Zur Verbmorphologie germanischer Sprachen [Reprint 2013 ed.] 9783110918656, 9783484304468

Table of contents :
Abkürzungsverzeichnis / List of abbreviations
Einführung / Introduction
Strong verb Ablaut in the West Germanic languages
The lengthened grade in the Germanic 4th and 5th class strong verbs
On the origin of ū in verbs of the type lūkan
Zur westmitteldeutschen ,Wechselflexion‘ bei den mhd. starken Verben der Klassen III-V
The Newcastle Germanic Weak Verbs Project: Conjectures on the weak preterite
Zum Formenbestand des Verbalparadigmas im Gotischen und im Althochdeutschen: Indogermanische Archaismen und germanische Innovationen
Aspect and tense from PIE to Germanic: The systemic evolution
Peculiarities of verbal classes in German, particularly in relation to English and Dutch
How to become an auxiliary: Progressive and perfect in Old Saxon
Diachronie und Synchronie von auxiliarem tun im Deutschen
Lexical and periphrastic DO in Early New High German
Zum frühneuhochdeutschen Ausdruck der Aktionsart im Präteritum beim steirischen Dichtermönch Andreas Kurzmann um 1400
Three modal verbs
The German tense-aspect-mood system from a typological perspective
The Old Low German verb as a token of linguistic identity

Citation preview

Linguistische Arbeiten

446

Herausgegeben von Hans Altmann, Peter Blumenthal, Hans Jürgen Heringer, Ingo Plag, Heinz Vater und Richard Wiese

Zur Verbmorphologie germanischer Sprachen Herausgegeben von Sheila Watts, Jonathan West und Hans-Joachim Solms

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 2001

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Zur Verbmorphologie germanischer Sprachen / hrsg. von Sheila Watts .... - Tübingen : Niemeyer, 2001 (Linguistische Arbeiten; 446) ISBN 3-484-30446-4

ISSN 0344-6727

© Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH, Tübingen 2001 Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Druck: Weihert-Druck GmbH, Darmstadt Einband: Industriebuchbinderei Nadele, Nehren

Inhaltsverzeichnis / Table of Contents

Abkürzungsverzeichnis / List of abbreviations

Vü

Einführung / Introduction

1

Martin Durreil Strong verb Ablaut in the West Germanic languages

5

Neale J. Laker The lengthened grade in the Germanic 4th and 5th ciass strong verbs

19

Harry Perridon On the origin of ü in verbs of the type lükan

29

Hans-Joachim Solms Zur westmitteldeutschen .Wechselflexion' bei den mhd. starken Verben der Klassen III-V

39

Jonathan West The Newcastle Germanic Weak Verbs Project: Conjectures on the weak preterite

51

Michail Kotin Zum Formenbestand des Verbalparadigmas im Gotischen und im Althochdeutschen: Indogermanische Archaismen und germanische Innovationen

63

John Hewson Aspect and tense from PIE to Germanic: The systemic evolution

73

Werner Abraham Peculiarities of verbal classes in German, particularly in relation to English and Dutch

83

Sheila Watts How to become an auxiliary: Progressive and perfect in Old Saxon

117

VI Annette Fischer Diachronie und Synchronie von auxiliarem tun im Deutschen

137

Nils Langer Lexical and periphrastic DO in Early New High German

155

Peter Wiesinger Zum frühneuhochdeutschen Ausdruck der Aktionsart im Präteritum beim steirischen Dichtermönch Andreas Kurzmann um 1400

175

Ton van der Wauden Three modal verbs

189

Rolf Thieroff The German tense-aspect-mood system from a typological perspective

211

Ekaterina Skvairs The Old Low German verb as a token of linguistic identity

231

Abkürzungsverzeichnis / List of Abbreviations

Deutsche Abkürzungen

ahd. akt. fmhd. Fut. germ. got. grhess. heth. idg. Ind. Konj. lat. md. mda. mhd. obd. omd. Part.Prät. perf. Fers. pl. Prät. sg.

-

St.

sw. thür. urgerm. vordt. wgerm.

althochdeutsch aktiv frühneuhochdeutsch Futur germanisch gotisch griechisch hessisch hethitisch indogemanisch indikativ konjunktiv latein mitteldeutsch mundartlich mittelhochdeutsch oberdeutsch ostmitteldeutsch Partizip Präteritum perfekt Person plural Präteritum Singular stark schwach thüringisch urgermanisch vordeutsch westgermanisch

Enghsh Abbreviations

aux Eng. Fr. Gmc.

auxiliary English French Germanic

vm Icel. impf. impfv. Lat. LG MDu. MHG MLG mod. MSw. NHG NLG NWGmc. OFr. OHG Okel. OLFr. ON OS OSw. pers. pfv. prog. sing. Skt. Sw.

-

— — -

Icelandic impeifect imperfective Latin Low German Middle Dutch Middle High German Middle Low German modern Middle Swedish New High German New Low German North-West Germanic Old French Old High German Old Icelandic Old Low Franconian Old Norse Old Saxon Old Swedish person perfective progressive Singular Sanskrit Swedish

Zur Verbmorphologie germanischer Sprachen

Einführung

Der vorliegende Band Zur Verbmorphologie germanischer Sprachen dokumentiert ein in mancherlei Weise gewagtes Vorhaben. Er publiziert die meisten der Beiträge eines Symposions gleichen Themas, zu dem sich mehr als 40 Fachkollegen und -kolleginnen aus ganz Europa und Nordamerika im Mai 1996 auf Einladung von Eda Sagarra, Sheila Watts und Jonathan West am Department of Germanic Studies des Trinity College Dublin trafen. Im Bewußtsein, daß das gewählte und sehr allgemein gehaltene Thema einen ganzen sprachwissenschaftlichen Kosmos eröffnet, den auch ein großangelegter Kongreß kaum annähernd hätte vermessen und erkunden können, sollte in Dublin der Versuch unternommen werden, einen Einblick in die aktuelle und insbesondere auch von einer jüngeren Forschergeneration getragene Verbforschung der im weiten und traditionellen Sinne verstandenen Germanistik zu bieten. Mit der disziplinären Eingrenzung auf jene allgemein verstandene Germanistik verband sich die weitere Absicht, den zwangsläufig begrenzten Horizont einer jeden beteiligten Einzeldisziplin im Rahmen des Symposions sinnvoll zu Uberwinden und gleichsam einen intradisziplinären Diskurs zu ermöglichen. Nicht alle Beiträge des Symposions konnten hier abgedruckt werden, u.a. auch deshalb, weil sie aufgrund leidiger und von uns zu verantwortender Verzögerung zwischenzeitlich schon in übergreifenden Darstellungen eingearbeitet und somit Teil der wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung geworden sind (s. Richard d'Alquen (1997) Time, Mood and Aspect in German Tense, Frankfurt usw.: Lang). Die nun hier in Auswahl abgedruckten, revidierten Beiträge des Symposions liefern den von den Veranstaltern erwünschten Einblick in die aktuelle Verbforschung der gesamtgermanisch wie auch nationalphilologisch orientierten Disziplinen. In ihrer Gesamtheit dokumentieren sie die enorme Bandbreite dieser Forschung, die empirische wie theoretische Aspekte gleichermaßen fokussiert; im einzelnen zeigt sich dann auch, wie der erwünschte intradisziplinäre Diskurs des Symposions die eigene Forschung in der Tat positiv beeinflußt hat. Der Sammelband vereinigt Beiträge form- sowie funktionsbezogener Forschung, es werden neben den Kernfragen der Morphologie ebenso Fragen der Syntax, der Semantik und der Typologie berührt; einige der Beiträge nehmen zentrale, immer wieder diskutierte und bisher ungelöste Probleme der Verbforschung wieder auf und diskutieren sie neu, andere wiederum eröffnen neue Forschungsfelder. Die thematisierte Spannweite reicht vom Gotischen bis in die Gegenwart und schließt das Deutsche, Englische und Niederländische somit ein. Zu einem der meistbehandelten Themen der Altgermanistik können wohl die morphologischen Implikationen des Ablauts und damit der phonologisch-morphologischen Wechselwirkung bei den germanischen starken Verben gerechnet werden. Die methodologisch sehr heterogenen Beiträge zu diesem Themenbereich haben gemeinsam, daß sie Bekanntes - wie etwa analogische Änderungen - mit Erkenntnissen aus der Typologie oder der kognitiven

2

Einführung

Linguistik zu verbinden versuchen, um neue Einsichten in die sprachlichen Daten zu gewinnen. Im ersten Beitrag zu dieser Frage widerlegt DURRELL energisch die von Beedham (1995/6) aufgestellte These, man müsse Ablautverhältnisse in den modernen westgermanischen Sprachen aus der synchronen Phonologie erklären, da das menschliche Gedächtnis nicht fähig sei, so viele unregelmäßige Formen im Lexikon zu verwalten. Durch eine Analyse der analogischen Verhältnisse im historischen Werdegang der Verbklassen zeigt Durrell, daß die Klassen I und Illb durch Analogie stark angewachsen und somit regelbezogener geworden sind, während andere Klassen weniger neue Mitglieder haben erwerben können. So plädiert er für einen Mittelweg zwischen vollständiger Regelbezogenheit und der Hypothese, ein jedes Verb sei einzeln zu erlernen. Während Durrell hauptsächlich die Verben in den neueren Sprachen behandelt, beleuchtet LAKER den Ablaut von der Entwicklung der germanischen Vokalreihen aus dem Indogermanischen her. Die bisher inadäquat erklärte Länge der Vokale der IV. und V. Ablautreihen wird neu unter die Lupe genommen und durch die Kontraktion und Ersatzdehnung in den ehemaligen reduplizierenden Aoristformen erklärt. Auch im Beitrag von PERRLDON wird Rekonstruktionsfragen nachgegangen, hier aus der Perspektive des Neuhochdeutschen und Neuniederländischen. Die verwandten Verben dt. biegen ndl. buigen lassen auf unterschiedliche Urvokale schließen (eu - M), was traditionell durch Analogiewirkung erklärt wird. Durch einen typologischen Vergleich mit der Verteilung von ähnlichen Vokalen in englischen Wörtern wie suit, duke kann ein neues Lautgesetz eu -> ü postuliert werden. Die Querverbindungen zwischen Erklärungen für Unregelmäßigkeiten aus der Analogie und solchen aus Entwicklungen universelleren Charakters kommt auch bei SOLMS zum Vorschein. Die sog. ,Wechselflexion' in Verben des Typs gebe - gibst wird hier an einem Korpus von Texten des 11. - 13. Jahrhunderts exemplifiziert, was auf einen Ursprung dieses Flexionstyps im Westmitteldeutschen hinweist. Eine universelle Markiertheitstheorie wird als Stütze für die Erklärung genommen, daß die Formen der ersten Person unmarkiert seien und daher den normalen Vokal der Pluralflexion teilten, während die 2. und 3. Personalendungen markiert seien, was durch einen eigenen Vokal zum Ausdruck gebracht werde. Die Beiträge von Solms und WEST haben gemeinsam, daß sie Teilergebnisse aus größeren Untersuchungen präsentieren. Bei Solms sind es die Texte aus der in Bonn, Bochum und Halle entstehenden Mittelhochdeutschen Grammatik, bei West ist es die etymologische Datenbank des Newcastle Weak Verb Project. Mit Laker und Perridon greift West Fragen der Rekonstruktion auf, hier um Licht auf die alte Frage nach dem Ursprung des germanischen schwachen Präteritums zu werfen. Die methodische Reflexion zur Erstellung eines etymologischen Wörterbuchs der schwachen Verben, das die Flexionsentwicklungen erklären soll, steht hier im Vordergrund. Im zweiten Block werden vor allem semantische Fragen zur Entwicklung von Verbalkategorien aus den Bereichen Tempus-Aspekt-Modus erörtert. In diesem Beriech lassen sich ebenfalls Verbindungslinien zu den eher morphologisch ausgerichteten Arbeiten im ersten Block feststellen, denn auch hier spielen sowohl die Rekonstruktion wie auch die Korpusarbeit eine größere Rolle. Von der theoretischen Konzeption her sind die Beiträge sehr differenziert, was den breiten Umfang des Symposions hervorhebt. Die Frage nach dem Anteil von indoeuropäischem Perfekt und Aorist an den germanischen Verbformen, die schon in den Beiträgen von Laker und West erörtert wurde, ist bei

Einführung

3

KOTIN das Hauptthema. Anhand der fehlenden Formen des Mediopassivs im Germanischen zeigt Kotin, daß das germanische Verbalsystem mehr Gemeinsamkeiten mit dem hethitischen als mit dem griechischen teilt, was auf ein hohes Alter des germanischen Systems hinweise. Zentrale Fragen aus dem Bereich der Indogermanistik werden auch bei HEWSON aufgegriffen, in einem Beitrag, der sich den Entwicklungen der germanischen Temporalformen aus älteren Aspektformen widmet. Hewson arbeitet mit dem Modell von Guillaume, dessen Theorie der sprachlichen Kategorisierung hier im Mittelpunkt steht, eine Theorie, von der Leiss behauptet, sie werde ,aus den Bereichen der Psycholinguistik, der Historiolinguistik und der Deixisforschung zunehmend bestätigt'.' Aus einer völlig anderen theoretischen Richtung, der der GB-Theorie, kommt der Beitrag von ABRAHAM, der dann allerdings wie Kotin und Hewson f ü r eine Zentralstellung aspektueller Unterschiede im Deutschen plädiert. Abraham argumentiert, daß die als universelle Kategorie angenommenen ergativen Verben in den kontinentalgermanischen Sprachen aspektuell bedingte Altemanten intransitiver Verben seien. Er warnt vor der Anwendung von Typologien, die aus Sprachen abgeleitet werden, die ihre Syntax auf der Wortebene organisieren, da das Deutsche eine Syntax aufweise, die auf der Ebene der Wortgruppe organisiert und somit diskursbezogen sei. Für WATTS wie für Abraham ist der Aspekt eine Kategorie der Wortgruppe, die mit der Transitivität eng zusammenhängt. Watts folgt der Grammatikaliserungstheorie, die eine universelle Tendenz in der Entwicklung von Auxiliarverben sieht. An einem altsächischen Korpus wird gezeigt, daß erfolgreiche Auxiliarverben alte Kategorien wie den Aspekt aufgreifen und neu verwenden, während potentielle Auxiliarverben, die nicht auf altem Material aufbauen, nicht erfolgreich werden können, auch wenn sie sonst universellen Typen entsprechen. Der Beitrag von Watts bildet eine Brücke von den semantisch-ausgerichteten Beiträgen über Tempus und Aspekt zu denjenigen, die sich der Entwicklung von einzelnen Auxiliarverben widmen. Die Beiträge von FISCHER und LANGER ergänzen sich in ihrer Analyse der Funktionen von tun als Auxiliarverb. Während Fischer sich mehr auf die modernen deutschen Dialekte konzentriert, liegt das Hauptgewicht bei Langer auf der Periphrase im Frühneuhochdeutschen. Beide Beiträge weisen auf eine Polyfunktionalität von tun hin, das viele andere grammatische Konstruktionen ersetzen kann. Für Fischer ist tun ein ,Stützverb', das bei grammatischen Umstrukturierungsprozessen als temporaler Lückenfüller diene, und das auch stilistischen Wert aufweise. Sowohl die Mehrdeutigkeit als auch das fakultative Vorkommen von tun verhindern laut Fischer, daß es im Deutschen grammatikalisert werden könne. Langer stellt sich die Frage, ob die sprachliche Ökonomie nicht das Vorkommen von redundanten Elementen wie auxiliar-fwn verhindern sollte, und argumentiert, daß partiell synonyme Konstruktionen wenigstens in Übergängen möglich seien. WIESINGER zeigt die im Frühneuhochdeutschen noch vorhandene Möglichkeit eines präteritalen Inchoativs, ausgedrückt durch die Periphrase werden -H Infinitiv, anhand der Schriften des bairischen, um 1400 lebenden Mönchs Kurzmann. Wiesinger vermag zu zeigen, daß im Frühneuhochdeutschen eine regionalbezogene systemhafte Ausbildung einer Aktionsartenmarkierung vorhanden war. '

Elisabeth Leiss (1992): Die Verbalkategorien des Deutschen. - Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. S. 3.

