1. Introduction Assibilation of k and g is an effect which strikingly distinguishes Frisian from its Dutch and Low German surroundings. Frisian shares this assibilation with English in many cases, but the process seems to have been different. In
this study I try to explain the effect in Frisian by
hypercorrect influence from a possible substrate
language. The 'late' assibilation in West Frisian since
about 1450 is left out of consideration here. 2.
Assibilation Assibilation
of palatal k and g in Frisian was already
profoundly investigated by Theodor Siebs (1886, 1901:
1290-1302). He stated (1886: 8) that the compound k +
î is impossible without an ç-like transition
sound (ich-Laut). In pronouncing k, the
tongue is already moving towards the situation at î,
where the tip of the tongue lays against the palate.
Consequently the resulting sound is a palatal stop,
hardly discernable from a dental stop t, followed
by a voiceless uvular fricative ç. This sound is
still approached in West Frisian words like tsjerke
'church' (Dutch kerk) and tsiis 'cheese'
(Dutch kaas), where ç has evolved to sj
or s respectively. Apart from k in
initial position also medial k may be assibilated,
like in West Frisian brutsen 'broken'. For
palatal g, assibilation should yield the voiced
counterpart, viz. a dental stop d, followed by a
voiced uvular fricative £, which might evolve to zj
or z. Where assibilation can only be expected in
case of a stop, it did not occur to initial palatal g,
which had become a velar fricative (, often evolving
to a glide j, like in Old Frisian jeva
'give'. The same usually occurred in medial and final
position (West Frisian neil, dei 'nail, day'
compared to Dutch nagel, dag). A stop, however,
must have been preserved in the combinations ng
and gg, because here assibilation appears: West
Frisian finzen 'captured', sizze 'say', widze
'cradle', compared to Dutch gevangen, zeggen, wieg. Siebs
deals with all example words he found in Old Frisian as
well as in modern dialects, where he is able to attribute
the great variation in spelling (like sth, sx, sz, ts,
tsz, tz, z for assibilated k and ds, dsz,
dz, s, schz, sz, z for assibilated g) to
different development of the composing elements of the
assibilation result, as also partly found in modern
dialects (for k initially West Frisian ts, tsj,
tj, East and North Frisian s, I, medially only
West and East Frisian ts; for g medially
West and East Frisian dz, z and perhaps North
Frisian d). On the basis of written forms of
names, he concludes (1886:47) that assibilation of k
and g in front of palatal vowels e and i
did at the earliest occur in the 13th century, especially
because assibilation proceeded in some younger dialects.
Later on, however, he puts the beginning of assibilation
back to a very early period, distinguishing a younger
assibilation (meitsje < makia) in West Frisian
(1901: 1290, 1294f.). For
a long time assibilation played a role in the discussion
about the question whether there has existed an
Anglo-Frisian language community. Recently Stiles (1995:
195f.) listed two arguments against assibilation as a
common development, namely (1)
assibilation must have taken place after the
diversion of old au, resulting in Old English ceapian
'to buy' with assibilation of initial k,
against Old Frisian kapia without it. (2)
Frisian shows assibilation of k in front of
palatal vowels only, whereas Old English also shows it
behind them, resulting in cirice 'church' beside
Old Frisian tser(e)ke. In
a reaction to (1), Fulk (1998: 146ff.) recalled that
palatalization and assibilation are separate sound
changes, because when the palatal factor disappears a
palatal stop reverts to velarity as long as it is not
affricated. As
to the difference in assibilation in medial position (2),
he supposes that the attested differences arose merely
from different methods by which the resulting paradigm
irregularities were resolved rather than by a difference
in the affrication process proper. This
discussion not yet seeming to be decided, assibilation is
primarily treated in the following as an effect in
Frisian alone. Efforts will be directed to find a
mechanism which explains how assibilation of palatal k
and g occurred in Frisian, where it did not in the
rest of continental West Germanic. Connecting it to
a Celtic substrate, as Schrijver (1999) did recently for
the North Sea Germanic vocalism, seems impossible here,
because Celtic does not show assibilation (cf. Lewis et
al. 40-43, 27-34). A solution is found in considering
that a substrate may influence a new language also in a
hypercorrect manner. Hypercorrection
generally indicates exaggerated pronunciation for social
reasons. In fact the speaker is so anxious to avoid
incorrect utterances that he applies correct rules in a
faulty way. About forty years ago Labov (1966) discovered
that this may lead to language change in that the faulty
application becomes a new standard. For the speaker eager
to gain prestige, this is usually a counterproductive
behaviour which could be solved with some education. There
