On Germanic Linguistics: Issues and Methods 9783110856446, 9783110130003

Table of contents :
Preface
Martin Luther, the Beatles, and the German language
Prepositions as encoders of abstract relations
Variation between and in the Ormulum
An explanation for ablaut-leveling in Early New High German strong verbs
Form, function, and the “perfective” in German
The origin of Scandinavian Accents I and II
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) syllabification and Germanic nominal inflection
Tempted by original syntax: Luther, Wulfia, and the Greek New Testament
Gothic relative clauses and syntactic theory
Assimilation in Germanic
Vowel lengthening before resonant + another consonant and svarabhakti in Germanic
German as an Object-Verb language: A unification of generative and typological approaches
The school masters as a source for the pronunciation of Early New High German
Old Saxon barred vowel
Toward an adequate characterization of relative clause extraposition in modern German
“Dative Sickness” and abstractness
Grammaticalization in spatial deixis: A case study
Kuhn’s Laws and Verb-Second: On Kendall’s theory of syntactic displacement in Beowulf
Problems with movement theories of Verb-Second in German: A view from a theory of coordinate ellipsis
On Old High German i-umlaut
Contrastive study of a set of German and English pragmatic particles
Index

Citation preview

On Germanic Linguistics

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 68

Editor

Werner Winter

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

On Germanic Linguistics Issues and Methods

Edited by

Irmengard Rauch Gerald F. Carr Robert L. Kyes

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1992

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

On Germanic linguistics : issues and methods / edited by Irmengard Rauch, Gerald F. Carr, Robert L. Kyes. p. cm. — (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 68) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-013000-9 (acid-free paper) 1. Germanic languages. 2. Germanic languages—Research. 3. Linguistics — Methodology. I. Carr, Gerald F. II. Kyes, Robert L., 1 9 3 3 - . III. Series. PD95.05 1992 430 — dc20 92-21566 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek

— Cataloging in Publication

Data

On Germanic linguistics : issues and methods / ed. by Irmengard Rauch ... — Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1992 (Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 68) ISBN 3-11-013000-9 NE: Rauch, Irmengard [Hrsg.]; Trends in linguistics / Studies and monographs

© Copyright 1992 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30 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 G m b H , Berlin. Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Preface

Romance Linguistics has long been understood in terms of quasi-Sprachbund; i. e., the convergences and divergences of the multiplicity of related languages within a unity are assiduously tracked. Perhaps this rather holistic position granted Romance languages as an object of study is bolstered by their common ancestry in an attested language, rather than in a mere reconstruct. Slavic Linguistics, absent such a living ancestry, nonetheless enjoys a perpetual limelight in the scholarly pursuit of the linguistically rich give-and-take of languages within its vast Sprachbund. Why, then, are the members of the Germanic Linguistic identity treated so individually in research? Or to rephrase the question: Is Germanic Linguistics as a unified field of study a reality? To cite but one piece of evidence for the legitimacy of this query, we turn to the brochure for the newly founded American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literature (inaugural issue January 1989), which states of the Journal·. "It is the only journal in North America devoted to the Germanic languages, including English and Scandinavian, from their earliest phases to the present..." To be sure, an equally incredible statement in this time of wide-ranging proliferation of scholarly journals would be hard to find. Certainly Comparative Germanic, with primary language representation from East, West, and North Germanic, bespeaks a venerable discipline. Indeed, the nineteenth-century pursuit of the laws of language, although decidedly comparative, was at the same time strongly evolutionary. Accordingly, Germanic Linguistics came to be unambiguously identified with historical linguistics, in fact, with its position in IndoEuropean. This perspective has prevailed throughout most of the present century. Curiously, the Germanic language with the most speakers, English, has been the premier data source for twentieth-century linguistic theory — theory which early on magnified the Saussure-instigated division between synchrony and diachrony. Accordingly, linguistics dealing with English as a contemporary language simply became separated from Germanic Linguistics, the latter viewed as dealing with purely historical data. As the century wanes, two powerful interdigitations which reshape Germanic Linguistics have become estabished. Rule generation in synchronic linguistic theory is frequently enhanced by historical explanation,

vi

Preface

while the refinement of historical explanation is accomplished within the most recent theoretical paradigms. In brief, we are witnessing the fecund symbiosis of historical data with modern theory. It is as though the Saussurean synchronic: diachronic axes have become a fiction. Thirteen of the twenty-one articles comprising this volume are historical in nature. Such a bifurcation is no longer so unsophisticated a matter, since these contributions, while addressing historical data, do so frequently with supportive evidence from modern language and certainly from modern language theory. Similarly, the eight articles dealing with contemporary data evince knowledge of older stages of the respective languages. We are achieving the productive melding of historical and contemporary language, their mutual exploitation for the best possible linguistic theory to account for the data. The collection of articles represents, then, a unified framework for Germanic Linguistics. It further displays English — Modern, Middle, and Old — as an equal partner in the study of Germanic Linguistics, along with Modern German, Early New High German, Old High German, Old Saxon, Gothic, Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian, and the protoreconstruct, Germanic. Doubtlessly, the isolation of language branches, of language data, and of linguistic theories is an archaism in the reshaped field of Germanic Linguistics as we move into the twenty-first century.

Contents

Preface

V

Martin Luther, the Beatles, and the German language Mervin R. Barnes

1

Prepositions as encoders of abstract relations Wilbur A. Benware

13

Variation between > and in the Ormulum Daniel Brink

21

An explanation for ablaut-leveling in Early New High German strong verbs Diana Chirita

37

Form, function, and the "perfective" in German Nada M. Cook

45

The origin of Scandinavian Accents I and II Richard d'Alquen — Kevin Brown

61

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) syllabification and Germanic nominal inflection G. Lee Fuller ton

81

Tempted by original syntax: Luther, Wulfia, and the Greek New Testament Paul Greiner

97

Gothic relative clauses and syntactic theory Wayne Harbert

109

Assimilation in Germanic Robert L. Kyes

147

viii

Contents

Vowel lengthening before resonant + another consonant and svarabhakti in Germanic Anatoly Liberman

163

German as an Object-Verb language: A unification of generative and typological approaches Mark L. Louden

217

The school masters as a source for the pronunciation of Early New High German Sigrid Painter

233

Old Saxon barred vowel Irmengard Rauch

245

Toward an adequate characterization of relative clause extraposition in modern German Thomas F. Shannon

253

"Dative Sickness" and abstractness Henry Smith

283

Grammaticalization in spatial deixis: A case study Christopher M. Stevens

299

Kuhn's Laws and Verb-Second: On Kendall's theory of syntactic displacement in Beowulf Robert P. Stockwell— Donka Minkova

315

Problems with movement theories of Verb-Second in German: A view from a theory of coordinate ellipsis John R. te Velde

399

On Old High German /-umlaut Joseph Voyles

365

Contrastive study of a set of German and English pragmatic particles Mary Michele Wauchope

365

Index

395

Martin Luther, the Beatles, and the German language Mervin R. Barnes

Introduction When the German child goes to school for the first time he already learns his first foreign language — German. This little joke is said to have appeared in an item in a German newpaper in 1961. The point of the joke is of course quite simple. It was an attempt to put a humorous face on what was considered by the society at the time to be a serious problem — the large numbers of German children who spoke their local dialect at home and never came into contact with the standard High German language until they went to school for the first time. 1 Children sometimes even spoke the dialect in the local Volksschule, and in some rural areas, primarily in Bavaria, the dialect even held over into the Gymnasium — not in the classes perhaps, but at least on the school grounds. One can easily understand the problem that is posed by first graders who must learn the language in which they are being taught at the same time that they are learning the subject matter. It would be like teaching one big foreign language immersion class. This situation did not last much beyond the sixties. By the time the seventies had arrived, new problems had arisen. People became aware that many children were no longer learning the dialects; there was even some fear that the dialects might die out. This paper will suggest that the changing sociolinguistic situation has not only affected the dialects but has had significant implications for the standard language as well. In fact, the German language may even be in the middle of a change that could rival that of the sixteenth century, when Martin Luther founded what was eventually to become the High German standard language. Specifically, I will suggest that the German language is currently undergoing a major change in the underlying word order, a change that began at the end of the nineteenth century, but which has received an extra stimulus during the period since the Second World War.