4

Einflihrung

Im letzten Beitrag zu der Entwicklung von Auxiliarverben wird eine ganz andere Gruppe, nämlich die Modalverben aus dem semantischen Bereich der Nezessität, ins Auge gefaßt und in ihrer Verteilung in den modernen Sprachen Englisch, Deutsch und Niederländisch dargestellt. VAN DER WOUDEN zeigt, daß die Negation bei Verben des Müssens zwei Bedeutungsrichtungen aufweist, einerseits daß es nicht notwendig ist, daß etwas geschieht, andererseits, daß es notwendig ist, daß etwas nicht geschieht. So entsteht eine Systemlücke, die die benannten Sprachen durch die Grammatikalisierung der etymologisch nicht verwandten Formen brauchen, hoeven und need als suppletive Formen zu müssen, moeten und must. Die Verbsemantik im weitesten Sinne ist das Thema der letzten zwei Beiträge. THIEROFF befaßt sich mit übergreifenden Fragen der Typologie, und zeigt, daß die Relationen zwischen Tempus, Aspekt und Modus im Deutschen so strukturiert sind, daß das Deutsche mit Französisch und Italienisch einen Sprachbund mitten in Europa bildet, der darüber hinaus am nächsten mit Sprachen wie Albanisch und Finnisch Ähnlichkeiten aufweist. Thieroffs Arbeit läuft somit gegen den traditionell sprachgenetischen Trend der anderen Beiträge und eröffnet ein Fenster in ganz andere Richtungen. Wieder sprachhistorisch ausgerichtet ist der Beitrag von SKVAIRS, die sich dem Altniederdeutschen und Altniederfränkischen widmet, um aus einzelnen Verbglossen die sprachliche Eigenständigkeit zu beweisen. Ob Symposion und Sammelband ihrem Anspruch gerecht und ob die erwünschten Ziele auch erreicht werden, das muß der fachwissenschaftliche Diskurs erweisen, in den wir uns mit diesem Band nun hineinbegeben wollen. Für sein Zustandekommen haben wir vielen Seiten zu danken. Eda Sagarra sind wir zu besonderem Dank verpflichtet, denn ohne ihren organistorischen Einsatz und ihre Fähigkeit, Sponsoren für die Idee zu begeistern, hätte das Dubliner Symposion nicht stattfinden können. Auch das restliche Dubliner Kollegium trug durch seine Gastfreundschaft und aktive Beteiligung wesentlich zum Gelingen des Symposions bei. Die Stiftungen Pro Helvetia und das Provost's Academic Development Fund machten es möglich, daß einige der Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer eingeladen werden konnten, und für diese finanzielle Unterstützung sind wir auch ihnen sehr verbunden. Unser Dank gilt auch den Herausgebern der Reihe, unseren Sammelband in die Linguistischen Arbeiten aufgenommen zu haben und ihm damit ein vorzügliches Forum für den fachwissenschaftlichen Diskurs eröffnet zu haben; zu danken haben wir insonderheit Heinz Vater für die große Mühe und sehr konstruktive Kritik, die er unserem Vorhaben entgegengebracht hat. Sheila Watts (Newnham College Cambridge) Jonathan West (University of Newcastle upon Tyne) Hans-Joachim Solms (Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg)

Martin

Durrell

Strong verb Ablaut in the West Germanic languages The aim of this paper is to consider the general problem of morphological irregularity with specific reference to Germanic Ablaut, i.e. the vowel altemations which are the exponent of tense with the so-called 'strong' verbs, which form one of the two major inflectional classes of the Germanic verb. The various historical developments of this class in the individual West Germanic languages demonstrate that morphological irregularities such as it exhibits cannot be accounted for appropriately within the phonological component of the grammar. However, a purely lexicalist account is not wholly adequate, either, since speakers appear, in certain instances, to have access to systematic relationships in terms of paradigmatic vocalic alternants within whole word-forms. The diachrony of Ablaut in the West Germanic strong verb suggests that a cline of irregularity can be identified from füll suppletion to rule-govemed alternation, with different consequences for the stability of the inflectional classes, and that this can only be established within an autonomous morphological component of the grammar which gives füll theoretical recognition to the concept of paradigmatic alternation.

1. Introduction: the problem of morphological irregularity

The question of how to account appropriately for irregularity is a central problem in inflectional morphology, especially in inflecting languages. Theoretical morphology is typically concemed to formulate adequate rules for regulär altemations, and ascertaining, describing and explaining such regularities has been a goal of linguistics since Panini. Nevertheless, descriptive grammars of typical inflecting languages like those belonging to the IndoEuropean group are packed with all kinds of exceptions to almost every general rule and, as Werner (1987) made clear, it would appear an equally cracial, but neglected aim of morphological theory to investigate irregularity and try to explain how it has arisen and why it is so prominent in the most frequent forms of the grammar. The aim of the present paper is to consider the issue of morphological irregularity by taking a fresh look at Ablaut in the strong verb in German and some of the other modern West Germanic languages, fifteen years after this was attempted in Durrell (1980). Morphological theory has advanced much in the meantime, as is demonstrated by the number of extensive treatments which have appeared recently, notably Anderson (1992), Aronoff (1994), Beard (1995), Carstairs-McCarthy (1992), Katamba (1993) and Spencer (1991). However, the central problem has remained the same, i.e. the extent to which morphological irregularities can be adequately or appropriately treated within the phonological component of the grammar. Or, if they are to be explained elsewhere, in a separate morphological component or in the lexicon, how they are to be represented and how significant generalisations are to be captured.

Martin Durreil

2. Phonological accounts of Ablaut in German and English and their deficiencies

The starting point for this renewed investigation was the claim in Beedham (1994: 279), which is repeated in more detailed form in Beedham (1995/96), that "The streng verbs of English and German are marked phonologically as being strong by the vowel + consonant (VC) sequences in them", in other words that structural regularities may be discovered in the weak and strong verbs of English and German. In effect, Beedham (1994 & 1995/96) is re-examining a notion with a long history, i.e. that inflectional class membership and morphological altemations in the German and English verb are rule-govemed and amenable to Statement in phonological terms. Numerous attempts have been made to demonstrate this in respect of the morphology of the German verb, both for the assignment to the weak and strong classes, as Beedham (1994; 1995/96) does, e.g. by Marchand (1955), and for assignment to particular Ablaut groups within the strong verb class, e.g. in Wurzel (1970: 69-79) and Barbour (1982). Durrell (1980) gives a critical survey of earlier work on this Problem. The theoretical justification for such accounts, when one is explicitly given, often comes down simply to the premise that irregularity is not allowable. Beedham (1989: 192) says that for the forms of these verbs to be "memorised individually as exceptions would conflict with the basic tenets of structuralism", since a language "cannot have a substantial set of arbitrary, disordered, irregulär exceptions", as that would overburden the memory capacity of speakers. This last appeal to the nature of linguistic competence is ultimately unsubstantiated and unfalsifiable, as Bittner (1988: 417) makes clear: "Über die Grenzen der Belastbarkeit des Gedächtnisses kann man im Moment nur spekulieren". Speculations about the supposed limitation of storage capacity and the boundaries of leamability are not issues which linguists can legitimately adduce in evidence without running theriskofcircularity. However, although Beedham (1989; 1994; 1995/96) makes particularly strong Claims in this respect, this is perhaps only unusual in that they are made so explicitly. Implicit assumptions of this kind underlie much other seeking after the phonological regularity which is waiting to be discovered. Thus, Halle & Mohanan (1985) assume that the optimal way of dealing with the English strong verbs is the simplest grammar, which involves, as Spencer (1988a: 1) says "all altemants being derived by phonological rule from a Single underlying form" (see also Aronoff 1994: 41). They consider that the optimal explanation of Ablaut in English will be in terms of the smallest number of phonological rules by which past tense and participle forms can be derived from the base (infmitive) form, and their account attempts this with characteristic use of the kind of 'free ride' typical of this model. Ultimately, though, the search for phonological regularities is a chimera. The kind of allomorphy we are dealing with here is simply not amenable to description in phonological terms, and phonologically based statements of the regularities involved can provide neither appropriate descriptions nor adequate explanations of Ablaut altemations in the strong verb of modern English and German, as Durrell (1980) attempted to show. Beedham (1994; 1995/96) takes both the onset and the rhyme of root syllables of German and English strong verbs into account in order to establish the phonological sequences which, in his view, mark strong verbs in German and English and distinguish them from weak ones. The tables in Beedham (1994: 292-93; 1995/96: 158-59) thus show that German verbs whose

Strang verb Ablaut in the West Germanic

languages

7

root syllables have the rhyme [iq] (e.g. singen) are predominantly streng (twelve streng, as against two weak), whilst those whose root syllables have the onset [va] (e.g. wagen) are predominantly weak (fifteen weak, as against two streng). However, the resultant set of phonological rules still entails specifying 50 relevant sequences of consonant + vowel or vowel + consonant for English (with about 150 strong or irregulär verbs) and 80 for German (with about 170 strong verbs). On the face of it, this would not seem to represent a significant simplification in the description compared to simply listing the individual forms of the individual verbs, or, for that matter, a significant reduction in the demands on the memory capacity. In such an account, the question must also arise of the theoretical status of these consonant + vowel or vowel + consonant sequences if they do have the function which Beedham (1994; 1995/96) would wish to ascribe to them. He recognises that it is difficult to consider them as morphemes according to generally accepted criteria, although he would wish to ascribe grammatical significance to them, and he labels them as 'submorphemic signs'. However, this designation on its own does not go far towards explaining their function systematically, but it does recall Prague School notions of non-distinctive meaning and the kind of phonaesthetic elements, like the English gl- and sl- words, cf. Samuels (1972: 4548), which linguistic theory has always found it difficult to cope with, cf. Plank (1981). Bloomfield(1914) described them as 'morphemes of vague signification' or 'minimal linguistic forms', cf. Matthews (1992), but later morphology has tended to ignore them because of their lack of precise significance. That such may play a role in Ablaut cannot be rejected out of hand, as I shall show later, but as a global explanation of inflectional class membership there are simply too many such sequences and, above all, there are too many exceptions and counter examples. To take one instance, even in the sets of German verbs with [aiC] in the present stem there are nineteen weak verbs (e.g. reisen) and 17 strong (e.g. preisen), and even this excludes verbs with [aitj] and [ail] which are all weak (e.g. peitschen, teilen). Further counter evidence to the account in Beedham (1994; 1995/96) is provided by the history of strong and weak verbs in German and English. If it were correct, we should expect diachronic movement from the strong to weak classes in both English and German to correspond to the phonological pattems which he posits - in other words that it is precisely those strong verbs which in his terms are anomalous and have consonant -l- vowel or vowel + consonant sequences in their root syllable characteristic of weak verbs which will be the most likely ones to change inflectional class and become weak. Indeed, Beedham (1994: 287) explicitly Claims that this will be the case. However, as will be shown in more detail later, the data in Hempen (1988) and Theobald (1992) clearly demonstrate that historical shifts between the strong and weak classes in German do not correlate in any significant way with any of the consonant + vowel or vowel + consonant sequences which Beedham (1994; 1995/96) adduces. A perhaps even more serious issue is whether it is actually appropriate to deal with modern German or English Ablaut in the phonology at all. Wiese (1996) has recently pointed out that there is a significant difference between Umlaut and Ablaut in this respect. Umlaut is amenable to Statement as a Single general rule of fronting and/or raising, cf. also Wiese (1995: 181-194), whereas Ablaut is, as Wiese (1996: 130) says, 'a cover term for at least twenty pattems of vowel altemation'. And, as Durreil (1980) pointed out, any link between these vowels and the phonological environment is wholly arbitrary. It is

Martin

Durreil

possible, as Barbour (1982: 339) does, to specify the past tense vowel for the ablauting verbs in /a(:)/ in terms of the following consonant by the following rule:

r N

(1)

[ -anterior]

a(i)


sedimä, would in Gothic, for example, have developed to *sistum. I shall leave this as it is for the moment, but I shall come back to this question of the development of the reduplicated forms later. The proposition that the Sanskrit forms might provide the pattem by which the Germanic verbs of Classes 4 and 5 act in the way that they do creates many more problems than it resolves. It is a lot easier to dismiss them, the Sanskrit examples, as languagegroup-specific (that is only appearing in Indo-Aryan), as Prokosch (1939: ibid.) himself does, than to try and use them as a way of explaining the lengthened grade in Germanic. Nevertheless they are tempting as a model, if only because they appear similar, and have the added tidy advantage of being perfect forms, that is forms belonging to the tense from which the Germanic preterite is assumed to have derived.

3. Length and the IE aorist

Let US leave these Sanskrit examples aside and look at the problem of the lengthened grade from a different angle. The lengthened grade need not be derived from an IE perfect tense; there is another possibility. The lengthened grade could come from an IE aorist. A look at the following examples from Sanskrit shows just this lengthening in the sigmatic aorist forms (an aorist with an /s/ as tense suffix), where the lengthened grade is used throughout the active voice. •Jchand 'seem'

acchäntslt 'he seemed'

Vp« 'purify'

apävXt 'he purified'

SnT 'lead'

anäislt 'he led'

When we look to Greek for some confirmation of these examples, we find that the evidence is difficult to evaluate conclusively. Writing of the sigmatic aorist forms, Smyth (1956: 159) states that in "verbs showing strong and weak grades, the tense-suffix is added to the strong stem". This would seem to suggest that length played a role in determining the shape of the aorist because the strong grade is, by definition, longer than the weak grade which often shows reduction; but this, unfortunately, is all relative. The strong grade is here nothing more than the normal grade; that is it is not reduced. This is totally unhelpful. The examples in Germanic that we are trying to explain are quite definitely seen to be lengthened when set in contrast with the present stem which we see as having the strong/full grade. In addition, the Greek sigmatic aorist (known as the first aorist) is dis-

24

NealeJ. Laker

tinguished from the second aorist (root-aorist) by its streng grade, in contrast to the typical reduced grade in the second aorist. Tliis is also unhelpful, because the two aorists do not need to be distinguished from each other, being in complementary distribution. Very few verbs exhibit both types of aorist, rather showing only one form or the other. So the Greek sigmatic aorist cannot essentially be seen as lengthened grade for our purposes, even though language-intemally it might appear to display a quantitative altemation with other forms. We now come back to the forms from Latin that I mentioned briefly in the discussion of the Sanskrit contracted perfects which looked like lengthened forms. These themselves might indeed be aorists. Latin, like Germanic, does not possess a separate aorist tense. It, too, formally lost the IE aorist. This means that these Latin examples are, in the same way as the Germanic examples that started this discussion, difficult to place. In the Latin perfect one does not have to go far to see other forms which bear a resemblance to the IE aorist formations. The sigmatic aorist plays an important part in the formation of the Latin perfect in such verbs as scribö 'I write' and dicö 'I say' whose perfects are respectively scripsi and dixi, both with i-suffixes. This, in a way, provides us with evidence from elsewhere in IE from a language other than Germanic that has likewise reduced the inventory of tenses. The Latin perfect shows IE perfect morphemes such as reduplication and in addition aorist morphemes such as the j-suffix from the IE sigmatic aorist. The Latin perfect therefore provides a point of comparison in considering the nature of the Germanic preterite. The Latin preterite shows a syncretism of two tenses in the forms and morphemes it exhibits. In the same way we can use this as justification for considering the same for Germanic, rather than insisting upon a heritage for all Germanic preterite forms in the IE perfect, just because the majority of the Germanic strong verbs conjugate in a way which owes much more to the IE perfect than to the other IE past tenses.

4. The question of motivation

It has been shown that we can account for lengthened grade as a possible IE moipheme in the formation of a past tense. The investigation of the use of lengthened grade in the aorist tense showed that the appearance of length was a normal formative in the IE aorist and one especially to be expected in the sigmatic aorist as the examples from Sanskrit showed. So far the investigation has looked at the problem of the lengthened grade from the point of view of explaining where it is from in the very restricted sense of looking for correspondences in IE. But this is not the only way of tackling the problem. Germanic need not simply be utilizing morphemes from a tense system other than the perfect. The syncretism we see in the Germanic system of strong verbs does not have to be that simple. We can approach the problem from a further two angles. Firstly why, from the point of view of why lengthened grade at all? Which goes together with the question: why not reduced grade as seen in the first three classes? And secondly from the point of view of how?

