Historical Linguistics and Philology 9783110847260, 9783110122046

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Historical Linguistics and Philology

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 46

Editor

Werner Winter

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Historical Linguistics and Philology

Edited by

Jacek Fisiak

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1990

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Historical linguistics and philology / edited by Jacek Fisiak. p. cm. — (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 46) Selection of papers from the International Conference on Historical Linguistics and Philology held at Blazejewko, Poland, Apr. 2 0 - 2 3 , 1988. ISBN 0-89925-610-4 : (alk paper) 1. Historical linguistics —Congresses. 2. Philology-Congresses. I. Fisiak, Jacek, II. International Conference on Historical Linguistics and Philology (1988 : Btazejewko, Poland) P140.H58 1990 417'.7 —dc20 90-5667 CIP

Deutsche Bibliothek Cataloging in Publication Data Historical linguistics and philology / [Internat. Conference on Histor. Linguistics and Philology held at Blazejewko, Poland, Apr. 2 0 - 2 3 , 1988], Ed. by Jacek Fisiak. - Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1990 (Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 46) ISBN 3-11-012204-9 NE: Fisiak, Jacek [Hrsg.]; International Conference on Historical Linguistics and Philology '«, yes)) sehe {{jhe, che)) yei ((yai)) hem {{hem, he, yaim)) here {{yer, yere, yaire)) swiche {{swich, swhiche)) eche {{eche a, ich, uch, uche, vche, vch a)) ben, ar, am, be {are) {{aren, bene, bey, buy)) y0113h (yeijh) {{youh, yeij, yejh, yei, youhj)) er, or {{her)) seyye {{seye, seyyen, sey, seyen, siyye)) 3it. .jut {(jet, 3ete, jite, .jutte)) yurth ((yurjth, yurh, yourh, yurjh, yrouj, jourh, yerwe)) de de {{dude)) haue heij, heijh {{hiej, heie)) litel owne {{oune)) self, selue

peas {pes) heo {jeo, he) hi 0'-) ham hare, hare suche, such eche, ech {ich) hep {beth) pei

'ere' conj. 'since' adv. 'yet' 'through' 'did' sg. pret. 'have' inf. 'high' 'little' 'own' adj. 'self

ar suppe 3ut {(jit)) poru {porwe) dude habbe, haue hei litel, lite, lute owe {owene, owen) sulf {sulue, silue)

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dominant form, and double parentheses enclose variants that occur less than one-third as frequently as the dominant form. Within each "dominance" category forms are given in order of relative frequency. Unlike the Atlas, I give the items analysed, which for reasons of space represent only a selected handful out of the ca. 260 items used for the Atlas, between single quotation marks which enclose corresponding Modern English forms. The forms given as belonging to Part I are based on my own analysis, which follows the same procedures as those of the Atlas. Apart from showing that the dialects of Parts I and II are not "extremely close", and that the language of Part I cannot be simply said to be that of Gloucestershire, this listing enables us to see that the language of Part II is much more homogeneous than that of Part I. In some cases the variants between double parentheses occur only once or twice, as in the case of 'though', where youjh occurs 20 times, and yeijh ten times, but youh, j e / j a n d yejh only twice, and yei and Poujh once. Nevertheless, the variation is considerable, and the total effect is such that there is no single localization which will fit all the evidence. The language of the MS of William of Palerne is, therefore, what the Atlas, in good English, terms a Mischsprache. Some variants tend to be concentrated in the early sections of the text of William of Palerne. Thus 'she' is predominantly sehe, with eleven instances of jhe and four of che in the first half of the text. For 'they', we find overwhelmingly Pei, with occasional occurrences of Pai, again only in the earlier sections of the text. For 'each' the picture is a little more complex; the minor variants ich, uch, uche, vch, vch a, and vche occur sporadically in the first 1580 lines, but uche occurs again as late as line 5000, only 540 lines from the poem's end. Such forms appear to be relict forms from an earlier stage of transmission, and the fact that they tend to occur in the early sections of the text only seems to point to what Benskin — Laing (1981: 165 — 169) term "a progressively translated text", in which the scribe at first copies the forms of his exemplar fairly closely, but gradually, as he becomes more accustomed to the text, superimposes more and more of his own linguistic habits. We shall return to these examples below. Here it should be observed that there are not many items for which there are clear differences in the distribution of variants between different sections of the text. To the above examples of this type of distribution we might add the suffix '-ly', which usually appears as -ly or -liehe in the early parts of the text, whereas later -li is by far the commonest

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form with only sporadic occurrences of -ly or -liehe. A fairly clearcut distribution occurs for the preposition 'with', which is wiy between lines 1 and 3667 and after line 5080, whereas with is found between lines 3505 and 5469, with only two exceptional instances of wiy in lines 4634 and 4646; similarly, deye for 'death' occurs only before line 3455, dethe only after line 3427. However, no other features have been found with a similar distribution; even forms of 'death' without a final -e show a different and less clearcut pattern. Some of the internal variation in the text may simply be a feature of the scribe's dialect. That this is so is suggested by three brief passages which the scribe has inadvertently copied twice. These passages give some evidence, however slight, of the degree of variation that our scribe's written dialect tolerated. Below I quote the three passages; I first give the lines as they occur in the edited text, but in strictly diplomatic transcription, and then as they were repeated by mistake in an incorrect position. fol. 32r, 1.1908 yan eiyer lapped oyer ful loueli in armes after 1.1902 yan eiyer lapped oyer ful loueli in armes (subpuncted for deletion) We see that here the two lines are entirely identical. This is not the case in the other two passages: fol. 74r, 11.4722-3 & yer to heimliche am i hold for holli i knowe yat alle ye sawes be soy yat you saidest ere after 1.4717 & yer to heijeli am i holde for holliche i knowe yat alle yi sawes be soy yat you seidest ere fol. 77 r , 11.4918-9 told yemperour treuli yat hem tidde hadde of meschef & of murthe and ho hem most helped after 1.4918 of mechef & of murye yat hem tidde h What these passages suggest is that the scribe's dialect allowed both -liehe and -li, which change places in the variant versions of lines 4722 — 4723, and that to him, in some cases and in certain positions

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within the word, chjsch, yjth, and eijai were equivalent graphs. We also note that the past participle of 'hold' may occur with or without a final -e. Apparently the scribe's written dialect tolerated a fair amount of internal variation. We may even note a substantive variation in the case of ye sawesjyi sawes. Other evidence also suggests that the scribe's usage was on some points rather erratic. Some of the variation in our text may also be due to the exigencies of alliteration or to other metrical considerations. Thus the usual form for 'church' is cherche (beside two instances of chirche in 11. 5043 and 5041), but in 1.4086, which alliterates on jkj, we find kyrke. For the present indicative plural of 'be' we find am, ar, are(n), ben, be, bene, and both 'are' and 'be' forms are used under alliteration; bene does not alliterate, but is found three times in line-final position, where the poet, in common with other alliterative makers, seems to prefer "feminine" endings. 1 In most cases, however, the variation of forms that we meet in the surviving text of William of Palerne must be due to its textual history. In what follows we shall make an attempt to unravel, with the help of the Atlas and related literature, some of the dialectal strands which are present in the text as it has came down to us. The first question which we must address is that of the provenance of the manuscript. It seems clear that the manuscript of William of Paler ne belongs dialectally to the Midlands. Characteristically northern features, such as a, ai, ay for Old English long a, swilk/swylk or slikjslyk for 'such', yir for 'these', scho for 'she', es for 'is', sal for 'shall', war for 'worse', at as relative pronomen or as infinitive marker, are altogether absent. Similarly absent are many typically southern features, such as ν for initial f , hijhy for 'they', libbe for 'live', segge for 'say'; the present indicative plural may indeed end in a dental fricative, but there are only eight instances of this, and the ending is by no means exclusively southern. A striking feature of the written dialect of our manuscript, and one which has been amply illustrated in our quotations from it so far, is that, with very rare exceptions, y and /> have the same shape. Benskin (1982) has shown that this type of scribal usage is characteristic of northerly areas and of parts of the N E Midlands and East Anglia. Only a limited number of documents from a small area near London also shows identity of y and />, but unfortunately these documents are not among the sources used for the Atlas. By and large, it seems, this feature, together with the absence of clearly northern dialect charac-

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teristics, enables us to restrict the possible area to which the language of our manuscript may belong to a comparatively narrow band which stretches from south Lancashire to East Anglia. It is also roughly in this band that we may expect the coexistence of -s and -/> in the third singular present indicative of verbs. In our text both forms of the suffix occur, but -s forms predominate (231 χ -s, 146 χ -/?), except in the case of 'do' and 'have'. It is possible to limit the possible area of provenance still further. The use of the same symbol for both y and in places where the sound was probably a voiceless dental fricative is mainly an East Anglian feature (Benskin, private communication). Although this feature does occur in other places, it directs our attention to East Anglia, and we must, therefore, ask ourselves whether there are other features that would support, or at least not contradict, an East Anglian provenance of our manuscript. In order to exclude from our examination relict forms which belong to earlier stages in the transmission of the text as much as possible, we shall use only "dominant" forms, disregarding for the moment variants which the Atlas would enclose in single or double parentheses. "Dominant" features which would not be inconsistent with a localization in East Anglia are, for instance, yisejyese 'these', sehe, hire 'her', yei 'they', hem 'them', here 'their', swiche (beside which only a single instance of swhiche occurs), which(e)/wich(e) 'which', eche 'each', many, any (although the absence of ony is remarkable), arjarnjbejben 'are', schal 'shall' sg., schul 'shall' pi., scholdjschuld 'should', fro 'from', after, yan 'than', jiif ' i f , ajens/a-jens, er/or 'ere', jit 'yet' (beside jut, on which see below), whil/while conj., strengye 'strength', ne 'nor', where, whan 'when', but, -ing/-and(e)/-end(e) in the pres. part., cherche, ferstjfirst, etc. It must be admitted that such characteristically East Anglian features as initial qu- or qw- for wh-, werld, werd 'world' (our text has world), myth 'might' or xal 'shall' are notably absent, but the collective evidence does seem to point to East Anglia as the dialectal home of our scribe, who may well have avoided employing strongly marked forms which he did not find in his exemplar. There are, however, majority forms in our text which cannot be reconciled with an Eastern localization. Such forms are, for instance, fur{e) 'fire', jut 'yet' (which is only slightly less frequent than jit), herre 'higher' (which the Atlas finds in only three LPs localized in northern Herefordshire, Shropshire and Warwickshire; the MED also quotes the form from other sources which include the northern Ashmole

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manuscript of The Wars of Alexander), togadere 'together'. Such forms are characteristic of West Midland usage. Other West Midland forms, which do not appear in the Atlas, are burn, lud (OE beorn, leod), murye 'mirth', kud 'famous', munge 'tell', luyerli 'wickedly'. It must be added, however, that in most cases spellings which seem to indicate rounded front vowels appear alongside more frequent alternatives. A West Midland element is unmistakably present in the language of our text, but it is far from being dominant, and we should note, for instance, the rarity of ο in such items as 'man' (there are only three occurrences of mon beside 126 of man), and the predominance of e and i spellings in words which in Old English or Old Norse had y. Of course, this West Midland element in the language of the manuscript might represent the dialect of the author of our poem. In order to determine what linguistic features belong to the authorial dialect, we shall employ the method by means of which Samuels (1985) showed that the language in which William Langland composed all three versions of Piers Plowman belongs to south-west Worcestershire, the area around Great Malvern. Samuels made use of certain aspects of Langland's alliterative practice, restricting himself to "genuinely grammatical and phonological criteria", since these are most likely to belong to the poet's native dialect. His criteria are (1) the words for 'she', which he finds to alliterate most frequently on h-; (2) the words for 'are', which are alliterated on ar{e)n as well as on befr, beop, bufj, ben; (3) the presence of //v alliteration; and (4) the practice of alliterating h- with initial vowels. If, making use of the dialect-geographical data in Samuels' article, we apply his criteria to William of Palerne, we find the following. (1) The manuscript contains no forms with initial h- for 'she'; 'she' alliterates only infrequently, and in those cases where alliteration must have been intended, it alliterates on s- or sch-. At first sight this feature might seem to point away from the West Midlands and the South (as well as from a small area in eastern Essex and south-west Suffolk), where the usual form is he or heo. However, the Atlas shows that s(c)he(o) is certainly present in West Midland texts, occasionally even as the only form. We cannot, therefore, use this feature as evidence for a non-Western origin of our poem. (2) Alliteration on ar(e)(n) is also infrequent (as is vocalic alliteration generally), but unmistakably present; the clearest instances are lines 3332 and 4215. Alliteration on 6-forms is more common; examples are

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lines 3133, 3367, 3702, 3760 and 4447. This feature excludes the Southern dialects as well as Gloucestershire (Samuels 1985: 234 — 235). (3) Alliteration between French loanwords with initial v- and native fwords is frequent only in Piers Plowman and Mum and the Sothsegger (Samuels 1985: 235). In William of Palerne f/v alliteration is restricted to only two lines (1685 and 5197), and Schumacher (1914: 63) regards this as insufficient evidence for the existence in our poem of f/v alliteration. According to Samuels the presence of this type of alliteration in Piers Plowman, together with criteria (1) and (2), limits its possible provenance to Herefordshire and south-west Worcestershire (Herefordshire is excluded by criterium (4)). Samuels' delimitation of the ν area is, of course, based on the Atlas material and on the methods employed in the Middle English Dialect Project. Other scholars, using other methods, have reached different conclusions as to the northern and eastern limits of the voicing of initial f2 For instance, Fisiak (1983, 1984) and Poussa (1985) print maps where the boundary, drawn on the basis of Kristensson's work on the Lay Subsidy Rolls, runs a more northerly course than that based on the Atlas material and includes much of Staffordshire in the ν area. However, for our purposes it is the eastern limits of the ν area which are most relevant, and on these there seems to be a consensus. The difficulty for us is that the status of f/v alliteration in William of Palerne is none too assured. (4) Alliteration between h and vowels is also present in William of Palerne; Schumacher (1914: 82 — 83) gives a long list of instances. It must be added, however, that h more frequently alliterates with itself. Alliteration between h and vowels belongs to a dialect where initial h is silent or unstable, and where it may be found written without etymological justification, or omitted where etymology requires it. The Atlas records these features in various areas in the South, in East Anglia, 3 in the Home Counties, and in an area in the West Midlands which Samuels defines as "a patch running through south Worcestershire to Gloucestershire" which excludes Herefordshire. It appears, then, that only criteria (2) and (4) yield firm evidence which may help us localize the dialect in which William of Palerne was originally composed. Neither of these features is exclusively West Midland, and there are several localizations which a combination of these two features would make possible. If, however, we are justified in assuming that the West Midland element in the language of the manuscript is a trace of the authorial dialect, criteria (2) and (4) enable us to further limit the possible provenance of our poem to southern

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Worcestershire or the adjoining parts of Warwickshire. Such dominant features as fur(e) and jut, and possibly herre, and a minority feature such as uch(e)/vch(e)/vch a would be consistent with this localization, although togadere, which mainly belongs to Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, would cause some difficulty. We are, therefore, led to the conclusion that the manuscript of William of Palerne seems to belong dialectally to East Anglia, but that the original author must have used a very different dialect, possibly one belonging to southern Worcestershire or Warwickshire, not very far from the area where Langland acquired his linguistic habits. We know that although Langland was a Westerner by origin, he lived for most of his life in London, and it is probable that all three versions of his great poem were composed there. Similarly, William of Palerne need not have been written in the area to which the dialectological evidence points; all we can say is that its author must have acquired his linguistic habits in that part of England. It is, therefore, entirely possible that our poem was originally composed on one of Earl Humphrey's Gloucestershire manors, but there is no positive evidence which leads us in that direction. A fair number of dialect features thus fall into place. Yet the text also contains majority features which will fit neither East Anglia nor the West Midlands without some difficulty. The dominant form for 'through' in our text is yurth. According to the Atlas this occurs only in three manuscripts from the West Riding of Yorkshire, and it is only in LP 589, the Surtees Psalter, Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 278, that it is the dominant form. If we turn to texts which distinguish y and />, we find that purth is the usual form in Hand A of the Auchinleck Manuscript (as is well-known, a London text, and one of the witnesses of what Samuels (1963) has termed Type II), and a minority form in four other manuscripts analysed for the Atlas, among which one localized in the Isle of Ely and one which belongs to Essex. Another problem feature is foroute 'without', which occurs only once, but under alliteration, and which is therefore likely to belong to the original language of the poem. In the Atlas this word, in a variety of spellings, is recorded only in a few LPs, all of which are from the North or the West Riding of Yorkshire. An apparently similar case is kyrke, which also occurs only once and then under alliteration. According to the Atlas it is found north of a line from the Mersey to a point somewhere just south of Ely and in the northern half of East Anglia, with a few scattered LPs further

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south. F o u r of these are West Midland; kyrke is the dominant form in a Worcestershire manuscript of the originally northern Prick of Conscience (where it may be part of a northern substratum), and a minor variant in three Piers Plowman manuscripts. It is, of course, a Norse loan, and it causes us no surprise to find it associated with areas where Danish settlement is known to have taken place. Yet its presence in the "Langland c o u n t r y " is not really anomalous. As D o b son (1976) reminded us, C n u t settled many of his former soldiers in the West Midlands; and Norse loanwords are far f r o m rare in Ancrene Wisse. In his pioneering study of the geographical distribution of the Middle English lexicon, Kaiser (1937: 151 — 152) found the vocabulary of William of Palerne to be of a northerly character, although he regarded the text as "ganz unzuverlässig", since he found little else which might point to the north. He attempted to solve the problem by suggesting that the poet may have been a northerner in the service of Earl Humphrey, who wrote in the language of his patron but betrayed his origins by his vocabulary. M a n y of the " N o r d w ö r t e r " that Kaiser finds in William of Palerne are used under alliteration, and are therefore likely to belong to the original language of the poem. Yet many of them are also f o u n d in such certainly non-northern texts as Piers Plowman, and it must be admitted that there is not really very much in the vocabulary of our poem that is exclusively northern. In the foregoing pages, we noted a number of variant forms which appear in the earlier sections of the manuscript, but are absent f r o m its later folios. Beside sehe we had f o u n d jhe and che. According to the Atlas, jhe is f o u n d in the south, the SW Midlands, London, Essex, and West Norfolk; che is much more infrequent, but is found in texts f r o m both the West and the East Midlands. The minor variant yai beside yei similarly does not give conclusive evidence; in this form it is northern and N o r t h Midland, but pai is f o u n d in many other areas. The forms uch(e), vch(e), which occur occasionally alongside the usual eche, are chiefly West Midland. Other minority variants, such as bihuld (two occurrences; biheld also occurs twice, and behilde once, and in the simplex verb held is by far the commonest form) also suggest the West Midlands; behilde is not in the Atlas's County Dictionary, but related forms are East or West Midland. On the other hand, alongside the " d o m i n a n t " how we find the minor variants hov (in 11.97, 98 and 225 only), hou, Äowjand howe. Of these hov is the least usual in Middle English generally; the Atlas records it as a minor variant only in a few

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manuscripts from Lancashire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, and Shropshire. Hou is less rare, and is found in a fair number of texts from the north and the Midlands. On some matters, the Atlas can give us no help. A number of items are surveyed only in its "northern" or in its "southern" corpus, which makes it impossible for us to see whether such items as gart (12 occurrences in our poem, all alliterating) extend any further south than Shropshire. Fortunately the MED is here more enlightening. On herre 'higher', we have also seen the evidence of the Atlas to be incomplete. On several other striking forms which occur as minority variants in the manuscript, we find nothing at all in the Atlas; such forms as yerwe, yurjth, yurjh, yrouj, jourh 'through', eijyen, eyijen 'eyes', and even forms which occur with some frequency in our text such as heijh 'high' and youjh 'though' with their characteristic -jh graphs, cannot be found in the Atlas's, County Dictionary. Apparently some of the spellings which the scribe of our manuscript used were fairly exceptional. It is time to sum up. We have seen that the language of the scribe who wrote the manuscript which has come down to us can be localized somewhere in East Anglia. The dialect of the author of the poem was found to belong most probably to southern Worcestershire or to Warwickshire. Yet the text continues to contain features which are puzzling, some of which might perhaps belong to a third dialectal layer. The last word has by no means been said on the subject of the language of William of Palerne; it may even be doubted whether it will ever be possible to unravel the mixture of dialects satisfactorily. Even the admirable Atlas, despite the — sometimes bewildering — wealth of information that it contains, cannot answer all our questions. 4

Notes 1. The form bene also occurs as the inf. (25 x) or past participle (4 x), invariably at the end of the line. 2. One of the points on which these methods differ is their use of purely graphic data (as in the Atlas) or of a phonic interpretation of the evidence (as in Samuels 1985). In this paper I leave the question of graphic vs. phonic data, on which see Fisiak (1982), aside. 3. On h- variation in some East Midland texts, see Milroy (1983). 4. I would like to thank Michael Benskin for his comments on an earlier version of this paper, and my fellow members of the 1988 Conference on Historical Linguistics

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and Philology at Btazejewko for their contributions to the discussion following its presentation. Of course, I am alone responsible for the opinions expressed here and for any errors that remain.

References Benskin, Michael 1982 "The letters ) and in later Middle English, and some related matters", Journal of the Society of Archivists 7: 13 — 30. Benskin, Michael —Margaret Laing 1981 "Translations and Mischsprachen in Middle English manuscripts", in: M. Benskin —Μ. L. Samuels (eds.), So meny people longages and tonges. Philological essays in Scots and mediaeval English presented to Angus Mcintosh (Edinburgh: Michael Benskin & M. L. Samuels), 55 — 106. Bunt, Gerrit Η. V. 1984 "Patron, author and audience in a fourteenth-century English alliterative poem", in: M. Gosman —J. van Os (eds.), Non Nova, sed Nove, Melanges de civilisation medievale dedies ά Willem Noomen (Mediaevalia Groningana, V) (Groningen: Bouma's Boekhuis), 25 — 36. 1985 (ed.) William of Palerne, an alliterative romance (Mediaevalia Groningana, VI) (Groningen: Bouma's Boekhuis). Dobson, E. J. 1976 The origins of Ancrene Wisse (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Dunn, Charles W. 1967 "Romances derived from English legends", in: J. Burke Severs (ed.), A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050 — 1500. 1, 1: Romances (New Haven, Conn.: The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences), 17-37. Fisiak, Jacek 1982 "Isophones or isographs? A problem in historical dialectology", in: John Anderson (ed.), Language form and linguistic variation: Papers dedicated to Angus Mcintosh (Amsterdam —Philadelphia: Benjamins), 117 — 128. 1983 "English dialects in the fifteenth century: Some observations concerning the shift of isoglosses", Folia Linguistica Historica 4: 195 — 217. 1984 "The voicing of initial fricatives in Middle English", Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 17: 3 — 16. Hussey, S. S. 1965 "Langland's reading of alliterative poetry", Modern Language Review 60: 163-170. Kaiser, Rolf 1937 Zur Geographie des mittelenglischen Wortschatzes (Palaestra, 205) (Leipzig: Mayer & Müller), [reprinted New York/London: Johnson Reprint Company, 1970], Lawton, David A. 1980 "Middle English unrhymed alliterative poetry and the South English Legendary", English Studies 61: 3 9 0 - 3 9 6 .

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Mcintosh, Angus —Μ. L. Samuels — Michael Benskin — Margaret Laing —Keith Williamson 1986 A linguistic atlas of Late Mediaeval English, 1 —4 (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press). Milroy, Jim 1983 "On the sociolinguistic history of /h/-dropping in English", in: Hans Frede Nielsen et al. (eds.), Current Topics in English Historical Linguistics (Proceedings of the Second International Conference on English Historical Linguistics Held at Odense University 13 — 15 April, 1981) (Odense University Studies in English, 4) (Odense: Odense University Press), 37 — 53. Poussa, Patricia 1985 "A Note on the Voicing of Initial Fricatives in Middle English", in: Roger Eaton et al. (eds.), Papers from the 4th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Amsterdam, 10—13 April, 1985 (Amsterdam — Philadelphia: Benjamins), 235 — 252. Samuels, M. L. 1963 "Some applications of Middle English dialectology", English Studies 44: 81-94. 1985 "Langland's dialect", Medium sEvum 54: 232-247. Schumacher, Karl 1914 Studien über den Stabreim in der mittelenglischen Alliterationsdichtung (Bonner Studien zur englischen Philologie, XI) (Bonn: Peter Hanstein). Turville-Petre, Thorlac 1974 "Humphrey de Bohun and William of Palerne", Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 75: 250-252. 1977 The alliterative revival (Cambridge and Totowa: D. S. Brewer/Rowman & Littlefield).

LYLE CAMPBELL

Philological studies and Mayan languages

0. Introduction Many non-specialists are surprised to find out that a number of American Indian languages have abundant written attestations earlier than those for several European languages. The earliest American Indian documents coincide in time roughly with those of a number of European languages, e.g., Latvian 1531, Finnish 1543, etc. Shortly after the Spanish Conquest (1520), material written in Spanish orthography began to appear in dictionaries, grammars, religious literature, land claims, and native histories, representing Araucanian, Aymara, Cakchiquel, Chiapanec, Chibcha (Musica), Cholti, Guarani, Huastec, Kekchi, Mam, Mixtec, Nahuatl, Otomi, Pokomam, Pokomchi, Quechua, Quiche, Tarahumara, Tarascan, Timucua, Tupi, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Yucatec Maya, Zapotec, etc. The first grammars of American Indian languages were not significantly later than the first for European languages; for example, we can contrast the early Mayan grammars of Cakchiquel 1550, Quiche 1550, Kekchi 1554, Huastec 1560, Tzeltal 1560, 1571, Mam 1644, Pokomchi 1648, Yucatec Maya 1684, Cholti 1685, and Tzotzil 1688 (cf. Campbell, Ventur et al. 1978) with the earliest for European languages, i.e., German 1573, Dutch 1584, English 1586, Danish 1688, Russian 1696, and Swedish 1696 (Rowe 1974). By the end of the sixteenth century, according to Rowe (1974: 372) there were 22 languages for which grammars had been written (recall that Nebrija's [1492] grammar of Spanish was the first grammar of a non-Latin, non-Greek European language); of these, six were of American Indian languages. By the end of the seventeenth century, Rowe finds an additional 41 languages with grammars, of which 15 are of American Indian languages.1 Even more impressive to some is the fact that several Mesoamerican languages employed well-developed pre-Columbian writing systems,

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beginning at least as early as 600 B. C. Decipherment efforts in Mayan hieroglyphic writing have reached a very advanced stage, and the glyphs now also offer a rich source of very early Mayan linguistic data, beginning ca. 250 A. D. In this paper, I will employ some of the abundant earlier documents written in or about Mayan languages, including some instances from the hieroglyphs, to investigate philologically some changes in these languages. It will be seen that these philologically documented changes have implications for claims about scribal practice, for subgrouping (classification), for clarifying the causes of certain grammatical changes, for determining the ultimate number of segments to be reconstructed in the proto-language, for borrowed sound changes and phonological rules, for the linguistic identity of extinct language varieties, and for the historical interpretation of many other changes in the Mayan languages. Given the number of languages, the abundance of sources, and the amount of documentary material in each, it will be impractical to present any detail about the resources for each language considered, and I will, therefore, concentrate only on the attested changes themselves. (For more general information on the Mayan family, see Campb e l l - K a u f m a n 1985.)

1. Yucatec Maya Several changes are documented in Yucatec Maya (cf. McQuown 1967; Smailus 1977). To take just one example, Proto-Mayan had a contrast between *x [velar fricative] and *h [glottal fricative], which has been lost in modern Yucatec due to merger (*x > h). Nevertheless, colonial sources attest that the contrast survived at least until after the Conquest. For example, in the Motul Dictionary (Ciudal Real 1984 [c. 1590]), both sounds are written after the Latin model (/x/ had not yet developed in Spanish; the change of s > χ occurred ca. 1700), but were treated differently in the dictionary, under two different sections, one called Η rezia 'loud H' (from Proto-Mayan [henceforth PM] *jc), the other Η simple 'simple H' (from PM *h). The latter was

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introduced as "De los que comienpan en Η simple, que hiere muy poco y aun se pierde en muchos, quando se les anteponen pronombres" [On those which begin in simple H, which wound ([sound strong]) very little and are even lost in many [words] when they are preceded by pronouns] (Ciudad Real 1984: 202v). Some illustrative entries under these two "A" sounds are: Η simple

(
tan + d-Verb > nd-Verb > («-Verb in some dialects) tan + &-Verb > tan + g-Verb > ng-Verb > ((n)y-Verb in some dialects) That is, the t- and k- aspect markers were voiced after the final -n of the tan particle, which itself was cliticized to the verb; the resulting abbreviated forms were ultimately grammaticized as present-tense markers, nd- or n- and ng-, ny-, or y. The old completive aspect marker, s-, was left with the meaning 'past', since actions that are completed typically occur in the past. The former incompletive k- with no particle came to be reinterpreted as 'remote past' (from '[was] on-going action' to 'remote past action'). With only modern Cakchiquel information and comparisons from related languages, one could not completely recover this sequence of changes or understand how an aspect system so typical of Mayan languages came to be transformed into the Cakchiquel tense system.

5. Quichean and Mamean A particularly interesting change, which is understood fully only through philological investigation, involves the diffusion of a phonological rule (also a sound change) which crosscuts the dialects of a number of Quichean and Mamean languages (for details, see Campbell 1974, 1977, 1978). The most basic form of this borrowed rule palatal-

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Map 1. Distribution of velar stops in modern Quichean languages

izes velar stops before a non-round vowel and a following uvular stop (/q, q'/) or fricative (x), e.g.: nonround V This had previously been reported as a Proto-Quichean rule (Grimes 1969), but documents show its later diffusion across dialects of Quichean languages (see Map 1). Earlier sources of Cakchiquel show no palatalization. Solana's dictionary (mid 1500s) [note: modern equivalents from western dialects, which do palatalize]:2 4ak 'flea' cak 'red' queh 'deer' icas 'sling' rochoch queh 'stable'

[ik'aq; modern k'yaq] [/kaq; modern kyaq] [ke:x\ modern kye:x 'horse'] [ikaqmodern ikyaq'\ [r-oco:c ke:x 'its-house horse']

Varela's dictionary (c. 1600, based on Betanzos' lost Arte de la lengua de Guatemala c. 1545): icah 'axe' icas 'sling'

[ikax; modern ikyax] [ikaq'\ modern ikyaq']

Philological studies and Mayan languages 93 queh 'deer' x4ak 'fingernails'

[ke:x; modern kye:x 'horse'] [isk'aq; modern isk'yaq]

Coto's dictionary (ca. 1651): cae 'guava' cak 'red' 4ak 'flea' icae 'sling' queh 'deer'

[ikaq'; modern ikyaq' ] [kaq; modern kyaq] [k'aq; modern k'yaq] [ikaq'; modern ikyaq'] [ke:x; modern kye:x]

Palatalization shows up for the first time in the 1704 dictionary by Pantaleon de Guzman: yrnh 'axe' yx4ak 'fingernails' yeas 'sling' 4ak 'flea' quieh 'deer, horse' mama quieh 'horse'

[ikax; modern ikyax] [isk'aq; modern isk'yaq] [ikaq'; modern ikyaq'] [k'aq; modern k'yaq] [ke:x; modern kye:x 'horse']

For the situation in Quiche is equivalent. Vico (c. 1550) had: cas 'guava' cak 'red' yeah 'axe' ycae 'sling'

[ikaq'; modern ikyaq'] [kaq; modern kyaq] [ikax; modern ikyax] [ikaq'; modern ikyaq']

Basseta (1690) has no palatalized forms, though; it may have been copied from older dictionaries, or it may represent the Quiche of Rabinal and Cubulco (mentioned in the dictionary), which still today lack velar palatalization. He lists: cae 'flea' cae 'red' rochoch queh 'stable'

[k'aq; modern k'yaq] [kaq; modern kyaq] [r-oco:c ke:x 'its-house horse']

However, Dürr (1987: 47) found four cases of quieh 'deer', palatalized (i.e. [kye:x]), compared with 20 of queh, non-palatalized ([ke:x]), in the Quiche text of the Popol Vuh, recopied and translated by Ximenez in c. 1703, and the 1787 Quiche dictionary of an anonymous Franciscan had similar examples of palatalization: yeah 'axe' 4ak 'red'

[ikax; modern ikyax] [k'aq; modern k'yaq]

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[r-oco:c kye:x 'its-house horse'] [cf. kye.x 'horse']

These sources show that Cakchiquel and Quiche did not undergo palatalization of velars until quite late. However, the Reynoso (1644) dictionary of Mam shows that the change was already quite advanced in Mam at a time before it was established in Cakchiquel and Quiche. Some examples are: kiak 'flea' kiahe 'four' kiakik 'wind' kiahol 'son' kiah 'flour' cheh 'horse'

[modern [modern [modern [modern [modern [modern

k'yaq] kya:x~] kyq'i:q'\ k'ya:x(o:)l\ k'yax] ce:x, kye:x]

The modern distribution of the palatalization rule is as follows (see M a p 1): Quichean Cakchiquel Tzutujil Sacapultec Sipacapefio Quiche Pokomchi

APPLIES

DOES N O T APPLY

Western dialects All dialects All All Southwestern

Eastern dialects N o dialects None None Cubulco, Cuyotenango, San Miguel Chicaj Tactic, Tucurü, Valparaiso

Pokomam

San Cristobal Belejü Palin

Kekchi

None

Mixco, Chinautla, San Luis Jilotepeque All

Mamean Mam Aguacatec Teco Ixil

All All All None

Does not apply

The Quichean documentation (Cakchiquel and Quiche) shows that the rule was not in force in Proto-Quichean times. The early Mam documentation adds support to the conclusion that the rule originated

Philological studies and Mayan languages 95 in Mamean and spread to adjacent dialects of Quichean languages. The geographical distribution with palatalization only in those Quichean dialects which are adjacent to Mamean territory further supports this view. Thus, the facts converge to show that the phonological rule (and sound change) of velar palatalization was borrowed into these dialects, beginning approximately 1700. (For a philologically documented grammatical change involving Mamean polite vs. familiar second person pronominal affixes, see Robertson 1987.)

6. Pokomam, Pokomchi, and Kekchi Colonial works on Pokomam and Pokomchi, two closely related languages of the Quichean subgroup, show that they had not yet undergone fully the change of *ts to s, though the change was in progress at the time of the earliest attestations. Thus, in the Zufiiga (c. 1608) Pokomchi dictionary (of San Cristobal) we find entries such as: azbez, atzbez; vatz, vaz 'older brother' (modern (w-)as '(my-)older brother' (PM *ats 'elder brother') azeh, azih, atzih, atzeh 'hermanear, tomar un hermano mayor' [to treat as a brother, to take an older brother] Of these, Züfiiga said: "some say it with tz atzeh, and others with only z, azeh. azih, or atzih; say it as you please. Most say azeh, with z, and some, with /z". azeel 'scoff [burla]' zelah, tzelah 'to laugh' tzeel, zeel 'laugh' (PM *tse?l 'laugh') litzlotic, lizlotic ("better with tz") 'sparkle' tzab, or more common zab 'addition, balancing weight' tzinuh, "more common than" zinuh 'oak' tzototzic, zotozic ("better the latter") 'round, circular, like a rainbow' tzub, zub ("zub is better") 'the profit from what is sold' Moran's (c. 1720) dictionary of Pokomam (of Amatitlan) was prepared by copying Züniga's dictionary, noting the differences between his

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Amatitlan forms and those of Züniga's San Cristobal Pokomchi forms. Some entries are: azvez j atzvez 'elder brother' (PM *ats) ah zeel / ah tzeel 'laughter' (PM *tse? 'laugh') alaz / alatz 'descendents' ah itz 'witch' (modern ax is) Kekchi also underwent the change of *ts to s after the Conquest, but later than Pokomam and Pokomchi, from whence the change apparently diffused to Kekchi. The change apparently was not completed in Kekchi, although Kekchi has mainly 5 as the reflex of PM *ts. In the dictionary fragment (ca. 1680; cf. Freeze 1975) and in Morales (1741), forms with /ts/ are attested, though the change had already begun, e. g.: Morales (1741) tzum 'companion' (modern sum) tzuc 'gnat' (modern suq) tzimaj 'bow, arrow' (modern simax) tzununk, sununk 'smell' (modern sunu[:]nk) Vocabulary fragment (c. 1680, Lanquin dialect?): vaz 'elder brother' (modern w-as 'my-brother' < *ats) uz 'good' (wi < *uts) The philological evidence that the *ts to s change in these three languages, Pokomam, Pokomchi, and Kekchi, took place after the Conquest, in relatively recent times, has had important consequences for Mayan subgrouping. Several scholars had previously grouped Pokomam-Pokomchi and Kekchi together as a single subgroup, apparently basing their conclusion largely on the innovation of *ts to s, assumed to be shared by these languages. However, since the postConquest writings demonstrate that the change was not a shared innovation, but was diffused after they had split up into separate languages, the change no longer constitutes evidence for a closer classification. In fact, it turns out that Kekchi is the remotest of the Quichean languages, and that Pokomam-Pokomchi is more closely related to Quiche proper than to Kekchi (for details see Campbell 1973, 1977). Another attested Kekchi change involves the third person possessive prefix, which in modern Kekchi is s- before consonant-initial noun

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roots, rather different from Kekchi's close relatives, which have reflexes of u-. The form in colonial times was /i—/ « y - , i->), an attested intermediate stage between PM *u-, Proto-Quichean *u-, and modern Kekchi £-. Some examples from the Vocabulary fragment (Freeze 1975) are: ybehen ναεη 'knee' (modern s-b'e:n w-aq 'my knee', literally 'its-top my-leg') y mamal vusm 'thumb' [literally 'its-grandfather my-hand'] (modern s-mama?il r-u?ux uq' [literally 'its-grandfather its-point hand']) ypeten xox 'the scab of a pimple' [literally its-roundness pimple] ypöp 'the leaves that they throw on the opening of a trap to hide it' (cf. modern s-po:p 'its-mat')

7. The testimony of Mayan hieroglyphic writing

The study of Mayan hieroglyphic writing has progressed to such a level that it is now possible to begin to use the glyphic texts philologically to document older stages of the language. This system of writing is too complex for more than a brief illustration here (cf. Justeson — Campbell 1984 for more details). The principal language of the older texts (ca. 250 A.D.—900 A.D.) was Cholan, and the glyphic texts attest that it had VOS word order, split ergativity based on aspect, and had already undergone several sound changes since Proto-Mayan. I will illustrate just one, *k > c in Cholan. Mayan glyphic signs are of various sorts, some logographs (representing whole morphemes), some used rebus style (employing a depiction of something for another word that sounds like it, e. g., a picture of an "eye" to represent "I" in English), and some phonetic (actually syllabic with the value CV). The rebus of a small snake is used to represent "distance" with a date, i.e., 'it was some much time since/from ...'. In Choi 'snake' is can, 'from' is ca9an, hence the rebus depiction of 'snake' (can) for 'from' (ca9an): Proto-Mayan had *ka:n (cf. Yucatec kä:ri) 'snake'; other languages lack cognates of ca9an 'from'. Since the hieroglyphic rebus principle works only with identical initial consonants, the change from *k to c must have already taken place by this time. A form with k (as in *ka:n) could not have been employed in a rebus to signal a form

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with c (as in ca9an). Thus we document the early age of the *k to c change, at least earlier than the Classic Mayan documents (ninth century A. D.) containing these rebus usages. Another instance involves the hieroglyphic spelling of Chac, the rain god, Cholan /cahk/ from PM *kahoq 'thunder, rain storm'. The name is spelled with the syllabic signs /ca/ + /ki/, where the final vowel is "silent" (has no function), the system for spelling monosyllabic forms of CVC shape with two signs whose values are CV:

Since the sign for ca has no instances of substitution for /ka/ (or any /kV/), the change from PM *k to Cholan c had to have been completed before this glyphic representation of the name. (For details on these readings, see Campbell 1984; Fox —Justeson 1984.)

8. Coxoh Coxoh has been something of a mystery language. In early colonial times several towns of Chiapas (Aquespala, Coapa, Coneta, Escuintenango, etc.) were identified with a language called Coxoh (Coxoc, Coxog, Coxogh, Coxhog, Coxot, Cochog); afterwards, these towns lost their population, due largely to disease, and the language disappeared, leaving no records. While there have been many opinions concerning its possible identification, an extensive recent investigation of the geographical, historical, and linguistic information available has yielded a very strong candidate: the Southeastern dialect of Tzeltal, a recently discovered quite divergent variety of Tzeltal, moribund but still spoken in adjacent territory, which had a different political administration in colonial times from other Tzeltal communities (see Campbell — Gardner 1988). Some of the philological evidence for this identification follows.

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1) The Comitan Libro de Bautismos. The record of baptisms from the Comitan administrative center, beginning 1569, has entries in Tzeltal, e. g. [y-unin] 'his/her child', (snichan) [s-nican] 'his son (of a man)', etc. The earlier personal names of this book were Mayan calendrical names, a person being named for the day upon which he or she was born; the calendric personal names from towns identified as Coxoh were the same as those based on the Tzeltal calendar; they were exactly the same as those given people from towns known to have spoken Tzeltal. For example, some Coapa names are: xuctzanab laghun (torn) xbalumul Juana xoeb chanix xunvota chabin

[s-huk-tsanab'] [laxun] [s-b'alun-mul] [s-hoW] [can-is] [s-hun-wo 9 tan] [cab'in]

'female-seven-Tzanab' 'ten' 'female-nine-M ul' 'female-five' 'four Ix[Jaguar]' 'female-one-Wo?tan[Heart]' 'Chabin'

2) Coxoh forms in colonial documents. While nothing written in or on the Coxoh language has survived, two Coxoh tree names were recorded. Ponce (1948 [1586]: 18) described the trees called pit, today called guanacaste in Spanish, the "ear pod tree" (Enterolobium cyclocarpum); it bears the same name in Tzeltal-Tzotzil, pit (cf. Yucatec pic). The second is found in a boundary-dispute document now in the Archivo General de Centro America in Guatemala (document AGCA Al.45.[1741]).2279 —2316), dealing with Escuintenango, which speaks of a "cross in a small tree which they call in the language of the natives chit, and another large tree has the same name". The Tzeltal-Tzotzil name is cit (Xylosma albidum), of which there are several species. 3) Place names, (a) The Ara Tzeltal dictionary (1571: 145 — 146) gives the native name of Escuintenango as , presumably [k(')osaxaw], where k'os means 'youngest son' and axaw is 'lord'. This would appear to be the origin of the name Coxoh, which parallels names for other ethnic groups, e.g., Mam 'grandfather or grandson'; Quelen, Quelem, colonial name of Tzeltal, 'boys'; Pipil 'boys' or 'lords'. (b) In another document (AGCA A1.45.[1741].2279 —2316) concerning a border dispute between Escuintenango (Coxoh) and Comalapa (Chicomuceltec, of the very divergent Huastecan subgroup) we find, "baja a un paraje q llaman ztonil yslabon que quiere decir piedra de eslabon"

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[one goes down to a hamlet that they call ztonil yslabon which means 'flintstone']. Yslabon is borrowed from Spanish eslabon, but ztonil is Tzeltal s-ton-il 'its-stone-Possessed'. (c) In the same document is Canchab "que quiere decir miel" [which means 'honey']; cf. Tzeltal k'an-cab' 'yellow honey'. (d) In another land-dispute document (AGCA A1.45.[1742].22802316) involving Escuintenango and Comalapa, we find a small river named Cozhuc, Cozhogh 'a lake and cave', and Coxhogh or Cozoch 'a hamlet'; all are suggestive of Coxoh. In short, such philological evidence gives us faith in the linguistic identification of Coxoh with Southeastern Tzeltal. (For details, see Campbell-Gardner 1988.)

9. Scribal practice While the history of linguistics is checkered with a diversity of opinions concerning the relation of scribal practice to linguistic theory, the scribal practice in some Mayan languages strains nearly all claims. For example, King (1969: 208 — 209) thought scribes would invent writing systems which represent underlying forms rather directly, i.e., the morphophonemic level. Others had thought scribes would choose a traditional phonemic level with which to represent their languages (e.g., Twaddell 1963 [1938]; cf. also Stockwell - Barritt 1961). To the discomfort of any holding the underlying form or morphophonemic theory of scribal practice, Quichean scribes created no morphophonemic symbols, though they did violate this assumption by writing with essentially autonomous or traditional phonemic units, e.g.: sequences of η + ρ or b' were most often written mp and mb', showing the results of the nasal assimilation rule, as in: tzapim balam 'cornered jaguar' (tzapi-n 'cornered') tzapin zotz 'cornered bat' (Quiche of the Popol Vuh (c. 1703); cf. Dürr 1987: 52) However, supporters of the view that scribes write in autonomous or traditional phonemes will also not find solace in Quichean practice, since some of their conventions represent allophonic (subphonemic),

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noncontrastive phonetic variants. For example, Quiche has an allophonic rule that devoices final sonorants: 1 r w y

L R W Y

ak'a.L 'child', ak'al-a:b' 'children' q'oR 'lazy', q'or-i:b' 'the lazy ones' te: W 'cold', tew-i:r 'become cold' k'aY 'to sell', k'ay-is 'be sold!'

Early Quichean scribes represented voiceless / ([L]) as and w ([W]) as , e. g. (kahaualh) [qaxawa:L] 'our lord' and (vleuh) [ule:W] 'land'. The graphemic representation of these phonetically nondistinctive, noncontrastive sounds run counter to all claims about scribal practice (cf. Campbell 1977: 120-121).

10. Conclusions The contribution of the philological investigation of Mayan languages has been seen in (a) the documentation of former contrasts now lost, (b) evidence for determining the number and form of Proto-Mayan phonological segments, (c) establishing that phonological rules and sound changes can and have diffused across language boundaries, (d) confirming correct subgrouping and distinguishing borrowed from shared innovations, (e) in assessing the relationship of scribal practice to theoretical claims, (f) for identifying now extinct languages, and (g) for establishing the age of changes. In short, the rewards to the historical linguist who exploits the philological resources in Mayan languages are great.

Notes 1. Some of the research upon which this paper is based was made possible by National Science Foundation Grant BNS 84-19143. Opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. I thank them for their support. I also thank the Brigham Young University Library for access to the documents of the Gates collection. Abbreviations used are:

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Asp Aspect Erg Ergative (pronominal prefix) PM Proto-Mayan 1 First person pronoun The Mayan family consists of 31 languages spoken in Guatemala, southern Mexico, and Belize. The most widely accepted classification is: Huastecan: Huastec, Chicomuceltec [extinct] Yucatecan: Yucatec, Lacandon; Mopan, Itza Cholan-Tzeltalan (or Greater Tzeltalan): Cholan: Choi, Chontal; Chord, Cholti [extinct] Tzeltalan: Tzeltal, Tzotzil Kanjobalan-Chujean (or Greater Kanjobalan): Kanjobalan: Kanjobal, Acatec, Jacaltec; Motocintlec (and Tuzantec) Chujean: Chuj, Tojolabal Quichean-Mamean (or Eastern Mayan): Quichean: Kekchi; Uspantec; Pokomchi, Pokomam; Quiche, Cakchiquel, Tzutujil, Sacapultec, Sipacapeno Mamean: Teco, Mam; Aguacatec, Ixil (cf. Campbell —Kaufman 1985). 2. Special non-Spanish orthographic symbols were invented for sounds not found in Spanish or Latin (especially glottalized obstruents); their origin is attributed to Francisco de la Parra, who wrote Vocabulario trilingüe Guatemalteco between 1544 — 1560, now lost. These were: 'tresillo' for /q'/ (glottalized uvular stop); 'cuatrillo' for /k'/ (glottalized velar stop), 'con coma' for /ts'/ (glottalized alveolar affricate), and e gyleful enemye .. slef> by gile of venemes, perfite persuaciouns, and be gileful counsailes.

It must be significant that the badness of the counsailes has to be brought out by the adjective gileful, while persuaciouns is accompanied by a non-evaluative adjective: persuaciouns seem to be bad enough by themselves. More technically: negative evaluation appears to be "incorporated" into the meaning of persuacioun.13 However, I would not go so far as to say that badness is an inherent feature of persuacioun·, there are a number of instances in which the meaning is best interpreted as neutral. Both persuasible and persuasioun are almost exclusively confined to religious literature. Chaucer seems to be the only non-religious writer to use persuasioun, in the House of Fame, 1. 872. And perhaps significantly, his use of the word is probably ironic: The eagle has just finished a would-be scientific explanation of why and how all rumours gather in the House of Fame, and he wants to be admired for his feat of learning: (21)

"[···] How thinketh the my conclusyon?" [Quod he]. "A good persuasion," Quod I, "hyt is; and lyk to be Ryght so as thou hast preved me. (Robinson 1957: 290)

The eagle's annoyed reaction after this quotation shows clearly that a persuasion is somewhat less than a conclusyon. What is also remark-

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able is that Chaucer uses the word as a count noun, whereas dictionaries of contemporary English are unanimous in mentioning it only as a noncount noun. For Chaucer the word clearly is not reduced to its perlocutionary meaning, any more than it was for Shakespeare. Rather, it refers to the speech delivered by the eagle with the intention to persuade 14 (or rather: to convince). The use of persuasion as a count noun, however, seems to have persisted much longer in the language than the use of to persuade as a full accomplishment verb. The OED gives a large number of examples well into the nineteenth century. The two facts observed here (a tendency toward a pejorative meaning and the use as a count noun) are well brought out by the MED, which gives the meaning of persuasioun as "a persuasive or seductive argument, an inducement". Having discussed the noun at some length, our treatment of the verb can be very brief. As already mentioned, persuadere occurs seven times in the Vulgate, suadere 23 times. Suadere is always translated as counseilen, persuadere in the majority of cases. Both, but especially suadere, can mean 'advise' as well as 'persuade'; the element of disinterestedness, which differentiates between the two verbs in modern English, is non-distinctive in Middle English. Nor is either of the Latin verbs confined to the perlocutionary, "conclusive" meaning. This distinction between perlocutionary and illocutionary meaning is also absent from Middle English.

