Low German Loan Words in English

Scientific Committee: Letizia Vezzosi - Coordinator; Rolf H. Bremmer Jr; Concetta Giliberto; Patrizia Lendinara; Martti Mäkinen. Editorial Board: Patrizia Lendinara - Editor-in-chief; Verio Santoro; Marina Buzzoni; Letizia Vezzosi., 2017

Le lingue del Mare del Nord - The North Sea Languages

2009

A major, well-documented branch of Indo-European, the Germanic languages have spurned a number of comparative surveys over the years, beginning with Grimm's pioneering Deutsche Grammatik (where deutsch signifies Germanisch), through the works of Rosen, Hutterer, Nielsen, Robinson etc. But whereas these books are set in the philological tradition and tend to focus on the early periods, a new line of work is now emerging whose outlook is more synchronic and theory-informed. König and van der Auwera's edited volume The Germanic Languages (1994) has been the pioneer of this trend so far, with separate chapters dedicated to single-language surveys in partly historical, partly genetic order, and a uniform basic structure imposed on the individual chapters so as to ensure comparability (cf. Leuschner, 2004 for discussion). Starting from the same synchronic orientation, the methodology adopted by Wayne Harbert is very different: the basic structure of his book is provided, not by self-contained descriptions of entire linguistic systems, but by the fundamental domains of morphosyntactic organisation (viz. the noun phrase, the verb phrase and the clause), which are then compared systematically across the Germanic languages. A notable consequence of this approach is that all languages in question are treated ''on a par'' from a synchronic point of view (p. 3), regardless of space and time, with interesting and unusual juxtapositions as a result. The individual Germanic languages are thus made to appear as ''different variants on a common theme'' (p. 3), a perspective which is still quite unusual in the literature on Germanic. Although Harbert's chapters on the NP and the VP each start with historical preludes of their own (cf. below), most historical information is concentrated in the Introduction (pp. 1-20), which discusses divergences and convergences within the Germanic family (including brief discussions of SAE and typological classification) and also presents brief surveys of four genetic groupings: East Germanic, West Germanic, North Sea Coast Germanic, and North Germanic. Even in these sections, the focus is firmly on language-internal matters, with only an absolute minimum of external information given per language or group. Next come two relatively short chapters on the lexicon (pp. 21-40) and the sound systems (pp. 41-88) of Germanic. The remainder of the book then consists of extensive chapters on the nominal system (pp. 89-269), the verbal system (pp. 270-368) and the clausal syntax of Germanic (pp. 369-481), followed immediately by the references (pp. 482-504) and a subject index (pp. 505-510). The absence of a Conclusion may come as a disappointment to some readers, and although Harbert does not explicitly comment on it, it may be due in part to the encyclopedic nature of the book (cf. below). Surprisingly, Harbert seems to downplay this part of his achievement when he distances himself implicitly from the ''encyclopedic approach'' of earlier surveys (p. 1). While his book may not be an encyclopedia of Germanic languages, it is in effect an encyclopedia of Germanic language structures, and its very success at this task deserves being acknowledged. What, then, are the main strengths of Harbert's approach? One is the flexibility brought by the morphosyntactic focus, which allows for anything from a simple comparative enumeration of structures to in-depth, problem-oriented discussion whenever the author deems this desirable. Another strength is the impressive coverage of languages within the family. Not surprisingly, Harbert's book is almost identical on this point to König/van der Auwera's (1994), with the sole exception of the Germanic-lexified Creoles, which (naturally, given their non-Germanic structure) are not discussed by Harbert at all. The secondary sources on which his book is almost entirely based vary hugely in terms of breadth and depth per language, and obviously it would have been neither possible nor desirable to feature every language at each point in the book (one reason being that the Germanic languages ''are much more alike than they are www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua

Tidsskrift for Sprogforskning, 2006

Institutt for litteratur, områdestudier og europeiske språk, Universitetet i Oslo, Norge Einige typologische Unterschiede zwischen den modernen germanischen Sprachen aus historischer und arealer Sicht. In dieser Arbeit werden die Stellung des finiten Verbs in Haupt-und Nebensätzen, die Abfolge finiter und infiniter Verbalformen in "Verbketten" sowie das Verhältnis zwischen Linearisierungsregeln für nichtverbale Satzglieder und anderen syntaktischen Regeln in modernen germanischen Sprachen aus einer typologischen und geographischen Perspektive betrachtet. Dabei wird auch auf ähnliche Strukturmuster in anderen europäischen Sprachen hingewiesen. Die infrage stehenden Erscheinungen werden insgesamt als Evidenz dafür gesehen, dass syntaktische Restrukturierung morphologischem Schwund vorangehen kann und nicht dessen Folge sein muss.