The lengthened grade in the Germanic 4th and 5th class streng verbs

25

If we assutne that the lengthened grade is not simply the IE vocalism of an aorist tense, which finds a reflex in Germanic, then it might very well be a language-intemal development akin to the one that we saw in the Sanskrit perfects. In discussing the first of these two further points (that is the 'why?' or 'why not teduced grade?' perspective) we need to develop Germanic roots of Classes 4 and 5 in analogy with the altemation pattem of the first three classes. The development would probably have followed the following course (infmitive - preterite 1 - preterite 2 - past participle): •neman 'take' •geban 'give'

*nam *gab

*nmum *gbum

•nmans •gbans

As can be seen, the forms end up with no syllable peak in the root in the preterite 2 alternant. As I mentioned earlier in the case of Class 4, the nasal/liquid could have formed a syllabic peak, but must also play the role of syllable onset for the termination. In the same way as the reduced grade forms (preterite 2 and past participle) in the first three classes, and in the past participle of Class 4, the nasal seems to have achieved the status of syllable-bearing segment, later developing a vocalic strengthener in the shape of /u/. For some reason, however, it seems not to have been able to carry this out in the preterite 2 form. It would seem that the consonant string which we are left with as a result of reduction was unacceptable to speakers, being difficult to pronounce. This is the stance of Bames/Esau (1973: 8). Because the reduced grade forms would have been difficult to reproduce, some other method had to be found to form the preterite 2 altemant. With reduction out of play the only other ablaut altemation possible was lengthening; and for this IE had the model in the aorists I talked about a while ago. However there is a large fly in the ointment here: the preterite-presents. Although referring to events in the present tense, these verbs have a morphological structure which reflects the one found in the preterite of the other strong verbs, hence their name. The altemation between the singular and plural in the present tense of the preterite-presents follows the same pattem as the preterite of the other strong verbs, i.e. in the singular there is a Germanic a-vocalism reflecting the IE oaltemant of e/o ablaut (e.g. Gothic wäit 'I know'and ßaif 'I need'). And likewise in the plural, the altemant has reduced grade, as is the case with the preterite 2 altemants of the first three classes (e.g. Gothic witum 'we know' and ßaürbum 'we need'). Whereas in the strong verb Classes 4 and 5 the reduced grade altemant is not utilized in the preterite 2 form, the lengthened grade forms that are the subject in hand being used instead, for the preterite-presents there is evidence to suggest that reduced grade was utilized. This is to say that the preterite-presents with root structures like those of the strong verbs of Classes 4 and 5 behave as one would expect the weak altemants of the IE perfect to behave: they have reduced grade. Class 4 Go. Class 5 Go.

skal mag

skulum magum

'shall, owe' 'can, may'

Thus there is a discrepancy between the strong verbs with lengthened grade and the preteritepresents with reduced grade. What can account for this? And does this not complicate any attempt to explain the lengthened grade in the strong verbs? Bames/Esau (1973: 8-9) suggest that the reason for the discrepancy might lie in the fact that the preterite-presents do not in fact refer to past time, and that they are therefore seen as belonging to a different

26

Neale J. Laker

morphological category from the preterite 2 altemant of the strong verbs. They may have comparable structure, but their function is altogether different. This does seem convincing and upholds the definite oddness of the preterite-presents in the Germanic verb system. Having put aside the preterite-presents in this way, Bames/Esau (1973: 9f.) go on to suggest that the only possible altemant pattem left open to the preterites of Class 4 and 5 strong verbs is that of lengthening. Unlike most other commentators, Bames/Esau see the reduced grade altemants in the first three classes as reflecting the reduced grade aorist of IE rather than the reduced grade altemant of the IE perfect. By doing this they can say that because the reduced grade aorist would have been unpronounceable as the preterite 2 alternant in Classes 4 and 5, the speakers of early Germanic could Substitute a different kind of aorist formation from the IE stock to produce an acceptable form: they tum to the lengthened grade aorist that I mentioned a while ago.

5. The Problem of reduplication

Bames/Esau's theory is in itself convincing. It seems generally agreed that the lengthened grade vocalism in the 4th and 5th Classes is secondary, replacing an earlier ablaut altemation. And it seems likely or at least possible that unacceptable reduced grade forms were replaced by more acceptable lengthened grade ones. However there is one factor here that has been overlooked. This is the role played by reduplication. The question of the extent to which the Germanic strong verb system ever used reduplication has not been entirely cleared up and I dare say it never will be. But assuming that reduplication was originally widespread throughout the Germanic strong verb system, and following the model of Bames/Esau, we would see a reduplicated preterite Singular daived from the IE perfect and an unreduplicated preterite plural derived from either reduced grade or lengthened grade aorists. This I find odd. If reduplication were a part of the Germanic preterite (and the Class 7 evidence from Gothic would at least support a claim in this direction) then it would surely be more likely that the reduced grade preterite 2 altemant would have derived from the IE reduced grade perfect. A further consideration of the presence of reduplication is that the pronunciation difficulties of the reduced grade preterite 2 altemants of Classes 4 and 5 are, according to Wolfgang Meid (1971: 52), overestimated or even, according to Richard D'Alquen (1988: 97) nonexistent. They may look odd, but particularly with endings beginning with a vowel they are perfectly plausible, especially in comparison with some of the examples from Sanskrit we saw earlier (e.g. dadrsimä 'we have seen' from -JdrS 'see'). Reduced and reduplicated forms such as *gegbum or *sesdum must then somehow find their way to a lengthened root vowel. One obvious way from this position would be to derive the III directly from some kind of contraction of these reduplicated forms with compensatory lengthening of the reduplication vowel. This would need to take place before the shift of accent to the first syllable to avoid the development into Gothic *sistum that I mentioned earlier. This development would be directly comparable to the formation in Sanskrit of the contracted perfect forms like *sasdimä > sedimä. A difficulty in this is the problem caused by any attempt

The lengthened grade in the Germanic 4th and 5th class strong verbs

27

to explain the origins of the vowel /eV in the seventh class of strong verbs using contraction of the reduplication syllable or the re-interpretation of infixes like Bech's -ez- (1969) er D'Alquen's superinfix -e- (1988). In this case, we have to account for two very similar processes producing two different long vowels: our lengthened grade / e/ in Classes 4 and 5 and also / eV in Class 7. We might like to explain this in terms of the periodization of the two developments. From the evidence of Gothic it seems clear that the seventh class letained reduplication longer than the other classes of strong verbs, as a result it would seem sensible to see the two possible developments as occurring at different periods in the development of Germanic. However, the obvious sticking-point with this Interpretation is that we are left wondering why the first three verb classes in Germanic do not exhibit the same kind of contraction to an eventual long vowel.

6. Summary and conclusion

We seem now to have come füll circle in our investigation of the lengthened grade preterite 2 altemation of Classes 4 and 5. We began by considering the similarity of the Sanskrit contracted perfect forms as possible models, and it is true that, at least on the surface, they could stand as a prototype formation for the Germanic verbs under consideration. However, we have seen that this does cause problems, not least in assessing when exactly reduplication was dropped in Germanic if indeed the entire strong verb system utilized it at all. The easiest, if least exciting, interpretation is to see the lengthened grade forms as merely leflexes of the IE lengthened grade aorist. The lengthened grade vowel might even be primary in that these roots are aorists and not perfects. That in these two classes in Germanic there are verbs which resemble both Latin veibs with lengthened perfects and Sanskrit verbs with what appear at least on the surface to be long vowels, is I think particularly significant. Despite the difficulties of contraction from reduplication, it seems that work on Class 7 and the genesis of /eV (Fulk 1987, D'Alquen 1988) point the way to similar interpretations for Classes 4 and 5. I may not have come up with any conclusive answers but the problems which beset the riddle of lengthened grade in these forms have, I hope, become clearer. The origin of this long vowel is certainly a difficult question, as D'Alquen (1988: 97) says on the subject: 'it would be advisable to leave open the question of the origin of this long vowel or lengthened grade'.

References

Barnes, M. and Esau H. (1973): Germanic Strong Verbs: A Case of Morphological Rule Extension? - In: Lingua 31, 1-34. Bech, G. (1969): Das germanische Präteritum. - Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabemes Selskab (= Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser 44, 1). Burrow, T. (1955): The Sanskrit Language. - London: Faber.

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NealeJ. Laker

D'Alquen, R. (1988): Germanic Accent, Grammatical Change and the Laws of Unaccented Syllables. - Bern: Lang. Fulk, R. (1987): 'Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest Germanic'. - In: PBB (Tüb) 109, 158-78. Kennedy, B. (1962): The Revised Latin Primer. Edited and further revised by J. Mountford. London: Longman. Meid, W. (1971): Das germanische Präteritum. - Innsbruck: Institut für vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft. Prokosch, E. (1939): AComparative Germanic Grammar. - Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America. Smyth, H. (1956): Greek Grammar. Revised by Gordon Messing. - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Sommerstein, A. (1973): The Sound Pattem of Ancient Greek. - Oxford: Blackwell. Whitney, W. (^971): Sanskrit Grammar. (12th issue of 2nd ed. of 1889). - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Harry

Perridon

On the origin of ü in verbs of the type lükan

The stem of the present of verbs like Gothic lükan is deviant, as it does not display the e that is characteristic of other strong verbs that have a-grade in the past Singular and zero-grade in the past plural and past participle. Various explanations for the quality and length of the stem vowel ü have been given, most of them starting out from the assumption that it reflects a zero-grade *ü, which was later analogically iengthened to ü. In all of these explanations, however, it has been overlooked that long ü occurs not only within the system of the strong e-verbs, but also in adjectives, nouns and weak verbs that are clearly related to words with e, a, or zero-grade of the useries. It seems, then, that the only reasonable way in which *ü in Proto-Germanic can be explained is to assume that a sound change from *eu to *ü has taken place. But since *eu did not change to *ü in all words or in the same way in all dialects, this sound change must have come to an end before the whole of the lexicon was affected.

1. Introduction

A comparison of the following strong verbs in German and Dutch: German saugen biegen fliegen

*ü *eu *eu

*ü *0 *eu

Dutch zuigen buigen vliegen

shows that the vocalism in the first pair of verbs seems to reflect Proto-Germanic in the third pair *eu, but in the second pair both *eu (German) and *a (Dutch). The questions I want to address in this paper are therefore the following: 1. Where does the long ü come from? 2. H o w can w e account for the dialectal differences within the Germanic dialect continuum?

2. T h e e - v e r b s in G e r m a n i c

The system of the strong e-verbs in Proto-Germanic, as reconstructed for example by van Coetsem (1990), is remarkably regulär: c-grade in the present, a - g r a d e in the past Singular, and zero-grade in both the past plural and the past participle. This is shown in Table 1:

30

Harry Perridon

Table 1. The e-verbs in Proto-Germanic stem 1. 2.

iC uC

present e eiC euC

3. 4.

RC R

eRC eR

aRC ar

5.

C

eC

aC

beit-an

bait

skeut-an bend-an

skaut band skal bar mat

Examples 1. 2. 3. 4.

ber-an 5.

met-an

^IC

past sing. a aiC auC

past pl.

past part.

0 iC

0 iC

uC RC R e2R e^C

^uRC ->uR

uC RC R

->uRC ->uR

eC

bit-um skut-um bund-um skul-um

bit-an-az

beVum me^t-um

bur-an-az met-an-az

skut-an-az bund-an-az

C = consonant (stop or fricative); R = liquid or nasal

There are only afew exceptions to this pattem e - a - 0 - 0 : (1) the vowel of the past plural of verbs of the so-called fifth class (i.e. e-verbs like *metan) is e^, instead of expected u< 'zero'; this e^ spread to the verbs of class 4 (type *ber-an), but in the preterite-present verbs of this class (e.g. OIc. muna 'to remember'; skulu 'shall') the original u was retained; (2) class 5 verbs have the same vowel (e) in the past participle as in the present; a number of verbs with an r or / preceding the Ablaut-vowel, however, retained the u: e.g. Go. brikan 'to break' ga-brukans 'broken'; (3) the verb *etan 'to eat' has e instead of a in the past singular, OIc. ät 'ate', Go.fret < *fra- et 'devoured'. In some e-verbs the vowel of the present stem is in zero-grade: (class 1) *wig-an 'to fight', *dig-an 'to knead'; (class3/4) *trud-an 'to tread'; (class 4) *kum-an 'to come', *wulan 'to seethe', *suf-an 'to sleep'. These verbs are commonly considered to be the last representatives in Germanic of the class of verbs which in Indian grammar are called tudäti-wcThs, i.e. verbs with a stressed thematic vowel and zero-grade in the stem of the present. Bammesberger (1984), however, Claims that mdari-verbs as such did not exist in the Indo-European parent language, but were innovations of the various daughter languages, especially Indo-Aryan and Germanic. In most grammars of Old Germanic or one of its dialects, it is suggested that strong verbs with long ü in the stem of the present also belong to this class of Germanic tudätiverbs. But if this is indeed the case, it has to be explained (a) why the u is long, instead of Short as expected; and (b) why there are many more verbs of the lükan-typs in the various Germanic dialects than other kinds of tudäti-werbs: in his dictionary of the Germanic strong verbs (1970) Seebold lists twenty-one different verbal stems of the lükan-typs against seven tudäti-vtrbs of other classes. In Middle Low German there were seventeen

On the origin o/O in verbs ofthe type IQkan

verbs of the lükan-iype

31

(Sarauw 1924), in Middle Dutch twenty (van L o e y 1948), but in

both dialects there was just one other tudäti-\tvh,

viz. komen < *kuman 'to c o m e ' .

3. P r e v i o u s a t t e m p t s t o e x p l a i n t h e l o n g ü in v e r b s o f t h e

lukan-typQ

T h e oldest explanation is the one given by N e o g r a m m a r i a n s like Hirt and B e e r (1918). T h e y supposed that ü was the result of a partial weakening of eu in unstressed or weakly stressed position: eu c h a n g e s into lu = ' M u r m e l v o k a l ' or ' s c h w a s e c u n d u m ' ) in unstressed position, and later into short u. But the latter part of this process of weakening could not take place after the stress had shifted f r o m the thematic vowel to the root syllable. In stressed position tu then changed into ü. Prokosch (1939: 150) finds fault with this reasoning, arguing that if schwa + u gave long a, then schwa + i would surely have given long f. But the tudäti-werb *wigan ' t o f i g h t ' has in fact Short, not long i. Prokosch assumes that the f o r m s with long a were analogical. A f t e r ei had b e c o m e long i, verbs of Class 1, such as bitan ' t o b i t e ' , s h o w e d Opposition between a long vowel (T) in the present and a short vowel (i) in the past plural and the past participle. This Opposition between long and short vowel was transferred to tudäti-werbs of Class 2, which originally had the same short vowel (u) in both the present and the past plural: "Probably the f o r m s are analogical, following the proportion steigan (stTgan) Staig stigum stigans = lukan lauk lukum lukans. An analogical leveling of *lukan to lükan is required to m a k e the parallellism complete" (Prokosch 1939: 150). It is remarkable that Prokosch failed to see that his own theory is not i m m u n e to the criticism he levelled against the explanation offered by the N e o g r a m m a r i a n s : if *lukan lükans with short ü in both f o r m s could b e c o m e lükan - lükans, with an Opposition long vowel in the present : short vowel in the past participle, under the i n f l u e n c e of Class 1 verbs such as bitan - bitans, why then d i d n ' t wigan - wigans b e c o m e wigan - wigansl Another weak point in P r o k o s c h ' s explanation, which Vine (1985: 60) considers to be the Standard theory on this matter, is that it suggests that verbs like *liikan (with short u) would have had m o r e in c o m m o n with Class 1 verbs like bitan than with Class 2 verbs like *beudan ' t o o f f e r ' . A n analogical c h a n g e f r o m * lükan to *leukan w o u l d , as SchmittBrandt (1967: 61n) points out, have been more "natural". It is finally to b e noted that wigan in fact did become weihan (= wihan) in Gothic. A slightly d i f f e r e n t Version of P r o k o s c h ' s theory is given by C a m p b e l l in his Old English G r a m m a r : " T h e reason f o r the intrusion of ü into the present of this class is uncertain, but may be n o more than analogy with Class I in Germanic: after ei > T, since verbs with ai in the past had f in the present system, those with au in the past might develop long ü in the present system" (1959: 303). This version of the theory has its problems, too: it does not account for the fact that eu did not a l w a y s turn into ü in v e r b s of Class II, whereas the transition of ei to T is without exceptions in the verbs of Class I. N o r does it explain where the long üs in nouns and adjectives c o m e f r o m (see below). K u r y l o w i c z (1973) also wants to derive the long ü in the lükan-verhs f r o m an original Short u, and agrees with Prokosch that the verbs in question are of the tudäti-lype. But his

32

Harry Perridon

explanation is an altogether different one. He assumes that the long ü is the result of a process of differentiation: tudäti-\Qvh& of Class 2 with an original ü did not differ in form from tudäti-vcrbs of Classes 3 and 4, after these latter had developed a secondary ü in syllabic sonorants. According to Kurylowicz (1973: 386) this had to lead to a differentiation between the two classes of tudäti-werbs. By the lengthening of the original Short & of the Class 2 verbs, the difference between the two classes was restored: On peut donc supposer que la formation des verbes tudäti entrainait une coYncidence des dörivds de la 2e classe en (-)ReuT a.\tc ceux de la 3e et 4e cl. en {-)ReT: classe II classes III et IV dögrö plein (präsent du verbe fort) (-)ReuT (-)ReT d6grd z6ro (deriv6 tudäti) (-)RuT (-jRuT Cet 6tat de choses etait apte ä entramer une differentiation: (-)ReT: (-)RuT = (-)ReuT: (-)RuuT(=-RüT) De cette fa9on le ü du type lükan se r6väle comme le d6gr6 z6ro de eu, lequel a subi une modification morphologique due ä une differentiation.

