Analogy, Levelling, Markedness

Analogy, Levelling, Markedness
W
DE
G
Trends in Linguistics
Studies and Monographs 127
Editor
Werner Winter
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Analogy, Levelling, Markedness
Principles of Change in Phonology
and Morphology
edited by
Aditi Lahiri
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin - New York 2000
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines

of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
Analogy, levelling, markedness : principles of change in pho-

nology and morphology / ed. by Aditi Lahiri. - Berlin ; New
York : Mouton de Gruyter, 2000
(Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 127)
ISBN 3-11-016750-6
© Copyright 2000 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this
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out permission in writing from the publisher.
Printing & Binding: Hubert & Co, Göttingen.
Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin.
Printed in Germany.
In acknowledgement of his past and continuing
achievement and inspiration—
To one of the contributors, the others
would like to dedicate this book:
Paul Kiparsky
Contents
Introduction l
Aditi Lahiri
Analogy as optimization: 'exceptions' to Sievers' Law in Gothic 15

Paul Kiparsky
Analogical levelling of vowel length in West Germanic 47

B. Elan Dresher
Hierarchical restructuring in the creation of verbal morphology

in Bengali and Germanic: Evidence from phonology 71
Aditi Lahiri
Constraints on schwa apocope in Middle High German 125

Renate Raffelsiefen
Morphological re-activation and phonological alternations:

Evidence for voiceless restructuring in German 171
Frans Plank
Inflectional system and markedness 193

Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel
On the origin and development of the Central Franconian tone

contrast 215
Carlos Gussenhoven
The origin of Danish st0d 261

Tomas Riad
Prosodic variation in 'Lutgart' 301

Paula Fikkert
viii Contents
The revenge of the uneven trochee: Latin main stress, metrical

constituency, stress-related phenomena and OT 333
Haike Jacobs
On the (non-)existence of High Vowel Deletion 353

Richard M. Hogg
Index of subjects 377
Index of names 382
Index of languages 384

Introduction
Aditi Lahiri
Although the notion "analogy" has been around for several centuries,
different disciplines and different schools of thought have assigned
disparate interpretations to the term.
The literature on this theme is vast and controversial. The term
"markedness" is less used as a scientific notion in disciplines other than
linguistics. Nevertheless, the expression is equally open to dispute.
Since this book is on analogy and markedness in language change, I
will indulge in referring to a few of the usages of these terms with
illustrative quotes from the literature in past times.1
In mathematics, the term "analogy" expresses a similarity in relation-
ships which are proportional (coming from Greek ana logon, 'according
to a ratio'). In Aristotle's usage, the analogy concerning the distances
a, b, c, d in (1) can be stated as follows: as a is to b, so is c to d.
(i)
If distance d is unknown, but its relation to c is known to be similar to

that in which known distances a and b stand, then it can be calculated
on the basis of the equation of proportions a:b = c:x, χ = b*c/a. Among
the numerous references to proportions in the literature, here are a few
illustrative ones:2
1557 Recorde Whetst. C ij, If any one proportion be continued

in more then 2 nombers, there maie be then a conference also of
2 Aditi Lahiri
these proportions..that conference or comparison is named

Analogie.
1660 Barrow Euclid v. def. 4 That which is here termed Propor-
tion is more rightly called Proportionality or Analogy.
1742 Bailey, Analogy [in the Mathematicks] the Comparison of
several Ratio's of Quantities or Numbers one to another.
Another form of analogy noted by the Greeks is that of inferring

similarity of function, where the relationship is expressed as follows:
as a is in b, so c is in d. Plato employed a functional analogy when
he argued that the Idea of the Good makes knowledge possible in
the intelligible world just as the Sun makes Vision possible in the
perceptual world. Here a relationship not yet understood is analogous
to one already familiar. Extending this notion, acceptance of the
analogy "Knowledge is to the mind, what light is to the eye" makes
light, or enlightenment, or illumination, an analogical word for know-
ledge.
In logic and philosophy the notion of inference is predominant in
any use of analogy. The term is used in reference to the process of
reasoning from parallel cases and presumptive reasoning based upon
the assumption that if things have some similar attributes, their other
attributes will be similar. The first Encyclopedia Britannica (1771)
stated that "A great part of our philosophy has no other foundation than
analogy, the utility of which consists in superseding all necessity of
examining minutely every particular body; for it suffices us to know
that every thing is governed by general and immutable laws, in order
to regulate our conduct with regard to all similar bodies, as we may
reasonably believe that they are endowed with the same propertie"
(p. 142). Towards understanding whether inferences by analogy can
arguably be a form of inductive reasoning, the following three quotes
from the OED are instructive:
1774 Goldsm. Nat. Hist. 1.143 Some philosophers have perceived

so much analogy to man in the formation of the ocean, that they
have not hesitated to assert its being made for him alone.
1843 Mill Logic iii. xx. § 1 The word Analogy as the name of a
mode of reasoning is generally taken for some kind of argument
Introduction 3
supposed to be of an inductive nature but not amounting to a

complete induction.
1875 Stubbs Const. Hist. L i . 11 Analogy, however, is not proof,
but illustration.
The message is that the adequacy of such analogies depends on whether

any verifiable consequences can be deduced from them. And this is
contingent on the resemblance being of a fundamental kind rather than
merely of a superficial kind.
In Natural History the term analogy is used productively to indicate
resemblance of form or function between organs which are essentially
different (in different species) and have different origins. Thus, one can
express the analogy of a common function between the tail of a fish and
that of the whale, the wing of a bat and that of a bird, the tendril of the
pea and that of the vine. The presence of the analogous structure (the
tail, the wing or the tendril) does not reflect evolutionary closeness
among the organisms that possess it. The following quotes illustrate this
form of analogy:
1857 Berkeley Cryptog. Bot. §25 We understand by analogy those

cases in which organs have identity of function, but not identity
of essence or origin.
1854 Woodward Man. Mollusca 55 Resemblances of form and
habits without agreement of structure..are termed relations of.,
analogy.
1814 Sir H. Davy Agric. Chem. 62 Linnaeus, whose lively imagi-
nation was continually employed in endeavours to discover analo-
gies between the animal and vegetable systems, conceived 'that
the pith performed for the plant the same functions as the brain
and nerves in animated beings.'
In all these disciplines, scholars employing the method of analogy are

aware that it should always be possible to show that the resemblances
noted bear relevantly on the point to be established, whereas the differ-
ences are irrelevant. In many cases it is difficult to be sure of this
distinction, and arguments from analogy are therefore precarious unless
supported by considerations that can be established independently. This
4 Aditi Lahiri
concern is reflected throughout the history of the use of analogy. For

instance, the use of analogy was widespread in early Greek speculative
thought, particularly in drawing conclusions about meteorological and
astronomical phenomena (Lloyd 1966). However, though Plato, and
even more so Aristotle, were more cautious than their predecessors in
their actual use of analogy in natural science, it remained an indis-
pensible method in elucidating obscure phenomena in many areas. The
application of analogy in language has encountered similar levels of
support as well as censure.
The term analogy in its use in language has not always had the same
relevance. The eighteenth-century Encyclopaedia Britannica states that
"Analogy among grammarians is the correspondence which a word or
phrase bears to the genius and received forms of any language" (p. 142).
This reflects the thought of ancient Western grammarians like Aristar-
chus and Varro who used the notion of proportional analogy to establish
paradigms. The grammarians classified nouns and verbs according to
similarities and differences in inflection, and the regularities they
showed were interpreted as complexes of mathematical proportions and
hence analogy. However, soon the term came to be used synonymously
with inflectional regularity. Any exception to the orderliness of para-
digms and all irregularities were explained by empirical rules. This
attitude is reflected also in the quotes below.
1659 B. Walton Consid. Considered 264 There [is]..a particular

Grammar analogy in each particular tongue, before it be reduced
into rules.
1706 Phillips, Analogy..in Grammar, the Declining of a Noun, or
Conjugating of a Verb, according to its Rule or Standard.
Thus analogy referred to paradigmatic regularities of language, but not

as an associative systematising process in language change. This latter
view arose in the late nineteenth century, when the Junggrammatiker
or neogrammarians took recourse to analogy not as before to explain
regularities, but to account for the apparent irregularities which arose
in contrast to regular sound laws. Even before the advent of the
neogrammarians, scholars like Whitney, Curtius, Scherer, Schleicher
recognised analogy, not as an explanation for exceptions but as a uni-
Introduction 5
versal linguistic process. Whitney (1867), in speaking of children's

extension of the plural -s and past tense -d, describes them as "extension
of prevailing analogies beyond their historically correct limits", an
analogy refered to a whole class of forms. In the earliest statements of
the position of the Junggrammatiker, Leskien (1876), Brugmann (1876),
and Osthoff and Brugmann (1878) established that (i) sound change
operates due to mechanical laws and does not permit exceptions, and
(ii) new forms are created through analogy. Here analogy refers to the
process by which new inflectional forms replace existing forms, and
in that sense it is "false analogy" seen from the traditional grammarian's
approach. "False" because analogy refers to the regular paradigm, and
analogical formation is an extension to form an "incorrect" form. How-
ever, as Brugmann and Paul insisted, the preferred term was "associa-
tive formations" since the analogical formations were directly linked
to psychologically associated words. In addition, analogy is explicitely
placed in opposition to "regular" sound change; i.e. analogical forma-
tions are not the result of sound change. And this started the analogy
controversy which continues till this day.
Hermann Paul's stance on analogy was explicitely discussed in the
fifth chapter of the Prinzipien. For him, analogy was not just a notion
relevant for language change but was present all the time. According
to him, words related in any way—phonologically, morphologically or
semantically—fall into associated groups in the minds of speakers.
Associated groups could be different nouns occurring in the same case,
or different cases of the same noun, or different nouns of the same
gender, and so on. Not only single words but analogous proportions
between different words tend to coalesce into groups as in (2).
(2) Analogous proportions in German nouns

Tag : Tages : Tage = 'day'
Arm : Armes : Arme = 'arm'
Fisch : Fisches : Fische = 'fish'
For Paul, speakers did not learn every single form in a declension or
conjugational class. In the process of mastering one's language, a
number of connected examples which associate themselves into groups
are learnt. Based on these associations, the speaker creates new forms.
6 Aditi Lahiri
Thus given the proportion Tag:Tage=Arm:x, is given a value and a

new form is created, viz. Arme. Note that in Paul's view analogical
formation or analogical association in the mind of the speaker is not
another way of saying that a set of rules has been learned. To say that,
Paul would have to assume that Tage is made up of the morphemes
{Tag} and {e}, and {e} would have a similar status to that of {Tag}.
This is not the level of abstraction Paul had in mind; to him words were
learnt as free forms, each individually, Tag and Tage.
Now the question arises as to what role analogy plays in change.
If a word fell into more than one associate group, then there was a
possibility of two analogical creations. For instance, the neuter word
Wort has the plural Wörter and Worte. In Old High German, due to
the deletion of final high vowels after heavy syllables, the nominative
plural ending -u did not surface, and the singular and plural nominative
forms were identical: Land-Land 'country-countries'. In late Middle
High German, many words of this class added a schwa in the plural
(Lande) like the masculines of this class (Tage), and even later added
the ending of the weak neuters -"er as in Länder (cf. Wurzel, this
volume). In Paul's view, Land fell into two associative classes:
Tag:Tage=Land:x and Lamb:Lember'-Land:y. The analogical creations
were Lande and Länder, both of which are in use with different mean-
ings. Clearly what proportions are established and what associative
group(s) a word falls into are crucial for new creations. The problem,
of course, lies in defining the precise nature of the relationships within
the proportions. Could any proportion be set up? Why do analogical
changes occur in some groups and not in others? Paul argued that there
must be "formal" (i.e. sharing grammatical properties as Tages and
Armes both sharing the genitive singular -es) and "material" (i.e.
sharing a single lexical value as in various forms of Tag) agreement
among the proportions. His contemporaries, neogrammarians and
structuralists, kept up their research on analogical change, and analogi-
cal proportions continued to flourish, but questions about the con-
straints on possible proportions continued to linger. Two examples will
illustrate this point.
Saussure (1916,1959) stated that analogy counterbalances the effect
of "phonetic transformations" and as an example cites the case of the
change from honös to honor in Latin. The proportion he had in mind
Introduction 1
was oratörem:orator = honorem:x, x=honor. But if the change was

based entirely on proportions but without further guiding principles
about setting up proportions, nothing would prevent the speaker from
forming an equation of the type honörem:honös=örätörem:x, solve
for x, thereby changing orator to örätös. Yet this type of analogical
change did not occur. Sapir cites the well attested example in Old
English of föt-fet 'foot'where the paradigm changed somewhat at a
later stage:
(3) Earlier Old Late Old English/

English early Middle English
SG.NOM/ACC föt föt
GEN fötes föt
DAT fet föte
PL.NOM/ACC fet fet
GEN föta fete
DAT fötum feten
According to Sapir, the dative singular changed by analogy to the

-stem nouns like döm 'judgement'.
(4) Paradigm of -nouns

SG.NOM/ACC döm
GEN domes
DAT dome
PL.NOM/ACC dömas
GEN döma
DAT dömum
The proportion he suggested was döm:döme =föt:x, x-föte. But propor-

tions on these lines provide no explanation for the change of the geni-
tive and dative plural. The change in the genitive plural föta to fete
could not have been achieved by forming a proportion with the mascu-
line -stem nouns like dömas (NOM.PL):döma (GEN.PL)=/<?J ( .
PL):*, since the nominative plurals do not agree. If, however, a propor-
tion is made this time with the neuter nouns like word, one obtains word
8 Aditi Lahiri
(NOM.PL):worda (GEN.PL)=/ef (ΝΟΜ.PL):*, x=/eia. Thus the associa-

tions and hence the proportions would have to be based on different sets
of nouns and are clearly unpredictable. This account also misses the
obvious generalisation that the analogy in this case was the levelling
of the stem vowel in the singular and e in the plural.
Concerns about which forms should constitute a proportion and what
kind of influence the forms may exert on each other were issues which
have preoccupied linguists ever since. One possible factor was that more
numerous forms played a role in forming proportions. But even here
there was disagreement. Sapir suggested that the more numerously
represented forms pressured the others to change. Saussure, on the other
hand, claimed that "the most numerous forms do not necessarily unleash
analogy" (p. 162). Kurytowicz and later Manczak attempted to provide
a set of guidelines which could govern the direction of analogical
change. For instance, Kurylowicz's fifth law states that in order to
reestablish a central contrast, the language abandons a marginal con-
trast. "Central" and "marginal" are not clearly defined, but one might
conclude that a central difference would be a difference in number and
a marginal contrast would be a difference in case. One of his examples
is as follows.
(5) Alternation in the 3MASC.DECLN. in Latin

SINGULAR PLURAL
NOM panis panes
ACC panem panes
In Iberian Romance, due to the merger of the front vowels to e and the
loss of final nasals the paradigm changed to:
(6) SINGULAR PLURAL

NOM panes panes
ACC pane panes
That is, as a result of normal sound change the number distinction in

the nominative was lost. Kurylowicz argues that the number distinction
was restored at the expense of the case distinction when the paradigm
changed to:
Introduction 9
(7) SINGULAR PLURAL

NOM pane panes
ACC pane panes
The relevant proportional equation was panes (&cc.PL):panes (NOM.PL)
-pane (ACC.so) :;c, x=pane. Kurylowicz's suggestion that certain gram-
matical distinctions are more important is related to the markedness of
certain forms. Note that the distinction in number in the accusative was
maintained at the earlier stage. Nevertheless, the final s in the nomina-
tive was deleted to reinstate the number contrast in the nominative,
making the nominative and accusative plural indistinguishable. And this
bring us to the second notion of the book, viz. markedness, another
concept which has been the focus of debate and controversy.
Developed in the Prague school for phonology, the notion of
markedness has been subsequently extended to all levels of linguistic
analysis. The terms "marked" and "unmarked" have often been related
to various levels of complexity. On the subject of markedness in pho-
nology, Chomsky and Halle (1968: 402) state: "Certain aspects of this
general problem can be dealt with if we incorporate the Praguian notion
of "marked" and "unmarked" values of features into our account in
some systematic way, and if we then revise the evaluation measure so
that unmarked values do not contribute to complexity". The problem
of course is what constitutes complexity. A trivial differentiation is the
overt marking of a grammatical function by an affix: the plural in
English is usually marked by a sibilant, the singular is not and hence
it is unmarked. Another use of the term is with reference to the general
versus the more specific. For instance, for the two plural variants of
German Land 'country', the form Lande is used in literary expressions
like durch die Lande ziehen 'to roam abroad', while Länder is the
general plural form as in durch viele Länder reisen 'to travel through
many countries'. Here, Lande is the more marked plural. A third and
equally common usage of markedness is in lexical distinctions like dog
and bitch. The latter refers to a particular sex and therefore more
marked. Finally, Kurylowicz's notion of central and marginal (or core
and peripheral) are also references to markedness, in this case
markedness of grammatical categories, moving away from the strict
surface proportions of the neogrammarians.
10 Aditi Lahiri
In the last thirty years, research on analogy and markedness has seen
many ups and downs. Kiparsky's seminal work on analogy and
markedness (1965,1968,1982a, 1988, this volume) unleashed an equal
amount of support and critique as did the neogrammarian proportions.
The interpretation of analogy as grammar simplification, as proposed
by Kiparsky, focuses not on surface analogy but on the phonological
system. The direction of analogical change is proposed to be governed
by the markedness of functional principles such as maximal utilisation
of rules, bleeding/feeding ordering, and opacity/transparency of rules.
Analogy in this context is not just surface analogy but change con-
strained by the phonological system. I think the most important distinc-
tion between this research and the neogrammarian position is not that
analogy was no longer only based on an equation of proportions, but
that "language change" was viewed as "grammar change", and hence
there was no longer a dramatic difference between sound change and
analogy like the neogrammarians, since both affect the grammar and
are constrained by the grammar. This interpretation was difficult to
understand for those who had long been influenced by the neo-
grammarian tradition. A quote from the psychologist Esper (1973: 190,
n. 58) is germane to this issue: "Kiparsky (1968) gets rid of analogy
by subsuming it under a concept of "simplification"; his treatment is
confusing in that he seems to make no distinction between analogy and
sound-change".4 Kiparsky's treatment of language change was not
confusing, but simply revolutionary. He did distinguish between sound-
change and analogy, though not in the same manner as the neogram-
marians. His treatment was merely drawing attention to the fact that
all forms of change have an effect on the grammar, which may have
confused those not used to conceiving of linguistic change as change
of grammars.
Research in the last three decades has continued to address these
issues, drawing attention to the fact that analogy is constrained by all
levels of grammar. Given the separation of phonetics and phonology,
and the various levels of interaction between morphology and phonol-
ogy (cf. Lexical Phonology, Kiparsky 1982b), various types of phenom-
ena could be subsumed under analogical change, including phonological
restructuring of stems and affixes, various types of reanalyses, and
generalisation of rules and constraints. Looking at phonological change
introduction 11
while being blind to the morphology, and vice versa, examining only
morphological change while ignoring phonological phenomena, had
caused tremendous problems in the past. Considering the grammar as
a whole has altered the approach to the study of change, and is reflected
in the research presented in this volume.
Issues of markedness and acquistion have continued to influence
argumentation in accounting for types of changes. In my own research,
as well, markedness has played a significant role in explaining certain
changes. Given that many changes appeared not to be straightforward
grammatical simplifications, Kiparsky (1977, 1978) was led to suggest
that this was because first, language learners are not exposed to the
same speech data, and second, even if innovations led to grammar
simplification, they were less likely to succeed if they were functionally
more blatant or salient. Contrary to this I claimed that the language
learners always base their initial grammar on highly valued forms which
are universal (nominative singular for nouns and third person singular
in verbs, if languages have such categories) regardless of the order in
which the data is presented to them (Dresher, this volume; Lahiri 1982;
Lahiri and Dresher 1983; Lahiri, Riad, and Jacobs 1999). If the gram-
mar formed at that stage includes innovations, they would be maintained
regardless of whether this would prevent grammar simplification. Later
attempts at innovations would be discarded. This suggests that there is
a hierarchy of preferred forms and that the phonology of the system
built by the language learner constrains possible and impossible analo-
gies. And again, it is the grammar as a whole which is taken into con-
sideration, even if the change involves a single lexical item. The restruc-
turing of the underlying form of a stem, or opting towards a preferred
metrical structure by lengthening vowels, or reanlysing morphemes by
fusing them closer to the stem rather than inflection, are not perceived
as being unrelated and categorically different types of change, but rather
generally as effecting the grammatical system as a whole.
The notions of analogy and markedness have influenced the research
lives of all the authors of this book (the measure is only dependent on
age!). The papers in this volume do not necessarily agree on the precise
interpretations of these notions, nor do they all subscribe to precisely
the same theoretical framework, but they conform on one point: namely
that analogy is not random and that change is constrained by the entire
12 Aditi Lahiri
grammatical system. The point of departure has been that examining

items that have changed individually is meaningful only if the grammat-
ical system as a whole is taken into consideration. The attempt has been
to explain "what really happened", "how it happened", and even
"why it did not happen".
Acknowledgements
The introduction has immensely benefited from detailed comments by Elan Dresher,
Mirco Ghini, Astrid Kraehenmann, Frans Plank, and Henning Reetz. This volume
stems from a workshop on the same topic held at Schloss Maurach near Konstanz,
funded by the Max-Planck-Forschungspreis.
Notes
1. This short commentary is not intended to be a comprehensive history of analogy

and markedness. It only sketches out some of the usages of the terms, with a very
abridged and selected set of references.
2. All such quotes, intended merely for illustration, are taken from the Oxford English
Dictionary (OED 1971, 1993).
3. In Middle High German, the spelling would be lamp:lember.
4. Esper himself worked extensively on analogy and evidence for analogical asso-
ciations in experimental psychology. He was rather dubious of pschyological
explanations of linguists from all traditions since such explanations were usually
not validated by experimental research. He was particularly equivocal about modern
linguistics influenced by "Chomskyan doctrines".
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Analogy as optimization: 'exceptions' to Sievers'
Law in Gothic
Paul Kiparsky
1. Lexical representations as a site of optimization
Suppose the phonological rules/constraints of the language are such that

underlying /A/ and /B/ lead to the same output [A].
(1) Underlying: /A/ /B/
Output: [A]
Lexical Phonology and Morphology (LPM) dictates that non-alternating
[A] is then analyzed
(a) as underlying /A/, other things being equal, but
(b) as underlying /B/, if/B/ conforms better to the constraints on under-
lying representations.
Case (a) has been familiar for a long time, and is supported by a fair
amount of historical evidence (Kiparsky 1968, 1973). It was adopted
by Natural Generative Grammar (Vennemann 1973; Hooper 1976) and
by Natural Phonology (Stampe 1972/1980). Prince and Smolensky
(1993) dub it lexicon optimization, and show that it is a consequence
of basic assumptions of OT.
It is case (b) that is controversial. Although it follows from LPM,
where constraints on the phonological inventory or morpheme structure
of a language are defined by its lexical phonology and morphology, it
does not follow from theories such as those assumed in much current
OT phonology, which define optimality only on output representations,
and claim that the structure of the lexical input is derivative just from
those constraints. Therefore evidence for (b) also calls into question the
adequacy of such output-oriented theories.
This paper will contribute such evidence, in the form of analogical
changes at the level of lexical (underlying) representations, driven by
16 Paul Kiparsky
constraints dominated at the level of output representations. The most

interesting cases show that, under the stated conditions, /B/ is preferred
even if it always occurs in a context where it is realized as [A].
Case (b) is of theoretical interest in another respect as well. It im-
plies, as a diachronic corollary, the possibility that lexical constraints
may induce reanalysis of [A] from /A/ to /B/. As usual, such reanalyses
may be initially covert, and have overt consequences when /B/ is either
generalized to new environments where its output is distinct from the
output of /A/, or when /B/ triggers contextual effects that were not
triggered by /A/. Viewed in terms of the pre-reanalysis underlying form
/A/, the overt consequences of the reanalysis to /B/ can appear as pho-
nological complications (exceptions, morphological conditions), or as
'Paradigm Uniformity' effects (for which workers in OT have proposed
Output/Output or Paradigm Uniformity conditions). In reality, the
phonology is unchanged—rather, it is the the morphology that is simpli-
fied. Such reanalyses form part of a larger body of evidence demonstrat-
ing the insufficiency of proportional and other purely output-based
accounts of analogy.
Before embarking on the argument, a word of caution. Material from
a dead language obviously has certain limitations. Inevitably, the written
documents on which our knowledge of Gothic is based leave out a lot
of phonetic detail, and some types of words are accidentally lacking in
the corpus. Still, the texts offer a remarkably consistent and largely
complete rendering of the language's contrastive phonological proper-
ties. We will not go far astray in inferring the output of the lexical
phonology from them. If the details of Gothic pronunciation were
accessible to study, we might well find, as in other languages, an over-
lay of additional postlexical processes.
2. The aftermath of Sievers' Law in Gothic ya-stems
The historical changes I will be concerned with here involve the mor-
phological reorganization of allomorphy originally due to the phonologi-
cal operation of Sievers' Law in Gothic.
The paradigms in (2) show the inflection of singular ya-stem nouns
in Gothic:1
Analogy as optimization 17
(2) Masculine nouns Neuter nouns

Light Heavy Light Heavy
NOM harjis herdiis kuni riiki
GEN harjis herdiis kunjis nikjis
• ·ι · ·
DAT harja herdja kunja riikja

ACC hari herdi kuni riiki
'army' 'shepherd' 'kin(d)' 'kingdom'
The alternation in the masculine (harjis vs. herdiis) is ultimately due

to Sievers' Law, a process that dates back at least to Proto-Germanic,
by which glides were vocalized after heavy syllables. The Gothic para-
digms in (2) reflect Sievers' Law only indirectly, however, for they are
descended from the reconstructed earlier stage in (3).
(3) Masculine nouns Neuter nouns

NOM *haris herdiis kuni riiki
GEN harjis herdiis kunjis *riikiis
DAT harja herdja kunja riikja
ACC hari herdi kuni riiki
'army' 'shepherd' 'kin(d)' 'kingdom'
(2) developed from (3) by the analogical spread of -jis beyond its
original phonologically conditioned limits in the two boldfaced forms.
(3) represents the direct Gothic reflex of the original weight-conditioned
j/i alternation. As (2) shows, the alternation was modified in the nomi-
native masculine, and eliminated altogether in the neuter.
An important point is that the ending -jis seems to have spread in
the light masculines earlier than in the heavy neuters. This relative
chronology can be inferred from the fact that no residual forms like
*haris are attested in the Gothic texts, whereas a number of heavy
neuters forms in -Us (such as andbahtiis) still occur alongside the new
type nikjis.
The change *riikiis > riikjis has been considered a case of analogy
that creates exceptions to Sievers' Law and complicates the grammatical
system.21 claim that the contrary is true. No exceptions develop and
18 PaulKiparsky
there is no morphologization. In fact, the change from (3) to (2) is a

simplification of the system. It consists of a restructuring of nominal
stems which brings them into line with a morphological constraint that
arose within Gothic through final syncope. This sound change largely
eliminated stems ending in short vowels. Remaining stems ending in
short vowels came increasingly under the sway of the synchronic form
of this constraint, and were adjusted to conform to it by analogical
changes which changed their lexical form.
My evidence for this interpretation of the change from (3) to (2) is
twofold. First, it unifies the changes with a more widespread pattern
of restructuring in the nominal and verbal morphology, including the
changes in (4).
(4) a. The introduction of -w in the declension of -\va stems, e.g.

*triggus > triggws 'faithful', *worstu > worstw 'work';
b. the restoration of -w in the past tense of strong verbs, e.g. *walu
> walw 'robbed';
c. the lengthening of final -/ in the 2SG imperative of weak verbs
ofthefirstclass,e.g. *nasi>nasii1 save!\*sooki>sookii'seek!'.
Secondly, unlike previous analogical accounts it provides a rationale

for the conditions under which the change in the nominal inflection
occurred. It explains why precisely the changes *riikiis > riikjis and
*haris > harjis took place, and other similar changes did not. Specifi-
cally, it offers answers to the following questions:
(5) a. Why did only masculines change in the ΝΟΜ.so? Why not
neuter kuni > *kunji, like masculine *haris > harjisl
b. If heavy stems analogized to light stems in the GEN. so of neuter
nouns (heavy *riikiis > riikjis on the model of light kunjis), why
did heavy stems not analogize to light stems in the GEN.so of
masculine nouns? I.e. why not heraus > *herdjis, by analogy
with harjisl
c. Why did heavy stems not analogize to light stems in the weak
-jan verbs? I.e. why not sookiis > *sookjis, by analogy with
light nasjisl See (6).
d. Why did heavy stems not analogize to light stems in the GEN.so
of neuter adjectives? I.e. why not wilfiiis > *wil}>jis, by analogy
with midjisl See (6).
(6) Neuter adjectives Weak jan-verbs

GEN.SG midjis wiljnis 2SG nasjis sookiis
NOM.PL midja wil^ja ISG nasja sookja
'mid' 'wild' 'save' 'seek'
In order to relate the changes from (3) to (2) to the other changes in (4),
and to explain why the the hypothetical changes in (5) did not occur,
we must first understand the phonology and morphology behind the pre-
Gothic system (3). Its inflectional paradigms are determined both by
phonological constraints which govern the realization of morpheme
combinations, and by morphological constraints which govern the
underlying shapes of stems and affixes. Spelling out these constraints
and their interaction in a precise way is a nontrivial task, but once that
is accomplished, the relationship to the changes in (4) will be obvious
and the questions in (5) will practically answer themselves.
In what follows I first outline and justify the assumptions I make
about Gothic phonology (Section 3) and morphology (Sections 4 and
5). I then show how these assumptions explain the morphological
innovations in the nouns (Section 6) and in the verbs (Section 7). In
Section 81 state the constraints explicitly and provide constraint tables
for the relevant forms. Section 9 restates the changes with a view to
showing their structural affinity.
3. Gothic syllabification
On the phonological side, the main question is what lies behind the
effects of syllable weight on the shape of ja-sterns. Here I follow up
a proposal introduced in Kiparsky (1998), which (like those of Dresher
and Lahiri 1991, Riad 1992, and Calabrese 1994) treats Sievers' Law
is a process of syllabification governed by metrical structure, but (unlike
theirs) derives it as a direct result of the optimal parsing of words into
20 Paul Kiparsky
left-headed bimoraic feet (moraic trochees). The main idea is that

syllabification avoids sequences which cannot be so parsed, given that
the word-initial syllable must be stressed. Specifically, syllabification
avoids initial light-heavy (LH) sequences, and syllables which contain
more than two moras. A special dispensation holds at the end of a word,
where a final mora may be extrametrical, thereby escaping the foot
maximum constraint.
On these assumptions, the contrast between heavy and light stems
in the genitive singular is derived by optimization of syllable and foot
structure as follows:
(7) a. GEN.SG /hari+is/ —> [har].\jis] (not *ha.nis because an LH

sequence cannot be exhaustively parsed into moraic trochees:
parsed as [L][H], the first foot is too short, parsed as [LH], it
is too long)
b. GEN.SG /herdi+is/ —> [her]. [dii]s (*herd.jis has a non-final three-
mora syllable)
c. GEN.SG /ragini+is/ —> [ra.gi].[nii]s (*m.gin.jis cannot be ex-
haustively parsed into moraic trochees)
The metrical constraints are complemented by constraints on syllable

margins, namely ONSET (a syllable must have an onset), * COMPLEX
(no consonant clusters), and *Cj (no consonant clusters containing /),
of which the last is undominated and hence unviolated, while the other
two are dominated by the major metrical constraints.
The existence of an undominated *Cj constraint means that Cj
clusters are categorically excluded, while other clusters are merely
disfavored. There are several pieces of independent evidence for this
special status of Cj. First, in initial position Gothic allows CR- clusters,
including Cw- clusters, but rigorously excludes all Cj- clusters. For
example, there are words like twai 'two', pwahan 'wash', swikns
'pure', dwals 'foolish',3 but there are no words beginning with *(/-,
*pj-, *sj-, *dj-. Secondly, scribal practice indicates that medial VCjV
was always syllabified as VCJV, whereas other medial CR clusters were
syllabified as VC.RVor V.CRVdepending on syllable weight and foot
structure:
(8) a. V.CRV (VC.RV would have an initial three-mora syllable)

b. VC.CRV (VCC.RV would have an initial three-mora syllable)
c. VC.RV (V.CRV has a complex onset)
This pattern is observed in the word divisions of two major Gothic

manuscripts (see Kiparsky 1998 and references cited there for fuller
discussion).
The claim that Gothic foot structure is based on moraic trochees
differs from previous accounts in predicting that disyllabic Heavy+Light
disyllables pattern metrically with Light monosyllables, rather with
Heavy monosyllables. This prediction is supported by comparative
Germanic phonology, and by such internal Gothic evidence as can be
gleaned from scribal practice. Thus, iupaproo 'from above' is divided
as iupap\roo, reflecting a metrical structure [iu].[paj)].[roo], rather than
*[iu].pa.Q)roo], with an unparsable syllable.
Since syllabification is predictable in Gothic, there is no lexical
contrast between /i/ and /j/, or between /u/ and /w/.41 will write HI for
the alternating segment in words like [harj-] ~ [hari-] 'army'. While
nothing at this point hangs on that choice, it is a principled one, for the
constraint system to be introduced below selects /hari/ over /harj/ as the
optimal lexical representation because the latter violates a more highly
ranked constraint, namely Cj.
I further assume that tautosyllabic Vi and Vj (including ii and if) are
the same thing, not only in segmental content—since HI and /j/ are not
featurally distinct—but also in syllabic structure, namely, both consti-
tute a long nucleus of the form [μ^ΐσ-
Heterosyllabic i.V, i.jV and Vi, Vji (including /./ and i.ji) are
excluded in Gothic. i.V, V.i violate ONSET. ONSET dominates the
FAITHFULNES constraints that preserve the input's syllable structure
in the output, so word-internally hiatus is eliminated by glide formation
and contraction of like vowels wherever possible. This happens without
exception in the native vocabulary; and in Greek loans, ία is often
replaced by Gothic ja, e.g. Μαρία > Marja, Αντιόχεια > Antiokja
(Braune and Ebbinghaus 1961; Calabrese 1994). But melodic FAITH-
FULNESS in turn dominates ONSET, which means that hiatus cannot
be removed by deletion or epenthesis. Hiatus therefore occurs even in
22 Paul Kiparsky
the native vocabulary where glide formation and contraction cannot

apply. Such cases include e.V in Ce- reduplication of vowel-initial
verbs, e.g. /e.auk/ (spelled aiauk) 'increased', and initial CiV- sequences
such as /fi+an/ —> [fi.an] (spelled fian,fljan) 'hate'.5
As for i.jV, V.ji we must take care to exclude both the representa-
tion with two / melodies and the representation with one i melody
spread over two syllabic positions. The two-melody representation is
excluded by the OCP, assumed to be undominated, and the shared
single-melody representation is excluded by the ONSET constraint,
formulated as requiring a melodically independent and non-empty
onset consonant.
4. Allomorphy
With these phonological prerequisites in place, we are ready to return

to the ya-stems. The first question is how to deal with the contrast
between light and heavy nominatives in the original system (3). Light
stem nominatives such as *haris are unproblematically segmentable as
/hari+s/, with the stem /hari/ that forms the basis for the entire para-
digm, and the normal nominative ending /-s/. It is the long vowel in
heavy stem nominatives such as heraus that is the problem. Syn-
chronically, no phonological process of Gothic, and certainly no version
of Sievers' Law, could turn /herdi+s/ into heraus. Its long vowel must
therefore be accounted for by positing a different underlying form for
the nominative of heavy stems—either a different ending, as in (9a) or
a different stem, as in (9b):
(9) a. Suffix allomorphy: heavy stems take a NOM.SG allomorph /-is/,

or
b. Stem allomorphy: heavy stems have a NOM.SG stem in /-ii/.
Previous treatments have all assumed suffix allomorphy as in (9a) as

a matter of course, but for no particular reason. In fact it is the inferior
alternative, because it fails to relate the allomorphy to anything else in
the language, and posits suffix shapes and alternation patterns otherwise
unknown in Gothic, whereas the stem allomorphy solution conforms

to the rest of Gothic inflectional morphology and allows a significantly
simpler overall analysis.
In the first place, the NOM.SG ending /-is/ postulated by the stem
allomorphy solution would be exceptional, for the NOM.SG in other
declensions is either /-s/ (dags, gasts, qeens, sunus, nasjands, borgs),
or null (word, giba, mawi, guma, tungoo, broopaf). Secondly, suffix
selection governed by syllable weight of stem would be exceptional in
Gothic: elsewhere its case allomorphs are selected in accord with the
gender and final segment of the stem. For example, the main synchronic
rule for the distribution of the two nominatives just mentioned is that
most non-neuter consonant stems have /-s/, and other stems have no
ending.
If, on the other hand, the alternations are treated as stem allomorphy
(solution (9b)), they fit tidily into Gothic morphology as part of a larger
pattern of stem alternations. Also, the context of the alternation can then
be stated in a more general way. The long stem /herdii/ in heraus is the
bound stem, selected before any case ending, and the short stem /herdi/
in ACC.SG herdi is the free stem, selected when no case ending follows.
This is because phonological constraints neutralize /-ii+V/ and/-i+V/
to -jV. For example, the optimal output of both /herdi+a/ and /herdii+a/
is herdja.
Once the V ~ V V-alternation of the ya-stems is generalized in this
way, a further unifying theme emerges. The alternation falls in with a
system of free/bound stem allomorphy that runs through the whole
nominal morphology. In particular, there is a closely parallel V ~ VV-
alternation in the o- and jo- stems:6
(10) a. ya-stems: free stem herdi, bound stem herdii- (e.g. GEN.SG
heraus 'shepherd')
b. o-stems: free stem herda, bound stem herdoo- (e.g. GEN.SG
herdoos 'herd'; a:oo is the regular length alternation in low
vowels)
c. yo-stems: free stem banja, bound stem banjoo- (e.g. GEN.SG
banjoos 'injury')
24 Paul Kiparsky
(H) o- stems jo- stems

SG NOM herda banja
GEN herdoos banjoos
DAT herdai banjai
ACC herda banja
PL NOM herdoos banjoos
GEN herdoo banjoo
DAT herdoom banjoom
ACC herdoos banjoos
'herd' 'injury'
The dative singular is not an exception; its -ai is enforced by the fact
that -ooi is an impossible diphthong in Gothic.
By the same token, two separate stem allomorphs need be posited
only for that class of yVz-stems where they are motivated by an overt
alternation, namely in masculines. In neuters, a bound allomorph in /-ii/
could never be realized in the output, since they have no consonantal
case endings. Because there is no positive reason to posit any allo-
morphy in neuters, simplicity (and lexicon optimization) dictate that
they have a single underlying stem form.7
I conclude that Gothic morphophonology motivates the analysis of
heraus as /herdii+s/, and more generally that heavy masculine ya-stems
have a bound inflectional allomorph in /-ii/.
5. The restructuring of nominal stems
In Proto-Germanic, most nominal stems ended in a vowel, e.g. */daga-/

'day', */gasti-/ 'guest', although there were also some consonant stems,
such as /brooj)(a)r-/ 'brother'. At this stage, the stem-final vowel ap-
peared overtly in most forms of the noun and would certainly have been
part of the underlying representation. Subsequently, short vowels in
word-final syllables were lost. As a result, former short-vowel noun
stems were reanalyzed as consonant stems, e.g. */daga/ as /dag/, */gasti/
as/gast/, merging with original consonant stems. Nevertheless, the color
of the original stem-final vowel continued to determine the shape of
certain inflectional endings in Gothic. For example, the endings of the

accusative plural are -ans, -ins, or -uns, for the most part depending on
whether the stem had formerly ended in -a, i, or -u. The resulting
synchronic situation for Gothic is shown in (12).
(12) α-stems /-stems «-stems r-stems

SG NOM dags gasts sunus brooj)ar
GEN dagis gastis sunaus broojjrs
DAT dags gasta sunau brooj)r
ACC dag gast sunu broo|>ar
PL NOM dagoos gastiis sunjus brooj>rjus
GEN dagee gastee suniwee broojjree
DAT dagam gastim sunum broo^rum
ACC dagans gastins sununs brooj)runs
'day' 'guest' 'son' 'brother'
From the synchronic point of view, the vowel quality of the ending con-
tinues to be determined by the stem. The selection of suffixal allomorphy
by the stem could be accounted for in two ways, (1) declensionally, with
different stem classes determining particular sets of case endings, or
(2) phonologically, with floating melodies corresponding to the lost stem
vowel, which dock on to an empty nucleus in the case ending.
The difference between the declensional analysis and the phonologi-
cal analysis can be illustrated by the accusative plural. The declensional
analysis would posit three endings -ans, -ins, or -uns, respectively
selected by noun stems like dag-, gast-, and broopr-. The phonological
analysis would have just one accusative plural ending -Vns, with an
unspecified vocalic nucleus which receives its segmental content from
the floating stem-final melody, e.g. /dag3/, /gast1/, /brooj)ru/, /sunu/,
/herdii3/. The theoretical justification for such an analysis comes from
autosegmental phonology's separation of syllabic skeleton and phone-
mic melody; in the case at hand, the stem is monosyllabic but has a
final vowel in its phonemic melody, which can dock (subject to locality
constraints) on a suffixal vowel.8
The choice between the declensional analysis and the phonological
analysis with floating vowels is actually not crucial to what follows,
26 Paul Kiparsky
because the alternations in vowel color do not play much of a role in

the analogical changes discussed here. It is syllable and foot structure
and not vowel color that is really important here. In any case, the pho-
nological analysis seems preferable because it captures a significant
generalization about the Gothic data in (12), namely that for any given
stem, the color of alternating suffix vowels is the same throughout the
paradigm. For example, the stems that get accusative plural -ans also
get dative plural -am, the stems that get accusative plural -ins also get
dative plural -im, and the stems that get accusative plural -uns also get
dative plural -urn; similarly in the nominative plural. On a purely
declensional analysis this would be an accident.
I will, therefore, be assuming the phonological analysis with floating
vowels. Specifically, I posit the principal allomorphs of the declensional
endings in (13), combining with the stem types shown in (14):
(13) so PL
NOM -s -VVs
GEN -is -ee
DAT -a -Vm
ACC -0 -Vns
(14) NOM. s G /daga+s/ —» dags