2

Mervin R. Barnes

German word order Word order has long been a favorite topic of Germanists and linguists, going back at least as far as Laurentius Albertus' Teutsch Grammatick of 1573,2 but interest in German word order certainly has increased noticeably since Greenberg's seminal article on word-order universale and wordorder typology (1966). In fact, it is difficult to find a general treatment of word order that does not contain a discussion of German word order. The reason is of course the well known frame or bracket structure in which the verb-second position in the main clause with the nonfinite verbs at the end of the sentence contrasts with the verb-final position in the subordinate clause. Before Greenberg, this bracketing structure was considered to be more of an oddity without any particular theoretical significance. 3 German has constantly provided a problem for word order typology, because German has two well established fundamental word orders: 1) the inflected verb is in the second position in the main clause (1 a); 2) the inflected verb is in final position in the subordinate clause (1 b). (1)

a. Der Linguist spricht heute über die generative Grammatik. the linguist speaks today about the generative grammar 'The linguist is speaking about generative grammar today.' b. Er behauptet, daß die generative Grammatik das Problem he claims that the generative grammar the problem nicht erklären kann not explain can 'He claims that generative grammar can't explain the problem.'

Moreover, as (1 b) and (2) illustrate, the nonfinite verb is always at the end of the clause. (2)

Der Infinitiv muß immer am Ende des Satzes sein the infinitive must always at-the end of-the sentence be 'The infinitive must always be at the end of the sentence.'

Thus German can be classed as either VO or as OV, depending upon whether one considers the main clause or the subordinate clause as the defining element, or whether one considers the inflected or the nonfinite verb to be more important. 4

Martin Luther, the Beatles, and the German Language

3

Despite the instinct to consider the main clause order as basic, the general consensus at the present time seems to be that the subordinate clause order is more characteristic, and that German is an OV language. 5 These linguists more often than not base their decision not on the order of the verb and object, but rather on the general characteristics of OV and VO languages. Thus German has several postpositions which are more characteristic of OV languages than they are of VO languages, as illustrated in (3 a). The extended participial construction, as in (3 b), is essentially a prenominal relative clause, a structure which is found in OV languages but not normally in VO languages. (3)

a. Greenberg nach ist Deutsch eine VO-Sprache. Greenberg according-to is German a VO-language 'According to Greenberg German is a VO language.' b. Diese von Chomsky erfundene Grammatik kann nicht this by Chomsky invented grammar can not richtig sein. right be 'This grammar invented by Chomsky cannot be right.'

Perhaps the most convincing evidence supporting an OV order for German, however, is diachronic, because not only are the postpositions and prenominal relative clauses present in German but they are also an innovation of the past 500 years and have increased in frequency during that period. Lehmann (1971) presents very compelling evidence concerning the accrual of postpositions since 1500, and Weber (1971) contains a thorough count of the extended participial constructions in German during the same period. His data show a steadily increasing frequency of use of these prenominal relative clauses — up to the twentieth century. This diachronic evidence indicates quite clearly that the German language experienced some kind of innovation around the time of the sixteenth century that has led to the addition of OV characteristics to the language. Thus one might interpret the evidence as indicating that German is either an OV language or at least a VO language on its way to becoming an OV language.

On a model of word-order typology The classification of a language as OV or VO is not as simple as just classifying the order of the verb and object; each classification also extends to the ordering of other elements of the sentence. In OV languages, for

4

Mervin R. Barnes

example, adjectives, relative clauses, and genitives normally precede the noun. OV languages also tend to have postpositions rather than prepositions. In VO languages the order is just the opposite. In fact, although the custom has been to classify the languages according to the order of the subject, the object, and the verb, it may very well be that the object/ verb order is not fundamental to the ordering process itself, but is rather a surface reflection of some other very basic characteristic of the language. Hawkins (1984) discusses two models of phrase-structure word-order patterns, the traditional concept of modifier-head and Vennemann's function-argument (1974, 1976, and elsewhere), deciding in favor of the modifier-head model. But Hawkins' model places the preposition as the head of the prepositional phrase parallel to the noun as the head of the noun phrase. Barnes (1983) describes a model in which the modifier and head are complemented by a function marker according to the pattern in (4). (4)

MODIFIER + HEAD + FUNCTION M A R K E R

In this model the modifier and the function marker tend to appear on opposite sides of the head in a phrase structure. In German, the modifier and function marker both appear on the same side of the head. In terms of the surface word order, German turns out to be both an OV language and a prepositional language, resulting in the noted frame system that is so dominant in the language. Whatever the actual underlying cause, one very significant conclusion must be drawn from the situation: In order to have a consistent wordorder pattern in a language there must exist a concept of "typological drift" such that a language tends to gain OV characteristics while rejecting VO characteristics, or vice versa. 6 If that were not the case, there would be no reason to expect anything more than random mixtures of OV and VO patterns; but virtually all research on the subject, beginning with Greenberg (1966), indicates that the typical word-order patterns in language are anything but random. The concept of typological drift requires that we posit some underlying perceptual strategy in language acquisition that encourages a language speaker to accept and expand certain types of constructions while rejecting others, or to reinterpret the structures that already exist in the language. 7 I have suggested in an earlier paper (Barnes 1979) that this perceptual strategy determines the underlying word order of a language. Once the strategy has become a part of the speaker's language process, it continues to influence the speaker's use of the language until it has been replaced.

Martin Luther, the Beatles, and the German Language

5

Thus the classification of a language as being OV or VO means that that language has an openness toward the incorporation of structures of the classification-type into the language, and it is only the addition or subtraction of structures of a type that can inform us of the underlying word order of the language.

Early New High German Most of the evidence points to the Early New High German period as being the time during which the OV word order established itself in German, and the tendency is of course to associate the establishment of OV order with Martin Luther. After all, as Besch (1964: 428) points out, even though many of the characteristics of the language may have been around during the preceding centuries, it is scarcely possible to speak of a unified Early New High German language before Luther. Luther must be given much of the credit for the revolution in the language, just as he was the stimulus for the revolution in religion and society. The verb-final word order actually occurs in German as far back as Old High German, but it was not until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that it began to appear systematically. 8 The question has not yet been settled as to what caused the influx of verb-final characteristics. The early research tried to identify the Latin language of the humanists as the source (Hammarström 1923), whereas more recent research looks for the origins in the prose literature (Betten 1987) and in oral speech (Ebert 1986), although Wells (1985: 259) finds Ebert's arguments unconvincing. 9 Whatever the source, the evidence appears to be quite clear that the verb-final structure became generalized before Luther and had established itself in the language by Luther's time to become a fundamental part of Luther's language. The foundations for the future OV developments had been laid.