It does not seem likely, to say the least, that the presence of one or two tudäti-yerhs of Class 3 and/or 4 in the language could have had such an enormous impact upon the large class of verbs that were to develop a long ü in the stem of the present. Weither Prokosch's nor Kurylowicz's theory offers any explanation for the fact that long a in some dialects corresponds with eu in other dialects, e.g. OE/OS bügan, MLG/MDu bügen 'to bow', but Go. biugan, OHG biogan. The verbs in question are given in Table 2: Table 2. Dialectal Variation of eu and u in Class 2 strong verbs eu bügan/beugan drüpan/dreupen hrütan/hreutan

'bend' 'drip' 'roar'

klüban/kleuban krüpan/kreupan rükan/reukan sküban/skeuban slüban/sleupan slütan/sleutan smügan/smeugan

'cleave' 'creep' 'smoke' 'push' 'sneak' 'dose' 'sneak'

sprütan/spreutan stüban/steuban ßätan/ßeutan

'sprout' 'be dusty' 'howl'

g

d d d

g g

d d d d d d d d

e n n n n n n

e

f

f

s

s d

e e e e

n

n

f

s

nd

s

nd

e

e e

e

e e

e

e

f

s

f f f f f

s

f f

s

nd nd nd nd nd nd nd nd nd nd nd nd

g: Gothic; d: OldHigh German; n: OldNorse; e: Old English; f: Old Frisian; s: OldSaxon; nd: Middle Low German and/or Middle Dutch

If analogy is the correct explanation, why then don't we find long ü in all the tudäti-vstbs in all languages? The lack of a plausible answer to this question led Vine (1985) to the conclusion that, at least in some cases, long ü is inherited from the Indo-European parent language. He assumes that especially in verbs with '^^-Erweiterung' ü is the reflex of +

On the origin of u in verbs of the type lükan

33

laryngeal in Indo-European, and that consequently, all forms of the verbs in question must originally have had long ü; the attested short ä of the past plural and participle would then be the result of a process of analogy. A form like Old Norse ßrütinn 'swollen' with a long a is, according to Vine, a remnant of the original Situation. This view is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, there is no trace of a long vowel in the related noun ßroti 'swelling', which strongly suggests that long ü is not original in this stem. Secondly, if ßrütinn really is a past participle, it is worrying that the verb ßrjöta, which both Vine and de Vries (1961: 624) suggest it might be a participle of, has jö *i vor *i (betrifft die 2. und 3.Sg.Ind.Präs. mit flexivischem *i), andererseits durch Verändemng *e > *i vor *u (betrifft die l.Sg.Präs.Ind. mit flexivischem bezüglich der vor u angenommenen Veränderung folgen alle Grammatiken und Handbücher in ihren Regelformuliemngen dem erstmals von Kögel formulierten .Gesetz', einem „lautgesetzlich" erfolgten Übergang von e vor u (Kögel 1887: 108). Den Gesetzescharakter des Wandels e > i auch vor dem u der Flexionssilbe und seine entsprechende Konsequenz für das Flexionssystem der starken Verben noch im Mhd. formuliert besonders explizit Mausser (1932:178): „Das Gesetz ,e > i vor u, w' [...] wird [...] restlos durchgeführt und ist innerhalb des beschränkten Bestandes obligatorisch bei den St. V. A.R. 2 und 3b. 4. 5. in der l.Sing.Ind.Praes. mit ahd. M-haltiger Endung". Der Hin-

Vgl. Ahd.Gr. (§ 30.c); Afr.Gr. (§§16.2, 191); Simmler (1987: 142); As.Gr. (§64). In der germanischen Sprachwissenschaft besteht Dissens, inwiefern i und e für das Urgerm./Germ. als zweiphonemisch (*/i/ und */e/) oder einphonemisch mit allophonischer Varianz (*/i,e/) zu werten sind (vgl. die einschlägigen Wertungen bei Ronneberger-Sibold (1989): zu Fourquet (1952) Nr. 34, zu Marchand (1957) Nr. 85, zu Moulton (1961) Nr. 121, zu Antonsen (1964) Nr. 147, zu Schweikle (1964) Nr. 157, zu Hock (1973) Nr. 321, zu Cercignani (1979) Nr. 457, zu Ramat (1981) Nr. 505, zu Voyles (1981) Nr. 509). Unabhängig davon besteht Konsens, daß kontinental-wgerm. (Antonsen (1964), Hock (1973), Cercignani (1979) und (1980)) in der Umgebung vor u nicht e, sondern i vorliegt.

42

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Solms

weis auf die verursachenden Bedingungen der Endung erklärt jedoch nicht die Form der 2.Sg.Präs.Imp., die im Ahd. / Mhd. wie im As. ebenfalls den sekundären Tempusstamm mit i aufweist. Da die germ. Ausgangsform durch ,den reinen Stamm' gebildet wird (Bammesberger 1987: 23), ist ein solch kombinatorisch erklärbarer, durch die Endung verursachter ,Laut'wandel auszuschließen. Dieser Umstand ist in der Ahd.Gr. nicht angesprochen, die Afr.Gr. (§181) räumt ein, daß die entsprechende Form des Imp.Sg. „nun lautgesetztlich oder durch Ausgleich" erklärt sein kann. Eine rein deskriptive und insofern vorsichtige Formulierung findet Weinhold (1883: §347): ,JDer Sg.Imp. folgt dem Sg.Präs.Ind.". Eine Erklärung versucht Bech (1964) durch Annahme eines enklitischen *thu, so daß auch für den Imp.Sg. eine letztlich lautliche Verursachung angenommen werden darf. Gegenüber den noch weitgehend klaren Verhältnissen der ahd. Zeit zeichnen die Grammatiken der mhd. Zeit das Bild eines landschaftstypisch im Md. nun nicht mehr eindeutigen Zustandes. Es wird als „dem Md. eigenthümlich" (Weinhold 1883: §347) die Existenz entsprechender Formen mit Stamm-e sowohl in der l.Sg. als auch in der 2./3.Sg.Ind.Präs. konstatiert; neben der Möglichkeit lautlicher Verursachung (gegenläufige Verwendung von i auch im Fl. oder Inf. läßt Deutung von „Schwebelaut zwischen e und i" zu, vgl. Weinhold (1883: §§47, 347) wird gemeinhin .Ausgleich' angenommen. Ganz explizit im Sinne junggrammatischen Analogie-Denkens formuliert Otto Mausser (1932: §215, Anm.2): „Ausgleich ist im md. Mhd. [...] möglich. Es findet sich [...] Entfernung von i zugunsten von e in der l.Sing.Ind.Präs.: analogisch möglich nach dem Muster des Inf. und der weitaus in der Mehrzahl befindlichen e-Formen des Präs."; ähnlich auch bei Weinhold (1883: §§348,355), Michels (1979: §271, Anm.4), Mettke (1983: §121, Anm.91). Uneindeutiger und insofern vorsichtiger formuliert Mhd.Gr. (242, Anm.l): „e [... dringt] im Md. früh in die l.Sg. ein [...]. Ja dieser Wechsel wird md. auch ganz aufgegeben: wigen, zimen für wegen, zemen, aber auch du zemst, er zemt für zimest, [zitn]-et [...]." Die Genese dieses Zustandes scheint damit klar, für das Md. gilt Veränderung eines vorgängig andersartigen Zustandes: „Im Md. ist das Verhältnis ursprünglich dasselbe wie im Obd. [...]" (Weinhold 1883: §348). Die vorgängige Gültigkeit des Kögeischen ,Gesetzes' ist nicht in Frage gestellt. Hier besteht noch in zweifacher Hinsicht Unklarkeit: - Es fehlt eine genaue Kenntnis der authentischen (s. Anm.3) schreibsprachlichen md. Verhältnisse. Es ist offen, ob es sich bei der konstatierten md. Besonderheit um eine vorwiegende oder nur marginale Erscheinung handelt, ob die Verhältnisse in der gesamten mhd. Zeit ähnlich/identisch sind, ob möglicherweise gar eine diatopische Differenzierung erkennbar ist. - Es besteht Unklarheit bezüglich der möglichen Erklärung der beschriebenen md. Verhältnisse. Grosse (1988) hat die Frage aufgeworfen, ob für das Md. überhaupt von einer Ausgleichung gesprochen werden kann, ob das Md. nicht vielmehr urprüngliche Verhältnisse spiegelt. Es geht somit um die angenommene Gültigkeit des ,Kögeischen Gesetzes'. Grosse knüpft dabei an Joesten (1931: 28) an, die einen im Sinne des ,Kögeischen Gesetzes' beschreibbaren Lautwandel ablehnt: für die l.Sg.Ind.Präs. ist entsprechend zu folgern, daß hier das „e [...] auf dem Gebiete des Mitteldeutschen und wahrscheinlich auch auf dem Gebiete des Altsächsischen sich in seiner aus dem Indogermanischen überkommenen Ursprünglichkeit erhalten hat". Die aus dem Md. heraus verallgemeinerte Wechselflexion ist somit nicht als ein auf Analogie beruhender Ausgleich zu werten, sondern als urspünglicher und d.h.

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43

mundartlicher Gebrauch. Demgegenüber sei für das Obd. (auch mundartlich) von einer „Veranalogisierung" auszugehen (Joesten 1931: 68): hier sei ein vorgängiger Lautwandel e > i vor folgendem u ebenso abzulehnen, doch habe Angleichung der l . S g . an die 2 7 3 . S g . stattgefunden. Der Einwand Joestens hat in der neueren Forschung z u m Germanischen keinen Widerhall gefunden (jedoch Teuchert 1931/32: 119), die vordt. Veränderung von *e > *i vor *u wird als gültig ausgewiesen (s. Anm.6).

3. D i e K o r p u s a u s w e r t u n g

Eine erste Auswertung' von 13 der in das Textkorpus zur zukünftigen Erforschung des Mittelhochdeutschen aufgenommenen md. Texte des 11. bis 13. Jh.s® ergibt trotz erwartbar geringfügiger Belegung der 1 .Sg.Ind.Präs.' einen doch klaren Befund:

Für die Untersuchung wurden nur eindeutig als Indikative zu wertende Belege berücksichtigt; so blieben Belege trotz formal indikativischer Auszeichnung unbeachtet, wenn sie z.B. Prädikat von mit daz eingeleiteten Konjunktionalsätzen sind. Ausgeschlossen wurden zudem Formen, die möglicherweise durch /i-Schwund mit Kontraktion verursacht sind (bei sehen, geschehen, jehen, vgl. Mhd.Gr. §111). Entsprechend gering ist selbstverständlich die insgesamt ermittelte Belegzahl Es handelt sich um folgende, gemäß diatopischer Gliederung des Korpus differenziert zugewiesene wmd. Texte: - ll.Jh., md.: .Trierer Williram', Cod. 805/5 8° StB Trier (md.) - 2.Hälfte 12.Jh., md.: ,Amsteiner Marienlied', Hs.Abt. 3004 C 8 Staatsarchiv Wiesbaden (mfr.); ,Mittelfränkische Reimbibel' (A/*A), Cod. Yg 34 4° UB Halle (mfr.); ,Frankfurter Predigtfragmente 1.1', Fragm.I.l StUB Frankfurt (hess.-thür.) - I.Hälfte 13.Jh., wmd.: ,Reinisches Marienlob', Cod. I 81,1-93 (rip.); .Tundalus', mgq Bibl.Jagl.Krakau (wmd.); ,Vatikanische Gebete', Cod.lat.4763,107r-128v Bibl.Vat.Rom (rhfr.) - l.Hälfte 13.Jh., hess.-thUr./omd.: ,Graf Rudolf Fragmente a-d/A-K Frahm.36 StB Braunschweig und Cod.Ms.philo. 184,7 SBUB Göttingen (hess.-thür.); ,Athis und Prophilias' A*C*, ABCDEF mgq.846 Bibl.Jagl.Krakau (hess.-thür.) - 2 . H ä l f t e 13.Jh., mfr.: ,Die Lilie', Cod.68,3r-26v (Prosa), 27v-115r (Vers) LB Wiesbaden (rip.) - 2.Hälfte 13.Jh., rhfr.-hess.: ,Rheinfränkische Marien Himmelfahrt' Cod.876, 163-272, UB Gießen; , Rheinfränkische Reimperikopen' cod.inscrin.99, 12-319, SBUB Hamburg; .Salomonis hüs' Cod.876, 1-105, UB Gießen; .Mitteldeutsche Predigten' Fragm.germ 11/2 StUB Frankfurt Cod.519 UB Freiburg Cod.42526 GNM Nürnberg Für die Überlassung des z.T. bereits maschinell aufbereiteten Materials zum 12./13.Jh. danke ich dem Kollegen Thomas Klein (Bonn); für Willirams Hohe-Lied-Paraphrase konnten die vom Kollegen Heinz-Peter Prell (Oslo) gespeicherten Partien genutzt werden. Das Problem einer nur seltenen Belegung der l.Sg.Ind.Präs. zeigt sich schon auch für das Mfr./Rheinfr. in ahd. Zeit. Die Exzerption der bei Sonderegger (1987:70-73) für das Mfr. und Rheinfr. ausgewiesenen Texte der Zeit des 9.-11. Jh.s erbringt nur wenige einschlägige Belege (bezeichnenderweise nur des identischen Lexems): Ih gihu (,Mainzer Beichte', r h e i n f r . 10.Jh.), Ih gihu, Ih giu (13 Belege, ,Lorscher Beichte', rheinfr. Ende 9.Jh.) (Texte nach Braune 1994:58f.).

44

Hans-Joachim Solms

Tabelle 1. Verteilung von -e-l-i- im Stamm der l.Sg.Ind.Präs. st. Verben der Klassen Illb, IV, V

ll.Jh. : 2.H.12.Jh.: l.H.13.Jh.: 2.H.13.Jh.:

md. mfr. wmd. hess.-thür./omd. mfr. rhfr.-hess.

-e-

-i-

./.

2

3 26 8 11 3

1

Die Belege aus Willirams Hohe-Lied-Paraphrase {ih Jiho, ih quida) stimmen zu dem für das Ahd. und Afr. formulierten Befund (s. Anm.9); entsprechende mfr. Glossen-Belege bestätigen die - nicht ausschließliche - Gültigkeit von i in der l.Sg.Ind.Präs.: gihon (9.Jh., vgl. Bergmann 1977: 293) sowie farspricu,'" fieruuirthun, giuisson, milcon, scildon, stilo (ll./12.Jh., vgl.Katara 1912: s.v., mit 6 i-Belegen zu 6 e-Belegen). Mit der zweiten Hälfte des 12.Jh.s. und d.h. mit dem Beginn einer kontinuierlichen Überlieferung ändert sich die Beleglage gänzlich, mit Ausnahme von hilf ih (Rheinfränkische Marien Himmelfahrt) CTscheint nurmehr e. Die Wertung dieser e-Formen setzt die Kenntnis des Usus innerhalb der 2./3.Sg.Ind. voraus. Erst dann ist zu klären, inwiefern und ob der Gebrauch von -e- ein spezifischer und d.h. insbesondere die l.Sg.Ind. auszeichnender Gebrauch ist: Tabelle 2. Verteilung von -e-/-i- im Stamm der 2./3.Sg.Ind.Präs. st. Verben der Klassen Illb, IV, V

2.H.12.Jh.: l.H.13.Jh.: 2.H.13.Jh.:

mfr. wmd. hess.-thür./omd. mfr.

-e-

-i-

./.

