift of Gmc. /> to d. Old High German scribes must have felt the need to differentiate Gmc. d and Gmc. f). Perhaps the difference was merely orthographic, so that if both sounds became voiceless lenis stops in Old High German, the old difference could at least be retained in orthography. Such a difference is generally maintained in New High German spelling, despite the fact that there is

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no difference between simple t and d in modern Middle and Upper German. They are both short, voiceless and unaspirated. Certainly it is desirable to avoid confusion in spelling, while context makes the difference in homonyms clear in conversation. Or, on the other hand, we may be dealing with phonetic difference between the sounds represented by OHG < t > and < d > . It is assumed that G m c . p was at first pronounced voiced after it became a stop in Old High German. Although it merged in the phoneme of the voiceless dental stop, its spelling may signify the possibility of irrelevant voice in a voiced environment. The phonological identity of OHG d and t may be reflected in the posited change of OHG d to / in certain instances. For the rare Germanic geminate pp it seems the regular reflex in High German is tt. OHG latta 'Latte' corresponds to ME lappe 'lath'. O H G smitta 'Schmiede' corresponds to OE smiööe 'smithy'. Gmc. pp thus merged in Gmc. dd, which had been devoiced with the other Germanic voiced stops. In southern Upper German there is also a strong, but sporadic tendency to what is called "initial strengthening" of OHG d to t. Some words have entered the modern standard in their "strengthened" form: Tausend (OHG düsunt), Traube (OHG drübä), for example. In Upper German there is great confusion in the treatment of words of this type, with d and t alternating from word to word and dialect to dialect. We are probably not dealing with phonological strengthening in this type, but rather a lack of any real difference in d and t. The reflection of phonetic differences in orthography is not unheard of. Herbert Penzl (1955) argued for the documentation of a phonetic alternation between lenis and semifortis allophones of phonological voiceless lenes in Notker's Anlautgesetz, or law of initial consonants. According to the law, initial stops are written after a pause or if they follow a final obstruent in sandhi, following a sonorant or vowel; cf. erdpüwo / himilbüwo, Ter bruoder / ünde des prüodor, Tes köldes / unde demo golde I ärdcöt fiurgot. Gmc. d is most commonly spelled < t > and it is generally not considered to take part in Notker's law, but < d > spellings do occur. Gmc. d appears as d following final η in sandhi, as it does within words in Notker's dialect: den däg, min deil, uuin drinchen. In the Psalms, < d > also appears for Gmc d following vowels: älliu dier, έϊηεω dohder. This evidence for Gmc. d is scant compared to the other stops, but it does seem there was some doubt about its status. Taken together with our other evidence on Gmc. d in Old High German, it does not seem that it was clearly distinct from Gmc. p. Rather than an alternation of strength, Notker's law may be an alternation of irrelevant voicing in a voiced environment in sandhi.

On the Old High German Medienverschiebung

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I would support such an interpretation not only for O H G dlt, but also for Middle High German Auslautverhärtung, or so-called final strengthening. By this law, medial b, d, g alternate with final p, t, k, as is exemplified by the following pairs: grabes/grap, tödes/töt, nigen/neic. The two most common interpretations are that the stops are actually strengthened in final position, or that phonological voiced stops are devoiced finally. But if voice is irrelevant in Middle High German and strength is equated with length, we seem to be dealing with a phonetic alternation of voice, determined by position: final consonants are generally voiceless, and medial consonants, which are mostly intervocalic, are generally voiced. There can be no question of strengthening except for southernmost Upper German. All three alternations - OHG dlt, Notker's law, and Middle High German final "strengthening" — may thus represent the orthographic formalization of an observed phonetic variation. Yet the exact content of these phonetic variations remains unclear. Finally, the supposed reversal of the shift of voiced stops to voiceless may be explained in terms of the proposed evaluation of the shift. If there was no strengthening involved in the Medienverschiebung, then we deal only with the loss of voice and its optional and sporadic presence. Why then, do we have a relatively consistent change in favor of < b > for < p > and for < k > in the late Upper German texts? One possible explanation is that the reversal is due to the influence of Franconian practices on the Alemannic and Bavarian scribes. Exceptions like < t > in all of Upper German and initial < p- > in Bavarian may also be attributed to scribal convention. If voice was irrelevant in the Upper German variants of Old High German, that would allow scribes to choose between p, t, k and b, d, g when representing the phonological voiceless lenes (short), which are opposed to the fortes (long). They could select letters from either series, following one convention or another, and still write unambiguously.

5. Conclusion While I cannot claim to have proven my hypothesis, I think that if we view the Medienverschiebung as the loss of phonological voice, rather than as the strengthening of the Germanic mediae, it can explain a great deal of the orthographic variation present in the Old High German texts. I also believe that we are seeing a consonant system in transition from the Old Germanic set of oppositions among stops, which is based on

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voice, to the new set of oppositions in Old High German, at least in Upper German, which is based primarily on manner of articulation, that is, stop/spirant/affricate, and secondarily on long/short. References Bothorel-Witz, Arlette - Magnus Petursson 1972 "La nature des traits de tension, de sonorite et d'aspiration dans le systeme des occlusives de l'allemand et de l'islandais", Travaux de l'Institut de Phonetique de Strasbourg 4: 277 — 356. Fischer-Jorgensen, Eli 1966 "Phonetic analysis of Danish stop consonants", Annual Report of the Institute of Phonetics (University of Copenhagen) 1: 31-33. Fourquet, Jean 1954 "Die Nachwirkungen der ersten und der zweiten Lautverschiebungen", Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung 22: 1—33. Gobiirsch, Kurt G. 1993 "Consonant lenition in the Scandinavian languages", Svenska landsmäl och svenskt folkliv: 7 - 1 7 . 1994 "Fortis and lenis in Standard German", Leuvense Bijdragen 83: 31-45. Hammerich, Louis L. 1955 "Worin besteht die hochdeutsche Lautverschiebung", Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 77: 165—203. Lerchner, Gotthard 1971 Zur II. Lautverschiebung im Rheinisch- Westmitteldeutschen. Diachronische und diatopische Untersuchungen. Mitteldeutsche Studien 30: Halle - Saale: Niemeyer. Moulton, William G. 1954 "The stops and spirants of Early Germanic", Language 30: 1—42. 1969 "The consonant system of Old High German", in: Melanges pour Jean Fourquet. 37 Essais de linguistique germanique et de litterature du moyen äge franfais et allemand. Paris: Klincksieck, 247-259. Penzl, Herbert 1955 "Zur Erklärung von Notkers Anlautgesetz", Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 86: 196—210. Prokosch, Eduard 1917 "Die deutsche Lautverschiebung und die Völkerwanderung", Journal of English and Germanic Philology 15: 1 —26.

Underspeciflcation and the Old High German monophthongization Wayne Harbert

1. The problem The monophthongization of Germanic *au —• δ in Old High German, illustrated in (1), may profitably be viewed as having taken place in two steps. First, the final element of the diphthong was lowered by a contextdependent sound change, yielding the intermediate stage ao which is arguably attested, as in (2).1 This was followed by the raising of the initial element of the diphthong, possibly, as suggested by van Coetsem (1975), by way of a general rule which also effected the changes listed in (3): ai —• ei, ee ('e 2 ') —» ie, oo —+ uo, etc., as well as au —» ou in non-monophthongization environments. (1)

The Old High German monophthongization (Braune) a. *raud- —• röt (also töd, stöj + an, kös, bön + α, hör + en, etc.) b. *hauh + ο —1• höh + ο (also zöh, etc.) c. *fraw frö (also strö, possibly also dröa, clöa, etc.)

(2)

Vowel lowering: au —* ao (Cf. Braune) fraono (Exhortatio) haoh (Abrogans) laosa (Hildebrandslied)

(3)

Vowel raising (van Coetsem) ao —1• oo fraono —»fröno au —• ou hlaufan —• loufan oo —1• uo ee —• ie ae —• ee

Of concern in the present paper will be the unusual and much-discussed context of the first of these changes — the lowering of au —• ao. This lowering occurred, according to the handbooks, in front of Germanic h, 'dental' (or, more accurately, anterior coronal) consonants (d, t, # 2 j , s, n, r, I), and in morpheme-final position (/ ). In modern analy-

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ses, it has typically been treated as an instance of assimilation to segmental place features, in which the u of au is lowered to ο by way of approximating some place feature of the following consonant. (Cf. Williams 1970, Vennemann 1971). This is an assumption which they share with earlier accounts, as noted in Penzl (1947). It is also widely assumed to be half of a more general change, which also resulted in *ai —» el Ger3 manic h, r and w. Given apparent differences in their environments, however, it is not completely clear to what extent a conflation of the two is in fact tenable. I will return to this aspect of the problem below. While the proposals for au —* δ as an assimilation have typically been quite ingenious, they are in some respects unsatisfying. Beyond the question of what set of segmental features, common to all and only h and coronals, could make them a phonetically natural environment for assimilatory lowering, there is also the problem that lowering in the final envi# ronment, / , is clearly not an assimilation to place features. Durrell (1977) suggests a different approach, closer to the one advanced here, which addresses this problem. He surmises that the lowering may have taken place as a "spontaneous" across-the-board change, which was not triggered by /h/ and coronals, but rather simply blocked by the complement of those consonants — that is, by non-coronals. His account resembles the others mentioned, though, in assuming that this blocking effect is related to the particular place features of the blocking consonants. It is therefore similarly problematic, since there seems to be no connection between the effect of the rule and the particular place features of the blocking consonants from which such blocking effects would follow in a phonetically natural way.4 Rauch (1973) recognizes the possible involvement of supersegmental phonology in the process, but satisfactorily reconciling both its non-segmental and apparent segmental environments becomes possible, in my view, only with the introduction of the concept of underspecification into phonological theory.

2. A new proposal Under the alternative proposed here, I will claim that the lowering which constitutes the first stage in the monophthongization of au is not an assimilation to segmental place features. Nor is it an instance of "passive assimilation", in which an across-the-board change is blocked by the assimilatory influence of such features. It is, rather, a process whose environment is defined at a higher level in the phonological architecture. It

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takes place, in particular, only when the u of the diphthong is associated with the rightmost place-feature specification in the morpheme. Under this approach, *fraw —* frö, as in (lc), represents the basic case. Lowering takes place because the vowel, being final, is linked to the rightmost place specification in the morpheme. 5 Non-assimilatory, positionally determined vowel lowerings of this type are not uncommon crosslinguistically. They are, for example, represented in Japanese, as in (4a), where the diphthong au is monophthongized in morpheme-final positions when not followed by a homorganic vowel. The latter condition bears an interesting resemblance to a restriction on the Old Saxon monophthongization, as we will see. (4)

a. Japanese monophthongization (Osaka dialect: John Whitman, personal communication) *mau moo 'hair' kaw + u —• kau 'buy (impf.)' kaw + ta —> koota 'bought (pf.)'

Within Germanic, positionally determined lowerings are also apparently represented in the Long Vowel Lowering of Gothic, as discussed by Vennemann (1971), in which long vowels are lowered syllable-finally when followed by a vowel as in (4b), without regard to the place features of that vowel. (4)

b. Gothic long vowel lowering (Vennemann (1971) stöjan [stöjan] ~ stauida [stöida] ~ staua [stöa] (mana)-seps [seOs]: saian [ssan] ~ saiip [sei0]

Within Old High German proper, such a positionally determined lowering is reflected in the change of final w to ο in non-monophthongization contexts in such alternations as (4c). This change can possibly be united with the lowering in monophthongization contexts, under the account being developed here (see note 9). (4)

c. garo ~ gar(a)wes kneo ~ knew es

The apparent conditioning effect of -h and coronals in the Old High German monophthongization, I claim, is not the result of a particular place feature specification which they share, but is due rather to their shared lack of specification for place features at the level in the phonological representation on which vowel lowering is defined. Because of their

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underspecification with respect to place-node features they are, in effect, invisible for the purpose of computing the position of the vowel; the underlying diphthongs in (la) *raud • röt, and (lb) *hauh • höh-, accordingly count as rightmost within the morpheme, too, and lowering applies in them for the same reason that it does in frö. This interpretation of the role - or rather, non-role - of h and dentals in the process is supported, as I hope to demonstrate, by independent evidence within Old High German as well as by results emerging from the investigation of consonant underspecification across languages. 6 The invisibility of /h/ is the result of the fact that, as a glottal fricative, it has no oral place features. Place-node underspecification in this instance is argued for by Clements (1985), Sagey (1986), Steriade (1987), and, most recently, by Stemberger (1993), and is by now widely accepted. The large literature on the transparency of glottal consonants to feature spreading is summarized in Stemberger's article. In the case of the dentals, I adopt the view, argued for at length by Paradis and Prunet (1989; 1991), that coronals are also unspecified for a place node in underlying representation, the value [+ coronal] being a default value. It is this lack of specification, according to Paradis and Prunet, which accounts for the differences in transparency between coronal and non-coronal consonants for the purposes of feature-spreading processes such as vowel place-node spreading in several West African languages. This coronal transparency is illustrated in the harmony between suffix vowels in Fula, as in (5), just where there is an intervening coronal: (5)

suudiima 'he hid' suudooto 'it is he who is hiding' suudeete 'it is he who is being hidden' jolf-o-(do) 'Wolof (sg.)' jolf-u-be 'Wolof (pi.)' *jolfebe

Such transparency is in fact only one piece of the abundant evidence for underspecification of coronals; the reader is referred to the papers in the volume edited by Paradis and Prunet (1991) for fuller documentation. Possible independent evidence for the transparency of coronals and /h/ in Old High German as well is provided by their similar apparent invisibility for a type of vowel-feature spreading in some dialects of that language, as seen in the well-known contrast between Old Upper German (6a) and (6b) on the one hand and (6c), (6d) on the other.

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ö-umlaut of *eu —• eo (io) (Braune) a. b. c. d.

Old Upper German *leug—" liug-u: liug-an *kleub—• chliub-u: cliub-an *beud- —'• biut-u: beot-ames *teux- —ι• ziuh-u: zioh-an

Old Frankish liug-u: liog-an kliub-u: kliob-an [same as Old Upper German] [same as Old Upper German]

The final element of the *eu diphthong in (6c) is lowered under the influence of the following low vowel across a coronal consonant, and in (6d) lowering takes place across Germanic /h/. Lowering is blocked, on the other hand, by a non-coronal consonant intervening between the diphthong and the low vowel, as in (6a) and (6b). The apparent parallel with West African vowel harmony as reported in Paradis and Prunet, suggests again that the salient phonological property of coronals and /h/ is precisely their lack of visibility for V—V assimilations, which may then be assumed to operate under conditions of strict V—V adjacency, in accordance with the Locality Condition of Archangeli and Pulleyblank (1987). Archangeli and Pulleyblank propose that all feature speading proceeds under strict adjacency between the participating segments. Apparent operation at a distance, over intervening phonological material, results from the fact that the satisfaction of the adjacency condition may be assessed by scansion of tiers relatively high up or relatively low down in the phonological tree, resulting, in effect, in the invisibility of elements introduced on tiers not dominated by the scanned tier. (7)

Partial geometry of phonological features: Syllable Rime Nucleus CV-Skeleton Root Node

Place Node This characterization of consonantal transparency in terms of the level of scansion yields in principle a rather constrained typology of such effects.7 If scansion takes place on the syllable nucleus tier, for example, only vowels will be represented, and all consonants will be transparent to the computation of V—V adjacency. Such nucleus-level scansion appears to be reflected in the operation of α-umlaut in Frankish Old High

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German, where the assimilation in question takes place in (6a) and (6b) as well as (6c) and (6d), i.e., where all consonants are transparent to aumlaut. In Old Upper German, scansion apparently takes place on a lower level, allowing consonantal nodes to be visible, so long as they are not null - that is, so long as they dominate place features in underlying representation. Accordingly, all and only consonants with an underlying place specification block feature spreading in Upper German. 8

3. Some extensions of the hypothesis This account of the monophthongization of au, under which h and coronals are united precisely by their lack of underlying place specification, has a number of possible merits. Besides uniting the fro case of (lc) with the other cases, it has the advantage of making the Old High German monophthongization appear not entirely unlike the corresponding monophthongization in Old Saxon, illustrated in (8), which was clearly an across-the-board development, not an assimilation to segmental features of following consonants. (8)

Old Saxon monophthongization a. au —• δ *laun —*• lön *laus —ι• lös *auk —• ök (OHG ouh) *baum —• böm (OHG bourn) *frau —• frö (But: hauwan, skauwon) b. ai — os coh +

'front' (cf. a.phi 'front' [subjective]) ot—ι 'clothes' (cf. o.sun 'as for the clothes') h ko —• cot—ι .k o 'good and' (cf. co.hu.ni 'as it is good') ap—i

As Iverson notes, this development is readily explicable only under the assumption that delinking of Ihl from its manner features leaves it entirely featureless, since it has no place specification, and that the unmarked values [+ coronal] and [— continuant] are assigned to it by default. Crucial to this account are the claims that (a) Ihl is not independently specified for place and (b) that [+ coronal] is a default place value. The view that [coronal] is the default place specification in Korean is amply supported by other evidence. I refer the reader to Iverson for details. This view is further strengthened by the behavior of heterosegmental cluster reduction in Korean, as discussed in Han (1992). Korean disallows clusters in coda positions. If you add a vowel-initial suffix to a root with an underlying final cluster, the second consonant in the cluster becomes the onset of the following syllable, as in (12a), satisfying this condition on codas. (12)

a.

kaps-i

—> kap-si

'price-nominative'

However, where the added suffix is consonant-initial, this resolution is impossible, and one consonant of the resultant CCC sequence must be deleted to avoid coda clusters. As the examples in (12b) through (12g) show, which segment is deleted depends on whether the final consonant

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of the root cluster is a non-coronal, on the one hand, or a coronal or h, on the other. When the root-final consonant is an underlying h or coronal, it is the one which deleted, as in (12b), (12c), (12d), (12e). (12)

b. c. d. e.

kaps-to —• mks-to —ι• anc-ta —>• alh-ta —

kapt'o ndkt'o ant'a altha

'price too' 'soul too' 'to sit' 'to be ill'

On the other hand, non-coronal final consonants are retained and the leftmost member of the cluster is deleted, as in (12f-12g). (12)

f. palp-ta —>• papt'a g. talk-to —• takt'o

'to tread on' 'chicken too'

Han's account derives this asymmetry too from the underlying placelessness of coronals and /h/, and their resultant invisibility in the mapping of consonants onto codas. The details of the analysis are not so important for present purposes as the fact that this deletion process, which is also obviously defined on supersegmental levels of structure where specific place features ought not to be of relevance, classes /h/ and coronals together. I propose that these segments pattern together in Old High German for the same reason that they pattern together in Korean — not because of any phonetic commonality, but because of lack of place-node specification in abstract representation. Finally, Stemberger (1993) observes that /h/ and coronals pattern alike - and distinct from non-coronals - in the phonologies of some firstlanguage acquirers of English with respect to a cluster-breaking epenthesis rule. Briefly, hi is obligatorily inserted in the speech of his subjects at word juncture between a final consonant and a non-coronal initial consonant, but not between a word-final consonant and an initial coronal or /h/. The similarity of this case to the Menomini cluster condition should be clear. 10

4. Some historical considerations In the final portion of this paper, I will attempt to show that the present account is consistent with a parsimonious interpretation of the Old High German evidence. An economic construal of this evidence might include, first of all, the assumption that the monophthongization belongs to the earliest period of attestation, since this is consistent with a straightfor-

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ward interpretation of the occasional early au spellings in monophthongization contexts which are listed in Schatz. 11 Second, it would include the position that Germanic /h/, originally a velar fricative, as evidenced by its participation in Verner's Law alternations with /g/, had become a glottal fricative in onset positions — that is, intervocalically as well as initially, at least by the earliest period of attestation. A variety of evidence suggests that this was the case. First of all, as Braune notes, /h/ is omitted intervocalically with some frequency even in quite early documents, as in (13a—13e). (13)

a. b. c. d. e.

höl{for höhl) (Interlinear Hymns) kisiit (for kisihit) (Benediktinerregal) see (for sehe) (Junius Glosses) höistan (for höhistan) (Tatian) höan (for höhan) (Tatian)

Such omission is much more readily imaginable if /h/ is phonetically a glottal fricative at this time than if it is an oral fricative with place features. The velar fricatives resulting from the High German consonant shift, for example, were not omitted in this way, with only rare exceptions (though these of course were geminate from the beginning). As illustrated in the writing systems of Greek and Old Irish, for example, the glottal fricative is often not given salient representation in orthographic practice. Braune concludes from such omission that /h/ was in fact a glottal fricative in postvocalic syllable onset positions as well as word-initial onset positions even in the earliest Old High German, and I see no reason not to agree with this assessment. Especially telling are such cases as (13a), (13d), where the missing /hi is the trigger, so to speak, of monophthongization. If we also adopt the traditional view that the monophthongization itself belongs to the period immediately before these early documents, separated from them by a matter of decades, then there is very little time for a scenario in which /h/, still an oral fricative of some sort (though not velar any longer), triggered monophthongization and only then became a glottal fricative, subject to omission. Considerations of parsimony, as well as chronology, weigh against such a scenario. The alternative assumed here — that monophthongization took place in front of glottal /h/ in these contexts — is at least as likely. Further evidence that intervocalic /h/ was simply a glottal fricative at a very early date is provided by the fact that orthographic h occurs from the earliest time as an inorganic hiatus breaker in verba pura. This is found already in the manuscripts of the Abrogans glossary, at the very

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beginning of attested Old High German — for example, arplahanti, anaplahit, kitrahit. Again, as Braune notes, this development is more plausible under the view that postvocalic onset /h/ had become a glottal fricative. Adopting this view, we may surmise that it is used here (as well as in its non-etymological occurrences in initial position) to represent prevocalic glottal stops, and that this practice was made possible by the fact that it already stood for a glottal consonant in these contexts. From this, we may reasonably conclude that the intervocalic /h/ in front of which monophthongization occurred in such cases as in (14a) was indeed already a glottal fricative, and that therefore glottal [h] was an environment for monophthongization, as the present analysis requires. (14)

a. höho

The most challenging empirical problem is that postvocalic Old High German /h/ from Germanic /h/ also triggered monophthongization even when it occurred in codas, for example, in final position, as in (14b), in spite of the fact that the evidence from both Old High German orthography and reflexes in the modern language suggests that it was not phonetically a glottal fricative here. (14)

b. höh, zöh

In fact, it was most probably still a velar fricative. It started out as one and at some point, it did merge phonetically in these environments with the velar fricative resulting from the High German consonant shift. There seems to be no compelling reason not to suppose that this merger followed directly the Old High German consonant shift. This is the conclusion of Penzl (1974). As Braune notes, for example, the two fricatives are nowhere distinguished in spelling. Even so, only the velar fricatives from Germanic /h/ in coda position, not those from Germanic /k/, constituted an environment for monophthongization. The differential behavior of the two ultimately indistinguishable consonants in this regard is a problem for the position that phonetic assimilation to place features is involved in the monophthongization - unless we assume a very early, pre-consonant-shift date for the vowel lowering (as does Penzl [1947]).12 This dilemma does not arise under the present account, however. We note that the inherited Old High German final /h/ was phonologically distinct in Old High German from the /x/ that arose from /k/, even if we assume that they had merged phonetically. The former alternated with the intervocalic glottal fricative [h], as in the reconstructed paradigm in (15):13

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a. Archaic Old High German b. Phonetic c. Morphophonemic

*hauh: [haux] lhauhl

*hauhes [hauh-es] Ihauh-esl

Relating the two forms in (15a) requires that we set the root-final fricative up uniformly as /h/ in systematic phonological representation in both of them. *[haux] will therefore be underlying /hauh/, as in (15c). Since monophthongization is sensitive only to underlying place nodes, under the present analysis, and since /h/ has no underlying place node, the u of the diphthong will count as morpheme final in both of the forms in (15c), and will accordingly lower. We need then to assume a phonetic realization rule associating the glottal fricative with a velar place feature in coda position, to derive the surface form [haux] of (15b).

5. Conclusions Finally, of course, Old High German also exhibited monophthongization of ai —* e / h, r, w, *. Illustrations of this event are presented in (16a). (16)

a. ai > e / h, r, w, * b. ai —• ei elsewhere

zeh, er, mero, sewes, hleo, se, we beij, steig, teil, hleib, stein

The two monophthongizations overlap in occurring in final position (we, se), so (16a) has some non-segmental environments. However, it differs from au —• δ in that it is blocked in the environment of dentals as well as labials and velars. Besides /hi, it occurs only in the context of /r/ and /w/. Because of these differences, I see no way at present of extending my account for au —* δ to cover this development as well. I rather suspect, along with Durrell (1977), that the monophthongization in (16a) is not a unitary event, but a conflation of a positionally determined lowering and a separate assimilatory change. Note, for example, the similarity of the hlr environment to the environment for the clearly assimilatory Gothic breaking. I refer the reader to Durrell's paper for some illuminating discussion. However, the present analysis does make possible the expression of certain other generalizations. By way of summary, these are the following: 1. Within Old High German proper, it provides a way of tying together the development of fro with the other instances of monophthongization

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of au, in a way which is not possible if these other instances involve assimilation of place features. 2. It allows us to relate the Old High German and the Old Saxon monophthongization to each other, in a way that is not possible if the former is an assimilation of place features while the latter is an across-the-board change. Under the present account, the difference between them can be as simple as an (independently needed) parametrization on the level of scansion, and therefore the degree to which operations on vowels have access to information about consonantal structure. 3. Finally, it provides a basis for relating the common patterning of /h/ and coronals in the case of Old High German au ö to their common patterning in the CV-phonology of other languages, where it is clearly their lack of specification which unites them. Notes I am grateful to Abby Cohn, Antony Green, Jeong-Im Han, Jay Jasanoff, Denise Meyer, and Draga Zee for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. All errors of fact and analysis are my own. 1. There is another possible interpretation of this spelling, as representing a long lax mid back vowel, i.e., [5]. Cf. Penzl (1947). 2. Exceptional occurrences in other environments are listed in Braune, and discussed in Rauch (1973). Most of the forms listed in (lc) also have double forms with au/ou. Nonmonophthongization of au in final position also appears in gau, tau, blou, kou, where I will assume, following Penzl (1947) that it was blocked by a following semi-vowel (e.g., *glauw), from Siever's Law, subsequently deleted. For differing views, see the references cited in Penzl. For a discussion of why the semivowel should block monophthongization, see the discussion of the Old Saxon monophthongization below. For a discussion of the alternation of u with uu in Old High German, see Schatz (1907: 9 6 97). We may assume, following Schatz, that clöa, dröa, next to clawa, draw a are built on old affixless nominatives, in which the w was final, undergoing monophthongization on that account, and that the monophthong was generalized from there. Monophthongization would not have taken place directly in, for example, drawa, since syllabification would result in the semivowel being syllable-initial, not final. 3. And possibly in their date, though this is a matter of interpretation of the spelling; cf. Penzl (1947). 4. The vowel lowering would seem to be a change with respect to the feature [diffuse], which does not affect the value [+ grave]. However, what unites the blocking consonants is precisely their shared specification for [+ grave], 5. Denise Meyer (personal communication) has suggested to me that rather than lowering, we might view this change as involving the delinking of the place features of the vowel. Losing its specification [+ high], it would emerge as a mid vowel by default. (Cf. Yu [1992] for arguments that /o/ is unspecified for height in Modern German.) This interpretation would make the final lowering here more like other well-known instances of feature neutralization on the right periphery of syllables.

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6. For a review of the various versions of underspecification theory, I refer the reader to Archangeli (1988), Paradis and Prunet (1989). 7. In fact, the typology they propose is too constrained, it would seem, to account for variation in the present instance, given their phonological tree in which [high] is dominated by a Secondary Place node under the Place node. They allow two possibilities: under Maximal Scansion, the Nucleus Tier - being the highest tier dominating [high] - would be scanned, and all consonants should be invisible. Under Minimal Scansion, the Secondary Place node - the minimal tier dominating [high] - would be scanned, and consonantal place features would again be invisible since they are dominated by the Place Node tier. To account for consonantal blocking effects, we must assume that processes affecting [high] can also be assessed by scansion on the Place Node tier. 8. A similar asymmetry in transparency between coronals/A and noncoronals is found in Old Norse. See Rauch (1973), Vennemann (1972) for discussion. 9. In fact, it is not clear that the characterization given by Braune and others of the process in (9a) as an instance of α-umlaut, is necessarily correct. In view of final lowering in such forms as kneo, it may be that lowering, for example, in beotan was not triggered by the following vowel, but was a simply another positionally determined lowering of the κ to ο when it was morpheme final, with the level of scansion again determining whether no consonant, or only [ - coronal] consonants, counted for the purpose of that calculation. Accordingly, it is imaginable that this change could be conflated with the monophthongization of au —» δ, as well as the lowering of u — p, t, k in word final position) seems to have been a change from weak consonants to strong ones, for after these new p, t, k only old p, t, k were allowed by Notker's Law, but Auslautverhärtung spread far to the north, and north of the Swabian dialects the status of consonant strength becomes unclear, though the progress of the Second Consonant Shift testifies to the partial victory of distinctive strength over distinctive voice. An additional difficulty consists in the fact that in modern Alemannic dialects both weak and strong consonants are allowed word-finally and that in northern German word-final devoiced stops are not always identical with old voiceless p, t, k. In Notker's dialect, after a pause only strong stops were allowed. Initial strong consonants were hardly lengthened, but some physical correlate of strength existed; perhaps it was tenseness. Consequently, an isolated word — insofar as it began with and ended in a stop - had a strong stop in both positions, which suggests that in the opposition weak ~ strong, weak consonants were marked. It is not too risky to assume that at the time of apocope Alemannic consonants were opposed as weak ~ strong. This conclusion is probably also valid for Bavarian and Swabian. Vowel lengthening in monosyllables is connected with either weak postvocalic consonants or lenition of strong consonants. We will now cast a glance at modern dialects, paying special attention to what dialectologists say about consonant strength, type of contact (,Silbenschnitt), and syllable division. Vetsch (1910: Sections, 33, 156, 159, 165-166; Appenzell), spellbound by Sievers's classification of syllables, searched for the usual "accents" and stated that the syllable division in ba-dd 'bathe', Ιξ-sd 'read', ha-fd 'port, haven', i-m 'in(side)' (= baden, lesen, Hafen, herein) presupposed -

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to a certain extent (! "einigermaßen") — free contact. In the intervocalic position, strong (long) resonants can alternate with weak ones: cf. namms 'name', tsämrm 'together', sQmmsr 'summer', himrml 'sky' (= Name, zusammen:, Sommer, Himmel) ~ mäm 'remind', häns 'faucet' (= mahnen, (Faß)hahn). Strong η occurs in words with shortened long vowels and diphthongs and in sandhi: cf. sinm 'seem', änmr 'one (person)', ann-are 'on her' (as opposed to an-smm 'on him') (= scheinen, Einer, an ihr, an ihm). Vetsch's book was the first in the series of volumes on the German dialects of Switzerland, and its format exercised some influence on the subsequent contributions. Other Swiss dialectologists also register free contact in words like ba-ch (after a short vowel) and mä-m (after a long vowel); see the statement to this effect in Henzen (1927: 31). Some scholars go so far as to say that in their area free contact reigns supreme, with close contact being relegated to a few special positions (Wipf 1910: 18; Stucki 1917: 36). Geminated sonorants between vowels are among the most typical features of Swiss German dialects; geminated obstruents are also common. Meinherz (1920: 34) noted the absence of geminates in his area as a peculiar phenomenon. It is usually mentioned as something to be expected that geminates are ambisyllabic (cf. also Najdic [1976: 159]), but the authors of dialectological descriptions often state that in words with a strong (or half-strong) intervocalic consonant and close contact (the two naturally go together) the point of syllable division lies immediately after the vowel. Meinherz (1920: 33) gives the following transcriptions: ga-fd 'gape' (= gaffen), ma-hd or ma-xa 'make' (= machen), we-h 'wish', v. (= wollen), kha-pd 'cap, hood' (= Kappe), la-td 'lath' (= Latte), sö-pfd 'draw water' (= schöpfen), nu-tss 'use' sb. (= Nutzen). Hausenblas (1914: Section 26) writes be-düx 'sheet' (= Bettuch), etc. Kauffmann (1890: Section 42) states as something needing no proof that in Swabian, intervocalic consonants, whether weak or strong, as well as consonantal groups, always go over to the second syllable. He writes: ro-kd 'rye' (= Roggen), bäe-ni Ί am' (= bin ich), mi-tnäxt 'midnight' (= Mitternacht), to the surprise of Fischer (1891: 409). Beck (1926: Sections 86, 88, 90) makes the expected remark that High German, in contradistinction to Low German, has no Schallgrenzen, but only Druckgrenzen. In his area (near Basel), all syllables are allegedly open: rö-ds 'advise' (= raten), like bfa-ηε 'pan' (= Pfanne), bri-ηε 'bring' (= bringen), and o-fe 'open' (= offen). Similar forms turn up all the way across Swabia, and go as far north as Trier: cf. klo-psn 'knock' (= klopfen)·, Fuchs (1903: Section 28) explicitly calls ρ in klo-psn strong.

