Linguistic Method: Essays in Honor of Herbert Penzl [Reprint 2018 ed.] 9783110815665, 9789027977670


226 77 43MB

English Pages 630 [640] Year 1978

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD PDF FILE

Table of contents :
PREFACE
CONTENTS
TABULA GRATULATORIA
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HERBERT PENZL
LINGUISTIC METHOD: A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE
PART I. LINGUISTIC CONCEPTS
DERIVATION VS. LEXICALIZATION IN GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY
ZUR MORPHOLOGIE DER DEUTSCHEN NOMINALGRUPPE
GRAMMATIK ALS ERGEBNIS VON TEXTANALYSE
LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION
SAGENA PISCATORIS: AN ESSAY IN MEDIEVAL LEXICOGRAPHY
ZUR PROBLEMATIK DER FACH- UND SONDERSPRACHEN
WHAT IS A DIPHTHONG?
PART II. LINGUISTIC STRATUMS
LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS AND THE 1972 BUNDESTAG ELECTION CAMPAIGN
HORST AND METHOD
LANGUAGE ECOLOGY AND THE CASE OF FAROESE
THE ENGLISHIZATION OF HINDI: LANGUAGE RIVALRY AND LANGUAGE CHANGE
OLD ENGLISH AGLÆ̅̅CA - MIDDLE IRISH OCLACW
THE PHONOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ORTHOGRAPHIC VARIATION: PROTO-GERMANIC /AW/ IN OLD NETHERLANDIC
NOTKER’S ‘ANLAUTGESETZ’
SEMANTIC NATURALNESS IN WORD-BUILDING: EAST GERMAN NUR-
ISOQU ANTOREN: EIN METHODISCHES HILFSMITTEL ZUR HISTORIOLINGUISTISCHEN REKONSTRUKTION DES SPRACHENKONTAKTS
PART III. LINGUISTIC SYSTEMS
THE GRAPHEMIC SYSTEM OF THE GERMANIC FUÞARK
THE MORPHOLOGY AND PHONOLOGY OF FINNISH GIVEN NAMES
RELATIONAL SOUND CHANGE: ‘VÁ’ > ‘VO’ IN ICELANDIC
PROLEGOMENA TO A THEORY OF GOTHIC VERBAL ASPECT
GAP-FILLING IN GOTHEMBURG PHONOLOGY
THE PROBLEM OF THE FRENCH SEMIVOWELS
CARME D’ILDEBRANDO 10b–11a
ERGATIVITY IN PUSHTO (AFGHANI)
THE PROLIFERATION OF GEMINATES IN THE EASTERN GREEK DIALECTS
DAS ALTHOCHDEUTSCHE VERBSYSTEM: TEMPUS UND MODUS
THE PHONOLOGY OF THE OLD HIGH GERMAN “TATIAN”
PART IV. LINGUISTIC ATTITUDES
PHILOLOGY AND METASCIENCE
NORTH-WEST GERMANIC ‘-UM’ = GOTHIC ‘-AM’
REMARKS ON THREE TRADITIONS IN THE DESCRIPTION OF GERMAN PHONOLOGY
ON SOME LINGUISTIC METHODS
THE FEATURES ‘VOCALIC’ AND ‘SYLLABIC’
GRASSMANN’S LAW, BARTHOLOMAE’S LAW, AND LINGUISTIC METHODOLOGY
JOHANN ANDREAS SCHMELLER ALS SPRACHSOZIOLOGE
QUOMODO SUPERFICIEI GRAMMATICAE NEXUS SENSUSQUE PROFUNDIOR IN JESPERSENII SYNTAXI ANALYTICA DICTA TRACTENTUR
INDEX
Recommend Papers

Linguistic Method: Essays in Honor of Herbert Penzl [Reprint 2018 ed.]
 9783110815665, 9789027977670

  • 0 0 0
  • Like this paper and download? You can publish your own PDF file online for free in a few minutes! Sign Up
File loading please wait...
Citation preview

JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA M E M O R I A E N I C O L A I VAN WIJK D E D I C A T A edenda curai C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

Series Maior, 79

LINGUISTIC METHOD Essays in Honor of Herbert Penzl Edited by

IRMENGARD RAUCH and

GERALD F. CARR

MOUTON PUBLISHERS THE HAGUE • PARIS • NEW YORK

ISBN 90 279 7767 4 © Copyright 1979, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands No part of this issue may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers. Printed in Belgium

PREFACE

Herbert Penzl, born in Neufelden, Austria, on September 2, 1910, received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1935, and joined the Faculty of Rockford College in 1936, the University of Illinois in 1938, the University of Michigan in 1950, and the University of California at Berkeley in 1963. His pioneer work in the discipline of LINGUISTIC METHOD and lifetime fosterage of that discipline are celebrated by this birthday volume presented in his honor. The development of Herbert Penzl's approach to linguistic description is evident from his earliest writings through his several more recent books; a selection of his works follows in the bibliographical listing. The ultimate scholarly characteristic may be assigned to Herbert Penzl's LINGUISTIC METHOD, namely universality. Parameters of his approach to linguistic change such as stages, structural strategies, cause, and adequacy, which are systematized and made explicit by him, are requisite to all treatments of language change. Thus his contributions over the years serve well the field of linguistics. It is impossible, however, to speak of Herbert Penzl's contributions to scholarship without recognizing those personal qualities that have earned him the respect of students and colleagues around the world: professionalism, humility, and humanity. The editors thank the contributing authors to THE HERBERT PENZL FESTSCHRIFT, and Professor Paul Kirby (Eastern Illinois University), Rebecca Dvorak and David Krooks (University of Illinois) for their assistance. September 2, 1975

I.R. and G.f.c.

CONTENTS

Preface Tabula Gratulatoria Selected bibliography of Herbert Penzl Linguistic method: a matter of principle

vu 5 11 19

P A R T I. L I N G U I S T I C CONCEPTS DANIEL BRINK

Derivation vs. lexicalization in generative phonology

27

JEAN F O U R Q U E T

Zur Morphologie der deutschen Nominalgruppe

45

HANS GLINZ

Grammatik als Ergebnis von Textanalyse

55

H E N R Y A N D RENÉE K A H A N E A N D R O B E R T A ASH

Linguistic evidence in historical reconstruction

67

JAMES W . M A R C H A N D

Sagena piscatoris : an essay in medieval lexicography. . . . .

123

H U G O MOSER

Zur Problematik der Fach- und Sondersprachen

139

ERNST PULGRAM

What is a diphthong?

153

P A R T II. L I N G U I S T I C S T R A T U M S MICHAEL G. CLYNE

Linguistic analysis and the 1972 Bundestag election campaign

163

ERIC P. HAMP

Horst and method

175

2

CONTENTS

EINAR HAUGEN

Language ecology and the case of Faroese

183

BRAJ B. K A C H R U

The Englishization of Hindi: language rivalry and language change

199

SHERMAN M. K U H N

Old English äglxca - Middle Irish öchlach

213

ROBERT L. KYES

The phonological significance of orthographic variation: ProtoGermanic /aw/ in Old Netherlandic

231

WILLIAM G. MOULTON

Notker's 'Anlautgesetz'

241

IRMENGARD R A U C H

Semantic naturalness in word-building: East German Nur- . .

253

WERNER H. VEITH

Isoquantoren: ein methodisches Hilfsmittel zur linguistischen Rekonstruktion des Sprachkontakts

historio265

PART III. LINGUISTIC SYSTEMS

ELMER H . ANTONSEN

The graphemic system of the Germanic fu{)ark

287

ROBERT A U S T E R L I T Z

The morphology and phonology of Finnish given names . . .

299

H R E I N N BENEDIKTSSON

Relational sound change: vä > vo in Icelandic

307

ALBERT L. LLOYD

Prolegomena to a theory of Gothic verbal aspect

327

ANDRE MARTINET

Gap-filling in Gothemburg phonology

347

JOHN A. REA

The problem of the French semivowels

353

PIERGIUSEPPE SCARDIGLI

Carme d'lldebrando 10b - 11a

363

H A B I B U L L A H TEGEY

Ergativity in Pushto (Afghani)

369

MÄRIA TSIAPERA

The proliferation of geminates in the eastern Greek dialects

419

CONTENTS

3

PAUL VALENTIN

Das althochdeutsche Verbsystem: Tempus und Modus

425

JOSEPH B. VOYLES

The phonology of the Old High German Tatian

441

P A R T IV. L I N G U I S T I C A T T I T U D E S

RAIMO A N T T I L L A

Philology and metascience

497

M A D I S O N BEELER

North-West Germanic -um = Gothic -am

509

B Y R O N J. K O E K K O E K

Remarks on three traditions in the description of German phonology

515

G. s . SCUR

On some linguistic methods

521

F R A N S V A N COETSEM

The features 'vocalic' and 'syllabic'

547

THEOVENNEMANN

Grassmann's law, Bartholomae's law, and linguistic methodology

557

PETER WIESINGER

Johann Andreas Schmeller als Sprachsoziologe

585

LADISLAUS ZGUSTA

Quomodo superficiei grammaticae nexus sensusque profundior Index

601 619

TABULA

GRATULATORIA

WERNER ABRAHAM

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen R I A ARMSTRONG

University of California at Berkeley MERVIN R . BARNES

University of Oklahoma CHARLES M . BARRACK

University of Washington JOHANNA S. BELKIN

Ohio State University CURTIS BLAYLOCK

University of Illinois DWIGHT L . BOLINGER

Harvard University FRANK X . BRAUN

University of Michigan BARTON W . BROWNING

Pennsylvania State University JAMES E . CATHEY

University of Massachusetts YUEN R E N CHAO

University of California at Berkeley GERHARD CLAUSING

University of Southern California MARY C . CRICHTON

University of Michigan WILLIAM C . CROSSGROVE

Brown University

6

TABULA GRATULATORIA RICHARD D ' A L Q U E N

University of Alberta NANCY C . DORIAN

Bryn Mawr College M A X DUFNER

University of Arizona ERNST A . EBBINGHAUS

Pennsylvania State University ROBERT PETER EBERT

University of Chicago HANS EGGERS

Universität des Saarlandes JOHANNES ERBEN

Universität Innsbruck KENNOSUKE EZAWA

Universität Tübingen JAMES FERRELL University of

Michigan

ROBERT T . FIRESTONE

University of Colorado ELI FISCHER-J0RGENSEN

Kebenhavn ROBERT A . FOWKES

New York University G . LEE FULLERTON

University of Texas at San Antonio JOHN B . GAMBER

University of California at Berkeley BARBARA D . GREIM

University of Illinois WERNER H . GRILK

University of Michigan JOHN J . GUMPERZ

University of California at Berkeley THOMAS ELWOOD HART

Syracuse University

TABULA GRATULATORIA R . R . K . HARTMANN

University of Exeter LUISE HERTRICH HATHAWAY

University of California at Berkeley SHIRÔ HATTORI

Yokohama ARCHIBALD A . H I L L

University of Texas G E R D HILLEN

University of California at Berkeley HENRY M . HOENIGSWALD

University of Pennsylvania HELGA HOSFORD

University of Montana VALENTINE CHARLES HUBBS

University of Michigan ANDREW O . JASZI

University of California at Berkeley KARL J . KAUSSEN

University of California at Berkeley NORMAN CARL University of KEUL California

at Berkeley

LAWRENCE B . KIDDLE

University of Michigan RICHARD KIMPEL

University of Western Ontario DAVID ANDREW KROOKS

University of Illinois WINFRIED KUDSZUS

University of California at Berkeley VICTOR LANGE

Princeton University RICHARD H . LAWSON

University of North Carolina R U T H AND WINFRED LEHMANN

University of Texas

7

8

TABULA GRATULATORIA ILSE LEHISTE

Ohio State University WALTER F . W . LOHNES

Stanford University YAKOV MALKIEL

University of California at Berkeley BERTIL MALMBERG

Lunds Universitet THOMAS L . MARKEY

University of Michigan JOSEPH MILECK

University of California at Berkeley WOLFGANG W . MOELLEKEN

University of California at Davis KLAUS A . MUELLER

University of California at Berkeley HENRY W . NORDMEYER

University of Michigan KARL ODWARKA

University of Northern Iowa ROSE-MARIE G . OSTER

University of Colorado PHILIP M . PALMER

University of California at Berkeley ANGELINA R . PIETRANGELI

University of Illinois HELMUT PLANT

University of Oregon EDGAR C . POLOMÉ

University of Texas HEINZ POLITZER

University of California at Berkeley CARROLL E . REED

University of Massachusetts WALTER A . REICHART

University of Michigan

TABULA GRATULATORIA ERNEST REINHOLD

University of Alberta MARGA REIS

Universität Köln PETER N . RICHARDSON

Yale University ORRIN WARNER ROBINSON I I I

Stanford University HANS-GERT ROLOFF

Technische Universität Berlin RICHARD M . RUNGE

University of Iowa HEINZ R U P P

Universität Basel ANNELIESE SARTORI STEIN

Universität Erlangen JESSE O . SAWYER

University of California at Berkeley HEINRICH C . SEEBA

University of California at Berkeley INGO SEIDLERof University

Michigan

LESTER W . J . SEIFERT

University of Wisconsin RICHARD K . SEYMOUR

Pennsylvania State University EMIL SKÄLA

University of Prague JOHAN P . SNAPPER

University of California at Berkeley STEFAN SONDEREGGER

Universität Zürich MARIE-LUISE S. SOUTH

University of Washington BLAKE LEE SPAHR University of California

at Berkeley

9

TABULA GRATULATORIA MACDONALD STEARNS

University of California at Los Angeles HENRI STEGEMEIER

University of Illinois FREDERIC AND SALLY TUBACH

University of California at Berkeley G . TREVOR TUNNICLIFF

University of Illinois BJARNE ULVESTAD

Universitetet i Bergen HEINZ VATER

Universität Köln WILFRIED M . VOGE

University of California at Irvine JOHN T . WATERMAN

University of California at Santa Barbara OTMAR WERNER

Universität Freiburg i.Br. TERENCE H . WILBUR

University of California at Los Angeles DONNA A N N ZYCH

University of Illinois

SELECTED B I B L I O G R A P H Y OF H E R B E R T P E N Z L

1937 "Der [r]-Einschub nach ME. ä in Neu-England", Anglia 49:81-92. 1938 "Die Bedeutung moderner Dialektaufnahmen für Probleme des Lautwandels", Proceedings of the Third International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ed. by Edgard Blancquaert and Willem Pee, 251-58. Ghent: Laboratory of Phonetics of the University. "Lehnwörter mit mittelenglisch ä vor r im Pennsylvanisch-deutschen Dialekt", Journal of English and Germanic Philology 37:396-402. "Relics with 'broad a ' in New England speech", American Speech 13:45-49. "The vowel in rather in New England", Publications of the Modern Language Association 53:1186-92. 1939 "Kompromissvokal und Lautwandel", Anglia 51:88-99. 1940 "The vowel-phonemes in father, man, dance in dictionaries and New England speech", Journal of English and Germanic Philology 39: 13-32. 1942 Review of Middle English ü and related sounds: Their development in Early American English by H. Whitehall, Language 18:148-51.

12

HERBERT PENZL

1943 "Aspect in the morphology of the Pashto (Afghan) verb", Studies in Linguistics 1:16.1-4. 1944 "A phonemic change in Early Old English", Language 20:84-87. 1947 "The development of Germanic ai and au in Old High German", Germanic Review 22:174-81. "The phonemic split of Germanic k in Old English", Language 23:34-42. 1949 "Categories in grammar", Actes du Sixième Congrès International des Linguistes. ed. by Michel Lejeune, 194-96, 365-66. Paris: Klincksieck. "Umlaut and secondary umlaut in Old High German", Language 25:223-40. [Published in German (1970) as "Umlaut und Sekundärumlaut im Althochdeutschen", Vorschläge für eine strukturale Grammatik des Deutschen, ed. by Hugo Steger, 545-74 ( Wege der Forschung 146). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.] 1950 "On the cases of the Afghan (Pashto) noun", Word 6:70-73. "Orthography and phonemes in Wulfila's Gothic", Journal of English and Germanic Philology 49:217-30. 1951 "Afghan descriptions of the Afghan (Pashto) verb", Journal of the American Oriental Society 71:97-lll. 1952 "Die Substantive des Paschto nach afghanischen Grammatiken", Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 102:52-61. "Zur Entstehung des i-Umlauts im Nordgermanischen", Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 66:1-15. [Reprinted by the University of Rejkjavik, Iceland, 1967.]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

13

1954 "Orthography and phonemes in Pashto (Afghan)", Journal of the American Oriental Society 74:74-81. [Translated into Pashto 1957, Kabul Magazine, 24 September, 26-33.] 1955 A Grammar of Pashto : A Descriptive Study of the Dialect of Kandahar, Afghanistan. Washington, D.C. : American Council of Learned Societies. [Translated into Pashto 1961 by Muhammad Rahim Elham: de pastö grämar (Publication no. 23 of the College of Literature of Kabul University, Kabul 1340).] "Zur Erklärung von Notkers Anlautsgesetz", Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 86:196-210. 1957 "The evidence for phonemic change", Studies Presented to Joshua Whatmough on his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. by Ernst Pulgram, 193-208. The Hague: Mouton. 1958 "Linguistic training and the teaching of languages", Language Learning 8:1-3. "Orthographic evidence for types of phonemic change", Proceedings of the 8th International Congress of Linguists, ed. by Eva Sivertsen, 146-48. Oslo: Oslo University Press. "Zur Vorgeschichte von westsächsisch x und zur Methode des Rekonstruierens", Anglistische Studien : Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Professor Friedrich Wild, ed. by Karl Brunner et al., 158-69 (Wiener Beiträge zur englischen Philologie 66). Wien: W. Braumüller. 1958/59 "On the linguistic history of Pashto", Kabul Magazine 466:8-11, 471-72: 7-10. 1959 "Konsonantenphoneme und Orthographie im althochdeutschen Isidor", Mélanges de linguistique et de philologie Fernand Mossè in memoriam, 354-61. Paris: Didier.

14

HERBERT PENZL

"Standard Pashto and the dialects of Pashto", Afghanistan: Journal of the Historical Society of Afghanistan 3:8-14. 1960 "Hoenigswald on linguistic change and reconstruction", American Speech 35:216-19. 1961 "Eduard Prokosch und die amerikanische Sprachwissenschaft", Österreich und die angelsächsische Welt 2, ed. by Otto Hietsch, 217-22. Wien: Wilhelm Braumüller. "Old High German and its phonetic identification", Language 37:488-96. "Western loanwords in Modern Pashto", Journal of the American Oriental Society 81:43-52. 1962 (With O.L. Chavarria-Aguilar) "Lexicographical problems in Pashto", Problems in lexicography: Report of the Conference on Lexicography held at Indiana University, November 11-12, 1960, ed. by Fred W. Householder and Sol Saporta, 237-47 (International Journal of American Linguistics 28, Publications of the Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore and Linguistics 21). Bloomington: Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore and Linguistics. "Methoden der Lautbestimmung in der historischen Sprachwissenschaft", Proceedings of the 4th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ed. by Antti Sovijärvi and Pentti Aalto, 719-22 (Janua linguarum, series maior, 10). The Hague: Mouton. 1964 "Althochdeutsch /f/ und die Methoden der Lautbestimmung", Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung 31:289-317. "The evidence for the change from th to d in Old High German", Studies in languages and linguistics in honor of Charles C. Fries, ed. by Albert H. Marckwardt et al., 169-85. Ann Arbor: The English Language Institute, University of Michigan. "Die Phasen der althochdeutschen Lautverschiebung", Taylor Starck Festschrift, ed. by W. Betz et al., 27-41. The Hague: Mouton.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1965 "Phonem, Allophon und Sprachlaut in der historischen Sprachwissenschaft", Proceedings of the 5th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ed. by Eberhard Zwirner and Wolfgang Bethge. Basel: S. Karger. A Reader of Pashto. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1966 "Early Germanic names and vowel shifts", Names 14:65-68. "Namen und althochdeutsche Lautverschiebung", Proceedings of the 8th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, ed. by D. P. Blok, 384-89 (Janua linguarum, series maior, 17). The Hague: Mouton. "The origin of the past tense of the Pashto verb", Shahidullah Presentation Volume, ed. by Anwar S. Dil, 101-08. (Pakistani Linguistics Series 7): Lahore: Linguistic Research Group of Pakistan. 1967 "The linguistic interpretation of scribal errors in Old High German texts", Linguistics 32:79-82. "The phonemic interpretation of Early Germanic names", Papers in Linguistics in Honor of Léon Dosiert, ed. by William M. Austin, 145-48. The Hague: Mouton. 1968 "The history of the third nasal phoneme of Modern German", Publications of the Modern Language Association 83:340-46. "Die Phoneme in Notkers alemannischem Dialekt", Germanic Studies in Honor of Edward Henry Sehrt, ed. by Frithjof Anderson Raven et al., 133-50 (Miami Linguistics Series 1). Coral Gables: University of Miami Press. 1969 Geschichtliche deutsche Lautlehre. München: Max Hueber. "Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik: Einleitende Bemerkungen", Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 1:11-14, 193f. "Zur phonemischen Deutung der 'direkten Variation' in althochdeut-

16

HERBERT PENZL

sehen Denkmälern", Mélanges pour Jean Fourquet, ed. by Paul Valentin and Georges Zink, 287-93. Paris: Klincksieck. 1970 "Die mittelhochdeutschen Sibilanten und ihre Weiterentwicklung", Word 24:340-49 (Linguistic studies presented to André Martinet part 2). "Die phonemische Interpretation der 'umgekehrten Schreibung", Actes du Xe Congrès International des Linguistes, ed. by A. Graur, 4:63-66. Bucarest: Éditions de l'Académie de la République Socialiste de Roumanie. "Zu den Methoden der historischen Lautbestimmung: Die althochdeutschen Sibilanten", Folia Linguistica 4:104-09. "Zur Lautwiedergabe in Lehnwörtern des Althochdeutschen", Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ed. by Bohuslav Hâla, Milan Romportl and Premysl Janota, 731-33. Prague: Academic Publishing House of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. 1971 Lautsystem und Lautwandel in den althochdeutschen Dialekten. München : Max Hueber. "Scribal practice, phonological change and biuniqueness", German Quarterly 44:305-10. 197? "Methods of comparative Germanic linguistics", Toward a Grammar of Proto-Germanie, ed. by Franz van Coetsem and Herbert Kufner, 1-42. Tübingen: Niemeyer. "Graphisches Beweismaterial in der historischen Phonologie", Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Linguists, ed. by Luigi Heilmann. Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. Methoden der germanischen Linguistik (Sprachstrukturen, Reihe A, 1). Tübingen: Niemeyer. "Old Germanie languages", Linguistics in Western Europe, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 1232-81 (Current trends in Linguistics 9). The Hague: Mouton.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

17

"Zu Problemen der neuhochdeutschen Phonologie: Einleitende Ausführungen zu einem sprachlichen Rahmenthema", Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 4:9-17. "Zur Phonologie des althochdeutschen Psalms 138", Studies for Einar Haugen, ed. by Evelyn S. Firchow et al., 460-68 (Janua linguarum, series maior, 59). The Hague : Mouton.

1973 "Orthographie und Phonemsystem im Deutschen", Linguistische Studien, III : Festgabe für Paul Grebe zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Hugo Moser et al., 126-34 (Sprache der Gegenwart 23). Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann. "Orthography and phonology in the Old High German Ludwigslied", Issues in linguistics: Papers in Honor of Henry and Renée Kahane ed. by Braj B. Kachru et al., 759-65. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. "Schreibungszusammenfall und Phonemwandel in den althochdeutschen Dialekten", Lexicography and Dialect Geography: Festgabt: für Hans Kurath, ed. by Harald Schüller and John Reidy, 208-11. (Ztitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik Beiheft 9 (N.F.)). Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. "Zur synchronischen und diachronischen Interpretation althochdeutscher Schreibungen", Phonetica 27:36-43. 1974 "Die 'kanonischen' distinktiven Merkmale in der historischen Phonologie", Probleme der historischen Phonologie, ed. by Herbert Penzl, Marga Reis and Joseph B. Voyles, 1-22. (Zeitschriftfür Dialektologie und Linguistik Beiheft 12). Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. (With Marga Reis and Joseph B. Voyles) Probleme der historischen Phonologic (Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik Beiheft 12). Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. "Zur Entstehung der frühneuhochdeutschen Diphthongierung", Studien zur deutschen Literatur und Sprache des Mittelalters: Festschrift für Hugo Moser, ed. Werner Besch et al., 345-57. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.

18

HERBERT PENZL

1975 "Semantische Struktur in Rilkes 'Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens'," Austriaca: Beiträge zur Österreichischen Literatur. Festschrift für Heinz Politzer zum 65. Geburtstag, by W. Kudszus, H. C. Seeba, and R. Brinkmann, 329-38. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Vom Urgermanischen zum Neuhochdeutschen: Eine historische Phonologie (Grundlagen der Germanistik 16). Berlin: Erich Schmidt. "Zur Frage der deutschen Rechtschreibreform: Einleitende Ausführungen zu einem sprachlichen Rahmenthema", Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 6:8-15. Forthcoming "Methods of textual linguistics and the Old High German Ludwigslied", Essays in Honor of Professor Archibald A. Hill, ed. by Mohammed Ali Jazayery, Edgar C. Polome and Werner Winter. The Hague: Mouton. "J. Ch. Gottsched und die deutsche Sprache in Österreich", Michigan Germanic Studies 2:141-51.

LINGUISTIC METHOD: A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE

1. Linguistics today enjoys an active and prestigious position in the world of learning. We wonder why it does not reflect the maladies of a time-worn discipline, inasmuch as it can be argued that man's focus on language is coterminous with his own appearance and that this focus is traceable through ancient cultures down to the present. Assuming that the study of language is very old, we recognize that linguistics is profiting from a wealth of cumulative knowledge. On the other hand, it can be argued that the roots of modern linguistics are little more than one and one-half centuries old. These arguments are not mutually excluding, nor do they provide, moreover, direct explanations for the healthy, thriving state in which we find linguistics. It is in the enviable position of serving as an analogue to other sciences, in particular the social sciences. The discipline of linguistics clearly appears vital; it is fast-moving, marked by definite methods, a relatively endless store of data, and rather continuous success. Admittedly, scientific method, characterized by such features as intellectual uncertainty and curiosity, data selection and judgment, hypothesis formation and testing, and hypothesis reapplication or modification, provides a most secure as well as eminent operating procedure for the linguist; yet he shares this procedure with other men of science. Quite obviously, we look then to the subject matter itself of linguistics - language, a fundamental human activity, although it is quite another step to the spectacular realization that language is not just a feature of human behavior, but that it is to be isolated as THE HUMAN ACT PER SE.

2. Method, a discipline in its own right, studies the principles peculiar to a particular science, art, or other branch of knowledge. Within linguistics, the special principles characterizing each competing school in modern times are adhered to with an absolute conviction and vigor of

20

IRMENGARD RAUCH

persuasion, possibly unequaled by former eras in the history of language investigation. Thus, linguistic method viewed as a matter of principle is a fitting ambiguity provoking the title of this introduction. In this volume, however, the arrangement of the thirty-five articles according to schools of linguistics was rejected. Although worthwhile, such an arrangement is not considered essential, since in the larger view the schools hardly compete. Typically, one method dominates by a breakthrough or breakthroughs effecting an irreversible development in the history of the discipline. The propaganda, iconoclasm, attacks and counter-attacks, often bitter and long-lived, are understandable from the human viewpoint, but they cannot eradicate the breakthroughs of successive schools, nor can they diminish those linguistic principles which withstand the test of time. Furthermore, the arrangement of the articles into the several components of grammar was rejected. Again, this is a valuable type of classification, but in itself allows for little new insight. The axis of linguistic method needs to be shifted; perhaps the evolving pivot is the one which seeks to explain HOW language is the hallmark of mankind. At present such a focus has not been achieved, although it appears to be in the process of development (cf. below). The quadruple sectioning of the articles in the present volume affords a slight modification in standard groupings. The divisions, while not strongly distinctive (i.e. an article may and usually does fit two or more sections), still serve to extract certain features which an article has in common with others of its group. The determination of a section for a particular article was not necessarily to emphasize one of its themes as more interesting than other of its features. Rather, the structure of the group as a whole and the mobility of a given topic are demonstrated by the selection process. Thus, e.g. the behavior of a diphthong is investigated generatively by Rea (The problem of the French semivowels) within the underlying and surface phonological systems of French [III. Linguistic systems]. On the other hand, Pulgram's more general treatment of the diphthong (What is a diphthong ?) is aptly placed into the section [I] on Linguistic concepts. The volume's third study dealing with diphthongs, van Coetsem's (The features 'vocalic' and 'syllabic') could be placed within sections I and III, but it is also appropriate to IV [Linguistic attitudes] by virtue of its discussion of the Chomsky-Halle approach to the problem. Group II [Linguistic stratums] stresses the external factors operative in language change rather than the internal factors as considered for group III [Linguistic systems]. So, for example, the Swiss language can

LINGUISTIC METHOD

21

be taken as a substratum when it is made accountable for a phonological rule not usually represented by the Old High German writers of the Alemannic dialect, as in Moulton (Notker's 'Anlautgesetz'). The functioning of another type of stratum, the adstratum, is seen, for example, in Clyne's demonstration of the mutual influence of political ideology and language (Linguistic analysis and the 1972 Bundestag election campaign). 3. Whether we consider today's linguistics relatively young or relatively old, one of the fundamental principles common to present methods is the STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLE, which holds that a linguistic element is to be analyzed as integral to a system. Witness the claims that Panini and Grimm were structuralists; Chomsky likewise is a structuralist. We are well aware that the Prague School is to be credited with formulating a consistent theory of linguistic structuralism, but we tend to be misled by the equation of Neo-Bloomfieldian taxonomy with American structuralism per se. Similarly our terminology in discussing various methods is deceptive with regard to the term DESCRIPTIVE; as with 'structural', this term is properly non-school associated. Thus, a phase of the methods of both the Transformationalist and the Classical Phonemicist consists in the structural description of a language, whether that language is prehistoric, historic, or contemporary. In this wise, it is worth noting that the endlessness of a description is hardly peculiar to the Transformationalist, for it is unlikely that any method, regardless of its orientation, can substantiate exhaustive or complete structural treatment of a language. DESCRIPTIVE ENDLESSNESS may be deduced as universal for linguistic method. In the long run, terminological and conceptual misapplications such as these create non-problems. Immediately, they are time-consuming and diverting, but eventually they tend to be sloughed off by linguistic method itself. Inherent in the structural principle is the PRINCIPLE OF MINIMAL both as a linguistic unit and a linguistic relationship. The ability of linguistic method to identify distinctive language features is a major factor in its success as a science among related sciences. Here linguistics clearly functions as a hard science; it reduces data to discrete elements. Presently, certain facts of phonology are readily scrutable in the acoustics, physics, or physiology laboratories, for instance. Accordingly, the linguistic scientist is secure in the physical reality of some phonological material. Other less tangible and intangible aspects of phonology, e.g. predictive phonology, as well as many facets of semantics, OPPOSITION,

22

IRMENGARD RAUCH

elude the current tools of the linguist qua laboratory scientist. This is not to imply that laboratory linguistics is an ultimate goal, since the study of language is not pure science alone (cf. below). Interestingly, however, it is the laboratory science of genetics which can intervene to allay the current supposed threat to the principle of minimal opposition. Granted, human linguistic behavior, pragmatically determined, proceeds within a continuum. Nevertheless, it remains a fact that the discrete elements within the continuum cannot become non-discrete without scrambling the linguistic code. We may seek a model in the DNA genetic code, where change in a code takes place not by change in discrete elements but by addition or deletion of discrete elements. Applying this model to the linguistic code, we may accordingly observe, e.g. the Indo-European resonants, which are [ + vocalic] and [ + consonantal], but which in the code that is in phase, i.e. not scrambled, must be either the discrete element [consonantal] or the discrete element [vocalic]. Intrinsic to the structural principle and the principle of minimal opposition is the PRINCIPLE OF SIMPLICITY. It is frequently represented in scientific method by the principle of 'Occam's razor', which holds that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. Considering the many types of simplicity which play a role in linguistic method, it is interesting that the specific type of simplicity which implies generality is a constituent of most linguistic approaches. We are thus able to recognize a PRINCIPLE OF GENERALIZATION in the Neogrammarian hypothesis as well as in the emicization of Classical Phonemics or Taxonomy. Both 'laws' produce abstracted constructs which account for most observed and non-observed data of a particular set, but usually not all such data. To be sure, the explicit formulation of a significant generalization is one of the foremost aims of the Transformational approach. The Transformationalist seeks to verify a generalization not by repetition of data, but by the introduction of confirming evidence from diverse domains. Transformational method is essentially self-evaluative, challenging its own ideas by adducing argument and counter-argument through rigorous reasoning. In this way it demonstrates some of the fundamental techniques of scientific method. 4. We have observed how a few basic principles unify linguistic progress. Yet, it appears that linguistic method itself can engender the noxious byproduct of false division. For example, the principle of minimal opposition has trained the linguist to analyze his cosmos to a large extent

LINGUISTIC METHOD

23

binarily. In like manner, the inclination to study linguistic method by charting the principles of various schools on a plus-minus feature grid seems quite natural, although rather insipid in view of the recent rediscovery by linguistics of the provocative phenomena involved in semantics. The study of semantics and the third member of the semiotic triad, pragmatics, opens the door irrevocably to an entirely new set of concerns which should engage all linguistic approaches. The linguistic scientist, tenacious of theory, is nonetheless amenable to change when confronted by warrantable facts. Accordingly, we observe a return to the study of language and thinking. On the one hand, linguistics looks to the laboratory sciences for insights into the composition and linguistic functions of the hemispheres of the brain. On the other hand, the probings of linguists resemble ever more the contentions of philosophy; understandably so, several schools of philosophy claim language as their principal subject matter. Semantics-pragmatics leads the linguist directly to the contemporary philosophical school of Conceptual Analysis, which has alternately been called 'Linguistic Philosophy'. One of the contributors to Conceptual Analysis, J. L. Austin, brands his particular approach 'Linguistic Phenomenology'. Strictly speaking, the schools of Phenomenology and Conceptual Analysis are distinct philosophies; they are, however, both humanistic philosophies, since they study man's personal experience in association with other humans (societal state) and in communication with other humans (linguistic state), respectively. It is clear that today's linguistics has progressed to the status of a wellestablished, independent discipline, which can now afford to enjoy the advantages of the integration of cross-disciplinary discoveries, humanistic as well as scientific. When we undertake to consider the language of man, who is capable of reflection, of developing and preserving a value system, and of projecting into the future, we undertake to comprehend man's unique position in evolution. From this focal point, linguistic method is only in its infancy; new principles await discovery without a necessary abandonment of the old ones. We in fact have no choice: The study of language cannot retrogress; it is integral to the irreversible evolutionary dynamism which is the ever heightened consciousness of man. IRMENGARD R A U C H

PART I LINGUISTIC CONCEPTS

DERIVATION VS. LEXICALIZATION IN GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY DANIEL BRINK

0.0 A few short years ago, phonological analyses involving a high degree of abstractness were almost universally considered - by linguists working within the framework of generative phonology - to be completely acceptable, the proper way of describing all of the significant morphophonemic facts about a given language. Long and involved derivations, requiring complicated, 'independently motivated' phonological rules, were the order of the day. The best examples of this approach to phonology, which I will refer to as 'traditional' generative phonology, are doubtlessly Chomsky and Halle's The Sound Pattern of English (1968) for synchronic description and King's Historical Linguistics and Generative Grammar (1969) for diachronic description. As is only natural in the process of refining any theory, many of the assumptions of traditional generative phonology, including the assumption that there is no limit on how abstract underlying phonological representations may be, are currently being seriously reconsidered. Probably the first generative linguist to formally challenge the assumption of unlimited abstractness was Kiparsky 1968, in his paper 'How abstract is phonology?'. In spite of the vast number of articles which have appeared in response to that paper, there is as yet no clear answer to the question asked in the title. 1 In the following paragraphs I would like to consider this question again, but from a point of view quite different from Kiparsky's. Rather than looking for formal constraints on phonological rules or underlying representations, I would like to explore the possibility of reducing the MOTIVATION for excessive phonological abstractness by capturing at least some of the significant morphophonemic facts in another way; that is, I would like to explore the possibility of developing a generative MORPHOLOGY. 2 0.1. The issue of whether a limit on phonological abstractness exists and the issue of how morphology should be handled in generative

28

DANIEL BRINK

grammar are, of course, closely related. On the one hand, if it is assumed, as is the case in traditional generative phonology, that ALL significant morphophonemic generalizations are to be captured by means of phonological rules, then there is no need for a fully developed, generative morphological component; only a redundancy-free lexicon is required. Further, no limit of any kind on the degree of phonological abstractness can be tolerated, because the imposition of such a limit would mean that at least some significant morphophonemic facts - namely, those which would require a level of phonological abstractness greater than the designated limit - could no longer be captured. Since it is a basic tenet of generative theory that the grammar must be capable of capturing all linguistically significant generalizations, unlimited abstractness has to be assumed within the framework of traditional generative phonology. On the other hand, the assumption that the 'derivational approach' (abstract underlying representations together with phonological rules) is not, necessarily, the only means available for capturing generalizations leads to a very different situation. Rejecting an exclusively derivational approach is in itself equivalent to accepting the possibility of a generative morphological component capable of capturing generalizations. It follows that, in a grammar containing such a morphological component, limits placed on the permissible degree of phonological abstractness will not impair the generalization-capturing capacity of the total grammar: a morphological explanation will always be available, even when a phonological one is not. The purpose of the present paper is to present evidence in support of this latter approach to grammar. There will be basically two types of evidence: first, examples will be presented which demonstrate that the regular underlying structures, which must be assumed if the derivational approach is to have any explanatory value, fail to manifest themselves with any degree of consistency; and second, examples will be presented of common types of morphophonemic alternation which display characteristics typical of purely morphological phenomena, characteristics which remain unaccounted for in traditional generative phonological theory. Following these two presentations there will be a brief, speculative discussion of the nature of the morphological component, and how it develops in the course of language acquisition.