GEN.SG /daga+is/ -> dagis
DAT.PL /daga+Vm/ —> dagam
NOM.PL /dagWVs/—> dagoos (*αα -> oo)
NOM.SG /gast'+s/ —> gasts
GEN.SG /gast'+is/ —» gastis
D AT. PL /gast'+Vm/ —> gastim
NOM.PL /gast'+VVs/ —» gastiis
D AT. PL /herdiiWm/ —> herdjam
NOM.PL /herdiiWVs/ -> herdjoos (*aa -> oo)
D AT. PL /giboo+Vm/ —·» giboom
NOM.PL /giboo+VVs/ —> giboos
In the interests of simplicity, the floating vowel will be omitted from

phonological representations below unless specifically relevant to the
point.
The restructuring just outlined only affected short-vowel stems. Long

vowels were retained in final syllables under certain conditions, and so
Gothic retains bound allomorphs ending in underlying -VV, e.g. /giboo/.
Indeed, the stock of inherited /-VV/ stem allomorphs was augmented
by new ones that arose by analogy, as we shall see.
As a result of these developments, Gothic nominal and verbal inflec-
tional stems tend to end either in -C (most original -V and -C stems)
or in -VV (most original -VV stems). I assume that at this point Gothic
acquires a constraint that stems should not end in a short vowel, which
I dub STEM-FORM:
(15) STEM-FORM: *V]STEM
STEM-FORM is dominated by certain Faithfulness and syllable structure

constraints, and violable where those constraints demand it. Stems like
/sunu/, and originally /hari/ as well, violate it in virtue of FAITHFUL-
NESS to the underlying representation. Still, its synchronic effects are
visible throughout the inflectional system, and its scope is extended to
new cases by analogical change. In fact, the morphological changes we
are considering, including not only the remodeling of the genitive
singular of heavy neuter y'fl-stems (*riikiis > riikjis) and of the nomina-
tive singular of light masculine ya-stems (*haris > harjis), but also of
vvfl-stems (*triggus > triggws, *lasjus > lasiws, *worstu > worstw},
of the past tense of strong verbs (*walu > walw), and of the 2 so imper-
ative of weak verbs in -jan (*nasi > nasii, *sooki > sookii), are so many
generalizations of STEM-FORM, albeit with local variations due to other
morphological factors.
With all the pieces of the puzzle now in place, we are ready to
examine the analogical changes in the declension.
6. The innovations in the noun declension
The change from *haris to harjis in the nominative singular of light

masculines can now be recognized as a generalization of the bound
form: the /-ii/ stem9 is extended to light stems. Prior to the change this
stem type instantiates the situation represented by the schema in (1):
28 Paul Kiparsky
(16) Underlying: /hari/ /harii/
Output: [harj-]
Of the two potential underlying forms for bound forms of the light
stems, /-ii/ is preferred over /-i/, for two reasons. First, this form is
positively required by the the corresponding heavy stems, and sec-
ondly, it conforms to STEM-FORM. The generalization of the bound
/-ii/ stem to short masculines thus both eliminates the weight condition
from the allomorphy, making for a more general distribution of stem
classes, and optimizes a class of stems by bringing them into complic-
ity with the STEM-FORM constraint. In that rspect, the innovation
increases the simplicity and system-conformity of the grammatical
system.
In most of the paradigm, the change is covert, in that the new base
form yields the same output as the old base form did. For example,
the change from /hari+a/ to /harii+a/ does not alter the output harja.
But there is an overt effect in the nominative singular, where the
change of underlying /hari+s/ to /harii+s/ entails the surface change
of *haris to harjis, in accord with the constraints of Gothic phonology.
The overt and covert changes for three of the singular forms are shown
in (17).
(17) Old system New system

Underlying Surface Underlying Surface
/hari+a/ harja /harii+a/ harja (covert change)
/hari+is/ harjis /harii+is/ harjis (covert change)
/hari+s/ *haris /harii+s/ harjis (overt change)
Now consider the neuter/a-stems. Unlike the masculines, heavy neuters

do not have an allomorph in /-ii/ because there is no alternation to
motivate positing two allomorphs in the first place. Therefore, there is
no question of neuters generalizing /-ii/ to light stems, as masculines
did. This stem type retains a single underlying representation /riiki/—
not /riikj/, in spite of STEM-FORM, because it would violate the higher-
ranked, in fact undominated, constraint *C/, nor obviously /riikii/, which
would generate the wrong output riikii in the nominative and accusative
singular.
Now consider the change in the genitive singular of heavy neuter
stems, from *riiki+is to riikj+is. We have just seen that the underlying
form is /riiki+is/ in both stages. There are two competing realizations,
the original *riiki+is and the new riikj+is, of which each satisfies just
one of two constraints, STEM-FORM, and *SUPERHEAVY, which im-
poses a bimoraic foot maximum. The form *rii.ki+is violates STEM-
FORM, which prohibits a stem from ending in -V, but (in virtue of final
C-extrametricality) it fulfills the requirement that syllables be maxi-
mally bimoraic. On the other hand, riik.j+is conforms to STEM-FORM
but its three-mora first syllable exceeds the syllabic template. (The
syllabification *rii.kj+is with its forbidden Cj cluster violates an even
more highly ranked constraint.) The historical change from *riikiis to
riikjis shows that the morphological constraint STEM-FORM has become
more important than the phonological constraint on the size of the foot.
Formally, the change corresponds to a reranking:]0
(18) a. Old system: *SUPERHEAVY » STEM-FORM (/riiki+is/ —>

*rii.ki+is)
b. New system: STEM-FORM » *SUPERHEAVY (/riiki+is/
Positing a reranking of STEM-FORM and *SUPERHEAVY commits us

to the prediction that other instances where these two constraints con-
flict should have changed in a parallel fashion. And this expectation is
confirmed.
Another set of paradigms where syllable structure and stem shape
place contradictory demands are the wa-stems. Here, the historically
expected nominative singular forms in -w, -us have been replaced by
forms in -w, -ws, e.g. *worstu —» worstw 'work' , *triggu+s —» triggw+s
'faithful'. The reconstructed forms *worstu and *triggu+s obey
*SUPERHEAVY and violate STEM-FORM. The new forms worstw and
triggw+s obey STEM-FORM and violate *SUPERHEAVY. The appear-
ance of -w, in spite of the resulting superheavy syllable, is thus another
consequence of the promotion of the morphological constraint STEM-
FORM over the phonological constraint *SUPERHEAVY."
30 Paul Kiparsky
(19) a. Old system: *SUPERHEAVY » STEM-FORM (output

*worstu)
b. New system: STEM-FORM » *SUPERHEAVY (output
worstw)
Another prosodic constraint, FOOT-FORM, which requires that words

should be parsed into moraic trochees (feet consisting of long syllables
or two short syllables) in turn dominates STEM-FORM; hence the output
of /harii+s/ is harjis rather than *hariis.
Another reassertion of the morphological S τ EM-FORM constraint
over prosodic markedness appears in the verb system. The analogical
generalization of stem-final -w in the past tense of strong verbs, as in
wa/w, for phonologically expected *walu (from wilwan 'rob'), and
blaggw, for *blaggu (from bliggwan 'hit') extends the consonantal stem
throughout the conjugation.
Moreover, our analysis explains why there was no parallel extension
of -j in the free allomorph of ya-stems. From a purely morphological
point of view, we might have expected riiki —> *riikj, like *worstu —>
worstw. We know from Section 3 that Cj clusters are barred by a more
stringent (higher-ranked, in fact undominated) constraint than all other
consonant clusters, Cw included. Thus, the analogical changes are
blocked by constraints that outrank the constraints that drive them. In
this way, the analogical changes are shaped by the interplay of phono-
logical and morphological conditions. STEM-FORM triggers only those
analogical changes that its precise position in the ranked constraint
system of the language enforces.
We have now provided a rationale for both morphological changes
in (3) to (2). We have also answered the first question in (5). Stem-Form
is generalized in two basic ways: underlying forms are modified to
conform to it, and reranking brings additional output forms under its
sway. Is there a connection between these changes? My guess is that
there is, in that analogical change tends to make constraints dominant
in the measure that they are unviolated. The more STEM-FORM
approaches surface-trueness, the greater the pressure to eliminate
the remaining violations of it.
I now turn to a final class of changes driven by STEM-FORM, after
which I will formulate the constraint system and the relevant constraint
tables. That will, as promised, provide answers to the other three ques-
tions in (5).
7. The innovations in the verb conjugation
Not only are verbs subject to STEM-FORM, they even morphologically

regulate the two stem shapes permitted by that constraint as follows:
(20) a. Nonpast weak verb stems end in -VV,

b. other verb stems end in -C.12
The generalization of stem-final -w in strong verb forms like walw and

blaggw mentioned in the preceding section thus obeys (20a) as well as
the general STEM-FORM constraint.
The first class of weak verbs, they'an- verbs, turns out to be no excep-
tion to the constraint that weak verbs end in /-VV/. For reasons that
have already become apparent in the discussion of ya-stem nouns like
/herdii/, underlying stems like /sookii-/ and /nasii-/ will be realized as
sookj-, nasj- before vocalic suffixes in forms like sookjan, nasjan. The
conclusive positive evidence for those underlying stems comes from
2SG imperative, which are suffixless and show the stem overtly ending
in -ii, e.g. sookii, nasii. The 2SG imperative always consists of the bare
present verb stem, e.g./ar 'go!', ur-riis 'get up!' (strong verbs), salboo
'anoint!', pahee 'be quiet!' (weak verbs), and displays the base form
unmodified by the phonological constraints activated in prevocalic
position (consonantal endings would reveal it too, but there are none),
in this case allowing the otherwise hidden underlying /-ii/ to surface.
But significantly enough, precisely these imperatives in -ii appear
to be analogical innovations, which have replaced the phonologically
expected forms *sooki, *nasi. Prior to this replacement, then, the weak
verbs of the first class, the yan-verbs, were actually exceptions to the
constraint (20a) that weak verbs end in -VV, albeit their exceptional
status hung by the thin thread of the 2SG imperative form in -i. So the
new imperative forms in -ii are the overt manifestations of another
instance of reanalysis that brings stems into line with the language's
morphological preferences. The real locus of the change is the under-
32 Paul Kiparsky
lying form of the stem, of which the imperative is a direct diagnostic.

The present stem of jan-verbs acquired the general stem shape of the
weak verbs stipulated by STEM-FORM. Thus /sooki-/ > /sookii-/, /nasi-/
> /nasii-/, like the second class (/salboo-/ 'anoint') and the third class
(/J)ahee-/ 'be silent').13 The rise of /-ii/ in thejan-verbs thus essentially
parallels the rise of /-ii/ in the y'a-stem nouns.
We have thus identified yet another instance of the pattern (1),
parallel to that of (16) in the nouns. As before, it is a change in underly-
ing forms, consisting of the elimination of an exception to the same
constraint on the morphological shape of stems that we earlier saw at
work in the nouns, and motivated by the morphological simplification
thus achieved.
(21) Underlying: /sooki/ /sookii/
Output: [sookj-]
As in the nouns, the reanalysis to l-'ul is covert before all vocalic end-
ings. This time, though, there are no consonantal endings in the present
conjugation of weak verbs. So it is only in the absence of a suffix that
the new underlying -ii can reveal itself on the surface, and the only
unsuffixed form is precisely the 2SG imperative:
(22) Old system New system

Underlying Surface Underlying Surface
/sooki+a/ sookja /sookii+a/ sookja (covert change)
/sooki+is/ sookiis /sookii+is/ sookiis (covert change)
/sooki/ * sooki /sookii/ sookii (overt change)
Consider the imperative paradigms of the first and second class of weak
verbs:
(23) First class Second class

Light Heavy
2SG nasii sookii salboo
3SG nasjadau sookjadau salboodau
2 DU nasjats sookjats salboots
ι PL nasjam sookjam salboom
2PL nasjij) sookii]3 salbooj)
3PL nasjandau sookjandau salboondau
'save' 'seek' 'anoint'
Viewed in surface terms, the analogical change could only be repre-

sented as a chain of two proportional analogical changes, as Andrew
Garrett has pointed out to me, e.g.:
(24) a. salboop : salboo = sookii]) : X (X = sookii)

b. sookjam : sookii = nasjam : X (X = nasii)
It seems impossible to represent it by any single proportion (much less

unify it with the corresponding shifts in the noun declension). Here are
some plausible tries that fail:
(25) a. 2PL.IMPER salboof} : 2SG.IMPER salboo = nasjip : X (X =

*nasji)
b. 3SG.IMPER salboodau : 2SG.IMPER. salboo = nasjadau : X (X
= *nasja)
c. 2SG.OPT salboos : 2SG. IMPER salboo = nasjais : X (X =
*nasjai)
8. The constraint system
Recall that I am assuming a constraint-based version of Lexical Phonol-

ogy and Morphology, where the constraint system both determines the
optimal output for a given lexical input, and applies at the level of
lexical representations to select the optimal base form from among those
potential representations that, in combination with each other, yield the
correct output forms of the language (lexicon optimization).Diachronie-
34 Paul Kiparsky
ally, analogical changes are optimizations, and the optimization may

affect either lexical representations, or output representations, increasing
their conformity with the system. Crucially, some of the changes are
motivated only at the level of lexical representations, because they
optimize the base forms without necessarily optimizing output represen-
tations. Analogical changes corresponding to such optimizations cannot
be characterized in purely surface terms.
Turning now to the constraints at work in the lexical phonology of
Gothic, our account has made use of the following:
(a) FAITHFULNESS. The most important subconstraint of this family
for present purposes is that segmental content is not to be inserted
or deleted (melodic faithfulness). E.g. an input /ia/ should not be
realized as *H, *αα, *z'fa. It is undominated in the subsystem of con-
straints we are concerned with, hence unviolated in the phonological
and morphological phenomena considered here. To save space I will
leave it, and the candidates it rejects, out of the constraint tables.14
I also assume that segmental slots are not to be inserted or de-
leted (segmental faithfulness). E.g. an input long vowel /VVY should
not be realized as a short vowel IVI or vice versa. This constraint
is dominated by ONSET but in turn dominates FOOT-FORM below.
(b) *COMPLEX-J: a consonant clusters may not contain the glide j.
Unviolated. This constraint is obtained by conjoining the two primi-
tive constraints *j and * COMPLEX. The conjoined constraint, which
says that both the primitive constraints may not be violated at the
same time, is visible because it is ranked higher than either of the
primitive constraints that it is composed of (Prince and Smolensky
1993). The former of these constraints properly says that a vocalic
melody must be affiliated with a mora, and comes from a theory
of the syllable that I hope to present elsewhere. It is part of a hierar-
chy of constraints which, in conjunction with other constraints,
generates a typology of syllable structure:
(26) 1. [+1ο]=>μ(α)
2. [-hi] => μ (a, e, o)
3. [-cons] z> μ (α, e, ο, ί, ύ)
4. [+voc] Z) μ (a, e, o, i, u, r, /)
5. ...
The primitive constraint *j (formally, (26c)) can be seen in action

in languages like Italian (where yV sequences are ruled out) and
Spanish (where y belongs to the nucleus, since yV sequences form
a single mora, as shown by stress; see Harris 1983).
(c) ONSET: a syllable must have a (melodically independent) onset.
Dominated by FAITHFULNESS and by *Q', and therefore violated
where its satisfaction would require either the deletion or epenthesis
of melodic content, or an impermissible Q'-cluster. These onset
violations include initial position (e.g. akran, ehta), and the
abovementioned medial cases of the types aiauk and fian, fijan.
Note that for simplicity I assume that the latter two are the same,
and in general, that i.Vand i.yVare both *ONSET violations.
(d) FOOT-FORM: a word must consist of moraic trochees (allowing for
the extrametricality of a final mora or the equivalent, as indicated).
That is, it must be parsed into long syllables or pairs of light sylla-
bles. The consequence is that ·—- sequences are avoided initially
and after a heavy syllable (or after an even number of light sylla-
bles). Violated when higher-ranked constraints so require.
(e) STEM-FORM: *V]STEM
(f) *SUPERHEAVY: no superheavy syllables (syllables of three or more
moras). This constraint does not hold for word-final syllables; I
have assumed that a final mora, including a sequence of consonants,
may be extrametrical, and thus need not count in the metrical parse
of the word. The metrical constraints must accordingly evaluate
every word in two ways, one with the final mora included, the other
without it, and accept the better of the two parses.15
(g) * COMPLEX: no consonant clusters!
Ranked as given, these constraints account for all the phonological and
morphological data we have considered.
36 Paul Kiparsky
(27)
*SUPERHEAVY
s sΡί
*COMPLEX-y
*COMPLEX
ο ο
B5
Η hι fcι
ω Η S
C/3Ο
55 Ο
ω
Underlying form Candidates Η
Ο PU en
NOM.SG /harii+s/ β· har.ji+s *
ha.rii+(s) *
ha.ri.i+s * *
j
NOM.SG /herdii+s/ er her.dii+(s)

herd.ji+s * *
her.di.i+s *
her.dji+s * * *
NOM.SG /managii+s/ «^ ma.na.gii+(s)

ma.nag.ji+s *
ma.na.gi.+i(s) *
ma.na.gji+s * *
GEN.SG /riiki+is/ «sr riik.j+is *
rii.ki-fi(s) *
rii.ki.-fi(s) * *
rii.kj-fis * *j
The following tableau shows how the constraints predict the right
syllabification for medial clusters, including the uniform treatment of
-Cj- and the weight-sensitive syllabification of other -CR- clusters:
(28) ζ
>< sO ου tu χ
u Ο Ο Ε u
οί hJ
α,
OH Η ι ι
S
ο
tu
<Λ
^Η
Ο
sW ΟΗ
J2 ^
Ο
Underlying form Candidates υ
*
Ζ
Ο
ο Η
00
CO υ
#
/herj>ram/ «sr her.Jjram *
herjxram * *
/hleij^rai/ «^ hlii.^rai **
hliiJD.rai * *
/iupa^roo/ «^ iu.pajxroo
iu.pa.)}roo * *
/woopjan/ «®· woop.jan *
woo.pjan * *
The derivation of the verbs is as follows:

38 Paul Kiparsky
(29)
*SUPERHEAVY
*COMPLEX-J
S
*COMPLEX
& Crf
Ο
H & ι
ω Η
Ο α
Underlying form Candidates Ο Η
Ο 00
2SG.PRES /sookii+is/ "5° soo.kii+(s)
soo.ki.+i(s) * *
sook.j+is *
soo.kj+is * *
2SG.PRES /nasii+is/ na.sii+(s) *
na.si.i+s * *
ο®" nas.ji+s *
na.sji+s * * *
2SG.IMP /sookii/ t®° soo.kii

sook.ji * *
2SG.IMP /nasii/ «®· na.si(i)

nas.(ji) *
Observe how the constraint system explains the difference between the
short noun and verb stems, viz. /harii+s/ —> harjis versus /nasii/ —>
nasii, not *nasji. Because final moras may be ignored for purposes of
assessing metrical well-formedness ('extrametricality'), nasi(i) is a good
moraic trochee, and satisfies FOOT-FORM just as well as the rival
candidate *nasji does. It wins over it by because, unlike that form, it
also satisfies the next lower constraint STEM-FORM. On the other hand,
*hariis violates FOOT-FORM even with final extrametricality, so it is
rejected in favor of harjis, in spite of violating the lower-ranked STEM-
FORM constraint.
The changes due to the reranking of STEM-FORM above * SUPER-
HEAVY are displayed next. The new ranking enforces GEN.SG *riiki+is
> riikj+is over *riikiis in neuter nouns, as well as NOM.SG triggw+s
over *triggu+s and similar cases, and wa/vv over *walu in the verb
system. Presumably the -w in longer stems like friwadw 'servitude', is
also restored from -w. This follows from the constraint system as well.
(30)
*SUPERHEAVY
*COMPLEX-y
S S
*COMPLEX
es e*
Ο Ο
UH l·.
ONSET
I
H
O
sM
Underlying form Candidates Ο H
PH on
NOM.SG /worstu/ «®· worst(w) * *
wor.stu * *
NOM.SG /sangu+s/ "^ sangw+(s) * *
san.gu+s *
NOM.SG /riiki/ riikj * * *
"*· rii.ki * * *
GEN.SG /riiki+is/ «s· riik.j+is *
rii.ki+i(s) *
3SG PAST /walw/ «s· wal(w) *;λ
walu *
3SG PAST /{iiwadu/ «s* |)iwad(w) * *
jriwadu * *
For masculineya-stems, this reranking of STEM-FORM above *SUPER-

HEAVY will have no overt effect, since, as a result of the restructuring
discussed in Section 2, they end in /-ii/ = /-μδμλν/. This answers question
(5b).
After the reanalysis described in Section 7, weak yVw-verbs end in
/-ii/, so they are therefore unaffected by the reranking, just like^'a-stem
nouns. This answers question (5c).
Adjectives also have a bound stem in /-ii/. It is motivated by the
40 Paul Kiparsky
masculine nominative singular form, as in nouns, e.g. /uiljrii+s/ ->

wilpiis. The failure of neuter genitive singular adjectives to change in
parallel with neuter genitive singular nouns (wilpiis ϊ *wilpjis, in spite
of /riiki+is/ *riiki+is > riikj+is) is explainable on morphological
grounds as follows. Assume that a lexical item will have a uniform
underlying representation if possible. Masculine and neuter adjectives
are different inflectional forms of the same lexical item. So, since
adjective stems in the masculine end in /-ii/, the neuter forms of those
stems end in /-ii/ too. But the optimal output of underlying /uil|?ii+iis/
is wiliis. Hence, the neuter genitive singulars of adjectives remain
unchanged. This answers question (5d).
9. Summary: The changes and their motivation
Here I restate in summary form the five analogical innovations in

Gothic inflectional morphology treated in this paper. For each, I state
the status quo ante of the grammar, how the grammar changed, why
it changed, and the effect of the change on the language's output forms.
It will be seen that all five are driven by the STEM-FORM constraint.
Given the hypothesis that transparency favors high ranking, each rein-
forcement of STEM-FORM has a 'snowball' effect which adds to the
structural pressure for subsequent innovations,
(a) NOM.SG haris > harjis (Section 2).
The starting point: At the stage preceding the change, represented
by the paradigms in (3), heavy stems have two underlying
allomorphs, e.g. /herdi/ (free) ~ /herdii/ (bound), and light stems
have one underlying allomorph, e.g. /hari/.
The change: The bound allomorph in /-ii/ is extended to light stems,
e.g. /hari/ (free) ~ /harii/ (bound).
The motivation: The' change (1) establishes uniform stem allo-
morphy for masculine 7'a-stems, and (2) minimizes violations of
STEM-FORM : the lexical representation /harii/ is preferred to /hari/,
as the following table shows. (Note that this table simply motivates
the diachronic replacement; /harii/ and /hari/ do not compete in the
synchronic system, since they yield different outputs due to domi-
nant FAITHFULNESS constraints.)
(31) >
r»
X
u 3
X
g* U
^
ω o o X ω
PH PH
ft« H S CU
S H g Cu S
0 CiO O W 0
Candidates U 2 0 H U
* O PH W * *
·*· hari(i)
hari *
har(j) * * *
The surface effect: The stem in -ji- is extended to the nominative

singular of masculine light stems, and the stem in -/ becomes re-
stricted to the accusative singular,
(b) 2.SG imperative *sooki, *nasi > sookiis, nasiis (Section 7).
The starting point: At the stage preceding the change, jan-verbs
have an underlying stem in /-i/, on the evidence of the 2SG impera-
tive, where the stem is overtly realized. This stem violates both the
generalization (20) and STEM-FORM.
The change: the underlying stem changes to /-ii/, e.g. /*sooki, *nasi/
> /sookii, nasii/.
The motivation: The change (1) removes a class of exceptions to
(20) and (2) optimizes lexical representations by eliminating viola-
tions STEM-FORM and FOOT-FORM. To see how /sookii/ is pre-
ferred to /*sooki/, see the constraint table below, for /nasii/, cf. the
table for /harii/ above.
The surface effect: The 2.SG imperative of yaw-verbs comes to end
in -ii.
42 Paul Kiparsky
(32) £
Pi ου Οί Μ Χ
Ο Ο κ Ευ
I Η
Ευ
^Γ ι
Ji
W ΟΗ
H Η PH *5
Ο c/3 Ο EU Ο
Candidates Ο
UH
Ζ
ο Ο
fc
Η
00
^ υ
*
*
«®° sooki(i)
sooki * *
sook(j) * *
*
(c) GEN.SG*rwfeiw > riikjis (Section 2).

TTie startingpoint: At the stage preceding the change, the morpho-
logical constraint STEM-FORM is violated in the genitive singular
of heavy neuters, e.g. *riikiis, due to domination by the phonologi-
cal constraint *SUPERHEAVY.
The change: STEM-FORM is reranked above *SUPERHEAVY.
The motivation: Changes (a) and (b) reinforced STEM-FORM by
decreased the extent to which it is violated. We supposed that
constraints tend to become dominant in the measure that they are
unviolated on the surface.
The surface effect: GEN.SG *riikiis > riikjis.
(d) *triggus > triggws (Section 6).
The starting point: At the stage preceding the change, -wa stems
violate the morphological constraint STEM-FORM, e.g. *triggus,
due to domination by the phonological constraint *SUPERHEAVY.
The change: same as (c).
The motivation: same as (c).
The surface effect: NOM.SG *triggus > triggws.
(e) *walu > walw (Section 7).
The starting point: At the stage preceding the change, the general
morphological constraint STEM-FORM, as well as the verb-specific
constraint (20), are violated by strong verb forms like *walu, due
to domination by the phonological constraint *SUPERHEAVY.
The change: same as (c) and (d).
The motivation: same as (c) and (d).
The surface effect: 350 PAST*W«/M > walw.
10. Conclusion
I have argued that a series of analogical changes in Gothic declension

and conjugation are all driven by a constraint on the form of stems in
concert with constraints on syllable and foot well-formedness. The most
interesting cases are the originalya-stems, where the constraint is imple-
mented at the level of underlying representations even though it is
violated in every output occurrence of the stem. They challenge theories
which define optimality only on output representations.
The analogical changes examined here do not complicate either the
phonological or the morphological system of Gothic. The phonological
constraints do not pick up any exceptions or morphological conditions.
In particular, Sievers' Law does not acquire any lexical or morphologi-
cal exceptions, but continues to operate, as a by-product of metrical and
syllabic parsing, in a fully regular way. In constraint-based terms, the
unity of the changes is that they all involve STEM-FORM asserting itself
in the morphology. None of the changes need be treated as a case of
surface analogy, and some of them cannot be so treated without loss
of generalization. Under the unified perspective proposed here, all the
changes are variations on a single theme: the increasing conformity to
the morphological generalization STEM-FORM. Thus they are consistent
with the view that analogical change is grammar optimization.
Notes
1. The plural endings are -os, -e, -am, -ans and work exactly like the Dative Singular
in (2). Except where specifically indicated to the contrary, I cite Gothic forms in
phonological transcription, not in transliteration. For the consonants, this makes
little difference. For the vowels and diphthongs, the relevant correspondences
between the spelling as romanized in the handbooks and my phonological transcrip-
tion are as follows:
Spelling Phonology
ai, au ai , au
ai, au e, 0
ei ii
o, e oo, ee
a, i a, i
u u (uu)
44 Paul Kiparsky
2. According to Murray and Vennemann (1983: 525), the innovating forms are
'analogical violations of Sievers' Law', which arise when '. . . gen.sg. -jis is
restored after long stems, on the analogy of the short stems and the para-
digmatically related forms with -ja(m) and -je'. Lahiri and Dresner (1983/84:156)
state that Sievers' Law 'was morphologized to apply only to the masculine ja-
nouns'.
3. As well as qiman 'come', hwoopan 'brag', where kw-, hw- might however be
considered unitary labiovelar phonemes rather than clusters.
4. Except word-initially, where there is a (marginal) contrast between I'M- and ju-,
e.g. iupa 'above' vs.juggs 'young'.
5. In such cases, the spellings iV and ijV seem to be in free variation in the Gothic
manuscripts, both in loans and in native words; whether the spelling variation
represents a variation in pronunciation is not clear, but there is at any rate no
contrast between them, and both occur only where glide formation and contraction
of like vowels are inapplicable. There is no evidence of a contrast between ija
and ia in any of the other older Germanic languages either, as far as I am aware.
6. Other free/bound alternation patterns occur in several unproductive declensions:
r-stems (broobar-broopr), η-stems (guma - guman-, gumin-), suppletives :foon,
watoo ~ (funin-, watin-).
7. Once again, this difference between masculine and neuter ya-stems is part of a
larger pattern. Other noun paradigms in Gothic have split by gender in a similar
way (for somewhat analogous reasons, which I will not go into here), most
strikingly the /-stems, where masculines and and feminines have diverged in the
singular.
8. Floating phonemic elements are in general suited for the tretment of what
Bloomfield called 'reminiscent sandhi"; see Tranel (1998) and Kiparsky (forth-
coming: ch. 5) for French liaison.
9. More precisely, the /-iiV stem; recall that we are omitting the floating vowel
melodies for simplicity.
10. As usual, the word-final mora can be ignored in the mora count.
11. A fortiori, STEM-FORM dominates the general CLUSTER constraint, which is
dominated by all other constraints considered here.
12. E.g. bind- 'bind', gib- 'give' (present stems of strong verbs), band-, gab- (past
stems of strong verbs), sookid- 'sought', bruuht- 'used' (past stems of weak
verbs).
13. The fourth class (/fullnoo-/ 'fill') is not so relevant here because it actually inflects
as a weak verb only the past tense.
14. I also assume tacitly that a FAITHFULNESS constraint prohibits mismatches of
morphological bracketing between input and output, for example a realization
of input [X][YZ] as output [XY][Z].
15. I am also assuming that nuclei of three or mora moras, e.g. *m, are prohibited
by an undominated constraint, not included in the tables.
References
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1961 Gotische Grammatik. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Calabrese, Andrea
1994 Sievers' Law in Gothic: A synchronic analysis with some notes on its
diachronic development. The Linguistic Review 11: 149-194.
Dresher, B. Elan and Aditi Lahiri
1991 The Germanic foot: Metrical coherence in Old English. Linguistic
Inquiry 22: 251-286.
Harris, James
1983 Spanish Phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hooper, Joan
1976 An introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York: Aca-
demic Press.
Kiparsky, Paul
1968 Linguistic universals and linguistic change. In: Emmon Bach and Robert
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1998 Sievers' Law as prosodic optimization. In: Jay Jasanoff, H. Craig
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Lahiri, Aditi and Dresher, B. Elan
1983/84 Diachronic and synchronic implications of declension shifts. The Lin-
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1983 Sound change and syllable structure in Germanic phonology. Language
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1993 Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in Generative Grammar.
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46 Paul Kiparsky
Stampe, David
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Vennemann, Theo
1973 Rule inversion. Lingua 29: 209^2.
Analogical levelling of vowel length in West
Germanic
B. Elan Ores her
1. Introduction
In this article I will begin by reviewing some work done in collabora-

tion with Aditi Lahiri on Open Syllable Lengthening (OSL) in Middle
English, Middle High German, and Middle Dutch (Lahiri and Dresher
1999). Our claim is that OSL is indeed just that, and not a form of
compensatory lengthening associated with the loss of a vowel. Our
analysis assigns a prominent place to analogy, in particular to analogical
levelling. Since an appeal to analogy is still considered to be somewhat
suspect, and since the direction of this levelling appears at first to go
against some proposed principles of analogy, I would like to focus on
the nature of this type of analogy. I will argue that an appeal to analogy
in the cases we discuss is entirely appropriate, and indeed unavoidable
by anyone; and that the direction of analogy is not problematic, as long
as we carefully distinguish different types of analogy that appear to
operate on different principles. I will consider the circumstances in
which analogical levelling arises, and I will argue that we should not
be surprised to find it in connection with Middle English vowel-quantity
alternations. Finally, I will argue that though this type of levelling exists
as a gross phenomenon, it is not itself a mechanism of grammar. Rather,
it is a byproduct of the acquisition process.
2. Middle English OSL
Until recently, it has been a fairly uncontroversial assumption that

stressed syllables in all the West Germanic languages underwent a
process of open syllable lengthening during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries (Prokosch 1939: 140). According to this standard account,
OSL lengthens the vowels of short stressed open syllables. In the last
two decades, however, this account has been challenged by a number
of proposals concerning Middle English open syllable lengthening
48 B. Elan Dresher
(MEOSL) which suggest that, at least in this language, there was no

general rule that lengthened vowels in open syllables. This move away
from OSL as open syllable lengthening was inaugurated by Minkova
(1982, 1985); Minkova (1982: 42^3) cites some earlier antecedents
of her position, including Sarrazin (1898), Minkoff (1955/72), andErd-
mann (1972). Basing her argument on a list of 326 native and Scandina-
vian words compiled from the entries in Holthausen (1934) and Sweet
(1888), supplemented by 107 words borrowed from Anglo-Norman
collected by Bliss (1952/53), Minkova (1982:42) claims that' 'MEOSL
depends crucially on the type of syllable following the stressed short
syllable. The change operates unfailingly only in cases when there is
syllabic restructuring in Middle English, i.e., when the second syllable
of the original form is lost due to final schwa deletion in Middle Eng-
lish." [emphasis in original BED] For Minkova, the contrast in (1)
reveals the essential context of MEOSL.
(1) MEOSL (Minkova 1982)

a. tale 'tale' b. talent 'talent'
OSL applies consistently in cases such as (la), where the stressed

syllable is followed by a schwa; it is the loss of the schwa, she suggests,
that causes lengthening of the stressed vowel. If a vowel (or syllable)
following an initial light syllable is retained, however, as in (Ib), the
stressed vowel does not lengthen, even if in an open syllable.
Minkova's suggestion of apocope leading to vowel lengthening is
taken up and modified in a series of publications, including Lass
(1985), Minkova (1985), Hayes (1989), Kim (1993), Ritt (1994), and
Bermudez-Otero (1998). While offering slightly different formulations
of MEOSL as well as providing different explanations for what might
have motivated it, all these accounts continue to take the view that the
behaviour of the following vowel is part of the conditioning environ-
ment for OSL. We will refer to this type of analysis as a compensatory
lengthening (CL) analysis. In our view, all these studies carry over a
fundamental flaw in Minkova's methodology: her word counts do not
take into account the morphological classes, and hence the paradigmatic
alternations, that the words belonged to. We maintain that a class-by-
class study reveals a different picture than do gross word counts.
2.1. Noun classes in Old English
To obtain some idea of the possible targets of OSL, let us start with the
main Old English nominal morphological categories, shown in (2):
(2) Survey of morphological categories (Old English)

Class Endings Stem Singular Plural Gloss
a- (m.) 0-VC C0VC hwael hwalas 'whale'
C0V:C Stan stänas 'stone'
C0VCVC, cyning cyningas 'king'
cradol crad[e]las 'cradle'
C0V:CVC, deofol deoflas 'devil'
0-V C0VC hoi holu 'hole'
0-0 C0VCC word word 'word'
0-0 C0VCVC, water water 'water'
C0V:CVC, födor födor 'fodder'
ja- (n.) V-V C0VCC stucce stuccu 'stick'
0-0 bedd bedd 'bed'
u- V-V C0VC sunu suna 'son'
0-V C0VCC feld felda 'field'
0-V QVCVC, sumor sumora 'summei
o- V-V C0VC talu tala 'tale'
0-V C0V:C bröd bröda 'bread'
C0VCC ein elna 'ell'
n- V-VC C0VC nama naman 'name'
C0VCC sunne sunnan 'sun'
C0V:C möna mönan 'moon'
V-VC CnVCVC, wuduwe wuduwan 'widow'
By Middle English times, these classes were considerably reduced

by the effects of vowel reduction, and the shifting of minor class nouns
into the major classes.
50 B. Elan Dresher
2.2. Monosyllabic stems
For monosyllabic nouns, essentially two classes are relevant for OSL,
as shown in (3). The first class (3a) consists of old -nouns, like hwcel-
hwalas: these nouns have a single closed syllable in the uninflected
nominative and accusative singular, and add a syllable in inflected
forms. If we assume that OSL is simply open syllable lengthening,
then the uninflected forms do not meet the environment for OSL,
whereas the inflected forms do. Thus, we expect OSL to apply in in-
flected forms but not in uninflected forms, creating an alternation in
vowel length:
(3) Expected effects of OSL on monosyllabic stems

a. 0-VC nouns b. V-VX nouns
Sing. Plural Sing. Plural
OE hwael hwalas talu tala
OSL — hwäles tale tale
Expect hwal hwäls täl täls
NE whale whales tale tales
If the expected alternation had persisted into Modern English, then all
descendents of -nouns would alternate like staff-staves. In general, we
do not observe such an outcome: rather, such nouns emerge in Modern
English with either a long or short vowel, as shown in (4):
(4) Old English monosyllabic -stems with short vowels

a. Short in Modern English
back, bath, black, brass, broth, chaff, glass, god, grass, lock, lot,
path, sap, shot, staff, swath, thatch, vat, wer[wolf\
b. Long in Modern English
bead, blade, coal, crate, dale, day, door, fare, gate, grave, hole,
hope 'recess', meet, sole 'mud', way, whale, yoke
If OSL did apply in the plural and then there was levelling because
there was an alternation in length, we should expect that some of these
nouns would restructure as long and some as short. If we systematically
look at this noun class, we find that these nouns have levelled in both
directions (we exclude nouns with high stem vowels which did not
typically undergo OSL). The breakdown of outcomes for nouns of this
class that we have collected from various sources is given in (5):
(5) Outcomes in monosyllabic classes with expected length alter-

nation in Middle English
OE stem OE vowel Expected NE Short NE Long
type length ME length # % # %
monosyll short S-L 19 53 17 47
What would a CL analysis say about these forms? Since it requires

lengthening to be triggered by the loss of a final vowel, then neither
the uninflected nominative and accusative singular (e.g., hwcel) nor the
nominative and accusative plural (hwales) could have caused the length-
ening of the stem vowel. Rather, Minkova (1982: 53 n. 2) assumes that
other forms of the paradigm—the dative singular and plural and the
genitive plural—would have supplied sufficient examples of a length-
ened vowel for long outcomes to prevail. So the CL account must also
appeal to levelling to account for the spread of length to the uninflected
forms in some nouns, and the loss of length in the inflected forms of
others.
Consider now the forms in (3b), like talu. These forms, derived from
various Old English classes, have open short stressed syllables in all
forms. On either account we expect lengthening in all forms of the
paradigm. As there is no alternation, there is nothing to level, and we
expect that such nouns will emerge in Modern English with long vow-
els. This is indeed the case, with some exceptions. In (6), we list words
of this class we have identified, grouped according to stem vowel.
(Again, we omit high vowels, which were not regularly subject to OSL).
(6) Old English words with disyllables throughout the paradigm

a. Stem vowel /a/
ealu(fi) 'ale', apa 'ape', b(e)alu 'bale', bana 'bane', blce.se
'blaze', bracu 'brake',c(e)aru 'care', draca 'drake', faru 'fare',
fces(u) 'feaze', gcere 'gear', grafu 'grave', haca 'hake', 'hook',
52 B. Elan Dresher
hama 'harne', ham 'hare', cnafa 'knave', lagu 'lake', lane

'lane', (ge)maca 'make' (n. dial., OED), manu 'mane', maga
'maw', nama 'name', nafu 'nave' (of wheel), place 'place',
racu 'rake', sacu 'sake', sola 'sale', sagu 'saw', scealu 'scale',
sc(e)apa 'scathe' (arch.,dial.,ODEE\sceadu 'shade', 'shadow',
scealu 'shale' (obs. dial. OED), scamu 'shame', slaga 'slayer',
snaca 'snake', spada 'spade', staca 'stake', stalu 'stale', swapu
'swath', 'swathe', talu 'tale', fana 'vane', walu 'wale' (dial.
OED), waru 'ware'
b. Stem vowel Id
bedu 'bead', bera 'bear', bece 'beck', cleofa, clifa 'cleve', denu,
-e 'dean', hege 'hedge', 'hay' (dial, arch.), mete 'meat', medu
'mead', me(o)lu 'meal', mere 'mere', nefa 'nephew', peru
'peaf,peose,pise 'pea(se)',p/ega 'play\cwene 'queen', siege
'slay', smeoru 'smear', spere 'spear', stede 'stead', 'steed'
(dial.), stela 'steal', 'stell' (both dial., ODEE), stcepe, stepe
'step', tere, teoru 'tar', preve 'thrave', 'threave', wela 'weal'
c. Stem vowel /o/
bola 'bole', 'boal',boga 'bow',cloca 'cloak',clofa 'clove',cote
'cote', copu, -e 'come' (dial.), cofa 'cove', duru 'door', dora
';dor(r)',dropa 'drop',/ο/α 'foal', hola 'hole', hosa 'hose', loca
'loke', 'loce', more 'more', nosu 'nose', scolu 'shoal', scota
'shote', 'shoat', smoca 'smoke', stole 'stole', stofu, -a 'stove',
sopa 'sup', pole 'thole', prote, -u 'throat'
Most of these words have long vowels in Modern English. Of the

ones that do not, 'shadow' derives from ME schadwe, where the w
either created a consonant cluster or a disyllabic which would have
trisyllabic inflected forms which were subject to shortening; shade is
the expected outcome from the CVC+V interpretation of the Old Eng-
lish form, via ME schade. Final OE -u is often ambiguous between
representing the vowel -u, as in u- and o- declensions, and a -w, which
appears to prevent lengthening, as in 'nephew'. Some other words with
short vowels have doublets with long vowels, like 'hook', 'hake';
'swath', 'swathe'; 'hedge', 'hay'; 'stead', 'steed'; 'stell', 'steal'.Count-
ing every outcome in (6), we arrive at the figures in (7):
(7) Outcomes in classes with no length alternation in Middle English

vowel length ME length # % # O/r>
t\J
/a/ Short L-L 3 6.5 43 93.5

Id Short L-L 9 33.3 18 66.7
lol Short L-L 3 12.5 21 87.5
Considering now the competing explanations of vowel lengthening,

these are the forms that Minkova (1982) observed reliably show length-
ening, on her view because lengthening here was consistently associated
with the loss of an inflectional vowel. However, an explanation in terms
of OSL arrives at the same result, because no other processes intervene
to shorten the vowel. Thus, with respect to monosyllabic nouns, both
accounts apply in straightforward fashion to classes where no length
alternation is created, and both need to appeal to paradigmatic levelling
in both directions to account for the nouns that should have emerged
with a length alternation.
2.3. Disyllabic stems
Let us turn now to disyllabic stems. Any consideration of the effects

of OSL on Middle English disyllabic stems has to take into account
another productive process which affected vowel quantity, namely
trisyllabic shortening (TSS) (Wright and Wright 1928: § 88, and others).'
Once OSL was added to the grammar of Middle English, the initial short
syllables of originally disyllabic stems could potentially be lengthened
both in the singular and in the plural. However, if TSS had priority over
OSL, only the singular forms would show any lengthening. In that case,
both stems with original long vowels and those that were lengthened
by OSL would maintain vowel-length alternations. We would therefore
expect the alternations in (8):
54 B. Elan Dresher
(8) Effects of OSL and TSS on disyllabic stems2

