A Linguistic History of English Volume I From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic for Emma and Lucy From Proto-Indo- European to Proto-Germanic DON RINGE 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 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Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd. www.biddles.co.uk ISBN 0–19–928413–x 978–0–19–928413–9 13579108642 Contents List of Abbreviations vii Acknowledgements ix Note on Transcription x 1 General introduction 1 2 Proto-Indo-European 4 2.1 Introduction 4 2.2 PIE phonology 6 2.2.1 PIE obstruents 7 2.2.2 PIE sonorants and high vowels 9 2.2.3 PIE nonhigh vowels 10 2.2.4 PIE phonological rules 11 2.2.5 PIE accent 21 2.3 PIE inflectional morphology 22 2.3.1 PIE inflectional categories 22 2.3.2 Formal expression of inflectional categories 26 2.3.3 PIE verb inflection 27 2.3.4 PIE noun inflection 41 2.3.5 PIE adjective inflection 50 2.3.6 The inflection of other PIE nominals 52 2.4 PIE derivational morphology 58 2.4.1 Compounding 58 2.4.2 PIE derivational suffixes 60 2.5 PIE syntax 64 2.6 The PIE lexicon 65 3 The development of Proto-Germanic 67 3.1 Introduction 67 3.2 Regular sound changes 68 3.2.1 The elimination of laryngeals, and related developments of vowels 68 3.2.2 Changes affecting sonorants 81 3.2.3 Changes affecting obstruents 87 3.2.4 Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law 93 vi Contents 3.2.5 Sievers’ Law and non-initial syllables 116 3.2.6 Loss of *j, *w, and *@; miscellaneous consonant changes 128 3.2.7 Other changes of vowels 145 3.2.8 Chronological overview 150 3.3 Restructurings of the inflectional morphology 151 3.3.1 The restructuring of the verb system 151 3.3.2 The double paradigm of adjectives 169 3.4 The development of inflectional morphology in detail 170 3.4.1 Changes in inflectional categories 171 3.4.2 Changes in the formal expression of inflectional categories 172 3.4.3 Changes in verb inflection 174 3.4.4 Changes in noun inflection 196 3.4.5 Changes in the inflection of other nominals 202 3.5 Changes in other components of the grammar 211 4 Proto-Germanic 213 4.1 Introduction 213 4.2 PGmc phonology 214 4.2.1 PGmc consonants 214 4.2.2 PGmc vocalics 220 4.3 PGmc inflectional morphology 233 4.3.1 Inflectional categories of PGmc 233 4.3.2 The formal expression of PGmc inflectional categories 234 4.3.3 PGmc verb inflection 235 4.3.4 PGmc noun inflection 268 4.3.5 PGmc adjective inflection 281 4.3.6 The inflection of other PGmc nominals 286 4.4 PGmc word formation 291 4.4.1 Compounding 291 4.4.2 PGmc derivational suffixes 291 4.5 PGmc syntax 295 4.6 The PGmc lexicon 295 References 298 Index 307 Abbreviations abl. ablative nom. nominative acc. accusative NP noun phrase act. active NWGmc Northwest Germanic aor. aorist O object Av. Avestan obl. oblique CP COMP phrase OCS Old Church Slavonic cpd. compound OE Old English dat. dative OF Old Frisian dial. dialectal OHG Old High German du. dual OIr. Old Irish fem. feminine ON Old Norse fut. future opt. optative gen. genitive OS Old Saxon Gk Greek pass. passive Gmc Germanic pf. perfect Goth. Gothic PGmc Proto-Germanic Hitt. Hittite PIE Proto-Indo-European I INFL pl. plural IE Indo-European PNWGmc Proto-Northwest Germanic indic. indicative prep. preposition inf. inWnitive pres. present inst. instrumental pret. preterite intr. intransitive ptc. participle ipf. imperfect PWGmc Proto-West Germanic iptv. imperative S subject Lat. Latin sg. singular Lith. Lithuanian Skt Sanskrit loc. locative subj. subjunctive masc. masculine Toch. Tocharian ME Middle English V verb MHG Middle High German Ved. Vedic MIr. Middle Irish voc. vocative ModHG Modern High German WGmc West Germanic mp. mediopassive 1, 2, 31st, 2nd, 3rd person N noun 1ary primary neut. neuter 2ary secondary This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following colleagues and students for helpful criticism of this work: the graduate and undergraduate students in a course on the history of English at the University of Pennsylvania, handouts for which constituted the first draft of the book; Anthony Kroch, who co-taught that course; Tom McFadden; and especially Alfred Bammesberger, Patrick Stiles, and Ronald Kim who read the manuscript, made many helpful sugges- tions, alerted me to several references, and corrected a number of errors. I am also grateful to my editor, John Davey, and an anonymous reviewer for further helpful suggestions, and to the editorial staff of Oxford University Press, especially Chloe Plummer, Sylvia Jaffrey, and Kim Allen. Remaining flaws and errors are, of course, my own. Note on Transcription Forms of attested languages are given in the system of spelling or transcrip- tion which is usual for each; the standard grammars should be consulted on particular points. For (Ancient) Greek, which Indo-Europeanists do not customarily transliterate, I also give a phonemic representation, which is accurate for the Attic dialect c.500 bc and a close approximation for the other dialects cited. In my phonemicization of Greek the colon indicates length of the preceding vowel, and lower mid vowels are marked with a subscript hook. On the spelling of PIE forms see 2.2; on the spelling of PGmc forms see 4.2. In the latter language a subscript hook indicates nasalization of the vowel, and vowels marked with two macrons are trimoric or ‘overlong’ (see the discus- sion in 3.2.1 (ii)). In statements of linguistic change, < and > indicate sound changes (i.e. spontaneous phonological changes); and ! indicate changes of all other kinds. Shafted arrows are also used in statements of synchronic derivation. 1 General introduction This volume began as part of a set of handouts for a course in the linguistic history of English at the University of Pennsylvania. It occurred to me that they contained much information considered standard among ‘‘hard-core’’ Indo-Europeanists but largely unknown to colleagues in other subdisciplines, and that they might therefore be made the basis of a useful book. Most of the first draft was written during the academic year 2002–3, when I chaired the School of Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee at Penn, to relax and unwind. I emphasize that this is not intended to be a traditional handbook in which the focus is always on attested languages. Instead I have tried to give a coherent description of various stages in the prehistory of English and of the changes that transformed one stage into the next. I also wish to emphasize that this book is not intended primarily for traditional ‘philologists’,though it seems likely that they will find it useful. My intended readership includes especially those who have not undertaken serious study of Indo-European or comparative Germanic linguistics, nor of the history of English, but want reliable information on what specialists in those disciplines have collectively learned over the past century and a half. In attempting to make this infor- mation available I have modelled Chapters 2 and 4 in part on the ‘grammat- ical sketches’ of unfamiliar languages which were produced in abundance in the middle of the twentieth century, and I have tried to employ terminology that a modern theoretical linguist might be expected to understand. I foresee that my colleagues in historical linguistics will find both tactics disconcerting; but the volume is not primarily intended for them. Since I have tried to present a coherent account of material that is generally agreed on, the overall picture of the grammar of Proto-Indo-European and the development of Proto-Germanic presented in this volume is relatively conservative. I have included innovative suggestions on a small scale when they seemed necessary, giving references to earlier publications; I hope that I have not forgotten to reference any distinctive views of previous researchers that I have accepted. Conclusions that are almost universally accepted in 2 General Introduction the field (such as the reconstruction of three ‘laryngeal’ consonants for PIE, or—most obviously—sound changes such as Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law) have not been referenced.