German and education Even more important for the future development of German was the sociolinguistic structure within which the language was used, a sociolinguistic structure which closely parallels that represented in the anecdote

6

Merviti R. Barnes

at the beginning of this essay. New High German was essentially an additional dialect which was spoken and written by the educated members of society. The children learned the language in school, assuring that they would learn the underlying structures of Luther German, including the underlying OV word order. When the second generation in a family learned the language, they would also learn the rules as laid down by the schools, because that was essentially the language spoken by all of the speakers of the standard language, with very little interference from the dialects or "colloquial" language. Thus the German language became essentially a "school-teacher" language in which the prescribed rules became established and generalized, including the underlying OV word order. It was under these conditions that the developments described by Lehmann (1971) took place and that various particles developed that function as postpositions. The underlying OV order also allowed speakers to accept the prenominal relative clause as an alternative to the postnominal clause already in the language. 10 The joke about the native tongue as a foreign language now takes on a different meaning and reveals some very insightful thoughts about the history of the German language. It reflects the extent to which Standard German had remained a language of the educated until well into the twentieth century. In learning their native tongue as a second language, the German children learned a language that adhered closely to the prescribed grammar rules offered by the teacher. The language thus missed much of the development that takes place in childhood, when the language learner normally establishes the basic underlying structure of the language.

Enter the Beatles! If Martin Luther is symbolic of the tremendous linguistic change and even revolution that took place during the sixteenth century, then the Beatles, straight from Liverpool over Hamburg, are in a sense symbolic of another revolution which is taking place in the German language today. The decade of the sixties brought about two major developments: television and rebellion. These developments brought with them a new sociolinguistic situation. Television brought the standard language to the children before they came to school; thus they began to learn the language

Martin Luther, the Beatles, and the German Language

7

not as a foreign language in the school, but rather as a natural language of childhood. The new situation allowed a greater linguistic interaction between the standard language and the colloquial language. Exposure to the language at this early age allowed the children to develop their own underlying structures rather than acquiring the prescription grammar of the school system. Their underlying perception of the basic constituent order in the language was determined less by the rules laid down by the school system than they were by the language of their peers. The situation was compounded by a major democratization of society, a democratization perhaps best represented by the expanded use of the du form in current German society. The language of the people has become more acceptable and some of the archaic written forms have been dropped and new forms allowed in from the lower classes, now members of the middle class. These new structures include even the deepseated processes involved in the establishment of word order. The linguistic revolution of the sixties may actually be the culmination of developments that began at the end of the 19th century, especially with the advent of naturalism in literature. Naturalism brought a new language into the literature, a language more closely associated with the speech of the masses than was that of previous generations. That meant that the language of the masses now became "quotable", because it was used by great writers. As such the language could now be used in the grammars as models for acceptable grammar. In this way the generation of the Beatles merely confirmed a development that had its seeds a half century earlier, just as Martin Luther confirmed the new OV seeds of the fifteenth century.

New developments in German word order Word order is one of the areas being affected by the new sociolinguistic situation in Germany. There is increasing evidence that the word-order tendencies in German have reversed themselves, that new VO characteristics are entering the language, and that some of the OV characteristics are being lost. Handschack (1988) suggests that zwecks 'for the purpose o f , auftrags 'on behalf o f , and seitens 'on the side o f , among others, are new prepositions that had not even made it into the standard reference books in 1988. Thus the perception of the post-Reformation period, in which

8

Μ ervin R. Barnes

the function marker appeared after the noun, has been replaced by an underlying cognitive strategy which seeks the function marker before the noun. Not only are new prepositions entering the language, but this change in cognitive strategy has moved some of the postpositions that entered the language during the strong OV period from behind the noun to a prenominal position, i.e., the postpositions have become reinterpreted as prepositions: des Wetters wegen 'on account of the weather' has become wegen des Wetters and even wegen dem Wetter; dem Autor nach 'according to the author' may occur just as frequently today as nach dem Autor. The VO tendency is also moving into the basic word order. Subordinate clauses with certain conjunctions, e. g., weil, allow the use of normal word order: Thus weil er diesen Vortrag gar nicht hören will becomes Weil er will diesen Vortrag gar nicht hören. There is also an increasing number of adverbial phrases that may now appear in the afterfield of the sentence, such that there is an abundance of articles on Ausklammerung in German. Admoni (1970: 297) cites, for example, such sentences as: Sie wird wieder stark werden in der Stille (Sudermann). Some readers may object that it has always been possible to find speakers who have made grammatical errors of this type in their speech, but the point is that these VO characteristics are now becoming more generally acceptable. Weber's data (1971: 214 — 215), for example, indicate that the trend toward increased use of the extended participial construction has reversed itself in the twentieth century. The evidence seems to be growing then, that something has occurred to change the developmental direction of German syntax and word order. 11 The actual cause of this surface change is very deep-set. There has been a change in the very processes by which the speaker perceives the order of elements in the sentence, a change which is in fact so fundamental to the speaker's perception of the language, that the twentieth century may eventually become recognized as a period as significant linguistically as the sixteenth century.

Conclusions The concept of a new language is not new in itself. Braun (1979: 9) contains a section entitled "1945 — Oder eine 'neue Sprache'!" Braun also cites other authors who make comments such as the following one

Martin Luther, the Beatles, and the German Language

9

by Betz: "Die heutige Sprache ist sowenig die Sprache Goethes wie die Sprache Goethes noch die Sprache Grimmelshausens oder Luthers war." [The present-day language is as little the language of Goethe as Goethe's language was still the language of Grimmelshausen or of Luther.] (Braun 1979: 8) Their evaluation is perhaps best summed up in Braun's citation from Wolfgang Borchert: "Wir brauchen keine Dichter mit guter Grammatik. Zu guter Grammatik fehlt uns die Geduld. Wir brauchen die (...), die zu Baum Baum und zu Weib Weib sagen und ja sagen und nein sagen: laut und deutlich und dreifach und ohne Konjunktiv." [We don't need poets with good grammar. We lack the patience for good grammar. We need (poets) who say tree for tree and woman for woman, and who say yes and say no: loudly and clearly and threefold and without subjunctive.] (Braun 1979: 10) Braun and Betz are speaking here primarily about vocabulary and style, but the evidence presented in this essay suggests that developments since 1945 go beyond simple style. The German language may in fact be in a period of major change, and although the surface language reflects an OV order, the seeds may already be planted for the development of a completely new word order, based on an underlying VO typological perception. Martin Luther justifiably represents a period of change in German society, a period of both linguistic change and social change. A major part of that change resulted from the role of the language within the educational system and the society of the time. Those social and education structures lasted some 400 years, but now the role played by Standard New High German has changed. With that change may have come a new language.

