NW vs. E Gmc

[Sean Crist]

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

1.  Both Marc Pierce and Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen cited *z > r as an
example of a shared innovation in NWGmc.  It's true that a sound change
along these lines operated in both WGmc and NGmc, but it can be shown that
this is a parallel change which operated after the two dialects had
separated.  The evidence is that there are rules both in WGmc and in NGmc
which are sensitive to the *z/*r distinction; the merger of the two
categories must have happened _after_ the two dialects had developed
separately for a while.

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.

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).

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.

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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