LL-L: "Historical linguistics" LOWLANDS-L, 07.AUG.2000 (01) [E]

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 07.AUG.2000 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: Historical linguistics

Roger Thijs asks:

> Do our language varieties still contain remnants of
> older languages? Are
> these detectable (beyond pure speculation)? May they
> have influenced the
> sound shifts of our dialects? Do isoglosses reveal
> the extend of
> pre-germanic language area's or are they all of more
> recent origin?

Yes, languages routinely show influences and elements
of other languages.  Detecting them is trickier.
Recent borrowings are easily traceable, but older ones
undergo sound changes and may no longer stand out as
borrowings, e.g. English _pitch_ from Latin _pix,
picis_, or German _Armbrust_ "crossbow" from Latin
_arcuballista_, further distorted by folk etymology.

Loan words are the most common trace of other
languages, but more general influences can often be
identified, e.g. Dutch gave up aspiration (the -h-
after Germanic ptk) due to French influence, Swedish
etc. adopted unstressed prefixes like be- or fo"r-
from Platt.  These influences can lead to sound
shifts, e.g. umlaut and uvular r are common to French
and Germanic languages, though it's hard to prove
which side was first.

Isoglosses can reflect circumstances from hundreds or
(occasionally) a couple of thousands of years ago--
but are mostly more recent.  Dialectologists thought
that modern German dialects reflected tribal borders
of the 500's AD, but subsequent research has made such
connections look less likely.  Certainly the High
German sound shift goes back some 15 centuries, but
many other are from the past few hundred years.

One thing to bear in mind is that the further back
from hard evidence you reconstruct a language, the
less accurate the reconstruction will be.
Under favorable circumstances, historical linguists
can reconstruct back a few millenia from the earliest
records; but each millenium introduced more and more
errors, and before long the theoretical
reconstructions are hopelessly off-track.
Several of the Indo-European languages were written
going back to 1800 BC, so reconstructing
Proto-Indo-European of circa 4000 BC is doable.  Some
linguists try to reconstruct a parent language for PIE
and other languages, but they've never been able to
prove that they are not just dealing with chance
resemblences, so great is the inaccuracy at that time
depth.

> Leuven University archeologists found some
> Neanderthaler remains and tools
> (including a 2 kg core shopper) in the South East of
> Belgian Limburg

Trying to go back to Neaderthals is beyond what we can
reconstruct.  We don't even know whether their
communication was sophisticated enough to call
full-blown language.   As said, trying to reconstruct
10,000 years back falls into the realm of speculation,
sad to say.

I have to log off now, but developments since Roman
times are definitely potentially (!) recoverable:
sometimes the influence is clear-cut, sometimes it is
ambiguous.  I'll try to get back to specific features
you mentioned later.

----------

From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: Historical linguistics

Roger Thijs asked whether ancient interaction between
languages can still be detected today

> - 1 - Historical considerations
>
> For the area I'm from, the Tongeren area, the known
> historical successive
> layers were:
>
> - 50 BC: The tribes of the "Eburones" fought with
> Caeser, later called (or
> replaced by) "Tungri", language unknown, but more
> probably germanic than
> celtic

Ebur- is a good Germanic root meaning "wild pig", but
I think Celtic (of 50 BC) would have the same word in
nearly the same form.  The -on- suffix, though, is a
common Germanic one; I don't recall it being common in
Celtic.  Examples:  Saxones from _sahs_ "short-sword",
thus "The Swordmen".  Likewise Gutones "Goth" from
gut- "flooded out"(debated etymology),
Francones/Franci "the Franks/brave ones"

I've never seen a definitive answer to how much
Germanic presence there was in Belgia of 50BC.  Gaul
was Celtic, but along the Rhine there seems to have
been heavy intermixing; some of the Rhinish Germanic
tribes have very ungermanic names, e.g. Tencteri:
"Tihteri" would have been as close as Germani would
have come to pronouncing that.  I'm not aware of
definite Celtic influence from this period.  One
problem is, that Celtic and Germanic were still quite
similar at this time.

> 358: Francs tribes allowed to settle in Tongeren by
> the Roman emperor Julianus
> 406. Germanic tribes: Alanes, Vandals, Sueves
> devastate the area around 660

By this time we know Germanic tribes were settling in
Belgia.  Lowland/Ingveonic/North Sea Germanic tribes,
Frisians specifically, appear to have settled the
entire Belgian coast, while the Franks settled inland.