is, however, another kind of hypercorrection, which is
compulsory for many people who learn a new language. This
is because they are unable to discern some phonemes of
the new language. A known example is Dutch uu [y],
which is never mastered by the majority of foreigners,
who then mostly escape to [u] or [i]. On the other hand,
English [ð] and [›] are unknown in Dutch, resulting
in frequent learners' utterings like dis, zis
'this', ting, sing 'thing'. The
same occurs with loanwords, like English goal,
which penetrated Dutch as a sport-term perhaps already at
the end of the 19th century. Dutch does not have the
voiced stop [g], which is therefore usually replaced by
its 'normal' i.e. its etymological representative, the
voiceless fricative [x], resulting in a pronunciation
[xo.ul]. There appear, however, also variants with
initial [k], as documented by kool (de Coster
1992). Some examples of this effect also appear in Dutch
dialects, according to Weijnen 1996: kaskon
< French Gascon 87 karwei
< German (Ein)geweide 87 keukele
< German gaukeln 92 It
should be clear that neither of the solutions ([x] or
[k]) is correct, but without mastering [g] the Dutch
speaker was forced to choose between them. In the
following I will call the case of the more exaggerated
forms like [k] 'supercorrection', in order to distinguish
it from the non-compulsory hypercorrection. Accordingly
the 'normal' forms ([x] etc.) can be labelled
'subcorrection'. It must be noted that the choice between
these two forms might be influenced by sociolinguistic
factors: the higher the status of the foreign language,
the earlier one would expect supercorrection instead of
subcorrection. Now
which is the Germanic sound that
"proto-Frisians" were unable to repeat? A
candidate may be aspiration of stops, because the
position of the tongue during the pronunciation of a
palatal stop, as described above, is precisely the
position arising at strong aspiration. We therefore will
treat aspiration in West Germanic in the following
paragraph. A
case of supercorrection remarkable in this framework is
reported by W. de Vries (1942: 79), who told that in
coming back to the city of Groningen in 1896, he found
some younger people had started to aspirate stops: kat
'cat' became khath
and even khats.
In the last form s is clearly a supercorrect
representative of aspiration! Today
Germanic languages like English and German and also the
eastern dialects of the Netherlands have strongly
aspirated stops. This can even make a t from
non-aspirated areas misunderstood as d. So indeed
a reason for supercorrection! About
the history of aspiration, not much seems to be known. As
usually not having phonemic status, it seems even today
being noticed only by researchers who know the
non-aspirated forms from other languages. So Löfstedt
(1931: 221-25) reports North Frisian p, t, k to be
aspirated in the initial position, but not medially. In a
local Low German dialect in East Frisia, Remmers
(1997:83ff.) finds p, t, k strongly aspirated as a
single consonant in the initial position of an accented
syllable. In my own experience, West Frisian is never
aspirated, and in Sater Frisian only occasionally some
speakers aspirate. From the province of Groningen I heard
persons from high and low social levels applying strong
aspiration. In
contrast to Romance lenition of consonants, Bichakjian
(1980: 213) sees in West Germanic a trend of what he
calls 'fortition' (hardening), starting with the
gemination of stops succeeding from glides and ending in
the High German sound shift. From this, one is tempted to
date today’s relatively strong aspiration in parts
of West Germanic back to the days of the Germanic
conquests. A
possible test could be in the way the relevant consonants
are adopted in early loanwords, because when stops in
West Germanic were strongly aspirated at that time, one
could expect West Germanic voiced stops to be borrowed as
voiceless stops in Romance and Celtic. Indeed Gothalania
became Romance Catalunya [Catalonia], but a list
of loanwords failed to produce further examples[1]. Also
Celtic really does not show initial k (often
written c) from Old English g[2]. On the other hand
one would expect voiceless stops from Celtic and Romance
to be borrowed as voiced stops in Germanic. The few
examples of Celtic loanwords in English, however, show
voiced stops in Celtic too[3]. Also loanwords from Latin
generally yield corresponding consonants in Germanic
(Kluge 1913: 26). Sometimes, however, words with initial t,
p were borrowed in Germanic with initial d, b,
such as Dutch degel, deppen, boegseren, bolder and
some placenames like Doornik, Demer[4]. So it seems that
pre-Germanic p and t were not always
identified as Germanic p and t. This
suggests variable pronunciation in the substrate, which
leads to the following paragraph. The
important factor seems to be that voicing of stops
alternated in the substrate language. "Alternate
voicing" due to sandhi is wide-spread and even
appears in Germanic languages[5].
