Several kinds of systematic deviations from the Greek original, including simple insertions and omissions of subject pronouns and transformations of nonfinite or impersonal Greek constructions into personal finite clauses, provide evidence concerning the distribution of null and overt referential subject pronouns in Gothic. While the evidence leaves no doubt that Gothic was a null-subject language, it also reveals a tendency, not found in Ancient Greek, toward the use of overt subjects for nontopic antecedents. This Gothic pattern is reminiscent of what a number of researchers have found recently in some other null-subject languages such as Italian, but Gothic appears to occupy an intermediate position between Ancient Greek and Italian.*

To the memory of Edgar Polomé, who inspired with his keen interest in Germanic and Indo-European

Modern German existentials with impersonal es gibt are attested only rather late in the German tradition (from late Middle High German, in the fourteenth century), have few compelling cognate constructions (if any) elsewhere in Germanic, and thus are usually taken to be an extension of other senses (e.g., ‘give, produce, yield’) of the verb geben. It is noted here, though, that parallels with existentials based on verbs meaning ‘have, take’ cognate to geben can be found elsewhere in Indo-European, in particular in Old Irish and Latin. When viewed against the backdrop of there being several verbs in Indo-European meaning both ‘give’and ‘take’, these facts suggest an interpretation wherein the existential sense of geben is the archaism, and the meaning ‘give’is a Germanic innovation.*

In the mid 1870s, Friedrich Kluge spent four semesters in Leipzig studying comparative linguistics and classical philology under the Neogrammarians Georg Curtius, Friedrich Zarncke, Hermann Osthoff, and Wilhelm Braune. Although Kluge applied and refined their methods for many years to come, he was even more deeply impressed by another teacher in Leipzig, the non-Neogrammarian Rudolf Hildebrand. Within the context of Kluge's famous Etymologisches Wörterbuch, of which Kluge oversaw the first (1881–1883) through the tenth (1924) editions, this article asks: In what way did Hildebrand's research come to bear on Kluge's own work? And to what extent did Kluge acknowledge Hildebrand's influence? The answer to the first question entails a fundamental shift in Kluge's view on the goal of etymology, while the response to the second one, which must also be pursued in other writings by Kluge, can be interpreted further by examining certain statements made by Kluge in the dictionary.

During the Northwest Germanic period, *ɣaβiɣs ‘rich’ (Go. gabigs / gabeigs ‘rich’ < giban ‘to give’) and related forms (Go. gabigjan ‘to make rich’, gabignan ‘to be rich’) were reanalyzed as consisting of the prefix *ɣa- + root. This reanalysis was triggered by the prevailing Germanic stress pattern (indicated where necessary by a raised tick '), since *ɣaβiɣs was stressed on the first syllable of the root (thus *'ɣaβiɣs). while nominal and adjectival compounds that consisted of *ɣa- + root ('ga-qumps ‘assembly’, 'ga-fulgins ‘hidden’, 'ga-hails ‘hale’) were stressed on the prefix. Thus, an extrapolated root form *ɣiγ- > *biγ- was created that then existed parallel to *γaβiγs in Northwest Germanic. The newly created form *biγs survived and developed into ME big(ge) ‘strong, sturdy’ (> Eng. big), while OE gifig, ON g˛fugr ‘noble’, and related forms in Old High German and Gothic are reflexes of *ɣaβiɣs.

The words discussed here are vaguely connected, for all three may originally go back to sound complexes designating objects capable of swelling and making frightening noises. In boy, we probably have a blend of *boi ‘devil’ and *bo ‘little brother’. (A close parallel is German Bube.) The etymon of beacon seems to be *bauk-, which, like OE būc ‘stomach’, referred to swelling. Its original meaning was ‘portent’ ‘banner’ and ‘signal fire’ were added to ‘portent, sign’ under the influence of the word for ‘token’. A reflex of another word that denoted an inflatable object is buoy, borrowed from Middle Dutch.

