Lowland

[Herbert Stahlke]

The standard trees for Germanic do show a West Germanic, but the evidence
for such a group is pretty weak.  If you look at the various innovations in
Germanic, you can pretty well separate East from the rest, although there is
some uncomfortable shared innovation with North, like loss of initial
glides.  North is also pretty clearly distinguishable.  But what's left gets
called West Germanic by default, not because there are any significant
numbers of shared innovations among them but because they didn't undergo
certain North Germanic innovations.  But you can't subgroup on the basis of
shared retentions; only on the basis of shared innovations, and WGmc doesn't
have them.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of David Bergdahl
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 6:21 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Lowland


"Uh, all the Germanic languages participated in the 1st Sound Shift--that is
what sets the Germanic langs apart from the rest of IE."  Correct

 Any standard chart will show the Germanic family divided into three
branches: North (Scandanavian), West (our group) and East (all extinct but
once included Gothic & Burgundian).  West Gmc is further subdivided into
"Platt" (flat or lowlands) German and "Hoch" (or mountainous) German
although the terms "north" for the flatlanders and "south" for the hilljacks
could just as easily be used.  Since "Hochdeutsch" is a subdivision of West
Germanic (defined by participation in Grimm's 2nd Sound Shift) the statement
"As far as the 2nd Sound Shift goes, it's not West Germanic, but High
German--that's what sets High German off from Low German and the rest of the
West Germanic languages" means that the Scandanavian languages are neither
"high" nor "low" since they belong to a different branch, nicht wahr?
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