1.0. In the traditional, derivational explanation of an irregular morphophonemic alternation, the analysis is considered successful if the surface

DERIVATION VS. LEXICALIZATION

29

forms can all be derived - by means of reasonably sensible, reasonably simple phonological rules - from an underlying construction displaying stem, affix and structural REGULARITY; that is, ideally, only one underlying phonological representation will be required for every lexical form and for every derivational/inflectional affix, and only one structural pattern will be necessary in order to account for all surface manifestations of a given derivational/inflectional category. For instance, although it would never be seriously proposed because neither reasonably sensible nor reasonably simple phonological rules present themselves, it would be considered desirable to derive the irregular preterite of bring, brought, from underlying /brlng/+/d/; then, only one phonological representation of the stem (/bring/) and of the preterite suffix (/d/), and one structural pattern (STEM-BOUNDARY-SUFFIX) need be assumed. The motivation and justification of the derivational approach lies ultimately in the claim that it is good to avoid repetition in the lexicon whenever possible. In the present case, assuming underlying /brlng/+/d/ would make it unnecessary to state more than once that br- is the initial sequence in all variants of the morpheme in question, or that a dental stop affix regularly appears in the formation of preterite forms. However, the following examples suggest that a rigorous underlying regularity of stems, affixes and structure is not particularly highly valued in natural language. The entire fabric of the derivational approach is weakened to the extent that these examples reflect a characteristic which is typical of language in general. 1.1. If underlying regularity were in fact highly desirable, one would expect automatic alternations to ALWAYS involve a derivational relationship, at least in those cases where the alternates stand in an intimate morpho-semantic relation. However, this does not seem to be so. For instance, there is an automatic rule in Middle High German which causes /h/ to tense to [x] in final position. 3 This rule explains a host of MHG [h] ~ [x] alternations: sack '(he) saw' ~ sähen '(they) saw', nach 'near' ~ nähe 'near' (inflected), hoch 'high' ~ höhe 'high' (inflected), and so on. For alternates which are morphologically closely related, the expected derivational relationship between forms is indeed true much of the time. This fact is revealed by a Late Middle High German sound change affecting non-initial /h/: it is weakened to 0. The shift from /h/ to 0 is carried out on forms with phonological /h/, regardless of how the segment is realized phonetically in a particular alternate: MHG sach ~ sähen becomes NHG sah ~ sahen ([za:] ~

30

DANIEL BRINK

[za:an]), MHG nach ~ nahe becomes NHG nah ~ nahe ([na:] ~ [na:s]), etc. A RESTRUCTURING of /h/ to /x/, on the other hand, which can be expected in forms historically from /h/ which have lost all morphosemantic relation to forms still realized with phonetic [h] in Middle High German, would be revealed under these circumstances by the retention of phonetic [x] even after the /h/ > 0 sound change. This expectation is also generally fulfilled: MHG nach 'toward' (preposition!) - historically related to the alternates nach ~ nahe (adjective!) - is realized in New High German with [x]: nach. The pattern exhibited by the forms presented so far fully supports the assumption of a rigorous underlying regularity. However, this pattern is not consistent; for at least one Middle High German morphophonemic alternation of [h] and [x], both Middle High German alternates are still present in New High German: MHG hoch ~ hohe, but also NHG hoch ~ hohe ([ho :x] ~ [ho :a]). The retention of this alternation indicates that the form hoch was restructured to /ho:x/ BEFORE the /h/ > 0 sound change; that is, during a period when it COULD have been derived automatically from underlying /ho:h/. Apparently, this 'golden opportunity' to simplify the treatment of an alternation through derivational means was simply ignored by the speakers of Middle High German. If NHG hoch ~ hohe were an isolated example, we might do well to consider this a case of the exception proving the rule. However, 'unnecessary' restructuring of this sort is not at all uncommon. For instance the w ~ 0 alternation of Middle High German (gel ~ gelwes 'yellow', val ~ valwes 'sallow', etc.), which is the result of an automatic rule dropping /w/ in final position and following I or r, is REGULARLY shifted to a ft ~ 0 alternation following the Early NHG w > b sound change (gel ~ gelbes, fal ~ falbes, etc.).4 (This alternation is ultimately eliminated, by analogical leveling, in favor of either b or 0: NHG gelb,fahl.) Basically the same sort of 'needless', wholesale restructuring also occurred in Medieval Yiddish.5 It is generally accepted that Medieval Yiddish, just like Middle High German, had a terminal devoicing rule. This rule resulted in automatic alternations for morphologically closely related forms: -d alternates with -t, -g with -k, and so on. Whereas the underlying representations were revealed through sound change in the previous examples, the significant development in this case was rule loss: the devoicing rule was dropped from the language, resulting in 'revoicing' for phonologically voiced segments, and in retention of voicelessness for restructured segments: veg 'way', cf. MHG wec(g); but avek 'adverb!). As in the previous example, however, restructuring has 'need-

DERIVATION VS. LEXICALIZATION

31

lessly' occurred in quite a large number of morphologically closely related forms: zip 'sieve', cf. MHG sip(b); gizunt 'healthy', cf. MHG gesunt(d); kinik 'king', cf. MHG kunic(g); etc. (Sapir:1963). The preceding examples, which are typical of what happens when automatic alternations are disturbed by historical change, strongly suggest that the preservation of a distinction between underlying and surface forms is fragile and difficult at best, even under the most favorable circumstances. This picture of the derivational treatment of morphophonemic alternation - as an on again-off again, unpredictable option in actual language use - scarcely supports the idea that underlying regularity is a highly valued, dependable characteristic of natural language. 1.2. Another indication that the underlying regularity posited in traditional generative phonology is somewhat unrealistic comes from the fact that speakers do not consistently display the PRECISION in their insights into structure which must be assumed in that theory. For example, it is far from uncommon for speakers to analyze even transparent STEM-BOUNDARY-SUFFIX structures incorrectly, such as the metanalysis which results in the development in Dutch of the suffix -ling, from stems in [al] being joined with the suffix -ing, or of the suffix -naar, from stems in [an] being joined with the suffix -aar, etc.6 Similarly, an already available derivational procedure may become outmoded and be 'overlooked' in the formation of new vocabulary. For instance, there is a rule in Dutch which devoices labial fricatives before the nominalizing suffix -nis: laav- 'refresh', lafenis 'refreshment'; droev'sad', droefenis 'melancholy'; etc. There is only one derivative in -nis not affected by this devoicing rule, but it is known to be of recent vintage: belevenis 'experience (n.)', derived from beleven 'experience (vb.)'.7 Even though there are many more forms affected by the devoicing rule than not, the newness of the unaltered form, together with the doubtlessly significant fact that the newer form is derivationally simpler (since fewer phonological rules are involved), indicates that belevenis reflects the currently active form of the STEM-BOUND ARY-w's derivation. 8 The lafenis-type forms, while presumably not completely destructured, have moved away from the level of spontaneous phonological derivation along the road toward lexicalization. A more advanced stage in this destructurizing process has been reached in Dutch in the case of -loos ('-less') suffixation. Some forms retain the effects of an older rule which inserts a schwa between the stem and the ending (as is the case with the -nis forms of the last example): bloede-

32

DANIEL BRINK

loos 'bloodless' from bloed 'blood' and -loos '-less', and similarly baardeloos 'beardless', machteloos 'powerless', vlekkeloos 'spotless', smetteloos 'spotless'; while other forms follow a schwa-less pattern: draadloos 'wireless', woordloos 'wordless', lichtloos 'without light', dakloos 'without a roof', vetloos 'without fat'. The indications are fairly clear that the schwa-less forms reflect the more active version of the -loos suffixation process. First, there are forms with schwa for which the original root has been lost or shifted in meaning: roekeloos 'reckless', klakkeloos 'gratuitous'. Second, a few cases have established themselves in which both the original derivation including a schwa, with a more figurative meaning, and a schwa-less form, with a more literal meaning, exist side by side: smakeloos 'in bad taste' vs. smaakloos 'bad tasting', zinneloos 'unconscious' vs. zinloos 'senseless', and so forth. Third, the derivational process is phonetically simpler for schwa-less forms, because no schwa-insertion rule is needed. The main point is, however, that a large number of -eloos forms still remain in the language; and again, unless wholesale lexicalization is posited, it must be assumed that these -eloos forms have been shifted to some intermediate status, in between productive, transparent derivation and structureless lexicalization. The ultimate result in this last example will probably be the development of a new suffix with its own set of phonological rules and its own 'suffixal meaning'. This is already true of the -ling suffix discussed earlier. In the above examples, the number of suffixation processes is multiplied, either because a previously available pattern is incorrectly analyzed or because a previously available derivational procedure is ignored. Such developments can only mean that the precise, highly consistent insights into word structure expected in traditional generative phonological theory did not manifest themselves in these examples. Since these examples reflect quite common language phenomena - metanalysis of sufiixes and the phonetic simplification of derivational patterns (with residue) - we have now even greater reason to suspect that speakers are just not as analytical about their language as the traditional generative phonologist would have them be. 1.3. Up to this point I have discussed only examples in which an irregularity developed in a regular pattern, and for little or no apparent reason. In the examples which follow, I will consider how well the assumption of underlying regularity holds for irregular alternations. In these cases, there are indications that the irregularly 'derived' forms are not derived at all, that they might more accurately be thought of as 'alternate

DERIVATION VS. LEXICALIZATION

33

stems'; specifically, we will find that the segment supposedly AFFIXED to a stem is actually an integral part of that stem. One indication of the typically morpheme-internal status of the 'suffixes' of irregular forms is that the entire sequence, including both stem and suffix, often conforms to the morpheme structure requirements of the language. For instance, the irregular preterite of the German verb denken 'think', dachte, displays this behavior in two ways: the -chtsequence conforms to a morpheme structure restriction against *stopstop sequences in native German vocabulary (which would not be the case if the k of denken were retained), and the lax vowel [a] conforms to a German morpheme structure restriction against tense vowels before many clusters (cf. MHG brahte).9 Lax vowels in these so-called 'mixed' verbs are also quite common in English (keep ~ kept, sleep ~ slept, etc.) and Dutch (zoeken ~ zocht 'seek' ~ 'sought', kopen ~ kocht 'buy' ~ 'bought', etc.). Note also German nehmen ~ nimmt 'take' with an irregular vowel and both a cluster and laxing in the inflected form, vs. sehen ~ sieht 'see' with an irregular vowel, but no cluster and no laxing.10 The fact that the above irregular changes bring the ENTIRE form - the altered stem AND the 'suffix' - into line with morpheme structure requirements can only be expressed directly and naturally if the supposed suffix is acknowledged as part of the stem, the alternate stem. A Middle Dutch schwa-deletion rule provides the basis for a diachronic example of an alternate stem analysis. Like English and German, Dutch has a series of 'mixed' verbs, verbs which show the dental preterite of regular weak verbs together with changes in the stem similar to what is found in strong verbs when the past tense is formed. Although the preterite singular of these verbs originally showed the same dental stopplus-schwa sequence which characterizes the preterite of regular weak verbs (brengen ~ brachte 'bring' ~ 'brought' = lachen ~ lachte 'laugh' ~ 'laughed'), a Late Middle Dutch schwa-deletion rule, which affected only NON-INFLECTIONAL final schwa, caused the deletion of the schwa in brachte and all other mixed verbs, but not of the final schwa in lachte or any other regular weak verb. 11 This difference in the treatment of the final -te sequence of irregular, mixed verbs explains the consistently schwa-less preterites of mixed verbs in Modern Dutch: zoeken ~ zocht 'seek' ~ 'sought', weten ~ wist 'know' ~ 'knew', mogen ~ mocht 'may' ~ 'might', etc. (These preterite forms also conform to morpheme structure requirements for Dutch, with a lax vowel before a fricative-stop cluster.)

34

DANIEL BRINK

Another example of the ease with which suffix and stem can become confused occurs in Old High German. In this language, adverbs are regularly derived from adjectives by the addition of the suffix -o: eban 'even', ebano 'evenly'; ubil 'evil', ubilo 'evilly'; etc. A slight confusion of this pattern arises with the one relevant wa-stem, /garw/ 'prepared', because final /w/ in Old High German automatically becomes o, resulting in the uninfected form garo, but the inflected form garwes (actually more frequently garawes, with epenthetic vowel). Because of the /w/ -> o rule, both the uninflected form, garo, and the form with the adverbial suffix added, gar(a)wo, could be used adverbially in Old High German. This free variation shows that the mere presence of phonetic o in final position was sufficient for Old High German adverb formation, even if the segment clearly belonged to the stem. 12 In each of the preceding examples except the last, the final segment of an irregular form is phonetically similar to the segment which would be affixed to the stem if the form were regular. In spite of the temptation to presume underlying regularity of stem, suffix and structure in these cases, the historical development shows that native speakers considered the forms in question to be without internal structure, with the potential suffixes behaving like parts of irregular, alternate stems, and not like suffixes. 1.4. All of the previous discussion has centered on historical developments which indicate that unstructured alternate stems are more prevalent in actual language usage than one would expect from the theoretical position taken in traditional generative phonology. It is also possible to find evidence of the alternate stem status of irregular forms in purely synchronic examples. For instance, there is a rule in Modern German which calls for the insertion of a schwa between any two dental stops in verbal inflection: compare bindet from bind- 'bind', or behütet from behiit- 'protect', with kämpft from kämpf- 'fight', küßt from küß'kiss', and so on, all with the third person singular -t ending; also, with the dental preterite -t- suffix, compare landete from land- 'land', or arbeitete from arbeit- 'work', with kaufte from kauf- 'buy', backte from back- 'bake', etc. Thus, the schwa-insertion rule applies automatically before /-initial suffixes to all verb stems ending in d or t, regardless of which grammatical inflection is involved.13 There are, however, exceptions to the schwa-insertion rule. The third person singular present of halt- 'hold', for instance, is hält, not *hältet; the third person singular present of werd- 'become' is wird, not *wirdet; the preterite singular

DERIVATION VS. LEXICALIZATION

35

for wend- 'turn' is wandte, not *wandete; in fact, WHENEVER a stem irregularity of any sort is involved in verbal i-suffixation, the schwainsertion rule is suppressed. The best evidence of the close relation between stem irregularity and non-application of the schwa-insertion rule is the forms for which irregularity is optional: the preterite of wendmay be either wandte or wendete; beside the third person singular present of lad- 'load', lädt, there existed formerly a second possibility, ladet; etc.14 It would be possible to relate these two rules in a purely phonological treatment - at least with the powerful 'global' rules which have been proposed in the literature of late - but it would be only a mechanical solution; no indication of WHY these rules are related would be provided. In a combined morphological-phonological solution, it would be automatically assumed that the irregular stems were at least partially lexicalized, leaving only the completely regular forms with a structure sufficient to trigger the application of the schwa-insertion rule. Actually, in a full description of the present tense of strong verbs in Modern German it is necessary to distinguish between TWO categories of irregularity: verbs with irregular second and third person singular alternation involving the raising of mid front vowels, such as sehen ~ sieht, nehmen ~ nimmt, etc., which require the ALTERNATE form in the imperative: siehl, nimml; versus verb stems with irregular umlaut variants in these two grammatical configurations, such as halten ~ hält, etc., which require the BASIC form of the verb in the imperative: halt\ Not only do we need a way of distinguishing between phonological and morphological alternations, we apparently also need a way of distinguishing between morphological alternations involving phonetically obvious, active processes, such as umlaut, and morphological alternations involving less recognizable changes, such as the e-io-i change!15 The German verb system provides us with another example of irregular, 'derived' forms which function much like lexicalized alternate stems. Moreover, this example also underscores the necessity of distinguishing between umlaut and other, less obvious morphophonemic processes. There are two distinct sets of rules for the derivation of Subjunctive II forms in NHG: for the irregular, 'strong' verbs, the subjunctive endings are added to the past stem of the verb, which, if possible, is umlauted: sehen has the past stem iah, the Subjunctive II form sähe; bieten has the past stem bot, the Subjunctive II form böte; etc.; in contrast, for completely regular, 'weak' verbs, the subjunctive endings are added to the present stem-plus-i: sagen has the Subjunctive II form sagte, lieben

36

DANIEL BRINK

has the Subjunctive II form liebte, etc.16 In addition to pure strong verbs and pure weak verbs, German has a number of mixed verbs, as mentioned previously. The formation of the Subjunctive II for these mixed verbs is generally treated in the handbooks as a hopeless hodge-podge, involving many exceptions and irregularities-within-irregularities. However, if we accept umlaut as a phonetically obvious, 'semi-regular' process, then mixed verbs will follow the same rules as all other verbs: irregular verbs (strong and mixed) add umlaut to the preterite stem, while regular verbs (weak and mixed) add t to the present stem. The subjunctive endings are then added to both types: irregular are (bringen) bracht». ~ brächte, (denken) dachte ~ dächte, (mögen) mochte ~ möchte, (haben) hatte ~ hätte, etc.; regular are können (konnte) ~ könnte, wollen (wollte) ~ wollte, senden (sandte) ~ sendete, etc. From this last group of examples we can see that, at least in German, the status of a morphological alternate as irregular or regular can be important in the determination of whether other rules of the language apply to it or to the basic stem. We have also seen that the more obscure the phonetic difference between an irregular form and a basic stem, the greater the tendency for that irregular form to behave like an alternate stem and not like a derivative.

2.0. The examples in § 1 were presented as support for what is essentially a negative argument: the derivational approach is inadequate because it does not fully explain certain commonly found characteristics of morphophonemic alternations. Another whole approach to the issue at hand would be available if it could be established precisely what the nature of a purely morphological generalization would have to be. Then, if the characteristics of morphological generalizations proved to be distinctly different from those of phonological generalizations, we would have a positive means of identifying morphophonemic alternations which have been treated morphologically in natural language. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to establish such an approach and to show again that derivation plays too prominent a role in traditional generative phonology. 2.1. Actually, at least some indication of the nature of a purely morphological analysis can be determined with relative ease: we need only characterize the manner in which completely non-phonological classificatory information is dealt with in the lexicon. A typical example of

DERIVATION VS. LEXICALIZATION

37

this type of information is the gender classifications of German nouns. There are two characteristics of this system relevant to the present discussion. First, the gender system itself is FORMALISTIC; that is, a) it constitutes a 'needless' complication of the grammar; b) it is only important within the limits of a clearly defined grammatical context, but is imperative there; and c) it involves a precisely defined set of options. Second, the lists describing which lexical forms follow which options, are subject to ASSOCIATIVE generalizations; that is, the memorization made necessary by the very existence of the formalistic system is reduced by means of generalizations, but these generalizations have characteristics quite different from those of phonological rules: a) they are not limited to the facts of any particular linguistic level; b) they typically describe only tendencies, not hard-and-fast rules (since even tendencies can be mnemonically valuable); and c) they need not form an integrated system: both contradictions and gaps are typical of these class membership generalizations. The gender system of German is indeed formalistic: distinct inflectional systems must be distinguished, even though these distinctions offer little of communicative value; it is relevant only and always in singular noun phrases; and it involves three formal classes, each with a specific set of concrete manifestations. Also, the members of the three gender classes are definitely subject to associative generalizations. One class of generalizations, for instance, involves the MEANING of the nouns: 'natural' gender, of course, with male animate beings generally der and feminine die, but also groupings such as 'trees', which tend to be die, or meteorological phenomena, which tend to be der.11 Another set of rules depends on the PHONOLOGICAL SHAPE of the noun, with nouns ending in schwa frequently die, those in -en mostly der, and so forth. A third class of generalizations depends on the DERIVATIONAL HISTORY of the noun, with nouns derived from verbs via /-suffixation mostly die and those derived without affixation mostly der. Moreover, these three sets of tendencies do not interact in any organized manner. Thus, on the one hand, the generalizations of different levels frequently make conflicting claims as to what the gender of a given noun should be. 18 Yet, this abundance of generalizations by no means insures that something useful will be said about all nouns: for many of them, gender classification remains a matter of rote memorization. This system of associative generalizations is not particularly efficient. One problem, that of dealing with nonce forms, foreign vocabulary and similar phenomena, necessitates the presence in the grammar of a

38

DANIEL BRINK

system of productive rules, in addition to the associative generalizations. In the German gender system, for example, a specific gender is closely associated with each of the productive noun-forming processes: the suffixes -ung and -heit are always die, infinitives in the role of nouns are always das, and so on. This characteristic is also commonly found in the morphological processes which involve morphophonemic alternations, such as regular vs. irregular verbs, regular vs. irregular noun plurals, regular vs. irregular derivational processes, etc. More revealing in the long run, however, is the fact that a large amount of memorization is made necessary by the inefficiency of the associative generalization system. Because so much memorization is still necessary, once a set of alternations has become subject to a purely morphological treatment, it is not surprising to find that ADJUSTMENTS are gradually made as speakers unconsciously attempt to reduce the memory load by means of more effective mnemonic devices. Thus, if we can find historical examples of adjustment, we can be relatively certain that the alternation involved had originally been handled morphologically by the speakers of the language in question. Examples of adjustment will be presented in the following section. 2.2. In the Middle High German period, there was only one phonetic form for the nominalizing suffix -heit. Late in this period, however, the variant -keit developed, presumably due to articulatory considerations, whenever the suffix was appended to adjectives in -ig; -heit continued to be the normal form for all other positions.19 In Modern German, by contrast, the -keit variant appears after ALL adjectival suffixes, including -bar, -lich, -sam, etc., as well as -ig. In addition, the -keit suffix has become the regular nominalizing suffix for non-derived adjectives ending in schwa-plus-liquid, if the adjective normally describes some physical or personal attribute of animate beings. Thus, the forms bieder 'honest', mager 'thin', tapfer 'brave', eitel 'vain', etc. all take -keit, while forms which do not meet the phonological requirements, such as schön 'beautiful', faul 'lazy', etc., and forms with a different semantic range, such as minder 'less', einzel 'individual', etc., all continue to take -heit. We may take the history of this suffix as evidence that the distribution of -heit and -keit in Early New High German was morphologically determined. The speakers of this language must have associated the occurrence of -keit after -ig with the morphological and semantic features of this suffix - it was an adjectivizing suffix and was often used to form adjectives with a stressed-unstressed syllable contour descriptive of

DERIVATION VS. LEXICALIZATION

39

animate beings (mutig 'brave', freudig 'joyful', hungrig 'hungry', etc.) - but in doing so they abandoned the original phonological basis of the rule. Finally, once these new associative generalizations had taken hold, all of the newly exceptional lexical items were gradually shifted until the Modern German distribution had been achieved.20 It is also possible to find evidence that a rale has become morphological even when derivational and semantic considerations are not involved in the adjustment. For instance, a phonetic rule developed in Early Middle Dutch dialects calling for the insertion of d between any preceding dental resonant and a following r. This rule explains the presence of d morpheme-internally in forms such as selderij 'celery', daalder 'dollar', Hendrik 'Henry', bunder 'hectare' (cf. MLat. bonnarium), and so on. 21 In addition to morpheme-internal effects, however, this ¿/-insertion rule has also been retained as an active process in Modern Dutch. This is especially true before the agentive and comparative suffixes, with derivatives like hoorder 'hearer' from hoor- 'hear', bestuurder 'driver' from bestuur- 'drive', etc. for the agentive, and verder 'further' from ver 'far', helderder 'brighter' from helder 'bright', etc. for the comparative. 22 Although these two -er suffixes do occasionally occur with d in other contexts due to the natural residue associated with an older phonetic rule (tuinder 'gardner' from tuin 'garden', minder 'less' from min 'little', etc.), the interesting fact about the modern form of the ¿-insertion rule is that it is only REGULAR after r. Apparently, a kind of 'morphophonemic uncertainty' prevailed before these two productive suffixes in Early Modern Dutch, an uncertainty which was only relieved when the distinction between -er and -der was formalized into a morphological system. During this formalization process, however, the 'left side' of the phonological-phonetic environment of the rule was altered without obvious motivation from 'dental resonant' to V'. A purely syntactic environment has been the result of the formalization of yet another originally phonetic rule in Dutch. The rule in question originally effected the deletion of t in the environment 'preceded by an obstruent and followed by j; precisely this form of the rule has been preserved in the diminutive, with underlying /buk/+/tja/, for instance, becoming [bukjg] boekje 'little book', etc. 23 This version of the rule also remains a true rule of articulation in Dutch, with i-deletion occurring on a phonetic, 'variable' basis whenever the environmental requirements are met. 24 Although doubtlessly the product of this phonetic rule, the procedure followed when the second person singular familiar pronoun, jij [jei] (often je [jo]), follows the verb - which must end in t in order

40

DANIEL BRINK

to agree with jij - no longer has a phonetic basis. The t is dropped, as in je hebt... 'you have...' vs. heb je 'have you...', but not because the phonetic requirements for /-deletion are met. One indicator of the non-phonetic status of this form of /-deletion is the fact that when the je is the subject of the sentence and the t is the verbal agreement suffix and only then - the t MUST be dropped. Further, the t is dropped even if the verb-je sequence does not meet the original phonetic requirements of the rule, either because the verb stem ends in a vowel (ie ziet... 'you see' vs. zie je... 'see you...') or because the subject and verb are separated, as in Nu heb ook jij de kans... 'Now you too have the chance...'. 2.3. There is another way of reducing the amount of material which must be learned by rote in a formalized morphological system: reduction in the number of options available, such as simplification from a three gender system to a two gender system, a development which occurred in Dutch not too many years ago. Similarly, simplification can be achieved by collapsing together into a single class whole sets of morphologically related irregular variations, such as the extension of the phonetically motivated deletion of final -de in the irregular preterite singular forms of Dutch modals from vowel-final forms, where it is expected (zou, not *zoude, from zulltn 'should'; wou, not *woude, from willen 'want to'), to an «-final form, where it is not (kon, not *konde, from kunnen 'can'). 25 This same sort of system-simplification probably also plays a role in explaining why such a large and phonetically diverse group of irregular English verbs all have preterites rhyming in [ot] catch, teach, fight, buy, seek, etc. It may also be part of the reason for the reduced vowel system found in the preterite and participial forms of German strong verbs, where no diphthongs and no umlauted vowels occur. This same strong verb system, by the way, frequently displays the same 'organized by derivative' character seen above in the case of catch, teach, etc. The best examples are the verbs from the old 'reduplicating' class, where the stem vowel is not relevant to the 'X - ie - X' pattern, lasaen-liefi-gelassen, stofien-stiefi-gestofien, raten-riet-geraten, laufen-lief-gelaufen, heifien-hiefigeheifien, etc. 26 In spite of the morphophonemic nature of all of these examples, the idea of deriving the morphologically more marked forms (that is, the preterite forms) from the present stem lacks intuitive appeal. These alternations just do not work that way. This situation is exceedingly awkward fcr traditional generative phonological theory, where the

DERIVATION VS. LEXICALIZATION

41

derivational approach is the only means available of accounting for morphophonemic alternation. From the above examples it seems reasonable to conclude that the unique position assigned the derivational approach in traditional generative phonology is not justified and that purely morphological rules must also be included in the grammar.

