Proto-Germanic ai in North and West Germanic

Arjen P Versloot

Proto-Germanic ai in North and West Germanic

Arjen P Versloot

2017, Folia Linguistica Historica

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Proto-Germanic (PGmc.) ai in stressed syllables shows varied outcomes in Germanic languages (ā, ē, ei), with many of these developments being conditioned by different phonological contexts. This article presents a reconstruction that unifies this variation by assuming that the monophthongisation spread over 'Germania' in two waves with different scopes and directions. The first wave expanded from north to south and was primarily limited to the contexts before-h and-r. A second wave, affecting the remaining instances of PGmc. ai, did not reach Old High German and Old West Nordic. The whole process covered the time between 400 and 900. The monophthongisation of PGmc. ai does not reflect any structural contrast among the Germanic languages, but the results had a differentiating impact on their vowel systems. The presented reconstruction is consistent with the information from runic inscriptions. It supposes a geographical configuration of tribes in a post-Migration setting.

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Legend: the numbering is taken from Krause (1966), the first dates are from the Kiel Rune Project (Marold and Zimmermann), behind ‘/’ from Imer (2011: 175). The Noleby stone can be dated to the period between ca. 400 and 600 based on linguistic features: it has the word toje [k]a = ‘give I’, with a monophthong from earlier /au/, which is an innovation from the transi- tional period towards Old Norse (Ralph 2002: 710); the use of the jar-rune for /j/ instead of /a/, which is still rendered by the ans-rune, is an archaic feature (Haugen 2004: 65). Table 1: The development of PGmc. ai before h in Early Runic.

Figure 3: The trend towards monophthongisation to @ in a corpus of 62 (Old) Frisian lemmas with PGmc. ai without /-mutation. Legend: The graph shows the interaction of the quality of the following consonant with the quality of the (semi-)vowel in the following syllable. Lemmas with both é and 4 are counted as half. Compare e.g. Labov (1981: 280-284, 301) for theoretical considerations about such ‘gradual’ sound laws. Words complying with rule 1 show @ in 68% of the cases in my dataset (n = 20; words with both vowels are scored as half). Rule 2 is effective in 79% of the lemmas (n=7), but it should be kept in mind that in three lemmas the 4 can just as well be explained based on rule 1. The overall percentage @ among the lemmas without i-mutation is 41, which is substantially lower than the percen- tages 68 and 79 for the two mentioned contexts for monophthongisation to 4d. Despite the high predictive power of the rules, they together explain only 19 out of the 31 items (61%) with (also) @ in my dataset. The other 12 items are found in other phonological contexts. In Old Norse and Old High German, also r and (directly following) w trigger monophthongisation. One finds é before a follow- ing w in Frisian, except in @- ‘law’ (in asega ‘law speaker’) which appears next to (we) ‘law’.’? Before r<PGmc. r or z there is (also) d in 7 out of 10 lemmas and, moreover, in 5 out of 9 lemmas with k. In all these instances, the impact of the following consonant and the vowel in the next syllable may interact. The result of this interaction is shown in Figure 3.

Table 2: The distribution of deviating spellings for PGmc. ai in Old Saxon. clear etymology and without the suspicion of being

Table 3: Synopsis of the phonological conditioning of wave 1. The context before h is the one where the monophthongisation is applied most consistently and in most languages. The monophthongisation before r is weaker, with quite some notable exceptions in Old Nordic and Old Frisian. There are indications that the monophthongisation before r was applied somewhat later han before h in Old High German. A similar order is suggested for Old Nordic by he Early Runic R6-stone inscription. Such details are lacking for Old Frisian, but the variation of d/é before r in Old Frisian can be interpreted in such a way that the monophthongisation before r was only gradually implemented and ultimately over- aken by the transition of ai> i. Old English, Old Saxon (not in the table) and Old Low Franconian have the most widely defined contexts for monophthongisation: roughly in the middle of ‘Germania’ and on the border of the ai/zi-isogloss at the ime of wave 1. This can also be interpreted in a more dynamic way in the sense that wave 1 and wave 2 are chronologically adjacent/continuous in that region. Another outetandine feature ic the cimilarity hetween the ‘velar’? contexte

