A Sketch of Diachronic English Morphology . By Alfred Bammesberger

A Sketch of Diachronic English Morphology. By Alfred Bammes­ berger. (= Eichstatter Materiallen, 7.) Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1984. Pp. 96. Reviewed by C. ROBIN BARRETT, University of Canterbury Bammesberger states in his preface that his intention is to bridge the gap between those works which, in consider­ ing the historical grammar of English, project the sounds and forms of English back to Germanic and Indo­European and those works on the comparative grammar of these proto­lan­ guages in which English plays a very minor role. His aim is to explain Old English morphology in the Indo­European con­ text by discussing the inflexions of Old English, tracing them where possible back to hypothetical Indo­European forms and relating them to forms in other Germanic languages, thereby showing how the grammatical system has changed in the course of over 3000 years. In addition, he outlines the more important inflexional developments in the centuries follow­ ing the Anglo­Saxon period. The work is divided into six chapters. In the first, designated introduction, the author defines phonemes and morphemes, discusses the tasks of diachronic linguistics and briefly outlines the scope and methods of his study. The chapter closes with figures setting out the phonological systems of Indo­European and Germanic. Here it was not clear why the palatal semi­vowel is represented by y in Indo­Euro­ pean, but by j in Germanic. Again, in the Indo­European sys­ tem, I was puzzled by the omission of aspirated voiceless plosives, beside the unaspirated sounds. In Germanic, a brief note on the distinction between ē1 and ē2 would have been welcome, though, to be fair, this point is raised in para. 5.2.4.5. However, B emphasises that he is providing only a sketch of phonology and that students should turn to the standard handbooks for further information. Nevertheless, I think this introduction would have benefited from the inclu­ sion of a brief account of qualitative and quantitative vow­ el­gradation in view of the importance of this in both the inflexional and the derivational morphology of Indo­European. In this connexion, at the risk of splitting hairs, I would suggest that the terms gradation or ablaut are more familiar in English phonological terminology than apophony, which B tends to favour in later chapters. Chap.II, devoted to noun inflexions, opens with a clear overview of the Indo­European case­system and a figure com­ Diachronica 2:2 (1985), 239–244. DOI 10.1075/dia.2.2.09bar ISSN 0176–4225 / E-ISSN 1569–9714 © John Benjamins Publishing Company 240 C. ROBIN BARRETT: REVIEW OF BAMMESBERGER (1984) paring the paradigm of Indo­European *wlkwos with its re­ flexes in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian and Gothic. This figure and the others in this work present important material to the student with admirable clarity. However, the student's task is not facilitated when technical terms like case­syncretism are not defined. Similarly, readers could be confused by the following statement in para. 2.1.2.4.: Apart from the o­stems (thematic­stems) the following major stem­ classes must be distinguished: stems in ­ā­ (Lat. toga 'garment' <*tog­ā) ; stems in ­i­ (Lat. hostis 'enemy' <*ghost­i­s); stems in ­u­ (Lat. man­u­s 'hand'). This implies that only the o­stems are thematic. Personally, I find that the division of Indo­European nouns into vocalic, root and consonant stems, as used later in para. 2.1.2.4. is quite sufficient and that to introduce the distinction be­ tween thematic and athematic declension merely complicates matters. It would have been more helpful, instead, to have included, as Campbell (1959:222) does, the information that stems are sometimes subject to ablaut. The full range of Old English noun classes are then discussed, their inflex­ ions traced back to Germanic and Indo­European, and problems of reconstruction or development of forms highlighted. There is a wealth of clearly presented detail here and the crit­ English icisms raised below are minor. Thus, the term pre­oid used in para. 2.2.2.2. with reference to the retraction of ae could be read as referring to Anglo­Frisian rather than to Primitive Old English (450­700 A . D . ) . The statement (para. 2.2.4.6.) that the form secg is probably an analogic creation invites the question, "In analogy to what?". The author then moves to a brief discussion of noun declension in Middle English. Its brevity is entirely jus­ tified by the author's declared intention to concentrate on Old English and to treat later stages in summary. I am, how­ ever, puzzled by his statement in para. 2.8.1.3. that gram­ matical gender has left traces in the pronominal system. A pronoun, surely, takes its gender either from its extra­ linguistic referent or from the noun which it stands in for. If such