On Gothic iup and the Germanic directionals PDF

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THE GOTHIC LANGUAGE A SYMPOSIUM UNIVERSITY PRESS OF SOUTHERN DENMARK NORTH-\VESTERN EUROPEAN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION Editors: Michael Barnes (Department of Scandinavian Studies, University College London, Gower StreeL GB-London WClE 6BT), Rolf H. Bremmer Jr. (Vakgroep Engels, Universiteit Leiden, Postbus...

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THE GOTHIC LANGUAGE A SYMPOSIUM

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF SOUTHERN DENMARK

NORTH-\VESTERN EUROPEAN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION Editors: Michael Barnes (Department of Scandinavian Studies, University College London, Gower StreeL GB-London WClE 6BT), Rolf H. Bremmer Jr. (Vakgroep Engels, Universiteit Leiden, Postbus 9515, NL-2300 RA Leiden), Gotthard Lerchner (Sachsische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Karl-Tauchnitz-Stra13e 1, D-041 07 l__.eipzig), Hans F. Nielsen (Managing Editor; see inside back cover). Editorial Assistant: Mette Bruus (Odense).

Advisory Editors: Anders Ahlqvist (Galway), Nils Arhammar (Flensburg), Hans Basb011 (Odense), Michael Benskin (Oslo), Kurt Braunmtiller (Hamburg), Bernard Comrie (Leipzig), Kees Dekker (Groningen), Lars-Erik Edlund (Umdi), Jan Terje Faarlund (Oslo), Kurt Gustav Goblirsch (Columbia, SC), Erik W. Hansen (Odense; Chairman), Odd Einar Haugen (Bergen), Jarich Hoekstra (Kiel), Henrik Gal berg Jacobsen (Odense), Thomas Klein (Bonn), Gillis Kristensson (Stockholm), Patrizia Lendinara (Palermo), Anatoly Liberman (Minneapolis), Torn Markey (Tucson), Bernard Mees (Melbourne), Wolfgang Meid (Innsbruck), Robert Nedoma (Wien), Terttu Nevalainen (Helsinki), David Parsons (Nottingham), Matti Rissanen (Helsinki), Peter Schrijver (Mtinchen), Michael Schulte (Volda), Rudolf Schtitzeichel (Munster), Flemming Talbo Stubkjrer (Odense). Matsuji Tajima (Fukuoka), Sheila \Vatts (Cambridge).

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Guus Kroonen

ON GOTHIC !UP AND THE GERMANIC DIRECTIONALS

0. Introduction It is widely assumed that the Gothic adverbs iup 'up( ward)', iupa 'up, above' and iupana 'from above' are related to the Proto-Germanic preposition *uba, cf. Go. uf 'under', ON of, OHG ob(a) 'over', i.e. the continuant of PIE *up6, e.g. Gr. {m6 'under', to Skt. upa 'to, by, with', Oir. fo 'under'. Little doubt as there is about the correctness of this connection, it raises several important questions. These are the focus of this article. To begin with, there is the issue of the semantic variation between 'above' and 'under' in Germanic as well as in the other Indo-European dialects. This problem is only minor. Hitt. up-zi '(the sun) rises' and Skt. upamci- 'highest', auhuma 'higher!] < *up-nJ,h 2 -o- indicate that the original meaning was 'above'. It may have swapped to 'under' in Gothic, Greek and Old Irish in ablative use. A parallel for such a shift can be adduced from Faroese. In this language, ON ofan 'from above', i.e. the ablative of of 'over', was relexified as oman 2 'down'. The shift was final in compound adverbs such as oman-[frci 'from below', where the ablative meaning of oman has completely disappeared. The most important difficulties concerning iup, however, are not of a semantic, but of a formal nature. First of all, iup contains a full grade of which the other Germanic languages show no trace. Secondly, iup has root-final *p. As this consonant cannot be derived from PIE *p directly, it seems necessary to presuppose a root *eub-. Such a reconstruction is impossible, however, because PIE did not have a *b. Since it is unsatisfactory on many levels to disconnect iup from *uba, as was suggested by Ramp in a 1953 note on the word, the question is how exactly iup developed out of the Proto-Indo-European Grundlage. By way of answering this question, it is important not to isolate iup from its synchronic Proto-Germanic context. This context, first of all, consists of the Germanic directional system. This is the 367