3.2. Old English Turning now to Old English, the only source that yields an appreciable number of instances is Bede. Although he uses persuadere only seven times and suadere only six times in the Historia Ecclesiastica (Jones 1929), the evidence of the Old English Bede is quite sufficient to show that there was no single translation equivalent for these verbs in Old English. Bede's Old English translators use spanan four times, Iceran six times, twice they use spanan ond Iceran. Other dyads are trymian ond Iceran and monian and Iceran. Clearly, the translators must have felt that none of the Old English words quite fitted the Latin. Spanan is by nature not a "speaking verb" at all. It may, for instance, be said of an eagle trying to induce his young ones to flying. In the dyad spanan translates the element "inducing to a course of action", while Iceran suggests that the inducing is done by means of the word. Lceran,

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however, lacks one feature which in all other equivalents of (per)suadere had always been present: that S has no authority over H. Other translation equivalents, such as trymian and monian, also suggest authority rather than the lack of it. It appears that this feature, which to us seems inextricably connected with Christian humility, was not particularly important to the Anglo-Saxon translators of Bede.15 That they were quite capable of noticing it when it was crucial, is borne out by two passages. One is to be found in St. Gregory's famous letter to St. Augustine (HE Book I, ch. 27). In his seventh Responsio the pope admonishes the bishop: (22)

Ipse autem extra auctoritatem propriam episcopos Galliarum iudicare non poteris; sed suadendo, blandiendo, bona quoque opera eorum imitationi monstrando, pravorum mentes ad sanctitatis studia reforma [...] 'But you yourself outside your own authority shall not be able to give judgment upon the bishops of France; but by persuading, by courteously entreating, by giving example also of good works for them to follow, reform to the pursuits of holiness the minds of the evil disposed.' (King 1930: I, 130/1)

In the Old English this becomes: (22')

Ne meaht Pu deman Gallia biscopas buton hiora agenra aldorlicnesse, ac Pu hy ä scealt libelice monigan [admonish them gently] 7 him ceteawan Pinra godra weorca onhyrenesse. (Miller 1890: I, 1, 74)

The other episode in which there can be no question of S's authority over Η is told in HE II, 12. Edwin, later king of Northumbria, lives in exile at the court of Redwald, king of East Anglia. Edwin has learnt that Redwald plans to kill him. In this desperate situation he has a vision of a man promising him to dissuade Redwald provided Edwin accept the Christian faith: (23)

'"Sed dicito mihi quid mercedis dare velis ei, [...] qui [...] Redualdo suadeat ut nec ipse tibi aliquid mali facial, nec [...]?" ' " B u t tell me, what reward would you give to him, [...], who should [...] persuade Redwald that neither he himself should do you any hurt nor [...]?"' (King 1930: 274/5)

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The Old English renders this as: (23')

"Ac gesaga me hwylce mede Pu wille syllan Pam men [...] Pcette [...] Rcedwalde on mod beswäpe, Pcet he noht lades ne

The translation of suadere by on mod beswapan has misled the dictionaries (both Bosworth - Toller 189816 and H a l l - M e r i t t 1960) into postulating 'to persuade' as one of the meanings of beswapan. The basic meaning of beswapan is 'to clothe, cover over, protect', the notion of 'persuading' arises only through the combination with on mod, a possible translation being 'and soften Redwald in his mind'.

4. Conclusions Having worked our way backwards through the history of English, we are now in a position to survey the evolution of the semantic contrasts which structure our semantic field today. Late Modern English persuade is characterized by (among other things) the following semantic features which will be indicated here very crudely (Table 7). Table 7. (i) (ϋ)

(iii) (iv) (v)

persuading = succeeding in persuasion: φ trying to persuade belief induced in Η less than absolute: φ convince belief/course of action induced by verbal means: φ convince S not disinterested in Η doing Α: φ advise S has no authority over Η: φ teach, command

These five contrasts have not existed at all times; they developed in the course of the history of English. Contrasts (i) —(iii) did not exist in Shakespeare's English, (iv) was unknown to the variety of Middle English which we studied, while (v) seems to have played no role in Old English. This development can be presented in tabular form (Table 8).

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Table 8. Distinctive features of Late Modern English persuade in the history of English. Verbal means

OE LME EModE LModE

+/ + + +

S no authoauthority over Η

+ + +

S not disinterested

+ +

Success try to)

Belief not absolute

+

+

Table 8 suggests an almost steady increase over the centuries of distinctive features. It presents a picture which is probably too neat for the philologist to feel comfortable with. But this is exactly as it should be according to Popper. A new hypothesis has emerged from the inspection of our buckets. We are now ready for the examination, or construction, of new buckets, for instance a corpus of non-literary Early Modern English. In doing so we will, I am sure, refine our hypotheses and improve our searchlights once more.17

Notes * The author wishes to thank Heike von Glischinski, Petra Beste, and Michael Duhme for help with searching concordances and texts. 1. It is of some interest in this context to follow the development from Quirk et al. (1972) to Quirk et al. (1985). The preface of the earlier version politely recognizes the importance of "the insights of several contemporary schools of linguistics", while drawing a pretty clear line between "linguists" and "grammarians" (p. vi). The 1985 preface carries no such acknowledgment, while the bulk of the work shows the traces of massive revision under the influence of linguistic theory. 2. Since there seems to be no way of testing the different degrees of certainty which form an important part of the difference in the meaning of the two verbs, this feature was omitted from the tables. This may serve as a wholesome reminder that some linguistic facts which are intuitively evident are very difficult to test. 3. The expression was suggested to me by Quirk et al. (1972: § 7.13), where it is used synonymously with "AFFECTED participant". A graphic term like "Victim" has its advantages in oral communication. Regrettably, it was dropped in Quirk et al. (1985: § 10.19, p. 741). 4. For reasons to do with passivization, Quirk et al. (1985: §§ 16.55, 59) classify the personal objects of persuade and convince as "indirect". This refinement appears unnecessary for our purposes. 5. For explanation of citation format see Bevan (1971: I, vi —xv). 6. In Shaw persuasive and convincing, persuading in Shakespeare. 7. persuasively.

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8. M M 4.1.52, 4.3.81; MV 3.2.321; H8 3.2.50; Oth 2.3.223, 5.2.16; Luc 130; 77V 4.3.14; R2 2.2.29, 5.5.35; Mac 2.3.33; Lr 2.4.113. The references are to Evans (1974). For explanation of sigla see Spevack (1968/80: IV, xii). 9. It is noteworthy that out of four occurrences three should be in lHenry VI. The questions of authorship which this may raise cannot of course be gone into in this paper. 10. Characteristically, the OED gives as its earliest example for this meaning a passage from Shakespeare which under our criteria must seem doubtful: Or that persuasion could but thus convince you That my integrity and truth to you Might be affronted; [...] (Tro 3.2.164) If "persuasion" is said to "convince", surely there can be no difference in cogency between the two verbs. 11. With instrumental: Mulcaster (1581, sense 1.1), Steele's Poet. Misc. (1714, sense I.l.d), T. Washington (1585, a "quasi-instrumental", sense 1.2: [He] vsed all the meanes he coulde to perswade me from it)\ with manner adverbial (all sense I.2.c): Sir J. Smyth (1590), Coleridge (1796 and 1801). 12. Persuasible here has of course the meaning 'capable of persuading', not 'capable of being persuaded'. In the former meaning it is now obsolete, having been replaced by persuasive, a word which was already known in scholastic Latin and was first recorded in English in 1589 (Greene's Menaphon). The lexical differentiation between the two meanings was not completed until the middle of the seventeenth century (if the OED can be trusted). 13. On the concept of "incorporation" cf. Gruber (1976: 9 — 36). 14. It is tempting to speculate that Chaucer was aware of the fact that to Aristotle persuasion was arguing from incomplete evidence, something which has to be done in political and juridical matters but is inappropriate in the sciences, with which the eagle claims to be dealing. 15. It is of some interest in this connection that the other Old English verb which also means 'to advise', rcedan, can equally be used of a Speaker in authority over the Hearer: Da Par ByrhtnoS ongan beornas trymian, rad and rcedde, rincum tcehte hu hi sceoldon standan and Pone stede healdan. (Scragg 1981: 57, 11. 1 7 - 1 9 ) 16. The error was corrected in Bosworth — Toller (1921), although the new meaning 'to sweep into the mind' sounds somewhat forced, too; especially since the passage in question, admittedly a figurative usage, is the only instance of 'to sweep'. The one attestation added by Campbell (1972) is also figurative. 17. After submitting this paper to the editor, I found the following note in The Observer (17 July, 1988, p. 32, column " W O R D S " by John Silverlight): C O N V I N C E / P E R S U A D E . For some time now readers have been asking about the use of 'convince' in the sense of 'persuade'. In 1983 Mr Τ. E. Ashton, of Penarth, in South Glamorgan, sent us an example cut from this paper: Robin Smyth, Our Man in Paris, had written about a French army officer who had failed 'to convince' a suspected terrorist 'to come out of hiding'. Now Miss E. Walker, of south-east London, asks for an explanation of this 'incorrect' usage.

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It appears to have come from the States. A definition of'convince' in the 1965 Webster's Collegiate, which is American, is 'to bring by argument to belief or assent'. The 1977 edition has '... to belief, consent or a course of action' (my [i.e., Silverlight's] italics). Longman's English has it with a note saying some people dislike it. Longman's Contemporary English (1987) [not the Langenscheidt/Longman version, H.J. D.] and Collins have it without comment. The earliest example in the files of the Oxford English Dictionaries, from the American Journal Word Study is: 'Another usage that jars me ... is that of "convince" in the sense of 'persuade'; e.g. 'She convinced him to stay (5 October 1958)' — that word 'jars' suggests that some Americans dislike it too. It amounts to a strengthening in sense of 'convince'. 'Persuade' derives from the Latin suadere, advise, recommend, exhort; 'convince' is from the tougher vincere, conquer. In St. Paul's resounding Ί am persuaded that neither death, nor life ... nor things present, nor things to come ... shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord' (Romans 38.8 [recte: 8.38 f.]), one might expect 'convinced' instead of 'persuaded' but that would be lame. For all its 'softer' derivation, 'persuaded' in that context is more convincing.

References Baber, Henry (ed.) 1810

The New Testament translated from the Latin by John Wiclif (London: Hamilton). Bevan, E. Dean 1971 A concordance to the plays and prefaces of Bernard Shaw, 10 vols. (Detroit: Gale Research). Bosworth, Joseph —T. Northcote Toller 1898 Anglo-Saxon dictionary16 (London: OUP). 1921 Anglo-Saxon dictionary. Supplement (London: OUP). Campbell, Alistair 1972 Enlarged addenda and corrigenda to the Supplement by T. Northcote Toller (Oxford: Clarendon). Evans, G. Blakemore (ed.) 1974 The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). Forshall, J. —Frederick Madden (edd.) 1850 Wycliffite versions of the Holy Bible (Oxford). Gruber, Jeffrey S. 1976 Lexical structures in syntax and semantics (North-Holland Linguistic Series 25) (Amsterdam etc.: North-Holland). Hall, John R. Clark - Herbert D. Meritt 1960 A concise Anglo-Saxon dictionary4 (Cambridge: CUP). Jones, Putnam Fennell 1929 A concordance to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Bede (Cambridge, Mass.). King, J. E. (ed. and trans.) 1930 Bedae Opera Historica. Ecclesiastical history of the English nation (= Loeb Classical Library) (London: Heinemann).

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Lindberg, Conrad (ed.) 1959/73 The earlier version of the Wycliffite Bible, 6 vols. (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell). Miller, Thomas (ed.) 1890 The Old English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical history of the English people ( = EETS, O. S. 95) (London: OUP). Peultier, P. P. 1939 Concordantiarum Universae Scripturae Sacrae Thesaurus 2 (Paris). Popper, Karl 1972 "The bucket and the searchlight: Two theories of knowledge", Objective Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon), 341 —361. Quirk, Randolph —Sidney Greenbaum — Geoffrey Leech —Jan Svartvik 1972 A grammar of contemporary English (London: Longman). 1985 A comprehensive grammar of English (London: Longman). Robinson, F. N. (ed.) 1957 The works of Geoffrey Chaucer2 (London: OUP). Scragg, D. G. (ed.) 1981 The battle of Maldon (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Shaw, George Bernard 1946/63 The standard edition of the works of Bernard Shaw, 36 vols. (London: Constable [repr.]). Spevack, Marvin 1968/80 A complete and systematic concordance to the works of Shakespeare, 9 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms). Vendler, Zeno 1974 "Verbs and Times", in: Alfred Schöpf (ed.), Der englische Aspekt (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft) [Originally published in The Philosophical Review 66 (1957), 143-160],

JAN T E R J E F A A R L U N D

Syntactic and pragmatic principles as arguments in the interpretation of runic inscriptions

1. Due to their antiquity, the interpretation of the oldest runic inscriptions in Ancient Nordic (approximately 200 — 750 AD) runs into several obstacles, such as uncertain readings of the actual runes and partially mutilated or even totally lost runes, on the one hand, and lack of knowledge of the society and culture that produced the inscriptions, on the other. The reason it has been at all possible to arrive at anything like a plausible and reasonable reading of most of the extant inscriptions, is that scholars have been able to combine insights from various disciplines, such as philology, archeology, and even geology. In addition, I believe that also such fields of research as syntax and pragmatics may serve as sources of arguments in the interpretation of inscriptions in the older runic alphabet. One case where syntactic arguments have been used, is in the interpretation of the inscription on the Eikeland buckle:

ek wiz I

wiwio

writu

i

runoz

Wi-N Wiwia-G/D write-lsg in runes-Α

asni dear-one-D 1

Traditionally, this inscription has been read as Ί , Wi, carve runes into (the buckle) for Wiwia, the loved one' (Liest0l 1965; Knirk 1981: 215). The problem is, however, that with this interpretation, this would be a sentence with the finite verb in third, non-final position. In wellattested older Germanic languages the finite verb could occupy one of three positions: first, second, or final. This is also a system inherited from Proto-Indo-European (Hopper 1975: 44f.; Braunmüller 1982). A third position with something following it would therefore be ungrammatical. On this basis, Gronvik (1976: 165) is forced to read the inscription as two separate sentences.

(a) ek wiz

wiwio

I, W.-N, W.-G/D Ί am Wiwia's Wi / I, Wi, am Wiwia's'

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Jan Ter je Faarlund

(b) writu i runoz asni write-lsg in runes-Α dear-one-D Ί carve the runes into (the buckle) for my loved one' This reading assumes that the grammar of Ancient Nordic allowed subjectless sentences, which are amply attested in all the older Germanic languages. In a more recent discussion of this inscription, Gronvik (1987: 55 — 57) reads (a) as an address formula, i. e., a nominal phrase rather than a sentence. The actual sentence then comprises only part (b) of the inscription. In this paper I will demonstrate how other syntactic and pragmatic principles can be applied to the interpretation of some of the older Runic Inscriptions. 2. The Stentoften inscription, (32) in the Appendix, 2 also seems to contain a sentence with the finite verb in an illegitimate position. The interesting part in this context is the first three lines of the main part of the inscription. There is general consensus in the runological literature as to the transliteration: niuhAborumz / niuhagestumz /

hApuwolAfzgAfj

When it comes to the actual reading of the lines there are several different proposals in the literature. This is not the place to get involved in a runological and paleographical debate about the correct reading. I will instead look at the syntactic implications of the various proposals. Marstrander (1953: 115-116) reads niu hAborumz niu hagestumz hApuwolAfz gaf jfara] nine high-sons-D nine high-guests-D H.-N gave year 'Hathuwolf gave a good year ( = harvest) to nine noble sons and to nine noble guests' The final rune is assumed to represent the Proto-Germanic jara 'year', which at the time of the inscription would have the form ar. Krause (1971: 164 — 165) reads niuhA borumz niuha gestumz and translates niuha as 'new'. Although this reading may be defended morphologically and paleographically, the order NP NP V NP is, as we have seen, syntactically deviant with the verb in third, non-final position. Another interpretation should therefore be sought. Antonsen (1968: 134, 1975: 85 — 87) takes up a proposal by Makaev (1965) and presents the following interpretation:

Syntactic

ni

uhA

borumz ni

not Uha-N sons-D

gAf

uha

and pragmatic

gestumz

principles

167

hApuwolAfz

not Uha-N guests-D H.-N

j

gave year 'Uha did not give good harvest to the sons or to the guests, but Hathuwolf did' If Antonsen's reading is correct, we have some interesting examples of the syntactic process of deletion in Ancient Nordic. If we fill in the deleted parts, we get three sentences, each complete with a finite verb and three nominal arguments. Assuming that the finite verb is in second position in all three sentences, they will be: ni [gaf] uha borumz far J ni [gaf] uha gestumz far] hafruwolafz gaf [borumz gestumz]

ar

There are three separate instances of deletion here: Deletion of the finite verb to the left, deletion of the direct object NP to the left, and deletion of the indirect object N P to the right. Naturally, the plausibility of Antonsen's interpretation depends on whether these processes can be motivated within syntactic theory and within the framework of what is otherwise known about the syntax of old Germanic languages. Let us first take a look at what seems to be the simplest instance, the deletion to the right of the dative NP. In the modern Germanic languages only subjects are deleted freely and regularly in conjoined sentences. (a) Het made a cake and [ — / , ate it (b) *He made a cakej and he ate [ — ], (c) *John sent hert a check and I gave [ — J, cash However, in older Germanic languages, deletion of other cases than the nominative in conjoined sentences is well attested, as shown by the following examples from Old Norse.

(a) pa

bra

hann sveröinu hart ok

titt

then struck he-N sword-D hard and often

ok

hljop [—] / stofuna

and ran

into the-room (N-N)

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Jan Ter je Faarlund

(b) pa let όδίηη bera inn / höllina then let Odin bring into the-hall sverö, ok varu [—] svä björt swords-A and were so bright (A-N) (c) siöan fluttu peir Porgils likit upp afterwards moved they Thorgils-N the corpse-Α up med änni ok grofu [—] par niör along the river and buried there down (A-A) (d) honum var fengin leynilega harpa, ok slo him-D was gotten secretly harp-N and struck hann [—] med tanum he with the-toes (N-A) (e) Einarr Pambarskelfir Einar Thambarskelfi ok med honum allr and with him all NiSaros Nidaros (D-A)

for med liki Magnüs konungs went with the corpse Magnus' King proendaherr ok fluttu [—] til Thronder-army and moved to

We may therefore be justified in assuming that the second occurrence of each of the conjoined dative phrases borumz and gestumz may have undergone a deletion process of this kind. The other two deletions are deletions to the left. There are basically two kinds of deletions to the left available in current syntactic theory: "gapping" and "right node raising". Gapping is deletion of a verb under identity with a verb in a conjoined sentence. An example would be the English sentence (b) below, derived by gapping from (a). The direction that the process of gapping takes, does not seem to be random. Ross (1970) has argued that it depends on the position of the verb. Compare the two possible kinds of gapping below, where only gapping to the right yields a grammatical sentence in English: (a) Mary went to England and Sue went to France (b) Mary went to England and Sue to France (c) *Mary to England and Sue went to France In a consistently verb-final language, such as Japanese, only gapping to the left is possible.

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169

(a) Taroo ga Amerika ni ik-i, Taroo TOP America D went Hanako ga Huransu ni itta Hanako T O P France D went 'Taroo went to America, and Hanako went to France' (b) * Taroo ga Amerika ni ik-i, Hanako ga Huransu ni (c) Taroo ga Amerika ni, Hanako ga Huransu ni, itta (ik-i and itta are forms of the same verb 'to go'.) To be sure, Kuno (1978: 132) states that Japanese lacks a rule of gapping, but it "has a process called Right-Node Raising, which extracts the rightmost common constituent from conjuncts". In that case (c) is an instance of right-node raising, not gapping. Right-node raising consists of the raising of the second of two identical right nodes in conjoined sentences, into a higher position, followed by the deletion of the two constituents in the individual sentences. A structure like (b) below would thus be derived from the structure underlying (a) by right-node raising. (a) John did not give us good advice, but Mary gave us good advice (b)[Not John — J [but Mary =,/ [gave us good advice]l One difference between gapping to the left and right-node raising is that the latter may involve other material than just the verb. Since the direct object ar is also deleted in the left conjuncts in the Stentoften inscription, gapping alone does not account for all the deletions in this sentence. On the other hand, if the deletion follows from rightnode raising, the finite verb gaf, and the direct object ar would have to be not only one constituent, but also adjacent at some level. If the verb is final in underlying structure, it might be adjacent to the direct object, but the question still remains whether the direct object and the verb are one constituent at any level of derivation. The Ancient Nordic runic material of course provides no basis for determining anything about the underlying sentence structure. If we look at later and better attested stages of Nordic, it still seems impossible to find any syntactic evidence for a constituent consisting exclusively of the main verb and its closest object NP. Even in contemporary Germanic languages there does not seem to be much evidence in favor of such a structure. In English, if the verb and the following object make up one constituent, it ought to be possible to delete them and leave the second object behind.

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John gave Mary a record and Paul *(gave her) a book. (The resulting sentence of course would be grammatical in a reading where Paul is the indirect object rather than the subject of the second conjunct.) There seems to be no evidence for a rule treating the verb and the direct object as one constituent in Ancient Nordic, and Antonsen's reading can therefore not be supported on syntactic grounds. Gronvik (1981: 143, 1984: 70) suggests that the final y'-rune may not represent another constituent in that sentence. He observes (personal communication) that since it is older than the regular α-rune used at the time, ^ , it might just serve as a word or sentence boundary, or marking the transition to the following line. Accordingly, Gronvik quotes the first part of the inscription as a verse: niu haborumz niu hagestumz Hapuwolafz gaf In that case we have a well-behaved verb-final sentence with an understood direct object. In a later work Gronvik offers a different interpretation by including the following line in the same sentence, and reading the φ as the word 'and' (Gronvik 1987: 129).

niu

hAborumz

niu

hagestumz

hApuwolafz gAf

nine high-sons-D nine high-guests-D H.-N

hAriwolAfz

eAk

busnu

hie

j

gave and

hidez

runono

H.-N consecrated order-D sanctuary-Α lair-A friends-G 'To nine high sons and to nine high guests Hathuwolf gave, and Hariwolf consecrated — according to the order — a sanctuary as a resting-place for friends' But now again we run into syntactic problems. Here there are two conjoined sentences, with different verbs and subjects, but with identical direct and indirect objects. The direct object (hie, with hidez runono as an apposition), has been deleted in the first conjunct, and the indirect object has been deleted in the second conjunct. This kind of "cross-deletion" seems rather unusual as a syntactic process. An English equivalent would be (b) from (a) below. (a) Mary sold us a piece of cake, but John gave us a piece of cake out of generosity. (b) *Mary sold us, but John gave a piece of cake out of generosity.

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171

Furthermore, we still have two constituents to the left of the finite verb, gAf. That means that it has to be in final position. However, the finite verb in the second conjunct, eAk, is in second position, followed both by an adverbial (busnu) and by the direct object. In other words, no known syntactic principles or rules of Germanic syntax would generate the surface structure of Gronvik's (1987) interpretation. His previous interpretation is so far the only one that can be defended on syntactic grounds. 3. The next inscription I want to look at, is the one found on the Vimose chape, (1) in the Appendix, a third-century inscription from Denmark. There are two sides, where the following runes can be read quite clearly:

With Marstrander's (1953: 38) spacing it can be transliterated as: A: mari hai ala B: makia Marstrander inserts a -d- in hai and interprets hadi (= handi) as the imperative singular of a verb meaning 'take in one's hands'. Mari (Old Norse mcer 'famed') is a proper name used of a sword, and ala (later Alii) is a man's name. mari hadi ala makia mari-A take ala-VOC sword-A 'Alii, take the sword Maer in your hands!' Krause (1971: 174) suggests that hai is misspelt for aih 'owns' and reads mari aih ala makia 'Alii owns Mari as his sword' Antonsen (1975: 3 2 - 3 3 ) , supported by Nielsen (1983: 29), reads the B-side first, and suggests that the Α-rune Ν should be read as Η d. Maridai is then read as one word, which could be the past tense of a verb meaning 'decorate': makija maridai ala sword-A decorated Alli-N

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Jan Terje Faarlund

The inversion of the two sides is possible only if the original side A starts with a verb. The reason is that the last word, ala, is uncontroversially a noun, and therefore the verb has to be either in first or second position. If Marstrander or Krause inverted the order of the two sides, they would end up with a sentence with two NPs in front of the finite verb. Nielsen says in support of Antonsen's reading that "this syntax [direct object —verb] seems more plausible than starting with the verb" (Nielsen 1983: 29, my translation, JTF). This is of course a very weak argument, since verb-initial declarative sentences were very common in all the older Germanic languages. A much better reason for reading makija first, is that this is the word referring to the artifact with the inscription on it. It is in other words thematic and carries given information. 4. The question of word order in Ancient Nordic is of course a highly problematic one. But along with other older Indo-European languages, it is considered a 'free word order" language. The notions "fixed" and "free" word order, when used about the sentence level, always refer to the relative order of constituents defined in terms of syntactic roles. Fixed word order thus means that the order of subject, object, and verb is always the same in a given sentence type. But, in principle, one could very well use the notion of word order about categories other than syntactic role, such as definiteness, semantic role, or pragmatic function. In this section, I will examine the position of sentence constituents other than the verb in Ancient Nordic to see to what extent the order might be determined by pragmatic factors. The result of such a study may not only have a bearing on the plausibility of the various readings of the Vimose chape discussed above, but also on the interpretation of other inscriptions. The following study is based on the extant corpus of 129 inscriptions in the older runic alphabet. Most of these are given in Krause (1971). In these inscriptions, there is a total of 69 sequences which can be interpreted as sentences or sentence fragments with more than one constituent. Of these, 49 have more than one sentence constituent in addition to the verb. In six of the sentences, one of the NPs is a predicate complement in the nominative. As such an NP is nonreferring, I assume that its position relative to another NP of the same case is determined by other principles than the ones that determine

Syntactic

and pragmatic

principles

173

the order of referring NPs. There are three subordinate sentences in the corpus (two of which are almost identical). Since, presumably, at least one N P is tied to the complementizer position in these sentences, they will not be included in the material. We are thus left with a total of 40 sentences with at least two referring constituents other than the verb. These are all listed in the Appendix. Since most of the sentences in the corpus are isolated utterances without a linguistic context, there is of course no basis for establishing text-linguistic rules for Ancient Nordic. Nevertheless, some of the inscriptions are long enough to include more than one sentence, and then certain sentence elements may refer to something which has been mentioned before in the same inscription. We may thus find NPs with an anaphoric reference. All the inscriptions have an additional situational or cultural context; some references are to natural and indispensable elements in the situation of writing or carving. Such elements have deictic reference. The kind of deictic elements often mentioned in the inscriptions are the runemaster, the person or "spirit" speaking through the runes, the object on which the runes are written, a picture on the same object, or the runes themselves. Another factor relevant to the word order, is empathy. Humans have a higher degree of empathy than inanimates, for example, and the speaker (first person) has the highest degree of empathy. On this basis it is possible to establish the following hierarchy: Reference-and-empathy hierarchy 1) Anaphoric reference: elements referring to entities mentioned in the previous context. 2) Higher empathy deictic reference: first person pronoun, NPs referring to the runemaster. 3) Low empathy deictic reference: elements referring to the runes, the stone or artifact, its location, a picture, etc. 4) All other elements. I will now test the following hypothesis against the material in the Ancient Nordic runic corpus: Functional-order hypothesis An element at level η on the reference-and-empathy hierarchy is not followed by another element belonging to level η-1. In the corpus there are altogether six instances of level-one elements. One of them, (7), is found in the Tune inscription:

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Jan Ter je Faarlund

falh woduride dedicated-lsg W.-D

staina stone-A

This sentence is the first one on side B, and should be read as a sequence to side A, (6),3 where Woduride is already mentioned. ek wiwaz after woduride I, W.-N, after W.-D

witandahalaiban bread-ward-D

worahto wrought

In (7) Woduride therefore follows immediately after the sentence initial verb. It precedes the level-three element staina. There are two occurrences of level-one elements in the Eggja inscription, (36) and (37): hin warp naseu wilz the-others-A threw death-sea-D W.-N made paim kaiba i bormopa wore them-D oarlocks-A in fatigued

huni mast-D

hin in the first sentence is preceded by the sentence hiu j?wer 'the family is shrinking'. The word hin 'other' presupposes something to which it is contrasted, and the previous mention of this (here 'family') makes 'other' anaphoric. Paim in the second sentence must refer to hin above. In the Möjbro inscription, (12), there is a name followed by a sentence starting with an adverbial: ana haha is slaginaz over (adv.) horse-N is slaughtered Gronvik (1987: 158) interprets this as meaning 'over the dead one', and it would then refer to the person whose name introduces the inscription, and thus be level one. In all of these, the level-one element comes first among the nonverbal elements. A typical level-two element is the first person singular pronoun. The word ek(a) occurs by itself as a complete NP only in one inscription, (9).

aih ek soman bi worumalaiba have I claim-Α with W.-D This is also the only inscription where it follows the verb. In all other inscriptions ek(a) is complemented by an appositional phrase, such as a name in (6) above from Tune, and in (5), (11), (13), and (26).

Syntactic and pragmatic principles

175

Other types of appositional complements are a patronymic in (10) ek frirbijaz, a name and a patronymic in (3) ek hlewagastiz holtijaz, the word erilaz in (20), and even both a name and erilaz in (21) uuigaz ek erilaz. All of these occur in first position in their respective sentences. The only apparent exception would be the sentence (34) from Björketorp.

hAidruno

ronu

fAlAhAk

bright-runes-G row-D commit-I

hAidera

ginArunAz

here

mighty-runes-A

But here the pronoun is cliticized to the verb: J'AlAh-Ak; it does not occupy a position of its own, and does not count as a separate NP in surface structure. Since ek is level two on the reference-and-empathy hierarchy, and since it always comes first, it is predicted that the sentences containing this pronoun do not contain an anaphoric element. This is also the case. The constituent consisting of a first person pronoun is either followed by a level-three or a level-four constituent. The Gallehus inscription, (3), is carved on a golden horn, and the word horna is therefore level three.

ek hlewagastiz holtijaz I,

H.-N

horna

tawido

(son) of Holt, horn-Α made

In sentence (6) from Tune above, the name woduride witandahalaihan is level four, since it refers to a third person. There are also level-three constituents following the ^-constituent in (5), (10), (20), (21), and (26), and a level-four constituent in (11). In (13) the word wraita may be interpreted as three or four. In (9) there are two level-four constituents. The runemaster does not always refer to himself by a pronoun, however. Many inscriptions start with a name in the nominative followed by a verb meaning 'write, carve, paint', or one meaning 'raise, erect'. Such a name must also be interpreted as an identification of the runemaster. Consider for example (2) Einang.

godagastiz runo (I) G.-N

faihido

rune-Α painted

We find the same type of nominative NP in (4), (16), (25), (29), and (31). In all of these inscriptions, the nominative N P is in first position. The other non-verbal elements in the sentences are level three. In the By inscription, (25), there is, in addition, a level-four dative phrase.

176

Jan Ter je Faarlund

hrozaz hrozez H.-N

orte

pat azina

ut

alaifu

(son) of Η. wrought this stone-Α out A.-D

If Gronvik's reading of (30) Setre is correct, we may have an instance of an N P referring to the addressee, which would also be deictic reference:

hAlmAz

mA

unA

Alu

na

Alu

nanA

leaning-girl-N must thrive all-Α reach all-Α enjoy 'If you, young girl, lie down, you will have a good time, you will be able to reach everything and enjoy everything' The reading of (27) Fonnäs is very uncertain, but if it is correct, it may be the grandmother speaking (either in reality or ritually through a near relative in her funeral; see discussion in Gronvik 1987: 46 f.):

iAz

AA

Arbe

bequeaths grandmother-N inheritance-Α

uhu young-woman-D

Several sentences have one level-three element and one level-four element; they are all in the order three —four. One example of such a sentence is the one we find in (1) Vimose chape, already discussed above. In (15) Etelhem, the clasp (level three) is referred to by a firstperson pronoun in the accusative.

mik

merila worta

me-A M.-N

made

Merila is the name of the person who made the clasp, but since it is not the "speaker", it is treated as a third person, level four. This also shows how the functional principle takes precedence over an ordering principle by case (which would predict nominative — accusative) or by semantic role (which would predict agent —patient). The same order is shown in (28) Strom, where an accusative patient precedes a nominative agent, because the accusative refers to the artifact, the whetstone itself.

wate hali

hino

horna

whet stone-Α this-A horn-A In sentence (22) from Eikeland, see above, both the adverbial i and the N P runoz are level three, and they are followed by asni which is four. A similar construction is (34) Björketorp (see above), where the

Syntactic and pragmatic principles

177

first N P is hAidruno ronu, which refers to the runes and therefore is level three. The last word, ginArunAz must be level four. In (8) Tune, (23) Noleby, (32) and (33) Stentoften (discussed in section 2), and in (35) Björketorp, all the NPs seem to belong to level four. There seem to be six counterexamples to the functional-order hypothesis in the corpus, but none of them are very serious, since they either have very uncertain interpretations, or the constituent order is accounted for by other principles. Two of the apparent counterexamples involve the placement of a level-one element, as in the second sentence (19) of the Ägedal inscription:

lid

tiade eli

flock-Α did

aiga i

tahe

the-fast-one-N have in yard

The word eli is interpreted by Gronvik (1987: 78) as meaning 'the fast one', and would thus refer to haha 'the horse' in (18) and be level one. The interpretation is, however, rather uncertain, and its position after a level-four element here may be an argument, although not a very strong one, against Gronvik's reading. On the other hand, the word order may be determined by metrical factors, which by the way Gronvik (1987: 79) uses as an argument in support of his reading. A similar counterexample may be found in the Noleby inscription (24):

tojeh

a unap

ou

help-and to happiness-Α young-woman-D

suhur

ah

su

sia

in-laws-A has she-N see 'and may one help the young woman to happiness; she has in-laws to visit' In the second sentence, the pronoun su most probably refers to ou in the previous sentence. It must therefore also be level one, but its position may be due to cliticization. Another counterexample is sentence (14) Amla:

... iz

hlaiwidaz par

... -N buried

here

The beginning of the sentence is lost, but the first word ends in I Τ iz. This would indicate a masculine noun in the nominative. In that

178

Jan Ter je

Faarlund

case it would be the name of the person who is buried there. Unless the person wrote his own burial inscription, it has to be a third person, level four. It is followed by the adverbial 'here', which is deictic, level three. The inscription is incomplete, however, and the reading is therefore very uncertain. Then there is sentence (18) from the Ägedal inscription.

wiz

aie

i

riod

iuhli afl haha

W.-N lead-SUBJ in grassland-D yule-strength-horse-A 'May Wi lead the horse full of Yule strength to pasture in the grassland' This may seem like a sentence containing only level-four elements, if it where not for the fact that it is inscribed on a bracteate where there is also a picture of a man and a horse. If the word haha is correctly interpreted as meaning 'horse', it would most likely be the horse in the picture, and therefore level three, which then follows riod, level four. There are of course several possibilities here. The word haha may not refer to the engraved horse, or the long and heavy constituent iuhli afl haha may have been placed at the end for rhythmic reasons. Finally there are two counterexamples in the Eggja inscription, (38) and (39).

ni

s solu

sot

uk

ni

sakse

stain

not is sun-D sought and not sword-D stone-A

skorin ni cut-Α

witi

maz [...] lagis

not seek-SUBJ man-N

bed-G

In the first sentence, the sun and the sword must belong to level four, whereas the stone is level three. In the second sentence, maz means 'anybody', and must be four, while lagis must refer to the ground where the stone is located, and is therefore deictic, level three. Most of the Eggja inscription, including this part, has a metrical form with alliteration (Gronvik 1985: 1 6 4 - 1 6 5 ) . The fact that the functional order is violated in this particular instance should therefore not be too disturbing. It should be kept in mind generally that counterexamples to functional principles are much less serious than counterexamples to syntactic rules, which then should be less readily accepted for metrical or other reasons (cf. the discussion of (32) from the Stentoften inscription in section 2).

Syntactic

and pragmatic

principles

179

The functional-order hypothesis seems to be generally supported by the extant runic material. To the extent that this material is at all representative, it may be concluded that in Ancient Nordic, being a "free word order" language with regard to grammatical roles and morphological case, a principle of functional order governs the distribution of sentence elements. 5. If such a principle operated in Ancient Nordic, it may be useful in the interpretation of some of the inscriptions. We have already discussed the Vimose chape, (1), and the results from the present study seem to support Antonsen's (1975) reading. Another type of doubtful interpretation is that where the transliteration itself is quite unproblematic, but where it may be difficult to interpret the actual content. Consider for example the Roes inscription, (40):

iu

fain

udz

rAk

horse-A this-A U.-N drove Who is this Udz who drove the horse? Is he identical with the one who made the inscription, or is the author referring to a different person? The inscription is on a stone where there is also a picture of a horse. This, together with the determiner pin 'this', shows that the first N P must belong to level three. If the name udz refers to the runemaster, it should be level two, and the order three —two would violate the functional order. On the basis of this hypothesis, it is more plausible that the runemaster is not just bragging about himself, but telling us about somebody else, since in that case the order will be two — four. 4 Consider now the traditional reading of the Tjurkö bracteate (Krause 1971: 168):

wurte

runoz

an walhakurne heldaz kunimudiu

wrought runes-Α on Welsh-corn

H.-N

K.-D

This sentence has two names at the end following two elements referring to the runes and to the artifact which are then level-three elements. But heldaz is nominative and the subject of wurte. It should therefore refer to the runemaster and thus be level two. Then this would be another counterexample. But Granvik (1987: 151 f.) defends a reading whereby heldaz kunimudiu is read separately as an introductory address formula, cf. (17) in the Appendix. The remaining sentence is now in

180

Jan Terje Faarlund

accordance with the functional-order principle, which then also supports Gronvik's interpretation. 6. As we have seen, syntactic and pragmatic principles may be taken into account in the interpretation of runic inscriptions from the Ancient Germanic period. A general Germanic constraint on verb positions rules out certain proposed readings of the Eikeland and Stentoften inscriptions. On the basis of the extant Ancient Nordic material it is possible to support a pragmatic principle of functional word order, which in turn supports certain interpretations of the Vimose chape, Roes, and Tjurkö inscriptions.

Appendix Corpus of sentences in the older runic alphabet For each sentence the name of the inscription (the geographic location of the find) is given with the approximate year of origin, then a transliteration of (the relevant part of) the inscription with appropriate spacing between the words, followed by a wordby-word translation, also indicating the case suffixes in the nouns. The numbers below each element indicate the position of that element on the reference-and-empathy hierarchy. The interpretations are from Krause (1971) except where another source is given. Vimose chape, 250

(1)

makija

maridai

ala

sword-A

decorated

Alli-N 4

3 (Antonsen 1975) Einang, 3 5 0 - 4 0 0

(2)

godagastiz

runo

faihido

(I) G.-N

rune-Α

painted

2

3

Gallehus, 400

(3)

ek hlewagastiz holtijaz

horna tawido

I, H.-N

horn-Α made

(son) of Holt,

3

2 Garbolle, 400

(4)

hagiradaz i

tawide

H.-N

in

made

2

3

Syntactic Rö, 400 (5)

ek hrazaz I,

satido staina

H.-N., set

ek wiwaz

after

I,

after W.-D

W.-N,

woduride

witandahalaiban

worahto

bread-ward-D

wrought

4

falh

woduride

staina

dedicated-lsg W.-D

stone-A

1 (8)

ana

3

2 (7)

prijoz

3

dohtriz

dalidun

arbija

three-N daughters-N prepared-nicely funeral-Α 4

4

arbijano inheritors-G (Grenvik 1981) Myklebostad, 400 (9) aih

ek soman

bi

worumalaiba

have I claim-Α with W.-D 2 4 4 (Host 1976) Barmen, 4 0 0 - 4 5 0 (10) ek pirbijaz I,

ru

(son) of Thirb,

ru(nes-A)

2

3

Kjolevik, 450 (11) ek hagustadaz

hlaaiwido

magu

buried

son-Α

I,

H.-N,

2

4

Möjbro, 450 (12) ana

haha

is

slaginaz

over(adv.) horse-N is slaughtered 1 3 (Gronvik 1987) Reistad, 450-500 (13) ek wakraz 1, 2

principles

stone-Α on ...

2 Tune, 400 (6)

and pragmatic

W.-N,

unnam

wraita

know

writing-N 3/4

minino-A mine

asijostez loveliest-F-Pl-N

181

182

Jan Ter je

Faarlund

Amla, 450-500 (14) iz ...-N

hlaiwidaz

jyar

buried

here

4

3

Etelhem, 450-500 (15) mik

Nebenstedt, (16)

merila

worta

me-A

M.-N

made

3

4

450-550 gliaugiz

uiu

runoz

Bright-eyed-N

consecrate

runes-A

2 Tjurkö, 500 (17)

Ägedal, 500 (18)

(19)

3

wurte

runoz

an

walhakurne

wrought

runes-Α 3 (Gr0nvik 1987)

on(adv) 3

wiz

i

aie

W.-D 4

nod

iuhli afl haha

W.-N lead-SUBJ in grassland-D

yule-strength-horse-A

3

3

3

lid

tiade eli

flock-Α did

aiga

Järsberg, 500-550 (20) ek erilaz

4

runoz

Runemaster-N, runes-Α

2 Väsby, 500-550 (21) uuigaz U.-N,

waritu write

3

ek erilaz I

fahidu

Runemaster-N, made

2 Eikeland, 550-600 (22) writu

tahe

the-fast-one-N have in yard

4 1 (Granvik 1987)

I,

i

uuilald piece-of-art-A 3

ι

runoz

asm

write-lsg in runes-Α

dear-one-D

3 3 (Granvik 1987)

4

Syntactic Noleby, 550-600 (23) tojeh

a

unap

principles

ou

help-and to happiness-Α 4 (24)

and pragmatic

young-woman-D 4

suhur ah su sia in-laws-A has she-N see 4 1 (Gronvik 1987)

By, 550-600 (25) hrozaz

hrozez

H.-N

orte

pat

azina

alaifu

(son) of H. wrought this stone-Α out

2

3

Ellestad, 550-600 (26) eka sigimArAz I,

ut

S.-N

AfsAkA

raisidoka

guiltless-N, raised

A.-D 4

stAinA stone-A

2

3

Fonnas, 550-600 (27) iAz

AA

Arbe

uhu

bequeaths grandmother-N inheritance-Α young-woman-D 4 (2) 4 4 (Gronvik 1987) Strom, 600 (28)

wate hali

hino

horna

whet stone-Α this-A

horn-N

3

4

Gummarp, 600 (29) hApuwolAfAz H.-N

sAte

stAbA

priA

set

staves-A

three-A

2 Setre, 600 (30)

3

hAImAz

mA

unA

Alu

na

AIu

nanA

leaning-girl-N must thrive all-Α reach all-Α enjoy 3 (Gronvik 1987) Istaby, 600-650 (31) hApuwulafz H.-N 2

4

4

hAeruwulafiz

warAit

runAz

(son) of H.

wrote

runes-A 3

pAiAz these-A

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Jan Terje

Faarlund

Stentoften, 650 (32) niu

hAborumz

niu

hagestumz

hApuwolafz

nine high-sons-D nine high-guests-D H.-N 4 (Grenvik 1981: 143) (33)

gave

4

herAmAlas

az ArAgeu

protectionless-N

is

pat bAriutip

gAf

welAduds

sa

baseness-D insidious-death-G

he-who-N

4

4

4

that-A breaks (Antonsen 1975) Björketorp, 650-700 (34) hAidruno

ronu

bright-runes-G

fAlAhAk

hAidera

row-D commit-I

3 (35)

ArAgeu

hAerAmAlAusz

uti

baseness-D protectionless-N

here

mighty-runes-A

3

4

az weladaude

out is

4 pat

ginArunAz

sAz

insidious-death-G

he-who-N

4

4

4

bArutz

that-A breaks (Antonsen 1975) Eggja, 700 (36)

hin

warp

the-others-A

threw death-sea-D W.-N

1

naseu

wilz

4

4

(37) made

pa im

wore

them-D oarlocks-A in fatigued 1

(38)

ni

s

kaiba

i

4 solu

bormopa

huni mast-D

4

sot

uk

ni

sakse

stain

skorin

not is sun-D sought and not sword-D stone-Α cut-A 4 4 3 (39)

ni

witi

maz [...]

not seek-SUBJ man-N 4

lagis bed-G 3

(Granvik 1985) Roes, 750 (40)

iu

pin

udz

rAk

horse-Α this-A

U.-N drove

3

4

Syntactic

and pragmatic

principles

185

Notes 1. The case form of each N P is indicated by a capital letter [N(ominative), A(ccusative), G(enitive), D(ative)] attached to the translation by means of a hyphen. 2. All the sentences in the corpus are given in the Appendix and referred to by the numbers they have there. 3. "...line A l — A 2 —B1 [constitute] a separate graphic unit, and line B1 is to be read as a separate syntactic unit" (Grenvik 1981: 168; my translation, JTF). 4. Jan Ragnar Hagland has pointed out to me that this combination of a picture and its description has a parallel in the early Skaldic poetry, which would often comment on shield pictures. The Roes inscription, being the youngest one in our corpus, is contemporaneous with the earliest known Skaldic poetry.

References Antonsen, Elmer H. 1968 Review of Makaev 1965. Language 44: 132 — 135. 1975 A concise grammar of the older runic inscriptions (Tübingen: Niemeyer). Braunmüller, Kurt 1982 Syntaxtypologische Studien zum Germanischen (Tübingen: Gunter Narr). Gronvik, Ottar 1976 "Runeinnskriften fra Eikeland pä Jaeren" [The runic inscription from Eikeland in Jaeren], Norwegian Journal of Linguistics 30: 133 — 190. 1981 Runene pä Tunesteinen [The runes on the Tune stone] (Oslo, Bergen, Tromsö: Universitetsforlaget). 1984 "Runene pä Tunesteinen. Doktordisputas ved Universitetet i Oslo. Svar fra doktoranden" [The Runes on the Tune stone. Doctoral Disputation at the University of Oslo. Response from the Doctorand], Μ aal og Minne 49-71. 1985 Runene pä Eggjasteinen [The runes on the Eggja stone] (Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Tromso: Universitetsforlaget). 1987 Fra Ägedal til Setre [From Ägedal to Setre] (Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Tromse: Universitetsforlaget). Hopper, Paul J. 1975 The syntax of the simple sentence in Proto-Germanic (The Hague: Mouton). Host, Gerd 1976 Runer. Väre eldste norske runeinnsrifter [Runes. Our oldest Norwegian runic inscriptions] (Oslo: Aschehoug). Knirk, James E. 1981 "Runeinnskrifta pä Eikelandsspenna — eit par lesingar" [The runic inscription on the Eikeland buckle — a couple of readings]. Frä haug ok heidni 8: 2 1 1 - 2 1 5 . Krause, Wolfgang 1971 Die Sprache der urnordischen Runeninschriften (Heidelberg: Winter).

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Kuno, Susumu 1978 "Japanese: A characteristic OV language", in: W. P. Lehmann (ed.), Syntactic typology. Studies in the phenomenology of language (Austin: University of Texas Press), 57 — 138. Liestol, Aslak 1965 "Runeinnskrifta pä Eikelandsspenna" [The runic inscription on the Eikeland buckle], Fra haug ok heiÖni 3: 155 — 158. Makaev, Enver A. 1965 Jazyk drevnejsix runiceskix nadpisej: lingvisticeskij i istoriko-filologiceskij analiz [The language of the oldest runic inscriptions: A linguistic and historicophilological analysis] (Moskva: Nauka). Marstrander, Carl J. S. 1953 "De nordiske runeinnskrifter i eldre alfabet" [The Nordic runic inscriptions in the older alphabet], Viking 161 —277. Nielsen, Niels Äge 1983 Danske Runeindskrifter [Danish runic inscriptions] (Kobenhavn: Hernov). Ross, John R. 1970 "Gapping and the order of constituents", in: M. Bierwisch —Κ. H. Heidolph (eds.), Progress in Linguistics (The Hague: Mouton), 249 — 259.

MARINEL GERRITSEN

The relationship between punctuation and syntax in Middle Dutch

0. Introduction* Philology can be defined in many different ways (see Campbell 1983: 442). But whatever definition one adopts, a philologist concerns himself with the study of texts primarily in order to understand them as thoroughly as possible. Editing manuscripts lies at the heart of philology and it is with that aspect that this paper deals. I assume that a philologist is engaged in editing texts with the aim of providing historical linguists with as much information as possible in order to help them gain insight into the linguistic aspects of the language in which that text is written. By and large, philologists and historical linguists agree about which linguistic aspects of a manuscript should be reflected in diplomatic editions. There is one phenomenon, however, that both have neglected: punctuation. For typographical reasons, philologists do not usually represent the original punctuation of a manuscript in their editions — even if such editions are otherwise strictly diplomatic. Historical linguists have seldom considered whether taking the original punctuation of a manuscript into consideration could broaden their insight into the language of the past. 1 In this paper I shall show that this is indeed the case: consideration of the use of the capital letter, point, and punctus elevatus (inverted semicolon) in late thirteenth century Dutch manuscripts can reveal something about Middle Dutch syntax, the segments mediaeval Dutch(wo)men distinguished in speech, and spoken Middle Dutch. It is the purpose of this paper to show that if philologists were to reflect the original punctuation of a manuscript in editions, this would prove highly useful to historical linguists. First, I shall deal with the few remarks that have been made about punctuation in Middle Dutch. Next, I shall deduce two hypotheses

188

Mar ine I Gerritsen

about Middle Dutch punctuation from these comments and test them on the basis of a description of the use of punctuation signs for the demarcation of sentences and for the demarcation of constructions within sentences in a corpus of thirteenth century Dutch. On the basis of these data I shall show that consideration of the original punctuation of the text broadens our insight into the language in which it has been written. In the final section of this paper I shall discuss what my findings could indicate for philologists and historical linguists.

1. Traditional notions concerning punctuation in Middle Dutch The most extensive description of the original punctuation in Middle Dutch prose and poetry has been given in Greidanus (1926). Although her observations about Middle Dutch punctuation are impressionistic and do not meet the requirements of contemporary investigations, her study has so far been authoritative. She makes a strict distinction between punctuation in prose texts (Greidanus 1926: 129 — 167) and in poetry (Greidanus 1926: 167 — 189), since the punctuation system of the two differs significantly. This is because punctuation signs in poetry are primarily used to delineate verses: often all verses start with a capital letter — irrespective of other factors such as whether the beginning of a verse coincides with a new clause or a new rhythmic entity. The use of punctuation signs in prose texts, however, is not determined by a stylistic unity such as the verse, but by other factors. Greidanus states that mediaeval speakers of Dutch did not yet consider the sentence as a linguistic unit. Consequently they did not bother about the division of the prose text into linguistic units as main and dependent clauses, but they divided it only into parts that belonged to each other. Middle Dutch punctuation in prose texts would mainly reflect the rhythm of the spoken counterparts of the text (Greidanus 1926: 130, 134). She distinguishes two types of punctuation in Middle Dutch prose texts: monopartite and bipartite. 2 These two types are considered as successive stages in the evolution of the Dutch punctuation system, but they do not follow each other clearly in time. We find both stages during the entire period of Middle Dutch (1200 — 1550).

Punctuation

and syntax

in Middle Dutch

189

In monopartite punctuation only one sign is used in order to divide the prose text: capital letters.3 These are used, according to Greidanus (1926), to indicate where a new thought and/or a new rhythmic unity commences.