3.1. To summarize, I have attempted to show in this paper that the structure of grammar will correspond more precisely to the behavior of natural language if a definite distinction is made between phonological and morphological generalizations. There are simply too many common linguistic phenomena which the 'natural phonetic' approach to explanation of traditional generative phonology does not account for. Once an alternation has become morphologized, phonetic explanation, although not discarded, functions as only one of a wide range of potential classificational bases. Further, we have seen that phonological material plays two distinct roles in morphology. One role is closely akin to that of the purely phonological-phonetic rules found in the derivational approach (except that the ENVIRONMENT of a rule and the PROCESS of a rule are formally distinct in morphological derivation and formally indistinguishable in traditional generative phonology). In this category belong rules describing familiar phonetic processes, including insertion (as in the Dutch ¿/-insertion example), deletion (as in the Dutch i-deletion example) and alteration (as in the case of German umlaut). The second role played by phonological material is, however, quite unlike derivation; the phonetic form of the morphological base cannot be used as a starting point in describing the systematic nature of the particular pattern, and it is not possible to characterize the difference between alternate forms in terms of familiar phonetic processes. This second role is exemplified, for example, in the English -[ot] verbs, and the German strong verb system. This kind of alternation is actually more closely akin to suppletion than it is to derivation, in spite of the partial phonetic similarity displayed by the forms in the pattern. 3.2. All of the characteristics which have been discussed in this paper the apparent lack of precision and consistency on the part of native speakers; the 'needless' diachronic proliferation of endings, irregularities and derivational processes; the presence of both derivational and suppletive morphological classes - all of these things can be fitted together into a consistent, understandable 'psychological reality' if two simple

42

DANIEL BRINK

assumptions are made about language acquisition: first, that the language learner starts out learning all of the phonetic variants of a morpheme separately, as in suppletion; and second, that in going about the task of organizing, categorizing and memorizing these suppletive relationships, he freely makes use of ALL of the information at his disposal - meaning, parts of speech, derivational history, etc. - with phonetic-phonological information as one, but only one, of these types. Restructuring and a derivational analysis - either phonological or morphological - remains, of course, as a possible organizing principle, but the language learner may also base his organization o n an irregular alternate stem, or he may even forgo organization and continue to remember each alternate form separately. With such a range of options open to the learner, it is quite natural that all of the phenomena discussed in this paper occur. University

of California,

Berkeley

NOTES 1

The most noteworthy of these articles are Hyman 1970 and Kisseberth 1969. See Halle 1973, Vennemann 1972 and Chapin 1970 for futher discussion of this entire topic. For Dutch, see especially van Haeringen 1971. 3 Tensing also occurs before t, and elsewhere. For a full presentation, see Paul (1969: §§38-39, 98-100). For a discussion of other implications of this and similar examples for generative phonological theory, see Brink 1973. 4 This rule is more complicated than indicated in the text; see Paul 1969: §78). 5 See King (1969:46-8), Kiparsky 1968a, Schane 1968 for further discussion of this well-worn example. 6 For further discussion, see Schönfeld (1970:§§169a, 170, 175). The -ling variant of -ing is apparently quite old; it is also found in German ana English. 7 Schönfeld (1970:§172 n. 2); there is much more to -nis derivation than presented here; see Schönfeld (1970:§48). Many of the Dutch examples in this paper come from my own investigations; for the reader wishing more material, in addition to the standard handbooks, I would recommend Niewborg 1969. 8 Another odd bit of information which indicates that there is no longer a devoicing rule in -nis derivation is the fact that those stems which end in a dental fricative never devoice before -nis: herrijzenis 'revival, resurrection', ultimately from rijz- 'rise'. Only recently formed -nis derivations can involve stems in a dental fricative, however; during the original period of productive -nis derivation, -nis was never joined to them. 9 Similarly, sechzehn, with irregular dropping of -s, has [?] : [ze- MHG panzier 'id.' -*• mod. dial, banzer 'peasant's frock' / panzer 'metallic pot cleaner'; OFr. chapel 'headdress' -> MHG schapel 'id.' -*• mod.dial. schap(p)el 'untidy headgear; invective against women'; OFr. compain 'comrade' -> MHG kumpàn 'id.' -> mod. Germ, kumpel 'miner' (Miettinen 1962:81-84, 95-100, 160-167, 180-189). (b) From the Venetian patriciate to the colonials. The Ionian Islands, between Greece and Italy, were under Venetian domination, from approximately the end of the 14th to the end of the 18th century. Lexical elements, which entered the dialects of the Greek islands by the hundreds, reflected a Western culture of gracious living (Kahane 1938:134). The upper classes abandoned the terms during the last decades of the 19th and the early part of the 20th century as a result of their own puristic inclinations and the impact of the mass media. Many Venetianisms survived (even into the thirties when we did fieldwork in the area) in the speech of the less educated. Labov (1972:115, 117), recording the speech habits of New Yorkers through fieldwork, established a correlation between social stratification, defined in terms of occupation, education, and income, and the pronunciation of certain phonetic variables, such as th and final -r. The pronunciation of the th (the voiceless interdental fricative), e.g. turns into a clue to class: In the résumé by Fishman (1972b :65) 'Lower class speakers were less likely to pronounce the fricative form of the [th] when saying 'thing' or 'through' than were working class speakers; working class speakers less likely to pronounce it than lower middle-class speakers; lower middle-class speakers less likely to yield it than upper middle-class speakers.' An interesting concomitant observation: Lower middle-class speakers have the greatest tendency towards linguistic insecurity, expressed, e.g. by frequent recourse to hypercorrection. 4 . 3 . CLASS PHONOLOGY.

78

HENRY & RENÉE KAHÀNE AND ROBERTA ASH

5 . STRATIFICATION. We assume that the various stages in the history of an area accumulate traces in its language; therefore an analysis of linguistic relics in terms of strata enables the chronicler to read the sequence and the impact of events, just as the layers of a rock formation record for the geologist the phases of its genesis. Sardinia, which, as an island, has undergone various dominations from the Punic period to its incorporation into the modern Italian national state, offers good material as a test case for linguistic geology (Wagner 1928). We shall exemplify this with some of the lexicological implications inherent in the dialectal variations of the simple phrase, 'Close the door' (Wagner 1928:6-12). The inventory: The noun 'door' is represented in central Sardinia by yanna; in the south by enna; in the island's capital, Cagliari, by pdrta. The verb 'close' is expressed by kundzare in the central as well as in the isolated rural area of the south; furthermore by serrare; by tankare; by kxudere. The historical correlations: (a) yanna, which goes back to Lat. janua, survives in the remote and conservative central area and is probably a relic from the early phase of the island's Romanization, starting in the 3rd century with the Punic wars. To this archaic stratum belongs likewise the rustic verb kundzare 'to close' (from Lat. cuneare 'to fasten with wedges'), a relic in Sardinia and the Balkans (Wagner 1951:107, 110). (6) enna continues Lat. jenua, a younger variant and a later layer than janua; its area, the southern plains, was of easier access and the center of a lively grain export to Rome (Wagner 1951:19).

(c) The verb k/tidere represents Ital. chiudere, in the Gallura (NE) (Wagner 1941: § 252). Could this be Tuscan? Tuscan influence, particularly via the Pisan enterprises in the island was strong from the 13th century on and much Old Tuscan material remains in the dialects. (d) The verb tankare is Catal. tancar, a witness of the period of the Aragonese domination (a carrier of the Catalan language), which started early in the 14th century. The urban population of the island spoke Catalan up to the early part of the 18th century. Catalan was prevalent particularly in the south. (e) serrare echoes Spanish cerrar; it is one of the many Hispanisms left. From the beginning of the 17th century, Spanish began to replace Catalan as the official language (into the 18th century) and as the ecclesiastical one (into the 19th). It was particularly strong in the north (Wagner 1951:183-195). ( / ) The noun porta in Cagliari reflects the re-Italianization of the island. The use of Italian weakened in the Spanish period but has been dominant since the unification with Italy. Italian became the language of the middle class, spreading with the modern national culture from the urban centers in the north and

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

79

south and slowly eradicating, particularly in syntax, the Sardinian, i.e. linear Latin, heritage (Wagner 1951:259-261). In short, the six linguistic strata of Sardinian contained in the example reflect six strata of Sardinian history: the early Latin colonization, the Imperial province, the connection with Tuscany, the Catalan occupation, the Spanish occupation, and the incorporation into modern Italy.

6 . DIASPORA. A group that is being dispersed, often involuntarily, is frequently prevented from taking to the new host country more than just two possessions: its sense of identity and its language. We assume, again, that the vicissitudes of the latter reflect the vicissitudes of the former. Diaspora appears in many forms. The foremost problem for the observer is to assess the degree of preservation or loss of the cultural heritage. Our illustrations cover three patterns: preservation and loss both in cohesive community emigration and in more individualistic emigration, and a blend of linguistic preservation with resemantization.

With the transfer of large and coherent groups of speakers, a language as such may disintegrate or it may survive as a means of communication for a minority in the new habitat during a lengthy span of time. Three cases. (a) Norman French. The dispersion of a North Germanic subgroup exemplifies the case of a speedy and large-scale loss of heritage and language. The Norsemen settled in France in the early 10th century and by the 11th they were, as Normans, the 'foremost propagators of the newly emerging French language and civilization' (Elcock 1960:266-267). After a few generations the process of acculturation was complete or near-complete. (b) Yiddish. Colloquial Middle High German was imported by the Jews into the Slavic areas of Europe; it is known as Yiddish. It has survived to our days but is succumbing to contemporary political events: large scale emigration, genocide, and the creation of the State of Israel, where Hebrew, symbol of the modern state, replaces Yiddish, symbol of the culture of the shtetl (Fishman and Fishman 1974). (c) Judeo-Spanish. The western counterpart of Yiddish, JudeoSpanish, has remained alive in the diaspora from the 15th century to our own. The refugees from Spain settled in various provinces of the Ottoman Empire, preponderantly in North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Balkanic area. Again, as with Yiddish, recent events have reduced 6 . 1 . LARGE-GROUP DIASPORA.

80

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

their numbers; and the fewer the speakers, the less resistant a language. Sala tells the story of the Judeo-Spanish community of Bucharest (Sala 1970 and 1971; Kahane 1973), a story of conservatism and decay, which is typical of the Balkanic settlements of the Sephardim. (i) Their conservatism was due, above all, to non-relations with either their home culture or their host culture: on the one hand, the ties with Spain were completely sundered; on the other hand, their new hosts forced them into a ghetto existence, shutting them off from the outside world in juderías. The isolation was propitious for the unfolding of what Sala calls the Hispanic essence, i.e. the consolidation of patterns prefigured in 15th-century Spanish and imported from their former Spanish homeland. Examples: initial/- ([fórka] 'fork' vs. mod.Span. [órka]); the voiced labiodental ([váka] 'cow' vs. mod.Span. [báka]); the cluster mb ([palómba] 'pigeon' vs. mod.Span. [paloma]), (ii) But neither the group as a cultural unit nor its language was able to survive. Isolation yielded to acculturation, which manifested itself in the closing of Jewish schools, in military service, in the necessity for businessmen to communicate in the national language, and in the gradual loss among the young of a sense of identity with the religious community. The concepts of modern civilization could no longer be expressed in Judeo-Spanish, a fact which opened an ever wider breach for foreign lexemes. The imported language died. Sala reconstructs the process of integration for the last half-century or so: Judeo-Spanish moved from standard usage to colloquial and family use, then finally gave way to a preference for the language of the national environment. Fluency yielded to reduced fluency, and reduced fluency to passive knowledge. The lexicon, as the entrance channel for the culture of the environment, disintegrated even faster than phonological or morphological habits, and thereby impaired communication. The most common of all culture-andlanguage changes is that which accompanies the emigration and immigration of an individual or a single family. In certain countries the adaptation of the newcomers becomes a significant problem within the social, economic, and political structure. Seaman's linguistic analysis of Greek immigrants in America (Seaman 1972; Kahane 1972) furnishes a model, we believe, for the study of a foreign group's adaptation to the American environment. The story of Greek in Chicago is, like that of JudeoSpanish in Bucharest, the story of the death of a language. Only, it is a much shorter story: the imported language is gone after three generations. Seaman analyses the impact of the host language on the home 6 . 2 . SMALL-GROUP DIASPORA.

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

81

language in two terms, interference and code-switching. Interference (which may appear on all levels: phonological, morphological, and lexical) refers to the speaker's inability to keep the two languages apart, which results in the adaptation of an item of the secondary language to the speech habits of the primary; at first, the host language is secondary but eventually it replaces the primary language. Code-switching refers to the transfer of an unadapted item from the one language to the other. (Could these two patterns of blending and borrowing be transferred from the linguistic process to that of acculturation?) There is a tight correlation between the social mobility of immigrants and the recession of the speech imported from the 'old country'. The slowness of this change is obviously due to a general discrimination against minorities which is evoked by their menial occupations and their foreign accents. Seaman summarizes the typical linguistic development of the Greek in America: The first-generation immigrant does not yet know English well but his Greek is fading, and both languages interfere about equally with each other; the second generation speaks English with relatively little interference from Greek, but Greek with much interference from English; the third generation approaches the stage of English monolingualism. 6 . 3 . SYNCRETISM OF OLD AND NEW. Numerous cultural and linguistic traces of African provenience survive in the Brazilian city of Bahia. Most of them are of Yoruban origin. The Yoruba, from the eastern Guinea coast, arrived in Bahia during the fourth cycle of the AfroBrazilian slave traffic, between 1770 and 1850. All of them had been baptized; yet, they still paid homage to their deities, the orisha, who are the deities of a complex polytheistic pantheon. The old beliefs blended with the new creed: the new cuiture was absorbed via the concepts and the names of the old. This transfer is interesting as a form of acculturation. Examples: St. Jerome is identified with Shango, the god of thunder and lightning; St. Anthony with Ogun, the god of iron and war; St. George with Oshosi, the god of the hunt; Our Lady of the Candles with Oshim, the deity of the homonymous river; the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception with Yemanja, the goddess of rivers and streams; the brothers Cosmas and Damian (the patron saints of physicians) with Ibeji, the twin deities of twins. The extent of cultural blending is indicated by the fact that speakers use Christian and Yoruban names interchangeably except during ritual possession when they use only the African names (Ramos 1951:138-139; Verger 1954:12-13, 172-173, 179, 182, 185-187,

82

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

191; Verger 1957: Index 605-606, s.v. syncrétisme afro-catholique; Megenney 1970:8, 31, 96-97, 126, 129, 131-132. For the Yoruban terms: Abraham 1958:266, 456. 528, 529, 621, 680).

The imposition of the conqueror's language on an indigenous society recreates the usual situation of the diaspora but in reverse : the new dominant environment comes to the conquered (instead of their going to it), and they have to conform. Their difficulties in language learning crystallize in what is traditionally called a substratum. Tovar (1954:342) aptly describes the substratum as a latent state of bilingualism, reflecting, we may add, a latent state of biculturalism. We shall discuss here two main facets of the substratum: (a) linguistic relics, either phonological or syntactical, as an indication of the territory of pristine ethnic groups and, perhaps^ as a clue to the analogous survival of indigenous non-linguistic features; and (b) lexemic transmission from the conquered to the conquerors as an indication cf actual contributions to the conqueror's civilization.

7 . SUBSTRATUM.

OF ETHNIC AND LINGUISTIC BORDERLINES. Rohlfs (1937:90-93), in an analysis of the linguistic structure of Italy, established three basic dialect areas, which be described in terms of three sets of substratum relics. These, in turn, reflect three ethnic underlayers The three are : the Celtic substratum in the north, the Etruscan substratum in central Italy, and the Greek substratum in the south. (a) The Celtic North. The area north of the bundle of isoglosses which is often called the Spezia :Rimini line displays a number of phonological features which are also characteristic of the Latin of Gallia Transalpina (i.e. underlie French) (Rohlfs 1930:75-77): dropping of final vowels except -a (nas vs. Ital. naso 'nose') / syncope of pre- or post-tonic vowels (vedva vs. Ital. vedova 'widow') / simplification of long consonants (poca vs. Ital. bocca 'mouth') / voicing of intervocalic voiceless stops, with -p- proceeding to -v- ( f r a d e l vs. Ital .fratello 'brother' ; cavei vs. Ital. capelli 'hair') / vocalic nasalization (pà. vs. Ital. pane 'bread'). Three of these rules (the dropping of final vowels, syncope, and degeminization) are closely related to phonological quantity, i.e. to the rhythm of the language; Celtic rhythm was, indeed, determined by its strong main stress. The fact of the linguistic Celticism of the northern Italian area correlates well, in the view of Bartoli (1937:12-13), with its cultural Celticism; he formulated the latter as lo spirito gallico 7 . 1 . COINCIDENCE

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

83

(whatever the reality behind the term), and argued that since antiquity, Celtic Italy, with its center, once Celtic Mediolanum, now bustling Milan, has been the dynamic region of industrialization, commerce, agricultural economy, and prosperity. (b) The Etruscan Center. Within the modern dialect system, the area of Etruscan culture is possibly indicated by a specific linguistic feature, the so-called gorgia toscana. The term refers to the aspiration, in Tuscany, of the intervocalic voiceless stops: in Florence, e.g. the standard forms amicoj focol nipote appear as [amiho/ foho/ ni• koine I want that I come. The latter, in mod. Grk. thelo na eltho, becomes the model for Apul. vogghiu cu bbegnu / Calabr. vogghiu mu vegnu (Rohlfs 1939:111; 1972:77-81). (ii) In the tense system, the koine dropped the perfect of the classical verb system and used the aorist instead. Italian Greek followed this practice and influenced the Italian tense system of the area: Whereas standard Italian distinguishes

84

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

between preterit and present perfect in expressing the distinction between punctuality and perfectivity, the dialects of Southern Calabria and Sicily know only the preterit (comu durmisti? instead of standard come hai dormito? 'how did you sleep?') (Rohlfs 1930:62; 1949:126; 19491954:2.477-478). 7 . 2 . SUBSTRATUM LEXEMES. Two case histories involving sets of Latin lexemes indicate how characteristic features of an indigenous but politically subjugated culture filter into the superseding culture, transmitted at times as terms representing a material culture, at times perhaps more as expressions of a style of life. A third example deals with cultural inferences which can be drawn from the meaning and distribution of lexical relics.

(a) Celtisms. Celtic lexemes first entered Latin in northern Italy, Gallia Cisalpina, where the Romans were in early contact with the Celts. As Elcock notes (1960:182-183; Stolz, Debrunner, Schmid 1970:62-63), the wide distribution of a Celtic word in Romania makes a transfer in Italy probable. The fields of civilization covered by Celtic relics are transportation, with carrus/ benna/ peto(r)ritum/ raeda, all types of vehicles, with camminus, road, and veredus, a light horse; weapons, with cateia, boomerang, gaesum, javelin, lancea, light spear; and clothing, with bracae, trousers, camisia, linen shirt, and sagum, woolen mantle. (b) Etruscan elements. Within the archaic period of Roman history Devoto (1936:76-78) distinguished two phases of relationship between Rome and the Etruscans, correlated with a social stratification of the Etruscan elements in Latin, an earlier upper-class phase and a later lower-class phase, (i) The dynasty of the Tarquinians (7th-5th century) favored the dominance of Etruscan institutions and cults. Its fall caused an anti-Etruscan current in Rome. During the period of close relations, the Etruscan lexemes which entered Latin reflected the endeavor of the Etruscan leadership to reorganize the state according to principles stemming from the outside, against the old Roman order. The Etruscan relics mirror a consciousness of state and society: the term populus 'people', first referring to a clan, the minimal organization of an embryonic state; par 'of equal social status, of the same clan', as in paricida 'the killer of a man of the same clan'; spurius 'that which belongs to the same town', in Latin 'bastard' (perceived as the one who belongs to all, i.e. to nobody in particular); and, probably, flexuntes, the Roman knights, members of the upper class, (ii) From the period of the Samnite Wars (4th century), the Latin of the Republic, no longer just a provincial

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

85

dialect, opened up to the influences of neighboring cultures; and various Etruscan elements, all nomina agentis, reflect the broadened life of the little man: subulo 'flute player', histrio 'actor', lanius 'butcher', lanista 'trainer of gladiators', verna 'a slave born in his master's house', and cacula 'slave of a soldier'. (c) Alpine relics. Hubschmid (1954:47-48), in an etymological study of the pre-Romance substratum (i.e. Celtic or Veneto-Illyrian or preIndo-European) which is found in the dialects of the Pyrenees and the Alps, came to interesting cultural correlates: Many of the Gallic elements refer to alpine dairy farming, agriculture, or parts of the house. They indicate a relatively advanced state of productive activity. Among the terms of Veneto-Illyrian origin, two refer to pastoral life and three to wild nature. Those of pre-Indo-European stock exclusively name features of the terrain, plants, and other items which do not presuppose an advanced technology. This distribution of the pre-Romance lexemes cannot be due to chance. In the remote pre-Indo-European era, the population of the Pyreness and Alps was not devoted, in any extensive way, to dairy farming, and agriculture was unimportant or primitive. The people were hunters and gatherers. With the Indo-Europeans, both the VenetoIllyrians and the Gauls, dairy farming advanced. The Gauls probably introduced the plow in the Pyrenees and cultivated the soil extensively. This would explain the wide distribution, in the Pyrenees, of *artika 'plowed land' (surviving, e.g. in Catal. artigaj Beam artigue) and synonymous *bodika (surviving, e.g. in OProv. boziga/ Catal. boiga) (Hubschmid 1954:18-19; Tovar 1963:§§11, 29), as well as the fact that Gall. *1anda is preserved, in the Pyrenees, in its original use of 'cultivated land' (e.g. Catal. landaj Beam lanoj Basque landa).

Superstratum refers to the linguistic influence, primarily lexical but sometimes structural, that a dominant culture, in hostile or peaceful symbiosis, exerts on another. The influence may be minor or extensive but stops short of a total change of language. Dominance, in this context, has many facets: from a military conqueror (such as the Normans in England), to a political organization (Russian Marxism in Eastern Germany), to a religious mission (Christianity in the West), to a powerful neighbor (France for the Netherlands), to the expanding life style of a superpower (American efficiency as model for the Western world). It is possible to retrace the history of a country through the medium 8 . SUPERSTRATUM.

86

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

of the changing superstrata. Take the example of the Western acculturation of Byzantine Greece (Kahane and Kahane 1970:499-501, 536-537, 557-558) as it evolves from the provenience, the chronology, the distribution, and the referents of its foreignisms. The first phase is that of the Greco-Latin blending known as Romania, lasting to about the 7th century; the second that of the Greco-Romance blending known as Francocracy and dating essentially form the Fourth Crusade in 1204. In the Latin phase, the metropolis was the main focus of acceptance; in the Romance phase, Peloponnesus and Cyprus were dominant in the opening to French, the coast and islands of the Ionian and Aegean Seas in the expansion of Italian, preponderantly Venetian, borrowings. The semantic fields covered are for Latin the Imperial Court, administration, law, army, the circus, and everyday life; the Gallicisms echo the culture of the feudalistic society; the Venetianisms mirror the bourgeois activities of business and technology, carried on in a frame of maritime transmission. The reconstruction of a superstratum is no easy task. The actual transfer usually takes place before the chronicler is aware of it. Many of the innovations have disappeared, and the process of phonological and morphological adaptation has deprived the items which survive of their original flavor (Mackensen 1972:7-16). The difference between a past reality and its limited record may, indeed, be conisderable, as is shown wherever a check is feasible. We ourselves gathered in the thirties the Venetian elements in the Greek dialect of Cephalonia which reflected essentially an eighteenth-century colonial culture (Kahane 1938). Literary and documentary sources, however, contained only a fraction of them. They remained in the spoken dialect by the hundreds until the political events of and after WW II and population shifts due to the earthquakes of the fifties eliminated the old conditions and along with them the Venetianisms. On the other hand, today's Franglais is being caught earlier, somewhat at the moment of birth (Etiemble 1964). The unending material of superstratum influences can be exemplified by four typical patterns echoing historical processes: one country's dialect structure as the result of the interplay of various superstrata; lexical doublets as reflections of two layers of superstrata; the history of social prototypes sketched in terms of superstrata; and two synchronic résumés of superstrata, the one assimilated, the other not. While the basic dialect structure of Italy has been explained in terms of the substratum, the basic dialect structure 8 . 1 . DIALECT STRUCTURE.

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

87

of France has been interpreted by Wartburg 1950 in terms of the superstratum, that is, as a reflection of the spatial and temporal extension of the Germanic settlements during the early Middle Ages. French (in a narrow sense, i.e. Northern French) represents the area of the Frankish superstratum; Provençal represents roughly the area of Visigothic domination. The borrowings from Frankish cover the northern part of the country down to the Loire, and overlap with the area of the Frankish settlements between 486 and 507. The Loire coincides also with the phonological borderline between French and Provençal. North and south differ particularly as to the treatment of stressed Latin vowels in open syllables: they are preserved in the south, but they diphthongize in the north (mele 'honey' gives Prov. mel but Fr. miel). Wartburg explains the diphthongization as the result of Frankish influence, since the breaking of a vowel under the impact of length occurred precisely in those areas where the Franks had settled densely enough to become influential. The third dialect group, Franco-Provençal (in southeastern France, the Suisse romande, and Val d'Aosta), coincides largely with a third Germanic superstratum, the Burgundian settlements, in the middle of the 5th century. The Burgundian borrowings are concentrated in the Burgundian heartland, the area of their first occupation, between the lakes of Geneva and Neuchâtel; a typical Burgundism in the dialect of Lyons is faramâ 'promiscuous woman' (Wartburg 1939:302-307). The lexicological evidence of the superstratum hypothesis is supported by the phonological: short ë and ô (except before r) must have been closed to I and M (mël > mil / nôvem > nùvem). This unique development in Romance corresponds to the Gothic and Burgundian phonological rules, according to which e and o change to i and u, except before r. 8.2. DOUBLETS. The data supplied by doublets, i.e. phonological variants of the same baseword, often reflect historical processes. Within the present frame of the superstratum, the High German shift of voiceless stops to affricates, which took place in the 6th century, illuminates two events, (a) In France, Frank, slltun 'to split', the pre-shift form, appears as OFr. esclier; slizan ,'verschoben', as esclicier. Wartburg (1950:10) concludes from this example (and similar ones) that the Frankish influence lasted over various centuries, long enough to include both the pre-shift and the post-shift periods. (b) In Italy, on the other hand, Gmc. tolla 'clod' appears in the pre-shift form tolla on the islands of Corsica and Elba; the post-shift form zolla is found in Tuscany. The phonological contrast is precisely one of the differences between

88

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

the two Germanic languages superimposed on Proto-Italian: Gothic, in the 5th century, before the sound shift, and Langobardic, in the 6th century, after it. The chronological relationship between the doublets is confirmed by the pattern of their geographical distribution: The Gothic form is preserved in the marginal and conservative northern Corsican dialect area, where it was imported from Tuscany; but in Tuscany itself, after the form tolla had been exported, younger Langobardic zolla superseded the older Gothic variant (Rohlfs 1941:34-35; 1949-1954: 1.281-282).

8 . 3 . SUCCESSION OF SUPERSTRATA REFLECTING CHANGES OF SOCIAL PRO-

TOTYPES. The changing image of the prototype of the man of distinction evolved from the sequence of terminologies which flooded the Western world: the Byzantine patrician; the Islamic knight, known via Spain and Sicily and the Crusades; the French warrior, of the chivalric period; the Italian cortegiano, of the Renaissance; the Spanish hidalgo, in the Age of Discovery; the French aristocrat, from Versailles well into the 19th century; the British gentleman in the 19th and early 20th century. All these ideal types with their a-la-mode styles and their milieus, true or hollow, each different from the other, can be reconstructed from the lexemes that were borrowed in large quantities by cultures eager to be up to date. 8 . 4 . FOREIGNISMS. Two case;, of superstrata may exemplify large-scale invasions of foreignisms behind which stand the (sometimes not otherwise demonstrable) invasion of things. Both instances cover Germany, the one is ancient, the other modern. (a) Rome in Germany. Conquest and close commercial ties produced a heavy influx of Roman features in the daily life of its Germanic neighbor (Mackensen 1962:56-65). Geographically, the focal area of innovations was the Germania Romana, the occupied Rhine province, with Augusta Treverorum (Trier) and Colonia Agrippina (Cologne). Chronologically, as indicated by certain phonological features, words and things entered West-Germanic between the period of Caesar and the end of the migrations of the Germanic tribes: none of the Latinisms underwent the first Germanic sound shift, completed in the last centuries before the Christian era, but all of them took part in the second (High German) sound shift, i.e. were borrowed before 600 A.D. Semantically, the numerous Latinisms reflect advancement and innovations in field, house, and community: agriculture (Vulg.Lat. *sicila > O H G sihhila, Germ. Sichel 'sickle';

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

89

Lat. molinae plur. > OHG muli, Germ. Mühle 'mill'); viniculture (Lat. vitium, regional Lat. vino > OHG win, Germ. Wein 'wine'; Lat. calicem > OHG kelich [with -ch representing a Lat .pronunciation -k, i.e. borrowed not later than the 5th century], Germ. Kelch 'cup'); horticulture (Vulg.Lat. persica > MHG pfersieh, Germ. Pfirsich 'peach'; Lat. caulis > OHG cholö, Germ. Kohl 'cabbage'); the house, particularly of stone (Lat. mürus > OHG müra, Germ. Mauer 'stonewall'; Lat. cellärium, with k-, > OHG kellari, Germ. Keller 'cellar'); kitchen and cooking (Lat. coquina / cocina, with k, > OHG chuhhina, Germ. Küche 'kitchen'; Lat. discus > OHG tisc, Germ. Tisch 'table'); law and administration (Lat. pactum/ pacta plur. > OHG *pfahta, MHG pfahte, Germ. Pacht [with Low German initial] 'lease'; Lat. carcerem [karkere] > OHG karkäri, Germ. Kerker 'prison'). (b) America in Germany. Today, the American form of life, in its many facets, is overpowering the Western World, and Americanisms, as an expression of the process, fill the terminologies of modernism. The traces are present at every step in the mass media, in advertising, in store windows, in the parlance of the young (Fink 1970). A sampling of the material found in a single recent issue of the German weekly, Der Spiegel (4.29.1974), contained more than 160 of these borrowings, representing the European image of America, above all its business organization, particularly its cult of efficiency, and its hectic informal style of life, with a stress on both social relations and technology. Typical examples [the numbers refer to the pages of the Spiegel]: (i) Business organization: Team (46)/ Broker (67)/ Promoter (145)/ Service (77). (ii) Terminology of efficiency: Know-how (49)/ Trend (86)/ Test (167)/ Lobby (für Scheidungsreisen) (169). (iii) Social psychology: Image (20)/ Fan (154)/ Stress (168)/ Backlash (96). (iv) Fads: Jogger (137)/ Jeans (140)/ Rock (145)/ Afro-Look (110). (v) Technology: HiFi (90)/ Instant-On (133)/ Aftershave-Lotion (80)/ Bulldozer (41). (vi) Caiques: Gehirnwäsche brainwashing] (62)/ Speerspitze [~ spearhead] (93)/ Kletterer [~ climber] (24)/ umwickeln involve] (84). (vii) Hybrids: Top-Klasse (143)/ Überschall-Jet (175)/ Girl-Kult (160)/ Playback-Tonband (143).

9. LINGUA FRANCA. In plurilingual areas or among plurilingual groups in need of communication a simplified pragmatic form of verbal intercourse may develop to bridge the barrier. In its most general form it is called a lingua franca (Samarin 1968). Lingua francas often develop around a body of water, where ethnic and therefore linguistic diversity

90

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

is most common (Kahane 1951). Each is indicative of the varied contributions of its constituents and of the modicum of economic or social coherence of the aquatic area. For the sea has a strong unifying force: it functions (at least up to the era of aircraft) as a highway in the diffusion of culture and language. Maritime Kulturzentren are, to name just a few, the Mediterranean (with such subdivisions as the Adriatic and the Black Sea), the North Sea, the Baltic, the Caribbean, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the China Sea. What we know about the origins and the spread of the lingua francas is fragmentary and hypothetical; yet it does throw light on cultural expansion and transfer. Three facets of the Mediterranean lingua franca (THE Lingua Franca) will illustrate this point: its name, its function as a terminological vehicle, and its role as the mother of pidgins. 9 . 1 . HISTORY OF THE TERM. For centuries, people maintained the fiction that both the East and the West of the Mediterranean world represented in togetherness the heritage of Rome. Typically, the Byzantines called themselves Romaioi, 'Romans'. But from the ninth century on and through the era of the Crusades, the Greeks viewed the Westerners as outlanders, calling them Phrángoi, 'Franks', i.e. Occidentals. This name continued the onomastic tradition stemming from the Carolingian Empire, the Imperium Francorum (Ohnsorge 1952:239-240; 1961:38). The Franks spoke, in Byzantine parlance, phrángika, Romance, which included mainly (although varying with period and area) French and Italian. This Byzantine morpheme phrang-, with its specialized reference to language, was adopted by the West (as Tagliavini [1932:374-375] and Cortelazzo [1965:108-109; 1970:92-93] have shown), yet with a generalization of its use: Lingua Franca, calqued after the Greek, became the label for the Mediterranean, in particular Levantine, contact vernacular, which had a Romance, primarily Italo-Venetian, base together with Byzantinisms, Arabisms, and Turkisms. Thus, the Mediterranean history of the morpheme Frank reveals the clashing views of the principal groups involved with regard to their relationship: whereas the Byzantines were conscious of the national and political dualism that separated their East from the West, the Latins, having overpowered the East, stressed the evolving common ties of the entire area. 9 . 2 . . LINGUA FRANCA SEMANTICS. The technological and ecological terminologies common to multilingual areas constitute a specific facet (semantic rather than structural) of lingua francas. They reflect common

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

91

experience and interdependence. The Mediterranean subareas, for instance, share navigation, weather, fishing, commerce, landscape, fauna, and flora. But the source languages of the lexemes-in-common vary: The succession of the epicenters of diffusion reflects the changing constellations of the technologically prominent powers. The more innovative and the more dynamic the epicenter, the more massive, of course, its contribution, but only during, and not beyond, the era of its glamour. This is exemplified by Byzantium as a dominant source of Mediterranean technology. Byzantium was a strong focus of westbound diffusion from the 10th century down to the Crusades. To nautical terminology it furnished such pan-Mediterranean termini technici as the following, all of which indicate an advanced technique of harbor installations and sea law: skála 'landing place', molos 'mole', phanárion 'lantern, lighthouse', bareia (sumbolé) 'heavy (contribution), average' (Kahane and Kahane 1970:450-451). After that, there was relatively little Greek material which spread west but much material which spread east: Byzantium had become a weak focus of diffusion in relation to, say, Venice, but it remained a strong one in relation to Turkey. In short, the history of the technical terminology contributes to the history of an area's technology: innovations, diffusion, and ups and downs. A pidgin is a contact vernacular having a very simple grammatical structure. While it is nobody's native tongue, it is used between speakers of different linguistic backgrounds who do not speak each other's language. A pidgin which through heritage turns into a group's native language is known as a creóle. Pidgins were common in colonial societies. A monogenetic (as against a polygenetic) origin of the European-based pidgins (i.e. those with a lexicon coming largely from a European language) has recently been advocated by Whinnom (1965:522-527), who elaborates earlier hints by Schuchardt, Hesseling, and Navarro Tomás and is cautiously seconded by DeCamp (1971: 22-24). The monogenetic hypothesis centers around the observation that the pidgins overlap in their structure to a degree that excludes pure coincidence. Whinnom believes that Mediterranean seamen and merchants, primarily the Genoese and Venetians, carried their Lingua Franca into the Atlantic and the newly discovered lands, where it became the model for their fellow voyagers, the Portuguese. Portuguese pidgin became, from the 16th century on, the primary contact vernacular of colonialism. It was spoken in West Africa and from India to Indonesia; it replaced Arabic and Malay as the trade language of the Far East; 9 . 3 . . PIDGINS.

