Re: Rozwadowski's Change

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 65483
Date: 2009-12-02



--- On Wed, 12/2/09, Torsten <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

From: Torsten <tgpedersen@...>
Subject: [tied] Re: Rozwadowski's Change
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2009, 5:33 AM

 


--- In cybalist@... s.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@ ...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@... s.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@ > wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@... s.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@ > wrote:
> > >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > Haste makes waste. I should have checked Emergewe in Google
> > > Books before guessing. The prevailing view is that it is a
> > > Schreibfehler;
> >
> > Apparently there was no other way for them to explain it.
> >
> > > one source cites as old forms of Emsgau: Emisga, Emisgowe,
> > > Emisgewe, and the "ganz schlechte Schreibart" Emergewe.
> >
> > Value judgment.
> >
> > > Some details of the text are given by H. Jaekel, "Zur
> > > Lexicologie des Altfriesischen" , PBB 15:532-6 (1891):
> >
> > Note, Old Frisian. Non-Germanic survivals to be expected.
>
> The forms with -s- are already non-Germanic in origin, no?

I claimed once that those on Schaffner's list
http://tech. groups.yahoo. com/group/ cybalist/ message/62159
were Aestian/Venetic
http://tech. groups.yahoo. com/group/ cybalist/ message/65034
so I'd better stick to it.

> > > "Aus lanthura [i.e. 'land-tax'] hat der schreiber Lanthusa
> > > [a phantom place-name] gemacht.
> >
> > -husa? As far as I know, the "hire" word is without etymology,
> > and first used in maritime vocabulary (so still in Danish). I
> > propose it is a Verner doublet of *hu:s-ja- "to house", eg. "to
> > hire" is to house sby, to take him into your household.
>
> I like that. Gmc. *xu:rjo: 'payment, land-tax' would originally be
> 'payment for housing', pre-shifted *ku:syá: beside *kú:som 'house,
> housing, building'. The restriction of *xu:rjo: and *xu:rjan 'to
> pay for services, house, hire' to the NWB area suggests that
> feudalism was imposed there when the Germans took over, AFTER Grimm
> and Verner, with terminology that became obsolete elsewhere. What
> we need is to identify more Gmc. words (as opposed to historically
> NWB words) restricted to the NWB area in order to develop a fuller
> theory of this takeover. Sailors presumably were escaping the
> confines of feudalism. "Seeluft macht frei!"

'Hyre' v. in Da. is used in the sense of hiring sailors for a ship.
'Hyre' n. is the pay or the employment.

> > > Er verwechselt s und r sehr haeufig; so schreibt er z.b.
> > > 'videmus' statt 'videmur',
> >
> > Could be bad grammar, not Schreibfehler.
>
> Or simple absent-mindedness, writing 'we see' for the less common
> 'we seem'. I have not yet looked at the full text.
>
> > 'Wisaha' statt 'Wiraha',
> >
> > River? *Wis- is common in river names.
>
> And in Visburgii, Viscellae, Vispii. Unclear are Wiesbaden
> (Uuisibada 830), Wiesenbronn (Wisibrunnen) , and a few other names
> upon which *wisu- 'good' may have had folk-etymological influence.
> Perhaps even the Visigothi belong here. Streitberg rejected the
> vulgate interpretation 'West Goths' in favor of 'Good Goths', but
> the third century seems rather early for a stem-shift. For that
> matter Ptolemy's <Ouisboúrgioi> seems much too early for the
> stem-vowel syncope required if Streitberg's 'die gute Bergen
> besitzenden' is correct.
>
> I did consider the possibility that <Wisaha> is copied right and
> refers to some other stream than Wiraha. However, Jaekel seems to
> know his East Frisian geography. The forms <Hunergewe> and
> <Heterheim> are otherwise identical to those with -s-, and that is
> not what we would predict for Gmc./NWB doublets. Indeed we have no
> expectation of NWB words beginning with /h/ at all. If these are
> genuine doublets not resulting from sloppy scribal s/r-Wechsel, the
> most we can say is that some Old East Frisian dialect might have
> rhotacized /s/ in this position. And actual rhotacism is not
> really necessary. The original scribe might have performed false
> phonemic analysis, regarding a mere voiced /s/ as closer to his own
> /r/. All we could then conclude is that some allophones were heard
> wrongly by a scribe accustomed to a different dialect. This is the
> sort of thing represented by satirical spellings like
> <Filhelmshawen> and <teschnich>.
>
> > 'More' fuer 'Mose',
> >
> > cf. German Moor, Engl. moor, Da. mose
>
> Point taken.
>
> > 'Wacheringe' fuer 'Wachesinge' , 'Emergewe' fuer 'Emesgewe',
> > 'Hunergewe' fuer 'Hunesgewe', 'Heterheim' fuer 'Hetesheim'. "
> >
> > All place names, so rejecting the Verner variants here because
> > they are supposedly Schreibfehler would be circular.
>
> They might not be Schreibfehler, but assuming that we have evidence
> for Grimm without Verner, a Holy Grail for shift-daters, requires
> much more than the peculiarities of a single MS.
>
> > > Thus we cannot use Emergewe and Hunergewe as evidence for some
> > > "Verner-free" area.
>
> > I don't think Kuhn did that, rather he thought it showed
> > vacillation, like Weser/Werra
>
> No problem with initial /w/. Big problem with initial /h/ in
> supposedly non-Gmc. forms. The vacillation is areal at any rate.