12 121 19 50

1 1 4

Die Analyse der Texte" erbringt einen eindeutigen Befund: es herrscht -i-, daneben kann in jeweils als Ausnahmen ersichtlichen Formen auch -e- auftreten'^. Diesen Befund einer nur in Ausnahme auftretenden -e-Graphie bestätigt auch die Verteilung der Formen des Imp.Sg.:

Bei diesem Beleg, den Katara (1912: 70) als as. wertet (unverschobener Plosiv), sieht Bergmann (1977: 165) jedoch auch die afr. belegte Möglichkeit .unvollständiger Schreibung c für ch'. Aufgrund des aktuellen Bearbeitungsstandes der jeweiligen Texte konnten ftir diese Zusammenstellung nicht genutzt werden: .Trierer Williram', .Rheinfränkische Marien Himmelfahrt', ,Rheinfränkische Reimperikopen'. Für jeden der hier aufscheinenden Belege ist eine jeweilige Besonderheit zu beschreiben, s o z.B. parallele Konstruktion einerseits mit Gebrauch einer Konjunktivform, andererseits mit Indikativform (.Lilie'): ,VveJ pine ij Jo Juar. dat |i niet irlihtet. enwerde UveJ gemude i | | o cranc. dat it niet gejterket in werdit'.

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Tabelle 3. Verteilung von -e-/-i- im Stamm des Imp.Sg. st. Verben der Klassen Illb, IV, V

2.H.12.Jh.: 1.H.n.Jh.: 2.H.13.Jh.:

mfr. wmd. hess.-thür./omd. mfr.

-e-

-i-

./. ./. ./. 1

10 104'^ 3 48'"

Die Auswertung erweist, daß die sogenannte ,Wechselflexion' im Md. schon der zweiten Hälfte des 12. Jh.s als Usus gelten muß. Aufgrund der (wenigen) Belege aus der Frühzeit des Mhd. sowie auch der Ubereinstimmenden Einschätzungen zur ahd./afr. Zeit muß der zeitliche Anfangspunkt dieser Entwicklung spätestens in die erste Hälfte des 12.Jh.s und d.h. wohl in die Anfänge des Mhd. datiert werden. Damit ist zugleich unterstellt, daß ein fniherer Zustand verändert ist, und zwar ein Zustand, in dem die 1 .Sg.Ind. ebenfalls mit -i- realisiert wurde. Wodurch dieses -i- ursprünglich verursacht wurde, ist dabei selbstverständlich offen; ob ein Lautwandel im Sinne des ,Kögeischen Gesetzes' (wohl plausibel) unterstellt werden darf (s. Anm.6), ob für 1.Sg.Ind. und auch 2.Sg.Imp. Ausgleich oder ein Ineinandergreifen beider Ursachen anzunehmen ist, das ist letztlich offen. Für einen morphologischen ,Ausgleich' sprechen jedoch einige weitere Beobachtungen: 1. Eine , Wechselflexion', bei der die 2./3.Sg.Ind. sowie der Imp.Sg. eine Stammvokalaltemation gegenüber der 1.Sg.Ind. aufweist, liegt auch bei st. Verben der Klasse II vor. Die wenigen belegten Formen der l.Sg.Ind.Präs. zeigen jeweils den auch in den Formen des Plural, des Konj. und auch Inf. vorgefundenen Stammvokal: flihen (aus den ,Vatikanischen Gebeten' gegenüber 18 Formen der 2./3.Sg.Ind. und 2.Sg.Imp. in den Texten ,Vatikanische Gebete' oder ,Rheinisches Marienlob': u.a. firlusit, uluet, genuzet, zuet)\ zie, vorliefe, genieze (aus ,Graf Rudolf und ,Athis und Prophilias' gegenüber 2 Formen der 2./3.Sg.Ind.Präs.). Da in der Forschung einhellig ein vordt. ,Laut'wandel von idg. *eu zu iu auch vor *u (Bedingung der l.Sg.Ind.Präs.) angenommen wird (mit ausdrücklichem Hinweis insbesondere auf das Afr./As. bei Cercignani (1973), vgl. Ronneberger-Sibold (1989, Nr. 312)), kann die Beleglage nicht anders als durch Ausgleich erklärt werden," wohl kaum ist im Sinne Joestens ein ,ursprünglicher' Zustand anzunehmen. 2. Eine ,Wechselflexion' liegt auch bei den umlautfähigen st. Verben der Klassen VI und v n vor (mit wenigen Belegen der l.Sg.Ind.Präs., z.B. drage in der ,Mittelfränkischen Reimbibel', dragen! tragen im ,Rheinischen Marienlob', mit zahlreichen Belegen mit Stammvokal -e- in der 2./3.Sg.Ind.Präs.). Insofern hier eine zweifellos alte und d.h. bis

" In der ,Lilie' (6 Belege) sowie im ,Rheinischen Marienlob' (8 Belege) erscheint auch o und u (besonders nom und num, auch holp), vgl. Weinhold 1883: §50. Die Belege sind als Belege des Typs ,i' gewertet, s. Anmerkung 13. " Der anzunehmende .Laut'wandel scheint vor allem durch Feuillet 1976 (vgl. RonnebergerSibold 1989: Nr.384) plausibel erklärt. Insofern wäre nicht von einer ,Spaltung' eu > iu und io/ie, sondern von einer primären Veränderung eu > iu mit entsprechender Fortentwicklung zu ahd. io/ia/ie vor folgendem a, e, o auszugehen. Dadurch erscheint auch die bei Schweikle (1990: §§15f.) formulierte und bezüglich der Veränderung von e« jedoch wenig überzeugend erwiesene Annahme grundsätzlich erfolgter Prozesse von Kontakt- und Fernassimilation plausibel. Dies nachzuweisen muß jedoch einem anderen Ort vorbehalten bleiben.

46

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Solms

weit in das Ahd. zurückreichende Altemation vorhanden ist, liegt zugleich ein mögliches Muster für die Altemation auch bei den Verben der st. Verbklassen II sowie auch Illb-V vor. 3. Schon in den frühesten, hier untersuchten wmd. Texten wird die l.Sg.Ind.Präs. auch der St. Verben mit einem Nasal-n aufweisenden Flexiv flektiert: Tabelle 4. Verteilung von -en- und -(e)- in der l.Sg.Ind.Präs. st. Verben -en2.H.12.Jh.: 1.H.n.Jh.: 2.H.13.Jh.:

mfr. wmd. hess.-thür./omd. mfr.

5 62 ./. 8

-(e)./. 1 Ii'' ./.

Bemerkenswert ist die in der LH. des 13.Jh.s aufscheinende regionale Differenzierung des Wmd. gegenüber dem sich ausdifferenzierenden Hess.-Thür. Damit zeigt sich allein von der Endung her die 1 .Sg.Ind.Präs. in den wmd. Texten jeweils ausdrucksseitig synkret zum Inf. wie auch zur I.Pl.Ind.; jener Synkretismus ist aufgrund des auch identischen Stammvokals ein vollständiger. Aufgrund der stammvokalischen Altemation tritt allerdings ausdrucksseitige Distinktion insbesondere zur 2./3.Sg.Ind. auf. Diese (evidente) Feststellung erweist sich als bedeutsam bezüglich der hier angesprochenen Frage nach einer mögliche Erklärung der belegten ,Wechselflexion'. Will man Einsichten morphologischer Natürlichkeit als mögliche Erklärung für vorhandene Formen zulassen (vgl. Grosse 1988), dann läßt sich mangelnde Markiertheit grundsätzlich am ehesten für die 1 .Person formulieren, da sie „prototypische Sprechereigenschaften" spiegele: „Aus dem Primat der prototypischen Sprechereigenschaften gegenüber den jeweils komplementären Gegebenheiten lassen sich direkt oder indirekt Markiemngsbeziehungen [...] ableiten [wie u.a. ... I.Person vs. andere Personen]": (Wurzel 1984: 22). Hieraus ergibt sich, daß eine formale, merkmalhafte Markierung der 2./3. Person sinnvoll ist, nicht jedoch auch jene der I.Person.

4. Z u s a m m e n f a s s u n g

Wenn hier der Versuch unternommen ist, die Gültigkeit der traditionellen Beschreibungen zu bestätigen und somit eine morphologische Neuerung in frühmhd. Zeit zu behaupten, so muß das nicht unbedingt im Widerspruch zu den mda. Verhältnissen stehen, die bereits Nordström (1911) und dann wieder Joesten (1931) als Erklärungshilfe mit herangezogen hatten. Für Joesten lieferte der Befund rezenter Mda. eine Bestätigung ihrer Hypothese, die Wechselflexion sei mda. Ursprungs, sie führe den md. Urzustand fort, einen Wandel e > i vor folgendem, flexivischem u habe es nicht gegeben. Tatsächlich erweisen zahlreiche Mda.Monographien, daß im Md. ein solcher Wechsel zwischen der 1. und der 2./3.Sg.Ind. nicht unüblich ist; sei es, daß es sich um entsprechende Quantitätsdifferenzen handelt, sei es, daß

Sowohl in ,Graf Rudolf als auch in ,Athis und Prophilas' liegen enklitisch verbundenem Pronomen vor, z.B. werdich, geuich.

zusätzliche Belege

mit

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.Wechselflexion'

47

eine qualitative Altemation des Stammvokals vorliegt. Nordström, der ähnliche Verhältnisse wie auch Joesten konstatiert, sieht darin jedoch keine Bestätigung einer Ursächlichkeit, sondern die Parallelität zweier Entwicklungen, die sich in der Schriftlichkeit wie auch in der Mündlichkeit zeigt. Die mda. Situation sei geprägt insbesondere durch die Herausbildung einer Quantitätsdifferenz zwischen einerseits der 1. und andererseits der 2./3.Sg.; diese aufgrund quantitativer Veränderungen eingetretene Alternation habe die morphologische Veränderung in der Schreibe mit getragen und gestützt. Zusammenfassend ist festzustellen: 1. Die für das Fmhd. erwiesene landschaftliche Differenzierung bezüglich der PräsensFlexion der St. Verben der Klassen Illb-V ist bereits eine solche der mhd. Zeit. Insofern erweist sich die nhd. Regelung als eine bis in das 12.Jh. zurückreichende md. Eigentümlichkeit. Das Mhd. zeigt eine klare diatopische Differenzierung. 2. Es gibt Indizien, die den md. Usus einer ,Wechselflexion' als einen erst in frühmhd. Zeit herausgebildeten begreifen lassen. Insofern behalten die Regelformulierungen für das Ahd./Afr. ihre Gültigkeit; somit ist von einer zum Ahd. hin durch Lautwandel verursachten Altemation des gesamten Ind.Sg. zum Ind.Pl. auszugehen, dem zum Mhd. hin partiell ein grammatischer Wandel folgt. 3. Die Richtung des Wandels ist auch sprachwandeltheoretisch durchaus plausibel zu begründen, sei es als Analogie, sei es als eine zu mehr ,Natürlichkeit' tendierende Entwicklung. 4. Es bedarf einer noch weitergehenden Untersuchungen (unter Einschluß auch des kompletten Urkundenmaterials), um diesen Befund zu bestätigen.

Literatur

Ahd.Gr. = Braune, W. und H. Eggers ('"1987): Althochdeutsche Grammatik. - Tübingen: Niemeyer (= Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken Germanischer Dialekte A, 5). Afr.Gr. = Franck, J. (M971): Altfränkische Grammatik. Laut- und Flexionslehre. 2.Aufl. v o n Rudolf Schützeichel. - Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (= Grammatiken der althochdeutschen Dialekte 2). As.Gr. = Gallee, J.H. ('1993): Altsächsische Grammatik. Register von Johannes Lochner. 3.Aufl., mit Berichtigungen und Literaturnachträgen von Heinrich Tiefenbach. - Tübingen: Niemeyer (= Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte, A. Hauptreihe Nr. 6). Bammesberger, A. (1986): Der Außau des germanischen Verbalsystems. - Heidelberg: Winter (= Untersuchungen zur vergleichenden Grammatik der germanischen Sprachen 1). Bech, G. (1964): Zum Stammvokalismus des ahd./as. Imperativs. - In: Studia Neophilologica 36, 2 1 7 - 2 1 9 . Beckers, H. (1982): Zum Wandel der Erscheinungsformen der deutschen Schreib- und Literatursprache Norddeutschlands im ausgehenden Hoch- und beginnenden Spätmittelalter (rund 1 1 7 0 - rund 1350). - In: Niederdeutsches Wort 22, 1 - 3 9 . Bergmann, R. (1977): Mittelfränkische Glossen. Studien zu ihrer Ermittlung und sprachgeographischen Einordnung. Zweite, durchgesehene und um einen Nachtrag ergänzte Aufl. Bonn: Röhrscheid (= Rheinisches Archiv 61). Besch, W. (1967): Sprachlandschaften und Sprachausgleich im 15. Jahrhundert. Studien zur Erforschung der spätmittelhochdeutschen Schreibdialekte und zur Entstehung der neuhochdeutschen Schriftsprache. München: Francke (= Bibliotheca Germanica 11).

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Hans-Joachim

Solms

Braune, W. ("1994): Althochdeutsches Lesebuch. 17.Aufl., bearbeitet von Emst A. Ebbinghaus. - Tübingen: Niemeyer. Duden (1995) = Grammatik der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. 5., völlig neu bearbeitete und erweiterte Auflage (hrsg. und bearbeitet von G. Drosdowski u.a.). Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut (= Der große Duden Bd.4). Ebert, R.P. u.a., (1993): Frühneuhochdeutsche Grammatik (hrsg. von O.Reichmann und K.P.Wegera). - Tübingen: Niemeyer (= Sammlung Kureer Grammatiken Germanischer Dialekte A. Hauptreihe 12). Grimm, J. (1819): Deutsche Grammatik. Tl.l. Göttingen: Dieterichsche Buchhandlung. Grosse, R. (1988): Zur Wechselflexion im Singular Präsens der starken Verben - Lautwandel oder Analogie. - In P. Wiesinger et al. (Hgg.) Studien zum Frühneuhochdeutschen. Emil Skala zum 60. Geburtstag am lO.November 1988, 161-6. Göppingen: Kümmerle. Joesten, M. (1931): Untersuchungen zu den ahd. (as.) ^ i vor u der Folgesilbe und zur l.Pers.Sg.Präs.Ind. der starken t- Verben (Kl.lllb, IV. V). - Gießen: Kindt (= Gießener Beiträge zur deutschen Philologie 28). Katara, P. (1912): Die Glossen des Codex Seminarii Trevirensis. R.III.13. Textausgabe mit Einleitung und Wörterverzeichnissen. - Helsingfors: Aktiengesellschaft Handelsdruckerei. Klein, Th. (1989): Zum Verhältnis von Sprachgeschichte und Literaturgeschichte in der gegenwärtigen Mittelaltergermanistik. - In: Deutschunterricht 41, 91-103. Kögel, R. (1887): Rezension zu .Ahd.Gr.'. - In; Literaturblatt für germanische und romanische Philologie 3, 105-112. Lachmann, K. (1820): Auswahl aus den Hochdeutschen Dichtem des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts. Für Vorlesungen und zum Schulgebrauch. - Berlin: G. Reimer. Mausser, O. (1932f.): Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik auf vergleichender Grundlage. 3 Bde. München: Hueber. Mhd.Gr. = Paul, H. ("1989); Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik. 23.Aufl. neu bearbeitet von P.Wiehl und S.Grosse. - Tübingen: Niemeyer (= Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte. A. Hauptreihe, 2). Mettke, H. ('1983): Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik. - Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut. Michels, V. (1979): Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik. 5.Aufl. hrsg. von H.Stopp. - Heidelberg: Winter. Moser, V. (1951): Frühneuhochdeutsche Grammatik. I.Band: Lautlehre. 3.Teil: Konsonanten, I.Hälfte (Schluß). - Heidelberg: Winter. Nordström, T. (1911): Studien über die Ausbildung der neuhochdeutschen starken Präsensflexion. - Diss. Uppsala. Pfeiffer, F. (1861): Über Wesen und Bildung der höfischen Sprache in mittelhochdeutscher Zeit. Wien: Gerold (= Sitzungsberichte der phil.-hist. Classe der Kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 37). Prell, H.-P. (1996): Ein Quellenkorpus zur mittelhochdeutschen Grammatik - Expertenkolloquium an der Universität Halle (Saale) am 26. und 27.1.1996. - In: Zeitschrift flir deutsche Philologie 115, 443-4. Ronneberger-Sibold, E. (1989): Historische Phonologie und Morphologie des Deutschen. Eine kommentierte Bibliographie zur strukturellen Forschung. - Tübingen: Niemeyer (= Germanistische Arbeitshefte. Ergänzungsreihe 3). Schweikle, G. ('1990): Germanisch-deutsche Sprachgeschichte im Überblick. - Stuttgart: Metzler. Simmler, F. (1987): Morphologische Grundlagen zur Beschreibung althochdeutscher Schreibdialekte. - In: R. Bergmann u.a. (Hgg.).- Althochdeutsch. Bd I. Grammatik, Glossen und Texte, 114-46. Heidelberg: Winter (= Germanische Bibliothek. NF. 3. Reihe: Untersuchungen). Solms, H.-J. (1984): Die morphologischen Veränderungen der Stammvokale der starken Verben im Frühneuhochdeutschen. Untersucht an Texten des 14. bis 18. Jahrhunderts. - Diss. Bonn. - (1990): Das System der Präfixverben in der frühesten Überlieferung des Hartmannschen ,Gregorius' (Hs. A aus dem Alemannischen des 13. Jahrhunderts). - In: W.Besch (Hg.): Deutsche Sprachgeschichte. Grundlagen, Methoden, Perspektiven. Festschrift für Johannes Erben zum 65. Geburtstag, 115-28. Bern u.a.: Lang.

