31.1696, Review: Historical Linguistics: Mailhammer, Vennemann (2019)
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Subject: 31.1696, Review: Historical Linguistics: Mailhammer, Vennemann (2019)
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Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 10:37:33
From: Bev Thurber [bat23 at cornell.edu]
Subject: The Carthaginian North: Semitic influence on early Germanic
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-4302.html
AUTHOR: Robert Mailhammer
AUTHOR: Theo Vennemann
TITLE: The Carthaginian North: Semitic influence on early Germanic
SUBTITLE: A linguistic and cultural study
SERIES TITLE: NOWELE Supplement Series 32
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2019
REVIEWER: Bev Thurber
SUMMARY
Some features of the Germanic languages can be explained as results of contact
between Pre-Germanic and Punic. That such contact occurred is the hypothesis
that underlies this book. The authors stress that it is speculative while
noting that “speculation has a clear place in the scientific method” (xii).
The features it helps explain are distributed throughout Germanic language and
culture: in vocabulary and grammar, in religion, and, perhaps most
importantly, in the runic writing system. The book consists of a preface, nine
chapters, a list of references, and an index. In this review, I follow the
authors’ convention of using + to denote reconstructed forms.
Chapter One summarizes the problems within Germanic that postulating contact
with Punic helps resolve. Nothing presented in this chapter has, in the
authors’ view, a satisfactory explanation in the literature. These problems
fall into four areas: the Germanic lexicon, the morphology of strong verbs,
the development of Germanic’s strict word order, and the origin of the runic
writing system. Each of these topics receives a full chapter later in the
book.
Chapter Two, “Theoretical foundations,” summarizes past research on how
languages change when they come into contact with other languages according to
the model proposed by Frans van Coetsem (2000), which is based on the idea of
dominance. The authors identify patterns of influence based on various contact
situations and common results, such as how borrowing (both lexical and
grammatical) reflects the type of dominance of one linguistic group. The role
of bilingualism is highlighted.
Chapter Three, “Contact, location and initial contact,” describes the
historical background necessary for contact between Punic and Pre-Germanic.
For the authors’ hypothesis to hold, Carthaginians must have settled in the
area around northern Germany, Jutland, and southern Sweden at the right time
in the development of Germanic, that is, in the mid-first millennium BCE. The
historical evidence that makes this assumption plausible is summarized. The
authors go on to describe how Punic and Pre-Germanic could have come into
contact. They propose two main phases: a gradual shift to Punic dominance
followed by a period of koinézation in which Germanic emerged as the dominant
language.
Chapter Four, “Punic elements in the Proto-Germanic lexicon,” proposes
etymologies for ten Germanic words that lack convincing Indo-European
etymologies. Naturally, these are all based on Punic sources. The ten Germanic
roots are: +fulka- “division of an army,” +flukka- “flock, company, troop,”
+plōg-, “plough,” +pleha-/+plega- “to cultivate,” +sibjō- “sib, extended
family, clan, kinfolk,” +aþal-/+aþil-/+aþul- “nobility, noble” and
+ōþil-/+ōþal- “inherited landed property,” +erþō “earth,”
+skellingaz/+skillingas “shilling,” +paning/+panning/+panding “penny,” and
+smītan “smite” and +smiþaz “smith.” These etymologies are followed by a
discussion of two Phonician loanwords in Germanic, +ebura- “male pig” and
+krabba- “crab, shrimp” and an explanation of how the genders of +sunnōn “sun”
(feminine) and +mēnōn “moon” (masculine) and the term norþ- “north, north
wind” may express a Punic influence. Although these words are not numerous,
they are important conceptually, and the authors believe that the types are
more important than the number. In particular, the appearance of loanwords for
nobility is stressed as this makes a strong case for the dominance of the
source language.
Chapter Five, “Punic influence in the Germanic verb system: The strong verbs,”
takes on four features of the Germanic strong verbs without complete
explanations: The functional ablaut system, the uniformity of present stems,
and the smaller number of available categories for tense and mood. Another
possible effect of this situation was the loss of reduplication in favor of
ablaut as a way of forming the past tense. All of these bring Proto-Germanic
closer to Punic in ways that match the patterns of change due to contact
described in Chapter Three. They highlight the possible role of bilingual
speakers in Punicizing Pre-Germanic as they attempted to optimize their
language use by economizing. Once established, these innovations in the verbal
system spread because the proposed contact situation made everything Punic
attractive to Proto-Germanic speakers.
Chapter Six, “Explaining the Germanic split word order,” is, at only six
pages, by far the shortest of the main chapters. Its argument is that
“bilingual speakers of Pre-Germanic capitalized on the possibilities within
their inherited syntax and aligned it more with the Punic word order” (137).
