Judging from the phenomena described on p.
441, we are dealing with an auctorial mistake overlooked during proofreading (a
rare thing in Hock's book, but nobody's perfect). Hock seems to have writted
"Danish" whereas he meant "Dutch".
I suppose he uses inverted commas to make
it clear that the word "Danes" has its Old English meaning (including all
the Norsemen who invaded England), rather than inhabitants of what is now
Denmark. At that time, of course, "Germany" was inhabited by so-called
"Germans".
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 1:04 PM
Subject: [tied] Hock that!
Leafing through Hock's "Principles of
Historical Linguistics"
looking for Very Important Subjects I found (15.2,
p. 441)
"For instance, in the early German/Danish dialect continuum, the
High
German sound shift originated in the south and spread toward the
north. At the same time, however, a development which originated in
the
north was arriving in the south, namely the voicing of fricatives
in
syllable-initial prevocalic environment. This change is ultimately
responsible for the voiced outcome of PGmc. *þ in all the German
dialects; cf. *þu > du "you (sg.)"."
What German/Danish dialect
continuum? When there was a dialect
continuum it was a German/Norse
continuum; the division within North
Germanic are much younger; and there
are no transitional dialects
along the Danish/German border. Elsewhere Hock
consistently refers to
the Danes in the Danelaw ín quotes as "'Danes'" or
"so-called Danes";
what's going on in the mind of this so-called German. In
Danish (if
that is the language I speak, you can never be sure these days)
/þ/
went > /t/ but /þ/ went > /d/ in exactly those mono-syllabic
pronouns
and particles (which usually live in unstressed syllables) in whose
English cognates /þ/ went > /ð/ (tempting to speculate that /þ/ > /ð/
> /d/).
There is no "voicing of fricatives in syllable-initial
prevocalic
environment" anywhere in any Danish dialect. No /z/'s
anywhere.
Torsten