From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 62877
Date: 2009-02-06
>too.
> ---
> > 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
>What about natives? The loss of gender makes English a lot easier to
> 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
> -n�) 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.
>Where and how do you find stuff like that? Or more importantly, WHY
> > 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
>