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Sonderegger, St. (1979): Grundzüge deutscher Sprachgeschichte. Diachronie des Sprachsystems. Bd.]: Einfiihrung - Genealogie - Konstanten. - Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. - (^1987): Althochdeutsche Sprache und Literatur. - Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Teuchert, H. (1931/32): Rezension zu Joesten 1931. - In: Teuthonista 8, 117-19. Wegera, K.-P. (1990): Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik und Sprachgeschichte. - In: W.Besch (Hg.): Deutsche Sprachgeschichte. Grundlagen, Methoden, Perspektiven. Festschrift für Johannes Erben zum 65. Geburtstag, 103-113. Bern u.a.: Lang. - (Hg.) (1991): Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik als Aufgabe. Berlin: Erich Schmidt (= Sonderheft der Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 110). Weinhold, K. (M883): Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik. (Neudruck 1967). - Paderborn: Schöningh. Wilhelm, F. (I931j.- Vorrede zum Corpus der Altdeutschen Originalurkunden bis 1300. Lahr: Moritz Schauenburg. Wurzel, W.U. (1984): Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag (= studia grammatica XXI).

Jonathan

West

The Newcastle Germanic Weak Verbs Project: Conjectures on the weak preterite The Newcastle Weak Verbs Project seeks to shed new light on the origin and development of the weak verbs by examining the evidence from each of the Old Germanic languages. To date, the evidence of Gothic, Old High German and Old Norse has been analyzed in detail. The methodology involves stratifying the verbs according to the probable period of their formation (pre-Gmc, Gmc, NWGmc, NGmc, WGmc, Gothic, OHG, ON, etc.), and then examining the formal-semantic oppositions which emerge for each period. Analogical extension of these oppositions helps to explain how the weak verbs emerged as the only productive pattem in late Germanic, and may also provide the key to the origin of the dental preterite.

1. B a c k g r o u n d

The aim of the Newcastle Weak Verbs Project is to create an etymological database of all the Germanic weak verbs. This will allow the weak verbs to be sorted according to their relative age and a group of archaic verbs to be isolated. Apart from providing an etymological reference work, this data will help to clarify how the weak verbs developed and subsequently spread as an inflectional category. The complexities surrounding the formation and development of the Germanic weak verbs must represent one of the oldest problems in Germanic philology. This paper describes a project designed to throw new light on the genesis and spread of the weak flexion through the creation of an etymological database of all the weak verbs in the Old Germanic languages. An etymological profile of each weak verb will allow its relative chronological age to be determined. In this way, a core group of old formations can be isolated and subsequent developments into the historical period can be outlined. A detailed review of the history of research into the question of the origin of the weak flexion would be impractical here (see Collitz (1912) for research before that date, and Tops (1974) for work up to 1974; thereafter see Bammesberger (1984, 1987, 1988), Birkmann (1987), Fullerton (1989), Kortlandt (1989), Manczak (1984), Matzel (1988), Rauch (1973), Shields (1982, 1988, 1997)). Nevertheless, before describing this project, its problems and its possibilities in greater detail, I propose to review briefly the background to the work and describe its context. From the point of view of inflection, it is universally agreed that Germanic has two large classes of verbs: weak verbs which form their preterite by means of a dental suffix; and strong verbs which form their preterite by means of ablaut. It is less certain where the so-called 'preterite present' verbs fit into this scheme: they are usually regarded as a separate class, but from a morphological point of view they can be regaided as a sub-class of the weak verbs, as they also form their preterite with a dental suffix. The Germanic strong verbs are conventionally presented as seven ablaut classes (Krähe 1967: 101-2). The weak verbs are conventionally presented as four classes differentiated by stem (e.g. Krähe

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1967: 115). By and large, the streng verbs form a closed set, the numbers of which tend to decrease in the historical Germanic languages. Their principal means of marking the preterite and past participle, by vowel gradation (apophony er ablaut), is parallelled in other IE languages and may therefore be of Indo-European age. The weak verbs, on the other hand, form an open set in the sense that they are the productive method of forming new verbs. The morphological marker of the weak preterite, the dental suffix, has no unambiguous parallels outside Germanic and is therefore generally regaided as a Germanic Innovation. It is largely for this reason that the weak verbs are reckoned to be younger than the strong verbs in terms of relative chronology.

2. Problems

This simple picture must be qualified in two important ways. Firstly, while it is certain that some strong verbs are old, there are also strong verbs for which there is no good IE etymology and which may therefore not necessarily be old. Equations such as Gothic leihvan 'to lend' (cf. Greek XEITTO, Skt rinäkti , Lat linquo, despite the differences in present class) and Gothic bairan 'to bear' (Greek (fiepo, Latin fero, Sanskrit bharami ) illustrate the first group, and an example of the second might be Gothic gretan 'to weep' (Lehmann 1986: 160); the etymology of tekan 'to touch' is by no means clear (1986: 342); ßwahan 'to wash' is also difficult (1986: 369). This list could be extended considerably (see Seebold 1970). Moreover, it has been recognized for some time that Germanic has innovated in the area of the strong verbs by restructuring and systematizing inherited IE ablaut (van Coetsem 1970: 82ff.; Keller 1978: 96). Some strong verbs may also have been formed on a secondary basis: the IE root *säg-, for example, which forms the basis for the class I weak verb Gmc *sökjanan, gives rise to Gmc *sakanan 'to dispute (legally)' by analogy. The pattem is the weak verb *sökjanan and the formal-semantic Opposition similar pairs originally represented (an Opposition historically attested in Gothic hvötjan / gahvötjan / hvöta vs. gahvatjan\ stödjan vs. standan\ ufhlöhjan vs. hlahan, etc.). So, when we look at the system as a whole rather than at individual verbs, we see that the development of the Germanic strong verbs is determined by innovation rather than the inheritance of already existing pattems. Secondly, while it is certain that the weak verbs are productive and therefore that many formations are recent, there are also examples of weak verbs which are undoubtedly old, in so far as they have well-supported IE root etymologies. Older formations are not hard to find, and include Gothic sokjan 'to seek', already alluded to, (cf. Greek r|yeo|Liai, Latin sagio, etc., Lehmann 1986: 318), rodjan 'to talk' (cf. rädhnöti 'prepares, achieves', rädhate 'is successful', OIr. rddid 'says' Lehmann 1986: 286; Thumeysen 1975: 419) and ßagkjan 'to think' (Latin tongere, Lehmann 1986: 353). In the majority of cases, it is only possible to reconstruct a root etymology, which is probably not too surprising, as the inflectional classes we know from Latin, Greek and Sanskrit only developed in the individual daughter languages of IE (Meillet 1964: 195). Apart from a few exceptions, all the neologisms in the historical Germanic languages are weak: obvious examples from Gothic are sildaleikjan 'to wonder at', paired with the adjective sildaleiks 'wonderful'; uflilohjan

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'to make laugh', paired with hlahjan 'to laugh', but this list could be lengthened considerably on the basis of evidence from any of the old Gmc languages (the evidence for OHG is assembled by Bailey (1997); for ON by Skinner (1998); and for Gothic by Skinner (1994)). In the modern languages, new weak verbs are being cteated all the time (for German, see Fleischer and Barz 1992: 305ff.).

3. Possible Solutions

It is thus apparent that both the strong verbs and weak verbs have taken IE material and restructured it to produce new paradigms, although the details of how this process might have been achieved are far from clear in the case of the weak verbs. Up to now, two main theories regarding the development of weak verb flexion have been advanced, both of which fail to fit the facts in important ways. 1. The 'tun Theory' rests on the assumption of a periphrastic construction consisting of some form of the lexical verb (the stem of the verb is usually given in reconstructions) and the IE root *dhe- with secondary endings, which could have had non-present function. Thus Runic Norse tawido 'I did' may be derived from *tawiööm, etc. (cf. *ööm > OHG tuom / tuon, etc.). The difficulties with this theory are numerous. For instance, there is no independent corroboration for the periphrasistic construction. It is also necessary to explain how a past tense developed from the stem and what became the present tense of the verb 'to do' (even though it may be in origin an aorist), as we should expect a present tense to result as in English or German with non-lexical 'do'. Neither are the phonological developments straightforward: the vowels only really work for the Gothic plural and Optative and the altemation of [t] and [ö] is not easily explained by this method. 2. The '-ro- Theory' assumes that the weak preterite paradigm is derived from the fd-participle which provides the past participle for the vast majority of weak verbs. The major problem here is to show how this process took place, for which we must have recourse to speculative analogies. West (1990), building on the work of Annerholm (1956), showed how a complex set of oppositions between original IE nasal presents, adjectives in Gmc *-naz, Gmc strong verbs and their past participles, and the preterite of weak verbs of Class II provided the basis for a new paradigm; analogical creation then allowed new formations paired with suitable adjectives and weak verbs of Class I, producing the productive formal-semantic Opposition characteristic of Gothic as we know it. In essence, Gothic Class IV is abstracted from pre-Gothic Class II via analogy, and it is only necessary to account for three classes of weak verbs in Germanic. But this just pushes the problem one stage further back. However, an important principle is established for the Germanic material in this work, namely the possible emergence of new paradigms by analogical creation using Clements supported by solid reconstructions.

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4. T h e P r o j e c t

The solidity of the reconstructions is a crucial issue here. However the weak flexion may have evolved, its development should be made clear from a study of the earliest Stratum of weak verbs. It is in this context that the Newcastle Weak Verbs Project has developed. Over the past several years I have attempted with students and colleagues to isolate these archaic verbs by stratifying the weak verb corpora in the old Germanic languages on the basis of their etymology. We began with an analysis of the evidence of each of the Old Germanic languages. Atthis point, data is available only for Gothic (Skinner 1994), Old High German (Bailey 1997) and Old Norse (Skinner 1998), so we are as yet unable to dtaw up a definitive list of the verbs in the earliest Stratum, although it would appear that there are over a hundred candidates for this category. From the point of view of the Old High German evidence, for example, out of the corpus of ca. 4,700 weak verbs, some 70% are OHG neologisms, ca. 18% can be reconstructed for West Germanic, a further 10% are Germanic or Northwest Germanic and around 2% could be pre-Germanic (Bailey 1997). Given the large number of verbs in the corpus as a whole, even 2% provides a reasonably large number of verbs to begin to reconstruct the earliest developments. Work is in progress for Old Saxon, Old English, Old Frisian and Old Low Franconian. It is further probable that the medieval languages such as Middle High German will contribute to the data with additional verbs which happen to be unattested at an earlier date. There will also be Germanic verbs which have been lost in the historically attested languages, but which can be reconstructed on the basis of word formation pattems. For example, Gmc *aiö- 'to b u m ' , which we see in Skt inddhe 'entzündet, entflammt' and Greek aidco 'zünde an, brenne', survives in Germanic only in formations such as * aiöaz m(o) 'fire' (OE öd, OHG eit m. 'Glut, Scheiterhaufen'); *aid-s->o{{ä) 'Feuer, Feuerstätte' (OIc eisa f. 'fire'; MLG ese f. 'Esse'); * aiöstaz 'oven' (OE äst 'oast' (in Modem English oast-house) (Falk and Torp 1979: 2). The methodology is deceptively simple. The etymology of every weak verb in the languages studied has been investigated and, on the basis of its cognates, has been assigned to an historical Stratum. This may be economically illustrated using Gothic data. For example, Gothic faurmuljan 'to muzzle' (< faur + muljan) has no cognates outside Gothic and will therefore probably be a Gothic formation. The existence of a Gothic *mül is suggested by Old Icelandic müli, OFrisian mala sm., MLG mül sn., OHG müla sf. and mäl sn., which are probably sufficient to reconstruct a Gmc *mulan (see Lehmann 1986: I I I ) , which the limited Gothic corpus does not record. This is a typical Gothic formation with the prefix faur- being used to form transitive verbs paired with nouns, sometimes with a corresponding simple verb (e.g. faursigljan, sigljan 'to seal', cf. sigljo 'sigillum'), and sometimes without (c.g. faurdammjan 'to block') (Streitberg 1910: 119; West 1977: 154). By contrast, Gothic fulljan 'to fill' is probably an earlier formation. Ol fylla, OEfyllan, OFris fullia, OS fullian, OHG füllen, and MHG vüllen suggest a Gmc first class weak verb *fullijanan (see Lehmann 1986: 131; Kluge 1989: 236), derived from an adjective Gmc *fullaz / *fulnaz reconstructed on the basis of Gothic/M//5, Ol fullr, OE ful, OHG fol, etc. (Lehmann 1986: 131). This is also a common Germanic (maybe also Common Germanic!) method of forming deadjectival verbs. Part of the difficulty with this methodology lies in the fact that one can never be sure that a verb formed by a method which remained productive well into the historical period of

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Germanic

Weak Verbs Project

55

many Germanic languages was not indeed formed 'afiresh' on more than one occasion in more than one language. One could also argue at length about the number and type of cognates necessary to reconstruct a word in a proto-language. Ideally, a weak verb will be well attested in all three branches of Germanic in order to be reconstructed: Gmc *fullijanan (see above) fulfills these conditions well. However, absence of evidence from one branch of Gmc need not present an insuperable difficulty. Lexical loss is common in languages, so a weak verb such as Gmc *brengijanan (Gothic briggan, OE bringan, OHG bringan, etc.), which happens to have been lost in NGmc (see Lehmann 1986: 79; Kluge 1989: 106) should not be excluded from the Gmc list on this account. Moreover, we are not always this well informed. The Gothic corpus in particular does not record a number of etyma which we may be sure are Common Germanic: the verb *breutanan 'to break' is reflected in Ol brjöta, OE breotan, MHG briezen (Falk and Torp 1979: 281). Its Common Gmc credentials are therefore established despite its absence in Gothic, and, to my knowledge, OHG as well. The Solution to the problem of the uncertainty inherent in reconstructed data is ruthlessly to exclude any verbs for which there is any doubt, or at least to treat them separately from those about which we can be reasonably confident. Despite this caveat, the conclusion for the prehistoric strata revealed by this procedure is therefore that they contain maximal sets of verbs within which the true sets of verbs formed during a given period will be found. As the research is not yet complete, it is too early to offer even a tentative list of the earliest weak verbs as we have isolated them, let alone a comprehensive theory of the origin and development of the weak verbs. However, there are certain aspects of the weak verbs and the formal-semantic oppositions they enter into which might allow us to favour one theory over another: 1. they are associated with the development from IE to Germanic and become productive in the immediate prehistoric and historical periods; 2. they do not generally show ablaut within the verbal paradigm, although they may show an ablaut relationship with other words formed from the same root; 3. they are associated with the *-to- participle, seen in Skt. (sruta- 'heard, renowned', Greek KXvTog, Lat. inclutus 'renowned'; 4. they are associated with IE present stem formations (see Krämer 1971) and nominal forms (especially, in the early period, i - s t e m s ) .

If the weak preterite is inherited from IE, and has not been borrowed from a language yet to be identified, we must therefore look among the forms of IE which become past tenses (the perfect on the one hand and various aorist formations on the other) for forms which share this profile. The IE perfect is the basis of the Germanic strong preterite, with its o-grade vocalism in the Singular (e.g. band 'he bound') and zero grade in the plural (e.g. bundum 'we bound') (Meid 1971: 16-17). The plural may also reflect root aorist forms, which also had zero grade (Meid 1971: 15). Root aorist forms probably also form the basis of the second person Singular of the strong preterite in West Germanic (OHG thu gäbi, M H G du gäbe 'thou gavest'); here the incidence of the prohibitive ni curi 'noli, d.h. erwähle nicht' which is formally identical with the preterite kuri 'du wähltest' establishes the connection with the IE injunctive, which is nothing other than the aorist without the augment.