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Steinhauser (1961: 174) recalls the time when in the dialect of Vienna Ofen 'oven' and offen 'open' were pronounced ö-fm and of-fm respectively. The same was true of words with intervocalic ss, ss, and xx. The strong consonants were rather short (shorter than their counterparts in Italian and in the Tyrol dialect) but ambisyllabic. In the sixties of the twentieth century, young people pronounced offen with the whole of the fricative in the second syllable ( o - f f m or ö-ffm), so that f f no longer started on the dynamic peak but rather attenuated slowly. Marga Reis (1974: 100-101) discusses Gustav Burghauser's (1891) attempt to represent Middle High German words offen 'open', ejjen 'eat', mischen 'mix', rispe 'panicle', rüstic 'sprightly', katje 'cat', sache 'thing', rücke 'back', rippe 'rib', tropfe 'fool', klette 'burdock' ( = offen, essen, mischen, Rispe, rüstig, Katze, Sache, Rücken, Rippe, Tropf, Klette) as o-ffen, etc., with the syllable boundary after the vowel. She does not deny this syllabification for Modern High German (obd. Sprechweise; 1974: 100) and only points out that even with Burghauser's assumption lengthening in open syllables remains partly unexplained and doubts that modern conditions can be projected into the past. In historical phonetics, we are less concerned with syllables than with the units in which certain events happen. A speaker of Old Germanic could probably divide *bin-dan after n, but the locus of accents and sound changes was bind-, not bin-, and this is what we really want to know. In a living language, words fall into syllables, which means that syllables are like short words. At the very least, a syllable must be pronounceable. Kurylowicz suggested that a syllable should be like a potential word of the language. His idea has never been discussed by specialists in prosody, and my defense of it (see Liberman 1990a: 1 - 7 ; 1990b: 154-156; 1992a: 7 7 - 7 8 ; 1994: 2 3 7 - 2 4 0 ) has met with steady opposition. However, the main argument I hear from my opponents is that if we consistently apply Kurylowicz's rule to various languages, many traditional analyses will have to be revised. I believe that such a revision will only improve them. In light of Kurylowicz's rule, both ba-ch (baden) and ma-xd (machen) look odd, for no area in Germanic has preserved words like bä and mä (that is, monosyllables ending in short vowels). Vetsch (1910: Section 64) notes that only unstressed pronouns and calls to animals (bi bi for chickens, tsi tsi for cats) have the structure of CV. The same is probably true of any Germanic dialect, and in German, CV words did not exist even a thousand years ago. It follows that the stressed syllables ba-, ma-, ro-, klo-, etc., should be dismissed as unpronounceable and unacceptable; they are equally improbable before weak and before strong consonants.

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Those who posited such syllables wanted to emphasize (as it appears) the difference between southern and northern (Standard) German on the one hand and between southern German and, for example, Italian. They warned readers against equating Swabian Roggen and northern German Roggen (the latter has close contact and ambisyllabic short g) or with Italian brocco 'pitcher' (the Italian word has ambisyllabic geminated /k/). In similar vein, they warned us against equating Swiss bade(n) and northern German baden, with its free contact and long vowel. They mistook their message: they thought they were speaking about syllabification, but they meant to direct our attention to the lack of the correlation of syllable cut in their dialect, even though they described their dialects in terms of Sievers's "accents". Hotzenköcherle (1934: 55) was perhaps closer to the truth than his predecessors when he gave up syllabification as hopeless. But he, too, kept viewing syllables with strong consonants as having stark (he actually said scharf) Silbenschnitt. Words like bäde(n) (with weak d) and Latte (with strong t), as they are pronounced in Switzerland, are disyllabic but they cannot be divided into bä-ch, lä-ta without impairing the shape of bä-, lä-, which, if a pause were made after them, would become bä- and lä-.) Whether the strong consonant t in lä-td is longer than weak d in bäch or more tense or more aspirated, or all of the above, it is clear that strength should sometimes be separated from gemination even when we deal with the intervocalic position. In some dialects, intervocalic strong consonants are ambisyllabic; strength in them is indistinguishable from length. For example, Abegg (1913: 10) syllabifies lä-bd 'live' (= leben) and huf-fa 'heap' (= Haufen with ü < ü). Urseren (Abegg's dialect) has an advanced prosodic system. At an earlier stage, läbd and huffs must have sounded läbd (with short ce and weak b) and hufa (with short or long u and strong, nongeminated f ) . Stickelberger (1881: 13, 17) made an attempt to distinguish three classes of consonants — weak, strong, and geminated — but failed. He noted that strong consonants were invariably geminated between vowels even after long vowels, though in all the other positions they remained short, and that a geminate must have a syllable boundary inside it, while a strong consonant before another consonant (as when it arises by Winteler's Law) and in word-final position is tautosyllabic. A geminate appears to be another name for a strong consonant between vowels (cf. Heusler 1888: Sections 35-37); in such a case, one does not need a special term for a particular manifestation of consonant strength. Carl Bopp

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(1890: 20) was justified in rejecting the term "geminate" (at least for stops) if gemination and strength presupposed one another. Instrumental phoneticians (Dieth and Brunner 1943) shed no new light on the problem. But as we have seen, the whole of a strong consonant may belong to the second (unstressed) half of a disyllabic word. It is only to differentiate systems in which intervocalic strong consonants are ambisyllabic from systems in which they are tautosyllabic that we may juxtapose geminated and nongeminated strong consonants; however, no dialect will have more than two classes. Although in disyllables long vowels are sometimes allowed to occur before strong consonants (cf. the examples from Inst, Tyrol: kxlaup-pd 'gather', louf-fd 'run\fQt-td 'father', grias-ss 'greet', nqak-kd 'bend', roux'smoke' [= klauben, laufen, Vater, grüßen, neigen, rauchen] — Schatz [1897: Section 28]), southern German dialects point to the conclusion that lengthening in monosyllables (and here we return to the main subject of the present paper) took place before weak or weakened consonants. When words of the (C) VCd type lost their endings, the remaining part — (C) VC — sometimes developed into a long syllable. But syllabic length can be achieved in two ways: (C) VC can become either (C) VC or (C) VC. In monosyllables of the areas under discussion, C stands for a short, or weak, C for a long, or strong, consonant. In southern German dialects, the first way (CVC > CVQ is the most widespread. Jutz (1931: 156—157) cites numerous words in which a vowel was lengthened before a weak consonant and calls this lengthening hochalemannische Dehnung. Like all students of Alemannic, he lists old monosyllables and apocopated forms as members of one set, which is correct from the synchronic, but wrong from the diachronic point of view, for old monosyllables would not have changed without apocope. Cf. his examples: höf 'court' (= Hof), räd 'wheel' (= Rad), weg 'way' (= Weg), gras 'grass' (= Gras), läm 'lame' (= lahm), wis 'meadow' (= Wiese), mel 'flour' (= Mehl). In a number of areas, says Jutz, this lengthening occurred only before resonants. In the words in which the vowel remained short, the final consonant can be strengthened (verschärft), as in tak 'day' (= Tag), grap 'grave' (= Grab), rat 'wheel' (= Rad; cf. räd, above). Strengthening in such monosyllables is indistinguishable from lengthening. Of crucial importance are old monosyllables ending in strong consonants. They already have one of the desired structures, namely, (C) VC, and the quantitative upheavals that affected monosyllables should have passed them by. But this is not what happened. When the prevailing

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structure (for monosyllables) —(C) VC — had asserted itself, numerous words of the (C) VC type with a strong postvocalic consonant joined this type: final consonants were weakened and root vowels lengthened. Consider the examples in Gabriel (1969), the forms cited by Jutz (1931: 157): s\f 'ship' ( = Schiff), bjs 'bridle bit' ( = Gebiß), fäl 'case' ( = Fall), mä 'man' ( = Mann), and the examples from northern Bavarian and the adjoining areas, as well as from Alemannic, cited at the beginning of this paper: Köpf Nacht, Nüß, Sack, Stock, Schnitz, Ritz, Ställ, Näpf, Frösch, Fisch, Tisch, Brett, Stich, Loch, Gicht, Blech, etc. Given the presence of tak, grap, rat (with short vowels and strong consonants), the emergence of sjf, fäl was not necessary. No economy was achieved by the simultaneous reinforcement of k in tak < tag and weakening of 5 in bis. But language is a social organism, with speakers pulling in different directions, so its structure can never claim the uniformity and elegance of Esperanto, and some changes - CVC > CVC is one of them — do look like fröhliches Wechselspiel, to use Gabriel's (1969: 112) disapproving phrase. In the Swiss dialect of Uri, bat 'bath' ( = Bad), week 'way' ( = Weg), tall 'valley' ( = Tat), etc., have short vowels and strong consonants. Clauß (1929: 27) characterizes these words as being pronounced with stark geschnittener Akzent. Similar forms are cited by Bohnenberger (1913: 146) and Brun (1918: 137). In Switzerland, they are comparatively rare. In northern Bavarian they are even rarer because northern Bavarian has generalized the CVC type for old monosyllables (in the nominative). It suppressed the resistance of strong consonants and introduced the opposition of the tTs (with weakened s; sg.) ~ tis (with strong s; apocopated plural) type on a large scale. Kubitschek (n.y.: 17) writes fiss 'fish' ( = Fisch) for the singular and fis for the plural ( = Fische)·, fiss ~ fis would probably have been more to the point. According to Jutz (1931: 158), in east Swabian a long vowel may occur before a consonant that has preserved its strength: &/zö/?/'head' ( = Kopf), säkk 'bag' ( = Sack), though in apocopated forms the vowel is short (khepf). Such forms are hard to pronounce, and they have minimal support from the prosody of other words. It is a miracle that they have survived for so many centuries. These are then the main situations examined above. (1) When words of the (C) VCd type lose their endings, new monosyllables may remain unchanged, while old monosyllables become (C) VC or (C) VC . (2) New monosyllables may undergo lengthening and become (C) VC or, less often, (C) VC. Old monosyllables join apocopated words, and all mono-

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syllables, whatever their origin, acquire the same structure. (C) VC and (C) VC are different versions of one prosodic type. When the string (C) VC has to choose between them, the vowel is lengthened before a weak consonant, that is, in the position in which lengthening is physiologically easier to carry out. But physiological difficulties can be overcome. When forced to join the prevailing (C) VC type, words with strong final consonants also lengthen their vowels; in most cases this lengthening occurs at the expense of postvocalic consonants, which become weak. Lengthening in monosyllables was a reaction to apocope, but this reaction did not achieve the status of a sound law. Disyllables whose endings were chopped off may become the locus of all kinds of compensatory processes, lengthening of the root vowel or postvocalic consonant being one of them. Or they may take their curtailment in stride and simply become one morpheme and one syllable shorter. In this case, old monosyllables run the risk of merging with new ones. Here, too, defense mechanisms may be set off or may remain dormant. If new monosyllables do not acquire any special features (length, circumflex, etc.), old monosyllables may change to avoid impending confusion, but they do not have to do so. Apocopated words sometimes side with old monosyllables and sometimes with the disyllables that survived apocope. By associating themselves with the words ending in -el, -er, -e(n), they have the best of both worlds: they lose the second syllable and yet retain their affiliation with disyllables. A rather obvious conclusion can be drawn from the fact that vowels tend to be lengthened before weak consonants. Language historians traditionally describe phonetic change in terms of a sound's environment: vowel lengthening before Id, nd, rd, breaking before h and r, diphthongization after palatal consonants or before the velar vowels of the next syllable, etc. Such formulations produce the impression that sound change is conditioned by the environment: vowels, it is believed, become long because they are followed by Id, nd, rd, monophthongs acquire glides under the influence of h and r, and so forth. There is some truth in these conclusions, but not more than in the generalization that for a book to be written pens should exist, and for a fish to be born water must be around. Pens and water are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the emergence of novels and sharks. One can venture the statement that the only function of the environment is not to impede sound change. The "command" comes from the code. If we disregard super- and substrates, fashion, and the like, the cause of a sound change is usually another sound change. As a reaction to some explosion, prosody, vowels,

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and consonants shift to adapt to the new circumstances. Shifts first occur where the resistance is minimal. In this they resemble water breaking the dam. Monosyllabic words of southern German dialects obeyed the command of apocope and lengthened their vowels. Lengthening started where the postvocalic consonant was weak, which does not mean that it happened because the postvocalic consonant was weak. As shown above, the flood could sweep the sturdiest defenses. In Carinthian dialects, strong stops and affricates usually posed an insurmountable barrier to its spread. The mechanism of so-called lengthening in open syllables was the same as that of lengthening in monosyllables. If my considerations about the indivisibility of Swiss German fäch 'Faden' (with weak d) and lätd 'Latte' (with strong nongeminated t) are correct, neither word has an initial open syllable. Nor did their counterparts anywhere in Early Germanic begin with open syllables. Lengthening in disyllables was caused by weakening of -e, which, when reduced to schwa, could not perform the function of a full-fledged mora (see Liberman 1992a: 71), and it also started before weak (elsewhere, before voiced) consonants. To spread to more words, it had to break through the resistance of consonants that formed tougher obstacles. Jutz (1931: 157) lists stTm 'voice' (= Stimme), with weakened ra, alongside sjf 'Schiff', fäl 'Fall', mä 'Mann', etc., (see above), and indeed the paths from Stimme to stTm and from Schiff to sjf ran parallel. Hoffmann (1890: 30) defines weak consonants as sounds unable to sustain syllabic length. This is a good definition, even if the opposition lenis ~ fortis cannot be fully submerged in the opposition short ~ long. To sustain syllabic length, weak consonants must become strong.

3. Monosyllables with preserved shortness and "impure" dialects Let us survey the possible pronunciation of the words Tag 'day', Tage (pi. or dative of the same noun), tagen 'dawn' and Pack 'package', Packe (pi. of it), packen 'pack (up)'. A nonapocopating dialect may (theoretically) preserve the Middle High German pattern. Then all six words will have short vowels: Tag, Täge, tägen; Päck, Packe, packen. As already stated, vowel lengthening in disyllables before a single consonant (socalled lengthening in open syllables) does not depend on apocope: weakening of endings is sufficient for it. Therefore, in a nonapocopating dialect lengthening in Tage, tagen, though not necessary, is always possible.

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Lengthening before a single strong consonant (which becomes weak in the process), as in Packe, packen, may occur. Analogy may result in Tag and Sack or only in Tag lengthening their vowels. Once Tag and Sack arise, other monosyllabic words that do not have the support of disyllabic cognates may join the type Tag {Sack). In an apocopating dialect, Täg (sg.) may merge with Täg (pi.) < Tage. Some apocopating dialects are conservative with regard to quantity (see Müller 1911: a Swabian dialect with inconsistent apocope and only sporadic lengthening in mono- and disyllables, except in forms with contraction and -Id, -It), but, as a rule, one of the two forms changes: either Täg (sg.) or Täg (pi.) becomes Täg. No direct connection exists between the development of old and new monosyllables and words ending in -el, -er, -en. Pack, Packe, packen may withstand lengthening. The pattern Täg, Täge, tagen has been barely mentioned in this paper, because its subject is lengthening in old monosyllables as a reaction to apocope, rather than the preservation of short vowels in them (see Gabriel (1969: 113-142). The opposition Täg ~ Täge/tägen is typical of Low German and Standard Dutch. For example, in the Soest dialect, Westphalia (Holthausen 1886: Sections 13, 50, 139), which has the correlation of syllable cut, we find däx 'day' (= Tag), xläs 'glass' (= Glas), xräf 'grave' (= Grab), pät 'path' (= Pfad), päpa 'priest' (= Pfaffe), häml 'wether' (= Hammel), lätd 'late', mäkd Ί make' (= mache), etc., (but cf. trapd 'stairway' (= Treppe). Apocope occurred in this dialect only after diphthongs, ä, rd, and el, em, en. In Oldenburg, apocope is all-pervading, but the distribution of length is the same as in Soest (Mohn 1904: Sections 42, 119). The patterns outlined above prevail in most areas where German and Dutch are spoken. Goepfert (1878: 20) states that in his Saxon dialect all endings have been shed and all old monosyllables have long vowels. Franke (1892: 28, 265) discusses the differences between the dialects of Oberpfalz, which he calls East Franconian and Upper Saxon. In the Franconian area, apocope has affected considerably more words than in the area of the Saxon dialect, and it is there that more old monosyllables have been lengthened. These are "perfect" cases. From a structural point of view, lengthening in monosyllables is an instantaneous act, a reaction to apocope, but dialects displaying consistent apocope and equally consistent lengthening and thus exemplifying the structural principle can be shown to be at the end of a long way. First, certain groups of words yield to the novelty in the system (and it is often hard to tell what makes them especially vulnerable), then others follow suit.

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In the dialect of Döbratal (Upper Saxon, at the border of the Czechspeaking area), apocope reigned supreme, but only the nouns corresponding to the first class of strong verbs had long vowels: rid 'ride' (= Ritt, bis 'bite' (= Biß), grif grip' (= Griff), etc. (Grimm 1921: Sections 275, 285). (It is curious that in Pernegg just the words of the Schnitt, Tritt type escaped lengthening - see above.) In Waldau (Thuringian Forest), apocopated plurals retain their short vowels, and old monosyllables have been lengthened, so one hears the familiar variants fis (sg.) ~ fis (pi.) (= Fisch 'fish' ~ Fische). But the dative, also an apocopated form, has the same pronunciation as the nominative (Bock 1965: Section 46b). In his description of the Swabian—Alemannic language border, Haag (1930: 5) points out that Swabian has läda, lega, wisd, öfd, stübd, as opposed to läch, legs, wisd, öfd, stübd in Alemannic (= Laden 'shop, store', legen 'lay', Wiese 'meadow', Ofen 'stove', Stube 'room'). Vowels in monosyllables are long in the entire area, but only in nouns and adjectives; in verbs they are short. On the same border, Dreher (1919: Sections 6 and 17) recorded pot 'messenger' (= Bote), along with the old monosyllables flüg 'flight' (= Flug), tsüg 'train' (= Zug), smid 'smith' (= Schmied) and tag 'day' (= Tag), höf 'court' (= Hof), trög 'trough' (= Trog). The plurals of täg, höf, trög are apocopated and also have long vowels: teg, hef treg. Dreher denies the existence of "Alemannic lengthening" in her dialect. In the area around the river Kupfer, lengthening in monosyllables holds sway, but not before t or m\ a and u especially often retain shortness. (See Eberle 1938: 5.) Such examples are countless, and only one more will be given here. Imperatives, for instance, (Swabian) gib\ 'give' (= gib), grab\ 'dig' (= grab), les 'read' (= lies) (Jutz 1931: 157), are not subject to lengthening. Similar forms occur in Alemanic. In the Scandinavian languages and in the dialects of the Rhein-Limburg area, imperatives regularly display metatony. The "wrong" length is a phenomenon akin to the "wrong" accent. See Najdic's (1979: 240-242) discussion of short-syllabic imperatives and expressive words in Swiss German; she also draws a parallel with Scandinavian metatony. All these are usual "exceptions", well-known in dialectological research. The problem arises when the expected patterns break down in principle. In the dialect of Schokau (Upper Saxony, close to the Silesian type), recorded at the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no apocope, as evidenced by words like hem 'hen' (= Henne), betd 'bed' (= Bett), which were pronounced with ambisyllabic n, t (Pompe 1907: 55). The words tögd 'days' (with fricative g; = Tage), pfütd 'paw' (= Pfote), etc., had long vowels in the root, and so did freds 'joy' (= Freude), süh

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'school' (= Schule), and so forth, with old vowels and diphthongs (1907: 57). But despite the consistent preservation of endings, we find the same alternations that marked so many Silesian apocopating dialects: büs (sg.) ~ büsd (pi.), tTs (sg.) ~ tlsd (pi.), röuk (sg.) ~ rükd (pi.), töup (sg.) ~ tüpd (pi.) (= Busch ~ Busche 'bush', Tisch ~ Tische 'table', Rock ~ Röcke 'coat', Topf ~ Töpfe 'pot') (1907: 57). Festa (1926: 15-16) reported that in his dialect, some areas had apocope, while others did not. However, Nominativdehnung occurred in all of them, which comes as a surprise. It is even more surprising that the distinction of the dQ tTs ~ gm tese {der Tisch ~ auf dem Tische) type was observed with greater consistency in nonapocopating areas. In the apocopating region, this distinction characterized only the most frequent words {Tisch, Kopf etc.); in the dative, both variants existed: Qm khöp and Qm khqp 'in the head' (= im Kopf). In all other cases, the long vowel predominated; cf. dQ fläk 'the spot' ~ om sel(b)m fläk 'in the same spot' (= der Fleck ~ auf demselben Fleck). What is the origin of length in Busch, Tisch, Rock, Topf in Pompe's dialect? Two answers suggest themselves. As known from Middle High German poetry, southern German dialects passed through the period of free apocope: a disyllabic word ending in -e could appear with or without its final vowel, depending on various rules. In this respect, German was not different from English or Scandinavian. Free apocope can last indefinitely long. Numerous Scandinavian dialects still have the alternations that go back at least five hundred years (see a survey of this material in Liberman [1982: 139-140, 238-239]). The same is true of a number of Swiss dialects. When free apocope has run its course, its most natural result is full (unconditioned) apocope, as happened in English. But when a modern Germanic language or dialect has preserved its final vowels, the reason may be that after centuries of vacillation free apocope ended in the return of the status quo. Regeneration of old forms is common (cf. Liberman 1992a: 72-75, with reference to V. G. Admoni). The dialect of Schokau could have had free apocope, when the alternation tTs (sg.) ~ tTs (pi.) was 'regular' {lautgesetzlich), and later returned to the pre-apocope forms, with the alternation remaining as a meaningless relic of the past state. The trouble with this hypothesis is that it cannot be proved unless we happen to possess old texts from Schokau and observe free apocope in action. The other explanation I have in mind is to refer to neighboring dialects and hybrid forms. So many people in that area said tTs (sg.) ~ tTs (pi.) that the fashion could have spread to vernaculars in which no structural

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justification of it existed. This hypothesis has the same weakness as the previous one. To be convincing, it should rest on the study of linguistic crosscurrents. For example, we would need proof that apocopating dialects enjoyed greater prestige, that children of Schokau went to school where tTs (sg.) was the accepted pronunciation, or that it was the norm in the nearest Halbdialekt. Even if such data are unavailable, we must not let the facts of "aberrant" dialects derail our reconstruction. The causes of linguistic change are clear only in its epicenter. Once the change leaves the area in which it originated, it will display many a twist. Lengthening in old monosyllables makes sense when there is apocope. When it occurs in dialects with preserved (or restituted) endings, it should be explained as a relic of free apocope or as phonetic importation. The situations described by Festa and Pompe are not unique. In the Silesian dialect of Reichenberg, apocope affected relatively few forms; yet words like Sack 'bag' were usually pronounced säk (pi. sake). Contrariwise, dr^k 'dirt' (= Dreck) and stöl 'stall' (= Stall) had short vowels. They puzzled the author of the description, who suggested the influence of the plural (Kämpf 1920: 134), but what plural can Dreck have? However often living speech may deviate from ideal rules and ultimate formulas, they are the only way to organize the material of local vernaculars. Sometimes they also help us solve a riddle that cannot be solved in any other way. For example, one of the questions that was traditionally discussed in Siebenbürgen dialectology concerns the relations between such forms as dQx 'day' (= Tag) and dudx, pi. (= Tage). The monophthong in dQx was perceived as a long, even extralong vowel, whereas the diphthong in the plural had the duration of a short vowel. The question asked was whether U3 should be viewed as a reflex of MHG ä (ä > *ö > ud) or as the product of lengthening and later shortening: ä > *ä > *δ > ud. Since the dialect of Siebenbürgen is an apocopating dialect with a prosody partly resembling Silesian, it is more probable that apocopated words retained short vowels and that old monosyllables underwent lengthening. The origin of the diphthong in dudx 'Tag', smt 'Schade', etc., is a special problem. (There is extensive literature on Siebenbürgen vowels; see, for instance, Scheiner 1897.)