Sing. Plural Sing. Plural
OE deofol deofelas beofor beoferas
OSL — — beover beoveres
TSS — defeles — beveres
Expect defel defeles bever beveres
NE devil devils beaver beavers
Notice that the resulting surface alternations obscure the original

underlying differences between long and short vowels. If this pattern
had been retained, we should find alternations in all heterosy llabic stems
of this type in Modern English. But there are no such alternations at
all, indicating clearly that there must have been some sort of levelling
of quantity distinctions within paradigms. If language learners faced
with these alternations prefer to have one stem type in each paradigm,
one would expect that the levelling would (a) go either way and (b) that
both original long vowels as well as those lengthened by OSL would
be equally affected.
Original short open syllables in Old English are found as both long
and short in Modern English, as shown in (9).
(9) Old English short open syllables in Modern English

a. With long vowels
cecer 'acre', by del 'beadle', beofor 'beaver', cradol 'cradle', efes
'eaves', efen 'even', hcefen 'haven', hcesel 'hazel', hlcedel 'la-
dle', mapul- 'maple', nacod 'naked', hrcefn 'raven', stapol 'sta-
ple', tapor 'taper'
b. With short vowels
botm 'bottom', camel 'camel', canon 'canon', copor 'copper',
feeder 'father', fcepm 'fathom', feper 'feather',/ete/ 'fettle',
hamor 'hammer', heofon 'heaven', hofel 'hovel', lator 'latter',
of en Oven', oter Otter', sadol 'saddle', seofon 'seven', sc(e)ofl
'shovel', water 'water', weder 'weather'
Further, if it is correct that underlying quantity distinctions merged

as shown in (8), we should expect to find that stems with original long
vowels, too, should have levelled in both directions, and this is just what
we find, as we see in (10):
(10) Levelling in both directions for original long vowels

a. With long vowels
beacen 'beacon', bltel, bietel 'beetle', bridels 'bridle', cefenn
'even(ing)',/e/or 'fever', häpen 'heathen', hüsl 'housel', 'Eu-
charist', stypel 'steeple', täcn 'token'
b. With short vowels
bösm 'bosom', bröpor 'brother', deofol 'devil' ,fodor 'fodder',
htzring 'herring', modor 'mother', rcedels 'riddle', spätl 'spat-
tie', 'saliva', pymel 'thimble', wcepen 'weapon'
Indeed, the proportions of long and short outcomes are quite compa-
rable for nouns with original long and original short vowels, suggesting
they did merge at some point:
(11) Outcomes in disyllabic noun classes with expected length

alternation in Middle English
type length ME length # % # %
Disyll Short L-S 19 58 14 42
Disyll Long L-S 10 53 9 47
Given what we have seen in the monosyllabic stems, these results are
expected given an OSL cum levelling analysis. What about a CL
analysis? Stems with original long vowels must again be accounted for
as in our analysis, i.e., through shortening by TSS followed by levelling
in both directions. In the case of disyllabic stems with original short
vowels, however, the CL analysis comes up short: no lengthening is
expected in the uninflected forms, like cradel or water, because no
vowel is lost there; and the inflected forms are not likely sources of
lengthening, because vowels in those contexts were subject to shorten-
ing, through TSS or, in the case of loss of the medial vowel, through
56 B. Elan Dresher
being in a closed syllable. (Recall the original long vowels, which were
presumably shortened in those contexts). A CL analysis cannot explain
why any significant percentage of disyllables with original short vowels
turn up with long vowels in Modern English, let alone why this per-
centage is similar to the distribution of disyllables with original long
vowels.
Even allowing for a certain arbitrariness in selection of Modern
English forms (e.g. should we pick cradle or creddle, staff or stavel),
the chance involved in whether a form becomes obsolete or not, possi-
ble changes in declensional class, influence from other declensional
classes (e.g. is NE grave from OE grcefor graful), and some phonologi-
cal influences we may not be allowing for (e.g. the final glide may
contribute to long outcomes in day, way, etc.), the results are remark-
ably consistent: in every class where we expect a Middle English length
alternation that was later levelled out, we find slightly over half of the
words emerge in Modern English with short vowels, and slightly under
half come out with long vowels. Since original long vowels come out
with the same proportion of short vowels, these results cannot be attrib-
uted to a failure of MEOSL in the absence of the loss of a following
vowel. Rather, the results are expected if length alternations existed in
paradigms that were subsequently levelled in both directions, with a
slight preference for short vowel outcomes. Such an account presup-
poses that OSL applied regularly in disyllables; for without OSL, there
is no reason why any words in the cradle-saddle class should have long
vowels in Modern English, let alone close to 50 per cent.
Minkova's (1982) figures for disyllables with original short vowels
present a different picture. She finds 96 words with Modern English
short vowels, or 81.4 per cent of the total, and 22 with long vowels, or
18.6 per cent. The impression is that such words only rarely have long
vowels in Modern English. The discrepancies between our figures and
hers can be traced to the fact that her list contains a heterogeneous
group of words. Besides words of the sort we considered, it includes
words with internal clusters which appear to have inhibited OSL (bas-
tard, jaspis, etc.), verbs with many trisyllabic forms that would have
undergone TSS (gather from OE gcedrian, ME gadrian, ferry from OE
ferian, MEferien, etc.), words with suffix -ig, which appears to have
inhibited lengthening (berry, many), and other words that present some
kind of special circumstance. In our view, a systematic survey in which

words from the same morphological class are compared yields more
reliable results, and presents the more accurate picture.
The crucial cases are summarized in (12). The Old English and
Modern English forms are the attested ones, the Middle English forms
are our hypothesis in keeping with what we expect given our analysis.
(12) Summary of nouns with and without lengthening

Old English Middle English Modern English
SG PL SG PL SG PL Vowel
a. OSL in singular and plural: Modern English long vowels
talu tala tab tab > tale tales [e:]
tabs
nama naman nama naman > name names [e:]
namas
b. OSL in plural only: Modern English long and short vowels
hol holu hol hob > hole holes [o:]
holes
god godes god gödes god gods [D]
c. OSL in singular and TSS in plural: Modern English long and
short vowels
water wateras water wateras water waters [D]
beofor beoferas bever beveres beaver beavers [i:]
d. TSS in plural (shortening): Modern English long and short
vowels
deofol deoflas defel defeles devil devils [ ]
beacn beacn becen becen > beacon beacons [i:]
becenes
The claim here, then, is that OSL applied systematically in all these
classes in Middle English. The reason why there are so many apparent
random exceptions to the lengthening is because there are shortening
rules like TSS present in the synchronic grammar of the language
which lead to paradigmatic alternations of length in the singular and
58 B. Elan Dresher
plural of nouns. Levelling assumes that OSL did apply; otherwise,

it would be impossible to explain why some stems ever lengthened.
3. The direction of levelling
If we agree, then, that paradigmatic levelling of quantity plays an

important role in the outcome of vowel length in English, we have to
turn now to some questions about this levelling. First, why did it occur?
Second, what can we say about the bidirectionality of the levelling?
Does it not contradict a principle that holds that the singular forms
should prevail over the plural (Kurylowicz 1949)? Let's consider the
reason for the levelling first.
We know that at some point the inflectional vowel in plurals was
deleted. Assuming the scenario we posited earlier, that OSL applied to
all stressed open syllables but was superseded by TSS, and now assum-
ing further that the inflectional vowel deletes, then in the absence of
any change in the vowel length derived to here, we would expect the
outcomes shown in (13):
(13) Expected vowel length alternations without levelling

a. Before loss of inflectional vowel
SG PL SG PL SG PL
tale tales god gödes bever beveres
b. After loss of inflectional vowel
SG PL SG PL SG PL
täl täls god gods bever bevers
Assuming no adjustment of vowel length, the loss of the inflectional

vowel leaves the vowel length situation in a confused state. In some
words, there is lengthening in the plural, but no change in syllable
structure, while in other words, but not all, the plural is associated with
shortening. There are no prospects for salvaging a phonological rule
from this situation. But even a morphological rule appears to be unavail-
able: we cannot, for example, associate length with any particular
morphological category. Thus, there is no reasonable way to reconstruct
a rule or set of rules that could lead to the observed alternations. In such
circumstances, paradigmatic levelling is liable to step in. On this ac-
count, language learners despair of a rule, and opt instead to choose a
consistent vowel quantity on a word-by-word basis.
3.1. Yiddish
A similar situation led to the loss of final devoicing in Yiddish. Accord-

ing to King (1976), the loss of devoicing was triggered by the apocope
of word-final unstressed -e.
(14) Yiddish final devoicing and apocope (King 1976)

a. Before apocope b. After apocope
SG PL SG PL
NOM tac tage tac tag
ACC tac tage tac tag
GEN tages tage tages tag
DAT tage tagen tag tagen
After apocope, there is neither a phonetic nor a morphological motiva-

tion for devoicing. King suggests the rule was then lost (we can say
abandoned), with levelling generally in favour of the predominant
allomorph, according to King; i.e., the allomorph that occurs in the most
forms in the paradigm, here the allomorph with the voiced consonant.
He also observes, however, that in certain types of words, the levelling
went the other way: for example, words ending in nasal-obstruent, like
hant, hunt, vant, vint, but also bund, kind, land, etc. We might expect
words that have similar properties might level the same way: when no
patterns appear to exist, learners impose some. King points to similar
phenomena in Bavarian dialects as evidence that apocope is the main
trigger of loss of devoicing and subsequent levelling.
We might observe that a further reason for the choice of the voiced
allomorph in these cases could be contrast. Before loss of devoicing,
Yiddish had stems ending in voiceless obstruents that were voiceless
in all members of the paradigm. Stems ending in voiced obstruents had
alternations, as in (14a). In the period of apocope, the stems with under-
60 B. Elan Dresher
lying voiceless obstruents remained as they were. So there could have

been a tendency to suppose that a stem that was not consistently voice-
less was voiced.
Whatever the reason, this example shows that levelling does not
necessarily have to be random. Also, levelling can obscure the original
phonological situation. If we base ourselves only on Modern Yiddish,
we might conclude that devoicing never applied to postvocalic voiced
obstruents, or did so sporadically, whereas it applied more frequently
to obstruents following nasals. But we know from historical evidence
that this is not correct. The modern pattern reflects influences on the
levelling of the voicing alternation, it does not mirror the original extent
of devoicing.
So far, I have argued that we have to recognize that levelling of
vowel quantity did occur in Middle English nominal paradigms, and
that it occurred in response to a situation that was phonologically and
morphologically incoherent. Thus, there is no need to make levelling
a grammatical principle, or a part of Universal Grammar. It is some-
times proposed, particularly within Optimality Theory (Prince and
Smolensky 1993), that paradigm effects can be modelled by constraints
that require output forms to resemble each other (see Raffelsiefen, this
volume). So, in this spirit, it could be proposed that in Old English this
constraint was ranked low, and so did not influence the output; in
Middle English the constraint was ranked high, enforcing uniform
length within paradigms.
I believe that this is the wrong way to go, for it makes levelling too
easily available at any time—whereas, if the preceding account is
correct, wholesale levelling occurs only as a response to a crisis.
3.2. Dutch
The idea that paradigmatic levelling of this kind comes in when learners
are unable to discover any basis for an alternation is supported by
looking at the fate of similar length alternations in other West Germanic
languages.3
Modern Dutch has a class of nouns with what are now considered
to be 'exceptional' plurals, i.e., plurals that have a long vowel even
though the singular has a short vowel. Some examples are given in (15):
(15) Dutch nouns with singular-plural vowel length alternation

so PL Gloss
dag da: gen 'day'
pad pa:den 'path'
glas gla:zen 'glass'
hoi ho:len 'hole'
A survey of these nouns from the CELEX database (CELEX 1995)

shows that almost all exceptional nouns of Germanic origin belonged
to the original α-class nouns. In fact, then, the alternation is not excep-
tional at all, but is exactly what we expect after OSL, since this particu-
lar class has singular CVC stems with no ending (therefore keeping the
stressed vowel in a closed syllable) and a plural V-ending which makes
the initial syllable light and open. Unlike in English, Dutch never had
syncope of the inflectional vowel. Therefore, the phonological basis of
the alternation was retained, and no levelling takes place here.
3.3. German
In German, the cognate forms of the old α-noun class must have also
undergone OSL in the inflected forms; but in Modern German, we find
no singular-plural length alternations. OHG underwent the second
consonant shift, whereby postvocalic voiceless stops become geminate
fricatives. This shift, and some other more sporadic gemination rules,
created closed syllables in the plural, to go along with the closed sylla-
bles in the singular. OSL could thus not apply in those forms, as shown
in (16), where the German stems consistently have nonalternating short
vowels where the Dutch cognates have alternating stems (glosses refer
to the German words):
62 B. Elan Dresher
(16) German nonalternating short stems

German Old English Dutch Gloss
Schloß slot 'castle', 'lock'
Blatt bleed blad 'leaf
Gebrechen (ge-)brec gebrek 'affliction'
Faß faet vat 'cask'
Gott god god 'god'
Dach l?aec dak 'roof
Schuß sc(e)ot schot 'shot'
Schiff scip schip 'ship'
Stätte, Stadt stede stad 'town'
This much is expected, given normal phonological developments.

What is surprising is that where doubling does not interfere, as in (17),
the stems do not retain a length alternation, but are long in all forms
of the paradigm:
(17) German nonalternating long stems

German Old English Dutch Gloss
Gebet (ge-)bed gebed 'prayer'
Gebot (ge-)bod gebod 'commandment'
Bad baej) bad 'bath'
Tag daeg dag 'day'
Tal da3l dal 'valley'
Glas glaes glas 'glass'
Grab graef graf 'grave'
Los hlot lot 'fate'
Hof hof hof 'courtyard'
Pfad pact) pad 'path'
Schmied smij) smid 'smith'
Stab staef staf 'pole', 'staff'
Stag stasg stag 'mast rope' (Naut.)
Weg weg weg 'path'
We can infer that the German stems must have restructured so that
they now have long vowels, and that this restructuring must have been
based on the plural forms, which had lengthened by OSL. This is unlike
Dutch, which maintains the short-long distinction in these paradigms.
Note that one cannot argue that all original nouns of this class were for
some reason lengthened in German, because those that underwent the
second consonant shift had a closed syllable in the plural and therefore
did not lengthen in the singular either, as shown in (16). Clearly, the
trigger for the restructuring must have been the plural, where the vowel
was lengthened by OSL.
Why was there a systematic restructuring in German in favour of
long vowels and not in Dutch? We conjecture that this was due to the
fact that, after the second consonant shift and the change of medial [d]
to [tt], the remaining single intervocalic consonants were all voiced.4
Thus, when OSL applied, the alternations in the α-nouns were typically
in the context of voiced sounds. Vowels in general are phonetically
longer in the context of such segments; once there is a vowel-length
alternation within a paradigm in the context of voiced sounds, it is
possible that the phonetic length in the closed syllable in the singular
can be interpreted as phonological, given that the plural has a phonolog-
ically long vowel.5
It follows, then, that the motivation for the levelling in the German
α-stems is different from that of their English counterparts. The para-
digms did not become incoherent in German. Rather, the segregation
of stems ending in voiced and voiceless consonants set the stage for a
reanalysis of OSL as lengthening before a voiced consonant. The results
of the levelling in German are also quite different: here there is no
word-by-word selection of a long or short vowel. Rather, the restructur-
ing proceeds by classes in a consistent direction. And again, there is
no reason to propose a constraint favouring uniform vowel length in
a paradigm—here, too, levelling is a by-product of something else, in
this case, a reanalysis of the context of OSL.
4. Important forms
Let us now consider the direction of the levellings. We observe that in

both English and German, the plurals (more precisely, the inflected
forms) play at least as important a role as the singulars (the uninflected
64 B. Elan Dresher
forms). Similarly, in the Yiddish devoicing case, it appears that the

inflected forms usually win over the nominative and accusative
singulars in determining the choice of allomorph. Do these facts jibe
with the claims, made by various students of analogy, that the singular
is more important than the plural, and that the nominative is more
important than the other cases? Since we are also on record as having
made just these claims (Lahiri and Dresher 1983/1984), it is worth
looking again at cases that motivate them. Our argument will be that
those cases are different from the cases we have been looking at.
4.1. Declension shift of Old English u-nouns
I would like to review a case discussed by Lahiri and Dresher (1983/

1984) which suggests that the nominative and accusative singular are
indeed the most important forms of the paradigm. Old English w-nouns
were a relatively small class of nouns that had a distinctive set of
declensional suffixes:
(18) Old English w-stems and -stems

a. Light w-stems b. Heavy w-stems c. -stems
Sing. Plural Sing. Plural Sing. Plural
Nom. sunu suna flöd flöda stän stänas
Ace. sunu suna flöd flöda stän stänas
Gen. suna suna flöda flöda stänes stäna
Dat. suna sunum flöda flödum stäne stänum
The light w-stem nouns had endings that were distinct from those of the
large and productive -stem nouns in all forms of the paradigm except
for the genitive and dative plural. In the heavy w-stems, the -u ending
of the nominative and accusative singular had been deleted by a regular
phonological rule that deleted high vowels following a heavy syllable
(a syllable with a long vowel or ending in more than one consonant).
Following the deletion of -w, the heavy w-nouns had nominative and
accusative singular forms that looked like -stem nouns on the surface.
Heavy w-stem nouns still differed from -stems in four other forms of
the paradigm, the genitive and dative singular, and the nominative and
accusative plural.
By the time of the earliest Old English documents, most of the heavy
w-stem nouns had already shifted into the α-stem class, or were in the
process of doing so, whereas the light stem w-nouns maintained their
distinct inflectional identity (Lahiri and Dresher 1983/84: 142-143).
Since the only difference between the light and heavy stems was in the
nominative and accusative singulars, it must have been the surface
identity of these forms of the heavy w-nouns with the corresponding
forms of the α-nouns, and the distinctness of those forms in the light
w-nouns, that accounts for the earlier assimilation of the heavy w-nouns
to the α-noun paradigm.
In this case, the nominative and accusative singular play a dispropor-
tionate role: the evidence of the oblique forms, which could have pro-
vided evidence that the heavy w-nouns were not α-nouns, appears to
have been ignored in deciding the class membership of the heavy u-
nouns. Notice that the issue here is declensional identity: what class
does a certain noun belong to? In such a case, it appears that the nomi-
native and accusative singular do indeed play a particularly important
role. See Lahiri (1982) and Lahiri and Dresher (1983/1984: 143-148)
for discussion of some other cases of declensional identity that leads
to the same conclusion. We observe further that, in cases where the
nominative and accusative singulars are distinct, the nominative is more
important than the accusative.
4.2. Class membership versus lexical representation
Our proposal, then, is that when learners are acquiring new words, they
make decisions about what declensional class a word belongs to that
gives added weight to the nominative singular. If the nominative singu-
lar looks like it belongs to a major class, they will tend to assign it
there, even if evidence against this classification is provided by other
forms of the paradigm.
The levelling of vowel-length alternations in English is a different
kind of case, however. Here it is not a question of establishing member-
66 B. Elan Dresher
ship in a declensional class, but rather of establishing a lexical represen-

tation for a stem. In such situations, it appears that the nominative
singular does not have as much influence, but that other forms of the
paradigm can play important roles, also. Evidently, language learners
pay attention to allomorphy in attempting to arrive at a lexical represen-
tation. Such cases are sometimes presented, wrongly in our view, as
examples where an oblique form replaces a nominative, or where a
nominative is reformed on the basis of another member of the paradigm.
But that is not what is really going on.
4.3. Restructuring of Latin nominative-vocative forms
To illustrate, consider another example discussed in Lahiri and Dresher

(1983/1984: 153):
(19) Latin suffix change of nominative-vocative forms (Pope 1952)

lac > lactis (cf. hostis)
a. Derivation of lak b. Derivation of laktis
UR /lakt+0/ UR /lakt+is/
Phonology [lak] Phonology [laktis]
Latin nominative-vocative lac was reformed to lactis, apparently on the

basis of the oblique lactis (Pope 1952: 309). However, we must separate
out two changes that are at work here. The main change is a change in
the nominative-vocative suffix from -0 to -is, evidently on the model
of forms like hostis. This change, then, involves the replacement of one
nominative suffix by another, not a nominative by an oblique.
The second part of the change is the reappearance of the stem-final
/t/. The original Latin nominative-vocative singular of the neuter noun
lac is derived from /lakt+0/ by a general phonological rule that deletes
the /t/ when it is word final. The /t/ must have remained part of the
lexical entry of this stem, for it continued to appear in the oblique
forms. When the -0 suffix is replaced by -w, the context for deletion
no longer exists, and the /t/ surfaces in the nominative-vocative. Of
course, without the oblique forms, language learners would have had
no evidence of the continuing presence of underlying /t/ in lac\ but that
is different from claiming that the nominative was replaced by the

oblique.
5. Conclusion
We can summarize our conclusions as follows. We have argued that

Middle English, like Middle Dutch and Middle High German, was
subject to a lengthening rule that lengthened stressed vowels in open
syllables. This rule created length alternations in inflectional paradigms.
Further alternations were created due to interaction with Trisyllabic
Shortening.
These alternations were not maintained in English, because, due to
the effects of vowel deletion, they lost their phonological basis; nor
could any alternative association of vowel length with morphological
categories be substituted.
In such situations, there is liable to be paradigmatic levelling, which
we understand as follows: in the absence of any principle for accounting
for an alternation, and assuming that language learners wish to find a
single lexical representation for lexical stems, learners abandon the
alternation and assign words a single underlying representation.
Various factors may influence which allomorph wins out in any
given form—the choice may be random, or subpatterns may develop
based on resemblance along some dimension. Contrastiveness might
play a role, also. Once these nonphonological factors intervene, the
distribution of forms in a later stage of the language may no longer
directly reflect the extent to which phonological processes had applied
at an earlier time.
When we count words as a way of learning about earlier phonologic-
al processes, we should count them according to their morphological
class. The number of tokens is less important than the number of types
of words.
In selecting an underlying representation, learners tend to consider
the evidence of all the alternants, not assigning significantly greater
weight to any member of the set. Presumably, this is the same process
that occurs when they arrive at lexical representations in general.
By contrast, when first assigning a stem to a morphological class,
some forms are more important than others. We have argued that the
68 B. Elan Dresher
nominative singular is the most important form in Germanic noun

classes.
Acknowledgements
This article is based on joint work with Aditi Lahiri. It is a revised version of a
presentation given at the Workshop on Markedness and Language Change at Schloß
Maurach in March 1997.1 would like to thank the participants for their comments.
This research was partially supported by grant 410-96-0842 from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and by a contract from the University
of Konstanz for the project "Change in Germanic Stress", part of the research group
"Theorie des Lexikons".
Notes
1. The existence of TSS as a rule of Old English has been questioned by Minkova
and Stockwell (1998) and by Bermudez-Otero (1998); however, we do not find
their arguments to be compelling. See further Lahiri and Dresher (1999), and Lahiri
and Fikkert (1999) for detailed discussion.
2. The derivation suggests that OSL was added after TSS and later reordered. It could
also be the case that TSS blocked the application of OSL. We have no clear
evidence of the ordering except for the fact that TSS clearly took priority over
OSL. Otherwise, the original long vowel stems as well as the short vowel stems
would not maintain vowel-length alternations.
3. For more on OSL in other Germanic languages, see also Fikkert (this volume),
who shows that OSL is not yet completed in the Middle Dutch text of 'Lutgart',
and Gussenhoven (this volume) on OSL and tonogenesis in Central Franconian.
4. See Reis (1974a, 1974b) for discussion of the relationship between West Germanic
gemination, High German consonant shift, and the various shortening and lengthen-
ing processes in the history of German. Reis, however, says nothing explicitly
about the interaction of open syllable lengthening and voicing.
5. King (1969: 53) states that vowels were lengthened before voiced obstruents in
Early Modern German, around 1400. See also Leys (1975) for the same point.
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Hierarchical restructuring in the creation of verbal
morphology in Bengali and Germanic: Evidence
from phonology
Aditi Lahiri
I . Introduction
The term 'grammaticalisation' has been adopted to denote a content

word becoming a function word or grammatical word, which may in
due course lead to cliticisation and affixation. In the process, the content
word may be considerably reduced phonologically to as small a unit
as a segment, or a feature, or, eventually, zero. The term 'fusion' is very
apt for the phonology of grammaticalisation. A phonological word is
reduced and fused to a different lexical item to form another phono-
logical word. Bybee, Pagliuca and Perkins (1990: 19), in a short para-
graph referring to phonological aspects of grammaticalisation, state that
the grammatical element having lost its independence becomes 'phono-
logically dependent upon surrounding material'.
Although this process of fusion has distinct phonological conse-
quences, there is very little serious discussion of them in the literature.
Hopper and Traugott (1993) propose the following cline: function word
> clitic > affix. Translated into phonological terms, grammaticalisation
seems to entail the reduction of a phonological word to a unit which
then attaches to another phonological word: [ννοκϋ]ω [WORD]W >
[[\νοκο]ωοι.]ω> [WORD AFFIX] M . Hence grammaticalisation crucially
involves phonological word (PWord) formation. Most cliticisations are
considered synchronically to be PWord formations (cf. Inkelas and Zee
1990, Lahiri et al. 1990, and references therein): Dutch ik zoek de krant
Ί am looking for the newspaper' > zoekte. The determiner is attached
to the preceding word to form a single phonological word. However,
the question is whether the diachronic process is a single step from clitic
to an affix and whether there is any phonological evidence to support
this assumption. In most examples in the literature, the target of the
fusion is an existing phonological word or a phonological stem (cf.
Inkelas 1988; Fitzpatrick-Cole 1996) such that the output is always a
72 Aditi Lahiri
phonological word. Moreover, in Hopper and Traugott's formulation,

there is an implicit assumption that once a function word is reduced to
an affix, it is treated as a single morpheme. That is, there is no further
morphological reanalysis of this word. This, however, need not always
be the case. When the fused element is being reanalysed by the language
learner as an affix, it is posssible to reinterpret the segments (or features)
as different morphemes. This paper focuses on changes of this type.
The central thesis is that when auxiliaries become affixes, they
continue to be morphologically complex, though with morphological
structures reanalysed. In the process of grammaticalisation, aphonologi-
cally reduced content word can be analysed as a sequence of mor-
phemes, via a process of cliticisation, in the following ways:
(1) Phonology of grammaticalisation

[WORD]W [WORD]0 > [[WORD]W CLITIC]],, >
(a) [ROOT + MORPHEME, + MORPHEME^
ΟΓ (b) [[ROOT + MORPHEME,] + MORPHEME 2 ]] W
The scenario in (la) is easily conceivable if the second word which

becomes a clitic was an inflected word itself. That is, if the clitic origi-
nally consisted of a root plus person or number affixes, it would be no
surprise if it is reinterpreted as two grammatical morphemes. However,
it is the second possibility which is of interest in this paper. The reanal-
ysis converts an inflected auxiliary into more than one morpheme, but
the morphological structure is richer than a mere linear concatenation.
The base of the auxiliary is attached closer to the root, with the inflec-
tional morphemes attached to the entire structure. Evidence for such
hierarchical structure comes from phonological processes which are
usually not taken into consideration in the grammaticalisation literature.
The validity of the hierarchical structure in (Ib) requires the existence
of phonological processes and constraints which apply only to the
internal [ROOT + MORPHEME,] domain and not to the entire string as
in (la). Additional evidence comes from the fact that the internal mor-
pheme patterns with other morphemes in the language which are known
to be closely attached to the root.
In this paper, we discuss two diachronic processes of grammati-
Verbal morphology in Bengali and Germanic 73
causation—the introduction of the dental preterite in Germanic and the

new formation of the progressive and perfect in Bengali—both of which
at a first glance look as if they are straightforward instances of reducing
auxiliaries like 'to do' and 'to be' to inflectional endings, which in the
modern languages are attached to the stem to form phonological words.
However, this was not always the case. Instead, in Germanic, the dental
preterite passed through a stage where the consonantal segment repre-
senting an erstwhile root was treated on a par with stem formatives and
the rest as an inflectional ending. Bengali underwent a similar process
with the auxiliary 'to be', and in the modern language it behaves both
as a stem formative which is added to the root as well as a clitic which
attaches to a phonological word. We will claim that both in Bengali and
in Germanic, the grammaticalised auxiliary was initially reanalysed as
a class marker plus person and number endings. Several phonological
processes provide supporting evidence for these analyses.
The consequence of this claim for morphology is that the cline of
grammaticalisation often assumed is not quite as simple as it seems.
It is not that a phonological word is reduced both in form and in status
to an affix which attaches to the nearest convenient phonological word.
The grammaticalised word continues to be more than one grammatical
morpheme, though with a reanalysed hierarchical structure. The focus
of this paper is to show that evidence for such grammaticalisation
comes from phonology—not merely the phonology of reduction as
usually assumed, but the phonology of the entire grammatical system.
We will draw upon evidence from apparently conflicting analogical
levelling in Germanic and partial levelling in Bengali to show that in
both instances the phenomenon is related to a restructuring of morpho-
logical structures.
2. The Bengali auxiliary /aflV
Other than distinguishing tense and aspect, the Bengali verb is inflected
for person. There is no distinction in number. Since our discussion leans
on diachronic processes, we will differentiate between 'literary' and
'colloquial' speech, where the former reflects an earlier stage of the
74 Aditi Lahiri
language. Literary Bengali (Jadhu bhofa 'cultured language'), the style

regularly used in prose,1 reflects an earlier stage of the present spoken
language which is known as Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB: tfolit
bhoja 'current language'). In its fuller forms and archaic inflections,
particularly for the verbs, Literary Bengali represents the Bengali spo-
ken about 500 years ago. Only the simple present and the imperative
have the same forms in the literary and colloquial varieties. Henceforth
when we refer to the literary language we are assuming a stage prior
to the spoken language of today.
We are concerned here with the verb /atfh-/ 'to be', a reduced form
of which is added to the progressive forms (present and past) and the
perfect forms (present and past).2 Although there are superficial simi-
larities, the progressive and the perfect differ in significant ways. We
will claim that for the progressive, the affricate is reanalysed as a
separate grammatical morpheme, and in SCB it is now underlyingly
a geminate affricate. For the present and past perfect, however, the
verb is cliticised to the root with a perfective marker which constitutes
a single phonological word. Before discussing the grammaticalisation
of the verb 'to be' we need to consider the basic properties of Bengali
verbs.
2.1. Basics of the Bengali verb
The verb /atfh-/ is irregular and is inflected only in the simple present
and past tense. For all other forms, another root /thak-/ is used. A
further irregularity is that unlike other verbs its past tense does not
differentiate between literary and colloquial speech. For the sake of
comparison, the parallel forms of a regular verb 'to sit' /boj-/ are pre-
sented along with the forms for /atfh-/ in (1). As we mentioned above,
verbs are marked for person but not for number. Bengali lost number
distinction in verb conjugation at an earlier period. With regard to
person marking, there are three forms of the second person pronoun:
the familiar form [tui], the ordinary form [tumi], and the polite or
honorific form [αρηί]. For the third person pronoun, there are two
forms, the honorific [tini] and otherwise [|e].
(2) Present and past tense forms of /af-/ and /bof-/

Present Simple Present Simple Past
Past (literary) (coll.)
ami I af -i f -i-l-am boj-i boj-i-l-am boj-l-am
tui 2FAM af -if f-i-l-i boj-if boj-i-l-i boj-l-i
tumi 2 af -o f-i-l-e boj-o boj-i-l-e boj-l-e
apni 2HON af -en f -i-l-en boj-en boj-i-l-en boj-l-en
Je 3 af -e f-i-l-o boj-e boj-i-l-o boj-l-o
tini THON af -en f-i-l-en bof-en bof-i-1-en boj-l-en
There are several points to be noted. First, the personal endings are not
all the same in the two tenses: ι (-i/-am) 2 (-o/-e), 2FAM (-ij/-i), 3 (-e/
-o) etc. Second, there is a vowel alternation in the stem for the verb 'to
sit'. This is typical for all the verbs of the language. Other than the
vowel /a/, all non-high stem vowels are raised in certain morphological
circumstances giving rise to the following alternations: /o-u/, /o-o/, /e-i/,
/ae-e/. We will discuss this in more detail later. Third, /-I-/ is clearly a
marker of the past tense. It appears both in the literary and colloquial
forms. Fourth, although the morpheme /-i-/ also appears in the simple
past (except in the colloquial forms of /bo/-/), it is not entirely clear
from these forms alone what role it plays. As we shall soon see, it is
the non-present (past, past habitual and future) marker of the simple
tenses in the literary language. This /-i-/ is one of the sources of the
raised vowel in verb roots. Compare the past habitual and the future
to see how the /-i-/ behaves in (3), where /-t-/ and /-b-/ are the markers
of the two tenses.
(3) Past habitual and future of /bof-/

Future Future Past habitual Past habitual
(literary) (coll.) (literary) (coll.)
ami ι bo/-i-b-o boj-b-o bo/-i-t-am bos-t-am
tui 2FAM boj-i-b-i boj-b-i boj-i-t-ij bos-t-ij
tumi 2 boj-i-b-e boj-b-e boj-i-t-e bos-t-e
apni 2HON boj-i-b-en boj-b-en bo/-i-t-en bos-t-en
Je 3 boj-i-b-e boj-b-e boj-i-t-o bos-t-o
tini 3HON boj-i-b-en boj-b-en boj-i-t-en bos-t-en
76 Aditi Lahiri
Again, the medial /-i-/ is present in the early literary forms but not in
the colloquial forms. Note that the root contains the raised vowel [o]
rather than [o] in both sets. Even after /-i-/ is deleted, the raised vowel
remains in the verb root. Thus, vowel raising, which was phonologically
transparent earlier, is now opaque. There is a further phonological
change in the past habitual colloquial forms: the [f] of the root assimi-
lates to the following dental [t] leading to the surface cluster [st].
Since the /-i-/ is not deleted in the past forms of /atfh-/ in (1), we can
assume that these are equivalent to the literary forms of the other verbs.
Why is it that this verb does not have colloquial forms in the past that
differ from the literary forms? If the /-i-/ were deleted, the ensuing word
initial cluster /tfhl/ would be an impossible one for the language. Of
course, had the verb root been /atfh-/ and not /tfh-/, the deletion of the
[i] would have been possible: af-i-lam > af-l-am\ cf. muf-i-lam >
muf'-l-am 'wipe, I PAST. Dialects of Bengali do have the full forms like
[atfh-i-lam], but the standard language has lost the initial vowel in the
past.
Now we turn to the simple past and past habitual of verbs where the
root vowel is /a/. As we mentioned above, this vowel is not raised in
the context of /-i-/. There is, however, a curious asymmetry when we
compare the past and past habitual of verbs in open and closed syllables
after the /-i-/ is deleted. The simple present is also given for the sake
of comparison—see (4). The root final /a/ combines with a following
vowel in an open syllable to form a diphthong as in [pailam] IPAST,
[pai] ι PRES, [pag] 3PRES. If the following vowel is in a closed syllable,
it is deleted: [pan] 2/3HON. In the simple past and the past habitual,
after the deletion of the medial vowel /-i-/, the root vowel /a/ is fronted
in the vowel final roots but remains unchanged in the closed syllables;
cf. pailam > pelam, but marilam > marlam. One could argue that al-
though the vowel /-i-/ has no effect on the root vowel /a/, if the root
is an open syllable, then the two vowels coalesce to An/ which later
becomes /-e/. However, this solution does not work if we compare the
forms in the future tense given in (5).
(4) Present, past and past habitual of /pa-/ 'get' and /mar-/ 'beat'
Past habitual Simple past Present
(literary) (coll.) (literary) (coll.)
-i-t- -t- -i-1- -1-
ami I pa-i-t-am pe-t-am pa-i-1-am pe-lam pa-i
tui 2FAM pa-i-t-ij pe-t-ij pa-i-l-i pe-li pa-J
tumi 2 pa-i-t-e pe-t-e pa-i-l-e pe-le pa-o
apni 2HON pa-i-t-n pe-t-en pa-i-1-en pe-len pa-n
Je 3 pa-i-t-o pe-t-o pa-i-l-o pe-lo pa-e
tini 3HON pa-i-t-en pe-te-n pa-i-1-en pe-len pa-n
ami I mar-i-t-am mar-t-am mar-i-1-am mar-l-am mar-i
tui 2FAM mar-i-t-ij mar-t-ij mar-i-l-ij mar-l-ij mar-ij
tumi 2 mar-i-t-e mar-t-e mar-i-1-e mar-l-e mar-o
apni 2HON mar-i-t-en mar-t-en mar-i-1-en mar-l-en mar-en
Je 3 mar-i-t-o mar-t-o mar-i-1-o mar-l-o mar-e
tini 3HON mar-i-t-en mar-t-en mar-i-1-en mar-l-en mar-en
(5) Future of /mar-/ and /pa-/

Literary Coll. Literary Coll.
-i-b- -b- -i-b- -b-
ami I mar-i-b-o mar-b-o pa-i-b-o pa-b-o
tui 2FAM mar-i-b-i mar-b-i pa-i-b-i pa-b-i
tumi 2 mar-i-b-e mar-b-e pa-i-b-e pa-b-e
apni 2HON mar-i-b-en mar-b-en pa-i-b-en pa-b-en
Je 3P mar-i-b-e mar-b-e pa-i-b-e pa-b-e
tini 3HON mar-i-b-en mar-b-en pa-i-b-en pa-b-en
These forms in (5) are very puzzling. Had the solution to the past been
vowel coalescence leading to a front vowel, the same result should be
obtained in the future. That is, we would expect [paibo] to become
*[pebo] and not [pabo].3 We believe that this fronting is a consequence
of the quality of the consonantal ending and not due to vowel coales-
cence. The consonantal markers of the simple past, the past habitual
and the future are [1], [t] and [b] respectively. The first two consonants
are [coronal] which causes the [a] to front. The future marker, on the
78 Aditi Lahiri
other hand, is a [labial] and does not have any such effect. We will
informally state this fronting as follows:
(6) Vowel fronting: the root vowel [a] is raised when immediately
followed by a coronal suffix.
The discussion so far has been confined to the simple tenses without
the addition of the auxiliary. Before we discuss the development of the
compound forms, let us summarise the main points until now. So far
we have established the following:
• Simple tenses are marked with consonantal morphemes: [1], [t] and
[b] mark the simple past, the past habitual and the future respectively.
• The verb /atfh-/ 'to be' has only two tenses, the present and the simple
past. It has two allomorphs: /atfh-/ in the present and /tfh-/ in the past.
• At an earlier stage of the language, the non-present tenses were
marked by the vowel /-i-/ which was attached to the root. This vowel
/-i-/ raised the root vowels /ae, e, o, o/ to /e, i, o, u/ respectively. The
low root vowel /a/ is not affected.
• The morpheme /-i-/ does not occur at a later period, i.e. in the collo-
quial language. The deletion, however, did not cause the raised root
vowels to be lowered.
• However, in vowel final roots, syncope of [i] led to the fronting of
/a/ in the context of coronal consonants.
We now turn to the grammaticalisation of /atfh-/ in the progressive and
perfect tenses.
2.2. The verb laf1-! in the progressive
There are two types of compound or periphrastic tenses which are

formed with the auxiliary /atfh-/, the progressive and the perfect. We
will first examine the present and past progressive forms. In literary
Bengali, the typical progressive is made with the verbal root plus the
participial /-ite-/ to which the fully inflected auxiliary is then added.
The only hint that the auxiliary is a clitic rather than a full verb is that
the initial /a/ has disappeared, as in [boj-ite-tfhi] 'sit' IPRES.PROG. In
some eastern dialects, the full forms occur: [korite atfhe] 'do' 3PRES.
PROG (Chatterji 1926: 1019). Below we give examples of literary and
colloquial Bengali forms in the present and past progressive. Since there
are complex alternations with roots ending in vowels, the progressive
forms of an additional verb /pa-/ 'to get' have been added.
(7) Present and past progressive forms

Literary Coll. Literary Coll.
sit (C)VC- get (QV-
Present progressive
ami ι boj-ite-tfhi boj-tfhi pa-ite-tfhi
tui 2FAM boj-ite-tfhij boj-tfhij pa-ite-tfhij pa-tftf h ij
tumi2 boj-ite-tfho boj-tfho pa-ite-tfho pa-ff h o
apni 2HON boj-ite-tfhen boj-tfhen pa-ite-tfhen pa-tftfhen
Je 3 boj-ite-tfhe boj-tfhe pa-ite-tfhe pa-tftfhe
tini 3HON boj-ite-tfhen boj-tfhen pa-ite-tfhen
Past progressive
ami ι boj-ite-tfhilam boj-tfhilam pa-ite-fhilam
tui 2FAM boj-ite-tfhili boj-tfhili pa-ite-tfhili
tumi2 boj-ite-tfhile boj-1fhile pa-ite-tfhile
apni 2HON boj-ite-tfhilen boj-tfhilen pa-ite-fhilen
Je 3 boj-ite-tfhilo boj-fhilo pa-ite-tfhilo
tini 3HON boj-ite-tfhilen
The colloquial forms of both verbs lack the medial suffix /-ite-/. The
deletion of the entire sequence /-ite-/ is rather odd. This change does
not conform to any other phonological deletion process in the language.
Chatterji (1926: 1020) claims that although /-ite-/ occurred in Middle
Bengali, and exists now in the literary language, this is not the source
of the colloquial forms. Had this been so, we would have expected
[bojtetfhe] from [bofitetfhe] rather than [bojfhe]. The form [bojtefhe]
does occur in dialects of East Bengal but not in the standard colloquial
language. Chatterji (1926) argues that the colloquial Bengali forms
come from another morpheme /i/, the source of which is not clear.
Forms like [bojitfhe] occur in early Middle Bengali and become more
frequent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Based on this evidence,
80 Aditi Lahiri
we will assume that the earlier stage of the progressives of the collo-
quial language was not the literary version with /-ite-/ but with medial
/-i-/. A few crucial forms repeated here illustrate the two stages:
(8) Progressives in earlier and present colloquial Bengali