in the languages where monophthongisation was applied. Especially the data from Old Saxon and Old Low Franconian — even though they show é in most cases — provide information about the actual direction and speed of the transition [ai] > zi]. Starting off in Old High German in the midd of the 6 century, the transition spread northwards. Wave 1 can be dated back the 6™ century, relying on monophthongisation was contemporaneous in Old Low Franconian, it is implied he evidence from Old Frisian. Assuming that t that [a1] had by then reached large parts of the Low Countries, except for t actual coastal zone, which s affected by the transition [ai > [er] when it went through the second wave in t hows d<ai in relic words. Old Frisian was already le to he ne ne 8 century. The d- and &-relics in Old Saxon names point in the direction of south-east Old Saxon (Eastphalia). The picture emerging from these distributions from the south, down through the Rhine-valley, affecting the Old Low Franconian and south-western Old Saxon, but leaving south-eastern Old Saxon, Old Frisian and the Dutch coastal strip untouched for is one of the spread of [zt some time. The geographica spread of [a] is illustrated in Figure 4. some time. The geographical spread of [zt] is illustrated in Figure 4.

Table 4: Synopsis of the developments of PGmc. ai in the main Old Germanic dialects. 28 The entire process can be easily analysed within a structuralist framework, with Germ. é' as the key factor. In Old English and Old Frisian, é was a rather fronted vowel [e:], while in OS and Old High German it was a more central [a:]. The monophthongisation product of PGmc. ai takes exactly the opposite phonological position in both groups.

Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen

2014

The present Ph.d. thesis entitled Archaisms and innovations: four interconnected studies on Germanic historical phonology and morphology consists of two articles on archaisms and innovations in the derivational system of Germanic nouns and two articles on regular sound changes that may support the conclusions reached in the former two articles. The first article Layers of root nouns in Germanic: chronology, structure and origin suggests that we can recognise Germanic root nouns inherited from Proto-Indo-European by the circumstance that their radical ablaut grade is predicted by the phonotaxis of their root. Germanic root nouns violating these principles have entered the inflectional class of the root nouns at a later stage. Few exceptions exist, but these may all be accounted for in various ways. The seeming exception of PG *aik- f. ‘oak’ deserves special mentioning in that the new regular sound change of PIE *#h2i- > PG *#ai-, which I suggest in the third article The outcome of PIE *#Hi- and *#Hu- in Germanic along with a parallel sound change of PIE *#h2u > PG *#au-, allows for the interpretation of PG *aik- as PIE *h2iĝ- which is the shape expected for a root noun of that phonotactic structure. The second article The structure, form and function of the Germanic primary i-stems also centres on derivational morphology; in this case, however, with the i-stems as the object of study. For the primary i-stems, I tentatively suggest that the archaic-looking types of i-stem adjectival agent nouns and i-stem action nouns or verbal abstracts that occur with both radical o-grade and zero grade originate from only one type in which, as was the case with the root nouns, the choice of radical ablaut grade depends on the phonotaxis of the root. When handed down to Germanic, however this system was abandoned and shaped anew in a manner compatible with the ablaut system of the Germanic strong verbs, thereby giving rise to new radical ablaut grades in the primary i-stems. In order to obtain a better understanding of possible transitions of nouns between i-stems and other inflectional classes, the fourth article The outcome of PIE *-ē̆i̯(C)# and *-ē̆u̯(C)# in Germanic makes a few adjustments to the standard assumption on the history of some of the i-stem case endings by suggesting a series of regular sound changes pertaining to PIE e-vowel diphthongs in final syllables. With its primary focus on how to identify archaisms and subsequently how to separate them from later innovations in Germanic derivational morphology, this thesis will hopefully contribute to the further development of the general field of Germanic and Indo-European studies by identifying and removing some such forms that can easily be disregarded as innovations by future scholarship.

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