Notes 1. According to discussions I had at the time, some of the rural school districts even used the dialect for early instruction, so that for some children the first real encounter with German would have been delayed even longer. 2. See Scaglione (1981: 32). 3. Even as late as the mid-seventies, some anonymous journal reviewer reported that the frame system might be useful as a pedagogical device, but that he could not perceive any particular theoretical significance in the structure. 4. See especially the works by Vennemann and Lehmann for discussion of German wordorder typology. Louden (1990) also supports and discusses the evidence for claiming an OV word order for German. Beckman (1976), following McCawley's treatment of

10

Mervin R. Barnes

5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

English, even tried to establish an underlying VSO order for German, although I have seen no indication that her attempt has been taken seriously. German is apparently not the only language in which the subordinate clause established the pattern for the basic word order. Stockwell and Minkova (1989) show evidence that English developed first into a verb-second language and that the current SVO order established itself first in the subordinate clause. Vennemann (1975) discusses the concept of drift as it involves word-order typology. Lehmann (1971) provides some excellent examples of this interpretive process in German. See Betten (1987, 127 — 135) for a discussion of the developments during this period, including the contributions of Ebert, Hammarström, Admoni, and others. Stolt (1964) presents evidence that Martin Luther used the verb-final order more consistently in German clauses introduced by daß than he did in the equivalent structures in Latin. Notice that if the thesis of this essay is correct, then Stolt's evidence loses any significance in the argument about the role of Latin as the source of the verb-final word order. If the verb-final order was already established in the 15th century, then the underlying OV drift would already be in the language and Luther would not need to follow a Latin model in generalizing the OV order. But the argument would actually be invalid in any case, because in Latin the verb-last order was never more than a basic order from which one could vary for stylistic reasons. That does not seem to have been the case in German. But notice, too, the severe restrictions that were placed on the prenominal relative clause. The participial construction can only modify nouns that serve as a subject in the reduced relative clause, so that the clause could not be completely generalized. The result is an alternative structure which in its best use is a stylistic device. These restrictions have probably been a major hindrance in terms of the complete generalization of the structure. A possibly related development is a sentence of the type: Wie heißt das Mädchen, die gestern bei dir war. I heard such sentences discussed as actual data in a seminar in Germany.

References Admoni, Wladimir 1967

1970 Barnes, 1979 1980 1983

"Der Umfang und die Gestaltungsmittel des Satzes in der deutschen Literatursprache bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts", Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (Halle) 89: 144 — 199. Der deutsche Sprachbau. 3. Auflage. München: C. H. Beck. Mervin R. "Deep structure and surface structure universals", in: Wolfgang Wölck — Paul L. Garvin (eds.), 562-571. "What is a linguistic rule?" in: William C. McCormack - Herbert J. Izzo (eds.), 2 1 - 2 9 . "A theoretical basis for German word order", in: John Morreal (ed.), 282 — 290.

Martin Luther, the Beatles, and the German language

11

Beckman, Barbara Joe 1976 Underlying word order — German as a VSO language. [Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Washington.] Besch, Werner 1968 "Zur Entstehung der neuhochdeutschen Schriftsprache", Zeitschrift fiir deutsche Philologie 87: 4 0 5 - 4 2 6 . Betten, Anne 1987 Grundzüge der Prosasyntax. Stilprägende Entwicklungen vom Althochdeutschen zum Neuhochdeutschen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Braun, Peter 1979 Tendenzen in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Ebert, Robert P. 1986 Historische Syntax des Deutschen. Bd. 2: 1300 — 1750. (Germanistische Lehrbuchsammlung 6.) Bern: Peter Lang. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966 "Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements", in: Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), 73 — 113. Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.) 1966 Universals of language. (2nd ed.) Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Hammarström, Emil 1923 Zur Stellung des Verbums in der deutschen Sprache. Studien in volkstümlicher Literatur und Urkundensprache der Übergangszeit vom Mittelhochdeutschen zum Neuhochdeutschen. Lund: Gleerupska Universitetsbokhandeln (Haan Ohlssohn). Handschack, Joachim 1988 " 'Auftrags' - eine neue Präposition?", Sprachpflege 37 (6): 84. Hawkins, John A. 1984 "Modifier-head or function-argument relations in phrase structure? The evidence of some word order universals", Lingua 63: 107 — 138. Juilliand, Alphonse (ed.) 1976 Linguistic studies offered to Joseph Greenberg on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Saratoga, CA: ANMA LIBRI and Co. Kastovsky, Dieter (ed.) 1991 Historical English syntax. Berlin —New York: Mounton de Gruyter. Lehmann, Winfred P. 1971 "On the rise of SOV patterns in New High German", in: K. G. Schweinsthal (ed.), 1 9 - 2 4 . Li, Charles (ed.) 1975 Word order and word order change. Austin: University of Texas Press. Louden, Mark 1990 "German as an Object-Verb language: A unification of generative and typological approaches", in: Studies in Germanic Linguistics. Irmengard Rauch, Gerald F. Carr, Robert L. Kyes (eds.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992. McCormack, William C. — Herbert J. Izzo (eds.) 1980 The Sixth LACUS Forum 1979. Columbia, S. C.: Hornbeam Press. Morreal, John (ed.) 1983 The Ninth LACUS Forum 1982. Columbia, S. C.: Hornbeam Press.

12

Μ ervin R. Barnes

Scaglione, Aldo 1981 The theory of German word order from the renaissance to the present. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schweisthal, Κ. G. (ed.) 1971 Grammatik Kybernetik Kommunikation. Bonn: Dümmler. Stockwell, Robert P. — Donka Minkova 1991 "Subordination and word order change in the history of English", in D. Kastovsky (ed.), 367-408. Stolt, Birgit 1964 Die Sprachmischung in Luthers Tischreden. Studien zum Problem der Zweisprachigkeit. (Stockholmer Germanistische Forschung 4.) Stockholm: Almqvist & Wikseil. Venneman, Theo 1974 "Theoretical word order studies: results and problems", Papiere zur Linguistik 7: 5 - 2 5 . 1975 "An explanation of drift", in: Charles N. Li (ed.), 269-305. 1976 "Categorial grammar and the order of meaningful elements", in: Alphonse Juilland (ed.), 615-634. Weber, Heinrich 1971 Das erweiterte Adjektiv- und Partizipialattribut im Deutschen. München: Max Hueber. Wells, Christopher J. 1985 German: A linguistic history to 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wölck, Wolfgang — Paul L. Garvin (eds.) 1979 The Fifth LACUS Forum 1978. Columbia, S. C.: Hornbeam Press.

Prepositions as encoders of abstract relations Wilbur A. Benware

1. Introduction The following remarks on prepositions as abstract relations are made in the context of an investigation of those particle verbs in German which show variable stress. The particles über-, unter-, hinter-, durch-, and um-, plus a few others may or may not exhibit lexical stress; for example, in the pairs übertreten vs. überträten, durchreisen vs. durchreisen, umfahren vs. umfähren. In any complete account of the stress patterns of modern German, the particle verbs with variable stress pose a particularly intractable problem. There is no simple, straightforward correlation between, say, verb transitivity and stress pattern, or, as is sometimes asserted, between figurative usage and the position of stress on the verb stem. The hypothesis put forth here is based on the view that a systematic lexical decomposition of the two morphemes out of which such verbs are constructed can lead to a solution to the problem, resulting in stress assignment either on the particle or on the verb stem, depending on the internal structure of each. The focus in this paper is on the lexical decomposition of those prepositions qua particles, exemplified with the preposition/particle über. A brief indication of the type of lexical decomposition proposed for verbs is given in the Appendix.