In this paper evidence for the phonological status of the velar nasal in Older Germanic is reviewed with particular reference to the innovation in the runes of a character for the sound. It is demonstrated that none of this evidence presents an unambiguous solution to whether the velar nasal is phonemic or phonetic. However, by taking the mapping processes that occurred during the invention of the runes as one of “prototypically significant sound” to character, a sufficient reason for the innovation of this rune is proposed.*

A survey of the literature on Old Saxon derivational suffixes and suffixoids does not yield a neat and clear-cut picture of forms. The reason is that some researchers take a diachronic view of the data, while others take a synchronic view. In this article I recommend a panchronic view of the data in hopes of clarifying the situation. As part of the discussion I argue that affixoids are a good example of grammaticalization. I thus also discuss and—as far as research on German is concerned—aim to resurrect the notion of AFFIXOID as a linguistic category. If successful, the results of this paper may be applied to other languages.

This paper considers the linguistic status of West Germanic alliterative, formulaic, syntactically tight pairs. These hendiadys binomials are phonetically interwoven, phrasally autonomous units. Echoic reduplication, including hendiadys, is a common way for language to generate iconic forms. Building on recent work on sound-symbolic expressives, iconicity, and the significance of poetic features (compression, phrasal symmetry) for language, this study argues that alliterative binomials are fundamentally affective, with proverb-like sentential characteristics, deriving idiomatic force from their iconically self-signaling structural properties. Like Stabreim, phonetically reinforced and with reciprocally highlighted components, they define a cohesive utterance (saying, phrase, metrical line). In this they share phrase-level contour properties with Behaghel's Law, which shapes the linguistic structure of day-to-day poetics, particularly in fixed idioms. The inquiry examines phrasal syntax, phrase-level iconicity and expressive symbolism, and the poetics of folk-discourse genres, reflecting language's structure.*

Hopper and Thompson's (1980) seminal article on transitivity has brought forth renewed interest in the passive and other correlates of transitivity. Langacker (1982) and others working within the Cognitive Grammar framework argue that the passive voice is an independent construction and that it is not a reorganization of the active voice. This paper builds on this view of the passive and presents an analysis of the processual passive in Old Saxon, using the theory of Cognitive Grammar. This semantic analysis focuses on the retention of the dative case in the passive and the similarity in event structure in events encoded by the active or passive voice.

In the Heliand, type E (/ / × /) shows a graded preference for the b-verse according to the composition of its first three positions. In Beowulf, by contrast, the same metrical type occurs with consistent preference for the b-verse. This paper claims that the gradation of type E unique to the Heliand arose as a consequence of the reorganization of the first drop of type A, whereby the traditional binary categorization of the normal and heavy drops was replaced by a single prototype-based graded category, as demonstrated in Suzuki 2000.

One of the enduring cruxes in Afrikaans historical linguistics has been the origin of the so-called “double” or more properly “brace” negation, specifically with respect to the negative particle nie in sentence-final position. Though bipartite negation is well represented in the Germanic languages, the Afrikaans pattern stands alone. The brace negation is an innovation that came about through the reanalysis of a discourse-dependent (pragmatically conditioned) structure in metropolitan Dutch. The agents of the change were Khoikhoi and enslaved peoples at the Cape in the context of wholesale language shift and basilectalization under the pressure of a socioeconomic order based on caste. Given the intensive mixing between mesolectal and basilectal varieties as part of a shared repertoire, the innovation was accepted by rural, lower-class Europeans living in closest proximity to indigenes and slaves, with stylistic and social variation.

Proto-Germanic *þe-na-z (Old English, Old Saxon, Old High German, Old Norse) is traditionally understood as ‘child, follower, servant’, connected with Greek teknon ‘child’, both from *tek- ‘to beget’.

This is unfounded; the meaning ‘child’ is unattested, the traditional etymology highly improbable. Proto-Germanic *þe-na-z is from *tek- ‘to stretch out one's hand, touch, receive’, designating basically ‘follower, retainer’, thus a technical term of Germanic Gefolgschaftswesen. Pertinent textual passages, the theory of Germanic heathen baptism, and the rites whereby a warrior is accepted into a lord's retinue are crucial for the analysis.