In the context of this article it is important to realize
that the phenomenon does not always appear simultaneously
and in the same way in different languages. This means
that an assibilation process as outlined above could have
been caused by a great variety of substrate languages. At
this stage we will stick to the best documented of the
possible candidates for the substrate of Frisian, which
is Celtic[6]. Both Celtic branches[7] show lenition (soft
mutation) of the consonant originally in intervocalic
position, but develop it in a very different way (Lewis et
al. 127-47). Because of the geographic situation,
however, we only need to consider P-Celtic here. It is generally agreed that sandhi caused Celtic mutation (Ball et al. 55), but scholars still hesitate on whether it had already occurred in continental Celtic, although Gaulish shows some indications of it (Lambert 47f). Where so little is known about mutation in Gaulish and where we have no clear indication yet as to whether the proto-Frisian substrate should have been nearest either to Gaulish or to insular Celtic[8], we may turn to the latter for more information. In modern Celtic, lenition is applied according to syntactic rules (Lewis et al. 130-47). Initial lenition, however, has caused many analogical forms (Lewis et al. 129f). So in spoken Welsh sometimes borrowed words are lenited or, the opposite, the borrowed initial is taken as a lenited form. Occasionally even radical forms are interchanged when they have the same lenited form, like Welsh men for historically correct ben, Gaulish benna 'waggon'. In Welsh soft mutation
makes initial p, t, k, g to b, d, g, Ø[9].
Thus 'a dog' is Welsh ci, but 'his dog' becomes ei
gi e. In the same way ardd is
the lenited form of gardd 'garden'. Although not
denoted in older literary periods, this lenition is
assumed to be old, for some traces already appear in Old
Irish (Lewis et al. 127). When such mutation
processes also existed in the proto-Frisian substrate,
then its speakers will often have pronounced [g] instead
of [k] or zero instead of [g] in trying to copy
the language of the Germanic conquerors, but unconciously
maintaining their own rules as to sandhi, etc. The
resulting misunderstanding then easily could have
given way to a supercorrect reaction like [k'] > [tI]
or [g'] > [d£]. It
is striking that assibilation in Frisian did not affect t
and p like it did in High German[10]. The most important reason
in the case of t might be that its assibilation
product [ts] would be quite similar to [tI], the product
of k. Likewise [pf], the product of p,
would be quite similar to f (although the last
named objection did not prevent assibilation of p to
arise in High German). Also the assibilation product of
k is further away from its original form than those
of t and p which therefore could more
easily revert to simple stops. In addition to that, words
with initial [k] are much more numerous in Celtic than
those with p and t each[11], which will have made
lenition of initial k the most frequent mutation
phenomenon and therefore the most difficult habit to get
out of. That would have lead to problems with the West
Germanic superstrate, where initial k also was
abundant[12]. In
case of g the effect of mutation, which makes it
zero, seems to be shocking enough in itself to trigger
supercorrection. As
for the process of assibilation, it could be supposed
that within the already Germanized field pockets of the
substrate language may have existed during a long time
after the Germanic conquest, as is reported for the High
German area[13]. From such pockets,
successive waves of supercorrection might have been
issued, which could present an alternative explanation
for the varying realization of assibilation in the modern
Frisian dialects. In this respect it has to be
considered, that each supercorrect form will have been
pushed strongly by having a higher social status than the
alternative - the subcorrect form. At
this stage one has to return to the contribution of
vowels. Tradionally the driving force of assibilation was
sought in a pure phonetic mechanism in front of palatal
vowels, as clearly expressed by Siebs (par. 2). But
neighbouring languages do not show assibilation at that
position. So there should have been another factor, and
as discussed above, supercorrection could account for
that. Apparently the process of assibilation was hampered
by following back vowels, which seems obvious from an
articulation point of view. 6.
Conclusion Hypercorrection
contains a component not due to sociolinguistic processes
but to the incapability of a person to copy the exact
sounds of a foreign language. When this problem is solved
by exaggerating the foreign pronunciation, the process is
called 'supercorrection' here. In the other way when the
pronunciation of the new language is adapted to the
pronunciation of the substrate language, it is called
'subcorrection'. This
approach is applied to explain assibilation of k and
g in Frisian as supercorrection of strongly aspirated
stops in the Germanic superstrate by speakers of a
substrate language which is supposed to show variable
pronunciation of stops. This is elaborated for the case
that the substrate would have been Celtic, which is known
to show variable voicing of stops due to soft mutation
(lenition).
