--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > >
> > > But I thought OHG had no plurals in <-s>,
> >
> > No, but PIE did, so they the must have been abolished it at some
> > time.
> >
> > > and especially not in neuter nouns. I don't think the Germans
> > > would have felt obliged to avoid *<Worts> or *<Wortes> as the
> > > plural of <Wort> because I don't think that form ever existed.
> >
> > No, but <woordes> vel sim. must have occurred in Dutch and Low
> > German (certainly in English) among non-native speakers.
> >
> > > So I don't see the process you describe operating in the case
> > > of the spread of <-er> with umlaut in German.
> >
> > The insistence on illogical exception forms like neuter plurals
> > in -er with umlaut even where they are not warranted is a way to
> > keep the rabble and foreigners in their place, like insisting on
> > 'fungi' over 'funguses'
> >
>
> OK I get what you're saying, but remember OHG extended neuter
> plurals in <-ir> (e.g. <hu:sir>) long before the Hansa and its
> period of widespread trade. I doubt that it developed primarily as
> a reaction to foreigners and the rabble.
That's where I have to draw on conclusions that seem to be entirely my
own only at least for the time being: Proto-Germanic, which was one of
many para-Germanic dialects spread through what then became Germania
with the campaign of Ariovistus in the mid first century BCE from
Southern Poland and Silesia. According to what I read I believe in
some article by Kuhn, but now I can't find it, in the earliest sources
the rabble in Northern Germania were called laeti (that would be the
people of the NWBlock area, of the Harpstedt-Nienburg culture
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpstedt-Nienburger_Gruppe
those of the south, the defeated Celts or para-Celts were called
*skalk- vel sim. But as you know, words in Germanic in p- are
substrate, many of those words are concentrated in especially
Northwestern Germany and Holland, but most of those words exist in
Standard, ie. Southern German too (but with pf-). That means that
whoever brought Germanic speech to Southern Germany must have included
a large contingent of original NWB-speakers, which means the social
factors which eradicated the 'practical' s-plural were active there too.
Another thing: all the creolized Germanic languages, English, Dutch,
Low German, 'Scandinavian' have an 'Einheitsplural', ie verbs are not
inflected for person in the plural, instead the original 3rd pl. (in
-nþ) is substituted, which might be a feature of the substrate (it is
extremely hard for adult learners of a language to learn logically
meaningless distictions in a new language, ie. for English speakers to
learn noun gender, for Scandinavians to learn to inflect verbs for
person and number), which i suspect came about for the same reason as
why the French substitute 'on + 3g.' for 'nous + 1pl.': to save a
syllable and get rid of a deviant form (so I suspect that substrate
language, like the Romance languages, was not initial-stressed).
Now, in the PIE thematic verb inflection, the thematic vowel was
-o-
-e-
-e-
-o-
-e-
-o-
Since -e- > -i- causes umlaut in Germanic, the umlaut pattern of
strong verbs in the 'high' languages (those least affected by
creolization) should be
no umlaut
umlaut
umlaut
no umlaut
umlaut
no umlaut
but it is
no umlaut
umlaut
umlaut
no umlaut
no umlaut
no umlaut
which means the substrate 'Einheitsplural' has been present in the
circumstances where the formation of the 'high' verb took place too,
eradicating (probably by shibboleth hypercorrection) the 2pl umlaut.
> I would put it in much
> the same category as the extension of the plural <-en> to
> originally strong feminines as well as weak feminines, i.e. a
> natural internal change.
German still has a sizable number of strong feminines AFAIK.
I would put that process in the same creolization bin, since it makes
learning the language easier for a foreigner.
> > In the 1600's, in the Gouden Eeuw, Golden Century in Holland, the
> > word 'arm' had two plurals, 'arms' and 'armen'; after the
> > decline, 'armen' prevailed. The first form would of course be the
> > one you heard from non-native Dutch speakers, those who used
> > Dutch as a trade lingua franca.
> >
> >
> > > I don't know where German did get its few noun plurals in <-s>,
> > > maybe it's from the Seemannsprache you have mentioned, or from
> > > Mittelniederdeutsch, or perhaps French, since it seems to be
> > > commonest among words of foreign origin.
> >
> > I didn't say Seemannsprache.
>
> OK, I misunderstood the following:
>
>
> "with exception of foreign words and 'low' words that are marked as
> specifically Northern and part of a sea culture (eg. Jungs
> "mates")."
I should have explained that everything that mattered in Northern
Germany was a sea culture. I see on comments on YouTube to clips from
'Das Boot' that many English-speaking people find it improbable that
the crew should be so openly hostile to the official ideology, since
they were supposedly elite troops and should be politically schooled;
I find it entirely plausible for people having to do with the sea.
>
> > I think you need to read up on the history of the Hanse ('scuse my
> > attitude).
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League
> >
> > It is like this:
> > Northern Germany was the Hanse, and the Hanse was Northern
> > Germany. The Hanse(atic League) spoke platt (Low German) and Low
> > German was the language of the Hanse. The Hanse Diets kept their
> > minutes part in Latin, part in Low German; *never* in High
> > German. If Columbus hadn't discovered America, moving Europe's
> > center of gravity to the west and producing Holland's Golden
> > Century, the Hanse would still be powerful and might have become
> > a separate state, speaking another language than High German. And
> > Middle Low German was the trade Lingua Franca of the North Sea
> > and the Baltic, thus it became creolized; it played a similar
> > role to the development of the grammar and vocabulary of Danish,
> > Swedish and Norwegian as the one of Northern French to English.
>
> OK, I read it. I actually wish Low German had survived as a
> national language, if only because I always thought Old Saxon was
> the prettiest (on paper) Germanic language, while remaining
> conservative, and it "deserves" a modern representative with full
> literary development (weird reasoning, I know -- perhaps I'll end
> my responses to this thread with that).
You see around Hamburg etc bumper stickers with 'wi snakt platt' "we
speak Low German" (note the Eastern Platt Einheitsplural in -t)
On the German third state TV channel which I had on cable for a while
they had once a month an hour in Platt, with invited guests etc before
an audience. It was my impression that it was more like a code switch,
High German with Low German phonology, back-translated on the fly,
with few separate words. If you are going for the weird experience,
learn Dutch. The further you get into the language, the culture and
the literature, the stranger it gets, unless the natives manage to
throw you off the track insisting they are very international etc.
Check out these Scottish girls' Dutch lessons and in particular the
hate mail they get in the comments from some Dutch speakers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGzwZH03QLE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZf07Stnh-E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfEuhAlUgkc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceemw1LkCH0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_zHHm5T24Q
Torsten