Northwest Germanic

[llama_nom]

Hi Francisc,

I think you gave a good, balanced explanation there. I also see
there's quiet a nice Wikipedia article on NWG [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Germanic ]. It makes a point I
was going to:

"However, as long as Northwest Germanic is not regarded as a distinct
proto-language, it is possible to harmonize these two hypotheses. An
early close relationship between Nordic and Gothic dialects does not
exclude a later similar relationship between remaining North and West
Germanic groups, once the Gothic migration had started in the 2nd or
3rd century."

You'd then simply have some isoglosses marking a NW versus E divide,
others NE versus W.  That said, I'm not sure that all points of
agreement can be accounted for in the way suggested in the last
paragraph. For example, Gothic shares with OHG and OS voicing of the
3rd person singular and 2nd person plural verbal ending -id (as
against -iþ in Proto-Old English and Ancient Nordic, as attested on
the Stentoften stone; the attested OHG -it is due to the later High
German consonant shift). This final /d/ is usually devoiced in Gothic
according to the later rule that all final fricatives were devoiced,
but the original voiced form survives when an enclitic particle is
attached ('wileidu'), and is shown in analogical spellings such as
'habaid', 'giutid' and 'wopeid'. Gothic also shares with OHG the
voiced final dental in the 3rd person plural -and (which became -ant
in OHG later according to the High German consonant shift). But the
early history of the dialects in this respect is obscure, so I
wouldn't rule anything out.

> - the definite article (?)

The earliest Old English poetry is much more sparing in its use of the
demonstrative as a definite article than Old English prose, not so
different to Gothic usage.  Early Old Norse poetry and runic
inscriptions are also more like Gothic in this respect; the suffixed
article was an innovation in ON. And of course, we have little idea
about the later development of Gothic. At least we know that i-umlaut
couldn't have operated in the same was as it did later (and partly
independently) in the various NWG dialects, since Gothic had already
lost many of the endings that were to give rise to i-umlaut. And
there's no sign of it in Crimean Gothic, e.g. in 'ada' "egg".

> - the z>R>r evolution

I suspect that the 'r' colouring is quite early in NWG. This could
explain the lowering of short high vowels before original /z/ in some
dialects, as in OE mé, ON mér : OHG mir, Go. mis. But the evolution of
vowels in Old English suggests that Proto-Germanic /z/ and /r/ were
still distinct phonemes in England until not long before the earliest
written texts (excepting runic inscriptions), and the distinction
lasted even longer in Scandinavia.

> Other arguments, like the distinctions s-z, e-i, o-u may be shared 
> archaisms (otherways said: the loss of these distinctions is an 
> innovation of Gothic).

Just to clarify: the s-z distinction wasn't lost, per se, in Gothic.
It was cancelled out in final position, but the voiced form was
restored before inflectional endings and when an enlitic particle was
added, thus: 'hatis' (nom.sg.): 'hatiza' (dat.sg.); 'wileis' :
'wileizu'; weis : weizuþ-þan; sums : sumzuþ-þan (although 'sumsuh' is
also attested). It's not clear whether spellings like 'wopeid' and
'giutid' reflect an analogous restoration of voiced forms in
pronunciation; I suspect it's more likely that they are just analogous
spellings, but that's just my guess. The 'z', and voiced fricatives
generally, were often replaced with the corresponding voiceless
fricative by paradigmatic analogy in the preterite of strong verbs,
and in causative verbs by analogy with the strong verbs from which
they derived: Go. us-kiusan, us-kusun : OE ceosan, curon; Go.
ur-reisan, ur-raisjan : OE rísan, ráeran. But there is no general
confusion of medial 'z' and 's' in Gothic: 'hazjan', 'nasjan' (but
never *hasjan or *nazjan). 

LN


--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Francisc Czobor" <fericzobor at ...> wrote:
>
> Hi, Ian
> 
> NWG is not something new - I've read for the first time about it many 
> years ago, and looked like something quite widely accepted among 
> linguists.
> Don't remember exactly now what were the arguments for a NWG linguistic 
> community; but among others were for sure:
> - the Umlaut
> - the z>R>r evolution
> - the definite article (?)
> Other arguments, like the distinctions s-z, e-i, o-u may be shared 
> archaisms (otherways said: the loss of these distinctions is an 
> innovation of Gothic).
> But these arguments are not always very solid:
> - the Umlaut started at different times in WG and NG and was not 
> operating identically;
> - the z>R>r evolution didn't work in the same conditions in WG and NG;
> - the definite article in NG is different from that in WG; regarding 
> Gothic, it uses many times the demonstrative sa/so/thata as a definite 
> article.
> On the other hand, there are arguments for a Gothic-NG community, like 
> for instance -ww- > -ggw- and -jj- > -ggj- (> Gothic -ddj-).
> 
> I'm sure that there is much more to be said related to this subject.
> 
> Fr.
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Ian Ragsdale" <delvebelow@> wrote:
> >
> > I must confess that the concept of NWG is new to me.  Is this a 
> contested
> > theory or is it becoming accepted?  And any other suggested authors 
> besides
> > the already-mentioned Nielsen?
> > 
> > -Ian R
> > 
> > 
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>


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