92

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

it was also used among non-Portuguese traders. Next, Portuguese pidgin served as the underlying form of the various European-based pidgins in the vast colonial world: these kept characteristic features of the Portuguese structure such as sundry particles of noun and verb phrases, which survived either in their original form or as caiques, while they replaced Portuguese lexemes with lexemes belonging to the respective dominant power. The assumption of a monogenetic origin of the European-based pidgins rests essentially on these two features: structural preservation and re-lexification. The origin and the expansion of the pidgins reflects various features of the age of discovery and the rise of colonialism. The fact that pidgins are frequently located on islands and on coasts highlights the function of the sea as a means of cultural and linguistic diffusion. The transformation of the Mediterranean Lingua Franca into the Portuguese wr-pidgin (the term after R. W. Thompson apud Whinnom 1965:522) underlines both the shift of the center of maritime and commercial events from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the dominant role of Portugal in the new age and the New World. The re-lexification of Portuguese pidgin in the Spanish-based/ French-based/ English-based/ Dutch-based pidgins reveals a significant pattern of the developing society of colonialism. Traders and missionaries, to be sure, must have played their roles in the dissemination of the pidgins; yet, the preponderant use of the contact vernaculars was reserved (one assumes) for the dialogue between slave and slave and between slave and master. They, for whom the environment changed often, needed new pidgins, and the language of each new milieu was pidginized in accord with the patterns of the earlier ones (Samarin 1968:667).

1 0 . LINGUISTIC GEOGRAPHY. Linguistic geography aims at the reconstruction of the linguistic past from the present-day linguistic diffusion. But linguistic diffusion often reveals non-linguistic events as well. Four patterns of diffusion are discussed. 1 0 . 1 . CENTER AND MARGINS. The area rules established by Bartoli (summarized by Bonfante 1971 and reformulated inventively by Malkiel 1964) are a powerful tool of analysis. The basic idea is that innovations come from the center, which is a culturally dynamic area, and spread toward the margins. In cases where they do not reach the margins, these preserve the older stage and thus appear conservative in relation

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

93

to the innovative center. The linguistic data often mirror a social process. (a) Town and country. Maurer (1972:116-118 with map 61a) describes the process in sociological terms: the impact of an urban center on the surrounding countryside implies the center's role in the spreading of fashion. For 'dress' Regensburg and the townships around it use the traditional Bavarian gwand (i.e. Germ. Gewand), whereas the close-by Nürnberg and its surrounding townships use the Franconian klad (i.e. Germ. Kleid)\ however, as a result of the dynamism of Nürnberg as a commercial center, the Franconian lexeme constantly encroaches upon the orbit of Regensburg. This pro\incial mini-story of the power of an urban center over its surroundings is repeated, on a large scale, time and again, with the impact of the nuclear area of a standard language in its struggle against regional dialects. (b) Disruption and unification. The ascendance of Castilia is reflected in the evolvement of Castilian into standard Spanish, and the ascendance of Castilian can be reconstructed in terms of the geographical distribution of linguistic features (Baldinger 1963:17-25, 37-52). In the Visigothic era a form of early Hispanic Romance tied the Iberian peninsula together linguistically. This is indicated (in documents of the post-Visigothic era) by the homogeneity of the vernacular, comprising the dialects of the entire area except Castilian: Galician-Portuguese and Leonese in the north-west, Aragonese and Catalan in the north-east, and Mozarabic, the Romance spoken in the southern and central regions under Islamic domination. Examples: Lat. initial f- is preserved (Lat. filius 'son' > Portug. filhoj Leon.,Aragon, filloj Catal. fill)', Lat. cluster kt preserves t (Lat. lacte 'milk' > Mozarab., Gal.-Portug., Leon., Aragon, leite/ Catal. llet); Lat. ly becomes palatal / (Lat. muliere 'woman' > Gal.-Portug., Leon., Aragon. Catal. muller); Lat. g-/j- before unstressed eft is preserved (Lat. genista 'broomplant' > Mozarab. yenesta/ Gal.-Portug. giesta/ Leon, ienesta/ Catal. gineatd). The northern mountainous region of ancient Cantabria was Romanized only late and then weakly; under Diocletian it was separated administratively from the future Leonese and Aragonese regions; it was never subjugated by the Goths, although the Goths did settle there with pleasure; it included scattered towns settled by Basque colonizers; and it remained free from the Moslems after the Conquest, in 711. From about the 9th century on, this area, known by then as Castilia, the Country of the Castles, became the driving power in the Christian resistance against Islam and in the unification of the country. The north-

94

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

central dialect of expanding Castile drove a wedge into the linguistic uniformity of the peninsula. In contrast to the four pan-Hispanic patterns just mentioned, Castilian established its own phonological rules: Lat. fbecame aspirated h- (hijo [hidzo], modern [ixo]); Lat. kt became c (ieche [léce]); Lat. ly became dz (OCast. [mudzér], modern [muxér]); Lat. g-j jwas deleted (hiniesta [inyésta]). These are, of course, the typical and familiar developments of Spanish, which spread wherever the standard language was used but which were impeded from further expansion by the force of the two marginal cultures and languages, the Portuguese and the Catalan, which still preserve the old patterns. With the last third of the 11th century, the strong Castilian push toward peninsular hegemony set in, greatly strengthened by the reconquest of Toledo, which (refined by Islamic influence) became the political and cultural center of widening Christian Spain. The dialect of Castilia was accepted as the language of the Court, and what had been rustic peculiarity now developed into respected standard. From the 11th to the 13th century, the Castilian march toward the south, Andalusia, broke up, on the one hand, the pristine linguistic continuity between east and west, by eliminating the bridge between the two, the old Mozarabic underlayer. On the other hand, the Reconquest created a new uniformity, comprising more than three-fourths of the country, by carrying the dominant dialect of the north into the liberated spaces of the south. The political Reconquest was (in the phrasing of the Muslim astrologer Abenragel [11th century]) a linguistic conquest. (c) Intermediate belts. Between margins and center there frequently exist intermediate belts which display patterns genetically between the conservative and the innovative. At times, these belts seem to represent the first wave of a two-phased expansion, thereby revealing that the innovations of the center may rise and radiate in successive stages. Consider the tripartite story of the palatalization of Lat. k- before a in France (Elcock 1960:342, 350, 352, 363-364; Rheinfelder 1968: 1.162-163). (i) The oldest stage shows k, i.e. preservation of the inherited shape, which must have covered the entire area well into the Middle Ages, (ii) The intermediate stage is the affricate is, a development of the Francien dialect (spoken in the territory around Paris), which was completed toward the end of the 7th century yet spread considerably later, since by the end of the 9th century its extension was still rather limited. This very common new form, ts, spread widely and superseded the older k- area, stopped only by the resistance of the Provençal tradition, in the south, and of the Picard and the Norman dialects, in the

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

95

Germanicized north. Since Norman kept the k-, English borrowings from French which display k- in lexemes of ancient heritage (such as carpenter) are of Norman origin, whereas those with is (such as chamber) represent standard medieval French. The spread of this phonological feature coincided with the spread, by about the 11th century, of the Francien dialect which developed into the French medieval koine. The movement towards standardization was strongly stimulated by the impact of the abbey of St. Denis on the country's political and economic life, on the organization of rising monasticism, and on the strengthening of the vernacular as a tool in religious education, (iii) The third stage is s, with loss of /-, completed by about the 13th century. It spread with the standard language whose expansion reflected the receding power of regional feudalism and the increasing power of the monarchy. It replaced the intermediate pattern ts except in two conservative belts, the Walloon and Lorraine dialects. It is interesting to note that the anthropologist Kroeber has applied the same model of center, intermediate belts, and margins to his description of the Amerindian civilization (Kroeber 1948:785-792): The central area, the nucleus of advancement, is located at the junction of the two American continents, the Meso-American in the north, the Andean in the south. From this center of culmination, and proceeding both north and south, cultural achievements decline and finally fade away, roughly in proportion to their distance from the center, through intermediate belts, toward the margins, Tierra del Fuego in the south, the Eastern-Northern area and the Arctic in the north. 1 0 . 2 . THE ISOLATED AREA. The preservation of linguistic relics often indicates an isolated area, cut off from the mainstream. Isolated areas may be at linguistic borders, in territories of difficult access, in regions separated from larger units by military events. Certain facets of the linguistic history of the concept 'church' may illustrate the impact of isolation on language. According to Aebischer 1968, in late antiquity the two names of the church as a building, basilica and ecclesia, were first geographically separated: the south (seen from Rome) preferred ecclesia, the north basilica, found from Dacia to the Iberian peninsula. But e(c)clesia advanced slowly and overtook basilica everywhere except, precisely, in three isolated areas: first in the Latin of Moesia (modern Serbia) and Dacia (modern Roumania), cut off from the mainstream of Romanism by the Slavic invasions into the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century; second, in the remote coastal area of Dalmatia; third in

96

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

Rhaetia (the Alpine province covering parts of modern Tyrol, Bavaria, and Switzerland), which passed in the 6th century into the hands of the Franks, and where in the 9th (when ec(c)lesia had not yet completely replaced basilica) the episcopate of Chur was shifted from the authority of the metropolitan Church of Milan to that of Mainz: the region's old Roman tradition was, in short, preserved in the new Germanic environment. In all three Romance languages involved, Roumanian, Dalmatian, and Rhaeto-Romance, basilica remained in use; and these three represent, indeed, areas conservative through isolation. 1 0 . 3 . PORTS OF ENTRANCE. In the spreading of linguistic features from one culture to another the geography of the points of contact (sometimes called ports of entrance) is of interest for historical reconstruction. The transmission of the Byzantine superstratum to the West, e.g. was realized through various channels, which can be recognized on the basis of such criteria as dialectology, distribution, and semantics. The main points of contact thus identifiable reflect a good deal about Byzantium's relations with the West (Kahane and Kahane 1970:440-450). The ports of entrance are four: (a) Ravenna, the seat of the Byzantine government in Italy from the 6th to the 8th century. The Greek items borrowed through Ravenna refer to the technology of everyday life, thereby representing the milieu of the settler: charádra 'lattice, gate', bóthunos 'trench', ardeia 'irrigation', brúa/broia 'rush', *chalkóchutron 'copperbucket'. (b) Venice, in turn subject, ally, and destroyer of Byzantium. The relation is characterized by terms of commerce and communication: allágion 'agio', hupérpuron 'golden solidus', katástichon 'cadastre', mandrákion 'inner harbor', gripos 'fishing net, fishing boat', (c) Southern Italy and Sicily, provinces of the Empire from Justinian to Islam and the Normans. The typical fields of transfer are: Church, field and kitchen, navigation and, through the School of Salerno, medicine: parádeisos 'garden of a monastery', ángouron 'cucumber', makardneia 'funeral song, *funeral banquet, *dish offered at the banquet', oiákion 'tiller', argaleton 'tool for rinsing (medical term)', (d) Oriens latinus and the Levant, Western possessions in the eastern Mediterranean. From there, the Westerners and, in particular, the Crusaders brought back terms dealing with church, commerce and administration, war, navigation, and luxury: Paulikianoi 'Paulicians', émbolos 'arcade with shops', despótés 'title of the Byzantine provincial governor', íourkópoulos 'Turkish-Christian soldier in Byzantine service', pélagos 'open sea', tapetion 'small carpet'.

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

97

1 0 . 4 . GO-BETWEENS. Lexemes often move from one culture to another not directly but through mediary stages: A particular foreign culture may be transmitted through a third culture. The implication (provided that no lengthy span of time intervenes between the two processes of borrowing, as in the case of, say, Germanic words in Italian reborrowed centuries later by Middle Greek [Thumb 1902] - a trivial matter): Culture A may be the target of influence from a neighboring culture B and become the source of a quasi-identical influence on culture C. The case of the Italian nautical terminology illustrates well the mediator's function. Italian words spread in all directions. On their way westward (Vidos 1939) Provençal became the next center of radiation, usually the intermediate stage between Italian and French. French then acted as the intermediate stage between the terminology of the Mediterranean and that of the Northern navigation. In the east there was a similar pattern (Kahane and Tietze 1958): Greek was the intermediate stage between Italy and Turkey, and Turkey, the intermediate between Greek and the Balkanic constituents of the Ottoman Empire. Proof of the intermediate stage is often difficult to find, but sometimes criteria of form are present. Italian lexemes which entered Turkish frequently show marks of their intervening life in Greece. We have found numerous criteria, both phonological and morphological (Kahane and Kahane 1942: 238-240; Kahane and Tietze 1958:39-40). Two typical ones: Italian bilabial stop changes in Greek to the corresponding nasal - Turkish likewise shows m (Ital. borello 'toggle' ->- Grk. murélo -> Turk, morela); Italian nouns in -o take the usual masculine ending -os in Greek Turkish likewise shows -oz (Ital. tacco 'stout piece of timber' -> Gr. tâkos Turk, takoz).

Regional variations of a standard language represent a linguistic subfield with ample suggestions for historical and social reconstruction. Three examples may suffice to illustrate the value of dialect data as they reflect the rise of regional boundaries, the pattern of demarcation of the boundaries, and the nucleus of settlements. 1 1 . DIALECTOLOGY.

11.1.

BOUNDARIES.

(a) Origin. Morf (1911:32-37), in a methodologically stimulating yet controversial essay, reconstructed, on the basis of the geographical distribution of three phonological criteria (Lat. en before consonant; Lat. k before front vowel; Lat. k before a), the rise and preservation of

98

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

the three main dialect areas of France (Picard-Norman-Walloon/ Francien-Champenois/ Gascon). The history goes back to the très Galliae, famous through Caesar, of the Belgae, the Celtae, and the Aquitani. The ethnic boundaries of these indigenous pre-Roman gentes were continued in those of the civitates of the Roman administration, and these, in turn, remained boundaries in the ecclesiastic division of the country into dioceses. Today, these markers of former units of administration and communication survive as the isoglosses of the modern dialects. (b) Contours. Dialect areas, as defined by Maurer (1972:13-14), are units of communications, internally unifying, externally isolating. The sharpness or fuzziness of modern dialect borders (we are speaking of Europe) depends on and therefore is indicative of the stability or instability of ecclesiastic or secular territories, particularly during the three centuries from 1500-1800. Maurer provides the example of the North Bavarian (i.e. Nürnberg) dialect, clearly contoured in the north where borders were stable, blurred in the south where borders were changing. 1 1 . 2 . SETTLEMENTS. The early history of many Hispanic settlements in Latin-America is seldom documented, therefore the linguistic data inherent in present-day speech provide the only solid material for a reconstruction of the regional nucleus of a community. Rona (1958) came to the following conclusions from this dialectological approach: The first wave of the continent's Hispanization, the Conquest proper, which reached the Caribbean, Mexico, and Peru, attracted adventurers from all over Spain; therefore, no specific dialect of Spain prevails in those colonies. The second phase, involving northern Mexico (with the area that is now New Mexico) and South America, was largely one of farmers who arrived in homogeneous groups from varied Spanish localities; the first settlers of a particular district or town would either entice followers from the home base or set the pattern of speech for any newcomers of a different origin. Thus, Uruguayan Spanish displays Canarian (i.e. Andalusian) features in Montevideo, but Galician and Asturian features in the southeastern districts of Rocha, Maldonado, and Minas. This kind of transfer of different dialects from the Old to the New World is one of the causes (in addition to the Indian substratum) of the fragmentation of American Hispanidad.

1 2 . LINGUISTIC PALEONTOLOGY. Attempts have been made, time and again, to solve the puzzles of unrecorded history such as pristine culture,

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

99

original habitat, and migrations of early tribes or ethnic groups by means of linguistic data. Tovar (1954:337) phrases the goal of this approach, commonly labeled Linguistic Paleontology and sometimes subsumed under the broad heading of Comparative Linguistics, as the transformation of prehistory into history. Thus, one has hypothesized that in an early stage of the Indo-European society cattle raising preceded agriculture because the terminology of the former shows a more regular, i.e. an older morphological patterning than that of the latter; that the appearance of feminine gender was due to the increased economic and social significance of the female as the first planter and owner of land; that the prevalence of Italic, Celtic, and Indo-lranian terms in the fields of law and worship hint at a 'democratic revolution' among the central Indo-Europeans; and that the emergence of the optative alongside the subjunctive was associated with the rise of prayer out of primitive magic (Scherer 1956). Obviously, however, the method stimulates skepticism no less than enthusiasm. Malkiel (1950:333) senses in its pursuit 'a kind of restlessness ultimately traceable to Romanticism'. Two particularly negative evaluations have been made quite recently by Kronasser (1961 and apud Merlingen 1961:161), who is radically antagonistic, and by Merlingen 1961. The gist of their argumentation: Practitioners of the comparative method who attempt to reconstruct the IndoEuropean beginnings often sin in a subjective selection of their material and err in concluding that the absence of a linguistic feature indicates the absence of its referent. Such linguistic interpretations are based primarily on non-linguistic, essentially archeological knowledge. This very fact is anathema in the epistemological credo of Kronasser and Merlingen; for them, a linguistic explanation must proceed without recourse to or correlation with other disciplines. The critics' sharpest attack is directed against the confusion they see everywhere of können and müssen: mere possibility is accepted as certainty. Nevertheless, the inveterate doubters recognize the validity of a linguistic approach if it is aimed at less ambitious and more realistic goals; they welcome such techniques as diachronic analysis (i.e. the comparative analysis of change), linguistic geography and linguistic geology, the description of substratum and superstratum, the observation of borrowings, in particular from foreign cultures (the Fremdwörter), and, of course, the implications of toponomastics. Clearly, their dismissal of linguistic paleontology as TRÜMMER and debris and soapbubbles, is slanted. That the URHEIMAT of the Indo-Europeans has not been clearly established should not deter SEIFENBLASEN,

100

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

further research and, of course, it has not. Kronasser's insistence on a pure linguistic approach asks for too much: paleontological mysteries do not yield to a purely linguistic attack (whatever that may be); the linguist has to be aware of non-linguistic data and correlations, and only through this interaction of fields does linguistics turn into applied linguistics. Nor should this field be condemned because of the hypothetical character of its conclusions. The material it is concerned with is the word; this can be analyzed in two ways, either through equation with corresponding words in other languages, or genetically through morpheme identification, better known as etymology. Whether the one method or the other or both are used, the result is bound to be hypothetical, just more or less probable. Word history is, optimally, always a KANN, never a MUSS. Three typical examples of the method. 1 2 . 1 . FROM LINGUISTIC DISTRIBUTION, ETHNIC ORIGIN. The language of the Illyrians, in the eastern Adriatic, was apparently Indo-European; yet their ethnic provenience has remained a puzzle. Battisti's diagnosis was based on the distribution of certain lexemes (Battisti 1959:5-41, esp. 30-37): these are non-Indo-European and appear rather densely as toponyms in the Illyrian heartland and, less frequently, as appellatives or toponyms in a scattered Mediterranean diffusion. Battisti inferred an Illyrian origin of these lexemes from this pattern of distribution and concluded (esp. 23) that the Illjrians represented a very old pre-IndoEuropean substratum secondarily Indo-Europeanized. Typical lexemes are: alba 'rock'/ mag 'mountain'/ mal 'hill' / sard- 'underbrush[?]\

Thieme ( 1 9 6 4 : investigated the problem of the homeland of the Indo-Europeans exclusively on the basis of names for fauna and flora. He considered only those Indo-European regions as potential focal areas for whose characteristic plants and animals Indo-European names can be posited according to the phonological rules of Indo-European reconstruction. Thieme assumed that the mother language was spoken in one of the regions in which the later Indo-European languages survive and therefore he eliminated those areas for whose characteristic animals and plants no Indo-European names can be hypothesized (i.e. India, Iran, and the Mediterranean). This restricted the possibilities of the original IndoEuropean habitat to the areas north of the Black Sea and south of the Baltic. Near the latter we find in historic times the greatest density of diverse Indo-European languages, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic. The system 1 2 . 2 . FROM LINGUISTIC ORIGIN, ETHNIC DISTRIBUTION. 594-597)

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

101

of plants, in a sequence of decreasing reconstructibility, includes such items as barley, birch, beech, aspen. The reconstructible names of animals include, e.g. dog, cattle, sheep; wolf and bear; stag, snake, and turtle; eagle and falcon; and the salmon. All these animals lived in the later Neolithic and the Copper and Bronze Ages in the Baltic and North German plains. The salmon (with beech, birch, and turtle) is found only in the rivers that flow into the Baltic Sea. The area of the beech is bounded in the east by a line going from Kaliningrad on the Baltic to Odessa on the Black Sea; the area of the turtle excludes Scandinavia. This method of combining etymological reconstruction with a check on the semantic component by means of the non-linguistic data concerning the distribution of fauna and flora led Thieme to a precise location of the postulated proto-Indo-European language: within the domain of salmon rivers, west of the beech line, outside of Scandinavia, i.e. in the region of the rivers Vistula, Oder, and Elbe. 1 2 . 3 . SYNCHRONIC SEMANTICS. In contrast to Battisti's and Thieme's diachronic attempts at reconstruction, Benveniste made use of synchronic semantics: the underlying meaning of a concept is equated with the etymological meaning of the concept's name. Benveniste revived with this method the ancient Greek belief (today strongly under attack) that the etymon tells the truth. We shall exemplify with four of his interpretations of the concept 'king' (Benveniste 1969:2.7-95). The multiple names for king provide insight into the multiple origins of a social institution such as hierarchy. Each type of name provides a metaphor used to justify the inequality of power and the control of resources associated with the emergence of kingship as an institution, (a) The Roman rex is the priest charged with the high duty to regere fines or sacra 'to line out, concretely, the boundaries of sacred districts; morally, the right road to be followed'. Not by chance is this religious (rather than strictly political) foundation for the king's office found only in the Indo-European margins: in the West, in Lat. rex and Celtic -rix (as in the name Vercingetorix); in the East, in Sanskrit raj-. In short, with regard to the priestly basis of the institution of the king, the area rules of linguistic geography show the Indo-lranian and Italo-Celtic margins to be more conservative than the central areas. The story of rex prefigures the role of the Roman Fratres Arvales, the Celtic Druids, the Indian Brahmans, the Iranian Magi. (b) The view of the ruler as the protector of his subjects is at the basis of a metaphor, widely used in the ancient Orient in political and religious application, the 'shepherd' (Jeremias

102

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

1959:484-487). According to Benveniste, the Homeric poimin laon 'shepherd of the people', i.e. 'ruler' spreads out from two definite areas, Thessaly and the Ilio-Phrygian region (Stegmann von Pritzwald 1930: 15-21). Benveniste (1962:98-101) correlates the Greek expression with the synonymous Avestan (an Old Iranian language) västar- and Hittite westara - both 'shepherd', both metaphors for priest or ruler. He hypothesizes that 'shepherd' as 'king' may represent an old heritage born of a stock-breeders' society. (c) The image of the chief as collector and redistributor of agricultural surplus value is made explicit in the AngloSaxon name, lord. The term represents a compound, hläford, with the constituents hläf (~ Engl, loaf) and weard Engl, warden), i.e. 'bread keeper'. And similarly his lady: her name represents OEngl. hlcefdige 'loaf kneader'. The metaphor, then, is based on the subjects' view of themselves as the breadeaters. (d) The common Germanic word is Engl, king / Germ. König; this focuses on the ruler's lineage: the basis of the term is *kun-ing-az, a derivative in -ing of the root kuni 'race, family' (a cognate of Lat. gens and Grk. genos). King, in short, is viewed as 'one of good stock'. The etymology is confirmed by Tacitus' statement about the Teutons: 'reges ex nobilitate ... sumunt' (Germania VII. 1).

1 3 . TOPONYMS. Placenames, surely the most conservative feature of language, have been used consistently as a means for historical reconstruction. The literature is endless; linguistic paleontology, for example, is largely based on toponymic materials. The many potentialities of the field can only be hinted at by the following succinct presentations: toponyms reflecting the succession of dominant powers in one particular area; two episodes of foreign immigrations; and certain facets of commercial geography. 1 3 . 1 . LAYERS. Lebel 1961, in a not too rigid methodological introduction to the field written for Samaran's handbook for historians, sketches the history of France in terms of French toponyms. Some of his case histories: (a) The Celtic layer, (i) Fierce zeal for their independence, inherited hatred, and rivalry amongst themselves explain the establishment by the Gallic tribes of numerous fortified places. Their location can be inferred from the generic root morphemes dunum / briga j durum; these were often differentiated by modifiers: Augustodunum 'fort of Augustus', modern Autun; Scaldobriga 'fort on the Scheldt', modern Escaudoeuvres

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

1 03

(Nord); Brivodurum 'fort of the bridge', modern Brières (Ardennes), (ii) The extended highway net of the Gauls can be reconstructed from landmarks such as bridges and fords which survive only as names: Celt, briva 'bridge' is continued in Brive (Corrèze), the plural in Brèves (Nievre)/ Brives (Indre); ritum 'ford' is reflected in Camboritum 'curved ford', modern Chambord (Loir-et-Cher). (b) The Latin layer, (i) The expansion of the highway net by the Romans is mirrored through the stations which served as shelters : Tabernae 'taverns' surviving in Saverne (Bas-Rhin)/ Tavernes (Var); Stabulae 'stables' in Alsace; Mansiones 'dwelling places', today Maisons at various localities, (ii) Placenames allow us to reconstruct the sites of industrial establishments: figulinae 'tile factories, potteries' surviving in Félines/ Flinesj Flins; vitrinae 'glass factories' in Védrinesj Verrines; salinae 'salines' in Salies-de-Béarn (Basses-Pyrénées). (c) Carolingian Latinity. In the period of rising feudalism the columbarium 'dovecot' became a typical privilege of the nobility; therefore places thus named indicate former aristocratic residences : a Columbarium of 823 marks a Carolingian possession, today Colmar (Haut-Rhin); another lordly Columbarium survives as Colomier-le-Bas (Haute-Marne). (d) The Germanic layer. Two patterns of toponyms based on anthroponyms indicate the extension of the Germanic settlements in France and sometimes hint at the particular ethnic subgroup involved, (i) A frequent toponymie type designating Germanic farms consists of the generic noun for farm, villaj corte/ villare, preceded by the specific, the (Latinized) genitive of the Germanic owner's name: *Arnaldi villa, modern Arnaville (Meurthe-et-Moselle) / *Gunderici corte, modern Guindrecourt (Haute-Marne) / *Ragimberti villare, modern Rambertvillers (Vosges). The Germanic farms developed into villages, (ii) The Germanic suffix -ing added to a name appears in French placenames in two variants, -ingas in the areas occupied by the Franks or the Alemanni, and -ingos in those colonized by the Burgundians or Goths. According to phonological rules the a of -ingas is closed to schwa (resulting in -ingue [Flanders]/ -ange [Lorraine]/ -anges [Burgundy and FrancheComté]); but the o of -ingos is deleted (resulting in -ans [Franche-Comté]/ -ens [Suisse romande, Southern France]). The settlers were, then, Franks in, say, Bonningas, modern Bouningues (Pas-de-Calais); Alemanni in *Wulfilingas, modern Off langes (Jura); Burgundians in Folcaringos, modern Foucherans (Jura); Goths in Scattalingos, modern Escatelens (Tarn-et-Garonne).

104

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

1 3 . 2 . IMMIGRATIONS. One of the following examples involves a phonological analysis of toponyms; the other, a morphological one. (a) Vasmer's well-known study on the Slavs in Greece reaches clear-cut toponymic conclusions, largely derived from phonological criteria (Vasmer 1941: 316-325): The numerous onomastic traces indicate Slavic immigrations in large numbers; these were more substantial in the west than in the east; the Slavs in Greece were not Serbo-Croatians but Bulgars. (b) Conea and Donat 1958 reconstruct an episode in the history of foreign settlements in the Balkanic area by means of hydronyms, using criteria of word formation: Numerous Roumanian hydronyms share the suffix -(l)ui, probably of Turkic origin. Their distribution marks the extension of the settlements of the Petchenegs and Cumans, nomadic Turkic tribes who invaded the region between the Carpathian Mountains and the lower Danube and remained there for about three centuries, from the 10th to the 13th, precisely in the less populated plains of Walachia. 1 3 . 3 . FROM PROPER NAME TO COMMON NOUN. Medieval economic history is reflected in the names of textiles, derived (via a process of syntactical shift from noun modifier to new appellative) from the names of the places of their production (Vidos 1950:189-196; Hofler 1967). From the 11th century on, the textile industry of Flanders and Brabant provided Europe on an ever increasing scale with its products. In the underlying form, the name of the material consists (in the analysis of Hofler [1967:136]) of some term for textile followed by the toponymic modifier; in the surface, the modifier appears elliptically: a pattern such as drap de Bruxelles 'cloth from Brussels' becomes bruxelle(s) 'kind of cloth'. These elliptic names of textiles, in their totality, represent a map of the industrial centers. Examples: Brussels (Fr. broisselej Span, bruselasj Catal. brusseles); Bruges (Span, brujas/ Portug. brugiaj Prov. bruges); Ghent (Span. gante)-, Ypres (Ital. ipral Portug. Span. Catal. ipre).

1 4 . ANTHROPONYMS. Names of persons (either individuals or groups) are an important piece of social evidence. The system of name giving reveals, to mention just a few facets, patri- or matri-lineality in societies; the process of religious conversion; cultural heritage; superstratum; the prestige of the ruling families reflected in the subjects' names; superstitions and beliefs; and, time and again, the fashions of the day. A few examples, involving criteria of etymology, comparative phonology, and semantics intertwined with word structure and superstratum, will

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

105

illustrate the potentialities of anthroponymic data for historical reconstruction. 14.1. ETHNIC ORIGINS. Two examples, the one centering on a tribal name, the other on a set of given names: (a) The pre-Greek populations of Southern Italy, which ceased to be an organized political unit before the 8th century B.C., were collectively called Ausones (Schmoll 1958:96). Their provenience has been a puzzle, which Ribezzo (1950:62-64) tries to solve through an analysis of the name: he derives it from *ausom 'reddish-yellow or blond metal', related to Lat. aurum 'gold', which may have indicated a physical characteristic, blond hair. He strengthens his hypothesis by reference to a subgroup of theirs, the Rutuli, whose name represents the Indo-European root rhud- 'red'. All this, in Ribezzo's opinion, points to a Northern European origin of the Italic populations. (b) Certain features of the African heritage of a wide variety of Black communities in the New World can be identified by means of anthroponymic data. For instance, the Fanti-Ashanti (Ghana) custom of naming children after the week day of their birth reappears in the New World. It is best preserved among the Bush Negroes of the Guianas, tribes constituted by the descendents of escaped slaves, among whom it coexists with a host of African cultural patterns. The day names are as follows (Bastide 1971:56):

Boys Ghana Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Kouassi Kodio Kouamina Kouakou Yao Kofi Kouami

Girls Guiana

Couachi Codio Couamina Couacou Yao Cofi Couami

Ghana Akouassiba Adioula Aminaba Akouba Ayaba Afouba Amoriba

j

Guiana Corrachiba Adioula Amba Acouba Yaba Afiba Abertiba

But some of the same names exist among the Gullah of the Atlantic Coast of the United States, and this fact can be used to hypothesize Fanti-Ashanti ethnic origins in the absence of virtually all non-linguistic evidence (except similarity of drum types) (Bastide 1971:11-12).

106

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

1 4 . 2 . SETTLEMENTS. Zgusta (1955:§§513-525) reconstructs ancient migrations in the Black Sea area exclusively on the basis of (non-Greek) person names, relying on the assumption that names found in inscriptions of the 2nd and 3rd post-Christian centuries preserve an anthroponymic tradition of long standing. The language which permits a maximum of derivations of these names is Iranian. Through a phonological comparison with Avestan and Ossetic two Iranian dialects come to the fore. These two dialects share certain features yet differ as to others: Where the one dialect shows diphthongs, stops, spirants, and presence o f f - before /, the other displays monophthongs, spirants, stops, and absence o f / - before I. The former variety represents the older stage of development, close to Old Iranian, the latter the younger stage. There is a correlation of the geographical data with the genetic: the records of the older stage are spread over the entire north coast of the Black Sea, whereas those of the younger are found only in the eastern part of the same area. The younger area thus proves to be an innovative one superimposed on the older. Zgusta identifies the older form with Scythian, the younger with the language of the Sarmatians, both unknown outside the onomastic records. Two historical implications: The speakers of the younger variety, i.e. the speakers of a later form of the language, left the Iranian heartland at a later period. They did not, however, pu?h the Scythians completely out of their settlements at the Black Sea; the Scythians remained even after the new conquerors had settled in.

