Old English, A Grammar of (Hogg & Fulk) [Volume 1 Phonology & Volume 2 Morphology] (2025)

Early Old English Foot Structure

The variable operation of high vowel deletion in Old English has long been a point of difficulty, both descriptively – a prehistoric form like *hēafudu is attested variably as hēafudu, hēafdu, and hēafod – and theoretically. Recent work, especially by Bermúdez-Otero (2005b) and Fulk (2010), has indicated that plural forms like hēafudu are most likely original, but accounting for why the medial *u is preserved in this case form, and not in hēafde, the dative singular of the same word, has remained theoretically problematic. These difficulties arise from attempting to describe the prehistoric Old English process of high vowel deletion on the basis of later Old English phonology. At an earlier stage, the nominative-accusative plural *hēafudu could be exhaustively parsed into two precisely bimoraic feet: *[hēa][.fu.du]. The dative singular historically ended with a long vowel, *hēafudǣ , in which the medial *u could not be accommodated within a bimoraic foot: *[hēa].fu[.dǣ ]. High vowel deletion is therefore best characterized as the deletion of unfooted high vowels in early Old English, initially operating while length in unstressed vowels remained contrastive. Both this quantitative system and the preference for precisely bimoraic units receive support from Kaluza's law, an archaic metrical phenomenon in Beowulf which prohibits resolution in secondary metrical ictus if the resulting unit would have more than two moras, and which is sensitive to prehistoric length distinctions. This original system was obscured, linguistically and metrically, in later Old English by the shortening of unstressed long vowels, triggering various morphological reanalyses of the effects of high vowel deletion. A review of these changes suggests that the system of metrical phonology described here provides a more plausible starting point for the reworkings that produced the forms found in later Old English than do alternative accounts such as those of Campbell (1983) or Ringe (2002).

A case study in grammaticalized inflectional morphology. Origin and development of the Germanic weak preterite

2010

This paper deals with one of the oldest and most controversial problems in the historical morphology of the Germanic branch of Indo-European: the origin and historical development of the so-called ‘weak preterite’. In Germanic, the weak preterite is the only means of forming the preterite tense of a derived verb. In spite of two hundred years of research into the weak preterite and a large number of hypotheses concerning its origin, it is not even securely established how the inflectional endings of this formation should be reconstructed for the common prehistory of the attested Germanic languages. Traditionally the inflectional endings of the weak preterite are conceived of as reflecting free inflectional forms of the verb “do”, only recently having been grammaticalized as inflectional morphology for derived verbs. But it has never been possible to identify the inflectional forms in question satisfactorily within the paradigm of “do”. This paper reconsiders the evidence of the Germanic daughter languages by taking into account West Germanic irregularities previously neglected or viewed as irrelevant. It is shown that the West Germanic evidence provides a key to understanding the origin and the later developments of the weak preterite inflectional endings.

The roles of phonology and analogy In Old English high vowel deletion: PHONOLOGY AND ANALOGY IN OLD ENGLISH HIGH VOWEL DELETION

Transactions of The Philological Society, 2010

The problem under consideration is the exact nature of the application of High Vowel Deletion (HVD) in Old English. As discussed in §1, according to what has come to be the most prevalent view, a form such as nom.acc.pl. hēafdu‘heads’ in Late West Saxon, from earlier *hēafudu, is the phonologically regular result of the application of HVD. In §2 a recent alternative explanation is discussed, whereby *hēafudu should have produced *hēafd, which was subsequently reformed to hēafdu in West Saxon on the basis of analogy. Some initial difficulties that confront this latter explanation are discussed. The earlier analysis of Eduard Sievers maintains that neither of these analyses is correct, and that hēafudu, one of the forms actually attested in early texts, including the Vespasian Psalter, represents the purely phonological result of HVD, which applies vacuously to this form. Evidence is adduced in §3 demonstrating that the treatment of the phonological results of HVD in interrelated declensional categories in the dialect of the Vespasian Psalter are preserved with impressive conservatism, evincing little or no analogical disruption. This conclusion lends strong support to Sievers’ analysis of forms like hēafudu and renders it extremely improbable that West Saxon hēafdu can be anything but an analogical creation or that the proposed *hēafd could ever have existed. In §4 a rationale is offered for the changes, analogical or otherwise, that must be assumed for West Saxon in forms like hēafdu, as well as in ja-stem neuter nouns with plurals like rīċu, wītu, along with feminine nouns in Germanic *-iþō, such as and .