Because Proto-Indo-European lacked a firmly fixed word order, speakers were
free to innovate, and the verb moved forward. The authors cite parallels in
Siberian languages and Quechua. At the end of the chapter, they slip in the
development of prepositions as a parallel. They attribute both the forward
movement of the verb and the appearance of prepositions to the influence of
Punic’s consistently head-initial structure.
Chapter Seven, “The origin of the oldest Germanic writing system,” explains an
alternative hypothesis for the origin of the runic writing system. The runic
alphabet (futhark) is clearly related to the Etruscan, Greek, and Latin
alphabets, which all derive from the Phoenician alphabet. Rather than arguing
for one of them as the source, as is commonly done, the authors propose that
the futhark derives directly from the Phoenician alphabet, eliminating the
middle step. This supposition helps explain the runes’ names, forms, and order
in the futhark, as well as orthographic conventions and the context of the
earliest inscriptions. Much of its space is devoted to accounting for the
shapes of the runes and why their order in the futhark differs from that of
the Greek and Latin alphabets.
Chapter Eight, “Extralinguistic evidence” returns to the underlying assumption
presented in Chapter Three, that Carthaginians lived in Northern Europe, by
summarizing the historical and archaeological evidence for this hypothesis. It
begins with an overview of what is known of Carthage, then segues into a
discussion of Himilico’s voyage, mentioned by Pliny, to northern Europe in the
sixth century BCE. The next important topic is religion, particularly the
Germanic god Balder, who, the authors argue, is a refiguration of the
Phoenician god Ba’l. Then, there is a discussion of archaeological evidence
for a Punic presence in the North Sea area, including coins. The authors note
that “there is no direct material evidence for Punic settlements” in the
Germanic homeland (233), but do not let that lack stop them from considering
their hypothesis plausible. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of three
genetic studies that do not rule out the authors’ hypothesis.
Chapter Nine concludes the book. It reiterates the authors’ goal of explaining
the unexplained parts of Proto-Germanic and why postulating Punic influence
can help. The Punic hypothesis is able to explain the dominant role of ablaut
in strong verb morphology and the structure of the writing system when other
hypotheses have been unable to. The authors point to the latter as possibly
“the strongest argument, because it is half-linguistic, half-extralinguistic,
and… specifically points to Punic” (240). The chapter ends with a call for
engagement with these new ideas “irrespective of what this engagement means
for the correctness of our theory” (241).
EVALUATION
The book brings up many interesting points and possible explanations for
unexplained features of Germanic. The main linguistic argument is made in
Chapters Four through Six. The proposed etymologies in Chapter Four fill in
some gaps by providing etymologies for words without satisfactory ones. The
discussion of money surrounding +skellingaz/+skillingaz “shilling” and
+paning/+panning/+panding “penny” is particularly interesting and includes
some nice color pictures. Chapter Five highlights some features of the strong
verb system that are specific to Germanic but can be explained by contact with
Punic, which the authors consider “more plausible than an internal account”
(128). The brief account of word order given in Chapter Six provides a compact
starting point for future research in the form of “the only explanation that
has not already been shown untenable” (138): that Proto-Germanic configured
its sentence structure to better reflect that of Punic, as suggested in
Vennemann (2003).
Chapter Seven, on the runic writing system, is the most cogent of the book.
The authors’ answers to most of the eight questions raised in the introduction
can be summarized by the concise answer they give to two: “Because that was
the Phoenician custom throughout Phoenician history...and this practice was
simply adopted into the Germanic writing system” (155). After addressing these
questions, the chapter digs more deeply into the history of the rune row and
runic orthography. This helps explain some of the peculiarities of the futhark
and opens up many possibilities for further research. This chapter steps
outside the linguistic realm, and Chapter Eight continues in that direction
with an evaluation of literary evidence for trade between Carthage and the
north and observations of some religious parallels. The religious evidence
returns to linguistics with an explanation of how the names Phol and Balder
are connected to Ba’l and each other phonologically.
The big question is whether the underlying hypothesis is correct. Was there
contact between Punic and Pre- or Proto-Germanic? The authors are agnostic on
this front; they have made a linguistic argument and provided enough
extralinguistic evidence to show that contact need not be ruled out. This is a
place where historians and archaeologists can come together with linguists to
create a complete picture of the situation. If there was contact of the type
postulated in the book, as the authors note, “this represents a major
watershed in the history and the historical investigation of Germanic”
(240-241). If not, the ideas presented cannot be correct, but may still
stimulate progress. In any case, the book is a fascinating one that is sure
to stir up some lively discussions.
REFERENCES
Coetsem, F. van. 2000. A General and Unified Theory of the Transmission
Process in Language Contact. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Vennemann, T. 2003. Syntax und Sprachkontakt: Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung
der indogermanischen Sprachen des Nordwestens. In Alfred Bammesberger and Theo
Vennemann (eds.), Languages in Prehistoric Europe, 333-364. Heidelberg: Carl
Winter.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Bev Thurber is an independent scholar whose interest include historical
linguistics and the history of ice skating.
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