Celto-Germanic: Later Prehistory and Post-Proto-Indo-European vocabulary in the North and West, 2020

Synopsis This book is a study of the inherited vocabulary shared uniquely by Celtic, Germanic, and the other Indo-European languages of North and West Europe. The focus is on contact and common developments in the prehistoric period. Words showing the earmarks of loanwords datable to Roman times or the Middle Ages are excluded. Most of the remaining collection predates Grimm’s Law. This and further linguistic criteria are consistent with contexts before ~500 BC. The evidence and analysis here lead to the following explanatory hypothesis. Metal-poor Scandinavia’s sustained demand for resources led to a prolonged symbiosis with the Atlantic façade and Central Europe during the Bronze Age. Complementary advantages of the Pre-Germanic North included Baltic amber and societies favourably situated and organized to build seagoing vessels and recruit crews for long-distance maritime expeditions. An integral dimension of this long-term network was intense contact between the Indo-European dialects that became Celtic and those that became Germanic. The Celto-Germanic vocabulary—like the motifs shared by Iberian stelae and Scandinavian rock art—illuminates this interaction, opening a window onto the European Bronze Age. Much of the word stock can be analyzed as shared across still mutually intelligible dialects rather than borrowed between separate languages. In this respect, what is revealed resembles more the last gasp of Proto-Indo-European than a forerunner of the Celtic–Germanic confrontations of the post-Roman Migration Period and Viking Age. This 2020 edition puts into the public domain some first fruits of a cross-disciplinary research project that will continue until 2023. https://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Centre/2020/Celto-Germanic2020.pdf

2014

This contribution claims that Modern Low German (as represented by North Low German dialects) is a rather prototypical word language according to the model provided by Auer (2001) and others. The interaction between syllable structure, stress, and phonemic alternations in different contexts is better explained as a consequence of word-related as opposed to syllable-related rules and restrictions. Apart from the relatively high complexity of possible consonant clusters at word boundaries, this view is supported by (a) the stress sensitivity of vocalic and consonantal syllable nuclei, including a highly differentiated vowel system, (b) word-level phonological processes such as word-medial obstruent voicing, and (c) the existence of a word-level suprasegmental phenomenon similar to a pitch accent. On the whole, Low German is even closer to the word language pole of the continuum between word and syllable languages than Standard German. The findings are also relevant in a wider perspective. First, it is of general importance to include dialectal or non-standard varieties in cross-linguistic typological studies and theoretical models. Second, some of the features found in Low German are also found in other non-standard varieties of (Northern) Germany as well as in neighboring languages, such as Danish (including South Jutlandic) and other Scandinavian and Circum-Baltic languages, which suggests an areal or contact-induced relation.

Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia (SEC)., 2011

Two important etymological dictionaries (one of English and one of the Germanic languages) and a bibliography of English etymology appeared in recent years. The aim of this article is to critically present and compare them, as well as to formulate a conclusion concerning the best possible future form of an etymological dictionary.

ISBN 978-88-255-0089-9. This work has been published by "ARACNE CASA EDITRICE"/Rome and www.amazon.it. , 2017

The objective of this work is to demonstrate, by the use of lexicographic and corpus analytic techniques, the presence of German loanwords in the English language, and to explore these. It is a topic not characterised by a particularly vast bibliography, since the area has not, hitherto, received the scholarly attention it deserves. The most important authors dealing with the German influence on English vocabulary have been Jay A. Pfeffer, Anthony W. Stanforth, Robbin D. Knapp, and Karl-Heinz Schönfelder as for American English. Scholars and linguists have generally tended to concentrate on the opposite phenomenon; that is to say, the influence of English on other languages. This work expounds on Germanisms characterizing English lexis which are cultural borrowings and mainly regard natural sciences, such as biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and mineralogy. German loanwords generally entered English word-stock in the 18th and 19th centuries being German coinages having a Greek or Latin etymon, whereas American English vocabulary almost exclusively reflects the presence of the German ethnicity residing in North America, and is thus marked by the inclusion of German intimate borrowings mostly relating to cuisine.

Diachronica, 2012