2. The trajector-landmark relation The particles über-, unter-, hinter-, durch-, um-, and others which are homonyms with prepositions, lend themselves to an analysis in terms of the relation between a "figure" and a "ground", or alternatively between a "trajector" and a "landmark", using the terminology of George Lakoff (1986) and Ronald Langacker (1987). Thus, in an expression such as

14

(1)

Wilbur Α. Benware

Die Lampe hängt über dem Tisch. the lamp hangs above the table 'The lamp is suspended above the table.'

Lampe is the figure or the trajector, Tisch is the ground or the landmark. In the sentence (2)

Die Kinder liefen über die Straße. the children ran across the street 'The children ran across the street.'

Kinder is the trajector or figure, Straße the landmark or ground. In this conception of the preposition as encoding an abstract relation, the term "figure" can refer to a moving entity, just as "trajector" can refer to a stationary one. Henceforth the terms "trajector" and "landmark" will be used. A locative preposition, then, expresses a relation between a trajector and a landmark. The traditional conception of a preposition as a relational word (Verhältniswort) is thus re-cast in abstract semantic rather than in syntactic terms, i. e., not as a syntactic relation between, say, two nouns, Lampe and Tisch, but between any two entities whose relation meets certain conditions. The advantage of this conception is that it allows a relation to be construed which is nonliteral, for example: (3)

Er steht über dem Gesetz. he stands above the law 'He stands above the law.'

where er is the trajector, Gesetz the landmark, and where the same relation holds as that between Lampe and Tisch. In other words, it is the construal of the same abstract relation which accomodates both literal and figurative interpretations. What, then, are the conditions which must be present for über to be the expression of the trajector-landmark relation? There seem to be four: 1) The trajector is vertically aligned above the landmark; 2) it may or may not be in contact with the landmark; 3) if it is not in contact and is stationary, the relation will be characterized by the term [ABOVE] — this is the relation between trajector and landmark, for example, in sentences (1) and (3); 4) if the trajector is not stationary, it either extends across the landmark, as in sentence (4),

Prepositions

(4)

as Encoders of Abstract

Relations

15

Das Tuch liegt über dem Tisch. the cloth lies across the table 'The cloth is lying across the table.'

or across the landmark and beyond, as in sentence (2). In sentence (4) the relation between trajector and landmark can be characterized as [ACROSS], in sentence (2) as [ACROSS-EXIT], This third possibility requires adding to the trajector-landmark relation what some investigators call a secondary landmark, or what is termed here the LocativeGoal. The designation [ACROSS-EXIT], then, specifies a relation between a trajector and a landmark plus a Locative-Goal. In sum, the preposition über encodes the three relations: [ABOVE], [ACROSS] and [ACROSS-EXIT],

3. The logical structure of verbs Since the focus here is on the abstract relations of prepositions which also function as verbal particles, only the briefest of sketches will be made of the lexical decomposition of verbs. This is undertaken using the four categories developed by Zeno Vendler (1967: 97 — 121) and refined by others (Dowty 1979: 3 7 - 1 3 2 ; Foley - Van Valin 1984: 2 7 - 7 4 ) . The Vendler system recognizes four classes of verbs: statives, activities, accomplishments, and achievements. The lexical decomposition of each of these can be represented by a kind of predicate calculus which is sketched very briefly in the appendix of this paper. The initial examples will be limited to the addition of über to a few simple activity verbs, and to a subclass of these, what will be called motion activity verbs, such as fahren 'go, drive', treten 'tread, walk' and laufen 'run'.

4. The [ACROSS-EXIT] relation In the sentence (5)

Die Kinder liefen über die Straße und spielten dort. the children ran across the street and played there 'The children ran across the street and played there.'

16

Wilbur Α. Benware

the trajector crosses the landmark and arrives at the Locative-Goal. The landmark is mentioned explicitly: die Straße, but that it has been surpassed and the trajector has arrived at a point beyond it becomes clear with the additional clause spielten dort, where dort refers to the LocativeGoal, not to the landmark. This is the prototypical instance of a motion activity verb plus a prepositional phrase headed by über. The grammatical object of the preposition encodes the landmark, but it is clear also that the landmark is exited, since dort does not refer to Straße, but to some entity beyond it: The trajector leaves the domain of the landmark to reach the Locative-Goal. The Locative-Goal can also be explicitly mentioned in the surface structure of the sentence in an optional prepositional phrase, for example, the nach-phrase in sentence (6): (6)

Sie ist über den Berg nach Heidenheim gelaufen. she has over the mountain to Heidenheim run 'She ran over the mountain to Heidenheim.'

To recapitulate: In sentences (5) and (6) the abstract relation which über expresses is [ACROSS-EXIT] in conjunction with a motion activity verb. Now when this same morpheme über acts not as a preposition, but as a stressed particle on a motion activity verb, then the landmark is no longer present in the surface structure of the sentence. The LocativeGoal, however, can be included in an optional prepositional phrase, as in the following two sentences, where the material in square brackets is optional. (7)

Das Wasser lief [auf den Herd] über. the water ran onto the stove over 'The water ran over [onto the stove].'

(8)

Einige Soldaten sind [zum Feind] übergelaufen. a few solidiers have to the enemy over-run Ά few soldiers defected [to the enemyl.'

From examples (7) and (8), where über operates as a stressed particle, the necessity of specifying the landmark is obviated. In (7), that information can be filled in by the listener or reader, i. e., the edge of some container. In (8), the landmark is less salient: simply some space which is traversed. Thus, the construction with the stressed particle über renders it unnecessary to specify precisely what the landmark is. This opens the

Prepositions

as Encoders of Abstract

Relations

17

possibility for reference to a nonliteral landmark, i. e., for figurative or metaphorical usage, as in example (9). (9)

Sie ist zum Katholizismus übergetreten. she has to Catholicism over-stepped 'She converted to Catholicism.'

5. The [ACROSS] relation When we take the same particle and a motion activity verb where the verb stem is stressed, as in (10)

Ein Schauer überlief sie a shudder over-ran her Ά shudder seized her.'

the syntactic object sie is the landmark; the movement of the trajector, ein Schauer, implicates the entire landmark. But neither in the surface structure nor in the logical structure of the particle verb itself is a LocativeGoal present. This means that the abstract relation is here simply [ACROSS] and not [ACROSS-EXIT], The trajector remains entirely within the domain of the landmark. The usual relation of the preposition über when linked to a motion activity verb is to place a trajector in relation both to a landmark and to a Locative-Goal, as in sentence (2). And in the stressed particle verb, as in sentences (7), (8) and (9), landmark and Goal are also present, although not necessarily in the surface structure of the sentence. The reduction to a single relation, that between the trajector and the landmark only (i.e., no Locative-Goal) marks this construction. And this marked behavior is signalled by the placement of stress on the verb stem rather than on the particle. In German, stress on the particle is the usual position, that is, the unmarked value, for particle verbs in general, e.g., abschreiben, ausziehen, eintreten, vorfahren, zukommen. The abstract relation [ACROSS] means that the landmark is totally implicated in some way, but is not exited (cf. sentences [4] and [10]). When linked to a motion activity verb, it gives the reading "from one end to the other". Again, this can be taken in either a literal or a figurative

18

Wilbur Α. Benware

sense, as can be seen in sentence (11). Taken in isolation, either interpretation is possible: (11)

Der the 'The 'The

Rechtsanwalt attorney attorney ran attorney ran

hat den Unglücklichen überfähren. has the unfortunate over-driven over the poor unfortunate.' or: roughshod over the poor unfortunate.'