Low Frankish/Istveonic dialects share many features
with the Ingveonic group, e.g.:
   =nasal loss (finf > fif etc.)
   =ai > ee, au > oo:   stain > steen, baum > boom
   =lack of the High German sound shift, among others

They differ from the Ingveonic group in a few ways,
e.g.:
   =no palatalization: kaas not cheese/tsjis  (but Old
Dutch does show a few traces)
   =no secondary umlaut, e.g. no umlaut in _schoon_
vs. German _schoen_.

Several features have changed over time and are
misleading:
   =Old Dutch still had different verb plural endings
(-en -et -en); Dutch arrived at a single verb plural
ending independently of the other Lowland languages
   = no brightening of a to ae/e:  dat vs. Old Frisian
thet and Old English thaet.  Old Saxon brightened a,
but soon restored it to [a] under High German (and
Frankish/Dutch?) influence.

Orrin Robinson wrote a fine book comparing the
Germanic languages: Old English and its closest
Relatives.  It is not too technical for nonlinguists,
and details these shared features.

Look for articles by Toni Buccini, a Netherlandic
scholar (University of Chicago), who has written
extensively on the history of Dutch, including
evidence of how coastal Frisians assimilating into
inland Dutch left clear traces, e.g. Ingveonic mu~th
(with nasalized u) gives Old English muth, English
mouth, but Dutch mond, German Mund... but coastal
towns still preserve the Ingveonic -muiden.  He also
presents a good case for Frisian influence leading to
the lack of secondary umlaut in Dutch (again schoon
vs. schoen).
Dutch subsequently developed u-umlaut and o-umlaut
sounds on its own, influenced by French and the
neighboring Germanic languages.  Buccini's work is a
good example of the ancient traces you are looking
for; umlaut provides an example of more diffuse
influence.

> (It is curious the Irish played a major role in the
> second Christianization

Yes, tho Ireland was the only part of western
Christendom that wasn't disrupted by the Great
Migrations.  Linguists have found only a few loanwords
in Germanic languages from the Irish missionaries, nor
from the subsequent Anglo-Saxon missionaries: they
were too few to affect the bulk of the population.

> - 2 - Linguistic considerations:
>
> While the romance-diets border is going
> "horizontally" from West to East in
>
> Belgium, some linguistic phenomena have more
> North-South isoglosses and  cross the linguistic
border.
> e.g. some common phonemes between South Limburg and
> East-Walloon:
> - preservation of the initial h (dropped in
> Brabantish)

Dropping h again appears to be inspired by contact
with French, and occurs early on: we have exactly one
sentence of Old West Flemish from circa 1000 AD,
“Hebban olla vogala nestas hogunnan, hinase hic enda
thu” (All the birds have started building their nests,
except you and me).  The uncertainty of ic/hic shows
early French influence.

> - occurrence of initial consonant dzj
 In Germanic words, or only in loanwords from French
etc.?

> Could this indicate the presence of an old language
> substrate square over the actual language borders?

Possibly.  You want to make sure that the suspected
substrate actually had the feature in question at the
right time.   A notable German scholar made the
embaressing mistake of thinking that the Swiss were
Ingveonic, because Swiss German does drop n's: drinkan
> triiche, finf > fiifi etc.   But n-loss is not
uncommon, and the Swiss dropped n's a millenium after
the Ingveonic group: that is a case of unrelated
superficial resemblance.
Umlaut and uvular [R], which cross the French/Germanic
border, are again examples of an innovation that has
spread subsequently.

> - Do the different US American Indian languages
> leave much vocabulary in standard English, or will
they disappear without
> leaving anything else as eventually some remnants in
deformated topographical
> names?

Remarkably few Amerindian words made it into English.
Amerindian place names are common, but only some words
like moccasin, tepee, wigwam, squaw, pemmican have
been adopted, and most of those refer to Amerindian
culture.

> Is there a science detecting patterns of disappeared
> languages in regional varieties of existing
languages?

Very much so.  Look for diachronic
linguistics/historical linguistics; traces of ancient
language interaction is one (one) of the main areas of
research.  Much of the interaction is clearly
detectable, much of it is hard to prove.

Stefan Israel

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