a noun has natural gender, this will be reflected in the pronoun, but if the noun has grammatical gender, the pronoun will either reflect this or, as Brunner (1951 II.21) points out with reference to Old English, have natural gen­ der. The statement in para. 2.8.1.4., that although details are hard to ascertain, it would seem natural to assume that French exerted considerable influence on the development of English, is with regard to morphology rather unfortunate. If details of such influence cannot be found easily, then one can hardly speak of considerable influence. REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS / BESPRECHUNGEN 241 Chapter Three opens with a full discussion, similar to that on the nouns, of strong and weak adjective declension. The loss of adjective inflexion for gender, number and case is rather too tersely treated in one short paragraph. The development of the Indo­European comparative in * ­yos*­/­is­ and superlative in *isto in Germanic and Old English is cov­ ered fully. In this section (para. 3.5.2.1.) the term re­ analysis is used. Again, this is a term which could usefully have been defined for the benefit of students. The chapter continues with an admirably full account of the formation of adverbs and the development of these forms from Old English into Modern. It concludes with details on the comparison of adverbs. Chapter Four opens with a concise and lucid summary of the types of pronoun in Indo­European, with affinities b e ­ tween Old English and other Indo­European languages well brought out, as in the clear distinction between rectus and obliquus in the personal pronouns and the demonstrative. Bammesberger then gives a thoroughly satisfactory treatment of the Old English personal pronouns and the more signifi­ cant questions concerning the origins of forms in Germanic and Indo­European. The Middle and Modern English developments in pronominal inflexion are discussed briefly, but adequately, though in para. 4.2.7.4. there ought perhaps to have been men­ tion of the uncertainty regarding the origin of possessives in ­s, hers, yours, etc. (see Brunner 1951 II.116), and re­ garding their use predicatively in contrast to the attrib­ utive use of non­s forms. In the next section of this chap­ ter, the Old English simple and emphatic demonstratives are satisfactorily covered. However, with regard to the latter, reference could have been made to an interesting feature of their remodelling, whereby medial inflexion was transferred to the end of the word (see Krahe 1957 II.65, and Prokosch 1939:272). We can compare here a Runic Norse form for the acc. sg. masc. pan­si, which is close to the Germanic proto­ type, with the Old English p i s n e , noting the similarity of this phenomenon to the development of Latin eumpse into ip­ sum. The section closes with a clear and succinct account of the Modern English article and demonstratives, with due note taken of the problems involved in satisfactorily explaining the plural forms these and those. The sections of this chap­ ter dealing with interrogative and indefinite pronouns are satisfactory, as is the section on the relatives, though in this last I would query the statement that the particle Se belongs in the paradigm of the demonstrative pronoun. Surely, as an indeclinable particle, it has no place in any paradigm. At the close of this chapter Bammesberger inserts a note on the vexed form flodu on the front panel of the Franks Casket, illustrating the point with a facsimile of the first line of runes. The argument is well presented and the inclusion of the facsimile is an excellent idea, as is the decision to 242 C. ROBIN BARRETT: REVIEW OF BAMMESBERGER (1984) reproduce the whole of the front of the casket on p.8. It is a pity that, presumably for reasons of space, the note should have been placed on p.53 rather than with the discussion of u­stem nouns on pp.21­22, where incidentally there is no re­ ference to the flodu­crux. Chapter Five covers the morphology of the verb very fully and on the whole satisfactorily. It opens with an ad­ mirably clear summary of verbal categories in Indo­European and Germanic, discussing the origins of our tenses in the Indo­European system of aspect, and considering matters of mood and voice. B then considers in turn the Old English strong, weak and preterite­present verbs. I was, however, surprised at the omission of a separate section covering the anomalous verbs beon, don and gân. The survey of strong verbs is full and useful, considering problems of gradation, re­ duplication and grammatical change. In para. 5.2.2.8. there is a helpful table setting out the four roots of the strong classes I­V, together with a symbolic representation of the Indo­European root structure for the first root of each. In this last feature, I am unhappy with the choice of symbols: B lists five root structures, KeiT, KeuT, KeNT, KeN and