27.1487, Review: Historical Ling: Askedal, Holsting, Nielsen, Hansen, Stubkjær (2015)

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Subject: 27.1487, Review: Historical Ling: Askedal, Holsting, Nielsen, Hansen, Stubkjær (2015)

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Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 16:25:44
From: Bev Thurber [b.thurber at shimer.edu]
Subject: Early Germanic Languages in Contact

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3225.html

EDITOR: John Ole  Askedal
EDITOR: Hans Frede  Nielsen
EDITOR: Erik W.  Hansen
EDITOR: Alexandra  Holsting
EDITOR: Flemming Talbo  Stubkjær
TITLE: Early Germanic Languages in Contact
SERIES TITLE: NOWELE Supplement Series 27
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Bev Thurber, Shimer College

Reviews Editor: Robert Arthur Cote

SUMMARY

“Early Germanic Languages in Contact”, edited by John Ole Askedal and Hans
Frede Nielsen, is part of the NOWELE (North-Western European Language
Evolution) Supplement Series and contains papers presented at an August 2013
conference on contact between early Germanic languages and other languages at
the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. It contains revised and, in some
cases, expanded versions of 12 of the 14 papers read at the conference plus an
introduction from the editors, a paper on vowel systems by Hans Frede Nielsen,
and a review article by Simon Mulder. Five of the contributions are in German,
and the rest are in English. The translations of the German titles given below
are my own.

The four-page introduction explains the genesis of the volume and provides a
brief summary of each paper. The papers are generally in the order in which
they were presented at the conference. The first paper, “Entlehnung und
Urverwandtschaft im vorliterarischen germanischen Wortschatz” (Borrowing and
Early Relatedness in the Pre-literate Germanic Vocabulary) by Elmar Seebold,
is the exception: it was moved to the beginning because of its “comprehensive
focus on the earliest Germanic vocabulary” (vii). It is concerned with words
that were borrowed into Germanic before Grimm's law occurred. The first part
of the paper describes a number of examples,  including “cannabis,” several
postulated borrowings, and borrowed names such as “Welsh.” In the second
section, the paper describes the types of lexical items borrowed, which are
mainly plant-related words and words for metals. The final section of the
paper is a discussion of how this vocabulary connects Germanic to other
Indo-European language families, especially Italic and Celtic. 

That paper is followed by another paper on loanwords, “The Stratigraphy of the
Germanic Loanwords in Finnic” by Petri Kallio, which summarizes the current
state of research in this area. Kallio explains that although this field has
been neglected, “the early Germanic influence on Finnic was considerable
indeed and may well be compared with the French superstrate in English, for
instance” (26). The paper divides the loanwords into three classes based on
whether they were borrowed into Early, Middle, or Late Proto-Finnic; most of
them fall into the latter category. In the latter part of the paper, Kallio
discusses what can be learned about contact between the two languages and the
location of the Germanic homeland by studying loanwords.

In “Baltisch, Slavisch, Germanisch --- Kontakte und Beziehungen aus der Sicht
der Onomastic” (Baltic, Slavic, Germanic --- Contacts and Relationships from
the Perspective of Onomastics), Jürgen Udolph describes Baltic, Slavic, and
Germanic place, field, and river names and uses this evidence to identify the
homeland region of each of these three language groups. Baltic is placed in
the modern Baltic region plus parts of northern Poland and nearby areas,
Slavic is placed in southeastern Poland and western Ukraine, and Germanic is
placed in and around southeastern Lower Saxony (69). The paper also describes
the interactions between the language groups; Baltic and Germanic seem to have
had the strongest interactions. Celtic is mentioned only to explain that it
played no role in the expansion and interaction processes of the other three
groups (39).