1 4 . 3 . SOCIAL STRATIFICATION. The morphologic and semantic patterning of anthroponyms in Attica of the classical and Hellenistic periods, i.e. from the 5th to about the 2nd century, is indicative of social stratification (Lambertz 1907-08: esp. 2.27-31; Bechtel 1902; Solmsen and Fraenkel 1922:113-116; Fraenkel 1935:1616-1622). (a) The names of the free are characterized, morphologically by compounds, semantically by the expression of the ideals of the Athenian citizenry. Their value system shows the following constituents: (i) manliness, valor, and fortitude (Polukrates 'man of great power'/ Nikdmachos 'conqueror in the fight'); (ii) leadership in war and peace (Eurumedon 'the wide-ruling' / Agesilaos 'leader of the people'); and (iii) fame, to the Greeks the highest good (Perikles 'far-famed'), (b) Slave names represent certain semantic categories - (i) foreign flavor (Gerus, a morpheme of Thracian origin); (ii) ethnic provenience presenting the slave, pejoratively, as merchandise of a barbarian brand (Phriix, the Phrygian); (iii) a lower-class deity ySaturos, Satyr); (iv) good qualities

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

107

of unfree workers (Philourgos 'one who loves to work'); (v) abstract qualities hoped for in a slave, usually used for females, since abstracts frequently take the feminine gender (Eutaxia 'orderly behavior, discipline', Euporia 'resourcefulness'). From the imperial period on, the distinction between the names of the free and those of the slaves fades away. 1 4 . 4 . SUPERSTRATUM PATRONYMICS. The typically Germanic patronymic pattern containing the constituent 'son' is uncommon in Italy. Yet it occurs, with the prefixed morpheme fil-, in Greek documents from Calabria and Apulia (e.g. 1125 Philrenaldos, i.e. Filrenaldus/ 1129 Philiiddnnes, i.e. Filijoannes). According to Rohlfs (1942:204-205), these names reflect the Norman superstratum imposed on the Greek (or Byzantine?) culture of medieval Southern Italy. The Normans, who occupied the area in the 11th century and stayed into the 13th, imported this particular onomastic structure (exemplified by, say, their Fitzwilliami), which they themselves may have calqued after such patronymic Anglo-Saxon models as Wilson. 1 4 . 5 . DYNASTIC LOYALTY. Bach (1952-53:2. §504) considers the old and wide-spread habit of naming a child for a sovereign as a symbol of the name-giver's loyalty. The frequency of a certain first name may indicate the popular appeal of the name's original model as well as the continued allegiance toward his dynasty. Thus Heinrich has been a German favorite since the Saxon King Heinrich J the Fowler (876-936); the trend was reinforced by the Salian monarchs Heinrich III-V; the Hohenstaufen Heinrich VI; and Heinrich VII, from Luxemburg. Otto echoes the popularity of the Saxon emperors; the liking for Konrad stems from Konrad I, the Franconian. The ascendance of Friedrich is due to the Hohenstaufen and to the house of Hohenzollern; and Wilhelm, likewise a Hohenzollern favorite, was the last fad.

1 5 . CATCHWORDS AND KEYWORDS. The isolated lexeme perceived as a self-contained unit of meaning may function in various ways as a powerful indicator of political, social, or cultural conditions. If considered systematically, i.e. as a witness of its own period, it may reflect (although not always with clearcut borderlines) either the specific or the general, as catchword or as keyword. 1 5 . 1 . CATCHWORDS. Certain terms which become current thanks to a pregnant phrasing that evokes emotional response (positive or negative),

108

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

most succinctly sum up contemporary events, institutions, or standpoints. They thereby reveal social attitudes, changes in taste, acculturation, or undercurrents of the time - or of the moment. Two brief illustrations. (a) German, to which Ladendorf 1906 devoted his trail-blazing Schlagwörterbuch, has furnished such terms as the following, which subsume preponderant events of nineteenth-century history: Krawall, 'riot', became current during the unrest of the dawning industrial age of the thirties and forties, with its compounds Straßenkrawall / Hungerkrawall / Arbeiterkrawall. Kriegsherr, 'warlord', a catchword since the fifties, hinted at the spread of Prussian militarism and expressed the absolute sovereignity of the ruling prince over the army in both war and peace. Gründer, the general term for the founder of a new business enterprise, changed shortly after the establishing of the German Reich in '71, and designated a promoter in the most pejorative sense, synonymous with swindler. (b) In present-day America, just to give a sampling of our own catchwords and their connotations, we are familiar with free enterprise, new deal, mccarthyism, and Watergate. 1 5 . 2 . KEYWORDS. Schlüsselwörter, according to Schmidt-Hidding (1963: 21), in his introduction to a most interesting series of monographs on such terms, reveal the style, thought, values, and behavior of a nation or a group. Often lexemes remain in the language over lengthy periods but their connotations change to reflect changes in the social environment. Three examples, illustrating several cases of varying connotations: (a) Alföldi (1953:96-99) described the change in function of the Roman keyword parens patriae/ pater patriae. The citizens of the early Republic followed military custom and gratefully honored in the successful leader the scrvator or savior of the country and thus its father. With the later Republic the concept shifted from the recognition of an individual to the recognition of a political institution. Caesar's case indicates that the parens tended to turn into a patronus. With the protectionism and welfarism of the Augustean age the paternal authority of the princeps implied no longer a voluntary but rather an accepted submission on the part of the Romans: For Seneca, in the 1st century A.D., the title pater patriae meant patria potestas, paternal authority. The concentration of such sacrosanctity in the Father-Monarch isolated the chief of state from the rest of humanity and, under Hellenistic influence, lifted him to a cosmic Father of All. (b) The article on peuple in the French Encyclopédie (Lough 1954: s.v.) described the concept as it was used by the middle of the 18th century: it referred to the poor and ignorant, com-

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

109

prising the larger part of the nation, the people outside of society, the working man and the peasant. The dramatic change of the term's meaning which took place soon afterwards reflects the political change: 1789 (in Michelet's phrasing) is the era of the birth of the peuple, now defined as the total nation (Michelet 1869:1.77). (c) After the middle of the 18th century, German borrowed the terms Kultur and Zivilisation from French (Pflaum 1967). With the German inclination toward antithesis and polarization, the original synonymity developed into an antonymy, which sheds light on German political philosophy. The first phase of differentiation suggests an intellectual romantic flight from the political realities of the Napoleonic turmoil: Kultur represented the mind and Zivilisation the senses. After 1870, the frustrated German, full of angst due to the monster of new factories and mines, tried to escape from material Zivilisation to spiritual Kultur. With the First World War this social contrast between the two terms gave way to a political and nationalistic one: folk-rooted Kultur typified the German values as opposed to the mechanistic Zivilisation of the Allies. Spengler, the historical structuralist, popularized the contrast between the creative principle, Kultur, and the final decadent phase of the Western World, Zivilisation. Today, the positive: negative antithesis recedes. In the German Democratic Republic Kultur embraces broadly socialist Volkskultur, and Zivilisation is equated with modern and accepted science and technology - all the more easily since Russian kuVtura combines both facets, Kultur and Zivilisation.

1 6 . LINGUISTIC FIELD. The analytic method of the field, the SPRACHFELD, developed in Germany by Trier and Weisgerber, consists in a synchronic integration of semantically related lexemes. It is based on the hypothesis that words are not isolated entities but the constituents of a higher unit, the field, a conceptually homogeneous section of the lexicon. The members of the field are interdependent and operate on the two levels of analysis: the deep structure, represented by the literal meaning, and the surface, represented by the function of that particular literal meaning within the prevailing cultural climate. Four cases: One dealing with the different attitudes toward a specific style of life, Joy; the second, with the echo of an incisive political event, the repercussion of the French Revolution in Italy; the third with the total involvement of a country in a contemporary social doctrine, Marxism in the DDR. (The last two cases also contrast as to the potentialities of language transfer: French

110

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

and Italian share much, Russian and German little.) The fourth case deals with the reconstruction of a religious subfield through etymological patterning. 1 6 . 1 . THE VARYING FUNCTIONS OF A PARTICULAR FIELD. Although field analysis is essentially a synchronic method, a comparison of its varying roles in either different times or different cultures contributes to historical or sociological insight. This may be briefly illustrated by using the field of Joy as the exemplar, (a) Wandruszka (1956:62-76) interpreted the material on Joy diachronically. Whatever the names, gaudium/ placerej laetitia/ alacr- (and their numerous variants), the basic concept remains the same, pleasurable emotion. What changes from phase to phase is the function of the field, thereby illuminating the change of values: to Seneca and the stoics, joy was bound to virtue; to Augustine and the Church Fathers, true joy was spiritual (Michel 1970:359-360, 412-414); in the Middle Ages it became a style of courtly life: it is, e.g. a highly distinctive aristocratic mark in the Hispanic world of the Cid (Allen 1959:361-372); in the exuberance of the Renaissance the secularization of joy was intnesified. (b) Reuning (1941:79-82), in his investigation of the same field, used the component of intensity for a comparison of English and German. He concluded that in English the members of the field are less forceful, less emphatic than the German. In this respect, the field of Joy is typical of British understatement and inhibition, and he explained (with caution, to be sure) tnese national characteristics as a Puritan tradition.

1 6 . 2 . BORROWING OF A LINGUISTIC FIELD FROM A CULTURE LINGUISTICALLY

Migliorini 1973 discussed the linguistic repercussions of the French Revolution in Italy between 1789 and -96. That event, which, especially through Napoleon's campaigns, strongly influenced the political and social outlook and the structure of Italy, permeated the vocabulary in many sectors, military, scientific, and administrative. Contemporary lexicographers were quite aware of the nuova lingua rivoluzionaria. The modernisms represent, essentially, two classes: either they are Gallicisms, which entered the language in large quantities, favored particularly by the adherents of the movement, or they are neologisms, above all semantic adaptations of indigenous Italian lexemes to the new condition. Examples: (a) Gallicisms are: (i) Direct borrowings: buro bureau/ maire or mere maire 'mayor'; (ii) Caiques: cittadino ~ citoyen/ destra and sinistra ~ droits and gauche, political terms derived from the CLOSE.

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

111

seating pattern in the French Convention of 1792; (iii) Franco-Latinisms, i.e. western lexemes of the classical tradition which took on new meanings in the Revolution : consolej direttorio, (b) Neologisms are : (i) Old words for new concepts : eguaglianza / popolo; (ii) Old words replacing unpopular terms: domestico for servoj servitore; (iii) New coinages: allarmista / rivoluzionario. It is interesting to see how the value of the entire field changes with the changing viewpoint of the evaluator: Of the three lexicographers analysed by Migliorini, Benincasa 1798, in his definitions, tried to refrain from value judgments; Campagnoni (in his addenda to Benincasa) favored the movement; and the Anonymous of 1799 was antagonistic. This third writer is sardonic: Democrazia should be changed to Demonocrazia, 'Government of the Demons'; Eternità spans only one or two years since regulations, although supposedly in force forever, last no longer than one or two years; Matrimonio should be rendered as Concubinato metodico; and Patriota is defined as atheist and as traitor to his sovereign, his country, and his own father. 1 6 . 3 . BORROWING OF A LINGUISTIC FIELD FROM A CULTURE LINGUISTICALLY

REMOTE. Reich 1968 examines the standardized lexicon of the DDR. The technological and intellectual language of the DDR is totally drawn into the orbit of politics : essentially it constitutes one unified field, with a subordination of the parts to the single goal, communistic Weltanschauung. Language is here not only a dynamic part of the political tenor but also (and this as always is our approach) the societal mirror. We shall illustrate with just a few aspects. The style of the entire terminology is officialese and doctrinairism. New DDR terms are either new coinages or reinterpretations of existing lexemes. Since German and Russian differ strongly on the phonological and morphological levels, direct borrowings are few but translations are numerous, comprising about four fifths of all neologisms. Many of the former lexemes have disappeared (as indicated by their omission in recent dictionaries), e.g. the names of old professions with their pejorative association: Knecht 'farmhand' and Dienstbote 'servant'. Economic-capitalistic terms of the West are no longer acceptable in the East: Arbeitsgeberl Arbeitsnehmer! Großkaufmann - employer, employee, grand merchant. The system of evaluation is revealed in the dictionaries through the two prevalent epithets, reaktionär and bürgerlich, of unclear distinction : both mean non-communist. Reaktionär is applied to Buddismus, Existentialismus, Expressionismus, Psychoanalyse, Symbolismus; bürgerlich is applied to Formalismus, Nihilismus, Parapsychologie, Surrealismus.

112

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

These few instances of lexical differentiations and gaps between the Marxist and the capitalist democracies elucidate the hypothesis of Moser (1961:2-3, 19-20) that the effect of the spatial split of Germany, in force since 1945, is reflected in the incipient linguistic split. 1 6 . 4 . ETYMOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF A FIELD. Word history can be used perhaps to bring a field to the surface. In the West, the vast complex of Christianity is represented largely by a Latin superstratum, in which numerous technical terms of Greek provenience have been embedded. Yet, German contains several Grecisms which did not radiate with the Latin of the Roman Church but were transmitted through the medium of Gothic (Mackensen 1962:66; Kahane and Kahane 1970:365-366). We know that the Goths had been converted to Arianism through Byzantium and that Gothic missionaries operated, probably in the course of the 5th and 6th centuries, in the areas of the Danube and the Rhine. Thus, the etymological criterion of a Germanic Byzantinism underlying terms of Christian content, combined with the history of the expansion of the Arian movement, sets up the ecclesiastic field of Arianism. Examples: Byz. Áreos héméra 'day of Ares, i.e. Tuesday' > Goth. *areinsdags, probably popular through association with Arius, still Bavarian-Austrian dial. Ertag; Byz. sámbaton [nasalized variant of sábbaíon] > Goth. *sambató, OHG sambaz-tac, Germ. Samstag, Fr. samedi 'Saturday'; Byz. pentékoste [héméra] 'fiftieth [day]' > Goth, paintékusté, Germ. Pfingsten 'Pentecost'; Byz. kuriakón¡ kurikón > Goth. *kyrikd, Germ. Kirche 'church'; Byz. papas/ pápas > Goth, papa, Germ. Pfajfe 'member of the lower clergy (up to the 16th century).'

1 7 . ETYMOLOGY. Finally, just a glimpse at the most revealing, most crowded of all linguistic avenues to history: the implications of word origins and word histories, i.e. the genetic analysis of isolated lexemes which is familiar as etymology and much maligned in these days - or is it? (Kiparsky 1974; Kahane 1975). Jacob Grimm's famous dictum that each word has its own history means, in this particular frame of reference, that history, time and again, is behind the word. The examples are endless. We shall illustrate, in the greatest condensation, with a few of our own suggestions largely reflecting East-West relations in the Mediterranean (Kahane and Pietrangeli 1972). The assumption is that our derivations are correct - a premise obviously open to debate. (a) Byzantine Egypt. Gulf (Kahane and Pietrangeli 1973) entails two

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

113

phases in the growth of Byzantinism: first, the symbiosis of dominating Greeks and indigenous Copts; and second the expansion of Byzantine navigation and monasticism in the Mediterranean. Phonologically, a transfer to the West of Grk. kolpos 'bosom, bay' should have given *gulp. The / can be explained, however, via the regional Hellenistic Egyptian variant kdlphos, whose phj f seems to be due to the Coptic substratum. The nautical term spread, then, from Egypt: the semantic variant 'bosom', likewise spreading from Egypt, reached pre-lslamic Sicily in the idiom in Abraham's bosom, an Egyptian sepulchral formula representing a blending of Judeo-Christian with Egyptian funerary cults. (b) Islamic Egypt, (i) The Magarit involves both the story of Mohammed's old fellow fighters and the two contemporary judgments on Islam. The Muhadzir, the early follower of the Prophet, became the privileged aristocrat in land occupied by Islam. But to the Byzantines, who adapted the designation as magarites, it turned into a derogatory label for converts and sympathizers of the new Islamic faith, and they transmitted their version to the West (e.g. OFr. margari) as the renegade, (ii) Risk (Kahane and Kahane 1968) reflects the history of the advance of Islam and that of the mercenary system. Arab, rizq subsumed a regulation in the early Islamic administration of Egypt: the soldier was expected to procure his own maintenance. The term, frequent in Greek papyri of the Islamic period, spread via Byzantine rizikdn to the West, partly with the mercenary system (first recorded in connection with the Normans in their Byzantine venture); partly with the sea law (first recorded in Venice) dealing with financial responsibility for shipped merchandise. (c) Byzantium and the West, (i) Gondola demonstrates the spread of Byzantine nautical innovations. Byz. kontoura 'short-tailed' is the name of a ship current in the Byzantine Theme of Dalmatia, whence it was borrowed by Venice, (ii) Romeo, the pilgrim, echoes the impact of the iconoclastic movement in 8th-9th century Byzantium. Many of the opponents of the movement fled to Rome; a refugee of this provenience was perceived as a pilgrim and referred to as a romaios. Legend included as one of them an icon of the Virgin called Maria he Romaia, Mary the Journeyer to Rome, (iii) Carestia preserves certain aspects of Byzantine monastic administration. The Greek monasteries which had been turned over as beneflcia to the lay aristocracy (in accordance with the so-called charisticary system) were mismanaged. The Greek word for beneficium, charist(e)ia, seems to have been brought back by the Crusaders, with a derogative semantic shade reflecting the sad state of those monasteries: Romance carestia still means 'scarcity of food, want, high cost of living'.

114

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE A N D ROBERTA ASH

( d ) The Langobards in Italy. Page (Kahane and Kahane 1961:467-468; Gamillscheg 1969: s.v. page 2 ) enlarges the roster of the many Langobardic contributions to medieval dignities and offices, during their occupation of Italy from the 6th to the 8th century. Langob. marpahis designated the servant boy who put the bit (-paiz) into the mouth o f a horse (marh-) (Alessio 1954:24-25). The Latinized variant maripassus is found in the 8th century; eventually, the second element o f the compound was isolated in Ital. paggio. (e) Medieval Judaism. Charivari (Kahane and Kahane 1962) illuminates medieval Jewish customs and medieval anti-Semitism. Hebr. haverim, plur. of hebra 'Jewish association', appeared in Catalonia in the Romanized form cabarim/ calbarim 'Jewish brotherhood in charge of burial and wedding rituals', in France in such variations as Poitou savari (from which Amer.Engl. shivaree)/ standard charivari 'mock serenade'. The implication: Jewish rituals were regarded unsympathetically, and the name o f the brotherhood became the word for a noisy annoyance. University of Illinois and DePaul University

REFERENCES C. 1958. Dictionary of Modern Yoruba. London: University of London Press. AEBISCHER, PAUL. 1 9 6 8 . Basilica. Eclesia. Ecclesia : Etude de stratigraphie linguistique Linguistique romane et histoire religieuse, 2 6 0 - 3 1 5 . (Biblioteca Filológica Histórica, 24.) Abadía de San Cugat del Valles: Instituto Internacional de Cultura Romanica. ALESSIO, GIOVANNI. 1 9 5 4 . Richerche etimologiche su voci italiane antiche. Revue de linguistique romàne 1 8 . 1 - 6 7 . ALFÖLDI, ANDRÀS. 1953. Parens patriae - pater patriae. Reprinted in Der Vater des Vaterlandes im römischen Denken, 80-111. (Libelli, 261.) Darmstadt : Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971. ALLEN, LOUISE H. 1 9 5 9 . A structural analysis of the epic style of the Cid. Structural studies on Spanish themes, ed. by Henry R. Kahane and Angelina Pietrangeli, 3 4 1 - 4 1 4 . (Acta Salmanticensia, Filosofía y letras, t. 1 2 , no. 3 . ) Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca. ANAGNOSTOPOULOS, GEORGIOS. 1 9 3 0 . Kathareúousa. Megále hellénike enkuklopaideía, vol. 13. s.v. Athens: Pursós. AUERBACH, ERICH. 1 9 5 8 . Das abendländische Publikum und seine Sprache. Literatursprache und Publikum in der lateinischen Spätantike und im Mittelalter, 1 7 7 - 2 5 9 . Bern: Franke. ABRAHAM, R A Y

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION AUGSTEIN, RUDOLF.

115

1968. Preussens Friedrich und die Deutschen. Franfurt am Main:

S. Fischer. Die deutschen Personennamen. (Deutsche Namenkunde, 1.) Heidelberg: C. Winter. —. 1961. Geschichte der deutschen Sprache. 7. Auflage. Heidelberg: Quelle und Meyer. BALDINGER, KURT. 1963. La formación de los dominios lingüísticos en la Península Ibérica. (Biblioteca románica hispánica. 1. Tratados y monografías, 10.) Madrid : Gredos. BARTOLI, MATTEO. 1 9 3 7 . Caratteri fondamentali delle lingue neolatine. Archivio glottologico italiano 2 9 . 1 - 2 0 . BASTIDE, ROGER. 1971. African civilization in the New World. Trans, by Peter Green. New York: Harper and Row. BATTISTI, CARLO. 1959. Sostrati e parastrati nell'Italia preistorica. Florence: F. Le Monnier. BAUGH, ALBERT C. 1 9 5 7 . A history of the English language. 2nd ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. BECHTEL, FRIEDRICH. 1902. Die attischen Frauennamen nach ihrem Systeme dargestellt. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. BENVENISTE, EMILE. 1962. Hittite et indo-européen: Études comparatives. (Bibliothèque archéologique et historique de l'Institut français d'archéologie d'Istanbul, 5.) Paris: A. Maisonneuve. —. 1969. Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes. Paris : Éditions de Minuit. Trans. Indo-European language and society. (Miami Linguistic Series, 12.) Coral Gables, 1973 : University of Miami Press. BONFANTE, GIULIANO. 1 9 7 1 . Le norme della linguistica areale. Sprache und Geschichte: Festschrift für Harri Meier zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Eugenio Coseriu and Wolf-Dieter Stempel, 51-76. Munich: Fink. BRANDENSTEIN, WILHELM. 1 9 3 7 . Die Sprache als Geschichtsquelle. Die Welt als Geschichte 3 . 4 2 9 - 4 5 . BREITINGER, EMIL, et al. (eds.) 1961. Theorie und Praxis der Zusammenarbeit zwischen den anthropologischen Disziplinen. Bericht über das 2. österreichische Symposion auf Burg Wartstein bei Gloggnitz, 6 . - 1 2 . September 1959. Horn(Niederösterreich): F. Berger. BROWNING, ROBERT. 1969. Medieval and Modern Greek. (Hutchinson University Library, Modern languages.) London: Hutchinson. CHAMARD, HENRI (ed.) 1948. Joachim DuBellay, La deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse : Édition critique. Paris : M. Didier. COHEN, MARCEL. 1 9 6 1 . La linguistique et l'histoire. L'histoire et ses méthodes, ed. by Charles Samaran, 8 2 3 - 4 6 . (Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, 11.) Paris: Gallimard. CONEA, ION and ION DONAT. 1958. Contribution à l'étude de la toponymie pétchénèguecomane de la plaine roumaine du Bas-Danube. Contributions onomastiques publiées à l'occasion du 6 e congrès international des sciences onomastiques, ed. by Iorgu Iordan and Emil Petrovici, 139-69. Bucharest: Académie de la République Populaire Roumaine. CORTELAZZO, MANLIO. 1965. Che cosa s'intendesse per 'lingua franca'. Lingua nostra BACH, ADOLF. 1 9 5 2 - 5 3 .

16.108-10.

—. 1970. L'influsso linguistico greco a Venezia. (Linguistica, 2.) Bologna: R. Pàtron. COSTAS, PROCOPE S. 1936. An outline of the history of the Greek language with particular emphasis on the koine and the subsequent stages. (Bibliotheca Eurasiatica Americana. Series Historico-Philologica, 6.) Chicago: Ukranian Academy of Sciences of America.

116

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

DEBRUNNER, ALBERT. 1 9 5 4 .

Geschichte der griechischen Sprache. Vol

2.

Berlin:

DeGruyter. DECAMP, DAVID. 1 9 7 1 . 13-39.

The study of pidgin and creole languages. In Hymes

DEUTSCH, K A R L W . 1 9 4 2 . The language aspect. In Fishman 1 9 6 8 : 5 9 8 - 6 0 6 .

1971:

trend of European nationalism - the language

1936. Storia della lingua di Roma. Bologna: L. Cappelli. Trans, by Ilona Opelt. Geschichte der Sprache Roms. (Indogermanische Bibliothek. 1. Reihe. Lehr- und Handbücher.) Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1968. [We quote the German translation.] ELCOCK, W. D. 1960. The Romance languages. London: Faber and Faber. ENTWISTLE, WILLIAM J. 1962. The Spanish language together with Portuguese, Catalan and Basque. London: Faber and Faber. ÉTIEMBLE, RENÉ. 1 9 6 4 . Parlez-vous franglais? (Collection Idées, 4 0 . ) Paris: Gallimard. FINK, HERMANN. 1 9 7 0 . Amerikanismen im Wortschatz der deutschen Tagespresse dargestellt am Beispiel dreier überregionaler Zeitungen. (Mainzer Amerikanistische Beiträge, 11.) Munich: M. Hueber. FISHMAN, JOSHUA A. (ed.) 1968. Readings in the sociology of language. The Hague: Mouton. —. 1972a. Advances in the sociology of language. 2 vols. The Hague: Mouton. —. 1972b. The sociology of language: An interdisciplinary social science approach to language in society. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House Publishers. —. 1973. Language and nationalism: Two negative essays. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House Publishers. FISHMAN, JOSHUA A . and DAVID E . FISHMAN. 1 9 7 4 . Yiddish in Israel. International journal of the sociology of language 1 . 1 2 5 - 4 6 . FRAENKEL, ERNST. 1 9 3 5 . Namenwesen. Paulys Realenzyklopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. by Georg Wissowa et al. Vol. 16, part 2, 1611-70. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler. FRIEDERICH GEORG. 1 9 4 7 . Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch. (Universität Hamburg. Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiet der Auslandskunde. 53. Reihe B. Völkerkunde, Kulturgeschichte und Sprachen, 29.) Hamburg: Cram, DeGruyter. FRIES, CHARLES C . 1 9 4 0 . American English grammar: The grammatical structure of present-day American English with special reference to social differences or class dialects. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company. GAMILLSCHEG, ERNST. 1969. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache. 2. Auflage. Heidelberg: C. Winter. GEISSENDÖRFER, FRITZ DIETER. 1 9 6 4 . Der Ursprung der Gorgia Toscana. Neustadt/ Aisch: Ph. C. W. Schmidt. HALL, ROBERT A., JR. 1958. Bibliografia della linguistica italiana. Florence: Sansoni. —. 1966. Pidgin and creole languages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. —. 1969. Bibliografia della linguistica italiana. Primo supplemento decennale (19561966). Florence: Sansoni. HEER, FRIEDRICH. 1968. Der Glaube des Adolf Hitler. Anatomie einer politischen Religiosität. Munich and Esslingen: Bechtle. HERTZ, FRIEDRICH. 1944. Nationality in history and politics. A study of the psychology and sociology of national sentiment and character. New York: Oxford University Press. HÖFLER, MANFRED. 1 9 6 7 . Untersuchungen zur Tuch- und Stoffbenennung in der französischen Urkundensprache. Vom Ortsnamen zum Appellativum. (Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, Beiheft, 114.) Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. HOFMANNSTHAL, H U G O VON. 1927. Wert und Ehre deutscher Sprache in Zeugnissen. Munich: Verlag der Bremer Presse. Reprinted Frankfurt/Main, 1957: S. Fischer. DEVOTO, GIACOMO.

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

117

Pyrenäenwörter vorromanischen Ursprungs und das vorromanische Substrat der Alpen. (Acta Salmaticensia, 7/2.) Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca. HYMES, D E L L (ed.) 1964. Language in culture and society: A reader in linguistics and anthropology. New York: Harper and Row. —. 1971. Pidginization and creolization of languages. Cambridge, Eng.: University Press. JEREMIAS, JOACHIM. 1959. Poimen. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, ed. by Gerhard Kittel, 6.484-98. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. KAHANE, HENRY. 1 9 3 8 . Gli elementi linguistici italiani nel neogreco. Archivum roHUBSCHMID, JOHANNES. 1 9 5 4 .

m a n i c u m 22.120-35.

—. 1951. The sea as a medium of linguistic diffusion. Italica 28.287-91. —. 1964. Review of Miettinen 1962. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 63.724-26. —. 1972. Review of Seaman 1972. Kratylos 17.169-72. —. 1973. Review of Sala 1970 and 1971. Language 49.943-48. —. 1975. The etymologist as a transformationalist. Diachronic studies in Romance linguistics, ed. by Mario Saltarelli and Dieter Wanner, 94-101. The Hague: Mouton. KAHANE, HENRY and RENÉE KAHANE. 1 9 4 2 . Turkish nautical terms of Italian origin. Journal of the American Oriental Society 62.238-61. —. 1961. Germanic derivations of Romance words. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 60.460-76. —. 1962. Charivari. The Jewish quarterly review 52.289-96. —. 1967a. Problems in Modern Greek lexicography. Problems in lexicography: Report of the conference on lexicography held at Indiana University, November 11-12, 1960, ed. by Fred W. Householder and Sol Saporta, 249-62. (International journal of American linguistics, 28. Publications of the Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore and Linguistics, 21.) Bloomington: Indiana University. —. 1967b. Greek in Southern Italy. Romance philology 20.404-38. —. 1968. Risk. Verba et Vocabula: Ernst Gamillscheg zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. by Helmut Stimm and Julius Wilhelm, 275-83. Munich: W. Fink. —. 1970. Abendland und Byzanz: Sprache. Reallexikon der Byzantinistik, ed. by Peter Wirth, 1.345ff. Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert. —. 1973. Greek in Southern Italy, III. Byzantinische Zeitschrift 66.1-37. KAHANE, HENRY, RENÉE KAHANE a n d ANGELINA PIETRANGELI. 1 9 7 2 . C u l t u r a l c r i t e r i a

for Western borrowings from Byzantine Greek. Homenaje a Antonio Tovar ofrecido por sus discípulos, colegas y amigos, 2 0 5 - 2 9 . Madrid: Gredos. —. 1973. Egyptian papyri as a tool in Romance etymology, II. Gulf: Hypercorrection or dialect borrowing? Romance philology 27.46-9. KAHANE, HENRY, RENÉE KAHANE and ANDREAS TIETZE. 1 9 5 8 . The Lingua Franca in the Levant: Turkish nautical terms of Italian and Greek origin. Urbana: University of Illinois. KANY, CHARLES E. 1 9 4 5 . American-Spanish syntax. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. KELMAN, HERBERT C. 1972. Language as aid and barrier to involvement in the national system. In Fishman 1972a: 2.185-212. KIPARSKY, VALENTIN. 1 9 7 4 . About etymology. Germano-Slavica (Ontario, Canada) 3.5-16.

1939. Überseeische Wörter im Französischen (16.-18. Jahrhundert). (Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, Beiheft 91.) Halle (Saale): M. Niemeyer.

KÖNIG, K A R L .

118

HENRY & RENÉE KAHANE AND ROBERTA ASH

KJMSTELLER, PAUL O. 1946. The origin and development of the language of Italian prose. W o r d 2.50-65. KROEBER, ALFRED. 1948. Anthropology: Race, language, culture, psychology, prehistory. N e w Y o r k : Harcourt, Brace. KRONASSER, HEINZ. 1961. Vorgeschichte und Indogermanistik. I n Breitinger et al. 1961: 117-40.

LABOV, WILLIAM. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. LADENDORF, OTTO. 1906. Historisches Schlagwörterbuch. Strasbourg a n d Berlin: K . J. Trübner. LAMBERTZ, MAXIMILIAN. 1907-08. D i e griechischen S k l a v e n n a m e n . 57./5S.

Jahres-

berichte des Staatsgymnasiums zu Wien VIII, 1.3-49, 2.3-42. Vienna: Selbstverlag des K . K . Staatsgymnasiums. LEBEL, PAUL. 1961. Onomastique: L'histoire et ses méthodes, ed. by Charles Samaran, 677-723. (Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, 11.) Paris: Gallimard. LORWIN, VAL R . 1972. Linguistic pluralism and political tension in m o d e r n Belgium. I n Fishman 1972a: 2.386-412. LOUGH, JOHN (ed.) 1954. The Encyclopédie of Diderot and Dalembert: Selected articles. Cambridge, Eng. : University Press. MACKENSEN, LUTZ. 1962. Deutsche Etymologie: Ein Leitfaden durch die Geschichte des deutschen Wortes. Bremen: C. Schünemann. —. 1972. Traktat über Fremdwörter. Heidelberg: Quelle und Meyer. MALKIEL, YAKOV. 1950. Culture history through linguistics (on the occasion of V. Bertoldi's L a parola quale testimone della storia). Italica 27.330-43. •—. 1964. Some diachronic implications of fluid speech communities. American anthropologist 66.177-86. Reprinted in Essays o n linguistic themes, 19-31. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968. MAURER, FRIEDRICH. 1972. Sprachgeographie. (Wirkendes W o r t , Beiheft 21.) Düsseldorf : Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann. MEGENNEY, WILLIAM W . 1970. A n ethnolinguistic study of West African influences o n Bahian Portuguese. (Dissertation, University of New Mexico.) A n n A r b o r : University Microfilms. MEILLET, ANTOINE. 1965. Aperçu d ' u n e histoire de la langue grecque. (Études et commentaires, 55.) Paris: C. Klincksieck. MERLINGEN, WERIAND. 1961. Sprachwissenschaft und Urgeschichte. In Breitinger et al. 1 9 6 1 : 141-64.

MICHEL, OTTO. 1970. Freude. Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, ed. by Theodor Klauser, 8.348-418. Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann. MICHELET, JULES. 1869. Histoire de la Révolution française, ed. by Gerard Walter. (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 55, 56.) Paris: Gallimard, 1952. MIETTINEN, ERKKI. 1962. Z u m mundartlichen Fortleben mhd.-mnd. Lehnwortgutes romanischer H e r k u n f t : Eine semantische Untersuchung. (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, series B, 126.) Helsinki : Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. MIGLIORINI, BRUNO. 1973. L a lingua italiana nell'età napoleonica. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 3 7 0 : 1.371-88.

MORF, HEINRICH. 1911. Zur sprachlichen Gliederung Frankreichs. Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, 1911: 2.32-37. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften. Reviews: J. R o n j a t 1912. Revue des langues romanes 55.418-22; R . L. Alexander 1912. R o m a n i e review 3.428-30; M. Roques 1914. Romania 43.318-9; E. Herzog 1915. Kritischer Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der romanischen Philologie 13:1.175-8. MOSER, HUGO. 1961. Die Sprache im geteilten Deutschland. Wirkendes W o r t 11.1-21.