4. Lengthening in old monosyllables: The state of the art We owe our knowledge of lengthening in monosyllables to the efforts of the dialectologists who not only recorded the data but also attempted to

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explain them. This section presents a brief survey of hypotheses about the chronology and causes of the lengthening. Bremer (1894: 299 — 301) was mainly interested in Bavarian alternations of the güds ~ gäis type (= Geiß 'nanny goat' ~ Geißen pi.) and discussed lengthened monosyllables in passing. He cited Waniek's (1880: 25) observation that plurals (that is, apocopated forms or disyllables with preserved -e) were pronounced with the grave accent, whereas lengthened monosyllables had circumflex: intensity in monosyllables (according to Waniek) displayed two peaks, the second of which fell on a lower note than the first. References to this type of circumflex in lengthened words do not recur in post-1880 Bavarian dialectological literature. If Waniek's evidence is to be trusted, we have the reversal of the usual situation, as it occurs in Low Saxon and Scandinavian (circumflex in apocopated words). More probably, Waniek had a very fine ear and heard the change of tone typical of vowels in many languages. An extreme case of such leaps is provided by the "singing" dialects of Switzerland. Bremer detected a parallel between fis with circumflex/ fis with the grave and gwslgäis(e), as well as with other instances of the Akzentumsprung [stress shift] in Germanic. This parallel rests on a shaky foundation. However, one remark of his deserves our attention. Since Γ in fis (new i) did not merge with old Γ (as in is 'ice', Modern German Eis), Bremer concluded that the two fs had had different types of circumflex. Invoking circumflex as the cause of diphthongization of old long vowels became common just at the time of his article: cf. Streitberg (1894) and Wrede (1895). Bremer assumed that after the completion of the oldest Germanic apocope (as in fiöd < *ßödus 'stream') long vowels had acquired circumflex and suggested that when *fiskaz had become fisk 'fish', something changed in /, this "something" being an increase in duration. Nagl set out to disprove Bremer's reconstruction. He conceded (1894: 338) that lengthening before weak consonants had taken place in Bavaria earlier than elsewhere but doubted, without, however, developing his argument, that Τ in fis had gone back to such a remote epoch. Another rejoinder was written by Bohnenberger (1896). The polemic between Bremer and Nagl lasted for a few years but concerned only Bavarian diphthongs. As far as the history of fis is concerned, we must concur with Bremer's critics (see also Jutz [1931: 153]). The previous lengthening in monosyllables, of which there are numerous traces in Old Scandinavian, Old English, and, less consistently, in Old High German, may well be tied to ancient apocope, but enough is known about the antecedents of

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words like Fisch, Loch, Mann, Rock, itac/z and their cognates to let us reconstruct short vowels in them. Whatever happened in *fiskaz, etc., when it lost its prehistoric ending, it emerged with short i. Comparison of lengthened and old long vowels is not useless for establishing the chronological framework of lengthening, but the results of this comparison are not easy to interpret. In the areas in which old long vowels have been diphthongized or at least shifted, lengthened vowels seldom merge completely with them: for example, Γ > Γ, ü > ü, ö > δ, but ϊ > ai, ü > Q, δ > ü (Festa 1926: 34, 38, 39). However, full merger is possible. The dialect of the Schönhengst language island did not distinguish between old and new Γ and ü. Although ä > δ versus ä > ü, both old fand Γ < ί yielded ai; cf. pfaif"whistle' (= P f i f f ) , graif'grip' (= Griff), staix 'sting' (= Stich), pais 'bite' (= Biss), gaift 'poison' (= Gift), blaik 'glance' (= Blick), fais 'fish' (= Fisch), tais 'table' (= Tisch). Likewise, both old ü and ü < ü became au, cf. braux 'breach' (= Bruch), nous 'nut' (= Nuß), rauk 'jolt' (= Ruck), braust 'breast' (= Brust), lauft 'air' (= Luft), paus 'bush' (= Busch). Old δ became ü, and so did it in spüt 'mockery' (= Spott), krüp 'crop, maw' (= Kropf)\ ce became f, just like e in flqk 'spot' (= Fleck) (Janiczek 1911: Sections 11-27; the examples cited above are on pages 28-29). Bremer's dictum that old and new Γ remain distinct should be taken with a grain of salt. Where new long vowels did not merge with those inherited from Old High German, they could have arisen before the shift and even provoked it, by forming part of the push chain, but theoretically speaking, they could have arisen at any time and retained their independence by being "different" (here Bremer's idea should not be dismissed without proper consideration). It was especially easy for mid vowels to remain "different" by joining f, Q rather than e, δ and thus escape the shift {ξ and e coexisted in many areas; old Q and δ were not too rare either, as evidenced by Central Bavarian dialects; see Beranek 1936: 48). The idea that lengthening in monosyllables should be examined in light of apocope and syncope occurred to several scholars but bore almost no fruit. Eichhorn (1928: 31) compared monosyllables with lengthened vowels and syncopated verbal forms like ( p ) sgkt 'he says' (= er sagt). Since SQkt, etc., had short vowels in his Bavarian dialect (southern Egerland), he concluded that lengthening had come to an end before syncope started. This is a wrong conclusion, as was pointed out by Roth (1940: 48). Roth's argument that lengthening in syncopated forms is possible before root final I, n, r is not so weighty, since tsöld 'pays' (= zahlt), etc., could have joined other words with homorganic groups. More important

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is his suggestion that words like sgkt need not have been lengthened at all, though he ascribed the preservation of shortness in them to the groups kt, pt, xt, etc. Having disposed of syncopated forms, Roth repeats Eichhorn's reasoning but applies it to words with apocope. The nominative singular tls has a long vowel, while the plural tis < tisa has a short one. According to Roth, it follows that apocope took place later than lengthening, for otherwise Γ in the plural would also have been long. In his opinion, lengthening in disyllables ending in -en and in monosyllables happened simultaneously, namely, at the close of the thirteenth century. He ascribed lengthening in disyllables to free contact and lengthening in monosyllables to the redistribution of syllable boundaries: since in speech words fall into open syllables, the string CVC— VCV used to transform into CV-CV-CV, and lengthening found no obstacles. Dellit (1913: 27) also made the redistribution of syllable boundaries responsible for lengthening, but he confined his explanation to a few proclitics: bT-nic Ί am' (= bin ich), άξί-rof 'the stove' (= der Ofen), bgires 'who is it?' (= wer ist's?), mT-chr 'with her' (= mit ihr), mi-dan 'with him, with them' (= mit ihm, mit ihnen) (however, mi is usually short). His explanation of lengthening in such phrases may well be correct. Other extremely dubious cases of lengthening as a consequence of resyllabification (cf. Gabriel 1969: 194, 210, 214) happen in disyllables and will not concern us. Roth's chronology is based on a series of false assumptions. (1) It is wrong to formulate the law "vowels in monosyllabic words underwent lengthening" and argue from it. Such a law never existed. Only old monosyllables underwent lengthening, and this is the process that has to be accounted for. New monosyllables often went their own way. (2) Lengthening in disyllables ending in -en should not α priori be viewed as a phenomenon inseparable from lengthening in old monosyllables. (3) Free contact cannot bring forth lengthening; see above on the phonetic environment and sound change. (4) In the process of speech, words fall into open syllables in all languages, but they never form position for lengthening. If they did, all vowels in Germanic would have become long by this time (assuming that the open syllable is a proper context for lengthening). Spangenberg (1962: 152) looked upon lengthening in monosyllables as a means for differentiating Köpf 'head', Böck 'ram' (nominative) and Köpf Böck (dative) but repeated (knowingly or unknowingly) Roth's conclusion that lengthening had been over when apocope set in. He, too, must have built his chronology on the idea that the process of lengthen-

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ing had affected all monosyllables, so if some of them displayed short vowels, they must have appeared in this form after the process in question had blown itself out. Conversely, Stucki (1917: 131) suggested that in Jaun (Switzerland) lengthening happened later than apocope but offered no arguments in support of his statement. Systemzwang is an all-time favorite in explaining the pronunciation of words for whose shape no better rules have been discovered. In most dialects, either apocopated words or words of the Tagellesen type have long vowels, and it has often been proposed that old monosyllables received their length by analogy (so in Wilmanns [1897: Section 245], and in many later works inspired by Paul). It seems that even some modern scholars are apt to treat this lengthening as an addition to other quantitative shifts. For example, Becker (1969: 138) notes that lengthening of vowels in open syllables has extended to monosyllables, such as des, köb(f), säg, fleg, män (= Tisch 'table', Kopf 'head', Sack 'bag', Fleck 'spot', Mann 'man'). Analogy as a factor of length distribution should not be treated lightly. In the dialect of Merzig (near Trier, see above), forms like Loch could in all likelihood have arisen, for lengthening asserted itself before strong consonants in Zettel 'slip', treffen 'meet', Kessel 'kettle', brechen 'break', machen 'make', waschen 'wash', as easily as in fahren 'go, travel' and Leben 'life'. According to Fuchs (1903: Sections 112, 113, 115), if a monosyllable has a cognate in the dialect ending in -er, -el, -en, both have long vowels in the root, and this is the only reason Hof 'court', satt 'full, satisfied', dick 'thick', [sret] 'step' sb. ( = Schritt), [fes] 'fish' ( = Fisch), [des] 'table' ( = Tisch), [kop] 'head' ( = Kopf), etc., preserved short vowels. But lengthening in old monosyllables is too widespread and regular to be explained by the influence of other forms, and Paul's idea, which is partly valid for northern German TäglTäge, fails for High German köb, säg, flegPerhaps the most common explanation of lengthening in old monosyllables revolves around mechanical factors. Hertel (1888: 11) mentioned the tendency to reinforce uninfected monosyllables ("einsilbige, flexionslose Nomina durch Tonfülle zu stärken"). Just why they have to be reinforced remains unclear, especially because many of them ended in strong consonants, so the change from tlss to tTs meant only the redistribution of, rather than an increase in, their syllabic weight. Dellit (1913: 27), perhaps following Hertel, also refers to the Streben nach Tonfülle (striving for full length under stress). Hans Reis (1908-1909: 200) says that monosyllables frequently have long vowels, while polysyllables gravi-

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täte toward shortness. He accounts for this discrepancy in the following way: Denn nachdem die Schallgrenze zwischen den einzelnen Silben an Stelle der Druckgrenze getreten war, mußten mehrsilbige Wörter mit demselben Ausatmungsstrom gesprochen werden wie einsilbige. Bei mehrsilbigen Wörtern blieb aber infolgedessen für die einzelnen Laute eine geringere Zeit übrig, und jeder Laut, also auch der Tonvokal, mußte daher von kürzerer Dauer sein als bei den einsilbigen.

If I understand this statement correctly, Hans Reis discovered the correlation of syllable cut in "the dialects of the Duchy of Hessen" and heard only the syllables of the type current in Standard German. In Old High German he must have reconstructed syllables typical of non-Germanic languages. He does not say when, in his opinion, Schallsilben ousted Drucksilben in Hessian dialects. Nor does he explain why he thought that after such a change polysyllables had been allotted the same temporal measure as monosyllables. In any case, according to his reconstruction, vowels in monosyllables did not lengthen. Rather, vowels in polysyllables gave up part of their duration, and by contrast vowels in monosyllables came to be perceived as long. This is an ingenious idea. Similar reconstructions (though not of lengthening in German) turn up in recent books (see, for instance, Kuz'menko [1991: 162]). As already mentioned, Sievers's terms stark/schwach geschnittener Akzent suggested the presence of a force responsible for a number of sound changes in Germanic. Sievers envisioned lengthening only under free contact, but he hardly ever said that free contact {schwach geschnittener Akzent) had caused lengthening. This was done by his disciples. For example, Lessiak (1906: 51-52), like his other contemporaries, posited the reign of free contact in Old Germanic. According to his reconstruction, in Middle High German all final consonants became strong (Auslautverhärtung), and gräb 'grave', gläs 'glass', pis 'bit, bite', man 'man', zöpf 'braid' sb. ( = Grab, Glas, Biß, Mann, Zopf), with weak, strong, and halfstrong consonants turned into gräp, gläss, piss, männ, zopf, still with free contact. Later this combination yielded either the structure long vowel + free contact (as the consonants again became weak) or the structure short vowel + close contact. Janiczek (1911: 9) detected only free contact in his dialect of the Schönhengst language island. Strong consonants in it struck him as less strong than elsewhere, and he called them lenes-fortes. The dialect had no geminates and distinguished voiceless nonaspirated ρ t k and voiced b d g. Janiczek also believed that in Old High German only free contact had occurred word-finally, and it is to free contact that he ascribed

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lengthening in monosyllables. Hager (1922: 11) and Eichhorn (1928: 27) echoed this view. In Hager's opinion, all monosyllables had free contact in the remote past, and this factor led to weakening of final consonants and to vowel lengthening; in apocopated words, the consonants that once preceded schwa had remained strong, which explains the preservation of shortness in them. Weakening of word-final consonants is treated by Hager as a change in its own right that took place before lengthening and before apocope (according to him, at the beginning of the thirteenth century at the latest). Of the hypotheses advanced to explain lengthening in monosyllables, the one going back to Sievers's "accents" stands in special need of refutation. The others (analogy, redistribution of syllable boundaries, etc.) will not impress many today. Connecting quantitative changes with the type of syllable cut seems logical. However (this maxim should be repeated at the risk of redundancy), the phonetic environment cannot be the cause of a sound change (indeed, if free contact was able to lengthen vowels by just being there, why did it wait until Middle High German?), and positing free contact in all old monosyllables produces an ad hoc rule that has nothing to recommend it. The "accentual" hypothesis has another side. As we have seen, according to a widespread opinion, word-final strong consonants underwent weakening (lenition), and vowels lengthened as a reaction to weakening. At present no one reconstructs the change of "accents" in Middle High German, but the essence of lenition is, after all, close contact (of some sort) giving way to free contact, especially if free contact is credited with promoting or even causing lengthening. Kranzmayer believed in the primacy of lenition, and so did Gabriel (in his 1969 book and in the reviews written at that time). Although Gabriel spoke about lengthening in open syllables, his arguments should be cited here: (1) Since lengthening does not occur before old strong consonants, it must have followed, not preceded lenition (this conclusion is apparently based on the assumption that lengthening "waited for lenition", but weak consonants had existed from time immemorial, so it could have begun at any moment); (2) in southern Swabian dialects, lenition took place, but lengthening did not occur (this is an important consideration; see below). It is often said that lenition is a broader and more basic process than lengthening, whether in mono- or disyllables. The truth of this statement is far from obvious. Approximately in the middle of the thirteenth century a wave of lengthenings spread over the Germanic (and Romance) languages. No recorded modern dialect from Switzerland to northern Scandinavia has retained its old quantitative relations intact. At the same

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time a wave of consonant shifts affected the Germanic languages. Whether it was the replacement of distinctive voice by distinctive aspiration (as in Danish and Icelandic, and partly in the rest of Germanic), the change of intervocalic voiced stops to fricatives, or the lenition of the southern German type, we face different manifestations of the same trend. Even the results of these upheavals were similar from Norway to Bavaria. The Central Bavarian correlation of quantity (VC ~ VC), with its analogues in all the Scandinavian languages except Danish, is the "goal" easily observable in the development of the other Upper German dialects in which vocalic length and lenes (and, conversely, vocalic shortness and fortes) are natural partners. The West Germanic changes of vowel quantity, the fall of geminates in English, Dutch, Frisian, and northern German, the virtual merger of consonantal strength and length in Upper German, and lenition from Denmark to Switzerland can hardly be dissociated from apocope (cf. Liberman 1982: 257-258). There is no virtue in positing lenition as an independent process and then looking for its exotic causes (for instance, in the Slavic substrate) or not bothering about its causes at all. To be sure, many "impure" dialects with their hybrid and regenerated forms, occasional Restformen, and borrowings from the Standard will not fit the overall scheme. Nor is it necessary to turn such a scheme into the Procrustean bed for fieldwork. The many sweeping changes listed above are connected only in that they stem from the same source (apocope), but each of them can exist without another. As already mentioned, lengthening in monosyllables is not inseparable from lengthening in disyllables. People can begin to pronounce tis but not leben, höf but not tis (though hardly tis without höß), and leben but not höf or tis. One can imagine the change tis > tis before or after leben > leben, etc. All this deprives Gabriel's second argument of its force. As a general rule, apocope, lenition, and lengthening in mono- and disyllables surfaced in our written records more or less simultaneously, but their exact date (which would anyway be relevant only for the epicenter of the change) will of necessity remain unknown. Consider the discussion of the chronological borders of Carinthian lengthening and its relation to consonant weakening (see especially Tillian [1986: 68-69]). I assume that lenition and lengthening in Upper German monosyllables were among the processes set in motion by apocope. In this area, when Höfe, Tage, etc., became hef tag, the singulars Hof Tag usually became höf täc. The wedge driven by apocope between old and new

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monosyllables made even Satz, Kopf, Loch, Tisch join Hof and Tag. In most cases, final consonants weakened when vowels preceding them lengthened, but the hard combination long vowel + strong consonant has also been attested. In the Germanic languages, vowels lengthened in monosyllabic words several times. There is sufficient reason to place the form ich Τ , gär 'ready', and the like into Old High German (Loewe 1927). Lengthening before homorganic groups happened early in English (at the close of the Old English period) and somewhat later in Low German, Middle Dutch, and Middle High German (see Liberman 1992b: 165-172). Other consonant groups are also believed to have provided a favorable context for vowel lengthening. Frings (1924: 36-38) cites laantllaank 'land' (= Land),fäält 'field' (= Feld), woort 'word' (= Wort), and also (around the ik/ich, wat/was isoglosses) naach(t) 'night' (= Nacht), geschääf 'business' (= Geschäft), deesch 'table' (= Tisch), and laoch 'hole' (= Loch). He disposes of such cases summarily as having long vowels before sch, st, chs, and cht. It is one of many linguistic curiosities that words in different areas acquire the same form for totally dissimilar reasons: vide the case of tisldeesch. References Abbreviations AJGLL Anz. BKDBM BKSM BSG IF NdJ PBB ZD A ZDL ZDP ZHM ZMF

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American Journal of Germanic Languages and Literature Anzeiger für deutsches Altert(h)um und deutsche Lit(t)eratur Beiträge zur Kenntnis deutsch-böhmischer Mundarten Beiträge zur Kenntnis Sudetendeutscher Mundarten Beiträge zur Schweizerdeutschen Grammatik Indogermanische Forschungen Jahrbuch des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung (Niederdeutsches Jahrbuch) — Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur - Zeitschrift für deutsches Altert(h)um und deutsche Lit(t)eratur - Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik - Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie — Zeitschrift für hochdeutsche Mundarten — Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung

Abegg, Emil [1913] Die Mundart von Urseren. (BSG 4.) Frauenfeld: Huber. Beck, Ernst 1926 Lautlehre der oberen Markgräfler Mundart. (Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken deutscher Mundarten 10.) Halle (Saale): Waisenhaus.

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Becker, Horst 1969 Sächsische Mundartenkunde. Entstehung, Geschichte und Lautstand der Mundarten des obersächsischen Gebietes. Neu bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Günter Bergmann. Halle (Saale): Max Niemeyer. Behaghel, Otto 1891 "Geschichte der deutschen Sprache", in: Hermann Paul (ed.), 526-633. 1901 "Geschichte der deutschen Sprache", in: Hermann Paul (ed.), 650-780. Beranek, Franz J. 1936 Die Mundart von Südmähren (Lautlehre). (BKSM 7.) Reichenberg: Verlag der Anstalt für Sudetendeutsche Heimatforschung. Blumenstock, Friedrich 1911 Die Mundart von Klein-Allmerspann. OA. Gerabronn. Dissertation Tübingen. Tübingen: H. Laupp, jr. Bock, Gudrun 1965 Die Mundart von Waldau bei Schleusingen. (Mitteldeutsche Forschungen 35.) Köln - Graz: Böhlau. Bohnenberger, Karl 1896 "Zur frage nach der ausgleichung des silbengewichts", ZDP 28: 515-524. 1913 Die Mundart der deutschen Walliser im Heimattal und in den Außenorten. (BSG 6.) Frauenfeld: Huber. Bopp, Carl 1890 Der Vokalismus des Schwäbischen in der Mundart von Münsingen. Dissertation Strassburg. Strassburg: Trübner. Bremer, Otto 1894 "Ein Fall von Ausgleichung des Silbengewichts in bairischen Mundarten", IF3: 297-301. Bremer, Oskar - August Hartmann (eds.) 1892 Bayerns Mundarten. Beiträge zur deutschen Sprach- und Volkskunde. Vol. 1. München: Christian Kaiser. Brun, Leo 1918 Die Mundart von Obersaxen im Kanton Graubünden. Lautlehre und Flexion. (BSG 11.) Frauenfeld: Huber. Clauß, Walter 1929 Die Mundart von Uri. Laut- und Flexionslehre. (BSG 17.) Frauenfeld: Huber. Dellit, Otto 1913 Die Mundart von Kleinschmalkalden. (Laut- und Formenlehre, Syntax und Wortschatz). Marburg: Elwert. (The same in: Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hennebergische Geschichte und Landesgeschichte in Kleinschmalkalden 17 (1913): 1-240.) Desnickaja, Α. V. (ed.) 1976 Lingvisticeskie issledovanija [Studies in linguistics]. Moskva: Institut jazykoznanija AN SSSR. Dieth, Eugen - R. Brunner 1943 "Die Konsonanten und Geminaten des Schweizerdeutschen experimentell untersucht", in: Sache, Ort und Wort, 737-762. Dreher, Eleonore 1919 Laut- und Flexionslehre der Mundart von Liggersdorf und Umgebung. Dissertation Tübingen. Tübingen: H. Laupp, jr.

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Eberle, Julius 1938 Die Mundart um die Kupfer nach Lauten und Flexion. Dissertation Tübingen. Stuttgart: J. Fink. Eichhorn, Otto 1928 Die südegerländische Mundart (Lautlehre). (BKSM 4.) Reichenberg: Verlag der Anstalt für Sudetendeutsche Heimatforschung. Eliason, Norman E. 1948 "Old English vowel lengthening and vowel shortening before consonant groups", Studies in Philology 45: 1 - 2 0 . Festa, Friedrich 1926 Die schlesische Mundart Ostböhmens. I. Die Lautlehre. (BKSM 3.) Prag: Verlag des Vereins für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen. Fischer, Hermann 1891 Review of Kauffmann 1890. Germania (Wien) 36: 406-437. 1895 Geographie der schwäbischen Mundart. Tübingen: H. Laupp. Franke, Carl 1892 "Die Unterschiede des ostfränkisch-oberpfälzischen und obersächsischen Dialektes, sowie die von den vogtländischen und erzgebirgischen Mundarten dazu eingenommene Stellung" in: Oskar Brenner - August Hartmann (eds.), 19-36,261-290,374-389. Frings, Theodor 1924 Rheinische Sprachgeschichte. Überblick. Essen an der Ruhr: G. D. Baedeker. 1956 Sprache und Geschichte, 3. Halle (Saale): Niemeyer. Fuchs, Ernst 1903 Die Merziger Mundart, Part 1: Vokalismus. Dissertation Heidelberg. Darmstadt: G. Otto. Gabriel, Eugen 1969 Die Entwicklung der althochdeutschen Vokalquantitäten in den oberdeutschen Mundarten. (Studien zur österreichisch-bairischen Dialektkunde 5.) Graz Wien - Köln: Böhlaus Nachf. Gobiirsch, Kurt G. 1994 Consonant strength in Upper German dialects. (NOWELE. Supplement Volume 10.) Odense University Press. Goepfert, Ernst 1878 Die Mundart des Sächsischen Erzgebirges nach den Lautverhältnissen, der Wortbildung und Flexion. Leipzig: Veit. Grimm, Hans 1921 Die Mundart des Döbratales. Lautlehre. [Unpublished dissertation, Halle a. d. Saale.] Haag, Carl 1898 Die Mundarten des Oberen Neckar- und Donaulandes. {Schwäbisch-Alemannisches Grenzgebiet: Baarmundarten.) Beilage zum Programm der Königlichen Realanstalt zu Reutlingen. Reutlingen: Eugen Hutzier. 1930 Sprachwandel im Lichte der Mundartgrenzen. (Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 16.) Berlin: Fritz Klopp. Haager, Alfred 1922 Lautlehre der Mundart von Sulzbach i. B. Oberpfalz. [Unpublished dissertation, Tübingen.]

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Haldimann, Hedwig 1903-1904"Der Vokalismus der Mundart von Goldbach", Ζ//ΛΜ: 295-351; 5: 2 2 5 244. Hausenblas, Adolf 1914 Grammatik der nordwestböhmischen Mundart. (Laut- und Formenlehre mit Textproben.) (BKDBM 2.) Prag: Verlag des Vereins für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen. Henzen, Walter 1927 Die deutsche Freiburger Mundart im Sense- und südöstlichen Seebezirk. (BSG 16.) Frauenfeld: Huber. Hertel, Ludwig 1888 Die Salzburger Mundart. Dissertation Jena. (Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Altertums 5.) Weinigen: Keyßner. Heusler, Andreas 1888 Der alemannische Consonantismus in der Mundart von Baselstadt. Strassburg: Trübner. [1970] [Reprinted in: Stefan Sonderegger (ed.), Andreas Heusler, Schriften zum Alemannischen, 1 — 131.] Hinderling, Robert 1980 "Lenis und Fortis im Bairischen. Versuch einer morphophonetischen Interpretation", ZDL 47: 25-51. Hoffmann, Eduard 1890 Der mundartliche Vokalismus von Basel-Stadt in seinen Grundzügen dargestellt. Dissertation Basel: Basel. Adolf Geering. Holthausen, Ferdinand 1886 Die Soester Mundart. Laut- und Formenlehre nebst Texten. (Forschungen herausgegeben vom Verein für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung 1.) Norden Leipzig: Diedrich Soltau. Hotzenköcherle, Rudolf 1934 Die Mundart von Mutten. Laut- und Flexionslehre. (BSG 19.) Frauenfeld: Huber. Janiczek, Julius 1911 Der Vokalismus der Mundarten in der Schönhengster Sprachinsel. Dissertation Freiburg i. d. Schweiz. Freiburg (Schweiz): Gebrüder Fragniere. Jespersen, Otto 1897 -1899 Fonetik. En systematisk fremstilling af leeren om sproglyd [Phonetics. A systematic presentation of the science of speech sounds]. Kjabenhavn: Schubote. Jutz, Leo 1931 Die alemannischen Mundarten. (Abriss der Lautverhältnisse.) Halle (Saale): Niemeyer. Kacnel'son, Solomon Davidovic (ed.) 1979 Issledovanija ν oblasti sravnitel'noj akeentologii indoevropeiskix jazykov [Studies in comparative Indo-European accentology]. Leningrad: Nauka. Kampf, Robert 1920 "Lautlehre der Reinberger Mundart", Mitteilungen des Vereins für Heimatkunde des Jeschken-Isergaues 14: 49—64: 131 — 152. (Also published as a separate brochure, according to Wiesinger-Raffin [1982]: No. 3125.)

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Kauffmann, Friedrich 1890 Geschichte der schwäbischen Mundart im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit. Mit Textproben und einer Geschichte der Schriftsprache in Schwaben. Strassburg: Trübner. Kaupert, Ernst 1914 Die Mundart der Herrschaft Schmalkalden. Teildruck. Dissertation Marburg. Marburg: R. Friedrich. Kranzmayer, Eberhard 1956 Historische Lautgeographie des gesamtbairischen Dialektraumes. (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.) Wien: In Kommission bei Hermann Böhlaus Nachf. Graz - Köln. Kubitscheck, Rudolf n.d. Die Mundarten des Böhmerwaldes. Pilsen: O. J. Carl Maasch. Kuz'menko Ju. K. 1991 Fonologiceskaja evolucija germanskix jazykov [The phonological evolution of the Germanic languages]. Leningrad: Nauka. Lessiak, Primus 1903 "Die Mundart von Pernegg in Kärnten", PBB 28: 1 - 2 2 7 . [1961] [Reprinted as: Deutsche Dialektgeographie 61. Marburg: Elwert.] 1906 Review of Schatz 1903. Anz. 30: 41 - 5 3 . Liberman, Anatoly 1982 Germanic accentology I. The Scandinavian languages. (Minnesota Publications in the Humanities 1.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1990a "The phonetic organization of Early Germanic", AJGLL 2: 1 - 2 2 . 1990b "Some debatable questions of Germanic prosody", AJGLL 2: 149-158. 1992a "A bird's-eye view of open syllable lengthening in English and in the other Germanic languages", NOWELE 20: 6 7 - 8 7 . 1992b "Vowel lengthening before resonant + another consonant and svarabhakti in Germanic", in: Irmengard Rauch — Gerald F. Carr — Robert L. Kyes (eds.), 163-215. 1994 Review of Kuz'menko 1992, Scandinavian Studies 66: 231-267. Loewe, Richard 1927 "Die dehnung von vocalen einsilbiger Wörter im althochdeutschen und mittelhochdeutschen", PBB 51: 271-287. Meinherz, Paul 1920 Die Mundart der Bündner Herrschaft. (BSG 13.) Frauenfeld: Huber. Mitzka, Walther 1943 Deutsche Mundarten. (Studienführer, Gruppe 1, Kulturwissenschaften 24.) Heidelberg: Winter. Mohn, A. vor 1904 "Die vocale der oldenburgischen Mundart", NdJ 30: 3 3 - 7 3 . Müller, Theodor 1911 Lautlehre der Mundart von Mühlingen. Dissertation Freiburg i. B.: C. A. Wagner. Nagl, W. 1894 "Zum Wechsel zwischen Ο und Ol ( = ahd ei) in der nordgauischen Mundart", PBB 19: 338-344.

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Najdic, Larisa E. 1976 "Sil'nye i slabye soglasnye ν svejcarskix dialektax nemeckogo jazyka" [Strong and weak consonants in Swiss German dialects], in: Α. V. Desnickaja (ed.), 151-159. 1979 "Prosodiceskie javlenija ν svejcarsko-nemeckix dialektax" [Prosodic phenomena in Swiss German dialects], in: S. D. Kacnel'son (ed.), 238-251. Paul, Hermann 1884 "Beiträge zur Geschichte der Lautentwicklung und Formenassociation. 11. Vokaldehnung und Vokalverkürzung im Neuhochdeutschen", PBB 9: 101 — 134. Paul, Hermann (ed.) 1891 Grundriss der germanischen Philologie 1. Strassburg: Trübner. 1901 Grundriss der germanischen Philologie 1. (2nd edition.) Strassburg: Trübner. Pompe, Franz 1907 Die Laut- und Akzentverhältnisse der Schokauer Mundart. Dissertation Leipzig. Borna - Leipzig: Robert Noske. Rauch, Irmengard - Gerald F. Carr - Robert L. Kyes (eds.) 1992 On Germanic linguistics. Issues and methods. Berlin - New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Reiffenstein, Ingo 1965 "Geminaten und Fortes im Althochdeutschen", Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 16.3: 61—77. Rein, Kurt 1972 "Die 'Kärtner Dehnung'. Ein Beitrag generativer Phonologie zur bairischen Lautgeschichte", ZDL 39: 129-146. Reis, Hans 1908-1909 "Die Mundarten des Großherzogtums Hessen", Z H M 3: 302-316; 4: 9 7 117, 193-264, 289-333. Reis, Marga 1974 Lauttheorie und Lautgeschichte. Untersuchungen am Beispiel der Dehnungsund Kürzungsvorgänge im Deutschen. (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik/International Library of General Linguistics 14.) München: Fink. Roth, Wilibald 1940 Die Mundart des engeren Egerlandes (Lautlehre). (BKSM 9.) Reichenberg: Franz Kraus. Sache, Ort und Wort. Jakob Jud zum sechzigsten Geburtstag 12. Januar 1942 (Romanica 1943 Helvetica 20.) Geneve. Droz; Zürich - Erlenbach: Rentsch. Schatz, Josef 1897 Die Mundart vom Imst. Laut- und Flexionslehre. Strassburg: Trübner. 1903 Die tirolische Mundart. [Separatabdruck aus der Ferdinandeums-Zeitschrift.] Innsbruck: Im Selbstverlage. Scheiner, Andreas 1897 Zur Geschichte des siebenbürgischen Vokalismus. Programm des theologischpädagogischen Seminars der ev. Landeskirche Α. B. in Hermannstadt am Schlüsse des Schuljahres 1896/97... Hermannstadt: Jos. Drotleff. Sievers, Eduard 1901 Grundzüge der Phonetik. (5th edition.) Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel.

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Spangenberg, Karl 1962 Die Mundartlandschaft zwischen Rhön und Eichsfeld. 2 vols. (Mitteldeutsche Studien 25.) Halle (Saale): Niemeyer. Steinhauser, Walter 1961 "Zur bairisch-österreichischen Lautgeschichte", ZDM 28: 161 — 183. Stickelberger, Heinrich 1881 Lautlehre der lebenden Mundart der Stadt Schaffhausen. Dissertation Leipzig. Aarau: H. R. Sauerländer. Streitberg, Wilhelm 1894 "Die Entstehung der Dehnstufe", IF3: 305-470. Stucki, Karl 1917 Die Mundart von Jaun. Lautlehre und Flexion. (BSG 10.) Frauenfeld: Huber. Tillian, Kurt 1986 Die Kärtner Dehnung. (Ein kritischer Literaturbericht.) (Klagenfurter Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 12.) Klagenfurt: Klagenfurt University. Vetsch, Jakob 1910 Die Laute der Appenzeller Mundart. (BSG 1.) Frauenfeld: Huber. Wanieck, Gustav 1880 "Zum Vokalismus der schlesischen Mundart. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Dialektforschung", Bielitz: W. Fröhlich. (The same in Programm des k.k. Staatsobergymnasiums in Bielitz für das Schuljahr 1879180, 1—52). Weber, Albert 1923 Die Mundart des Zürcher Oberlandes. (BSG 15.) Frauenfeld: Huber. Wiesinger, Peter - Elisabeth Raffin 1982 Bibliographie zur Grammatik der deutschen Dialekte. Laut-, Formen-, und Wortbildungs- und Satzlehre 1800 bis 1980. Bern — Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Wiget, Wilhelm 1916 Die Laute der Toggenburger Mundarten. Frauenfeld: Huber. Wilmanns, Wilhelm 1897 Deutsche Grammatik. Gotisch, Alt-, Mittel- und Neuhochdeutsch, Part I. (2nd edition.) Strassburg: Trübner. Wipf, Elisa 1910 Die Mundart von Visperterminen in Wallis. (BSG 2.). Frauenfeld; Huber. Wrede, Ferdinand 1895 "Die Entstehung der nhd. Diphthonge", ZDA 39: 257-301.

Aspects of "headedness switching" in German, Dutch, and Danish verb complexes Erik J. Macki

1. Introduction The problem of verb (V) syntax in German and Dutch is well known. Government-Binding in a generative framework has certainly permitted solutions to G e r m a n - D u t c h clausal asymmetry, convincing in both their theoretical motivation and demonstrative simplicity. Typologically, German and Dutch are unique in that matrix clauses exhibit the so-called verb-second phenomenon (V2), while embedded clauses exhibit verb-final position (Vf). However, German and Dutch also exhibit "double infinitive" structures that deviate from verb-final in embedded clauses (cf. [la] and [lb] below). (1)

a. German ich habe eine Kuh kaufen wollen. Dutch Ik heb een koe willen kopen. I have one cow buy inf want inf Ί wanted to buy a cow.' b. German Es ist gut, daß ich eine Kuh habe kaufen Dutch Het is goed, dat ik een koe heb willen It is good that I one cow have buy inf wollen, kopen. wanti nf 'It is good that I wanted to buy a cow.'