Pre-coll. Coll. Pre-coll. Coll.
sit (C)VC- get (C)V-
Present progressive
ami ι boj-i-tfhi boj-tfhi pa-i-tfhi pc
tui 2FAM boj-i-fij boffij pa-ite-fij pa-tffij
Past progressive
ami ι boj-i-tfhilam boj-tfhilam pa-i-tfhilam pc
tui 2FAM boj-i-tfhili boj-tfhili pa-i-tfhili pa-iftfhilli
Several points of interest arise. First, in the past progressive the endings
are identical to the past forms of /atfh-/ given in (1). The present pro-
gressive endings are different—they lack the initial vowel [a]. Second,
as in the past, past habitual, and future, the medial /-i-/ is syncopated
in the colloquial forms. Third, unlike in the past and past habitual, but
similar to the future, the root vowel [a] is not raised in any of these
forms. Finally, after the syncope, in the colloquial forms of /pa-/ the
affricate of the auxiliary is geminated. This is true for all vowel final
roots not just/a/: [fu-i] 'sleep' IPRES, [futftfhi] 'sleep' IPRES.PROG;
[ni-i] 'take' IPRES, [nitftfhi] 'sleep' IPRES PROG; etc. Summarising the
phonological changes discussed so far, we have the following:
(9) Phonological changes (informally stated)

a. Raising: vowels are raised when /i/ follows.
b. Syncope: medial I'll is deleted.
c. Gemination: syncope leads to the leftwards spreading of the
following consonant when the root ends in a vowel.
d. Fronting: the low vowel /a/ is fronted in the context of coronal
consonants.
e. Sibilant assimilation: the palatoalveolar /J7 assimilates to a fol-
lowing dental consonant.
Our purpose here is to examine the progressive forms in the light

of its development from a syntactic construction consisting of two
phonological words till the present colloquial language where it appears
to be a suffix. That the progressive forms were earlier a participial form
of the verb to which the fully inflected auxiliary was added is evident
from Middle Bengali literature and present-day dialects. The first stage
of cliticization is observable in pre-colloquial Bengali. The only obvious
effect of grammaticalisation is that the initial vowel of the present tense
allomorph /atfh-/ is deleted. Otherwise the entire verb is simply added
to the root plus the participial /-i-/. At a later period there are further
changes. In colloquial Bengali, when the medial /-i-/ disappears and
/tfh-/ is added to a vowel final root, the affricate is geminated. Why
should that be? The deletion of [i] in the past or the future had no effect
on the consonant. The future tense of the verb /pa/ changes from
/pa-i-bo/ to /pa-bo/ but not */pabbo/. Further, as noted earlier, after the
loss of [i] the low vowel [a] was fronted in the context of coronal
consonants in the simple and habitual past. However, the affricate /tfh/
which is also coronal had no influence at all and the vowel remains low.
Finally, when we look at the progressive and the other forms purely
from a synchronic perspective, the progressive morpheme is best
analysed as a geminate affricate /-tftfh-/. Our claim is that the discrepan-
cies and asymmetries between the progressive morpheme and the other
morphemes with regard to the phonological alternation of the roots are
all due to the fact that the reanalysis of the auxiliary has led to a hierar-
chical morphological structure rather than a linear string.
Thus, grammaticalisation was not a matter of simply reducing the
auxiliary to a suffix. We claim that grammaticalisation consisted in a
reanalysis of the verb /atfh-/ with its inflectional ending. The affricate
/tfh/ of the auxiliary is now interpreted as a marker of the progressive
to which the former person endings are added. But the concatenation
is not linear. The progressive marker does not have the same status as
the other tense markers [t], [b] and [1] since they are sensitive to differ-
ent types of phonological processes. Instead, the reduced auxiliary /tfh/
is closer to the root than the tense and person suffixes. There must be
two levels of morphological analysis, which implies that grammati-
calisation has worked in the stages depicted in (10):
82 Aditi Lahiri
(10) Grammaticalisation of the progressive

[/ROOT + i /]ω + [/atfh-/ + person affix]ω
Stage I [[ROOT + /i/]w + [/tfh-/ + person affix]clitic ]l ω
Stage II [[ROOT + /i/ + /fh-/] + [person affix]affix ]ω
Stage III [[/ROOT + /tff-/] + [person affix]affix ]ω
To support this analysis, we must look at the stages in detail. In Stage I,

i.e. the pre-colloquial stage, the progressive is still a clitic. Here the
participial I'll still surfaces. Next, the affricate /-tfh-/, now being a suffix,
is treated on a par with the participial suffix and the non-present suffix,
but separate from the other tense and person/number suffixes. We show
Stage II, where the syncope rule has also been added in Level I.
(11) Reanalysis of the progressive: Stage II

Level I: non-present marker, participle, progressive markers (syllabifi-
cation is indicated with a dot)
PRES NON-PRES PARTICIPLE/PROGRESSIVE
bof bof- i mar-i pa-i bof-i-tfh mar-i-tfh pa-i-tfh
Raising - bo-J-i - - bo-J-i-tfh - -
SYNC & GEM - boj mar pa boj(tf ) mar(tf ) paf(tfh)
h h
Level II (tense markers, person endings)

IPRES 3FUT 3HAB.PAST
boj-i mar-be pa-bo boj-to mar-to pa-to
Fronting - - - - - pe-to
Raising boji _ _ _ _ _
J-Assimilation bos-to
SURFACE bofi marbe pabo bosto marto peto
3PRES.PROG
bo/fh-e mar-f-e patf-fe
Fronting - -
Raising -
J-Assimilation
SURFACE boffe marfe patffe
The crucial points in the analysis are as follows. First, the grammati-
calisation of /atfh-/ means the reanalysis of the affricate as an aspect
marker having the same status as the non-past marker and hence added
independent of the person endings. Second the loss of the medial [i]
in Level I frees a segment position. This can be filled by leftwards
consonant spreading, but this is only possible if there is no other preced-
ing consonant. Gemination or consonant spreading is automatic but is
blocked if there is a preceding consonant. This is due to general syllable
constraints which prohibit syllable final consonant clusters in Bengali.
Thus, /pa-i-tfV becomes /patftfV, but */maif If Vis ill-formed. Final con-
sonants when not preceded by a vowel are extrasyllabic in Level I. Here
is another piece of evidence that syncope must occur on a different level
from the tense morphemes like the past habitual [t]. Had this been the
case, /pa-i-t/ would have become /pat.t/. Since the /-t-/ is added in the
next level, syncope does not lead to gemination. Third, the fronting of
the vowel occurs only in open syllables and in Level II. Since the
progressive contains a geminate morpheme, the syllable is closed and
the fronting is blocked. Note that raising occurs again in Level II, this
time triggered by the first person suffix.
The above phonological alternations, therefore, support the view that
the grammaticalisation of the verb 'to be' was not merely that it became
a suffix, but that it was reanalysed and split into a consonantal progres-
sive suffix plus person endings, each added at a different level. The
resulting morphological structure was not linear but hierarchical. What
was the motivation for the hierarchical structure? Recall that the pro-
gressive has its own past and present tense forms. The other tense
markers, along with their person suffixes, are added separately. Hence,
for the language learner, the base of the auxiliary, now treated as a
progressive suffix was better analysed as being closer to the root and
independent of tense/person suffixes.
We now move to Stage III, that is a stage where syncope is no longer
active and the language learner has no further evidence for the existence
of the synchronic participial and non-present class marker HI. Instead,
the progressive morpheme is better analysed as an underlying geminate
/tftfV and degemination occurs after consonantal stems. In fact, the verb
roots in all probability have been reanalysed as having raised vowels
as the underlying root vowel which is then lowered in the present or
84 Aditi Lahiri
in the verbal noun when followed by a non-high vowel. We can assume

the following two processes:
(12) Changes in SCB

a. Degemination: postconsonantal geminates are degeminated.
b. Vowel Lowering: root vowels in open syllable are lowered
when followed by a non-high vowel in the next syllable (inflec-
tional endings).4
The analysis for current colloquial Bengali would be as follows:
(13) Current Bengali—progressive stage III

3PRES IPRES 3HAB.PAST
boj-e boj-i boj-t-o mar-t-o pa-t-o
Fronting - pe-to
Lowering bo-Je - - - -
Degemination - - - - -
SURFACE bofe bofi bosto marto peto
3PRES.PROG
Fronting - - -
Lowering - - -
Degemination bo/-tfhe mar-tfh-e
SURFACE hoffe marfe paffe
There is no evidence here that we need to distinguish between tense

markers like HI and the progressive /-tftfh-/ and add them on different
levels. Since the geminate progressive morpheme automatically closes
the syllable for the vowel final roots like /pa-/, the fronting of the low
vowel is blocked. However, evidence that there are still two levels
comes from the perfect, where again the auxiliary plays a role. Here,
the verb /atf-/ is also added, but with a difference.
2.3. The perfect in Bengali
The perfect was formed in Middle Bengali with the past passive partici-
ple /iyα/ (Chatterji 1926:1002,1021,1028).5 The present and past tense
forms are obtained by adding the inflected forms of /atfh-/. The person
endings are, therefore, the same as those of the progressive. However,
the development has not been identical. In colloquial Bengali, /iyo/ is
reduced to Id. The present and past perfect forms of two verbs are given
in (14).
(14) Perfective forms of/bo/-/ and /pa-/

Literary Colloquial Literary Colloquial
Perfect
bojiya boje ραΐα pe(y)e
Present perfect
ami bojiyatfhi fhi paiaf i pe(y)etfhi
tui bojiyatfhij bojef ij paiaf ij pe(y)etfhij
tumi bojiyatfho bojefo pe(y)etfho
apni bojiatfhen pe(y)efhen
Je bojiyaf e paiafhe pe(y)efe
tini bojiyatfhen bojetfhen
Past perfect
ami bojiyatfhilam paiafhilam
tui bojiyatfhili bojefili paiafili
tumi bojiyatfhile bojetfhile paiafile
apni bojiyatfhilen bojefilen paiatfhilen
Je bojiyatfhilo pe(y)etfhilo
tini bojiyatfhilen
There are several differences between the perfect forms and the other
tenses. First, the medial morpheme /iya/ from Middle Bengali is not
deleted, but coalesces to an [e] in both vowel final and consonant final
roots. Second, although the initial vowel of the auxiliary /ofh-/ is de-
leted, there is no gemination of the affricate in the colloquial language;
compare the verb 'give', [peyetfhilam] IPAST.PERF, but [patftfhilam]
86 Aditi Lahiri
IPAST.PROG. Third, surprisingly the low vowel [a] is raised in the

colloquial language, and in fact the vowel is raised even when the root
syllable is closed: 'beat' [meretfhilam] IPAST.PERF, but [martfhilam]
ι PA ST. PROG. We attribute the difference between the perfect forms and
the progressive to the fact that in the former the auxiliary /atfh-/ has not
as yet become a suffix. Rather it is still a clitic, attached to the perfect
which itself is suffixed (and not the bare root) and hence a prosodic
word. Thus, contrary to the progressive, the perfect tenses are still one
step behind total grammaticalisation. To indicate the differences,
the stages proposed for the development of the perfect are labelled A
andB.
(15) Grammaticalisation of the perfect

[/ROOT + iyo/]co + [/atfh-/ + person affix] ω
Stage A [[/ROOT + iya/](0 + [/tfh-/ + person affix]clitic ]1ω
Stage B [[/ROOT + ε/]ω + [/tfh-/ + person affix]clitic ] ω '
In the process of cliticisation, the initial vowel of the auxiliary [/atfh-/

is lost in Stage A, and in Stage Β the morpheme /iya/ coalesces to /e/.
But that is all. The auxiliary has not reached the level of a suffix in
colloquial Bengali and still behaves like a clitic. Thus, Stage A of the
perfect and Stage II of the progressive are at the same period in the
history of Bengali. Comparing the progressive and the perfect, we get
the picture in (17) with the additional phonological changes listed
in (16).
(16) Additional changes

a. Vowel coalescence: /iya/ > Id.
b. Vowel harmony : /a/ > Id when followed by /e/.
(17) Perfect Stage A, Progressive Stage II
Level I (non-present class marker, present and past participle, progres-

sive, perfect)
PRES PERF (PAST PART)
ρα-i boj-iya mar-iya pa-iya
Raising - bo.J-iya
Syncope + gem. J>a - - -
/iya/ > Id coalescence - boj-e mar-e paye
Vowel harmony - - mere peye
PRES/PART PROGR
Raising bo.J-i-tfh -
h
Syncope + gem. boj.tf mar.tfh
/iya/ > Id coalescence - -
Vowel harmony - -
Level II (tense marker, person endings)

PRES I H AB. PAST PERF
ρα-i bof-i pa-to boje mere peye
Fronting - - pe-to - - -
Raising boj-i - - - -
3PRES.PROG
boj.fh-e mar.fh-e
Fronting - -
Raising - -
Word level (Cliticisation of auxiliary)

PERF + AUX 3PRES
boje = f h e mere = tfhe peye = tfhe
SURFACE bofefe merefe peyefe
Vowel coalescence has striking results. The root vowel /a/ is fronted
to Id when the perfective suffix follows. Since it is unaffected when
88 Aditi Lahiri
the person endings Id or l\l follow, we must assume that this fronting
(we will call it vowel harmony to distinguish if from fronting and
raising) is realised in Level I.
Recall that the other root vowels were reanalysed as being underlying
raised vowels at Stage III of the progressive. Similarly, in Stage B, for
the perfect, all root vowels are now raised. There is, moreover, no
additional evidence for the language learner that the past participial
suffix is anything other than /e/. Comparing again the progressive and
the perfect, the analysis for the present-day Bengali is as follows.
(18) Present-day analysis of the perfect (Stage B) and progressive

(Stage III)
Level I (participles and progressive)

PRES PERF (PAST PART)
boj pa boj-e mar-e pa-e
V-harmony - - mer-e pe-e
Level II (tense marker, person endings)

3PRES 3HAB.PAST PERF
boj-e ρα-e mar-to pa-to bo/e mere pee
Fronting - - - pe-to - - -
Lowering bof-e - _ _ _ _ _
Degem. - - _ _ _ _ _
3PRES.PROG
bojtfh-e martffh-e patff-e
Fronting - - -
Lowering - - -
Degem. bojtf -e martfh-e
h
Word level (cliticisation of auxiliary)

3PRES PERF + AUX
boje = tfhe mere = tfhe pee = tfhe
SURFACE bofefe merefe peefe
Notice that there is a difference betweent the participial ending of the

perfect /-e/ and the 3PRES suffix /-e/. The perfect triggers vowel har-
mony, but the person suffix has no effect on the root: 'beat'/'get'
[mere], [pee] PERF; [mare], [pae] 3PRES. Similarly, for all the other
vowels, there is a difference in the root vowel although the surface form
of the suffix is identical: 'sit' [boj-e] PERF, [boj-e] SPRES.
At the word level the auxiliary is cliticised and the /a/ deleted. The
affricate is not geminated. One could argue that the participle for the
perfect is added at word level along with the cliticised auxiliary. There
are however, other arguments in support of the analysis that unlike the
progressive tenses, the auxiliary has not been grammaticalised to a
suffix, at least not yet, and that the perfect ending /-e/ behaves like a
suffix rather than a clitic.
• First, the perfect forms [boje] etc., are morphological and prosodic
words and can stand on their own. For example, they appear in
nonfinite clauses and as the non-inflected verb of a complex predi-
cate: [boje por-i] 'sit-PERF fall-i, I sit down'.
• Second, phonological clitics [o] (ALSO) and [i] (indicating emphasis)
which cannot add to anything smaller than a prosodic word, can
attach to the perfect: [boje=o por-i] 'sit-PERF=ALSO fall-1,1 also sit
down' (Bayer and Lahiri 1990; Lahiri and Fitzpatrick-Cole 1996;
Fitzpatrick-Cole 1999).
• Third, the clitic can also be added to any inflected verb: [pheli=o]
'throw-1 PRESENT ALSO'. When the verb is in the progressive the
clitic can only come after the suffix: [pheltfhe=o] 'throw-3PRES.pROG'.
However, when the verb is a present perfect or past perfect, the clitic
can be inserted after the perfect marking and the auxiliary ending.
The following possibilities are attested: [phele=tfhe=o], [phele=o=tfhe]
'throw-3PRES.PERF, ALSO'. With the progressive no insertion is
possible between the root and the affricate in the ending: [pheltfhe=o]
but *[phel=o-he].
• Finally, the perfect ending Id behaves like a suffix rather than a clitic
with respect to the placement of the clitic. Just as we can get
[phele=o] 'throw-3PREs', *[phel=o-e], the clitic can come after the
perfect (as also above), [phele=o] 'throw-PERF', but not *[phel=o-e].
Thus, the perfect ending Id behaves as a suffix and not a clitic, but it
90 Aditi Lahiri
does not trigger the same rules as the person suffixes. Hence, standard
colloquial Bengali still requires two morphological levels as well as a
word level.
2.4. Summary
Our analysis shows that the verb /atfh-/ 'to be' has been grammaticalized
in two ways in Bengali. A grammaticalized form of the verb is now part
of the progressive and the perfect forms. However, although superfi-
cially the two cases look similar, the grammaticalisation process is not
identical. For the progressive, grammaticalisation has led to suffixation.
For the perfect, the auxiliary is not so closely fused to the root and bears
similarity to a clitic.
More significant is the process of decomposition, given in (10),
which we claim is also a part of grammaticalisation. The auxiliary as
a suffix maintains its morphological parts, but the concatenation to the
main verb root is not linear. For the progressive, the affricate /tfh/ from
the base of the auxiliary is first reinterpreted as a progressive marker
and adheres closer to the root than the person suffixes. The affricate
is on a par with the original present participle ending, and kept separate
from the other tense suffixes. We argued that this was possible for the
language learner since the progressive had its own tense/person inflec-
tions which were then on a par with the other tense/person suffixes. It
is only at a later stage that the affricate is reanalysed as an underlying
geminate and treated in the same way as the other tense markers. This
claim is supported by several phonological alternations.
In the case of the perfect, the grammaticalisation has only proceeded
to clitic formation, as shown in (15). Again, if we compare the forms
closely, we find that a number of phonological alternations differ be-
tween the progressive and the perfect, lending support to this claim. The
perfect marker itself is attached closer to the root than the person or
tense endings.
In the next section we will examine the dental preterite in Germanic
which, we shall claim, has undergone similar grammaticalisation and
decomposition stages.
3. The dental preterite in Germanic
In the Germanic languages, there exists a class of verbs, usually referred

to as the 'weak' verbs, which are almost exceptionlessly derived from
nouns, adjectives, and other verbs by the addition of the derivational
suffix l]l. The past tense of these verbs is marked by the addition of a
dental/alveolar obstruent. The origin of this preterite is controversial.
The consonant has survived in all the modern languages as an anterior
coronal stop, the source of which must be an IE *dh or *?-. The main
problem is that although the coronal element is constant, the consonant
may be a voiced or voiceless stop or a fricative: Gothic IPRET.INDIC.
SG/INF sökidalsökjan 'seek', pähtalpagkjan 'think', wissa/*witan
'know', kunpalkunnan 'know'. A survey of the various theories con-
cerning the source of the preterite is given in Tops (1974).6 We will
argue that the most convincing source of the preterite is the initial
consonant of the IE verb *dhe-/dho- 'to do', PGmc *don-. The claim is
that the fully inflected form of 'do' was added to the weak verbs along
with the suffix /j/ to mark past tense. Later, due to grammaticalisation
and reanalysis, the verb root became a suffix and is now present as the
productive tense marker in all the Germanic languages.
Although we believe that the most plausible source of the dental
preterite is the verb 'to do', the central issue in this paper is not the
actual Indo-European source, but rather the status of the coronal stop
in Germanic at a stage after the initial reanalysis. Like Bengali, our
claim is that the consonantal element (in this case the coronal stop) is
fused closer to the root than the person/number suffixes, and the result-
ing morphological structure is hierarchical. The crucial point is that the
evidence for this structure is based on the entire morphological system
of the various languages and not just on the weak verbs. To establish
our claim, the discussion is structured as follows: (a) the nature of the
weak verbs and why a novel way of forming the preterite was neces-
sary, (b) the source of the person/number inflectional endings, and
(c) the morphological status of the verbal root before grammatic-
alisation.
92 Aditi Lahiri
3.1. The nature of the weak verb
In discussing the source of the dental preterite, we have to address the

causes behind this formation. One reason for the interest in the dental
preterite is because this way of forming the past tense is novel among
the Indo-European languages. Four classes of weak verbs exist, but we
will focus on the Class I verbs which are by far the largest group.
When a verb is derived from another word class, it would be not be
unusual for it to take on the inflectional endings of the regular verbs.
Constructing an entirely different past tense form is certainly untypical.
Insofar as the present tense is concerned, the person/number/mood
suffixes of the weak verbs are very similar to the strong verbs. An
example of the inflectional endings of the present tense (indicative and
subjunctive) of two Old English verbs illustrates this point.
(19) Present tense

Strong Weak
(heran 'to bear') (nerian 'to save')
Indicative
Singular 1 bere nerie
2 bir(e)st ner(e)st
3 bir(e)J) nerej)
Plural beraj) neraj)
Subjunctive
Singular bere nerie
Plural beren nerien
Thus, to form the present tense, the person/number/mood endings of

the strong verbs may be added to the root plus /j/ without any problems.
The concatenation is simple. It is only the past tense which introduces
a new formation. The strong verbs, which could be considered as the
regular class of verbs in Germanic, form the preterite by ablaut involv-
ing a qualitative and/or quantitative change in the stem vowel, the result
of the original Indo-European system. The ablaut classes are given
in (20).7
(20) Ablaut classes in Gothic, Old English, and Old High German
Class I
Gothic beidan bai{) bidum bidans 'await'
OE bidan bad bidon biden 'await'
OHG bitan beit bitun gibitan 'wait'
Class II
Gothic -biudan -bauj) -budun -budans 'to command'
OE beodan bead budon boden 'to command'
OHG biotan bot butun gibotan 'to offer'
Class III
Gothic bindan band bundun bundans 'to bind'
OE bindan band bundon bunden 'to bind'
OHG bintan bant buntun gibuntan 'to bind'
Class IV
Gothic bairan bar berun baurans 'to bear'
OE beran baer bseron boren 'to bear'
OHG beran bar barun giboran 'to bear'
Class V
Gothic mitan mat metun mitans 'to measure'
OE metan maet mjeton meten 'to measure'
OHG mezân mas maûn gimezân 'to measure'
Class VI
Gothic faran for förun farans 'to go'
OE faran for foron faeren 'to go'
OHG faran fuor fuorun gifaran 'to go'
Extrapolating from the individual qualitative differences across the three

languages we find that the prosodic shapes of the roots and the vocalic
quantity of the different ablaut classes are very similar. In almost all
instances, the vowel quality in the individual languages are the result
of regular phonological changes from Proto-Germanic. The issue here
is not the etymology of the various ablaut grades but whether a new
verb can fit into any of the existing patterns. Since the weak preterite
94 Aditi Lahiri
is of Germanic origin, we must examine the reconstructed Proto-

Germanic ablaut grades to review the possibility of adopting one pattern
for the past tense of the derived verbs. Only the infinitive and the two
past forms are relevant since the vowel quality of the past participle
depends on other factors.
(21) Proto-Germanic ablaut grades

Infinitive Past Sing. Past PL Root
Class I [ϊ] [ai] [i] -C
Class II [eu] [au] [u] -C
Class III [i] [a] [u] - [+son]C
Class IV [e] [a] [a] - [+son]
Class V [e] [a] [se] - [-son]
Class VI [a] [o] [o] -C
The consonants under [+son] include liquids and nasals. It is immedi-

ately noticeable that other than in Class VI, the vowels differ in the
front/back dimension between the infinitive and the two past forms. In
fact, all the vowels in the i/3PAST.siNG forms are back in Proto-
Germanic as well as in the later stages of Gothic and Old High German.
Only because Proto-Germanic */a/ > OE [ae] except before nasals, Old
English has a front vowel in Class IV and V. Vowel quantity is not
predictable either within an inflectional class nor within an ablaut class.
Only in Class III, where the root is closed by a nasal plus obstruent, all
vowels are short. Thus, in all the ablaut classes, the root vowel in the
infinitive (which also represents the present) differs from the two past
forms either in backness or in quantity and sometimes in both.
The crucial question we must now ask is why the derived verbs did
not form their past tense by ablaut. We believe there are two main
reasons, both of which are linked to the non-concatenative nature of
ablaut. Let us take OE as an illustration. First, consider the quality of
the vowels in the different morphological categories. The glide /j/ which
is added to all the roots causes umlaut in the West Germanic languages.
Hence all the root vowels in Old English weak verbs are front vowels.8
However, as we saw in (20) and (21), to fit into an ablaut pattern, the
vowel quality must change. Changing the vowel into a back vowel to
fit into a particular ablaut class (e.g. Class I) would be phonologically

very odd in this assimilatory context. The only class with all front
vowels is Class V, and indeed, when a verb analogically shifts from
weak to strong in OE, it often falls into this ablaut pattern: cf. OE
biddan, sittan etc.
Second, vowel quantity is a further restriction. The glide /j/ causes
gemination when the preceding syllable is a stressed light syllable.9 This
means that the roots of the weak verbs were either heavy as in (C)VCC,
CVC or light CVC + j > CVCa Ca by gemination. Thus, only the CVC
roots could match the Class I and II infinitives, while the others CVCC
and CVCa Ca could fit the other classes. But again, the vowel quality
constraint allows only one ablaut class to be suitable.
Thus, the derived weak verb roots are incompatible with the non-
concatenative characteristics of the past tense formed by ablaut. The
above arguments concerning the vowel quality and quantity hold for
all the West Germanic languages. Gothic, however, did not undergo
either gemination or umlaut and if we assume that the weak verbs
obtained their preterite right from the Proto-Germanic period, one might
argue that the concerns regarding gemination and umlaut are moot. But
the central reason remains the same: the weak verb roots do not match
the existing ablaut grades. If we summarize the Gothic ablaut grades
we come to (22).10
(22) Gothic vowel alternations in the strong verbs

Infinitive Past Sing. Past PL Past Part. Root
Class I V: [i] V: [ai] V [i] V [i] -C
Class II V: [iu] V: [au] V [u] V [u] -c
Class III V [ί/ε] V [a] V [u] V [u] - [+son]C
Class IV V [i/ε] V [a] V: [e] V [u] - [+son]
Class V V [i/ε] V [a] V: [e] V [i] - [-son]
Class VI V [a] V: [o] V: [6] V [a] -C
The infinitive gives the full range of vowels allowed in the Gothic
strong verb roots—essentially four. The derived verbs, on the other
hand, have a wider range of vowels: sokjan 'to seek', maurjan 'to
murder', meljan 'to write', hrainjan 'to make clean' etc. Only those that
96 Aditi Lahiri
match the quality of the four vowels could fit into the ablaut schema
like liuhtjan 'to light'. Further, the strong verb roots are in general
monosyllabic with the following structures: CVC (niman 'to take'),
CV:C (beidan 'to await'), or CVCC (bindan 'to bind'). In contrast, the
derived verb roots can be heterosyllabic and even the monosyllabic
roots can be more varied. For example, Gothic swögatjan 'to sigh',
maurfrrjan 'to murder', mikiljan 'to magnify', deviate from the strong
verb pattern. Finally, the derived verbs in Proto-Germanic had the
structure /root+j/. The daughter languages show different manifestations
of this /j/. In Gothic the glide appears everywhere in the present tense.
The Proto-Germanic root corresponding to Gothic nasjan 'to save'
(OHG nerien, OE nerjan) is *nazij. In contrast, a strong verb like
Gothic niman (OHG neman, OE niman) is derived from the Proto-
Germanic present tense root *nem-. Thus, even if the base from which
the weak verb is derived is similar to a strong verb, the verbal root
would be different, and cannot be part of the normal ablaut formation.
The fact that the derived weak verbs had a different structure from
the strong verbs would be of no consequence if inflectional marking
involved the addition of suffixes which did not care about the structure
of the root. But since expression of past tense formation by ablaut is
crucially dependent on the phonological structure of the root, another
way of forming the past tense was chosen, namely to add an auxiliary
verb 'do'. In the next section, we consider the consequences of this
hypothesis.
3.2. The endings of the weak preterite
The arguments for and against the source of the preterite being IE *dhe-
are both phonological and morphological. Phonologically, the arguments
are often linked to the particular coronal attestation in the various
languages and the likelihood of their being derived by the consonantal
changes due to Grimm's Law and Verner's Law. There is no difficulty
in explaining the development of IE *dh to PGmc *d. This would be
the normal change due to Grimm's Law. The subsequent changes in
the different languages (Gothic d, OE d, OHG t) are also accounted for.
However, there are some other variations among the coronal preterite
forms. Although the largest number of verbs have the PGmc *J as the
past marker, there are other variations.
(23) Various dental occurrences in the weak preterite

Gothic OE OHG
a. nasida nerede nerita
b. J>ühta J>ühte dühta
c. kunj)a cuj)e konda
d. wissa wisse wissa (westa)
We will concern ourselves with (a) since this is largest class of verbs
which all clearly had a glide as its derivativational suffix. And in this
class there is no difficulty to assume that the preterite marker could
have come from PGmc *dby accepted phonological changes. If we then
assume that the inflected past tense of the verb 'to do' was added to
some non-finite form of the derived root to express past tense (at least
for this set), the next issue is the source of the endings of the preterite
forms of the weak verbs.'' One logical possibility is that they are identi-
cal to, or were derived from, the vocalic endings of PGmc *don- itself.
A second possibility is that they are related to the endings of the strong
verbs. The inflectional (person/number/mood) endings of the indicative
forms of the strong and weak preterite in Gothic, OE and OHG are
given in (24).
(24) The endings of the strong and weak preterite
Gothic12 ÖE OHG
Weak Strong Weak Strong Weak Strong
SG i, 3 -a 0 -e 0 -a 0
2 -es -t -es(t) -e -OS -i
PR I -edum -um -on -on -um/-om -umes/-um
2 -eduj) - -on -on -ut/-ot -ut
3 -edun -un -on -on -un/-om -un
The singular forms of the strong and the weak verbs are quite different.
In the plural, however, the endings are identical in OE and OHG,13
while in Gothic the last part of the ending is the same. In the 2/380,
98 Aditi Lahiri
since there is a zero ending in the strong verbs, the ablaut grade alone
marks the inflectional category. It is not surprising, therefore, that the
singular endings for the first and third person are different for the two
classes. In the weak verbs, given that ablaut is not possible, some suffix
is added; the question is where does it come from?
Compare now the past tense paradigm of the verb 'to do' in OE and
OHG. IE *dhe-/*dho- showed reduplication in the paradigm, retained
in Sanskrit dadhämi and Greek tithemi. This reduplication is also found
in the preterite forms of the Germanic languages. There are however,
no extant forms of this verb in Gothic.
(25) Past tense paradigms of the verb 'to do'

OE OHG
dön tuon
so i, 3 dyde teta
2 dydes(t) täti
PL I dydon tätum
2 dydon tätut
3 dydon tätun
We can see from the West Germanic languages that the plural endings
for the weak preterite in Gothic are clearly part of the original verb 'to
do', indeed in all probability the entire form. The OE forms of 'to do'
match exactly the endings of the weak preterite, and except for the
second person singular, the same holds for OHG. We can assume,
therefore, that the past tense of the verb 'to do', inflected for person,
number and mood, was used to express the past tense of the derived
verbs.
The question arises whether at the initial stage this auxiliary verb
was added directly the verb root derived from a basic morphological
category by the addition of a suffix, or to a non-finite inflected form
of the verb root. Most of the proponents of the claim that the source
of the dental preterite is the verb 'to do' assume that the weak preterite
was initially a syntactic construction (see Tops 1974 for detailed discus-
sion). The first part, that is the part before the preterite marker, is either
assumed to be a verbal noun (Sverdrup 1929, following Streitberg 1896,
and others), or an infinitival construction (von Friesen 1925, and oth-

ers). Since the various positions have been discussed in enormous detail
in the last century, we will not favour any particular position here. We
will assume that there was an initial syntactic construction and focus
on the subsequent development of the grammaticalisation of 'to do'.
3.3. Grammaticalisation of PGmc *don
All scholars have assumed that the coronal stop was interpreted as an
exponent of the past tense. This could not have been the case in the
initial stage where pastness was expressed by 'do' plus its own preterite
inflection, contrasting with the present where there was no 'do'. The
initial stages were therefore the following:
(26) Preterite formation in weak verbs: early stage

Stage I [ROOT + j + /Χ/]ω + [/'do'/ + past infl. suffix^
(where ROOT < verb, noun, adjective; X=infmitival,
case/number or nominalising suffix)
Stage II [[RooT+j + /Χ/]ω + [/'do'/ + past infl. suffix],,^],,
Stage III [[RooT+j +/CORONAL STOP/] + [past infl. suffix]suffix](u
When we look at the synchronic stages of OE, Gothic and OHG, we

can observe that the coronal stop is a common factor in all the past
tense forms and can therefore be analysed as a past tense marker, inde-
pendent of the person/number/mood suffixes (cf. Lass 1994: sect. 7.3).
At first glance there appears to be no evidence which stage of (26) is
reflected in these languages. Our claim is that Gothic reflects Stage II
where the auxiliary is cliticised, while Old High German, Old English
and Old Norse provide evidence for Stage III. At Stage III, the morpho-
logical structure is hierarchical such that the root plus derivational suffix
/j/ plus the coronal stop are fused closer together and separate from the
person/number/mood suffixes of the past tense. Like Bengali, the con-
catenation is not linear. Recall that the inflectional suffixes of the
present and past tense of Germanic verbs are different (see (19) and
(24)). Thus the suffixes themselves incorporate tense marking. Hence,
at Stage III, when the coronal stop is on a par with the root and the
100 Aditi Lahiri
derivational suffix, it behaves like the marker of a class of verbs rather

than an exponent of tense.
To support this claim, we will draw on phonological alternations
within the weak verb paradigms as well as in the nominal paradigms.
It is necessary to look at the entire morphological system to understand
the complex interactions.
3.3.1. Stem formatives and /]/
There are two types of monosyllabic roots in Germanic: light (C)VC

and heavy (C)VC, (C)VCC, (C)V, and less frequently (C)VCC. The CC
sequences may be geminates or consonant clusters. There are no roots
of the type (C)V in any of the Germanic languages. Further, Germanic
has both long and short vowels and long and short consonants. Closed
syllables with long vowels and consonant clusters do exist, but rarely
long vowels plus geminates.
Stem extensions (also labelled stem formatives or theme vowels)
were normal in Germanic (as in other Indo-European languages) and
are commonly used to distinguish nominal classes. Although strictly
speaking they are extensions of the root, following traditional terminol-
ogy we will refer to them as stem extensions and when alluding to the
weight of the roots, they will be called light and heavy stems. These
stem extensions could be vocalic or consonantal. Our interest here is
in comparing the ja- and /-nouns, which are marked by a high front
sonorant segment with the derivational suffix /j/ which formed the weak
verbs. In most languages the alternation between moraic HI and non-
moraic /j/ would be based on syllable position. However, we claim that
both exist as underlying stem extensions in Germanic (cf. Lahiri
1982).14 Evidence comes from the synchronic alternations within both
noun and verb paradigms. Of particular importance is the comparison
between the nominal stem extension /j/ and the original derivational
suffix /j/ which formed weak verbs. As we mentioned earlier, this suffix
triggered gemination in West Germanic and umlaut in West and North
Germanic. Both processes were constrained by prosodic structures of
the stem. Compare the following paradigms in Old English, Old Norse
and Old High German. Only the forms relevant for the phonol-
ogy/morphology interaction are given. The 3SG.PRES pattern like the

2SG indicative and imperative while all other present forms are like the
infinitive. And the 350.PAST represents all indicative and subjunctive
forms in the preterite.
(27) Phonological alternations in weak verbs

OE ON OHG
/fram+j/ /tal+j/ /zal+j/
Light stems infinitive fremmen telja zellen
3SG.PRES.IND fremej) telr zelit
3PAST.IND fremede talöa zelita
/dom+j/ /dom+j/ /stall+j/
Heavy stems Infinitive demen döema stellen
3SG.PRES.IND dem(e){) döemir stellit
3PAST.IND demde dcemöa stalta
Superficially the languages look very similar, but there are major differ-
ences.
• First, in OE and OHG, there is no gemination in 350 and in the past
tense of the light stems.
• Second, umlaut occurs in the present and the infinitive of the light
stems of all three languages, but no umlaut occurs in the past tense
of these verbs in ON.
• Third, the umlaut pattern is different in the past tense of the heavy
stems. Here, there is no umlaut in the OHG heavy stem stellen either,
and the underlying geminate consonant is degeminated. OE and ON
show umlaut in the heavy stems throughout.
The presence and absence of umlaut in OHG and ON is exactly reversed
with respect to the underlying quantity of the stem. In OHG, the heavy
stem shows no umlaut in the past tense, while in ON it is the light stem
that lacks umlaut in the past. The complications increase, however, if
we look at the nominal paradigms with the stem extensions /j/ and /i/.
There are many apparent discrepancies, which we will argue are easily
accounted for if we assume hierarchical structure in the morphology
with the weak preterite treated on a par with the stem extensions. We
102 Aditi Lahiri
first examine Old Norse and then Old High German, sometimes drawing
on Old English for additional evidence.
3.3.2. Interaction of umlaut and syncope in Old Norse
As is obvious from the examples in (27), Old Norse umlaut is con-

strained by metrical structure: the light stems do not show umlaut in
the past while the heavy stems do. Umlaut in Old Norse is an extremely
controversial issue. The difficulty arises in accounting for the fact that
heavy stems, nouns and verbs with /j/ or l\l extension undergo umlaut,
likewise the lightya-stem nouns and the present tense of the weak verbs,
but the light /-stem nouns and the past tense of the weak verbs resist
umlauting. Consider the nominal forms in (28).
(28) Umlaut in ON nouns

Light stems Heavy stems
y'a-stem ya-stem
/bad/ (MASC) 'bed' /mäk/ (MASC) 'sword'
beör (NOM.SG) maekir (NOM.SG)
beöjar (NOM.PL) maekjar (NOM.PL)
/kun/ (NEUT) 'kin' /rik/ (NEUT) 'kingdom'
kyn (NOM/ACC SG/PL) nki (NOM/ACC SG/PL )
kyni (DAT. so) nki (DAT.SG)
kynja (GEN.PL) rlkja (GEN.PL)
/-stem /-stem
/staoY (MASC) 'state' /bekk/ (MASC) 'bench'
staör (NOM.SG) bekkr (NOM.SG)
staöir (NOM.PL) bekkir (NOM.PL)
staöi (ACC.PL) bekkja (GEN.PL)
As we can see, only the light /-stems have no umlaut in spite of the
presence of an overt HI. Surface differences between NOM.SG stadr vs.
2SG.PRES.INDIC telr, but ACC.PL stadi vs. SSG.PAST taldi do not help.
The interaction of umlaut and syncopation has led to considerable
bafflement in the literature. Generally it has been assumed that syncope

of high vowels occurred after heavy syllables (cf. for instance Prokosch
1939:135). The chronology of umlaut relative to syncopation led to the
term 'Rückumlaut' by Jacob Grimm, suggesting that wherever was
deleted before the period of umlaut, the stem vowel had to remain
unchanged. In other words, syncope was the direct cause for 'Ruck-
umlaut' . This proposal was relevant for all i- andya- nouns and particu-
larly the preterite of weak verbs.15 There have been several proposals
to account for the problematic interaction of umlaut and syncope in Old
Norse. They include Kock's (1888) classic account of positing different
umlaut periods, morphologisation (Iverson 1978; Voyles 1982, 1992),
reanalysis of stems (Cathey and Demers 1972, 1975, 1977) and level
ordering (Kiparsky 1982a).16
Our claim is that all the Old Norse forms can be accounted for if we
assume that umlaut is restricted to heavy syllables and that the weak
preterite behaves on a par with the nominal stem extensions. However,
we first begin by assuming that there is no level ordering. Umlaut is
defined as in (29).
(29) Umlaut in ON: back vowels are fronted in heavy syllables in the
context of a front high vowel or glide.17
A further phonological process that needs to be mentioned is syncope,

which deletes medial unstressed vowels before a syllable beginning with
a lax dental (Oresnik 1978; Kiparsky 1983). Assuming syncope and
umlaut, the past tense in Old Norse can be analysed as follows:
(30) Umlaut and syncope in ON past tense

/döm+j+öa/ > /dö.mi.öa/ > umlaut /döe.mi.öa / > syncope [dcemöa]
/tal+j+öa / > /ta.li+öa / umlaut does not apply > syncope [taloa]
However, this cannot be the complete story. Although this accounts for
the lack of umlaut in the past tense of light stems, the asymmetry in
umlaut between ally'a-nouns (which always showed umlaut) and light
/-stems which never underwent umlaut is not accounted for.
The critical cases are stadir and stadi where the suffix - does not
trigger umlaut. Thus, neither the stem extension I'll which is syncopated
104 Aditi Lahiri
in the singular, nor the suffix causes umlaut.18 If we take the surface
forms, the stem vowel is in an open light syllable or closed by [r] in
which context syncope would have deleted the [i]. This is parallel to
the past tense forms where in the presence of the consonantal past
marker the glide is vocalized making the stem syllable light. But so are
kyni and bedr and they still undergo umlaut. The solution rests on the
assumption that the stem extensions are different and are added on a
different level from the inflectional endings.
(31) Deriving umlaut in ON

Level I (with stem extension)
baö-j bakk-j staö-i mäk-i tal-j
Syllabification baö (j) bak(kj) sta.öi mä.ki tal(j)
Umlaut beö (j) bek(kj) - rnse.ki tel(j)
Level II (with inflection)
beoj-r bekkj-a staoi-r lei.kir telj-a telj-oa
Syllabification be.öir bek.kja sta.öir lei.kir tel.ja te.li.oa
Syncope beör - staör leikr - *teloa
SURFACE bedr bekkja stadr leikr tel.ja *telda
Assuming level ordering and different stem extensions is, however, still
not enough. Umlaut correctly applies to bedr and not to stadr. For the
former, the glide is unsyllabified, and the root syllable remains closed
and heavy, thereby being sensitive to umlaut. The '-noun stadr, on the
other hand, has an open syllable right from the beginning and umlaut
is blocked. But under these conditions, the past tense of telja undergoes
umlaut incorrectly just like bedr. These are the sort of facts which have
made researchers resort to the assumption that umlaut was morphologic-
ally constrained. But even if one assumes umlaut is morphologised, the
constraint on where umlaut fails to apply is phonologically transparent,
namely when the coronal preterite forces the vocalisation of the glide.
The solution rests on the status of the coronal preterite at this stage. In
the above derivations it was assumed that the coronal stop is part of the
inflectional ending. If we assume instead that the coronal stop has the
same status as the stem extension /j/, we have the situation depicted
in (32).
(32) Preterite marker as class marker in ON (earliest stage)