The Development of Old English

2014

An Introduction to Old Frisian

An Introduction to Old Frisian

Preface ix chapter i History: The when, where and what of Old Frisian 1 The Frisians. A short history (§ §1-8); Texts and manuscripts (§ §9-14); Language (§ §15-18); The scope of Old Frisian studies (§ §19-21) chapter ii Phonology: The sounds of Old Frisian 21 A. Introductory remarks (§ §22-27): Spelling and pronunciation (§ §22-23); Axioms and method (§ §24-25); West Germanic vowel inventory (§26); A common West Germanic sound-change: gemination (§27) B. Ingvaeonic/North Sea Germanic sound-changes (§ §28-35): (1) Nasalization and rounding of long and short a before nasals (§ §28-29); (2) Loss of nasal before voiceless fricative plus compensatory lengthenig (§ §30-32); (3) Fronting of WGmc ā (§ §33-35); C. Proto-Frisian sound-changes (§ §36-71): (4) Development of the West Germanic diphthongs *au, *ai and *eu (§ §36-38); (5) Fronting of WGmc *a > PFris *5 (§ §39-41); (6) Palatalization and assibilation of velar plosives (§ §42-44); (7) I-mutation (§ § 45-47); (8) Breaking (§ §48-50); (9) Labio-velar mutation (§ §51-53); (10) Loss of intervocalic-hand contraction (§ §54-57); (11) Loss of unstressed prefix *ga-/*gi-(§ §58-59); (12-13) Grimm's Law and Verner's Law (§ §60-64); (14) Metathesis of r (§ §65-67); (15) Loss of final-n (§ §68-70); End of Proto-Frisian changes (§71) D. Overview of the origin of Old Frisian phonemes (§ §72-78): Short vowels (§ §72-73); Long vowels and diphthongs (§ §74-76); Consonants (§ §77-78) Table of contents vi Table of contents chapter iii Morphology: The inflections of Old Frisian 53 Word-classes, case and number, gender, verbs (§ §79-82) A.

Old English: Morphology.

2012

Old English is in many respects a typical Indo-European language. This is particularly true of its morphological categories and its complex inflectional systems. It is mainly due to this complexity that this article cannot treat all aspects of OE morphology in full detail. It therefore focuses on the most important inflectional systems of Old English. Morphological word-formation patterns are necessarily treated only marginally (Kastovksy, this volume). Moreover, there is a considerable degree of dialectal variation in Old English which is also manifested in the morphological paradigms. This variation cannot be covered here comprehensively. This article therefore has a strong bias towards the later stages of the West Saxon variety-the dialect and period from which the greatest share of our extant sources is transmitted. For more comprehensive accounts, including the details of the diachronic and diatopic variation, I refer the reader to the relevant sections in Hogg/Fulk (2011) as well as to the older, but still valuable works by .

Leiden Summer School reader OCS

The Words for “Fire” in Germanic

Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 2009

This article puts forth a comprehensive set of etymologies for "fire" words in the Germanic languages that descend from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) + péh 2-u r. I propose that all relevant cognates are derived from the PIE holokinetic inflection, that is, + ph 2-u r (nominativeaccusative) ~ + ph 2-un-(oblique), and that all variants in the Germanic languages arose as a result of analogical changes in the Proto-Germanic and later periods. Furthermore, these etymologies cast doubt on reconstructions that require the positing of + in Proto-Germanic or Proto-Indo-European. In addition to providing cause to review existing reconstructions, this article also provides a closer philological view of the evidence of cognates in Germanic.

The Conundrum of Old Norse Umlaut: Sound Change versus Crisis Analogy

Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 2004

West Germanic monosyllabic lengthening and Gothic breaking as partially Proto-Germanic developments. The evidence of pronominal place adverbs ‘here’, ‘where’ and ‘there’

North-Western European Language Evolution 70.2: 135-170 , 2017

The paper deals with two Germanic sound changes which are traditionally believed to postdate the disintegration of the Proto-Germanic parent language. The lengthening in several monosyllables, attested in West Germanic languages, is usually believed to be an innovation of this branch. The so-called Gothic breaking is similarly thought of as belonging exclusively to East Germanic. The paper shows that there is evidence suggesting a Proto-Germanic age for parts of both sound changes, in particular for a lengthening in monosyllabic words ending in PGmc *-r and for a lowering of PGmc *i if followed by *r. Proto-Germanic possessed at least three pronoun-based place adverbs formed with PGmc *-r, cf. Goth ƕar ‘where’ from ƕa- ‘what’, þar ‘there’ from þa- ‘that’ and hēr ‘here’ from hi- ‘this here’. The vocalism of these adverbs did not match that of the corresponding pronouns in two points. First, the vowels of the adverbs were probably long. Second, the close PGmc * (Goth ē, OHG ia) of ‘here’ did not match PGmc *i in the corresponding pronoun. The paper assumes that the long vowels of the place adverbs emerged by a lengthening of etymologically short vowels in monosyllablic words ending in PGmc *-r. The timbre difference between PGmc * in ‘here’ and PGmc *i in the corresponding pronoun for ‘this here’ is accounted for by a lowering of PGmc *i before *r. Both postulated developments must have been operating already in Proto-Germanic times but the lowering must have chronologically preceded the lengthening. The paper introduces the data supporting the assumptions made and discusses the apparent counterevidence.