(1)

Uut

desen woerden werden wij vermaent

From these words

were

te volgen ende sijn zeeden to follow and

christum

we summoned Christ

Of wy verliecht

his life style If

we illuminated

willen werden Ende verloest van

onzer blijntheit

want be And released from our (Greidanus 1926: 131)

blindness

In a few prose texts this capital letter is occasionally preceded by a point. This point is an additional marking of the capital and not a second punctuation sign, since it only occurs in close connection with the capital letters. Even if a capital letter arrives by accident at the beginning of a new line, the point occurs just before that letter, so at the beginning of the line, and not at the end of the preceding line. In bipartite punctuation a second sign is used in addition to capital letters, viz. a point. 4 The combination reflects, according to Greidanus, a pause in the sentence.

(2)

Ende hoe langhe dat

hise

And

how long

sijs

niet en wiste Ende

she it not

ghemynt hadde. dat

that he her loved

had.

that

knew And (De Vooys II: 217)

Bipartite punctuation is common in Middle Dutch prose texts. Capitals indicate new thoughts and/or rhythmic unities, while points mark pauses. According to Greidanus (1926: 130) it is out of the question that punctuation in prose texts is used to indicate the division of the sentence into linguistic entities as main or dependent clauses. In the remainder of this paper, I shall only deal with punctuation in prose texts, since it is easier to gain insight into the relationship between punctuation and syntax by studying texts in which the use of punctuation seems to be mainly conditioned by linguistic factors than by studying those in which it has (also) been conditioned by stylistic ones. It is, after all, easier to start with the less complex cases. Greidanus' view of punctuation in Middle Dutch prose texts has until now been accepted. As far as I know, nobody has ever investigated whether her theories are supported by the data and, if so, what insight

190

Marine l Gerrit sen

Middle Dutch punctuation can give us into the Middle Dutch language. This was also hard to do, since editors of Middle Dutch prose texts have mostly replaced the original punctuation by the punctuation of Standard Dutch on the pretext that Middle Dutch punctuation is unsystematic and does not contribute to a better insight into the interpretation of the language. 5 The Netherlands Historical Society and the Government Office of Dutch History even recommend in their guidelines for the publication of historical documents (Richtlijnen 1975) changing the use of capitals and punctuation according to present usage. There is one person, however, who was not impressed by such traditions and guidelines: Maurits Gysseling. He published an edition of all Middle Dutch texts that dated from the thirteenth century and tried to reflect as best he could the original punctuation of the texts. He accounts for this policy as follows: "Mediaeval punctuation is founded on other principles than our punctuation (not the sentence structure, but the rhythm of speaking). It is, however, seldom arbitrary. Underestimation of it can lead to misinterpretations" (Gysseling 1977: I, XIII). Gysseling differs positively from other philologists in that he recognizes the regularity of Middle Dutch punctuation, but through lack of a thorough investigation into Middle Dutch punctuation he remains relatively vague about the regularities that we can expect. I shall try to remedy this situation to some extent in the next section of this paper.

2. Original punctuation of Middle Dutch prose manuscripts 2.0. Introduction This study aims to show that the punctuation of Middle Dutch prose manuscripts is neither haphazard nor meaningless, but that it obeys certain linguistic principles, and that the study of Middle Dutch punctuation can consequently deepen our insight into the Middle Dutch language. I have therefore formulated and tested the following hypotheses about the original punctuation of Middle Dutch prose texts, which can be deduced from the traditional views mentioned in Section 1:

Punctuation and syntax in Middle Dutch

191

Hypothesis 1: The punctuation in Middle Dutch prose texts does not reflect sentence structure, but only rhythm of speech. Hypothesis 2: The punctuation in Middle Dutch prose texts is either monopartite or bipartite. In order to test these hypotheses, I have performed an investigation into the punctuation system of a number of Middle Dutch texts. Because editions of Middle Dutch texts that reflect the original punctuation are rare, the choice of texts was limited to the thirteenth century Middle Dutch prose texts published in Gysseling. The present investigation has been confined for practical reasons to statutes originating from Bruges (Gysseling 1977: 352 — 362: 255 main clauses, 273 dependent clauses). Naturally, the restriction to a limited corpus of texts implies that the results of my study do not necessarily hold for all Middle Dutch prose manuscripts. The following five punctuation signs occur in these texts. (3)

a. b. c.

d. e.

capital letter; point; punctus elevatus (inverted semicolon: t) (represented here by ; for typographical reasons and abbreviated as p.e. in the Tables); numbers of statutes; The paragraph, a sign that is used to show that a new paragraph starts (1).

A fragment in which all five signs are present is given in: (4)

.Ende darmense ondervindt; hi .And where one them finds; he .XX. s. twenty solidi (9) || Alle dicke saye salmen maendaghes (9) 1] All thick cloth shall one Monday die halle; Ende dar salmen hem the hall; And there shall one them loy leaden seal (Gysseling I: 356)

verbord forfeits

besien inspect gheven give

in in haren their

In this paper I shall only deal with the first three signs, since the use of numbers of statutes and inverted P's is rare and does not show a significant difference from the use of points. I shall deal separately

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with punctuation that might be used to demarcate sentences (2.1) and punctuation that might be used to set off constructions within the sentences (2.2). In 2.3 I consider whether or not my data confirm the hypotheses.

2.1. Demarcation of sentences In order to test the hypothesis of, among others, Greidanus and Gysseling that Middle Dutch punctuation does not reflect sentence structure, I have investigated whether the beginning and the end of the main and dependent clauses that I distinguished in the text on the basis of purely linguistic criteria, were marked by punctuation signs, and if so by which punctuation signs. I shall first deal with main clauses (2.1.1) and subsequently with dependent clauses (2.1.2).

2.1.1.

Main clauses

2.1.1.1. Beginning of main clauses Column A of Table 1 shows which punctuation signs occur at positions in the text that can be considered onsets of main clauses. Column A of Table 1 clearly shows that the beginning of the majority of the units that can be considered main clauses, is set off against the preceding sentence by a point with a capital letter. Most of the main clauses (82%) are demarcated in the same way as nowadays in Modern Dutch and many other languages. This seems sufficient evidence to show that Middle Dutch scribes also used punctuation signs to indicate where main clauses started. It may be that the beginning of a main clause also coincides with a rhythmic entity (I shall return to this point in 2.3), but it is not true that the Middle Dutch punctuation in my corpus in no way reflects sentence structure (cf. hypothesis 1). More than 82% of the onsets of main clauses are demarcated in the same way as in Modern Dutch writing, but what is the case with the 18% (η = 45) of the main clauses whose onsets are signaled in another way? It appears from Table 1, column A, that most of the deviations from the marking of the beginnings of a Modern Dutch main clause consist in the use of the following punctuation marks: small letters preceded by a point (10%), or by a punctus elevatus (3%), and capital

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Table 1. The demarcation of the onset of all main clauses (column A), of those beginning with a coordinating conjunction (column B), those not beginning with a coordinating conjunction (column C), those beginning with a subordinate clause (column D) and the number of main clauses with deviant punctuation at the beginning that cannot be explained (column E)6·7

Small letters Small letters prec. by a Small letters prec. by a Capital letters as such Capital letters prec. by Capital letters prec. by Total number of cases Total Total Total Total Total

point p. e. a point a p. e.

small letters capital letters neither point nor p. e. points punctus elevatus

Column A

Column Β

Column C

Column D

η

η

%

η

η

% η

1 0.4 1 24 10 9 7 3 4 1 3 1 205 82 47 4 10 4 250 66

2 14 6 2 71 6

0 0 15 8 3 2 2 1 158 86 6 3 184

0 9 3 0 34 4 50

0 18 6 0 68 8

32 13 218 87 4 2 231 92 17 7

21 73 3 79 12

18 10 166 90 2 1 173 94 9 5

12 38 0 43 7

24 76 0 86 14

%

14 48 2 52 8

%

Column Ε

0 6 0 2 2 10 6 2 2

letters preceded by a punctus elevatus (4%). The question is, whether these deviations are determined by linguistic factors and — if so — whether they can provide insight into Middle Dutch. This seems indeed to be the case. There is in the first place a difference between main clauses that start with a coordinating conjunction (5) and main clauses that do not so start (6).8 (5)

dat say salmen sniden an that cloth shall one cut in sticken moeten nemmermeer pieces must one never again (Gysseling I: 357)

.iiij. sticken; Entie four pieces; And the vergadren assemble

(6)

.Dit magh die deken zoeken .This may the dean investigate (Gysseling I: 359)

Column Β in Table 1 shows the punctuation of the beginning of main clauses with a coordinating conjunction and column C that of the other main clauses. There is a significant difference in the use of small letter versus capital letter (Χ 2 , ρ < .009**) and in the use of point

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versus punctus elevatus (Χ2, ρ < .03*) between main clauses that start with a coordinating conjunction and main clauses that do not. The latter start more frequently with capital letter and point than the former and less frequently with punctus elevatus. This difference in occurrence of punctuation signs between main clauses that start with a coordinating conjunction and main clauses that do not, is not very surprising since a coordinating conjunction is a marker which shows that a text is coordinated with the preceding one. It is not striking that main clauses which start with such a conjunction are less clearly set off against the preceding main clauses than main clauses that do not start with such a coordinating conjunction. Part of the deviant demarcation from the preceding main clauses is due to the fact that main clauses beginning with a coordinating conjunction often are less clearly delimited. This shows not only that Middle Dutch demarcation of the beginning of main clauses is less chaotic than has been thought, but also that — from a linguistic point of view — a fairly logical system is used. The Middle Dutch scribes of my text realized very well that main clauses starting with a coordinating conjunction are linked to the preceding main clause not in the same way as main clauses which do not begin with a coordinating conjunction.9 The deviant punctuation of main clauses beginning with a coordinating conjunction only explains some of the 45 occurrences of deviant demarcation of the beginning of main clauses, viz. 42% (n = 19). A number of deviations (η = 26) has been omitted, as appears from column C in Table 1, which shows the frequency of the different ways to set off main clauses that do not begin with a coordinating conjunction, against the preceding clause. Besides the occurrence of a coordinating conjunction at the beginning of a main clause, there is a second factor which affects the punctuation used for the demarcation against the preceding main clause: whether or not the main clause commences with a subordinating clause. Sentences (7) and (8) give examples of main clauses beginning with a subordinate clause. Only two types of subordinate clauses occur in my material at the beginning of main clauses: subject clauses (7) and conditional clauses (8). (7)

. die hier jeghen dade; . who here against did; (Gysseling I: 352)

(8)

. waerd .1/2. marc te lict; . were it one half marc too light; (Gysseling I. 352)

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Column D of Table 1 shows the frequency of the punctuation marks that are used to set off main clauses commencing with a subordinate clause against the preceding main clause. It is clear that those main clauses more frequently have other punctuation signs than capital letters preceded by points than do main clauses that do not start with a coordinating conjunction (column C of Table 1). There is a significant difference in the use of small letter versus capital letter (Χ 2 , ρ < .007**) and in the use of point versus punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .02*). Main clauses commencing with a subordinate clause are less clearly demarcated from the preceding main clause than are other main clauses. This, again, is not surprising if we realize that subordinate clauses are generally set off in another manner against the rest of the text, than are main clauses (see 2.1.2.1). The scribes of the Middle Dutch texts under investigation were aware of the fact that the beginning of main clauses starting with a subordinate clause was different from that of other main clauses and consequently they used another kind of punctuation. This shows that the scribes of the Bruges statutes felt the difference between main and subordinate clauses. 10 The deviant punctuation of main clauses commencing with a subordinate clause can explain 36% (n = 16) of the deviant punctuation signs that are used to signal the beginning of main clauses. If we take into account that the demarcation of the beginning of main clauses is affected by both the occurrence of a coordinating conjunction and the occurrence of a subordinate clause at the beginning of the main clauses, the punctuation of only 4% (n = 10, see Table 1, column E) of the beginning of all 250 main clauses remains unexplained. This part of my investigation shows that the demarcation of the beginning of main clauses is in my corpus in no way chaotic.

2.1.1.2. End of main clauses Since the text that I studied consists of an uninterrupted sequence of main clauses, the punctuation signs that signal the beginning of one main clause, at the same time mark the end of the preceding one. There is consequently only one ending of a main clause that is not considered for the study of the demarcation of the beginnings of main clauses (the ending of the last sentence of my corpus) and there is only one beginning that cannot be considered for the study of the signaling of the end of main clauses in my corpus (the beginning of the first

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sentence). This difference, however, can be ignored in view of the fact that I studied 250 main clauses. Table 1, column A, also reflects which punctuation signs mark the end of main clauses. I have shown above that the 45 deviations from the usual way to demarcate the beginning of the main clause (point + capital letter) can be explained for 78% if we take into account that main clauses beginning with a coordinating conjunction or with a subordinate clause show a deviant demarcation from the preceding main clause. In theory it is also possible that characteristics of the preceding main clause affect the use of deviant punctuation signs. Since the end of subordinating clauses is marked differently from the end of main clauses (see 2.1.2.2), it is possible that main clauses ending in a subordinate or relative clause have a demarcation from the following main clause different from that of main clauses which do not end with a dependent clause. This idea, however, was in no way confirmed by my data. There is no statistically significant difference in the use of capital letter, small letter, point and punctus elevatus between main clauses that end with a dependent clause and main clauses that do not. Furthermore, main clauses beginning with a coordinating conjunction were nor set off against the following main clause in a way different from main clauses without a coordinating conjunction. According to my data, the preceding main clause does not affect the demarcation from the following main clause. This part of my investigation indicates that the use of punctuation for the demarcation of main clauses is not determined by the text that has been produced, but by the text that will be produced and that the scribes of the texts of my corpus were well aware of the different sentence types that they were going to produce.

2.1.2.

Dependent clauses

2.1.2.1. Beginning of dependent clauses The demarcation of the beginning of dependent clauses is very different from that of main clauses. Whereas main clauses were set off against the preceding main clause by a point with a capital letter in almost 100% of the cases (see 2.1.1 and Table 1), dependent clauses are seldom so marked. There is a highly significant difference in the use of capital versus small letter, point versus punctus elevatus, and the use of none of these punctuation signs between main clauses and dependent clauses

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(Χ 2 , ρ < .000**, cf. Table 1, column A and Table 2, column B). The beginnings of the latter are less demarcated by punctuation signs than the beginnings of the former. This shows again that the scribes of the texts of my corpus realized very well the difference between main and dependent clause. They considered a main clause as a linguistic entity in itself and therefore indicated its beginning clearly; they took a dependent clause to be a part of a larger unit and consequently marked their beginnings less clearly. For my investigation into the demarcation of the beginning of dependent clauses I have drawn a distinction between dependent clauses before main clauses and dependent clauses which occur in other positions in relation to main clauses, since there is good reason to believe that the former would be demarcated differently from the latter (2.1.1.1). As only non-relative subordinate clauses occur before main clauses, I have only considered subordinate clauses in the narrow sense for this part of my investigation. Column A in Table 2 shows the punctuation signs that are used for subordinate clauses occurring before main clauses and in column Β those that are used for subordinate clauses found in other positions. Table 2 shows that there is a vast difference between the demarcation of the beginning of subordinate clauses that occur before a main clause (column A) and that of subordinate clauses in other positions (column B). There is a significant difference in the use of small versus capital letters (Χ 2 , ρ < .000**), in the use of points versus punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .0001**) and in the use of neither punctus elevatus nor point versus point + punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .000**). These results emphasize that the mediaeval scribes of the texts of my corpus realized the difference between main and subordinate clauses. But in cases where both converge, a conflict arises and a demarcation is used which partly corresponds with the demarcation of main clauses and partly with that of subordinate clauses. Certainly, the demarcation of the beginning of subordinate clauses that occur before the main clause, differs statistically significantly from both the demarcation of other main clauses (see 2.1.1.1) and that of other subordinate clauses. That is why those subordinate clauses are omitted from my investigation into the demarcation of the onset of subordinate clauses. A second factor that affects the demarcation of the beginning of dependent clauses is whether it concerns a subordinate (9) or a relative clause (10).

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Table 2. The demarcation of the onset of dependent clauses

Small letters Small letters prec. by a Small letters prec. by a Capital letters Capital letters prec. by Capital letters prec. by Total number of cases Total Total Total Total Total

point p. e. a point a p. e.

small letters capital letters neither point nor p. e. points punctus elevatus

A

Β

η

η

C

F

η

η

G

%

0 0 67 60 78 76 0 0 67 60 76 81 2 9 18 11 10 10 10 1 7 10 10 7 7 3 3 6 20 18 12 12 4 29 16 16 9 10 3 2 2 1 1 7 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 34 68 2 4 29 3 3 1 1 1 7 6 2 4 8 5 4 0 0 4 29 1 1 0 0 0 112 14 98 94 50 103 9

22 33 33 0 11 0

12 38 0 43 7

89 11 22 44 33

24 76 0 86 14

%

%

η

Ε

η

%

η

D

%

98 88 100 97 5 36 93 14 13 3 3 10 71 4 62 77 1 7 67 69 79 18 16 12 12 5 36 13 25 22 12 12 8 57 17

%

%

95 92 98 8 4 2 2 1 68 77 82 2 13 8 8 4 17 9 10 3

Column A: subordinate clauses that occur before main clauses. Column B: subordinate clauses that occur in other positions in relation to main clauses. Column C: relative clauses. Column D: coordinated subordinate clauses. Column E: non-coordinated subordinate clauses. Column F: non-coordinated relative clauses. Column G: coordinated relative clauses."

(9) (10)

alst in di halle coemt te beziene. if it in the hall comes to inspect. (Gysseling I: 352) Die scerre die dit say nat af dade; The shearer who this cloth wet off did; (Gysseling I. 356)

If we compare the punctuation signs that mark the onset of subordinate clauses (Table 2, column B), with the ones that demarcate the beginning of relative clauses (Table 2, column C), we see differences in the use of capital versus small letter (Χ2, ρ < .009**), in the use of punctus elevatus versus neither point nor punctus elevatus (Χ2, ρ < .02*) and in the use of point + punctus elevatus versus neither point nor punctus elevatus (Χ2, ρ < .03*). The beginning of subordinate clauses is more often demarcated by capital letter, point, and punctus elevatus than is the beginning of relative clauses. This is not striking from a linguistic point of view. A relative clause often constitutes an entity with the NP in the main clause to which it belongs, but subordinate clauses do not form a similar entity with a constituent in the main clause. It is not, therefore, striking that relative clauses are less clearly set off against

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the preceding main clause than are subordinate clauses. A further argument for this is that a relative clause that is removed from the constituent in the main clause to which it belongs, has more punctuation than a relative clause that simply follows the N P in the main clause. The mean distance in words between relative clause and the relevant constituent is 5.1 for relative clauses that are introduced by a punctuation sign and 0.2 for relative clauses that are not introduced by a punctuation sign. These data confirm that the punctuation signs in the Middle Dutch texts of my corpus are not used indiscriminately, but that their occurrence depends on syntactic factors. Since the punctuation used for the demarcation of the beginning of subordinate clauses differs significantly from that for the signaling of the beginning of relative clauses, both types of dependent clauses are dealt with separately in my investigation into the demarcation of the onset of dependent clauses. A third factor that affects the use of the punctuation of the beginning of dependent clauses is whether or not the dependent clause is a coordinated one. Coordinated and non-coordinated subordinate clauses (Table 2, columns D and E) show a significant difference in the use of capital versus small letters (Χ 2 , ρ < .000**), in the use of neither point nor punctus elevatus versus point (Χ 2 , ρ < .0003**), in the use of neither point nor punctus elevatus versus punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .00001**) and in the use of neither point nor punctus elevatus versus point + punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .0001**). The coordinated subordinate clauses use all punctuation signs significantly more often. Coordinated and non-coordinated relative clauses (Table 2, columns F and G) show significant differences in the use of point versus neither point nor punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .0002**), in the use of punctus elevatus versus neither point nor punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .002**) and in the use of neither point nor punctus elevatus versus point 4punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .0002**). The coordinated relative clauses have significantly more punctus elevatus and point. The coordinated sections of both types of dependent clause show a more frequent use of punctuation signs. 12 This result is exactly opposite to the difference in punctuation between the beginning of coordinated and non-coordinated main clauses (2.1.1.1). The latter had significantly more punctuation signs than the former (cf. Table 1, columns Β and C). With regard to the punctuation of the beginning of the clause, coordinated main clauses show less of a main-clause character, but coordinated dependent clauses more of it. There are, however, great differences in

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the use of punctuation signs between coordinated main clauses and coordinated dependent clauses, as appears from comparison between Table 1, column Β (coordinated main clauses), Table 2, column D (coordinated subordinate clauses) and Table 2, column G (coordinated relative clauses). There are statistically significant differences for all punctuation signs (Χ2, ρ < .000**), except for the difference in the use of capital letters between subordinate and main clauses. This shows that the Middle Dutch scribes of my texts realized both that coordinated sentences were different from non-coordinated ones and that coordinated dependent clauses were different from coordinated main clauses. Since coordinated dependent clauses show a different punctuation of the beginning from non-coordinated dependent clauses, I have not considered them in my investigation into the demarcation of the beginning of dependent clauses. A fourth factor that affects the punctuation of the beginning of dependent clauses is whether or not that beginning is lexically expressed, and which lexical items are used. Dependent clauses can be introduced by a relative pronoun (11) (a so-called relative clause), a relative pronoun with an included antecedent (12), a conjunction (13), or no lexical item at all (14). (11)

So wat contente dat es tusscen den So which dispute that is between the mesters enten knapen masters and the apprentices (Gysseling I: 356)

(12)

Diet corter scerd; Who it shorter shears; (Gysseling I: 352)

(13)

als hie wille if he want (Gysseling I: 352)

(14)

Ward te licht A. vierendeel Were it too light one quarter (Gysseling I: 353)

Table 3 shows which punctuation signs occur in dependent clauses introduced by conjunctions and relative markers. We see in Table 3 that there are great differences in the use of punctuation signs between dependent clauses introduced by different lexical items. Dependent clauses introduced by a relative pronoun have capital letters statistically significantly less often than relative clauses with an included antecedent (Χ2, ρ < .002**), or than dependent clauses introduced by no lexical item at all (Χ2, ρ < .005**). Relative

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Table 3. The demarcation of the onset of dependent clauses differentiated according to the kind of conjunction/relative marker at the beginning 13

Small letters Small letters preceded by a point Small letters preceded by a p. e. Capital letters Capital letters preceded by a point Capital letters preceded by a p. e. Total number of cases Total small letters Total capital letters Total neither point nor p. e. Total points Total punctus elevatus

Relative pronoun η %

Rel. pron. inc. ant. η %

Conjunction η %

N o lexical item η %

76 5 6 1 0 0 88 87 1 77 5 6

8 1 1 1 0 0 11 19 2 9 1 1

45 6 11 0 4 1 67 63 4 46 9 12

19 3 5 0 4 0 31 27 4 19 7 5

86 6 7 1 0 0 99 1 88 6 7

73 9 9 9 0 0 82 18 82 9 9

67 9 16 0 6 1 94 6 68 13 18

61 10 16 0 13 0 87 13 61 2 16

clauses have points and punctus elevatus significantly less often than dependent clauses with a conjunction (points Χ 2 , ρ < .05*, punctus elevatus Χ 2 , ρ < .01**) and than dependent clauses introduced by no lexical items (points Χ 2 , ρ < .01**, punctus elevatus Χ 2 , ρ < 0.5*). Our above observation that the onsets of relative clauses are less often marked by punctuation signs than those of subordinate clauses, is confirmed again. But now we see that the difference in the use of the different punctuation signs is not the same for all subordinate clauses. The difference between relative clauses, on the one hand, and subordinate clauses with a relative pronoun with an included antecedent, on the other, concerns only the use of capital letter. The difference between relative clauses and dependent clauses introduced by a conjunction, concerns the use of point and punctus elevatus. The difference between relative clauses and dependent clauses introduced by no lexical item at all concerns the use of capital letter, point, and punctus elevatus. Dependent clauses that are not introduced by a lexical item indicating that a dependent clause will follow, have punctuation signs statistically significantly more often than dependent clauses that are introduced by such a lexical item, such as relative clauses. This indicates that the mediaeval Dutch scribes of my texts remedied the lack of a lexical item indicating that a dependent clause was to follow, by the use of punctuation signs. These data again show that they were well aware

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of the sentence structure of the texts that they produced and that the punctuation which they applied also served to give the reader greater insight into the linguistic structure of the text. 14 Since the demarcation of the onset of dependent clauses seems to bear a strong connection with linguistic factors, it is also plausible that a relation exists between the punctuation used for the signaling of the beginning of a subordinate clause and its function. This is the more so, since a relation exists between the kind of lexical item that introduces a dependent clause and its function (cf. 2.1.2.2 Table 5). I have therefore investigated whether there are statistically significant differences in the use of capital, point a n d / o r punctus elevatus between subordinate clauses with the following functions: subject, object, nominal predicate, adverbial of time, conditional clauses (see the sentences 15 — 21 in 2.1.2.2). Such differences, however, were not found. This part of my study shows that the scribes of these Middle Dutch texts from Bruges carefully punctuated the beginnings of dependent clauses and that the utilization of punctuation signs was highly determined by linguistic factors such as position of the dependent clause in relation to the main clause, type of dependent clause (subordinate versus relative, coordinated versus non-coordinated), and type of lexical item that introduces the clause.

2.1.2.2. End of dependent clauses In my investigation into the graphic signaling of the end of dependent clauses, I did not consider dependent clauses that occur following main clauses, since those dependent clauses (n = 57) show a demarcation that does not differ significantly f r o m that of the end of main clauses: 86% ended in a point followed by a capital letter (see also 2.1.1.2). Column A of Table 4 shows the frequency of the different punctuation signs that are used to demarcate the end of a dependent clause. 15 If we c o m p a r e these data with those for the demarcation of the end of main clauses (Table 1, column A), we see great differences in use of capital versus small letter (Χ 2 , ρ < .000**), point versus neither point nor punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .000**), point versus punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .000**), and neither point nor punctus elevatus versus point plus punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .000**). The demarcation of the end of dependent clauses differs f r o m that of the end of main clauses: the latter have significantly more capital letters and points and fewer

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instances of punctus elevatus than the former. This shows again that the punctuation of the texts under investigation also reflects sentence structure. I have shown in 2.1.2.1 that the beginning of a subordinate clause was significantly more often marked by punctuation signs than the beginning of a relative clause and I have accounted for this difference by adducing the linguistic fact that a relative clause often forms an entity with a constituent in the preceding text, whereas subordinate clauses mostly do not. For the same reason we can expect the end of relative clauses to be less marked by punctuation signs than the end of subordinate clauses. It is, after all, plausible that there is less need to demarcate the end of a clause that forms an entity with the preceding text than the end of a clause that has a looser connection with the preceding text. My data, however, do not strongly confirm this theory. There was only one statistically significant difference in the use of punctuation signs at the end of subordinate and relative clauses (cf. Table 4 column A, subtracting the figures from the column Relative): subordinate clauses, more often than relative clauses, have punctus elevatus at the end (Χ2, ρ < .04*). The Middle Dutch scribes of my texts demarcated subordinate clauses more clearly than relative clauses, but the difference in demarcation of the beginning is much greater than that of the end. This indicates that the text that precedes the dependent clause has a stronger influence on the punctuation of its beginning than on the punctuation of its end. Whether or not the dependent clause forms an entity with the preceding text, it is finished — and that is indicated by punctuation signs. Although the difference between subordinate and relative clauses in demarcation of the end is relatively small, I have kept them apart in the remainder of this section. A second factor that affects the punctuation at the end of the dependent clause is the function of the clause. Table 4 shows the punctuation signs that are used for the demarcation of the end of dependent clauses in the function of subject (S) (15), object (O) (16), predicate noun (17), place (18), time (19), conditional (20), and relative clause (21).

(15)

Die

hier ieghen dade hie verborde

Who here against did

(16)

Ende vindmen dat And

he

forfeited (Gysseling I: 359)

die weuer

vt heuet legghende

finds one that the weaver it

has

lying

204

(17)

(18)

MarineI Gerritsen bouen . xij. draden; hi above twelve threads; he (Gysseling I: 358) war dat sake; dat niet alleens ne ware; were that matter; that it not alone NEG were; Dat say That cloth (Gysseling I: 353) ende darmense onderuind; hie and where one them finds; he (Gysseling I: 357)

(19)

er si besien waren van vinders; hie before they inspected were by inspectors; he (Gysseling I: 353)

(20)

stont corter; die stood it shorter; the (Gysseling I: 355) So wat con ten te dat es tusscen den mesters So which dispute that is between the masters enten knapen van alle dese ambochters. Dat and the apprentices of all these guildsmen. That vorseide aforesaid (Gysseling I: 356)

(21)

It appears from Table 4 that the demarcation of the end of the dependent clause depends greatly on its function. Subject clauses have, in a statistically significant way, less often capital letters than dependent clauses in the function of predicate noun (Χ2, ρ < .00016**), or adverbial clause of place (Χ2, ρ < .02*), or conditional clause (X2, ρ < .007**). Relative clauses have fewer capital letters than predicate noun clauses (.Χ2, ρ < .006**) and conditional clauses (Χ2, ρ < .01**). The demarcation of the end of the clause with capital letters occurs significantly more often with dependent clauses in the function of predicate nouns and of conditional clauses than with subject and relative clauses. The latter show in this respect a demarcation less resembling a main clause than do the former.16 This also holds for the difference in the use of point and punctus elevatus between subject and conditional clauses. The latter have points significantly more often, and fewer cases of punctus elevatus (Χ2, ρ < .02*). Relative clauses, however, show in this respect more main clause features than do subject clauses: they have more points and fewer cases of punctus elevatus at the end {Χ2, ρ < .009**). My data show clearly that the different ways of demarcating the end of dependent clauses coincide with linguistic

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Table 4. The demarcation of the end of dependent clauses for all clauses together (column A) and differentiated as to the function of the dependent clause (the other columns: S = subject, Ο = Object)15

Small letters Small letters preceded by a point Small letters preceded by a p. e. Capital letters Capital letters preceded by a point Capital letters preceded by a p. e. Total number of cases Total small letters Total capital letters Total neither point nor p.e. Total points Total· punctus elevatus

A

S

η

% η 33 16 41 19

0

Pred. Place Time Condi- RelaΝ tion tive η % η % η % η % η %

% η % 8 12 0 3 9 2

0 50

0 0 1 14 1 10 1 14

1 11 2 22

7 11 11 16

16 19 21 25

106 50 22 65 2

50

5 50 3 43

5 56

29 47

40 47

0 0 1 11

0 0 9 14

3 5

4 6

0

6 19

0

0

3 16

1 8

0 0

0 0 0 0

0 0

0 0 0 1 10 0

12

7

1

3 0

0

3 30 2 29

34

4

211

10

0 0

7

0

9

62

85

180 85 33 97 4 100 31 15 1 3 0 0 36 17 8 23 0 0

6 60 5 71 4 40 2 29 0 0 1 14

8 89 1 11 1 11

47 76 15 24 7 11

77 91 8 9 19 22

57 27 3 9 2 118 56 23 68 2

2 20 1 14 8 80 5 71

3 33 5 56

20 32 35 56

26 31 40 47

50 50

aspects. The results of my investigation show here exactly what I set out to show: punctuation not only reflects rhythmic entities, but also sentence structure. An intriguing question then arises as to why the end of conditional clauses and that of predicate noun clauses is more marked than the end of subject clauses, and why relative clauses have fewer capital letters for demarcating the end than do conditional and predicate noun clauses, but have more points than do subject clauses. We have seen that there is a connection between the graphic signaling of the beginning of dependent clauses and the kind of lexical item that introduces such a clause (see 2.1.2.1, Table 3). It is therefore plausible that a relation also exists between the graphic signaling of the end of the dependent clause and the lexical item that introduces it. It is likely, for example, that dependent clauses which are not introduced by a lexical item indicating that a dependent clause will follow, use more punctuation signs for demarcating the end than those that are introduced by a conjunction or a relative marker. Since dependent clauses with various functions differ from each other in the kind of conjunction

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or relative marker that introduce them (see Table 5), possibly it is not the function of the dependent clause that determines the punctuation of the end, but the kind of lexical item that introduces it.

Table 5. Frequency of the different conjunctions and relative markers that introduce dependent clauses in different functions

s 0 Predicate noun Place Time Condition Relative clause

Conjunction

Rel. incl. ant.

Nothing

6 3 8 0 9 2 0

28 1 0 7 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 46 0

Rel. pronoun

0 0 0 0 0 0

Coordinator

0 0 2 0 0 13 9

75

Table 6 shows which punctuation signs occur at the end of dependent clauses, differentiated as to the conjunctions and relative markers that introduce the clause. The significant differences mainly concern the use of capital letters: dependent clauses introduced by a relative pronoun use them less

Table 6. The demarcation of the end of dependent clauses having different lexical items at the beginning

Small letters Small letters preceded by a Small letters preceded by a Capital letters Capital letters preceded by Capital letters preceded by Total number of cases Total Total Total Total Total

point p. e. a point a p. e.

small letters capital letters neither point nor p. e. points punctus elevatus

Relative pronoun η %

Rel. pron. incl. ant. η %

Conjunction η %

Nothing

η

%

15 17 38 3 2 0 75

20 23 51 4 3 0

8 4 22 0 0 2 36

22 11 61 0 0 6

3 4 15 0 2 4 28

11 14 54 0 0 14

5 5 25 0 6 5 46

11 11 54 0 13 11

70 5 18 19 38

93 7 24 25 51

34 2 8 4 24

94 6 22 11 67

22 6 3 6 19

79 21 11 21 68

35 11 5 11 30

76 24 11 24 65

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often than those introduced by a conjunction (Χ 2 , ρ < .03*) or by nothing (Χ 2 , ρ < .0006**), and dependent clauses introduced by a relative pronoun with an included antecedent use capital letters less often than do dependent clauses introduced by a conjunction (X 2 , ρ < .02*). There is furthermore one difference in the use of punctus elevatus: relative clauses employ it less often than do dependent clauses introduced by nothing (Χ 2 , ρ < .05*). If we compare these results with the significant results for the differences between dependent clauses with different functions, we see that these results are very similar. Conditional clauses, for example, are mostly introduced by nothing, and subject clauses mostly by a relative pronoun with an included antecedent. The difference in the use of capital letters between subject clauses and conditional clauses (Χ 2 , ρ < .007**) is virtually the same as the difference in use of capital letters between dependent clauses introduced by a relative pronoun with an included antecedent and dependent clauses introduced by nothing (Χ 2 , ρ < .02*). The fact that the level of significance is much higher for dependent clauses with different functions than for dependent clauses introduced by different lexical items shows, however, that it is usually the function of the dependent clause and not the lexical item that introduces it, which determines the demarcation of the end. Consequently, we cannot yet explain why the end of dependent clauses in some functions is more marked than in others. I have only a tentative explanation for the fact that the end of conditional clauses is significantly more demarcated by points and capital letters, thus resembling the end of main clauses, than that of subject clauses. Conditional clauses have a syntactic structure that is deviant from the syntactic structure of other dependent clauses, namely with the verb at the beginning of the clause (cf. sentences 7b, 20), whereas the other dependent clauses have the verb at the end or close to it (cf. sentences 7a, 15 — 19, 21). It is possible that this unique syntactic structure of conditional clauses, which resembles more the structure of main clauses than the structure of other dependent clauses, has led Middle Dutch scribes to assume that conditional clauses were a kind of main clause. In this view, the punctuation of my texts is even more determined by structural linguistic factors than the punctuation that we use nowadays. This explanation, however, does not yet answer all the questions that my data raise. Why do we only find a significant difference between conditional clauses and subject clauses and not between conditional clauses and other verb-final clauses and why have predicate noun clauses, which

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are nearly always verb final, more capital letters than subject clauses? 17 The results of my investigation into the demarcation of the end of the dependent clause show that mediaeval punctuation is determined to a great extent by linguistic factors. I shall return to this in greater detail in 2.3.

2.1.3. Conclusion I hope to have shown in this section that punctuation signs such as point, punctus elevatus, and capital letter are used in thirteenth century Dutch for the demarcation of main and dependent clauses and that the way in which they are used is much more systematic than has been thought. It can be considered an established fact that the punctuation system used for the demarcation of Middle Dutch sentences does not follow the same rules as the punctuation systems of modern standard languages. Middle Dutch punctuation is systematic, but it is controlled by linguistic factors different from those characteristic of the modern system. Main clauses are, for example, demarcated differently from the preceding main clause depending on whether they begin with a subordinate clause or with a coordinating conjunction. This may look like an irregularity at first sight, but it can also be explained as due to the fact that Middle Dutch punctuation takes other linguistic factors into account than we do nowadays. Whether or not the beginning of a dependent clause is marked by punctuation signs, depends in Middle Dutch partly on whether the clause starts with a lexical item indicating that a dependent clause will follow. This is again different from what we do now, but is is neither inferior nor unsystematic. On the contrary, it is as a matter of fact very practical to employ punctuation signs in positions where lexical items are absent, in order to indicate that a dependent clause starts. The endings of conditional clauses are demarcated much more like those of main clauses than the end of subject clauses. This may look strange compared with modern punctuation systems, but it reflects the fact that conditional clauses have a structure resembling more that of main clauses than that of subject clauses. The punctuation in the Bruges texts in this respect reflects differences in linguistic structures even more clearly than that of modern Dutch ones. In short, I hope to have shown in this section that Middle Dutch punctuation signs used to demarcate sentences are not unsystematic. The system is just different from that of modern punctuation, because it takes other linguistic factors into account.

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Punctuation within main and dependent clauses

2.2.0. Introduction One of the most confusing aspects of Middle Dutch punctuation is that the punctuation signs used to demarcate beginnings and endings of main and dependent clauses are also used within these clauses. In this section I shall try to show that most of these punctuation signs are not randomly distributed, but used regularly, and that they also provide insights into the linguistic structure of the Middle Dutch sentence. I shall deal in sequence with punctus elevatus (2.2.1), point (2.2.2), and capital letter (2.2.3).

2.2.1. Punctus elevatus Of the attestations of punctus elevatus in my corpus 20% (45 out of 229) occur in positions that do not coincide with the beginning or the end of main, dependent, and/or coordinate clauses without contraction. Consequently, they do not seem to be used for the demarcation of clauses. The occurrence of those 45 cases of punctus elevatus, however, is restricted to only six syntactic positions.

2.2.1.1. PPs as afterthoughts? In 27% of these cases (12 out of 45), punctus elevatus occurs just before a PP that stands at the end of the clause: (22)

So wie die waerp doet trecken vte sinen say So who wool let pull from his cloth wevele; sonder malengien hie es weft; without bad faith he is (Gysseling I: 352)

(23)

So wie so sijn say were met sinen bomen So who so his clothwork with his beam ende met sinen kamme vlucht; and with his reed runs away from; van vrese vanvinders Dat were es verbord for fear of inspectors That work is forfeited (Gysseling 1:354)

210 (24)

Mar ine l Gerritsen die hiere an verdient hevet dieter leide; that he on it gained had who it there laid down; metter wet. by all lawful means. (Gysseling I: 354)

There are, however, also many PPs at the end of the clause that are not preceded by a punctus elevatus. (25)

(26)

So wat scerre die say vilde sonder haren So which shearer who cloth teared off without their loy. hie leaden seal, he (Gysseling I: 353) hie moet hem weder segghen tsaterdaghes te noenen. he must him again say Saturday at noon. (Gysseling I: 359)

The question arises: what is the difference between the PPs that are preceded by punctus elevatus and PPs that are not? I think it most plausible that the punctus elevatus expresses a pause — as was also said by Greidanus (1926) — and that this pause indicates that the following PP should be interpreted as an afterthought, a constituent that belongs to the clause but that has been forgotten and is therefore stuck on after it. I realize that this view can never be proved. Nevertheless, we have to reckon with the fact that the linguistic status of a PP preceded by a punctus elevatus may be different from that of a PP not preceded by one. This may be an important consideration if one wants to determine how many of all the PPs in a certain text are placed after the V. It is possible, for example, that VPP-structures occurred less often in thirteenth century Dutch than has been thought, since a number of the PPs after the V should be seen as afterthoughts. Consideration of the original punctuation of Middle Dutch texts evidently leads in the first place to deeper insight into the linguistic structure of Middle Dutch. In the case of PPs which should be considered as afterthoughts, it further increases our understanding of the linguistic aspects that can bring about syntactic change. It is said that the frequent occurrence of afterthoughts contributed to the reinterpretation of OV-languages as VO-languages in Niger Congo (Hyman 1975) and English (Stockwell 1977). If PPs at the end of a clause preceded by a punctus elevatus are indeed afterthoughts, it shows that this mechanism of syntactic change also occurred relatively frequently in Middle Dutch. Since this language did not develop into a VO-

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language, the observation just made indicates that the frequent occurrence of afterthoughts is not the most important factor that affects the change from OV to VO (Gerritsen 1980, 1984).

2.2.1.2. Coordinating constituents In 20% (9 out of 45) of the cases the punctus elevatus occurs before the coordinating conjunction that coordinates two constituents. (27)

Entie scerre iof And the shearer or comet toten deken; comes to the dean; (Gysseling I: 353)

iemen van sinen taluen anyone of his company iof tote enen vindre. or to an inspector.

(28)

Die makelare die van dese cope; ende van The agent who from this buy; and for vercope makelare ware, hie sale agent were, he (Gysseling I: 354)

(29)

Alse die deken; ende sine cueriers omme gaen. If the dean; and his aldermen around go. (Gysseling I: 358)

(30)

dat hijt moet betoghen den deken; en ten that he it must show the dean; and the vinders inspectors (Gysseling I. 354)

The coordinating conjunction that coordinates two constituents is very seldom not preceded by a punctus elevatus or a point (see 2.2.2.1). (31)

hie verborde dat laken iof dat say. he forfeited the cloth or the cloth. (Gysseling I: 355)

(32)

dat hi die saye iof trense vergaderde. that he the cloth or loops collected. (Gysseling I: 355)

(33)

vordat die deken ende vinders hebben besien; before the dean and inspectors have inspected; (Gysseling I: 358)

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It seems to be the rule in this Middle Dutch text to have a punctus elevatus or a point (see 2.2.2.1) before the coordinating conjunction. Perhaps this reflects a rhythmic pattern, but it also shows that Middle Dutch (wo)men realized very well that a constituent consisting of one part differs from one which is made up of more.

2.2.1.3. Before an infinitival construction Almost all infinitival constructions in my corpus (n = 8) have a punctus elevatus at the beginning. (34)

(35)

Alse die deken met sinen cueriers omme If the dean with his aldermen around omme eueren te zoekene in order marks to look for (Gysseling I: 356) Die porter heuet macht; te houdene vp The burgher has power; to look after ambotsman sijn goed craftsman his property (Gysseling I: 354)

gaen; go;

den the

This does not seem strange when we consider that an infinitival construction is de facto a dependent clause without tense, and consequently without a subject in surface structure. Since we have seen that a great number of dependent clauses are introduced by a punctuation sign (2.1.2.1), it is not surprising that this kind of dependent clause is almost always introduced by a punctus elevatus. This again shows that the punctuation of my Middle Dutch corpus clearly reflects sentence structure. The punctuation of my corpus seems to be even more strictly conditioned by linguistic factors than that of Modern Dutch.

2.2.1.4. Between long object and finite verb When a relatively long object precedes the finite verb, a punctus elevatus occurs almost always (η = 9) inbetween. We find this punctus elevatus in both dependent and main clauses. The position before the finite verb is unmarked for objects in dependent clauses (37, 38), but marked for objects in main clauses. An object can occur only before the finite verb in main clauses if that object is topicalized (36, 39).

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(36)

Elc dinne saywerc; salmen sceren met .xv. Every thin clothwork; must one shear with fifteen draden. threads. (Gysseling I: 352)

(37)

So wie die dinne saye; leghet So who the thin cloth; lays (Gysseling 1:354)

(38)

So wie die dicke say; vercopt So who the thick cloth; sells (Gysseling I: 356)

(39)

Den deken en ten vinders van den sayen te The dean and the inspectors of the cloth in brugghe; dinct goed dat men saye. Bruges; seems good that one cloth. (Gysseling I: 356)

There are, however, also many examples of objects without a punctus elevatus before the finite verb. In these cases, though, it applies to relatively short objects (40, 41). (40)

dat say salmen sniden an .iij. sticken that cloth shall one cut in three parts (Gysseling I: 353)

(41)

Dit

mach die deken

This may (42)

the dean

zoeken investigate (Gysseling I: 353)

So wie die say doet varwen So who the cloth let dye (Gysseling I: 355)

The use of punctus elevatus in this construction is highly determined by linguistic factors: function of the constituent and length. The rationale of the occurrence of the punctus elevatus in this grammatical context is, however, not very clear to me. It is plausible that the punctus elevatus indicates a pause after the relatively long object, but I wonder why such a pause should occur only after long objects and not after long constituents in another function. Although I cannot explain why a punctus elevatus occurs in such constructions, the consideration of the original punctuation of the Middle Dutch text focuses our attention onto an aspect of Middle Dutch sentence structure that had so far not been recognized.

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2.2.1.5. Coordinating clauses with contraction Almost all coordinating clauses with contraction have a punctus elevatus (n = 4) or a point (η = 4) (see 2.2.2.2) before the coordinating conjunction. (43)

(44)

So wat hosteller di witte saye copt; ende So which innkeeper who white cloth buys; and doet varwen. hie verbord make paint. he forfeits (Gysseling I: 354) Es dat ./. te cort; en tat ander te Is the one too short; and the other too lane long (Gysseling I: 353)

Coordinating clauses with contraction, in common with coordinating constituents (2.2.1.2), have a punctuation sign — either a point or a punctus elevatus — before the coordinating conjunction. It appears to be a rule in the Middle Dutch texts I studied, to introduce coordinated clauses and constituents with a punctus elevatus or a point. This also shows that punctuation signs were used very systematically in the texts that I studied and that they reflect linguistic structure.

2.2.1.6. Comparisons One-quarter of the comparisons in my corpus (η = 3) have a punctus elevatus before the conjunction. (45)

(46)

(47)

met niet min; dan met .v. vinders with not less; than with five inspectors (Gysseling I: 355) woeghe dit say me min; dan ./. vierendeel weighed this cloth more less; than one quarter (Gysseling I: 357) dat iemen zijn say langher liet legghen; that somebody his cloth longer let lie; dan tsaterdaghes. than Saturday. (Gysseling I: 359)

Most of the comparisons, though, have no punctus elevatus.

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(48) ward me te licht dan ./. vierendeel were it more too light than one quarter (Gysseling I: 353) (49) war dit say min ward dan .iij. lb. were this cloth less worth than three lb. (Gysseling I: 353) Since the than-clause is often considered as a dependent clause, it is not surprising that a punctus elevatus occurs before dan (than). It shows again that the punctuation of my corpus reflects sentence structure. It is remarkable, though, that this punctuation sign does not occur regularly, whereas it does in other constructions. I have not found any significant difference between comparisons with and without a punctus elevatus.

2.2.2. Points Only 5% of the points in my corpus (17 out of 334) are not used for the demarcation of the end or the beginning of main, dependent, or coordinate clauses without contraction. These 17 points occur in three different constructions, all three of which also have punctus elevatus.

2.2.2.1. Coordinating constituents The majority of the points (n — 10; 56%) occur before the coordinating conjunction that coordinates two constituents. (50)

datmese

mach besien

that one them may

van

ende te ende, ende

inspect from end

to end.

and

van egghe te egghe from corner to corner (Gysseling I: 356) It seldom occurs (cf. 2.2.1.2) that the coordinating conjunction in such a construction is not preceded by a point or a punctus elevatus. Unfortunately, I was not able to discover in which coordinating constructions a punctus elevatus is used and in which a point.

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2.2.2.2. Coordinating clauses with contraction Almost all coordinating clauses with contraction have either a point (« = 4) or a punctus elevatus (cf. 2.2.1.5) before the coordinating conjunction. Again, I could not find out why in some cases a point is used and in others a punctus elevatus. (51)

dat say salmen That cloth shall one boete. ende bede die fine, and both the (Gysseling I: 353)

sniden an cut in zeluende selvedges

Aij. sticken; sonder three parts; without afsniden cut off

2.2.2.3. NPs as afterthoughts In three cases we find a point before a constituent that occurs at the end of the clause. It is highly plausible that in each case it concerns afterthoughts. Contrary to the use of punctus elevatus with afterthoughts, we do not have only PPs (52) but also NPs (53, 54) after the point. It is not clear why one PP that can be considered an afterthought is demarcated by a point from the sentence to which it belongs, and the others by a punctus elevatus (see 2.2.1.1). The fact that NPs that can be considered afterthoughts are always demarcated by a point from the sentence to which they belong indicates that the occurrence of NPs in such a position is different from that of PPs in such a position. This could indicate that the occurrence of NPs in such a position is experienced as much more extraordinary than that of PPs in such a position. This strengthens the notion that thirteenth century Dutch is an OV-language (Gerritsen 1980, 1984). Although the data are scarce we see once again that taking the original punctuation of a text into consideration broadens our insight into the language in which it has been written. (52)

Nevinden sijt niet al dore aleuen goet. NEGfind they it not everywhere just as good. bi .ij. deine. at two parts. (Gysseling I: 358)

(53)

Elc dinne say sal gheven .v. s. Every thin cloth shall give five solidi

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te wine . ghereder peneghe to the wool weaver, cash pennies (Gysseling I: 358) (54)

die mester the master hure, dien wage, the

soude should ersten first

dien knapen gheven sine dach the fellow give his daily were daghe. working day. (Gysseling I: 359)

2.2.3. Capital letters Capital letters seldom occur in my corpus except for the demarcation of main and dependent clauses. There are only four examples of capital letters that occur in other positions. It is striking, however, that all are preceded by a point or a punctus elevatus and that they can consequently be considered as a kind of reinforcement of those punctuation signs. We thus find capital letters also in positions that often have points or punctus elevatus. Owing to the rare occurrence of capital letters within the clause, I have not been able to conclude why they sometimes occur and sometimes not.

2.2.4. Conclusion I hope to have shown in this section that the use of punctuation signs within the clause is not as indiscriminate as may at first sight appear. In some respects Middle Dutch punctuation seems to be more consistent than, for example, that of Modern Dutch. It appeared from the data in this section that some of the punctuation signs used within main, dependent, or coordinate clauses without contraction, were in fact used for the demarcation of the beginning of a special type of dependent clause (infinitive constructions, comparisons) or a special type of coordinated clause (coordinating clause with contraction). The remainder of the punctuation signs within main and dependent clauses was used in three types of constructions: coordinating constituents, long direct objects before V, and afterthoughts. I have also shown that under special conditions the Middle Dutch scribes of my texts, by the use of punctuation marks, seemed to be able to signal special constructions, probably grammatical, but unusual in Middle Dutch. The punctuation within clauses in my texts indicates for example that the occurrence of VPP-structures was experienced as less unusual than the

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occurrence of VNP-structures, and that it is highly implausible that "afterthought" has played a prominent part in the change from OV to VO in Middle Dutch (2.2.1.1. and 2.2.2.3). Consideration of the original punctuation signs of a text — especially the punctuation within clauses — can therefore produce a greater insight into both the linguistic structure of the language in which it was written and the mechanism of syntactic change.