The compelling question is whether German and Dutch are typologically SVO and SOV languages. Haegeman's (1991) work in this area, as well as Bayer's investigation of COMP-V associative properties in Bavarian (1984a, 1984b), provide important insights into the solution of this problem. Today, most generative syntacticians espouse the theory that German and Dutch are typologically SOV languages, explaining the verbsecond transformation in terms of these COMP-V associative properties. This paper seeks to elucidate the double infinitive structures of German and Dutch within the extant Government-Binding framework in terms

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of parametric variation: the phrasal headedness parameter and aggregation of heads in the verbal complex (VP, AuxP, IP, CP) 1 seem to be responsible for the deviation of double infinitives from verb-final. There is evidence for this "headedness switch" in Danish Adv orderings, as well. These data are then taken as a theory toward language change in Germanic.

2. Verb-second and Germanic typologies Those texts that survive of the older Germanic languages whose syntax seems least influenced by poetic license or translator's influence exhibit a clear pan-Germanic tendency for verb-final - especially in embedded clauses. It is no radical assertion to posit that Germanic was typologically an SOV language. Consider in this light, however, the following evidence from the modern languages: (2)

English: SVO Dutch: matrix S V2 O, embedded S Ο Vf German: matrix S V2 O, embedded S Ο Vf Scandinavian: matrix S ([V2 Adv] O, embedded S [Adv V3] Ο

Given the typology of Germanic, English has deviated over time the most of all the surviving Germanic languages, unsurprisingly. But for remnants in especially topicalized negatives (as in [3] below), English stands largely outside the scope of this paper. (3)

a. Never have I seen such a large cow. b. I have a cow. — So do /.

The evidence above evokes the question whether VO/OV and AdvV/VAdv orders are actually a single manifestation of a phenomenon inherited from post-Germanic. The answer is yes, to be discussed in terms of "headedness switching" below. It is thus at this point in the discussion important to revise the terminology at hand. In fact, verb-second is not synonymous with SVO order. Evidence in German, Dutch and Danish for topicalization transformations shows that the subject in these languages does not inherently stand first; nor does the object. As we shall see, a more correct expression of SVO for verb-second languages is in fact XVX (in matrix clauses), where X stands for any topicalized phrasal category.

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3. Other approaches to German and Dutch asymmetry The following section briefly describes attempts within and outside of Government-Binding, including Minimalism, to deal with German and Dutch asymmetry. Few of these accounts seek to resolve the problem in terms of diachronic syntax or to include Scandinavian in the wider discussion. (For a complete discussion of these, see Webelhuth [1984].) 3.1

Latinization

Scientifically based proposals of the idea that German verb asymmetry is rooted in a presumedly erudite influence from ecclesiastic Latin date to the late nineteenth century. While there is an admitted ideal in Western academia to find solutions in a classical past, the arguments for this "Latinization" theory of verb-second/verb final in German remain uncompelling on two counts. First, this perspective overlooks resounding evidence from pre-Latinate texts in the older Germanic languages, especially numerous verb-final Runic inscriptions. Germanic verb phenomena clearly predate Latin influences in the Middle Ages. Second, the ecclesiastic Latin in use in medieval Europe was not a living language — as is the case with linguae francae as diverse as Swahili in East Africa or Chinook Jargon in the Pacific Northwest, such trade and political languages without native speakers also lack native syntax. The syntaxes of such languages inherently vary from speaker to speaker, influenced by each speaker's native language syntax. Undoubtedly, the directionality of Latin-German syntactic influence has been backward: if any syntactic interference can be found, then it must surely have passed from the German syntax of German-speaking medieval scribes into the Latin syntax of the texts they composed, and not the reverse. Literacy rates among medieval German populations also call this Latinization account to task: how could written Latin have had such a pervasive influence on an illiterate, predominantly oral speech community? 3.2

Luther

It is clear that Luther's Bible helped fix modern "Standard German". In orthography and phonology, the Luther Bible translation was an important point of focus for compromise. Ebert (1983) has analyzed Luther's verb syntax, and the syntax of the next generation who would first have

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modeled its style after him, and finds inconclusive results. The inconclusivity of this investigation is, to my mind, rooted in the limited impact Luther had on the syntax of his contemporaries and posterity's everyday German. Luther's writing conventions are part of the uninterrupted scribal tradition of the German-speaking chancellories in Austria and Prussia. He was perhaps less an innovator than a synthesizer of the language in use all around him. As in the Latinization account, the Lutheran account fails to recognize the pre-Reformation, and indeed pre-Christian, origins of German syntactic phenomena. In addition, it seems a questionable assumption to think that Luther, in supposedly having influenced the syntax of Standard German so greatly, might have had an equal influence on Standard Dutch — a language with nearly identical syntactic properties to German but with an utterly other, non-Lutheran written tradition. In fact, Dutch differs somewhat from German in its word order, though it is largely the same. In the account of these differences below, I have hopefully avoided extending conclusions from German to Dutch or vice versa without presenting evidence for the same. 3.3

Minimalism Syntax Phonetic form (π-form)

Logical form (λ-form)

Figure 1. Minimalism

In the wake of the emergent school of Minimalism, it is important to note that no convincing treatment of German and Dutch asymmetry can be undertaken until Minimalism works out its methodologies more clearly. In an attempt to acknowledge the advent of this perspective, however, Minimalism does present some interesting questions for the current Government-Binding approach at hand. First, in eliminating D-structure and S-structure in favor of the model shown in Figure 1, Minimalism is still left with G e r m a n - D u t c h π-Form asymmetry. It has also proposed that German and Dutch, as all languages in a Minimalistic framework, are fundamentally (i.e., at λ-form) SVO languages. All this theory achieves, then, is a resituation of the problem: while the current SOV theory has to explain how verb-final becomes verb-second between Dand S-structures, a Minimalist SVO theory must explain how verb-second

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becomes verb-final between λ- and π-forms. And indeed, as discussed below, minimalism must yet work out a framework to explain double infinitives in German and Dutch and adverbial positioning in Scandinavian, both of which are unpredictable even with current GovernmentBinding models. However, traditional Government-Binding remains the simplest, most elegant, and most convincing approach to this problem, as undertaken in Haegemann (1991) and elsewhere.

4. Configurationality and phrase structure Platzack (1984) has proposed that the hierarchies of superverbal phrase structures (COMP, INFL, TENSE, AGR, etc.) are fundamentally different in the various Germanic languages. For example, he proposes that IP is a daughter to VP in German, and cites evidence that Swedish has no IP at all.2 In other accounts, it is proposed that German has a "flatter" structure than, say, English which has a "taller" structure - i. e., German is non-configurational. Although apparently unrelated, both "modified hierarchies" and "non-configurationality" belong outside the scope of this paper for the same reason. While the search in universal grammar remains that of the parametric determiners in human language acquisition, panlinguistically, the search in historical linguistics remains that of language change in diachronic speech communities. Webelhuth (1984), among others, correctly observes that German is configurational, as his title emphatically shows, and various motivations for German configurationality at least at D-structure are derived from Case Theory, A- and A'-chains, and whmovement. These motivations are commonalities among all the modern Germanic languages; for the sake of sameness which in historical syntax must be emphasized for comparativity, each of the languages at hand (German, Dutch, and Danish) is taken to exhibit the same phrasal structures and similar configurations; indeed there is no compelling evidence to differentiate any one of them radically from the others.

5. German and Dutch double infinitives The so-called "double infinitive" structure in perfect tenses of German and Dutch modal verbs exhibits non-participial morphology, unlike the morphology of non-modal verbs. 3 Compare the morphology of non-

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modal and modal constructions in (4) and (5) below (German first, Dutch second): (4)

a. Present ich habe keine Kuh. Ik heb geen koe. I have no cow Ί have no cow.' b. Perfect Ich habe keine Kuh gehabt. Ik heb geen koe geheeft. I have no cow had p p a r t Ί have not had a cow.'

(5)

a. Present Ich will keine Kuh haben. Ik will geen koe hebben. I want no cow have inf Ί do not want a cow.' b. Perfect Ich habe keine Kuh haben wollen. Ik heb geen koe willen hebben. I have no cow have inf wantjnf7 Ί have not wanted a cow.'

In all these matrix examples, we see that any verb inflected for tense stands verb-second, while all other elements of the verbal complex stand verb-final (infinitives, participles). In these matrix clause examples, we find that perfect modals exhibit the expected ordering but lack the expected morphology. German and Dutch past participles typically exhibit the prefix ge- and either the suffix -en or -t, as in ge-hab-t / ge-heef-t 'had' from (4b) above. We can regard the perfect auxiliary (Aux) in these instances as haben! hebben + ge, which by government (and verbal complex aggregation, to be discussed below in section 7) normally forces participial morphology onto the main verb, as in (6) below. As the S-structure in (6) shows, the main verb is raised and aggregated with the auxiliary where it picks up its morphological features (on this cf. Haegeman and van Riemsdijk [1986]).

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a. German Ich habe keine Kuh gehabt, b. Dutch Ik heb geen koe geheeft. D-Structure

S-Structure

AuxP

AuxP

haben +gehabt

haben Governs

Raises

Unexpected in perfect modal constructions is the lack of participial morphology: the modal verb wollen 'want', which as a daughter to the auxiliary haben + ge- might be expected to appear at S-structure as * gewollt.4 Instead, the modal remains unmarked for any perfect tense morphology.

6. Phrasal headedness Haegeman (1991) provides an important solution to German and Dutch verb asymmetry mainly in terms of phrasal headedness. Headedness is a parametric variation that is language-specific, though related languages such as English, Dutch and German exhibit similar headedness parameters. Headedness is also phrase-specific such that different phrasal categories in the same language may have different headednesses from each other. A language like English is largely left-headed or head-initial (HI), while a language like Japanese is largely right-readed or head-final (Hi). Such generalizations do not apply universally within a language, however, to which end consider the examples in (7) below where different headednesses occur in English despite its heavy head-initial tendency: (7)

a. b. c. d.

Hl HI Hf Hf

V? [see [him]] DP [the [woman]] PP [ [five years] ago] NP [tall [buildings] ]

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There is also evidence in German that headedness is a parameter set not in syntax but at lexicon. Thus, while one may generalize that German PPs are head-initial, there are numerous lexically determined counterexamples: (8)

a. [[dem Muster] nach] the pattern after 'according to the pattern' b. [ [die Straße] entlang] the street along 'along the street' c. [ [der Schule] gegenüber] the school across 'across from the school'

Headedness is thus a lexically generated feature, which I will here mark as [± Hi]. Haegeman (1991) correctly notes that the German and Dutch verbal complexes are asymmetrical in phrasal headedness. While NP, AuxP and IP are generally [+ Hf] in German and Dutch, CP is [ - Hi], This headedness property will help explain below why main verbs (either infinitival or participial) normally stand verb-final in these languages, while any inflected element, usually auxiliary or verb aggregated with INFL, stands verb-second in matrix clauses.

7. Gemination and verbal complex aggregation To turn now to the syntactic roots of the double infinitive construction in German and Dutch, I will discuss first the concept of gemination in its phonological sense and demonstrate its usefulness in syntax. 7.1 Gemination in phonology The double infinitive problem is a morphological one, to be sure, but its solution in both Dutch and German can be found in syntax by borrowing an allied concept from metrical phonology, gemination. The Swedish example of geminate consonants in (9) below demonstrates the phonological principle:

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Swedish flicka 'girl' /flikka/

c c cc I I

V

f I i k a

V V Swedish flicka has the series CCVCCV as its metrical or skeletal tier. The third and fourth consonantal nodes (C) share the single melodic feature matrix represented by Ik/. In short, metrical phonology understands gemination as a kind of double head. One melodic head simultaneously occupies two metrical nodes. 7.2

Gemination in syntax

Phrase structure trees in generative syntax serve essentially as a kind of "skeletal tier", dictating the sequence of elements in any syntactic utterance just as a phonological skeletal tier dictates the sequence of elements in any phonological utterance. Syntactic "geminate heads" already have conceptual precedents, furthermore, in both Trace Theory and INFL/V aggregation, and thus logically follow out of current theory. Figure 2 illustrates this point graphically. IP

habe Figure 2. Geminate head (S-structure)

The lack of participial morphology in German and Dutch perfect modal constructions, or "double infinitives", is really evidence for verbal complex aggregation similar to V/INFL aggregation, defined in (10a) below: (10)

a. Verbal Complex Aggregation: the multiple occupancy by heads in the verbal complex (V, Aux, INFL, COMP) of a single node.

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A distinction must be drawn between aggregation and gemination: (10)

b. Syntactic Gemination: the simultaneous occupancy by one head of multiple nodes after all transformations. (This is essentially the S-structure, and π-form, evidence for Trace Theory.)

In that German and Dutch double infinitives are aggregate heads, their lack of participial morphological marking may be attributed syntactically either (10a) to the morphology's systemic inability to mark aggregate heads, or (10b) to a rule barring the gemination of already aggregate heads at the auxiliary node. Thus, the + ge- feature of the perfect auxiliary haben/hebben + ge- applies vacuously to double infinitives. There is also evidence in German and Dutch dialects for gemination at the COMP node in terms of the verbal complex as well. Bayer (1984a, 1984b) and Haegeman (1991) have found that Bavarian and West Flemish, respectively, inflect COMPs to agree in person and number with the verb in [+ Agr] clauses. This may be due to aggregation of the verbal feature matrix of INFL with COMP. The evidence shows, however inconclusive the nature of these movement transformations, that the lines between each of the verbal complex levels are blurred and that some kind of interrelativity exists between them (for a more complete discussion, see Haegeman and van Riemsdijk [1986]).5 The impact of this evidence from West Germanic languages on the double infinitive construction in Dutch and German is twofold. First, gemination of heads is a phenomenon documented by much crosslinguistic evidence.6 It thus provides a reasonable and simple explanation for the syntactic processes at hand. Second, the verbal complex in West Germanic seems to exhibit various kinds of aggregation which explain tense/ mood agreement properties, inflected COMPs and double infinitives; this is probably a parametric phenomenon specific largely to West Germanic. It thus provides an important insight into the diachronic syntax of Germanic.

8. The COMP filter Returning to the foregoing verb-second/verb-final discussion and why German and Dutch are matrix-typologically XVX and not SOV languages, then, the problem of phrasal headedness in these two languages emerges as argumentatively central. In our model of syntax which, for

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the time being, includes both a D-structure and an S-structure, we posit that the underlying structure in German and Dutch is verb-final because VP and IP are head-final, and a Move-α transformation elicits the correct verb-second S-structure. (An analogous dichotomy of generative levels may emerge out of Minimalist π- and λ-forms, where the present discussion will conceivably retain its theoretical validity.) This asymmetry of verb position in matrix versus embedded clauses has to do with a verb-second language-specific COMP parameter. I have already cited Bayer's and Haegeman's evidence of inflected COMPs in Bavarian and West Flemish, among other West Germanic dialects. Clearly, the CP is a part of, and important in, the German/Dutch verbal complex and its nodes are closely associated with verb morphology and position. Apparently, verb-second languages have the parameter "COMP Filter" defined in (11) below which in turns creates a verb-second languages. (11)

COMP filter: For a verb-second language, if COMP = 0, then •COMP.

In other words, verb-second languages like German and Dutch require all COMP nodes to be filled. In an embedded clause with an overt COMP, such as (12a) below, the highest constituent of the verbal complex cannot be promoted from INFL into COMP because German and Dutch do not permit COMP/V aggregation (though some dialects do permit COMP/INFL aggregation). Thus, once promoted to INFL, the verb remains verb-final because IP is head-final. In (12b), however, the embedded clause does not have an overt COMP. Since the COMP node is empty, we must by the COMP Filter fill this node with the aggregate V to produce an embedded verbsecond structure. An identical movement, as in (12c), occurs in matrix clauses where the COMP is also empty. (12)

a. Overt COMP in embedded clause. Es ist gut, daß ich keine Kuh habe. it is good that I no cow have. 'It it good that I have no cow.'

Erik J. Macki

CP

Nominative keine Kuh haben^ Aggregation Figure 3. Embedded V position with overt COMP

b. No COMP in embedded clause: Es ist gut,

ich habe keine Kuh.

it is good I have no 'It is good I have no cow.'

cow

CP

Topicalization

COMP FILTER

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c. Matrix clause: Ich habe keine Kuh /„ I have no cow Ί have no cow.' CP

The foregoing discussion of verb movement and its motivation is based primarily on Haegeman, but my understanding of verb-second/verb-final phenomena deviates somewhat from hers with respect to the nature of the [Spec, CP] node. She has also proposed that nominative case is assigned in German and Dutch not at [Spec, IP] as Case Theory provides in most languages, such as English, but at [Spec, CP]. This then motivates the necessary NP-movement to create true verb-second. As I have explained before, however, German and Dutch do not have matrix SVO word order but XVX word order. In fact, any phrasal category, not just a nominative DP, can occupy the [Spec, CP] position, as the examples in (13) demonstrate. [Spec, CP] is in fact a topicalizer position in these languages. (13)

a. Keine Kuh habe ich. No cow have I Ί have now cow.' b. Typischerweise habe ich keine Kühe. Typically have I no cows 'Typically I have no cows.'

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c. In der Tat habe ich keine Kuh. In the fact have I no cow 'In fact, I have no cow.' In verb-second languages, the COMP filter thus has the following stipulation: (14)

For a verb-second language, when by the COMP filter headto-head movement fills COMP with a verb, then [Spec, CP] Φ 0.

This stipulation does not require the subject DP to be topicalized, though it usually is since it is normally the next-highest element in the phrase structure. Any phrasal category can be, and is, promoted in German. This is true in all Germanic verb-second languages (cf. [15]). (15)

a. Dutch Geen b. Danish Ingen No Ί have

koe heb ik. ko har jeg. cow have I no cow.'

9. Double infinitives in embedded clauses: "headedness switching" The foregoing sections have dealt with nonproblematic aspects of German and Dutch verbal syntax. The double infinitive construction in embedded clauses is the central problem of this paper, however, and with the preceding background in mind it provides evidence for a phenomenon of aggregate verbs called "headedness switching". The syntactic model I have presented so far cannot generate the grammatical sentences given in (16) and (17) below: (16) (17)

German Es ist gut, daß ich keine Kuh habe Dutch Het is goed, dat ik geen koe heb It is good that I no cow have wollen. kopen. want 'It is good that I haven't wanted to buy

kaufen willen buy

a cow.'

The inflected auxiliary habelheb in these sentences does not stand verbfinal, as expected, but before the double infinitive.

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One approach to this problem is to posit "headedness switching" whereby the syntax imposes a switch between [± Hf] on the VP in an embedded clause. However, this model can produce only the following ungrammatical sentences using configurational phrase structure hierarchies: (18)

* Es ist gut, daß ich habe keine Kuh kaufen wollen.

(19)

* Es ist gut, daß ich keine Kuh kaufen wollen habe.

In order for "headedness switching" to apply grammatically, the aggregation of heads cannot stop only at VP and must involve AuxP as well (cf. (20)). (20)

Es ist gut, daß ich keine Kuh habe kaufen wollen. CP

keine Kuh

kaufen •

Headedness switching is motivated apparently by the "semantic weight" of the phrasal categories. Topicalization, for example, is a semantically motivated word ordering which enables the speaker to emphasize the semantic importance of phrasal categories in syntax. (21)

Semantic weight: the subjective and optional importance afforded the meaning of a syntactic constituent.

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Macki

In this case of double infinitives, the aggregate head produced by gemination would elicit the order *[[kaufen wollen] habe]. Keeping in mind the internal structure of the aggregation, i.e., [kaufen wollen] are a product of a previous aggregation and therefore function when aggregated in higher nodes like one element, we see that the semantically light element habe is last. Applying the headedness switch produces the correct oder [habe[kaufen wollen]]. A question remains: what motivates the aggregation of the main verb and the modal verb in German and Dutch double infinitives in the first place? A rather ad hoc response is to find a general tendency of verbal elements to aggregate, although this seems generally the case in German and Dutch, at least. The motivation for verb raising into INFL has also remained inconclusively explained, yet this operation is essential to nominative case assignment and correct S-structure word order. The motivation for raising of any constituent of the verbal complex may be a generalized one. A more compelling motivation for the aggregation of the main verb and the modal verb, however, is semantic. Modal verbs by their nature require a main verb as a complement. The close semantic relationship between the main verb and the modal verb motivates aggregation in the double infinitive structure. In a sense, the modality of the modal verb is a kind of inflection. Some languages do not permit the same level of syntactic reflection of semantic weight as German and Dutch. French, for example, often uses iterative "disjunctive" pronouns interjectively for this purpose, as in (22). (22)

French Je n'ai pas de vache, moi. I [Neg]-have not of cow me Ί do not have a cow.'

Headedness switching is a technique in German and Dutch to syntactically emphasize semantic weight. It explains, for example, the phenomenon of "scrambling" which otherwise seems to defy configurationalist analyses of German and Dutch (see Haegeman [1991] or Haegeman and van Riemsdijk [1986]). I have shown that German and Dutch are typologically verb-final languages. The semantic ramification of this is that semantically weighty phrasal categories tend to stand later in an utterance than sooner. Headedness switching in German and Dutch embedded double infinitive constructions thus preserves the semantic weight of the verbal and modal elements positionally in the utterance.

Aspects of "headedness switching"

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10. Headedness switching in Danish Headedness switching finds application in a phenomenon of the Scandinavian languages, a phenomenon closely related diachronically to the double infinitive in German and Dutch. The position of adverbial elements to the VP is asymmetrical in Danish matrix and embedded clauses: (23)

a. matrix Jeg har ikke set koen. I have not seen cow-the Ί haven't seen the cow.' b. embedded Det er godt, at jeg ikke har set koen. It is good that I not have seen cow-the 'It is good that I haven't seen the cow.'

This phenomenon is not restricted to negatives like ikke 'not', however: any adverbial undergoes this switch: (24)

Det er godt, at jeg sä snort kopte koen. It is good that I so quickly bought cow-the 'It is good that I bought the cow so quickly.'

The ordering of the AdvV / VAdv in Danish, as in the other Scandinavian languages, is headedness switching motivated by verb-second. Underlying the Danish order is AdvV where a sentential AdvP is generated as a mother to IP (cf. [25]). Motivated by Logical form (or Minimalist λ-form), a sentential Adv becomes, in part, part of the Danish verbal complex and is subject to aggregative properties. The verb moves up into INFL to receive its tense properties, the INFL/V aggregate moves up into Adv, and then by the COMP filter moves again into COMP. The headedness switch applies at COMP, preserving the verb's verb-second status and reflecting its semantic weight (see [25] below). (25)

Danish Adv/V aggregation: Jeg [ser [ikke] ] koen. I see not cow-the Ί don't see the cow.'

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CP

11. Parametric change and language change: Conclusions Finding a similarity in "headedness switching" in Danish, Dutch and German is rooted in the idea of historical syntax. If at some point in Proto- and Common Germanic only verb-final word order were possible, as Lenerz (1985) presumes, and at some point SVO and SOV word order existed side by side, as the older Germanic languages attest, then Danish and the other Germanic languages should, and do, have close syntactic relationships. There is much to gain by positing VP operations for Danish parallel to German and Dutch and for positing headedness switching. First, there may be a crosslinguistic diachronic tendency to start flipping headedness switches in the same direction that would explain in terms of diachronic linguistics why, for example, the Germanic languages are verb-second languages while Celtic languages are verb-initial languages. Ultimately, the syntax of Indo-European may be convincingly reconstructable. Second, this may explain tendencies evident today in Dutch and German where certain sentential elements are placed after the infinitival verbs at the very end of the sentence ("scrambling"). In fact, German and Dutch are probably in a process of headedness realignment, a process Danish has already, but not fully, undergone. The headedness

Aspects of "headedness switching"

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switch is part of language change. Last, the notions of scrambling and adjunction may become irrelevant in favor of more satisfying analyses of Germanic syntactic structures. Notes 1. The verbal complex consists of all projections and superprojections of the verb, including VP, AuxP, IP, and CP. The aggregation of these elements into compound heads is defined and discussed more fully in section 7. 2. One must assume that Platzack's analysis of Swedish holds for Danish as well, which is the Scandinavian language I know best. Platzack proposes that Swedish verbs are generated at lexicon and inserted at D-structure with tense features already: i.e., verbs are lexically and not syntactically marked for tense. Tense correspondence in indirect discourse serves as counterevidence to this observation, however. It is also somewhat counterintuitive within current theory to regard verbs in Scandinavian that are clearly marked for tense as lacking an IP (or subcategory thereof, such as TP, AgrP, etc.). 3. In both German and Dutch, we can regard "modal verbs" as a label for the lexical class of verbs including (German) dürfen, können, lassen, mögen, müssen, sollen, wollen and (Dutch) kunnen, laten, laten, moeten, willen, zullen. The shared lexical or semantic properties of these verbs stand outside the scope of this paper, but clearly modality plays a role. 4. Although marked here by an asterisk, gewollt is a grammatical form permitted in sentences with ellipsis of any main verb, for example, Ich habe es nicht gewollt Ί did not want it'. 5. This kind of interrelativity of phrasal categories has not been adequately investigated. A similar interrelativity also clearly exists in the nominal complex between D P and N P 6. For example, Italian preverbal anaphoric complements such as gliela may be instances of gemination and aggregation at COMP.

References Bayer, Joseph 1984a "Towards an explanation of certain that-X phenomena: The COMP node in Bavarian", in Wim De Geest and Yvan Putseys (eds.), Sentential Complementals. Dordrecht: Foris, 23-32. 1984b "COMP in Bavarian syntax", The Linguistic Review 3: 209-274. Besten, Hans den - Jerald A. Edmondson 1981 "The verbal complex in Continental West Germanic", Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik 19: 11—61. Bierwisch, Manfred 1963 Grammatik des deutschen Verbs. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Brandt, S0ren 1992 "Two problems in Danish verb syntax", Nordic Journal of Linguistics 15: 4 7 61. Chomsky, Noam 1986 Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT. 1989 "Some notes on economy of derivation and representation", in: Elizabeth A. Cowper (ed.) (1992), 17.

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Cooper, Robin 1986 "Verb second: Predication or unification?", Nordic Journal of Linguistics 9: 163-179. Cowper, Elizabeth A. (ed.) 1992 A concise introduction to syntactic theory: The Government-Binding approach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ebert, Robert P. 1983 "Verb position in Luther's Bible translation and in the usage of his contemporaries", Monatshefte 75: 147-155. Gerritson, Marinel 1985 "The history of Dutch frame and verb second sentences", in: William H. Fletcher (ed.), Papers from the First Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlands Studies held at the University of Maryland. Maryland: University Presses of America, 87-91. Haegeman, Liliane 1991 "Aspects of the syntax of Germanic languages", Introduction to Government & Binding theory. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 513-553. Haegeman, Liliane - Henk van Riemsdijk 1986 "Verb projection raising, scope and the typology of rules affecting verbs", Linguistic Inquiry 17: 417—466. Haider, Hubert 1986 "V-second in German", in: Hubert Haider — Martin Prinzhorn (eds.), Verb second phenomena in Germanic languages. Riverton, NJ: Foris, 49-75. Haider, Hubert - Martin Prinzhorn (eds.) 1986 Verb second phenomena in Germanic languages. Riverton, NJ: Foris. Kemenade, Ans van 1984 "Verb and clitics in Old English", in: Hans Bennis - W. U. S. van Lessen Kloeke (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands. Assen: Van Gorcum, 101-109. Koster, Jan 1975 "Dutch as an SOV language", Linguistic Analysis 1: 111-136. Lenerz, Jürgen 1985 "Diachronic syntax: Verb position and COMP in German", in: Jindrich Toman (ed.), Studies in German grammar. Dordrecht: Foris, 103 — 132. Olsen, Susan 1985 "On deriving V-l and V-2 structures in German", in: Jindrich Toman (ed.), Studies in German grammar, Dordrecht: Foris, 133-163. Platzack, Christer 1984 "The position of finite verb in Icelandic", in: Wim De Geest and Yvan Putseys (eds.) Sentential complementation. Dordrecht: Foris, 195-204. Pollock, Jean-Yves 1989 "Verb movement, UG and the structure of IP", Linguistic Inquiry 20: 3 6 5 424. Uszkoreit, Hans 1987 Word order and constituent structure in German. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Webelhuth, Gert 1984 "German is configurational", The Linguistic Review 4: 203—246.

Agreement and null subjects in Germanic and Romance Enrique Mallen

1. Null subjects and the Empty-Category Principle Icelandic shares a number of significant features with null-subject languages such as Spanish. In both Icelandic and Spanish, there is a number agreement between the subject and the finite verb. Moreover, they both allow heavy subject postposing and subject raising over an overt that complementizer. The two languages differ, however, in other crucial and related aspects that need careful investigation. For instance, while Icelandic may be considered a null-subject language, the empty subject must be a non-argument. In this, it contrasts with full-fledged null-subject languages like Spanish where empty subjects can be arguments. Furthermore, Icelandic, but not Spanish, has constructions where a non-Nominative DP syntactically and semantically behaves as a subject. Finally, Icelandic differs from Spanish in that it allows stylistic fronting, a process by which a range of elements may be raised in subjectless subordinate clauses. Platzack (1987) attempts to account for the characteristics shared by Icelandic and Spanish by assuming that both languages select the positive value in a null-subject parameter. In this they differ from languages such as German, Swedish, and English, which are considered non-null-subject languages. Many authors have argued in favor of a correlation between the possibility of having empty subjects in tensed clauses and the existence of a rich verb-subject agreement system. Following this tradition, Platzack (1987) proposes that the characteristic feature of null-subject languages may be attributed to a rich enough system of verb-subject agreement. Such an agreement system would license the occurrence of empty subjects via proper government of the empty category as required by the EmptyCategory Principle. 1

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2. A non-Empty-Category Principle account of null subjects While the ability to have null subjects could in principle be attributed to the Empty-Category Principle, we can actually show that neither Icelandic nor Spanish, two null-subject languages, allow extraction of a noun phrase from preverbal subject position. In this regard, they differ from German, where extraction from this position is possible. (1)

(2)

[German] a. Ich frage I ask Ί wonder b. Ich frage I ask Ί wonder

(Noonan 1988: 193, 201) mich was wer gekauft myself what who bought who has bought what' mich wer was gekauft myself who what bought who has bought what?'

hat? has hat? has

[Spanish] (Jaeggli 1986: 3 - 4 , 65, 69) a. Que dijiste que compro quien what you-said that bought who 'What did you say that who bought?' b. *Que dijiste que quien compro what you-said that who bought 'What did you say that who bought?'