Level I (stem extension and preterite marker)
tal-j tal-jö döm-j dö.m.jö staö-i baö-j
19
Syllabification tal(j) ta.liö dö(mj) dö.miö sta.öi baö(j)
Umlaut tel(j) - dce(mj) dce.miö - beö(j)
Level II (inflectional endings)
telj-a taliö-a dcemj-a döemi-öa staöi-r beöj-r
Syllabification tel.ja ta.li.öa döe.mj+a dce.mi.öa sta.öir beöir
Syncope - talöa - döemöa staör beör
20
Glide deletion dcema
SURFACE telja talda döema dcemda stadr bedr
There are many consequences of interpreting the dental preterite as
having the same morphological status as the stem extension. The /j/ is
syllabified such that the root final consonant is the onset of the second
syllable: /tal-jö/ > / ta.liö/. The stem syllable is light and therefore is
not fronted by umlaut. Else, the glide is unsyllabified in Level I and
remains as an appendix, allowing the root final consonant to close the
syllable and undergo umlaut: /tal-j/ > /tal(j)/ > /tel(j)/. Thus we get the
correct present and past forms for the light weak verbs: the present with
umlaut and the past without umlaut. In the present, since the glide
remains extrasyllabic, the root final consonant closes the syllable
thereby allowing umlaut to apply. And in the past when followed by
the coronal stop the glide is vocalised and the initial syllable becomes
light just like the i-stem forms, and umlaut is blocked. With this analy-
sis we can see why the /- and ^ -stem nouns differ in their umlaut
patterns and why there is allomorphy of the root for the light stem weak
verbs but not in the heavy stems.
Thus, the phonological evidence supports the analysis that the cor-
onal stop marks the class of derived weak verbs and is on a par with
derivational suffixes and nominal stem extensions. In Section 4, we
discuss in greater detail the precise nature of the weak class marker.
It creates a domain for phonological rules, to the output of which inflec-
tional suffixes are added. Grammaticalisation of Proto-Germanic *don
created a hierarchical morphological structure. In the next section
we look at two minor analogical changes in Old Norse and Old High
106 Aditi Lahiri
German which show that in a few instances a further reinterpreta-

tion has taken place and the coronal stop now patterns with the inflec-
tional suffixes.
3.3.3. Analogical levelling: Reinterpretation of the dental preterite in

Old Norse
A handful of the light stems in Old Norse and Old High German show
a change in the past tense with respect to umlaut. These changes look
as if there is a levelling within the paradigms, where in both languages
the light stems follow the examples of the heavy stems. In ON, the
umlaut is extended, in OHG the umlaut is revoked.
(33) Analogical levelling in ON selja and OHG zellen

3PASTINDON OHG
Light salöa > selöa zelita > zalta
Heavy dcemj)a stalta
The analogical levellings seen in these forms go precisely in opposite

directions. In ON, the light stems acquire umlaut, while in OHG, it is
the light stems which lose umlaut. These changes are perceived as
levelling since forms become 'similar' to other parts of the paradigm
or to other members of the paradigm. ON selda, with the umlauted
vowel, is closer to the present tense, while OHG zalta takes on the
unumlauted vowel of the heavy stems. It is worth noting that there was
no general levelling of the present tense. For instance, the 350 in OHG
remained ungeminated and did not follow the examples of the majority
of the forms. Neither were the heavy stems affected. Our claim here
is that this analogy is restricted only to these forms and goes the way
it does due to a further reanalysis of the weak dental preterite.
As mentioned above, the past tense of a few light stems like selja
began to surface with umlaut. The traditional explanation is that they
changed in analogy to the heavy stems. The two stages are given
below:
(34) ON analogy of weak verbs

/sal/ /deem/
Stage I: past tense salj)a dcemj>a
infinitive selja dcema
Stage II: selöa dcemâ
The change affected only the preterite indicative. Otherwise the para-
digms remained as they were. If it was merely a question of paradigm
levelling, one would have expected the entire paradigm to have levelled.
Our alternative proposal is that the coronal consonant changed its status
again and became part of the inflection. It is, therefore, no longer added
in Level I.
(35) Further reanalysis in ON: tense marker is now becoming part of

the inflection
Level I (only stem extension)
sal-j sal-j
Syllabification sal(j) sal(j)
Umlaut sel(j) sel(j)
Level II
selj-a selj-oa
Syllabification selja seliöa
Syncope - selöa
SURFACE selja selda
It is important to note that no other part of the grammar is affected by

this change. The nouns show the same asymmetry in umlaut and the
rest of the verbal paradigm remains the same. That is, the light i-stems
remain without umlaut and the ya-stems show no changes either. The
only change was in the reanalysis of the coronal stop. However, only
a handful of verbs show this development. Thus, in Old Norse, the
preterite generally remained a Level I suffix.
108 Aditi Lahiri
3.4. The preterite in Old High German
Additional support for our proposal comes from OHG. The weak verbs
in OHG show the exact same pattern—the coronal stop was originally
attached in Level I along with stem extensions and the derivational
suffix. Again, in the process of grammaticalisation, the language learner
parsed the coronal stop on a par with stem extensions. The phonological
processes are not quite the same, but the pattern of alternations across
the grammar provide the same sort of evidence as in ON. In addition,
a similar analogical levelling took place, except that in OHG the light
stems in the preterite matched the heavy stems as a result of which both
verbal paradigms had two distinct stem forms in the surface.
As we saw in (27), the Old High German weak verbs show the
opposite pattern of alternation with respect to umlaut than Old Norse.
In Old High German, the light stems show umlaut while the heavy
stems do not. The alternations in the i- and y'a-stem nouns are also
different. The crucial forms are given in (36).
(36) OHG /j/-/i/ alternations in nouns and verbs

Light stems
y'a-nouns /bat/ betti NOM.SG/PL.NEUT 'bed'
f-nouns /mar/ meri NOM.SG/PL.MASC 'lake'
Weak verbs /zal/ zellen INFINITIVE 'tell'
Zelit PRES.INDIC.3SG
zelita PAST.INDIC.ISG
Heavy stems
ja-nouns /ant/ enti NOM.SG./PL.NEUT 'end'
/-nouns /gast/ gast NOM.SG.MASC 'guest'
gesti NOM.PL
Weak verbs /stall/ stellen INFINITIVE 'lay'
Stellit PRES.INDIC.3SG
stalta PAST.INDIC.ISG
Just like Old Norse, the i-stems in Old High German vary in umlaut.
Unlike Old Norse, the heavy stems like gast show no umlaut in the
singular, but have a front vowel in the plural. The light stems show
umlaut in both singular and plural. Umlaut occurred in all stem forms
in theya-nouns. The fact that only the plural gesti undergoes umlaut,
but both singular and plural of the ja-nouns have umlaut, are added
evidence to the underlying difference in stem extensions. Again, at first
glance, it looks as if umlaut is morphologised (cf. Voyles 1992). How-
ever, all the patterns of alternations fall into place if we assume that the
stem extensions and the coronal stop are added in Level I.
The crucial phonological processes in OHG are umlaut, gemination
and syncope. Umlaut was triggered by front vowels and glides and was
not sensitive to syllable structure as in ON. Both gemination and syn-
cope are constrained by foot structure. The West Germanic gemination
was still a synchronic process in Old High German and Old English.
This is a process by which all consonants except r are doubled when
followed by a front glide /j/. It is constrained only when the head of
the foot becomes trimoraic or the weak branch is strengthened.21 There
is another instance where gemination fails to apply. It does not apply
to the light stems in the 3PRES.SG whose ending is itself an /i/, and as
a result of which we see a contrast between zelit and stellit. Here, a
sequence of non-moraic and moraic high sonorants as in /ji/ reduces
to a moraic /i/. Finally if the glide is vocalised by normal syllabifica-
tion, then gemination is blocked. This may happen if the glide is fol-
lowed by a consonant as in the past tense: /zal+j+ta/ > /za.li.ta/ >
[zelita].
Syncope was essentially deletion of high vowels in the weak branch
of a foot. The high vowels resulting from syllabification of /j/ are also
subject to deletion and can bleed umlaut.
(37) Syncope in OHG

/stall+j+ta/ > 7stal.li.ta/ > SYN /stall.ta/ > simplifying impossible
syllable structure [stalta]
Our claim is that the analysis of OHG is parallel to that proposed for
Old Norse, where the coronal obstruent of the preterite and the stem
extensions are class markers. Although superficially the languages look
as if they have opposite patterns of alternation, the hierarchical morpho-
logical structure with the necessary phonological rules accounts for the
entire set of data.
110 Aditi Lahiri
(38) OHG: coronal stop on a par with stem extensions

Level I (stem extension and preterite marker)
PRES PRET
zal-j stall-j zal-j-t stall-j-t
SYL zal(j) stal(lj) za.lit stal.lit
y'a-nouns /-nouns
bat-j ant-j gast-i mar-i
SYL bat(j) an(tj) gas.ti ma.ri
INF 3SG.INDIC
zalj-en stallj-en zalit-a stallit-a
Gemination zal.ljen stal.ljen za.li.ta stal.li.ta
Syncope - - - stall.ta
Umlaut zel.ljen stel.ljen ze.li.ta
Other zelten stellen zelita stalta
NOM.SG NOM.PL
batj+0 antj+0 gasti+0 gasti+i
Gemination bat(tj) an(tj) gas.ti gas.ti.i
Syncope - - gast gas.ti
Umlaut bet(tj) en(tj) - ges.ti
Other betti enti gast gesti
The above scenario is what we assume to be the correct earliest stage
of OHG when the consonantal element of the cliticised form of 'do'
has been converted into a suffix which is attached at the same level as
stem extensions and derivational suffixes. This assumption suggests an
earlier level of morphological affixation where syllabification forces
the preterite to enter Level II as /zalit/ while the present remains /zal(j)/.
The final glide remains extrasyllabic until the end of the lexical level
and is then vocalised if no suffix follows. The glide however, is also
available for gemination in Level II. We have indicated that gemination
applies automatically to forms like /zalj+en/ and also /bat(j)/ > /bat(tj)/
but not to /stal(lj)/. In actual fact it could lead to a representation like
/stal(llj)/ but it would not survive ultimately since at the end of the word
level a trimoraic head would be not permitted *[stall.li].
A further reanalysis of the preterite occurs in some dialects where

a few of the light stem verbs surface without umlaut: i.e., zalta occurs
instead of zelita as in Old Norse, the weak verbs underwent analogical
levelling, but the curious fact is that the analogy went in the opposite
direction. In Old Norse, the past of the light stems retained the umlauted
allomorph, while in OHG light stems lost the umlauted form. Our
assumption is that the exactly the same grammaticalisation process of
the dental preterite was responsible for the seemingly opposite change,
i.e., as in Old Norse, in OHG the preterite was reanalysed as an inflec-
tional ending. The Old High German analysis for zalta would be as
follows:
(39) OHG coronal stop as part of the inflectional suffixes

INF 3SG.INDIC
zalj+en stallj+en zaljt+a stalljt+a
Gemination zal.ljen staüjen zal.li.ta stal.li.ta
Syncope - - zallta stallta
Umlaut zel.ljen stel.ljen
Other zellen stellen zalta stalta
NOM.SG NOM.PL
batj+0 antj+0 gasti+0 gasti+i
Gemination bat(tj) an(tj) gas.ti gas.ti.i
Syncope - - gast gas.ti
Umlaut bet(tj) en(tj) - ges.ti
Other betti enti gast gesti
Again it is difficult to explain this change only with the notion of

paradigm levelling. The rest of the paradigm remained the same. For
instance, the second and third person singular of the light stems show
no gemination: zelis, zelit. None of these forms were affected by the
levelling process. We can understand this only as a consequence of the
reanalysis of the dental preterite. The endings of the 2/3SG.PRES were
/is/ and /it/. The stem extension /j/ + the l\l in the suffix were not toler-
ated and were reduced to [i]. This blocked gemination in all the forms
regardless of whether the past tense was zelita or zalta. Note that in the
later stage, where the glide triggers gemination in the past tense of light
112 Aditi Lahiri
stem and feeds syncope thereby blocking umlaut (/zal+j+ta/ > GEM
7zal.li.ta/ > SYN /zalta/), the endings with l\l prevent gemination but
allow umlaut. This is because a sequence like /zal+j+it/ is rightaway
reduced to /zalit/ and then after umlaut becomes [zelit]. And this is
precisely why the /t/ in the earlier stage had to be in Level I along with
the stem extension.
The forms with zelita, i.e. the stage where the coronal stop is in
Level I, is the most frequently attested, except in Tatian. At least some
of these forms must have been present when open syllable lengthening
occurred in Middle High German, lengthening the first stressed sylla-
bles: cf. Modern German erzählen. If we take the original underlying
geminates like stellen, none of these verbs have an initial long vowel
in present-day German. We take one more look at the early stage to see
exactly how the coronal consonant interacted in the preterite as com-
pared to the 3SG and for comparison 2 PL zellet.
(40) OHG early stage (I/SSG.PAST, SSG.PRES, 2PL.PRES)

Level I (with stem extension and preterite marker)
PRES PRET
zal-j stall-j zal-j-t stall-j-t
Syllabic zal(j) stal(lj) za.lit stal.lit

3SG.PRES 2PL.PRES
zalj-»-it stallj+it zalj+et stallj+et
Gem. (with syll.) za.lit stal.lit zal.ljet stal.ljet
Syncope (with syll.) - - - -
Umlaut ze.lit stel.lit zel.ljet stel.ljet
Other zelit stellit zellet stellet
3SG.PAST
zalit+a stallit+a
Gem. (with syll.) za.li.ta stal.li.ta
Syncope (with syll.) - stalta
Umlaut ze.li.ta -
Other zelita stalta
Verbal morphology in Bengali and Germanic 1 13
In the same dialects where zelita changed to zalta, the forms zelit and
zellet had remained unchanged. This meant that there was no change
in gemination. This applied (along with concomitant syllabification)
as usual. The difference was that there was no independent level where
the preterite marker applied leading to syllabification which would give
/zelit/ and block gemination.
3.6 Summary
We have claimed that the past tense of the verb 'to do' was added to
all derived verbs, known as the weak verbs. The present tense of the
weak verbs had the regular inflectional endings of the strong verbs.
However, since the strong verbs formed their past tense by ablaut, which
involved prosodic constraints on stem- vowel quality and quantity, this
method of forming the past tense was excluded for the derived verbs.
Thus, a novel method of forming the past was required, and the verb
'to do' was used for this purpose. It is assumed that initially a regular
syntactic construction with a non-finite form of the derived verb along
with the past tense of 'do' served to express pastness. Later, the verb
'to do' lost its independent word status and was cliticised to the derived
verb. The consonantal segment of the auxiliary was then reanalysed and
treated on the same level as stem extensions and derivational suffixes.
The process just described suggests the following stages:
(41) Gradual stages of decomposition in grammaticalisation

[{Lexical category + /j/ +X} DERIVED WEAK νΕΚΒ ] ω + ['do'+past
inflectional suffixes^
where perhaps X=infmitive or nominalising suffix
=> [[ROOT + /j/ +Χ]ω + ['do' + past inflectional suffixes],,,.,™],,,
=> [[ROOT + /j/ + /CORONAL STOP/] + [person/number/
and in a few instances

[[ROOT + /j/ ]derived weak verb + [/CORONAL STOP/]PAST + [person/
Thus, in the process of grammaticalisation, the auxiliary becomes a

suffix, maintaining all along its own inflectional endings. But in the
114 Aditi Lahiri
process of reanalysis the resulting structure is hierarchical rather than

linear. The evidence comes from phonological processes operating on
the entire morphological system and not restricted only to verbs.
4. Conclusion
The principal thesis is that in the process of grammaticalisation when

auxiliaries become affixes, they continue to be morphologically com-
plex, though with morphological structures reanalysed. The inflected
auxiliary is interpreted as consisting of more than one affix, which
is not surprising. The more interesting claim is the way in which these
reanalysed affixes are attached to the root. In the process of reanaly-
sis, the base of the auxiliary is detached from its inflectional endings
and fused closer to the root. The end product is a hierarchical mor-
phological structure rather than a linear concatenation of root plus
affixes.
The evidence comes from phonology, in particular the way in which
phonology interacts with complex morphological structures. We argued
that in the process of grammaticalisation, a word can lose its phonologi-
cal word status and be analysed as a sequence of morphemes, via a
process of cliticisation in the following way: [\νοκο]ω [\νοκο]ω >
[[ννοκο]ω CLITIC] ] ω > [[ROOT + MORPHEME,] + ΜθΚΡΗΕΜΕ 2 ]] ω . The
morphological structure is richer than a mere linear concatenation, and
the phonological processes and constraints which operate on each
morphological domain are different. The evidence comes from the
reductions of two auxiliaries, 'be' in Bengali and 'do' in Germanic,
where a host of phonological processes support the hierarchical struc-
tures. In examining the grammaticalised structures, other puzzling
phonological phenomena are also accounted for. For instance, the
fronting of vowel final roots in the context of coronal suffixes other
than the progressive /tfV in Bengali, or the surprising lack of umlaut
in nominal classes marked with front vowels in Old Norse and Old High
German are no longer problematic.
There are other claims implicit in the restructuring analysis. First,
our assumption that after cliticisation, the morphological structure was
hierarchical means that the language learner encountering OHG zelita,
analyses this string as underlying [[zal+j+t]a]. Similarly, the Bengali

child half a centure ago analyses porife as [[por+i+tfh]e]. Would it not
be 'simpler' or 'less marked' for the child to assume a linear structure
like [zal+j+t+a] or [por+i+tfh+e]? Not necessarily, because neither
structure is inherently more or less marked. The analysis or reinterpreta-
tion depends on the rest of the grammar. In discussing the weak
preterite, we alluded to the fact that the coronal stop was being treated
as a class marker and not merely as a tense marker, very much as ablaut
was a class marker. Let us consider Old Norse as an example to clarify
this point.
With the strong verbs, the Germanic roots need to have three basic
categories: ROOT, ROOT PAST] andRooT PAST2 . For a verb like bera 'bear',
the three versions would be /ber/lv, /ber/1VpAST1 and /ber/ IVpAST2 . The
vowels in the roots would change according to the ablaut grade and the
inflectional suffixes are added to the relevant roots. Of course another
possibility is that the ablaut grades are already noted on the roots:
/bar/ IVpASTI and /bar/ IVpAST2 . The two alternatives are not relevant here.
The important point is that a past indication has to be part of the form.
What of the weak verbs in class I, the ones that we have been focusing
on? Here the root includes the derivational suffix: telja /tal+j/. To be
parallel to the strong verbs a past marker is required as well which
would then be /tal+j+o/PAST W E A K . Recall that the past and present per-
son/number/mood suffixes are different, and hence these suffixes them-
selves include tense indication. Thus, given the organisation of the
strong verbs, the child reanalysing the inflected auxiliary 'do' as sepa-
rate morphemes associates the coronal stop of the base as a class
indicator marking the past root of the weak verbs, to which then the rest
of the inflectional suffixes are added. The consonantal part of the auxil-
iary is reinterpreted by the language learner as a separate morpheme
to be treated as a Level I suffix. Existing phonological processes imme-
diately treat these sequences as they ought depending on the rest of the
grammar.
A possibility which we did not consider in our discussion of the
hierarchical morphological structures is the assumption of allomorphy.
For instance, in Old High German, we could have assumed that the
heavy stems of the weak verbs have two allomorphs /stall/-/stell/
while in Old Norse the allomorphy would be restricted to the light
116 Aditi Lahiri
stems /tal/-/tel/. This sounds at first plausible but not when the entire
grammar is considered. Recall that the infinitives of both forms in
Old High German have the same pattern: stellen, zellen. But there
is evidence from the past tense and the 2/350 and imperative that
confirm that the roots are different. Faced with alternations like
stellen-stalta and zellen-zelita, it would be obvious to the language
learner that there is a difference in the root, but not necessarily that
one verb has root allomorphy and the other not. The child does not
only learn verbs. In learning the nominal patterns, it encounters similar
alternations distinguishing the heavy and light patterns: gast-gesti,
meri-meri. Again, if underlying allomorphy is assumed it would be
for the heavy stems. Given enough evidence of the prosodic condition-
ing of different rules in both nouns and verbs, and faced with regular
patterns of alternations in the strong and weak verb paradigms, it is
not difficult to consider a coherent morphological and phonological
analysis of the entire system without taking recourse to underlying
stem allomorphy.
A final point is the notion of paradigm that we have just alluded to.
In discussing the diachronic process of grammaticalisation, we have
seen that both in Bengali and in Germanic there has been a change in
paradigms. Particularly with respect to Old Norse and Old High Ger-
man, in a few isolated instances, the weak verbs have levelled in oppo-
site directions. Our claim was that in these forms the preterite marker
was now treated on the same level as other inflectional endings. One
could argue that surface allomorphy in stems increases the markedness
of the grammar and hence the mechanical procedure of paradigm level-
ling comes into force to reduce markedness. It induces the umlauted
vowel to be either removed from the short stems in Old High German
or introduced in Old Norse. Thus in Old High German, all the past tense
forms of these words in these dialects surface without umlaut, thereby
introducing surface allomorphy in the light stems which had previously
been uniform. But another source of surface allomorphy remains, viz.
the lack of gemination in the 2/380 forms. This is equally true for Old
Norse. In the few forms where the umlaut was introduced in the past
tense of the light stems, although the distinction between the past tense
forms disappeared, the light-heavy distinction was maintained in other
forms of the present particularly in the context of glide deletion:
ISG.PRES.INDIC tel-heyri, etc. It seems that a levelling in one part of

the verbal system causes another part to maintain or increase allo-
morphy. Levelling as an explanation for the isolated changes is highly
unsatisfactory. We therefore claim that levelling alone is not the gov-
erning force. Earlier in Lahiri (1982) and Lahiri and Dresher (1983/84)
we have argued that such analogy crucially depends on the interpreta-
tion of data by the language learner. In these instances of grammati-
calisation, the same holds true. The analogical levelling depends on
the grammar the child is building at that moment. The child interprets
the coronal stop as an inflectional suffix and only part of the verbal
paradigm is levelled. The surface levelling is the effect rather than the
cause of the change.
In a sense, the language learner uses the existing morphologic-
al pattern when reanalysing the base of the auxiliary to be either a
progressive marker in Bengali or a class marker of the weak verbs in
Germanic. In Bengali, the /tfΎ is treated on a par with other suffixes
like the non-present and the participle. This fits into the existing
pattern where the tense and person suffixes are separate. The progres-
sive itself distinguishes between present and past, and hence these are
added in Level II where the other tense suffixes belong. In Germanic,
the language learner uses the structure of the strong verbs and ex-
tends it to the weak verbs when reanalysing the coronal stop as a class
marker. Given the traditional classification, any change other than
sound change would fall under the rubric of analogy. And as analogy,
the restructuring processes we have discussed do not contradict
Kiparsky's notion of analogy as grammar simplification (Kiparsky
1982b, 1983, 1988 and this volume). The morphological system per-
mitted such hierarchical restructuring and since the phonological
system deals with the entire grammar, it tackled the new structures
appropriately.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our appreciation to Walter Bisang, Miriam Butt, Paula
Fikkert, Jennifer Fitzpatrick-Cole, Paul Kiparsky, Astrid Kraehenmann, and Gillian
Ramchand for very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Particular
118 AditiLahiri
thanks to Frans Plank for his invaluable critique. This research was funded by the SFB
471 and the Max-Planck-Forschungspreis.
Notes
1. This style is used less frequently in modern novels. However, it is routinely used
in scholarly writing as well as in newspapers.
2. See Chatterji (1926) for a detailed discussion of Bengali verb morphology.
3. This sort of vowel alternation is also observable in other vowel final roots: 'sleep'
Lfo-bo] ι PUT, but Lfu-to] 3HAB.PAST; 'take' [ne-bo] IFUT, but [ni-to]
3HAB.PAST. In the earlier stage, the vowels were all high: [fui-bo], [Jui-to]. The
analysis for colloquial Bengali is not the same as [a]-fronting. As we shall see,
all vowels other than /a/ in verb roots were later reanalysed as having
underlyingly the raised vowel. Hence the verb /Ju/ is the root in the colloquial
language and here it is a case of lowering in the future. Few verbs with vowel
final roots have kept the medial /i/ in present Bengali: 'tolerate' [Jo-i-bo] ι PUT,
[fo-i-to] 3HAB.PAST, verb root/Jo/
4. There is a better way of accounting for this lowering assuming underspecified
representations. For our purposes here it is sufficient to make the context partially
morphological.
5. The form /-iya-/ in Middle Bengali represented the past (passive) participle as
well as the conjunctive. It still indicates 'a succession of actions or events done
by or with reference to the same subject' (Chatterji 1926: 1003); for example,
ami delfiya gelam Ί having seen, went'.
6. The literature on this topic is vast. Although there are more recent publications
than Tops (1974), this is probably the best survey. Other than the 'do', suggested
sources include the verbal adjective in */>, IE *-t- (?), generalisation of a 2SG
personal ending IE *-thes, intensive suffix IE *-f-, and a deictic particle (see
Collitz 1928; Meid 1971; Bammesberger 1986; Shields 1982). Most theories,
however, concern themselves with details which are not relevant for the overall
picture. And even when a different source for the preterite is assumed, as Shields
(1997) suggests, "they do not lead to a rejection of the most traditional explana-
tion". See also section 3.2.
7. The Class VII reduplicated verbs are not considered here.
8. All Old High German weak verbs are umlauted as well. However, the glide is
deleted after heavy roots in the preterite; we discuss the interaction of syncope
and umlaut in section 3.5.
9. This is a simplified version of the gemination. See Lahiri, Riad and Jacobs (1999)
for a longer discussion.
10. Gothic digraphs are considered to have the following phonetic values: ei=[\],
αίί=[ο], αί=[ε], αι=[ε], aw=[5]; au, άί, and iu are diphthongs.
11. This claims that the word order was such that the finite form of the auxiliary came
after the main verb.
12. The dual forms in Gothic are omitted since for our purposes they do not add any
further information.
13. The vowel alternations in OHG reflect dialect differences.
14. Kiparsky (this volume) argues that the vocalic stem extensions in Gothic were
floating melodies which surfaced in appropriate contexts. He does distinguish
between ja- and i- nouns. For jo-nouns, he assumes an underlying non-floating
ΙΊΙ (or /ii/, depending on allomorphy) with a floating /a/. The /-nouns are demar-
cated with a floating I'll. This is a very attractive proposal but does not work for
all the Old High German forms. Therefore, for this paper, we will distinguish the
two classes by assuming an underlying moraic and non-moraic distinction.
15. Prokosch's (1939: 200-201) comment on this matter is revealing "If in a given
dialect and a given type of verb umlaut preceded syncopation, the preterit is
mutated; if syncopation took place sooner, ruckumlaut resulted. In general,
therefore, we should expect ruckumlaut in long stem verbs but not in short stem
verbs, but the actual conditions are far more complicated than that". Continuing
about literary Old Norse, he says, "Long-stem verbs have umlaut in all forms,
short-stem verbs only in the present, that is they show ruckumlaut. This apparently
paradoxical situation finds its explanation in Axel Kock's umlaut theory."
16. · Kock(1888, 1889):
- Umlaut stage I (600-700 AD): umlaut carried out on long root syllables, after
which the / disappeared; also umlaut triggered by j.
- Umlaut stage II ( 700-800 AD): / was deleted after a short syllable and no
umlaut occurred; ex. talda.
- Umlaut stage III 850 AD: Umlaut reoccurred by the i and; that were still
around.
• Iverson (1978):
i-umlaut is essentially morphologically conditioned; the important fact is that
the plural of short /-stems did undergo umlaut and then regularized in favour
of non-alternating α-stem; originally *stedir > stadir.
• Cathey and Demers (1972, 1975, 1977):
Umlaut is triggered by both /j/ and /i/, but original monosyllabic /-stems are
analysed as disyllabic /bekke/ and /stabe/, but /kynj/, /domj/ and /talj/, thus
preventing /stabe/ from undergoing umlaut.
• Voyles (1982, 1992)
Four rules:
ill —» /j/ if unstressed and immediately followed by a vocalic segment
0 —> [i] / VC/VCC j (among other contexts)
I'll —» 0 in weak verbs past tense
Umlaut by [i] not [j]: Later extended to /j/
Short [i] stems did undergo umlaut (in some forms) but later restructured to
have "the non-umlauted forms as the basic" (as in Iverson).
120 Aditi Lahiri
• Kiparsky (1983):
First stage: Level I (stem extensions): i-umlaut (long stems)
Level II (inflection): syncope, i-umlaut (long stems)
Later: Level I (stem extensions): i-umlaut (long stems)
Level II (inflection): i-umlaut (all), syncope (reordered)
Accounts for talpa and d empa, but same problem remains for stadr, stadi
(dative) if syncope is ordered after i-umlaut.
17. Our claim is that umlaut was always restricted to heavy stems—i.e., light stems
never underwent umlaut. Paul Kiparsky (SFB International Colloquium, Univ.
of Konstanz 1998) in a response to an earlier version of the paper assumed that
the light ί'-stems like stadr must have had umlaut at an earlier period and then
levelled out the vowel. Support comes from attested forms like stadr in related
dialects like Altgutnisch (cf. Noreen 1923: §392,1). Moreover, given Kock's
periods of umlaut, many scholars have assumed that at some point at least the
plural of the light /-stems had an umlauted vowel as stedir. However, our position
is that given the overwhelming tendency of the attested light /-stems never show-
ing umlaut in Old Norse, it seems that forms like stedr are more likely to be the
innovations rather than the other way around.
18. A study of all the nouns confirm that stem extensions, although not always evident
on the surface, are part of the nominal system. For instance stadr cannot be an
α-noun like harmr, since the plural of this class is harmar. If we assume stem
extensions, then the inflectional classes are reduced considerably.
19. Syllabification is not to be viewed as an active process which may vary in its
ordering with different rules. It applies automatically to a prosodic domain. If
deletion or any other process affects it, it reapplies according to the syllabic
principles of the language. Here it is spelt out only to point out that extrasyllabic
elements remain unresolved till the end of the word level.
20. The front glide disappears after a heavy syllable except when preceded by a
velar.
21. The foot relevant for Germanic was a resolved moraic trochee, which is essentially
a binary quantity sensitive trochee, where the head must branch (Dresher and
Lahiri 1991; Lahiri et al. 1999). The effect of gemination in synchronic Old
English is more complex and we can illustrate how gemination is constrained
better with examples from this language:
(i) Gemination blocked:

U ·) (x ·)
[[μμ] μ] μμμ μ [[μ μ] μ] μ μμ μ
wi tje > *witte ae be Ije > *£e bei le
'punishment-DAT.se' 'noble-DAT.se'
(ii) Gemination permitted:

(χ .) (χ) (χ ·) (χ ) (χ ·)
[[μμ]μ]μ [[μμ]] [[μμ] μ] [[μ μ]] [[μμ] μ]
we ste nje > we sten ne cy nje > cyn ne
'desert-DAT.so' 'race-DAT.so'
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1990 Bengali emphatic clitics in the lexicon-syntax interface. In: W.U.
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1988 Prosodic effects on syntax: Hausa 'fa'. In: Seventh West Coast Con-
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1990 The Phonology-Syntax Connection. Chicago: The University of Chicago
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1978 Synchronic umlaut in Old Icelandic. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 1:
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1982b Explanation in Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris.
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Lahiri, Aditi
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1999 Emphatic clitics and focus intonation in Bengali. In: Kager and
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1978 The modern Icelandic epenthesis rule revisited. Arkiv for nordisk
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1982 The origin of the Germanic dental preterite: A new proposal. Leuvense
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1997 Typological plausibility and the deictic origin of the Germanic dental
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1929 Das germanische Dentalpräteritum. NTS 2: 5-96.
Tops, Guy A.J.
1974 The Origin of the Germanic Dental Preterit. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
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1992 Early Germanic Grammar. Pre-, Proto-, and Post-Germanic Lan-
guages. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Constraints on schwa apocope in Middle High
German
Renate Raffelsiefen
1. Introduction
When described as a deletion rule, word-final schwa loss in Middle
High German (MHG) is highly idiosyncratic. Systematic restrictions
on preceding segments indicate phonological conditioning of the rule.
Yet a phonological motivation is elusive. The impression of arbitrari-
ness is reinforced by the observation that specific phonological restric-
tions correlate with morphological and even semantic properties of
words. For instance, why did schwa disappear only after liquids in
feminine count nouns but also after nasals and voiceless obstruents in
most unpluralizable nouns? Why are the phonological conditions for
schwa loss in unpluralizable nouns identical to those in uninflected
adjectives? Why do the conditions for schwa loss in titles or swear
words differ from those in other nouns?
The answers to these questions proposed in this paper are based on
constraints rather than on rules (cf. Prince and Smolensky 1993) and
rely on two assumptions. First, we assume a constraint *SCHWA imply-
ing that all schwas will disappear unless needed to satisfy a higher-
ranking constraint. In this approach the true generalizations which
determine the development of schwas concern the conditions for stabil-
ity rather than for loss. The second assumption is that there exists a
constraint which requires all members of an inflectional paradigm to
be identical in certain respects. This constraint, which will be referred
to as LEVEL, presupposes that the forms to be evaluated consist of
entire paradigms rather than individual words.
Together these two assumptions allow for a description of word-final
schwa loss in MHG which refers neither to segment classes, nor to
morphological or semantic word properties. The analysis is also relevant
for the notion of possible language change.
The paper is structured as follows. In Section 21 describe the strictly
phonological stability conditions for final schwa, which apply in all
words including those which are not members of a paradigm. In Sec-
126 Renate Raffelsiefen
tion 3 it is shown that in words which belong to inflectional paradigms

schwas are generally stable for as long as the paradigm includes at least
one member which requires a schwa in the corresponding site for
phonological reasons. The conclusions are summarized in Section 4.
2. The Voice Stability Effect
In some classes of words schwas disappeared after sonorants and voice-

less obstruents, but remained after voiced obstruents. Compare for
instance the MHG collective neuter nouns in (la) with those in (Ib),
where the final schwa was preceded by a voiced obstruent and re-
mained. The circumflex indicates vowel length in MHG orthography.
The glosses refer to the MHG meanings.' The abbreviation NHG stands
for 'New High German' and refers to the present day language. Schwas
in MHG result from the historical reduction of full vowels in unstressed
position, which marked the transition from OHG to MHG (e.g. OHG
apful > MHG apf[d]l 'apple', OHG herbist>MHG herb[d\st 'harvest',
OHG melo > MHG melfr] 'flour'):
(1) MHG NHG
a. gemuetfa] Gemüt 'mind'
geschirrO] Geschirr 'dishes'
gebluet[a] Geblüt 'blood'
gebüschfe] Gebüsch 'bushes'
gewülkO] Gewölk 'clouds'
gestein[>] Gestein 'rocks'
gestirn[a] Gestirn 'stars'
b. gemue[z][>] Gemü[z][>] 'mush'
getreidfc] Getreid[>] 'food'
gesind|>] Gesind[a] 'servants'
gewerb[s] Gewerb[a] 'business'
gelend[a] Geländ[>] 'terrain'
gebirgO] Gebirg [3] 'mountains'
gesmid[9] GeschmeidO] 'wrought iron'
The development of the final schwa in the 88 MHG collective neuter
nouns derived by circumfixation (i.e. geXe) which still exist in NHG
is shown in (2):2
(2) Total Schwa retained Schwa lost

in MHG in NHG in NHG
Final schwa after 64 2 62
voiceless obstruents or (Gerippe, Gefalle]
sonorants:
Final schwa after 24 24
voiced obstruents:
The same phonological restriction on schwa deletion is found in unin-

flected adjectives as illustrated in (3).3
(3) MHG NHG

a. dickfg] dick4 'thick'
riffs] reif 'ripe'
still [9] still 'still'
rein [9] rein 'clean'
swaerfg] schwer 'heavy'
zäh[9] zäh 'tough'
rich [9] reich 'rich'
spaet[9] spät 'late'
kiusch[9] keusch 'chaste'
laer[>] leer 'empty'
b. traeg[9] trag [9] 'lazy'
oed[9] öd[9] 'barren'
boe[z][9] bö[z][9] 'mad'
veig[9] feig [9] 'destined to die'
trüeb[9] trüb [9] 'dull'
müed[9] müd[9] 'tired'
mürw[9] mürb[9] 'crumbly'
1 [ ][9] lei[z][9] 'quiet'
snoedfg] schnöd[9] 'contemptuous'
bloed[9] blöd[9]5 'weak, tender'
Of the list of 87 MHG adjectives ending in schwa (i.e. the former ja-//o-
stems) listed in Paul, 58 still exist (cf. Paul et al. 1989: 212).6 (4) shows
the distribution of word-final schwa for those adjectives in NHG:
(4) Total Schwa retained Schwa lost

in MHG in NHG in NHG
Final schwa after 43 l 42
voiceless obstruents (irre)
or sonorants:
Final schwa after 15 12 3 (wild, elend,
voiced obstruents: fremd)
The near-complete loss of word-final schwas after voiceless obstruents

or sonorants is a rather recent development. Wilmanns (1911) notes that
the adjectives nütze 'useful', irre 'mad', dwrre 'dry', stille 'still', dünne
'thin', and zähe 'tough' 'can or must retain the final schwa'.7 Of these
words, the last four are no longer pronounced with final schwa. The
three adjectives listed in (4) which exceptionally lost the schwa will be
discussed shortly.
Viewed in terms of conditions on deletion the pattern of schwa loss
illustrated above is described by (5). The additional morphological re-
strictions stated in that rule are discussed in Section 3:
(5) Domain: strong non-count nouns

[3] -> 01
(including collective neuter nouns,
cf. (1)), uninflected adjectives (cf.
(3)), titles, swear words
Rule (5) is phonologically odd because sonorants and voiceless

obstruents do not constitute a natural class. This problem disappears
if the conditions for schwa stability are described instead: schwas are
stable after voiced obstruents and delete elsewhere. According to
Wilmanns (1911: 364) the deletion patterns in (5) have historically been
related to the absence of voiced obstruents in syllable-final position in
German (cf. Adelung 1781). The constraint in question can be formu-
lated as follows (cf. Shibatani 1973):
(6) CODA VOICE (preliminary version)

Voiced obstruents in coda position are prohibited.
Reference to a specific class of speech sounds can be avoided by invok-

ing the notion of markedness as in constraint (7). This constraint presup-
poses that the unmarked value for the feature [±voice] is plus for
sonorants and minus for obstruents (cf. Chomsky and Halle 1968:406):
(7) CODA VOICE (final version)

Speech sounds in coda position must be unmarked for the fea-
ture [±voice].
The deletion patterns illustrated in (1) and (3) can be described by

ranking CODA VOICE above a general constraint against schwas.8 A
preliminary version of the latter constraint is stated in (8) (cf. Mester
and Ito 1994):
(8) *SCHWA
Schwas are prohibited.
Evaluation of candidate forms with respect to *ScHWA, which ex-

presses the markedness of schwas, is demonstrated with the example
MHG er[*]z[9], NHG Erz Ore' shown in tableau (9):9
(9) *SCHWA
er(>]z[9] **
er[a]z *
erz[a] *
"3= erz
Tableau (10), which compares forms with schwa with the corresponding
schwaless forms, shows that the ranking CODA VOICE » *SCHWA
accounts for the data considered so far. The examples in (lOa-c) repre-
sent words in which the final schwa is preceded by a voiceless obstru-
ent, a sonorant, and a voiced obstruent, respectively. The exclamation
mark indicates a "fatal" violation, which leads to the elimination of
the candidate.
130 Renate Rqffelsiefen
(10) Candidates CODA VOICE *SCHWA

a. dick[s] *!
·*· dick
b. reinfg] *!
B®" rein
c. traeg *!
isr traegO] *
The fact that CODA VOICE is never violated in German has led propo-
nents of rule-based approaches to conclude that there is an automatic
rule of Final Devoicing in German. The observation that the final schwa
in words like trceg[d] has been stabilized by the illformedness of the
form trce[g\ argues against the existence of such a rule. Yet the question
arises of what rules out the "devoiced" candidate trcek. This candidate
cannot be eliminated on phonological grounds but rather calls for a
different type of constraint which relates candidates to input forms.
Ranking the constraint PRESERVE VOICE stated in (11) higher than
*SCHWA yields the desired effect:10
(11) PRESERVE VOICE