2.3. Hypotheses In this section I shall trace whether my data help to confirm or reject the hypotheses about Middle Dutch punctuation that I have deduced from the literature (2.0). I shall deal with the two hypotheses separately.

2.3.1. Sentence structure and rhythm of speech The first hypothesis that I want to test runs: Hypothesis 1: The punctuation in Middle Dutch prose texts does not reflect sentence structure, but only rhythm of speech. I hope to have demonstrated sufficiently that the data of my corpus strongly indicate that the first part of this hypothesis must be rejected: the punctuation in my corpus does reflect sentence structure. The majority of the punctuation signs in my texts (91%; 674 out of 740) is used for the demarcation of the end or the beginning of main and dependent clauses (2.1.2.2). If we realize that infinitival constructions (2.2.1.3), comparisons (2.2.1.6) and coordinating clauses with contraction (2.2.1.5, 2.2.2.2) are also de facto clauses, this percentage is even higher (94%; 693 out of 740). Without doubt then, the punctuation signs in my texts reflect sentence structure. I would even argue that the 6% (η = 47) of all the punctuation signs in my corpus that are not used for the demarcation of clauses, also reflect sentence structure. For they occur in constructions that are probably grammatical, but unusual (afterthoughts [2.2.1.1, 2.2.2.3], long objects before finite verbs [2.2.1.4], coordinating constituents [2.2.1.2, 2.2.2.1]). The particular nature of these constructions is emphasized by the use of a punctuation sign. Seen thus, these punctuation signs also reflect sentence structure, for they indicate which structures are experienced as more unusual

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than others. It has to be concluded that the study of punctuation can deepen our insight into Middle Dutch syntax. My data indicate emphatically that the first part of hypothesis 1 has to be considered falsified. This does not imply, however, that the second part of hypothesis 1 should also be rejected. It is an established fact that sentence structure can coincide with rhythm of speech. This is even highly plausible, if we take into account that this also happens in current spoken Dutch. In this view, it is strange that it has ever been thought that punctuation signs would reflect rhythmic entities only, but not sentence structure (Gysseling, Greidanus); rather, while it is hard to prove directly that Middle Dutch punctuation reflects the rhythm of speech, since we have no access to spoken Middle Dutch, it is plausible that Middle Dutch punctuation reflects not only sentence structure but also the rhythm of speech. By studying original Middle Dutch punctuation we can thus probably also gain some insight into the rhythm of spoken Middle Dutch.

2.3.2. Monopartite or bipartite punctuation? The second hypothesis that I want to test reads: Hypothesis 2: Middle Dutch punctuation is either monopartite or bipartite. In order to test the hypothesis that Middle Dutch has either one or two punctuation signs which have different functions (cf. section 1), I have set up Table 7. Table 7. T h e frequency o f capital letter, point, and punctus elevatus in my corpus Column I Capital

C o l u m n II Point

letter,

287

344

Punctus

Capital

Capital

Capital

Small

Small

elevatus

letter

letter

letter

letter

letter

alone

+ point

+

+

+

27

230

30

229

p.e.

114

point

p.e.

199

Table 7 seems to indicate that the Middle Dutch punctuation system that I studied is neither monopartite nor bipartite. There are three different punctuation signs (column I) that often occur in combination (column II, plain) but also alone (column II, italics). However, it

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appears from my data that in 17 cases out of 27 (63%) where a capital letter occurs without point or punctus elevatus, this concerns a clause beginning on a new line. These single capital letters are special. The scribe has not finished the preceding clause with a point or a punctus elevatus because it ends at the end of a line and this indicates sufficiently in his opinion that the clause has been completed. There are consequently only 10 cases of capital letters that occur alone. In my opinion this is not enough to state that Middle Dutch punctuation used three different punctuation signs. The more so since it is unclear that the occurrence of capital letters alone is restricted to specific linguistic contexts. In the Middle Dutch texts that I studied only two punctuation signs are used, point and punctus elevatus, which are occasionally followed by a capital letter instead of a lower case one. Table 7, column II, shows the frequency of the four combinations of punctuation signs in my corpus. Those four combinations are not equally used in all the linguistic contexts in which punctuation signs occur, as we have seen in 2.1 and 2.2. Capital letters preceded by points are used mainly for the demarcation of main clauses (in 82% of the occurrences of capital letters preceded by a point). Capital letters preceded by punctus elevatus are mainly used for the signaling of the end of conditional and predicate noun clauses (40%) and the beginning of coordinate clauses (27%). Small letters preceded by a point are mainly used for the demarcation of the end of relative and conditional clauses (36%), the beginnings of coordinate clauses (11%) and dependent clauses (9%), and for the demarcation of constructions within the text (15%). Small letters preceded by a punctus elevatus mark the end of subject, conditional and relative clauses (53%), and constructions within the clause (22%). We can conclude from this that the different combinations function in different contexts, but that there is also a lot of overlap. Of course, it is possible that conditional clauses that finish with a point and are in lower case, differ from conditional clauses that finish with a punctus elevatus and have a capital letter. But so far I have not found such differences. This shows, however, that taking the original punctuation of a text into consideration can lead to a more thorough study of the text. It holds for all four combinations of punctuation signs in my corpus that their occurrence is not restricted to specific linguistic contexts. The punctuation system that is used in my corpus differs significantly from the monopartite and bipartite system that has been sketched by

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Greidanus (cf. section 1). My data in no way confirm hypothesis 2, and consequently do not support the evolution of the punctuation system she has outlined.

3. Philology and historical linguistics: a symbiosis I have tried to show in this paper that the original punctuation of the Middle Dutch texts that I studied reflects the sentence structure very clearly and that a consideration of it provides a greater insight into Middle Dutch. I have found, for example, that taking the original punctuation of my texts into consideration deepens our insight into the VO or OV character of the language in which it has been written. It appeared that the language of my texts was probably less VO than we would assume if we disregarded the original punctuation (2.2.1.1, 2.2.2.3). Furthermore, I have shown that the Middle Dutch scribes of my texts were well aware of the different types of sentence structures, as appears from the fact that conditional clauses which have a structure deviating from that of most dependent clauses, resembling rather that of main clauses, have a more main-clause like punctuation that other dependent clauses (2.1.2.2). Of course, these results only hold for the texts of my corpus: the punctuation in other Middle Dutch texts may be different (Greidanus 1926: 115).18 Nevertheless, I believe my data indicate that it would prove very useful to historical linguists, especially historical syntacticians, to consider the original punctuation of the texts they study. This is problematic, however, since philologists have usually disregarded the original punctuation of mediaeval texts and replaced it by modern punctuation, believing the original punctuation to be unsystematic and assuming it could not contribute to a better understanding of the text. I hope I have convinced both linguists and philologists that mediaeval punctuation may provide more insight than has previously been assumed. Whether or not we can study the original punctuation of older texts depends, however, on philologists. Historical linguistics nowadays requires a great many different skills; one of them being the ability to decipher the handwriting in old manuscripts. For this reason historical linguists have to rely on the editions of philologists. If philologists aim to edit texts for historical or literary purposes only, it does not matter

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if the original punctuation is replaced by a modern one — provided it does not force an inaccurate interpretation on the reader. If they aim, however, at editing texts for linguistic purposes, it is important to provide as accurately as possible the original punctuation of a manuscript. I realize that this may be difficult. The punctuation signs are not always very clear. A small letter may appear to be a capital letter, and a small capital letter may seem a lower-case letter; a point may look like a comma, and so on. Gysseling (1977 I: XIII) sketches these problems in extenso. But data about older stages of a language are scarce and we therefore have to use all the evidence available. Historical linguists profit from an accurate reflection of the original punctuation of a text because it can deepen their insight into the linguistic structure of the language in which that text was written. Philologists profit from the clearer understanding that historical linguists gain from the study of the punctuation signs in older stages of a language, when they interpret their texts. I hope this article will both stimulate historical linguists to consider the linguistic information provided by the original punctuation of a text, and philologists to show as clearly as possible in their editions this original punctuation. Both will surely benefit from this.

Notes * I thank Nettie Bloembergen for drawing my attention to the relation between the original punctuation of a fourteenth century Dutch manuscript and its syntax, in an extended essay that she wrote under my supervision (Bloembergen 1983). Furthermore, I am grateful to the participants of the conference, especially Rolf Bremmer, Camiel Haitians, Jaap van Marie, and Pieter van Reenen, for fruitful discussion concerning the matters dealt with in this paper. I also thank Wendie Schaffer for polishing the style and content of this paper. 1. There are a few studies of the original punctuation in Old and Middle English manuscripts (Harlow 1959; Zeeman 1956) and Middle Dutch manuscripts (Greidanus 1926, Stracke 1910). Those studies, however, do not examine to what extent the consideration of the original punctuation of a manuscript can deepen our insight into the language in which it was written, but try to trace mainly whether the punctuation is conditioned by rhythmic or by grammatical factors and whether consideration of it leads to a better comprehension of the text. 2. She also mentions a tripartite type of punctuation in Middle Dutch. This is left out of consideration here since it rarely occurs, and in the few cases where it does, Greidanus has not been able to find a distinction in use between the two punctuation signs that are used in addition to capital letters in order to divide the text.

Punctuation

and syntax

in Middle

Dutch

223

3. Some texts with a monopartite punctuation do not use capital letters as division signs but red marked small letters. 4. Some texts with a bipartite punctuation do not use points to indicate pauses but colons, slashes, or double slashes. 5. It is notable that a few experts of English philology already advanced a theory in the 1950s that the original punctuation of Old and Middle English manuscripts was not at all haphazard and meaningless, but that those manuscripts were punctuated carefully according to principles unfamiliar to us, but nevertheless as valid as those held today (cf. Zeeman 1956). This opinion, though, did not get through to editors of manuscripts or historical linguists. 6. Main clauses that start on a new line in the manuscript (η = 5) are left out of consideration since they are in statistically significant way (Χ2, ρ < .000**) less often not set off by a point against the preceding sentence than are the other main clauses. 7. The use of numbers and paragraphs is counted as points. 8. Main clauses as in (5) start with a coordinating conjunction, but they are full main clauses in themselves and they do not show contraction as for example (43) and (44) in 2.2.1.5. Sentences which start with a coordinating conjunction and which show contraction are studied in 2.2. 9. The question that arises is in what respect do those main clauses that start with a coordinating conjunction and are set off against the preceding main clause by a point with a capital letter (71%) differ from those main clauses with a coordinating conjunction which are set off in another way against the preceding sentence (29%). Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any clear differences between those sentences. 10. Exactly 1/3 of the subject clauses and 1/3 of the conditional clauses that occur before a main clause have a deviant demarcation from the preceding main clause. It would be interesting to know in which linguistic respects those main clauses differ from the ones following a subject or a conditional clause which are set off against the preceding main clause by a point with a capital letter. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any clear difference between the two types of main clauses. 11. Since I left out of consideration main clauses that commerced on a new line in the manuscript (see note 6), I had also to leave out of consideration dependent clauses that started on a new line in the manuscript — in order to be able to compare the data of column A with the other columns. 12. The difference in demarcation between the beginning of coordinated relative clauses (Table 2, column G) and the beginning of coordinated subordinate clauses (Table 2, column D) is statistically significant for the use of capital versus small letters (.Χ2, ρ < .0002**), the use of points versus neither points nor punctus elevatus (X2, ρ < .0005**), points versus punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .04*), neither points nor punctus elevatus versus points + punctus elevatus (Χ 2 , ρ < .02*). These results are the same as for the difference between all subordinate and relative clauses (Table 1, columns Β and C). 13. For this part of my investigation, I have included dependent clauses that occur on a new line in the manuscript, since there are no significant differences in the use of punctuation signs between those dependent clauses and dependent clauses that do not start on a new line in the manuscript.

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14. Because of the fact that the punctuation signs that are used for the demarcation of subordinate clauses at the beginning of main clauses differ significantly from those of subordinate clauses at another position in the main clause, I have left out of consideration subordinate clauses at the beginning of main clauses. I have checked, however, whether the kind of lexical item also affects the punctuation of the beginning of subordinate clauses preceding main clauses. I found no significant differences. 15. Dependent clauses that end on a line in the manuscript are included for this part of my investigation, since there are no significant differences in use of punctuation signs between the 21 dependent clauses that end on a line and the 190 that do not. 16. The demarcation of the end of both conditional clauses and predicate noun clauses differs, however, most significantly from the demarcation of the end of main clauses (Χ 2 , ρ < .000** for all punctuation signs). 17. Harlow (1959) found a relationship between length of the dependent and main clause taken together and the punctuation at the end of the dependent clause. If the dependent clause preceded the main clause and the combination exceeded 20 syllables, a punctuation sign is found. If the combination is less than 20 syllables, punctuation signs are much rarer. Such a correlation, however, was not present in my data. 18. The punctuation in other texts may be different, but there are good reasons to believe that it would also deepen our insight into syntax. Bloembergen (1983) found for example a relationship between the use of capital letters at the beginning of imperative clauses in fourteenth century Dutch, and syntax. VO-imperatives always started with capital letters, while OV-imperatives never did. The use of capital letters indicated that the VO-imperatives were seen more as distinct clauses than the OVimperatives. This showed that VO-imperatives were felt to be more usual than OVimperatives.

References Bloembergen, Nettie 1983 Een onderzoek naar de woordvolgorde van de imperatiefzin in het Middelnederlands [A study of the word order in Middle Dutch imperative clauses] (thesis, Utrecht). Campbell, Lyle 1983 "Discussion of historical linguistics and philology", in: Anders Ahlqvist (ed.), Papers from the 5 th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Amsterdam — Philadelphia: Benjamins), 442. Gerritsen, Marinel 1980 "An analysis of the rise of SOV patterns in Dutch", in: Elizabeth C. Traugott et al. (eds.), Papers from the 4th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Amsterdam: Benjamins), 123 — 137. 1984 "Divergent word order developments in Germanic languages: a description and a tentative explanation", in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Historical syntax (Berlin —New York —Amsterdam: Mouton), 107 — 137.

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and syntax

in Middle Dutch

225

Greidanus, Johanna 1926 Beginselen en ontwikkeling van de interpunctie, in Ί biezonder in de Nederlanden [Beginnings and development of punctuation, especially in the Netherlands] (Zeist: Vonk & Co.). Gysseling, Maurits 1977 Corpus van middelnederlandse texten [Corpus of Middle Dutch texts], ('s Gravenhage: Nijhoff). Harlow, C. G. 1959 "Punctuation in some manuscripts of yElfric", The Review of English Studies (NS) 10/37: 1 - 1 9 . Hyman, Larry 1975 "On the change from SOV to SVO: evidence from Niger-Congo", in: Charles N. Li (ed.), Word order and word order change (Austin: University of Texas Press), 113 — 147. Richtlijnen 1975 Richtlijnen voor het uitgeven van historische bescheiden [Guidelines for the publication of historical documents] (Utrecht — 's Gravenhage: Nederlands Historisch Genootschap — Rijkscommissie voor Vaderlandse Geschiedenis). Stockwell, Robert P. 1977 "Motivations for exbraciation in Old English", in: Charles N. Li (ed.). Mechanisms of syntactic change (Austin: University of Texas Press), 291 — 314. Stracke, D. A. 1910 "lets over de punctuatie in Middelnederlandse dichtwerken" [Remarks on punctuation in Middle Dutch literary texts], Leuvense Bijdragen 9: 213 — 243. Vooys, C. G. N. de η. d. Middelnederlandse Marialegenden [Middle Dutch legends about St. Mary] (Leiden: Brill). Zeeman, Elizabeth 1956 "Punctuation in an early manuscript of Love's Mirror", The Review of English Studies 7/25: 1 1 - 1 8 .

IVES G O D D A R D

Unhistorical features in Massachusett orthography

0. There are a number of problems in the interpretation of the written record of Massachusett, the extinct Eastern Algonquian language that was native to the area of southeastern Massachusetts. Comparative evidence derived from knowledge of other Algonquian languages is extremely helpful to this task, but substantial difficulties are nevertheless caused by the fact that the English-based orthography is particularly variable in the representation of the vowels, which are precisely the entities that have undergone the most comlex phonological innovations and attendant analogies. This paper deals with the problem of interpreting the representations of certain Massachusett vowels whose history is significant for the classification of the Eastern Algonquian languages. 1. The initial study of Massachusett was undertaken by John Eliot, who received the bachelor of arts degree from Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1622 and was a missionary to the Indians of Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1646 to 1690. Eliot's Massachusett translation of the Bible was printed at the Indian College in Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1663, the first entire Bible in any language to be printed in the Western Hemisphere (Eliot 1663). Eliot also published a grammar of Massachusett (Eliot 1666) and numerous religious translations and other compositions. A second edition of the Bible, basically unchanged from the first, appeared in 1685. Eliot's translation is based directly on the English Authorized Version (the King James Bible), published in 1611, though Eliot often prefers alternate wordings that probably reflect his knowledge of Hebrew and Greek. The complex inflectional and derivational morphology of Massachusett is well documented in the Bible and appears generally to be accurately used, but the phrasal idioms and word order of the English

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Ives Goddard

model tend to be closely followed to an extent that must have made the text appear awkward and in places incomprehensible to native speakers. During the Colonial period, English and Indian ministers and teachers used the Massachusett Bible to teach the reading and writing of Massachusett in the Christian Indian communities of southeastern Massachusetts, which were to a large extent internally self-governing. As a consequence, literacy in Massachusett became widespread, and Massachusett was used extensively in writing both personal and official records and communications. This literacy is documented by scores of Massachusett writings penned by native speakers between 1664 and 1789 (Goddard - Bragdon 1988). In addition to attesting dialect variants and other features not found in the Bible, these writings aid in the interpretation of Eliot's orthography by showing how native speakers adapted it to their use. 2. Massachusett had twelve consonant phonemes and six vowel phonemes, as follows: (stops and affricate) /p/, /t/, /t y / (alveopalatal), /c/, /k/; (voiceless continuants) /s/, /s/, /h/; (voiced continuants) jmj, /n/, /w/, /y/; (short vowels) /a/, /a/; (long vowels) /!/, /ä/, /ä/ (nasalized), /ü/. The orthography developed by Eliot (1666: 1—4) provided for the indication of all the distinctive contrasts of Massachusett, except in a few cases in restricted environments, but it did not provide a consistent one-to-one representation of the phonemes, and even Eliot did not regularly indicate several of the distinctions that he himself explicitly provided for (Goddard 1981). In Eliot's transcriptions, the vowels , , , , and were used in both their long and short English values, though the long value was occasionally specified by the use of an acute (or other) accent. Massachusett /a/ was written or almost interchangeably (and sometimes with a spurious accent) and occasionally ; /a/ was written with any of the five vowels (in their short English values), though most commonly and , and occasionally in other ways; ßf was usually (in its long value) or ; /ä/ was written , ( o ) , , (and with other accents); /ä/ was written with , , or and an indication of nasalization, either a following (before /t/, /t y /, /c/, and /k/) or (before /p/) or a circumflex accent (specified as a mark of nasalization by Eliot 1666: 3), but the circumflex was often replaced by an acute or omitted. For /ü/, Eliot created a special character, a diagraph of two os (here transcribed 8 for typo-

Unhistorical features in Massachusett orthography

229

graphical reasons); even this could be used in a short value to spell /s/ before /w/. A typical example of the ambiguities of Eliot's orthography is provided by menadtam 'he vomits' (Jonah 2: 10), which is /manatam/ (with in its short English value), in contrast to menan 'tongue' (Jas. 3: 5), which is /mTnan/ (with long English ); the phonetics of the second form are made clear by other attestations, e. g., meenan (Jas. 3: 6). A typical range of spelling variants is exhibited by /awasaw/ 'he warms himself, which appears as auwossu (Is. 44: 15), ouwassu (Is. 44: 16), äwossu (Mark 14: 54), and auwösu (John 18:

18). 3. The Massachusett vowel system has evolved from the Proto-Algonquian ( P A ) system of four short and four long vowels: (short) */, *e, *a, *o; (long) */·, *e·, *α·, *o·. In Eastern Algonquian, as shown by the Delaware languages to the south (Munsee and Unami) and Eastern Abenaki and Maliseet-Passamaquoddy to the north, P A short *i fell together with long *ί· to Proto-Eastern-Algonquian ( P E A ) *F, P A *o and *o• fell together to P E A *ö, and P A *e became P E A (Goddard 1979: 9 6 - 9 7 , 1980: 149-150, 1982: 30). A n important conditioned change was the shift of P A *i and *o to P E A *d before *w: P A *elenyiwa 'man' > P E A *drdnsw > Munsee Imaw (cf. Fox neniwa); P A *ki-sow- 'warm' > P E A *kisaw-, as in Munsee ki-sgwe-w 'it is nice and warm' (cf. Fox ki-sowisinwa 'he lies warm'). The Proto-Eastern-Algonquian system of two short and four long vowels is directly reflected by the Massachusett vowel system, with the phonetic shift of P E A *e to /ä/ and of P E A *ä to nasalized /ä/, as in neighboring languages (Goddard 1965,1971). The distribution of P E A *T and is, however, extensively altered in Massachusett by the weakening of P E A *F to Mass. /a/ in many non-initial syllables (Goddard 1981: 7 4 - 7 6 , 8 6 - 9 5 ) . P E A * f i s retained as Mass. /I/ in a wordinitial syllable, in a second or third syllable if only short-vowel syllables precede, or before P E A *w (which often drops intervocalically in Massachusett); elsewhere P E A *F gives Mass. 3. This weakening gave rise to doublets for many morphemes, and the distribution of the two reflexes has been somewhat disturbed by analogy. A n example of a doublet is provided by the two reflexes of P E A *-Tksn 'grow, be (inanimate)': (1)

kesukun /kTsskan/ 'it is ripe' (Rev. 14: 15) < P E A *kmk3n (with weakening of the second * f ) ; (cf. E. Abenaki

kisikm).

230

(2)

Ives Goddard

wunnegen /wanikan/ 'it is good' (Gen. 1:4) < PEA *w9rikm (cf. E. Abenaki wdlikm).

The weakening of PEA *f to Mass. /a/ is accompanied by two other changes that affect adjacent consonants: palatalization, which affects a preceding consonant, and infection, which affects what follows. Palatalization shifts PEA *k to Mass. /t y / before a weakened PEA *ϊ ( > Mass. /a/) that is followed by *(h)p, *m, or *(h)k: (3)

sontim /sat y am/ 'chief ('master, prince, lord' passim) < P E A *säklmäw

( > U n a m i sa-k-vma)

< PA

*sa-kima-wa

(cf. 18). Mass. /t y / is also the reflex of PEA *k before PEA *e ( > Mass. a) and before PEA *dw ( > Mass. /aw/): (4)

keteau /klt y äw/ 'he recovered' (Is. 39: 1) < PEA *kikew ( > Unami ki-k-e·).

(5)

pittu /pat y aw/ 'pitch' (Gen. 6: 14) < PEA *p9kdw(> pkii 'gum').

Unami

The alternations between Mass. /k/ and /t y / brought about by this palatalization are subject to analogical pressures: the palatalization before /a/ from PEA *f tends to spread to morpheme-final *k before /a/ from PEA (in the same consonantal environment; 50, 51), while, conversely, before /ä/ and /aw/ Mass. jkj tends to be restored to eliminate alternations with /t y / (40). Infection is the insertion of a jyj before a vowel that follows a /t/, /ht/, /n/, or /h/ which itself follows a weakened PEA * F ( > Mass. /a/) (Goddard 1981: 8 4 - 8 6 ) : (6)

sekeneam /sTkanyam/ 'he refuses (to)' (Gen. 37: 32) < PEA *smkmam 'he hates (it)' ( > Munsee si-nki-nam 'he does not like the looks of (it)').

(7)

wuskannemuneash /waskanTmanyas/ 'seeds' (Gen. 47: 19, 23) < P E A

(8)

*w99kammmar.

wepitteash /wTpatyas/ 'his teeth' (Gen. 49: 12)
Fox sakime wa).

sogkemas

Hence, if the treatment of PA *i before *w were really the same as the treatment before *(h)p, *m, and *(h)k, preservation of PEA *Tw as Mass. /iw/ would be expected in Mass. pittu (5, 9). Alternatively, it might be proposed that PA *i and */· did not fall together in Massachusett the way they did in the rest of Eastern Algonquian, and that the palatalization took place only before PA */, in the appropriate consonantal environments. To account for the palatalization under this proposal, however, it would also have to be assumed that Massachusett did not share the general Eastern Algonquian shift of PA *i to /a/ before *w, and that, whatever the ultimate developments were, PA *i and *o were distinct before *w at the time the palatalization was conditioned. Under this set of assumptions the historical derivation of 'pitch' (9) and 'waves' (10) would have been as follows: (20)

PA *pekiwa > **pdkiw /pst y 3w/) (cf. 9).

(21)

P A *tekowaki

>

>

**t9kawak

** pstyiw

> pittu

( o r **t9köwak)

(/pst y iw/ or >

tukk8og

(cf. 10). Other evidence, however, appears to rule out any explanation that depends on the assumption that Massachusett does not share with the other Eastern languages the early developments of PA *i and */'·. For one thing, in the position before *w all these languages appear to have had the same distribution of the short or reduced vowels (putative Mass. /a/ and /i/, other Eastern *p) and the long or unreduced vowels (Mass. β/, other Eastern *i). This parallelism extends even to perturbations of the distribution, which apparently reflect the workings of

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morphological analogy though the motivation is not always obvious. For example, Massachusett agrees with other Eastern Algonquian languages in having a class of intransitive verb stems that retained */ before the third person ending *w; for the most part, this class continued verbs in PA */·: (22)

t8keu /töhklw/ 'he woke up' (Ps. 78: 65), Munsee tohki-w, F o x to-hki-wa

< PA

*to-xki-wa.

This class of stems in non-alternating PEA */"(< PA */•) contrasted with the class of stems in alternating PEA *f ( < PA *i [11, 14] or *o ~ *wi [12, 15]), which descriptively replaced the *i by *d before third person *w. Although by sound law these classes of stems would both have been treated the same way in many environments in Massachusett, as a result of paradigmatic levelling the classes have distinct shapes in most inflectional forms (Goddard 1981: 90 — 91): (23)

t8hkeit /töhklt/ 'when he wakes up' (Zech. 4: 1); contrast with 14 and 15.

What is significant in the present context is that some stems in PA */ are continued by non-alternating stems in the Eastern languages, and where attestations are known, Massachusett shows the same class shift in the same stems: (24)

sagkeet /säklt/ 'he who urinates' (1 K. 16: 11; the /I/ proves the non-alternating stem), Munsee ski-w 'he urinates' < P E A *s3kJw < PA *sekiwa; cf. M u n s e e ski-wan

Maliseet

'urine',

skiwm.

The treatment of PA *i in PEA *saklw 'he urinates' (24) is also found in Unami kwsl· 'he moves (his residence)' < PEA *kwosTw ( < PA *kwesiwa); phonologically it is the same treatment as in Munsee nihki-wan 'my nose' ( < PA *nexkiwani [Goddard 1982: 40]) and Maliseet ksmiwsn 'it is raining' ( < PA *kemiwanwi [Bloomfield 1946: 91; Sherwood 1981]). These forms suggest a phonetically conditioned exception to the general shift of PA *i to PEA before *w: PA *i was regularly kept as PEA *F before *w in the second syllable of words with short-vowel first syllables. This treatment survived, however, only in the final syllable of some disyllabic intransitives and internally in synchronically unanalyzable stems. Subsequently, under this hypothesis, the treatment of PA *iw as PEA *dw was extended to PEA *apsw

Unhistorical features in Massachusett

orthography

235

'be (there)' (11, 14) and a few other verbs, and generally to the final syllables of simple noun stems (9) and stem-initial elements (41). The extension of PEA *aw to the third person of PEA *apsw (and some other verbs) may well have been semantically conditioned. The alternating and non-alternating classes of Proto-Eastern-Algonquian stems in *ϊ were to a great extent semantically specialized. The inherited non-alternating stems tended to be active verbs, including verbs of motion and others (Goddard 1981: 92 — 93), while the inherited alternating stems would have been dominated by statives and the large class of middle reflexives (intransitives with middle or passive meaning derived from transitives), which had stems in PA *o ~ *wi. The verbs that have PEA *ϊ\ν from PA *iw are active ('urinate', 'move residence'), while those that have putatively replaced expected PEA *fvv by * aware statives. For example, PA *apiwa 'he is (there), etc.' ( > PEA *apsw) is almost prototypically Stative and is part of a derivationally related set of verbs in which it functions as the middle reflexive beside transitives meaning 'put, place (there)' (Bloomfield 1962: 76, 289). Similarly, nishuog /nshsawak/ 'three (animate)' (1 John 5: 7) < PA *ne9liwaki 'they are three' and tohsüog /tahsawak/ 'they are (so) many' < PA *tahsiwaki (30) are statives and also conform to the reflexes of other numeral verbs, which have /aw/ from PA *iw (e.g. 38); wusso /w3hs3w/ 'she has a husband' (Gen. 20: 3) < PA *we9siwa is a stative that conforms to the stem class of other verbs of possession (e. g. 47); and hogk8 'he is clothed' (45) is a stative. Massachusett also shares with the other Eastern languages a morphological leveling in the other direction, which results in the generalization of the long or unweakened vowel (Mass. /!/, PEA *i) before the *w of the negative suffix in both the alternating and non-alternating stem classes (in Massachusett the *w is generally lost by sound law): (25)

matta na ... wutappein /wstaplsn/ 'he does not stay there' (Jer. 49: 33), M u n s e e mäh wtapi-wan (cf. 11, 14).

Whatever the historical explanations, however, the fact that Massachusett and the other Eastern languages reflect the same somewhat quirky innovations in the distribution of the reflexes of PA *i and */· argues that these vowels underwent these developments as a shared feature of Eastern Algonquian. The shared innovations in the treatment of PA *i could not have spread through the Eastern languages after the Massachusett palatalization, since under such an hypothesis the conditions for the unique Massachusett palatalization would have

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to include unmotivated distributional patterns anticipating those that characterize the subsequent general Eastern treatment of PA *iw (as shown by pittw, 5, 9). 6. It appears, then, that the apparent distinction in spelling between appu (11) 'he sits, etc." and kodtupp8 'he is hungry' (12) presents a real philological problem. For these words the distinction seems to be completely consistent, but the question must be raised whether this consistency obtains in other cases. One obvious check on Eliot's transcriptions is provided by the writings by native speakers of Massachusett, and in fact these materials present a quite different picture of the putative reflexes of PEA *dw. Where Eliot uses word-finally and prevocalically in its long English value, the native writers usually write (equivalently ), « o o w » , or (examples are taken from Goddard — Bragdon [1988], using their system of citation): (26)

ahsoomapoo /ahsömapaw/ 'he keeps still' (79: 4); stem-final /-apa/ is derived from the stem /apa-/ 'sit, stay (there)' in appu (11).

(27)

Chequnnappow /clkwanapaw/ 'he remains still' (111: 4); also with stem-final /-apa/; cf. Eliot's chequnappu (Josh. 10: 13).

(28)

Wudtabooonkkanoo /watapawakanaw/ 'their (46: 32); noun stem /apawakan-/ (derived /wat —aw/, the inflection for third plural Eliot's appuonk /apawak/ 'seat' (Rev. 4: 5 same noun in a concrete use.

(29)

watchanitt8onganit /wacänatawäkanat/ 'salvation (loc.)' (B47: Mala, 1.2); cf. Eliot's wadchanittuonk /wacänatawäk/ 'salvation' (Is. 59: 16).

staying (there)' from appu) + possessor; cf. "throne"), the

One native writer (Zachary Hossueit) often uses the non-standard spelling as the equivalent of Eliot's long , but even he seems freely to substitute for this: (30)

tass8og /tahsawak/ 'they are (so) many' (49: 39), tassueog (49: 40); cf. Eliot's tahsuog (Rev. 1: 20), tohsuog (Eliot 1666: 14).

The spelling (or ) is common after /t y /, where it helps to indicate the palatalization, but /aw/ may be spelled here as well, especially when the preceding /t y / is spelled :

Unhistorical features in Massachusett orthography

237

(31)

maskehtuash /masklht y awas/ 'grass' (1: 10, etc.), moskehtuwash (133: 32); cf. Eliot's moskehtuash (Dan. 4: 25).

(32)

wechoo /wlt y aw/ 'house' (48: 4, etc.); cf. Eliot's wetu (17).

Furthermore, although Eliot seems to be consistent in using either or in some words and morphemes, in others he uses both spellings: (33)

natuppuog /natapawak/ 'they feed' (Luke 8: 32), nadtuppSog (Is. 30: 23); < PA *natw- 'seek' + *-po 'eat' (cf. 12).

(34)

kutche kutt8wog /katawak/ 'they began to speak' (Acts 2: 4), kekuttuog /klkatawak/ 'they spoke' (Acts 2: 11) < PA *ketowaki, *ki-ketowaki (reduplicated).

(35)

hett8wonk /hatawak/ 'speech' (Gen. 11: 1), hettuonk (Trumbull 1903: 27); cf. hettuog 'they said to one another' (Gen. 11: 3) < PA *etwiwaki (with prefixed /(a)h-/, the reduplication of initial /a/).

(36)

pohquohwuss8waen /pahkwahwasawäln(an)/ 'savior' (Ps. 17 7), kuppohquohwussuaeneum 'your (sg.) savior' (Is. 43: 3 second-singular possessed form with affixes /ka —am/) , /-awä-/ < PA *-iwe- (detransitivizer) (pohqohwun- 'save (him)' [with mutation of /n/ to /s/ before PA */]; -en(in) 'person').

(37)

pomitchuwan /pamacawan/ 'it flowed' (Ps. 105: 41), pomitch8wan 'flowing water' (Prov. 5: 15), < PA *pem'along' (*e replaced by *a) + *-ciwan 'flow'.

(38)

neesuoh /nlsawah/ 'two (animate obviative)' (2 K. 10: 14), nees8oh (2 K. 4: 1); obviative (secondary third person) of agent noun homophonous with PA *nyi-siwaki 'they are two'.

(39)

\vunnuss8ut /wanahsawat/ 'his testicles (loc.)' (Deut. 23: 1), quoshqunuss8ont 'he whose testicles are broken' (Lev. 21: 20; medial /-anahsaw-/ 'testicle'), wunnussue /wanahsawT/ (prenoun) 'his testicle (attrib.)' (Job 40: 17); < PA *we9e9siwahi 'his testicles'.

(40)

wek8oash /wlkawaas/ 'their houses' (Jer. 43: 13), wekuout /wlkawäat/ 'in their houses' (Jer. 43: 12); < PEA *wik9wäwar 'their houses', with palatalization leveled out at morpheme boundary (cf. wek 'his house' [Prov. 14: 11]).

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Ives Goddard

These examples show that the spelling variation is found in Mass. / C a w / f r o m all s o u r c e s : P A *Cow (33, 34), P A *Cwiw (36, 37, 38, 39), a n d P E A *Cdw (40).

(35), P A

*Ciw

7. There is, in fact, a considerable amount of evidence, of a number of types, which indicates that the weakened reflex of PEA *fdid indeed fall together with PEA to Massachusett /a/. It has been pointed out above that the weakening of the second vowel in pittu 'pitch' (5, 9) is found generally in Eastern Algonquian and that, whatever its explanation, the resulting vowel represents an exception to what is presumed to have been the phonologically regular treatment, which would have given PEA *ϊ ( > Mass. β/) from PA *i before *w after a word-initial short-vowel syllable (24). In another morpheme that is an exception to this rule, the orthography confirms that Massachusett had /aw/ as the reflex of the second-syllable *iw in such cases, rather that a putative [iw]: (41)

miss8unk /mahsawahkw/ 'dry tree' (Ezek. 20: 47), mussSonk (Ezek. 17: 24) < PA *meHsiwa-xkwi 'dead tree' (PA *meHsiw-

(?) + *-a-xkw

' t r e e ' ; > F o x mesiwa-hkwa

fallen tree', Munsee xäwahkw 43).

'dead

'old tree'; Goddard 1982:

This treatment conforms to what is found in other cases that have the environment expected for weakening and seem to have consistently for the reflex of PA */w: (42)

nuppas8 /nspäsaw/ Ί bring (them)' (Is. 43: 5), uppas8uh /spässwäh/ 'he brings him' (Luke 10: 34), stem /päsaw-/; cf. PA *pye-siwe-wa 'he brings (him)' ( > Cree pe siwe-w).

Additional evidence that the weakened reflex of PEA *f fell together with Mass. /a/ comes from cases of phonological and morphological reshaping that presuppose this neutralization. For example, Eastern Algonquian has an old and persistent rule that drops *w in the sequence *Cw9 if followed by a labial or labial cluster (43; Siebert 1975: 315, 354; Goddard 1980: 148), and this is generalized to cases in which the Mass. /a/ in the environment reflects weakened PA */ (44): (43)

onkup /ahksp/ 'strong drink' (Prov. 20: 1), onkuppe /ahkspsy/ (Prov. 31: 4) < PA *a-hkw- 'severe' + *-epy'water' (Goddard 1965: 212).

Unhistorical features in Massachusett orthography (44)

239

togkuppinnonat /takapananat/ 'to tie him up' (Judg. 15: 10); stem /takapan-/ < PA *takwipi6e-wa ( > Arapaho toukuO-).

As a consequence, intransitive stems in PA *Cwi lose the *vv in the stem when the final vowel is weakened before the *w of the third person suffix; stems in PA *Cwi thus fall together completely with stems in PA *Co *Cwi), which never had *w in the stem in these third-person forms (cf. 12, 15): (45)

hogk8 (hakaw/ 'he is clothed (in as the reduplication of /a-/), aqut (with it)' (Ps. 68: 13), agquit /akwanyät/ 'to put it on' (1 Pet.

it)' (Ps. 93: 1; with /(a)h-/ /äkwat/ 'he who is clothed (Dan. 12: 7), ogqunneat 3: 3); < PA *akwiwa.

(46)

wunogk8 /wanakaw/ 'he is fat' (Judg. 3: 17), wunnogkS (Deut. 32: 15), wanogqutcheg /wänakwaclk/ 'the fat ones' (Ezek. 34: 16); < PA *welakwiwa ( > Fox anakwiwa).

(47)

owonogkuog /swanakawak/ 'they have holes' (Matt. 8: 20), 8wonogk8og (Luke 9: 58) < PA *wewa-6akwiwaki (cf. *wa-6akwi 'hole').

The obvious explanation for why weakened PA *i is treated phonologically like Mass. /a/ in such cases is simply that it fell together with /a/ phonetically. There are a number of types of morphological reshaping that point in the same direction. Some verbs have been transferred from the class in *-Ci (cf. 11, 14) to the class in *-C (13, 16): (48)

meechu /mlcsw/ 'he eats (it)' (Rom. 14: 2) < PA *mi-ciwa, meech /mlc/ 'id.' (Is. 7: 15), meechwog /mlcwak/ 'they eat (it)' (Gen. 1: 30), meechan /mlcan/ 'what you (sg.) ate' (Prov. 23: 8), meechuk /mlcak/ 'he who eats it' (John 6: 51), meechik (John 6: 58), meechinat /mlcsnät/ 'to eat it' (Gen. 3: 6).

(49)

weasukeg /wlasaklk/ 'those that carry burdens' (Neh. 4: 17), 8weassunäoont /awlasanääät/ 'that they carry burdens' (2 Chr. 2: 2); < PA *wi-wasiwa 'he carries a pack'.

This transfer in inflectional class would obviously have been facilitated after the falling together of weakened PA *i with PA *e caused the word-final sequences in a number of inflectional forms to become homonymous in the two classes (Goddard 1981: 97). For example, in

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Ives Goddard

a form like kummeechin /ksmlcsn/ 'you (sg.) eat it' (Gen. 2: 16) the /-an/ was historically from PEA *-Tn (stem-final *-f + *-n [PA *-/ + *-«/]) but it was reinterpreted as being from the sequence PEA *-an of the corresponding form in the consonant-final class (which inserts [ < PA *e] before most consonant-initial suffixes). A case in which the reinterpretation went in the other direction is furnished by non-initial stem-forming elements that begin with a Mass. /a/ followed by one of the consonants that provide the environment for palatalization (§ 3). Historically palatalization would have occurred before these elements only if the Mass. /s/ reflected weakened PEA *f, but it has been generalized to occur before the elements that begin with a /s/ that reflects PEA (Goddard 1981: 7 8 - 7 9 ) : (50)

tahtippadtou /taht y apataw/ 'he cools it with water' (Luke 16: 24) < PA *tahkepata-wa (*tahk- 'cold' + *-epat 'act on by water').

(51)

matikenukkeg /mät y 3kln3klk/ 'those who are great' (Rev. 19: 18); stem /mat y 3kln-/ < PA *mankeki0- (*mank- 'big (pi.)' 4- *-eki6 'be (in size)'; > Fox makekinwa 'he is big' [pi. stem generalized]).

Here also the falling together of weakened PEA *ϊ with provides the most straightforward explanation for the generalization of palatalization from reflexes of the first to reflexes of the second. That PEA was not originally an environment for palatalization (except in PEA *aw) is shown by the lack of palatalization in morpheme-internal sequences: (52)

nagum /näksm/ 'he, she' (Eliot 1666: 7) < PEA *nekama.

With the falling together of PEA and weakened PEA *i to Mass. /s/ the conditioning for infection would also have become opaque, and as a consequence infection has been extended to appear after some syllables with Mass. /a/ from PEA and appears with some morphemes even when the preceding vowel is not /a/: (53)

pemunneat /plmsnyaht/ 'string' (Mark 7: 35), pemunneahtonash /plmsnyahtanas/ 'cords' (Hos. 11: 4), < PEA *pim9nahtän ( > Munsee pi-mmähta-n 'thread'); the initial (PEA *pimon- < PA *p(y)i-men- 'twist by hand') has secondary infection, probably by contamination with an unidentified model.

Unhistorical features in Massachusett orthography (54)

241

upposqushäheouh /apaskwasähyäh/ 'they cause him to go naked' (Job 24: 10); causative /-hy-/ < PEA, PA *-h-, with infection generalized from occurrences after weakened PEA *f.

In the data considered, the only residual difficulty with assuming that weakened PEA *i gave Mass. /a/ is the word tukk8og 'waves' (10), which lacks the palatalization of pittu (9). The most obvious solution is to assume that this was phonemically /taköwak/ rather than /takawak/, with a treatment of PA *ow as PEA *öw (paralleling the treatment of PA *iw as PEA *iw in comparable environments). There could also have been pressure from related morphemes that always have /kw/ or /k/: (55)

kehtontukquog /kahtatakwak/ 'great waves' (Ps. 93: 4), mogkcmtuk8 /makatakaw/ '(the sea) had big waves' (John 6: 18).

N o other examples of morpheme-internal PA *kow have been identified, and in the cases involving a morpheme boundary the nonpalatalization of the *k before PEA *ph> can be accounted for as the analogical restoration of surface invariance in the preceding morpheme (as in 40). 8. If the weakened reflex of PEA *ϊ was indeed Mass. /a/, and if PA *iw did indeed, generally, give Mass. /aw/, it remains to explain the consistencies in Eliot's spellings that suggest that these neutralizations might not have been complete. The answer lies in a closer examination of Eliot's work and the ways in which he analyzed the Massachusett language and systematized his knowledge of it. It is evident that Eliot knew the paradigmatic patterns of Massachusett verbs well, since he presents the verbal inflections largely by means of paradigms in his grammar (Eliot 1666). Furthermore, he shows a clear tendency to standardize the spelling of morphemes, such that, in spite of the variation permitted by his orthography, common words tend to be more consistently spelled than those that are less common. It is noteworthy, for example, that appu (11) is not merely invariant in the spelling of the last syllable, it never has for (as in many other words; e. g., 30), and never uses the other available spellings of intervocalic /p/ (

, , , and ). Eliot greatly favors the use of and to spell /-c/ if it is the third person

242

Ives Goddard

imperative suffix, and he explicitly states that he has put /eo/ before h + C (breaking). The rune is missing from the Scandinavian Fufrork. • No. 22: Gmc. *inguz 'the god Ing'. Goth, enguz; OE Ing (cf. also Ingwine in the Beowulf; it is generally equated with the Ingvaeones of Tacitus). The sound value is [η]. £ No. 24: Gmc. opila 'inherited possession, Vaterland'. Goth, utal; OE (early Anglian) opel, (Late West Saxon, Kentish) efrel. The name represents a short vowel foj, the English sound value is due to later sound changes: j a j (/-mutation) later unrounded to /e/ which did not

The orthographic

aspect of the runes

249

operate in Gothic. The rune was not represented in the Scandinavian sequence. The general rule is that the sound value corresponds to the initial sound of the name. Of the above rule nos. 15 and 22 prove to be exceptions: their phonetic value is not the one indicated by their initial sound, they are rather used to write consonants which did not occur in initial position, only medially and finally: No. 15: [η], no. 22: /z/ > R (in Old English, where final R was eliminated, the rune took the value of /x/, also occurring only medially or finally; similarly, no. 13 represented a later allophone in Old English: [ς]. In the basic Fufrark, only the monophthongs were represented by individual characters. The notation was phonetic, but there seems to have been no effort to mark vowel quantity, though the shortness or length of a vowel was an unconditioned phonemic marker in Germanic. Some of the names have an originally long vowel, some a short one. In the inscriptions all the vowel runes could mark both a long and a short vowel. The following vowel values were expressed by the runes: i E? e

u i? ο

a The runes no. 2, /u/ and 11, /i/, served also as markers of the glides i, u as the second element of Germanic diphthongs, which thus were represented by digraphs. It is also noteworthy that not only was vowel length not observed in the early Runic inscriptions but long consonants too were written with a single character, even if the two consonants belonged to two adjacent words or morphemes, only one rune appears: e. g., setce in Old English.

3. The Scandinavian runes The Germanic runes which originally represented the monophthong system as high mid low

front and back i u e ο a

250

Veronika Kniezsa

were reduced to a two-way contrast in the Scandinavian runic inscriptions: rounded: unrounded and low: non-low. The Scandinavian Fufrork reduced the original 24 characters to 16, the five vowel characters to four, to represent all the old vowel values and the new phonetic developments (Fig. 2). No2

No4 Π

No 11 4

No12 I

Ί

Γ) No. 2: u marked all the unrounded non-low vowels: /u, o, y, 0/, the «-glide of diphthongs (as well as consonantal /w/, replacing in this value the original no. 8). 4 No. 4: a was preserved to mark pre-nasal [a]. Nielsen described no. 4 as marking the nasalized quality of the low vowel, remarking that nasality is not a distinctive feature elsewhere; however, it could be described as a rounded low vowel, if we consider its later development to jo/. I No. 11: i marked all the unrounded non-low vowels: /i, e, ae/, also the /-glide of diphthongs (as well as consonantal /j/, since the original character, no. 12, became a vowel marker, see below). /] No. 12: ä is a new vowel marker, modified both in form and sound value from an earlier consonantal rune. Initial /j/ was silenced, thus original jar > är. The rune represented the unrounded low vowels: /a, x/, also /e/, especially in diphthongs. By the end of the Middle Ages the Fupork of Scandinavian inscriptions was again expanded, this time both to have a correspondent for the letters of the Latin alphabet and to mark the specially developed sounds. The innovation was that the Fupork of the later periods followed the order of the Latin alphabet and no names were given to the new characters (Fig. 3).

λ

•

I

λ

Π

Λ

Ι

*

α

e

i

ο

u

y

χ

ji

\ a is a modified form of no. 12 which earlier represented the unrounded low vowel. ψ e is a modified form of no. 11 is. I i is no. 11 preserved both in form and sound value. ^J ο is the modified form of no. 4, and instead of the earlier value of rounded low, it now represents mid back.

The orthographic

aspect of the runes

251

P) ii is the old no. 2 preserved. J^ v, the sound usually has two symbols: one is old no. 15, which earlier marked R, but now reappeared with the sound value of the first sound of its name. The other one is a composite character: u + /, as in Old English too. \ ce is the old form no. 12 which represented earlier all unrounded low vowels, now is given a new value: low front. is a new symbol for a new sound, it is a modified form of old no. 4, expressing the relationship between the two sounds also in the form.

4. Some Old English sound changes The treatment of the Germanic runes in England was primarily phonetic. Ingvaeonic sound changes were reflected in the use of the runes both on the Continent in what are recognized as Frisian inscriptions and in England. The phonetical modifications are represented by the modification of the individual runes, thus expressing the relationship of the vowels to one another, and new characters were also added to the common stock. In Old English, the original Germanic vowel system underwent an extensive change under the influence of the neighbouring sounds. It meant an important redistribution of the vowels and the appearance of new phonemes too. The earliest change effected Gmc. /a/ resulting in its split into various allophones which later were phonemicized. Gmc. a + Ν > OE OE /ae/ (fronting) is discussed as an unconditioned change of the vowel. Gmc. I'd/ + a > OE /a/ (retraction), explained as a later insular development of pre-OE /ae/. Gmc. /a/ + / / , / + C, rr, r 4- C, h + C, h > (breaking) Gmc. /a/ + u/o > (back mutation). The exact sound value of the digraphs in the positions for breaking and back mutation has been much debated; it is uncertain whether they mark a quantitative contrast with OE /ea/ < Gmc. /au/. Similar

252

Veronika

Kniezsa

developments can be observed in the case of Old English ce: too (with the exception of back mutation; in West Saxon, there are instances of breaking of OE /ae:/ before final h). Breaking and back mutation effected the other front vowels: /i/ > , /e/ > , (with later development ( i o ) > OE /a:/. Gmc. /iu, eu, au/ appear as OE /io, eo, s o / (the latter as at a later period) usually referred to as the "long" diphthongs (the digraphs appearing under the influence of breaking and back mutation are the "short" ones). New phonemes appear — in addition to OE /ae/ — as the result of /-mutation: OE /u(:)/ 4- i > OE /y(:)/; OE /o(:)/ + / > OE /Θ(:)/. /y/ = was retained till the end of the period, j a j = was soon unrounded and merged with OE /e(:)/, altering the latter's distribution, /-mutation of OE /ae(:)/ and /a(:)/ resulted only in the redistribution of OE /e(:)/ and /ae(:)/ respectively; where the diphthongs were concerned, there was a difference in the regional developments: West Saxon had a special form, /ie(:)/ as the mutated diphthongs (both "short" and "long"); in the Anglian dialects /eo/ remained unchanged, /ea/ > /e/. In Late West Saxon seems to have been simplified so that it appeared as ~ . The Old English vowel system was (both short and long): io

i, y

u

eo

e,0

ο

ea

as

a

5. The expanded English Fupork In Old English runic inscriptions, all the vowel allophones and new phonemes were represented by individual characters, either a modified form of existing ones or by newly invented ones. There seems to have been an important difference from other runic scripts: that the custom of marking diphthongs by digraphs is on the way of disappearing and OE /ea(:)/ is represented by one of the new runes (Fig. 4).

The orthographic aspect of the runes No24

No4

No 25

No 26

No 28

No27

A

Ρ oe

253

No 29

Τ eo.