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

119

ÖHMANN, EMIL. 1957. Der romanische Einfluß auf das Deutsche bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters. Deutsche Wortgeschichte, ed. by Friedrich Maurer and Friedrich Stroh, 1.269-327. (Grundriß der germanischen Philologie, 17.) Berlin: DeGruyter. OHNSORGE, WERNER. 1952. Drei Deperdita der byzantinischen Kaiserkanzlei und die Frankenadressen im Zeremonienbuch des Konstantinos Porphyrogennetos. Reprinted in Abendland und Byzanz: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geschichte der byzantinisch-abendländischen Beziehungen und des Kaisertums, 227-54. Weimar: H. Böhlhaus Nachfolger, 1958. —. 1961. Die Anerkennung des Kaisertums Ottos I. durch Byzanz. Byzantinische Zeitschrift 54.28-52. PFLAUM, MICHAEL. 1967. D i e K u l t u r - Z i v i l i s a t i o n s - A n t i t h e s e i m D e u t s c h e n .

Euro-

päische Schlüsselwörter, ed. by Johann Knobloch et al., 3.288-427. Munich: M. Hueber. RAMOS, ARTHUR. 1951. The Negro inBrazil. Brazil: Portrait of half a continent,ed.by Thomas L. Smith and Alexander Marchant, 125-46. New York: Dryden Press. REICH, HANS H. 1968. Sprache und Politik: Untersuchungen zu Wortschatz und Wortwahl des offiziellen Sprachgebrauchs in der DDR. (Münchener germanistische Beiträge, 1.) Munich: M. Hueber. REUNING, KARL. 1941. Joy and Freude: A comparative study of the linguistic field of pleasurable emotions in English and German. Swarthmore, Penn. :Swarthmore College Bookstore. RHEINFELDER, HANS. 1968. Altfranzösische Grammatik. 4. Auflage. Munich: M. Hueber. RIBEZZO, FRANCESCO. 1050. Preistoria protostoria e glottologia. Indoeuropei e preindoeuropei nel bacino mediterráneo. Archivio glottologico italiano 35.46-64. ROHLFS, GERHARD. 1930. Vorlateinische Einflüsse in den Mundarten des heutigen Italiens? Reprinted in Rohlfs 1952: 61-79. —. 1937. La struttura lingüistica dell'Italia. Reprinted in Rohlfs 1952: 89-107. —. 1939. Das Griechentum Unteritaliens. Reprinted in Rohlfs 1952: 108-24. —. 1941. Über eine unbekannte gotisch-langobardische Wortdublette. Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 179.34-35. —. 1942. Zur Kulturgeschichte der italienischen Familiennamen. Reprinted in Rohlfs 1952: 195-214. —. 1944-46. Griechischer Sprachgeist in Süditalien: Zur Geschichte der inneren Sprachform. (Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Abteilung, Jahrgang 1944/46, Heft 5.) Munich. —. 1949. Historische Grammatik der unteritalienischen Gräzität. (Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Jahrgang 1949, Heft 4.) Munich. —. 1949-54. Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten. (Bibliotheca romanica, series 1. Manualia et commentationes, 5-7.) Bern: A. Francke. —. 1952. An den Quellen der romanischen Sprachen. Halle (Saale): M. Niemeyer. —. 1972. Nuovi scavi linguistici nella antica Magna Grecia. (Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, Quaderni, 7.) Palermo: Istituto Siciliano. ROÑA, JOSÉ. 1958. Aspectos metodológicos de la dialectología hispanoamericana. (Universidad de la República. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias. Instituto de Filología. Departamento de Lingüística. Publicaciones, 14.) Montevideo: Universidad de la República. SALA, MARIUS. 1970. Estudios sobre el judeoespañol de Bucarest. Trans, by Flora Botton-Burlá. (Ediciones filosofía y letras, 72.) Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

120

H E N R Y & RENÉE KAHANE A N D ROBERTA ASH

—. 1971. Phonétique et phonologie du judéo-espagnol de Bucarest. Trans, by Ioana Vintilä-Rädulescu. (Janua linguarum, series practica, 142.) The Hague: Mouton. SAMARIN, WILLIAM J. 1968. Lingua francas of the world. In Fishman 1968: 660-72. SCHERER, ANTON, et al. 1956. The comparative philology of the Indo-European languages. Proceedings of the 7th international congress of linguists, ed. by Fredrick Norman and Peter F. Ganz, 159-70, 501-20. London: International University Booksellers. SCHMIDT-HIDDING, WOLFGANG. 1 9 6 3 . Zur Methode wortvergleichender und wortgeschichtlicher Studien. Europäische Schlüsselwörter, ed. by Hugo Moser et al., 1 . 1 8 - 3 3 . Munich: M. Hueber. SCHMOLL, ULRICH. 1958. Die vorgriechischen Sprachen Siziliens. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. SCHÖLTE, J. H. 1928-29. Sprachgesellschaften. Reallexikon der deutschen Literatur, ed. by Paul Merker and Wolfgang Stammler, 3.270-74. Berlin: DeGruyter. SEAMAN, P . DAVID. 1 9 7 2 . Modern Greek and American English in contact. (Janua linguarum, series practica, 132.) The Hague: Mouton. SEILER, FRIEDRICH. 1 9 2 5 - 2 4 . [sic, in view of varying editions.] Die Entwicklung der deutschen Kultur im Spiegel des deutschen Lehnworts. 8 parts. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses. SOLMSEN, FELIX and ERNST FRAENKEL. 1922. Indogermanische Eigennamen als Spiegel der Kulturgeschichte. Heidelberg: C. Winter. STEGMANN VON PRITZWALD, K U R T . 1 9 3 0 . Zur Geschichte der Herrscherbezeichnungen von Homer bis Plato. (Forschungen zur Völkerpsychologie und Soziologie, 7.) Leipzig: C. L. Hirschfeld. STEWARD, JULIAN H. and Louis C. FARON. 1959. Native peoples of South America. New York : McGraw-Hill. STOLZ, FRIEDRICH, ALBERT DEBRUNNER and WOLFGANG P. SCHMID. 1 9 7 0 . Storia della lingua latina. Trans, by Carlo Benedikter. Bologna: R. Pàtron. SVENNUNG, JOSEF G. A. 1 9 5 8 . Anredeformen: Vergleichende Forschungen zur indirekten Anrede in der dritten Person und zum Nominativ für den Vokativ. (Skrifter utg. K. Humanistska vetenskap-samfundet i Uppsala, 42.) Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells. TAGLIAVINI, CARLO. 1 9 3 2 . Divagazioni semantiche rumene e balcaniche. Archivum r o m a n i c u m 16.333-83. THIEME, PAUL. 1 9 6 4 . The In Hymes 1 9 6 4 : 5 8 5 - 9 8 .

comparative method for reconstruction in linguistics.

1902. Die germanischen Elemente des Neugriechischen. Germanistische Abhandlungen Hermann Paul... dargebracht, ed. by Andreas Heusler et al., 225-58. Strasbourg: K. J. Trübner. TOVAR, ANTONIO. 1954. Linguistics and prehistory. Word 10.333-50. —. 1963. Les traces linguistiques celtiques dans la Péninsule Hispanique. Celticum [Suppl. to OGAM: Tradition celtique] 6.381-403. VASMER, M. 1941. Die Slaven in Griechenland. (Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 12.) Berlin. VERGER, PIERRE. 1954. Dieux d'Afrique: Culte des Orishas et Vodoums à l'ancienne Côte des Esclaves en Afrique et à Bahia, la Baie de tous les Saints au Brésil. Paris: P. Hartmann. —. 1957. Notes sur le culte des Oriça et Vodun à Bahia, la Baie de tous les Saints au Brésil et à l'ancienne Côte des Esclaves en Afrique. (Mémoires de l'Institut Français d'Afrique Noire, 51.) Dakar: Institut Français d'Afrique Noire. VIATTE, AUGUSTE. 1969. La francophonie. Paris: Larousse. VIDOS, BENEDEK E. 1939. Storia delle parole marinaresche italiane passate in francese. (Biblioteca dell'Archivum Romanicum, serie II, 24.) Florence: L. S. Olschki. THUMB, ALBERT.

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE IN HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

121

—. 1950. Noms de villes et de provinces flamands et néerlandais devenus noms communs dans les langues romanes. Reprinted in Prestito, espansione e migrazione dei termini tecnici nelle lingue romanze e non romanze. Problemi, metodo e risultati, 185-209. (Biblioteca dell'Archivum Romanicum, serie II, 31.) Florence, 1965: L. S. Olschki. WAGNER, M A X L . 1 9 2 8 . La stratificazione del lessico sardo. Revue de linguistique romane 4 . 1 - 6 1 . •—. 1941. Historische Lautlehre des Sardischen. (Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, Beiheft 93.) Halle (Saale): M. Niemeyer. —. 1951. La lingua sarda: Storia, spirito e forma. (Bibliotheca romanica. Series 1. Manualia et commentationes, 3.) Bern: A. Francke. WANDRUSZKA, MARIO. 1956. Das Bild des Menschen in der Sprache der italienischen Renaissance. Reprinted in Wörter und Wortfelder: Aufsätze von Mario Wandruszka, ed. by Hansbert Bertsch, 57-76. (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik, 6.) Tübingen. WARTBURG, WALTHER VON. 1939. Die burgundischen Wörter im Frankoprovenzalischen. Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 59.302-07. —. 1950. Umfang und Bedeutung der germanischen Siedlung in Nordgallien im 5. und 6. Jahrhundert im Spiegel der Sprache und der Ortsnamen. (Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Vorträge und Schriften, 36.) Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. WEINREICH, URIEL. 1963. Languages in contact. The Hague: Mouton. WHINNOM, KEITH. 1 9 6 5 . The origin of the European-based Creoles and pidgins. Orbis 1 4 . 5 0 9 - 2 7 . ZBOROWSKI, M A R K and ELIZABETH HERZOG. 1962. Life is with people: The culture of the shtetl. New York: Schocken Books. ZGUSTA, LADISLAV. 1955. Die Personennamen griechischer Städte der nördlichen Schwarzmeerküste. Prague: Nakladatelstvi Ceskoslovenské Akademie Véd.

SAGENA

PISCATORIS:

AN ESSAY IN MEDIEVAL LEXICOGRAPHY JAMES W. MARCHAND

In his treatment of the papal election decree of 1059, Kennerly M. Woody 1970 argues that Peter Damiani wrote at least a part of the decree. The major portion of his argument is based on what he considers to be an unusual use of the word sagena in the decree, coupled with a parallel use in the works of Damiani. Although he is aware that the word has been translated as 'net, seine'in treatments of the decree, he feels, following du Cange and Krause, that it must mean 'ship' here, a meaning found for it also in Damiani, who, according to Woody, 'was not even conscious that the word COULD mean net'. Woody is interested mainly in church history and Damiani, but his article is really an essay on sagena, a model treatment of the meaning of a word in the Middle Ages, and as such it offers us an ideal point of departure for the discussion of medieval lexicography and translation. The medieval Church and medieval man in general had a language for the discussion of the Church and almost any 'religious' question which differed strongly from that of ordinary language. It had to be learned just like any other language or code, and one of its major characteristics was its highly complex semantic structures. It is unfortunate that those semantic structures are generally ignored in works of medieval lexicography, such as du Cange, Graff, Bosworth-Toller, Cleasby-Vigfusson, Tobler-Lommatsch. It is thus not surprising that Woody, who depended on such dictionaries, should have missed the significance of sagena in the decree. I shall argue first that the expression sagenapiscatoris or piscatoribus commissa is a patristic commonplace for 'Church', and that Damiani could scarcely have failed to be aware of this fact. Furthermore, I hope to show that this sort of language, often called 'figurative' and dismissed, was not merely figurative, but really was involved in the same sort of SIGNANS/SIGNATUM relationship that ordinary language is, and that its neglect by medieval lexicographers and others working with medieval languages is unjustified. The text of the section of the decree under discussion reads (Woody

124

JAMES W. MARCHAND

1970:52): '... haec apostolica sedes ... per simoniacae haeresis trapezitas malleis crebisque tunsionibus subiacuerit, adeo ut columna Dei viventis iamiam paene videretur nutare et sagena summi piscatoris procellis intumescentibus cogeretur in naufragii profunda submergi'. The Church has been struck repeatedly by the blows of the Simoniacs, the moneychangers, to such an extent that 'the column of the Living God was almost shaken and the sagena of the Great Fisher [almost] forced by the growing tempest to sink in the depths of naufragiuni1 Woody feels that sagena must be used here in its rare meaning of 'ship', since 'a net ... can hardly be 'shipwrecked', and it is no great misfortune for it to be 'submerged'.' First, it seems to me that he is pressing the point too much in the case of both naufragii and submergi. Submergo usually has a more forceful meaning than our submerge-, in fact, whether one reads sagena as 'seine' or as 'ship', submergi is going to have to mean 'to be sunk'. The context certainly requires something stronger than 'submerged', and, whereas it is no great misfortune for a seine to be submerged, it is a disaster for it to be sunk. O N E OF THE FIRST TASKS FOR A TRANSLATOR IS TO OBSERVE THE CONTEXT AND PRESERVE THE FORCE OF THE WORD.

Second, the word naufragium is an expression fraught with meaning, both in the language of the fathers and of Roman writers, and it would be wrong to base an argument on just one of its meanings. Just on the literal level, rather than reading profunda naufragii as 'depths of shipwreck', it would seem more natural to translate it as 'depths of the storm', since 'storm' is a common meaning for naufragium. Lucretius so uses it, for example, and Cicero uses the word frequently for any kind of disaster, ruin of fortune, plans, etc. But a papal decree is a Church document, and just as articulation will mean one thing to a linguist, another to an anatomist, and still a third to an educationist, naufragium might well have a peculiar meaning for the Church. In a passage which is important for the patristic interpretation of the term, and perhaps also of our passage, St. Paul (1 Tim. 1.19) speaks of those who have 'made shipwreck of their faith' (circa fidem naufragaverunt).2 This then led to the common usage of the term to mean 'apostasy, falling away from the faith', even 'sin'. Cyprian speaks of excommunicates as naufragi, and accuses a former bishop of 'veritatis ac fidei naufragium factum circa quosdam sui similes paria naufragia concitare.' 3 Ambrose so uses the word, and it is a favorite of Augustine, who points out that Pelagius 'a fide catholica naufragavit'. 4 This usage lasted into the late middle ages, particularly in the expression tabula naufragii, and we find many cases of naufragium simply meaning 'sin', even original sin.5 Beside this

SAGENA PISCATORIS

125

usage, or perhaps even deriving from it, there is the meaning of naufragium ponere in legal jargon, where it means 'to dissipate, sell, alienate', and naufragare is used to mean 'to sell or profit from the sale of Church goods', cf. the Council of Toledo XVII, Chapter 4: 'De universis Ecclesiae ornamentis nihil unusquisque sacerdotum pro suis usibus confrigere, vendere, aut naufragare pertenet.'6 It would be well, it seems to me, in view of the figurative nature of the language of the decree, to consider the possibility that naufragium is used here precisely because it does have the secondary meaning of 'apostasy, selling of Church goods', ergo 'simony'. At any rate, it is obvious that there is no reason to assume that sagena must mean 'ship' here because of its collocation with naufragium and submergo. I N DEALING WITH A PASSAGE, WE MUST OBSERVE NOT ONLY THE IMMEDIATE LINGUISTIC CONTEXT, BUT ALSO THE TYPE OF DISCOURSE IN WHICH IT IS FOUND.

What is more important in Woody's article (remembering that it is really only unum e pluribus), it seems to me, is the assumption that Peter Damiani might not have known the common meaning of sagena. That it was the common Latin designation for 'seine' in Damiani's day cannot be denied; in fact, the word has survived in that meaning in the modern Romance languages in French seine, Italian sagena, and is found in OE segna, OHG segina, so that it could scarcely be assumed to have been lost and then reintroduced; it must have been alive in whatever language Peter Damiani spoke as a lad in Ravenna (where fishing was an important industry) and in the Latin of the Church which he learned. He was one of the most learned people of his day, and he was raised among the people. To assume that he did not know this meaning of sagena is to assume a fair deficiency in his Latin. The matter is graver than this, however, for the assumption that he did not know the meaning of sagena in the expression sagena piscatoris is to assume a deficiency in his knowledge of the Bible and the common medieval interpretation of it. As Woody points out, '... in the intensely conservative vocabulary of allegorical exegesis, sagena already had a symbolic function of its own, which was independent of that of navicula.' He does not mention what that symbolic function is, but it is of great importance for the interpretation of the expression sagena summi piscatoris of the decree. Throughout the Middle Ages, particularly in the language of the Church, but penetrating all walks of life and every kind of discourse, words were thought to have two kinds of meaning, literal and spiritual. This was expressed in the theoretical literature (in medieval works on exegesis and grammar) in several ways: (1.) by metaphors such as cortex -

126

JAMES W . M A R C H A N D

medulla, tegmen - candor, tectorium - nucleus, plane - mysticum, pallium granum, integumentum/ involucrum - fructus, vile - preciosum, historia mysteria, pictura - spirifus, littera - sensus, etc. for the literal versus the spiritual sense. (2.) By pointing out that, in the language of men, words were significant by agreement, whereas in God's language, scripture and creation, things were significant. (3.) By theories o f second imposition, etc., under which, e.g. sagena would mean 'seine' and seine itself would mean 'Church'. The origin and development of this kind of language has been extensively treated by Danielou (1964, 1973), Dolger (1925), Rahner (1963,1964), de Lubac (1959), Ohly (1958), and Robertson (1962), to name but a few; but it has only been treated from a literary or exegetical point of view, not as a linguistic matter amenable to normal linguistic techniques. Perhaps it would be well to explore some of the medieval theories and to show some of the ramifications o f the theory before continuing with the question of the meaning of sagena, for, as with so many fields new to scholars, it is difficult to persuade people that medieval man actually made use of some o f these 'metaphors.' The most common metaphors for the use of the 'spiritual' sense of words involve themselves with the notion of internal or hidden vs. external or obvious: the nut-meat and the nut (a difficult problem is still a 'hard nut to crack'), the peel and the pith ('a pithy saying'), the bark and the marrow, etc. Nothing could better show this mode of medieval thought than the words of Gregory the Great (1845, vol. 2:514):

T H E NOTION OF THE INTEGUMENTUM. 7

For what is it to set before the eyes of the cattle rods of green poplar and of the almond and plane trees, but through the course of Holy Scripture to furnish for an example to the people the lives and sentences of the Ancient Fathers, which same because by the testing of reason they are in a right line, are styled 'rods'. From which he peels the bark in part, that in these which are stripped the inward whiteness may appear and in part he keeps the bark, just as they were outwardly they should remain in greenness. And the colour of the rods is made pied, whereas the bark is in part stripped off, in part retained. Since before the eyes of our reflection the sentences of the foregoing Fathers are placed like pied rods, in which, whereas we very often avoid the sense of the letter, we as it were preserve the bark. 8 Gregory's metaphor is reflected by the writers after him in the use of cortex and medulla for the literal and the spiritual sense, cf. St. Bonaventure (1874:29) 'Ideo sub cortice litterae apertae occulatur mystica at profunda intelligentia;' Gonzalo de Berceo (1968:5): 'Sennores e amigos, lo que dicho avemos, / Palabra es oscura, esponerla queremos: / Tolgamos la corleza, al meollo entremos ...;' Le Roman de la Rose (Pare 1941:30 f.): 'Or vous ai dit dou sen Vescorce, / Qui fait l'entencion repondre, / Or en vueil la moele espondre;' Alanus (PL 210, 451): 'At in superficiali litterae cortice falsum resonat lyra poetica, sed interius, auditoribus secretum intelligentiae altioris eloquitur, ut exteriore falsitatis abjecto putamine, dulciorem nucleum veritatis secrete intus lector inveniat.' T H E SIGNIFICANCE OF THINGS. Another common metaphor for the use of words in the spiritual sense was that of the significance of things. Taking as their point of

SAGENA PISCATORIS

127

departure St. Paul's words (Rom 1.19 f.), 'Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For G-od hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,' medieval theoreticians felt that the difference between human speech and divine speech was that the words of human speech had few meanings, whereas the words of divine speech, the entire creation, had infinite meanings. Julian of Toledo (PL 96, 723): 'Universus enim mundus iste quasi quidam liber est digito Dei scriptus, hoc est, virtute divina creatus, et singulae creaturae quasi figurae quaedam sunt, non humanae placito inventae, sed divino arbitrio institutae ad manifestanda, et quasi quodammodo significanda, Dei invisibilia.' Bernard of Clairvaux (PL 183, 565): 'Invisibilia Dei, Apostolo teste, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta conspiciuntur. Et est velut communis quidam liber, et catena alligatus, ut assolet, sensibilis mundus iste, ut in eo sapientiam Dei legat quicunque voluerit.' And, finally, I cannot resist adding a famous passage of Alanus ab insulis (PL 210, 579): 'Omnis mundi creatura / Quasi liber et pictura / Nobis est speculum. / Nostrae vitae, nostrae mortis / Nostri status, nostrae sortis / Fidele signaculum.' Richard of St. Victor (PL 177, 205): '... non solum voces, sed et res significativae sunt.' Because of this notion, one even finds 'dictionaries' of attributes of things (sort of distinctive features) which may be used to determine their significance, e.g. the following verse from the Anonyous of Clairvaux (cited by Ohly 1958:7): 'Est mare diffusum, fervens, salsum atque profundum, / absorbens, fluidum, lucidum, foetens et amarum / Atque procellosum, fugit, gignitque periculum.' THE GRAMMARIANS. It is unfortunate that the 'spiritual' meanings were generally relegated to the figures of speech by medieval grammarians, much as if we were to refuse to treat foot of the monutain in a dictionary because it was a metaphor or reject foothill because it was a mixed metaphor. We do have dictionaries which treat the 'spiritual' meanings in a lexicographic fashion, e.g. the Allegoriae in universam Sacram Scripturam of Pseudo-Hrabanus (PL 112, 849-1088), not to mention such later dictionaries as Lauretus' SiIva Allegoriarum (1971),9 but the matter is always treated as if such meanings were special, unusual, and secondary. Thomas Aquinas and others were convinced that this mode of signifying was peculiar to theology (cf. Ohly 1958:18). Most modern authorities who treat medieval allegoresis treat it as if it were a matter of symbolism rather than meaning. Actually, as Robertson has rightly stressed (1962:286 ff.), '... medieval allegory, which is a vehicle for the expression of traditional ideas, has with few exceptions no counterpart in modern poetry,' and '... the symbolism of modern poetry, which is most typically a vehicle for the expression of mood or emotion, has no counterpart in the Middle Ages...' The so-called 'spiritual' meaning of a word was just as fixed as the 'normal' meaning of the word; the bond between the SIGNANS and the SIGNATUM was just as arbitrary for it as for any other part of the language, and it had to be learned, just as any other part of the language. Living stones, for example, meant 'believers, members of the Church, apostles', and it would have been unthinkable to have it mean, e.g. 'jewels' as it would have been to have stone mean 'head'. What Emile Mâle (1958:1. f.) has said of iconography: 'The art of the Middle Ages is first and foremost a sacred writing of which every artist must learn the characters,' applies also to the 'spiritual' meanings of words.

Of all the metaphorical realms exploited by patristic exegesis, that of the sea is probably the most common. 10 In such exegesis, the present life is a sea, Satan (Leviathan) is the demon of the deep, man is a voyager or a fish, God is the Great Fisher, Peter and the apostles are fishers of men, Christ is the bait (e.g. on the hook of the cross), the cross is a ship

128

JAMES W . MARCHAND

(or a hook), etc. In this metaphorical realm, there are two images commonly associated with the Church, the navícula Petri and the sagena piscatoribus commissa.11 The second of these was most closely connected with the simile of Matthew 13. 47-50: 'Again the kingdom of heaven is like to a net [sagena] cast into the sea and gathering together all kinds of fishes. Which, when it was filled, they drew out; and sitting by the shore, they chose out the good into vessels, but the bad they cast forth. So shall it be at the end of the world. The angels shall go out and shall separate the wicked from among the just.' This in turn was connected with a number of other Biblical passages (Job 40.26; John 21. 1-14: Luke 5. 1-10, primarily). This gloss on Matthew 13. 47-50 is not at all uncommon. St. Thomas quotes Jerome, Gregory the Great, and Chrysostom. In fact, we find the Church equated with sagena (piscatoribus commissa) by Jerome (PL 25,703 f.), Augustine (PL 35,1964), Gregory the Great (PL 76,695, 1116), Bede (PL 92,69 f.), Hrabanus (PL 111,240), Pseudo Hrabanus (Allegoriae, PL 112,1044), Paschasius Radbertus (PL 120,506 f.), Odo of Cluny (PL 133,493), Glossa Ordinaria (PL 114, 133 f.), to offer only a partial list, many of which were known to Peter Damiani. 12 Indeed, if we look at the list of books he procured for the library of Fonte Avellana, we see a number of these commentators mentioned: '... ex commentariis allegoricas s. scripturae sententias exponentium, Gregorii scilicet, Ambrosii, Augustini, Hieronymi, Prosperi, Bedae, Remigii etiam et Amalarii insuper et Haimonis atque Paschasii.' 13 I have not found the equation explicitly made in Ambrose, Prosper, Amalarius and Haimo, but I should be surprised if a close reading did not turn up sagena meaning 'Church' in all of them. We have thus shown that commentators known to and used by Peter Damiani use sagena presumably in the meaning 'seine' and equate it with 'Church'. This still does not show that Damiani knew this meaning, for, as Woody points out, it is possible, 'with the idea in your head that the word means boat,' to read it as 'boat' even in Mt. 13.47. If he had read Augustine's Tractatus in Ioannem 22, 9 (PL 35,1964), however, he would have known to connect the rete 'net' of John 21 with the sagena of Mt. 13.47. if he had read Augustine's Sermo 362 (PL 39,1612) he would have known that 'retia enim quaedam sagena appellante.' Augustine mentions this connection in several of his sermons De duabus piscationibus, and it even appears in De civitate Dei XVIII, 49 (PL 41, 611): 'Et utrique tanquam in sagenam evangelicam colliguntur; et in hoc mundo, tanquam in mari, utrique inclusi retibus indiscrete natant, donee perveniate ad littus, ubi mali segregentur a bonis ...' The same

SAGENA PISCATORIS

129

equation of rete and sagena is made by Jerome in his translation of Origen on Matthew, Homily 12 (PL 25,677) and in the commentary on Ezechiel (PL 25,307). Hrabanus equates rete and sagena in his De Universo (PL 111,240) as does also Paschasius Radbertus in his Expositio in Matthaeum (PL 120, 506 f.). That Peter Damiani was familiar with these authors is known. They all know that sagena means 'seine, net' and that it is used in Church language to mean 'Church'. It seems no more likely that Peter Damiani did not know this than it would be that he did not know that Sol Iustitiae 'Sun of Justice' meant 'Christ', or that Mary was the Stella Maris 'star of the sea' or that Navícula Petri 'little ship of Peter' was another commonplace for 'Church'. To hold otherwise because of a supposed mixed metaphor is to prefer to label Peter Damiani unlearned rather than have him mix a metaphor. Whoever the author of the decree was, he did not mind mixing a metaphor or two. According to him, the apostolic see has been struck by the moneylenders' hammers to such an extent that the column of the Living God (1 Tim. 3.16) is shaken and the sagena of the Great Fisher is almost sunk. Whether sagena means 'seine' or 'boat', it obviously refers to the Church and we are dealing with mixed metaphors at any rate. Summing up, there seems to be little reason to assume that sagena means 'boat' in the papal election decree of 1059, though that is a relatively rare meaning of the word. Moreover, it seems highly unlikely that Peter Damiani did not know that sagena meant 'seine'. But in the decree, as elsewhere, the word means 'Church', so that there is nothing incongruous in having a sagena possess all the attributes of the Church, just as, for example, we may speak of the nave of a church without realizing that the word really means 'ship'. It is also quite likely that the word naufragium is used here precisely because the decree is speaking of Simoniacs who have made shipwreck of their faith (1 Tim. 1.19). Most important in all this, however, are two points: (1) We must not, without very strong reasons, assume ignorance of the language on the part of an author; (2) In dealing with a medieval document, we must never indulge in context-free translation. We must observe not only the immediate linguistic context, but also the larger discourse unit in which the word or expression is imbedded, and we must pay particular attention to the field derived meaning. In a Church document, we must expect a word to have a Church meaning. We must not fault Woody too much, however, for the standard dictionaries and treatments of medieval languages are woefully inadequate

130

JAMES W .

MARCHAND

when it comes to 'extended meanings,' although these may be important for even the decipherment of a text. For example, no one reading the Middle High German Rheinauer Paulus (Maurer II 1965:51), 'Ich bit dich, herre, eine dur die lebentigen steine,' could find the meaning of lebentigen steine 'apostles' in any Middle High German dictionary. If he was unfamiliar with 1 Peter 2.5 and the patristic commentaries of it, he would be unable to read the passage (Plumpe 1943). Our little essay on sagena has, I hope, shown the need for the lexicographic registration of 'spiritual' meanings, but there are other types o f meanings of equal importance which are also neglected. One of the most widespread modes of thought in the Middle Ages was that of typology, an attempt to harmonize the two testaments. Since God does nothing in vain, 'Nihil vacuum neque sine signo apud Deum' (Irenaeus), there must be a reason for every act in the Old Testament, and thus arose the theory of types of foreshadowings, in which events in the Old Testament prefigured those in the New or, occasionally, even in the present world.14 In this way a complicated set of designations came about, based on supposed agreements, many quite fanciful, between the two testaments. Thus, for example, the story of Gideon's fleece, which became wet while the ground around remained dry (Judges 6.37 ff.), was taken to prefigure the virgin birth by the method of analogies. For, just as the fleece was miraculously infused with dew from heaven, so was Mary infused with the Holy Spirit. The term Gideon's fleece came to mean 'Virgin Mary', even for those who did not know the original reason, just as we refer to Christ as the Lily of the Valley without realizing why. Without lexicographical reference to such meanings, it is impossible to read some medieval works. For example, in the Metker Marienlied(Maurer 11964:361), we read: 'Ein angelsnuor geflohtin ist, dannen du geborn bist.' Unless we know that angelsnuor 'fishing line' commonly refers to the genealogy of Mary, we cannot understand the line. This is not an ingenuous metaphor invented by the poet, but a fixed and stereotyped part of a complicated scheme which the medieval poet had to learn, probably the most common of all such schemes. In this group of metaphors, as seen in art in the famous miniature of Herrad of Landsberg, God the Father fishes with a line made of the genealogy of Mary, with the cross as a hook and Christ as bait, in the sea of this world in order to catch Leviathan, the demon of the deep, to make him yield up the souls he holds in bondage.15 We must not dismiss this whole notion as ridiculous mythology, which it may well be, although this picture exercised some of the finest minds of Christendom from Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory right on down to Thomas Aquinas. It may be ridiculous, but it is a part of the meaning of language in the Middle Ages and deserves lexicographical treatment. Another example: In his Milagros de Nuestra Señora, Gonzalo de Berceo refers to 'un prado, verde e bien sinfido,' an expression which still puzzles commentators.16 In one of the most recent treatments (Keller 1972:53), it has been translated as '... a meadow ... green and truly fragrant.' Any one in the Middle Ages would have understood it as a reference to the Virgin Mary, for bien senfido means 'unplowed, intact' (Berceo 1922:1), and Mary is often referred to as the 'unplowed field' in the Middle Ages (cf. Melker Marienlied, Maurer 11964:361, anger ungebrachot), a metaphor originally based on Genesis 2.5. Just as the waters fructified the unplowed ground, so did the Holy Spirit cause Mary to bring forth fruit, cf. Peter Riga (1 1965:37 f.): 'Non erat ululs homo qui terre cultor inesset; / Irrorabat ibi gratia fontis humum. / Nescia Virgo uiri tellus est absque colono; / Fons Sacer est Flatus uiscera sacra TYPOLOGY.

