Refine
Year of publication
- 2004 (6) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (6)
Language
- English (6)
Has Fulltext
- yes (6)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (6)
Keywords
- Baltoslawische Sprachen (1)
- Futur (1)
- Gemination (1)
- Glottalisierung (1)
- Indogermanische Sprachen (1)
- Litauisch (1)
- Metatonie (1)
- Preußisch (1)
- Vedisch (1)
Docherty et alii have "noted that several sociolinguistic accounts have shown a sharp distinction between the social trajectories for glottal replacement as opposed to glottal reinforcement, which have normally been treated by phonologists as aspects of 'the same thing'. It may therefore not always be appropriate to treat the two phenomena as manifestations of a single process or as points on a single continuum (presumably along which speakers move through time). From the speaker’s point of view (as manifested by different patterns of speaker behaviour) they appear as independent phenomena" (1997: 307).
Elsewhere I have argued that the three Old Prussian catechisms reflect consecutive stages in the development of a moribund language (1998a, 1998b, 2001a). After first eliminating the orthographical differences between the three versions of parallel texts while maintaining the distinction between linguistic variants and then assigning separate phonemic interpretations to the three versions on the basis of the historical evidence I listed the following phonological differences between the three catechisms.
Most scholars nowadays reconstruct a static root present with an alternation between lengthened grade in the active singular and full grade in the active plural and in the middle. I am unhappy about this traditional methodology of loosely postulating long vowels for the proto-language. What we need is a powerful theory which explains why clear instances of original lengthened grade are so very few and restrains our reconstructions accordingly. Such a theory has been available for over a hundred years now: it was put forward by Wackernagel in his Old Indic grammar (1896: 66-68). The crucial element of his theory which is relevant in the present context is that he assumed lengthening in monosyllabic word forms, such as the 2nd and 3rd sg. active forms of the sigmatic aorist injunctive.
The origin of the Goths
(2004)
Witold Ma´nczak has argued that Gothic is closer to Upper German than to Middle German, closer to High German than to Low German, closer to German than to Scandinavian, closer to Danish than to Swedish, and that the original homeland of the Goths must therefore be located in the southernmost part of the Germanic territories, not in Scandinavia (1982, 1984, 1987a, 1987b, 1992). I think that his argument is correct and that it is time to abandon Iordanes’ classic view that the Goths came from Scandinavia. We must therefore reconsider the grounds for adopting the latter position and the reasons why it always has remained popular.
Since 1973 I have been advocating the view that the Balto-Slavic acute tone was in fact glottalic and has been preserved unchanged in originally stressed and unstressed syllables in Žemaitian and Latvian, respectively (e.g. 1975, 1977, 1985, 1998). Jay Jasanoff has now (2004) adopted the gist of my view, but with-out mentioning my name. It may therefore be useful to sketch the background of our differences and to point out the remaining discrepancies.