P.
Kramer, E-mail:
pytkramer@hotmail.com Ball,
Martin J., Nicole Muller. 1992. Mutation in Welsh.
New York: Routledge. Bichakjian, Bernard. 1980. 'La lénition
Romane et l'hypothèse d'une lénition Hollandaise', in
Joep Kruijsen (ed), Liber amicorum Weijnen. Assen:
Van Gorcum, 210-19. Bourciez,
Edouard. 19464. Éléments de linguistique
Romane. Paris: Klincksieck. de
Coster, Marc. 1992. Woordenboek van jargon en slang. Amsterdam:
Bert Bakker. Cymraeg
i ddysgwyr, Welsh for learners. 19882.
Merthyr Tudful: Foxgate. Fulk,
Robert D. 1998. 'The Chronology of Anglo-Frisian Sound
Changes' in Rolf H. Bremmer Gildemacher,
Karel F. 2001. 'West Frisian Place-Names' in Horst Haider
Munske (ed), Gysseling,
M. 1970. 'De vroegste geschiedenis van het Nederlands:
een naamkundige Kluge,
Friedrich. 1913. 'Urgermanisch, Vorgeschichte der
altgermanischen Dialekte' in Kuhn,
H. 1959. 'Vor- und frühgermanische Ortsnamen in
Norddeutschland und den Kuhn,
H. 1968. 'Die ältesten Namenschichten Frieslands', Philologia
Frisica 1966, 20-29. Labov,
William. 1966. 'Hypercorrection by the lower middle class
as a factor in linguistic Lambert,
Pierre-Yves. 20032. La langue Gauloise.
Paris: Errance. Lewis,
Henry, Holger Pedersen. 19894. A concise
comparative Celtic grammar, Göttingen: Löfstedt,
Ernst. 1931. Nordfriesische Dialektstudien. Lunds
Universitets Årsskrift, n.f. avd. 1, MacBain,
Alexander. 19112 /1982. An Etymological
Dictionary of the Gaelic Language. Remmers,
A. 1997. Plattdeutsch in Ostfriesland. Die Mundart von
Moormerland- Schrijver,
Peter. 1999. 'The Celtic Contribution to the Development
of the North Sea Siebs,
Theodor. 1886. Die Assibilirung der friesischen
Palatalen. Tübingen: Franz Fues. Siebs,
Theodor. 1901. 'Geschichte der friesischen Sprache' in
Hermann Paul (ed): Grundriß Stiles,
Patrick V. 1995. 'Remarks on the
"Anglo-Frisian" Thesis' in Volkert Faltings
et al. Tiersma,
Pieter Meijes. 1999. Frisian Reference Grammar. Ljouwert:
Fryske Akademy. de
Vries, Jan. 19923. Nederlands etymologisch
woordenboek. Leiden: E.J. Brill. de
Vries, W. 1942. 'Iets over de verbreidheid en herkomst
van het Fries en Enige opmerkingen Weijnen,
A.A. 1996. Etymologisch dialectwoordenboek. Assen:
Van Gorcum. Weijnen,
A. 1958. 'Praegermaanse elementen van de Nederlandse
toponiemen en Wendt,
Heinz F. (ed). 1961. Das Fischer Lexikon: Sprachen, Frankfurt
am Main: Fischer
ASHYP5.WPD [1] Bourciez 140 and 191-194 respectively. Some
examples, however, could have become invisible due to the
West Romance lenition, as we see even Germanic words on
initial k appearing with Romance g. [2] Compared to many
examples with initial g in MacBain. [3]
From the Celtic loanwords* to be considered, only bard
and glen could be expected to have been borrowed
rather early in a direct way. *The
Columbia Encyclopaedia, Sixth Edition. 2001, sub
Celtic languages. [4]
de Vries 1992:109, 111, 69, 74. Already Weijnen (1958:8,
also about both place-names) proposed a less clear
pronunciation of t in the 'Belgic' substrate as
possible case of transition to d. Here 'Belgic'
denotes the hypothetic language of the pre-Germanic
place-names found in the southern Netherlands (cf.