Ρ No. 4: *ansuz. The rune has a modified name in Old English: os. There was an Ingvaeonic tendency of losing the TV if a voiceless fricative followed it, causing the complementary lengthening of the vowel, which previously was rounded before a nasal. The change of the name caused a change in the representation, which became /o(:)/ (of whatever origin). This change is marked on the form of the rune itself. £ No. 24: Gmc. *of)il. Due to the palatalizing influence of the j'xj in the second syllable, Gmc. joj developed into OE jaj. This value was represented in Anglian inscriptions. The rune masters seem to have used the rune in its original setting, thus it is difficult to decide whether in some of the cases it was /Θ/ or /e/. New characters and sound values of the Old English Fußork are: ^ N o . 25: OE ac 'oak'. This belongs to the Anglo-Frisian innovations; inscriptions with this new character were found of the old no. 4. The Isruna Tract and the Runic Poem give its name as ac, aac. In the inscriptions it marks OE /a(:)/. ^ N o . 26: OE cesc 'ash-tree'. Another one of the Anglo-Frisian modifications. The form is the original no. 4, the value represents the unconditioned development of Gmc. /a(:)/ in the Ingvaeonic languages: fronting to /ae(:)/. The Runic Poem gives the name as CESC, the Isruna Tract as asc, the value is /a/. In the inscriptions it marks OE /ae(:)/. /j\ No. 27: OE yr 'bow'. The new rune is clearly formed on phonetical analysis, as the combination of no. 2 and 11 ( = /u/ + /i/), also in its runic representation. The name itself can be explained as due to Scandinavian influence. In the Nordic Fupork yr is the name of no. 15, which represented R, the rhotacized form of word-final Gmc. jzj, which was lost in Old English. It is clearly a new name in this language. The rune is missing from the Isruna Tract, which does have a rune with the name ur which according to Derolez could go back to yur, a short /y/, but the value given there is g, and the form of the rune is different; it is identical with the one for Gmc. ρ, as in OE peord. Elliott gives the rune with the name cweorö. Derolez is of the opinion that the value q was simply due to the rune's place in the sequence, which is identical with that of q in the Latin alphabet. T N o. 28: OE ear 'sea, earth'. This is the rune for the diphthong /ea/ but the Isruna Tract, which gives the name aer, assigns to it the

254

Veronika Kniezsa

value ζ. Derolez could not determine the process how ear could receive this value and concluded that it must have been used to fill in a gap when runes were matched with the Latin alphabet; since ear appears as the last character in the sequence, it was given the value z. The rune is entirely an Old English innovation both in sound value /ea(:)/ and form. Since this rune was not found in Frisian inscriptions, it reflected specific English developments, /ea/ occurs not only as the Old English reflex of Gmc. /au/ but is also the much debated outcome of OE /ae/ in the position for breaking. In the Old English inscriptions, no. 28 occurs in both contexts; therefore it can be presumed that there is a phonetic similarity between the two sounds, "short" and "long", with a probable quantitative opposition between them. Page expressed his puzzlement over the need for the new rune saying that /ea/ (aeo) could easily have been marked by two existing runes, as is usual in the other Germanic inscriptions. ^ N o . 29: OE ior 'sea fish?'. Another new English rune which is featured in the longest, 33-character Fufrork. The name has no traceable meaning. The value usually is given as io, but in inscriptions it often occurs instead of the expected X (/g/ > /j/). The rune is not included in the Isruna Tract. It seems to have been fairly short-lived.

6. Old English runic orthography The texts of the Old English runic monuments have not yet been gathered into one publication, as were the Danish or Swedish ones. Elliott (1959) and Page (1961, 1968, 1973) quote some of them in their monographs on runes. The following analysis is based on examples where Elliott and Page gave not only the transliteration but also the runic script itself. In the presentation, the procedure used above will be followed and the runes enumerated in their sequence in the Old English Fufrork (Fig. 5). fj No. 2 represents /u(:)/: Ο Ε / u : / : cufibere; Ο Ε / u / : giwundad; in an unstressed syllable: becun, galgu.

The orthographic aspect of the runes No 2

No4

h

Noll

p

No13

No19

I

I

255

No24

M

:

i,9

No25

No 26

No27

No28

A

No 29

Τ ea

There are some instances where no. 2 represents the second element of a diphthong: bceurne on the Great Urswick stone, greut on Franks' Casket; in foreign words: reumwalus, giupeasu also on Franks' Casket. On the Tornhill III stone it replaces wynn in post-consonantal position: jilsuip, berhtsuipe, and also in a pre-consonantal position: saule. This feature is not found in manuscripts before the Norman Conquest (cf. the Second Continuation of the Peterborough Chronicle). ^ N o . 4 marks /o(:)/: Ο Ε /ο:/: rodi; Ο Ε / ο / : god, force, on (2 χ ) ; in the second element of compounds: beagnop; in unstressed syllables: ceco soeri; afitatores. Interesting is torojtedce, worohte (cf. "thorough, borough" in Modern English < OE purh, burh); it also occurs as the second element of a digraph: eoh. I No. 11 marks /i(:)/: OE /i:/: lieas, tidpirp, gistiga; in the second element of compounds: berhtsuipe, jilsuip; OE /[/: hilddigyp, hildipryp, gibidcep, jilsuip, gebiddap, hince; in second elements of compounds: epelwini, tidpirp (but see hildipryp below at no. 27); in unstressed syllables: (Epil(i)rced, hilddigyp, hildipryp, cunybald, epelwini, bergi, almejttig; in unstressed prefix: gibidcep, gistigap. There is one single instance where jv.j may be indicated by the doubling of the rune: riicnce; but as Elliott remarks (1959: 91), it might only be for ornamental purposes. Ί , Ν ο . 13: This is the rune the name of which represents PIE /ei/, the diphthong which was the earliest to be monophthongized in Common Germanic. The Old English name of the rune is eow with a variant

256

Veronika Kniezsa

iw. The proposed sound value is given as Ε or / by Elliott, as h by the Isruna Tract. The Old English inscriptions reflect the above ambiguity: in gislheard, eateinne, it renders a vowel /i/, in almejttig, torojtredece, it seems to represent a consonant: [9] and [x] respectively. Π No. 19 marks /e(:)/: OE /e:/: egi, he; in second elements of compounds: eadred, unneg; OE / e / : efieIber ht, settcefter, epelwini, sete, berhtsuipe, bekun, bergi, geredce; in second elements of compounds: cupbere, epelberht, almejttig; in unstressed syllables: cupbere, epelberht, -wini, settcefter, sete, cefte (2 χ ) , eateinne, arcerde, berhtsuipe, saule; in unstressed prefix: gebiddap, geredce. The inscriptions show variant forms of O E /ae(:)/ represented by no. 19: epel (-wini, -berht) < Apil, eadred < reed, unneg < nceh. It is noteworthy that single runes appear in the cases where O E /e/ is in the position for breaking, where we would expect : berht (epel-, -suipe), bergi. There are very few examples to be quoted where digraphs mark OE /eo/: greut, and the foreign word reumwalus. In this respect the inscriptions represent an earlier orthographic stage. £ No. 24: Gmc. *opil > Early Old English 0pil > Late Old English epel. In the inscriptions, the rune is used in the appropriate value, i. e., for /-mutated OE /o(:)/: gidre..d, twogen, afoddce; in second elements of compounds: limworignce, ceco sori. It is very difficult to verify whether j a j or /e/ was meant. Page is of the opinion that scanomodu quoted by Elliott does not belong to the English inscriptions at all but represents a Continental runic example, so that no. 23 in the value of /0/ is appropriate. t ^ N o . 25 marks /a(:)/: O E / a : / : hlafard, saule, pa, arcerde; OE /a/ : almejttig, walde, galgu, al; in second elements of compounds: cynibald; in unstressed syllables: arcerde, gebiddap, gistiga, hlafard; Re pada: Elliott still associated it with Peada, king of Northumbria, and together with scanomodu, he explained no. 25 as an early single graph representation of O E /ea(:)/. Page, however, claims that pada

The orthographic

aspect of the runes

257

(or padda) is a simple name element which occurs in place-names: Padfield (Derbyshire), Padiham (Lancashire). The rune appears in contexts eligible for breaking: cynibald, walde, galgu, al. I* No. 26 marks /ae(:)/: OE /ae:/: arcerde, freer, in second elements of compounds: cepil(i)rced\ OE /ae/: cefteil χ ) , cepil(i)reed, ceco seri, rcehcebul, hcelda, ccestri, hcermbergce', in unstressed syllables: gibidcep, force, geredce, hince, hcermbergce, bceurnce. It occurs as a single graph in positions for breaking: hcelda, hcermbergce; ccestri can be explained as a non-West Saxon form. There is one instance to be quoted for the early digraph notation of OE /ea/ < Gmc. /au/: bceurnce. /ΚNo. 27 marks /y(:)/: OE /y:/: in the second element of compounds: hilddigyp, -pryp (but cf. tidpirp above); OE jyj: wylif, cyning, cynibald. No. 28 marks the diphthong /ea/: OE /ea/ < Gmc. /au/ (the "long" diphthong): beagnop, eadred, eateinne, fearran; OE /ea/ < breaking of OE /as/: hea(l)du(n), fearran\ in second elements of compounds: jislheard; OE /ea/ < back mutation of OE /ae/: heafunes. ^ N o . 29: there are no published examples.

7. Conclusions Germanic runic notation was phonetic as — in the case of the vowels — it tried to represent speech sounds, without, however, all the existing contrasts. In this respect it probably followed the European models; thus, Latin did not differentiate vowel quantity either, though in most cases the place of Latin stress and the quality of the syllable itself would indicate the length of a vowel. In the Germanic languages, on the other hand, vowel length was positionally independent, the place of the stress being fixed. Writing was treated as an abstraction when no external influences were at play: in the 16 Nordic Fupork vowel

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Veronika Kniezsa

contrasts were reduced to the minimum marked by four runes. Both the expanded English and Nordic Fufrork seem to have been influenced by contemporary Latin: all the new phonetic-phonemic developments were marked by additional — modified or newly formed — runes, the marking of vowel quantity was not among the new representation of oppositions, riicce on the Ruthwell Cross is an exception rather than representative of a general tendency, though Old English runic writing represented consonant length in general, especially in junctures.

References Arntz, Helmut 1935 Handbuch der Runenkunde (Halle/Saale: Niemeyer). 1939 Die einheimischen Runendenkmäler des Festlandes (Leipzig: Harrassowitz). Brunner, Karl 1965 Altenglische Grammatik (Tübingen: Niemeyer). Campbell, Alistair 1959 Old English grammar (Oxford: University Press). Cristofani, N a u r o 1973 Introduzione alio studio dell'etrusco (Firenze: Olschi). Derolez, Rene 1954 Runica Manuscripta. The English tradition (Gent: Rijksuniversiteit). Düwel, Klaus 1968 Runenkunde (Stuttgart: Metzler). Elliott, Ralph W. V. 1959 Runes (Manchester: University Press). Jacobsen, Lisa —Erik Moltke 1941 —1942 Danmarks runeindskrifter [Runic inscriptions of Denmark] (Kobenhavn: Munksgaard). 1947 The runic inscriptions of Denmark (Copenhagen: Munksgaard). Jansson, Sven Β. F. 1962 The runes of Sweden (New York: The Bedminster Press). Klingenberg, Heinz 1973 Runenschrift — Schriftdenken — Runenschriften (Heidelberg: Winter). Krahe, Hans 1963 Germanische Sprachwissenschaft I (Sammlung Göschen) (Berlin: de Gruyter). Krause, Wolfgang 1970 Runen (Sammlung Göschen) (Berlin: de Gruyter). 1971 Die Sprache der urnordischen Runeninschriften (Heidelberg: Winter). Krause, Wolfgang —Herbert Jankuhn 1966 Die Runenschriften im älteren Futhark I —II (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht).

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aspect

of the runes

259

Musset, Lucien 1965 Introduction ä la runologie (Paris: Aubier Montaigne). Nielsen, Karl Martin 1970 "Til runendanskens ortografi" [On the orthography of runic Danish] Arkiv for Nordisk Filologi 75: 1 - 7 8 . Page, R. I. 1961 "The Old English rune ear" Medium Aevum 30: 65 — 79. 1968 "The Old English rune eoh, ih 'yew tree'" Medium Aevum 37: 1 2 5 - 1 3 6 . 1973 An introduction to English runes (London: Methuen). Pallottino, Massimo 1963 Etruscologia (Milano: Hoepli). Swanton, Michael (ed.) 1970 The Dream of the Rood (Manchester: University Press).

WITOLD MANCZAK

The object of philology and the object of linguistics

1. Philology and linguistics Opinions on the meaning of the terms "philology" and "linguistics" are divided. E.g., according to The Encyclopedia Americana (New York, 1961), the meaning of these terms is the same, cf. the fact that under the lemma Philology (vol. XXI, p. 767) one reads See Language, Science of and under the lemma Linguistics (vol. XVII, p. 545) one finds See Language, Science of But the opinion of Dictionnaire encyclopedique Quillet (Paris, 1970, p. 5167) is somewhat different. Philology is defined as science des langues ou d'une langue, en partic. de son histoire et de sa grammaire... La philologie etait pour les Anciens l'amour de la science, de l'instruction dans le sens le plus large. Pour Wolf, c'est la science de l'Antiquite. Par la suite, on a tendu a grouper sous ce terme l'etude du langage, particulierement celle de la grammaire, de la lexicographie, de l'etymologie, de Interpretation litterale et de la critique des textes; on y joint l'etude des institutions antiques et celle de l'histoire litteraire dans la mesure ού elles peuvent faire mieux comprendre un auteur, et aussi celle de la prosodie et de la metrique; on y joint egalement l'epigraphie, la paleographie, etc. — La philologie se presente done non comme une science mais comme une pratique erudite. Aussi le terme philologie, qui a longtemps regne dans l'Universite, a-t-il progressivement disparu au profit du terme linguistique. La linguistique, fondee par Saussure, est aujourd'hui une science qui se veut exacte. According to Grand Larousse encyclopedique en dix volumes (Paris, 1963, vol. VIII, p. 421 —422), philology is an "etude d'une langue par

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Wit old Mahczak

les documents ecrits qui nous la font connaitre. Etude des textes et de leur transmission". A similar definition can be found in Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon (Mannheim, 1976, vol. 18, p. 582): "Wissenschaft von der Erforschung von Texten, von der Behandlung von Kulturen aufgrund ihrer sprachl. Eigenheiten und ihrer mündl. oder schriftl. überlieferten literar. Texte". It follows from these quotations that texts are the object of philology. As far as the object of linguistics is concerned, Saussure (1931: 23) considers this question to be very complicated: "Quel est l'objet ä la fois integral et concret de la linguistique? La question est particulierement difficile; nous verrons plus tard pourquoi; bornons-nous ici ä faire saisir cette difficulte. D'autres sciences operent sur des objets donnes d'avance et qu'on peut considerer ensuite ä differents points de vue: dans notre domaine, rien de semblable". Afterwards, Saussure introduces a distinction between "langage", "parole", and "langue", which should be the true object of linguistics. In the famous book by Saussure, "langue" is defined in different ways, but mostly it is identified with a "systeme de signes". This definition has had a tremendous success if one takes into account that nowadays most linguists do not hesitate to define language this way, although, between this theoretical confession and practice, there is a contradiction. If we asked a botanist what the object of botany is, we would be told that plants are the object of botany. If we addressed similar questions to a zoologist and a chemist, we would hear that animals are the object of zoology, whereas any matter, both animate and inanimate — and not, e. g., Mendeleev's system of elements — constitutes the object of chemistry. If we decided to confront the answers received with reality and visited the laboratories of botanists, zoologists, and chemists, we should have an opportunity to convince ourselves that our information was exact because the botanists, in fact, investigate plants, the zoologists, animals, and the chemists, both animate and inanimate matter. If we, however, decided to visit linguists, we would be surprised to see that they investigate not an abstract "systeme de signes", but texts, which, having a material character, occupy the shelves of libraries. The only logical conclusion which could be drawn from the confrontation of the utterances of linguists on the object of their discipline with the observation of their activity would be that there is a contradiction between what linguists say on the object of linguistics and what they in fact do. Far from being an abstract "systeme de signes", language is nothing else but texts, written

The object of philology

and the object of linguistics

263

on paper, parchment, or papyrus, engraved on walls, coins, or slates, or recorded on tapes. In short, language is everything one says or writes. One would arrive at the same conclusion if, instead of asking what language is in general, one asked more particular questions, taking into consideration that most people are less familiar with general problems than with specific questions. If we asked a Romanist what one has to do in order to describe thirteenth-century French, he would reply that one has to investigate as many texts as possible written at that time in France and to deduce a grammar and a dictionary from them. If we asked an Africanist what one has to do in order to describe the dialect of a tribe which does not yet know writing, he would answer that one has to record as many texts as possible and to deduce a grammar and a dictionary from them. Asking different specialists this way, we also would finally arrive at the conclusion that language is nothing else but spoken or written texts. But Saussure does not define "langue" only as a "systeme de signes". He likewise compares it to "une symphonie dont la realite est independante de la maniere dont on l'execute; les fautes que peuvent commettre les musiciens qui la jouent ne comprommettent nullement cette realite". This comparison is completely false. If one excludes artificial languages like Esperanto, grammatical rules never precede spoken or written texts, but, on the contrary, they are deduced from texts by linguists. What is more, grammatical rules, once deduced from texts, do not prevent language, i. e., texts, from evolving. This evolution consists of mistakes, which, if their frequency of occurrence increases considerably, become new norms, and vice versa: old norms, in turn, if their frequency of occurrence essentially diminishes, become mistakes. Somewhere else, Saussure defines "langue" in still another manner claiming that la langue existe dans la collectivite sous la forme d'une somme d'empreintes deposees dans chaque cerveau, a peu pres comme un dictionnaire dont tous les exemplaires, identiques, seraient repartis entre les individus; c'est done quelque chose qui est dans chacun d'eux, tout en etant commun ä tous et place en dehors de la volonte des depositaires. At another place, we read that la langue ... est un tresor depose par la pratique de la parole dans les sujets appartenant ä une meme communaute, un systeme gram-

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Manczak

matical existant virtuellement dans chaque cerveau, ou plus exactement dans les cerveaux d'un ensemble d'individus: car la langue n'est complete dans aucun, eile n'existe parfaitement que dans la masse. Setting up hypotheses concerning what there is in the brain is rather hazardous for a linguist. Therefore, it is more reasonable that the investigation of the brain be left to natural scientists and that linguists be concerned only with things which do not interest naturalists, namely with language, i. e., with texts. Taken literally, the definitions with which Saussure defines the terms "langue" and "parole" do not designate anything that would exist in reality. But if one considers the contexts in which Saussure uses these terms, one arrives at the conclusion that these are two neologisms unnecessarily introduced to stand for notions known since antiquity, because "langue" = grammar + vocabulary, whereas "parole" = texts. These are not the only neologisms unnecessarily introduced in Cours de linguistique g0nerale\ thus, the terms "linguistique synchronique", "linguistique diachronique" and "linguistique panchronique" do not designate anything else than what has been known long since under the name of descriptive, historical, and general linguistics. But even if one realizes that "langue" = grammar + vocabulary, Saussure is incorrect because grammars and dictionaries are only the results of linguistic investigation, whereas texts are the object of linguistics. It is necessary to insist on the fact that the statement that texts are the object not only of philology, but also of linguistics is very important since many consequences derive from this statement. Here are two examples.

2. Nature of linguistic relatedness The German orientalist Ludolf, who lived in the seventeenth century, was the first to claim that "die Sprachverwandtschaft offenbart sich nicht im Wörterbuch, sondern in der Grammatik" (cf. Schuchardt 1928: 198). During the last 300 years, so many authorities approved the principle formulated by Ludolf that it has become a dogma of linguistics. Nevertheless, I have decided to confront it with facts and

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have arrived at the conclusion that this dogma is false. Here are arguments supporting this view. According to a unanimous opinion of Slavicists, Polish is more closely related to Ukrainian than to Russian. I, however, counted the most striking phonetic resemblances between these languages and noticed that there were 10 between Polish and Russian and only 2 between Polish and Ukrainian. Afterwards, I studied the fragment of a Russian novel translated into Ukrainian and into Polish, and the comparison of this fragment revealed 13 lexical convergences between Polish and Ukrainian and only 1 between Polish and Russian. So one sees that the comparison of the vocabulary in texts, and not the consideration of phonetic features, leads to the correct conclusion that Polish is more closely related to Ukrainian than to Russian. According to unanimous opinion, Polish is more closely related to Bulgarian than to Lithuanian, Gothic is more closely related to English than to Old Church Slavic, and Latin is more closely related to French than to Gothic. I, however, compared parallel texts and noticed the following inflectional and lexical similarities between the languages in question (Table 1). Table 1. Inflectional resemblances

Lexical resemblances

Polish and Bulgarian Polish and Lithuanian

52 62

291 51

Gothic and English Gothic and Old Church Slavic

31 83

93 74

18 103

222 47

Latin and French Latin and Gothic

It follows from these data that the Slavic character of Bulgarian, the Germanic character of English, and the Romance character of French can be justified only by lexical, and not inflectional, convergences, which is simply explained by the fact that Bulgarian, English and French are analytic languages, where inflection is more or less reduced. Among innumerable authorities who have approved of L u d o l f s view that linguistic kinship is a matter of grammatical structure, and not of vocabulary, one may mention Meillet (1925: 24), who claimed that "la morphologie... est ce qu'il y a de plus stable dans la langue".

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Witold Manczak

This claim is contradicted by the most evident facts. Proto-IndoEuropean *es-ti has become is in English and es in Spanish, which is to say that only the root has been preserved, whereas the ending has disappeared. Proto-Indo-European *sün-u-s has become son in English, Sohn in German, and syn in Russian. In these three forms, the ending and the stem suffix have disappeared, while the root has been preserved. It is true that sometimes a reverse change may be observed, cf. Russian vy-nu-t' 'take out', which has no root, but such cases are extremely rare. In most cases, the root is the most stable part of the word. Among linguists, faith in the infallibility of authorities is so inveterate that during 300 years nobody thought of checking the principle formulated by Ludolf. But the divergence between this principle and reality has been so large that a curious phenomenon could often be observed. Although nobody dared to criticize the principle from a theoretical point of view, it sometimes occurred in practice that one proceeded against the principle that linguistic kinship depended upon grammatical structure. Here are some examples. The first classification of Indo-European languages based on statistical data was proposed by Czekanowski (1927). He made all computations himself, but being an anthropologist, he asked a linguist (Kurylowicz) to indicate the most important features of the languages in question. Kurylowicz indicated 20 features: 6 phonetic, 10 morphological and, curiously enough, 4 lexical. The principle that relatedness between languages depends upon grammatical structure was violated much more seriously by the Austrian linguist Solta in his "habilitationsschrift" (1960) on the place of Armenian among Indo-European languages, a problem which he tried to resolve by scrutinizing only the vocabulary. But by publishing his book he by no means wanted to refute the principle in question. On the contrary, Solta (1960: 12) wrote: "Ich bin mir bewußt, daß auf Grund lexikalischer Kriterien allein kein endgültiges Urteil über die Stellung einer Sprache gefällt werden kann." In addition, glottochronologists may be mentioned, who attempt to assign specific dates to splits among languages taking into consideration only the lexicon. But between even the boldest violations of the principle that language relationship depends on grammatical structure and my own postulates, there is an essential difference. All those who have tried to resolve particular problems relating to genetic relatedness by taking into consideration only the vocabulary have done so like Solta, who

The object of philology and the object of linguistics

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counted words in dictionaries, or like glottochronologists, who counted words in especially prepared word lists, whereas I count words in texts. It is essential that counting words in dictionaries and counting words in texts does not always lead to the same conclusions. Here are two examples. On p. 1 of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (Oxford, 1974), there are 17 words: 3 of Germanic and 14 of foreign origin. Consequently, counting words in a dictionary, one would arrive at the conclusion that English is not a Germanic language. I, however, counted words in two sentences of the preface of the abovementioned dictionary and found 32 words of Germanic and 18 words of foreign origin. It follows that only counting words in texts allows us to justify the Germanic character of English. In the book by Popovic (1960: 199), one finds the following claim: "In bezug auf den Wortschatz ist das Rumänische keine romanische, sondern eine slavische Sprache, da ... im Dakorumänischen ... in einem Verzeichnis von 5765 Wörtern, auf nur 1165 Wörter lateinischen Ursprungs die imposante Anzahl von 2361 slavischen Wörtern kommt". One will, however, arrive at another conclusion if one considers words in a text. In a fragment of a novel by Sadoveanu, I found that more than 80% of the words were of Latin origin. Consequently, in order to arrive at the right conclusion that Rumanian is a Romance language, it is necessary to count words in texts.

3. The original homeland of the Goths Since Jordanes, i.e., for 1400 years, there has been an almost general belief that the original homeland of the Goths was in Scandinavia. Among others, Schwarz (1951) found 26 linguistic features which seemed to prove that Gothic was more closely related to Scandinavian than to other Germanic languages. I, however, decided to check this view by comparing texts in different Germanic languages. First of all, I compared a fragment of the Gospel (Matthew VIII, 1—13) in Swedish 1 with parallel texts in Danish 2 , Low German 3 , Middle German 4 and Upper German 5 . In Table 2, words showing the same consonantal skeleton of the root as the Swedish words are printed in italics (numbers indicate the frequency of occurrence of forms used more than once):

Witold

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£

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CO wo -δ 3 ΐ/> υ 4= tu ι/-Γ -s:

0 •Ό Μ S δ Wh fll -4—· in 00 > δ δ

c

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ΙΛ

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-Q 23 iS

-Si κ

(N 00 g ^ ^ κ s « -C

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of linguistics

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at is gladnesse (Lat. leticiam). Ps. 6.5 schryue 'give praise' J?, i. knouleche to }5e. (Lat. confitebitur tibi). Ps. 7.14 he ha£> redyd 'prepared' [5. i. dyjt (Lat. parauit). Ps. 7.16 vpgrof'dug up' J).i. vpdalf (Lat. effudit). Ps. 7.18, 9.1 schal schriue i. knoweleche to ^e (Lat. confitebor). Ps. 9.22 in tidfulnesse 'times of necessity' J), i. in tymefulnesse (Lat. in opportunitatibus). Ps.9.29, 13.6 wariyng (U weriynge) J), i. cursyng (Lat. malediccione). Ps.9.33 he schal helde 'bow' J?,i. bowen him (Lat. cadet). Ps.9.41 f)e redyng J).i. redy dyjtyng (Lat. preparacionem). Ps. 15.2 selcoupede J), i. made wonderful (Lat. mirificauit). Ps. 16.7 held J), i. bo we doun ^yn ere (Lat. inclina aurem tuam). Ps. 16.8 selcoupe 1. make wonderful (Lat. mirifica). Ps. 17.5 sterand (sic!) (U strandes) 'streams' J>.i. brokes (of wyckednes) (Lat. torrentes). Ps. 17.11 helded J?, i. bowede doun (Lat. inclinauit). Ps. 17.11 lyjtede 'alighted' J), i. com doun (Lat. descendit). Ps. 17.35 beltede 'engirdled' i. gerde (Lat. precinxit). Ps. 17.43 Jx>u beltist i. gyrdest me (Lat. precinxisti). (b) In this group only one explanatory gloss was Romance. Ps. 17.20

strengped 'made strong' J), i. conforted (Lat. confortati

sunt).

(iii) The third category contains Romance words occurring in Rolle's text; these were glossed in 14 instances (11 word-stems). (a) Thirteen doublets contained glosses of Germanic origin. Ps. 2.6 stabled (OF, aphetic) J?, i. sett (Lat. constitutus). Ps.2.12 discipline 'learning' J?.i. lore (Lat. disciplinam).

278

Saara

Nevanlinna

Ps. 5.12; 9.36 excitede 'vexed, provoked' J), i. stirede (Lat. irritaverunt). Ps. 7.6 ire 'anger' i. wrefrfre (Lat. ira). Ps. 10.2 in quyuer 'quiver' J), i. aruwe gerdel (Lat. in pharetra). Ps. 11.8 generacioun J3. i. kynrede (Lat. generacione). Ps. 13.11 caytyfe[te] (with te superscript) (U caitife for caitifte) {d.i. wrecchednesse (Lat. captiuitatem). Ps. 17.13 his tapessyng (OF) 'hangings' 1p. i. hidinge (Lat. latibulum suum). Ps. 17.27 purite J).i. clennesse (Lat. puritatem). Ps. 17.36 stablynge J). i. settyng (Lat. statuens). Ps. 17.43 J)ou supplauntedest 'subdued' Id. i. vndersettest (Lat. supplantasti). Ps. 19.9 j)ei are oblisched (U obligid) f>. i. bounde (Lat. obligati). (b) There was one hybrid gloss with a Romance word-stem. Ps. 16.14 supplaunt him 'cause to fall treacherously' (a biblical sense) Jd.i. begyle (be- + O F guile) (Lat. supplanta eum).

The Wycliffite New Testament The second sample was taken from a text printed by Forshall and Madden that represents the early version of the Wycliffite New Testament (c. 1382 — 90). The passage that I examined comprises the first ten chapters of the Gospel of St. Matthew after five manuscripts which differ little from one another. Though Wyclif was born in Yorkshire, like Rolle, his New Testament was written in the rising standard language that was already in use at Oxford. With the aim of making The Bible accessible to laymen who did not know any Latin, Wyclif or his collaborators provided a number of glosses to words that they believed might have proved exotic or strange to the prospective lay readers. The words glossed included recent or learned loan-words, dialectal or archaizing words, and a few coinages by the translator for lack of suitable translation equivalents. Very few of the manuscripts that were based on the early version lacked the double glosses, whereas there were practically no doublets left in Purvey's revised version of the text (c. 1395). In the revised version either the gloss or Wyclifs

279

Glosses in three Late Middle English texts: lexical variation

original word occurring in the doublets was retained, or a fresh word was substituted for the whole doublet. Altogether I registered 41 double glosses connected by or. The doublets were divided into four categories according to their two constituents. The corresponding Latin terms in the Vulgate ( = Vulg.) will also be provided, as well as the relevant translation equivalents in The New English Bible ( = NEB). (i) Words of Germanic origin, i.e., Middle English words, including early Old English loan-words and Old Norse or Old Dutch loans, 16 doublets in all. (a) In the following four instances the original word in the early version was retained in the revised one. Early version: Matt. 1.20 in sleepe or sweuen (OE) (Vulg. in somnis) N E B 'in a dream'. M a t t . 3.3 shal neij or come nije 'draw close' (Vulg. appropinquavit) N E B 'is upon you'. Matt. 3.12 wynwing-cloth or fan 'winnow-cloth, fan' (Vulg. ventilabrum) N E B v. 'winnow'. Matt. 6.20 deluen nat out or vndirmyne 'dig out' (Vulg. non effodiunt) NEB: reading altered. (b) In five instances only the gloss was retained in the revised version. Early version: Matt. 3.12 Fyr vnquenchable or that neuer shal be quenchid (Vulg. inextinguibilis) N E B 'that can never go out'. Matt. 5.17 gesse or deme (Vulg. putare) N E B 'suppose'. Matt. 5.19 vndoth or breketh (Vulg. solvent) N E B 'sets aside'. Matt. 9.15 weilen (ON) or mourne (Vulg. lugere) N E B 'go mourning'. Matt. 9.28 sothely or jea (Vulg. utique, Domine) N E B 'yes, sir'. (c) In one instance both variants occurring in a doublet were successively used in the revised version. Early version: Matt. 8.30 a floe or droue (of pigs) (Vulg. grex) N E B 'herd'. (d) A fresh term was introduced in the revised version six times. Early version: Matt. 2.1 kyngis or wijs men (Vulg. Magi)\ revised: astromyenes tracted of O F astronomien) N E B 'astrologers'.

(con-

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Saara Nevanlinna

Matt. 3.15 leete or left (sic!) him (Vulg. dimisit eum); revised: suffride (OF) NEB 'allowed (him to come)'. 7 Matt. 4.21 makynge ajein or beetynge (OE, ON) her nettis (Vulg. reficientes); revised: amendynge (OF) NEB 'overhauling'. Matt.4.23 sorow or ache (Vulg. languorem); revised: langour (OF) NEB 'illness'. Matt. 8.20 Dichis or borowis (Vulg. foveas)·, revised: dennes NEB 'holes'. Matt. 10.16 be 3e war or wijse before (Vulg. prudentes); revised: be 3e sli3 (ON) NEB 'wary'. (ii) Four native words were glossed with Latin or French words, which were dropped in the revised version, whereas the original word was retained. Early version: Matt. 5.17 vndo or distruye (Vulg. solvere); revised vndo NEB 'abolish'. Matt. 5.47 if 3ee greten or saluten (Vulg. salutaveritis); revised: greten NEB 'greet'. Matt. 10.19 thei shulen take or bitraie (sic!) (Vulg. tradent); revised: take NEB 'you are arrested'. Matt. 10.25 husbondeman or fader of meyne (OF maisnie) (Vulg. paterfamilias); revised: hosebondeman NEB 'master'. (iii) Thirteen Romance words in the early version were glossed with Middle English words. (a) Six of the Romance words were retained in the revised version. Early version: Matt. 1.19 wolde not puplische hir or lede hir ferther (sic!) (Vulg. traducere); revised: puplische NEB 'to save her from exposure'. Matt. 3.11 baptise or cristen (Vulg. baptizo); revised: baptise NEB 'baptize'. Matt.7.27 on grauel (OF) or soond (Vulg. super arenam); revised: grauel NEB 'sand'. Matt. 8.19 a scribe or a man of lawe (Vulg. scriba); revised: scribe NEB 'doctor of the law' (biblical sense). Matt.9.15 spouse or husbonde (Vulg. sponsus); revised: spouse NEB 'bridegroom'. Matt. 9.20 flix or rennynge of blood (Vulg. fluxum); revised: blodi flux NEB 'haemorrhages'.

Glosses in three Late Middle English texts: lexical variation

281

(b) In four instances the Middle English gloss was retained in the revised version instead of the original Romance word. Early version: Matt. 1.2 gendride or bigate (Vulg. genuit)·, revised: bigat NEB 'was the father o f . Matt. 1.19 iust man or rijiful (Vulg. iustus); revised: rijtful NEB 'man of principle'. Matt. 7.3 a festu or a litill mote (Vulg. festucam); revised: a litill mote NEB 'speck of sawdust'. Matt. 10.26 couerid or hid (Vulg. opertum); revised: hid NEB 'covered up'. (c) The doublet was replaced by a fresh term in the revised version three times. Early version: Matt. 8.28 feerse or wickid (Vulg. saevi); revised: woode NEB 'violent'. Matt. 9.16 of rudee or newe cloth (Vulg. panni rudes); revised: buystous 'boisteous, course, rough' N E B 'unshrunk'. Matt.9.35 languyshynge or ache (Vulg. languor)·, revised: langour NEB 'ailment'. (iv) The remaining eight doublets in the early version only involved words of Romance origin. (a) The original word was retained in the revised version four times. Early version: Matt. 5.24 to be recounseilid or acordid (Vulg. reconciliari)·, revised: recounselid NEB 'make your peace'. Matt. 7.6 margaritis or preciouce stoonys (Vulg. margaritas); revised: margaritis NEB 'pearls'. Matt.7.13 to perdicioun or dampnacion (Vulg. ad perditionem); revised: perdicioun NEB 'perdition'. Matt.9.17 botelis (OF) or wijn vesselis (Vulg. utres); revised: botelis NEB 'wine-skins'. (b) The French gloss was retained in the revised version twice. Early version: Matt. 2.16 he was scorned (sic!) or disceyued of the kyngis (Vulg. illusus esset); revised: he was disseyued N E B 'he was tricked by the astrologists'. 8

282

Saara Nevanlinna

Matt.4.24 'fame'.

opynyoun or fame

(Vulg. opinio)·, revised: fame

NEB

(c) Once the whole clause containing a doublet was discarded in favour of a familiar idiomatic phrase. Early version: Matt. 1.23 that is interpreted or expouned (Vulg. quod est interpretatum)\ revised: that is to saye NEB 'which means'. (d) One doublet was retained in the revised version, only in the reverse order. Early version: Matt. 10.18 presidentis or meyris (Vulg. praesides) revised meyris or presidentis NEB 'governors'. Chapters 5, 6, and 10 in the early version contained additionally seven expository comments, not variants, introduced by that is, e.g. Matt. 5.18 on i (Vulg. iota) that is leste lettre. They were disregarded in this study; none of them was retained in the revised version.

Gilte Legende The third text differs from the previous two samples in that there were no double glosses in the text itself, but a glossary with 57 entries was annexed to the manuscript by a later reader, who also added a list of contents (probably to replace a lost one) and other information to a manuscript of the Gilte Legende. Its principal source is Jehan de Vignay's French translation of Jacobus de Voragine's popular Legenda aurea written c. 1270. The oldest extant manuscript of the Gilte Legende is dated 1438. The present text containing the late glossary is in the British Library, BL MS Egerton 876, London. According to Mcintosh et al. (1986 III: 176) it comes from Hertfordshire, South-East Midlands (Linguistic Profile 6540), whereas the translation from French was probably made in East Anglia. 9 There are paper fly-leaves attached to the vellum manuscript, one at the beginning and two at the end. The recto of the first fly-leaf contains the heading of the Gilte Legende followed by the first half of the list of contents in two columns of 45 lines each. The verso of the fly-leaf is divided into four columns.

Glosses in three Late Middle English texts: lexical variation

283

The list of contents continues in the first two columns. The third and fourth columns contain a small alphabetical glossary in the same hand. There are no entries under the letters G (for modern J), P, Q, X, and Z. Both the list of contents and the glossary were written much later than the fifteenth-century text of the Gilte Legende in the manuscript. The earlyish Modern English hand probably belonged to a Joseph Dixon, who had signed his name in the upper right-hand corner of the first paper fly-leaf, together with the date Sept. 13, 1765. I strongly suspect that the date is wrong and should be 1675, judging by the reference at the end of the glossary, to a book printed in 1674. If the double gloss INught = Iknew stands for enough = enow, which just might be possible, that would corroborate the year 1675. In that case Iknew would be a rare inverted spelling of inew 'enow' (old plural of enough) to reflect the recent loss of initial jkj before /n/ (Cf. Dobson 1968: 976 — 977). Present-day spelling is, as a rule, already manifested in the majority of the glossarial entries. Seven of the 57 glosses have been disregarded in this study, because they are either due to misunderstanding on the part of the glossator or only intelligible in their proper context in the Gilte Legende. For the moment it is not possible to trace those words in the extensive manuscript, because the text is not yet available in this country, and because there are no folio references in the glossary. The remaining 49 glosses can be divided into several categories. The number of instances in each is given below in parentheses. (i) Words with older or dialectal spelling: als = also; hit = it; ho = who; yelde = yield; whou = who; thou = though (6). (ii) Dialectal forms glossed with standard forms: hem — them; cuss = kiss; eueriche = eueryone; dowue = dove; kunne not — cannot; tanne (!) = then (6). (iii) Obsolete or dialectal Germanic words: behests = commands; behight = promise; behotithe = promiseth; bihest = reward; eye — egg; hele = health; hight = called; hoseled = gaue pe sacrament to; leue = believe; nompne = name; sethe = sines, then; sethenes = since; sothely = verily; stie = mount up, haste (!); went = thought; wode = mad; wost = knew (17). (iv) Middle English loan-words from French or Anglo-Norman glossed by later Latinized forms or revised spellings:

284

Saara Nevanlinna

auotrie, or avowtrie = adultery; norise = nurse; rewme = realm; sowde = subdue; salowd — saluted (5). (ν) Romance words that disappeared from the standard language in the course of the Early Modern English period: Grew = Greek; guerdon = reward; mesell — leper; veer — spring (4). (vi) Words no longer used in the medieval sense at the glossator's time explained now by other terms then current: defended = prohibited; renie = deny or renounce; sege = seat; werned = denied (4). (vii) A number of words probably glossed on stylistic grounds as not being part of the glossator's repertoire: araied = appointed, alloted; asoyle = loose, forgive; deynedest = vouchsafest; medeled — mixed; orison = prayer; shrive = confess; tourbe = multitude (7).

Conclusion It is a commonly accepted fact that no linguistic change can occur without preceding variation. This study of lexical variation in the form of double glosses for the purpose of promoting comprehension is based on samples taken from two Late Middle English religious texts that had been translated from Latin, and from a small glossary attached to a third text translated from French. MS Arundel 158 ( = A) containing Rolle's English Psalter and commentary provides an example of a Middle English dialectal text that appears to have been completely translated by a scribe into another vernacular dialect which was on the point of developing into a standard type of language. The majority of Rolle's words glossed in A were peculiar to the Northern dialect of Middle English. The double glosses occurring in the first 29 Psalms proper amount to 74. Of the words glossed 81% were of Germanic or Old English stock current in the North of England, whereas 19% were of Romance origin. About 76% of the glosses introduced by the scribe, who was translating all the time into his own accustomed language, were Germanic words, and

Glosses in three Late Middle English texts: lexical variation

285

only about 24% were French or Latin. The double glosses in Rolle's English Psalter exemplify regional variation. In the emerging standard language, which was mainly based on the dialects of the Central and South-East Midlands, there were a number of French loan-words that had been established in Middle English during the Anglo-Norman period so firmly that they could often be used as variants of dialectal or obsolescent native words. This accounts for the proportional rise of Romance words in the glosses. That the translator's vocabulary was close to the growing national standard is reflected by the fact that the glosses here include a number of words that are commonly used today, such as bow, cleanness, dark, gladness, hide, praise, set, smoke, stir, take, teach, trouble, wrath, wretchedness. A quick comparison of this sample from A with the Wycliffite Psalter gives reason to believe that the glossator was familiar with the Wycliffite Bible, because over 40% of the glosses registered in A, involving 24 different word-stems, occur there in the same context. 10 Though Wyclif wrote his translation of the Latin New Testament in the South-East Midland dialect that he had adopted while studying at Oxford, a few Yorkshire traits must have clung to his language. It is only natural that he or his collaborators should have tried to provide any strange dialectal forms with glosses that were comprehensible to non-northern readers. Because Wyclif was a learned man, the first translation equivalent that came to his mind was often one that was related to the word in the Latin model text. He must have realized immediately that many such words would probably be incomprehensible to lay readers. When Wyclif s doublets in the first ten chapters of the Gospel of St. Matthew are compared with the later version revised by John Purvey, many of the changes made by the latter should rather be assigned to idiolectal than to dialectal variation, because both versions appear to have been written basically in the same language. The first ten chapters of the New Testament in the earlier Wycliffite version contain 41 double glosses. About 49% of the words glossed were of Germanic origin, and the remaining 51% were French or Latin. Of the glosses 70% were Germanic and 30% Romance, including a few hybrids and periphrastic phrases that contained Romance ingredients. The decline of Romance words in the glosses also reflects the fact that the prevalence of the French language in England in official contexts was over.

286

Saara

Nevanlinna

Purvey's revised text retains 20 words that had been glossed in the earlier version, but only 13 of the glosses. Wyclifs doublets were replaced nine times by fresh single words and once by a phrase. Purvey introduced five Romance words, which seem to have been current in the South-East Midlands at the time, namely suffren 'allow', langour 'illness', amendyng 'repairing, mending', buystous 'rough', and astromyenes 'astrologers'. Two of the glosses in the early version which were appropriate terms in rural areas but probably incomprehensible to the urban population, i. e. fan 'winnow-cloth' and borowis 'foxes' burrows', were dropped in the revised version, as well as the transferred meanings of some Latin words that made no sense in the context. Time was apparently not yet ripe to accept unquenchable, Wyclifs literal translation of Latin inextinguibilis, which is part of the English stock today. To form some idea of the extent to which Wyclifs vocabulary might have survived in The New English Bible, a quick study was made. Only five of Wyclifs words glossed were found in the same context, and only four of the glosses (with slight modifications). Three of the former (greet, baptize, perdition) and three of the glosses (mourn, fame, yeaj yes) occurred in both versions of the Wycliffite New Testament. None of the words that had been substituted in the revised version for Wyclifs double glosses occur in NEB in the same context. The glossary attached to the Gilte Legende in the fifteenth-century MS Egerton 876 is of a much later date than the text in the Gilte Legende and the other glosses discussed above. The glossary seems to have been compiled by an educated reader of the manuscript, some two hundred years later than the text was written in Hertfordshire. By the glossator's time two centuries of lexical variation had been long enough for a great deal of linguistic change to have taken place. The development of a Received Standard language had been accelerated by the growing importance of the vernacular and the spread of the printing press. From that time on, there was to be little regional or dialectal variation in the vocabulary of religious texts. Whatever lexical variation has taken place during the past few centuries will have rather been due to temporal, cultural, social, psychological, or stylistic factors.

Glosses

in three Late Middle

English texts:

lexical

variation

287

Notes 1. The above is mainly based on A. Mcintosh et al. (1986). 2. Bramley (1884: xi) claims that Rolle's texts were widely diffused in the fifteenth century. This is corroborated by the linguistic profiles of numerous manuscripts of Rolle's Psalter analyzed in A. Mcintosh et al. (1986), vol. III. 3. Certain corrupt spellings in the double glosses (e.g. at Ps.6.2, 17.5 and 17.9) imply that the glosses had been introduced by a scribe preceding the one who is responsible for copying A. 4. There are no lexical doublets in Rolle's psalm translation. He introduced his expository comments to difficult allegorical or metaphorical phrases in the commentary either by a parenthetic as who seye (also occurring in A), which must be the equivalent of Latin quasi dicat, or by !>at is (to seye). 5. The first few Latin verses (Ps. 1.1 — Ps. 4.2) are defectively rendered in A; only the incipits are given. From Ps. 4.3 on the whole of each Latin verse has been copied before the translation. The text is interrupted at Ps. 135. 6. This is the only triplet in the sample. It first occurred in the commentary of Ps. 6.2. The verb droue (after the Old English adjective drof 'troubled' or a variant of OE dreogan, Dutch droeven) seems to have been a problem to the scribe or to a copyist preceding him (see Ps. 6.2, 17.5 and 17.9). 7. A few of the glosses in the early version convey some meanings of Latin verbs (perhaps from a Latin-English word-list) which are not applicable in the context. See Matt. 10.19 and 1.19 below. 8. Wyclifs term scorned is wrong here, whereas the gloss renders the correct meaning. 9. The manuscripts of the Gilte Legende are registered in Severs (1970: 559). 10. BL Additional MS 17376, London, containing The Early English prose psalter (edited by Bülbring in 1891) agrees with 28 of the glosses registered in A, involving 20 different word-stems, and shares nine of Rolle's original terms in the doublets. The MS is assigned to Essex in Mcintosh et al. (1986 III: 126), Linguistic profile 6280.

Texts A Ε U Early version Revised (version)

British Library MS Arundel 158, London. British Library MS Egerton 875, London. MS University College 64, Oxford, as printed by Bramley in 1884. The earlier Wycliffite version of the Gospel of St. Matthew as printed by Forshall and Madden in 1850. The Gospel of St. Matthew in the revised Wycliffite version by Purvey as printed by Forshall and Madden in 1850.

288

Saara

Nevanlinna

References Bible, The New English 1975 edited by the Bible Societies in association with Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam 1959 edited by R. P. A. Colunga, and T. Turrado in Biblioteca de autores Cristianos 3 (Madrid: La Editorial Catolica). Bramley, H. R. (ed.) 1884 The Psalter or Psalms of David and Certain Canticles. With a translation and exposition in English by Richard Rolle of Hampole. Edited from manuscripts. With an introduction and glossary (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Bülbring, Karl D. (ed.) 1973 The earliest complete English prose psalter together with eleven Canticles and a translation of the Athanasian Creed (1891) ( = Early English Text Society, Original Series 97) [Reprint: Millwood, New York: Kraus]. Dobson, E. J. 1968 English pronunciation 1500 — 1700 1 — 2 [second edition] (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Forshall, J. — F. Madden (eds.) 1850 The Holy Bible ... in the earliest English versions, made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his followers 1 —4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Glare, P. W. G. 1976-1982 Oxford Latin dictionary 1 - 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Kurath, Hans et al. (eds.) 1956—1987 Middle English dictionary, vols. A l — S 5 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press). Lindberg, C. (ed.) 1965 MS Bodley 959 in the earlier version of the Wycliffite Bible: I Esdras — Ecclesiasticus 48.6, vol. 4 ( = Stockholm Studies in English 13) (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell). Mcintosh, Angus —M. L. Samuels —Michael Benskin et al. 1986 A linguistic atlas of Late Mediaeval English 1—4 (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press). Moore, Samuel 1962 Historical outlines of English sounds and inflections. Originally published as Historical outlines of English phonology and Middle English grammar (1951). Revised by Albert H. Marckwardt (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Georg Wahr). Nevanlinna, Saara 1984 "Continuity and variation in Old English psalm glosses", in: H. Ringbom — M. Rissanen (eds.). Proceedings from the Second Nordic Conference for English Studies (Hanasaari/Hanaholmen, 19—21 May, 1983), (Äbo: Abo Akademi), 2 3 - 3 6 . Severs, J. Burke (ed.) 1970 A manual of the writings in Middle English 1050—1500 2 [based upon a Manual by John Edwin Wells (1916) with the same title and Supplements

Glosses in three Late Middle English texts: lexical variation

289

1 — 9 (1919 — 1954)] (Connecticut, New Haven: The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences). Stratmann, Francis Henry 1978 A Middle English dictionary containing words used by English writers from the twelfth to the fifteenth century (1891). A new edition re-arranged, revised and enlarged by Henry Bradley, [reprint: Oxford: Oxford University Press].

KARL ODWARKA

On scribal errors: from the Old Saxon evidence

When we analyze a medieval manuscript, we attempt to determine its underlying phonological system. We may assume that the scribe was trained in Latin and that he wrote down what he thought to be the closest approximations of the sounds in the language he wrote in to the Latin alphabet. This was certainly true of Old English, Old High German, and Old Saxon, the languages, or more precisely their dialects, of concern in this investigation. In analyzing the probable consonant system of Old Saxon, I investigated what is considered the most reliable Old Saxon manuscript, i.e., MS Μ (Monacensis) of the Old Saxon Heliand. There is little doubt that MS Μ was copied early enough in the ninth century to precede the development of a distinct Old Saxon scribal tradition. One may accept the assumption advanced by some that Louis the Pious commissioned an Old Saxon poet to write the Heliand (Lehmann 1953: 11). According to Behaghel, this religious epic poem was probably written between 814 and 840, possibly after 821 (Behaghel 1965: XV and XXX). The Heliand consists of almost 6,000 alliterative long lines treating the gospel story up to the ascension. In addition to MS Μ from the ninth century, there exists another rather complete manuscript of the Heliand, the Cottonianus (C) from the tenth century, and two fragments, the Prague (P) and the Vatican (V) one, the latter two being placed in the ninth century. What makes MS Μ so valuable is the fact that it was copied by one neat hand; occasional errors were corrected carefully. Whether Μ was copied from the original cannot be determined. According to Sievers (1878: XII) the dialect of MS Μ is pure Old Saxon except for the forms gilih (lines 785 and 935) and gelich (lines 2,624 and 2,628),' which are apparently Old High German loan words reflecting a shift of /k/ to /x/.

