11 search hits
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Winter's law again
(2007)
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Frederik H. H. Kortlandt
- Since I discussed the scholarly literature on Winter’s law twenty years ago (1988), several important articles on the subject have appeared (Young 1990, Campanile 1994, Matasovic 1995, Derksen 2002, Dybo 2002, Patri 2005, Derksen 2007). As the law evidently continues to be controversial, it is important to look into the nature of the evidence and counter-evidence which is adduced. It appears that doubts about Winter’s law are largely the result of four types of misunderstanding.
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Gothic gen.pl. -e
(2007)
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Frederik H. H. Kortlandt
- Don Ringe has recently published an article on the Gothic gen. pl. ending -e (2006) which is as peculiar for the author’s self-confidence as it is illustrative of the lack of knowledge in some quarters of the Indo-Europeanist scholarly community.
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Accent retraction and tonogenesis
(2007)
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Frederik H. H. Kortlandt
- Like its predecessor in Zagreb, the conference on Balto-Slavic accentology in Copenhagen was a great success. The enthusiasm of the organizers Adam Hyllested and Thomas Olander proved highly effective in stimulating discussion among the participants. While in Zagreb most papers dealt with Slavic data, in Copenhagen the emphasis was on Balto-Slavic problems.
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On the relative chronology of Slavic accentual developments
(2007)
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Frederik H. H. Kortlandt
- Last year Georg Holzer proposed a relative chronology of accentual developments in Slavic (2005). Here I shall compare his chronology with the one I put forward earlier (1975, 1989a, 2003) and discuss the differences. For the sake of convenience, I first reproduce the relevant parts of my chronology, omitting asterisks before pre-historic Slavic forms. 1. Proto-Indo-European. 2. Dialectal Indo-European. 3. Early Balto-Slavic. During this period the characteristic lateral mobility of Balto-Slavic accent patterns came into existence. 4. Late Balto-Slavic. During this period the Balto-Slavic accent patterns obtained their final shape.
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Indo-Uralic consonant gradation
(2007)
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Frederik H. H. Kortlandt
- Koivulehto and Vennemann have recently (1996) revived Posti’s theory (1953) which attributed Finnic consonant gradation to Germanic influence, in particular to the influence of Verner’s law. This theory disregards the major differences between Finnic and Saami gradation (cf. Sammallahti 1998: 3) and ignores the similar gradation in Nganasan and Selkup (cf. Kallio 2000: 92).
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Nivkh as a Uralo-Siberian language
(2007)
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Frederik H. H. Kortlandt
- In his magnificent book on the language relations across Bering Strait (1998), Michael Fortescue does not consider Nivkh (Gilyak) to be a Uralo-Siberian language. Elsewhere I have argued that the Indo-European verbal system can be understood in terms of its Indo-Uralic origins (2001). All of these languages belong to Joseph Greenberg’s Eurasiatic macro-family (2000). In the following I intend to reconsider the grammatical evidence for including Nivkh into the Uralo-Siberian language family. The Indo-Uralic evidence is of particular importance because it guarantees a time depth which cannot otherwise be attained.
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Japanese aru, iru, oru 'to be' : [oru ist bin aru]
(2007)
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Frederik H. H. Kortlandt
- Among the Japanese expressions for 'to be', the verbs aru (unmarked), iru (animate subject) and oru (humble variant of iru) are of special interest (cf. Martin 1975: 194f. for a descriptive account). We may look for cognates of these verbs in the (other) Altaic languages.
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The Proto-Germanic pluperfect
(2007)
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Frederik H. H. Kortlandt
- The Germanic perfect presents (Präteritopräsentien) form a past tense by adding the endings of the weak preterit to the stem of the past participle, e.g. Go. wissa ‘knew’. This is a recent formation (cf. Kortlandt 1989). We may therefore ask ourselves if we can reconstruct the earlier formation which was ousted by the weak preterit. We may also try to recover the motivation for the replacement.
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The Germanic weak preterit
(2007)
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Frederik H. H. Kortlandt
- The main difficulty with the Germanic weak preterit is that one cannot endeavor an explanation of its origin without taking into account almost every aspect of the historical phonology and morphology of the Germanic languages. In the following I intend to show how a number of problems receive a natural explanation in a unified treatment on the basis of earlier studies. The theory presented here is not revolutionary, but aims at integrating earlier findings into a coherent whole. There is no reason to give a detailed account of the scholarly literature, which is easily accessible (cf. Tops 1974, Bammesberger 1986).
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The accentuation of neuter nouns in Slovene and West Bulgarian
(2007)
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Frederik H. H. Kortlandt
- The Slovene neo-circumflex is our major source of information for the reconstruction of Proto-Slavic long vowels in posttonic syllables (cf. Kortlandt 1976).