The feature [±voice] must be preserved
Tableau (12) shows how the ranking of the three constraints considered
so far accounts for the preference of schwaless forms unless the schwa
is preceded by a voiced obstruent."
(12) ω
rrj
S
[•τ"] fT"|
5
<
*—^
ΓΤ
^.^
ffi
US »M
0
Input Candidates U P
>
Di
CX
O
>
&n
a. dick[a] dick[s] *!
es* dick
b. rein[a] rein[9] *!
osr rein
c. traegO] traeg *!
traek *!
«®· trag [9] *
All input forms in (12) end in schwa to match the historical starting
point of schwa deletion. Specifically, the input forms in (12) represent
the surface forms which were historically encountered in language
acquisition. The constraint ranking accounts for the forms selected by
learners on the basis of those input forms, which then surfaced in their
own speech (i.e. the forms dick, rein, and trcegfy] in (12)). "Schwa
deletion" thus refers to an era when learners were more likely to en-
counter words ending in schwa than to render that schwa in their own
speech with the result that input forms like dick[d] and rein[d] were
eventually replaced by the restructured forms dick and rein
The constraint CODA VOICE has been inviolable in German since
MHG, when all voiced obstruents in coda position were replaced by
voiceless obstruents (cf. Old High German tou[b] 'mindless' > MHG
tou[p], OHG ar\g\ 'bad' > MHG ar[k]). The transition from OHG to
MHG is thus marked by a constraint reordering whereby CODA VOICE
came to dominate PRESERVE VOICE. Synchronically, the continuous
high ranking of CODA VOICE w.r.t. PRESERVE VOICE is manifested
in the absence of analogical restoration of voiced obstruents in coda
position12 and in conditions on loan word adoption: voiced obstruents
in coda position are replaced by the corresponding voiceless obstruents
when loan words are adopted into German (e.g. Swedish sm rg sbor[d]
'buffet' > German Smorgasbor[t], French vo[g] 'vogue' > German
. It appears then that while existing schwas (i.e. schwas which
13 2 Renate Raff els i efen
result from the historical reduction of full vowels in unstressed position,

which marked the transition from OHG to MHG) have been stable to
satisfy the constraints CODA VOICE and PRESERVE VOICE, no schwas
have been inserted to satisfy those constraints. That is, existing schwas
have been stable to ensure the continuous syllabification of voiced
obstruents in onset position but no new schwas have been inserted
to yield such a syllabification (e.g. OHG tou[b] became MHG tou\p]
rather than *tou.[bd}). This shows that PRESERVE VOICE dominates
*SCHWA and is dominated by a constraint against vowel epenthesis.13
Consider now the words in (4) in which schwa deleted despite being
preceded by a voiced obstruent. The adjectives elend and fremd differ
from the other adjectives under consideration in that they consisted of
a ternary foot in MHG (i.e. MHG eilende, vremede) provided that a foot
consists of a stressed syllable and the following less stressed syllables
within the phonological word.14 The tendency in German not to exceed
binary feet was already observed by Heyse (1838). His observation can
be stated in terms of the following constraint:15
(13) (σ2)Ρ
Feet must be maximally binary.
The fact that schwa systematically deleted after voiced obstruents in

words consisting of ternary feet indicates that the constraint (o2)F domi-
nates PRESERVE VOICE. Recall that *CODA VOICE is never violated
in MHG and NHG:
(14) tu
ου 3
?
^ w Γ_τ"| r^
Ε
0 u Γ)
ο ο
(Χ] !_,
Input Candidates 2
(σ )Ρ ei P CO
υ> CU > *
ellendfs] eilend *!
ellend[3] *!
«®· client *
The constraint ranking in tableau (14) also accounts for the different
development of the final schwa in the words in (15a) and (15b), which
have similar segmental structure but differ with respect to foot structure:
(15) MHG NHG

a. gegende Gegen[t] 'area'
lebende leben[t] 'alive'
b. legende Legend[a] 'legend'
behende behend[a] 'swift'
Most cases where schwa deleted after voiced obstruents can be ex-
plained with reference to foot binarity. The question of why schwa
disappeared in MHG wilde (NHG wild) is less clear. The loss appears
to be phonologically motivated as the Voice Stability Effect generally
fails after the cluster Id.
The constraint ranking in tableau (14) applies to all phonological
words in MHG regardless of their category.16 However the effect is
visible only in words which do not belong to inflectional paradigms.
This is because in inflected words certain schwas are stabilized by
independent constraints on paradigmatic leveling which obscure the
Voice Stability Effect. In Section 3 it will be shown that restricting
schwa deletion to specific morphological categories as in rule (5) be-
comes unnecessary if candidates consist of entire inflectional paradigms
rather than individual words.
Consider next the issue of possible deletion rules, or rather, of pos-
sible stability effects. Three hypothetical stability effects are listed
in (16):
(16) Schwa is stable: Schwa deletes:

after voiced obstruents elsewhere
*B after voiceless obstruents elsewhere
*C after sonorants elsewhere
Type A corresponds to the Voice Stability Effect discussed above. This

stability effect implies that *SCHWA is dominated by a constraint
against voiced obstruents in syllable codas. Since there is strong evi-
dence both from language acquisition (cf. Stampe 1969; Smith 1973)
and cross-linguistically that such a constraint exists pattern A qualifies
as a possible stability effect.
134 Renate Rqffelsiefen
In contrast, pattern B presupposes a constraint against voiceless

obstruents in coda position and pattern C presupposes a constraint
against sonorants in coda position. Without independent evidence for
either constraint the corresponding stability effects can be ruled out.
Given the range of (presumably universal) constraints it is accordingly
possible to predict the range of possible stability effects.17 The theory
thus allows one to assess the plausibility of linguistic descriptions. For
example, consider Koziol's (1937: 308) description of schwa loss in
Middle English: "The loss within each individual category—weakly
stressed, polysyllabic, disyllabic, native and borrowed words, begins
earlier after voiceless stops and fricatives, as well as after liquids or
nasals than after voiced stops or fricatives". Minkova (1991: 111)
dismisses Koziol's observation on phonological grounds: "It would be
even more than difficult to find the common denominator in the envi-
ronment defined by Koziol, so the whole proposal seems at best inde-
fensible". Minkova errs in assessing Koziol's observations in terms of
a deletion rule. Viewed from the 'stability' perspective the pattern of
Middle English schwa loss observed by Koziol is simply another in-
stance of the Voice Stability Effect.18
3. LEVEL Stability Effects
3.1. Schwa loss in verbs
Consider the type of quantity sensitivity exhibited by schwa apocope

in the MHG first person singular present tense forms in (17). While the
final schwa in these forms is generally considered an inflectional mor-
pheme in NHG the data in (17) show that its stability is phonologically
governed in MHG: schwa never disappeared if preceded by either a long
stem vowel (including diphthongs) or a long consonant.19 Recall that
the circumflex indicates vowel length. Orthographic double segments
indicate consonantal length.
(17) MHG NHG

a. mal|>] > mal mahle '(I) grind'
var[a] > var fahre '(D go'
hol[>] > hoi hole '(I) call'
spil[a] > spil spiele '(D play'
ner[a] > ner nähre '(I) cure'
stelO] > stel stehle '(I) steal'
hel[a] > hel hehle '(I) conceal'
ber|>] > ber gebäre '(I) bear'
scher[>] > scher schere '(I) shear'
swer[a] > swer schwöre '(I) swear'
zer[a] > zer zehre '(I) tear'
b. mal[9] male '(I) mark'
harr[>] harre '(I) await'
teil[3] teile '(I) share'
vallM falle '(I) fall'
hcerfg] höre '(I) hear'
kuel[a] kühle '(I) cool'
fühle '(I) feel'
wühle '(I) roll'
heil[9] heile '(I) cure'
still[e] stille '(I) calm'
vüer[>] führe '(I) move'
Apocope tends to be restricted by minimality conditions on output
forms. In Estonian, for example, final vowels delete in nominative
forms unless the remaining stem is a single syllable consisting of a short
vowel followed by a short consonant (cf. McCarthy and Prince 1986).
Apocope is restricted in a similar fashion in Germanic (Prokosch 1 939),
Lardil (Wilkinson 1988), and Proto-Nordic (Riad 1992).
In view of this general tendency to avoid monosyllabic words with
a VC-rhyme the pattern of MHG schwa deletion calls for an explana-
tion. Specifically, final schwa deleted precisely in words with a short
stem vowel followed by a single consonant as shown in (17a), but was
stable elsewhere. Yet another phonological oddity is the segmental
restriction on schwa loss illustrated in (17a): the rule applies only after
liquids as is shown by the fact of schwa non-deletion in the words
shown in (18). Verbs in which the final schwa is preceded by a voiced

obstruent are omitted from consideration to rule out potential Voice
Stability Effects.
(18) MHG NHG

wat[3] wate '(D go'
nick[9] nicke '(I) bend'
bete '(I) beg'
nem[9] nehme '(I) take'
den|>] dehne '(I) stretch'
waschO] wasche '(I) wash'
lach[3] lache '(I) laugh'
knet|>] knete '(I) knead'
kom[3] komme '(I) come'
sprech[s] spreche '(I) speak'
The patterns of schwa loss illustrated in (17) and (18) can be described
in terms of the deletion rule (19) (cf. Paul et al. 1989: 81).
(19) [9] —> 0 / XVL Υ Domain: finite verb forms, feminine and
masculine count nouns
To explain the deletion pattern in rule (19) within the constraint-based

analysis proposed here, which presupposes a constraint against schwas,
one must focus on the question of what stabilized the schwa in the
examples in (17b) and (18). I will argue that the key to understanding
the development of the final schwas in those words is the observation
that they belong to inflectional paradigms and that the schwa deleted
either in all members of a paradigm or in none. Consider the complete
paradigms of MHG male '(I) grind', male '(I) mark', and mache '(I)
make' listed in (20). Vowel alternations are typical for so-called strong
verbs and do not affect the development of the final schwa in MHG.
The grapheme <ch) represents the velar fricative [x].
(20) so 1. a. mal|>] > mal b. mal[>] c. mach[>]

2. mel(>]st > meist mäl[>]st mach[a]st
3. mel|>]t > melt mal[>]t mach[>]t
PL 1. mal[>]n > main mal[>]n mach[>]n
2. mal[3]t > malt mal[>]t mach[>]t
3. mal[>]nt > malnt mal[>]nt mach(>]nt
The claim that the schwa deleted either in all members of a paradigm
or in none presupposes a definition of the paradigm in terms of agree-
ment. Specifically, it is necessary to define a paradigm as the set of the
inflected forms of a word whose distribution is determined solely by
agreement with another element within the clause. On this definition
the different verb forms in for instance (20a) are members of the same
paradigm because their distribution is determined by agreement with
the subject within the clause. In contrast, the inflected word forms in
(2la), which relate to the same verb main 'to grind', do not belong to
a single paradigm because the choice of tense is not determined by
agreement. Neither are the verb forms in (21b) members of a single
paradigm because their distribution is determined not exclusively by
agreement but also involve different tenses. The stability of the schwa
in muol\d\t vis-ä-vis schwa loss in mal([d]} thus does not contradict the
claim that schwa deleted in all members of a paradigm or in none,
assuming that paradigms are defined in terms of agreement.
(21) a. PL 1 mal([e])n 'grind' b. so 1 mal([a]) 'grind'

PL 1 muol[>]n 'ground' PL 2 muol[>]t 'ground'
Defining the paradigm is important because all and only the members
of a paradigm are subject to a constraint LEVEL, which for the purpose
of this paper will be defined as follows:
(22) LEVEL
All stem consonants must occupy the same syllable position in
each member of a paradigm
The notion 'stem' in constraint (22) is used informally and describes

the word without inflectional markers.20 For an illustration of LEVEL
13 8 Renate Raffelsiefen
consider the evaluation of the three hypothetical paradigms in tableau

(23), in which n functions as an inflectional marker:
(23) LEVEL
a. [perl 1
[perlnj
b. [per.le 1
[per.lenj
c. [perl 1 *
[per.lenj
The paradigm in (23a) satisfies LEVEL because the three stem conso-
nants/?, r, and / occupy the same syllable position in each member. That
is, the p is always in head position and the two liquids are always in
coda position. Paradigm (23b) satisfies LEVEL as well. Only paradigm
(23c) violates LEVEL because the / is in coda position in one member
but in head position in another member.
The evaluation of the paradigms in tableau (23) may suggest that
LEVEL could also be defined as a constraint requiring the number of
syllables in each member to be the same. While such a definition would
suffice to account for MHG verbal paradigms it would not always yield
the desired result (cf. Section 3.4.). Specifically, the constraint LEVEL
as defined in (22) expresses a preference for paradigms in which all
members exhibit the same adjacency relations among the stem conso-
nants (cf. (24a)) over a paradigm in which all members have the same
number of syllables (cf. (24b)).
(24) LEVEL
a. iperl 1 *
[per.lenj
b. ipe.rel 1 **
[per.lenj
The fact that schwa deleted either in all members of a paradigm or in

none indicates that the constraint LEVEL dominates *SCHWA. If stabil-
ity of schwas rather than schwa deletion requires an explanation, the
question arises of why the schwas failed to delete in certain paradigms.

Arguably those paradigms include at least one member which requires
a schwa for strictly phonological reasons. Consider first the question
of why schwas failed to delete in inflected verbs after consonants other
than liquids. Since the most sonorous inflectional suffix occurring in
verbal paradigms is the nasal n, schwa loss would entail a sonority
violation whenever the stem-final segment is less sonorous than liquids.
The relevant constraint is based on the Head Law and the Coda Law
proposed in Vennemann 1988 (cf. also Sievers 1901):21
(25) SON
A segment in the syllable head may only be followed by seg-
ments of higher sonority; a segment in the syllable coda may
only be preceded by segments of higher sonority.
That is, for every segment in the syllable shell (i.e. head and coda) the
sonority level must increase toward the nucleus. The sonority hierarchy
is given in (26):
(26) Increasing Decreasing Syllable

sonority sonority appendices:
Vowel r l Nasal Fricative Stop s, t
The ranking among r, /, and the nasals in (26) is consistent with the
'discontinuous gradings' of sonority proposed by Sievers on auditory
grounds (1901: 198f).22 According to (26) sonorants must precede
obstruents in coda position and the only permissible sonorant clusters
are rl, rN, IN, and rlN ('N' = nasal). Any other combinations result in
'sonority violations', which would inhibit schwa deletion as is shown
in (27). The MHG words in each row differ only in the order of the
consonants which flank the schwa.
(27) MHG NHG

a. at[o]m At[>]m 'breath'
ov[s]n Of[a]n Oven'
kell[a]r Keller 'cellar'
ham[9]l Hamm[9]l 'wether'
ham[3]r Hamm[9]r 'hammer'
b. zim[9]t Zimt 'cinnamon'

sen[3]f Senf 'mustard'
quirr[9]l Quirl 'whisk'
hal[9]m Halm 'stalk'
har[3]m Harm 'h rm'
The development of the schwa in the words in (27) is determined by

the fact that the clusters in (28a), but not those in (28b), violate SON
when occurring in coda position:
(28) a. *tm b. V mt
*fn ^ nf
*lr ^ rl
*ml >/ 1m
*mr \/ rm
The observation that schwa never deletes if its loss would entail a SON
violation indicates that SON dominates *SCHWA as is shown in ta-
bleau (29).23 In fact, the constraint SON is never violated in German.
Tableau (29) merely compares forms with schwa with the corresponding
schwaless candidates. To eliminate candidates like am, at, and aim it is
necessary to rank various PRESERVE constraints higher than *ScHWA.24
(29) Input Candidates SON *SCHWA

a. at[9]m ι®* at[9]m *
atm *!
b. zim[3]t zim|>]t *!
3
ι® zimt
Consider next the syllable appendices listed in (26). Only coronal

obstruents can be extrasyllabic in German.25 Schwa loss in the words
in (30) accordingly does not violate SON since the final coronals are
not part of the syllable proper.
(30) mark[3]t > markt 'market'; ar[ts]|>]t > ar[ts]t 'medical doctor'
Because n is the most sonorous suffix occurring in verbal paradigms,

schwas are never needed to prevent SON violations in paradigms with
stem-final liquids as is illustrated with the paradigm of the verb
mal([d\)n 'to grind' in (20). If the stem-final consonant is a nonliquid,
schwas are needed to avoid SON violations in the first and third person
plural forms, which include nasal suffixes (e.g. mach[d]n > *machn,
mach[d]nt > *machnf). The observation that the schwa is stable in all
members of such paradigms (including mach[d]) indicates that both
SON and LEVEL dominate *SCHWA. To illustrate this analysis it suf-
fices to represent the paradigms by listing distinct members only as
shown in tableau (31).26 The constraint LEVEL is violated once in the
second candidate in (31) because there is one stem consonant which
appears in coda position in some members of the paradigm and in head
position in others, i.e. the velar fricative represented by <ch). *SCHWA
is violated five times in the third candidate listed because there are five
occurrences of schwa.
(31) SON LEVEL *SCHWA

"mach **!
machst (*machn,
macht * machnt)
machn •:
.machnt
"mach *!
machst
macht
mach [a] n
.mach[9]nt .
US' mach[9] *****
machst[9]
macht|>]
mach [9] n
.mach[9]nt .
Consider now the second phonological restriction on schwa deletion

142 Renate RaffeIsiefen
expressed in rule (19), that is, the restriction concerning length. That
restriction reflects the constraint WEIGHT stated in (32), which is based
on the Weight Law proposed in Vennemann 1988:
(32) WEIGHT
The maximal weight of a stressed syllable is three moras.
Assuming that short vowels or single consonants consist of one mora

and that long vowels, diphthongs, or geminate consonants consist of
two moras the development of the schwa in the MHG infinitives shown
in (33) can be described by ranking WEIGHT higher than *ScHWA.
(33) a. mal[9]n *maln 'to mark' b. mal[>]n > main 'to grind'
teil[9]n *teiln 'to share' hol[>]n > holn 'to call'
vall[s]n *valln 'to fall' spil[9]n > spun 'to play'
hoer[9]n *hcern 'to hear' ner[a]n > nern 'to cure'
harr[o]n *harrn 'to await' var[a]n > varn 'to go'
Tableau (34) gives an analysis of the historical schwa loss seen in (33b).
Like SON, the constraint WEIGHT is never violated in MHG. Schwa
loss in nouns like MHG ern\d\sl > ernst 'earnestness' does not violate
WEIGHT because word-final coronal obstruents are extrasyllabic and
hence do not contribute to syllable weight.
(34) Input Candidates WEIGHT *SCHWA

a. mal[>]n *& mal[>]n *
main *!
b. mal[3]n mal[3]n *!
«®- main
Given the constraint ranking in (34) the MHG inflected verbs mal[d]
'(I) grind' and mal[d] '(I) mark' differ in that the paradigm of mal\d\
includes members in which the schwa is needed to avoid a WEIGHT
violation (i.e. the forms mäl[d\n, mäl[d]ni) whereas the paradigm of
ma/0] includes no such members.27 The members which require the
schwa for phonological reasons are again the first and the third person
plural, but in this case because the consonant n (unlike s or f) contrib-

utes to syllable weight. The observation that the schwa has been stable
not only in the members which violate WEIGHT but in all members in
the respective paradigms supports the claim that LEVEL dominates
*SCHWA. Tableau (35) accounts for the development of schwa in all
inflected present tense verbs in MHG. Since both SON and WEIGHT
are inviolable in MHG they cannot be ranked with respect to each other.
(35) SON WEIGHT LEVEL *SCHWA
a. 'mal **!
malst (*mäln,
malt * mälnt)
main
. mälnt
'mal *!
malst
malt
mäl[9]n
. mäl[9]nt .
us- " mälfs] *****
mäl[3]st
mäl[a]t
mäl[3]n
. mäl[3]nt .
b. «a? " mal
malst
malt
main
. malnt
Tableau (35) shows that the paradigms of verbs with a short stem vowel
followed by a short liquid like main 'to grind' differ from other MHG
verbs in that none of their members need schwas to avoid SON or
WEIGHT violations.28 Consequently, such paradigms satisfy LEVEL
even if all schwas delete (including the word-final schwa as shown
in (17)).
The analysis of the distribution of schwa illustrated in tableau (35)

does not preclude an analysis of the word-final schwa in the first person
singular as an inflectional marker in MHG.29 Clearly, the subsequent
restoration of final schwas in the first person singular forms illustrated
in (17a) indicates that at some point such schwas were analysed as
inflectional suffixes and then spread to all relevant forms by analogical
extension.
To summarize, the description in (35) establishes a direct connection
between the restriction to liquids in Paul et al.'s schwa-deletion rule
(19) and the sonority of the most sonorous suffix in verbal paradigms
(i.e. a nasal): since the sonority in codas must decrease, the nasal suffix
cannot be preceded by consonants other than liquids. Reference to the
constraints SON and LEVEL hence obviates the need to refer to liquids
for the description of schwa loss seen in (17a). Similarly the restriction
of Paul et al.'s schwa deletion rule (19) to short stems follows from
the fact that the heaviest suffix contributes one mora to syllable weight
and is explained by ordering WEIGHT and LEVEL higher than
*SCHWA.30
3.2, Schwa loss in feminine count nouns
Consider next the loss of final schwa in feminine count nouns described
in rule (19). In NHG the final schwa in such nouns is often analysed
as a morpheme encoding feminine gender. As is shown by the data in
(36) that schwa also deleted after short liquids preceded by short vowels
in MHG.31
(36) MHG NHG

zalfe] > zal Zahl 'number'
walfe] > wal Wahl 'choice'
türfe] > tür Tür 'door'
scharfe] > schar Schar 'flock'
werfe] > wer Wehr 'defence'
kürfe] > kür Kür 'examination'
girfe] > gir Gier 'desire'
birfe] > bir Birne32 'pear'
After long stem vowels, long liquids or non-liquid consonants schwas

have been stable as is illustrated by the feminine nouns in (37a,b).33
(37) MHG NHG

a. huor[>] Hur[9] 'whore'
hell[a] Hollfo] 'hell'
VU[e] Feil[s] 'file'
kapoll[e] Kap611[e] 'chapel'
biul[e] Beul[o] 'bump'
sel[9] Seel[e] 'soul'
grillte] Grillte] 'cricket'
b. bet[9] Bitt[e] 'plea'
woch[3] Woch[9] 'week'
Heffe] 'yeast'
taschfa] Taschfa] 'bag'
deck[9] Deck[9] 'blanket'
van[>] Fahn[a] 'flag'
Sitt[a] 'custom'
The observation that the nouns in (36) and (37) exhibit the same schwa
deletion pattern as the inflected verbs in (17) and (18) leads one to
suspect that the most sonorous suffix occurring in the nominal para-
digms is also a nasal. In fact, all nouns in (36) and (37) are members
of paradigms which include no suffix other than n. The so-called
"strong declension" is represented by the paradigm of bete 'plea' in
(38a) and the "weak declension" is represented by the paradigm of the
noun huore 'whore' in (38b):34
(38) a. strong b. weak

SG.NOM bete huore
GEN bete huoren
DAT bete huoren
ACC bete huoren
PL.NOM bete(n) huoren
GEN beten huoren
DAT beten huoren
ACC bete(n) huoren
In paradigms which belong to the strong declension, the suffixed plural

nominative and accusative forms replaced the earlier forms ending in
schwa already in MHG. To illustrate the evaluation of the nouns in (36)
and (37) it suffices to represent the paradigms by listing only the phono-
logically distinct members as is shown in tableau (39):

a. [bet 1 *!
[betnj
[bet I *! : .:.'·. .' :'"'·' .:.:::::. ." ·;'
[bet[3]nj
ra-rbetfc] 1 **
[bet|>]n]
b. [huor 1 *!
[huornj
[huor *!
[huor [a] n J
"®"[huor[>] 1 **
|huor[9]n]
c. "^[zal 1
[zalnj
Again, the only nouns which require no schwa to satisfy SON, WEIGHT,
and LEVEL are those with a short stem vowel followed by a short liquid
as is shown in tableau (39c).
The defectiveness of certain noun paradigms yields an additional
argument for the analysis illustrated in tableau (39). If the final schwa
in for example bet[d] were indeed stabilized by the schwa in bet[d]n,
which is needed to avoid a SON violation, then final schwas should
disappear in phonologically similar nouns whose paradigms lack suf-
fixed forms. For an illustration of this point consider the evaluation of
the MHG count noun mote 'rod' (NHG Rute) and the MHG abstract
noun huote 'care' (NHG Hut), which differ in that only mote can be
pluralized.35 This difference determines the stability of the final schwa
as is shown in tableau (40):

a. [ruot 1 *!
[ruotnj
[ruot *!
[ruot [a] n J
B3r[ruot[3] 1 **
[ruot[3]n]
b. crihuot 1
LhuotO]] *!
This point is further illustrated by evaluating the minimal pair MHG

huore 'whore' (NHG Hure) and the non-count noun MHG more 'dys-
entery' (NHG Ruhr). In this case the crucial difference is that the para-
digm of huore, but not that of more, includes a member in which the
schwa is needed to satisfy WEIGHT:

1
! huor
huornj
*!
! huor
huor[a]n
m· huor[>]
*!
**
huor[a]n
b. ·*! ruor
jruor[3]J *!
A comparison of the feminine-noun paradigms in (38) shows that the

paradigms of non-count nouns do not necessarily lack suffixed mem-
bers. Only the paradigms of strong non-pluralizable nouns have no
suffixed members. These two conditions hold for both MHG huot[d]
'care' and ruor[d\ 'dysentery', as well as the other feminine nouns listed
in (42). The constraint ranking in tableau (41) accounts for the fact that
the final schwa disappeared regardless of the sonority or length of the
preceding segments:36
(42) MHG NHG

schamfa] > schäm Scham 'shame'
vorhtO] > vorht Furcht 'fear'
zier[a] > zier Zier Ornament'
pm[g] > Pein 'pain'
smäh[>] > smäh Schmach 'disgrace'
kost [3] > kost Kost 'food'
aht[>] > aht Acht 'attention'
äht|>] > äht Acht Outlawry'
natür[9] > natür Natur 'nature'
maer[9] > maer Mär 'fame'
schiuhfa] > schiuh Scheu 'repugnance'
schouw[a] > schouw Schau 'spectacle'
witz[>] > witz Witz37 'wisdom'
The claim that the schwa loss in the feminine non-count nouns (e.g.
huot([d\), ruor([d\)) vis-a-vis the stability of the final schwa in the
phonologically similar count nouns (e.g. mot[d\, huor[d\) is conditioned
not by their semantic difference but rather by the absence of suffixed
members in the respective paradigms is supported by the phonological
development of the weak non-count nouns. The paradigms of those
nouns include no plural forms but suffixed oblique forms as is illus-
trated with the MHG asche 'ashes' in (43b):
(43) a. strong b. weak

SG.NOM huote (>huot) asche
GEN huote (>huot) aschen
DAT huote (>huot) aschen
ACC huote (>huot) aschen
In tableau (44) it is seen that the stability of the final schwa in asche
is correctly predicted by the constraint ranking established above:

[asch 1 *!
[aschnj
[asch *!
[asch|>]n]
«^ fasch[>] 1 **
[asch[9]nj
Membership in the weak declension also accounts for the stability of

the final schwa in the MHG nouns sunne 'sun' (NHG Sonne) and galle
'gall' (NHG Galle), which occur only as singular nouns. It is thus not
the semantic property of pluralizability per se but rather the form of the
other paradigm members which determines the stability of the final
schwa. That is, schwa is stable if the paradigm includes a member
which violates SON or WEIGHT, and deletes otherwise. Note that
reference to the notion of a paradigm is crucial for capturing the gener-
alization that the final schwa disappeared only in the subset of the
unpluralizable nouns which have no suffix in the oblique cases.
There is only one phonological restriction on schwa loss in words
whose paradigms include only suffixless members: schwas fail to delete
after voiced obstruents. This restriction has been referred to as Voice
Stability Effect in the preceding section and accounts for the stability
of the final schwa in the feminine non-count nouns in (45):38
(45) MHG NHG

schandO] Schand[>] 'disgrace'
ebb[9] Ebb[s] 'low tide'
Seid[9] 'silk'
erd|>] Erd[a] 'earth'
krid[a] Kreid[a] 'chalk'
hir[z][a] Hir[z][9] 'millet'
lieb[9] Lieb[9] 'love'
genad[g] Gnad[s] 'mercy'
han[z][g] Han[z][a] 'Hanseatic League'
The Voice Stability Effect is obscured in words which belong to para-

digms which include a nasal suffix because in such words schwas are
stable after any obstruent. Similarly the Voice Stability Effect is ob-
scured in historical dactyls like MHG lebende 'alive' because in such
words schwas deleted to satisfy the constraint ( 2) regardless of the
preceding consonant (e.g. lebende > leben[t\). The constraint ranking
in (46) thus accounts for all data considered so far:
(46) SON
WEIGHT
CODA VOICE » PRESERVE VOICE » *SCHWA
( 2)
LEVEL
In the following sections additional data will be presented which allow
one to establish further rankings between the constraints in (46).
3.3. Schwa loss in masculine nouns
Consider the loss of final schwa in masculine count nouns. Those nouns
are generally weak, which means that all other forms in their paradigms
end in n (cf. (38b)). Schwa loss in nouns with a short stem vowel
followed by a short liquid like MHG star([d]} 'starling' is therefore
expected (see 47a). In all other nouns final schwas should be stable.39
The nouns in (47b) illustrate the stabilizing effect of either vocalic or
consonantal length. The data in (47c) show that schwa is stable after
nasals and obstruents (t indicates that the word is archaic).
(47) MHG NHG

a. star[a] > star Star 'starling'
ber[s] > ber Bär 'bear'
ar[a] > ar Aar 'eagle'
stör[a] > stör Stör 'sturgeon'
ster[s] > ster tStär 'ram'
b. farr[>] tFarre 'bull'
bull[3]40 Bulle 'bull'
gesell [a] Geselle 'house mate'
buol[a] Buhle 'lover'
c. valk[a] Falke 'falcon'

aff[a] Affe 'monkey'
Ahne 'grandfather'
ohs[>] Ochse Ox'
The familiar constraint ranking in tableau (48) illustrates the analysis

of final schwa loss seen in the data in (47):

a. "S" star
starnj
[star 1 *!
[star[9]nj
[starfa] **|
[star [3] n
b. [fair 1 *!
[farm]
farr *!
farr[9]n
fsrrfarr[9] 1 **
|farr[3]nj
c valk *!
valknj
[valk 1 *!
[valk[3]nj
rarfvalkfg] **
[valk[3]n
The claim that the final schwa in the data in (47b, c) is stabilized by
leveling is supported by the systematic schwa loss in non-count nouns
whose paradigms include no members which violate SON or WEIGHT
(e.g. MHG met([d\) 'mead' (NHG Met), MHG kut([d\) 'resin' (NHG
Kitt)). In masculine nouns whose paradigms include no suffixed forms
the final schwa is stable only if preceded by a voiced obstruent (e.g.
MHG kce[z][9] (NHG Käse) 'cheese').41
Recall that the paradigms of weak nouns always include members with
a nasal suffix. Therefore the word-final schwa in weak nouns is predicted
to be stable due to LEVEL effects unless the stem consists of a short
vowel followed by a short liquid. There are, however, two types of weak
nouns where the final schwa disappeared regardless of the length or the
sonority of the preceding segments: nouns which are used as titles (cf.
(49a)) and nouns which are used as swear words in MHG (cf. (49b)):42
(49) MHG NHG

a. vrouw[a] > vrouw Frau 'female ruler'
herrfa] > herr Herr 'lord'
vürst[a] > vürst Fürst 'ruler'
gräv[a] > gräv Graf 'count'
prinz[a] > prinz Prinz 'prince'
schenk[a] > schenk Schenk 'cupbearer'
b. geck[a] > geek Geek 'silly person'
lump|>] > lump Lump 'person dressed in rags'
narr[s] > narr Narr 'fool'
schelmfa] > schelm Schelm 'dead person; carcass'
tropf[a] > tropf Tropf 'pathetic or stupid person'
tor[a] > tor Tor 'confused person'
The nouns in (49a) and (49b) are frequently used in the function of
direct address and hence occur as vocatives. This observation is relevant
to the exceptional schwa loss in (49) if we make two assumptions. First,
unlike the case forms in (38), vocatives do not belong to inflectional
paradigms (cf. Glück 199343). Consequently there are no Level effects
and word-final schwa disappears.44 This analysis raises the question of
why schwa also disappeared in the nominative form, which clearly does
belong to an inflectional paradigm containing suffixed forms and hence
should exhibit LEVEL effects. The second assumption is accordingly
that the nominative form must be identical to the vocative and that this
requirement dominates LEVEL. Identity requirements pertaining to word
forms which share few or no morphological features (and may well
belong to separate paradigms) are attested universally and are in fact
cited as the main argument in support of the word and paradigm model
(cf. Matthews 1991: 185ff).45
3.4. The ranking of LEVEL with respect to other constraints
Recall that schwa loss in adjectives like MHG ellend[d] (NHG elen[t])
indicates that the constraint (σ2)Ρ dominates the constraint PRESERVE
VOICE. Schwa loss in MHG nouns like gegend[d] 'area' (NHG
Gegen[i\) indicates that (σ2)Ρ dominates the constraint LEVEL as well.
(50) SG.NOM gegend[9] > gegent

GEN gegendb] > gegent
DAT gegend[>] > gegent
ACC gegend[s] > gegent
PL.NOM gegend[a]n gegend[a]n
GEN gegend[a]n gegend[a]n
DAT gegend|>]n gegend|>]n
ACC gegend[a]n gegend[s]n
The data in (50) show not only that (σ2)Ρ dominates both PRESERVE
VOICE and LEVEL but also that (o2)F is violable. Specifically, the
stability of both schwas in words like geg[d]nd[d]n shows that SON
ranks higher than (a2)F as is shown in tableau (51).
PRESERVE
(51)
*SCHWA
LEVEL
ζ
Input Conditions ο (a2)F
00
igeg|>]nd[3] 1 fgeg[9]n[t]l *!
[geg[3]nd[9]nj [geg[9]ndnj
[gegO]n[t]l *!
[gegnd[3]nj
rgeg[3]nd[9] 1 **!
[geg[3]nd[9]nj
^ geg[3]n[t] 1 * * * ***
geg[9]nd[3]nj
The interaction between the constraints in tableau (51) can be further

determined on the basis of the historical schwa loss in the data in (52):46
(52) MHG NHG

herb [9] st > her [p] st Herbst autumn
kreb[a]3 > kre[p]3 Krebs 'crab'
houb|>]t > hou[p]t Haupt 'head'
vog[a]t > vo[k]t Vogt 'governor'
mag[9]t > ma[k]t Magd 'maid'
bäb|>]s > bä[p]s Papst 'pope'
abb|>]t > a[p]t Abt 'abbot'
jag[>]t > ja[k]t Jagd 'hunting'
amb[>]t > am[p]t Amt Office'
ob[a]3 > o[p]3 Obst 'fruit'
The schwa loss seen in (52) appears to contradict the claim that PRE-
SERVE VOICE dominates *SCHWA, as was established in Section 2.
However, the contradiction disappears when the developments of the
complete paradigms are considered. Consider the three stages in the
development of the paradigm of the MHG noun kerbest 'harvest, au-
tumn' in (53):
(53) Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

her.b[>]st her.b[s]st her[p]st
her.b|>].st[>]s her[p].st(>]s her[p].st[9]s
her.b[d].st[d] her[p].st[>] her[p].st[d]
her.b[a].st[9]n her[p].st[a]n her[p].st[a]n
Schwa loss in herb[d\st is arguably a consequence of the schwa loss

in the corresponding site in the dactylic members of the paradigm. On
that view schwa loss in herb[d]st served not to satisfy *SCHWA but the
higher-ranking constraint LEVEL. The initial schwa loss in the dactyls
(cf. Stage 1 > Stage 2) supports the ranking ( 2) » LEVEL,PRESERVE
VOICE established above. The subsequent schwa loss in the unsuffixed
member of the paradigm (cf. Stage 2 > Stage 3) indicates that LEVEL
dominates the constraint PRESERVE VOICE. Tableau (54) illustrates this
point:
(54) Input Candidates (σ2)Ρ LEVEL PRESERVE

VOICE
her.b[9]st her.b[9]st ***|
her.b[9].st[9]s her.b[9].st[9]s
her.b|>].st|>] her.b[9].st[9]
.her.b[9].st[9]n . .her.b[9].st[9]n.
her.b[9]st #**(
her[p].st[9]s
her[p].st[9]
.her[p].st[9]n -
I®1 her[p]st *# #***
her[p].st[9]s
her[p].st[9]
.her[p].st[9]n .
The third paradigm in tableau (54) is more leveled than the second one
because there are only two consonants which appear in the syllable head
position in some members but in coda position in others (i.e. s,t). This
raises the question of how to eliminate the candidate in (55), which
incurs no LEVEL violations:
(55) her[p].st[9]
her[p].st[9]s
her[p].st[9]
her[p].st[9]n
The observation that existing final schwas were consistently preserved
to satisfy LEVEL in MHG but were never inserted to satisfy LEVEL
indicates that the constraint against vowel epenthesis dominates not only
PRESERVE VOICE (cf. Section 2), but also ranks higher than LEVEL. 47
3.5. Schwa loss in neuter nouns
Unlike the count nouns considered so far neuter count nouns lose their
final schwa even after consonants other than liquids (cf. (56a)) and after
long segments (cf. (56b)):
(56) MHG NHG

a. stück[>] > stück Stück 'piece'
netzO] > netz Netz 'net'
hirn[s] > hirn Hirn 'brain'
kmn[s] > kinn Kinn 'chin'
kriuz[3] > kriuz Kreuz 'cross'
nch[a] > rieh Reich 'empire'
heft[3] > heft Heft 'handle'
vletz[a] > vletz Flöz 'hallway'
b. cer[a] > der Öhr 'eye'
mul|>] > mül Maul 'mouth'
The fact that the patterns of schwa deletion in neuter count nouns differ
from those in other count nouns is perhaps conditioned by the structure
of the strong neuter paradigm, to which almost all neuter nouns which
ended in schwa in MHG belong.48 The strong neuter paradigm, illus-
trated in (57a), differed from the paradigms considered so far in that
it lacked a plural marker. Compare the paradigm of the neuter noun
stücke 'piece' with the paradigms of the non-neuter nouns brücke
'bridge' and mucke 'midge'. The paradigm of the weak noun mucke is
representative of almost all non-neuter nouns which end in schwa.
(57) a. strong b. strong weak

(neuter) (feminine) (feminine,
masculine)
SG.NOM stücke (>stück) brücke mucke
GEN Stückes (>stücks) brücke mucken
DAT stücke (>stück) brücke mucken
ACC stücke (>stück) brücke mucken
PL.NOM stücke brücken mucken
GEN stücke brücken mucken
DAT stücken brücken mucken
ACC stücke brücken mucken
The fact that schwa disappeared only in neuter singular nouns can be
explained by introducing the morphological constraint PL * so defined
in (58) which dominates LEVEL:
(58)
At least one plural form must be morphologically marked with
respect to the corresponding singular form such that the marker
occurs in all plural forms in the paradigm.
The specification "at least one plural form" in (58) is motivated by the
observation that in weak paradigms only the nominative plural is
marked with respect to the corresponding singular form. The require-
ment that the relevant marker must occur in all plural forms of the
paradigm is meant to ensure that for instance the suffix -n in (57b,c),
but not in (57a), is analysable as a plural marker.
As a result of schwa loss in the singular forms in (57a) schwa
emerges as a plural marker in the plural forms thereby satisfying PL so .
By contrast, the constraint PL^SG is satisfied by the suffix -n in the
paradigms of brücke and mucke with the result that schwa loss is inhib-
ited by the lower-ranking constraint LEVEL. The deletion patterns in
the paradigms represented in (57) can thus be described without refer-
ence to gender.
The disappearance of word-final schwas in all dactylic word forms
including all plural forms indicates that the constraint (o2)F dominates
PL ^SG. As examples, consider the schwa loss in the paradigms of the
masculine noun MHG jegere 'hunter' and the neuter noun meêre
'knife' in (59):
(59) SG.NOM jeger[s] > jeger me33er[3] >

GEN jeger|>]s > jegers me33er|>]s >
DAT jeger[a] > jeger me33er[>] >
ACC jeger[>] > jeger me33er[>] >
PL.NOM jeger [a] > jeger me33er[9] >
GEN jeger[a] > jeger me33er[9] >
DAT jeger[a]n > jegern me33er[a]n > m
ACC jeger|>] > jeger me33er[>] >
The claim that PL /so dominates LEVEL implies that it dominates the
constraint PRESERVE VOICE as well (cf. the ranking in tableau (54)).
As a result it is predicted that schwas preceded by voiced obstruents
are stable in neuter nouns which lack plural forms but delete in strong
neuter count nouns. Unfortunately there are almost no data relevant to

this prediction.49 The schwa loss in the neuter count nouns hemde >
hemt (NHG Hemd) 'shirt' and bilde > bilt (NHG Bild) 'picture' is
consistent with the ranking PL ^SG » PRESERVE VOICE but does not
necessarily support it.50
4. Conclusion
Schwa loss in German has generally been described in terms of context-

sensitive deletion rules of the type shown in (60) (cf. Paul et al. 1989,
Wurzel 1970):
(60) a -> 0 / X-Y
While it may seem intuitively plausible to describe schwa loss in terms

of deletion as in (60) it can be shown that a more general description
is possible in terms of conditions for stability. Such a description pre-
supposes the constraint * SCHWA. Contextual restrictions on schwa
deletion are described by constraints which dominate *SCHWA as is
shown in (61). The claim is then that schwa disappears unless it is
needed to satisfy higher-ranking constraints.
(61) CONSTRAINT,, . . . , CONSTRAINT,,» *SCHWA
The constraints dominating * SCHWA identified here are shown in (62):
(62) SON
» (G2)F» PL *SG » LEVEL »
WEIGHT „ _
~ .. PRESERVE Λ7
VOICE » 4*SCHWA
CODA VOICE
The basic generalisation expressed in (62) is that final schwa in MHG

deletes unless one of the three high-ranking constraints on syllabic
wellformedness is violated. In inflected words this generalisation can
be obscured by LEVEL effects. That is, for words which belong to a
paradigm schwas are stable if the paradigm includes a member which
requires schwa for phonological reasons. Both the LEVEL Stability
Effect and the Voice Stability Effect fail in dactyls because of a higher
ranking constraint which limits the size of feet. The type of conditions
which determine the stability of word-final schwas can accordingly be
classified as in (63).51
(63) Constraints on Constraints on Constraints on

the wellformed- the well- the wellformed-
ness of syllable formedness of ness of para-
structure foot structure digm structure
While the context for deletion requires reference to disjoint classes (e.g.,
the class of sonorants and voiceless obstruents in (5)), highly specific
and seemingly arbitrary segment classes (e.g. the class of short liquids
in (19)), as well as a number of highly idiosyncratic semantic and
morphosyntactic features (e.g. restriction to count nouns, strong neuter
nouns, inflected adjectives) reference to all of these properties can be
dispensed with when the conditions for schwa stability are described
instead. The description of stability conditions can be based entirely on
independently motivated constraints as shown in (62) provided that the
notion of the paradigm and the constraint *SCHWA are recognized. The
notion of the paradigm has generally been ignored in Structuralist or
Generative work but played a prominent role in Neogrammarian de-
scriptions of language change. The analysis in (62) challenges the
Neogrammarian view in that paradigmatic leveling does not (necessar-
ily) presuppose a process by which forms having undergone regular
phonetic change are restored due to analogical pressure. Rather ana-
logical pressure serves as a constraint on the progess of regular sound
change (e.g. schwa loss). That is, on the description in (62) certain
schwas are analogically retained rather than restored.52
Consider finally the constraint *SCHWA, which raises the question
of why schwas are undesirable (or marked). The relevant property is
presumably not lack of stress because the unstressed high vowel [i],
which is an allophonic variant of schwa occurring before high conso-
nants in MHG, is generally stable (cf. the dactyls Kon[i]ge 'kings',
Kran[i]che 'cranes'). This suggests that schwas are marked because
they lack place features, and that perhaps *SCHWA should be replaced
by a constraint *[~PLACE], which prohibits placeless segments. How-
ever, a fresh look at the contexts in which vowel (or segment) loss
occurs in cross-linguistic perspective may reveal that the relevant data
are in general better described in terms of stability conditions than in
terms of deletion rules. If this were the case this would argue for the
replacement of *SCHWA by a more general constraint * VOWEL, which
prohibits vowels, or even *SEGMENT, which prohibits segments, which
in MHG happens to be dominated by a constraint PRESERVE PLACE,
which requires the preservation of segments containing place features.
Acknowledgements
This paper was first presented at the workshop "Markedness and Language Change"
in Schloß Maurach in March 1997.1 thank the participants there for a lively discus-
sion. In particular I thank Aditi Lahiri for helpful comments on the written version
and Bruce Sträub for proofreading.
Notes
1. The data are based on Lexer (1878) and Drosdowski (1989).