292

Karl

Odwarka

Though the evidence presented here is from a study of the consonant system of the Heliand, I did find some interference by vowel graphemes from Anglo-Frisian. There were nine occurrences when ce replaced e (Odwarka 1973: 35). Before turning to the scribal errors found in the consonant system of MS M, a word on deviant spellings of the same forms is appropriate. All deviant spellings in Old Saxon manuscripts may be indicative of certain features of the underlying phonemic system. As shown by Opperman (1959, 1962) and King (1965), vowel variations outside of the main stress in MS Μ provided the basis for their conclusions. Though I was not studying vowels, some findings of the above authors were useful in determining the consonant system of M. For example, the lack of scribal distinction between the gi- and ge-prefix in hundreds of forms allowed me to list stems together where only the prefix differed such as gefragn, 'learned, came to know' 3 sg. pret. (occurring three times) and gifragn (nine times). The position of Old Saxon between Anglo-Frisian and Old High German, both structurally and geographically, is of importance. In addition to borrowing from the above two dialect groups, Old Saxon scribes also showed lapses into the orthographic systems of these dialect groups. The scribes were, of course, also influenced by Latin. Some of the "errors" of scribe Μ cannot be sufficiently explained, i.e., they may well be naive misspellings. Many obvious deviations may be explained, however, as caused by orthographic or-dialectal interference. The linguistic importance of analyzing deviant spellings was pointed out by Penzl (1967), whose terminology will be used here for the most part. Scribe Μ was a meticulous copyist, as attested by Sievers (1878: XII) and others. Nevertheless, he sometimes used graphemes not consistent with his overall graphemic system. For example, he uses the ligature a nine times for the graph e, while the latter occurred in over 5,500 different forms used in this study, each form recorded between one and one thousand times. King's disregard of « as a deviant spelling influenced by Anglo-Frisian orthography seems justified (1965: 26). Such a low frequency hardly allows speculation on phonological significance. Several orthographically deviant forms involving consonants can be found, each requiring a different interpretation.

On scribal errors: from the Old Saxon evidence

293

Such forms as grohta for grotta 'approached, called' 3 sg. pret., and suarht for suart 'black, dark' may be scribal errors based on misreading of the material to be copied. It is tempting to speculate that these errors might have been due to the relatively high frequency of h before t. The combination ht occurs 745 times in 140 different forms in MS M. An obvious scribal error is the spelling of hebrengen for bebrengen 'bring' 2 pi. pres. opt., occurring only once. The shape of A, of course, is similar to the shape of b, but it cannot be explained why the scribe copied one b correctly and "misread" the other. Another example of occasional lapses is brathmu for brahtmu 'noise, noisy crowd' instr. sg., a simple matter of orthographic metathesis. Several different cases of addition may be cited, such as suebon for sebon 'mind, heart' acc. sg., called intrusive anticipation, where the scribe anticipated the b in the next syllable; both u and b were used to represent the same grapheme medially. In the case of hegan for egan 'own' called intrusive lag, the h of the preceding word hem 'home' may explain the addition of h to the next word. 2 The repetition of ... so quad so quad... in line 271 (Sievers 1878: 23) cannot be justified as meaningful, and was therefore reduced to one so quad 'thus spoke' 3 sg. pret., by Sievers. Dialectal influences may explain other kinds of deviations. The form gelik 'alike', gelic, and gilic occurs also as gel ich and gilih. The latter two variations were called the only non-Old Saxon impurities by Sievers; he thought they were probably of Old High German origin (1878: XII). In addition to gelik, Behaghel points to the form uurachi 'repaid, punished' 3 sg. pret. opt., and the deviant forms og of ok 'also', and oc, gihuuilig of gehuuilic 'each one', and sulig of sulik 'such', and sulic

as other examples of Old High German influence (1965: XV). 3 Other forms deviate even more from the Old Saxon system. The ζ may represent an allograph of in such forms as blidzeanne 'to make merry', and blitzea 'joyfulness'; in bezt 'best' and its inflected f o r m s bezta,

bezte,

bezto,

bezton,

a n d beztun,

however, it p r o b a b l y

represents plus (Page 1952: 36, following Holthausen 1921: 25). Holthausen also proposes that the ζ possibly represented a phone [s] (1921: 25). The form uurht 'fate' in line 2,189 is considered a scribal error for uurth by Sehrt (1966: 725).

294

Karl Odwarka

The medial c of cruce represents another isolated case of deviant spelling which may be best explained as the Latin loan word for 'cross' in Old Saxon. It must have been the Latin -c- with the phonetic value of [ts]. One more interesting spelling deviation is found in one occurrence of the form iungaro 'young' gen. pi. Manuscript C of the Heliand has lungro in line 1247, a form which follows both alliteration and meaning. Scribe Μ broke the alliteration because his dialect did not have the word lungro 'strong' gen. pi., a theory advanced by Page (1952: 6). The form lungres 'strong' gen. sg., occurs in line 987, but the / could be interpreted as an /; both Sievers (1878: 987) and Sehrt (1966: 353) point to this possibility. The above examples are not all-inclusive, but they show that some deviant spellings occurred in M; on the whole they are not of a frequency to allow formulation of any theory on contamination of manuscript Μ by a significant percentage of foreign forms. Only among proper names, mostly of Biblical origin, deliberately left out in this study, could one find greater deviations from the graphemic system. These names must be considered unassimilated loan words brought into Old Saxon during the short period of time between the Christianization of the Saxons and the writing of the Heliand. In conclusion I should like to mention one additional source of "scribal errors". Both the Sievers edition of the Heliand and the Old Saxon dictionary by Sehrt are not without fault. A rather complete listing of deviant copying can be found in my study of Old Saxon consonants (Odwarka 1973).4 It is imperative that one work with a photocopy of the manuscript under study. Editions of manuscripts, dictionaries, and any previous work done can be invaluable. But only a careful reading and recording of the graphemic evidence found in the manuscripts should be the basis for any analysis of their content.

Notes 1. I am using the line count of the Sievers edition of the Heliand (Sievers 1878). 2. Sehrt (1966: 109) interprets hegan as replacing euuig 'eternal' acc. sg., as found in MS C of the Heliand. 3. The g in final position would indicate unvoicing to /x/. 4. For example, Sievers (1878) misquotes himself by using gilich on p. XII for the properly recorded forms gelich (lines 2,624 and 2,638). Sehrt (1966: 115) records

On scribal errors: from the Old Saxon evidence

295

biuallen in lines 2,398 a n d 2,406 of Μ erroneously as biuallan, all three occurrences of silubar as silobar (p. 463), tol for tolna (line 1.840, p. 195), lists hord for hort (line 1,762, p. 268), etc.

References Behaghel, O t t o 1956 Heliand und Genesis 8 (ed. by Walter Mitzka) (Tübingen: Niemeyer). Holthausen, Ferdinand 1921 Altsächsisches Elementarbuch 2 (Heidelberg: Winter). King, Robert D. 1965 "Weakly stressed vowels in Old S a x o n " , Word 21: 1 9 - 3 9 . L e h m a n n , Winfred P. 1953 " T h e alliteration of Old Saxon poetry", Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap, Suppl. Bind III. O d w a r k a , Karl E. 1973 The consonant system of manuscript Μ of the Old Saxon Heliand [dissertation] (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan). O p p e r m a n , Fred 1959 The Old Saxon vowel phonemes under medial and weak stress in the manuscript Μ of the Heliand [dissertation] (Austin: University of Texas). 1962 " T h e Old Saxon vowel p h o n e m e s under weak stress", Journal of English and Germanic Philology 61: 77 — 80. Page, Carl R. 1952 The phonological system of the Old Saxon language [M. A. thesis] (Ithaca: Cornell University). Penzl, Herbert 1967 " T h e linguistic interpretation of scribal errors in Old High G e r m a n texts", Linguistics 32: 79 — 82. Sehrt, E d w a r d H. 1966 Vollständiges Wörterbuch zum Heliand und zur altsächsischen Genesis~ (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht). Sievers, E d u a r d 1878 Heliand (Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses).

H E R B E R T PILCH

The last Vercelli homily: a sentence-analytical edition

A. The diplomatic text f. 133 ν, 1.7 ff. Waes \>χτ inj>am sprecenan iglande sum mycel hlaew of eorJ)an ge worht J)one ylcan hlaew iugeara men braecon «fedulfon for feos t)ingü öa waes J)aer on oöre sidan öaes hlaewes ge dolfen swylce mycel sea{) on^am sea{)e ufan se eadiga werguölac him hus & eardung stowe ge timbrode sona on fruman J)aes öe he f> ancer setlge sast Jja^ohte he t>aet he nawöer J?ara ne wyllenes hraegles ne linenes brucan wolde ac on fellenü gegyrlan f) he wolde ealle dagas hislifes alifigean & he hit swa forö ge laeste aelce daege waes his ondleofenes swylc ge metegung ofjsaere tide ^e he f) westen aerest eardigean began. J)a ge lamp hit sume daege mid t>y J)e he Jjyge wunelican J)eow dome his sealmas sang & his ge bedü aet fealh. J)ase ealda feond man cynnes gengde geond J>aet graes wang. Swagryme tende leo: f) he his costunga attor wide geond straegde. Mid^y he J?a yfelnes maegen &his grimnesse attor teldaö J?aet he mid^y atre Ipa. menniscean heortan wundaö £>a semninga swahe of bendü &ofbrogan waes his costunge öa he öa £>am earh winnendan straele on^am mode gefaestnode J)aes cristes cempan \)a he öa se eadiga wer midj)aere ge aetredan straele gewundod waes J>aes werigan gastes J)a waes his mod J?aes eadigan weres swiöe ge drefed onhim be {>am onginne J?e he ongan J?aet westen swa ana eardigan. He öa hine hider &fyder gelomlice onhis mode cyrde &he gemunde Ipa aerran fyrena &leahteras {3e he gefremede &ge worht haefde. hewende J)ast he hie aefre ge betan ne meahte. J^a waes se eadiga wer guölac mid J?aere ormodnesse swage drefed &ge wundod £>aet hesylfa

298

Herbert

Pilch

f. 134 r.

nyste hwider he mid his mode cyrran wolde. \>& waes öyöriddan daege {Daere aefter fyllendan nihte J?aet he öam wol berendan ge J^ohtü faeste wiö stod & eft swa he wite domlice muöe sang & J)us cleopode togode &cwaeö. mindrihten mid minre ge swencendnesse ic clypige &cige acge hyr öu me &mege ful tuma inminü earfeöü öä waes söna aefter öam j^aet his se ge trywa fultü him to com scs bartholomeus &nalas }3aet he him onslaepe aet ywde ache waeccende j)one apostol ongelicre faegernesse geseah & sceawode &he waes \>a sona se eadiga wer swiöe feonde ^aes heofon lican cuman fref rede hine J)a scs bartholomeus &hine [mfid wordü try mede & strangode &hine het J^aet hl ne tweode no ac \> he waere anraede &he him an fultume beon wolde ineallu his earfeöü. öa he se haliga guölac |?as word ge hyrde his ]3aes ge trywan freondes öa waes he ongaestlicre blisse & heofoncundre gife swiöegfeode & hisgeleafan faeste ingod sylfne ge trymede & faestnode syööan seo tid waes J?aet naefre {^aet deoful eft wiö hine |?aere or modnesse waepnö onhine sceotode swylce eac ge lamp on sumne sael Ipa he ymb öa drohtunga smeade his lifes hu he mihte ge cwemlicost öacoman J?aer semninga tudeoflu ofjDaere lyfte slidan &J)amid cuölicü wordü öus cwaedon we syndon gewisse J?ines lifes & ^ines ge leafan trünesse we witon &jDinge|?yld eac we cunnon nu ofer swiöde J)aer we J)in cunedon & costedon p we mid manig fealdü craefte ussa waepna straela wiö mec sendan wene ic J?aet we öe furöor ne wyllan leng swencan ne öe mid brogan bysmrian ac nales f) an f) we öe öaer nu nellaö laetan ])aer öu ge öoht haefdest. Acwe öe eac wyllaö secgan beöam eallü £>e iugeara westen geardodan hu hie heoralif lifdon. Moyses aest &elias hie faeston &swylce eac se haelend ealles middan geardes inwestene hefaeste &swylce eac öamaeran munecas t>e mid egiptü waeron &{3a aer inwestenü eardodan |)aöe jDurh heora for haefednesse in him eallü uncysta ofslogon &acwealdon |3onne giföu t>aes wilnast t>aet öu oföe öa aerran fremednesse yfelra f. 134v. leahtra ofaöwea |?ön scealt [?u f?ine lichaman Jiurh forhaefednesse weccean fortan swiööor swa öu her on worulde wecst &weccest toforgifenesse j?inra gylta swa öu }?ön eft bist inecnessü getrymed faestlicor & swa

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micle swiöor swaöu on|?yssan andweardan life ma earfeöa dreogest swa micle |DU eft intowyrdnesse forgifest &j3anne JDU bist on faesten heron worulde astreaht |)ön byst öu ahafen for godes eagan foröan t»in faesten ne sceal beon {?aet atwega daga fyrst oööe t>reora oööe aelce daege J?aet öuöe swa onteala micelre for haefednesse a hebbe ac on seofon nihta fyrste faesten biö to claensigeanne seman swa on syx dagü merest god ealles middan geardes faegernesse ge hiwode &on Jiam seofoöan hine reste swa ]?onne ge dafenaö J?ane man ge lice syx daga faesten jsone gast fraetewigean &Jx>nne seofeöan daege mete |?ycgan &his lichoman restan. öa he öa se eadiga wer l^as word ge hyrde J?a aras he sona &to gode cleopode &hine ge baed &JDUS cwaeö. Mindrihten god syn mine fynd a on hin der ge cyrred foröan ί φ ε ongite &ge|?ence.foröan eart min scyppend £>asona se awyrgeda feond efne swa rec beforan his onsyne äidlode he^a sona for seah f)a deofollican lare for J?an hie J)a ealle, idle2, &unnytte ongeat. Ac|?a feng toj^aere teala myclan &leofone fjaet waes tojrä berenan hlafe ygde &his feorh big ferede öaj)a werigan gastas |)ison geaton Jjaet he for hogode hie &heoralare hie J?aet mid wepen dre stefne be murnon &wide geond {)aet land waeödon &hese geadiga wer swage sige fassted J^a bysmornesse ealle forhogode J^ara werigra gasta &hl for naht dyde &him for naht dyde.Swylce eft gelamp onsumü saele ymb un manega dagas f>aes J)e he guö lac J)ygewunelican J^eow dom waeccende J3a niht inhalegü gebedü wunode |>a on^aere nihte stilnesse gelamp semninga J)aer com micel maenego j^ara werigra gasta.&hie eal f) hus mid heora cyrme gefyldon &him onaelce healfe inguton ufan &neoj3an &aeghwaenon waeron hie onsyne egeslice & haefdon heardu &lange sweoran &maenigre onsyne waeron fulice f. 135 r. & or fyrme onheora bearde. & haefdon ruge earan &wohneb egeslice eagan &ondrysenlice muöas. &heora teö waeron horses tuxü gelice &hTwasron ^ahracan lige afylled c&hie waeron on drysenlice onstefne. &hie haefdon wosceancan «femicle cneowo &hindan greate &misscrence tan. &hashrymedon onheora cleopunge &hie swa ungemetlice hrymdon «feforan mid forhtlicü egesü & ungejDwaernessü f) hit {nihte f> hit eall be tweoh heofone &eoröan hleoörode J?am egeslicü stefnü. naes £>a

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naenig ylding to^am syööan hie ϊιφ hus comon hie öa sona |)one halgan wer eallü limü gebundenü hine tugon &laeddon ut oföaere cytan ondhie hine ο φ swearte [fpenn laeddon &hine on j[?a horwihtan waeter wurpon &besencton aefter f)am hie hine baeron &laeddon aefter reöü stowü |?aes westenes betuh |?a {)iccan gewridu J)ara brymela £ eal se lichoma waes ge wundod. mid f)y hie öa lange on^aere Systran nihte hine swa laeddon & swencton J)a leton hie hine bindan 4 ana &ge standan heton hine J>a $ he of öam westene gewite oööe gif he f) nolde p hie woldon mid maran brogan bysmrigan &waecan heöa se eadiga wer heoraworda negymde.ache mid witigende muöe Jms cwaeö dryhten me is onöa swiöran healfe foröam ic nebeo oncyrred Jja aefter öä ]3a werigan gastas hine ge namon &hine swungon mid is.enü swipü &Jja aefter \>ä hine laeddon inj)am andrysenlicü fiöerü betuh öa caldan facu Jsaere lyfte \>a. heöa waes onJ)aere heannesse t»aere lyfte upge laeded ^age seah he ealne norö dael heofones swylce he waere Ipä sweartestü wolcnü afylled swiöra ge nipa t?a ge seah he semninga t»aeröa ondrysenlican fiöeru ongen cuman J^ara werigra gasta &unmaete weorod hyra J)aer coman to genes «fehie sona \>xr to somne ge^yddon hieöa sona J?one halgan wer gelaeddon toöam sweartü tintreges gomü helle dures öa he öaer geseah J?a smicendan Jsismas J)ara byrnendra liga &J)one ege £>aere sweartan nywylnesse heöa sona waes f. 135 v. waes ofer geotol ealra j3aera tintrega ^e he frä J)am werigü gastü aerdreah &drsefde &n[al]as 5 f) an ^aet he Jsaer ]sa leglican hyöe öaes fyres up J^yddan geseah &eac|?a fulan receastunge swefles fcaer geseah upgeotan hie sona hie ]sa sona £>a werigan gastas betwuh öa grimlican ligeas in,hruron 6 &feollon &J>aer J?a sawla arleasra manna manigfealdum tintregum tintregud J)a he se eadiga wer guölac geseah micelnesse j^ara wita &[h]ine7 for jsy ege swiö lice on^raec öa clypedon hie sona \>Ά werigan gastas micelre clypunge &j}us cwasdon. Us is miht seald f)eto scufanne onöas witu J)ysse neowolnesse &her J)aet fyr J^aet öu sylfa inj?e baerndest &for |)inum synnü helle duru ongen {je openaö mid J?y J)e öa weri gea gastas J)yssü wordum spraecon &him swa to beotodon J?a and swarude he him &him to cwaeö wa eow t»ystra bearnum 7forwyrde tuddor ge synd ondustes acsan hwageaf eow yrmingumji) öaet ge minge

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weald ahton in[{)]8as witu to sendanne.H[w] 8 aet ic eom her &weard &earo &bide mines dryhtnes willan for hwan mid eow rumleasum beotingü (me)9 breagean (h)ie t>a werigan gastas hine toöam gegearwodon swylce hine man f)aer inscu[f] 10 an wolde J>a semninga com se heofones big genga se ha(l)ga apostol.scs bartholomeus mid heofonlicre beorht nesse &wuldre scinende be tuh J)a dimman J>ystro |)aere sweartan helle hie öa J)a werigan gastas ne meahtan J)[ae]re" faegernesse J^aes halgan cuman \>xr ge wunigean.achie sylfe inheolstre hyddon |?[a]12 he öa (s)e eadig[a]12 we[r]13 his |?one ge trywan freond ge seah öa wies [hem]14 id gastlicre ge(f)e[a] 15 nnesse &onheofoncundre blisse swiöe ge feonde &\>a. aefter J?am (f)leah se haliga guölac mid t?am apostole see bartholom[ ]13 to h[] 1 5 ona saces wuldre &hine se haelend t>aer onfeng &he J)(aer leof)aö &rixa)3 inheo fana rices wuldr(e) abutan ende on ecnesse amen fi(a)t:

B. The principles of sentential analysis Punctuation is one of the perennial problems besetting the critical editor of medieval texts. He is expected to replace the punctuation of the manuscript(s) by one in accordance with the rules of modern school grammar. In other words, he must segment the manuscript text into a linear sequence of "complete sentences", i. e., sentences complete with their single main clause accompanied by its various subsidiary clause(s), each clause being parsed into its phrases (subject, predicate, adverbial complement, etc.), each phrase into its lower constituents down to the words and morphemes. Latter-day grammarians have presented this segmentation procedure as a tree algorithm with or without attendant transformations. However, they have not modified the requirement that the editor find, in the manuscript text, the linear sequence of "grammatically correct sentences". This requirement is routinely accepted by editors as a burden they must shoulder. The problem is seen entirely as one of the specific details. Should I (the editor) put my punctuation marks here or there? For instance, is the phrase than him tharf sie in Bede's "Death Song" part of the preceding sentence: Fore th'e neid faerae naenig uuiurthit thonc snotturra than him tharf sie 'nobody becomes wiser before his death than he must be'.

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Or is it part of the following sentence: Than him tharf sie to ymbhycggannae ... huaet his gastae godaes aeththa yflaes ... doemid uueorthae 'then he must consider what judgement his spirit will receive — good or bad'. N o editor doubts it must be either one parsing or the other (Bammesberger 1986: 1 1 3 - 1 1 5 ) . Or must it? We wish to question this assumption. Can the current model of "the complete sentence", as it has evolved in the European cultural tradition, simply be taken for granted as "God's truth", even for medieval texts? In fact, it is far from being applicable to all modern texts, let alone medieval ones. Its applicability is, we assert, limited to the "well-written text". This is, by definition, the text which comes up to the school grammar prescriptions. On the other hand, anyone who edits for the printing press a spontaneous tape-recorded discussion faces the same quandary as the editor of medieval texts: The "complete sentences" are, in many instances, hard to find. As our textual evidence, we draw on the last homily of the Vercelli Book. The reason is that this writer recently had an opportunity to study the manuscript (diplomatic text above), 16 while the recent editio princeps (Szarmach 1981) strictly adheres to the usual punctuation conventions. Such adherence gratuitously (as we claim) produces a number of unexplained cruces and the need for many emendations. Apart from this incidental consideration, we could have chosen any other medieval English text to make our point (Pilch 1969) — or a text in some other medieval vernacular, for that matter. The problem of punctuation alias parsing would have remained fundamentally the same. The model of "the complete sentence" (we claim) unnecessarily obscures many texts both medieval and modern. The problem is not so much in the "staggered constituents", i.e., it is not in the non-linear word order, as non-linear word order is envisaged even by school grammar. It has been categorized as "embedding" (e. g., the "embedded relative clause") by latter-day grammarians, as parenthesis, hyperbaton, variation (Lausberg 1960), ellipsis, etc., by earlier ones. The problem is rather in the mixture of syntactic and asyntactic modes of cohesion. The "complete sentence" has been traditionally defined both as a syntactic whole and as an ideational whole ("the expression of a complete idea", and such like). Inevitably, the two definitions conflict at least in some instances. For instance, one an-

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tithesis is certainly "a complete idea", yet it can easily be expressed in "two sentences", e. g., This one has a little star, this one has a little car}1 Characteristically, grammarians hesitate should they put just a comma between them (treating them as two paratactic main clauses in one sentence) or a period (treating them as two different paratactic sentences). The difference is, of course, strictly in the model used, while the analytical object remains the same. Syntactic cohesion is linear (according to Eberhard Zwimer's first axiom, Zwirner 1967: 2459). Asyntactic cohesion is not necessarily linear, but a given phrase can, from the point of view of the cohesion of ideas (i.e., asyntactically), belong both to the preceding and the following syntactic entity. This is the way we interpret the phrase than him tharf sie in Bede's "Death Song" above. Ideationally, it is connected both with the preceding nänig ... 'nobody becomes wiser than he must' and the following to gehycganne ... 'then he must consider what is going to happen to him after death'. Syntactically, it is first interpreted as a "clause of comparison", then as an equational predicate with the "pseudo-subject" than (Pilch 1970: Par. 45). Alternatively, we could assume syntactic conflation ("ellipsis"), i.e., the phrase than him tharf sie is expressed once, but functions twice.18 Whoever should judge this interpretation far-fetched is asked to mull the following modern instance 19 : [I hate sitting around [here] Because I'm in a bad mood I want to go honte J For the same reason as above, we would link the clause because I'm in a bad mood both to the preceding clause I hate ... and to the following clause I want to go home. Claiming that the because-phrase must be subsidiary to either the preceding or the following "main clause" may be grammatically correct, but it strikes us as unrealistic as far as the actual message is concerned. We shall therefore accept, as a useful editorial tool, Jan Mulder's distinction between syntactic analysis on the one hand, and sentential analysis on the other. Syntactic analysis is concerned with the relations of functional dependency, i.e., determination (e.g., the article, the numeral, and the adjective determine the substantive in the Modern English noun phrase), interordination (i.e., symmetric determination,

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e. g., either ...or determine each other in the phrase either the preceding or the following main clause, as used above) and co-ordination (e.g., between the two adjectives in a big black box, Mulder —Hervey 1980: 40 — 63). The fundamental unit of syntactic analysis is the syntagm (which is, in many instances, the same as the clause of school grammar). Sentential analysis, on the other hand, is concerned with the formal structure of messages (such as antithesis above, Mulder —Hervey 1980: 56 — 59). The message may be couched in one or more syntagms or fragments of syntagms. The latter form its syntactic base. The fundamental unit of sentential analysis is the sentence. It is segmented into clauses (e. g., the two clauses called "thesis" : "antithesis" within the total antithetical sentence "this one has a little star, this one has a little car" (as quoted above). In addition to the syntactic base, sentences contain intonations and, very often, "sentential markers" or particles, such as yet, indeed, well, but. The latter are not constituents of, but additions to, the syntactic base. All three kinds of sentential constituents — syntagms, intonations, particles — can serve as cues of sentential structure, i.e., as cues signaling the cohesion of the "sentence". In addition, lexical relations sometimes serve as cues such as paronymy, hyponymy, witness the antithesis: "Some are red, and some are blue. Some are old, and some are a ^ a ~> u new " .20 The two pairs of paronyms red: blue, old: new indicate the division of this group into two sentences, the latter are segmented into two equational clauses each. Syntagms are linguistic structures, i. e., structures of one particular language. As such they are necessarily destroyed under translation, as translation, by definition, destroys the source language text, restating the message in the target language. Sentential structures (such as antithesis), on the other hand, transcend the linguistic structure, as antitheses can be couched in many different languages. What is specific to one language is not the sentential structures as such (such as antithesis), but the cues which signal the sentential structure, e. g., the intonations and the particles. The cues must be re-set by the translator for the sentence group as a whole (not on a one-one basis). This is so not only because sentential markers and intonations are linguistic structures, but also because they cannot

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even be glossed or paraphrased — the way lexical words such as write are paraphrased or glossed in dictionaries. It follows that what is preserved under translation is the sentential structure, not the syntactic structure. For instance, there is no good reason at all why a relative clause of source language L, should be translated by a relative clause of target language L 2 (assuming that both languages agree typologically to the extent that they both have relative clauses). On the other hand, an antithesis of L, should be translated as one of L 2 — whatever the pertinent cues may be in either language. In practice, translatability serves as a useful criterion to distinguish between syntactic and sentential structure, equally between the traditional "complete sentence" (which is intranslatable as a linguistic structure) and the message-orientated "sentence" of Jan Mulder's dispensation. The "group of sentences" (as in the latter example) is not simply a higher unit of the sentential hierarchy, but belongs to the discourse hierarchy. The fundamental unit of the discourse hierarchy is, ontologically speaking, not the sentence, but a "discourse unit which corresponds to the sentence". This seems just a nice distinction at this juncture, but it will be needed later to avoid inconsistency. Suffice it to remind the reader that, by the same token, the morpheme is not just "a group of phonemes", but the fundamental unit of the morphological hierarchy — even though every allomorph is homophonous with some group of phonemes. Failure to observe this distinction will involve us in inconsistency, when we are setting up homophonous morphemes such as see and sea. If the morpheme see were the same thing as the group of phonemes /si/, then it would follow that see and sea are the same morpheme. Instead, we therefore say that /si/ is just one feature of the morpheme see, namely its signifiant or, if we so desire, that the morpheme see "corresponds to the phoneme group /si/". As Sandor Hervey has pointed out, the sentence (in his sense) is the basic unit of linguistic analysis, as it is the only self-contained unit of speech. Phonemes, words, syntagms, etc., are not accessible to our observation except as they "occur" in actual sentences, being abstracted therefrom by linguistic analysis: "The establishment of any descriptive model presupposes access to all aspects of (complete) linguistic data; but only sentences model all these aspects simultaneously" (Hervey 1988). At the same time, the sentence is the (minimal) unit which "corresponds to" a speech act and which can be used to compose

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discourse. In any discourse, sentences (i.e., "discourse entities which correspond to sentences") occur in linear sequence. The syntactic base of the sentence need not be a well-formed syntagm in the ordinary sense. Consider the group of sentences 21 : (i)

Celtic playin' at home first in the fnmt row of the stands me

(ii)

Celtic playin' away first one on the supporters'

train

me (iii)

anybody says: up the Rangers I stretch him

The second clause first in the front row of the stands is, syntactically speaking, two predicative nouns in parallel determination. We could claim that the words who is are to be understood elliptically, but we hesitate to do this. It could, with equal plausibility, be which fool do you think sits, so the chunk of text "omitted by ellipsis" is not uniquely recoverable. What is recoverable is just the subject-copula group and some interrogative filler of the subject slot (Mulder —Hervey 1980: 5 6 - 5 9 , 154-157): [first interrogative subject « forgifest 'thou art forgiven' 23 (134v.6), bid tö clcensigeanne se man 'man is to be cleansed' (134r.9). We equally pass over the phenomenon of doubling, i.e., saying the same thing twice by two synonyms linked by a co-ordinating conjunction, e.g., bräcon and dulfon 'broke and dug' (the mound, f. 133v.8). This mode of expression is common enough in Old English literary texts (Pilch-Tristram 1979: 9 6 - 9 7 ) . Nor do we consider in depth the predicative syntagm with the finite verb first in the linear order, e. g., was frär ... sum mycel hlcew (133v.7), frefrede hine Sanctus Bartholomeus (134r.l0), wäron hie onsyne egeslTce (134v.32). This word order is commonplace in Old English. Just by way of digression, we note one instance of (possibly) Irish sentential structure which occurs in the text, namely the prepositional group on-N to designate the person Ν who is undergoing something untoward, e.g., on him in: pä wees his mod ... swTde gedrefed on him (133v.25, cf. Felix: totis sensibus turbatus). This kind of sentential structure is common today even in Hiberno-English, as in it will be a good hour's walk on you 'you'll have to walk for more than an hour'. It is loan-translated from Irish, as orm 'on me' in bhris se an clai orm 'he broke my fence' (literally: 'he broke the fence on me'). The text of the Vercelli homily is, as far as its contents are concerned, reasonably close to the Latin Vita Guthlaci by one Felix (Colgrave 1956: ch. s. xxviii —xxxii), adding Guthlac's ascent to Heaven (sentence group (30 [ii] — [v]) below). We now consider the following sentential constructions:

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1. Anticipating class word In the syntactic base of this construction, one slot is filled twice, first with a pronoun as class word, then the lexical description of the designate. The relation between the two fillers is asyntactic (i.e., it is apposition, not co-ordination), as in he Güöläc (134v.27). Alternatively, Guthlac is described not by his name, but by a paraphrase such as: he ... se eadiga wer (134r.9 passim), his ... pees eadigan weres (133v.26 passim). Similarly for the evil spirits: hie ...pä werigangästas (135v.4, 8, 17, 21).24 In one instance, the anaphoric plural pronoun pära distributively refers to the two lexical items wyllenes hrcegles 'woolen dress' and linenes 'a linen one'. The clause is negated: nawder pära ne wyllenes hrcegles ne linenes — '(he would wear) neither, neither woollen clothing or linen clothing' (133v.l3). What is anaphorically anticipated is, in some instances, a clause which is governed by an initial conjunction, e. g., by pcet and peer respectively in: t>aet än, J?set we öe öäer nü nellaö lätan, J)äer pü gepöht heefdest 'that one thing, namely that we will not leave thee there, i.e., not where thou hast intended to be' (134r.25). The anticipating class word is, in some instances, adverbial, e. g., pä ... py driddan dcege ... — 'then, on the third day' (134r.l).

2. Anticipated focus The normal word order of the syntactic base is changed by placing one constituent first as focus (Bally 1932). In the following comment, the anticipated focus is resumed by a personal pronoun. For instance, as the Devil is tempting Guthlac, the narrator focuses on the Devil's costung 'temptation', then explains that the Devil {he) fixes it ( ö ä ) on Guthlac's mind by päm earh winnendan sträle 'the poisonous arrow'. The definite article päm shows that the reader is expected to know about this arrow (Pilch - Tristram 1979: 116 f.): his costunge, öä he öä päm earhwinnendan gefcestnode pees crlstes cempan (133v.22).

sträle

on päm

möde

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The antithetical fellene gegyrle 'clothing made of skin' is placed first in the that-clause, preceding even the introductory conjunction pcet: pöhte he past ... ac on fellenum gegyrlan pcet he wolde ... lifgean — 'he thought that ... but in dress made of skins that he was going to live' (133v.l2).

3. Asyntactic polysyndeton The constituents linked syntactically by "co-ordinating conjunctions" such as and, but usually belong to the same syntactic and lexical classes, e.g., poor, but proud. However, a sentential relation can be between other types of constituents. In two examples, one of the "coordinate" constituents is a verb phrase, stating a general truth, the other a noun phrase stating one exception. Our Modern English translation renders this sentential structure faithfully: we de fur dor ne wyllan leng swencan ... ac näles pcet an ... 'we are not going to hurt you any longer, but just one thing...' (134r.24) he pä söna wees ofergeotol ealra pcera tintrega ... and näläs pcet än pcet... 'he soon forgot of all those torments ... and just one thing (was in his mind), namely t h a t . . . ' (135r.31).

4. The supplemental clause Adverbial phrases are often added after completion of a clause. In modern speech, such adverbials are very common. They appear in the enclitic section of the pitch pattern or in the postcontour. When seen in writing, they appear to violate the word order rules. In fact, they are (we take it) separate clauses, e. g., relative to the machine age within the sentence: [[technological

de-[velopment]

practically,

relative to the machine

age] [was in its irtfemey in the late 18th century ,..".2S Syntactically, we can parse relative to the machine age as an adverbial expansion of the copulative syntagm was in its infancy. The sentential structure is, however, different. Conventional grammar expresses the

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difference by categorizing practically as a "sentence adverbial" in this example, but as a "predicative adverbial" in was practically in its infancy. (i) An example from our text is pcet ...he him fultum beon wolde (134v.l3) 'that he was going to be his helper'. This clause comes first, then the specification is added in eallum his earfedum 'namely his helper in all his needs'. If the latter phrase were part of the same clause, it would have been placed before (not after) the finite verb. (ii) and him on älce healfe inguton (134v.31f.) 'and they poured in on all sides'. The phrase on älce healfe is then supplemented by a distributive restatement ufan ond neopan and äghwcenon 'namely from above and from below and from everywhere'. (iii) The verb faste 'strengthened' is specified, after completion of the clause his geleafan fceste 'strengthened his faith', by the two supplementary clauses in god 'even his belief in G o d ' and getrymede and fcestnede 'even confirmed and fastened (his faith)'. We take the particle sylfne to be a sentential cue of the supplementary clause: his geleafan fceste — in god sylfne — getrymede and fastnede (134r. 16). (iv) The supplementary clause is cued by the introductory particle group for päm swiööor swä 'the more so a s . . . ' : ponne scealt pü pmne llchaman purh forhcefednesse weccan — for päm swiööor swä öü pe ... wecst ...to forgifenesse 'then shalt thou keep thy body awake through abstinence — the more so as thou washest thyself ... to forgiveness' (f,134v.l). (v) The supplemental clause is not necessarily adverbial, but it may be a verbal predicate as infinitive. The sentence is a rhetorical question: hwä geaf eöw yrmingum pcet öcet ge min geweald ähton — in pas wltu to sendanne 'who gave you poor devils that (authority) that you should have power over me? Power even to send me into those punishments'? (135v.l4). Syntactically, the noun geweald could be expanded either by mm 'power over me' or by the infinitive ... to sendanne, but not by both.

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5. The deictic group This construction is typologically similar to Lat. ecce homo. It contains a governing deictic particle such as here, there and a dependant nominal group: (i) and peer pä sawla ärleasra manna mannigfealdum tingregum tingregud 'and lo the souls of graceless men tortured by manifold tortures' (135v.5). and her peet fyr poet öü sylfa in pe bcerndest 'and lo that fire that thou burnedest thyself in' (135v.l0). (ii) Or the deixis is by the curse wä eöw 'woe to you'. In the following example, this is followed by two polysyndetic nominal groups, the first pystra bearnum in case agreement with the dative plural eöw : 'you children of darkness', the second forwyrde tüddor in the nominative ("vocative") without the case agreement (even though the two are linked by and, cf. section (3) above): wä eöw pystra bearnum and forwyrde tüddor 'woe to you, children of the dark and cursed race' (135v.l3).

6. Enclitic tags (i) seo fcegernesse ... pär 'the beauty-there'. This corresponds to the colloquial 'the beauty-like'. The enclitic tag there is familiar in Modern Colloquial English, as in you guys-there. If we read pär as a locative adverb 'in that place', it makes no sense in the context: 'The evil spirits were unable to bear the heavenly messenger's brightness in that place (but they could have borne it in some other place)': hie ... ne meahton pcere foegerne pees hälgan cuman-pär

gewunigean

(135V.21).

(ii) The word ufan 'from above' is similarly used as an enclitic deictic particle (rather than a locative adverb): on pam seaöe-ufan 'on the brink of that very well' (133v.l0). (iii) Verbs and adverbs are similarly expanded, as in cöman-pär 'came-like' (134r.20), semninga-pär 'sort of suddenly' (f. 135r.26).

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Just to imitate the Old English construction, we use the tag like and similar "substandard" tags in our translation. We beg the reader not to take offence!

7. Anadiplosis Successive paratactic syntagms are linked by the resumption of a lexical group. The group is first introduced as focus by indefinite deixis (such as sum, swylce), then resumed once or several times as the known topic by definite deixis (such as se, se ilea). This device has been called "anadiplosis" in classical rhetoric, "chain link" by K. L. Pike ( P i k e Becker-Young 1970: 346). (i) For instance, the initial focus of the narrative is on Guthlac's earthmound: sum my eel hlcew (133v.7). This is resumed as topic (of a parenthetic author's comment) at the beginning of the next syntagm: frone ilean hläw. It is resumed again, in the mainline narrative, in a syntactically lower ranking position in the following syntagm on ööre sidan dees hläwes. (ii) The definite deixis on the island at the very beginning of the text {in päm sprecenan iglande 'in the said island') can be taken to resume an earlier focus as known topic (cf. Felix: in praedicta insula). The inference is, then, that the text is fragmentary. Something has been lost prior to its manuscript beginning. (iii) The "reduplicative construction" is a special form of anadiplosis. It duplicates a syntagm with variation of wording and intonation — either for precision or for climax (Pilch 1979). For instance, wiö hine 'against him' is made more precise by on hine 'at him': ... pcet deofol eft wiö hine — päre ormödnesse wäpnum on hine sceotode

'... that the Devil aimed against him — nor at him ever — the weaponry of despair' (134r.l7). Similarly, has hrymedon is duplicated by swä ungemetlice

hrymdon

pcet... (though with an ««^-construction), preparing the climax: ... häs hrymedon on heora cleopunge, and hie swä ungemetlice hrymdon ...

'... hoarsely they screamed when shouting, yea so immoderately they screamed ...' (135r.6).

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By the same token, Iceddon is duplicated four times, culminating in the vision of hell: ... hine tugon and läddon ... hine on pat swearte fenn läddon ... ... hine bäron and läddon after redum stöwum ... ... hine swa läddon and swencton ... ...geläddon to päm sweartum tintreges gömum helle dures '... dragging him, they led him ... they led him even to the black fen ... they carried and led him to the desolate places ... yea they led him, tormenting him so much t h a t . . . ... led (him) to the black mouths at the gate of hell'.

8. The άπό κοινοΰ construction Three syntactic units ab c are linked in such a way that, in terms of standard grammar, b is linked either to a or to c. Sententially, however, b is linked both to a and to c (see examples above): (i) One example is the first foröan-clause: Μ In drihten god! Syn mine fynd a on hinder gecyrred, foröan ic pe ongite and gepence, foröan pü eart mm scyppend (134r.l6). 'My Lord God. Let my enemies turn back forever because I remember Thee, as Thou art my creator'. In conventional syntax, either: 'let my enemies turn back because I remember Thee'. Or: Ί remember thee, because thou art my creator'. Sententially, it is pointless inquiring whether this is a case of "leftbranching" or "right-branching". Or is the question appropriate even syntactically? This means we are challenging the hallowed doctrine that a subsidiary clause (notably one introduced by a subordinating conjunction) should necessarily depend, syntactically, on a main clause. We take it that even this dependance is, in certain cases, sentential rather than syntactic. Otherwise, we run into a contradiction. For instance, because is the identity element (alias "autonomous element") of the subsidiary clause

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and therefore its nucleus (Mulder —Hervey 1980: 166 — 167). For the same reason, the whole subsidiary clause must be the nucleus of the "complete sentence": (because —> I remember you) —• let my enemies... But at the same time, because I remember you commutes with an adverbial expansion of the main clause, such as for good reasons: let my enemies turn back for good reasons. We solve the contradiction by treating the relation (between main clause and subsidiary clause) as sentential in this instance rather than as syntactic. Note the /^-clause unaccompanied by a main clause f.l35v.l7 of our text. (ii) By the same token, the clause introduced by for öan swiöor swä... 'all the more so because' is linked sententially both to the preceding gif... ponne-syntagm and the following swä ponne-syntagm: gif pü pas wilnast ... Jxmne scealt pü ... weccean — f o r t a n swlö or swä pü pe her on worulde wecst and weccest to forgifnesse plnra gylta, swä pü J?onne eft bist in ecnessum getrymed fcestllcor 'if thou wilt ... then thou shalt rouse (thy body) — all the more so because, to the extent (swä) that thou washest and rousest thyself in this world for the forgiveness of thy guilt, thou art strengthened, in due course {eft) to this very extent (swä) in eternity' (134r.32).

C. The critical text We proceed to a critical text. We proceed from sentence group to sentence group (in the sense defined above, not the "sentence" of standard grammar), commenting on its sentential structure. We number the sentence groups (1) —(30). Within each group, we number the sentences in small Roman numerals. Parentheses and supplemental clauses are marked by an initial parenthesis. Clauses which agree with the "main/subsidiary clauses" of standard grammar are marked by comma and period as usual. We print in roman type those sentential particles and bearers of lexical relations which we focus on. The manuscript itself contains the odd period by way of punctuation. This is usually at the end of a sentence (but it is in the very middle of

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a word in isenum, 135r.21), but far from being at the end of every sentence. Episode 1: The devils tempt Guthlac to despair. 1.

(i)

W(Es-\>&r in päm sprecenan iglande sum my eel hläw of eorpan geworht — ]3one ylcan hläw iü geära men bräcon and dulfon for feos pingum. (ii) Ipä wees-pär on ööre sldan dees hläwes gedolfen swylce mycel sead. (iii) On päm seape-ufan se eadiga wer Güöläc him hüs and eardungstöwe getimbrode — söna on fruman pees de he poet ancorsetl gescet. (i)

(ii) (iii)

'In the said island there was a big mound of earth — this mound had once been dug open for treasure hunting (cf. Felix: avari ... lucri ergo illic adquirendi defodientes scindebant). On the farther side of this mound a big well had been dug. On the brink of this very well Guthlac built a dwelling place for himself — this was soon after he first occupied the hermitage'

The discourse proceeds by anadiplosis from Guthlac's island to the earthmound (on the island), thence to the well, thence to the hermit's habitation near the well (see section B. 7 above). The second clause is inserted as author's comment. The supplemental clause söna ... scet provides additional information (Lat. congeries, see section B. 4 above and Lausberg 1960: Par. 666 f.). 2.

(i)

fcä pöhte he J)aet he nawöer J)ära, ne wyllenes hrcegles ne linenes, brücan wolde, ac on fellenum gegyrlan {5set he wolde ealle dag as his lifes älifigean — and he hit swä ford geläste älce deege — (ii) wees his andleofenes swylce gemetegung — of päre tide pe he peet westen ärest eardigan began. (i)

(ii)

'Then he decided to wear neither, neither woollen clothing nor linen clothing, but to wear clothing made of skin every day of his life — and he did so daily from then on. He was similarly mundane as far as his food was concerned — ever since he first started to live in the wilderness'.

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Focus on Guthlac's decision as regards his clothing. The and-clause contains the narrator's comment. It resumes the earlier focus on ealle dagas by the anadiplotic älce dcege (see section B. 7 above). The third clause supplies additional information cued by the particle swylce 'such' and, presumably, a low postcontour pitch. The fourth clause re-states the moment of the narrative by chainlink (of päre tide pe...). 3.

(i)

J)ä gelamp hit sume dcege — mid f}y J)e he py gewunelican peowdöme his sealmas sang, and his gebedum cetfealh — (ii) \)ä se ealda feond mancynnes gengde geond poet grceswang — swä grymmeftjtende leo, J^aet he his costunga ättor wide geond stragde (iii) — mid J>y he pä yfeines[se] mcegen and his grimmnesse ättor teldaö, |)aet he mid py ätre pä menniscean heortan wundaö (iv) (i)

(ii)

(iii) (iv)

J?ä semninga swä he of bendum and of brögan wees. 'Then it happened some day — as he was singing his psalms in the habitual liturgy, and observing the routine of his prayers — at that moment the old fiend of mankind was walking the grassy plain — like a raging lion, so that he was spraying far and wide the poison of his temptation — he spreads the power of evil and the poison of his range, in order therewith to wound the human heart — at that very moment as he was free of his bondage and of the horrors (of hell)'.

Focus on the Devil as a poison archer (Pilch — Tristram 1979: 116 — 117). Triple correlative (interordinate) syntagm (Pilch 1970: Par. 50): J}a (gelamp hit...) ä he-öä, se eadiga wer, his pone getrywan freond öä wies he mid gästlicre gefeannesse

geseah,

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Herbert Pilch

(ii) (iii) (iv) (ν) (vi) (i)

(ii) (iii) (iv)

— and on heofoncundre blisse, swiöe geßonde. And \>ä aefter |}äm fleah se häliga Güöläc mid päm apostle sancte Bartholome tö heofona rices wuldre. And hine se hälend pär onfeng, and he peer leofad and rixap in heofona rices wuldre ä bütan ende on ecnesse. Amen. Fiat. 'When at that point he, the blessed man, saw that true friend of his, then he was overjoyed with spiritual joy — feeling heavenly bliss. Then next the holy Guthlac flew to the glory of the Heavenly kingdom with the apostle St. Bartholomew, and the Saviour received them there, and he liveth there and reigneth in the glory of the heavenly kingdom for ever and ever world without end'.

Guthlac "flies" to Heaven. Correlative syntagm öä ... öä ... in the first sentence. Next stage of narrative cued by pä after päm, followed by two and-clauses and the narrator's concluding amen and fiat. On the co-ordination: his Φ- pone getrywan, mid ... gefeannesse Φ swiöe

geßonde

see sentence groups (7) and (9) above.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Hole in the manuscript page, letter m only partially visible. idle inserted above the line. Hole in the manuscript page. Two dots above and below first letter η respectively of bindan. Szarmach reads

bidan. 5. MS. n'aias. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Letter h inserted above the line. Letter h only partially visible. Hole in the manuscript page. Manuscript me barely visible. Manuscript stained by chemical agent from here on. Weakly visible letters placed in round brackets by editor. 10. Scratching and hole in manuscript page.

The last Vercelli homily: a sentence-analytical 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

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MS. /> re. Letter a visible in Foerster's facsimile, not in manuscript. Letter illegible in manuscript. Visible in Foerster's facsimile, not in manuscript. Not visible in manuscript, nor in Foerster's (1913) nor Sisam's (1976) facsimile. My warmest thanks go to the Msr. Guiseppe Ferraris, librarian of Vercelli Cathedral. He welcomed me on several occasions, placing his resources at my disposal. Dr. Seuss, as read by a Canadian child (recorded on tape). As for the intonational analysis and transcription, see Pilch (1980). This syntactic interpretation has been orally proposed by Jan Mulder (St. Andrews). It is known as άπό κοινοΰ in traditional grammar. Even so he were a bold grammarian who ventured to apply άπό κοινού to the passage under consideration. In fact, the concept has been traditionally applied just to "omitted relative pronouns". as in: There were two sisters sat in a hour (Child 1965: nr. IOC). I owe the example to Brigitte Halford, Freiburg i. Br. It is from spontaneous conversation (recorded on tape). See fn. 2. I owe the example to Bettina Euler. It is a chunk from a spontaneously told joke (recorded on tape). Brigitte Halford's example. Szarmach emends to J?ü gefehst 'thou obtainest'. The Latin text reads gaudehis. Presumably, the evil spirits are "weary" of the torments they suffer. This is why we translate the paraphrase as 'tormented spirits' below. Radio interview with Canadian antique dealer, recorded on tape. Szarmach reads swä he witedomlice müöe sang 'so he was singing with a prophetic mouth", cf. Felix: velut prophetico spiritu psallere coepit. Szarmach's alternative reading involves much emendation at this point. Satan's kingdom is conventionally situated in the northern part of Heaven, cf. "pat he on norpdäle häm and heahsetl heofena rices agan wolde" (Genesis 32).

References Bally, Charles 1932 Linguistique generale et linguistique franfaise (Paris: Leroux). Bammesberger, Alfred 1986 Linguistic notes on Old English poetic texts (Heidelberg: Winter). Beda Venerabilis The Death Song, St. Gall Manuscript (author's transcript). Child, Francis James (ed.) 1965 The English and Scottish popular ballads (New York: Harper, reprint). Colgrave, Bertram F. 1956 Felix's life of St. Guthlac (Cambridge: University Press). Foerster, Max (ed.) 1913 11 Codice vercellese (Codices e vaticanis selecti phototypice expressi: series minor 3) (Rome).