True that, but Kuhn also operates with half-Grimm'ed roots. Grimm in anlaut, not in auslaut or vice versa, whatever he thinks the mechanism is.

> > > > Objection, they would, or at least within a sufficiently
> > > > small distance that it was known to them; only as long as
> > > > Grimm's law functioned as a sociological marker between the
> > > > incoming elite and the locals would Grimm's law be applied to
> > > > local place names, after the hierarchical relationship is
> > > > established the upper class will feel they can 'afford' to
> > > > pronounce local names the local way; this means only
> > > > backwaters get to keep the original non-Grimm names. Cf.
http://www.angelfir e.com/rant/ tgpedersen/ Shibbolethisatio n.html
> > >
> > > I was thinking along the lines of York (old Eboracum
> > > 'Yewplace'). The initial /y/ was produced regularly in Old
> > > Norse, but not when they dominated the place.

Actually e: -> ie/ye is common in Danish dialects, presumably happened later than ON.

> > > It was the name of a FOREIGN place when the change occurred.
> >
> > I didn't know that. Tell me about it.
>
> The British name *Ebura:kon 'Yew-Place' (preserved in Welsh
> <Efrog>) was folk-etymologized into Old English <Eoforwíc> 'Boar-
> Town'. Old Norse <Jórvík> 'Boar-Bay' cannot come directly from
> this but must represent an earlier *Jøfurvík, this in turn from an
> early ON borrowing of the OE name, well before the Norse occupation
> in 867.
>
> > > Similarly, Coriovallum could have been known
> > > to Germans before the shift, and a foreign place when the /k/
> > > became the /x/ later reflected as /h/ in Heerlen.
> >
> > I said that too. It's even likely the name was given by the
> > Germani, considering the importance of the *xar-j- stem, but if
> > so in the pre-Grimm phase. Wrt it supporting your claim of an
> > earlier Grimm: I don't think so; Coriovallum AFAIK was [n]ot an
> > important place (cf. Du. Straatburg "Strasbourg" , it's on the
> > Rhine route, which was vital for Dutch economy, and therefore
> > vital for the French to seize).
>
> If an army guarded a wall there, it must have had some importance
> at some time. French has plenty of names for Italian towns like
> Perugia which did not come from modern Italian. Perugia has no
> obvious political or economic importance today, but it must have
> been important to some of the French at some time.
>
There is a chanson by some troubadour which shifts for each line between Tuscan, Genovese, Langue d'Oc and Catalan, but I forgot all about by where I read it.

Torsten
 
Please allow me the privilege of potentially putting my foot in my mouth
.
Is it possible that there was once a functional difference between -s- and -r-? At least in one or more of the languages? e.g. passive vs. active "to house" vs. "to be housed"?
I realize we're dealing with a change in sound but these often give way to changes in meaning when examples of the "unsuccessful" movement are retain: e.g. stinky vs. stanky, hungry vs. hongry, grammar vs. glamour,  etc.