The next two papers, “Gothic Contact with Greek: Loan Translations and a
Translation Problem” and “Gothic Contact with Latin: Gotica Parisina and
Wulfila's Alphabet,” were presented by Magnús Snædal as one paper at the
conference and split into two for the collection because their contents
differ. The first describes the influence of Greek on biblical Gothic and
primarily focuses on loan translations of Greek words. Most of the paper is a
discussion of two such words, *hrainjahairts (clean-hearted) and *gudaskaunei
(god-shape). Snædal concludes that some compound words in Gothic were modeled
after Greek words and that Wulfila “knew Greek fairly well” (87--88). The
second of these papers turns to Latin for a discussion of Gothic pronunciation
and writing. Most of this paper is a discussion of Wulfila's alphabet. Snædal
examines each letter and describes its antecedents. Most of Wulfila's letters
are easily derived from Greek letters, but < j > and one type of < s > appear
to have come from the Latin alphabet; a few other letters show varying degrees
of Latin influence. These two alphabets suffice as sources for all of
Wulfila's letters (104--105).

The next two papers turn to interactions between Germanic and Romance
languages. One of the shorter papers in the collection, “Die langobardischen
Sprachreste in Italien und ihr Beitrag zur Kenntnis des langobardischen
Konsonantismus” (The Linguistic Remnants of Langobardic in Italy and their
Contribution to the Understanding of Langobardic Consonantism) by Carla
Falluomini examines Langobardic words that survive in Latin and Italo-Romance
languages and compares them with cognates in Germanic languages to explore the
consonant system of Langobardic. The paper emphasizes the extent of the High
German Consonant Shift in Langobardic in its identification of clear and
unclear parts of this system.

“What is Visigothic and What is Frankish in Medieval and Later Spanish?” by
Ingmar Söhrman examines the influences of Visigothic and Frankish on the
Spanish lexicon. The paper begins with a discussion of the difficulty of
identifying the origin of Germanic loanwords in Spanish, then proceeds to
describe particular loanwords. The paper links the appearance of these
loanwords to the historical migrations of various Germanic tribes and ends by
raising the question of whether specific types of lexical items were borrowed,
such as words for new military technologies (134).

The connection with Italic languages continues with the next paper, “Zwei
'neue' Inschriften aus Frankreich im Kontext der Ausbreitung norditalischer
Alphabete” (Two “New” Inscriptions from France in the Context of the Spread of
North Italian Alphabets) by Markus Egetmeyer. Unlike the other German papers,
this one includes an English abstract. The paper describes two short, recently
published inscriptions from museum collections in France; clear photographs
are included. One is on a tusk of a wild boar and is translated as “for Esus
--- for Toranis” (141). The other is on a fragment of a dish and contains only
five letters whose reading is unclear (152). The writing system used in the
inscriptions is discussed in the context of north Italic alphabets and
Germanic runes.

“Onomastik und Deonomastik im keltisch-germanischen Sprachkontakt” (Onomastics
and Deonomastics in Celtic-Germanic Language Contact) by Ludwig Rübekeil
discusses several names of people and places selected from those that are
associated with contact between Celtic and Germanic languages. The latter part
of the paper discusses four elements used in names in languages from both
families. Overall, the goal of the paper is to show how a special onomastic
vocabulary promoted the loan of names (and name-elements) between the two
language families; this is accomplished by means of discussions of specific
names and name-elements and short sections comparing the different examples.

The next two papers discuss interactions between Old English and Old Norse.
“Norse-English Runic Contacts” by Michael P. Barnes is concerned with the
British Isles during the period after 700. The paper begins by examining the
possibility of pre-Viking contact, then moves on to clearer instances of
contact during and after the Viking Age. The latter discussion includes
influences on both the runes themselves and the languages. Barnes concludes
that most of the influences are of English on Scandinavian runic practice and
finishes with a reminder that this study is quite speculative (200).

“Identifying and Dating Norse-Derived Terms in Medieval English: Approaches
and Problems” by Sara M. Pons-Sans is about identifying Norse loanwords in Old
and Middle English and determining when they were borrowed. The first part of
the paper describes types of evidence that a word has been borrowed and their
strengths and weaknesses; it focuses on “formal evidence,” i.e., whether a
form can be derived using established sound changes. If it cannot, it is
probably a loanword (204--208). The latter part of the paper describes methods
for dating borrowings, which rely on manuscript evidence. Examples are
provided throughout the paper.