SAGENA PISCATORIS

131

replens. / De terre limo fit homo: de Virginis aluo / Carnem Christus habet, que quasi terra fuit.' 17 TRADITIONAL EPITHETS. Connected with typology in part was the system of traditional epithets given to people in the Church, to the Trinity, to any number of things. These epithets, of various origins, became fixed in time, so that there was never any doubt, for example, that Stella Maris meant 'Virgin Mary'. Since these traditional epithets are not treated in the standard dictionaries, however, one can be at a loss as to how to translate a simple passage. In the Old Icelandic Postola Sogur, for example, we read (Unger 1874:541): gengr rettlatissolin i pat mcetazta musteri 'the sun of justice goes into the most splendid temple', which is unintelligible without knowledge of the fact that Sol Iustitiae means 'Christ' and Templum Domini or Magnum Templum means 'Virgin Mary'; only then do we realize that this is a statement about the Incarnation. To fail to treat these epithets in a dictionary would be the same as refusing to treat The White House in a modern dictionary. There are many passages which simply cannot be deciphered without a knowledge of such epithets. ETYMOLOGIES. Probably the most misunderstood and certainly the most overlooked area of medieval language and expression is the medieval etymology. For the most part we pass over them with a fond smile at the folly of those who believe that lapis is so called for 7aedens pedem', or fenestra because of its '/erens nos extra'. Only recently have we come to see their importance for understanding medieval texts (Klinck 1970; Marchand 1970). Thus, for example, as Fred C. Robinson (1968:14 ff.) has pointed out, anyone reading the expression fridarsyn in Old Norse or sibbe gesihd in Old English must know that the traditional etymology of Jerusalem is visio pads or he will not realize that these expressions both mean 'Jerusalem'. The same problem is encountered with any number of other name etymologies, cf. for another example the Old Norwegian book of homilies (Unger 1864:68): 'Stadr sa, er drottenn var boren i, calladesc adr brau5s hus,' a sentence which makes little sense unless one knows that the traditional etymology of Bethlehem was 'bread house'. In the Old English Solomon and Saturn (KLemble 1843:178), we read: 'Saga me for hwylcum i>ingum heofon sy gehaten heofon? Ic be secge, forSon he behelad eal 5aet him be ufan bi.' The Old Icelandic version of the Joca Monachorum (Kilund III 1917:38) offers the same information: 'f>vi er himen kalladur? Jivi att hylr undir sig allt J)ad i veralldinne er.' Until we realize that the traditional etymology of caelum 'heaven' in Latin was (Balbus 1971: 'Celum'): 'Celum a celo, quia celat nos secreta ...'we cannot understand these texts. Cf. Postola Sogur (Unger 1874:268): 'En celum bySiz hulning, ok er t>vi lopti3 celum, at bar er mart leynt ok hulit fyr maunnum, bat er i loptinu er.' Since the traditional etymologies were taught in school, they influenced almost every writer in the Middle Ages; I have pointed to some examples in another place (Marchand 1970), but let me adduce some more here to demonstrate the ubiquitous nature of such etymologies. One of the origins of confusion in name etymologies in the Middle Ages was the tendency to translate Biblical epithets literally at times and to leave them alone at other times. Thus, throughout the Middle Ages, in numerous different literatures, we find Simon Peter referred to as 'rock' (etymology of Peter), as 'obedient' (Simon), but also as the 'son of the dove', e.g., by Hrabranus Maurus (PL 107, 990), filius columbae, in the Old High German Tatian (Sievers 1892:129) tubun sun, Otfrid (Erdmann 1973:67) dubun kind, and in the Old Icelandic Postola Sogur (Unger 1874:161) dufu sow; this is because of the fact that he is called in the Bible Simon Barjona and barjona means 'son of the dove'. At the same time, he is called sunu Ionases in the Heliand (Kolb 1965) and Jonssdn in Old Norse, because he is the son of Jona, i.e., John. Where this standard etymology is not known, it is impossible to know what the text is saying. The matter can be graver than this, however, for the understanding of a literary text may be impaired without knowledge of the 'etymology' of a word, causing one

132

JAMES W . M A R C H A N D

to miss the full import of the message. In the Carmina Burana, for example (Schmeller 1847:172), the poet laments the fact that he will be caro datur vermibus, which Dobiache-Rojdesvensky (1931:145) translates as: 'à être la pâture des vers.' As this translation without comment shows, she has missed the point, for 'caro data, vermibus' is the traditional etymology of cadaver (Klinck 1970:79 f.). Such etymologies as this were fixed in the Middle Ages and require treatment in any dictionary. Other methods of etymologizing, such as etymology by acrophony, were more fluid and lequire interpretation rather than lexicographical treatment, since they can be made up on the spur of the moment, in fact one can make them up himself. Thus, an etymology of Maria might be 'mediatrix, odjutrix, reparatrix, /lluminatrix, auxiliatrix'; others might be invented as nonce forms, such as Frauenlob's Vunne irdisch paradis' as the 'etymology' for MHG wip. This shows how uncertain the border is between an item and a process, between a dead and a live metaphor. Everyone knew that the etymology for Deus as 'dans eternam «itam suis' or that flos meant '/undens /ate odorem .ruum', and a lexicographical treatment of these words ought to include their 'etymologies,' but the etymology given for Christ in the Old Icelandic Postola Sogur (Unger 1874:541) : 'fleôi sytandi manna, eilif lifandi manna, iaôning hungrandi manna,/liotandi naegô Jiurfandi manna, /¡eilsa siukra manna', which makes little sense without the corresponding Latin etymology, for Iesus, N.B. : 'l'ucunditas maerentium, etemitas viventium, ianitas languentium, «bertas egentium, satietas esurientium' (Marchand 1970; Roethe 1887, 120 f., 626), may be a nonce creation in the Latin source. One other kind of 'etymology' ought to be included in the lexicon of any medieval language, the interpretatio germanica. Everyone knows that the Germanic names for the days of the week come from the equation of ¡una - moon, Mars - Tyr, Mercury - Wotan, Jupiter - Thor, Venus - Frija, but the matter goes further than that. As Paul Lehmann (1962:365f) points out there are numerous passages in Old Icelandic, for example, which cannot be understood without the original Latin or without a gloss. He cites a number of passages, particularly one in the Postola Sogur (Unger 1874:146f.), which are unintelligible without the knowledge that Gefjon means 'Diana, Venus' or that pors hof means 'Templum Jovis', ergo 'Roman Senate' etc. THE MEANING OF NUMBERS AND LETTERS. Another area of great importance to medieval lexicography is that of the meaning of numbers and letters. We think of the number seven as meaning whatever the mathematical symbol 7 means ; for the Middle Ages, however, its connotation at least was much wider. Seven meant the seven deadly sins, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, the seven sins of Adam, the seven principal beatitudes, etc. These were, for medieval theoreticians, not simply APPLICATIONS of seven, but were actually MEANINGS to it. We possess any number of medieval treatises on numbers, such as the Liber de NumerisQAcHalXy 1957), in which the headings are : 'Quid unus dicit ? Quid duo dicit?', that is 'What does one mean?' 'What does two mean?' To medieval man, 153 referred inevitably to the draught of fishes of John 21.11, and 666 had to be the number of the beast and the Antichrist. These numbers were so common in their various meanings that works were actually composed according to them (for a bibliography, see Batts 1969), and the Romanesque ceiling of the church at Zillis, Switzerland, for example, has exactly 153 painted panels in it (Murbach 1967), representing the Church as sagena. The same importance attaches to the meaning of letters. We think of letters as simply indicating the sounds and images of words, and many people do not even realize that they have names in the usual sense of the word, being surprised to see the name aitch 'h', for example. In the Middle Ages, the name of the letter could be very important (Marchand 1955/56), but so also could be its meaning. Dieter Kartschoke 1967 has pointed out the importance of the 'meaning' of t, and Wolfgang Harms 1970 has written a whole book on Y, the 'Pythagorean letter'. Occasionally,

SAGENA PISCATORIS

133

the meaning of a letter is not of crucial importance, but lends flavor to a passage. In the Old Provençal Flamenca, a knight who is enamoured of a certain woman consults the Psalter for guidance, a widespread medieval practice. He finds the expression dilexi quoniam and assumes that God is telling him to give in to his desire. Thomas D. Hill 1969 has pointed out the significance of this passage, but it is quite likely that q of the key word quoniam gave added weight to the message, for q was the 'lascivious letter' throughout the Middle Ages (Wilhelm 1960:210-214): 'Q ... copulationem viri et mulieris;' 'Q suntleich oder schentleich leben.' There are a large number of poems devoted to the exposition of the meanings of the letters of the alphabet, such as the Versus cuiusdem Scoti and the Senefiance de I'ABC. Even Isidor offers the meaning of 5 Greek letters, theta 'the fateful letter, death', Y 'human life', T 'the cross of Christ', and the ever-present alpha and omega (Origines I, ii, 8). Dornseiff 1922 has shown the importance of the meanings of the letters in Greek and Roman civilization, and this tradition was carried down to the Middle Ages. Just as no treatment of the runes would be complete without mention of the fact that the o-rune means 'riches', so no treatment of letters in the Middle Ages is complete without indication of the various meanings of the Latin letters. To sum up, there are a number of types of meanings for words in medieval languages which have so far escaped treatment by lexicographers. In part this is undoubtedly due to ignorance of 'spiritual' meanings of words, since this is a foreign mode of thought not usually taught in the schools, but it is also occasioned by the tendency in making dictionaries of modern languages to disregard 'figurative' languages, since that is a matter for poets and is usually not fixed enough in modern languages to admit of lexicographical treatment. In the Middle Ages, however, large metaphorical structures were simply taken over from the early fathers and learned in school, so that the SIGNANS/SIGNATUM relationship on which all meaning is based is perhaps even more fixed than in the case of other meanings. That is, in general the received 'spiritual' meanings were not amenable to change. In addition, there are meanings of numbers, such as 153 and letters, such as Y, categories of meaning which modern languages do not possess in general and which need to be treated in the lexicon. It would not be a difficult task to repair the lacunae in our dictionaries. We possess a number of treatments of 'spiritual' language (Lauretus, a Lapide, Hrabanus Maurus, Pitra), of typology (PL 219.241-264), of epithets (Salzer 1967, PL 219, passim), of numbers (Bongus 1584-85), and of letters (Dornseiff 1922). With these as a point of departure, one could begin to register the various meanings and fabricate a 'spiritual' dictionary. There are three different ways in which we might go about lexicographical treatment. (1) Words and their meanings could be registered and documented for each occurrence, which is essentially what happens in a monographic treatment at present. This is, in the long run, the most satisfactory of all methods, for no one can remember all the meanings of all words. (2) We can continue in the haphazard treatment we accord such matters at present, in which each new meaning is the occasion for a note in a learned journal expressing the author's wonderment at the novel manner of looking at things in the Middle Ages. This is wasteful of scholarly effort, for it inhibits progress, since each scholar must relearn the field for himself, and since it leads to repetition of work already done, such as Rathofer's 'discovery' of Petrus Bongus (Rathofer 1970), or the 'rediscovery' of the Joca Monachorum's Qui aviam suam virginem violavit ? as the origin of Wolfram's remark on Cain's violation of his virgin grandmother (Lachmann 1891:223) (Scholte 1934). (3) We can teach the procedures employed in generating images in the Middle Ages (a sort of humanistic generative grammar, if you will), so that the meanings can be recognized when encountered. Such a procedure has much to recommend it as a procedure of Verstehen applied to the Middle Ages. Only when we begin to treat the 'spiritual' meanings of words in the Middle Ages in a lexicon will we be on the way to recovering the so-called

134

JAMES W . MARCHAND

'lost language of medieval symbolism.' We need to give up the chauvinism of the present which is reflected in our dictionaries and seek to understand medieval languages in their own terms, as an expression, by men like us, of an age unlike ours. University of Illinois

NOTES 1

I have left sagena and naufragium untranslated, since these are the words in questien 2 For a discussion of the expression 'shipwreck of faith,' see Rahner (1964:298-301, 444-449). 3 Epist. 52, 1; cited by Rahner (1964:445). 4 De natura et origine animae 2, 13; cited by Rahner (1964:448). 5 Rahner (1964:448 f.). 6 Du Cange (1885, x. v.) 'Naufragium,' 'Naufragare.' 7 On this notion, see Marchand 1973, Chenu 1955, and Jeauneau 1957. 8 This passage is attributed to Hrabanus by Robertson (1962:317), another instance of how easy it is to go astray in this relatively unplowed field. 9 Ohly 1958 gives a good survey of 'spiritual' dictionaries, but he is not exhaustive. A good bibliographic treatment of the field is urgently needed. 10 Rahner, 'Antenna crucis' (1964:239-564). Rahner fails to discuss the important motif of Christ as the bait on the hook of the Cross; on this see Zellinger 1925 and Marchand (forthcoming a). 11 On the navicula Petri, see Rahner, 'Das Schifflein des Petrus" (1964:473-503). The sagena piscatoris as a designation for the Church has not received the same amount of attention. St. Thomas Aquinas summarizes this tradition in his Catena aurea (on Matthew 13.47) in the following words [my translation]: 'Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto a seine. For thus was the prophecy of Jeremiah fulfilled, saying (Chapter 16) 'Behold, I will send you many fishers'. For when Peter, Andrew, James and John heard the words (Mt. 4): 'Follow after me and I shall make ye fishers of men', they wove for themselves out of the Old and the New Testament the net of evangelic teaching, and threw it into the sea of this world, and it is still stretched in the midst of the flood up to the present day, catching everything which falls into the deceitful and bitter abyss, i.e. the good and the bad people. Or we may take it this way: The Holy Church is compared to a seine both because it is entrusted to fishers and also because every person is lifted up by it from the floods of this life to the eternal kingdom, so that he may not fall into the depths of eternal death. It collects fish together of every kind, because it calls unto forgiveness of sin learned and unlearned, free and slave, rich and poor, strong and weak alike. This seine, namely Holy Church, will then be totally filled, when mankind comes together at the end of the world. Hence the words: 'When it is full, etc.' For just as the sea signifies the world, so does the shore of the sea indicate the end of the world. At this end, you see, the good fish will be gathered into the vessels, the bad ones thrown away, because on the one hand each of the elect will be taken up into the eternal mansions, while on the other hand the evil ones will be thrown into the outermost darkness after the loss of the light of the lower kingdom. For now the seine of the faith contains both the good and the bad, like mixed fish; but the shore will show what the seine

SAGENA PISCATORIS

135

of the Church has caught. For when the seine is drawn up on the shore, then the true sign for the division of the fish will be given.' 12 For a discussion of Damiani's sources, see Blum 1947. 13 PL 145.334. This list is discussed thoroughly by Blum (1947:58-64). 14 The concept of typology is discussed by Jean Danielou in a series of books, see particularly Danielou 1964 and 1973. 15 On the widespread nature of the theme and Herrad's miniature, see Zellinger 1925 and Marchand (forthcoming a). 16 For comments on the introduction to the Milagros, see del Campo 1944, Serrano 1957 and Lorenz 1936. 17 There was no man there to cultivate the earth; He wet the earth by means of a fountain. That earth without a cultivator is the Virgin knowing no man; the Holy Fountain is the Holy Spirit filling the sacred womb. Man was made of clay; Christ took on flesh, which is a kind of earth, from the womb of the Virgin.' 18 For a discussion, edition, and translation of the Old Icelandic Joca Monachorum, see Marchand (forthcoming b).

REFERENCES 1971. Catolicon. Reprint of the edition of Mainz, 1460. Westmead, Farborough, Hants. England: Gregg International Publishers. BATTS, MICHAEL. 1969. Numerical Structure in Medieval Literature (with a bibliography). In: Formal Aspects of Medieval German Poetry, ed. by Stanley N. Werbow. Austin: University of Texas. BERCEO, GONZALO DE. 1968. Milagros de Nuestra Señora. Ed. by A. G . Solalinde. (Clasicos Castellanos, no. 44). 7th ed. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S. A. BLUM, OWEN J., O . F. M. 1947. St. Peter Damian: His Teaching on the Spiritual Life. The Catholic University of America Studies in Medieval History, New Series, 10. BONA VENTURE, ST. 1874. Breviloquim. Ed. Antonius Maria a Vicetia. Venice: Ex Typosgraphia Aemiliana. BONGUS, PETRUS. 1584-1585. Mystica numerorum significatio. Bergamo: Cominus Ventura. CAMPO, AUGUSTIN DE. 1 9 4 4 . La técnica alegórica en la introducción de los 'Milagros de Nuestra Señora.' Revista de filología española 2 8 . 1 5 - 5 7 . CHENU, M.-D. 1955. Ihvolucrum: Le mythe selon les théologiens médiévaux. AHDL 22.75-79. DANIÉLOU, JEAN. 1964. The Theology of Jewish Christianity. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. —. 1973. Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. DOBIACHE-ROJDESVENSKY. 1931. Les poésies des goliards. Les textes du Christianisme, 9. Paris : Éditions Rieder. DÖLGER, FRANZ JOSEPH. 1925. Sol Salutis. Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung. DORNSEIFF, FRANZ. 1922. Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie. Stoicheia, Heft 7. Leipzig: Teubner. Du CANGE, DOM. 1885. Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis. Niort: L. Favre. ERDMANN, OSKAR. 1973. Otfrids Evangelienbuch. 6th. ed., by Ludwig Wolff. (Altdeutsche Textbibliothek, 49.) Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. BALBUS, IOANNES.

136

JAMES W . MARCHAND

1845. Morals on the Book of Job. Transi, by anonymous translator. Vol 2. (Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, vol. 21). Oxford : John Henry Parker. HARMS, WOLFGANG. 1970. Homo Viator in Bivio. Medium Aevum, 21. Munich: Wilhelm Fink. HILL, THOMAS D. 1969. A Note on Flamenca, Line 2294. Romance Notes 9.1-5. JEAUNEAU, E. 1957. La notion d'integumentum à travers les gloses de Guillaume de Conches. AHDL 24.35-100. KALUND, K R . 1917-18. Alfraeöi íslenzk. Vol. 3. Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur. Copenhagen: S. L. Möller. KARTSCHOKE, DIETER. 1 9 6 7 . Signum Tau. Euphorion 6 1 . 2 4 5 - 2 6 6 . KELLER, JOHN ESTEN. 1 9 7 2 . Gonzalo de Berceo. World Authors Series, 187. New York: Twayne. KEMBLE, J. M. 1843. Solomon and Saturn. London: For The Aelfric Society. KXINCK, ROSWITHA. 1 9 7 0 . Die lateinische Etymologie des Mittelalters. Medium Aevum, 17. Munich: Wilhelm Fink. KOLB, H. 1965. Simon sunu lohanneses, Überlegungen zu Heliand v. 3062 a. PBB 87.364-78. LACHMANN, KARL. 1891. Wolfram von Eschenbach. 5th ed. Berlin: G. Reimer. LAURETUS, HIERONYMUS. 1 9 7 1 . Sylva Allegoriarum. Reprint of the Cologne, 1 6 8 1 edition. Munich : Wilhelm Fink Verlag. LEHMANN, PAUL. 1 9 6 2 . Skandinaviens Anteil an der lateinischen Literatur und Wissenschaft des Mittelalters. In his: Erforschung des Mittelalters, vol. 5, 2 7 5 - 4 2 9 . Stuttgart: Hiersemann. LORENZ, ERIKA. 1963. Berceo der "Naive," Über die Einleitung zu den Milagros de Nuestra Señora. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 1 4 . 2 5 5 - 6 8 . LUBAC, HENRI DE. 1 9 5 9 - 1 9 6 4 . Exégèse médiévale. Les quatre sens de l'écriture. 4 vols Paris: Aubier. MÂLE, ÉMILE. 1958. The Gothic Image. Harper Torchbooks, TB 344. New York: Harper and Row. MARCHAND, JAMES W. 1970. Review of Klinck 1970. J E G P 69.719-723. —. Forthcoming a. Leviathan and the Mousetrap in the Old Norse Niörstigningarsaga. —. Forthcoming b. The Old Icelandic Joca Monachorum. —. 1955-1956. Das akrophonische Prinzip und Wulfilas Alphabet. ZfdA 86.265-275. —. 1973. Tristan's Schwertleite: Gottfried's Aesthetics and Literary Criticism. In: Husbanding the Golden Grain. Studies in Honor of Henry W. Nordmeyer. Ed. by Luanne T. Frank and Emery E. George. Ann Arbor: Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. MAURER, FRIEDRICH. 1964. Die religiösen Dichtungen des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts. Vol. 1. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. —. 1965. Die religiösen Dichtungen des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts. Vol. 2. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. MCNALLY, ROBERT E . , S. J. 1957. Der irische Liber de Numéris. Dissertation Munich. Munich: the author. MIGNE, JACQUES PAUL. 1 8 4 4 - 1 8 8 0 . Patrologiae cursus completus ... Series Latina. 221 vols. Paris: Migne. MURBACH, ERNST. 1967. The Painted Romanesque Ceiling of St. Martin in Zillis. New York: Praeger. OHLY, FRIEDRICH. 1 9 5 8 . Vom geistigen Sinn des Wortes im Mittelalter. ZfdA 8 9 . 1 - 2 3 . PARÉ, G., O. P. 1941. Le Roman de la Rose et la scolastique courtoise. Publications de l'Institut d'Études Médiévales d'Ottawa, 10. Ottawa: Institut d'Études Médiévales. GREGORY THE GREAT.

SAGENA PISCATORIS

137

1965. Aurora. Ed. by Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. Vol. 1. University of Notre Dame Publications in Mediaeval Studies, 19. PLUMPE, J. C. 1943. Vivum saxum, vivi lapides. The concept of 'living Stone' in classical and christian antiquity. Traditio 1 . 1 - 1 5 . RAHNER, H U G O . 1 9 6 3 . Greek Myths and Christian Mystery. London: Burns & Oates. —. 1964. Symbole der Kirche. Salzburg: Otto Müller. RATHOFER, JOHANNES. 1970. Numerorum mysteria - Ein Hinweis für die Forschung. Miscellanea Medievalia 7.152-155. ROBERTSON, D. W., Jr. 1962. A Preface to Chaucer. Studies in Medieval Perspectives. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ROBINSON, FRED C. 1968. The Significance of Names in Old English Literature. Anglia 86.14-52. ROETHE, GUSTAV. 1887. Die Gedichte Reinmars von Zweter. Leipzig: S. Hirzel. SALZER, ANSELM. 1 9 6 7 . Die Sinnbilder und Beiworte Mariens in der deutschen Literatur und lateinischen Hymnenpoesie des Mittelalters. Reprint of the 1 8 8 6 - 1 8 9 4 edition. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. SCHMELLER, JOHANNES. 1 8 4 7 . Carmina Burana. Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, 16. Stuttgart: Literarischer Verein. SCHÖLTE, J. 1934. Qui aviam suam virginem violavit? Neophilologus 19.13-24. SERRANO, CARLOS FORESTI. 1957. Sobre la Introducción en los "Milagros de Nuestra Señora" de Gonzalo de Berceo. Anales de la Universidad de Chile 107-108. 361-367. SIEVERS, EDUARD. 1892. Tatian. (Bibliothek der ältesten deutschen Litteratur-Denkmäler, 5.) Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. UNGER, C. R. 1864 Gammel Norsk Homiliebog. Christiania: Bregger & Christin. —. 1874. Postola Sögur. Christiania: B. M. Bentzen. WILHELM, FRIEDRICH. 1 9 6 0 . Denkmäler deutscher Prosa des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts. Germanistische Bücherei, vol. 3. Munich: Max Hueber. WOODY, KENNERLY M. 1 9 7 0 . Sagena piscatoris: Peter Damiani and the Papal Election Decree of 1 0 5 9 . Viator 1 . 3 3 - 5 5 . ZELLINGER, J . 1 9 2 5 . Der geköderte Leviathan im Hortus deliciarum der Herrad von Landsberg. Historisches Jahrbuch 4 5 . 1 6 1 - 1 7 7 . PETER OF R I G A .

ZUR PROBLEMATIK DER F A C H - U N D S O N D E R S P R A C H E N HUGO MOSER

1. Der Bereich der Fachsprachen stellt einen Ausschnitt aus der Sprache - aus jeder Vollsprache - dar, der durch einen doppelten Bezug gekennzeichnet ist: die Fachsprache ist gruppenbezogen und ist insoweit Gegenstand der Soziolinguistik, und sie ist zugleich in ausgeprägter Weise sachbezogen und insoweit Gegenstand der Pragmalinguistik. Weitere Wesensmerkmale sind, daß die Fachsprachen ein eigenes Zeicheninventar im lexischen Bezirk besitzen und daß sie bei einem fortgeschrittenen Grad der Entwicklung durch eine rigorose Herrschaft der Norm charakterisiert ist, durch ein Streben nach Terminologisierung im Sinne einer Eindeutigmachung der Bezeichnungen (wobei Terminus zugleich das Fehlen der Konnotationen der Wortinhalte, usw. meint); dabei kann jedoch Eindeutigkeit nur relativ verstanden werden und streng genommen nur für eine ganz bestimmte historische Situation gelten (von Weizsäcker 1960:332; Ischreyt 1965:48). Im Deutschen ist die Entwicklung neben den Fächern Chemie und Physik am weitesten bei den technischen Fachsprachen fortgeschritten, wo seit 1917 der Deutsche Normenausschuß am Werk ist. (Daß die Normierung sich bei den sog. Geistes- oder Humanwissenschaften am wenigsten bemerkbar macht, liegt in deren Wesen begründet; jede Bezeichnung wird hier von der jeweiligen Theorie her inhaltlich geprägt.) Dabei überschneidet sich die Lexik einer Fachsprache mit der der allgemeinen Standardsprache, mit der die Fachsprachen in einem wechselseitigen Austausch stehen, zum Teil auch mit der anderer Fachsprachen (so z.B. bei Chemie und Pharmazeutik, Pädagogik und Psychologie, Psychologie und Psychiatrie). Man hat versucht, wissenschaftliche Fachsprachen und der Praxis zugewandte Berufssprachen zu unterscheiden, eine Unterscheidung, die jedoch der Differenzierung bedarf. Recht unbefriedigend ist der Begriff der Sondersprachen beschrieben. Man pflegt 'erhöhte' Sondersprachen (der Religion, der Politik, der Dichtung) von 'sonstigen' (Soldatensprache, Jiddisch, Zigeunerisch,

140

HUGO MOSER

Rotwelsch) zu unterscheiden; im Grunde stellt sich die ganze, uneinheitliche Gruppe als 'Sonstiges' dar. Hier seien einige Bemerkungen zu den beiden Erscheinungen der Fach- und Sondersprachen gemacht, die als Anregungen verstanden sein wollen.

2. FACHSPRACHEN. ES erscheint wichtig, folgende Varianten der Humanund dei Naturwissenschaften wie der Technik zu unterscheiden, die nicht in jeder Fachsprache voll verwirklicht sind: I. Theoretisch-wissenschaftliche Variante mit einheitlicher, von außen gesetzter Normung = 'eigentliche' Fachsprache II. Gebrauchsvarianten mit geringerem Grad der Normung: 1. Werbesprachliche und populärwissenschaftliche Variante 2. Arbeitsplatz-(Werkstatt-)variante III. Jargon mit geringerem, aber noch auffallend weitgehendem Grad der N o r m : 1. Eigenjargon 2. Fremd-(Gegen-)jargon Die Variante 1 hat außer den wie bei den anderen Varianten durchaus überwiegenden lexikalischen Besonderheiten auch syntaktische und stilistische Eigenmerkmale, die weithin mit Gemeinsamkeiten der 'Wissenschaftssprache' ineins gesetzt werden können. Die Gebrauchsvarianten bieten zum größten Teil 'gesunkene' lexikalische Elemente von Variante I, haben jedoch auch ihre eigenen Besonderheiten. Die Variante II 1 hängt teilweise auch mit Variante II 2 zusammen. Die Variante II 1 entspricht weithin dem, was man auch Verbrauchersprache zu nennen pflegt; von ihr gehen auch die meisten Einwirkungen auf die allgemeine Standardsprache aus. Bei Variante II 2 kommen Bezeichnungen organisatorischer Art dazu. Man kann diese Form als Berufssprache bezeichnen. In der Pharmazeutik spricht man auf der Ebene der Variante 1 und II 2 von Ammoniak, in der Werbe- und Verbrauchersprache II 1 für das gleiche Mittel von Salmiak. Der Jargon hat an den Varianten I und II 2 erheblichen Anteil, stellt aber eine besonders eigentümlich ausgeprägte Variante dar, als er Ausdruck einer Haltung zur Sache wie zur Sprache ist, die ihn in aie Nähe des Slangs stellt (Distanz, Witz, Ironie) und vielfach auch eigene lexikalische Mittel verwendet, die nicht mit den anderen Varianten zusammenhängen. So mag der Mediziner im Jargon von einem ex statt einem exitus sprechen, der Hochschullehrer von predigen oder tönen statt Vorlesung

FACH- UND SONDERSPRACHEN

141

halten. Im Unterschied zum Slang ist der Jargon gruppenbezogen und fachbezogen. Die Varianten II 1, II 2 und III enthalten wichtige Elemente normierter Art, aber daneben sind sie durch 'gewachsene' Normen gekennzeichnet, die von Landschaft zu Landschaft und von Arbeitsstelle zu Arbeitsstelle verschieden sein können. Jargonhaftes wird auch von Nichtangehörigen der betreffenden Berufsgruppe mit Bezug auf diese und deren Arbeit gebraucht; man mag dem Eigenjargon den Fremdjargon gegenüberstellen. Der Fremdjargon hat häufig den Charakter des Gegenjargons abwertender Art und geht oft in Beschimpfungen über, nimmt nicht selten den Charakter der Scheltrede an. So nennt man etwa, um nur einige recht grobe Beispiele von Berufbezeichnungen anzuführen, den Zahnmediziner Maul- oder Goschenschlosser, den Chirurgen Metzger, den Lehrer Pauker oder sehr pejorativ Steißtrommler. Natürlich können Elemente eines solchen Fremdjargons bewußt in ironischer Weise auch von Angehörigen des betreffenden Fachs gebraucht werden. Die obige Abfolge der Varianten ist nur zum Teil identisch mit deren Genese. Variante I kann später entstehen, so aus der Variante II 2 in großem Umfang bei technischen Fachsprachen, z.B. des Bergbaus oder der Landwirtschaft. Bei den neueren Fachsprachen der Kybernetik und der Datenverarbeitung, der Pharmazeutik, Chemie und Physik, auch der Hygiene, steht die Variante I am Anfang. Ansätze zu Variante I begegnen im übrigen in allen älteren seit dem Mittelalter bestehenden Fachsprachen. Alle Varianten finden sich in den naturwissenschaftlichtechnischen Fachsprachen der Physik, Chemie, Pharmazeutik, Biologie, Technik, in den humanwissenschaftlichen der Theologie, Soziologie, Pädagogik, psychologie, ebenso bei der der Medizin, die eine Zwischenstellung nimmt. Die Variante I und die Gebrauchsvariante II 1 sind bei manchen älteren und infolge des Zurücktretens der betreffenden Berufe seltener gebrauchten Fachsprachen wie der der Fischer und Hirten (besonders Schäfer) heute nicht sehr entwickelt. Natürlich müssen die fachsprachlichen Varianten auch unter dem Gesichtspunkt des schriftlichen und mündlichen Gebrauchs betrachtet werden. Es zeigt sich, daß die Variante I vorwiegend in schriftlicher Form auftritt, aber auch im mündlichen Fachgespräch der wissenschaftlichen Fachvertreter, während die Variante II 2 vorwiegend mündlicher Art ist (zum Teil, etwa bei Werkstattzetteln, wird sie auch schriftlich gebraucht); bei der Variante II 1 überwiegt die schriftliche Form, wenngleich auch die mündliche Werbung im Rundfunk und Fernsehen von

142

HUGO MOSER

Bedeutung ist. Variante III (Jargon) wird wieder überwiegend mündlich gebraucht, hat aber im Sportbericht (s.u.) weithin die gedruckte Form erreicht.

3. Man kann sich fragen, ob man die Sprache des SPORTS überhaupt hierherstellen soll. Unter den Sportausübenden bilden die Professionellen gewiß eine Minderheit; die überwiegende Mehrheit auch der Leistungssportler betreibt Sport nebenberuflich. Aber der Aufbau wie die Funktion der Sprache des Sports stellt diese durchaus in die Nähe der Fachsprachen. Die Variante I umfaßt den normierten Teil der Sprache der einzelnen Sportarten, die Sprache des Spielplatzes und des Sportfeldes ist die Variante II 2. Auch die Variante II 1 fehlt nicht, und vor allem ist die Variante III, der Jargon, stark entwickelt, besonders im Bereich des populärsten Sports, des Fußballs, wobei allerdings wieder Unterschiede zwischen dem gesprochenen Sportjargon der Sportausübenden und dem der Sportberichterstatter bestehen. Wie von Variante II 2 steigt er in der Sportberichterstattung (und dabei wieder besonders in den Fußballberichten und -reportagen) zur gedruckten Form auf. Von den oben genannten 'Sondersprachen' muß ein Teil zu den Fachsprachen gerechnet werden, nämlich die Sprache der POLITIK und die Soldaten- oder vielleicht besser MILITÄRSPRACHE. (Ich versuche damit, meine eigene frühere Einstellung zu verbessern). Bei der Sprache der POLITIK bestehen zwei Gruppierungen, die miteinander verschränkt sind: die Sprache des Parlamentarismus und die der Parteien. Dabei stehen der Variante I die Gebrauchsvarianten II 1 und 2 wie auch eine Variante III zur Seite. Diese Fachsprache hat mit der des Sports die Gemeinsamkeit, als sie weitgehend von Menschen getragen wird, die das Geschäft der Politiker nur temporär betreiben. Die MILITÄRSPRACHE ist die fachliche Sprache einer Berufsgruppe mit ständigen und temporären Mitgliedern (Berufsoffizieren und Unteroffizieren einerseits und kürzer Dienenden anderseits). Die Militärsprache hat eine theoretisch-wissenschaftliche Variante I, die auch die Vorschriftensprache und die Gerätelisten bestimmt, wie die Gebrauchsvariante II 2, die Dienstsprache (man denke an Veränderungen bei der mündlichen Wiedergabe von Teilen der Dienstvorschriften und an Vereinfachungen von Waffen- und Gerätbezeichnungen), z.T. auch die Variante II 1, vor allem in großem Umfang (aus psychologischen Gründen, aus der Tendenz, den Drill und das ständige Befehlen-gehorchenmüssen zu überspielen) die Variante III, den Jargon, der noch häufiger

FACH- UND SONDERSPRACHEN

143

als sonst Elemente der Gossensprache enthält, also der Sprache der Käferperspektive mit einer Vorliebe für Bezeichnungen aus dem Bezirk von anus und sexus. Diese Variante III ist es, die vielfach unter der Bezeichnung 'Soldatensprache' verstanden wird (vgl. im Ersten Weltkrieg Latte für Gewehr, Knarre usw.) (vgl. Günther 1919). Bei den Varianten I wie II 2 spielt heute bei der Bundeswehr der Einfluß des Englischen im Zusammenhang mit Beräten amerikanischer Herkunft und mit der englischen Dienstsprache der Nato eine große Rolle (Moser 1964b). So erscheint in den Varianten I und II 2 - jeweils mit Übernahme des Genus der deutschen Entsprechung - etwa der circuit breaker für Hauptschalter, die base für den Fliegerhorst, das proceding für das Verfahren, mit Angleichung an das deutsche Lautsystem etwa schäcken 'to check', schopen 'to chop', Hänger 'hanger', dazu Mischbildungen wie auf dem Armeelevel, crash-Wagen 'Unfallwagen'. Es ergeben sich auch morphologisch-syntaktische Mischkonstruktionen wie z.B. bei der Luftwaffe Wir leinen up 'to line up'; ich bin um 12 Uhr afgeteikt 'to take off'; ich sökle raund 'to circle round'. Auch in der jargonhaften Form der Alltagsrede (Variante III) wird angelsächsischer Einfluß sichtbar: o.k.; cheerio; troublemaker 'Störenfried'; ich muß die Verabredung känseln 'to cancel' usw.