CRTUS KROONEN

morphological pattern of the directional adverbs to form paradigms containing a locative, an allative and an ablative form. The context further consists of the intimate relation of Gothic iup and its North/ West Germanic cognates with the two typologically similar directionals *inn 'in' and *ut 'out', i.e. the continuations of PIE *h 1en (cf. Gr. £v, poet. EVl, E:vO and *ud (cf. Skt. ud 'upwards, out of). G. Schmidt ( 1962:§ 156) already acutely pointed out that these three items constituted a subgroup in Proto-Germanic because they shared a number of phenotypical features. Logically, the derivational history of iup cannot be satisfactorily clarified without taking these two adverbs into account. In the present article, I first describe the synchronic dialectal situation of the three different directionals from the perspective of the directional system. On the basis of this description, I present my reconstruction of the Proto- and Pre-Germanic situation in two subsequent paragraphs. The picture that emerges from that enables us to make a comparison with the directionals in Hittite and the Indo-European proto-language itself.

1. The Germanic directional system In Germanic, a large part of the spatial adverbs systematically occur in locative, allative and ablative forms. These three dimensions are expressed by the addition of certain suffixes. In Gothic, for instance, -(a)r, -(a)d and -(a)pro form a locative, ablative and allative case correspondingly when added to the root. Thus, we get paradigms such as h.Jar 'where', Ivap "'hJad '(to) where', Jvapro 'from where' or jainar 'there',jaind '(to) there',jainpro 'from there', etc. An entirely parallel system is formed by the adverbial directionals that are of prepositional origin. Yet, although the three dimensions remain the same, the endings are different. The allative forms have a zero ending across the different dialects; the locative ending was PGm. *-ai, cf. Go. -a, ON -i, OHG -e; the ablative, attested as Go. ana : ON -an : OHG -ana, continues PGm. *-a-n- plus a vocalic element. This vocalic element is somewhat difficult to reconstruct in consequence of the dialectal vowel reduction in word-final position (theAuslautgesetze), but I am inclined to follow Schmidt (1962:194), who systematically 368

ON GOTHIC !UP AND THE GERMANIC DIRECTIONALS

uses *-a-neon the basis of e.g. Skt. vfna 'without'< *ui-neh 1 (cf. Streitberg 1896:188; Boutkan 1995:376ffi. Together, the allative, locative and ablative seem to behave like cases of further defective nouns (cf. Blaisdell 1959:52). This is reminiscent of the Proto-Indo-European situations where many spatial adverbs demonstrably continue case forms of old root nouns. a In the section below, I give a survey of Proto-Germanic 'in' and 'out' and 'up' across the Germanic dialects. Several observations can be made, such as, for instance, the fact that the formal variation of these three adverbial complexes differs greatly, 'in' being the most inert, 'up' the most unstable item. The most striking contrast, however, is undoubtedly that the adverbs differ from the pertaining prepositions by way of 'ein grosseres Lautvolumen und veranderte, "verscharfte" Konsonanz [ ... ]', as Schmidt (1962:179) pointed out. This may be a simplification of an actually more multifaceted varation, as I will try to point out, but gemination indeed appears to be a feature bound to the adverbs not so much as the pertaining prepositions. a) 'in'

Go. ON OE OS OHG

preposition in i in Ln

locative inn a inni inne ~nna

~n

inne

allative inn inn in Ln In

ablative innana in nan innan innan(a) innana

The consonantal difference between the preposition *in and the adverbs *innai, *inn and *innan- is clearly visible: the former has a single, the latter have a double n. There are no further alternations except for the long I in Old High German (cf. MoG ein), which is probably due to late secondary lengthening of an unstressed, degeminated form. On the whole, the dialectal variation is minimal. b) 'out' Go. ON OE OS OHG

preposition us or,6r,ur orurur-

locative uta

allative ut

1Ui

ut

ate uta, -e uzze

at at uz

369

ablative utana utan atan lltana uzzana

emUS KROONEN

As opposed to 'in', the oldest Germanic dialects do not reveal an opposition of consonantal length for 'out'. Instead, the preposition *uz, which developed out of PIE *ud-s (cf. Gr. < *h1eg"-s, Att. d; 'to, in' < *h 1en-s), contrasts with the adverbs in that it has final *z instead of *t. However, evidence for a geminated root variant *utt- is probably provided by Modern Faroese, in which the ablative form is uttan.

rs

preposition Far.