Whether the event is construed literally or figuratively, the same relation holds: the landmark, here the syntactic object, is completely implicated in some way by the trajector, but there is no Locative-Goal beyond the landmark. Hence the relation is [ACROSS] and stress is located on the verb stem. This same particle verb can be used in the sense 'to run a red light', as in (12): (12)

Er hat die Ampel überfähren. he has the light over-driven 'He ran the light.'

Again, the interest is in the landmark {die Ampel) alone; there is no Locative-Goal. Since the Locative-Goal is present neither in the surface structure of the sentence nor in the logical structure of the verb, the relation [ACROSS-EXIT] is excluded. Pragmatically, of course, the trajector moves past the landmark, but there is no end point to the action, no goal. The activity is relevant only in the domain of the landmark. In examples (11) and (12) the particle verbs show stress on the verb stem. This stress configuration is typical for all verbs in which über encodes the abstract relation [ACROSS], [ACROSS] because the Trajector does not exit the landmark.

6. The [ABOVE] relation The stress pattern when the abstract relation is [ACROSS] holds also when the relation is [ABOVE], illustrated in sentence (13) with the achievement verb treffen 'meet, strike, gain':

Prepositions

(13)

as Encoders of Abstract

Relations

19

Sie hat den Weltrekord um 0,2 Sekunden über tröffen. she has the world record by 0.2 seconds over-met 'She surpassed the world record by 0,2 seconds.'

The object Weltrekord is the landmark, the subject sie is the trajector. The relation between the two is [ABOVE] since, unlike the previous examples, one cannot construe the relation between landmark and trajector as either [ACROSS], i. e., completely implicating the landmark, or as [ACROSS-EXIT], where a Locative-Goal is the terminus of the action. Rather, the trajector is at a distance from the landmark, and in this and a few other verbs the distance can be expressed with a prepositional phrase headed by um, as can be seen also in (14): (14)

Er hat mich um 200 DM überboten. he has me by 200 DM over-bid 'He outbid me by 200 marks.'

Again, the trajector (er) is construed as some point above and beyond the landmark (mich).

7. Conclusion Research thus far indicates that particle verbs with über show a correlation between the various abstract relations encoded by that preposition and the stress placement on the particle verb. The relations [ACROSS] and [ABOVE] correlate with stress on the verb stem; [ACROSS-EXIT] correlates with stress on the particle itself. Indications are that the same type of analysis results in similar correlations for the other particle verbs with variable stress as well.

Appendix The Vendler-Dowty system recognizes four classes of verbs: statives, achievements, activities, and accomplishments. In brief, statives and activities are non-telic. Verbs such as leben 'live', wissen 'know', haben 'have' refer to states; treten 'tread', laufen 'run', suchen 'seek', bauen 'build', for example, refer to activities. Accomplishments and achievements are telic,

20

Wilbur Α. Benware

that is, they signal closure. Accomplishments include verbs such as aufessen 'consume', ausschreiben 'write out', ausdenken 'think out', which refer to activities which continue for a while and then come to a close; achievements differ from activities in that only the moment of closure is at issue, e . g f i n d e n 'find', erreichen 'reach', sterben 'die', erkennen 'recognize'. Tests can be devised to ascertain to which category a verb belongs. The four classes can be characterized as follows, where DO, CAUSE and BECOME are operators (not lexical items): Statives:

predicate' (x) or predicate' (x, y) (e.g., leben', wissen)

Achievements:

BECOME predicate' (x, y) (e.g., erreichen)

Activities:

DO (x, [predicate' (x)]) (e.g., laufen)

Accomplishments:

φ CAUSE ψ (where φ is normally an activity and ψ an achievement)

References Dowty, David 1979 Word meaning and Montague grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel. Foley, William A. — Robert Van Valin 1984 Functional syntax and universal grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George 1986 Women, fire and dangerous things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langacker, Ronald 1987 Foundations of cognitive grammar I: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Vendler, Zeno 1967 Philosophy in linguistics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Variation between > and in the Ormulum* Daniel

Brink

0. Introduction Although rarely praised for its literary merit, the early Middle English Ormulum, a 20,000-line homiletic poem written in the East Midlands dialect around 1200 by the Augustinian monk Orm (Ormin), is wellknown to students of the history of the English language because of its unique and carefully implemented spelling system, the nature of which can be seen from the sample text found in Figure 1.1 This spelling system has been the subject of a rather large number of linguistic analyses over the years, primarily because of its most striking feature, the doubling of consonants. As a result of this unique and most carefully prepared document, we know a great deal more about syllable structure in Middle English than would otherwise be the case. In addition to consonant doubling and its implications for interpreting Middle English vowel quantity, however, the methodical spelling system developed by Orm for his lengthy poem displays another, less well-known feature, a feature which is of interest because of its potential for contributing to our understanding of the time and place of the development in Middle English of a voiced initial interdental fricative, (δ) (from inherited Germanic, Old English ]?) in the enclitic, "weak" forms of the familiar pronominal and adverbial words this, that, they, then, though, and so on. 2 This less well-known feature of Orm's spelling, which consists of the regular substitution of for initial > following words ending in or , can be seen in line 3608, Figure 1, in the phrase [And] tatt from *And patt and immediately again in the same line in tatt te from *tatt pe (ultimately, *patt pe); lines 3622 and 3624, Figure 1, show a similar change. (The regular, unaffected form of patt can be seen in lines 3610, 3612, and elsewhere.) The same alternation between > and

* I would like to thank Donka Minkova, Herbert Penzl, and Tom Shannon for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Errors remain my own.

22

Daniel Brink

pa gode menn Jmtt lufenn Crist, 3 hise lajhess haldenn, p e j j alle sinndenn Cristess shep, Fon* J?att t e j j sinndenn alle

3605

-^Eddmode 3 meoke 3 milde menn, All affterr shepess kinde.

3 tatt te Laferrd Jesu Crist Wass borenn her to manne, patt time J?att hiss moderr wass

3610

I }?eowwdom unnderr laferrd, patt dide he forr to shaewenn swa Unnsejjenndlij meocnesse, T o taechenn }?urrh himm sellfenn swa, 3 furrh hiss hallghe bisne,

3615

patt juw birrjj berenn blifelij peowwdom off jure laferrd; j ec forr fatt he wollde swa purrh hiss f>eowwdom ütlesenn Off deofless j?eowwdom alle ]?a,

3620

patt wel himm sholldenn folljhenn. 3 tatt te laffdij Marje warrj? * I Nazarae}? wi)?J? childe, j tatt j h o comm off Galileow Till Bej^lesemess chesstre, patt time fatt jho Jesu Crist T o manne shollde childenn, Figure 1.

Sample text from the Ormulum

3625

Variation between -> and in the O r m u l u m

pa gode menn f>att lufenn Crist, •3 hise lajhess haldenn, pej^ alle sinndenn Cristess shep, Forr J?att t e j j sinndenn alle jEddmode 3 meoke 3 milde menn, All affterr shepess kinde.