4. Die Überlagerung von Fach- und allgemeiner Standardsprache beruht auf dem schon angeführten doppelten Cursus - einerseits fachsprachliche Terminologisierung von standardsprachlichen Wörtern, andererseits Entterminologisierung fachsprachlicher Termini bei der Übernahme in die Standardsprache. Kraft und Zug bedeuten, in die technische Fachsprace aufgenommen, etwas anderes als in der allgemeinen Standardsprache, und das fachsprachliche Flügelschraube wird bald (schon in der Werkstattsprache) zum 'normalen' Lexem mit unscharfen Bedeutungskonturen, wenn es in die Standardsprache eingeht. Es ergibt sich das schwierige Problem wo die Grenze zwischen fach- und standardsprachlicher Lexik zu ziehen ist, d.h. wohin die Teilmenge zu rechnen ist, die sich bei der Überschneidung abhebt (Abbildung 1). Damit stellt sich die weitergehende Frage, bis zu welchem Grad das Inventar der Fachsprachen zur Standardsprache zu rechnen ist; es muß eine Teilmenge, eben die durch Überlagerung entstehende, als standardsprachlich bezeichnet werden, dagegen nicht die andere, in der Regel größere Teilmenge. Es ergibt sich also eine Teilung der Lexik jeder Fachsprache in eine spezifische und in eine unspezifische fachsprachliche

144

HUGO MOSER

Abbildung 1

Teilmenge, wobei der ersteren oft Terminologiecharakter zukommt, der zweiten zwar ebenfalls häufig bei der Anwendung durch Fachzugehörige aber meist nicht beim laienhaften Gebrauch außerhalb der Fachwelt. Kasus und Computer etwa werden demnach zur standardsprachlichen Teilmenge, Kompetenz/Performanz in streng linguistischer Bedeutung und Bit dagegen nicht. Vor allem aber ist die Überschneidung z.T. gar keine echte, sondern es sind in der Zone der Überlappung manche gleichen Bezeichnungen als Termini zur Fach-, als normale Lexeme dagegen zur Standardsprache zu rechnen; es wäre also z.B. Lampe in fachsprachlicher Bedeutung 'Glühbirne,' standardsprachlich 'Beleuchtungskörper'; Leuchte fachsprachlich Beleuchtungskörper, standardsprachlich Leuchte 'repräsentativer Beleuchtungskörper'. Zum Teil wirkt sich fach- und standardsprachlicher Charakter auch auf die Schreibung und gelegentlich außerdem auf die Aussprache aus: fachsprachlich schreibt man Calcium, Oxid, standardsprachlich Kalzium, Oxyd, wobei im zweiten Fall auch die Aussprache verschieden ist: [o'ksi :t]-[D'ksy:t].

FACH- UND SONDERSPRACHEN

145

Klar ist die Grenze zwischen Fach- und Standardsprache zu ziehen, soweit es sich um die metaphorische Umsetzung fachsprachlicher Termini handelt, vgl. An-, Auftrieb, Kettenreaktion, Verzahnung, Lohn-PreisSpirale, ein-, mehrgleisig fahren, verankern, entgleisen (der Redner ist entgleist, hat durch Inhalt oder/und Form Anstoß erregt), die Wirtschaft ankurbeln. Neben der Sprache der Technik ist vor allem die des Sports eine wichtige Bildquelle für die Standardsprache vgl. einen Versuch starten)stoppen, ein Eigentor schießen usw. Solche Vorgänge der Entterminologisierung weisen klar in den Bereich der Standardsprache.

5. SONDERSPRACHEN. Durch die Zuordnung der Sprache der POLITIK und der MILITÄRSPRACHE zu den Fachsprachen ist die Gruppe der Sondersprachen verringert. Auch das Rotwelsche und das Jiddische sind anders einzuordnen. Dabei steht das Rotwelsche (Jenische) in der Nähe der BERUFSSPRACHEN. Es ist die Sprache der Kesselflicker, Scherenschleifer, Hausierer, aber auch der Landstreicher, hat aber im Unterschied zu den sonstigen Berufssprachen Arkanumcharakter. Für die sie tragenden Gruppen ist im modernen Wirtschaftsleben kein rechter Platz mehr, und so ist sie im Rückgang begriffen. Jiddische, zigeunerische, romanische und eigene verhüllende Elemente sind für die Sprachform kennzeichnend. Das Jiddische aber ist ein ETHNOLEKT, die Sprache einer ethnischen Gruppe, und hat damit im Aufbau der Vollsprache seinen Ort in der Nähe der Dialekte; neben mittelhochdeutschen Elementen sind hebräische, romanische und slawische erkannt worden. Infolge der Ausrottung eines großen Teils der Juden in der Hitlerzeit ist die Zahl der früher 12 Millionen zählenden Träger sehr zurückgegangen; Israel verkündet die Alleinherrschaft des Neuhebräischen (Awrit), und so ist der Weiterbestand des Jiddischen heute in Frage gestellt. Der andere im deutschen Sprachgebiet auftretende Ethnolekt, das Zigeunerische, sei hier, weil nicht zum Deutschen gehörig, übergangen.

So bleiben als SONDERSPRACHEN nur die der DICHTUNG und der RELIDie Sprache der DICHTUNG - gibt es die überhaupt? Einmal ist die Sprache der Dichter bekanntlich nach Zeit- und individuellem Stil sehr verschieden, und es gibt auch nur teilweise Gruppen, denen man Dichtungsstile zuordnen könnte (wie den Romantikern mit ihren Subgruppierungen des Heidelberger, des Berliner, des schwäbischen Kreises, wie den Expressionisten, den Dadaisten); dabei bestehen auch innerhalb solcher Gruppen ausgeprägte Unterschiede, so daß man nur in eingeschränkter Weise von SOZIOLEKTEN sprechen kann. Als ein Merkmal GION.

146

HUGO MOSER

von dichterischen IDIOLEKTEN gilt eine besondere Auswahl sprachlicher Zeichen lexikalischer, morphologischer und syntaktischer Art, die häufig als stilistisch 'gehoben' gelten, oft Abweichungen von der standardsprachlichen Norm darstellen und die als poetische Varianten gemeint sind und empfunden worden (allerdings soll damit das Wesen der Poetizität nicht erfaßt sein, es gibt ja auch poetische Wirkungen, die von Aussagen in der Form der Alltagsrede ausgehen, so z.B. bei Fallada, Anna Seghers), oder vom Gebrauch von fachsprachlichen Termini (s.u.). Solche Eigenheiten werden zum Teil in die Standardsprache übernommen, wobei gelegentlich auch die Varianten II 1 und II 2 ins Spiel kommen können, die es hier nur in eingeschränkter Weise gibt. Ursprünglich dichterische Bildungen wie Seelenfrieden, Bruderzwist gehören heute der Standardsprache an, und das unbekannte Wesen der Romantiker ist als Titel in sog. Aufklärungsfilmen verwendet worden. Eine Variante II 2 mag man darin erblicken, daß nicht selten dichterische Zitate in veränderter Form in die Alltagsrede eingefügt werden. Auch die Variante III spielt eine Rolle im Bereich der Dichtersprache, und zwar in der Form des Slangs wie etwa bei Morgenstern oder E. Roth, die es verstanden haben, dieser Aussageform Poetizität zu verleihen. Sodann wird man auch Aussagen des gegenseitigen Spotts und der Beschimpfung von Dichtergruppen, soweit sie Poetizität besitzen, hier anführen; man denke etwa an die Xenien von Goethe und Schiller. Auf eine Seite der Sprache der Dichtung muß noch hingewiesen werden, auf die Berührung mit den Fachsprachen. Manche Dichter, und zwar gerade neuere, bauen bewußt fachsprachlich Elemente in ihre Aussage ein, so etwa Benn medizinische Termini in seine Lyrik, Thomas Mann Medizinisches in seinen 'Zauberberg', Musikwissenschaftliches in seinen 'Doktor Faustus'. Die Verwendung von Fachsprachlichem hat bei Thomas Mann die Funktion, Personen und Situationen zu charakterisieren. Dabei begegnen im 'Zauberberg' alle Varianten, auch der Jargon, während im 'Doktor Faustus' Variante I und II 1 und II 2 zu finden sind. Einer besonderen Untersuchung bedürften die Veränderungen, die sich bei den fachsprachlichen Elementen durch die Einbettung in dichterische Sprache vollziehen. Eine Aufwertung der Sprache der Dichtung stellt die Aufnahme von Elementen der Sprache der Religion dar, wobei neben der Übernahme die Umdeutung stehen kann (Binder 1964:70).

6. Noch mehr als bei der Sprache der Dichtung muß gefragt werden,

FACH- UND SONDERSPRACHEN

147

ob man überhaupt von der Sprache der RELIGION sprechen kann. Dies gilt zunächst in einem weiten Sinn, d.h. es erhebt sich angesichts der Verschiedenheiten der Inhalte der Aussagen der einzelnen Religionen die Frage, ob es Gemeinsamkeiten des Ausdrucks 'der' Sprache der Religion gibt und worin diese bestehen. Auch wenn man Sprache der Religion auf die der christlichen Religion einschränkt, ist das Problem noch nicht gelöst (Kaempfert 1971b, 1972; Güttgemanns 1971; Moser 1964a). Es bestehen große Unterschiede nicht nur im Hinblick auf die konfessionellen Gruppierungen mit ihren Soziolekten, sondern auch angesichts der innerkonfessionellen Gruppenbildungen, die sich dann z.T. wieder interkonfessionell auswirken, z.B. Luther und die lutherischen Theologen, Zwinglianismus, Kalvinismus - Eck und die katholischen Kontroverstheologen, Gegenreformation; Pietismus - Aufklärung Romantik; Neuscholastiker - Bultmannschule. Dazu tritt eine Vielfalt von Variationen des Aufbaus der Sprache der Religion (vgl. Abbildung 2). .Bibel Verkündigung

Theologie

Liturgie

i

Rel-Unterricht

\ \ \Predigt /' I I

Bibl. Th.

Syst. Th.

I ¡Ai '(Offiziell privat (Andacht usw.) I I 1

Hist. Th.

T /Prakt. Th.

"I

Kirchl. Recht

Abbildung 2. Sprache der kirchlichen Organisation

Diese Varianten sind primär von der Sprache der Bibel bestimmt oder doch mitbestimmt. Diese wirkt auf die fachsprachliche Variante innerhalb der Sprache der Religion, die Theologie, die aber auch stark von philosophischen - und soziologischen - Fachsprachen beeinflußt ist (Aristotelismus, Piatonismus, Philosophie des Idealismus, Romantik, Marxismus, Existentialismus usw.); ihre speziellen Ausprängungen stehen auch sehr stark unter der Einwirkung der Fachsprachen (wie der Methoden) anderer Wissenschaften: der Hermeneutik und Textlinguistik (Biblische Theologie), der Philosophie (Systematische Theologie), der Historie (Historische Theologie), der Didaktik und der Sozialwissenschaften (Praktische Theologie), der Jurisprudenz und der Historie (Kirchliches Recht). Bei der Sprache der Liturgie spielen neben den

148

HUGO MOSER

dargestellten und gesprochenen Inhalten Rücksichten der Handlung (Gesten, Bewegungen, Gewänder) eine Rolle, und künstlerisch-dichterische Sprache findet in liedhafter Prägung Eingang in die offiziellen wie die privaten Formen der Liturgie (Hymnen, Sequenzen, Kirchenlied). Die Sprache der Verkündigung (Predigt, Katechetik) bezieht sich auf Inhalte biblischer, theologischer und liturgischer Art und ist durch die Berücksichtigung rhetorischer wie didaktischer Gesichtspunkte mit bestimmt. Dabei ist jedoch ein ausgedehnter Kernwortschatz allen Ausprägungen gemeinsam. Ein Grundzug der Sprache der Religion liegt im Wesen der Religion begründet: ihr bewahrender Charakter, der dem Streben nach Kontinuität der Glaubensinhalte entspricht. So sind heute noch altertümliche (und z.T. oft von negativen Konnotationen begleitete) Lexeme in Gebrauch wie Zähre, Zier, Buße, Zerknirschung (Lehnübersetzung von lat. contritio), benedeien, süß im Sinne von gut (nach lateinisch dulcis). Die Innovationen sind in neuer Zeit vorwiegend organisatorischer Art (Rundfunkpredigt, Laiendienst; prot. Freizeit 'religiöse Besinnungstage'). Die Varianten der Fachsprachen gelten auch weithin für die Sprache der Religion. Auch hier steht neben der Variante 1 die Gebrauchsvariante II 1 in der Form von didaktisch und paränetisch orientierten populärwissenschaftlichen Schriften, populärer Gebets- und Andachtsliteratur der Predigt, des katechetischen Unterrichts, des seelsorgerlichen Gesprächs. Die Variante II 2 tritt als Reden des einfachen Gläubigen über religiöse Fragen in Erscheinung. Auch die Variante III fehlt nicht: es gibt einen Theologenjargon, der z.T. der allgemeine Jargon der Hochschullehrer ist, aber auch spezielle, kaum erfaßte, mit der Seelsorge zusammenhängende Formen zeigt. Sonst ist diese Variante aus dem Respekt vor dem Religiösen, Numinosen bei den Gläubigen kaum entwickelt. Anders bei Nicht- oder Andersgläubigen. In weitem Umfang hat, besonders seit der die Grundhaltung zum Religiösen entscheidend verändernden Aufklärung, eine Säkularisierung der Sprache der Religion stattgefunden, die bis zu Variante III reichen kann, zunächst aber die Standardsprache betrifft. Bei der Sprache der Religion läßt sich seit der Einführung des Christentums bei den 'deutschen' Stämmen bis ins 18. Jahrhundert ein enger Austausch mit der allgemeinen Standardsprache beobachten. Am Anfang stehen Vorgänge der Sakralisierung. Christliche Kernlexeme wie Sünde ( = urspr. 'Schuld'), Leid, Tugend, Reue (— urspr. 'Schmerz'), Auferstehung, Himmel sind Sakralisierungen profaner Lexeme, wobei z.T. eine profane Bedeutungskomponente erhalten geblieben ist (so bei

FACH- UND SONDERSPRACHEN

149

Schuld, Leid, Himmel, Geist, im Mittelalter auch bei Tugend (vgl. Moser 1964a); Geist, das ursprünglich Dämon meinte, hat sekundär eine profane Bedeutungskomponente angenommen, ebenso Reue, bei dem eine weltliche Komponente also wiederhergestellt wird; vgl. geistvoll, -reich, -los, oder den Slogan der Zigarettenreklame Genuß ohne Reue).

7. Damit stoßen wir auf einen anderen Vorgang: auf den der Säkularisierung (vgl. Kaempfert 1971a, Binder 1964). Einmal handelt es sich um lexikalisierte säkularisierte Bezeichnungen der allgemeinen Standardsprache, wie die zuletzt angeführten oder barmherzig, teuflisch, diabolisch, Mission, Sündenbock, ketzerische Meinung; bleibt in den genannten Beispielen die primär religiöse Bedeutungskomponente bestehen, so in anderen Fällen nicht, vgl. Fanatiker ( = urspr. 'religiöser Sektierer'). Daneben stehen okkasionelle, idiolektische und soziolektische Vorgänge der Säkularisierung, von denen besonders die letzteren oft mit der Absicht der Lexikalisierung herbeigeführt werden. Sie können wieder zur Profanierung eines Lexems führen, so wenn man idiolektisch von einer Wallfahrt zu einem Heilkundigen, einer Bibel des Gartenbaus spricht, oder wenn man in der Alltagsrede in weltlichem Sinn ein Bibelwort zitiert. Schon W. Binder hat das Nötige zur Säkularisierung von Bibelworten zusammengefaßt: man kann diese einmal 'in weltlichem Interesse, aber in ihrem biblischen Sinn' verwenden, was seiner Meinung nach 'nicht als Verweltlichung empfunden' wird, zum andern in einem weltlichen Sinn, 'ohne mit dem biblischen Interesse in Konflikt zu geraten', aber auch 'in einem antibiblischen Sinn'. Nur im letzten Fall glaubt Binder, daß 'der Tatbestand der Säkularisation eindeutig erfüllt' sei. Schon Binder zweifelt mit Recht, ob 'diese Formel' nicht 'vielleicht zu eng' sei; vor allem weist er selbst auf pantheistische Deutungen von Bibelworten hin, für welche die Bezeichnung 'antibiblisch' zu scharf ist (Binder 1964:43, 46). Die Entscheidung kann in jedem Fall nur im Zusammenhang mit dem Kontext getroffen werden. Sprachliche Säkularisierung kann aber auch neuerlicher Sakralisierung dienen wollen. Dies ist der Fall bei manchen soziolektischen Vorgängen, so wenn in der Hitlerzeit in der öffentlichen Sprache Epitheta wie ewig, heilig auf die NSDAP übertragen wurden und seit 1945 nach sowjetrussischem Vorbild Lexeme wie heilig, unsterblich, Bekenntnis, Gewissen, Schuld in bezug auf die SED gebraucht werden; im Syntagma soll und kann, je nach der Einstellung der Sender bzw. der Einstellung und Empfänglichkeit der Empfänger diese Koppelung eine Sakralisierung des

150

HUGO MOSER

mit dem Substantiv Bezeichneten bewirken, d.h. die Partei soll als eine pseudoreligiöse Größe erscheinen. In diesem Zusammenhang ist etwa auch auf die Freiheitstempel der Französischen Revolution und auf die Jugendweihe in der D D R hinzuweisen. Auch idiolektische Vorgänge solcher Art sind häufig. Hieher gehört etwa, daß sich Menschen ewige Treue geloben oder sich ein heiliges Versprechen geben. Neben Transferierungen der besprochenen Muster sakrales -v profanem Lexem und sakrales Lexem ->- säkularisiertem Lexem + neuerlicher pseudoreligiöser Sakralisierung steht noch ein anderes: sakrales Lexem -»- ironischer Entsprechung. Hier ist vor allem das Beispiel Nietzsches zu nennen, der einerseits religiöse und religionsbezogene Sprache im Sinne der beschriebenen neuerlichen Sakralisierung verwendet, aber auch Lexeme der Sprache der Religion, oft mit durchsichtigen Umformungen, als Mittel der Ironie benutzt, vgl. unbefleckte Erkenntnis, Christentümler, der frohe Botschafter, die Gott-Menschen (welche die Religion nicht mehr brauchen) (Kaempfert 1971 a). Das führt zur Variante III der Sprache der Religion. Sie wird, wie wir als Folge einer Haltung der Ehrfurcht vor dem Religiösen, nicht so sehr von Angehörigen der Gruppe selbst als Eigenjargon verwendet, als vielmehr von Nichtangehörigen als Fremdjargon (s.o.), oft von Gegnern, wo die Variante abschätzig-ablehnend gemeint ist. Immerhin gibt es solchen Gegenjargon auch zwischen Richtungen innerhalb derselben Konfession, so wenn man etwa Anhängerinnen eines überbetonten Marienkultes in Anknüpfung an den Namen einer Vereinigung innerhalb der katholischen Kirche ironisch als Marienkinder bezeichnet. Die Erscheinung des Gegenjargons ist in bezug auf konfessionelle Gruppe in früherer Zeit, z.T. noch bis ins 20. Jahrhundert hinein oft in schiere Schimpfrede übergegangen, in Injurien auf religiöse Lehre und religiöses Tun des Gegners. 2 An Beispielen mangelt es nicht. Man denke etwa an die konfessionellen Beschimpfungen früherer Jahrhunderte: bei Luther für den Papst erzgotteslästerer, für seine Anhänger baptsketzer, götzenknecht, für sonstige Gegner bildstürmer, splitterrichter, werkheilige, umgekehrt bei Luthers katholischen Gegnern Bapsts-, Heiligenschänder, Wortheilige und bei seinen reformierten mit Bezug auf die Abendmahlslehre fleischfresser, blutseujfer (Erben 1959:464, 466); dem Schimpfwort Lutherische entspricht später etwa das gegen die Katholiken gerichtete Kreuzköpfe (vom Sichbekreuzigen). Diese vorläufigen Überlegungen zu Fach- und Sondersprachen vermögen gewiß nicht alle Probleme zu lösen. Trotzdem darf ich sie dem verdienten Linguisten Herbert Penzl in Freundschaft widmen in

FACH- UND SONDERSPRACHEN

151

der Hoffnung, daß er sie freundlich aufnehme, auch wenn die historische Dimension nur am Rande berücksichtigt ist! Universität

Bonn

NOTEN 1

Den folgenden Überlegungen sind auch Diskussionen zugute gekommen, die im Rahmen der Kommission für wissenschaftlich begründete Sprachpflege des Instituts für deutsche Sprache in Mannheim am 16.XI.1973 stattgefunden haben (Vgl. Benes 1973). 2 Interessant ist in diesem Zusammenhang etwa der Gebrauch von fromm bei Luther und Melanchthon auch als Synonym für gerecht und die Reaktion der Kontroverstheologen, vgl. Moser 1967.

LITERATURVERZEICHNIS 1973. Die sprachliche Kondensation im heutigen Fachstil. Linguistische Studien 3.40-50. BINDER, W O L F G A N G . 1964. Grundprobleme der Säkularisation in den Werken Goethes, Schillers und Hölderlins. Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 83 (Sonderheft).42-69. ERBEN, JOHANNES. 1 9 5 9 . Luther und die nhd. Schriftsprache. Deutsche Wortgeschichte, 2 . Aufl. von Friedrich Maurer und Friedrich Stroh, 4 3 9 - 9 2 . (Pauls Grundriß der germanischen Philologie, 1 7 / 1 . ) Berlin: DeGruyter. G Ü N T H E R , LOUIS. 1 9 1 9 . Soldatensprache, Rotwelsch und 'Kunden'-Deutsch. Zeitschrift für den deutschen Unterricht 3 3 . 1 2 9 - 5 0 . GÜTTGEMANNS, E R H A R D T . 1971. Theologie als sprachbezogene Wissenschaft. Linguistica Biblica 2.137-63. ISCHREYT, H E I N Z . 1 9 6 5 . Studien zum Verhältnis von Sprache und Technik. Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann. KAEMPFERT, M A N F R E D . 1971a. Säkularisation und neue Heiligkeit Religiöse und religionsbezogene Sprache bei Friedrich Nietzsche. (Philologische Studien und Quellen, 61.) Berlin: E. Schmidt. —. 1971b. Skizze einer Theorie des religiösen Wortschatzes. Muttersprache 81.15-22, —. 1972. Vorläufige Überlegungen zur Beschreibung der Religiosität von Texte. Gegenwartssprache und Gesellschaft, ed. by Ulrich Engel und Olaf Schwenke. 164-86. Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann. M O S E R , H U G O . 1964a. Sprache und Religion. (Wirkendes Wort Beiheft 7 . ) Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann. —. 1964b. Sprachprobleme bei der Bundeswehr. Muttersprache 74.129-33. —. 1967. 'Fromm' bei Luther und Melanchthon. Ein Betrag zur Wortgeschichte in der Reformationszeit. Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 86.161-82. WEIZSÄCKER, C . F. VON. 1960. Über die Sprache der Physik. Sprache und Wissenschaft. Vorträge gehalten auf der Tagung der Joachim-Jungius Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Hamburg, am 29. und 30. Oktober 1959. (Veröffentlichung der Joachim-Jungius Gesellschaften der Wissenschaften Hamburg.) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. BENES, E .

WHAT IS A D I P H T H O N G ?

ERNST PULGRAM

1. It may seem rather late in the day to propose an answer to this question, or even to raise the question itself. Does not everyone know what a diphthong is ? Not everyone does, I believe, even though everyone must operate with the diphthong, of course. (The syllable has suffered from equally controversial and uncertain theoretical underpinnings, despite its practical necessity - though perhaps I may have been able to shed some light in a recent book; see Pulgram 1970.) But there seems to be no single place in the literature where the matter is dealt with in both phonetic and phonemic terms together, even though various ad hoc solutions, either phonetic or phonemic, for a given problem or a given dialect have been suggested. In the discussion that follows I am applying the structural approach, in which I use the abstract concept of the phoneme as constituting a class of functionally equivalent phones employed by the speakers of a given dialect. If this be taxonomy, so let it be; it is a necessity not only for dealing with things and events, but also for arranging these things and events in classes.1 Thus homo loquens recognizes all sounds that belong, in one dialect, to the same class, that is, function in the same way, no matter how different articulatorily or acoustically. In general, members of that class are likely to be physically similar, but it is impossible to fix a boundary for the degree of permissible dissimilarity. If all [a]'s belong to the phoneme /a/, well and good; but also [o]'s and [ae]'s may belong to it. 2 Whether we choose then to transcribe the class as /a/ or /o/ or /as/ is irrelevant; indeed any squiggle will do (though for the sake of convenience one usually chooses a phonetic symbol): the only requirement is that there be as many distinctive signs as there are sound classes in the dialect, and that each be explicated by a phonetic (articulatory, acoustic, etc.) statement.3

154

ERNST PULGRAM

2. Typically, when one says 'diphthong' one means that the two sounds constituting it belong to the same syllable. And since each syllable contains, by definition, no more than one functional vowel, which is the syllable nucleus (whence it follows that every utterance has as many syllables as it has vowels), only one member of the diphthong is a functional vowel; the other must be a consonant, since functionally one distinguishes only vowels (that is, sounds that are capable of constituting syllable nuclei) and consonants ("that is, sounds that are not thus capable). Hence English sweet /syit/ and French oui /ui/ 'yes' are monosyllabic and contain the diphthong /yi/; but English suet /suit/ and French oui /ui/ 'heard' are bisyllabic and contain two vowels. (In French, the accent is predictably on the final syllable of a lexeme in citation form, or at the end of what I call cursus, which is a group of lexemes that behave phonologically like a single lexeme in citation form, hence need not be marked in phonemic transcription). Englisn Indian may be pronounced bisyllabic /In-dian/ or trisyllabic /In-dl-an/ in free variation. Some linguists call the consonantal portion of the diphthong 'semiconsonant' if it precedes the vowel, as in /yi/, and 'semivowel' if it follows, as in /ui/; and some choose to transcribe the first [j, w], and the second [i, u] (though no such graphic distinction is available for other vowel symbols if they should occur as functional consonants in a given dialect: see below). But there is no consistency in either terminology or transcription. If phonetically [j] and [j], and the members of the other pairs, are different, their phonemic function is the same, namely, consonantal, hence /j/ and /j/ are equivalent transcriptions. As will be seen later, the distinction of semivowel and semiconsonant on the phonetic level is not useless or senseless. In my text, 1 shall therefore distinguish semivowels from semiconsonants in phonetic transcription (in the two cases where the con\entional phonetic alphabet offers a choice), but not in phonemic transcription. Verbally I shall refer to all of them as 'semis' wherever possible and convenient. It is obvious, however, that describing the diphthong as a sequence of vowel and consonant, /VC/, or consonant and vowel, /CV/, will not do because such a definition embraces not only /ui/ and /ui/ but also /ut, us/ etc. and /bi, fi/ etc. Yet the latter are not diphthongs in anyone's use of the term, nor, as will be shown presently, should they be. But this means that the reason for calling /ui/ and /ui/ diphthongs, but not the others, cannot reside in the function of /u, i, b, f, t, s/, since functionally they are all non-syllabics, hence consonants. And if this is so, it is also implied that on the functional, phonemic level, the distinction between

WHAT IS A DIPHTHONG ?

155

diphthong and other /VC/ or /CV/ sequences is at least redundant, if not senseless: they are all either /VC/ or /CV/ (plus whatever other /C/'s make up the complete syllable). Consequently, diphthong is a term based on the phonetic peculiarity of the consonantal member of some, but not all, /VC/'s and /CV/'s; and this implies that not all /C/'s of a dialect can participate in forming a diphthong - a restriction which, of course, no one would contest. In other words, to determine the nature of what we habitually call diphthong we must examine why, by reason of what phonetic property, some functional consonants of a dialect form a diphthong with a preceding or following functional vowel, that is, with the syllabic nucleus. It would be pleasant to report that the nomenclature is never based on spelling; unfortunately, the literature is not innocent of statements explaining a diphthong as a sequence of two vowels, which clearly has reference to the use of alphabetic symbols generally and loosely associated with vowels. Thus, for example, Italian paura /paura/ 'fear', mais /mais/ 'maize' are often said to contain a diphthong, and ciao /cao/ or /cay/ 'good-bye' a triphthong. But such naivete, though not rare, may be left out of account here. Nor is it helpful to be told that a semivowel or a semiconsonant is a vowel employed as a consonant (or, conversely, that in Czech vlk /vlk/ 'wolf the consonant I is employed as a vowel). In linguistics, something is what it is employed as in the phonemic system, or what it is in accordance with a phonetic definition. But there is a glimmer of truth in that peculiar definition of the semis, however awkwardly and unsatisfactorily phrased, in that it connects the consonantal portion of a diphthong somehow with vowels. Indeed it now leads us to ask the question concerning the characteristics of phonetic vowels and phonetic consonants, and their differences. In other words, we ask on what physical basis (as distinct from the functional basis mentioned earlier) one distinguishes, or finds it useful to distinguish, vowels and consonants on the phonetic level. I insist on the qualification 'useful' because we are considering the classification of speech sounds in two phonetic categories (a classification that has already turned out to be useful on the phonemic, functional level.) Now classes do not occur in nature, only things and events do. Rather, classes are constituted by reasonably selected criteria for membership, for a reasonable and useful purpose. (There can be no such things as a false class, only a silly or useless or even vicious one. Of course, this does not mean that a thing or event cannot be falsely assigned to a

156

ERNST PULGRAM

class, if it does not match the criteria which were chosen to define that class.) Hence the division of sounds into phonetic vowels and phonetic consonants must rest upon reasonable criteria and serve a useful purpose.

3. As every linguist knows, a phonetic definition, whether based on articulatory or acoustic or other criteria, is difficult at best. But, on the whole, there appears to exist a consensus that one may epitomize as follows. A sound is called a phonetic vowel if it has all of the following articulatory properties: it is a continuant; it is voiced, that is, articulated with the participation of the vocal lips (so-called voiceless or whispered vowels belong to the phonemic level, and are best dealt with as a peculiar variety occurring under restricted circumstances); it is produced without closure in the vocal tract; it is not significantly modified by friction due to the narrowing of the vocal tract (although a certain amount of friction is inevitably caused by the passage of air); its specific quality, or timbre, is caused by the size and shape of the oral cavity (through position of the lower jaw, tongue, and degree of lip-rounding); it issues through the mouth, or partly through the nose (nasal vowels). Acoustically, as shown on the spectrogram, for example, a vowel has formants, while striations and other features due to noise are irrelevant to its identification. A phonetic consonant has all the following articulatory features: it is produced by a given type and degree of closure or stricture in the vocal tract for significant and distinctive purposes. (Activity of the vocal lips may or may not be involved; a consonant may or may not be a continuant.) Acoustically, on the spectrogram, a consonant is recognizable by striations and other features due to noise. (The formants of surrounding vowels may deliver important transitional clues. For the consonant itself, formant-like traits may show, if voicing is present.) One may say, then, that in the articulation of vowels the air stream is modified in the oral cavity, but not anywhere impeded for distinctive purposes, whereas in the articulation of consonants the obstacles placed into the airstream (their place and the organs producing them) provide the significant distinctions. Or, put more briefly, the essence of the vowel is tone, the essence of the consonant (whether voiced or voiceless) is noise. How does a semi fit into this scheme? It is a consonant in that it is typically produced by a stricture, a narrowing of the vocal tract, albeit a gentle and smooth one, never a complete closure, and in that it is a

WHAT IS A DIPHTHONG?

157

non-continuant; but it is a vowel in that the shape and the size of the oral cavity and the degree of lip-rounding determine its quality. Acoustically, therefore, on the spectrogram, it exhibits typically vocalic and typically consonantal features simultaneously. Thus a semi is both tone and noise. At this point it may be well to refer again to the terminological distinction between semivowel and semiconsonant. Although it was found to be irrelevant on the functional, phonemic level, since both function as consonants, it seems that the semivowel in the diphthong [aj] has a more vocalic quality, and the semiconsonant in [ja] a more consonantal quality. Hence the different names are defensible on the phonetic level, and the transcriptions [j] and [j] are legitimate: [aj], [ja], and also [ay], [wa].4 From all this it emerges that, though the semis are not a separate class among the phonemes of a dialect, in addition to vowels and consonants, phonetically they are such a class, indeed one in which two subclasses can be reasonably and usefully established. It is curious, however, and significant that the vocalic qualities of the semis relate them to but a restricted number of vowels: the ones at the top of the triangle, between [i] and [u], and the central [a]. But I am not sure that any language (none that I know) has phonetic semis in the position of the [e, o, a]-type sounds, that is, in the mid and low region of the triangle.5 Of course, orthography and non-linguistic 'transcriptions' remain irrelevant: Latin ae is [afl, oe is [ojj, and not [ag], [o§]; indeed archaic Latin texts may actually spell ai, oi; South German (in the more or less traditional spelling that is supposed to convey the sounds of the dialect) Bud 'boy', liab 'dear' (for Standard German Bub, lieb) is [bug], [ligp] and not [bua], [liap], (The German diphthongs sound like English in the r-less dialects - sure, leer.) But this surmise with respect to phonetic reality has nothing to do with phonemic transcriotion, where the economy of book-keeping (and, in the final analysis, phonemics is book-keeping) may well counsel one to write /a, g,