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Old Germanic Languages

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Old Germanic Languages OLD GERMANIC LANGUAGES HERBERT PENZL 1. EARLY GERMANIC 1.1 General Among Old Germanic languages we include: Gothic (§2), Old North Germanic ('Proto-Norse', §3) before its split into the Old Norse (ON) dialects, the 'West Ger- manic' languages such as Old English (OE, §4), Old Frisian (OFris., §5), Old Saxon (OS) and Old Low Franconian (OLF, §6), Old High German (OHG, §7). Compre- hensive research reports on Germanic languages without specific regional and time restrictions have appeared by Carl Karstien ("Altgermanische Dialekte"), Victor Michels ("Deutsch"), and Wilhelm Horn ("Englische Sprachwissenschaft") in Stand und Aufgaben (1924); in Götze et al. (1934); and in Streitberg et al. (1936). Many studies concern not only these individual attested languages but rather features shared by all or by some of them which we can thus attribute to an earlier reconstructed stage. Some early onomastic data, some Runic inscriptions cannot be easily assigned to any particular major Germanic dialect. In this first subchapter (§1) I shall deal with all these publications and those that involve reconstructed stages of, or within, Germanic. The character and status of reconstructed forms and sounds were infrequently an issue, rarely the whole concept of a reconstructed ancestral language like 'Proto- Germanic' ('Primitive Germanic', Urgermanisch), 'Common Germanic' (Gemein- germanisch) but frequently the assumption and grouping of specific intermediate proto- languages. Some scholars, however, like Pisani (1955), also van Coetsem (1969), avoided altogether references to 'Proto-Germanic'; other scholars, like Sparnaay (1961), criticized the concept of a monolithic proto-language without dialects. Maurer (1943) successfully attacked 'West Germanic' as an areal and tribal entity, within an analysis of the grouping and development of the Germanic languages but largely on the basis of Germanic tribal history and archeology; cf. also H. Arntz in Götze et al. (1934:41-4). Schwarz (1951) found in analyzing all pertinent isoglosses that Maurer's Elbgermanen, his Nordseegermanen, derived from Ingvaeonic, and his Weser-Rhein- germanen are usable subdivisions. His Südgermanisch, already proposed by Neckel (1927), in opposition to the Gotonordisch of the Nordgermanen, essentially just OLD GERMANIC LANGUAGES 1233 substitutes another term for the traditional West Germanic (Westgermanisch), not, of course, in the old sense of a uniform proto-language. To Kuhn (1955) Schwarz's Gotonordisch is a highly questionable 'Sorgenkind'. In Rosel's (1962) detailed, well documented study any Stammbaum division of Germanic is rejected;West Germanic is seen as characterized by the gradual realignment of Pre-English from North to South Germanic. Rosenfeld (1954) denied that 'North-Sea Germanic' was ever a part of North Germanic. The grouping controversy has proven helpful in evaluating the posi- tion and linguistic data of Old Saxon, Old Low Franconian, and Old Frisian (§§ 5, 6) because it partly removed the rigidity of the concept of West Germanic without in- validating reconstruction procedures of shared Germanic features. Wrede's (1924) earlier theory of an 'Ingvaeonic' spread to Upper German territory had been refuted but proved highly stimulating. Lack of specific North Germanic features makes it difficult to assign the oldest Runic inscriptions to 'Proto-Norse' (§3.1). This applies, e.g., to the famous inscription on the horn of Gallehus of 400 A.D. (Schwarz 1951:243; Krause 1966, see §3.6 below), which is Spatgemeingermanisch to Kuhn (1955:45). Continental Runic inscriptions as described by Arntz and Zeiss (1939) cannot be called Old High German (§7.1 below) either, unless there is some reflection of the High German consonant shift, as, e.g., in Wurmlingen's Idorih of the seventh century. The presumably oldest Germanic inscrip- tion (of the beginning of our era), the helmet of Negau, which was a favorite topic of analysis by Germanic scholars, was recently shown by the Austrian classicist Egger (1959) to contain Latin genitive inflections (HARIXASTI TEI). The characteristics of Germanic were described by Meillet (1937), who sees in its differences from other Indo-European (IE) languages the result of the adoption of Indo-European by non-IE speakers. Similar opinions have been advanced in explain- ing the Germanic consonant shift by adherents of substratum theories (§1.2 below). Comprehensive comparative treatments of Germanic phonology and morphology were provided by Boer (1918), Hirt (1931-34), and Krahe (1967). Streitberg's Proto- Germanic grammar of 1896 has been recently reprinted without changes (Streitberg 1963). Van Coetsem's (1969) most recent account emphasizes Germanic phonemics. 