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Winter's law again
(2007)
Since I discussed the scholarly literature on Winter’s law twenty years ago (1988), several important articles on the subject have appeared (Young 1990, Campanile 1994, Matasovic 1995, Derksen 2002, Dybo 2002, Patri 2005, Derksen 2007). As the law evidently continues to be controversial, it is important to look into the nature of the evidence and counter-evidence which is adduced. It appears that doubts about Winter’s law are largely the result of four types of misunderstanding.
The Germanic perfect presents (Präteritopräsentien) form a past tense by adding the endings of the weak preterit to the stem of the past participle, e.g. Go. wissa ‘knew’. This is a recent formation (cf. Kortlandt 1989). We may therefore ask ourselves if we can reconstruct the earlier formation which was ousted by the weak preterit. We may also try to recover the motivation for the replacement.
The Germanic weak preterit
(2007)
The main difficulty with the Germanic weak preterit is that one cannot endeavor an explanation of its origin without taking into account almost every aspect of the historical phonology and morphology of the Germanic languages. In the following I intend to show how a number of problems receive a natural explanation in a unified treatment on the basis of earlier studies. The theory presented here is not revolutionary, but aims at integrating earlier findings into a coherent whole. There is no reason to give a detailed account of the scholarly literature, which is easily accessible (cf. Tops 1974, Bammesberger 1986).
Polabian accentuation
(2007)
From a synchronic point of view, the accentuation of Late Polabian has been clarified by Trubetzkoy (1929) and Olesch (1973, 1974). The stress fell on the last full vowel of a word form, which was found either in the final or in the penulti-mate syllable. In the latter instance, the final syllable contained a reduced vowel. This rule was challenged by Kurylowicz (1955), who maintained that the stress was fixed on the initial syllable of the word. The latter theory has the advantage of accounting for the absence of reduced vowels in initial syllables.
Last year Georg Holzer proposed a relative chronology of accentual developments in Slavic (2005). Here I shall compare his chronology with the one I put forward earlier (1975, 1989a, 2003) and discuss the differences. For the sake of convenience, I first reproduce the relevant parts of my chronology, omitting asterisks before pre-historic Slavic forms. 1. Proto-Indo-European. 2. Dialectal Indo-European. 3. Early Balto-Slavic. During this period the characteristic lateral mobility of Balto-Slavic accent patterns came into existence. 4. Late Balto-Slavic. During this period the Balto-Slavic accent patterns obtained their final shape.
In his magnificent book on the language relations across Bering Strait (1998), Michael Fortescue does not consider Nivkh (Gilyak) to be a Uralo-Siberian language. Elsewhere I have argued that the Indo-European verbal system can be understood in terms of its Indo-Uralic origins (2001). All of these languages belong to Joseph Greenberg’s Eurasiatic macro-family (2000). In the following I intend to reconsider the grammatical evidence for including Nivkh into the Uralo-Siberian language family. The Indo-Uralic evidence is of particular importance because it guarantees a time depth which cannot otherwise be attained.
Koivulehto and Vennemann have recently (1996) revived Posti’s theory (1953) which attributed Finnic consonant gradation to Germanic influence, in particular to the influence of Verner’s law. This theory disregards the major differences between Finnic and Saami gradation (cf. Sammallahti 1998: 3) and ignores the similar gradation in Nganasan and Selkup (cf. Kallio 2000: 92).
Gothic gen.pl. -e
(2007)