In general, all cases of subject extraction at s-structure or LF can be ascribed to raising from the postverbal position, which the subject may also continue to occupy at s-structure in both Icelandic and Spanish (see (3) and [4]). (3)

[Spanish] (Jaeggli 1986: 2; Mallen 1994: 5) a. Quien dijiste que salio tempranol who you-said that left early 'Who did you say left early?' b. Kathy me dijo que no cogio el paquete ningün Kathy me told that no took the package no estudiante student 'Kathy told me that no student took the package'

(4)

[Icelandic] (Platzack 1987: 378) a. Hver heldur pu (αδ) hafi framiö glaepintü who believe you (that) has committed the-crime 'Who do you believe has committed the crime?'

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b. pad munu kaupa pessa bok margir stüdentar there will buy this book many students 'Many students will buy this book' In order to show clear examples of extraction from preverbal subject position in Icelandic, we must examine a particular subtype of verb-initial declarative common in this language, namely, "narrative inversion". 2 As Sigurösson (1990) reports, narrative inversion differs from other verb-initial declaratives in that it is confined to main clauses. (5)

[Icelandic] (Sigurösson 1990: 52-53) a. *Pvi er sennilegt ad verdi rigningin mikil ά morgun thus is likely that will-be the-rain heavy tomorrow 'It is likely that it will rain heavily tomorrow' b. Ρ vi er sennilegt ad verdi mikil rigning ά morgun thus is likely that will-be heavy rain tomorrow 'It is likely that it will rain heavily tomorrow'

Furthermore, narrative-inversion clauses have a topical subject, whereas other verb-initial declaratives have an overt nontopical subject or no overt subject. (6)

[Icelandic] (Sigurösson 1990: 4 1 - 4 2 ) a. Kom Olafur seint heim came Olaf late home 'Olaf came home late' b. Höföu Ρ vi komiö margir gestir um nottina had thus come many guests in the-night 'Many guests had come at night' c. Var oft komiö seint heim was often come late home 'People often came home late'

Finally, topical subjects cannot be postposed, again regardless of whether or how the initial specifier position is lexicalized: (7)

[Icelandic] (Sigurösson 1990: 50) a. Bokina haföi hann ekki enn lesiö the-book had he not still read 'He had not read the book yet' b. * Bokina hafdi ekki enn lesiö hann the-book had not still read he 'He had not read the book yet'

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c. *Haföi ekki enn lesiö bokina hann had not still read the-book he 'He had not read the book yet' Sigurösson accounts for these differences by assuming that narrativeinversion clauses involve double verb-raising. After double verb-raising in narrative-inversion clauses, the verb must be in Comp, which is impossible if Comp is filled by a complementizer as in embedded clauses. Furthermore, the topical subject is always in the preverbal subject position, from which movement is impossible. Neither one of these features is necessarily shared by other verb-initial constructions. In this respect, Sigurösson deviates from other studies of verb-initial/verb-second structures which propose a general verb-to-Comp approach. If it were the case that the verb occupies the characteristic verb-second position (i.e., Comp) in the relevant structures, we would not be able to claim that extraction is possible in German due to the fact that the empty category is licensed through government. The verb in Comp governs the trace in preverbal subject position as required by the Empty-Category Principle. However, such a proposal could not account for the contrast between German and Icelandic/Spanish given that verb-raising to Comp applies in all three languages in the relevant extraction environment (see Torrego 1984, Platzack 1986a). (8)

[Icelandic] (Rögnvaldsson - Thräinsson 1990: 12, 14) Hvern hefur Maria kyssf! whom has Mary kissed 'Who has Mary kissed?'

(9)

[Spanish] (Torrego 1984: 103, 111) Qui querian esos dos / *Que esos dos querian? what wanted those two what those two wanted 'What did those two want?'

Rather, what we observe is a certain correlation between the possibility of licensing null-subjects and the impossibility of extracting from preverbal subject position. Icelandic and Spanish are null-subject languages and prohibit movement from this position at both s-structure and LF. German is not a null-subject language and allows the relevant type of extraction.

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3. Nominative Case in verb-second languages Verb-raising to Comp in verb-second languages has been related in recent analysis to the mechanism of Nominative-Case assignment to the subject position. Some have attributed the obligatoriness of verb-movement to the need for a potential Nominative-Case assigner to occupy a location from which it can govern the subject position. Others have claimed that the verb moves to Comp for independent reasons, and that it is the subject DP that must move to a preverbal position to receive Case from a Comp lexicalized through verb-movement. The idea that either the subject or the verb must move in order to enter a different syntactic relation with each other at s-structure is connected to one of the two crucial features which many reseachers have identified as characteristic of verb-second languages: (a) a close relation between the subject position and Comp; (b) a close relation between Comp and Infi. Kosmeijer (1991) interprets obligatory verb-movement in verb-second languages as a process which is independent of Nominative-Case assignment. First, it is assumed that Infi does not constitute a separate projection in German, i.e., the verb and Infi form a joined projection (Verb/ Infi). Second, a finite Verb/Infl is marked with a Tense feature [+ tns]. This feature must move to a position from which it can have scope over the entire predication (subject + VP). In the absence of an independent Infi, the only available position for [+ tns] is Comp. 3 Furthermore, the feature [+ tns] must be lexically supported. As a result, the [+ tns] bearing verb must move to Comp in main clauses to provide [+ tns] with lexical support. (10)

[Cp [ e [comp V/I[ + tns] ] [iP [vP/Γ [ν/Γ DP tv/l] ] ] ]

In Icelandic, the scope bearing [+ tns] moves to Infi, triggering verbraising to that same position to provide lexical support. In a sentence with the subject in first position or with a fronted non-operator, the verb may remain in Infi. Conversely, in main sentences where an operator occupies Spec,CP, the feature [+ tns] must move to Comp, forcing the finite verb in turn to move also from Infi to Comp. I will deviate from the configurations proposed by Kosmeijer (1991) and follow Travis (1991) in positing a common sentence structure for all verb-second languages which is identical to the one assumed for nonverb-second languages. Let us also assume, following Jaeggli and Safir (1989: 33), that a feature [+ fin] ([+ F]) in verb-second-languages is generated in Comp and that this feature endows Comp with operator status.

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As a result, a finite verb must move to Comp at s-structure or LF to provide the operator Comp with the necessary variable. In the event that Comp is not filled by a complementizer, verb-movement must apply at s-structure to provide [+ F] with lexical support. By contrast, the feature [+ F] is generated in Tense in Spanish declarative clauses. Thus, the verb need only move up to Tense in order to lexically support [+ F].4 (11)

a.

[CP[C[+ F]

b.

[Cp C [TP[T

V] [ TP [ T t T ] [Agrp[A t A ] [+

[VP

DP t v DP] ] ] ]

Η V ] [ A G R P [A t A ] [VP D P t

v

DP] ]] ]

In summary, a lexical verb must move to Comp in declarative main clauses in verb-second languages to comply with the requirements on the feature [+ F]. This second movement is not obligatory in non-verb-second languages such as Spanish: the verb need only move up to a Tense which contains the feature [+ F]. In the next section, we argue that the position where [+ F] is base-generated is also crucial to explain differences in the process of Case-assignment between verb-second languages such as Icelandic and German versus non-verb-second languages like Spanish.

4. Nominative Case in German and Spanish For Kosmeijer, the assignment of Nominative Case is related to the Tense feature in Comp. Nominative Case, like other structural Cases, is assigned under government. Consequently, the subject must occupy a position which is governed by the Tense feature, i.e., Spec,IP. In the more articulated Infi approach, Nominative Case in Dutch, German and Swedish is assigned to the Spec,TP position by the verb bearing the feature [+ F] in Comp as in (12a): (12)

a.

η V] [ T P DPj [ T t T ] [ AgrP [ A t A ] [ VP tj t v DP] ] ] ] : Τ b. [ C p C [ T P [ T [ + F ] V] [ AgrP [A t A ] [Vp DP t v DP]]]] : Τ [CP[C[+

In Spanish, a non-verb-second language, the feature [+ F] is generated in Tense. Therefore, Nominative Case can in principle be assigned to a DP in Spec,VP under government once the verb moves (to Agr) to Tense. This occurs in Spanish in topicalization structures both in main and subordinate clauses, where the subject may follow the verb (see 28b). The relevant structures are exemplified in (13) and (14):

Agreement

and null subjects

(13)

[German] (Travis 1991: 343; Olsen 1985: 143) a. Die Kinder haben das Brot heute gegessen the children have the bread today eaten 'The children have eaten the bread today' b. Die Mühle klappert am rauschenden Bach the mill clatters at-the rushing brook 'The mill clatters near the rushing brook'

(14)

[Spanish] (Campos and Zampini 1990: 48) a. Los libros los leyo Juan the books them read Juan 'John read the books' b. Unos libros compro Juan en esa libreria some books bought Juan in that bookstore 'John bought some books in that store'

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Alternatively, Nominative Case may be assigned in Spanish to a DP in Spec,TP under Spec-head agreement with Tense as shown in (15) and exemplified in (16): (15)

[CP[TP D P J [T[+

ί (16)

F]

V ] [ A G R P [A t A ] [VP t j t v D P ] ] ] ]

:

[Spanish] a. Bonnie jamas sabria la importancia de aquella Bonnie never would-know the importance of that relacion relation 'Bonnie would never know the importance of that relation' b. Me supongo que Bonnie jamäs sabrä la verdad me I-suppose that Bonnie never will-know the truth Ί suppose that Bonnie will never know the truth'

German is similar to Spanish in that the subject D P may remain inside VP in contexts of Nominative Case assignment. As shown by Cardinaletti (1990) and Harbert and Toribio (1993), however, this is only possible in German if an expletive is available in Spec,TP to receive Nominative Case from the feature [+ F] in Comp. This expletive element can be a phonetically realized DP as in (17a) and (17b) or an expletive empty category as in (17c) and (17d): (17)

[German] (Cardinaletti 1990: 139; Safir 1985: 196) a. Es stieß ihn ein Soldat von der Brücke it push him a soldier from the bridge Ά soldier pushed him off the bridge'

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b. Es hat ein Mann die Maria geküßt it has a man the Maria kissed Ά man has kissed Mary' c. daß (*es) ein Mann getötet wurde that there a man killed was 'that a man was killed' d. Gestern wurde (*es) ein Mann getötet yesterday was there a man killed Ά man was killed yesterday' The necessary presence of an expletive element in Spec,TP in these cases is connected to the nature of Nominative Case assignment, i.e., the expletive element must be present to receive Nominative Case. We had assumed up to this point that Case assignment was the trigger for obligatory movement of the subject D P from inside VP to Spec,TP in languages such as Dutch, Swedish, and German. We can show, however, that the obligatoriness of this process is not directly connected to the lexical status of the subject DP. In other words, Case assignment must apply even in the absence of such a lexical subject. That is, even if a lexical subject is unavailable, Nominative Case must be assigned. Thus, some other nominal element must be syntactically present to receive Nominative Case.

5. Nominative Case and PRO identification In Icelandic, as in other verb-second languages, there is a close connection between verb-movement to Comp and Nominative Case assignment to the subject. There is, nevertheless, one important difference between Icelandic and German. We noticed earlier that the Spec,TP position must be filled by a (null or lexically realized) expletive in German in order for the VP-internal subject to be licensed. Thus, in (18a), the Spec,TP is filled by a null expletive with which the VP-internal subject may coindex and receive Nominative Case as required. The same coindexation could in principle be posited in examples such as (18b) and (18c) from Icelandic: (18)

[German/Icelandic] a. daß meinem Onkel die Urne geschenkt worden ist that my uncle-D the urn-N given been has 'that my uncle was given the urn' b. Mer Hka pessir bilar me-D like those cars-N Ί like those cars'

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c. Honum voru seldir drengirnir him-D were sold the-boys-N 'The boys were sold to him' As argued in Harbert and Toribio (1993), however, there is clear evidence that the Dative element in Icelandic occurs in Spec,TP. In the Icelandic example (19a), the VP-internal subject is unable to control the adverbial clause PRO. In this respect it differs from its German counterexample (19b): (19)

[Icelandic/German] (Harbert and Toribio 1993: 16) a. *Henri var gefinn lax, til pess aö PrOj vera boröaöur her-D was given salmon in order to be eaten 'She was given salmon to eat' b. ob dem Studenten die Bücher, gegeben wurden, um if the student-D the books-N given were to PROi gelesen zu werden read to be 'if the students had been given the books to be read'

This can be explained if the VP-internal subject is coindexed with an expletive element in Spec,TP in German, but not in Icelandic. The coindexed expletive c-commands PRO in the adverbial clause. The VP-internal subject may then control it through its coindexation with the null expletive. By contrast, the dative DP prevents the occurrence of an expletive in Spec,TP. Therefore, the VP-internal subject cannot be coindexed with an element that c-commands PRO nor can it co-command PRO itself from inside VP. The following question now arises: if Nominative Case is not necessarily assigned to an element in Spec,TP in Icelandic as it is in German and if we maintain that verb-movement is somehow connected to Nominative Case assignment in Icelandic as a verb-second language, then what position receives Nominative if not Spec,TP? Let us assume that Nominative Case must be assigned to a nominal element but that such a nominal element does not have to be a DP. We can then allow a nominal head instead of a nominal maximal projection to be the recipient of Nominative Case. In other words, Nominative can be (a) assigned directly to a DP in Spec,TP or (b) to a nominal Agr in Tense. Let us posit furthermore that Agr in German is not nominal. Then it follows that German must select the first option, i.e., a subject DP must occupy Spec,TP and receive Nominative Case since a verbal element

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cannot be the recipient of Case. By contrast, Icelandic and Spanish have a nominal Agr and may then choose the second option, i. e., the nominal Agr may be the recipient of the Nominative Case. (20)

[Icelandic] a. Jon las aldrei bokina John read never the-book 'John never read the book' b. ad Jon las aldrei bokina that John read never the-book 'that John never read the book'

A similar conclusion is reached in Holmberg and Platzack (1991). They propose that Agr in Icelandic is nominal and inherently marked with Nominative Case. As such, Agr can and must be licensed according to the same rules as other nominative elements.5 Adopting their proposal, we may assume that nominal Agr can be licensed in one of two ways: (a) The feature [+ F] in Tense licenses a nominative DP in Spec,TP through government and this DP is then coindexed in a chain with Agr, Agr being the coda of the chain. In this case, Agr is essentially a resumptive pronoun licensed via coindexation with the subject DP.6 (b) A possible alternative is for Agr to be licensed directly by cliticizing to Tense where it is governed by [+ F] in Comp, leaving Spec,TP available for a non-nominative DP. (21)

[ CP C [ T P (DPj) [ τ V Aj] [ AgrP [ A tA] [ V P DPJ t v D P ] ] ] ]

We mentioned earlier that Icelandic and Spanish differ in the possibility of licensing a referential null subject (pro) in Spec,TP. Spanish exhibits null referential subjects, while Icelandic is restricted to expletive null subjects. In this respect, Icelandic patterns with German. (22)

[Spanish] a. Bonniej me habia prometido que proj pasaria por · Bonnie me had promised that she-would-go by el supermercado the supermarket 'Bonnie had promised me that she would go by the supermarket'

(23)

[German] (Cardinaletti 1990: 137) a. Hans sagt, daß pro gestern getanzt wurde Hans says that yesterday danced was 'Hans says that people danced yesterday'

Agreement and null subjects

b. Hans Hans 'Hans c. Hans Hans 'Hans d. Hans Hans 'Hans e. Hans Hans 'Hans (24)

sagt, says says sagt, says says sagt, says says sagt, says says

165

daß pro gestern ein Mann gekommen ist that yesterday a man come is that a man came yesterday' daß pro gestern ein Buch gestohlen twurde that yesterday a book stolen was that a book was stolen yesterday' daß pro gestern ein Mann angerufen hat that yesterday a man called has that a man called yesterday' daß pro ihn gestern ein Mann betrogen hat that him yesterday a man cheated has that a man cheated him yesterday'

[Icelandic] (Platzack 1987: 387-388) a. paöan var (*paS) skammt til baeja from-there was there short-way to the-farms 'There was a short-cut to the farms from there' b. Νύ er (*paö) augljost aö Jon hefur bar id Mariu now is it obvious that John has beaten Mary 'It is obvious now that John has beaten Mary' c. I dag hafa (*paö) komiö margir mälxisindamenn hingaö today has there come many linguists here 'Many linguists have come here today'

The availability of null expletive subjects in Icelandic and German is not surprising according to Safir (1985) since pure expletive pronominal empty categories are universally available as long as other conditions are not violated. Jaeggli and Safir (1989), however, argue in favor of a more restricted account of expletive null subjects. They assume that null subjects must be licensed by a morphologically uniform paradigm. (25)

Null Subject Parameter (Jaeggli and Safir 1989: 29): Null subjects are permitted in all and only languages with morphologically uniform paradigms.

(26)

Morphological Uniformity (Jaeggli and Safir 1989: 30): An inflectional paradigm Ρ in a language L is morphologically uniform if and only if Ρ has either only underived inflectional forms or only derived inflectional forms.

The uniform verb-subject agreement of German and Icelandic licenses the presence of a null expletive subject in Spec,TP. Neither one, how-

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ever, is a full null-subject language like Spanish, i. e., they lack referential null subjects altogether. A straightforward answer to this unexpected difference between Icelandic and Spanish with respect to the referentiality of pro can be found if we take into consideration the different nature of Agr in the two languages. In Icelandic, Agr receives Nominative from Tense in Comp (see 27a), whereas in Spanish, Agr may absorb Nominative in Tense itself (see 27b): (27)

a. [ C P C[+ F] [ TP [ t Agr] [ AgrP t A [ VP DP t v DP] ] ] ] I J b. [CP C [ T P [ T[+ F] V] [ AgrP t A [VP DP tv DP] ] ] ]

We assumed earlier that Nominative Case must be assigned to some nominal element. If it is absorbed by Agr, then Nominative Case is saturated. Otherwise, it must be assigned under government or Spec-head agreement. In Icelandic, Agr in Tense may be the recipient of Nominative Case. (28)

[Icelandic] (Sigurösson 1990: 41-42) Var oft komiö seint heim was often come late home 'People often came home late'

Alternatively, a DP may move to Spec,TP and there receive Nominative Case under government by Tense in Comp. (29)

[Icelandic] (Sigurösson 1990: 58) ad hann haföi ekki enn lesiö bokina that he had not yet read the-book 'that he had not read the book yet'

As expected, a topical subject, i. e., a DP in Spec,TP, is in complementary distribution with another element requiring Nominative Case. This is observed in examples such as (30a) and (30b) in which a nominal expletive (pad) occupies Spec,CP. Comp assigns Nominative to the expletive element under Spec-head agreement and the topical subject in Spec,TP is unable to receive the already assigned Nominative: (30)

[Icelandic] (Sigurösson 1990: 48) a. *paö eru komnir gestirnir hingad are arrived the-guests here 'The guests have arrived here'

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b. *})aö eru gestirnir komnir hingad are the-guests arrived here 'The guests have arrived here' Finally, Case can also be assigned to a DP in Spec,VP under government once V-movement to Tense has applied. In this event, the preverbal subject position can be occupied by an expletive null subject. (31)

[Icelandic] (Sigurösson 1990: 41 - 4 2 ) Höföu pvi komiö margir gestir um nottina had thus come many guests in the-night 'Many guests had come at night'

The three processes of Nominative saturation are repeated schematically in (32a-32c): (32)

a. [ C P [C[+ F] V] [ T P DPJ t, [ AgrP t A [VP TJ t v DP] ] ] ] I ί b.

[ C p C [ T P [ T [ + F] V ] U g r P t A [VP D P t v D P ] ] ] ]

c. [Cp c [ + I

I ί F] [TP [T Agr] [ AgrP t A [ VP DP t v DP]]]] ί

Focusing on the different nature of Agr in Icelandic and Spanish, let us assume that the Case-marking on Agr is crucial for the identification of pro. That is, I propose that Agr can identify pro only if Agr is Nominative-Case marked. This is a logical expectation if we estimate that the nominal feature of Agr is a determining factor in the full identification of the null pronoun pro, and that for Agr to be nominal, it must bear one determining feature of realized nominal elements, namely Case. Furthermore, since the only Case which Agr can receive is Nominative Case, we are led to define nominal Agr as in (33): (33)

Nominal Agr: Agr is nominal if and only if it is a recipient of Nominative Case.

Let us assume moveover that the relationship between pro and the Agr which identifies it is even closer than was earlier assumed. That is, identification of pro is not dependent on the structural relation between Agr and the category assigning Nominative Case to pro. Instead, pro is identified by its relation with Agr itself. More concretely, pro is identified if it agrees with Agr.

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Identification by nominal agreement: Nominal Agr identifies an empty category X as a thematic pro if and only if it agrees with X.

While in principle the redefinition of the condition on the identification of pro in (34) does not seem to differ drastically from earlier ones, it is both intuitively more satsifactory and empirically right, as corroborated by the contrast between Icelandic and Spanish. Neither in Spanish nor in Icelandic can pro be identified in Spec, VP since Agr does not agree with it in place. The only way pro can be identified is by moving to Spec,TP where it agrees with Agr once Agr itself moves to Tense. In Icelandic, once pro moves to Spec,TP, it blocks Nominative-Case assignment to Agr in Tense, assuming an adjacency condition on Case assignment. Thus, Agr is unable to identify pro since Agr must be nominal to identify pro, but pro blocks the required Nominative-Case assignment to Agr. In Spanish, however, Agr receives Nominative via absorption from Tense and we expect the adjacency condition on Case assignment not to play any role in Case absorption. Hence, Agr can receive the necessary Nominative Case and cooccur with pro in Spec,TP. (35) Spec

C

Our analysis also explains an additional contrast in the syntax of Icelandic and Spanish. There are constructions in Icelandic where non-Nominative D P syntactically and semantically behaves like a subject: (a) They invert with finite verb in yes/no question, (b) They trigger obligatory

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reflexivization. (c) They may be deleted under identity with the subject of a preceding conjunct clause, (d) They trigger deletion of a Nominative subject in a following coordinated clause, (e) They are exceptionally Case-marked by the matrix verb in accusative with infinitive constructions. (36)

[Icelandic] a. Η ana van tar peninga her-A lacks money-A 'She lacks money' b. Mer lika pessir bilar me-D like those cars-N Ί like those cars'

According to Platzack (1987), the presence of these so-called "quirky (Q-) subjects" depends on a positive value of the null-subject parameter. Since oblique Case cannot be structurally assigned to the subject position, these Q-subjects must be inherently Case-marked. Thus, the reason why Q-subjects may occur in null-subject languages and not in non-null-subject languages is that the subject position does not necessarily get Nominative Case in the former, but it obligatorily does so in the latter. Platzack's analysis, however, fails to account for the fact that Q-subjects are not possible in Spanish, a null-subject language. Our proposal with respect to Agr offers a more promising answer to this question. We maintain that the absence of Q-subjects in Spanish is also accounted for by the Case-absorption relationship between Agr and Tense in this language. It is logical to assume that Agr must be coindexed with Tense in Spanish in order to absorb Nominative-Case. Now, if Agr carries the same index as Tense, then it must also agree with Spec,TP which is coindexed with Tense via spec-head agreement. Consequently, we expect that only elements agreeing with Agr can occupy Spec,TP. Since only Nominative-Case-marked elements can agree with Agr, it follows that only Nominative-Case-marked elements can take Spec,TP. (37)

[cp[cC [TpDPj/*i[T'[Tj Agr J [AgrpDP[Agr< VP] ] ] ] ] ]

This restriction does not apply to Icelandic, in which Agr receives Nominative via government. Thus, the process of Nominative-Case assignment does not interfere with a non-Nominative-Case-marked constituent to land in Spec,TP. The present analysis also explains the availability of stylistic fronting in Icelandic and its impossibility in Spanish. Stylistic fronting is only

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possible when there is a subject gap as in (a) relative clauses, (b) indirect questions, (c) clauses with heavy subject postposing, or (d) clauses with no θ-role for the subject position. According to Platzack (1987), where Comp is marked [+ prn], the feature is coindexed with the empty subject position and there is a chain (Whj, [+ prnj], and [ D P ej). Nominative Case is assigned to the pronominal element. Thus, the presence of the empty category in subject position does not affect the well-formedness of the chain and the empty subject position can be used as a landing site for elements moved out of IP. In languages like Swedish where Comp is [— prn], Nominative Case must be assigned to the wh-trace in subject position; no element can move to the subject position without erasing the trace and violating the Case filter. Notice, however, that Spanish is also a null-subject language like Icelandic. Therefore, we expect stylistic fronting to also be possible contrary to fact. Under the absorption account, such a process is blocked in Spanish due to the direct relation between the subject position (i. e., Spec,TP) and Tense. No element except a Nominative-Case-marked DP can occupy this position on its way out of TP.

6. Conclusion We have pointed out that German, Icelandic, and Spanish differ in the possibility of extracting a noun phrase from preverbal subject position (Spec,TP). Extraction is possible in German, but not in Icelandic or Spanish. We showed that while the availability of extraction in German could in principle be attributed to licensing via verb-government, such a proposal could not account for the contrast between the three languages since verb-raising to a governing position applies in all three languages in the relevant extraction environment. An alternative was proposed whereby the contrast between German and Icelandic/Spanish is ascribed to the process of Case assignment. Spec,TP is marked directly with Nominative Case (Nominative) in German, but not in Icelandic and Spanish, where Agr is the actual recipient of Nominative Case. The presence of a directly Nominative-Case marked Spec,TP in German forces the deletion of the trace of Tense. Once it is deleted, Spec,TP can be licensed by Comp. By contrast, Spec,TP is a non-Nominative-Case-marked position in Icelandic and Spanish. Thus, it permits licensing of the verbal trace in Tense and in turn disallows licensing of the subject trace. Hence subject extraction from Spec,TP is prohibited.

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Yet, while Icelandic and Spanish coincide in disallowing extraction from Spec,TP, they differ in the possibility of licensing a referential null subject (pro) in the same position. Spanish, but not Icelandic, allows referential pro in Spec,TP. This cannot be attributed to the absence versus presence of Agr in Tense, since both languages have Agr (or its trace) in Tense. It was argued that the unexpected contrast between Icelandic and Spanish is due to the different nature of Agr in the two languages. In Icelandic, Agr receives Nominative Case from Tense in Comp; whereas in Spanish, a "stronger" Agr absorbs Nominative in tense itself. The presence of pro in Spec,TP in Icelandic would prevent Case assignment to Tense in Icelandic, assuming an adjacency condition on Case assignment. This condition does not interfere with Case absorption in Spanish. Hence, Agr can receive Case and cooccur with pro in Spec,TP. The Case-absorption relationship between Agr and Tense in Spanish also accounts for the presence of quirky subjects in Icelandic and their absence in Spanish. If Agr must be coindexed with Tense to absorb Nominative Case in Spanish, then Spec,TP coindexed through spec-head agreement with tense, must also agree with Agr. As a result, only NominativeCase-marked elements could occupy Spec,TP. This is not the case in Icelandic, where Agr receiving Nominative Case via government can allow a non-Nominative-Case-marked constituent to land in Spec,TP. Notes 1. The definition of the Empty Category Principle adopted by Platzack (1987) is as in (i): (i) (ii)

(iii)

ECP: an empty category must be properly governed. Proper Government X p-governs Y if and only if (a) X governs Y and (b) X is coindexed with Y or X θ-marks Y. Government Ζ governs Y if and only if

(a) X = X° in the sense of X-bar theory, and (b) X co-commands Y, and (c) Y is not protected by Xmax. 2. Declarative verb-initial is a subtype of main-clause declarative that are not subject initial and is in general prompted by strong discourse cohesion. Narrative inversion (involving a topical subject) is more typical of narrations than other verb-initial declaratives. For narrative inversion a high degree of subject topicality, typical of cohesive discourse, is important. 3. Once [+ tns] is in Comp its domain is the entire CP, so even elements in Spec,CP are in its scope.

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4. In sentences with an operator in Spec,CP, the verb obligatorily moves (to Agr to Tense) to Comp. Mallen (1993a: 25) assumes that verb movement to C o m p in Spanish is triggered not by a base-generated [+ F] feature in C o m p as it is in full verb-second languages, but rather by a licensing condition on variables. A variable is licensed if it is governed by a strictly c-commanding Case assigner or if the entire chain containing the variable is governed or in agreement with a Case assigner. Consequently, the lexical verb moves to C o m p in cases where an operator occupies Spec,CP. Crucially, the empty position left by a displaced Case-assigning head must not count as a potential licensing element. Otherwise, verb movement would have no effect whatsoever on the licensing of variables at s-structure and PF, contrary to fact. Mallen (1993b) attributes this deficiency of empty heads to their lack of indices, since a head cannot refer (Travis 1991). Thus, if cosubscripting is reduced to coreference, a head could never be coindexed with its empty category at s-structure. As a result, the empty head does not bear an index at that level. If we assume that such an index is crucial in permitting a head to function as a Case assigner and as a licensing element for variables, the observed obligatory movement can be accounted for. 5. Holmberg and Platzack (1991: 98) assume a Case-licensing condition according to which a lexicalized [+ F] head (i.e., Comp or Tense in our analysis) must govern nominative Case. 6. Being an operator, [+ F] must bind an empty category (or a resumptive element) to be licensed.

References Abraham, Werner - Wim Kosmeijer - Eric Reuland (eds.) 1991 Issues in Germanic syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Baltin, Mark - Anthony Kroch (eds.) 1989 Alternative conceptions of phrase structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Borer, Hagit (ed.) 1986 Syntax and semantics 9. New York: Academic Press. Campos, Hector - Mary Zampini 1990 "Focalization strategies in Spanish", Probus 2.1: 4 7 - 6 4 . Cardinaletti, Anna 1990 "Es, pro and sentential arguments in German", Linguistische Berichte 126: 135-164. Contreras, Heles 1986 "De reglas a principios: Las clausulas minimas", Revista Argentina de Lingüistica 2: 167-182. Fekete, Denise — Zofia Laubitz (eds.) 1988 McGill Working Papers in Linguistics. (Comparative Germanic Syntax.) Quebec: McGill University. Freidin, Robert (ed.) 1991 Principles and parameters in comparative grammar. Cambridge, MA: M I T Press. Grewendorf, Günther 1990 "Small pro in German", in: Günther Grewendorf - Wolfgang Sternefeld (eds.), 2 9 5 - 3 1 5 .