3605

Ί tatt te Laferrd Jesu Crist Wass borenn her to manne, patt time J?att hiss moderr wass I f>eowwdom unnderr laferrd, patt dide he forr to shaewenn swa Unnsegjenndlij meocnesse, T o taechenn furrh himm sellfenn swa, J?urrh hiss halljhe bisne, patt juw birrj? berenn blif>elij peowwdom off jure laferrd; j ec forr J?att he wollde swa purrh hiss peowwdom ütlesenn Off deofless f>eowwdom alle pa.,

3610

3615

3620

patt wel himm sholldenn folljhenn. •j tatt te laffdij Marje warrf> * I Nazarae]? wiJ?J? childe, 3 tatt jho coTnm off Galileow Till Bej^leaemess chesstre, patt time J>att jho Jesu Crist T o manne shollde childenn,

56,25

23

24

Daniel Brink

in initial position can also be seen in lines 3604 and 3605, for the word they. At the same time, although Orm is nothing if not methodical in his spelling, the change of > to does not always take place after dental stops. For example, in line 3615 of figure 1, we find [And] purrh, not *And turrh. This apparent inconsistency led the 19th-century editors of the Ormulum, R. M. White and Robert Holt, to characterize the alternation as subject to exceptions in a variety of rather unpredictable environments. Thus, in the preface to the 1878 edition of the Ormulum, Holt lists three circumstances (originally from White), in which the > to rule tends to be unpredictable: Exceptions [to the to rule, DB] occur in compounded words, or when a word with the initial J) is separated by the metrical point from that which precedes is, or lastly, in some instances, when it takes the vowel u as in pu and purrh. (Holt 1878: lxviii)

Although Holt's second case, metrical separation, does, quite unremarkably, result in suspension of the > to rule, his other two categories — the case of compounding, and the case of J) followed by u — serve only to confuse matters. The inappropriateness of these latter two cases is obvious. First, compounds are, in fact, fully subject to the > to rule in the Ormulum, for which examples abound: taeraffterr 'thereafter', taerinne 'therein', taerfore 'therefor', etc., based on paere 'there'; or tepenforrp, 'thenceforth', based on pepen 'thence'. 3 And second, the occurrence of u does not explain anything, since pu, for example, is always subject to the change, while purrh never is. Clearly, something else is going on.

1. Blackburn's "law" The true pattern of occurrence for the > to rule was carefully and accurately described already in 1882 by F. A. Blackburn: the shift is only found in what he calls the "pronominal" words this, they, thy, there, then, thus, and their derivatives; and further, in these words the shift is entirely consistent, with only a handful of exceptions — that is, expectedbut-not-occurring-cases — in the entire 20,000 lines ( Blackburn 1882: 48). 4 Although he sees the difficulties attendant to his proposal, Blackburn suggests that, since the list of words which are subject to the

Variation between -> and

in the

Ormulum

25

alternation matches more-or-less exactly the distinct set of words which have voiced initial [5] in Modern English, the behavior of the > to rule is indirect evidence for a distinct category of initial, voiced interdental fricatives, patterning exactly as they do today, in Orm's dialect, in 1200 — or about 200 years before it is generally assumed that these words emerged as a phonetically distinct group (1882: 56).5 Although there is an immediate appeal to Blackburn's suggestion, we find that the idea has not been widely adopted in the handbooks, primarily because of two difficulties. First, since the alternation involves a change across word boundaries, it seems improbable that Orm's highly consistent rendering truly reflects the reality of actual speech, which would be likely to have a sandhi phenomenon of this sort occur sometimes, but not always, because of pauses, differences in emphasis or stress, and the like. 6 The proper response to this objection, I believe, is to acknowledge that Orm is likely to be overly consistent for the sake of his spelling system, but to point out that the fundamental facts are still valid regardless, that the words this, they, thy, there, then, thus, and so forth are treated as a group by Orm, and that this grouping requires an explanation. Furthermore, there are other manuscripts which display a > to rule in Middle English, such as the Bestiary (ed. Morris, 1872), a 1,000line poetic translation of Physiologus from the mid-13th century written in a northerly, probably East Anglian dialect. There are two relevant differences between the Bestiary and the Ormulum: first, there are exceptions to the > to rule in the Bestiary (about ten in all, such as: it fet de licham and te gost 'it feeds the body and the soul' [1. 301], rather than it fet te ...); and second, the rule also operates regularly after final , in addition to final and . However, the Bestiary does show the same fundamentally important property as the Ormulum: all and only those words which have a voiced initial interdental fricative in Modern English participate in the alternation. The group of affected forms includes te 'the', tis 'this', tat 'that', tus 'thus', tu 'thou' {tin, te), tanne 'then' etc., but not words like ding 'thing', drote 'throat, or öurg 'through'. Thus, since the Bestiary, written in a dialect identified on the basis of other criteria (inflection, loan words, etc.) as very similar in time and date to the Ormulum, treats precisely the same set of forms as distinct, we cannot write off the occurrence of the to rule in the Ormulum as an idiosyncratic, irrelevant anomaly (Morris 1865: xiii —xv). In fact, although there is rarely any connection made in the secondary literature on Ormulum, spellings for this same set of pronominal forms are also found in similar (but not identical) patterns in a number

26

Daniel

Brink

of Middle English manuscripts, such as pe Liflade ant te Passiun of Seinte Iuliene (d'Ardenne 1961: 198), Hali Meidhad (Millett 1982), and the other titles in the Katherine group. A fuller study of the similarities and differences of how this phenomenon is realized in these different sets of documents is much needed. The second objection to Blackburn's proposal is that the phonetics do not make sense: how can a change from a fricative to a stop, [Θ] to [t] — and a voiceless stop at that — be evidence of a change from voicelessness to voicing, [Θ] to [δ], especially in those cases where the environment itself is voiced (that is, when the preceding sound is [d]? Blackburn (1882: 54) recognizes this difficulty, and offers no explanation, stating simply that he has "no explanation to offer" for getting around the phonetics problem. In fact, the phonetic elements of this rule have traditionally been viewed by many prominent scholars as proof of the exact opposite of what Blackburn proposed: as proof that voiced initial interdental fricatives could not have appeared in Middle English until after 1200, precisely because of the tatt, tiss, tann, etc., found in the Ormulum. In particular, Kluge's Grundriß chapter on the history of English, following ten Brink (1884), contains an especially clear statement of this point of view (Kluge 1901: 1007). And Kluge's statement is generally considered definitive on this issue. 7 Siebs, for example, in discussing the likely early data of the development of initial [δ] from )> in Frisian in his Grundriß chapter on that language, rejects any possibility of a common origin for Frisian and English forms precisely because of the evidence from the Ormulum, citing Kluge as his authority (Siebs 1901: 1281). Similarly, Lambertz (1904: section 267) cites Blackburn's article, but rejects his conclusions without discussion, again — like Siebs — basing his position on Kluge (1901).