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Curiously, Germanic is alone among the westem IE groups in not showing reflexes of the j-aorist, despite the fact that this was the most productive method of forming the aorist in late IE. It was merged with the perfect in several IE groups (Celtic and Italic), but lemained separate in Indo-Iranian, Greek and Slavonic. It was originally an athematic formation with secondary endings (Greek eSei^a 'I showed' < *e-deik-s-m) and therefore contrasted with the thematic formations characteristic of the asigmatic root aorist (Greek eiSov 'I showed' < *e-wid-o-n) (Szemerenyi 1970: 262-3). The stem showed ablaut in the root, but the various languages have clearly regulated matters idiosyncratically: Sanskrit has the long grade in the active and in the middle voice either the zero grade, or, in roots in i or u, the e-grade. The sigmatic aorist stem in Greek usually has the same ablaut grade as the present and it is a matter of some dispute as to which Situation is the earlier. This does not immediately affect the argumentation for Germanic, as it shows, as with the IE future, that we are dealing with a convergent development with origins in PIE, rather than a well-developed IE category. The evidence suggests that each daughter language also has an idiosyncratic distribution of the i-aorist and has extended characteristic types by analogy, even retaining the -smarker, presumably also by analogy, where it should have been lost by normal phonological development. In Greek for example, the s-aorist replaced other types (thus Greek e-^ev^a has replaced the *yewg-m implied by Sanskrit yojam. Rix 1976: 217). Intervocalic *-s- was regularly lost in Greek, but {s} in forms such as e^iXrjcra was retained, the usual explanation by analogy with roots ending in a consonant (such as eSei^ä). Similarly, Latin has generalized the forms with the lengthened vowel, e.g.vexT < *wegh-; texl (present tego, and also extended the type to roots which did not end in a plosive, e.g. maneo, mänsl. There were some other analogical extensions: vfvö does not aid in a plosive, the perfect värbeing by analogy with OLat fivö : fixT, fivö being the regulär reflex of IE *dhig'"- (Palmer 1974: 273). In Old Irish (Thumeysen 1975: 336; McCone 1987: 57), all weak verbs have the so-called i-preterite. These are largely denominatives and their stems end either in a neutral vowel (a-quality, in which case they are compared to the Latin first conjugation in ->a-, Gmc class II *->on verbs, etc.) or a palatal vowel (i-quality, in which case they correspond to formations with an original -i- or ->e-, for instance Gmc class I *-jan and class III *->en verbs). The j-preterite was formed by adding s to the final vowel of the general verbal stem: thus caraid 'loves' has a preterite carais and leicid 'leaves' has a preterite leicis (Lewis and Pedersen 1974: 291), which implies (with analogical levelling of the vowels) *kara-s-t and *leik"e-s-t repectively. However, as postvocalic *s should have been lost, for example in the first person singular *kara-s-m > *karasem and HeUCe-s- m > *leikesem, the -ss resulting from the pret. sg. 3 must have been generalized (Thumeysen 1975: 417). This Situation is reminiscent of Greek, but the Greek Solution Thumeysen regards as 'unsafe' as far as Old Irish is concemed (1975: 417). In Old Church Slavonic, the s-aorist endings (singular *-som) are added to stems ending in a nasal and vocalic stems, although they have spread to verbs ending in a consonant which otherwise might form a simple aorist (Leskien 1969: 132). Sanskrit has developed several sigmatic aorists, and, if the Greek Situation is original, has innovated with regard to ablaut (Mayrhofer 1965: 85-87). The variety of the realizations of the aorist in IE languages serves on the one hand to emphasize how anomalous Germanic is, if it does not share in this common Innovation. After all, the root aorist and traces of the injunctive are present. On the other hand we may

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surmise that, if the i-aorist does play a role in the development of the weak preterite in Germanic, it is likely to have just as idiosyncratic a distribution, form and development as it does in the other language groups, so we are unlikely to be presented with a series of 'equations' of the type Greek r]veYKOV = Skt anamsa. However, the s-aorist has precisely those characteristic features we are looking for in an antecedent of the weak preterite. It is late; it is associated with secondary formations and with the ;d-participle; there is no ablaut between the present and the aorist. From the point of view of its distribution, therefore, the IE i-aorist has seductive similarities with the Germanic weak preterite. One parallel is provided by the Irish f-preterite, which Watkins (1963: 156-174) has shown to be derived from the 5-aorist. The Common Celtic aorist forms which underlie the Old Irish conjunct forms 1 sg. -biurt, 2 sg. birt and 3 sg. -bert, for example, Watkins reconstructs as 1 *ber-s-ü 2 *ber-s-T 3 »ber-s-t > *bert

The 3 sg. form became *bert by a regulär sound change and was then re-interpreted as *ber-t-0. The suffix was subsequently generalized and we arrive at the forms which underlie the attested Old Irish paradigm (Watkins 1963: 171). 1 *ber-t-ü 2 *ber-t-I 3 *ber-t-0

This change occur with roots in -/, -r and -m, which accounts for the curious distribution of the r-preterite in Old Irish (strong verbs with roots ending in these consonants). But the Germanic forms cannot be dealt with so simply. For one thing, the weak verbs in the historical Old Germanic languages do not have such a clear distribution, and, until we can reconstruct the most archaic Stratum of weak verbs, or at least an approximation to that set, it will remain difficult to make any generalizations in this regard. This indeed is one of the features of primitive Germanic which the Newcastle Weak Verbs Project hopes to uncover. For another, the sound laws are not nearly so accommodating: pre-Celtic *-st# becomes quite regularly and may then be generalized. This sound law is just not available for Germanic. One formation has been isolated which could possibly be derived from the s-aorist: the form Gothic wissa is conventionally taken to reflect the periphrasis *wit-döm (i.e. zero grade of the root plus present of 'tun', but, as explained above, the meaning does not really work: *'I do seen*). However, it could equally well reflect *wid-s-ö, with replacement of the athematic aorist ending with the ending reconstructed by Watkins for Old Irish (1963: 171ff.). The Project is now searching for other possible s-aorists in Germanic. Discussions regarding the origin of the weak preterite are often conducted and presented as if IE just had an active voice. But IE also had a middle. Consequently, as well as 'What happened to the aorist?', we must therefore ask 'What happened to the middle?'. Active and middle paradigms could be used with the same or similar meanings, as is evidenced by active-middle doublets like Greek rawrai 'streckt sich' beside TEIVCO 'streckt' (Pokomy 1959: 1065). It will help our case if we can show that a significant number of weak verbs in the core to be reconstructed have an affmity with middle roots in IE, in so far as these

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can be ascertained (e.g. Gothic man -munnum : Skt manyate 'denkt', Greek fiaivofiai, Old Irish muiniur 'ich glaube'). Gothic has a middle voice in the present (with passive meaning), derived conventionally from the IE middle, e.g. nimada < *nim-e-tai, although the vowel -a- instead of -/- does suggest that the -o- from the first person (cf. Greek (pepofiai from *bheroma\) has been generalized; the development of the final diphthong *-oi to -a is explained by the acute accent (Stoßton). However, passives in the past tense are expressed periphrastically. If the aorist middle had a role to play in the formation of the Germanic weak preterite, this could account for the distribution of passive forms in Gothic. As far as the present passive forms are concemed, Germanic belongs to the r-less languages of IE (compare Latin sequitur

>oo

could have been formed from a three aspect system in Descending Time as represented in (6). (6) Universe Time oo< Imperfective

event time |< x

Perfective

event time |-l |- past development

I follow here the traditional view according to which Irish has a preterite (called 'Past' in grammars of Irish) and a habitual past (called 'Habitual' in Irish grammars); c f The Christian Brothers (1991: 92f), Ö Siadhail (1989: 177f), Ö Baoill (1994: 205). Mac Eoin (1993: 124) and Russell (1995: 98) both use the terms 'preterite' and 'imperfect' without giving any justification for their choice or any details of the use of these forms. Mac Eoin (1993: 124) writes only that the Imperfect "denotes habitual or repeated action in past time" (which would again suggest a habitual past) and that the preterite is "the narrative tense, denoting a Single action in the past" and Russell (1995: 98) remarks with regard to the meaning of these forms: "beside the preterite, which refers to Single completed actions, the imperfect tends to refer to habitual activities". Finally, John Hewson has suggested to me that the Irish preterite is an aorist and the habitual past an imperfect. This would imply that Irish belongs to the imperfect rather than to the preterite languages.

217

The German tense-aspect-mood system

With regard to the relationship between preterites and perfects, Dahl (1996: 365) remarks: "Aus typologischer Sicht muß man die Situation im Hochdeutschen als ein typisches Übergangssystem charakterisieren". Indeed there are several languages in Europe in which the perfect is currently in the process of superseding the preterite or the aorist, or which have recently undergone this process. Disregarding the now isolated Yiddish, what we might call the 'Präteritumschwundgebiet' or, more generally, a 'Past-Schwundgebiet"* is again a coherent area (map 2). This time, German belongs to a group of ten languages characterized by the fact that they are developing (or have recently developed) their perfect into a past.' However, if we now look at the division of the languages in the sample into the three past areas, there are only two preterite languages belonging to the perfect-into-past languages, namely German and Upper Sorbian. That is, only these two languages have both the feature 'preterite' and the feature 'development of perfect into past'. Map 3. SuperCompound pluperfects

• ^ ^

ANT;PRET

ANT:AOR:IMPF

present anlerior > past developmenl

other languages: GPST plupeifect: supercorapound forms

In fact, the Situation is somewhat more complicated. In German and Upper Sorbian it is the preterite which is vanishing, in French, Italian, and Albanian it is the aorist (with the imperfect remaining as it is), in Serbo-Croatian and in Rumanian, both aorist and imperfect are being replaced by the perfect. I use the term 'past' as a cover term for the four categories PRET, IMPF, AOR, and general past.

218

Rolf Thieroff

But of course there are also considerable differences between German and Upper Sorbian, of which one is particularly relevant here. More often than not (but by no means always), the development of a perfect into a past leads to a so-called supercompound pluperfect like e.g. German hat gemacht gehabt or French a eu fait, i.e. a form made up of the perfectauxiliary + the past participle of that same auxiliary + the past participle of the main verb. Map 3 shows that German shares the feature of having a supercompound form with five other languages. However, such a form does not exist in Upper Sorbian. As a result, German is the only language of the sample which belongs at the same time 1) to the preterite languages and 2) to the perfect-to-past languages and 3) to the languages with a supercompound pluperfect.

4. Perfect, progressive and future

I come now to a second group of tense-aspect features. Map 4 shows, in a way, the negative of map 2. Map 4 highlights those languages which have a stable present anterior (or perfect). This means languages which, firstly, do have a perfect and where, secondly, there is no tendency for these perfect-forms to supersede the preterite or the aorist. Map 4. Stable perfects

staWe present anterior ("perfect")

The German tense-aspect-mood

219

system

Map 5. Progressives

Ic« Nor

Rn Swd

LHi

/

LSrb USrb

Pel

Knn Yid

Rut BIr

Ci

Ukr Hng

Slv«

$Cr

nun Hg

Ttk

Alb Grk PROG

Once again, German lies within a large area with languages which do not have a stable perfect. Note, however that German is again situated on the fringe of this area. Map 5 marks out those languages which have some kind of progressive construction, irrespective of to what extent this construction is grammaticalized.® The feature of having a progressive construction is shared by 18 languages, among them German, which, once again, is situated on the border of the progressive area. If we now combine the map of those languages having a stable perfect with the map of those with a progressive construction, we get the picture presented on map 6, which shows that there are only three languages which do have a progressive and which at the same time do not have a stable perfect. These three languages are German, French, and Italian. I shall retum to this group in section 4.

In English (and similarly in Icelandic, Irish, and Maltese) the progressive is highly grammaticalized, in the sense that it is obligatory in the appropriate contexts. In the remaining languages the progressive constructions are optional, as e.g. in ist am Singen in German.

220

RolfThieroff

Map 6. Correlation of progressive and perfect

Stahle present anterior Cmaritime petfect")

PROG

Another feature mentioned by Dahl is what he calls futurelessness, or, as I prefer to call it, the weakly grammaticalized future. This feature is common to languages where future time reference in most contexts need not be expressed by a future form, i.e. in such languages the present can normally be used to refer to future time. However, all these languages do still have forms which must, as I see it, be categorized as future forms, even though their use is optional, just as is the use of progressive forms in these languages.' This, in Dahl's words, 'northem European futureless area' is shown on map 7 together with the stable perfect area and the progressive area. The result is comparable with the result of the investigation of the past tenses. Again we see that there is only one language which at the same time 1) has a progressive, 2) does not have a stable perfect, and 3) has a weakly grammaticalized future, and that language is German. In addition, German is the only one of the three languages mentioned earlier (German, French, Italian; i.e. those with a progressive but without a stable perfect) that belongs to the preterite languages group.

Exceptions are Icelandic and West-Frisian which belong to the 'futureless area', but have a strongly grammaticalized progressive. Cf. map 9.

The German tense-aspect-mood

221

system

Map 7. Stahle perfect, progressive, and weakly grammaticalized future

staNe present anterior ("maritime perfect")

^

PROG

weakly grammaticalized FUT

To sum up, each feature we have looked at exists in a smaller or larger group of European languages, so that German shares its tense-aspect features with up to twenty other languages of the sample. However, at the same time it tums out that German is the only language with this specific combination of feamres. So far then, both the hypotheses which we set out to test would seem to he valid.

5. A 'Charlemagne Sprachbund'?

Having shown that, with respect to the combination of tense-aspect features, German differs from all other languages of the sample, a second question arises. How many differences are there in fact between German and the other languages, or, to put it differently, which languages are most and which are least similar to German? In Order to answer this question, I have adopted a proposal made by van der Auwera (1998). Van der Auwera poses the question of whether the Whorfian 'Standard Average European', or SAE, really exists, and he makes an interesting suggestion as to how one could try to find out. Van der Auwera begins by making a distinction between SAE 'in a Wide sense', which is more or less the SAE as Whorf understands it,' and SAE 'in a narrow

"Since, with respect to the traits compared, there is little difference between English, French, German, or other European languages with the POSSIBLE (but doubtful) exception of Balto-

222

RolfThierojf

sense', which is characterized by more specific features. The author then investigates a sample of fifty European languages (including most of the thirty-nine languages of my sample) with respect to various features of adverbial constructions, and lists the number of adverbial features the languages have in common. In so doing, van der Auwera makes the assumption that the "possession of fewer features defme[s] the lower degrees of SAE-hood and areas of lower SAE-hood", and observes that "it seems that all areas are homogeneous and that the areas of the lower degree always contain the areas of the higher degrees" (ibid.). Van der Auwera's conclusion is that, with respect to five adverbial domains investigated,' the languages with the most similarities are German, Dutch and French, followed by Italian and Polish. Consequently, according to van der Auwera, these five languages are "the core düster", i.e. the languages which are "most SAE" or "core SAE languages", and he proposes calling the area of these languages the 'Charlemagne Sprachbund', "by virtue of the fact [that] Charlemagne was the ruler, both the first and the last one, of more or less the area where we now find French, Italian, German, and Dutch". Map 8. FUT and restrictions of its combinability

Big

weakly grammalicaUzed F U T

Q

n o F U T + past

Trk

^

^

©

no F U T + A N T

Slavic and non-Indo-European, I have lumped these languages into one group called SAE, or 'Standard Average European"' (Benjamin Lee Whorf, quoted in van der Auwera (1998)). These domains are: 1) phasal adverbials, 2) equative and similative constructions, 3) adverbial subordinators, 4) scalar and universal concessive conditionals, and 5) systems of adverbial Subordination.

The German tense-aspect-mood

223

system

Map 9. Aspectual areas

AOR:IMPF PROG

PFViIPFV V

•

HAB

PROGhighJygrammalicaUzed

Having carried out this analysis, and looking for further evidence for the 'Charlemagne Sprachbund', van der Auwera then analysed the results of Thieroff (1999) with respect to eight tense-aspect features. In addition to the features presented above, van der Auwera took some further features into account which are documented on maps 8 and 9. Ahogether, van der Auwera uses the following eight features (ibid.): (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) (viii)

the 'present anterior' has developed into a 'past' there is no stable present anterior there are supercompound pluperfects the language has a future, however weak its grammaticalization, which is combinable with a past or an anterior there is a progressive the progressive is not highly grammaticalized there is no habitual there is no 'Slavic aspect' [i.e. no Opposition between a PFV and an IPFV aspect, as in the Slavic languages]

The result of his investigation is presented in map 10.

