The processes of gemination, lenition, and vowel lengthening are central to the study of phonology, as they reveal much about the treatment of quantity in a given language. Using data from older language stages, modern dialects and standard languages, this study examines the interdependence of vowel and consonant quantity in the history of the Germanic branch of Indo-European. Kurt Goblirsch focusses on the various geminations in Old Germanic languages (West Germanic gemination, glide strengthening, and expressive gemination), open syllable lengthening in German, Dutch, Frisian, English, and Scandinavian languages, and the major lenitions in High German, Low German, and Danish, as well as minor lenitions in Bavarian, Franconian, and Frisian dialects. All of these changes are related to the development of the Germanic languages from distinctive segmental length to complementary length to syllable cut. The discussion challenges traditional theoretical assumptions about quantity change in Germanic languages to argue for a new account whereby, gemination, lenition, and vowel lengthening are interrelated.

Gemination, Lenition, and Vowel Lengthening: On the History of Quantity in Germanic

The preference for bimoraic stressed syllables in pre-Old High German necessitated the phonological restructuring of syllables with stressed, short vowels either by early implementation of open syllable lengthening (non-shifting dialects north of the Benrath line) or by triggering an autochthonous phonological shift of +t, +p, +k after short vowels (shifting dialects). From there, the OHG dialects “progressed” though the rest of the shift in a largely parallel fashion. Asymmetry of the shift of +-p and +-k and geminate +-pp and +-kk was caused by place bias, however, especially in the Rhenish dialects where tone accents could sometimes delay or block the shift of these segments. The greater susceptibility of the more marked labial and velar affricates (-pf- and −kx-) to weakening limited their later occurrence to dialects outside the Rhineland. The reanalysis of aspirated +t- [th], +p- [ph], +k- [kh] as affricates in initial position was possible only when the corresponding geminate had already shifted, exemplifying both the effects of place bias as well as a kind of phonological reanalysis Blevins (2004) calls “choice.”

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S147054270800007X

Toward a Progression Theory of the Old High German Consonant Shift

In Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter, art historian Hans Belting explores the “need to see” that informed the visual arts from the thirteenth century onward. Visual representation, he argues, aimed to satisfy the need of the people to see for themselves what they were supposed to believe, and through this visualization to participate in the “reality” of religious doctrine (Belting 126). Walther von der Vogelweide, considered the most innovative and versatile poet/performer of the German Middle Ages, was active at the time this phenomenon began to emerge, and there is no question that his lyric works appeal to his public’s need to see. Indeed, Walther fully exploits the visual potential of performed lyric, at times directly equating the act of singing with the act of looking or seeing (Paddock, “Speaking of Spectacle”). One of the more striking manifestations of this tendency towards visuality in Walther’s oeuvre appears in songs in which the singer’s own physical person is offered explicitly as a textual image. For example, in what is generally held to be one of Walther’s earliest songs, “Ich saz ûf eime steine” (L. 8,4ff.), the singer begins his political-philosophical ruminations by painting a detailed picture of himself in the indisputably iconic pose in which Walther is depicted in both the Codex Manesse and the Weingartner manuscript. The pose described in the song is that of the meditative, perhaps troubled thinker widely familiar today from the famous Rodin sculpture. Although the image of the thinker was known in the literature of Walther’s time (Wenzel 136ff.), it was found predominantly in the visual arts; nowhere in literature does it appear so painstakingly rendered as in Walther’s song. “Ich saz ûf eime steine” is, moreover, an intriguing example of Walther’s tendency to invest his images with movement so that listeners not only “see” the contours of the image through his description, but also are able to follow the motion of the image (Paddock, “Of Me I Sing” 3). Walther’s songs present not merely a verbal illustration but rather a rhetorical variant of what Belting terms an Erlebnisbild, a picture of devotional nature in which something is being experienced and that invites the viewer to participate in that experience (Belting 18).

Sight, Insight, and Inszenierung in Walther's "Frô Welt" (L. 100, 24ff.)

The high German consonant shift: Monogenetic or polygenetic?

This paper deals with three South Germanic runic inscriptions that are highly relevant to language history. 1. The Frienstedt comb, which dates to the second half of the 3rd century A.D., bears four runes kaba = WGmc. ka(m)ba m. ‘comb’. The nominative sg. marker -a /x(x)/.

Rudolf Schützeichel

Papers

Die Grundlagen des westlichen Mitteldeutschen : Studien zur historischen Sprachgeographie

Das alemannische Memento mori : das Gedicht und der geistig-historische Hintergrund