NW vs. E Gmc

[CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU]

Since I haven't been diligently reading the list recently, I may be repeating
what others have said.  But still:

Sean Crist wrote:

>I'd like to bring up a few points which were discussed in connection with
>the distinction between NW and E Germanic:

> ...

>2. Marc Pierce mentioned gemination before *j.  Actually, this is a
>strictly WGmc innovation, and thus isn't evidence one way or the other for
>the grouping of the three Gmc branches.

Doesn't North Germanic geminate -kj- -gj- to -kkj- -ggj-?  (I don't have my
handbooks at hand.)

>3. Marc Pierce mentioned that Gothic retains the old IE passive verbal
>morphology. It's true that this is lost both NGmc and WGmc, but since the
>loss of a morphological category is something which can readily occur
>independently, we once again can't take this as evidence for a NWGmc
>grouping (even tho there are other grounds for making such a grouping).

The Gothic passive (actually, a PIE middle formation) has West Germanic
parallels, such as OE _ha:tte_ 'is named' (cf. Gothic _haitada_), contrasting
with active _ha:tT_ (T = thorn) 'calls' (Gothic. _haitiT_).  Since even Gothic
uses synthetic forms for the preterite passive, it is likely that the synthetic
forms are already PGmc., at least in preterite function.

>4. Pete Gray said "...East Germanic cannot be seen as an early form of
>North Germanic - it shares too much with Allemanic and Bavarian, for a
>start."  There are some Gothic loan words into Old High German, but this
>is an event which happened well after the Germanic languages were well
>differentiated.

The better reason is that the defining features of East Germanic -- funny
vocalism, almost complete devoicing of final stops and fricatives, peculiar
vocabulary -- are precisely *not* shared with North Germanic, which in all
these points agrees better with West Germanic.  Neither is the almost complete
elimination of grammatischer Wechsel in strong verbs, clearly a Gothic
innovation that was not extended to modal verbs.  But Sean is right that the
(probable) loans prove nothing.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at memphis.edu                    University of Memphis