1.2 Phonology The reexamination of the grouping of, and the relation between, the Germanic lan- guages (§1.1 above) by German scholars shows the unabated healthy influence of findings and methods of dialectal geography. This applies also to Germanic historical phonology in the twentieth century: cf. Bretschneider (1930). Eduard Sievers' 'Schallanalyse' once seemed to provide a theory and a technique for direct access to the phonetic data contained in written monuments of the past as if in a deep freeze. The application to OE, OS, OHG material has shown Sievers' technique to be based primarily on highly sophisticated scholarly empathy, his theories concerning the 1234 HERBERT PENZL relation between oral and written data, pitch and sound change to be essentially mis- leading. Sound-identification through 'Schallanalyse' had a great influence in the twenties, cf. Fritz Karg in the Streitberg-Festschrift (Stand und Aufgaben 1924:112-25). A structural approach to sound-change and the recognition of 'systems' of vowels and consonants have been advocated since an early date. While Streitberg (Streitberg et al. 1936:291) ridicules Max Miiller's 'Unterscheidungstrieb' and declares the teleological explanation of sound change as finished ('abgetan'), M.H. Jellinek in a postscript refers to Karl Luick's (§4.7 below) work with the remark: 'Jetzt urteilt man anders.' Pfalz's (1918) 'Reihenschritte', i.e. parallelism in connected sound changes, expressed a useful concept for the description of historic and prehistoric changes. Martinet (1955) has formulated connected chains of phonemic change. J. Fourquet pleaded for the recognition of this type of causation (§4.2 below), similarly van Coet- sem (1964) for a structural approach in Germanic historical phonemics. Benediktsson (1967) discussed the Proto-Germanic vowel-system in terms of Roman Jakobson's 'distinctive features'. East German scholars have now begun to apply American transformationalist techniques of description also to historical data, e.g. Motsch (1967) in his description of verbal ablaut. The Germanic consonant shift, 'Grimm's Law', is a reconstructed change from a reconstructed Indo-European consonant pattern to a reconstructed Proto-Germanic pattern. Yet its alleged cause has often been treated as if the explanation of phonemic change in general depended on it. The description of the change involved also postu- lating specific consonant values for Indo-European, e.g. for the so-called 'media aspirata' (Steinhauser 1930:102), the aspirated tenues, as well as for Proto-Germanic. Steinhauser (1930) and Kretschmer (1932), as J. Franck before, already assumed Proto-Germanic voiced stops *[bdg] for IE *bh *dh *gh in certain environments; Lessiak (1933) and others rejected this. Seebold (1967) investigated reflexes of IE *gtih in Germanic. The assumed Proto-Germanic aspiration of voiceless stops, a subtle detail to be reconstructed, led to a controversy because of their Finnish render- ing in loanwords (Streitberg et al. 1936:279 f.) from Germanic (§1.5 below). 'Verner's Law', i.e. the split of non-initial Pre-Germanic spirants as, e.g., from IE *t in Gothic fadar, bropar, was generally considered to follow chronologically a general shift of IE voiceless stops to voiceless spirants. Boer (1918:123f.) linked the split to the IE pitch-accent rather than to the stress-accent. Repeatedly efforts were made to provide a 'phonetic explanation' for Verner's Law (see Russer 1931:95-107). The voiced allophones *[b] *[d] *[g] (from IE *p *t *k) of the voiceless spirants coalesced with the shifted result of IE *bh *dh *gh. *z- became a phoneme beside -*s, after the Germanic withdrawal of the accent to the root-syllable removed the former deter- mination of the allophones by accent: PGmc. *-/s/, *-/z/. Investigation of the relative sequence (chronology) of the shifting of the various IE consonant types resulted in an early recognition of a structural link between the shift of mediae and tenues by some scholars, e.g. by Georg Curtius in 1853, Wilhelm Scherer in 1870 (Streitberg et al. 1936:291f.). More recently descriptions by Pisani OLD GERMANIC LANGUAGES 1235 (1955), Kretschmer (1932), Fourquet (1948), and van Coetsem (1969:§4.224) stressed the structural chain of shifts through which, contrary to other IE languages, the IE consonantal oppositions remained intact in Proto-Germanic. Among reconstructed causes for the shift, a non-IE substratum was assumed by Karsten (1928a:120ff.), Güntert (1927), Meillet (1937), Sparnaay (1961:22), before them by Sigmund Feist in many publications since 1910 (Streitberg et al. 1936:292-301). Various uniform articulatory and physiological tendencies were postulated to explain Grimm's Law, see Russer (1931:204ff.). The origin of PGmc. geminate tenues, possibly through assimilation before n, as in Old Norse
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