2. Current opinion As a result of this "received opinion" that the date of the appearance of voicing in that, then, thy, etc., must be late, the handbooks quite consistently address the issue of when the [Θ] to [δ] change occurred using argumentation which can be generalized as follows: there is little or no conclusive evidence from the manuscripts one way or another; the change must be after the 12th century; the change is clearly established by the

Variation between -> and

in

the

Ormulum

27

time of orthoepists such as John Hart (mid-16th century; Danielsson 1963:208); and thus, the change must have occurred without documentary evidence in the 14th century: midway between the 12th and 16th centuries. Jespersen (1911 [1961: section 2.614]), for example, in his Modern English Grammar, sees no evidence for an early date for the change; he accepts as possible a voiced variant in intervocalic position by the time of Chaucer, but believes, at least in the case of though, in an initial voiceless pronunciation clear into the 18th century (1911 [1961: section 6.53]); Mosse (1968: 39) is similarly cautious, stating only that, because of spelling practices, "it is impossible to draw definite conclusions"; Jordan (1968: section 207) follows Jespersen; Luick (1914: section 763) includes Middle English initial [δ] in the general voicing of all fricatives in late 14th century Middle English (spätmittelenglische Spirantenerweichungen)·, Brunner (1953: section 36) states only: "Inwieweit anlautendes J) in satzunbetonten Wörtern {thou, that, usw.) bereits me. stimmhaft war, läßt sich aus der Schreibung nicht erkennen." Thus, a phenomenon, which, when first discovered, led the author of the original article to propose that the appearance of voiced initial interdental fricatives in pronominal words occurred very early in the history of English, has become the basis for almost universal agreement among scholars that the change in question — from [Ois] to [5is] 'this', from [Gey] to [5ey] 'they', and so on — in fact occurred very late, with no compelling reason to believe in its appearance until sometime in the 14th century.

3. A reassessment of Blackburn There are significant arguments, however, in support of a return to Blackburn's original conclusions. For example, even granting that the voicelessness of the initial sound in tiss, tatt, and the like represents a serious difficulty in arguing narrowly for a voicing rule, rejection of the idea of voicing brings with it an even greater problem: how to explain the fact that the words affected by Orm's rule consists of precisely those words which today constitute a phonetically/phonemically distinct set of forms. This is clearly not a matter of chance. Anyone wishing to reject the assumption that voicing defines the distinct quality of these forms must come up with some other defining quality to take its place: lenis articulation, characteristic weak stress, or something; after all, then as

28

Daniel

Brink

now, the words are treated differently from other words beginning with ->; there must be some basis for this fact. The only discussion of a possible alternative explanation — something other than a distinct pronunciation of the initial dental fricative of enclitic forms — which I am aware of is the one provided by Blackburn himself. He points out that the most likely alternative explanation to the assumption of a "distinct" (phonemicized?) initial [δ] in Orm's dialect is to assume that a dynamic process of weakening under weak stress is an ongoing process for Orm; that is, that each occurrence of for > is the result of actual weak stress. Blackburn also provides the refutation of this possibility, pointing out that even underlying initial *p- not in a typical clitic position — either in compounds (tepenforrp 'henceforth', tohhwheppre 'nevertheless') or in proclisis (talde for te aide [*pe aide] 'the old', at tallre lattste [*at pe allre] 'at the last of all') — still shows, the change from > to ^t-). 8 There are other arguments in support of the existence of an initial [δ] in pronominal forms in the Ormulum as well. For one thing, there are numerous examples of early voicing of p in pronominal and adverbial forms in other, closely related Germanic dialects. The close parallel of Frisian has already been cited, a pattern which is manifest in the modern dialects by a distinction between initial [t] and [d] in the reflexes of Old Frisian voiceless and voiced p- respectively (Siebs 1901: 1280). Similarly, Old Norse shows very early development of weak alternates with initial [δ] in the same pronominal words: bu 'thou', bat 'that', bar 'there', and so on, again a pattern still found today in a [t]:[d] contrast, for example in Swedish (Noreen 1923: section 221.1). Noreen (1901: 570) dates this change from 700. Thus, the two languages most closely related to Middle English — Northern Middle English, in fact, with its known close links to Scandinavian — are assumed to have voiced weak forms, well before the date at issue. Scandinavian influence is important in this discussion for another reason as well. The size of our list of > to words is relatively small: eighteen according to Blackburn's count. Of the words in this list, Scandinavian influence is fairly significant. The Scandinavian source for they is well-known, but the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, suggesting a Scandinavian influence, lists Orm as an early example of the modern forms, and uses of other words form this group as well, including this and these. And, of course, many early Scandinavian forms are indistinguishable from northern Middle English anyway, such as the early forms of that, there, thou, and so on. Because of the leading role which

Variation between -) and

in the

Ormulum

29

the northern dialects took in establishing the form of Middle English grammatical words, and since the northern dialects were strongly under the influence of a language known to have the voiced interdental fricative in pronouns and adverbs, a strong circumstantial case for [δ] in Orm's dialect can be made. In fact, the case is more than circumstantial that the northern dialects were the first to show incontrovertible evidence of [δ] in the forms in question. Shortly after the turn of the century, it was suggested in the literature (Hackauf 1902; Heuser 1904) that a number of northern Middle English manuscripts showed evidence of distinguishing between voiced and voiceless interdental fricatives. The list proposed included the Göttingen and Cotton mss. of the Cursor Mundi, the Gast of Gy and a number of other northern documents. The idea that any Middle English materials distinguished the two interdental fricatives was, however, subsequently strongly opposed by Jespersen, who, responding to Heuser, states in his Modern English Grammar in no uncertain terms (1911 [1961: section 1.2.614]): Some ME manuscripts use both th and f>, though they do not, as is sometimes said, distinguish them systematically, using th for the unvoiced and /> for the voiced consonant. ... So far as I have been able to see, they do what we should much rather expect from medieval scribes, namely use /> in the small constantly recurring (pronominal) words, in which orthographical conservatism is quite natural, and th in nearly all other cases, whether the sound was unvoiced as in thing or voiced as in brother. The spelling thus shows nothing with regard to the pronunciation, and pu, etc. may at that time still have been the unvoiced sound. ...

The issue was not cleared up until 1936. In that year, von Appel published careful counts of initial, medial, and final and contact resulting from verb "contraction". 9 For the first case — that of "pronominal" parallels to Orm — it has often been pointed out that forms like pattcet (for *pcet pcet) are attested as early as the mid-8th century (Klaeber 1926: 321). Similarly, the almost regular change of > to in pronominal forms following the preposition at — in a wide variety of dialects and temporal stages and resulting in fusions such as atten-, atter-, and the like — is widely attested in the handbooks (Jordan 1968: section 204). The universal — albeit, generally unspoken — assumption for these cases seems to be that they reflect some sort of weakening of the pelement, resulting in cliticization, assimilation, and finally absorption into the preceding, presumably voiceless . Since this case involves only, and not , the handbooks generally take a common-sense approach and assume that the interdental fricative was somehow weak — voiced or whatever — and thus subject to enclisis and assimilation. Although these cases do not provide a direct argument for accepting every case of > to in the Ormulum as evidence of voiced initial p in pronominal forms (since there are no cases of final involved), they do support in a general way the notion that weakening of initial interdental fricatives and the merging of final dental stops and initial interdental fricatives are somehow related. The second case, that of -p to -t following dlt because of contraction in verbs, is equally compelling. There are two cases in which dental stops and fricatives become juxtaposed in Orm's verbal inflection. The first contraction case occurs in verbs of the first weak conjugation, when a stem in -δ- occurs in the preterit, aligned therefore with -d-. This occurs in the Ormulum only with the verb kipenn 'to make known', which takes the form kidde(nn) in the preterit (Thüns 1909: section 42). That is, the sequence *-δd- becomes -dd-, the voiced fricative becoming a stop when in contact with a dental stop. 10 The other type of contraction involves the juxtaposition of a stem-final dental stop and an inflectional interdental fricative by means of "true"

Variation between -) and