2. This number excludes neuter nouns which did not have a schwa in MHG such as
Getier 'animals' (collective). In addition some MHG neuter nouns with final schwa
are excluded because they are synchronically indistinguishable from a class of
highly productive nomina actionis. The class in question includes nouns of the type
GeXe, where X is a verb with initial stress, such as Gequatsche 'chattering',
Gekichere 'giggling', Getelefoniere 'telephoning', based on the verbs quatschen
'to chat', kichern 'to giggle', telefonieren 'to telephone' (for discussion see Olsen
1991 and references therein). The high productivity of nouns of the type GeXe in
German makes it difficult to assess the status of final schwa in a specific small
set of MHG collective neuter nouns. Does the existence of NHG Gehetze 'rushing'
indicate that the schwa exceptionally failed to delete in the MHG noun gehetze?
Or, more likely, did MHG gehetze become obsolete (as did most MHG collective
neuter nouns) and NHG Gehetze is an instance of the productive rule mentioned
above? In general the two types (i.e. inherited collective nouns versus recently
coined nomina actionis) can be clearly distinguished on the basis of semantic,
syntactic, and phonological criteria as is illustrated in (ia) versus (ib):
(i) a. Gepäck 'baggage' b. Gepacke 'packing'
Both the inherited collective noun in (ia) and the productively coined action
nominal in (ib) are (etymologically) related to the verb packen 'to pack'. Nouns
belonging to the first type are historically based on verbs or nouns, where many
of those bases have become obsolete. The stems of the inherited nouns always
consist of a single foot and often show umlaut. The relation to their etymological
base is typically marked by semantic idiosyncrasies. By contrast, nouns which
result from the current productive rule are always based on actual verbs, never
have umlaut, and the semantic relation to their base is strictly compositional (cf.
(ib)). The few MHG nouns which do not allow for a clear classification according
to these criteria (i.e. gehetze, gerinne, etc.) have been omitted from consideration
in (2).
3. In NHG the type of collective neuter nouns illustrated in (1) differ from adjec-
tives in that dialectal variants without the final schwa are more acceptable for
adjectives.
4. The schwa does not delete in adverbs (e.g. dick[s] satt sein 'to be very full',
lang[d] her sein 'to be a long time ago', etc.), where it functions as a suffix.
5. In addition to blöde 'feeble-minded' there is also a variant blöd 'annoying' in
NHG, which presumably originates in German dialects in which final schwa
disappeared in all uninflected adjectives. The observation that the two adjectives
also differ in meaning shows that they are separate lexical items.
6. This number excludes the NHG word nütze (from MHG nütze), which occurs only
in the idiomatic phrase zu etwas/nichts nütze sein 'to be good for some-
thing/nothing' . The irregular persistence of the final schwa in nütze is typical for
the phonological behavior of words occurring in fossilized phrases. The negated
cognate of nütze, the adjective unnütz 'useless' (from MHG unnütze), occurs
freely and shows the regular loss of final schwa.
7. It appears that schwa persisted longer after h and after (historical) geminates
where stability may correlate with sonority (i.e. the more sonorous the geminates,
the more stable the following schwa). For the persistence of schwa in nütze,
see n. 7.
8. The observation that schwas tend to disappear unless specific conditions obtain
is also supported by the development of schwa in Proto-Slavic. According to Leed
schwa disappears in "weak position" but is stable in "strong position". He notes
that "/a/ is said to be in strong position when it occurs: (1) before kl or /!/ when
the resulting sequence occurs between consonants; (2) as the second, or even-
numbered /3/ in a sequence of syllables containing /3/, counting from the end of
the word, /a/ is said to be in weak position when it occurs elsewhere . . ." (Leed
1958:15). Crucially, the description focuses on the conditions for schwa stability,
rather than the conditions for schwa loss (i.e. the "elsewhere case").
9. Schwa loss in MHG er|>]z|>] cannot be considered an overall phonological
improvement since it resulted in a complex coda (i.e. [erts] Ore') (cf. the view
of language change as "local improvement" in Vennemann 1988). This shows
that the constraint *SCHWA dominates the constraint NoCoDA, which requires
open syllables (cf. Prince and Smolensky 1993).
10. This description raises the question of whether or not the Voice Stability Effect
is contingent on the fact that [±voice] is a contrastive feature in German. Consider
noncontrastive features like aspiration or glottalization in American English:
voiceless stops are aspirated in onset position but glottalized in coda position.
Could there for example exist a stability effect in American English which is
based on the constraint against aspirated stops in coda position? I suspect that
such an effect could not exist but that contrastiveness is a crucial prerequisite for
stability effects.
11. In words like strenge 'strict', enge 'narrow', and bange 'anxious' word-final
schwa deleted presumably after postnasal ^-deletion occurred (e.g. stre[nga] >
stre[na] > stre[n]). This is because, unlike the obstruent [g], the nasal [ ] is
unmarked for the feature [±voice] in coda position and therefore does not stabilize
the following schwa. The deletion of final schwa in those words argues against
the analysis proposed by Hall (1992) and Wiese (1994) who derive the velar nasal
synchronically from an underlying cluster /ng/.
12. For instance, in the adjective tau[p] 'deaf the voiceless obstruent in coda position
alternates with the corresponding voiced obstruent in onset position in all inflected
forms (e.g. tau[b]+e, tau[b]+es, tau[b]+em). Yet, analogical levelling never
occurs. That is, tau[p] to tau[b] is not a possible analogical change in German.
13. Interestingly, Jeffers and Lehiste (1979: 11) note that vowel epenthesis in word-
final position occurs only to avoid complex clusters. That is, vowel epenthesis
after a single consonant (e.g. toub > toube) appears not to be a possible sound
change.
14. In accordance with the prosodic hierarchy, feet are limited by phonological word
boundaries. The words in (i) differ from words like eilende, vremede in that they
consist of two phonological words. The schwa in (i) is therefore stable according
to the ranking in tableau (14), although the stress contour of those words is similar
to that of historically fused compounds like eilende, in which the schwa disap-
peared:
(i) MHG>NHG
(sm't)w(kaese)w > (Schnitt)w(kas[3])w sliced cheese
(glas)w(ouge)w > (Gläs)w(äug[a])w glass eye
(vur)w(sorge)w > (Fur)w(sorg[3])w welfare
(ur)w(kunde)w > (Ur)w(kund[3])w document
15. The constraint in (13) differs from the constraint FrB IN in Prince and Smolensky
in that it imposes an upper limit on the size of feet rather than require binary feet.
This modification is necessary to account for the general preference of monosyl-
labic over trochaic forms in German.
16. The restriction to phonological words is motivated by the restrictions illustrated
in n. 15 and by the observation that there is no Voice Stability Effect in function
words (cf. MHG a[te] > a[p] 'from', MHG o[bd] > o[p] 'if'). The claim that
function words are not phonological words is based on various phonological
properties including the fact that they can disobey minimality conditions (cf.
Selkirk 1995, Hall 1999). The absence of the Voice Stability Effect in function
words shows that for function words the constraint PRESERVE VOICE does not
dominate *SCHWA. Instead, schwa deletion appears to be determined by sentence

intonation. The fact that schwa disappeared in mit[3\ > mit (NHG mit) 'with', but
not in än[3\ (NHG ohne) 'without' may well be related to the fact that mit fre-
quently combines with an unstressed determiner (mit der Hoffnung 'with the
hope') whereas ohne tends to combine with bare nouns, which typically have
initial stress (ohne Hoffnung 'without hope'). That is, the stability of the schwa
in ohne serves to yield a pattern of alternating stress.
17. All syllable structure constraints used in my description are based on
Vennemann's independently motivated preference laws for syllable structure (cf.
Vennemann 1988).
18. Note that the Voice Stability Effect only requires that both CODA VOICE and
PRESERVE VOICE dominate *SCHWA. The irrelevance of the order between
CODA VOICE and PRESERVE VOICE implies that "Final Devoicing" is not a
prerequisite for the Voice Stability Effect.
19. The subsequent analogically conditioned restoration of word-final schwa as an
inflectional marker as well as vowel lengthening manifested in the NHG forms
is irrelevant to the issue under consideration and will not be discussed.
20. To avoid reference to "stems" one could also refer to "shared" consonants
which occur in each member of the paradigm.
21. Those laws say that the more sharply the sonority increases towards the nucleus
the more syllable heads and codas are preferred (cf. Vennemann 1988: 13ff).
22. There seems to be general agreement among phonologists that German r is more
sonorous than /, which in turn is more sonorous than the nasals. The overall
structures of the sonority hierarchies proposed, however, differ considerably (cf.
Vennemann (1982: 284), Strauss (1982: 97), Hall (1992: 64)).
23. The description in (29) is not entirely satisfactory in that it fails to account for
the chronology of schwa loss. For example, schwa in har[a]m disappeared appar-
ently earlier than schwa in hal[y]m, perhaps because of a preference for coda
clusters with maximally sharp sonority drops (cf. Vennemann 1988: 21).
24. Constraints which preserve consonants are violable in MHG as is shown by
historical developments like MHG we[rlt] > NHG We[lt] 'world', MHG la[mp]
> NHG La[m] 'lamb'.
25. This restriction has also been claimed to hold for English (cf. Kiparsky
1981).
26. I assume that the input consists of the corresponding paradigm encountered in
acquisition.
27. I assume that the final / in malm is extrasyllabic and hence does not contribute
to syllable weight.
28. This account crucially relies on the definition of the paradigm in terms of agree-
ment because past tense forms of the verb main 'to grind' do require schwa to
avoid WEIGHT violations (e.g. muol[d\ri).
29. For example, the final -n in NHG plural forms (e.g. Kindern 'children') clearly
functions as a dative marker although its occurrence is phonologically restricted:
the marker appears only if neither (o2)F nor SON are violated. Otherwise the dative
case is unmarked in plural forms.
30. The claim is then that the phonological restrictions on schwa loss in inflected
words in MHG can be predicted on the basis of the most sonorous and the
heaviest suffix within the inflectional paradigm. To test this claim it would be
desirable to investigate paradigms in which the most sonorous suffix is not a
nasal or does not weigh one mora. For example, given a paradigm in which /
is the most sonorous suffix the constraint ranking in (35) would predict that
schwa deletes only after the consonant r. Unfortunately, there are very few
relevant cases with which to test such predictions. MHG adjectival paradigms
are not suited for testing the analysis because of the large number of variants
within the so-called strong declension which resulted from the merger of two
distinct inflectional systems (i.e. nominal and pronominal) in MHG. However,
in NHG adjectival paradigms no longer include variants. The difference in the
site of the schwa in NHG pairs like dunkl[9]n]A 'dark'-Dunfc[a]/n]N follows from
the condition that NHG adjectival paradigms are leveled and the fact that in
adjectival paradigms the most sonorous suffix is r while in nominal paradigms
it is n (cf. Raffelsiefen 1995).
31. The nouns in (36) are typically represented with both variants in Lexer (e.g. zal-
zal[s]; wal-wal[3>]), but with the exception of tür[d>] the form with schwa has
become obsolete. The nouns listed below are counter-examples in that the variant
with schwa has been retained in NHG while the schwaless variant has become
obsolete:
(i) MHG NHG

schal[a]-schal Schale 'shell'
kel[a]-kel Kehle 'throat'
sol[3]-sol Sohle 'sole'
mül[3]-mül Mühle 'mill'
war[3]-war Ware 'awareness
32. For the development of MHG bir into NHG Birne see n. 48.
33. A counter-example is the feminine noun ur[a] 'hour, clock' (NHG Uhr), where
the final schwa deleted in a word with a long stem vowel.
34. The assumption that all forms such as those in (38a) are members of a single
paradigm can be motivated by the fact that their distribution is determined by
agreement with the determiner which functions as the head of the NP. In addition
all cases listed there express syntactic relations, a property which distinguishes
case from tense—cf. the discussion of the examples in (21).
35. The complete paradigms of these two nouns are given in. The hyphen indicates
that the relevant form does not exist.
(i) a. strong/weak b. strong

SG.NOM ruote huote
GEN ruote(n) huote
DAT ruote(n) huote
ACC ruote(n) huote
PL.NOM ruoten
GEN ruoten
DAT ruoten
ACC ruoten
36. The final schwa failed to delete whenever it functioned as a derivational suffix
(e.g. Frisch^] 'freshness'-/mc/i 'fresh', Tiefte] 'depth'-ffc/'deep'), cf. n. 5.
37. This noun is masculine in NHG.
38. Recall that there is no Voice Stability Effect after the cluster Id. The schwa loss
in the non-count nouns Huld 'grace' from MHG hulde and Schuld from MHG
schulde 'responsibility' is therefore systematic.
39. There are numerous counter-examples to the LEVEL Stability Effect among
masculine nouns. The patterns of loss indicate that final schwa became reanalysed
as a marker encoding the natural gender male in masculine nouns and disappeared
whenever it could not be recognized as such. Examples are inanimate nouns like
smerzte] 'pain' (NHG Schmerz), blitzte] 'lightning' (NHG Blitz), kimte] 'sprout'
(NHG Keim), kernte] 'seed' (NHG Kern), stern[a] 'star' (NHG Stern) but also
animate nouns like swante] 'swan' (NHG Schwan), küzte] 'screech owl' (NHG
Kauz), spatzte] 'sparrow' (NHG Spatz), grifte] 'griffin' (NHG Greif), and
menschte] 'human being' (NHG Mensch).
40. This noun stems from Middle Low German.
41. The loss of final schwa in MHG sige 'victory' (NHG Sieg) and gri[z][3] Old
man' (NHG Greis) are counter-examples to the Voice Stability Effect.
42. Löhken's (1997: 211) claim that schwa loss in the nouns (49a) is explained by
their status as function words lacks independent evidence. Regarding phonological
structure those nouns conform to the phonological wellformedness conditions for
lexical words rather than function words (e.g. they allow for complex syllable
heads and/or codas, they resist stem vowel reduction).
43. Glück writes: "Der Vokativ drückt weder syntaktische Beziehungen noch
adverbiale Charakterisierungen aus und kann deshalb nicht als Kasus im
eigentlichen Sinne gelten." (p. 683). [The vocative expresses neither syntactic
relations nor adverbial characterizations and can therefore not be admitted as a
case in the true sense of the word. RR] Cf. also n. 35.
44. Words which are not subject to Level effects are expected to exhibit the Voice
Stability Effect. The only relevant example is the masculine swearword MHG
buobte] (NHG Bube) 'undisciplined person', which has indeed kept the schwa.
45. The crucial observation is that inflected word forms often exhibit mismatches
between formal and semantic structure. For example, the simplest description of
the first singular imperfect subjunctive forms in Latin is that the segment -m is
added to the present infinitive active form. While cutting across paradigms on
the semantic plane the rule is simple and free of exceptions on the formal plane:
however irregular a verb may be in other respects one form always predicts the
other (e.g.florere 'to flower' -^florerem, esse 'to be' —» essem) (cf. Matthews
1991: 194ff). Similar phenomena abound in natural languages. Such formal
identity relations pertaining to fully inflected words cannot be captured in morpho-
logical frameworks where semantically complex forms are necessarily derived
from simpler forms.
46. The insertion of final -t in bä[p]s and o[p]j is a later development which is
irrelevant for the description of schwa loss.
47. There are two cases of apparent word-final schwa epenthesis in German, both
of which are morphologically conditioned. Final schwa was (re)introduced in first
person singular present tense verbs by analogical extension (cf. the data in (17a)).
Cases of apparent final schwa epenthesis in nouns such as loc > lock[s] 'curl',
trän > tren[a] 'tear' are due to the reanalysis of former plural forms as singular
forms as is shown in (i) (cf. Paul et al. 1989).
(i) Original paradigm Historical reanalysis New paradigm:

(der) loc]SG (die) lock[3]]SG
(die) lock[3]]PL (die) lock[3]]PL -^ (die) lock[3]]SGFEM (die) lock[3]n]PL
Reanalysis as in (i) occurred only in nouns which typically occur in groups rather
than as individuals. Nouns which were affected by reanalysis accordingly often
refer to objects like trees (cf. (iia)), insects (cf. (iib)), small fruits or vegetables
(cf. (iic)), or non-unique body parts (cf. (iid)). Nouns ending in a stressed vowel
or a liquid preceded by a short vowel could undergo reanalysis twice (e.g. Me
'bee', bir 'pear').
(ü) MHG NHG

a. asch > esch[a] Esche 'ash-tree'
eich > eich[a] Eiche Oak'
b. hornis > homista] Hornisse 'hornet'
bie > bin > binfa] Biene 'bee'
c. bir > birn > birn[9] Birne 'pear'
arweis > arweisls] Erbse 'pea'
ber > ber[a] Beere 'berry'
d. nier > nier[a] Niere 'kidney'
huft > huftfs] Hüfte 'hips'
druos > drues[9] Drüse 'gland'
The analysis illustrated in (i) is supported by the systematic homophony between

the forms which show "schwa epenthesis" and the nominative/accusative plural
forms of the original paradigm. Specifically, if the plural in the original paradigm
showed umlaut the form with "schwa epenthesis" also has umlaut. In addition,
"schwa epenthesis" always correlates with a change to feminine gender, which
is apparently conditioned by the homophony between the definite plural article
and the definite singular feminine article.
48. The four neuter nouns which are inflected weakly exhibit the Voice Stability
Effect:
(i) MHG NHG

herz[3] > herz Herz 'heart'
ör[a] > ör Ohr 'ear'
ougO] Auge 'eye'
wang[a] Wange 'cheek'
The absence of the LEVEL-Stability Effect in the neuter nouns in (i) is perhaps
related to the fact that the paradigms of neuter weak nouns differ from other weak
paradigms in that the accusative singular form has no suffix.
49. I assume that the collective neuter nouns discussed in section 2 and the neuter
nouns erbe 'inheritance' and ende 'end' lacked plural forms. They accordingly
exhibit the Voice Stability Effect.
50. Recall that the Voice Stability Effect always fails after the cluster Id. The noun
hemde used to be dactylic which means that the loss of final schwa could also
have served to satisfy the constraint (o2)F. There is accordingly no clear evidence
that final schwa in either noun deleted to satisfy the constraint PL *SG.
51. The rankings of PRESERVE constraints are feature-specific and are therefore not
mentioned in (63).
52. Cf. the discussion in Jeffers and Lehiste (1979: 69 ff).
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Morphological re-activation and phonological
alternations: Evidence for voiceless restructuring
in German
Frans Plank
1. Yesterday's syntax, tomorrow's morphology, and today's

phonology
As words descend from major word classes to lesser ones, especially

that of uninflecting particles, not a far cry from affixhood, and as they
more closely attach themselves to neighbouring words, you by now
know what to expect of them: they will become part of single phonolog-
ical or even morphological words and they will lose weight. Typically,
as yesterday's syntax prepares to be tomorrow's morphology, nothing
much happens that would excite the phonologist. And what happens
phonologically will generally be found rather dull by the retrospective
syntactician and prospective morphologist. Sometimes, though, words
caught in the routine of shrinking and uniting give tell-tale, and rather
more subtle, evidence that phonology matters for grammaticalisation,
and vice versa.
When lexical words turn into grammatical forms, the ancestral word
often survives, co-existing with its grammaticalised offspring. Despite
the appearances of a continuing family resemblance between parent and
offspring, phonology may reveal that in reality a split has occurred that
is deep and irreparable. That is, when words are severed from near
morphological relations in the process of grammaticalisation (or also
of becoming morphologically inert for other reasons), and with them
lose crucial phonological alternations, they are liable to be restructured.
Should they, against the odds, manage to re-acquire relations, restruc-
tured phonological representations may become audible.
Final Devoicing (or "Auslautverhärtung") in German is implicated
in such a scenario.
172 Frans Plank
2. A parting of the ways
The German adverb weg [vek] 'away, off', as in (1), is grammaticalised

from (the ancestor of) the noun Weg [veik] 'way', or more precisely
from a syntactic construction including this noun.
(1) a. Geh weg!

'Go away!'
b. Das Geld ist weg.
The money is gone.'
c. Er war so weg von ihr, dass er sie vom Fleck weg heiratete.
'He was so off (i.e., in raptures) about her that he married her
from the spot off (i.e., on the spot).'
The way weg got dissociated from its lexical parent is instructive,
though in most respects none too unusual. The following account is
summarised from the Deutsches Wörterbuch (as usual referred to by
the names of its initiators, Grimm and Grimm 1922), s.v. WEG (subst.)
and WEG (adv.).1
Much like in the case of English away (< ä-weg < on-weg < on weg),
the point of departure was the Old High German directional adverbial
expression in weg On (the) way', accompanying verbs of autoloco-
motion such as 'go' and 'come' ,2 Semantically, what happened was that
the meaning of literally getting going and thereby leaving a place was
generalised to those of directed movement, separation, and mere ab-
sence, also licensing more idiomatic uses of weg as in (Ic). With the
preposition and noun never interrupted by modifiers or determiners, and
thus always representing just one phonological word, they underwent
univerbation; a syntactic construction thus turned into a morphological
one. The attendant formal changes were a weakening of the unstressed
initial vowel in the mid-twelfth century (enwec), and the subsequent
assimilation or omission of the following nasal consonant (ewe'c).
Eventually, as first attested in the fourteenth century, what had remained
of the former local preposition was dropped entirely, yielding wee, a
morphologically non-complex item.
Also, though in no connection whatsoever to grammaticalisation,
syllable-final obstruents underwent devoicing since late Old or early
Morphological re-activation and phonological alternations 173
Middle High German, as quite faithfully reflected in the spelling (enweg

> enwec). This final voiceless obstruent did not distinguish the adverb
from the basic, nominative singular form of the noun. What did make
the adverb more dissimilar from the noun was something that did not
happen to it. Also in Middle High German (like elsewhere in West
Germanic; see Lahiri and Dresher 1999), stressed open syllables in-
clined to be lengthened. If this introduced nonuniformity into inflec-
tional paradigms, where some forms met the conditions for lengthening
while others did not, there tended to be subsequent analogical levelling
one way or the other. The adverb (eri)wec was not affected by such
lengthening (except in a few dialects given to lengthening vowels in
syllables of almost all kinds), since its closed syllable was never opened
by anything that would have followed it within the same word: it was
an adverb of the kind that could not be inflected, and is therefore per-
haps more appropriately referred to as a particle. The noun, however,
took inflectional endings with an initial vowel, and its stem vowel
accordingly lengthened in such forms: Weg [vek] NOM/ACC.SG-Hteg-es
['vei.gas] GEN.SG, Weg-e ['vei.ga] DAT.SG/NOM/ACC/GEN.PL, Weg-en
['ve:.g9n] DAT.PL. Owing to levelling, in the direction that seems
generally preferred in Standard German, its stem vowel ended up long
even in the nominative singular, where the syllable was closed: [ve:k].
Thus, the rather incidental net result of the adverb's immunity to
sound change and analogy was that, with a short (or lax, or abruptly
cut) stem vowel, its phonetic substance was less than that of the noun
with its long (or tense, or smoothly cut) stem vowel—thus confirming
the expectation that grammatical forms and items in minor word classes
will generally have less volume than nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
3. Voice going unheard
With these grammaticalisation developments over and done with, the

adverb weg joined a set of items—to be detailed below (Section 6)—
which pose a delicate problem for German phonology (and attentive
phonologists): what is the underlying, lexical, basic form of the final
obstruent of weg and other such words (or word-parts)? One might of
course also ask what is the basic form of the stem vowel; but since
174 Frans Plank
regular quantity alternations are no longer part of the synchronic gram-

mar, even though they remain intimately tied up with the nature of the
following consonant, the answer here seems comparatively straightfor-
ward: what is heard at the surface—a short (or lax) vowel—will also
be basic. By contrast, contrasts between voiceless and voiced obstruents
depending on whether or not they are syllable-final have lost none of
their vigour, at least in the case of plosives.3
There are essentially two answers that can be given (and indeed have
been given, somewhere or other) to the question about the final obstru-
ent of weg.
(A) It is—or, diachronically speaking, has remained—basically

voiced (or lenis, or media), just like that of the noun Weg.
To be sure, the adverb weg, being inflectionally invariable, is not

involved in alternations like the noun Weg, which takes suffixes with
an initial vowel such that its stem-final obstruent syllabifies as the onset
of the next syllable, in which position it is voiced. Even when it com-
bines with a following stem in a compound and maximised onsets
would be permissible, its final obstruent never resyllabifies across a
morphological boundary (e.g., weg-laufen ['vek.laufan], *['ve.glauf3n]
'run away', weg-arbeiten ['vek.?aif.bai.t9n], *['ve.gaK.bai.t9n] 'work
off'). Although there is thus no overt evidence of the final obstruent's
voicedness, assuming that it is voiced in its basic, lexical form, does
not complicate the phonological machinery in the slightest. Provisions
need to be made for basic voiced obstruents to be voiceless when
syllable-final anyhow—and the adverb weg, lexically represented as
/veg/ (or, even more abstractly, /veig/), would get a free ride on these
provisions which are responsible, e.g., for the noun Weg, basically
/veig/, ending up as [ve:k].
(B) It is—or, diachronically speaking, has been reanalysed as—

basically voiceless (or fortis, or tenuis), in contradistinction to
the final obstruent of the noun Weg.
Owing to the morphological inertness of such adverbs, the stem-final

obstruent in weg is always syllable-final, hence gets no chance of ever
being voiced. So, why not take it at its face value, which is voiceless?
Of course, with Final Devoicing in general (or Final Fortition, to
translate "Auslautverhärtung" more closely), it seems that appearances
could hardly be more deceptive, for no conceivable aspect of its phonol-
ogy and phonetics is uncontroversial. And the differences of opinion
are radical not only on ephemera but on major issues—e.g., as to
whether voicedness or voicelessness is unmarked, or whether voice is
really the relevant laryngeal property, or whether Devoicing/Fortition
is really strengthening rather than weakening. Brockhaus (1995) gives
an interim summary of the state of debate, plus a highly theory-bound
proposal of her own.
However, for present purposes, essentially all that matters, and this
is probably beyond controversy, is that there is some basic representa-
tion of words (or word-parts) with final obstruents where a distinction
is made between those obstruents which are under all circumstances
voiceless (or fortis or tenuis) and those which are voiceless when sylla-
ble-final and voiced (or lenis or media) when syllable-initial, like in Rat
[nait] NOM.SG of 'advice'-/faf-es Oai.tas] GEN.so and Rad |>a:t]
NOM.SG of 'wheel'-Rad-es ['uai.das] GEN.so, respectively. While
syllable-finally the voicing opposition is neutralised in favour of voice-
lessness (to be considered unmarked at least on these grounds), owing
to a rule or a constraint to this effect, there must be some way of distin-
guishing obstruents which are voiceless in non-neutralising positions
from those which are voiced when this is a positional option.
Thus, on analysis (A), both the noun Weg and the adverb weg are
represented with a velar obstruent participating in the regular (de-)voic-
ing alternation (marked for voicedness, assuming that voicelessness is
unmarked), even though with the adverb the voicedness potential is
never realised. On analysis (B), the grammaticalised word is represented
with a voiceless final obstruent (left unmarked for voicedness), just like
Rat 'advice'.
Empirically speaking it might seem an academic question in which
of these two ways the final obstruent is represented in the adverbweg.
Accordingly, it was on purely theoretical grounds, to do with the per-
missible extent of abstractness of basic representations, that analyses
in the spirit of (A) or (B) have been argued to be superior in phonologi-
cal descriptions of German where such subtleties were paid attention
176 Frans Plank
to. Abstract, free-ride analyses ä la (A) would typically be found conge-

nial in the early generative literature (including Vennemann 1968:171-
173, 181, 391, where at least some such underlying voiced obstruents
are assumed to be geminates, in a variation of theme (A)). But abstract-
ness got reined in soon, most prominently by the Alternation Condition,
as first suggested by Kiparsky (1968) and often refined afterwards. Its
upshot is that learners will not posit basic forms different from surface
forms unless they have good reasons, the best being alternations of a
form itself. With invariable weg there are no such reasons, hence the
theory dictates analysis (B).
That it is not facts but plausibility which decides in such cases is also
the message of a popular early textbook, King (1969: Ch. 3.3). The
illustration fittingly comes from Final Devoicing in German, or more
precisely its remains in Standard Yiddish. In Yiddish (like in some other
dialects of German), Final Devoicing has generally been lost, but there
are a handful of words which look like they would continue to have
their final obstruents devoiced; one of them happens to be avek [a.' vek]
'away'. King suggests that such relics rather result from a restructuring
of underlying representations as voiceless, hence as impervious to the
loss of the rule of devoicing, though he sees no way of knowing for sure
what is going on in the lexicon of a speaker of Yiddish.
Actually, there is empirical evidence, so far apparently disregarded,
which directly bears on this question in the case of speakers of German.
It proves that lexical representations are indeed being restructured under
such circumstances, along the lines of (B). It is the Alternation Condi-
tion at its bluntest that is thereby revealed to be effective. What needs
refining, though, is the notion of alternations which are relevant for that
condition.
4. Voice heard to be lost
The assumption so far was that weg and similar problematic words (or
word-parts) are morphologically inert. In particular, there are assumed
to be no morphologically related forms where a stem-final obstruent
would be resyllabified as the onset of a following syllable.
This, however, is to ignore the possibility of function words being

re-activated as members of major lexical classes, of words with a lim-
ited syntactic and morphological potential extending, or indeed re-
extending, their range. Insofar as the direction of the more familiar
transitions of words from major into minor word classes is reversed,
this can be considered a kind of degrammaticalisation. This type of
degrammaticalisation, which might be termed RE-CATEGORISATION,
is abrupt, and is to be distinguished from the gradual reanalysis of
function words as members of major word classes.4 While it is more
common for lexical words to be re-categorised in another lexical word
class (especially nouns as verbs or vice versa), it is also possible for
grammatical words to be upgraded to lexical ones.
The crucial kind of upgrading, encountered in German since the
nineteenth century and characteristic of colloquial speech (see e.g.
Küpper 1982: 30,115; 1984: 3065), is the re-categorisation of adverbs,
particles, or quasi-adjectives, originally all uninflecting and confined
to predicative position, as full-fledged adjectives, admitted to attributive
position and capable of inflecting for agreement. If there is any accom-
panying semantic change at all, it is to do with the general meanings
of attribution and predication.
The one example which is sure to be quoted in this connection is the
particle zu 'shut', as in (2), and it serves well to illustrate a phonological
peculiarity attendant on such re-categorisations:
(2) a. Die Tür ist zu.

the door is shut
b. diezu(-ri)-e Tür
the shut(-n)-NOM.so.FEM.WEAK door
When words which end in a full vowel (stressed or unstressed) and

which are not basic attributive adjectives are used attributively, they
usually require, or at least permit, an epenthetic /n/ before a vowel-
initial suffix. For impeccably basic adjectives of similar shape, avoiding
hiatus by epenthetic /n/ is unheard of (froh-e/*froh-n-e 'glad', nah-el
*nah-n-e 'c\ose\frei-e/*frei-n-e 'free'). In (3) some further examples
with optional or obligatory epenthesis are given, some very colloquial
178 Frans Plank
despite the highfalutin words,5 while (4) illustrates another option for
some such upgraded attributive adjectives (especially non-basic colour
terms), viz. to continue to resist inflection.
(3) a. eine so-n-e Couch

a such-n-NOM.SG.FEM.STRONG couch
(almost equivalently: so ein-e Couch 'such a-NOM.SG.FEM
couch')
b. rosa-n-e 'pink', lila-n-e 'lilac', chichi-n-e 'chichi', tabu(-n)-e
'tabu', solo-n-e 'solo', extra-n-e 'extra', solala(-n)-e 'so-so',
anderswo-n-e 'elsewhere', entz\vei(-n)-e 'asunder', anbei(-n)-e
'enclosed', k.o.(-n)-e [ka.'?o:.(n)3] 'knocked-out', o.k.(-ri)-e
[?o:.'ke:.(n)3] Okay'
(4) eine rosallilalsepialprima Couch (*sepia(-ri)-e, *prima(-ri)e)

a pink/lilac/sepia/swell couch
Returning from final vowels to final obstruents, the adverb or particle

weg is among the items that can be re-categorised as fully inflecting
attributive adjectives. Corresponding to (Ib), there is (5):
(5) dasweg-e Geld

the gone-NOM.SG.NEUT.WEAK money
In a way, weg's grammaticalisation is thus reversed: though not revert-

ing to its original nounhood, as an adjective it has also reclaimed lexical
status. In particular, it can inflect again, and inflectional suffixes begin
with vowels. The stem-final obstruent which was confined to the sylla-
ble coda as long as there were no inflections now also appears in sylla-
ble onsets (or actually, ambisyllabically, indicated by under- or over-
dotting in transcriptions). And this contrast is the litmus test for voice:
if it were basically voice-alternating (marked for voicedness), as it was
before the noun got grammaticalised as an adverb and as it still is in
the noun, it would naturally come out voiced in inflected forms as in
(5). But it doesn't: the stem-final obstruent does not revert to voicing
but stays voiceless (and the stem vowel short, but then open syllable
lengthening is no longer productive), ['veks].
In dialects where voiceless velars are spirants, the surface form of

the adverb is [νες]. Assuming basic /veg/, this could result from
spirantisation of the final obstruent (/vcj/), followed by devoicing.6 The
inflected upgraded form would then have to be ['veja], with the no
longer final obstruent undevoiced, as in the plural of the noun; but it
is [' νεφ9], proving that the form with the final obstruent both spirantised
and devoiced has become basic.
5. Ab upgraded—and why not others, too?
Another telling item is ab. Its story is not one of grammaticalisation,

but the phonological lesson it teaches is the same. Though always a
local particle in its known past, meaning '(away, down) from, down'
(and related to English of), it had an alternative form abe up to Middle
High German times and perhaps later, and would therefore have had
a voicing alternation and also one of vowel quantity, [?ap]-['?a:.ba].
If the stem-final obstruent had remained basically voice-alternating
(marked for voicedness) after the overt alternation had been lost with
the disappearance of abe,1 the upgrading of the particle to an inflecting
attributive adjective, as in (6), would bring it to light again.
(6) derab-e Knopf

the off-NOM.SG.MASC.WEAK button
Again, as with weg-e, it doesn't: non-syllable-finally, the obstruent

remains voiceless (and the vowel short): ['?ap9]. Modelled on upgraded
adjectives with a final full vowel, forms with a more elaborate inflection
including an epenthetic /n/ are also attested, such as ab-ene (K pper
1982: 30); but the stem-final obstruent likewise remains voiceless.
Such upgraded forms are too colloquial to be used much in writing;
when they are, their spelling causes discomfort. While there is never
any hesitation about spelling devoiced obstruents with the letters nor-
mally expressing voiced variants as long as they are syllable-final, this
seems odd when they are syllable-initial, as in wege ['veks] and abe
['?apa]. No matter how transparent the morphological relation between
uninflected and inflected forms, there is a temptation to resort to varying
180 Frans Plank
the spelling of the latter, to something like wegge or wecke and abbe
or appe (cf. Küpper 1982: 30).8
Due to the limited productivity of upgrading and to the scarcity of
adverbs and other particles with a final obstruent whose voicelessness
could conceivably be due to devoicing, words comparable in relevant
respects to weg and ab are rare. At any rate, regardless of whether or
not they were ever involved in a voicing alternation, should particle-like
words ending in an overtly voiceless obstruent ever be upgraded on the
models of zu, weg, and ab, their inflected forms will never show voic-
ing—which implies that their basic form is perforce voiceless. Thus,
more adventurous speakers might upgrade the adverb aus Over, fin-
ished' (< MHG wj, also a preposition meaning 'from', and no longer
transparently related to aussen Outside' and ausser 'except', both with
voiceless [s]), but they would never consider its [s] to be represented
as /z/:9
(7) a. Das Spiel ist aus [?aüs].

the game is over
b. Erst ein auses ['?au.S9s] Spiel ist gewonnen.
only an over game is won
Further non-conjectural confirmation of even more radical restructur-

ing is obtained from one of the Southern dialects that have given up
Final Devoicing. In Bavarian, the final, non-devoiced obstruent of the
particle ab is overtly deleted (and the vowel is raised and rounded),
[?o:]. There are distantly related forms, such as the directional adverb
abe 'downwards', where the obstruent is syllable-initial and comes out
as a voiced spirant, ['?oi.ve], pointing to /b/ in its basic representation.
Yet when the particle itself acquires inflections owing to upgrading—as
in (8), the Bavarian translation of (6)—no consonant at all surfaces
stem-finally, proving that there no longer is one, underlyingly.
(8) [de '?o:.3 gnoibv]
Another adverbial and prepositional particle that permits upgrading

is an On' (Küpper 1982: 115), continuing Old and Middle High Ger-
man ana and ane essentially unchanged as to category and meaning.
While nothing happens to its final nasal in Standard German, it overtly

deletes in Bavarian, giving [?o:], or in some varieties also [?o:], with
nasalisation as a trace of the segment. The continuing underlying pres-
ence of a final nasal is revealed in words where vowel-initial suffixes
can be added to the stem: e.g., [mo:]—['ma:.ne] NOM.SG and ΝΟΜ.PL
of 'man' (Standard German Mann—Mann-er). Being morphologically
inert, the particle an lacks such alternations. When it re-acquires them
through upgrading, no nasal re-surfaces, proving once more that in such
circumstances lexical representations are restructured:
(9) a. das an(n)-e Licht (Standard German)

the on-NOM.SG.NEUT.WEAK light
b. [(B)S '?o:.3 Irexd] (Bavarian)
6. Inert and finally voiceless
In sum, as the two adverbs or particles weg and ab and eventual ana-
logues are upgraded, their stem-final obstruents alternate as little in
voicedness as in pairs such as those in (10), where stem-final obstruents
are clearly basically voiceless.
(10) a. dick-dick-e '\hick\fett-fett-e 'fat', schlapp-schlapp-e 'slack'

b. upgrading re-categorisations:
tiptop-tiptopp-e 'tip-top', ruckzuck-ruckzuck-e 'instantaneous',
fit-fitt-e 'fit' 10
The only possible conclusion is that this is because, like these, they are
basically voiceless. They do not need to hitch a free ride to become
voiceless because this is what they are to begin with (synchronically).
After the earlier voicing alternation had been lost, with only the voice-
less alternant surviving, which used to be accounted for by final
devoicing, these words were reanalysed as ending in a basically voice-
less obstruent. Therefore, when they acquired morphological relations
owing to their re-categorisation, the voicing alternation could not be
revived, no matter how superficially conducive the environments.
182 Frans Plank
(Mutatis mutandis, the same conclusion holds for alternations of present

and absent final consonants in Bavarian.)
Now, if final obstruents even of such words as once showed a voic-
ing alternation are demonstrably reanalysed as basically voiceless after
they ceased to alternate, this clearly justifies the assumption of basic
voicelessness for other relevant words or word-parts even when it is
not revealed through upgrading and concomitant morphological re-
activation.
These alternation-free words include uninflecting conjunctions like
und/?unt/ 'and', ob R op/ 'whether', and als /?als/ 'when', prepositions
like bis 'until' and aus 'from', pronouns like was 'what', das 'that' and
es 'it', adverbs like weiland Once',11 and many major-class words,
native or nativised, consisting of or containing closed syllables with or
without morphemic status, such as Band 'music band' ([bent], as op-
posed to [bant] 'band, ribbon', same spelling), Smog 'smog' (another
loan without vowel-initial, or indeed any, inflectional or derivational
suffixes), Ad.miral 'admiral' (borrowed via Old French from Arabic
amir ar-rahl 'emir of the fleet'), Ag.fa, Ed.gar, Eg.mont, Ib.sen,
Ud.murt (all proper names), Molyb.dän 'molybdenum', Wod.ka 'vodka',
Rug.by, Subjekt 'subject', As.best 'asbestos', Sand.wich, kid.nappen
'kidnap', adjustieren 'adjust', wid.men 'dedicate', sub.altern 'subal-
tern', or ab.surd 'absurd'. These words or word-parts have no morpho-
logical relations which would allow syllable-final, hence perforce
voiceless, [p, t, k, s] to alternate with syllable-initial voiced [b, d, g, z].
Final Devoicing is not always strictly final, but also applies to
obstruents immediately followed by other voiceless obstruents in the
syllable coda: e.g.,/rag-si [feaikst] ask-2SG.12 This example is one
where basic voicing, /f»a:gst/, though undone by regressive assimilation,
is licensed by other inflected forms of this stem (e.g., the infinitive/rag-
en ['fnai.gan]). With other words of such shape there may have been
historical forms with a vowel breaking up the sequence of final
obstruents, but now there are no alternations where the first obstruent
of the cluster would be syllable-initial and voiced, and the logic inspired
by the evidence ofwege and abe suggests that the voicelessness of these
obstruents is, or has become, basic too rather than being due to assimila-
tion (sometimes contrary to their standard spelling, reflecting earlier
voicing before a now elided vowel): e.g., Abt /apt/ 'abbot' (MHG
abbet), Papst /papst/ 'pope' (MHG babes(i)}, Obsthpst/ 'fruit' (MHG

ob(e)3\ h bsch /hYpJV 'pretty' (MHG hub(e)sch}.
7. Not with one voice
On the direct evidence of wege and abe, which is not ample but cogent,
the conclusion was that if an overtly voiceless obstruent does not actu-
ally alternate with a voiced counterpart, its basic form will not be voiced
or voice-alternating in a language with Final Devoicing of the kind
found in German. What is not self-evident, however, is what counts as
a relevant alternation.
Sometimes, it is only an alternative syllabification of the same
word, regardless of morphological relations, which keeps alternations
like those of voicing alive. Thus, if the only possible syllabifications
of words like Adler 'eagle', red-lich 'honest' (which, despite the clearly
identifiable adjectival suffix -lieh, is for semantic reasons not syn-
chronically relatable to forms of the same origin such as red-en 'to
speak' or gerade 'even-numbered'), or Dogma 'dogma' were ['?a:t.te],
[Ήειϋις], ['cbk.ma], the syllable-final obstruents could be expected to
be basically voiceless. But they can also be syllabified differently by
different speakers or also the same speakers, sometimes in violation of
sonority constraints on syllables: ['Pai.dle], ['Kei.dli?], ['do.gma], which
reaffirms basic voicedness.
Alternations in inflectional paradigms, as in Weg [\e:k]-Weg-e
['vei.ga] etc., are clearly the most potent inducements to have and to
retain basic forms distinct from surface forms.
Alternations in words which are derivationally related should have
the same effect. For example, the loanword Snob takes at least one
productive derivational suffix, -ismus '-ism', which provides an alter-
nation, [snop]—[snoi.'bis.mus], and this presumably justifies basic
/snob/, while Smog, another loan (listed above, along Band etc.), is
derivationally rather inactive, and positing a basic form different from
overt [smok] therefore seems unwarranted. In a possible resultative
participle ver-smog-t 'affected by smog' the stem-final obstruent is not
in an alternating position either and comes out voiceless; this participle
is not part of a regular inflectional paradigm, and if other verbal forms
184 Frans Plank
are created, by a kind of back-formation, it is at least possible, and

possibly preferred, for the obstruent to stay voiceless also syllable-
initially (actually, ambisyllabically), as in the imperative ver-smog(g)-e
[fcv.' smok9]/[feB.' smogs].
Now, relations in word-formation are not always so regular as in
Snob-Snob-ismus. For example, both semantically and formally flug-s
'instantly' is only tenuously related to the verbflieg-en 'to fly' or the
deverbal noun Flug 'flight' (plural Flug-e), with the adverbial suffix
-s being unproductive and with the ablaut alternation not being very
regular either; so, positing anything other than /flüks/ as the lexical
representation of the adverb would seem to be exaggerating the influ-
ence of words which are etymologically related but in time have be-
come rather distant. Sometimes spellings confirm such suspicions, as
when schupsen competes with schubsen 'to nudge' ['/up.san], as if in
indecision about the strength of the link with schieb-en 'to shove', with
its stem-final obstruent basically voiceless, or when Stöv-chen ['/t0:f.
93n] 'little stove (for keeping plates and kettles warm when on the
table)' is (mis-)spelt Stöfchen, where the diminutive suffix is productive
but the base does not occur independently and is not transparently
relatable to sloven 'to warm' (Low German) or Stube '(warm) chamber'.
Thus, presumably, the more opaque derivational relations are, the
weaker the support underlying forms distinct from surface forms can
draw from alternations. Significantly, differing from even the opaquest
derivational relations, there is no such support left at all once a relation-
ship has been severed in the course of a word being grammaticalised
or becoming morphologically inert otherwise.
Consider the case of genug 'enough', which could seem reminiscent
of weg and ab, but really is not: here, a derivational relation audibly
reasserts itself after upon upgrading. Like weg and ab, genug is primar-
ily used in adverbial or predicative function (lla), hence is not itself
inflecting. However, unlike those, it possesses a live derivational rela-
tion in the verb genügen 'to suffice', whose stem-final obstruent is
syllable-initial and voiced with many inflectional endings. That this
suffices to keep the obstruent of genug basically voiced (and the vowel
potentially long) is showing when this word is upgraded to membership
in an attributive phrase, roughly in the manner of weg and ab, with its
final constituent attracting agreement inflections, as in (lib).
(11) a. Das Schnitzel ist teuer genug [ga.'nuik, ga.'nuk].

