NOWELE. North-Western European Language Evolution - Volume 72, Issue 1, 2019

Abstract

Ever since Kemble (1840), buton folcscare (Beowulf, 73a) has been thought to mean ‘with the exception of the common land’. The Old English compound folcscaru is reliably attested in poetic texts in the sense ‘tribe, nation’; secondarily the meaning ‘province, land’ may have arisen, but nowhere does the compound convey the special sense ‘common land, commons’. It can be shown that a meaning in the area of ‘tribe’ makes sense at line 73 of Beowulf as well, but the genitive gumena refers to both folcscare and feorum. It is quite conceivable that the line provides a distant echo of ancient Germanic customs concerning limitations of royal authority as adumbrated in Tacitus’ Germania.

Abstract

This paper offers a descriptive account of conditional sentences in the Brokmonna Bref (Brookmen’s Charter), an Old East Frisian regional law text of the thirteenth century. The text shows peculiarities of compositional design, particularly the systematised employment of verb-initial conditional sentences, attested to a lesser degree in other East Frisian texts, and which a comparative perspective reveals as sporadic outside Old Frisian. The descriptive approach provides a suitable opportunity to revisit, from the syntactic side, questions of phraseological inheritance in the language of Old Frisian law. In presenting data, this research takes initial steps towards further study of Old Frisian syntax and its relationship to West Germanic structures.

Abstract

The present article deals with the reflexes of Lat. scrībere in Germanic. It is proposed that the word was borrowed into Germanic at quite an early stage (1st century AD) as a result of contacts between West-Germanic-speaking populations and the Romans. Special stress is put on the importance of the Roman military in introducing the practice of writing among those that served in the army. Special attention is given to the North Germanic reflexes of Lat. scrībere in order to tentatively explain the morphological difference found in that branch of Germanic, where the verb is found both in the first class of strong verbs and in the second class of weak verbs. It is proposed that the former conjugation is primary, and that the rise of the latter is due to later developments such as lexical analogical processes and language-external causes. Furthermore, the present study confirms from a different perspective that English influence on writing is primary in the Old-West-Norse-speaking area. Finally, Schulte’s (2015) proposal is re-read in the light of terminological evidence from England and Scandinavia.

Abstract

This article presents an absolute chronology of the early major sound changes reflected in the Pre-Old English (Pre-OE) runic inscriptions. These inscriptions were written in the Pre-fuþorc, which was still close to the Common Germanic fuþark (= Older fuþark) of 24 characters but was extended and modified during the Pre-OE period (ca. AD 425–610/650). The Caistor-by-Norwich Brooch (ca. AD 610–650) marks the beginning of Old English (OE) because the new and modified runes – ᚩ o, ᚪ a, ᛟ œ, ᚨ æ – with their new phonemic sound-values appear together for the first time. All the relevant sound-changes were completed by then. The Pre-OE and also the Pre-Old Frisian (Pre-OFris.) data reveal four phases of development. In my proposed chronology phases one and four are straightforward, while phases two and three are more complex, with two scenarios being possible.

Abstract

The quantitative reduction and loss of Proto-Germanic vowels during the transition from some form of Common North West Germanic to the attested ‘Old’ languages, such as Old English and Old Frisian, is a complicated process, interfering with morphological restructuring processes. Various reconstructions have been presented, the most extensive one by Boutkan (1995). Scrutiny of the Runic Frisian data, from the period ca. 500–800, shows that especially the apocope of PWGmc *-a and of *-u < PGmc *-ō should be positioned much later in the relative chronology than envisaged by Boutkan. The order that can be derived from the Runic Frisian data reflects a gradual loss of one mora, running in a cline from the least salient to the most salient vowel, which provides a phonetic rationale for the development. This gradual mora reduction can be dated to the period between ca. 500 and 700. This absolute dating can have implications for phonological processes in which root vowels interact with the quality or quantity of the vowel in the following syllable.

This article reviews Syntactic Variation in Insular Scandinavian

This article reviews La grammaire du gotique. Deux cours inédits. 1. Cours de grammaire gotique (1890–1891). 2. Cours de grammaire gothique (1881–1882). Accompagnés d’autres articles de Saussure sur le gotique