The last few papers in the volume are more general treatments of the Germanic
languages. “Language Contact and Consonant Shift in Germanic: The Witness of
Aspiration” by Kurt Goblirsch describes the influences of substrate languages
on Second Consonant Shift, which refers to a set of shifts that includes the
High German Consonant shift, similar shifts in Danish and Icelandic, and
partial shifts in English, Frisian, Low German, Swedish, and Norwegian (224).
Goblirsch finds that non-Germanic substrates  influenced the consonants of
some Germanic languages but not others (237) and considers other factors, such
as contact with other Germanic languages.

“Some Unsolved (and Probably Insoluble) Aspects of Initial Fricative Voicing
in Early English: Voicing in Early English Viewed as Part of the Great
Germanic Lenition” by Anatoly Liberman focuses on /f/ and /s/ becoming /v/ and
/z/, respectively. In this paper, Liberman proposes a model of sound change
that is similar to Sapir's concept of drift (248). It describes the Germanic
Lenition as a long process that has been through several steps and continues
to this day. The paper concludes that [v ð z] were in English from its
beginning rather than being the result of one or more sound changes. The
connection to language contact is made in section 9 of the paper, which
considers the possibility that contact with Celtic, French, or Scandinavian
was responsible for initial fricative voicing in English.

“The Vowel Systems of Old English, Old Norse and Old High German Compared” by
Hans Frede Nielsen shows that Old High German, like Gothic but unlike Old
English and Old Norse, is a syllable language, i.e., it is not possible to
identify subsystems corresponding to accented and unaccented vowels (273).
Much of the paper is taken up by descriptions of the vowel systems of the
three languages in its title, with Gothic brought in for some comparisons. The
paper concludes that this is an innovation that may have been the result of
contact with speakers of Latin and Romance languages (273).

The last paper is a review of Riho Grünthal and Petro Kallio's A Linguistic
Map of Prehistoric Northern Europe by Simon Mulder. This book is the product
of a 2008 symposium on linguistic and archaeological evidence for the
languages and cultures of prehistoric northern Europe. Mulder provides a brief
summary or more detailed treatment of the introduction to and each of the 11
papers in the volume and concludes that “we are no doubt heading in the right
direction” (298).

The volume ends with a brief index.

EVALUATION

All of the articles in this book are centered on one or more Germanic
languages or on Germanic in general except Egetmeyer's contribution on two
inscriptions, which is connected to Germanic by means of the runic writing
system, and the review article at the end, which includes summaries of some
papers that address Germanic languages alongside summaries of others that do
not. Because the theme of the book is contact between Germanic and other
languages, this seems appropriate; Germanic forms a thread that is common to
all of the articles. The arrangement of the articles is sensible; papers with
similar themes are placed near each other.

The final review article is a nice addition to the volume because it provides
glimpses of a wider range of studies of linguistic and cultural contacts. The
papers in the volume under review are similar to the ones in the current
volume in that they discuss contacts, but they expand the range of contact to
include, for example, Saami languages, and many of them have a more
archaeological focus.

The editors do not provide a rationale for publishing this book, but it
certainly falls within the purview of the series, which “is devoted not only
to the study of the history and prehistory of a locally determined group of
languages, but also to the study of purely theoretical questions concerning
historical language development” (back of half-title page). The papers in the
book are varied enough to address both parts of this objective. For example,
Egetmeyer's contribution speaks to the first part of this objective because of
its tight focus on two short inscriptions, and Pons-Sans' contribution speaks
to the second part of the objective by discussing problems and types of
evidence.

This volume should appeal to researchers in linguistics and those working at
the intersection of linguistics and archaeology. In particular, graduate
students seeking dissertation topics may find it useful because many of the
papers summarize the state of a particular area of research or discuss general
problems, as Kallio's contribution does, rather than providing specific
solutions. Other researchers will find that the papers in the volume provide
helpful starting points.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Bev Thurber is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Natural Sciences at
Shimer College in Chicago whose interests include Germanic linguistics and the
early history of ice skating.





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