ur

locative uti

allative zit

ablative uttan

This uttan, which seems to have gone unnoticed in the literature, cannot possibly be the regular reflex of ON utan, but rather presupposes an Old Norse variant *uttan. As a matter of fact, this variant is not hypothetical: it can be retrieved from several Old Norse texts, such as the Gulaping law (ef kona gipter sik uttan {ronda raao, cf. Flom 1937:121), saga Hakonar Hakonarsonar (fyrir uttan Pj6rsa I uttan af islandi, cf. Fornmanna sogur 114, 116), the Frostaping law (uttan konongs umbodes mader I uttan uilia sialfra pCEirra, cf. Hcegstad!Torp 1909: XV), etc. One could perhaps argue, especially in view of the occurrence in the Gulaping manuscript, that uttan is a Tr¢ndheim form of ON utan. The double tt would then have to be an extremely early testimony of central Scandinavian vowel balance (cf. ON baka, eta> Tnmderish bdkkd, atta). Still, the assumption that such a dialectal form could spread to the Faroe Islands so as to become the dominant variant, is somewhat daring. The alternative, to postulate a ProtoGermanic ablative variant *uttan- that is formally parallel to *innanand *uppan- (see below), seems preferable. In addition to the roots *ut- and *utt-, there is unambiguous evidence for a variant *ut- with a short vowel and a single stop in the ablative. The West Germanic languages all have *utane, but ON utan probably had a short vowel in spite of the fact that most Old Norse reference works give the form as (dan with a long u (e.g. Cleasby/ Vigfusson 669; Zoega 462; Faarlund 2004:108). The Modern Icelandic continuant simply is utan (Boovarsson 1982:1098), and this form shows that the vowel must have been short in Old Norse. As such, it presupposes a North Germanic form *utane that contrasts with West Germanic *utane. 370

ON GOTHIC IUP AND THE GERMANIC DllfECTIONALS

c) 'up' Go. ON OE OFri. OS OHG

preposition uf of

locative iupa uppi uppe

-

ob(aj

uppa obe, uffe

allative iup upp up op up

at

ablative iupana ofan ufan bova, boppa oban(aj, uppan obana, uffana

As compared to 'in' and 'out', the root variation of'up' is relatively well attested in the different dialects. There is evidence of three different roots. First of all, Gothic points to a root *eup-, which occurs in all three case forms. Apparently, the original allomorphy was leveled completely. The North/West Germanic languages add two other variants, i.e. *upp- and *ub-. While "''upp- is almost universally attested in the locative *uppai and the allative *upp, *ub- has its base in the ablative form *ubane. This original distribution was partly obliterated in Old Frisian and Old Saxon, which bear witness to an alternative ablative variant *uppane. Some innovations must have taken place in Old High German as well, the most important being that the allative a{, which must have developed from degeminated *upp in stressed position (cf. In< *inn), became intrusive in the locative and ablative. In this way, it ended up competing with the original ablative form *ubane and the uniquely German locative form *ubai. The latter form is probably based on the preposition *uba or the ablative *ubane.

2. The origin of the geminates Having analyzed the root variation of the directionals across the various Germanic dialects, the next step is to resolve the issue that Schmidt touched upon, i.e. origin of the so-called 'sharp' consonantism of the adverbs *inn-, *upp-, *utt- as opposed to the single consonants in the prepositions *in, *uba, *uz. Several solutions have been formulated in recent years, the most popular ones falling within the scope of the so-called Expressivity Theory. This theory- or paradigm- can be traced as far back as Gerland (1869), who called the geminate ofMoG placken 'to tease' psychological, arguing that it gave the verb a more intensive meaning than the homonymous plagen with a singulate. Dur371

CHJUS KROONEN

ing the past century, the theory has had prominent supporters such as Trautmann (1906), 1.\-Iartinet (1937), Pokorny (1955-65), Hopper (1989) and Ringe (2006). It is therefore unsurprising that the geminates in the adverbs have indeed been analyzed as expressive by e.g. De Vries (1997:493), Sommer (1977) and- somewhat differently- by Seebold (2004:71). 4 To my mind, however, there is little point in trying to prove that the semantics of geminated inn-, *upp- and *utt- are more expressive than their singulate counterparts. The idea to account for the difference between, for instance, the fully isofunctional variants OS oban,.., uppan or OFri. bova- boppa in such a way, is quite literally pre-scientific, Gerland's suggestion predating the creation of the Comparative Method by the Neogrammarians. In this respect, it is in fact somewhat reminiscent of Scherer's old hypothesis that the Verner alternations *f,....., *b, *p- *d, *h- *g were distributed according to their frequency, high frequency words receiving the voiced variants. An approach to the problem of the geminates that does fit into the N eogrammarian paradigm follows more or less naturally from the comparison of *upp- with *inn-. It was shown by Osthoff (1882) and Kluge (1884) that the Germanic voiceless geminates arose by the assimilation of a stressed n-suffix, and that the resulting voiced geminates were regularly devoiced under Grimm's law, cf. Du. wit 'white' < *hwitta- (cf. Skt. svitna- ), OE jJaccian 'to pat' < *jJakkon< *t!J:e-neh 2 - (Lat. tango). 5 Since PGm. *inn- must have developed out of PIE *h 1en by the addition of ann-suffix anyway, we can logically assume that the same suffix gave rise to the geminates of *upp- and *utt- under Kluge's law. The required nasal suffix was identified by Johansson (loc. cit.) with the Sanskrit instrumental element -na, as in e.g. ena 'this', tena 'that' etc. 'Ebenso ist g. iup, iupana aus idg. eupn- entstanden,' Johansson (1891:242) further notes. This seems indeed to be the case. The Germanic *p can well be explained by n-gemination and subsequent generalization of the full-grade vocalism (Liihr 2000:190), as the resulting superheavy syllable *eupp- would have been resolved by the regular shortening of gen1inates after long vowels and diphthongs (cf. Kluge 1884). There are good parallels to this shortening process, such as Go. h;eits 'id.' < *hw1ta- < *hw1tta- < *kueit-n6- 6 and diups 'deep'< *deupa< *deuppa- < *dheubh-n6- (cf. Lith. dubus < *dhub1t-u-, not *dhub-u-) 372

