Re: Rozwadowski's Change

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> > > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > [...]
> > > >
> > > > Which [Grimm's shift] happened around the beginning of our
> > > > era, according to Kuhn's data.
> > > > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/29016
> > > > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/34439
> > >
> > > If memory serves, the Ems is the Amisia in Tacitus, so
> > > Emer-gewe is to be expected; the form Ems must have had no
> > > vocalic extension after the stem, *ames- or whatever it was,
> > > thus no rhotacism. With Coriovallum/Heerlen and the like we
> > > have Celtic/Gmc. doublets which cannot reliably date the shift,
> > > since the Germans did not have to live there DURING the shift.
>
> 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.

> "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.

> Er verwechselt s und r sehr haeufig; so schreibt er z.b. 'videmus'
> statt 'videmur',

Could be bad grammar, not Schreibfehler.

'Wisaha' statt 'Wiraha',

River? *Wis- is common in river names.

'More' fuer 'Mose',

cf. German Moor, Engl. moor, Da. mose

'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.

> 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

> > 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.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Shibbolethisation.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. It was the name of a FOREIGN place when
> the change occurred.

I didn't know that. Tell me about it.

> 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 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).

> > For a similar example
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diepholz
> > vs. eg.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_van_Diepholt
> >
> > The German place name should properly be either Low German
> > Diepholt or High German Tiefholz; only -holt, recognizable as
> > "wood" or "forest" has been 'translated' into High German,
> > whereas diep-, which makes dubious sense as "deep forest", was
> > opaque and has therefore not been translated.
>
> This sort of thing is about as rare as dirt. Where I live, the
> locals have half-translated Kaffeeklatsch into "coffee clutch".
> The first element was easily recognized; the second was not, so it
> was deformed into something familiar, not translated.

Yes, it is.

> > > Indeed if the shift occurred just as the Germans were expanding
> > > into the NWB, we would expect all, or nearly all, of Kuhn's
> > > anlautend-/p/ words to have exact anlautend-/f/ equivalents.
> >
> > No, as I said, only as long as Grimm is still a living process in
> > the language community would it be applied to local place names,
> > not after.
>
> I am referring to APPELLATIVES, and if the Grimm shift were still
> in progress during expansion into the NWB area, we should have had
> scads of doublets, just as we do in High/Low German border areas.

As for regular doublets, as far as I know the Germans, they are acutely aware of whether a word is platt or not; they don't use doublets. On the other hand High German has hundreds of platt words, but in specialized senses (eg. Wappen "coat of arms", cf. Waffe "weapon"); this is exactly what Kuhn describes for modern Germanic languages: they contain hundreds of non-Grimm-affected words, presumably NWB most of them.


Torsten