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Grewendorf, Günther - Wolfgang Sternefeld (eds.) 1990 Scrambling and barriers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Haider, Hubert - Martin Prinzhorn (eds.) 1986 Verb second phenomena in Germanic languages. Dordrecht: Foris. Harbert, Wayne - Almeida J. Toribio 1993 The syntax of nominative objects. [Unpublished MS, Cornell University.] Hellan, Lars - Kirsti Koch Christensen (eds.) 1986 Topics in Scandinavian syntax. Dordrecht: Reidel. Holmberg, Anders 1988 "The head of S in Scandinavian and English", in: Denise Fekete - Zofia Laubitz (eds.), 123-155. Holmberg, Anders - Christer Platzack 1991 "On the role of inflection in Scandinavian syntax", in: Werner Abraham Wim Kosmeijer — Eric Reuland (eds.), 93 — 118. Jaeggli, Osvaldo 1986 ECP effects at LF in Spanish. [Unpublished MS, Los Angeles, USC.] Jaeggli, Osvaldo - Kenneth Safir 1989 "The null subject parameter and parametric theory", in: Osvaldo Jaeggli Kenneth Safir (eds.), 1 - 4 4 . Jaeggli, Osvaldo - Kenneth Safir (eds.) 1989 The null subject parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Kosmeijer, Wim 1991 "Verb second, nominative case and scope", in: Werner Abraham - Wim Kosmeijer - Eric Reuland (eds.), 197-221. Maling, Joan - Annie Zaenen (eds.) 1990 Syntax and Semantics 24. New York: Academic Press. Mallen, Enrique 1993a "Verb movement in Spanish and the licensing condition on variables", Linguistische Berichte 148: 445-476. 1993b "Inflection and proper government in German and Spanish", Theoretical Linguistics 19.2/3: 1 - 4 0 . 1994 "Blocking effects of A-Spec,IP in German and Spanish, in: Michael Mazzola (ed.), 367-383. Mazzola, Michael (ed.) 1994 Issues and theory in Romance linguistics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Noonan, Marie 1988 "Superiority effects: How do antecedent government, lexical government and V2 interact?", in: Denise Fekete - Zofia Laubitz (eds.), 192-214. Olsen, Susan 1985 "On deriving V-l and V-2 structures in German", in: Jindrich Toman (ed.), 133-163. Platzack, Christer 1986a "COMP, INFL, and Germanic word order", in: Lars Hellan - Kirsti Koch Christensen (eds.), 185-234. 1986b "The position of the finite verb in Swedish", in: Hubert Haider - Martin Prinzhorn (eds.), 27-47.

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"The Scandinavian languages and the null-subject parameter", Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5: 377—402. Pollock, Jean-Yves 1989 "Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP", Linguistic Inquiry 20: 365-424. Raposo, Eduardo - Juan Uriagereka 1990 "Long-distance case assignment", Linguistic Inquiry 21: 505-537. Rögnvaldsson, Eirikur - Höskuldur Thräinsson 1990 "On Icelandic word order once more", in: Joan Maling - Annie Zaenen (eds.), 3 - 4 0 . Safir, Kenneth 1985 "Missing subjects in German", in: Jindrich Toman (ed.), 193-229. 1986 "Subject clitics and the Nom-Drop parameter", in: Hagit Borer (ed.), 333 — 356. Sigurösson, Halldor Armann 1990 "VI declaratives and verb raising in Icelandic", in: Joan Maling - Annie Zaenen (eds.), 41-69. Toman, Jindrich (ed.) 1985 Studies in German grammar. Dordrecht: Foris. Torrego, Esther 1984 "On inversion in Spanish and some of its effects", Linguistic Inquiry 15: 103129. Travis, Lisa deMena 1989 "Parameters of phrase structure", in: Mark Baltin - Anthony Kroch (eds.), 263-279. 1991 "Parameters of phrase structure and verb-second phenomena", in: Robert Freidin (ed.), 339-364.

Articulatory phonology as a tool for explanation in historical phonology: The case of stop epenthesis in Germanic B. Richard Page

1. Introduction It is commonly assumed that phonological change is drawn from synchronic variation that is present in any speech community. Cohn (1993: 46-47) gives the following description of how a gradient phonetic process of segment shortening may lead to a categorical process of segment deletion: One common type of historical change is that a phonetic characteristic ... is exaggerated until it is perceived as distinct from the conditioning factor ... consider, for example, the case of the shortening and eventual deletion of a segment. A segment might have a tendency to shorten in certain prosodic positions or at faster rates of speech. The most extreme version of shortening is deletion. As a phonetic process we would expect the results of this to be gradient and perhaps also variable; even if the segment is deleted in some cases, there is evidence through the gradient and variable nature of the process that the segment is indeed present underlyingly. Yet once the deletion becomes increasingly systematic, it could be easily reinterpreted by the hearer or language learner as not present at all. For such members of the speech community, the process would be realised as a categorical one of deletion.

Browman and Goldstein's articulatory phonology offers a way to represent formally gradient phonetic processes such as segment shortening that may lead to phonological change. The particular change we will examine is stop epenthesis. The history of the Germanic languages is replete with examples of stop epenthesis. Stop epenthesis typically occurs either between two resonants or between a resonant and an obstruent. Typical examples include

empty < aemtig, thimble < pymle. The traditional explanation of this phenomenon pointed to the relative timing of articulatory gestures. Sievers (1881: 213) gave a unified description of stop epenthesis on the basis of articulatory timing. Epenthesis after nasals occurred when the velum was raised before the buccal closure was released. Epenthesis after / occurred

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if, before the apical closure of the / was released, the lateral release was closed in anticipation of a following central liquid or fricative. Like descriptions of epenthesis as a lack of simultaneity in the movements of articulators are quite common (Bloomfield 1914: 213; Jespersen 1904: 62; Heffner 1950: 185-186; Malmberg 1963: 60; Stampe 1979; Barnitz 1974; Hock 1991: 117-119; Ohala 1975). Anderson (1976) offers a similar analysis on the basis of the relative timing of distinctive features. I will argue that there is in fact only one type of epenthesis and that the traditional view is essentially correct. I will use the model of articulatory phonology being developed by Browman and Goldstein to update the traditional explanation and to show how their model of articulatory phonology makes different predictions with respect to stop epenthesis than does feature geometry. Moreover, articulatory phonology allows us to see directly the connection between stop epenthesis and the antagonistic phonetic process of nasal shortening.

2. Feature geometric analysis Before looking at an analysis of stop epenthesis using articulatory phonology, it is helpful to examine a feature-geometric description of the process. Recently, Clements and Wetzels have argued for two kinds of stop epenthesis. Type 1 occurs between a nasal or a lateral and a following obstruent. Examples of Type-1 epenthesis taken from Clements (1987: 32) are given in (1): (1)

(from Clements [1987: 32]) θ C2= s J η nts ηίθ ntf I Its ItO Itf m mps mpO mpf qks T)k9 ükf V

f

t

—

—

—

—

mpf —

mpt —

(Examples: sense, ninth, censure, false, health, Welsh, hamster, assumption, triumph, dreamt, youngster, length, anxious.)

warmth,

Clements and Wetzels describe Type-1 epenthesis by referring to the relative timing of features. Type-2 epenthesis on the other hand, occurs when the epenthetic stop appears before a liquid. Clements and Wetzels argue that Type-2 epenthesis results in an improvement in syllable contact and is therefore moti-

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177

vated by syllable structure. Examples of Type 2 epenthesis from Germanic are given in (2): (2)

m$r > m$br ON timbra, OE timbran, O H G zimbarön, Go. timrjan (occasionally timbrjan) 'build' l$r > l$dr M. Du. kelre > kelder 'cellar' OE aire > ME alder m$l > m$bl OE pymle > Ε thimble n$r > n$dr OE obi. pomes > ME pondres

Wetzels and Clements maintain that such a distinction is justified for several reasons. First, Type-1 epenthesis results in a stop that is part of a contour segment and Type-2 results in a stop that is a full segment. Second, the phonetic make-up of a Type-1 stop is not always predictable from the surrounding sounds whereas the phonetic make-up to a Type-1 stop always is. Third, a Type-2 stop is motivated by syllable structure, specifically syllable contact, and a Type-1 stop is an assimilation. In support of the argument for distinguishing Type-1 and Type-2 stops on the basis of phonological status (contour segments versus full segments), Wetzels and Clements cite experimental phonetic evidence. Fourakis and Port (1986), cited by Clements, show that in the speech of American English speakers, an epenthetic stop in a nasal-fricative cluster is regularly shorter than a corresponding underlying stop. For example, Fourakis and Port found that the [t] in dense had a shorter average duration than the [t] in dents. Clements (1987: 33) and Wetzels (1985: 315) also find support for the different phonological status of the two types of epenthetic stops in that epenthesis in forms such as dense seems to apply optionally in the speech of an individual speaker. Wetzels (1985: 315) points out that this idiolectal variation is not found in Type-2 stops like the one in thimble. Picard (1987) raises a fundamental objection to the argument that Type-1 and Type-2 epenthetic stops may be distinguished by their phonological status. With respect to Wetzels (1985), Picard (1987: 137) states: One suspects that this conclusion has been heavily influenced by the nature of his data since all the examples of Type [2] epenthesis he cites represent well-established historical changes backed up by traditional spellings, whereas his analysis of Type [1] insertion is based mainly on Modern English and Dutch forms in whose spelling the epenthesis is not represented. There is no reason to believe that any emerging case of Type [2] epenthesis will fail to exhibit the same kind of temporary instability as that found in Type [1],

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Page

In fact, Wetzels (1985: 314) himself cites examples of Yiddish where Type-1 epenthesis created a stop that constituted a full phonological segment: halz > haldz 'neck', ganz > gandz 'goose'. As Picard (1987: 137) points out, there is no phonetic or phonological difference between the interconsonantal stops in empty < OE xmtig and tempting. Therefore, the phonetic and phonological differences in the stops found by Clements and Wetzels are not attributable to two types of epenthesis, but to the difference between a completed diachronic process and a variable synchronic one. Another argument presented by Wetzels and Clements is that Type-2 epenthetic stops "may have features that are unpredictable from the phonetic context, as in si > ski, nl > ngl, Ir > Idr" (Clements 1987: 40). This is in contrast to Type-1 epenthetic stops where the stop has the place of articulation of the preceding segment and shares all other features with the following segment. Wetzels and Clements cite several examples from Romance languages of an epenthetic stop having a different place of articulation from the preceding segment: (3)

si > ski

L.

nl > ngl

L . spen(ü)la.

> Ital.

i(n)s(u)lam

ischia

> F r . ep ingle

'island' 'pin'

However, as Clements (1987: 40, 42) and Murray (1989: 296-297) point out, Romance languages have a phonotactic prohibition against clusters of dl and tl. Therefore, the place of articulation of the epenthetic stop in forms like French epingle is better attributed to language-specific phonotactic constraints rather than to the type of epenthesis (Murray 1989: 297). Clements' other example of an epenthetic stop "which is unpredictable from the phonetic context" is Ir > Idr. However, Clements' ability to distinguish Ir > Idr from Is > Its on the basis of phonetic context is a consequence of the formalism of feature geometry. Clements' rule for stop epenthesis is given in figure 1. σ supralaryngeal tier:

oral cavity tier:

[- son]

[-cont]

Figure 1. Clements' rule for stop epenthesis

The case of stop epenthesis

in Germanic

179

Clements' formalism indicates that the epenthetic stop has all those features of the preceding segment that are dominated by the oral cavity tier, namely place of articulation and [± continuant]. It also has the supralaryngeal features of the following consonant, in this case [ - sonorant] and [ - nasal]. The rule in figure 1 implies that a distinction exists between epenthesis in clusters of two resonants and epenthesis in clusters of resonant plus obstruent or obstruent plus resonant. For a rule like figure 1 to give rise to an epenthetic stop, it is crucial that either the first or second position on the supralaryngeal tier is marked as [— son]. Otherwise, there is no way to account for the fact that the epenthetic segment is [— son]. Hence Clements' statement that the features or the epenthetic stop are "unpredictable from the phonetic context" in Ir > Idr. However, one can easily account for the occurrence of an epenthetic stop in Ir > Idr by referring to the timing of articulatory movements as did Sievers (1881: 213). Therefore, the inability of an analysis based on the timing of features to account for the marking of the epenthetic stop as [— son] in Ir > Idr does not indicate that epenthesis between two resonants is of a different kind from other cases of stop epenthesis, but rather that an analysis based on the timing of articulatory movements is preferable to an analysis based on the timing of features. Clements' remaining argument for distinguishing Type-1 and Type-2 epenthesis is based on the assertion that the motivation of Type-1 epenthesis is to improve syllable structure (1987: 40-41). The Syllable Contact Law, first formulated in Hooper (1976), is stated as follows by Vennemann (1988: 40): (4)

Contact Law A syllable contact A$B is the more preferred, the less the Consonantal Strength of the offset A and the greater the Consonantal Strength of the onset B, more precisely - the greater the characteristic difference CS(B) — CS(A) between the Consonantal Strength of Β and that of A.

Clements (1987: 41) points out that many examples of Type-2 epenthesis, such as those in (2), result in an improvement in syllable contact. However, syllable contact cannot provide a phonological motivation for many cases of Type-2 epenthesis. As Murray (1989: 298) points out, epenthesis may result in a worsening of syllable contact. Examples are given in (5):

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Β. Richard Page

MHG eigenlich > Ger. eigent$lich 'real, actual' M H G wesenlich > Ger. wesent$lich 'essential' M H G hoffenlich > Ger. hoffent$lich 'hopefully'

There are also examples where Type-2 epenthesis does not occur at a syllable boundary, as in (6): (6)

sn > stn sr > str

ON variants stnua 'snow', stnior 'turn', laustn 'release' OE stream, compare Skr. srävati

Vennemann (1988: 5) defines the head of the syllable as that part of the syllable that precedes the nucleus. His Head Law states (Vennemann 1988: 13): "A syllable head is the more preferred: (a) the closer the number of speech sounds in the head is to one, (b) the greater the Consonantal Strength value of its onset, and (c) the more sharply the Consonantal Strength drops from the onset toward the Consonantal Strength of the following syllable nucleus." Thus Murray (1989: 305-307) argues that the insertion of the stop in the head must be viewed as a worsening of the head since it increases the number of speech sounds in the head and lessens the slope of the drop in Consonantal Strength from the onset toward the following nucleus. Murray (1989: 310) summarizes the different cases of epenthesis with respect to their effect on syllable structure in (7): (7)

Less Preferred (Type 2) m$l More (Type (Type (Type (Type

Preferred 2) n$l 2) $sr 1) m$t 1) mt$

>

More preferred m$bl (Contact Law)

> > > >

Less Preferred nd$l (Contact Law) $str (Head Law) mp$t (Contact Law) mpt$ (Coda Law)

As Murray points out, (7) illustrates that Type-1 and Type-2 epenthesis are primarily sensitive to the linear sequence of the segments since both Type-1 and Type-2 epenthesis may worsen syllable structure. He then concludes that both Type-1 and Type-2 epenthesis are what he terms similarity adjustments.

3. Gestural analysis The fact that both Type-1 and Type-2 epenthesis are primarily sensitive to the linear sequence of the segments supports the traditional interpreta-

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181

tion of epenthesis as resulting from the relative timing of articulatory features. Browman and Goldstein's articulatory phonology attempts to construct a phonology on the basis of the organization of articulatory gestures. Cohn (1993: 48), Clements (1992), and Steriade (1990) have all criticized Browman and Goldstein's approach as being relatively unconstrained when compared to autosegmental approaches. I do not wish to defend or to endorse articulatory phonology as phonological theory. Of concern here is Browman and Goldstein's claim that articulatory phonology offers an effective way to model the gradient variation found in casual speech. Browman and Goldstein (1991: 323) state: "Gestural overlap, in particular, can help explain much variability observed during speaking.... In addition, as will be exemplified below, simple changes in gestural overlap can account for more extreme forms of variation such as apparent segment assimilations, deletions, and insertions." With respect to insertions in clusters of nasal plus oral consonant, Browman and Goldstein claim that a percept of insertion may occur if denasalization precedes the release of the closure gesture. In such a case, a period of oral closure will be produced. Historical changes, such as Old English pymle becoming Modern English thimble, may arise from such synchronic variation (Browman — Goldstein 1991: 337). Two questions pose themselves that are not addressed by Browman and Goldstein. Does the analysis of epenthesis arising from the overlapping of gestures make different predictions than the analysis offered by feature geometry? Second, does the model of articulatory phonology offer any insights different from those of the traditional analysis? With respect to the first question, an analysis using articulatory phonology obviously makes different predictions about so-called Type-2 epenthesis. Articulatory phonology predicts that epenthesis would rely crucially on the linear order of the segments as opposed to the relative positions of the segments in the syllable. As we have seen from Murray's critique of Clements, that appears to be the case. With respect to Type-1 epenthesis, feature geometry and articulatory phonology also make different predictions about whether stop epenthesis may occur between / and / . According to Clements' formulation of the rule governing Type-1 epenthesis, we would expect epenthesis in this environment. If we use the Browman and Goldstein model, we would not expect epenthesis between / and / since the overlapping of the alveolar articulation of the I and the labiodental articulation of the / will not give rise to complete oral closure. In fact, dialects of American English that exhibit Type-1 epenthesis show this hole in the pattern, which (1) il-

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lustrates. Thus, an American English speaker might produce epenthetic stops in wealth or false, but will not produce an epenthetic stop in golf or wolf However, these predictions are also made by the traditional analysis. The primary advantage of the articulatory phonology analysis over the traditional analysis is that it allows us to put epenthesis in a multilinear framework that is compatible with current feature-geometric and autosegmental models of phonology. This compatibility provides a conceptual advantage. For example, stop epenthesis between a nasal consonant and a following voiceless fricative has often been interpreted as being motivated by the inherent difficulty in the transition between the nasal and the following fricative. Stampe (1979: 1) states: "a sequence of nasal plus spirant, e. g. [ns], is difficult to articulate because it requires the release of the oral closure of the nasal to coincide precisely with the closure of the velum". Similarly, Harms (1973: 6) speculated that epenthesis automatically occurred between nasals and fricatives because it was neurologically impossible to coordinate the release of the oral closure of the nasal with the raising of the velum. Experimental evidence does not support Stampe or Harms. It does not appear that the transition between a nasal and a fricative represents any extreme difficulties since there are dialects of English, such as South African English, in which epenthesis never occurs in this environment. The focus on the difficulty of the transition between two segments appears to derive from the conception of a sound sequence as a linear string of phonemes. A multilinear approach, such as feature geometry or articulatory phonology, on the other hand, leads us to think in terms of the relative timing of different features or articulatory gestures. Recent progress in phonology indicates that this is a more fruitful approach. Another traditional assumption about the cause of stop epenthesis after nasals is that the stop arises when the velum is raised too early in anticipation of the following oral sound. Ohala is a current proponent of this analysis (e.g., Ohala 1974: 357-358; 1975: 289; Ohala - Ohala 1993: 229). As Clements (1987: 39) notes, the study of Ali, Daniloff and Hammarberg (1979) on the epenthetic process of American English in words such as dense undermines this hypothesis. Their findings indicate that the epenthetic stop arises not from the anticipatory raising of the velum before a following oral segment, but from the prolonging of the oral closure after the velum has been raised (Ali - Daniloff - Hammarberg 1979: 95).

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It is not the timing of the devoicing gesture, nor the extent and timing of the LR [left-to-right] velar coarticulation which contributes most heavily to the realization of intrusive stops Rather, and especially in the case of dental fricatives, it is the delayed release of the oral occlusion for the nasal which delays oral friction onset, [italics in original]

Clements (1987: 38-39) quotes the same passage and uses it to support his characterization of Type-1 epenthesis as the spreading of the feature [ - continuant] onto the following obstruent. The process of stop epenthesis between nasal consonants and voiceless obstruents appears to be in opposition to a process of nasal shortening in the same environment. Fourakis and Port (1986) examined the production of resonant-fricative and resonant-stop-fricative clusters in the speech of speakers of South African English and American English. They found that in nasal-voiceless fricative clusters, the speakers of American English regularly inserted an epenthetic stop and speakers of South African English regularly did not. Fourakis and Port (1986: 216) sum up their findings as follows: We found as others have that with respect to the voicing contrast, a nasal segment in a V N C behaves more like the vowel; it is longer before voiced segment. The nasal consonant was much shorter before a voiceless consonant than before a voiced one. In our experiment, however, the duration of the nasal for the American speakers was also longer when followed by an inserted stop than by an underlying one. Conversely, the voiceless stop that followed the nasal or liquid was shorter when it was epenthetic than when it was present in the underlying representation of a word.

All of the findings of Fourakis and Port (1986) and of Ali, Daniloff and Hammarberg (1979) are consistent with interpreting stop epenthesis as a dissimilatory process which is antagonistic to the shortening of the nasal segment. Articulatory phonology provides a way to represent formally the experimental data. The implementation of a nasal-voiceless fricative sequence without an intrusive stop may be represented schematically as in figure 2. A gestural organization of a nasal-fricative sequence that results in an inserted stop may be represented as in figure 3. Deletion of a nasal consonant is characterized by the absence of alveolar closure while the velum is lowered and is depicted in figure 4. Compare figures 3 and 4 with feature geometric/autosegmental representations of the same process. Figure 1 is Clements' formulation of the rule of stop insertion. Figure 5 is Cohn's representation of nasal deletion before tautosyllabic voiceless stops in words like can't.

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Page

velic opening

velic

alveolar closure

alveolar fricative nasal + fricative [ns]

Figure 2. The implementation of a nasal-voiceless fricative sequence without an intrusive stop

velic

velic opening

alveolar closure

alveolar fricative

epenthetic stop [n's] Figure 3. A gestural organization of a nasal-fricative sequence that results in an inserted stop

velic

oral

velic opening

alveolar fricative

Figure 4. Nasal deletion and nasalization of preceding vowel [Vs]

Figure 5 says that a nasal is deleted before a voiceless stop and the preceding vowel is nasalized if the stop is tautosyllabic, but not ambisyllabic. Figures 3 and 4 indicate formally that the difference between stop insertion and nasal deletion lies in the implementation of the oral-closure gesture associated with the nasal consonant. Figure 1 also captures the phonological effect of prolonging the oral-closure gesture. However, figure 5 gives no formal indication that the implementation of the oral-closure ges-

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σ

R

Ν V

/

Ν

[+nasal]

[-cont]

[-voice]

Figure 5. Nasal deletion and nasalization of preceding vowel [VT] (from Cohn 1993: 65)

ture is what distinguishes nasal deletion from stop insertion. Moreover, the feature-geometric/autosegmental approach implies that epenthesis and nasal deletion are both categorical processes. Association lines may be either drawn or erased; there is no middle ground. In contrast, articulatory phonology implies that epenthesis and nasal deletion are gradient processes along the same continuum. The length of the bar representing oral closure for the nasal consonant may vary infinitely in length. Experimental evidence supports the assertion that nasal loss and stop insertion in nasal-voiceless obstruent clusters may be gradient, variable processes. As already noted, the studies of Ali, Daniloff and Hammarberg, and of Fourakis and Port show that stop insertion in American English may be variable in the speech of an individual speaker and that an epenthetic stop is significantly shorter than an underlying stop. In her study of nasal deletion before voiceless stops in American English, Cohn (1993) found that one speaker in her study did categorically delete η before a tautosyllabic t. However, another speaker shortened η before tautosyllabic t but did not categorically delete it. Cohn (1993: 67-68) states: I conclude that [Nasal Deletion] is a (postlexical) phonological rule applying categorically for the one speaker when the /t/ is tautosyllabic and not ambisyllabic.... However, this rule is in a sense the endpoint along a continuum of nasal shortening; and since the process of nasal shortening is gradient and variable, I assume that it is a part of the phonetics. The proposed analysis assumes that at least for some speakers, the process of Nasal Deletion has become phonologised. As [previously discussed], in such cases the rule has crossed over a threshold and its effects have become categorical. In such cases, one part of a phonetic process becomes relevant to the phonology, with categorical effects. But the phonetic effects remain in other cases and are realised more gradiently. The haziness of these data suggest that this may be a change in progress.

Cohn (1993: 68-69) goes on to point out that articulatory phonology provides a means of describing such changes in progress, but rejects it on

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the grounds that it is not as predictive or as constrained as feature geometric, autosegmental approaches. I propose that we succumb to the temptation alluded to by Steriade (1990: 382) and constrain articulatory phonology so that it applies only to gradient phonetic processes. In cases where the processes of stop epenthesis and nasal deletion appear to be gradient, articulatory phonology provides a means to represent formally the processes and allows us to see the connection between the two. On the other hand the processes may become categorical, as witnessed by the many historical changes involving nasal loss or stop epenthesis. Once the process becomes categorical, a feature-geometric/autosegmental approach provides an appropriate form of representation. By describing the gradient variation present in speech, Browman and Goldstein's model of articulatory phonology provides a formal means to identify similarity adjustments in articulation that may give rise to phonological change. Using articulatory phonology we can account for the motivation of cases of epenthesis that might otherwise appear anomalous: such as the lack of epenthesis between I a n d / i n Modern English or cases of so-called Type-2 epenthesis that result in a worsening of syllable structure, like the epenthetic t in Modern German eigentlich. References Ali, Latif - Ray DanilofT - Robert Hammarberg 1979 "Intrusive stops in nasal-fricative clusters: An aerodynamic and acoustic investigation", Phonetica 36: 8 5 - 9 7 . Anderson, Stephen R. 1976 "Nasal consonants and the internal structure of segments", Language 52: 326-344. Back, Michael 1991 Die synchrone Prozessbasis des natürlichen Lautwandels. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Barnitz, John G. 1974 "Bloom-p-field, Chom-p-sky, and phonetic epen-t-thesis", Studies in the linguistic sciences 4.2: 1 — 13. Bloomfield, Leonard 1914 An introduction to the study of language. New York: Henry Holt. Browman, Catherine - Louis Goldstein 1991 "Gestural structures: Distinctiveness, phonological processes, and historical change", in: Ignatius G. Mattingly - Michael Studdert-Kennedy (eds.), 313— 338. Clements, George N. 1987 "Phonological feature representation and the description of intrusive stops", in: Papers from the parasession on autosegmental and metrical phonology. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 29—51.

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1992 "Phonological primes: Features or gestures?", Phonetica 49: 181-193. Cohn, Abigail C. 1993 "Nasalisation in English: Phonology or phonetics", Phonology 10: 4 3 - 8 1 . Ferguson, Charles - Larry Hyman — John J. Ohaha (eds.) 1975 Nasälfest: Papers from a symposium on nasals and nasalization. Stanford, Cal.: Language Universale Project. Fourakis, Marios - Robert Port 1986 "Stop epenthesis in English", Journal of phonetics 14: 197-221. Grammont, Maurice 1933 Traite de Phonetique. Paris: Delagrave. Harms, Robert T. 1973 Some nonrules of English. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Heffner, Roe-Merrill S. 1950 General phonetics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Hock, Hans Henrich 1986 Principles of historical linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [1991] [2nd edition.] Hooper, Joan Bybee 1976 An introduction to natural generative phonology. New York: Academic Press. Jespersen, Otto 1904 Lehrbuch der Phonetik. Leipzig: Β. G. Teubner. Malmberg, Bertil 1963 Phonetics. New York: Dover. Mattingly, Ignatius G. - Michael Studdert-Kennedy (eds.) 1991 Modularity and the motor theory of speech perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Murray, Robert W. 1989 "On epenthesis", Folia Linguistica 23: 293-316. Ohala, John J. 1975 "Phonetic explanations for nasal sound patterns, in: Charles Ferguson Larry Hyman - John J. Ohala (eds.), 289—316. Ohala, John J. - Manjari Ohala 1993 "The phonetics of nasal phonology: Theorems and data", in: Marie K. Huffman - Rena A. Krakow (eds.), Nasals, Nasalization, and the Velum. (Phonetics and Phonology 5.) San Diego: Academic Press, 225-249. Picard, Marc 1987 "On the general properties of consonant epenthesis", Canadian Journal of Linguistics 32: 133—142. Sievers, Eduard 1881 Grundzüge der Phonetik. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. Stampe, David 1979 A dissertation on natural phonology. New York: Garland. Steriade, Donca 1990 "Gestures and autosegments: Comments on Browman and Goldstein's paper", in: John Kingston — Mary E. Beckman (eds.), Papers in laboratory phonology I: Between the grammar and the physics of speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 382-397.

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Vennemann, Theo 1988 Preference laws for syllable structure and the explanation of sound change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wetzeis, W. Leo 1985 "The historical phonology of intrusive stops: A non-linear description", Canadian Journal of Linguistics 30: 285—333.

The Germanic /'-umlaut revisited Herbert Penzl |

1. Why this "revisit"? I have dealt repeatedly with the /-umlaut in Old High German (Penzl 1949; 1971: §11; 1983), Old English (Penzl 1988, 1994a), and Old Norse (Penzl 1952). The question may be asked why I should want to select it as a topic again, since most of the handbooks in the field present my point of view anyway, and I quite recently replied to in my opinion quite erroneous descriptions of this most important Germanic set of sound changes (Penzl 1994). It is not difficult to write umlaut changes as generativistic ("Chomsky Halle") rule types because they are all essentially phonotactic and only environment-sensitive, and these /-umlauts can certainly be described as phonotactic (cf. Penzl 1972: 87). But the rules are also system-insensitive, thus allophones and phonemes, phonological and "analogical" (morphophonemic) sound changes are not differentiated, and the phonemic systems have become mere sound inventories, which can never be fully established through noncontemporary, graphic data. To confuse or to ignore the distinction between allophonic umlaut variation and phonemic umlaut is disastrous historiography, and takes us back to prephonemic days before Twaddell's definitive analysis (Twaddell 1938). The present state of the art still seems to require a restatement of the principles of adequate historiography. This is one reason for my revisit. The other reason is a pertinent concept which the handbooks have been reluctant to accept as a historical fact: the existence of a NordicWestgermanic proto-language attested in many Runic inscriptions from about 200 to 400 A.D. (cf. Antonsen 1975). The best known NordicWestgermanic (not Northwest-Germanic!) text is on the horn of Gallehus (350 A. D.?): EK HLEWAGASTIZ HOLTIJAZ H O R N A TAWIDO. I assume that this proto-language contained under the assimilating influence of the palatal /-sounds palatal (allophonic) variants of A (-GASTIZ, TAWIDO) and of Ο (HOLTIJAZ, from earlier *u). Thus, with the exception of Wulfila's Bible Gothic of the fourth century Balkans and a sixthcentury manuscript in Italy, all the Germanic languages show evidence

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of /-umlaut. The "phonemicization" of the umlaut vowels, however, occurred at different times in the Nordic-Westgermanic languages, for example, quite early in Old English and considerably later in the Old High German dialects (section 2 below). This correlates well with Otto Höfler's Entfaltungstheorie (Höfler 1955-1956), which so far has been largely ignored because of the competing Stammbaumtheorie and Wellentheorie with their well-known reconstruction of the origin and spread of features of a proto-language (Ursprache), usually with considerable "hocus-pocus" (Penzl 1972: 146-149). Important is the dominant typological Germanic feature of phonetic variation and phonemic splits of stem-vowels under the influence of following unaccented vowels in suffixes and the like. The resulting Germanic type of vowel-harmony contrasts strikingly in its origin with the harmonizing variation in the Finno-Ugric languages, where the quality of the stem vowels determines the sound values of the suffixes. Already in Common Germanic *e changed to */ before */ (OHG beran, biris, birit) and *u became *o before mid or low velar vowels (OHG butun 'boten', gibotan). These Common Germanic changes are typologically like the much later phonemic /-umlaut in the Nordic-Westgermanic languages, but must never be confused with it as, for example, surprisingly in a table in a recent outstanding publication (Hogg 1992: 113).

