NOWELE. North-Western European Language Evolution - Volume 75, Issue 1, 2022

Abstract

Middle Dutch and Middle High German possess a femininizing suffix ‑erse, of which reflexes survive in some modern dialects. Its Old Germanic preform arose from the grafting of Latin ‑issa onto the masculine suffix *‑ārja‑ in Dutch and German dialects closest to the Gallo-Romance area in the Early Middle Ages. The main aim of the present contribution is to provide hitherto underexposed details on the Dutch linguistic area, to show that the mainstream historical explanation for ‑erse in Dutch historical linguistics must be given up, and to provide a unified and more detailed account for the rise of this suffix formation in the medieval contact zone between Gallo-Romance and Germanic.

Abstract

The Vimose plane features an early runic inscription that has long remained opaque, with none of the attempts to explain it having commanded assent in the historiography. Like the inscription on the Vimose buckle, however, the text on the wood plane appears to preserve an early example of West Germanic religious language. The inscription on the sharpener shows some parallels with comparable Roman texts but also distinctively West Germanic phonological development. The text on the plane seems to be one of several early runic texts found in the Southern Scandinavian votive bogs that preserve Ingvaeonic features.

Abstract

The Burgundian language is one of several smaller early Germanic languages that are scarcely attested and often under-researched. Moreover, it is commonly classified as an ‘East Germanic’ language, forming a Germanic subgroup alongside Northwest Germanic. This paper investigates Burgundian in detail in order to establish the most complete phonology and morphology that is currently possible with the current data base. Furthermore, we examine the linguistic relationships of Burgundian with other Germanic languages, with a focus on Gothic in particular. Our findings suggest that Burgundian does not form a coherent subgroup together with Gothic but that the data imply a common post-Proto-Germanic dialect continuum of which Burgundian, Gothic, and most likely Vandalic were a part.

Abstract

The Crimean Gothic numerals sada ‘hundred’ and hazer ‘thousand’ are not of Persian origin, as long assumed in reference works, but loanwords from Alanic or another of the closely related Iranian languages spoken to the north of the Black Sea from the mid-1st millennium BC onwards. With its final vowel, sada reflects Alanic *sade (cf. Ossetic sædæ), whereas hazer can be from Alanic *hazar or *haz(a)re (cf. Ossetic ærzæ ‘countless number, myriad’). The borrowing could have occurred anytime from the 3rd century onwards, with a date in the late 4th century most likely.

This article reviews Glossing the Psalms. The Emergence of the Written Vernaculars in Western Europe from the Seventh to the Twelfth Centuries