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Gonser, Paul 1909 Das angelsächsische Prosaleben des hl. Guthlac (Anglistische Forschungen 27) (Heidelberg: Winter). Hervey, Sändor 1988 "Sentences and linguistic data", Paper presented to the 21st annual meeting of the Societas linguistica europaea, July 12, 1988, at Freiburg i. Br. Lausberg, Heinrich 1960 Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (München: Hueber). Mulder, Jan —Sändor Hervey 1980 The strategy of linguistics (Edinburgh: Scottish Academy Press). Pike, Kenneth L. — Alton L. Becker — Richard E. Young 1970 Rhetoric: discovery and change (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World). Pilch, Herbert 1969 "Syntactic prerequisites for the study of Old English poetry", Language and Style 3, 51—61. [reprinted in: H.Tristram (ed.), Sound, sense and system (Heidelberg: Winter 1987), 172-183]. 1970 Altenglische Grammatik (Heidelberg: Winter). 1979 "Pour une syntaxe de la langue parlee: la construction anglaise ä redoublement", in: Bela Brogyanyi (ed.), Festschrift Oswald Szemerenyi (Amsterdam: Benjamins), 655 — 661. 1980 "English intonation as phonological structure" Word 31, 55 — 67. Pilch, Herbert —Hildegard Tristram 1979 Altenglische Literatur (Heidelberg: Winter). Sisam, Celia (ed.) 1976 The Vercelli Book (Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 19) (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger). Szarmach, Paul E. (ed.) 1981 Vercelli Homilies ix—xxiii (Toronto: Toronto University Press). Zwirner, Eberhard 1967 "Sprache und Sprachen", in: To honor Roman Jakobson (The Hague: Mouton), 2444-2467.

REBECCA POSNER

Linguistics and philology: parametric changes and Romance possessives

1. The nature of the relationship of linguistics and philology is a topic that fills many books. I shall here assume that they can be concerned with the same problems, but that philology relies on the evidence of texts, rather than on live language use. Philological methods, it follows, are appropriate when spoken data are not readily available: they are indispensable when we wish to compare modern linguistic structures with those of earlier periods. 2. I am particularly concerned in this paper with how to assess philological evidence for "parametric change", in the sense of Chomsky (1981). It will be recalled that within the "principles and parameters" model, it is postulated that the child language-learner "sets the switches to make the network function", that is, fixes the values of parameters left unspecified by universal grammar on the basis of "presented data". An example given concerns differences within Romance languages (particularly with respect to the individuality of French as against Spanish and Italian), ascribed to parametric change, which happened "only a few centuries ago", and was "perhaps influenced by the example of the nearby Germanic languages" (Chomsky 1988: 64). 3. It is hard to see what German-influenced data could have induced French language learners to flick the switches to another setting, three, or even four or five, centuries ago. However, by the seventeenth century, standard French had rejected certain linguistic habits that persisted in other Romance standards. Often the changes are attributed to socio-cultural factors — influential linguistic arbiters were keen to establish French as a modern, rational idiom and to abandon archaism and medieval obscurantism. However, the arbiters presumably were not inventing a new language, but imposing an already existing variety

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as a prestige form. What changes there were must have already taken place in some variety. The parametric change, for some language learners, may have been effected by the fifteenth century, but the weight of tradition, and, in the sixteenth century, of reaction (born of respect for Latin models) befogged the evidence. Hence the time-lag. 4. That a typological change overcame French in the "Middle" period (fourteenth to fifteenth centuries) is argued at length by Eckert (1986) who develops Coseriu's hypothesis that French discarded the "Romance principle" during that time of social and political strife. The "Germanic influence" suggestion is implausible for this period. Where it is espoused (e.g., by Hilty 1968, 1975), the assumption is that a switch began in the Dark Ages, gaining ground by gradual displacement of Romance features: the so-called "Non-/?ro-drop" character of French is a much discussed example of such change (cf. Posner forthcoming). 5. If such changes are "parametric", we should expect them to occur once for all in the acquisition process of at least some speakers. The spread of their usage to the community as a whole could be accounted for in social prestige terms — the usage was imitated by other adult speakers, so that the input to new language learners' acquisition processes would incorporate the reformed usage. But what input data would trigger off the change? Would the language learner require positive evidence before deciding which way to flick the switch, or would there be a default position, to which, in the presence of conflicting or ambiguous evidence, the learner would have recourse? And what proportion of the evidence would have to point in the relevant direction? Is there some "crunch point" beyond which the learner would decide how to set the switch? 6. Philological evidence may be expected to cast light on these questions. Usage in texts, imaginatively interpreted, should reflect, to some degree, data that may be presented to language learners. To maintain, as some do, that spoken usage is radically different from that of written texts, is to renounce all hope of substantiating hypotheses about past linguistic states. The textual evidence may be inadequate and misleading, but it is all we have. So we cannot ignore it. 7. I wish to illustrate here from suggestions recently made about parametric setting relating to possessives in French compared with

Parametric

changes and Romance possessives

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other Romance languages. First, I shall briefly rehearse some wellknown facts. In modern French, the person of the possessor of a noun can be expressed by what is traditionally called a possessive adjective, but is distributionally more akin to an article: (1)

mon/ton/son/notrejvotre/leur

livre, etc.

This "weak" possessive article agrees with the following noun in gender and number; the gender of the possessor is unmarked in these forms. The possessive "pronoun" in modern French appears to be related in form to the "article" but, except in the case of leur, not identical. It is obligatorily preceded by a definite article: (2)

le mien/tienjsien/nötre/vötre/leur,

etc.

Traditionally this sequence is analysed as a definite article + "strong" possessive adjective 4- deleted noun. The strong possessive form can also appear as a predicative adjective: (3)

Ce livre est mien This book is mine

This usage is however very rare today, even in written style, and is replaced by: (4)

Ce livre est ä moi This book is to me

8. The origin of the phonological distinction between the "strong" and "weak" possessives is attributed to different treatment of the vowel in stressed and unstressed syllables: the distinction is attested from the earliest texts (ninth century) in the singular persons. I shall not here concern myself with their phonological history, in which analogical reformation and other not-wholly-explicable factors were at work. Relevant to my topic is the existence, until the seventeenth century of NPs like: (5)

r

un/ a /

le mien //vre"11 the my book

which today are used only in archaizing contexts. Similar constructions are, of course, still normal in most of the Romance languages. 9. In modern standard Italian, for instance, we find run / il mio libro'', or, less frequently, run / il libro mio~>. Similar sequences in Spanish are

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found as more emphatic formulations of rmi libro'1 with a "weak" possessive. In the history of most Romance languages, alternation between "strong" and "weak", preposed and postposed, articled and articleless forms is to be found (cf. e. g. Togeby in Posner and Green 1980: 1.131—2 and, for a survey in European languages in general, Manzelli, forthcoming). The final choice made by each standard may have been influenced by a host of factors, like accentual differences, regional prestige, homonymic clashes, and the like. 10. Accepting that the Romance forms are derived ultimately from Latin rMEU(M) LIBRU(M)~1,2 where the possessive pronoun acts like an adjective, the introduction of a determiner into Romance sequences can be seen as part and parcel of the development of overt determiners in all Romance languages. rIl libro mio~> is most easily construed as a definite NP containing a postposed adjective, while in r il mio libroΊ the adjectival rmio~> can be viewed as one of a set of common preposed adjectives, closely bound semantically to its noun. 3 11. In modern usage, "weak" Romance possessives are not accompanied by a determiner and appear to have developed phonologically as clitics — most often as proclitics, though enclitics are found in some Italian and Rumanian dialects. The clitic forms are more like determiners than modifying adjectives. 12. The difference between adjectival-possessive and determiner-possessive languages is regarded as parametric by some commentators. Giorgi — Langobardi (forthcoming), for instance, regarding possessives as genitives NPs at D-structure, posit that an open parameter of Universal Grammar allows them to surface either as adjectives or as determiners. 4 Lyons (1986) goes further, claiming that an adjectivalpossessive language must use an overt definite marker in specifier position, to constitute a definite NP, 5 whereas in determiner-possessive languages the possessive specifier itself carries definite interpretation. For him, definiteness is configurationally determined — the structural position of specifier within the NP is interpreted as "definite". Thus r il mio libro"" and rmon livre1 are interpreted as definite NPs because the specifier slot is filled by ΓΐΓ and rmorP respectively. 13. Whether indeed rmon livre1 is an inherently definite NP is open to doubt (cf. Posner 1988). In modern French the question of "definite-

Parametric changes and Romance possessives

341

ness" is complicated by the semantic ambivalence of the definite article C/e"1), which is not unambiguously a signal of specificity (cf. its use with abstracts — le silence, or with inherently specific referents — La France). It does mark a certain degree of familiarity with its referent (or, in pragmatic terms, "accessibility" — cf. Ariel 1988 — within a shared framework of thought as well as in the situational or discourse context). For most French grammarians (following Guillaume 1919), it is the most generalising of the determinants or discriminants, which serve to insert a concept into a specific discourse by limiting its potential extension (cf., e. g., Grevisse 1986: 906; Chevalier et al. 1964: 213; Valin et al. 1985: 61 —62). The role of the possessive may however be a "quantifying" rather than a "generalising" one, akin to the indefinite as well as to the definite article. 14. What is important for our present purpose, however, is the undisputed fact that adjectival-possessive constructions ( r le mien livre"•) ceased to be used in colloquial French by the seventeenth century. Whether this was the result of a parametric change is less certain. It could be argued that, by the sixteenth century, the less frequently used r le mien livre'1 sequence had come to be seen as redundant, synonymous with rmon livre'1 and that there was in the seventeenth century a banal tidying-up operation. For French to abandon such morphologically complex expressions retained by other Romance languages merely reflects the rationalising radicalism that characterised French at the formative period of the modern standard language. 15. However, the overt dichotomy in modern French between the conjunctive (clitic?) determiner (rmon') and the disjunctive (free-form) pronoun ( r le mien*) should give us pause. We note that, by diverse means, parallel changes have arisen within the discourse pronoun system (rje~l, rme/moi~i),

a n d t h e d e m o n s t r a t i v e system

^ce^TceluP),

r

and, indeed, within the anaphoric pronoun system ( learticle or clitic 1 6 pronoun / 7m/" disjunctive pronoun). The categorial specialisation of r morP and rle mienminimal though the change in itself appears, can therefore be seen as part of a more radical upheaval of the linguistic system. 16. But let us look first at the use of possessives in the earlier stages of French — remembering, of course, that the texts from which we

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gather evidence are not necessarily representative of a homogeneous "natural" language. Accepted wisdom tells us that in Old French the "weak" and "strong" possessive forms are, respectively, unaccented, unemphatic, and accented, emphatic. The weak forms are found only proclitic to an NP, whereas the strong forms occur in the same range of positions as any adjectival, including "pronominal" use with a deleted head noun (which may also be an indefinite) — rle mierP like r le grand'1. As Old French progressed the strong form before a noun was most often preceded by a definite article, though frequently, after a preposition or in "absolute" constructions (e. g., meie culpe, tue merci), no determiner was used. 7 17. How far does the philological evidence bear out the classic story? In an attempt to answer this question, I have examined textual evidence from the ninth to the fifteenth century. 8 A fuller account is to be found in Posner (1988); here I merely refer to points more relevant to my present purpose. First, we note that the proportion of "strong" to "weak" forms decreases from the earliest texts (Strasburg Oaths 5 : 2 , Eulalia 2 : 1 , St. Leger 7 : 1 8 ) to settle at about 6% in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries and decreasing more radically from the fifteenth century. The variation between persons is great, with the third person possessives, presumably less emotively charged, appearing much less in the strong form (in the Roland 4 % compared with 17 — 20% in the first and second persons). In later texts where the tu person is less favoured, there is a corresponding fall in the absolute number of strong forms. 18. A m o n g the strong forms, we can distinguish different functions — adjectival (pre-noun), predicative, pronominal — and examine the determiners which precede them. The pronoun sometimes appears with a zero determiner, but usually with a rlen (definite article?). For the adjectivals, however, there is no evidence that rle~l is the most frequent determiner, though some texts (e.g., Le Mystere d'Adam) appear to use only rle~l. Commentators tend to quote only the rle~> forms (cf. Schwake 1979 on Chretien's Cliges) but this may be misleading: runy appears in the twelfth and thirteenth century texts as frequently as, or even more often than, rle~l with adjectival possessives. In later texts, r urP is even more frequent and seems to be particularly popular in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. The earliest texts present a rather different picture. The strong possessive occurs regularly without a

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determiner post-prepositionally, but rle~l is frequently used, and demonstrative rcist~> is not uncommon, with adjectival possessives. 19. The pattern that emerges is that strong forms, frequent at first, become comparatively rare as time goes on, though their use as pronouns increases. Adjectivals with zero become increasingly marginal, mainly restricted to set phrases. But it is not true that there is an increasing use of the definite article with adjectivals. Indeed, given the overall infrequency of run* compared with rle~>, it is surprisingly common with possessives and becomes more so in later texts. Demonstratives, on the other hand, are rare, or even non-existent, with adjectival possessives in the later texts. 20. Why should we assume (with Lyons 1986: 33) that in Old French the weak possessive determiner was semantically equivalent to the strong adjectival possessive preceded by rle~,r! The first hypothesis I advance is that the difference between the weak and the strong forms is not merely stylistic, but that the former was unmarked for definiteness, whereas the latter put more emphasis on the possessor — as the defining factor — than on the head noun, and might well be (redundantly?) accompanied by an overt definite marker. It is of course hard to discern the semantic nuances of texts in a language for which there are no longer native speakers to act as consultants. In some cases there is even dispute about the basic meaning of an example — for instance in the ninth century Song of Eulalia we can read: (6)

a.

Ele adunet lo suon element = 'She gathers together her forces'.

or

b.

Ele aduret lo suon element = '... That she adore his deity'.

The latter interpretation is more evidently defining than the former. In other cases, different manuscripts offer different readings. For instance in the eleventh century Life of St. Alexis, one manuscript has: (7)

Li tons parentez 'your relations'

while another has: (8)

tut tis altres parentez 'all your other relations'.

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Sometimes, however, a defining function seems highly likely, as when: (9)

Le ton cors, la tue/sue cam 'your body, your/his flesh'

are best translated 'yourself, himself, with the noun serving as a conventional placeholder. In many examples, it is feasible to read into the distinction rmierpj r mon amp a difference which can be associated with emphasising the possessor, compared with emphasising the possessed noun. That such a distinction should be related to stress differences seems natural. 21. But why should the definite article be associated form? And what would its function be? First, we determiners, besides the definite article, are used possessive. Originally, the demonstratives rcest~>lrceP were found in this construction — recall that the first Strasburg Oaths, has two examples of the sequence: (10)

cist meon this my

with the stressed recall that other with the strong not infrequently French text, the

fradre brother

Demonstratives rcesP and rceP functioned, in Old French, as pronouns as well as determiners; by Middle French the "proximal" had specialised as a determiner, rcet~', and the "distal" as a pronoun, r celuP. It is noteworthy that the former, marking high accessibility, was the demonstrative more frequently used with the strong possessive. Is it coincidental that the rcest mien freren construction became obsolete, more or less at the time that rcesP ceased to be used as a pronoun? Not if, indeed, rcesP were a pronoun, and not a determiner, in such a construction! That the emphatic pronoun rcesP should be followed by a strong "determining" possessive is not at all surprising. The Strasburg Oaths example would therefore be translated as 'this one, my brother' rather than as 'this brother of mine'. 22. In later Old French and Middle French there was an increase in popularity of constructions like (11)

un sien ami a his friend

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usually translated as 'a friend of his'. Such constructions were rejected by linguistic arbiters in the seventeenth century in favour of (12)

un de ses amis one of his friends

Could it be that the dislike of run sien ami'1 was due to a structural ambiguity? For rurT could be a pronoun (as in un de ses amis) or an indefinite determiner, or a numeral (as in un ami = 'a friend' or 'one friend'). In Old French it is highly likely that the runl was more clearly a pronoun than a determiner. In the St. Alexis, for instance, the line: (13)

D'un son filz voil parier Of one his son I-wish to-speak

used to introduce the topic, cannot be interpreted as meaning 'one of his sons', as the point of the story is that Alexis was Eüfemien's only son. We could therefore read it to mean O f (some)one, his son', rather than 'Of a son of his', which, in my usage at least, implies the existence of other sons. Unlike the case of demonstrative rcestn, there is no reason why the indefinite pronoun runl should be accompanied by a stressed possessive. We can therefore interpret the following possessive uses in the Roland as marked only by the difference between the weak and strong forms sun/soen (14) a.

b.

un sun noble barun one his noble baron 'one of his noble barons' un soen grant escut one his big shield 'a big shield that he has'

23. But what of the rle* + possessive + Ν sequence? Here I hazard the bolder suggestion that here rle~l, like rcest~l and run~*, was in Old French a pronoun, not an article. That rle~> survived, even if only marginally, as an anaphoric pronoun in Old French is shown by examples: (15) a.

Al With-the [leave] al with-the [leave]

Jhesus e of-Jesus and mien (Roland) mine

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Ton cheval e le Perceval Your horse and the [horse] of Perceval (Queste)

Moreover, Moignet (1973: 105) suggests that the pronoun rle mierP is better analysed as a pronoun + adjective, than as an article 4- adjective + deleted noun sequence. Any attempt at translation into English of rle mien N~* must be awkward as English lacks an anaphoric pronoun equivalent to r/e"\ Its function can most easily be illustrated by use in apostrophe: (16)

u mien baron The my barons 'You, my barons!'

It is also particularly apt in examples like the following: (17)

u miens amis il est de tel paraget... The my friend he is of such nobility... 'He, my very own love, he is so high-born'...

in which a young woman replies to a question about the identity of her lover (ton ami). 24. It is noticeable, however, that most frequently, in the texts I have examined, the rle~* 4- possessive + Ν construction is found with abstract nouns, where deictic or anaphoric function cannot be attributed to the rlen element. A link may be made with the suggestion (Gueron 1983) that in modern French: (18)

II demande le silence

the le is a non-argumental pronoun like il in (19) II est venu This is not, however, the place to pursue this question.9 25. It seems that rle~i was normally followed by a strong possessive form. Apparent examples of the weak form in this position are often "corrected" by editors, or explained in terms of dialect variation, perhaps misguidedly. For instance: (20)

... Parle men escient (Roland 1.1791) by the my knowledge

Parametric changes and Romance possessives 347 can, in context, be interpreted '(There's a battle,) that I know', without emphasis on men. On the other hand, the absolute construction without r 1 le : (21)

mien escientre (Roland 1.552) my knowledge

is understood as Ί myself know (that he is more than 200 years old)', with a strongly determining mien. However, we must ask why the weak possessive is apparently never used with feminine nouns, after la. It seems that the (unusual) sequence in (22)

la sa mere (Yvain 1.664) the his mother

could not permit the interpretation 'that one, his mother', but only, as the context shows, 'that one [äme] of his mother'. But here, other factors, both phonological and syntactic (i. e., the noun in oblique case used as a genitive), intervene and I must renounce discussion here. 26. What I am suggesting is that the rle mien N'1 construction in Old French was marked for defining function by the strong possessive, and that the rle~* was an anaphoric pronoun (or, with abstracts, a "non-argumental" pronoun) rather than a definite marker. In the course of Old French however, le, la, les became specialised as clitics and lost their limited capability of being used as free-form pronouns. The rle mien Nn sequence may at this stage have been reanalysed as definite article + possessive + N. With prosodic changes in the Middle French period rmieny ceased to carry emphatic stress in pre-N position and lost ground to the much more frequent rmorP form. It however continued to be used predicatively and pronominally (in rle mienn), where it more frequently appeared in stressed position at the end of a breath-group. The sequence run mien N"1 survived better than rle mien N"1 perhaps because run> continued to be recognized as a pronoun. However, its isolation, after the loss from the spoken idiom of rle mien N"1 left it vulnerable and it eventually succumbed in the seventeenth century. Today, the rle mienpronoun is still in normal use but, as predicative r mien[ has been virtually lost from the colloquial language, the article + adjective analysis of the sequence has become obsolete, and it may be regarded as a monomorphemic element.

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27. The change that took place in the French possessive system is not unequivocally reflected in the textual evidence until the seventeenth century. The texts I have examined suggest, nevertheless, that the rle mien livre~* sequence may have lost its semantic motivation for many fourteenth-century language-users, and that it survived only as a quaint alternative to rmon livreIt is not unlikely that children at that time rarely encountered, during their language learning period, the rle mien N"1 construction, and so failed to incorporate is into their grammar. However, the fact that such constructions continued to be used in some registers militates against the suggestion that a definitive parametric change had been effected. 28. Have we any reason to postulate that the determiner-possessive mode was indeed the most likely option for the Middle French learner to choose? Yes, if we take in a wider spectrum of material. I suggest that French underwent a typological change in the "Middle" period which set it apart from most other Romance languages, even though writers did not wholly come to terms with the change until the early seventeenth century. One aspect of this change was the divorce between determiners and pronouns, part of a general separation of clitics from related free-forms. Whether the change was primarily morphophonological or syntactic is debatable. An effect was the favouring of grammatical markers cliticized to phrasal categories rather than inflections affixed to words, as in Latin. A relevant and controversial question here is whether the possessive in rmon livre'1 is a phonological or a syntactic clitic — a question paralleled by that concerning the status of French subject pronouns (cf. Rizzi 1984). 29. The parametric change, if such it was, was not dependent only on the "presented data", narrowly confined to possessives, but on the whole organization of grammatical markers in the grammar. There was undoubtedly a link with the prosodic changes, with word-accentuation giving way to breath-group-accentuation, which must have affected French by the sixteenth century. Whether the phonological changes preceded the morpho-syntactic ones we do not, and perhaps cannot, know. Closer examination of Middle French texts may yield answers. Here we rely on philology to fuel speculation on linguistic problems and to supply the information to fill out the historical perspective.

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30. We must of course always be wary of drawing too firm conclusions from philological material, given that we work with a limited corpus of written texts of uncertain reliability and that we cannot appeal to the intuitions of long-dead native speakers. Nevertheless, philology is the life-blood of historical linguistics. I would go further and maintain that just as diachronic linguistics requires theoretical support from synchronic linguistics, synchronic study would itself be crippled without the insights provided by a historical perspective.

Notes 1. I use the device " t o symbolise that the forms cited are read as representative of a series of related forms. 2. The Romance third person possessive continues the reflexive r suu(m)" 1 form and not the genitive of the demonstrative pronoun ""eius"1. In the plural however a new possessive has sometimes been developed from the genitive plural of the distal demonstrative I L L Ö R U M (cf. Togeby 1968). 3. Some languages — like Sardinian and some southern Italian dialects — do not allow preposing of the possessive adjective. In Rumanian, a preposed possessive is emphatic. In older stages of Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, a determiner was used regularly only when the possessive adjective was postposed. In some modern Rheto-Romance varieties, a "strong" possessive is regularly preposed but no determiner is used. 4. They argue that the θ-position of the possessive, in Head-Subject languages like most Romance languages, must be post-nominal. Movement to the prenominal position of adjectives is optional, whereas the determiner, in French, must land in prenominal position. 5. For Giorgi and Langobardi, an articleless N P in Italian cannot function as an argument (cf. apostrophic Amico miol) given that a determiner is required in order to saturate an N P (at least in the singular). In French, the possessive determiner is able to saturate the Ν P. 6. The indefinite article and pronoun ( r urP) are not clearly distinguished — though in some contexts where numeral function is less prominent, the pronoun has a determiner-like prefix ( T u n \ rchacuny). 7. We note that the prediction that a determiner is most often used with a pre-noun strong possessive is self-fulfilling, as commentators class as strong any possessive following a determiner whatever its phonological form, justifying themselves by assuming scribal error, dialectal variation, and the like. 8. The usual caveats apply — the earlier texts are often known from later manuscripts, manuscript versions differ, dialect and genre conventions differ, texts cover a long chronological period, and, moreover, there are difficulties in distinguishing "strong" from "weak" forms. I have made no principled choice of texts, using mainly those for which concordances are available: there is no reason to assume they are atypical. 9. The link between the definite article and related pronominal forms has aroused much speculation. One particularly original and thought-provoking contribution should be cited here: Warnant (1980).

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References Ariel, Mira 1988 "Referring and accessibility", Journal of Linguistics 24: 65 — 87. Chevalier, Jean-Claude —Claire Blanche-Benveniste —Michel Arrive—Jean Peytard 1964 Grammaire Larousse du frangais contemporain (Paris: Larousse). Chomsky, Noam 1981 Lectures on government and binding (Dordrecht: Foris). 1988 Language and problems of knowledge (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Eckert, Gabriele 1986 Sprachtypus und Geschichte. Untersuchung zum typologischen Wandel des Französischen (Tübingen: Narr). Giorgi, Alessandra —Giuseppe Langobardi forthcoming "Another parametric distinction: the status of the possessive" [unpublished manuscript]. Grevisse, Marcel (revised by Andre Goose) 1986 Le Bon Usage. Grammaire frangaise 12 (Paris-Gembloux: Duculot). Gueron, Jacqueline 1983 "L'employ possessif de l'article defini en frangais", Langue frangaise 58: 23-35. Guillaume, Gustave 1919 Le probleme de l'article et sa solution dans la langue franqaise (Paris: Hachette). Hilty, Gerold 1968 "Westfränkische Einflüsse auf die galloromanische Syntax", in: Kurt Baldinger (ed.), Festschrift Walter von Wartburg zum 80. Geburtstag, 18. Mai 1968 (Tübingen: Niemeyer), 493-517. 1975 "Westfränkische Superstrateinflüsse auf die gallo-romanische Syntax", Romanische Forschungen 87: 413 — 426. Lyons, Christopher 1985 "A possessive parameter", Sheffield Working Papers in Language and Literature 2: 9 8 - 1 0 4 . 1986 "On the origin of the Old French strong-weak possessive distinction", Transactions of the Philological Society 1986: 1—41. Manzelli, Gianguido forthcoming "Free and bound morphemes (possessive adnominal modifiers)" [paper given at workshop in Rome, 1987]. Moignet, Gerard 1973 Grammaire de l'ancien frangais. Morphologie -syntaxe (Paris: Klincksieck). Posner, Rebecca 1988 "Definiteness and the history of French possessives", French Studies 42. forthcoming "Evolution and revolution: speciation in Romance" [paper given at conference in Oxford 1988]. Posner, Rebecca —John N. Green (eds.) 1980 — 1982 Trends in Romance linguistics and philology 1—4 (The Hague — Paris — New York: Mouton).

Parametric Rizzi, Luigi 1984

changes and Romance possessives

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"On the status of subject clitics in Romance", in: O. Jaeggli — C. Silva Corvalan (eds.), Studies in Romance linguistics (Dordrecht: Foris), 391 — 419. Schwake, Helmut Peter 1979 Der Wortschatz des "Cliges" von Chretien de Troy es (= Ζ RPh Beiheft 149) (Tübingen: Niemeyer). Togeby, Knud 1968 "Suus et Illorum dans les langues romanes", Revue romane 3: 66 — 71. Valin, Roch —Walter Hirtle — Andre Joly (eds.) 1985 Legons de linguistique de Gustave Guillaume. 1945—1946, Serie C: Grammaire particuliere du frangais et grammaire generale (Quebec-Lille: Presses Universitäres). Warnant, Leon 1980 "La determination de pronoms", in: M. Dominicy —M. Wilmet (eds.), Hommage α Jacques Pohl. Linguistique romane et linguistique franfaise (Bruxelles: Universite Libre), 231—234.

MATTI RISSANEN

On the happy reunion of English philology and historical linguistics

1. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to discuss the new ways in which philological and linguistic research can combine methods and approaches in order to achieve more interesting and accurate results, particularly in the study of English historical syntax and lexicon. In the 1960s, it seemed rather difficult to believe that English philology and historical linguistics could ever have much in common. The linguists were mainly interested in generalizations based on rulebuilding. In the field of historical phonology and morphology, the rule-bound linguistic approach yielded interesting results, and the linguists' disciplined and non-impressionistic attitude to the study of the past stages of language was certainly welcome. On the other hand, the new linguistic approach was less rewarding and less successful in historical studies of syntax and vocabulary, mainly because of the different character of the changes taking place in these fields. In most linguistic studies, little attention was paid to the mechanisms of language change, to nuances of meaning, or to questions of non-random variation. This led to accusations of negligence towards, or even ignorance of, the details of the syntactic and lexical patterns of the past. At the same time, philological research was, at least to some extent, cramped by hostile and over-defensive attitudes. (I am, of course, only referring to studies of language, not to purely literary studies.) Many philologists failed to understand the demands for the linguistic generalizability of their interpretative analyses. Their profound knowledge of the language, based on extensive and close reading of texts, enabled them to make insightful observations on the meaning of the structures

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and vocabulary of the past. Yet they were often unconcerned as to the compatibility of their discussions of linguistic details with the general structural characteristics and trends of development in the language. The new developments which, in the second half of the 1960s and in the 1970s, ended this unfortunate breakdown in communication between historical linguists and philologists are well known and do not need a detailed description here. The rapid increase of sociolinguistic studies, and the growing interest in language variation in general, focused interest, once again, on performance, the communication situation, and the members of the speech community. The frequently-quoted essay by Weinreich — Labov — Herzog (1968) influentially and successfully formalized the mechanisms of language change and defined its components: constraints, transition, actuation, embedding, and evaluation. Labov's works on sociolinguistics and change (1966, etc.), Bailey's (1973) implicational scaling, Romaine's Socio-historical linguistics (1982), and a host of other studies have, in the past two decades, radically shaped our concepts of language and its development. One of the most important recent statements on the sociolinguisticvariational approach to the historical study of English is Milroy — Milroy (1985). The core point of this article is the discussion of the actuation of change, "the very heart of the matter". The emergence of speaker innovation and its diffusion through a speech community, the role played by "early adopters", social networks, and the ties within these networks in the process of converting an innovation into a more or less permanent change in the language are competently discussed within a sociolinguistic framework. The Milroys' article establishes, in fact, the success of a sociolinguistically coloured, speaker-oriented approach to the study of the diachrony of English. But the sociolinguistic invasion alone would hardly have been sufficient to give remarkable new impetus to the historical study of English syntax and vocabulary. The practical limitations of the adaptation of these methods are obvious: sociolinguistics is mainly concerned with spoken language and, at present, its most outstanding results relate to phonology. Furthermore, a detailed description of the social structure of the speech communities of the early stages of English is, understandably, impossible.1 It is of vital importance that, at the same time, a remarkable development has taken place in the philologically oriented study of language history. The Middle English Dialect Atlas project (Mein-

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tosh — Samuels — Benskin 1986), with its systematic focus on extant manuscripts as the basis of linguistic deductions, marked a new opening in historical dialectology. Samuels's Linguistic evolution (1972) presented a useful theoretical basis for the study of English diachrony, with due attention paid to the limitations caused by insufficient textual evidence and the lack of information on spoken language. 2 Of the many recent studies which successfully combine linguistic insights with a philological basis, Amos's Linguistic means of determining the dates of Old English literary texts (1980) can be mentioned as just one example. Mitchell's Old English syntax (1985) deserves a special comment in this context as it is the most extensive and ambitious work published on the history of English since Visser's Historical syntax (1963 —1973). Mitchell pays little attention to recent linguistic theory, and he is not greatly concerned a b o u t the development of language before or after the time he is describing and analysing. Consequently, a linguistically oriented reader may fail to find answers to some of the problems occupying his mind. The impression of an impatient attitude to purely linguistic problems is underlined by the a u t h o r ' s frequent sarcastic comments on studies using a linguistic line of argument. The reader will, however, soon notice that Mitchell is no less scathing in his criticism of many purely philological studies. The essential thing is that Mitchell's Syntax contains an enormous a m o u n t of information equally useful to linguists and philologists. His critical and uncompromising attitude towards ingenious interpretations that just "sound g o o d " is praiseworthy, 3 and his views on the meaning, development, and constraints of use of the Old English syntactic structures are always based on solid textual evidence. As just one r a n d o m example of the implications of Mitchell's way of discussing the questions of Old English syntax we could take his treatment of the use of the indefinite subject man, in contrast to expressions in which a finite verb form in the active voice is used without an expressed subject, as in peer mceg nihta gehweem nidwundor seon (Beow. 1365) 'there every night a fearful wonder may see', i. e., 'be seen' nu mag cunnian hwa cene sy (Maid 215) 'now may test (i. e., 'be tested') who is valiant' Uil mec ... hatan ... hyhtlic giucede (LRid 11) 'Will call me (i. e., Ί will be called') a comforting garment'

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Mitchell gives this section of his Syntax the somewhat dubious heading "Indefinite man not expressed" (§§ 370 — 376), but he argues convincingly against Pogatscher's (1901) view that we should interpret subjectless sentences with an active finite verb as cases of subject omission or ellipsis. He ends his discussion with the pertinent observation that "the existence of the examples with magan as in Beow. 1365, Maid. 215 ... does leave a nagging doubt in one's mind that LRid 11 may be another example of a dying idiom which was not recognized by whoever inserted mon in the later W-S version of the Leiden Riddle" (§ 375). A statement of this kind, couched in typically Mitchellian terms, should incite any historical linguist's imagination. It seems, indeed, that historical Old English is no longer particularly tolerant of subjectless active sentences, perhaps because of the gradual collapse of the system of morphological case markers and the shift from one typological word-order pattern to another (cf. Fischer — van der Leek 1987). Only certain types of verbs could be used without an expressed subject (cf. Mitchell 1985, esp. §§ 370-376; 1025-1051). Man developed a pronominal use as an indefinite personal subject, in Old English as well as in other Germanic languages, probably because of the lack of available indefinite pronominal forms suitable for expressing a high degree of non-specificity (cf. Rissanen 1987: 417 — 418). Finally, we should not forget the importance of recent developments in text linguistics and discourse analysis to the historical study of language. By combining pragmatic and discourse factors with semantic and syntactic ones, we may considerably clarify our views of variant distribution in past synchrony and, in particular, our understanding of the phenomena connected with diachronic developments. Traugott's important article (1982) and subsequent studies arising from her method of argumentation (e.g., Hopper —Martin 1987; Kytö 1987; Nevalainen 1987; Wright 1987) give welcome new insights in both the broad outlines and the details of linguistic change. Enkvist's (e.g., 1972, 1986), Enkvist and Wärvik's (1987), and Warvik's (1987) studies on Old English narrative markers are also of great interest.

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2. Computer corpora for the diachronic study of English Perhaps the most conspicuous characteristic of the recent developments in philology and historical linguistics described above is the heightened importance given to evidence offered by texts. The description of change through variation is only possible if it is based on a vast amount of textual evidence, particularly if attention is focused on the linguistic and extralinguistic factors affecting the choice of the variants. Systematic study of texts is also necessary for finding more general diachronic and synchronic support for interpretations of structural and lexical details of the texts of the past. Consequently, problems caused by the insufficiency of the textual basis available for our explorations in the past of the English language become more acute than ever. These problems are intensified by the anonymity typical of Old and early Middle English texts, which may make an accurate description of the relationship of a text to its author and his society impossible. The study of change is hampered by the uneven chronological distribution of extant writings in the first six or seven centuries of written English. The most obvious gaps in the total corpus of English texts are the period immediately following the Norman Conquest (c. 1070—1150) and the time in which the French influence on language and literature reached its peak (c. 1250 — 1350). Hardly any original texts written in the post-Conquest decades survive in roughly contemporary manuscripts: a few charters, sermons, and lives seem to be all. Very few prose texts go back to the period around 1300. Ayenbit of Inwyi is an exception, although an extremely important one; unfortunately Richard Rolle's writings only exist in much later manuscripts. These textual problems are, of course, only too well known to all students of the history of English. It is also a commonplace that the student must try to cope with these problems as best he can, making attempts to reconstruct the various levels of expression and trends of change on the basis of the scanty evidence he has. The most acute problem he faces is how to find as much information as possible about the spoken language of the past — a prerequisite in socio-historical studies and in our attempts to understand and describe the process of change. Although the problem of an insufficient textual basis will no doubt always remain a source of frustration for the student of the history of

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English, the possibility of forming coherent hypotheses about the nondocumented levels and forms of expression is now better than earlier. This is due to new computerized methods of storing, classifying, and handling large amounts of text material. The most impressive example so far of this development is the Toronto Dictionary of Old English database, which comprises practically all Old English writings, some three million words of text (see Venezky — Healey 1980; Venezky — Butler 1985; Holland 1986). This database, together with the two microfiche concordances derived from it, has already proved indispensable to scholars. At the University of Helsinki, for the past four years or so, work has been done to collect an extensive diachronic corpus of English texts.4 This 1.5-million-word database will cover the time-span of a millennium, from the earliest Old English texts to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It consists of extracts of continuous text varying in length from two thousand to ten thousand words. Shorter texts are included in toto; with some texts of particular importance, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, even longer extracts have been included. The Old English section of the Helsinki Corpus has been edited from the Toronto DOE database. These two computer corpora might open the door to an easier, more systematic and more extensive study of English texts from centuries past. They can and should be supplemented by other texts existing in machine-readable form. The largest collection of early English texts on magnetic tape is stored and distributed by the Oxford University Text Archive. Some of these texts are available for scholarly use; others can only be used by permission of the copyright holder. At the moment, a number of computer programs for searching for and listing syntactic structures and lexical items from text corpora are being developed in various parts of the world. Most of them are intended for microcomputers, these being the most readily available hardware for linguists. The WordCruncher, developed at Brigham Young University, has proved efficient and user-friendly for microcomputer searches of words and affixes and their combinations. 5 The Oxford Concordance Program (mainframe and microcomputer versions) is sensitive to various types of taggings of text material. In Toronto, Richard Venezky has designed and implemented a Portable Editor for the writing and editing of the Dictionary of Old English entries. It has to be borne in mind, however, that each of these programs sets certain limitations on the format of the corpus and problems of compatibility can easily emerge.6

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3. Classification of text material The role of technological developments should, of course, not be overemphasized: the core of historical language research lies, even today, in the analysis and interpretation of data. Yet a quantitatively oriented study of syntactic and lexical variation, both in past synchrony and in diachrony, requires the analysis of such vast amounts of text material that the traditional method of searching and sorting with pencil and index cards is no longer feasible. It is self-evident that the possibility of providing computerized text corpora with coded information of various kinds decisively improves the efficiency and speed of analysis. An interesting question still awaiting the final answer is whether the automatic tagging programs developed for the grammatical analysis of present-day English databases can be adapted for tagging historical corpora. Promising experiments have been introduced by Edward Finegan and Douglas Biber at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. The texts and text extracts of a historical corpus can also be coded according to a number of parameters which give information on the time of writing and the provenance of the text, as well as on its genre, purpose, author, and intended audience. This kind of coding is of particular importance to studies based on the new approach, which emphasizes considerations of style, social setting, type of discourse, etc. The problems concerning textual coding are linguistic and philological rather than technical. The most obvious parameters for the description of the texts of a historical corpus are, of course, the date and dialect (or geographical variety), with due attention paid to the manuscript history of the earliest texts. Needless to say, in determining the values of these parameters, the methods and results of solid philological research are indispensable. As just one example of a survey of major importance one might mention Gneuss's article on the "Winchester standard" and its role in determining the dialectal features of later Old English texts (Gneuss 1972). An attempt to give an accurate description of corpus texts and their authors and audiences in the form of parameter code values serves a twofold purpose. Firstly, this type of coding supports the analysis of the distribution and development of variant structures in varying linguistic and extralinguistic environments and, secondly, it gives the

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user an overall picture of the coverage and representativeness of the corpus in respect to the various levels of language. In compiling the Helsinki Corpus, we have noticed that at least the following text types can be found from the Old English to the Modern English period: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Stipulatory documents; handbooks (collections of medical recipes, etc.); scientific treatises; chronicles and histories; fiction; biographies; homilies, sermons, and religious treatises.

These text types could be called "diachronic text prototypes". Other text types which play an important role from late Middle English onwards are private and official letters, drama, and court trials. When finished, the Helsinki Corpus will also offer an opportunity to compare, for instance, the language of extracts of Bible translations from Old English to the Authorized Version and the translations of Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae from King Alfred to Queen Elizabeth. Meticulous textual coding of a historical corpus is, however, not devoid of risks. A corpus is not an end in itself — it exists solely for the purpose of research based on its contents. A fixed corpus may call forth a "God's truth fallacy" — an erroneous impression that it represents the entire reality of language. With a historical corpus, this risk is particularly acute as intuitive awareness of the restrictions of the corpus is less immediate than with corpora containing contemporary texts. A fine mesh of fixed parameter codings easily multiplies the ill effects of the insufficiencies of the corpus. Particularly dangerous are definitions of extralinguistic parameter values drawn from linguistic evidence: these values may later be used as the basis for statements concerning the distribution of the same linguistic features which have originally determined the parameter, and circular reasoning is unavoidable and difficult to trace. To avoid the "God's truth fallacy", we have made an attempt to keep the Helsinki Corpus open-ended — to structure it in a way that makes addition and deletion of texts and text extracts easy. We have also spent much time in discussing and developing our system of textual parameter coding. 7 Among other things, the parameter "style" has been excluded because it seems too elusive and too strongly based either on subjective opinion or impressionistic references to linguistic

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criteria. Furthermore, creating a system of stylistic labels that would be applicable to English writings over a thousand-year span proved an impossible task.

4. The changing methodological bias The purpose of the preceding outline of recent trends in text-based study of the history of English has been to show the importance of both the philological and linguistic approaches to research. It is evident, however, that the share of each approach does not remain constant when we shift our focus of study along the chronological axis. For a variety of reasons, the early Modern English period marks a change in emphasis. The study of Old and Middle English requires a great deal of solid philological knowledge of the background of texts. From late Middle English on, rapid social change, the spread of education, the explosive growth of printed texts, and more easily accessible information on the background of authors inevitably emphasize the linguistic approach. With the wealth of textual evidence, it is also possible to make assumptions on the syntactic and lexical patterns of spoken language, although any reliable macro-description of the spoken expression of the past will necessarily remain an illusion. This changing emphasis from philology to linguistics can crudely and informally be illustrated by a figure which assumes the shape of an S-curve (see Figure 1).

"V"

EModE

In Figure 1, the horizontal lines depict time from the earliest stages of English (on the left) to present-day English. The curve PL marks the highly hypothetical and fuzzy borderline between the philological and linguistic approaches, with philology filling in the top part of the

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field and linguistics the bottom part. If, then, lines AB and DE represent two research topics in past synchrony, we might assume that AC and CB illustrate the proportionate roles played by philological and linguistic aspects in a pre-Modern English topic and D F and FE in a Modern English one. In studies of diachrony, the shifting bias may thus cause problems of method and attitude. The above representation does not, of course, suggest a confusion or mixture of research methods; if anything, it may serve as a reminder of the importance of both the linguistic and philological considerations in the study of the history of English. Furthermore, a figurative presentation of this kind is necessarily over-simplified; the emphasis on approach depends on a number of factors, the least important of which are certainly not the character of the individual research topic and the scholar's training and temperament.

5. Text type variation and the OE /zw-indefinites In conclusion, I will briefly discuss a detail of Old English pronoun syntax in order to show how a survey of the distribution of variant forms in varying types of text and in different syntactic and functional environments can give further insight in questions of historical grammar and lexis. My example deals with the OE referential/quantifying indefinite pronouns meaning 'some' or 'any'. In Old English, there are a dozen or so pronominal forms which can be used with indefinite reference, either specifying, non-specifying (non-generic), or generalizing/generic (cf. Rissanen 1987: 414 — 418). The most common of these forms are sum (inherently specifying), cenig (inherently generalizing), and man (personal, highly indefinite, weakly referential, subject position only). There is also a set of pronominal forms derived from /w-interrogatives: hwajhwoet, hwilc (hwugu), hwcet (hwugu), nathwilc, nathwcet, ahwa, ahwilc, etc. Even the /jw-indefinites, particularly hwa/hwcet and hwilc were relatively frequent in Old English texts — so frequent that it is worth asking why they did not stay in the language and form a regular part of the system of English indefinite pronouns. The most common Aw-forms, hwajhwaet and hwilc, are almost invariably used with generic reference, in the sense 'any(one/thing)'

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and they can be used interchangeably with cenig, as can be seen from the following instances:8 Gif aenig man wilnaö dcedbote to underfonne for his synnum (Conf. 1.4) Gif hwa on swylcum manfullum sinscipe öurhwunaö od his lifes (ende (Conf. 2.11) Gif hwylc man to fiam hatheort .57 & strangmod, facet he to nanum worldrihte & sibbe fon nelle (Conf. 2.28). There are, however, clear trends in the distribution of the aforementioned forms. By examining the textual, functional, and syntactic environments of these forms, it seems possible to show that hwa, hwcet, and hwilc are more marked and more emphatic than the prototypical ce η ig. Table 1. Distribution of cenig and the indefinite hwa/hwcet, hwilc in some Old English text samples o f the Helsinki Corpus.

cenig

hwa/hwat/hwilc

Total

sum

19

11

Group 1: Herb Laws (Alfred/Ine) Conf BenR CP JE Let

0

19 ( 1 0 0 % )

3

45 ( 9 4 % )

48

2

30 17

71 ( 7 0 % )

101 45

2

13

28 ( 6 2 % ) 17 ( 5 6 % )

7 21

9 25

11 ( 5 5 % )

30 20

17 ( 4 1 % )

42

0

97

208 ( 6 8 % )

305

89

24 11

12 ( 3 3 % ) 4 (27%)

36 15

111

Chron WHom

64

2 (3%)

66

11

99

18 ( 1 5 % )

117

178

Laws (11th c.)

Group 2: Or, Bede, G D

56

56

In Table 1, the occurrences of hwa/hwcet and hwilc are compared with the occurrences of cenig in two groups of texts. The first group consists of stipulations and directions: early and late laws, ecclesiastical rules and guides (Conf, BenR, y£Let, CP), and medical recipes (Herb). The second group contains narrative and homiletic texts (Or, Bede, GD, Chron, WHom). 9 The figures for the occurrence of (the predom-

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inantly specifying) sum are given in order to illustrate the overall variation of the types of indefinite reference in the texts sampled. 10 The difference in the distribution between the stipulative/directive and narrative/homiletic texts is obvious. In the first-mentioned group, the proportion between the /jw-forms and cenig is roughly 70% to 30%, while the corresponding percentages in the second group are 15% to 85%. At least on the surface, the difference is fairly easy to explain. A common feature in texts containing stipulations and directions is a high degree of generalization and timelessness, while the narrative and homiletic texts are characterized by references to particular situations or events (cf., e.g., Werlich 1983: §§ 193-208). It seems, indeed, that the Aw-forms of the indefinite pronouns emphasize the generalizability, inclusiveness, and universal applicability of the statement — an assumption supported by the etymology of these forms. The difference in the reference patterns of the texts in Group 1 and Group 2 is confirmed by the higher proportion of the occurrence of sum in the narrative texts. One factor which may affect the figures to some extent is the earliness or lateness of the text: the Aw-indefinites rapidly lose ground by the end of the Old English period. In eleventh century laws cenig is proportionally more common than in the early ones and in Wulfstan's Homilies the hw-forms are very rare. On the other hand, even in late texts of Group 1, /zw-forms are more common than in any of the texts in Group 2, and a comparison of CP with Alfred's narrative texts confirms the difference based on text type. Even a superficial survey of the functional and structural environments of /?w-indefinites strongly supports the "emphatic generalization" hypothesis of these forms. As Table 2 shows, they are particularly common in conditional clauses: the typical pattern of a direction or stipulation is, "if χ (happens), so y (should be done)". In expressions of this kind, a maximal degree of referential generalization is often Table 2. JEnig

and hwajhwaet, hwilc in conditional clauses in the Old English text samples of the Helsinki Corpus. cenig

Conditional Other

hwajhwcEtjhwilc

76

248

371

88

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focused on the linguistic elements forming χ (cf. the examples from Conf quoted above). On the basis of the prevalence of the Aw-forms in conditional clauses, we could assume that the difference in distribution of the indefinites in Groups 1 and 2 in Table 1 is only due to the more frequent occurrence of conditional clauses in G r o u p 1. That this is not the whole truth can, however, be seen, e. g., in CP, a text with varying contents. In this text, there are nine instances, out of a total of 17, in which the /zw-pronoun occurs in a non-conditional sentence. 11 It can also be easily seen that the position of the pronoun in the sentence affects the choice of the form. In Table 3, figures are given for oenig and the /zw-pronouns at the beginning of the sentence 12 and in other positions in conditional clauses. Table 3. Position of cenig and hwajhwat, hwilc in conditional clauses in the Old English text samples of the Helsinki Corpus.

Beginning of sent, (subj.)

cenig

hwajhwatj hwilc

24 (31%)

197 (79%)

(non-subj.)

15 (20%)

30 (12%)

Other positions

37 (49%)

21 (9%)

76 (100%)

248 (100%)

Table 3 shows how Aw-indefinites, in contrast to oenig, are most frequent when located early in the sentence, particularly in subject position. This distribution pattern can be used in evidence of the emphatic generalization carried by the hw-forms. We can assume that the generalizing character of reference is most prominent at the beginning of the sentence, and particularly with the subject of the sentence. Later in the sentence, typically in non-subject positions, the content of new information increases in importance at the expense of the quality of reference. 13 In view of these textual and syntactic constraints, which can ultimately be derived from the emphatically generalizing character of the /zw-pronouns, it is not surprising that the more neutral pronoun cenig, supplemented by the indefinite subject form man, prevailed and finally made the hw-forms obsolete. 14

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6. Final remarks Ideally, the new approach to the study of language history could combine the strengths of both the older philological and the more recent linguistic traditions and avoid at least some of their weaknesses. From philology it should inherit an "ear for the language of the past", based on extensive reading of texts, an interest in the finest nuances of expression, a solid textual basis for research, and a focus on cultural, historical, educational, and personal aspects in analysing the language of a text. The contribution of linguistics should be a solid theoretical background to encourage disciplined generalizations, a vision of language as a simultaneously individual and social phenomenon, an interest in not only written but also spoken expression, and more powerful methodological and technological tools for collecting and handling linguistic data.

Notes 1. Cf., however, Tieken-Boon van Ostade (1987: 229). 2. Later criticism of Samuels's emphasis on the functional explanation of change does not, to my mind, decisively weaken the basic tenets of his discussion of the principles of change, as expounded on pp. 177 — 181. 3. See also Mitchell (1975). 4. See the progress reports in lhalainen —Kyto — Rissanen (1987), Kytö — Rissanen (1988), and Kytö (1989). The manual of the first experimental version of the corpus will be available in 1990. 5. Another promising program of the same type, the Browser, was reported by G. Kaye at the 9th ICAME Conference in Birmingham, in May, 1988. 6. As an example of the cooperation and the exchange of know-how between Adam Mickiewicz University and the University of Helsinki, mention can be made of the application of the ChiWriter program which converts the rather awkward-looking script of the Helsinki Corpus database into proper Old or early Middle English text, with all the special characters neatly reproduced. This application has been prepared by Mr. Michal Jankowski of Adam Mickiewicz University. He has also devised a word-counter application for the special use of the Helsinki Corpus and a "proof-reading program" for checking the various code symbols in this database. 7. The members of the project group, some fifteen post- and pre-doctoral scholars from our English Department, have developed the coding tables in work groups divided by the period. 8. The examples and abbreviated titles are taken from the Toronto Old English Corpus. 9. The figures are based on the Old English samples of the Helsinki Corpus. ^ I f r i c ' s Homilies are not included because of the very low number of instances (hw 2; χη ig 6).