ON GOTHIC !UP AND THE GERMA.N"IC DIRECTIONALS

and OE t:Ecan 'to show' < *taikjan- < *taikkjan- < *doik-neh:{ (cf. Gr. OElKVUJ.U). It is therefore not necessary to postulate a problematic PIE root containing the non-existent phoneme *b. 7 I conclude that the geminates of *upp- and *utt- arose under Kluge's law by the assimilation of an n-suffix. This conclusion is corroborated by the parallelism of these geminates with the double n of*inn-, which proves the pre-existence of ann-suffix anyway. 8

3. The Pre-Germanic situation With the dialectal variation and Kluge's explanation of the ProtoGermanic geminates in mind, it becomes possible to shed some light upon the directional system in the Pre-Germanic period. In order to do so, it is necessary to focus on the original distribution of the different root variants. Of the available material, the most pertinent evidence comes from the case of 'up' because the variation is maximal and therefore most informative here. Additionally, limited information can be obtained from 'out'. The adverbial forms pertaining to 'inn', on the other hand, show no root alternations at all, and therefore tell us nothing about the original distribution. In section 2 of this article, I have already mentioned that there is a clear distribution between the root *upp- and *ub- in North/West Germanic, the former being associated with the locative and allative, the latter with the ablative. This distribution has been destroyed only in Gothic, where *eup- was generalized. The fact that continuations of *upp- became intrusive in the ablative in Old Frisian, Old Saxon and Old High German is irrelevant, because these languages also have preserved the original variant *ubane. It therefore seems reasonable to argue, on the basis of the dialectal situation, that the geminate arose in either the locative or allative, but at any rate not in the ablative. Of no less importance is the contrast of the geminates of the ablatives *innan- and *uttan- as opposed to the singulate in *uban-. It follows from the different etymologies of the three different adverbs that this distribution is not coincidental either: whereas *h 1en and *ud ended in a consonant in Proto-Indo-European, *up6 had a vocalic ending. This means that, after the addition of the nasal suffix, Kluge's law could operate in the former two adverbials, but not in the latter. As a 373

emus KROONEN result, we can reconstruct the ablatives as *h 1 en-neh 1 ~ *u.d-neh 1 , *u.p6neh 19 in Pre-Germanic, and accordingly as *inne, *u.tte and *u.bane in Proto-Germanic. It can further be assumed that *innane and *uttane received their suffix from *u.bane, which was apparently reanalyzed as *u.b-ane. Further information can be obtained from the difference between ON lit, uti and utan. The usually overlooked short vowel of u.tan directly points to an alternative proto-form *u.tane from PIE *ud-on-eh r Its *u was never lengthened to *a, because this process only affected the monosyllabic (proto-)allative *u.d > PGm. * iit. The pan-Germanic locative *utai must be secondary because of the same principle. I assume that it was created on the basis of the allative *at. So, as opposed to the *uppai and *innai, which are probably primary from *u.p-noi and *h 1en-noi, there is no Germanic evidence of a locative **u.ttai 10 from *u.d-noi. It is possible, however, that OCS Vhrte 'outside' continues just this form. The suffix *-noi further seems to be found in Lith. pernai 'last year' < *perH-noi. 11 The fact that the allative *at seems to be primary in the case of'out' raises the question whether the allatives *inn and *u.pp are primary as well. There is, of cou...