2. The Old English /-umlaut The /-umlaut variants became phonemes, i. e., basic, distinctive, positionally unrestricted units within the phonemic system, if their values remained after change or loss of the formerly determining /-sounds in the following unaccented syllables. Under the influence of the Germanic stem accent the palatal high vowels [i] [i:], if unaccented in suffixes, soon merged phonemically with other vowels or were lost through syncope or apocope in the Old English dialects. Thus the variants in the stems became phonemes. New symbols were created in Old English to express the new phonemes, even in the old Runic alphabet: for the /-umlaut of /u/ a reversed U with a small I inside in the Runic "futhark", the symbol in the Roman alphabet, for example, in yfel 'evil'. This use of y, so different from Otfrid's, is usually explained as due to interpreting Y as V (= u) above I, thus . Other umlaut symbols are , , LOCATION, SOURCE, GOAL > T H E M E

In this paper I will argue on the basis of my analysis of ditransitive verbs in Germanic languages that (at least for purposes of the mapping of argument structure onto syntactic structure) the hierarchy in (2) is the correct one. I will suggest, however, that this mapping is sensitive to syntactic categories: the hierarchy applies first to PPs and then to bare NPs. Assuming Kayne's (1993) "antisymmetry" theory of phrase structure, this will account for the fact that across the Germanic languages (abstracting away from the effects of scrambling) bare N P indirect objects precede direct objects, while prepositional indirect objects follow direct objects. This will also account for the fact that argument PPs, as in (3c) and (3d), do not pattern with adjunct PPs, as in (3a) and (3b) in German.

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a. Maria hat das Buch (auf der Stelle) gekauft Mary has the book (on the spot) bought 'Mary bought the book (on the spot)' b. Maria hat (auf der Stelle) das Buch gekauft Mary has (on the spot) the book bought 'Mary bought the book (on the spot)' c. Maria hat ihren Freund an die Party erinnert Mary has her friend of the party reminded 'Mary reminded her friend of the party' d. ?*Maria hat an die Party ihren Freund erinnert Mary hat of the party her friend reminded 'Mary reminded her friend of the party'

Furthermore, I will show how the hypothesis that genitive second objects in German (seines Geldes in meinen Bruder seines Geldes berauben 'my brother-ACC him money-GEN rob') and dative and genitive second objects in Icelandic (pennanum in skila Joni pennanum 'return John-DAT the-pen-DAT) are syntactically PPs (Sprouse 1989, 1995) allows for a unified analysis of a wide range of verbs.

2. Theoretical framework In this paper I will assume the essentials of Chomsky's (1993) Minimalist Program, modified by certain aspects of Kayne's (1993) Antisymmetry framework. 1 Thus, I will assume that syntactic representations are built up of elements selected from the lexicon by the application of a generalized transformation acting in accordance with X-bar theory. A phrase XP consists of a head X, its complement YP, and its specifier ZP, as sketched in (4).

Following Larson (1988), if more than two phrases are associated with X as arguments or modifiers, then X will project a series of XP "shells" each with an empty head X, which takes an XP as its complement. Each shell will then accommodate an additional Phrase in its Specifier position. The representation for a verb with three arguments is sketched in (5).

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229

Again following Larson (1988), hierarchical relations among elements related to a predicate reflect the relative position of these items in a universal thematic hierarchy - a matter to which I return in section 3. All branching is binary (Kayne 1984), and only right-branching structures are allowed (Kayne 1993). Consider the representations in (6) through (7c). (6)

(7)

V NP NP

NP NP V Of these four representations, only (6) is well-formed. (7a) is ill-formed because the head follows the complement. (7b) is ill-formed because a single node immediately dominates more than two nodes. (7c) violates both the requirement of right branching and the requirement of binary branching. In Kayne's (1993) framework, specifier-head-complement order is derived from the requirement that precedence relations be derivative of hierarchical relations. Following the essential innovations of Chomsky's (1993) framework, I assume that fully inflected words are drawn from the lexicon. They are specified by inflectional features which must be checked and deleted in a specifier-head relation with an appropriate functional head. Strong features are visible to both PF and LF and must be eliminated before Spell

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Out. Weak features are visible only to LF and cannot be eliminated before Spell Out because of the Procrastinate principle. All syntactic movement is driven by the need to eliminate features. Consider the representations in (8) and (9). (8)

AgrO

VP V' NP;

(9)

AgrOP Ν P; AgrO

AgrO' VP

V' NP, t, In (8) NP; must move to Spec,AgrOP position in order to have its case feature checked off. When this movement has taken place, as in (9), NPj is in a specifier-head relation with AgrO, as required. If the N-features of Agr are strong, then this movement must take place before Spell Out. If the N-features are weak, then this movement cannot take place until LF (i.e., after Spell Out). Coupled with the requirement that only rightbranching is possible, it now follows that all languages are SVO underlyingly, but SOV at LF. The notion of SYO or SOV as underlying word order is replaced by the strength of the N-features of Agr. Where these features are strong and overt movement is obligatory, we observe SOV on the surface. Where these features are weak and movement is covert, we observe SVO on the surface. Movement is further constrained by the requirement that one must always make the shortest movement possible; however, this severe requirement is slightly loosened by the definition of "equidistance" 2 in terms of minimal domains. Consider the following representation.

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231

(10)

In (10) NPj must move to Spec,AgrOP for case checking. However, this movement would be blocked by the presence of a lexical NP or a trace in Spec,VP position, since this is a position of the same type as Spec,AgrOP, which is closer to NPj. However, once the verb has adjoined to AgrO, as illustrated in (11), Spec,AgrOP and Spec,VP will be equidistant from NPj, since they are both members of the same minimal domain defined on the chain {[Vj, AgrO], tj}. AgrOP

(Π) Spec

AgrO' AgrO AgrO

V

NP/t tj

NP,

Now, it will be possible for NPj to raise to Spec,AgrOP. If the subject NP had moved to Spec, AgrOP, then NP; would not be able to raise to a higher specifier position for case checking, because there will be no point in the derivation where Spec,VP and a position higher than Spec,AgrO will be in the same minimal domain. Thus, given the fact that the subject asymmetrically c-commands the object underlyingly, the subject will always asymmetrically c-command the object (abstracting away from non-case-driven movement); thus, the subject will precede the object in surface syntax. Generally, multiple movements driven by case feature checking preserve underlying hierarchical (and, thus, linear) relations.

3. Argument structure and thematic hierarchies Let us now turn to the precise formulation of the thematic hierarchy that regulates the building of structure by the generalized transformation.

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While there is some disagreement about the exact hierarchical arrangement, particularly in the "middle" and "lower" ranges of the hierarchy, the results of careful and detailed investigations on a number of languages converge to a remarkable degree. As Hale and Keyser (1993: 65) point out, two different families of thematic hierarchies are defined by the hierarchies proposed by Larson (1988) and Grimshaw (1990), sketched in (12a) and (12b), respectively. (12)

a. AGENT > THEME > GOAL > OBLIQUES (Larson 1988: 382) b. AGENT > EXPERIENCER > GOAL, LOCATION, SOURCE > THEME (Grimshaw 1990: 8)

In (12a), THEME is immediately below AGENT, while in (12b), THEME is at the very bottom of the hierarchy. Further examples of proposed or implied thematic hierarchies where THEME is higher than GOAL can be found in Carrier-Duncan (1985) and Perlmutter and Postal (1984), while Bresnan and Kanerva (1989) and Jackendoff (1972) take GOAL to be higher than THEME. Finally, in the approaches of both Zaenen etal. (1985) and Rosen (1984) to the mapping of thematic roles to grammatical relations, THEME and GOAL appear to be in principle unordered, at least universally. This last possibility would not be permitted under the assumption of Baker's (1988) Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis, stated in (13): (13)

Baker's Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis: Identical thematic relationships between items are represented by identical structural relationships between those items at the level of D-structure. (Baker 1988: 46).

The adoption of the Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis leads us to look for a single thematic hierarchy with universal validity.

4. An empirical generalization In this section I present an empirical generalization regarding the relevant order of direct and indirect objects, based on a comparison of a range of Germanic and Romance languages. In section 5,1 discuss how the empirical generalization presented here could be derived from the assumption of a universal thematic hierarchy with GOAL higher than THEME within the Minimalist framework outlined in section 2.

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If we abstract away from the effects of movements apparently motivated by topicalization or focalization, the generalization (14) emerges, at least for the Germanic and Romance languages: (14)

Bare NP indirect objects precede direct objects, while prepositional indirect objects follow direct objects.

I will illustrate this generalization for English, German, and French. 4.1

English

Following Larson's (1988) terminology, in the domain of triadic verbal predicates, English exhibits both a double object construction (where both the direct and the indirect object are bare NPs) and an oblique construction (where the direct object is a bare NP, but the indirect object is a PP). As illustrated in (15) through (19), in the double object construction (the a-sentences) the indirect object (GOAL) uniformly precedes the direct object (THEME), while in the oblique construction (the b-sentences) the indirect object uniformly follows the direct object. 3 (15)

a. i) ii) b. i) ii)

I will give *I will give I will give */ will give

Mary the book the book Mary the book to Mary to Mary the book

(16)

a. i) ii) b. i) ii)

I will show */ will show I will show */ will show

(17)

a. i) ii) b. i) ii)

I will tell */ will tell I will tell */ will tell

(18)

a.

I will loan ii) * I will loan b. I will loan ii) */ will loan

(19)

a. i) I will offer Joan the bottle ii) */ will offer the bottle Joan

John the paper the paper John the paper to John to John the paper

Kim the story the story Kim the story to Kim to Kim the story Fred my car my car Fred my car to Fred to Fred my car

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b. i) I will offer the bottle to Joan ii) *I will offer to Joan the bottle In the (aii)-sentences in (15) through (19), the order THEME > bare-NP GOAL is totally unacceptable, while in the (bii)-sentences in (15) through (19), the order PP GOAL > THEME is unacceptable unless there is a sharp pause between the indirect object and the direct object, in which case the direct object is interpreted as a list. Again, I abstract away from this type of focalization, which I attribute to non-case-driven movement operations. English also exhibits a number of triadic verbal predicates that allow only the oblique construction, illustrated by donate in (20). (20)

a. i) ii) b. i) ii)

*/ will donate */ will donate I will donate */ will donate

charity these clothes these clothes charity these clothes to charity to charity these clothes

Here again, the order in (20bii) can only be associated with the highly marked list interpretation. 4.2.

German

When we turn to German, we find that of the triadic verbal predicates that allow either the double object construction or the oblique construction, the judgments on individual sentences are not nearly as sharp as in English, illustrated in (21) and (22).4 (21)

a. i) Ich will meinem Bruder-DAT dieses I want my brother this Paket-ACC schicken package send Ί want to send my brother this package' ii) Ich will dieses Paket-ACC meinem Bruder-DAT I want this package my brother schicken send Ί want to send my brother this package' b. i) Ich will dieses Paket-ACC an meinen Bruder-ACC I will this package to my brother schicken send Ί want to send this package to my brother'

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ii) Ich will an meinen Bruder-ACC dieses Paket-ACC I will to my brother this package schicken send Ί want to send this package to my brother' (22)

a. i) Sie hat ihren Kindern-DAT die Krankheit-ACC she has her children the disease vererbt passed on 'She passed on the disease to her children' ii) Sie hat die Krankheit-ACC ihren Kindern-DAT she has the disease her children vererbt passed-on 'She passed on the disease to her children' b. i) Sie hat die Krankheit-ACC an ihre Kinder-ACC she has the disease to her children vererbt passed-on 'She passed on the disease to her children' ii) Sie hat an ihre Kinder-ACC die Krankheit-ACC she has to her children the disease vererbt passed-on 'She passed on the disease to her children'

Furthermore, a much larger class of triadic verbal predicates in German allows only the double-object construction. In the double-object construction either order of elements is possible, as illustrated in (23) and (24).5 (23)

a. i) Ich will dem Kind-DAT den Wagen-ACC schenken I want the child the car give Ί want to give the child the car' ii) Ich will den Wagen-ACC dem Kind-DAT schenken I want the car the child give Ί want to give the child the car' b. i) * Ich will den Wagen-ACC an das Kind-ACC/ zu dem I want the car to the child/ to the Kind-DAT schenken child give Ί want to give the car to the child'

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ii) *Ich will an das Kind-ACQ zu dem Kind-DAT I want to the child/ to the child Wagen-ACC schenken car give Ί want to give the car to the child' (24)

den the

a. i) Ich will meinem Bruder-DAT dieses Bild-ACC zeigen I want my brother this picture show Ί want to show my brother this picture' ϋ) Ich will dieses Bild-ACC meinem Bruder-DAT zeigen I want this picture my brother show Ί want to show my brother this picture' b. i) *Ich will dieses Bild-ACC an meinen Bruder-ACCI I want this picture to my brother/ zu meinem Bruder-DAT zeigen to my brother show Ί want to show this picture to my brother' ϋ) *Ich will an meinen Bruder-ACCI zu meinem I want to my brother/ to my Bruder-DAT dieses Bild-ACC zeigen brother this picture show Ί want to show this picture to my brother'

While it is true that German exhibits greater freedom in the surface ordering of direct and indirect objects than English does, Lenerz (1977) has shown that in each of these patterns one of the orders is "unmarked" in the sense that it is possible under any discourse situation, while the other order is "marked" in the sense that it is permissible only under specific discourse situations, essentially when the first (linear) object can be understood as topical and the second (linear) object can be understood as rhematic or focalized. The marked order becomes unacceptable when the first (linear) object is more rhematic than the second (linear) object. Specifically, with the double-object construction, the order dative > accusative is unmarked, and the order accusative > dative is marked. With the oblique construction, the order accusative > PP is unmarked, and the order PP > accusative is marked. I assume here that the marked orders arise through "scrambling", which involves further movement beyond that which is required for the checking of case features.

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4.3 French French and most other modern Romance languages 6 exhibit only the oblique construction. As illustrated in (25) the direct object precedes the indirect object. (25)

a. i) *Je veux donner Jean le livre I want give Jean the book Ί want to give Jean the book' ii) *Je veux donner le livre Jean I want give the book Jean Ί want to give Jean the book' b. i) Je veux donner le livre a Jean I want give the book to Jean Ί want to give the book to Jean' ii) *Je veux donner ä Jean le livre I want give to Jean the book Ί want to give the book to Jean'

While the languages surveyed differ with respect to the extent to which they exhibit the double-object construction and the oblique construction, the generalization in (14) appears to hold: abstracting away from topicalization and focalization processes, bare NP indirect objects precede direct objects, while prepositional indirect objects follow direct objects.

5. Deriving the empirical generalization (14) 5.1 Why bare-NP GOAL precedes

THEME

The more straightforward part of our task is deriving the fact that bareNP indirect objects precede direct objects. Let us assume that GOAL is in fact higher on the universal thematic hierarchy than THEME. Within the Minimalist framework multiple movements driven by case-feature checking preserve underlying hierarchical (and, thus, linear) relations. 7 5.2 Why Ρ Ρ GOAL follows

THEME

Here I will consider two approaches to deriving the fact that PP indirect object follow direct objects. Both approaches would continue to claim

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that GOAL is higher on the universal thematic hierarchy than THEME. The first approach would claim that the application of the thematic hierarchy is sensitive to syntactic category. Thus, uniformly argument PPs are mapped onto syntactic representation before NPs. However, this approach seems conceptually unattractive, since it tends to undermine the basic intuition of the Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis that syntactic representations (more or less) transparently represent predicateargument structure. An alternative approach is to assume that PP GOALs are mapped onto a structural position higher than THEMEs, just as bare-NP GOALS are, but that PPs are dominated by an AgrPrP (Prepositional Agreement Phrase), as sketched in (26). (26) Spec

In (26), NPi is the THEME. It will move to Spec,AgrOP for case checking. NP 2 is the GOAL. It will move to Spec,AgrPrP for case checking (and Ρ will move to AgrPr). The result of the movement of the two NPs is sketched in (27). (27)

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Since the movement of the GOAL is entirely contained with the AgrPrP, while the movement of the THEME is within the larger AgrOP, this particular constellation of movements will not preserve hierarchical (and, thus, linear) relations. This approach can be easily extended to other cases where bare NP objects precede PP arguments in both SVO and SOV languages. Consider examples such as those in (28) and (29). (28)

a. I will remind my brother of the text b. I will ask my brother for the book c. I will release my sister from her promise

(29)

a. Ich will meinen Bruder-ACC um 100 DM bitten I want my brother Ρ 100 DM ask Ί want to ask my brother for 100 D M ' b. Ich will meinen Bruder-ACC vor dem Hund-DAT I want my brother Ρ the dog Ί want to warn my brother of the dog' c. Ich will meinen Bruder-ACC nach meiner I want my brother Ρ my Schwester-DAT fragen sister ask Ί want to ask my brother about my sister'

warnen warn

In examples (28) and (29) we do not seem to have a "standard" G O A L THEME configuration of thematic roles. Nevertheless, in both English and German the bare NP precedes the PP. This is different from the situation with PP adjuncts in German, where the unmarked order is PP adjunct > bare NP object. This analysis can also be extended to examples of triadic verbal predicates in German and Icelandic with the case marking pattern ACC > GEN/DAT, illustrated in (30) and (31), respectively. (30)

(31)

Ich habe meinen Bruder-ACC des Mordes-GEN I have my brother the murder Ί suspected my brother of murder' Hann minnti Höskuld-ACC profsins-GEN he reminded Höskuldur the-exam 'He reminded Höskuldur of the exam'

verdächtigt suspected

Sprouse (1989, 1995) argues that German verbs with the ACC-GEN casemarking pattern illustrated in (30) and Icelandic verbs with DAT-DAT,

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DAT-GEN, ACC-DAT, or ACC-GEN case-marking patterns involved a null preposition governing the second (linear) object. Regardless of the relative position of the thematic roles represented by the complements of these verbs, it would follow uniformly that the complements of the null prepositions would follow the other objects in surface syntax. Notes 1. See Zwart (1993) for an analysis of many aspects of Dutch syntax in this framework. 2. For further technical details on the definition of "minimal domains" and "equidistance", see Chomsky (1993: 11-19). 3. Similar facts hold for Dutch, Icelandic, and the Mainland Scandinavian languages. It should be noted that Icelandic exhibits relatively few verbs that allow the oblique construction; most triadic verbal predicates in Icelandic require the double-object construction. 4. Additional verbs that allow either the double object construction or the oblique construction include the following: bringen 'bring', zahlen 'pay', auszahlen 'pay out', schreiben 'write', (eine Frage-ACC) stellen 'pose a question', verkaufen 'sell', vermieten 'rent', verpachten 'lease', verraten 'betray'. 5. Additional triadic verbal predicates in German that permit only the double-object construction include the following: geben 'give', erklären 'explain', empfehlen 'recommend', anbieten 'offer', leihen 'loan', versprechen 'promise', wünschen 'wish', beibringen 'teach', erzählen 'tell', gönnen 'grant', vorschreiben 'prescribe', gestatten 'permit', erlauben 'allow', gewähren 'grant', anvertrauen 'entrust', vorschlagen 'suggest', erweisen 'show', gestehen 'confess'. 6. This is true of Portuguese, Spanish, Rhaeto-Romance, and Italian. Romanian has not been investigated here. 7. There appears to be a technical problem for the Minimalist framework associated with the derivation of any ditransitive sentence in an SOV language. In deriving structures with a single object in such languages, it is assumed that the object raises overtly to Spec,AgrOP crossing the underlying position of the verb. Because of the shortest-movement requirement it is necessary for the verb to raise to AgrO, so that Spec,AgrOP and Spec,VP will be equidistant from the underlying position of the object. These raises of the verb, however, do not affect surface order, since AgrO is to the left of Spec,AgrOP. In the case of a ditransitive verb, however, the verb would have to move a second time, so that the object in Spec,VP can raise to a higher specifier position as well. However, this movement would yield an order where the verb is positioned between the two objects (both hierarchically and linearly). A potential solution to this problem is to assume that ditransitives involve some sort of "small-clause" structure, which moves as a constituent to a checking position before Spell Out. Thus, a constituent containing both objects moves to the left of the surface position of the verb. While this would solve the problem of surface word order, it would seem to undermine the spirit, if not the letter, of the Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis to the extent that it postulates distinct structural relationships for G O A L and T H E M E in SVO and SOV languages. I leave this as an open problem here. See Collins and Thräinsson (1993: 140) for an analysis within the Minimalist framework that treats Icelandic ditransitives as biclausal.

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References Baker, Mark 1988 Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Bresnan, Joan - Jonni M. Kanerva 1989 "Locative inversion in Chichewa: A case study of factorization in grammar", Linguistic Inquiry 20: 1—50. Carrier-Duncan, Jill 1985 "Linking of thematic roles in derivational word formation", Linguistic Inquiry 1 6 : 1 - 34. Chomsky, Noam 1993 "A minimalist program for linguistic theory", in: Kenneth Hale - Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), 1 - 5 2 . Collins, Chris - Höskuldur Thräinsson 1993 "Object shift in double object constructions and the theory of case", MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 19: 131 — 174. Grimshaw, Jane 1990 Argument structure. (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 18.) Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press. Hale, Kenneth - Samuel Jay Keyser 1993 "On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations", in: Kenneth Hale - Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), 53-109. Hale, Kenneth - Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.) 1993 The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger. (Current Studies in Linguistics 18.) Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press. Jackendoff, Ray S. 1972 Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. (Current Studies in Linguistics 2.) Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press. Kayne, Richard S. 1984 Connectedness and binary branching. Dordrecht: Foris. 1993 The antisymmetry of syntax. [Unpublished manuscript, City University of New York.] Larson, Richard 1988 "On the double object construction", Linguistic Inquiry 19: 335-391. Lenerz, Jürgen 1977 Zur Abfolge nominaler Satzglieder im Deutschen. (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 5.) Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Perlmutter, David M. - Paul M. Postal 1984 'The 1-advancement exclusiveness law", in: David M. Perlmutter - Carol Rosen (eds.), 81-125. Perlmutter, David M. - Carol Rosen (eds.) 1984 Studies in relational grammar 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rauch, Irmengard - Gerald F. Carr (eds.) 1995 Insights in Germanic linguistics I. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Rosen, Carol G. 1984 "The interface between semantic roles and initial grammatical relations", in: David M. Perlmutter - Carol G. Rosen (eds.), 38-77.

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Sprouse, Rex A. 1989 On the syntax of the double object construction in selected Germanic languages. [Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University.] 1995 "The double-object construction in the Germanic languages: Some synchronic and diachronic notes", in: Irmengard Rauch - Gerald F. Carr (eds.), 325-342. Zaenen, Annie - Joan Maling - Höskuldur Thräinsson 1985 "Case and grammatical functions: The Icelandic passive", Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3: 441 -483. Zwart, C. Jan Wouter 1993 Dutch syntax: A minimalist approach. [Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Groningen.]

Against the notion "metrical grammar" Robert P. Stockwell

— Donka

Minkova

1. Uses of the term "metrical grammar" in Old English metrics The term "metrical grammar" has been used in a variety of ways by metrists generally and more specifically among scholars studying Old English metrics and the metrical practices of the Beowulf poet. Two of these seem reasonable and appropriate, to us, but the third does not. The three common usages are these. First, as a name for a set of rules which determine the match between abstract metrical form and surface rhythmic realization. In this usage metrical rules refer to phonological prosodic properties such as stress, word and phrase boundaries, and their distribution in verse. Cable (1991) has developed a metrical grammar for Beowulf which conforms completely to this concept of the term. His metrical grammar has four rules for the assignment of lifts and dips, all stated in terms that are either purely prosodic or purely morphological. 1 Since we are merely illustrating the concept we oversimplify his rules here for brevity, as follows: i. There are four positions in each verse; the default filler of each position is a single syllable. ii. In each verse two positions are both strong and heavy (including resolution). iii. The first weak position can be expanded. iv. Prefixes like ge-, be-, on-, and the clitic ne are extrametrical. Neither the hypermetric nor the A 3 verses fall out from these rules, but all others, with rather trivial exceptions like D*, do. A well-known and widely accepted instance of metrical grammar in this sense is "suspension of resolution". A syllable must be heavy in order to be ictic. The notion "heavy" is defined for Old English quite differently from the way it is defined in later English. Heaviness is a function of what is known as "the Germanic foot". 2 In order to be ictic, if the target syllable ends with a short vowel (i. e., the nucleus of the syllable is neither VV nor VC), then the next syllable is phonologically absorbed into it to

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give the target syllable sufficient weight. The syllable that is phonologically absorbed is thereafter "invisible" to the metrics. More generally, an ictic syllable must have a branching nucleus, which is equivalent to saying it must have bimoric weight. If it does not have that weight inherently, which it does in (1) and (2), then it steals the additional weight from the next syllable, as in (3):

(1) σ μ μ ν ν baat

bat

(2)

w

ΐ ι VC word

Aa

worda

(3) σ σ μ μ I Λ VC ν 1 ο f u

lofu

It is debatable whether this "heft" is a device of poetic license or a property of the phonological system of Old English. We have argued against the latter position at some length in Minkova and Stockwell (1994); we pass on that question here, because nothing hinges on it for this discussion. The phenomenon shows up in well-known morphological alternations like word (*wordu) versus scipu (*scip), with high-vowel deletion in word but not in scipu. On the other hand, when resolution is "suspended" (i. e., the unstressed syllable counts as "visible" to the metrics again), as most systems of scansion 3 claim it is in verses like Beo. 376a:

Against the notion "metrical grammar"

S

S

heard her

/

S

245

W

cum en

this "suspension" (allowing [s w] in the second foot) most certainly is a device of poetic license and properly belongs among the rules of "metrical grammar" in this first sense. Second, as a name for morphosyntactic rules that are manifested only or predominantly in the verse corpus. It is important to note that in this use, "metrical grammar" says nothing about meter, only about the morphosyntactic usage that is found in the metrical corpus. Whatever is said about morphosyntactic usage in this context is said in the same way, and with the same assumptions and theoretical apparatus, as anything that might be said about morphosyntactic usage in prose. Three examples of such rules which operate mainly in the verse corpus are: (a) verb-fronting not accompanied by topicalization; (b) verb-fronting in surbordinate clauses; (c) multiple-particle fronting. The first rule needs only an example 4 or two to remind one of the frequency with which we expect verb-first sentences in the verse (about onefourth of the main clauses in Beowulf): (4) Beo. 1441b

eorlgewxdum, in hero garb 'Beowulf got afraid for his

Gyrede hine Beowulf Geared himself Beowulf nalles for ealdre mearn no way for life mourned himself dressed in proper warrior's garb, he was not life'

(5) Beo. 1035 Heht öä eorla hleo eahta mearas Ordered then earl's defender eight horses ßetedhleore on flet teön, with-gold-head-gear on hall-floor led in under eoderas. in under ramparts 'Then the defender of earls ordered eight horses with gold head-gear led in under the ramparts onto the hall floor.' The second rule, verb-fronting in subordinate clauses, is the basis of the fact that from word-order alone we cannot always discriminate between

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main and subordinate clauses in verse, as we can (with almost no exceptions) in the prose. (6) Beo. 1326b öonne we on orlege when we in battle hafelan weredon, ponne hniton fepan, head defended when clashed armies eoferas cynsedan. boar-helmets smashed 'When we defended our heads in battle and when armies clashed and boar-helmets got smashed.' The third rule is the starting point of Kuhn's famous generalizations (Kuhn 1933). Although clause initiation in the prose is largely governed by a rule of topicalization which requires, as in modern German and Dutch, that one sentence element, and only one, be fronted into first position verse allows multiple particles (such as light adverbs, finite verbs, and pronouns) in first position. 5 (7) Beo. 388 gesaga him eac wordum past hie sint wilcuman tell them too in-words that they are welcome Deniga leodum. of-Danes nation 'Tell them too that they are welcome to the Danish Kingdom.' (8) Beo. 395 Nü ge möton gangan in eowrum güögeatäwum Now you may go in your war-gear 'Now you may go in your war-gear' (9) Beo. 2801b ne mseg ic her leng wesan. not may I here longer be Ί can't stay around any longer.' Third, as a mixed bag of apples and oranges designating properties of verse which are not uniquely definable by the axioms of a metrical theory nor by those of a morphosyntactic one. It is this usage about which we have reservations. The reason for our reservations is simply this: if syntactic constraints (position, word order, etc.) are stated in terms of metrical entities (like "first dip"), then whatever these constraints turn out to

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be, they cannot be compared with similar properties in the prose, or described by syntactic rules of universal theoretical types (because notions like "first dip" are irrelevant in prose, and theoretical devices for the characterization of syntax do not include such notions, nor should they). Our problem, then, is simply that "metrical grammar" formulated in these mixed terms is a handicap, not a help, to metrical scholarship in achieving the goal of characterizing the unique properties of verse. This mixed usage seems to have originated with Kuhn: "Sentence particles appear in the first dip of the sentence, as proclitics either to the first or the second stressed word" (1933: 8). Sentences do not have dips, which are defined only within a theory of meter. Of course anyone can use any word for a meaning of choice, in spite of Humpty Dumpty's admonition to Alice.6 What bothers us is not the fact that the label "metrical grammar" is being coopted for a sense that fails to accord with the first and second reasonably well-established usages above. It is hardly up to us to decree Fowleresque standards of usage in Anglo-Saxon metrics. What bothers us is that the constructs covered under this label are incoherent in some rather basic ways, and yet the analyses which depend on them continue to proliferate, from Bliss's work to the impressive recent work of Kendall. One can admire the achievements of these monumental studies, and indeed benefit richly from their insights, without being convinced that this notion of metrical grammar should be perpetuated in the study of Anglo-Saxon metrics.