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10. A more detailed account of the figures of occurrence is given in Rissanen (1987: 421-422). 11. In three of these instances, however, the pronoun occurs in a temporal clause with a strongly hypothetical implication, as in öonne hwa on da leasunga befehd, donne ne mag he... (CP 239.11). 12. I.e., only preceded by a conjunction or a light-weight pronoun or adverb. 13. In certain functions, as in predicate complements, the post-verbal NP is generally regarded as non-referring. 14. In other contexts, I have tried to show that a linguistic analysis of referential indefinite pronouns — a very prosaic grammatical category — may have some relevance in the philological interpretation of certain passages in Beowulf (Rissanen 1986 a) and the Exeter Book Riddles (Rissanen 1986 b).

References Amos, Ashley Crandell 1980 Linguistic means of determining the dates of Old English literary texts (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America). Bailey, Charles-James 1973 Variation and linguistic theory (Washington D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics). Enkvist, Nils Erik 1972 "Old English adverbial pa — an action marker?", Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73: 9 0 - 9 6 . 1986 "More about the textual functions of the Old English adverbial pa", in: D. Kastovsky —A. Szwedek (eds.), Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries (Berlin —New York—Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter), 3 0 1 - 3 0 9 . Enkvist, Nils Erik —Brita Wärvik 1987 "Old English pa, temporal chains and narrative structure", in: A. G. Ramat et al. (eds.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Amsterdam —Philadelphia: Benjamins), 221 —237. Fischer, Olga —Frederike van der Leek 1987 "A 'case' for the Old English impersonal", in: W. Koopman et al., Explanation and linguistic change (Amsterdam —Philadelphia: Benjamins), 79 — 120. Gneuss, Helmut 1972 "The origin of standard Old English and ^ t h e l w o l d ' s school at Winchester", Anglo-Saxon England 1: 63 — 83. Holland, Joan 1986 ''The microfiche concordance: A lexicographer's tool", American Notes and Queries 24: 1 2 0 - 1 2 3 . Hopper, Paul J. —Janice Martin 1987 "Structuralism and diachrony: the development of the indefinite article in English", in: A. G. Ramat et al. (eds.), Papers from the 7th International

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Conference on Historical Linguistics (Amsterdam — Philadelphia: Benjamins), 2 9 5 - 3 0 4 . Ihalainen, Ossi —Merja Kytö — Matti Rissanen 1987 "The Helsinki corpus of English texts: diachronic and dialectal. Report on work in progress", in: Willem Meijs (ed.), Corpus linguistics and beyond (Amsterdam: Rodopi), 21—32. Kytö, Merja 1987 "Can {could) vs. may {might) in Old and Middle English: testing a diachronic corpus", in: Leena Kahlas-Tarkka (ed.), Neophilologica Fennica (Helsinki: Societe Neophilologique), 205 — 240. 1989 "Progress report on the diachronic part of the Helsinki Corpus", ICAME Journal 13: 1 2 - 1 5 . Kytö, Merja —Matti Rissanen 1988 "The Helsinki corpus of English texts: classifying and coding the diachronic part", in: M. Kytö et al. (eds.), Corpus linguistics, hard and soft: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (Amsterdam: Rodopi), 169 — 179. Labov, William 1966 The social stratification of English in New York City (Washington, D. C.: Center for Applied Linguistics). Mcintosh, Angus —Michael L. Samuels—Michael Benskin 1986 A linguistic atlas of late mediaeval English (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press). Milroy, James — Leslie Milroy 1985 "Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation", Journal of Linguistics 21: 3 3 9 - 3 8 4 . Mitchell, Bruce 1975 "Linguistic facts and the interpretation of Old English poetry", AngloSaxon England 4: 11—28. 1985 Old English syntax I —II (Oxford: University Press). Nevalainen, Terttu 1987 "Modelling functional differentiation and function loss: the case of but" [paper given at ICEHL 5, Cambridge, 1987], Pogatscher, Alois 1901 "Unausgedrücktes Subjekt im Altenglischen", Anglia 23: 2 6 1 - 3 0 1 . Rissanen, Matti 1986 a " S u m in Old English poetry", in: Ph. R. Brown et al. (eds.), Modes of interpretation in Old English literature (Toronto —Buffalo —London: University of Toronto Press), 197 — 225. 1986 b "Nathwat in the Exeter Book Riddles", American Notes and Queries 24: 116-120. 1987 "Old English indefinite pronouns meaning 'some' and 'any', with special reference to Aw-forms", in: Leena Kahlas-Tarkka (ed.), Neophilologica Fennica (Helsinki: Societe Neophilologique), 411—428. Romaine, Suzanne 1982 Sociohistorical linguistics; its status and methodology (Cambridge: University Press).

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Samuels, Michael L. 1972 Linguistic evolution, with special reference to English (Cambridge: University Press). Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid 1987 The auxiliary "do" in eighteenth-century English. A sociohistorical-linguistic approach (Leiden: ICG Printing). Traugott, Elizabeth Closs 1982 "From propositional to textual and expressive meanings: some semanticpragmatic aspects of grammaticalization", in: W. P. Lehmann —Y. Malkiel (eds.), Perspectives on historical linguistics (Amsterdam: Benjamins), 245 — 271. Venezky, Richard L. — Antonette diPaolo Healey 1980 A microfiche concordance to Old English (Newark and Toronto). Venezky, Richard L. — Sharon Butler 1985 A microfiche concordance to Old English: The high-frequency words (Newark and Toronto). Visser, F. Th. 1963 — 1973 An historical syntax of the English language I —III (Leiden: E. J. Brill). Weinreich, Uriel —William Labov —Marvin I. Herzog 1968 "Empirical foundations for a theory of language change", in: W. P. Lehmann—Y. Malkiel (eds.), Directions for historical linguistics (Austin: University of Texas Press), 95 — 195. Werlich, Egon 1983 A text grammar of English (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer). Wright, Susan 1987 "Discourse, style and the rise of periphrastic do in English" [paper given at ICEHL 5, Cambridge, 1987]. Wärvik, Brita 1987 "On grounding in narratives", in: I. Lindblad —M. Ljung (eds.), Proceedings from the Third Nordic Conference for English Studies (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International), 3 7 9 - 3 9 3 .

WERNER WINTER

The importance of fine points in spelling: deletion of accented vowels in Tocharian Β

0. Philology, if understood as the close study of texts, is a necessary prerequisite of all primarily nonspeculative investigation of languages available to us only in written form and not accessible to direct analysis with the help of a native speaker. As even in the case of richly attested dead languages our body of data cannot be enlarged at will, painstaking collection and careful evaluation of details becomes an indispensable precondition for linguistic interpretation; frequently, there will be need for what may seem to be a tedious presentation of a rather large inventory of forms observed before even relatively modest conclusions can be drawn. To illustrate such a state of affairs, the paper offered here will treat a problem of Tocharian synchronic and diachronic phonology; it forms part of a fairly large-scale study which I am presently undertaking, but it can be presented separately. 1. It has become accepted practice to identify the place of the accent in Tocharian Β words on the basis of graphic variation observable as occurring with a high degree of internal consistency in texts from the Central (Sorcuq) and Eastern (Sängim, Murtuq, etc.) dialects of B; whenever (transcribed) -a- alternates with (transcribed) -ä- (or zero) or (transcribed) -ä- alternates with (transcribed) -a-, accent is assumed to occur where the first member of the respective set of variants is found; the evidence of -f- vs. -i- and of -ü- vs. -u- is thought to be suggestive, but not absolutely compelling. In the context of a writing system of Indian origin, -e- and -o- cannot possibly show an accentconditioned variation in vowel length; the same observation applies to -ai- and -au-. The fact that absence of accent appears to correlate positively with lesser prominence of a vowel (including even its loss) may safely be taken as proof that a crucial property of the Tocharian Β word accent

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was intensity; such a conclusion may be based on observations such as found, e.g., in Pike (1964: 23): Vocoids under heavy stress are likely to be longer and clearer ... than the same vocoids without stress. When they become very weak, vocoids tend to become somewhat obscure in quality (usually to be interpreted as a shift of tongue position toward the central mid classification). At this stage of the discussion, it then seems justified to refer to the word accent in Tocharian Β with the term "stress". 2. This cannot be the place to discuss in detail the rules of stress placement in Tocharian B. However, it is important for the argumentation in this paper that one particular rule be introduced at this particular point. From observations published in Marggraf (1970), a monograph which has received by far too little attention among Tocharianists (except for some vituperative pontificating by Thomas 1985: 34 — 35), the following statement may be extracted: In words of two or more syllables in Tocharian B, an accent will not occur on a (morphophonemically) final syllable. This statement is, of course, strictly descriptive, and it is concerned only with limitations on a possible freedom of stress placement; a more powerful reformulation seems in order: The underlying accent of a (morphophonemically) final syllable will be retracted to the preceding one in the surface realization of a Tocharian Β form. The correctness of this reformulated rule can be demonstrated easily enough: Β yämornta beside Β yämor 'deed' and Β palskalnenta beside Β palskalfie 'idea', all forms with a stressed first syllable, show clearly that the plural marker Β -nta did not attract the word accent toward itself; hence, Β pakenta beside Β päke 'part' and Β ckenta beside Β cake 'river' require an identification of the underlying stems of the two nouns mentioned last as Β |pake| and Β |cske|, respectively. 3. The present paper will be concerned with the discussion of what, at first glance, appears to be a very strange and most unexpected phenomenon indeed. The phenomenon is easily enough described, but

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373

by no means readily explained. A brief comment is found in Krause (1952: 11 —12), a more elaborate one in Krause — Thomas (1960: 47 — 48); a note in Sieg —Siegling (1949: 154) makes reference to the environment in which the development is found; Marggraf (1970: 11 — 12) enlarges upon this note; Thomas (1979 — especially pp. 59 — 64) studies a small segment of the total material without, however, arriving at more than a description of the major determinant (the way in which he treats his own contribution in the survey Thomas 1985: 34 — 39 makes one doubt that he himself found his observations in Thomas 1979 genuinely helpful); Thomas (1978) is important as a collection of data, but shows again the lack of a deeper and comprehensive analysis. The phenomenon may be characterized as follows: A variant of underlying stressed |aj in an open syllable may be, but need not be, deleted in a metrical passage. Upon deletion of |6|, a phoneme /a/ in an adjacent nonfinal syllable may appear in writing as (transcribed) -ä-, likewise, an adjacent nonfinal /a/ may be rendered by (transcribed) -a-. Examples for shwa deletion can be adduced in rather large numbers. 4. A stressed -a- (/a/) has been deleted in forms such as: Β aismo*

Β aisamo* 'wise' : Β aisamne (§) 'wisdom' Β ämtpi (§) : Β antapi (S) 'both' Β ämtsne (§) : Β antsane (§) 'shoulders' Β ästre (§) : Β astare (§) 'pure' Β cäncre (MQR) : Β cäncare (S) 'attractive' Β kälsmo (MQR) : Β kälsamo* 'patient' : Β kälsamne (S) 'patience' Β kätkre (3) : Β kätkare (S) 'deep' (§) :

Β klautsne (§) : Β klausane (S) ' e a r s ' Β koklentse (S) : Β kokalentse (S) 'of t h e c h a r i o t '

Β koynmem

(MQ) : Β koynamem

(S) 'from the mouth' Β lyelykormem (§) : Β lyelyakormem (§) 'having seen' Β mäsk"mem (MQR) : Β maskwamem (MQR) 'from an obstacle' Β nke ( S ) : Β nake

(S) ' n o w '

Β olypo (§) : Β olyapo

(S) 'very' (§) 'extremely' Β orkmo (MQR) : Β orkamo* 'dark' : Β orkamne Β orsse (MQR) : Β orasse (M) 'of wood' Β ostmem (S) : Β ostamem (§) 'from the house' Β osle (§) : Β ossale (M) '(in the) west' Β olypotse

(§) : Β olyapotstse

(§) 'darkness'

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Β pärkre ( M Q R ) : Β pärkare (MQ) 'long' Β pik"la (S) : Β pikwala (δ) 'years' Β tärknam (δ) : Β tärkanam (Η) 'lets go' Β me (§) : Β tane (S) 'there' Β wäntre (§) : Β wäntare (S) 'thing' Β wärpnäträ (§) : Β wärpanatär (δ) 'enjoys' Β wäsmon (δ) : Β wasamon ( M Q R ) 'friends' Β wee (§) : Β wace (δ; accusative singular masculine) 'second' Β witsko (δ) : Β witsako (δ) 'root' Β wlo (δ) : Β walo (δ) 'king' Β wmer ( M Q R ) : Β wamer (δ) 'jewel' Β wse (Ot) : Β wase (δ) 'poison' Β yämsäm (δ) : Β yamassäm (FK) 'makes' 5. Stressed Β -i- has been suppressed in: Β atyai (δ) : Β atiyai (Μ) 'grass' Β epyac (δ) : Β epiyac (δ) 'to mind' Β kärpye (δ) : Β kärpiyemts (genitive plural; δ) 'repulsive' Β kercyen- (MQ) : Β kerciyem (δ; accusative) 'palace' Β kewye (δ) : Β kewiye (δ) 'cow's' Β mänye ( M Q R ) : Β maniye (MQ) 'servant' Β naumye (δ) : Β naumiye (δ) 'jewel' Β penyaccem (accusative plural; M Q ) : Β peniyacce (accusative singular; S) 'resplendent' Β prascye (MQ) : Β prasciye (H) 'cloudburst' Β prescyai (δ) : Β presciyai (Qu; accusative) 'time' Β tucyane (dual; M Q R ) : Β tuciyai (accusative singular feminine; S) 'yellow' Β wertsyai (δ) : Β wertsiyai (δ; accusative) 'entourage' Β yonyai (MQ) : Β yoniyai (S; accusative) 'passage(?)' All these instances of a loss of stressed Β -i- involve a position before -y-; as there seem to be no cases of stressed Β -a- (/a/) in this environment, Β -i- in this position may be considered a variant of Β |6|. An exception is found in the nominative singular feminine form Β prärna (Β 242 b 1 MQ) beside the expected nominative-accusative plural feminine Β prarinnana in Β 116 frg. 45; in the former, the underlying -imay have been reinterpreted as a reflex of |a| in the position before -η-, a palatalized consonant.

Deletion of accented

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375

6. A reduction of stressed -i- before Β -yV- also occurs in forms of the third person plural of the optative and imperfect in metrical texts; examples are: (a) Β cämpyem (FS) : Β cämp- 'be able to' Β klinem (for klinyem*; M Q R ) : Β kli(n)- 'be obliged to' Β klyausyem (S) : Β klyausiyem (Η) : Β klyaus- 'hear' Β liksyem (δ) : Β lik- 'wash' Β räsyenträ (S) : Β rässiyem (PK) : Β räss- 'pull out' Β samyem (§) : Β säm- 'be seated' Β sämsyenträ (§) : Β sätns- 'count' Β tsäksyenc (Μ) : Β tsäkslyentärne (Η) : Β tsäk- 'burn' Β yasyemträ (§) : Β yäsk- 'beg' (b) Β tsopyemne (§) : Β tsop- 'sting' Β yämyem (S) : Β yäm- 'make' The forms in (a) are derived from thematic, those in (b), from athematic stems. In both cases does it seem appropriate to derive stressed Β -/- in matching prose variants from an underlying stressed BN7. It might be noted in passing that absence of -i- before Β -ye- of the optative and imperfect is also found in a number of forms in prose contexts; these forms are, however, characterized by their showing stress reflex on the syllable preceding deleted -/'-. Pertinent cases are: Β läkäsyem (S) : Β läkä- 'see' Β winäsyenne (§) : Β winäsk- 'venerate' Β yamasyenträ (S) : Β yäm- 'make' The form mentioned last is particularly instructive: It occurs in Β 337 in a context with a number of forms of the imperfect. Deletion of -/- is found in Β yamasyenträ (twice) and Β mäntanyenträ : Β mäntann- 'violate', while -i- can be seen to be retained after a syllable without stress in Β mäsklyenträ : Β mäskä- 'be (in a place)', Β naksiyenträ : Β näk- 'blame', and Β taslyemträ : Β täs- 'place' (the locus of the accent in Β kraupiyenträ: Β kraup- 'gather' can only be determined in a general discussion of unextended thematic present stems). Loss of -/- in the forms included in § 7 then occurs under conditions different from those encountered with items in § 6: the forms listed in the present section show deletion of unstressed, not stressed, -i- (N) in open syllable and hence are perfectly regular prose forms.

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8. A special kind of thematic stem is found in subjunctives with a suffix Β-ι- (Krause's class IV, cf. Krause 1952: 128-130, Krause Thomas 1960: 226). As shown by Winter (1961), these stems enter into a paradigmatic relationship with present stems in Β /-ask-/. In some cases, such a present stem is also found alongside a normal thematic subjunctive (Krause's class II, cf. Krause 1952: 122 — 127, Krause — Thomas 1960: 224—225), though it is more common to find a simple thematic subjunctive combining with a thematic present in one paradigm. Very frequently, a simple thematic subjunctive (no matter whether it is associated with a thematic present or with one in Β /ask-/) is incurred in a paradigmatic association with a preterit characterized by a suffix Β /-a-/ following a palatalized consonant. Examples are: Β aksäre (S) 'they proclaimed' : Β äksäm (§) 'he will proclaim' : Β aksaskau (Η) Ί proclaim' Β yasäte (S) 'he begged' : Β yästrä (Η) 'he will beg' : Β yaskastär (S) 'he begs' Β klyausäre (S) 'they heard' : Β klyausäm (S) 'he will hear' : Β klyausäm (§) 'he hears' Β lamssäte (S) 'he worked' : Β lämstsi (S) 'to work' : Β lämstär (Μ) 'he works' Β winässa(re) (S) 'they venerated' : Β winässi (§) 'may he venerate' : Β winäskau (Ot) Ί venerate' Preterits associated with thematic subjunctive stems containing a suffix Β -/- closely resemble the forms just cited, yet differ from them in what seems to be a significant way: In prose forms, a suffix complex Β -iya- is found — note in particular the one completely attested paradigm: Β lalyiya (B + ) 'he worked hard' : Β lalyitsi (S) 'to work hard' : Β lalaskemane (H) 'working hard' The forms of the subjunctive and preterit agree in their extended stems with an apparently closely related noun, viz., Β lalyiye (D), accusative Β lälyi (§), 'strong effort'. The same observation can be made concerning Β aklyltsi (FS) 'to teach; to learn' and Β akalye (MQR), accusative Β äklyi (Μ), 'teachings'. In both cases, the nouns and the verbs seem to contain -y- extensions of underlying stems Β |lal| and Β |aksl|. These stems are to be interpreted as noun forms in Β j-\j (cf. Β camel 'birth') and Β /-si/ (cf. Β enkäl 'passion'), respectively.

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vowels in Tocharian Β

377

For pre-B *lal, cf. Van Windekens (1976: 256); the interpretation offered for *akd (Van Windekens 1976: 156) may safely be disregarded — the form is best viewed as derived from PIE *ag- 'say', the -sderivative of which, PIE *agos, survived in the verb stem Β äks'proclaim' as it did in Lat. axämenta 'carmina Saliaria'; Pedersen (1941: 168) can therefore be taken to be correct in all essentials. If indeed *akdl and *lal were full-fledged noun forms, then it seems natural to derive Β aklyi- and Β lalyi- from underlying denominative formations with a suffix reflecting PIE *-ye-j-yo-. If so, other subjunctives in Β -/-, of course, have to be interpreted in a parallel way; this implies the conclusion that, e. g., Β kälypitsi (PK) 'to steal' might also be based on a noun, which in this case would have been unextended by a special nominal suffix. This in turn brings to mind forms such as Gk. klöps 'thief and Gk. boükleps 'cattle thief, but also the use of a *-ye-/-yopresent in Gk. kleplein 'to steal' (cf. Frisk 1960: 870-871). The class of verb forms discussed in the present section again is subject to deletion of -/- in metrical texts. The following forms can be adduced: Β aklyamai (S) Ί learned', Β aklyyate (Qu) 'he learned' Β lalyyasta (MQR) 'you worked hard' : Β lalylya (B + ) 'he worked hard' Β prusya (§) : Β prusiya (§) 'he skipped' Β saryate (MQR) 'he sowed' If Ί stole', rendered kälypawa by Krause (1952: 165) and T h o m a s Krause (1964: 183) and kälpyawa by Krause (1952: 236), is Β kälypyawa* instead, this form has to be added to the list just given; an unreduced form is Β kälyplyawa (B + ). 9. While the deletion of -i- can be taken as an elimination of manifestations of |s| in all cases studied in §§ 5, 6, and 8, no such interpretation seems possible for the items to be discussed next: (a) Β mäskyenträ (§) : Β mäskiyenträ (Η) 'they were' : Β mäskä- 'be (in a place)' Β srukyenträ (§) 'they died' : Β srukä- 'die' (b) Β sälyye (S; accusative plural Β sälyain-o) 'borderline' Β weiiye (£; accusative Β wenai) 'idle talk(?)' Β yokye (§; accusative Β y o k a i ) 'thirst'; prose variants are Β yokiye (MQ), yokiye (M)

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The forms under (a) form part of a paradigm with Β mäsketär 'is (in a place)' and Β sruketrä 'dies'. This is hardly the place to review the numerous proposals that have been made with a view to explaining Β -e- (A -a-) in these forms; suffice it to say here that whatever the origin of this vowel and whatever its status as a short or a long vowel in Common Tocharian, Β /-iye-/ in a form like Β mäskiyenträ has to be taken as a continuation of *-V,yV2- in which *-Vr cannot possibly be equated with Common Tocharian (and Β as well as A) /a/. This observation gains additional weight once another form of the imperfect with -/- deletion is considered: An imperfect Β korpyentär (Μ) 'they descended' is found beside a present Β korpotär (Μ) 'descends' (both from a stem Β kärpa-). Here - V r underlying Β -iye-* is a Β -ο- (A -a-) which cannot be taken to be a continuation of CT */a/, either. The forms in (b) pose a similar problem. If the vowel deleted in Β sälyye, Β wenye, Β yokye had been an -/- reflecting a morphophonemic |a|, one would have expected to have accusative forms ending i n Β -i (< *-gyd;

cf. Β kalymi

: Β kälymiye

'direction') and not

the

attested ones in Β -ai. While it is possible to align Β yokai with the nominative Β yoko found beside Β yokiye, etc., no such way out is available for Β sälyain-o and Β wenai. It seems best to assume that (palatalizing) Β -ai in these forms reflects (palatalizing) Β -ey ( < P I E *-ey-).

The conclusion that has to be drawn from the discussion in § 9 is that also vowels other than |a|, once they had been changed to Β -ibefore -yV-, could be affected by metrical shortening. "Shwa deletion" thus is not a term that can be used to describe all aspects of the phenomenon under investigation here, although it characterizes both the core area and the majority of cases that can be observed. 10. A stressed -u- has been deleted in forms such as the following: Β etswai

(§) : Β etsuwai

(§) ' u p to'

Β kästwer (S) : Β kästuwer (ΜΚ) 'at night' Β kwälfie (S) : Β kuwälne* 'pouring' (cf. Β pluwälyne [Η] 'floating') Β noswent (D) : Β nausuwent (MQ; accusative singular masculine) 'earlier' Β nwalne (§) : Β nüwalne (Amb) 'roaring' Β onwanne (§) : Β onuwanne (S) 'immortal' Β ostwa (§) : Β ostuwa (M) 'houses' Β pwär (MQ) : Β püwar (S) 'fire'

Deletion of accented vowels in Tocharian Β Β säswa

(§) : Β sasüwa

379

(§) ' s o n s '

Β serwe (S) : Β seruwem ( M Q ; accusative) ' h u n t e r ' Β yswar

(S) : Β ysuwar

( M Q ) 'kindly'

The deletion is limited to a position before Β /wV/. 11. The phenomenon recurs in a small class of past participles and of nouns based on them. Cases in question are: Β Itwes (S) : Β Ituwes (S) 'having left'

Β plätkwes (MQR) 'having come out' Β snätkwa (Krause 1952: 160) : Β snätküwes (Ot) 'having entered' Β seswer (§) : Β sesüwer ( F W ) ' m e a l ' Β säswerss' (§) : Β sfsüwersse (§) 'of s o n s '

The forms in the first three lines of this list are characterized by the absence of reduplication; they represent morphophonemic sequences Β |bt9wes9|, etc. — which means that here shwa deletion in the narrow sense took place. Simple |u| deletion can be observed in Β kwälne and Β nwalne (both listed in § 10). While Β seswer jsesuwer invites comparison with Β kekuwer (S) 'pouring', a difference has to be noted: the forms for 'meal' are derived not from a stem in Β -u, but from one extended by Β /a/, viz., Β swä- 'eat'. A parallel treatment of Β /u/ and Β /wa/ can also be noted in Β säswerssejsasüwersse; for a discussion of these and related forms see Winter (1988). 12. The point has now been reached where an explanation of the reduction phenomena presented in the preceding paragraphs should be attempted. For our purposes, it seems possible to treat /i/ for |a| and j\j for |i| (including |i| derivable from other vowels found in the conditioning context /_yV/) as well as /u/ for |s| and /u/ for |u| (including again |u| reflecting other vowels in the conditioning environment /_wV/) alike, which means that it is assumed that phonemic identity of the respective realizations of |s| and |i| (the latter before |yV|) or of |s| and |u| (the latter before |wV|) led to a reinterpretation of the morphophonemic status of unconditioned /a/ and of conditioned ji/ and /u/: all of these phonemes were now taken to represent one single morphophoneme, viz., Β |a|. Given this clarification, it becomes possible to reintroduce the use of the term "shwa deletion" as a convenient formula under which to subsume the phenomena described in the present paper.

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13. The loss of a reflex of unstressed |a| in an open syllable is normal in both prose and metrical texts in Tocharian B; as a matter of fact, the occurrence of Β -ä- in unaccented open syllable appears to be due to metrical conditioning: an -ä- seems to have been introduced when another syllable was needed, and for no other reason. For an example, see the eight-syllable colon ... (we)na slo(k) krentäpud-näkte (Β 50 a 8 S) 'the good stanza spoke the Buddha', with the uncommon variant Β krentä, which is also found in some other metrical texts (e. g., in Β 134, 407, 428, 588), replacing the usual form Β krent. Conversely, even an -ä- in a closed syllable could be suppressed in a metrical context — note, e. g., Β klpäskem 'they obtain' in Β 30 a 7 3. 14. The reduction and, in more extreme cases, elimination of an unstressed vowel is a very natural phenomenon observable in a variety of languages — Russian akan'e, German final-vowel reduction, and Armenian elimination of unstressed *i and *u may be cited as examples. On the other hand, the deletion of the underlying stressed vowel in Β sälyye for Β sälyiye* 'borderline' is not the outcome to be expected: if metrical considerations called for a disyllabic, rather than a trisyllabic, form, such a form could easily enough have been obtained by a reduction of unstressed -ä- in the first syllable — in other words, a form Β slyiye* would have seemed the natural outcome of a reduction process, while attested Β sälyye comes as a surprise. 15. This being the case, a new attempt at determining the nature (not, for the moment, the place) of the word accent of Tocharian Β seems called for. In § 1, reasons were given why this accent should be identified as stress. The deletion of accented |a| in metrical passages though, which has been amply documented in the present paper, seems to preclude just this identification. Is there a way to reconcile two obviously contradictory sets of facts and of conclusions based on them? From Pike (1964: 106), the following statement can be adduced: One may find a phoneme which is neither tone nor stress by itself, but is a combination of pitch and stress, or pitch, stress, and length. In such an instance, it is frequently convenient to call the group of contrastive characteristics a 'phoneme of stress with a simultaneous phenomena of pitch and length.'

Deletion of accented

vowels in Tocharian Β

381

If the word accent of Tocharian Β combined in itself phenomena of intensity and of pitch variation, it could indeed become possible to delete one of the components while retaining the other and thus continuing to have the place of the accent identified. The question, of course, immediately arises how this could possibly be done if, in metrical forms, the accent-bearing vowel was deleted. A possible answer to this question can be provided from Vedic Old Indie, a language with a pitch accent. (A convenient access to essential data is found in Whitney 1889: 28 — 29.) In the local writing system, a svarita accent indicates that a sequence (transcribed) -iya- or -ύνα- has been reduced in spelling to (transcribed) -yd- or -vä-, while in (metrically recoverable) pronunciation the accented vowel may, or may not, have been retained as such. In the latter case, the accented vowel was deleted, but its high pitch was preserved as the first part of a falling ("circumflex") contour on the following syllable. It seems plausible to assume that a similar development took place in metrical texts in Tocharian B: the accented syllable, characterized by co-occurring stress and (possibly high) pitch, was reduced; stress was lost while (high?) pitch was retained, though not in its original place, but on an adjacent syllable. 16. There is evidence that this pitch transfer took place toward the right (as in Old Indie). This evidence is from polysyllabic forms such as the following: Β kärsnäträ (§) 'it is cut off Β kwäsnäträ (§) 'laments' Β pärsnom (§) 'they sprinkled' Β pruknänträ (Η) 'they make a jump' The fuller form is found in, e.g., Β yäksanatärne

(Qu) 'clings to him'

Whenever the shifted accent would have been attached to the morphophonemically final syllable, the retraction (cf. § 2) had to operate. As a result, items such as the following came into existence: Β karsnam (§) 'cuts off Β katnam (§) 'strews' Β natknam (S) 'holds' Β tallam (S) 'they lift up' (cf. the mediopassive Β tlanatärfi S)

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It is noteworthy that accent retraction from the morphophonemically final syllable operated on the surface form Β /katnaN/, not on an underlying Β |katanaN|, with the result that the retracted accent fell on the secondary penultima. It is furthermore an interesting fact that the shortened forms Β /karsnaN/ (for |karstanaN|) and Β /tallaN/ (for |talanaN|) show the effects of assimilatory processes, which goes to indicate that accent retraction was not a phenomenon just of a remote past; this observation is supported by the fact that retraction also affected loanwords such as Bcäkkär 'wheel' ( < S k t . cakra-), whose genitive Β cakkarntse (S) shows that the underlying form is to be posited as Β |cakra|, that is, with an accent on |a|. 17. The same characteristics of the accent retraction can also be observed in Β samyem, Β tsopyemne, Β yämyem, that is, in verb forms listed in § 6 (a) and (b). Again, retraction operates on the surface form, and not on underlying Β |yamayeN|, etc. Once more, the development has to be identified as one of recent or current nature (stated, of course, in terms of the date of our Tocharian Β materials). 18. The developments described in §§ 16—17 are not without exceptions. On the one hand, there are forms with Β -nä- instead of expected Β -ana- (i. e., |ana|) even in prose contexts (cf., e. g., Β kärsnämane 'cutting off in Β 90, Β skärrämane 'scolding' in Β 85, Β skainämane 'trying' in Β 95); in the participles, a generalization of a pattern in which the ending complex Β -mane would as a rule be preceded immediately by word accent may have led to the elimination of forms in Β /-anamane/, but items like Β truknälle 'to be distributed(?)' in the prose context of Β 497 S (beside, e. g., Β kärsanalle 'to be known') cannot be so explained. At this point, one may want to consider the possibility that with long forms there may have been a tendency to choose the shorter of two possible variants even if the normal conditioning factor, a metrical context, was not present. This, however, must remain a most tentative suggestion. Elsewhere, leveling in a paradigm may have exerted an influence; thus Β yämsyem (S) beside Β yamasyem (S) 'they made' is a regular metrical variant matching the forms in § 17, but its mediopassive counterpart Β yämsyenträ (§) beside unreduced Β yamasyenträ (S) should not show accent retraction to the first syllable, which of course is not a penultima, not even in surface terms.

Deletion of accented

vowels in Tocharian Β

383

19. Alongside items with an indication of what is interpreted here as pitch transfer, there are others which would invite an identification as forms without an accent. A very instructive case in question is the occurrence of metrically reduced variants of Β tärkanam (Η) 'he lets go', Β tärkanam (MQ) 'they let go', etc., in texts from Sorcuq, viz., third person singular Β tärknam in Β 26 and 33 and third person plural Β tärknam in Β 22. Neither the first nor the second (phonological) syllable shows a graphic indication of accent. Likewise, Β nätknallona (S) 'those to be held', which represents morphophonemic Β |n9tk0nallona|, has both -ä- and -a- indicated as unaccented, as they would be in the fuller (prose) form Β nätkanallona*.

Variation between forms with graphic signalling of accent and the absence thereof is incurred in the paradigm of Β wärpä- 'enjoy'. Unreduced accented forms are the third person singular Β wärpanatär (§) and the participle Β wärpanamane (S); a reduced form with accent indicated is the third person singular Β wärpnäträ (§); reduced forms without a marking of an accented syllable are the first person singular Β wärpnamar (S), the third person plural Β wärpnantär (δ), and the verbal adjective Β wärpnalyi (S). An inspection of the passages in which the "unaccented" shortened forms occur provides no evidence for an influence of phrasal or clausal accent (intonation) upon the selection of the one or the other set of variants. Whatever solution one wants to take into consideration should therefore preferably be located in the domain of word accent itself. 20. In § 15, it was proposed to identify the Tocharian Β word accent as one which, if unaffected by metrically conditioned changes, had properties of both pitch and intensity. This approach provides the possibility to explain a number of suprasegmental developments in the prehistory and history of Tocharian B. (a) As stated in § 2, a prominent characteristic of accent distribution in Tocharian Β is the inadmissibility of accent on the (morphophonemically) final syllable of a word. In order not just to describe this phenomenon, but to account for it, it is necessary to point out a cause for the non-appearance of an accent in this position. This may indeed be possible if one assumes that a morphophonemically final syllable

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in Tocharian Β obligatorily had a low pitch which may be viewed as a signal of word boundary. If a word, in its underlying form, had an accent on the morphophonemically final syllable (this would occur in disyllabic words), a conflict had to arise to the effect that either the word accent was preserved in its proper place and the low pitch on the last syllable was changed, or the pitch was preserved here and the word accent, with its features of intensity and high pitch, had to be changed or be moved elsewhere. What appears to have happened is that the boundary signal was left intact and that word accent was placed on the syllable immediately to the left of the morphophonemically accented syllable. This leftward shift seems to have involved both the feature of high pitch and that of intensity since the lengthproducing effects are the same for unshifted and for shifted accent — cf. Β tapre 'high' (with shift, see the feminine Β tparya) : Β kätkare 'deep' (without shift, see the abstract Β kätkarne), and Β läre 'deer' (with shift, see the abstract Β laraune): Β pakwäre 'bad' (without shift, see the abstract Β pakwärne). (b) In § 16, evidence was adduced that seemed to indicate that upon suppression of an accented |a| in words in metrical passages, an accent shift to the right took place. In the same section, and in § 17, it was shown that if a transfer involved placement of the accent on the morphophonemically final syllable, a leftward shift as referred to in (a) led to the appearance of reflexes of accentuation on the first syllable of a word. (c) In § 18, forms were adduced which showed that graphic marking of accent after the presumed postdeletion transfer was inconsistent both in words in which the new accent must have occurred on morphophonemically nonfinal syllables (e. g., Β wärpnamar) and those where this accent had to be subjected to leftward shift (e. g., Β tärknam).

(d) The findings under (b) and (c) obviously contradict each other. Short of labeling the fairly numerous cases assembled in § 18 mere mistakes, it seems advisable to propose that the graphic vacillation observable derived from the fact that postdeletion transfer involved just certain aspects of the Tocharian Β accent, viz., its pitch properties and not its intensity features. The absence of the latter would explain the failure of the postdeletion transferred accent (in contrast to the left-shifted one) to produce a lengthening. The vacillation may be the

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result of the scribes' inability to reproduce graphically vowels which were marked by high pitch, but which were not also lengthened under accent. 21. A special case are morphophonemically disyllabic words such as Β wlo : Β walo 'king', Β wmer : Β wamer 'jewel', etc. (cf. § 4). Deletion here affected a shwa that was accented only as a result of the leftward shift, that is, a morphophonemically unaccented |a|. The deletion as such would not come as a surprise, were it not for the fact that a form like Β wlo would not have a place for an accent at all: final -o would lose it through leftward shift, initial w- could not have it because of the absence of any vowel. Hence, the conclusion seems inevitable that a word such as Β wlo was genuinely unaccented (comments to the contrary by Thomas 1979: 62 — 63 notwithstanding). The loss of accent in these forms seems, however, largely to be the result of developments across lexeme boundaries, and these require a presentation and analysis of actual text passages, a task which cannot be undertaken in the present paper. 22. In conclusion, a different problem will be raised. It should be a matter- of course that entries in a dictionary should be given in the prose form wherever attested, with the reduced variants recorded as derived items. The solution chosen in the glossary in Thomas —Krause (1964), where listings such as "nes(a)mye... 'üble Nachrede'", "on(u) wanne ... 'unsterblich, ewig' ", etc., are found, it not optimal as it suggests equal standing for the variants. Worse are, however, the cases where the prose variant is not given at all, as in Β encuwafine : Β encwahhe 'iron', where only the reduced form is listed in Thomas — Krause (1964: 171); likewise, Sieg - Siegling (1949: 91) gives for 'arhat' only the variant Β arhänte and not the prose form Β arahante (of which various case forms are attested in Β 164, 286, 333, 369, 552, with the derivative Β arahantenne surviving, in various graphic shapes, in Β 169, 333, 369, 391, 427). The treatment of Β nesamye : Β nesmye in Sieg — Siegling (1949: 134) is more adequate than that noted for Thomas — Krause; Sieg —Siegling's (1949: 103) ordering Bonwanfie, onuwafine, on the other hand, ought to be reversed. Neither in Sieg —Siegling (1949: 177) nor in Thomas —Krause (1964: 246) is there any reference to the principal variant of Β serwe 'hunter' (attested in the accusative singular Β seruwem in Β 255), though Thomas —Krause (1964: 246)

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gives an adequate listing Β sesuwer (seswer) 'Essen, Mahlzeit' (while Sieg —Siegling 1949: 176 adduces only Β seswer). A basic difficulty arises when only forms in metrical contexts have survived. Ideally, a prose form should be posited here, too. At times, this will be simple enough. Thus, the masculine Β mewiyo (accusative Β mewTyai) 'tiger' makes it more than likely that Β mewiya* (or, in plene writing, Β mewiya*) should be posited as the principal variant beside metrically reduced Β mewya 'tigress' (attested in Β 338). The same goes for Β aisamo* 'wise' and Β kälsamo* 'patient' because here the abstract formations Β aisamne and Β kälsamne provide immediate support (cf. § 4), but it also applies to Β wenamo* to be placed beside Β wenmo 'speaking' (attested in the metrical text Η 149.26/30); the accentuation pattern of forms in Β -mo is easily discernible in the items listed by Krause (1952: 47 — 48). Likewise, for the nominative singular of 'star', a prose variant Β sciriye* (or sciriye*) is to be posited beside the attested metrical variant Β scirye (B 74) on the strength of the evidence of parallel formations such as Β ysiye 'night' (cf. Krause — Thomas 1960: 133; if it was legitimate to construct an unattested form Β alyiye* 'palm of hand', it is equally warranted to set up a variant Β sciriye*). 23. The appropriateness of positing unattested prose forms beside attested metrical variants extends, of course, to items not to be listed in a dictionary. Thus, it would seem legitimate to consider forms with Β -ana- (/6na/) normal (prose) present variants for verbs in Krause's class VI (cf. Krause 1952: 71—75), making it proper to posit such forms when unattested, unless there is positive evidence to the contrary in prose texts. Such evidence exists, e. g., for Β skärrämane 'scolding' (Β 85) instead of expected Β skranamane*, in Β kwasnämane (Β 431) 'lamenting' instead of Β kusanamane* (if: Β kwäsä-) or Β kwasanamane* (if: Β kwäsa-), in Β kärsnämane (Β 90) 'cutting off instead of Β kärstanamane*. The form mentioned last is met alongside a number of reduced forms found in metrical passages (cf. Krause 1952: 232 for references, to which Β kärsnam in Η 149.295 b 3 should be added); all of these show the cluster simplification noted already in § 16. In contrast to this state of affairs, the full stem of the present forms of Β kärsä- 'know' fails to show reduction in the accessible texts, regardless of whether they are in prose or metrical (as, e. g., Β 523, Β 597, LK 2, LK 3, LS 7). It thus seems as though a somewhat surprising method had been used to

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avoid homonymy: the reduced form of, e. g., the mediopassive present participle should have been Β kärsnämane for both Β kärsä- 'know' and Β kärstä- 'cut o f f ; in actual usage it appears to have been used, however, only for the second of these stems (cf. also LU 3 a l ) . N o explanation can be given for this state of affairs; neither is it clear why the assimilated form Β skärrämane is given preference over the unreduced — and hence unassimilated — form Β skranamane*. 24. Whatever the reasons for the developments just referred to, they go to show that full and reduced variants were at the disposal of speakers of Tocharian B, who could make use of them if they chose to do so. In metrical passages, full advantage seems to have been taken of this possibility; in most prose texts, the reduced variants appear to have been avoided (note, though, the items discussed in § 22, to which Β kälsnäle 'to be put in by drops(?)' and Β truknälle 'to be distribu t e d ^ ) ' , both from Β 497, may be added). Exceptions to this statement are found in the monastery records. Here, Β yiksye 'flour' is found instead of expected Β yiksiye* more than twenty times, while Β yäkslyefyäksiye is amply attested in F P and FW; in Β 451, there occurs Β kewye '(fat) of a cow', while Β kewiyej kewiye survived in FP, FW, and FY; Β menye 'of the m o n t h ' and not Β meniye* is encountered in Β 467 and 468, and Β wee 'second' and not Β wace is read in a badly damaged passage in Β 467. A parallel is found in one of the graffiti published by Pinault (1987): 'in the year of the tiger' is rendered in G - Q a 1.1 by Β mewye pikul-ne and not by what would be expected, viz., Β mewiyai* pikul-ne (cf. Β (m)ewiyai in Β 423). The monastery records, though found at Ming-öy Οϊζϊΐ, reflect a dialect of Β normally encountered in texts of Eastern origin (cf. Winter 1955: 2 2 3 - 2 2 4 ) . Schmidt (1986: 636) proposed to view the deviations from the Sorcuq norm encountered in "Eastern" texts not as characteristics of a regional variant of B, but as those of a colloquial form of Tocharian Β ("Umgangssprache"); I continue to find this interpretation difficult in view of a fact pointed out in Winter (1955): in Β 486, reference is made to a king not of the western realm (Kucä), but of the kingdom of Agni in the east. The question need not be decided here; in any case, there can be no question but that the monastery records are written in a language which deviates from the careful standard as found represented by many texts from Sorcuq. As regards the forms under discussion in the present section, this "informal"

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quality of texts and language of monastery records and graffiti may be invoked in support of a sociolectal interpretation of these forms rather than one in terms of regional variation: after all, the fragments of the literary manuscript Β 107 — 116, a typical "Eastern" text, show very clearly that Β -iy V- and not reduced Β -y V- is regular for prose in this dialect, too (cf. Β sranciyem, Β peniyacce, Β atiyai-sa, Β nomiyesse, Β wi(yä)r, Β yoniyai, Β (pre)ksiyem, Β nikciye). Deviations from this regularity are found in prose passages in Β 107 in the shape of Β naumyesse and Β nomyesse; if these deviations are due to an intrusion of "informal" style, no reason can be adduced why this should have happened just here. 25. There is no inherent contradiction to be seen in the utilization of the same variant in two radically different contexts. To be sure, metrically organized language must be considered the very opposite of "informal" language. However, if "informal" language provided a kind of variation not found in the register proper for formal literary prose, those faced with the task of having to cope with the constraints of a metrically organized text could certainly be attracted by the flexibility provided once they made use of the resources of "informal" language together with those of more formal prose. Thus, the coexistence of elements of what one might call "high" and "low" style in what one would be inclined to think of as the most formalized type of text, would not be surprising after all. If interpreted correctly, deletion of an accented syllable (with compensatory pitch movement) could then be taken to have been a feature of nonformal language transferred, as an optional and hence easily usable compositional device, to the language of highly structured metrical texts. A good example for the use of an "informal" variant in a metrical text is found in PK NS 34 b l (publication in Pinault 1988: 188, with a brief note on p. 192). The passage reads: lyaukar saissem tarltseccem:

'they lit up the three-thousandfold

worlds'; it seems possible to fill in part of the following lacuna by adding: (yaltse wroccem) /// 'the one thousand great ones', for which Geng — Klimkeit (1988: 105) and the literature mentioned here should be compared. Β tarltse is an allegro form for Β täryäyältse, as pointed out by Schmidt (1986: 645), who also lists a number of

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further variants of the (unattested) full form. The shortened forms occur, on the one hand, in "informal" texts; Β 563 and Β 566, both from Sorcuq, on the other, seem to contain standard "formal" prose, and both PK NS 34 b l and Β 274 b 6 MQ are metrical passages. It seems only natural that speakers of Tocharian Β should have had a command of more than one register of their language, and if they did have it, they could resort to the use of a less "normal" variant if this could be to their advantage. In coping with the task of composing texts governed by metrical principles, it must have been most convenient to have access to forms of varying length, and here not only metrically shortened forms, but also "informal" doublets could be welcome items. 26. What seems to make the observations presented here relevant to Tocharian studies in general is that they help to remove some of the uncertainties that have continued to exist in the field of accentual studies; it appears that what seemed to amount to rather uncontrollable free variation can be described in terms of fairly consistent rules of application. The identification of the variation described in the present paper will contribute to a higher degree of reliability in distinguishing between metrical and prose passages even in the case of rather small fragments of text. Where damaged textual material needs completion or emendation, proposals for the restitution of passages can be made with greater assurance than before. Last not least, the close analysis of metrical forms can be said to have contributed, in a rather unexpected way, to deeper insights into the nature of the word accent in Tocharian B. 27. As has been pointed out in § 0, philological investigations must be concerned with minutiae if they are to provide data interpretable for a linguistic analysis that is to be empirical even where a direct access to observable language is blocked. To be sure, looking for fine points and presenting them in detail at times makes it difficult not to lose sight of problems of major scope. Still — and this is one aspect which makes work with such fine points not only necessary, but also exciting and rewarding — through the inspection of what may appear to be minor issues, through careful weighing of evidence and of hypotheses, and through patient attempts at the discovery of patterns unrecognized so far, it will at times be possible to come up with conclusions that turn out to be fruitful.

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References Frisk, Hjalmar 1960 Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 1 (Heidelberg: Winter). Geng Shimin — Hans-Joachim Klimkeit 1988 Das Zusammentreffen mit Maitreya. Die ersten fünf Kapitel der Maitrisimit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz). Krause, Wolfgang 1952 Westtocharische Grammatik 1: Das Verbum (Heidelberg: Winter). Krause, Wolfgang—Werner Thomas 1960 Tocharisches Elementarbuch 1: Grammatik (Heidelberg: Winter). Marggraf, Wolf-Jürgen 1970 Untersuchungen zum Akzent in Tocharisch Β (Kiel) [dissertation]. Pedersen, Holger 1941 Tocharisch vom Gesichtspunkt der indoeuropäischen Sprachvergleichung (Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Historisk-filologiske Meddelelser 28.1) (Kobenhavn: Munksgaard). Pike, Kenneth Lee 1964 Phonemics. A technique for reducing languages to writing9 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press) [Ί947]. Pinault, Georges-Jean 1987 "Epigraphie koutcheenne", in Chao Huashan et al. (eds.), Sites divers de la region de Koutcha. Epigraphie koutcheenne (Mission Paul Pelliot ... Documents archeologiques, 8) (Paris: College de France), 59 — 196. 1988 "Revision des fragments en tokharien Β de la legende de Mahäprabhäsa", in: Peter Kosta et al. (eds.), Studia Indogermanica et Slavica. Festgabe für Werner Thomas (Specimina Philologiae Slavicae, Suppl. 26) (München: Sagner), 1 7 5 - 2 1 0 . Schmidt, Klaus T. 1986 "Bemerkungen zur westtocharischen Umgangssprache", in: Annemarie Etter (ed.), o-o-pe-ro-si. Festgabe für Ernst Risch (Berlin —New York: de Gruyter), 6 3 6 - 6 4 9 . Sieg, Emil —Wilhelm Siegling 1949 Tocharische Sprachreste. Sprache Β. 1: Die Udänälankära-Fragmente (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Thomas, Werner 1978 „Zur Behandlung von inlautendem -ä- bzw. -a- in toch. B", Indogermanische Forschungen 83: 144 — 186. 1979 Formale Besonderheiten in metrischen Texten des Tocharischen: Zur Verteilung von Β tane/tne 'hier' und Β nake/nke 'jetzt' (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse, Abhandlungen 1979.15) (Mainz: AdWL). 1985 Die Erforschung des Tocharischen (1960—1984) (Schriften der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, Universität Frankfurt, Geisteswissenschaftliche Reihe, 5) (Stuttgart: Steiner). Thomas, Werner—Wolfgang Krause 1964 Tocharisches Elementarbuch 2: Texte und Glossar (Heidelberg: Winter).

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Van Windekens, Albert Joris 1976 Le tokharien confronte avec les autres langues indo-europeennes 1: La phonetique et le vocabulaire (Centre International de Diabetologie Generale, Universite catholique neerlandaise de Louvain, Travaux, 11) (Louvain: CIDG). 1982 ... 2.2: La morphologic verbale (... Travaux, 13) (Louvain: CIDG). 1988 "Notes de grammaire comparee indo-europeenne", in: Peter Kosta et al., Studia Indogermanica et Slavica. Festgabeför Werner Thomas (München: Sagner), 9 9 - 1 1 9 . Whitney, William Dwight 1889 Sanskrit grammar2 ( 9 1960, Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Winter, Werner 1955 "A linguistic classification of 'Tocharian' Β texts", JAOS 75: 216 — 225. 1961 "Zum sogenannten Durativum in Tocharisch Β", K Z 77: 89 — 96. 1988 "The loss of Tocharian Β *-we- and its conditions", Tocharian and IndoEuropean Studies 2: 211 —220.

Index of authors Acufia, R. 103 Adamska-Salaciak, A. 24, 26 Adamson, S. 67 Ahlqvist, A. 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 224 Aitchison, J. 13, 14, 25, 26 Aldama y Guevara, J. A. de 108, 111, 115, 116 Alfred 360, 363, 364 yElfric 366 Amos, A. C. 355, 367 Anderson, J. 85 Anderson, L. B. 56, 57, 67 Andrews, R. J. 116 Angel 102 Antonsen, Ε. H. 166, 167, 1 7 0 - 1 7 2 , 179, 184, 185 Ara, D. de 89, 99, 102 Ariel, M. 341, 350 Arntz, H. 258 Arrive, M. 350 Ashby, W. J. 23, 26 Austen, J. 3 2 - 3 4 , 36, 38, 43 Austin, F. 42 Baber, H. 163 Bailey, Ch.-J. 354, 367 Baldinger, Κ. 350 Bale, J. 155 Bally, Ch. 308, 335 Bammesberger, A. 302, 335 Barnes, J. M. 29 Barnes, W. 29 Barrett, W. 116 Barritt, C. W. 100, 105 Bartholomaeus Anglicus 157 Basseta, D. 93, 102 Bayot, A. 129 Becker, A. L. 312, 336 Bede