224

Rolf Thieroff

Map 10. 'SAE or Charlemagne tense aspect features' (van der Auwera (1998))

Arm /

Grk

X

Mit 8 features 7 features 5 featuies 4 features 3 features

Van der Auwera arrives at a picture which does not differ greatly from his own findings on adverbial constructions. The SAE-core consists of only two languages, German and French, while in the outer core come (expectedly) Italian and (somewhat surprisingly) Albanian. However, there are some problems with van der Auwera's results. The first question to consider is whether these eight features are all equally important - for example one might regard feature no. vii (there is no habitual) as less important, since only a few languages have a habitual, and the habitual is the only category which, unlike all other categories, does not appear in a coherent area. A second question is why van der Auwera selected precisely these eight features and not others, such as for example the feature preterite vs. imperfect/aorist (vs. neither of the two). I believe that this feature is more important than many others and would have to be included here. Thirdly, it must be stressed that we are in fact not dealing with tense-aspect categories in the European languages, but with tenseaspect-mood categories; tense-aspect and mood, which together are the "inherent verb categories" (Anderson 1985: 172, 190) or 'semantic' inflectional categories of the verb (Kurylowicz 1964: 24; cf. also Thieroff 1992: llf.), are interdependent and often hard to distinguish, and they should not be analysed independently. So, what needs to be added to the whole picture of tense-aspect categories in the languages of Europe (as presented on maps 1 to 9) is an analysis of the mood categories in these languages.

The German tense-aspect-mood

system

225

6. Subjunctives

On map 11, some mood-areas, or rather, subjunctive areas, are presented. Only those nonindicative moods which can reasonably be called subjunctive are taken into account. Since with the moods the exact analysis of their meaning is even more difficult than with tense and aspect,'" it is, strictly speaking, necessary to justify why what I subsume under the notion of subjunctive for each language here is indeed an item of the same cross-linguistic category. However for reasons of space I cannot go into this here. What is interesting about map 11 is the fact that here again we have some larger coherent areas - the largest being the area of the (almost) subjunctiveless languages in the northwest. There are still some remnants of the subjunctive in all of these languages, but in none of them is the subjunctive really productive. In Dutch there are only "a few lexicalized remnants" of the subjunctive (De Schutter 1994: 455); in Danish and Norwegian only some idiomatic Optative expressions with the subjunctive have survived (Fabricius-Hansen 1994: 51); in Swedish the present subjunctive "is used mainly in fixed constructions such as Leve kungen! '(long) live the King!"' (Dahl 1995: 64) and it is only the preterite subjunctive of the verb vara 'be' "which is still relatively frequent in daily speech, whereas the Subjunctive forms of other verbs sound a bit stilted even in the written language" (Dahl 1995: 65). In English, the subjunctive is "generally an optional and stylistically somewhat marked variant of other constructions" (Quirk et al. 1985: 155) which furthermore is distinctive only in the third person singular and with be. Finally, in Irish, the "optative usage of the subjunctive is now largely confined to petrified phrases and its subordinating functions have for the most part been taken over by the future or by forms combining the habitual aspect and the past" (Ö Siadhail 1989: 179), and according to Mac Eoin (1993: 143) "the subjunctive mood [...] is likely to disappear completely"." Another larger group is the group of languages where the subjunctive is in the process of developing into a pure agreement category. In these languages (French, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian, and Bulgarian) the subjunctive tends to occur only in fixed positions such as after certain verbs and/or certain prepositions, where it is not in Opposition to the indicative; in other words, the occurrence of the subjunctive is or is becoming determined merely by the syntax. A language where this development is almost complete is French, where the indicative and the subjunctive are in Opposition only in certain relative clauses (Wagner/Pinchon 1991: 350).

This was one of the reasons for not taking the moods into consideration in Thieroff (1999). Whether Greek belongs to this group of 'almost subjunctiveless' languages too, as on map 11, is a much debated issue. For Hedin (1995: 248ff.) there is a subjunctive in Greek, Mackridge's (1985: 103f., 174f.) Position is somewhat ambivalent, and in Thieroff (1995: 16f.) I argue against the existence of a subjunctive form in Modem Greek.

226

Rolf Thieroff

Map 11. Subjunctive mood and restrictions of its combinability with tenses

o

(almost) no morphological mood distinction

ff

subjunctive developing into agreement calegot>' O l no combination with FUT

•

no or almost no tense restrictions

no combinations with FAST nor with FUT Other languages: no combination with tense

There are also many languages which do not belong to a larger area. It is worth noting that German is one of only three languages with no restrictions with respect to the combinability with tense categories, i.e. in German each tense exists in the indicative and in the subjunctive mood. The only other language which has exactly the same combinations of the subjunctive and the tenses is Icelandic; in Portuguese, there is one restriction, although this is not indicated on map 11.

7. Fourteen tense-aspect-mood features

If we now take all the phenomena described thus far, i.e. all features represented on maps 1 to 9 and on map 11, we arrive at a total of fourteen tense-aspect-mood features, which are listed in table 5. Each feature is described such that it is positive for German, with the result that each difference with respect to German is indicated by a minus sign. The reason for taking German as the starting point is firstly, trivially, that it is German which I intend to compare to the other European languages. Secondly, choosing precisely German to compare to the other languages is justifiable on the basis of van der Auwera's results, since German is one of the three languages - alongside French and Dutch - which are always in the centre in van der Auwera's maps, i.e. 'most SÄE'.

The German tense-aspect-mood

227

system

Table 5. 14 tense-aspect-mood features in 20 languages #

Grm

Fr

It

Alb

Fin

Ice

Dut

+

+

+

Dan

Spn

SCr

+

_

_

PRET (* IMPF/AOR or GPST)

1

PERF>PRETorAOR

2

+

+

+

+

no stable perfect

3

+

+

+

+

superCompound pluperfect

4

+

+

+

FUT weakly grammaticalized

5

+

-

-

+

+

+

+

-

-

FUT + PRET/IMPF (= 'past future')

6

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

-

FUT + ANT (= future perfect)

7

+

+

+

+

-

+

+

+

+

+

there is a PROG

8

+

+

+

-

+

+

+

+

+

-

PROG weakly grammaticalized

9

+

+

+

+

+

_

+

+

+

+

noHAB

10

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

no PFVAPFV-opposition

11

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

_

there is a subjunctive mood

12

+

+

+

+

+

+

-

-

+

+

subj. combinable with tenses

13

+

+

-

+

+

0

0

+

-

subj. * 'agreement'-category

14

+

+

-

+

+

+

0

0

-

+

14

11

11

10

10

10

8

8

8

8

USr Hng

Pol

number of features #

Rum

.

1

PERF>PRETorAOR

2

no stable perfect

3

+

+

+

superCompound pluperfect

4

_

_

-

FUT weakly grammaticalized

5

FUT + PRET/IMPF (= 'past future')

6

+

-

-

FUT + ANT (= future perfect)

7

_

there is a PROG

8

-

9

-

+

+

-

-

-

+

-

+

6

+

PRET {* IMPF/AOR or GPST)

PROG weakly grammaticalized

+

Eng

LSrb Slve Cz

Ir

+

_

_

+

_

+

_ -

+

-

-

+

+

+

-

-

-

-

-

_

_

-

+

+

-

-

-

+

_

-

+

+

-

_

-

-

-

-

-

+

-

-

-

+

_

+

+

+

_

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

noHAB

10

+

-

+

-

+

-

-

no PFV/IPFV-opposition

11

+

_

+

_

_

+

-

-

-

+

there is a subjunctive mood

12

+

+

+

+

+

-

+

+

+

-

subj. combinable with tenses

13

-

-

-

-

-

0

-

-

-

0

14

_

+

+

+

+

0

+

+

+

0

7

6

6

6

6

5

5

5

4

4

subj.

'agreement'-category

number of features

In table 5, only twenty out of the thirty-nine languages of my sample are considered - I have yet to analyze the mood systehis of the remaining languages.

228

Rolf Thieroff

Note that the number of features of a language is relevant only with regard to German, not with regard to any other language. Thus French and Italian, for example, differ from each other in two features (supercompound pluperfect and subjunctive not as agreementcategory), but both languages share the same number of features (eleven) with German. Albanian and Finnish differ in as many as eight features; still, both languages have ten features in common with German. Finally, the results of table 5 are presented on map 12. Probably the most striking result of this analysis is that, just as in van der Auwera's findings, German, French, and Italian are once more the core languages, this time French and Italian being equally similar to German, each having only three features which differ from German.'^ To the next group belong Albanian (which is again in line with van der Auwera's analysis) but also Icelandic and Finnish. So, in this group we have three languages which we would not have expected here, since all three are geographically very distant from German, and we do not arrive at a coherent area, which is again contrary to our expectations. Map 12. Areas of tense-aspect-mood features

10 features

However, in spoken French the combination of the subjunctive with tenses other than present and present perfect is practically non-existent, so that French is tending towards the next group, i.e. those languages with only ten features in common with German.

The German tense-aspect-mood

system

229

Only in the following groups of languages, one step further from the centre (i.e. eiglit features and fewer) do we find coherent areas again. Note also that the area with eight features is similar to van der Auwera's area with five features, as shown on map 10. Further, with respect to the fourteen features investigated, English is astonishingly distant from German, again in accordance with van der Auwera's results. A preliminary conclusion which can be drawn from the data presented is that both of our initial hypotheses have been shown to be valid: for each of the fourteen tense-aspect-mood features investigated, there are indeed a number of languages which share that feature with German, i.e. there is no feature that we find only in German (hypothesis no. 1). But none of the nineteen other languages (table 5/map 12) and most probably none of the thirty-eight languages of my earlier larger sample shares more than eleven features with German (hypothesis no. 2). Finally, the fact that no other language has the same combination of features as German is not trivial. Note that in table 5 there are two cases of languages which do have identic features, namely Dutch and Danish on the one hand and Lower Sorbian and Slovene on the other hand. In addition, Norwegian and Swedish, not included in table 5, also have the same features as Dutch and Danish. It must of course be stressed that I maintain an identity of the feature-combinations only with respect to the features investigated here:'^ I do not deny that there are differences regarding the semantics and the pragmatics of certain tenses, e.g. of the preterite and the perfect, amongst Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, or between Lower Sorbian and Slovene. With regard to the Germanic languages mentioned, such differences have been analysed exhaustively in the literature.'"' In other words, differences in the semantics and pragmatics of the Single tense-aspect-mood forms between all languages are to be expected, but not differences regarding the existence of certain categories and their combinations, which is what is presented in table 5.

References

Abraham, W. / Janssen, Th. (eds.) (1989): Tempus - Aspekt - Modus. Die lexikalischen und grammatischen Formen in den germanischen Sprachen. - Ttlbingen: Niemeyer (= Linguistische Arbeiten 237). Anderson, St. R. (1985); Inflectional Morphology. - In: Shopen, T. (ed.): Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, 150-201. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hartmut Haberland (p.c.) is right in observing: "If two languages were identical in all syntacticmorphological feature, it would probably be the same language, unless the lexicon were different". But even if two languages have an identical tense-aspect-mood system, they can of course differ in many other respects, also syntactically and morphologically. See e.g. ten Cate (1989) for German and Dutch; EhrichA'ater (1989) for German and Danish; Haberland (1991) for German, Dutch, and Danish; Fabricius-Hansen (1994) for German, Danish, and Norwegian. For similarities between Dutch and the Scandinavian languages see Thieroff (1994: 8-12).

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ten Cate, A. P. (1989): Präsentische und präteritale Tempora im deutsch-niederländischen Sprachvergleich. - In: Abraham / Janssen (eds.): 133-54. The Christian Brothers (1991): New Irish Grammar. Dublin: Fallon. Dahl, ö . (1995): The Tense System of Swedish. - In: Thieroff (ed.): 59-68. - (1996): Das Tempussystem des Deutschen im typologischen Vergleich. - In: Lang, E. / Zifonun, G. (eds.): Deutsch - typologisch, 359-368. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter (= Institut für deutsche Sprache. Jahrbuch 1995). De Schutter, G. (1994): Dutch. - In: König, E. /van der Auwera, J. (eds.): The Germanic Languages, 439-477. London/New York: Routledge. Ehrich, V. / Vater, H. (1989): Das Perfekt im Dänischen und Deutschen. - In: Abraham / Janssen (eds.): 103-32. Fabricius-Hansen, C. (1994): Das dänische und norwegische Tempussystem im Vergleich mit dem deutschen. - In: Thieroff / Ballweg (eds.): 49-68. Haberland, H. (1991): Der Gebrauch der Tempora im Dänischen und Deutschen. - In: Iwasaki, E. / Shichiji, Y. (eds.): Begegnung mit dem 'Fremden'. Grenzen - Traditionen - Vergleiche. Akten des VIII. Kongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung für Germanische Sprach- und LiteraturwissenSchaft (IVG), Tokyo 1990. Band 11, 366-75. München: iudicium. Hedin, E. (1995): The Tense Aspect System of Modem Greek. - In: Thieroff (ed.): 233-51. Kurylowicz, J. (1964): The Inflectional Categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg: Winter. Mac Eoin, G. (1993): Irish. - In: Ball, M. J. with J. Fife (ed.): The Celtic Languages, 101-44. London / New York: Routledge. Mackridge, P. (1985): The Modern Greek Language. A Descriptive Analysis of Standard Modem Greek. - Oxford: Clarendon. Ö Baoill, D. P. (1994): Tense and Aspect in Modem Irish. - In: Thieroff / Ballweg (eds.): 201-16. Ö Siadhail, M. (1989): Modem Irish. Grammatical Structure and Dialectal Variation. - Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press. Quirk, R. / Greenbaum, S. / Leech, G. / Svartvik, J. (1985).- A comprehensive grammar ofthe English language. - London & New York: Longman. Russell, P. (1995): An Introduction to the Celtic Languages. London / New York: Longman. Thieroff, R. (1992): Das flnite Verb im Deutschen. Tempus - Modus - Distanz. - Tübingen: Narr. - (1994): Inherent Verb Categories and Categorizations in European Languages. - In: Thieroff / Ballweg (eds.): 3 ^ 5 . - (1995): More on Inherent Verb Categories in European Languages. - In: Thieroff (ed.): 1-36. - (2000): On the areal distribution of tense-aspect categories in Europe. - In: Dahl, ö . (ed.): Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, 265-305. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (= EUROTYP 6). - (ed.) (1995): Tense Systems in European Languages II. - Tübingen: Niemeyer. - and Ballweg, J. (eds.) (1994): Tense Systems in European Languages. - Tübingen: Niemeyer. van der Auwera, J. (1998): Conclusion. - In: van der Auwera, Johan, with Dönall P. Ö Baoill (ed.): Adverbial constructions in the languages of Europe, 813-36. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (= Empirical approaches to language typology 20. EUROTYP 3). Wagner, R. Löon / Pinchon, J. (1991): Grammaire dufrangais classique et moderne. Paris: Hachette.

Ekaterina

Skvairs

The Old Low German verb as a token of linguistic identity Interrelations between Old Saxon, Old Low Franconian and other dialects of the region left the language sources marked by heavy language / dialect mixing. The outcome of the search of a firm foundation for North-continental language history (an early Low German or an early Dutch) depends on whether one treats the scanty surviving evidence in terms of a 'genuine* Saxon or Old Dutch, or accepts the early mixed character of the languages in the area. Isoglosses, reconstructed from OLFr. and OS sources, present evidence of early contacts on the Saxon-Franconian border, which lead to the split in OLFr. (as a result of East OLFr. contacts with OS) and to the forming of the nucleus of the future Low German. This heritage, though small in scale and territory, lives on in Low German and could be a clue to the understanding of 'Altniederdeutsch' as a contact phenomenon, not limited to OS only. The weak verb system presents several genetically based regional contrasting features for Saxon-Franconian differentiation: 2-3 class distribution, -6- / -o/'a-type Variation in class 2, distribution of y-present types. Their analysis shows a loosening of morphological oppositions, reduction of vowelsuffixes and merging of verb-types, following desemanticisation and phonetic weakening in the course of language / dialect contact. The large number of OLFr. -