KeT, whereby K and T represent any consonant and N represents a nasal or a liquid. Leaving aside the minor point that in a book written in English the symbol c might be more appro­ priate than K, as conforming to general usage, I see no need to have two symbols where one would do. Clearly K is here root­initial and T root­final, but in para. 2.3.3.4. K re­ presents any root­final consonant. This is inconsistent. A small modification to the system would eliminate these prob­ lems: let K (or c) represent any consonant, N a nasal or liquid, and T any consonant other than a nasal or liquid. The revised list would the read: KeiK, KeuK, KeNK, KeN, KeT. The inflexions of weak verbs are well analysed and there is a particularly clear and useful table in para. 5.3.2.8. show­ ing the derivation from Germanic of Old English class I weak infinitives with original linking vowel as compared with the derivation of their preterites which lack such a vowel, as for example wyrcan worhte. In para. 5.3.5.1. mention is made of verbs like beorhtnian with a nasal infix in the present, but I was surpris­ ed that the nasal infix of the class VI strong verb standan, a very common verb indeed, had not been mentioned in the re­ levant paragraph. With regard to the problem of the origin of the preterite dental suffix, B cites the commonly posited view that this is to be looked for in a periphrastic tense involving the IE verb *dhe- as auxiliary, and he is careful to draw attention to the difficulties which this explanation involves. The Old English preterite­presents are amply cover­ ed, being explained as verbs in which IE perfect forms re­ REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS / BESPRECHUNGEN 243 tained their presential meaning of a state in the present resulting from previous action. The various verbs are re­ lated to the root structures of the strong­verb classes, whereby the notation criticised above, involving K, T and N is used again. Section 5.5. is devoted to the Old English imperative and subjunctive inflexion. I felt that this sec­ tion could have included the infinitives and participles, which seemed to me to fit uneasily in para. 5.7.1.1.ff. under the heading Sample Paradigms of Old English Verbs, Personal endings are satisfactorily dealt with in Section 5.6. and the section on sample paradigms provides, in addi­ tion to information on non­finite forms, full paradigms of ridan, fremman, witan and wesan/beon. The chapter closes with an account of verbal categories in Modern English which covers such important matters as the problem of the 3rd sg. pres. indic, in ­ s , the simplification of two preterite stems into one in the strong verbs and the transfer of strong verbs to weak verb inflexion. The apparatus consists of a bibliography and an index verborum of Old English words whose morphology is dealt with. The bibliography is sufficiently comprehensive to provide a student with useful references for further study. However, I thought that the MLA Old English Newsletter (Szarmach 1967 ff.) might have been included among the bibliographies listed. My assessment of this work as a whole is that it a­ chieves what it sets out to do clearly and concisely. It provides detailed data on the morphological changes which led to the emergence of the Old English inflexional system and it places this system in the wider framework of Germanic and Indo­European. The criticisms I have made concern mainly matters of detail. However, in wider terms I would have liked some extrapolation from the data leading to a general dis­ cussion of the processes and causes of morphological change. It may well be that the author intends his readers to do this extrapolation for themselves. My final comment is that it is unusual to find a work on historical linguistics deco­ rated with illustrations and zoomorphic initials derived from Anglo­Saxon manuscripts. It is a practice to be com­ mended. Reviewer's address: C. Robin Barrett Department of English University of Canterbury CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand REFERENCES Brunner, Karl. 1950­51. Die Englische Sprache: wicklung. Bd.I: Allgemeinesi Lautgeschichte; Ihre geschichtliche EntBd.II: Die Flexionsformen. 244 C. ROBIN BARRETT: REVIEW OF BAMMESBERGER (1984) Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer. Campbell, Alistair. 1959. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Krahe, Hans. 1957. Germanische Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd rev. ed. Bd. I: Einleitung und Lautlehre; Bd.II: Formenlehre. Berlin: Walter de Gruy­ ter. Prokosch, Eduard. 1938. A Comparative Germanic Grammar. Baltimore, Md.: Linguistic Society of America. Szarmach, Paul, ed. 1967ff. Old English Newsletter. Published for the Old English Division of the Modern Language Association of America by the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State Univ. of New York, Binghamton, N.Y.