2. The ambiguity of "Auftakt" "Metrical grammar" as formulated by Kuhn and his supporters - Bliss, Donaghue, Kendall, Lucas - depends crucially on the interpretation given to the notion "upbeat". Hutcheson has pointed out that Kuhn used the term ambiguously, that in fact he switched back and forth rather recklessly between two senses of the term. What Kuhn referred to as an upbeat, Hutcheson believes, included two distinct entities, "anacrusis", which is a prosodic upbeat, and "Satzauftakt" (hereafter "clause upbeat" or more generally "syntactic upbeat"). Upbeat Prosodic

Syntactic

"Clause upbeat" is a notion left somewhat unclear by Hutcheson (and by Kuhn), but at least it is not a phonetic-prosodic notion since it is defined in

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terms of word order and morphological class membership. If an initial dip is a proclitic or prefix, then by virtue of its phonetic properties alone it is recognizable as a mere prosodic upbeat that can be declared extrametrical (i.e., anacrusis) if there are theoretical reasons for doing so. But if the clause-initial string (not the clause-initial dip, since a finite verb in the initial string may be stressed) contains a particle - even including a stressed alliterating finite verb - then, in Kuhn as interpreted by Hutcheson, it is a clause upbeat. More generally, a clause upbeat is a clause-initial string in which there is no obligatory stress (e. g., on a noun) and in which there may be several weak syllables of which one or more can carry stress if nothing else is available. The alliterating finite verbs discussed by Bliss (1967: 16— 23) are the best candidates for these possibly variably-stressed syllables. On this interpretation all the "weak" clause initiations are not prosodic upbeats but are called upbeats only by virtue of an arbitrary claim about clause initiation having nothing to do with their intrinsic phonetic-prosodic properties. That is, in just the same sense that "anacrusis" is not just any old prosodic upbeat but a prosodic upbeat which is extrametrical, so "clause-upbeat" is not just any old string of prosodically weak syllables at the beginning of a clause but a syntactically-defined string in which there is a predominance of weak syllables - in fact, some of them can even be stressed and still be counted as part of the clause upbeat. Hutcheson argues persuasively, to our minds, that the laws are circular, that they are classical instances of begging the question because what they conclude is in fact assumed in the premise. As Hutcheson (1992: 132) sums up this part of his argument: "... Kuhn asserts that if verbs are unstressed, they follow the law of sentence particles. But apparently the only verbs that Kuhn regards as unstressed are verbs that are in the positions that his first law allows; this is because these are the only verbs that Sievers regards as unstressed. The few unstressed verbs Kuhn mentions that are not placed according to his law of sentence particles he explains away. A clearer case of petitio principii could scarcely be imagined. Worse, Kuhn regards words that are normally particles as other than particles when they break his law." In Kendall's work, however, the notion "upbeat" is given a consistent metrical interpretation by treating both kinds of upbeat as sharing the same prosodic property, namely absence of metrical ictus. His way, at least there is no ambiguity. Taking the clause upbeat examples and interpreting them on the prosodic upbeat reading, Kendall scans all nonstrong clause-initial verses as metrically weak, including alliterating finite verbs. To these he may then assign a stress by what he calls "the trans-

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formational rule". He thus makes a distinction between a kind of "deep structure" - which permits stress only on lexically heavy items, basically only nouns and adjectives, - versus "surface structure" - the actual surface rhythm which may include some surface stresses that are not present in the underlying metrical pattern. One of the roles of the "metrical grammar" is to make these surface stress assignments. Another of its roles is to group the particles in accord with Kuhn's two laws - the laws themselves are taken to be part of the metrical grammar. The system as a whole is conceived as a kind of base component plus an "adjustment" component including a transformational rule, in the sense of generative grammar. Consider Kendall's analysis of Beowulf 47a: (10) Beo. 47 f)a gyt hie him äsetton segen gyldenne Then yet they to-him set-on standard golden heah ofer heafod. high over head 'In addition they set a golden standard high over his head.' dall's translation.]

[Ken-

Beowulf Ala. is assigned no metrical stress by the metrical grammar because it consists entirely of particles all "grouped in the first dip of the clause (first law)" (Kendall 1991: 20). The alliterating syllable of asetton is then assigned, by "the transformational rule", a stress in order to put the verse minimally into conformity with regular metrical contours (i.e., the basic Sie vers types). From a prosodic point of view, this is a transparent deus ex machina, which has the interesting property that it completes a vicious circle. Kuhn took Sievers' scansion as correct, and defined some word-order rules on the basis of it; Kendall takes Kuhn's laws as absolute with respect to clause-initial scansion, but then repairs the resulting bad prosody by a rule which returns the surface form to Sievers's scansion. See figure 1. Siever's scansion

Kendall's transformation 7

Kendall's abstract prosody Figure 1. Analytical circularity

Kuhn's laws

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Hutcheson is right that it makes no sense, in purely phonetic or rhythmic terms, to refer to clause-initiations such as in 47a as "upbeats". But Hutcheson has not established that it is a bad thing to use "upbeat" in the imaginative (and consistent) way that Kendall has chosen, only that this is not the way Kuhn was using it.

3. The disambiguation of "Auftakt" The question is, what do you gain if you take this kind of liberty with Kuhn? Kendall's answer, we infer, is that you gain a credible account of how oral-formulaic composition might have been possible. A deus is not a bad thing if something is explained by it: for example, WH-movement in syntax is a deus, but highly explanatory in the sense that it relates open classes of clauses to each other with a single generalization that covers both semantic and syntactic properties the classes share. Kendall does not do that, but he does in fact do something of great interest: he defines four classes of verses which have severe positional limitations (can only be used at the beginning of a clause, for example). This gets him closer to the goal of understanding how formulaic composition could have taken place. Kuhn's principles are not themselves defeated by showing that he was inconsistent in his use of the concept of upbeat: one still has to see whether the principles do useful work under one interpretation or the other, even though we may be sure that our reading is not strictly speaking what Kuhn himself intended. Hutcheson, having seen that Kuhn was really talking about a certain intersection between prosody and syntax and that the principles themselves were syntactic, proceeds to throw out the whole lot and replace it with a morphological list of what is stressable and what is not, accompanied by some "tendency" generalizations. These generalizations also crucially refer to verse phenomena such as alliteration and do not stand independently: on a small scale they replicate the Kuhnian error. They also give no clue to why the most interesting properties that are commonly thought to have been described by Kuhn's laws should exist at all. We think there is indeed a metrical grammar — a syntax that is characteristic of verse, i.e., the second sense suggested in our introductory remarks - and that it has something to do with Kuhn's laws because contrary to other interpretations we think Kuhn's laws are syntax poorly

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formulated. From a well-formulated syntax (such features as the fronting of finite verbs, the rightward movement of heavy phrases of whatever types, the leftward cliticization of pronouns) along with certain metrical generalizations (e. g., the principles of Russom, in press), Kuhn's laws fall out fairly naturally, without trying to state syntactic generalizations in terms of metrical concepts like lift and dip and thereby failing to make syntactic generalizations at all. In a paper presented before this same audience (institutionally speaking, that is) we showed that all but one of Kendall's verse types could be redefined in purely syntactic terms (Stockwell and Minkova 1992). We think we can now repair that deficiency by showing that "Type lb displaced" also has clear syntactic properties which define it without invoking Kuhn's laws. First, some examples: (11) Beo. 4 Oft Scyld See fing sceapena. preatum, oft Scyld son of Scef of-enemies from-bands monegum rrwegpum, meodosetla ofteah, from-many tribes mead-benches seized egsode eorlas. Syööan xrest weard terrorized earls since first he-was feasceaft funden, he pass fröfre gebäd, destitute found he of-it relief knew weox under wolcnum, weorömyndum päh, grew under skies in-honors throve 'Scyld, the son of Scef, had seized homes and terrorized warrior nobility from bands of enemies from many tribes, since he was first found destitute. He experienced relief from it, prospered under the skies and throve in honors.' (12) Beo. 47 pä gyt hie him äsetton segen gyldenne standard golden then yet they for-him set up heah ofer heafod, leton holm beran, high over head they let sea carry geafon on gärseeg; him wads geömor sefa, gave to ocean in-them was gloomy heart murnende mod. Men ne cunnon mourning mind Men not can

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secgan tö sööe, selerxdende, say for truth hall-counselors hxleö under heofenum, hwä pzm hlassie onfeng. heroes under heaven who that cargo received 'Then they erected a golden standard high overhead; they let the sea take him, gave him to the ocean; their hearts were gloomy, their minds were mournful. Men, royal counselors, great heroes, cannot say for sure who finally received that cargo.' (13) Beo. 129b Μ sere

peoden,

mighty chieftain aEpeling

äergöd,

noble-king old-good polode

unbllöe

sset,

unhappy sat

öryöswyö.

suffered severely 'The mighty chieftain, the noble king of ancient quality, sat unhappy and suffered terribly.' (14) Beo. 229 pä of wealle geseah weard Scildinga, then from wall saw warden of-Scyldings se pe holmclifu healdan scolde, he who seacliffs guard should heran ofer bolcan beorhte randas, borne over gangplank bright shields fyrdsearu füslicu; war-gear ready 'Then the guardian of the Scyldings, whose responsibility was to guard the seacliffs, saw the colorful shields carried over the gangplank, the war-gear ready.' In all these examples (and many more, with the only exceptions being of the type discussed below), the Type lb displaced verse has the following syntactic characterization: Following a verb-final clause, main or subordinate, the immediately subsequent clause with the same subject unexpressed (i. e., appositional VPConjunction) is regularly verb-first. Such a verb-first clause is "Type lb Displaced" in Kendall's system. The only examples which do not follow this pattern are like 51a, where clearly the V-l is just a complement on cunnon in the previous verse. We

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believe such examples are incorrectly categorized by Kendall as Type lb with displacement. To sum up: what Kuhn did, as Hutcheson has pointed out, was to assume the familar metrical analysis of his day and make inferences from it about early Germanic syntax. What he achieved is of some value to students of historical syntax (though, in fact, limited: see Stockwell and Minkova [1994]). It is work possibly of considerable value to students of oral-formulaic theories if it is interpreted in the consistent and coherent manner of Kendall but reformulated along purely syntactic lines, even though Kendall's reading actually misrepresents Kuhn's own position. What Kuhn did is of no value at all, so far as we have been able to discover, with respect to evaluating competing theories of the metrical system of early Germanic verse: it makes no independent predictions about that system, and we can continue to discuss alternative theories — Sievers (1885, 1893), Heusler (1891), Pope (1942), Cable (1974, 1991), Russom (1987, in press), Obst (1987, in press), and even Kendall (1991) - without feeling constrained by Kuhn's so-called laws. Confronted by Kendall, however, we do face the problem that many old-line structuralists faced when they encountered Chomsky's Syntactic structures and Aspects of the theory of syntax. Namely, is there really anything in these imaginative deep structures? Can the scansion of Old English verse be realistically formulated as having abstract deep properties as well as surface readings, with only the latter conforming to any theory of stress assignment rules, and with the former assigned on the basis of conformity with Kuhn's laws? Notes 1. His rules of course include the usual principles of alliteration, which is not our concern at this point. 2. From a purely linguistic point of view, this construct has been defined by Liberman (1979) and in considerably more detail with reference to Old English by Dresher and Lahiri (1991). 3. Not, however, that of Wolfgang Obst, who argues - persuasively from a linguistic point of view, but apparently not from the perspective of most present-day metrists - that you cannot undo for the convenience of modern metrists a regular phonological process of the language. It is, after all, not possible to argue directly that the scop permitted the suspension of resolution. We are making inferences which allow one modern scansion or another to work better, from the point of view of some set of reasonably general principles. 4. In citing examples we follow the standard practice of indicating half-line divisions by the letters "a" and "b". Thus 47a means the first half of line 47, 47b the second half. When no letter is given it is because the entire line is quoted, with appropriate spacing.

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5. As has been pointed out by Hock (1985), Pintzuk and Kroch (1989), and Pintzuk (1991). 6. " 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean, - neither more nor less.'" (Lewis Carroll, Through the looking glass. The Walrus and the Carpenter, chapter 6.) 7. Yielding surface scansion.

References Bliss, Alan J. 1952 The metre of Beowulf. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. [1967] [Revised edition.] Cable, Thomas 1974 The meter and melody of Beowulf. (Illinois Studies in Language and Literature 64.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1991 The English alliterative tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Donaghue, Daniel 1990 "Old English meter", American Notes and Queries 3: 6 9 - 7 4 . Dresher, B. Elan - Aditi Lahiri 1991 "The Germanic foot: Metrical coherence in Old English", Linguistic Inquiry 22: 2 5 1 - 2 8 6 . Heusler, Andreas 1891 "Zur Metrik des altsächsischen und hochdeutschen Alliterationsverses", Germania 36: 139-179, 279-307. Hock, Hans Heinrich 1985 "Pronoun fronting and the notion 'verb-second' position in Beowulf', in: J. T. Faarlund (ed.), Germanic Linguistics: Papers from a Symposium at the University of Chicago, April 1985. Bloomington: IULC, 7 0 - 8 6 . Hutcheson, Bellenden Rand 1992 "Kuhn's Law, finite verb stress, and the critics", Studia Neophilologica 64: 129-139. Kendall, Calvin B. 1991 The metrical grammar of 'Beowulf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuhn, Hans 1933 "Zur Wortstellung und -betonung im Altgermanischen", Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 57: 1 — 109. Liberman, Anatoly 1979 "On the history of quantity in Germanic", in: H. Hollien - P. Hollien (eds.), Current Issues in the Phonetic Sciences. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1085— 1090. Lucas, Peter J. 1987 "Some aspects of the interaction between verse grammar and metre in Old English poetry", Studia Neophilologica 59: 145-175. Minkova, Donka - Robert P. Stockwell 1994 "Syllable weight, prosody, and meter in Old English", Diachronica 11.1: 35-64. Obst, Wolfgang 1987 Der Rhythmus des Beowulf: Eine Akzent- und Takttheorie. (Anglistische Forschungen 187.) Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.

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"Can rhythm be reconstructed?", in: Christopher McCully - J. J. Anderson (eds.), English Historical Metrics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pintzuk, Susan 1991 Phrase structures in competition: Variation and change in Old English word order. University of Pennsylvania: 1RCS Report No. 91-43. Pintzuk, Susan — Anthony Kroch 1989 "The rightward movement of complements and adjuncts in the Old English of Beowulf', Language Variation and Change 1: 115—143. Pope, John Collins 1942 The rhythm of Beowulf: An interpretation of the normal and hypermetric verseforms in Old English poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press. Russom, Geoffrey 1987 Old English meter and linguistic theory. Cambridge - New York: Cambridge University Press. in press "Purely metrical replacements for Kuhn's Laws", in: Christopher McCully - J. J. Anderson (eds.), English Historical Metrics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sievers, Eduard 1885 "Zur Rhythmik des germanischen Alliterationsverses", Pauls and Braunes Beiträge 10: 209-314, 451-545. 1893 Altgermanische Metrik. Halle: M. Niemeyer. Stockwell, Robert - Donka Minkova 1992 "Kuhn's laws and verb-second: On Kendall's theory of syntactic displacement in Beowulf', in: Irmengard Rauch - Gerald F. Carr - Robert L. Kyes (eds.), Studies in Germanic Linguistics. (Trends in Linguistics 68.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 315-399. 1994 "Kuhn's laws and the rise of verb-second syntax", in: Toril Swan - Endre Merck — Olaf Jansen Westvik (eds.), Language change and language structure: Older Germanic languages in a comparative perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 213-231.

Two-domain conditionals: Verb-first, integration, politeness Ilona Vandergriff

This paper 1 analyzes the variant finite-verb orderings in preceded conditional consequents and the constraints which govern their usage. In their 1989 article, Kopeke and Panther showed that, while the domain of the w«rc-clause (content versus speech-act) was a relevant factor, it alone was not sufficient to predict the verb position in the ensuing apodosis; speech-act conditionals, for instance, occasionally occur with unexpected verb-first instead of predicted verb-second. In order to explain the deviant word order, Kopeke and Panther posited an overriding pragmatic parameter, namely the "speaker's degree of certainty". I disagree with their account and propose to show that verb-first in preceded apodoses signals a close linking or conceptual integration of the two clauses, which is paralleled in the topic-comment structure on the textual level. Verbfirst entails the apodosis' reduction of semantic independence, prosodic independence and illocutive weight and, as such, functions in discourse to deliver the proposition in a polite, non-confrontational manner.

1. Content conditionals versus speech-act conditionals Two types of conditionals are commonly distinguished, content and speech-act conditionals. Content conditionals show a dependency relation between the proposition of the consequent and the truth of the antecedent. They are therefore truth-conditionally assessed (cf. Levinson 1983: 231). They only allow verb-first as (la) illustrates: Verb-second (cf. [lb]) renders the sentence unacceptable. (1)

a. When nämlich kein Verbot da ist, hat man If namely no law there is has one keinen Grund, dieses Verbot zu brechen. no reason this law to break 'If there is no law you have no reason to break this law.' (.DSK/DAE2, NDR Hamburg, telephone consultation, 7/12/ 68)

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b. *Wenn nämlich kein Verbot da ist, man hat keinen If namely no law there is one has no Grund, dieses Verbot zu brechen. reason this law to break 'If there is no law you have no reason to break this law.' Conditionals like (la) show either a cause-effect or enablement relationship (cf. Sweetser 1990: 115). This content link is an important property of natural-language conditionals and is not necessarily shared by logical conditionals. Sweetser (1990: 113) points out that appropriate truth values alone are not a sufficient requirement for a well-formed natural-language conditional. The following logical conditional illustrates the point. (2)

If Paris is the capital of France, (then) two is an even number. (Sweetser 1990: 113)

Even though conditionals such as (2) are logically true, they do not occur in natural language. Instead, natural language "uses conditionals to talk about 'related' things" (Sweetser 1990: 113). Sweetser (1990: 142) emphasizes this content link between the protasis and the apodosis when she states: "Natural-language conditionals express a relationship and a dependency, not only between the truth values of the two clauses, but between their contents as well." Akatsuka (1986: 335) concurs: The "'connection' is an integral part of the 'if p, q' construction's linguistic meaning". Contrasting with truth conditionals, speech-act conditionals are felicity conditionals in the sense that the negation of the antecedent has no effect on the truth conditions of the apodosis but merely renders it infelicitous. König and van der Auwera (1988: 112) speak of the "separate assertability" of the apodosis. The truth of the consequent proposition remains untouched by the speech-act antecedent. In speech-act conditionals the relationship between the two clauses is not on the content level but on the discourse-pragmatic level. But, as in content conditionals, the protasis and the apodosis of a speech-act conditional show a relationship of "enablement" or "causation". The truth of the protasis enables the speaker to perform the apodosis; the conditional thus can be represented in the following form: "if p, q is performed". Their complexity arises from the fact that "these speech-acts 'purport' to be conditional" (Sweetser 1990: 118), i. e., the speech-act protasis merely "purports" to be hypothet-

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ical but turns out to always be "true" because the apodosis is performed. Speech-act conditionals typically exhibit a verb-second configuration in the main clause. (3)

a. Wenn du es noch nicht wußtest, Hans ist wieder im If you it yet not knew Hans is back in-the Lande. country 'In case you didn't know, Hans is back in town.' b. * Wenn du es noch nicht wußtest, ist Hans wieder im If you it yet not knew is Hans back in-the Lande. country. 'In case you didn't know, Hans is back in town.' (Kopeke - Panther 1989: 688)

(4)

a. Wenn du die Neuigkeit noch nicht kennst, Anna hat If you the news yet not know Anna has geheiratet. married 'In case you don't know the news, Anna has got married.' (Kopeke - Panther 1989: 689) b. *Wenn du die Neuigkeit noch nicht kennst, hat Anna If you the news yet not know has Anna geheiratet. married 'In case you don't know the news, Anna has got married.'

The examples (3a) and (4a) show that speech-act conditionals allow verbsecond and are unacceptable with verb-first (cf. [3b] and [4b]). Unfortunately, the widely used terms content and speech-act conditional are somewhat misleading. The term speech-act conditional denotes all conditional clauses whose antecedent is located on the discourse level. But the domain of the antecedent alone is not the relevant characteristic determining verb position in the consequent. Rather the domains of both clauses in the conditional are important. If both clauses are located on the same level, in one domain, be it content or speech-act, verb first will typically result in the consequent. In the following conditional both clauses are located on the speech-act level; as a result we have a conditional that is truth-conditionally assessed.

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(5)

Wenn Sie jetzt aber noch Einzelfragen aus der If you now but still details out of-the Denkschrift klären wollen, dann sollten wir's vielleicht memorandum discuss want then should we-it possibly jetzt tun. now do 'If you wish to discuss specific questions on the memorandum, (then) we should probably do it now.' (FKO/XAI, Sender Freies Berlin, Gespräch über die Denkschrift der EKD, discussion, 6/10/66, p. 27)

(6)

Wenn jemand an einer andern Stelle einsetzen If someone at a different place begin ... will, soll das völlig frei sein, gestattet sein. ...wants shall that fully free be allowed be 'If someone wants to bring up a different point, that will be allowed.' (FKO/XAK, Sender Freies Berlin, Pressekonferenz zur Denkschrift der EKD, interview, 11/5/65, p. 9)

These conditionals whose two clauses are located in one domain, be it content or speech-act, will be labeled one-domain conditionals. If, in turn, the antecedent is metacommunicative and the consequent is on the propositional level, we have a two-domain conditional as in (3a) and (4a). Other syntactic characteristics correlate with the one-domain versus two-domain distinction. Since these have been considered in detail by Kopeke and Panther (cf. 1989: 686-692), I will limit my discussion to i/ann-resumption and topicalization in the apodosis. One-domain conditionals allow dann in the consequent, two-domain conditionals do not. Sentence (7) will serve as an example. (7)

Wenn nämlich kein Verbot da ist, dann hat man keinen If namely no law there is then has one no Grund, dieses Verbot zu brechen. reason this law to break 'If there is no law, then you have no reason to break this law.'

One-domain conditionals allow dann, which is "interpreted as a resumptive proform being co-referential with the protasis" (Kopeke - Panther

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1989: 689). Two-domain conditionals, by contrast, do not allow resumption as (8—10) show. (8)

* Wenn du es noch nicht wußtest, dann ist Hans wieder If you it yet not knew then is Hans back im Lande. in-the country 'In case you didn't know, then Hans is back in town.'

(9)

* Wenn du die Neuigkeit noch nicht kennst, dann hat If you the news yet not know then has Anna geheiratet. Anna married *'In case you don't know the latest, then Anna has got married.'

Topicalization in the consequent clauses, by contrast, is only permissible in two-domain conditionals as (10) shows and renders one-domain conditionals unacceptable (cf. [11]). (10)

Wenn du es noch nicht wußtest, um acht beginnt die If you it yet not knew at eight begins the Party. party 'In case you didn't know, at eight the party starts.' (Kopeke - Panther 1989: 690)

(11)

* Wenn nämlich kein Verbot da ist, keinen Grund hat If namely no law there is no reason has man, dieses Verbot zu brechen. one this law to break 'If there is no law, you have no reason to break this law.'

These syntactic characteristics are in line with the logical properties of the two types of conditionals. It was noted above that in one-domain conditionals the truth of the antecedent is a sufficient condition for the truth of the consequent. Kopeke and Panther (1989: 693) contend that "in the most typical cases" the truth of the protasis is not only a sufficient but also a necessary condition for the truth of the apodosis. This is not explicitly stated in the conditional but merely implicated. One-domain conditionals allow such conversational implicature of the type "if ρ is true, q is true; if ρ is not true, g is not true".

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Wenn nämlich ein Verbot da ist, hat man einen Grund, If namely a law there is has one a reason dieses Verbot zu brechen. this law to break 'If there is a law, you have a reason to break this law.' (DSK/DAE, N D R Hamburg, telephone consultation, 7/12/68)

Two-domain conditionals, by contrast, do not allow contraposition, hence induce no conversational implicature. (13)

* Wenn du es (schon) wußtest, ist Hans nicht wieder If you it (already) knew is Hans not back im Lande. in-the country *'In case you (already) knew, Hans is not back in town.' (Kopeke - Panther 1989: 695)

(14)

* Wenn du kein Interesse hast, die Party beginnt nicht If you no interest have the party begins not um acht. at eight *'In case you aren't interested, the party doesn't start at eight'

Two-domain conditionals do not allow conversational implicature. In the two-domain conditionals in (13) and (14), the negation of the protasis renders the apodosis irrelevant, resulting in the following type: "if ρ is true, q is performed; if ρ is not true, 0 is performed." 3 In brief, one-domain conditionals allow dö/tn-resumption and contraposition which are not acceptable for two-domain conditionals. Two-domain conditionals, on the other hand, allow topicalization in the apodosis which is not possible for one-domain conditionals. These characteristics directly correlate with verb position in the consequent clause. Two-domain conditionals exhibit verb-second while one-domain conditionals show verb-first.

2. Two-domain conditionals with verb-first On close examination, however, the simple correlation does not hold. The distinction between one-domain and two-domain conditionals cannot reliably predict verb position. Kopeke and Panther provide us with a challenging counterexample. In the following example, a two-domain

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conditional unexpectedly allows verb-first (15b) as an optional variant of verb-second (15a). (15)

a. Wenn du meine Meinung hören willst, die Aktien If you my opinion hear want the stocks fallen bald. go-down soon 'If you want to hear my point of view, the stocks will go down soon.' (Kopeke - Panther 1989: 702) b. Wenn du meine Meinung hören willst, fallen die If you my opinion hear want go-down the Aktien bald. stocks soon 'If you want to hear my point of view, the stocks will go down soon.' (Kopeke - Panther 1989: 702)

The protasis in (15) is unambiguously located on the discourse level, the apodosis on the propositional level. Therefore the clauses are clearly located in different domains resulting in a two-domain conditional. The logical properties point in the same direction. Since there is neither a realworld nor a hypothetical-world connection between listening to someone's opinion and the performance of the stock market, the conditional seems to be assessed in terms of felicity. Verb-first in (15b) should be unacceptable. Kopeke and Panther (1989: 701-702) state: "The protasis is not sufficient for the truth of the apodosis, contraposition is impossible and a conceptual link, e. g., causality, between the contents of the protasis and the apodosis is lacking." Therefore, Kopeke and Panther (1989: 702) ascribe the unexpected word order in conditional sentences like (15b) to an overriding pragmatic factor, namely the speaker's degree of certainty about the truth of the consequent: "We suggest that the factor degree of certainty influences the word order in the apodosis. The higher the degree of the speaker's uncertainty about the truth of the apodosis, the more likely s/he will resort to integrative [verb-first] word order in the consequent clause." In this paper I will take issue with Kopeke and Panther's analysis. I will argue against an overriding pragmatic parameter, namely "speaker's degree of certainty" which purportedly triggers this unexpected word order. Instead I want to propose an alternative unified account of the varying verb positions, which is based on the assumption that the verb posi-

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tion does not signal the communicative level (speech-act versus content level). Rather, verb-first indicates the conceptual integration of the two clauses involved. Their conceptual dependency can either be a reflection of the real-world dependency (as in content conditionals) or can be established in the discourse world as perceived by the interlocutors. In the latter case the two-domain conditional can occur with verb-first as in example (15b). Returning to the data for a more detailed analysis, I will consider linguistic clues on the suprasegmental level. Kopeke and Panther decided to ignore prosodic evidence. They (1989: 687—688) argued: It has been claimed that there are prosodic differences between integrative [verb-first] and non-integrative [verb-second] conditional sentences. We d o not question this point here, assuming that these suprasegmental differences (if they exist at all) are the result of different pragmatic (communicative) meanings that the speaker intends to convey by means of either integrative or non-integrative word order in the consequent clause.

It is precisely because these prosodic differences correlate with pragmatic function that we cannot make any claims about pragmatics without consideration of the suprasegmental evidence. (15a) is repeated here as (16) including stress markings. Note that (16) is only acceptable with contrastive stress in the protasis. (16)

Wenn du meine Meinung hören willst, fällen die If you my opinion hear want go-down the Aktien bald. stocks soon 'If you want to hear my point of view, the stocks will go down soon.'

Without contrastive stress in the protasis (16) would be unacceptable because it would force a truth-conditional reading of the type "if ρ is true, q is true; if ρ is not true, q is not true". With contrastive stress, however, i/a««-resumption and application of contraposition become possible, both of which typically render two-domain conditionals unacceptable. Consider first i/««n-resumption. (17)

Wenn du meine Meinung hören willst, dann fallen die If you my opinion hear want then go-down the Aktien. stocks 'If you want to hear my point of view, then the stocks will go down.'

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Upon embedding the sentence into a larger discourse the possibility of contraposition becomes apparent. (18)

A: (Wenn du meine Meinung hören willst,) die Aktien steigen (If you my opinion hear want the stocks go-up B: Wenn du meine (nicht deine) Meinung hören willst, If you my (not your) opinion hear want fällen (nicht steigen) die Aktien bald. go-down (not go-up) the stocks soon A: '(If you want to hear my point of view,) the stocks will go up B: 'If you want to hear my (not your) point of view, the stocks will go down (not up) soon.'

We can represent the form of the dialogue as follows: (19)

A: (if ρ is agreed on), q is performed B: if ρ is not agreed on, not-*/ is performed

Speaker Β presupposes a conditional acceptance of q of the type "if ρ is agreed on 4 , q is performed", then, much like a contrastive topic, offers his/her discourse contribution. In more general terms, two-domain conditionals with verb-first such as (17) do trigger a conversational implicature of the sort that, if the interlocutors disagreed on the protasis, a contrasting apodosis ("not-*?") would be performed. This conversational implicature provides ample evidence of a content link between the clauses. "Invited inference is a natural consequence of the inherent connection between ρ and q..." (Akatsuka 1986: 335). This content link between a speech-act protasis and a propositional apodosis I will call conceptual integration. Kopeke and Panther (1989: 702) denied this "conceptual link" as well as the possibility of conversational implicature for sentences such as (17) (cf. Kopeke and Panther [1989: 701-702] "The protasis is not sufficient for the truth of the apodosis, contraposition is impossible and a conceptual link, e. g., causality, between the contents of the protasis and the apodosis is lacking"). I disagree with their analysis of (17). Even though there is no real-world causal connection between the protasis and the apodosis in B's utterance, they are conceptually linked in discourse. In contrast to other types of conditionals, (18) is not about conditional truth value or conditional relevance but about conditional discourse construction. The conditional in (18) enables the interlocutors to agree on the conditional acceptance of a proposition for the sake of finding common ground from which to advance the communication. Such conditionals, we can thus hypothesize, occur when the speaker has reason to be-

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lieve that the interlocutor may not agree on the truth of the proposition and wishes to present the proposition in a polite, non-confrontational manner. This type of conditional attests to the collaborative nature of dialogic discourse. In (18), then, the wenn-clause has an important discourse function besides its ideational function. In addition to enabling the performance of the apodosis, the wenn-clause establishes a link across speakers, hence has interactional function 5 while, on a textual level, the protasis in (18) serves much like a contrastive topic. These three discourse functions identified here, namely ideational, interactional and textual are all closely interrelated. I hope to have shown the importance of the discourse perspective for the problem at hand. Before I go on to consider some actual data, a brief summary is in order. (20)

a. One-domain conditionals typically allow only verb-first 6 and invite a conversational inference, "if ρ is true, q is true; if ρ is not true, q is not true" b. Two-domain conditionals typically allow verb-second. 1. Two-domain conditionals without a content link (cf. [2], [3]) only allow verb-second. "if ρ is true, q is performed; if ρ is not true, 0 is performed" 2. Two-domain conditionals with conceptual integration (cf. [19]) allow verb-first. "if ρ is agreed on, q is performed; if ρ is not agreed on, not-