Gysseling 1970:157). [5] So West Frisian dy
[di] becomes [ti] in op dy 'on that' and se
[sc] becomes [zc] in wie se 'was she' (Tiersma
24f). [6] Weijnen sees Celtic name
elements as far north as Lüneburg (1958:20) and Drente
(p. 30). Especially tempting in our case is his
explanation (p. 24) of the old name Uxalia for the
island of Terschelling from Celtic Uxanthos 'high'
(Welsh uchel). For this and two other indications
of a Celtic element in Frisia, cf. Schrijver 1999: 10f. On
the other hand Kuhn (1959:7) finds in the Dutch and
Northwest German inland quite a number of what he
considers to be pre-Germanic placenames with initial
Indo-European p, which was lost in Celtic (cf.
Lewis et al. 26). Among them even the West Frisian
river-name Peasens (Kuhn 1968:22, cf. Gildemacher
167). Such a name, however, could have been copied from a
pre-Celtic substrate. [7] Celtic consists of two
branches, called P-Celtic (Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and
somewhat distant continental Gaulish) and Q-Celtic
(Irish, Manx, Scottish) according to the representation
of Indo-European ku (Lambert
16-18, cf. Lewis et al. 43-45). [8] Based on historic evidence, however, Schrijver (1999: 9, 11) concludes that for West Flanders and Zealand the presence of British Celtic speakers is probable. [9] Cymraeg i ddysgwyr
1988:8f. The
complete scheme of soft mutation in Welsh is as follows
(radical forms on top):
Here
Ø denotes the total disappearance of g. [10]
In the line of arguing of this paper the differing result
in High German might be related to another substrate,
viz. West Romance. In that language group initial k
was assibilated in front of palatal vowels (e.g. French cerf
, Rhaeto-Romance tšerf 'deer') since
the imperial era (Bourciez 161). So
at the time of the Germanic conquest of southern Germany,
the substrate language will have pronounced initial k already
very sharply, causing no need to assibilate it in the
(Old High German) superstrate language. Pronunciations
like [kxind] for High German Kind 'child' in the
extreme south-west (Wendt 102) might even be considered
adaptations to the substrate (subcorrection also).
Assibilation did appear, however, in medial and final k:
machen 'make', Buch 'book', according to the
fact that k was not assibilated in those positions
in West Romance. Strikingly the product is a velar glide
[x] here. In
the same era, however, West Romance shows lenition
('affaiblissement') of voiceless stops in medial position
(Bourciez 166), which originally might have been a
sandhi-effect too. In that way it could have induced
assibilation of that other stops, yielding forms like
High German Pfund 'pound', zehn [tse:n]
'ten', sitzen ‘sit’, Schiff
‘ship’. [11] Counting in MacBain's etymological dictionary yields 6.2, 3.0, and 1.7 pages for words with initial C ([k]), P, and T respectively. A dictionary of modern Welsh, also counting compositions, yields a still larger difference for C and T. [12] At this stage it should be mentioned that a unique situation exists in Dutch and Low German, where assibilation of stops seems to be nearly absent. In the present approach, this could mean that only subcorrection is applied, which might point to a differing sociological relation between speakers of the successive languages. A
possible reason for that could be that in heading for the
rich coast, the Rhineland and the south the Germanic
conquerors left unattended the poor inland, from where
later on Dutch and Low German sprouted. Interestingly,
this is precisely the "Northwest Block" where
Kuhn (1959) claims a high density of substrate
place-names. [13]
A Romance population still existed in the 7th century in
Bregenz and Arbon, so around Lake Constance. In the 8th
century, groups of Romani are mentioned as serfs
in the district of Salzburg. (Bourciez 135). |
A Celtic scholar had the kindness to review this paper thoroughly. The review shows that today's knowledge of Celtic cannot sufficiently explain the relevant part of my theory. Where I have still so much work to do on Saterfrisian, I don't think it wise to invest much more time on other languages. So I leave here the material and the connections as I
see them from the Frisian side, taking the liberty to
present the conclusion paragraph of the review below. The idea itself that a process of hypercorrection induced by language contact may be the cause for Frisian assibilation is not implausible at all, but, at this stage, and given our knowledge of P-Celtic, it does seem implausible to see the contact language as some variety of P-Celtic. Yet, it is still worth pursuing this hypercorrection hypothesis and it still may be possible to salvage it with reference to some other contact language (possibly a form of Romance, e.g. Vulgar Latin?). |