the schnitzel is expensive enough
b. Das teuer genug-e [ga.'nui.ga] Schnitzel
the expensive enough-NOM.so.NEUT.WEAK schnitzel
Other ostensible analogues of weg and ab aiefeind 'hostile, inimical'

and also its less common positive companion, freund 'friendly'. Al-
though here matters are even more intricate, synchronically and
diachronically (see Grimm and Grimm 1862, s.v. FEIND), they go to
show how remarkably sensitive obstruent voicedness is to structural
distinctions, whenever it gets a fair hearing. As adjectives, feind and
(less commonly) freund are typically predicative, with the stem-final
obstruent syllable-final and voiceless as there are no inflections (12a).
That this is an instance of a syllable-final obstruent devoiced, rather
than of one basically voiceless, shows when inflections are added in
less typical attributive uses, of which an intensifying compound of
feind, spinne-feind 'extremely hostile' (literally 'spider-inimical'),
admits most readily (12b).
(12) a. Sein Nachbar war ihm spinnefeind [fpma.1 faint].

his neighbour was towards.him spider.hostile
b. sein ihm spinnefeind-er [fpms.'fain.dB]
his towards.him spider.hostile-NOM.so.MASC.STRONG
Nachbar
neighbour
The retained underlying voicedness of the final obstruent of feind and

freund is obviously due to their nominal relations, Feind 'enemy' (its
English cognate is fiend) and Freund 'friend', which show the voicing
alternation in their regular inflection for case and number (Feind-e,
Freund-e ΝΟΜ.PL, etc.).13 Actually, such relations between nouns and
zero-marked corresponding adjectives are rather uncommon in German,
and certainly do not represent a productive derivational pattern. (Also,
the compositionally intensified adjective spinnefeind cannot be used
as a noun at all.) Ultimately, this relation can be traced back to the
Germanic origin of these words in active participles in -nd-, which split
up into formally identical nouns and adjectives, and in the latter func-
186 Frans Plank
tion were gradable (and perhaps still are in dialects), with comparatives
and superlatives thus also showing the voicing alternation (feind-er,
feind-esi). Although there are only individual instances of such conver-
sions among the word classes of nouns and adjectives,14 they were
continually part of the synchronic morphology of German; participles
(ultimately therefore verbs) turning into nouns and adjectives was all
that may have changed diachronically. Crucially, as is revealed by the
retained potential for obstruent voicedness, there was no discontinuity
as is effected when a lexical item ends up grammaticalised.
Now, grammaticalisations, consisting of perhaps complex sequences
of individual changes, are liable to be gradual, and so do not necessarily
effect discontinuity at one fell swoop. The relevance of alternations
accordingly should not be categorical, either. As an example, consider
the adjective los(e) 'loose, not firm, not tightly fitting', which occurs
predicatively as well as attributively (13a/b) and has the stem-final
obstruent devoiced when it is syllable-final owing to the omission of
the optional stem extension.
(13) a. Das Kleid ist los(e) ['loi.za, lo:s].

the dress is loose
b. das los-e ['loi.za] Kleid
the loose-NOM.SG.NEUT.WEAK dress
There are one or two strongly grammaticalised versions of los, namely

as an invariable particle meaning '[going] on', as in Was ist los? 'What
is (going) on? What is the matter', and as a command to get going, as
in Auf die Plätze, Fertig, Los! On your mark, Get set, Go!'. As these
items are morphologically inert, they do not themselves show voicing
alternations. And there is no direct empirical evidence that their final
obstruent has indeed been restructured as voiceless, now that the link
with the parent adjective, which would have provided alternations in
support of basic /z/, has presumably been severed with grammatic-
alisation completed. However, there is a stage in between full lexicality
and completed grammaticalisation, and this is suggestive of voice being
(about to be) lost in this case, too. With the meaning 'unfastened', los
is only comfortable in predicative position (14a). A further indicator
of its ongoing grammaticalisation is the loss of the otherwise optional
stem extension -e. Still, the specialised new meaning is probably not
far enough removed from the original one for a strict line to be drawn
between the two, like that between the adjective and the particle(s).
Reflecting its uncertain status, most speakers balk at using it attribu-
tively (14b), and when they do, they feel equally uneasy about having
the obstruent voiced or keeping it devoiced.
(14) a. Der Hund ist los(*-e} [lois].

the dog is loose
b. derlos-e ['loi.za?, 'Io:.s3?] Hund
the loose-NOM.SG.MASC.WEAK dog
There is a postposition halb [halp] 'for, because of which coalesces

with pronominals, as in des-halb and wes-halb 'for that/what, there-
fore/wherefore'. It is grammaticalised from the Middle High German
noun halp or halbe 'side', derived from the adjective halb 'half. It
seems semantically distant enough from its parent word no longer to
be under its influence concerning the underlying voicing status of the
final obstruent. However, there are alternative forms of the postposition
itself, viz. halber and halben, used with nominal and certain pronominal
complements (e.g., des Friedens halber 'in the interest of peace',
meinet-halben 'for my sake, as far as I am concerned') and going back
to fossilised case forms of the noun halp/halbe; presumably, they pro-
vide alternations in support of basic voiced /b/. But halb is also used
in combination with local elements to form adverbs and prepositions,
such as ober-halb 'above' and ausser-halb Outside'. The historical
source is again the noun halp/halbe, in prepositional phrases like zuo
oberhalbe 'at (the) upper side'. In this sense, -halb hardly links up with
the inflecting adjective halb 'half any longer; and it is itself invariable
in its customary uses, as in (15a). So, if it could be inflectionally re-
activated one way or another, one would expect its final obstruent to
come out voiceless, owing to its isolation from salient alternations.
(15) a. das Haus oberhalb ['?o:.be.halp]

the house above
b. das oberhalb-e ['?o:.bfc.hal.b3] Haus
the above-NOM.sc.NEUT.WEAK house
188 Frans Plank
The attempt in (15b) thwarts this expectation. The likeliest reason,

however, is not that the expectation was fundamentally misguided, but
that there is a phonological factor interfering: arguably, the sonorant
preceding the obstruent prevents it from devoicing.
To wind up this brief phenomenology of alternations, in our para-
digm case the adverb weg /vek/ too has potential alternations owing to
words or word-forms with a corresponding voiced obstruent, namely
zuwege [tsu:.'ve:.ga] (as in zuwege bringen 'to get done'), univerbated
from the Middle High German prepositional phrase ze wege On the
(right) way' but surviving unmaimed at the edges, and of course the
nominative plural etc. of the noun Weg, Weg-e ['vei.gg]. However, with
weg fully grammaticalised, these links seem to have been severed for
good: on the evidence of the stem-final obstruent staying devoiced even
when not syllable-final, they have not mattered ever after. Thus, the
lesson of weg is that parent words and their grammaticalised offspring
indeed do not count as morphologically closely enough related to supply
alternations on whose basis the Alternation Condition would license
abstract representations different from surface forms.
Whether this is confirmed by all grammaticalisations of words with
stem-final obstruents where voicelessness used to alternate with voicing
will remain a matter for conjecture. It is not that such forms are rare;
some are sketched in (16), also illustrating several variations on the
theme of grammaticalisation:
(16) a. preposition and conjunction während 'during', grammaticalised

from the present participle of währen 'to last' (itself still an
existing and regularly inflecting non-finite form), with inflected
forms of the participle reanalysed as preposition (governing
genitive or dative) + definite article:
wahr-end-es Krieg-es »
last-PTCPL-GEN.SG.MASC war-GEN.SG
während d-es Krieg-es
during the-GEN.SG.MASC war-GEN.SG (absolute genitive)
in währ-end-em Krieg »
in laSt-PTCPL-DAT.SG.MASC War-DAT.SG
während d-em Krieg
during the-DAT.SG.MASC war-DAT, so
b. preposition entsprechend 'corresponding to', semi-grammatic-

alised from the present participle of entsprechen 'to corres-
pond' (again, itself a form which continues to exist and to
inflect)
c. prepositions anhand 'by means of and aufgrund On grounds
of, semi-grammaticalised from the univerbated prepositional
phrases an Hand 'at hand' and auf Grund On ground'
d. adverb and interjection gottlob 'thank God', grammaticalised
by univerbating a whole optative sentence, OHG gote si lob
'to God be praise!'
But these a-morphological words are unlikely to be upgraded to

inflectable words, ä la weg and ab, and there is no other direct evidence
for the retention or loss of basic voicedness of stem-final obstruents.
Acknowledgments
Peter Eisenberg, Mirco Ghini, Rüdiger Harnisch, Bernhard Hurch,

Michael Wagner, and especially the editor of this volume lent a sympa-
thetic ear and offered sound advice as, perhaps unexpectedly for them,
voicelessness for me became something other than not being active,
passive, antipassive, or middle.
Notes
1. Another source, here and subsequently, is the Etymologisches Wörterbuch der

deutschen Sprache (Kluge 1995).
2. Static verbs such as 'be, remain' could also be accompanied by such a prepositional
phrase, though with in plus the dative: in wege '(be) under way'.
3. Especially with labial fricatives, voicelessness is prone to be generalised in many
varieties of contemporary German, as in doof 'dotty' [do:f]—doof-e ['do:.fa],
where the northern standard is ['doi.va]
4. E.g., of local or comitative prepositions as transitive possessive verbs, as often seen
in Afroasiatic and in other languages of North Africa; cf. Plank (1999).
5. Even re-categorised adjectives with final schwa seem tempted to take epenthetic
/n/: die Mannschaft ist spitze 'the team is top'—eine spitzeC-n-e) Mannschaft.
190 Frans Plank
With so (3a) and perhaps a few words in (3b), the source of epenthetic /n/ may
be the reduced enclitic indefinite article (so=ne < so (ei)ne 'such a'), although
a further preposed indefinite article is permissible (eine so (ei)ne bequeme Couch
'a such a comfortable couch').
6. The reverse order would counterfeed spirantisation, which does not affect voice-
less velars.
7. Though possibly etymologically related, the conjunction and modal particle aber
['?a:.bB] 'but' is certainly not close enough to support basic voicing.
8. Another temptation, sometimes yielded to upon reflection but rarely in spontane-
ous speech, are spelling pronunciations: ['vega], ['?aba].
9. Upgraded to a noun, das Aus 'the out' remains inflectionally inert.
10. Notice that with loans and other not-so-conventional words, it is in inflected
forms—where the phonological contrasts of voicing and of vowel quantity are
not neutralised—that spelling geminates tend to be used first. See Eisenberg
(1991) on orthographic "Silbengelenksgemination".
11. Historically, this is an old instrumental plural of the noun for 'while', MHG
wtten/wilan, with an epenthetic -d added, just like jeman-d 'someone' and
nieman-d 'no-one', except that these latter words take further vowel-initial
inflections.
12. A general phonological factor conducive to voicing, and possibly overriding
morphological considerations (see below), is the neighbourhood of a sonorant.
13. Other such pairs of nouns and identical (predominantly predicative) adjectives
where final obstruents can on a similar logic be assumed to be basically voiced
include schuld 'guilt-guilty', leid 'sorrow-sorry', HuldlHold-hold 'grace-
gracious' , and gang 'going' (adjectival only in the idiom gang und gäbe 'custom-
ary').
References
Brockhaus, Wiebke
1995 Final Devoicing in the Phonology of German. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Eisenberg, Peter
1991 Integration einer fremden Struktur: Die Gemination von Konsonant-
graphemen in deutschen Anglizismen. In: Eijiro Iwasaki (ed.), Begeg-
nung mit dem 'Fremden', vol. 4, 341-347. München: ludicium.
Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm
1862/ Deutsches Wörterbuch. Dritter Band: E—Forsche; Dreizehnter Band:
1922 W— Wegzwitschern. Leipzig: Hirzel.
King, Robert D.
1969 Historical Linguistics and Generative Grammar. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Kiparsky, Paul
1968 How abstract is phonology? Bloomington: Indiana University Linguis-
tics Club.
Kluge, Friedrich
1995 Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. 23rd, expanded
edn, edited by Elmar Seebold. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Küpper, Heinz
1982/84 Illustriertes Lexikon der deutschen Umgangssprache. Band l: A—Blatt;
Band 8: Susig—Zypresse. Stuttgart: Klett.
1999 Open syllable lengthening in West Germanic. Language 75: 678-719.
Plank, Frans
1999 Wie sich Präpositionen zu Verben wandeln: Der kurze und der lange
Weg. Unpublished paper, Universität Konstanz.
Vennemann, Theo
1968 German phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los
Angeles.
Inflectional system and markedness
Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel
1. Introduction
When one considers more complex inflectional systems that make use
of inflectional classes, one is likely to see at first glance a totally unsys-
tematic and confusing picture with respect to classifying individual
words into the relevant classes. The classification seems to be formed
by accident to a great extent. To illustrate, let us consider the German
noun. Masculine nouns ending in a consonant (except those in -el, -en,
-er), a diphthong or a long vowel1 can be inflected in six different ways:
(1) Wolf GEN.SG des Wolfs ΝΟΜ.PL die W lfe
Hund GEN.SG des Hunds ΝΟΜ.PL die Hunde
Mann GEN.SG des Manns ΝΟΜ.PL die M nner
Park GEN.SG des Parks ΝΟΜ.PL die Parks
Mensch GEN.SG des Menschen ΝΟΜ.PL die Menschen
Staat GEN.SG des Staates ΝΟΜ.PL die Staaten
As is well known, such relationships have led modern grammatical
theory, for a long time, to regard inflectional classes as arbitrary and
theoretically uninteresting and to ignore them to a great extent. But
relevant investigations have recently shown that the issue of inflectional
classes is not as uninteresting as it has been alleged to be.2 In particular,
it has been demonstrated that one cannot simply consider one inflec-
tional class as being equal to another, and that different inflectional
classes within an inflectional system can have very different status. On
the one hand, it is trivial, although not irrelevant, that inflectional
classes vary greatly in size. In the German verbal system, for instance,
the difference is between a handful of strong verbs (or even individual
verbs) and several thousand weak verbs. On the other hand, there are,
as is well known, inflectional classes which take over words from other
inflectional classes and new words, as well as classes that lose words.
One can compare weak and strong verbs in German and other Germanic
languages. The classes differ from one another clearly with respect to
194 Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel
their productivity. Obviously, there are preferred classes as well as less

preferred ones. One can often show markedness relationships by consid-
ering comparable constellations in other areas of grammar. So the
question is whether one should also assume markedness relations in
inflectional classes. If the answer is yes, then an issue arises as to what
consequences would follow for the architecture of inflectional systems.
2. The architecture of inflectional paradigms: paradigm structure

conditions
The words belonging to an inflectional class are characterized as having

unique inflectional paradigms, that is, they have the same inflectional
markers in the same grammatical categories. To be precise, this holds
only of the derived categories. For example, according to the rather
general pattern the German nouns Hase and B r or the Latin nouns
amicus and vir respectively belong to the same inflectional class, al-
though their base-forms (ΝΟΜ.so) differ. The combination of individual
markers within the paradigm is therefore not simply arbitrary, but
follows certain regularities. A closer look reveals that such regularities
can be captured as implications in many cases. Thus the following two
implications hold for German nouns:
(2) If a feminine noun ends in -e, then it takes the marker -n in the
plural.
(3) If a noun takes the marker -er in the plural, then it takes the marker
-s in the GEN.so.
The implication in (2) concerns words like Tante, Katze and Rose, cf.
Tante-die Tanten. The implication in (3) encompasses cases like Mann,
Weib and Kind, cf. die M nner-des Mannes. The latter shows simulta-
neously that the converse of the implication relations does not necessar-
ily hold, because not all nouns with -s in GEN.SG show the plural
marker -er. Implications of this type capture the regularities of paradigm
construction. As they are structural rules (i.e.not production rules), one
can accordingly call them paradigm structure conditions (PSCs)3. The
PSCs holding of certain paradigms start from the independently given

properties of the words in their base-forms, i.e. their phonological,
morphological, syntactic and semantic structural properties (like (2)).
The conditions then gradually specify the occurring markers (like (3)).
In many cases, but not always, the different paradigms of an inflectional
system have a similar implicational structure. Along these lines, then,
there exists a general direction of derivation for the whole system. That
is also the case for the German noun inflection, where the derivation
of the markers is represented as follows:
(4) NOM.SG
M:/PL
Mj/GEN.SG Uml/PL Mm/DAT.PL
Μ,/ACC.SG
M/DAT.SG
In (4), 'M' stands for additive markers, i.e. suffixes, 'Uml' for Umlaut.
One-way arrows show implication relations, double arrows the form-
identity of the markers, and the broken lines are for non-implicational
connections. All markers can also be zero.
This schema holds of the canonical structure of German noun para-
digms.4 It might at first be surprising that the direction of derivation
goes from the base-form to the additive plural markers and then eventu-
ally back to the markers of singular oblique case-markers. However,
it is quite simply a consequence of the fact that there are more different
additive plural markers in the category plural than all other categories.
Here, five different markers occur, namely, -e, -er, -s, -n and -0, but
there are only four in GEN.SG, namely, -s, -n, -ns and -0. That typically
has the consequence that the form of the plural marker of a non-femi-
nine noun like Hund, cf. die Hunde, is required to take the marker -s
in the GEN.SG. But the other direction does not hold, since s-genitives
exist not only in non-feminines with e-plural, but also in those with -er,
s-, n- and 0-plurals; cf. des Manns, Parks, Staats, Ankers, but die Män-
ner, Parks, Staaten, Anker.
One can now formulate the PSCs for the individual inflection classes.
When these groups of conditions are cross-referenced, one can see that
many generalizations are not captured in this way, since obviously the
same markers in the same categories often show up in various classes.
For instance, there are in German three distinct non-feminine paradigms
(except some specific cases) with words ending in -e in the base-form,
namely, the types Bote, Auge and Funke. They show different markers
in GEN.SG; cf. des Boten, Auges, Funkens. But all three types have in
common the marker -n in the plural: die Boten, Augen, Funken. One
can accordingly state the generalization across paradigms that all three
types of non-feminines ending in -e take the category marker -n in the
plural, and similarly in other cases. Therefore, one can consider the
PSCs for all available paradigms as a uniform system of distribution
of the existing markers to the individual paradigms. It is evident that
the representation of inflectional systems is considerably simplified and
generalized in this way. One can now assume that the paradigm and the
inflectional class disappear from the grammar in such a framework,
which is certainly undesirable. On the contrary, the paradigm appears
only in a new and somewhat unsual form. The paradigm is represented
as a specific transition through the system of PSCs.5
Now, crucial to the issue to be discussed is that there are relations
within the paradigms that are not really strictly implicational. As the
schema in (4) shows, this applies to the relation between the base-form
and the additive markers of the plural and to the relation of the additive
plural marker and the occurrence of umlaut in the plural. Thus, certainly
a feminine ending in -e implies the plural marker -n (as claimed in (2))
but non-feminines ending in a consonant, a dipthong or a long vowel
(except those ending in -el, -en and -er) may take four different plural
suffixes; cf. again Hunde, Männer, Parks and Menschen. The same is
true of masculines ending in -e in the plural; they may have umlaut in
the plural as in the case of Wölfe or not as in the case of Hunde. In
addition, closer inspection reveals that in the relevant case one of the
possible competing variants in the system quantitively dominates, with
respect to type-frequency, and is in this sense 'more normal' than the
other(s). That is in the first case the e-plural, and in the second case
umlaut-plural (cf. Paul 1917: 9ff.)· Similarly, it also holds of all other
relevant cases of competing inflectional classes in the German noun
inflection. Here, there are no strict implications, but rather tendencies.
Such constellations may be included in the implicational derivation of
the markers, if one assumes that PSCs generally do not apply strictly,
but following the default principle. They assign a marker to a category,
only if another marker for the same category and the same position,
the slot, is not already specified. (German nouns have three slots, two
suffix positions and one vowel change position, as the D AT. PL form den
Wolf-e-n shows; cf. Section 4). Such a procedure requires that in the
relevant case the less normal markers are specified in the lexical repre-
sentation, for instance, [er/PL] for Mann, [S/PL] for Park, [n/PL] for
Mensch as well as [0Uml/PL] for Hund. By contrast, the normal cases
need no inflectional specification in the lexicon. They are automatically
assigned to inflectional classes by the PSCs. Apart from very few
exceptions, there are according to the schema in (4) only specifications
of additive plural markers and umlaut in the plural. We will return to
this later.
3. Markedness
There are two different types of words in the lexicon. The words of
one type show a 'normal' inflectional behavior, and have no inflec-
tional information; the words of the other type show a 'less normal'
inflectional behavior, and have explicit inflectional information. Ac-
cording to what we know about the occurring marked forms, here exists
a very clear case of markedness despite the language-specific arrange-
ment of the structural relationships.The words of the first type are
unmarked, and those of the second type are marked. You have got to
be aware that markedness is grounded exclusively on synchronic quan-
titative criteria.
Now, there is simply no markedness as such, as far as we know. The
concept of markedness holds of grammatical units only with regard to
certain parameters. So a vowel like [y] is not simply marked, but
marked in contrast with [i] with respect to roundedness. In the area of

inflectional classes the concept of markedness does not apply to these
classes, but to the individual words. It therefore follows that there are
definitely inflectional classes containing both marked as well as un-
marked words. One can conclude that such classes can lose words and
acquire new words at the same time. An example for that is the class
of weak masculines. It takes over on the one hand masculine words
ending in -e like Schimpanse, Kanute, Chaote, Kongolese, Senegalese,
but on the hand lose words ending in a consonant, a dipthong or a long
vowel like Greif, Mond, Pfau', cf. the older plural-forms die Greifen,
Monden, Pfauen, and the newer ones die Greife, Monde, Pfaue. As the
assumed lexical representations show, the words are marked with
respect to their category markers, i.e. their membership to the inflec-
tional class.
With respect to the inflectional class membership, markedness has
a clear formal correlate. It shows up in features, which do not hold of
all types of markedness, as is well-known. Non-low back vowels are
unmarked when they have the feature round like [u] and [o], and are
marked when they do not have this feature like [ui] and [ω]. As it can
easily be seen, the formal correlate of markedness not only enables one
to distinguish unmarked from marked cases, regarding inflectional class
membership. Depending on the proportion of necessary lexical features,
the degree of markedness can also be established. Generally, only one
feature in German noun appears in the lexicon; it refers to either the
plural suffix or the plural-umlaut. Only specific cases like the neuter
Herz deviates from it. Non-feminines ending in a consonant, a diph-
thong or a long vowel like Bein inflect, in the unmarked case, according
to the strong declination, and take the plural marker -e. By contrast, the
corresponding words of the weak declination like Ohr take the plural
marker -n, as it is specified in the lexicon as having the feature [n/PL].
By implication, the singular inflection is -s for the unanimate nouns in
the GEN.SG and is zero in the DAT/ACC.SG; cf. des Ohrs, dem/das Ohr.
But the noun Herz deviates from it; its inflection is des Herzens, dem
Herzen, das Herz. It thus means that it is specified in the lexicon as
having the features [ns/GEN.so] and [0/ACC.SG] in addition to [n/PL].
(The marker for DAT.SG dem Herzen implicationally results from that
for GEN.SG.). We obtain the scale of markedness:
(5) Bein: no lexical feature, unmarked

Ohr: one lexical feature, marked
Herz: three lexical features, strongly marked6
Because of the obvious connections, one can formulate a principle of

markedness of words regarding their inflectional class membership:
(6) If in an inflectional system there is a competition between two or

more inflectional classes which contain words with the same inde-
pendently given phonological, morphological, syntactic and/or
semantic structural properties relevant for inflection, a word is
unmarked regarding inflectional class membership when it belongs
to the class that includes most words of the corresponding structural
properties; otherwise, it is marked. Markedness shows up in the
occurrence of lexical inflectional features, where the degree of
markedness of a word results from the number of features.
Even if the inflectional class membership of words is a phenomenon

determined by the relevant language-specific relationships, the formula-
tion of the principle shows that the markedness regarding class member-
ship has a universal basis. This type of markedness has the same valid-
ity as that for all other types of markedness. The principle (6) holds of
all languages with competing inflectional classes.
4. Markedness and the architecture of inflectional systems:

German noun inflection
As an example of how markedness relationships are represented in a

inflectional system under the discussed requirement and what conse-
quences might follow for the structure of systems, let us consider the
German noun inflection insome detail.7 First of all, we indicate corres-
ponding lexical specifications and PSCs (-VV# describes words ending
in a 'full vowel', i.e.vowel other than short -e, phonetically [a]; -eL#
stands for words ending in short -e- followed by a sonorant, i.e. a liquid
or a nasal, including also words ending in -lein [-laen]); 'Anim' means
animate.
A. Lexical specifications
I. Plural suffix
[n/PL]: type Villa/Drama; unmarked type OmalTeddylKino- Omasl

Teddys/Kinos
[e/PL]: type Cans', unmarked type Bahn-Bahnen
[0/PL]: type Mutter, isolated case Jeans (singular); unmarked type
Schwester-Schwestern
[S/PL] : type Bar/Single (feminine); unmarked type Bahn/Schwester-
Bahnen/Schwestern
[er/PL]: type Mannl'Rind', unmarked type Wolf/Bein-Wölfe/Beine

[S/PL]: type Park', unmarked type Wolf*
type Steppke; unmarked type Bote
[n/PL]: type Bari'Staat/'Muskel; unmarked type Wolf
type Untertan; unmarked type Herold
[0/PL]: isolated case Käse; unmarked type Auge/Funke-Augen/Funke
II. Plural umlaut
[Uml/PL]: isolated cases Floß/Lager (besides umlautless plural),

Kloster; unmarked BrotlPolster-BrotelPolster
[0Uml/PL]: type Hund/Sommer; unmarked Wolf/Vater
III. Exception: plural and case suffix
n
Herz; unmarked type Bein-Beine, regularly marked type
ns/GEN.SG rM
n,
0/ACC.SG
Ohr-Ohren
B. Paradigm structure conditions
I. Plural suffix
(a) [-Vv#] ID [S/PL] type Oma/Teddy/Kino

(b) [Fern] => [n/PL] type KatzelBahnlSchwester
(c) [-V. . . eL#] type Vater/Wagen/Segel/Mädchen/
Büchlein
TNeut l z> [0/PL] type Gebirge (vs. Geselle/
#ge+ +e#| Gemeinde—Gesellen/Gemeinden
(d) [-e#] D [n/PL] type Bote/Auge/Funke
(e) [ ] z> [e/PL] type Wolf/Bein
II. Plural umlaut
(f) [er/PL] z> [Uml/PL] type Mann/Lamm

(g) [Neut] type Brot/Polster
[0Uml/PL]I
[+er#] type Fahrer
(h) [e/PL] type Wolf/Gans
[Uml/PL]
[0/PL] type Vater/Mutter
III. Case suffix
(i) [Fem] z> [0/GEN.so] type FraulOmalGans

Ü) -Neutr
-Anim =) [nS/GEN.SG] type Funke (vs. Auge-des Auges)
-e#
(k) n/PL
Anim =) [S/GEN.SG] type Untertan (Professor)
'V . . . VK,#.
]=>[n/GEN.SG] type Bote/Bär
[AnimJ
(m) [ ] z> [S/GEN.SG] types WolfIVaterlMannlPark,
Staat/Ohr/Auge
(n) [n/GEN.SG] type Bote/Bär

=) [n/DAT.ACC.SG]
[ns/GEN.SG] type Funke
(o) -n types WolfIVaterlMann, Gans/
Mutter (vs. Bär-Bären, Bote-
r~ #]PL] Z> [n/DAT.PL] Boten, Wagen-Wagen; Park/
-s Teddy/Oma-Parks/Teddysl
Omas)
No markers occur in cases that do not fall under the PSCs. For instance,
every noun in GEN/ACC.PL and most nouns in DAT/ACC.SG have no case
inflections. An explicit specification is necessary only in the cases,
which have consequences for the application of other PSCs (more on
this later).
The system of PSCs formulated here, including the lexical specifica-
tions, captures the inflection of German nouns that have native word
structure. In many cases, words of non-native structure also fit in, for
instance, words of the type Professor (animate) adhere quite 'automati-
cally' to PSC (k) and words of the type Generator (inanimate) to PSC
(m).
The words marked regarding their inflection are specified for their
inflections in the lexicon. Normally, only plural markers, not case
markers, show up in the lexicon for German nouns, as the lexical
representations under I and II indicate. The relevant words strictly
follow the PSCs in their case inflection. For instance, the word Käse
(the only masculine ending in -e with s-genitive and 0-plural), which
should take the unmarked -plural, is specified in the lexicon as
having no plural ending [0/PL]: der Käse-die Käse. Otherwise, it
fits perfectly in the inflectional system; those that have 0-plural quite
regularly take the marker -s in the GEN.so and the marker -n in the
DAT.PL. On the other hand, the above-mentioned word Herz is speci-
fied, in addition to the plural feature [n/PL], as having the features
[ns/GEN.SG] and [0/ACC.SG], which do not show up in any other word.
First, the case inflection is not implied from the plural, and second,
because of the lexical specification of [0/ACC.so] the otherwise general
formal identityof DAT.SG and ACC.SG does not hold (cf. schema (5)).
The word Herz contradicts the general structural principles of German
inflection and is therefore a true exception to the inflectional system.9

Here, the difference is clearly between specific cases like Käse, which
is marked but regular, and clearly genuine exceptions like Herz.
The PSCs are ordered with respect to each other. The ordering is
based on two requirements.
First, the conditions should naturally capture the implicational rela-
tions between markers of different grammatical categories. This con-
strains the order of individual groups of conditions concerning the
different positions for the markers. The German noun has, as demon-
strated above, three positions for category markers: a position for ex-
pressing plural by suffix, one for expressing plural by stem-vowel
alternation (Umlaut), and one for expressing case by suffix. The condi-
tions for the plural suffix position (group I) precede those for the plural-
umlaut position (group II) and for the case suffix position (group III),
since the first group creates the conditions of application for the other
two. Between the two latter groups, there is no linear sequence (cf. the
schema (4) above). Here, the ordering is intrinsic, and need not be
explicitly fixed. Between markers of different positions, there is no
distinctivity; the markers of different positions do not block each other's
occurrences; cf. again the example (den) Wolf-e-n with the possible
maximum of three markers. It follows from the general principles of
grammars that the lexical specifications have priority over the PSCs.
They block the application of the PSCs concerning their respective
positions. So the application of PSC (b), which assigns the unmarked
marker -n, is blocked when a marked feminine has the lexical specifica-
tion [C/PL] like Gans-plural Gänse.
Second, the assumed ordering of PSCs is based on the simplest possi-
ble, i.e. 'minimalistic', formulation. Such a formulation is possible, only
if a disjunctive ordering within the three groups of conditions is assumed.
If a marker for a given category is specified, then no other marker for
this category can be specified. Consequently, the 'settled' cases in the
formulation of the following conditions need not be observed. In this
connection, it is important that the zero-specification has the same value
as positively specified markers. For instance, PSC (g), which assigns the
feature [0Uml/PL] to neuters among others, blocks the application of
PSC (h). Without the specification of zero markers in such cases, the
system of PSCs would be represented in a much more complicated way.
The lexical zero-features also work this way; the information [0Uml/PL]
in words like Hund and Sommer prevents the application of PSC (h),
which assigns the unmarked feature plural-umlaut to words of this type.
It is easy to see that the ordering of the conditions in the groups is conse-
quently not intrinsic. It does not always follow the 'specific before
general' criterion. However, it is not a surprise but a consequence of the
fact that the PSCs do not operate on the basis of an uniform set of prop-
erties or features that are comparable to phonological features. Their
input specifications are phonological, syntactic, semantic and morpho-
logical properties of words and additionally already specified markers.
In contrast with other areas of the language system the specificity of
morphology manifests itself in the dependence on very different factors.
Accordingly, there are in many cases no inclusion relations between the
input specifications, for example, PSC (a) is concerned with the noun
ending in 'full vowel', but PSC (b) is relevant for feminine words. Where
the inclusion relations show up, however, intrinsic ordering holds. One
can compare PSCs (k) and (1). The specifications in (1), 'η-plural and
'animate', constitute a subset of (k), 'η-plural, 'animate and word-ending
in -V. .. eL'. PSC (k) therefore automatically takes precedence. The
same naturally holds for PSCs without constraining input specifications
and for all other conditions concerning the same category. Therefore,
all other conditions for plural suffixes precede PSC (e) and all other
conditions for GEN.so-suffixes precede PSC (n). Where such relations
are not given, extrinsic ordering must be assumed.
Let us turn now to the application conditions for the PSC. It is worth
repeating that the conditions hold only in the unmarked cases, i.e. for
such words that are not already specified for a marker of the corre-
sponding category in the lexicon. The conditions for the plural suffixes
refer exclusively to independently given phonological, syntactic and
morphological properties of the words in their base-forms. PSC (a) first
assigns the marker -s to a noun with a 'full vowel'. Here, gender plays
no role, in contrast to the other cases. The following PSC (b) captures
the remaining feminines that take the marker -n independently of their
word endings. The remaining PSCs (c), (d), and (e), which are relevant
to non-feminines only and assign the 0-, n- and e-plurals, hold exclu-
sively on formal factors, i.e. phonological and morphological criteria,
where these need not be explicitly given in the PSC (e).
For the PSCs governing the distribution of the plural-umlaut, the

plural suffixes are primarily crucial. According PSC (f), the nouns with
-er plural (and umlautable vowel) always have umlaut in the plural. The
PSC (g) takes exception of neuter and derivations with the morpheme
-er as Fahrer and Schalter without plural-umlaut. The remaining e- and
zero plurals show umlaut according to PSC (h).
The PSCs for the GEN.SG-markers come partly from independent
properties of the base-form (i.e. PSCs (i) and (j)) and partly from such
properties and plural markers (i.e.PSC (k) and (1)). PSC (i) specifies
the markerless GEN.so form of the feminines. PSC (n), which assigns
the marker -n in the DAT/ACC.SG, refers exclusively to the specified
GEN.SG marker.
PSC (o) has an interesting special position in the system. Its appar-
ently simplest formulation depends on phonological properties. But it
depends not on phonological properties of the base-form, but on the part
of the plural form which acts as the base for the derivation of the
DAT.PL. 10 It is not the form of the plural marker that is crucial for the
occurrence of the D AT. PL marker -«, but the phonological form of the
plural: (den) Wagen and (den) Gärten work in the same way as (den)
Bote- and (den) Bar-en. One can also compare the individual case
(singular) die Jeans-plural die Jeans-OAT.PL der Jeans functioning
exactly like the feminine word die ßar-plural die Bar-s-OAT.PL den
Bars.
Lastly, the assignment of the markers by the PSCs (i.e.the ouput of
the PSCs) also mirrors important structural properties of the system.
There are no PSCs which specify the markers for the DAT.SG alone, and
for the markers of the ACC.SG alone. PSC (n) specifies a uniform DAT.
ACC.SG marker -n for the types Bote/Bär and Funke and all other cases
uniformly show no marker in these catagories. Here, the general marker
identity of ACC.SG and DAT.SG mentioned above manifests itself.11
As a whole, the system of PSCs shows clearly the distinctive division
between feminines and non-feminines in the German noun declension.
This is evident in the plural suffix as well as in the GEN.SG (and so in
the entire singular inflection). Here, the feminines get their markers
first, and then the rest of the noun is specified. It is to be observed that
the unmarked feminines accordingly behave uniformly. They are all
assigned the marker [n/PL] and [0/GEN.so]. On the other hand, there
are more options with the non-feminines, in the plural depending on

the phonological and morphological properties of words, and in the
GEN.SG depending on the phonological, syntactic and semantic proper-
ties as well as the plural markers. This does not hold, with respect to
plural formation, of the noun with a 'full vowel', which is independent
from gender and also untypical for German. By the PSC (a), the first
PSC, they are assigned the plural markers -s, which mirrors their spe-
cific status in the inflectional system. Explicitly and implicitly indepen-
dent of the gender is furthermore the assignment of the D AT. PL marker
-n, which functions following phonological criteria. The differentiation
between neuters and masculines plays a role only in three cases: neuters
with the morphological structure '#ge+ +e', according to PSC (c),
have a 0-plural different from the corresponding masculines; cf. das
Gebirge-die Gebirge vs. der Geselle-die Gesellen. Neuters (unmarked
for umlaut) except those with er-plural have no plural umlaut differring
from the corresponding masculines; cf. das Brot-die Brote vs. der Wolf
-die Wölfe. And the masculines that are inanimate and end in -e have
the marker -ns in the GEN.SG, which is different from the corresponding
neuters according to the PSC (j); cf. der Funke-des Funkes vs. das Auge
-des Auges. When one classifies these words as non-neuters, then the
PSCs need not refer to the syntactic property 'masculine'. It should be
remarked that the PSC (j) and also the distinction that it makes between
masculines and neuters cease with the contemporary transfer of the
words of the type der Funke-des Funke-ns to the type der Funken-des
Funken-s. The only semantic feature which plays a role in the German
noun inflection is 'animate' vs. 'inanimate'. It determines along well
with other characteristics the distribution of different GEN.SG markers
for non-feminines with -plural, assigned by the PSG (j), (k), and (1).
5. Markedness and change in the inflectional system
In the foregoing sections, we considered the question of how inflec-

tional systems are structured with the example of the German noun
inflection. We then argued that the concept of markedness of the words
regarding their inflectional class membership on which the analysis is
based is grounded exclusively on synchrony (cf. principle (6)). The
assumptions on the markedness of inflectional classes that follow from

it are not implausible, but they still constitute a working hypothesis, as
long as they are not independently justified. One can find justification
for it by appealing to language change, which Kiparsky characterized
as "a window on the form of linguistic competence that is not obscured
by factors like performance" in a much cited formulation three decades
ago (1968: 174). If the synchronically determined markedness evalua-
tions of the German nouns are correct, then it should not only structure
the paradigms and the inflectional system as a whole, but should also
help make predictions in which direction the paradigms within the
system may change, i.e. which changes in the system show up or may
show up. What is required is the hardly controversial assumption that
grammatically (i.e. not sociolinguistically) conditioned change is by
nature to reduce markedness, which provides a motivation for language
change to take place (Wurzel 1994a: 28ff.). In the following, we shall
verify whether the assumptions made here for markedness can be con-
firmed by language changes in the area of the German nouns.
First. If the lexical representation of the inflection class membership

by the specification of the marker is marked and the non-representation
is unmarked, then lexical inflectional information should tend to disap-
pear and the corresponding words should change into the unmarked
class. In the history of German and also in comtemporary language
there is indeed a great number of examples for such class changes.
Here are three examples:
EXAMPLE 1. Many feminines ending in a consonant, a diphthong
or a long vowel (branching rhyme) have lost their lexical specification
as β-plural (with umlaut according to PSC (h)) in the course of language
history. For examples illustrating older transfers, one can name words
like Fahrt, Geburt, Saat and Tat. In this century, words like Flucht,
Sucht and Zucht have changed class, and contemporarily one can con-
sider the transfer of the word Gruff, cf. Flucht-Fl chte > Flucht-
Fluchten. The change consists in the deletion of the lexical feature
[C/PL], where the conditions are no longer given for the PSC (h), which
specifies for umlaut. The corresponding words are assigned the un-
marked inflection with η-plural by PSC (b).
EXAMPLE 2. A great number of masculines with e- and zero plural
which originally had no plural umlaut, i.e. were specified as [0Uml/PL],

changed into the umlaut class since Middle High German. Older trans-
fers are Bock, Hof and Wolf as well as Vater, Acker, Boden and Hafen,
and in this century Mops, Rumpf, Schöpf ana Strand changed their class:
Mops-Mopse > Mops-Möpse (cf. Paul 1917:11). Through this change,
the lexical feature blocking umlaut was deleted. The words are then
accordingly captured by PSC (h).
EXAMPLE 3. The word Herz shows the traditional inflection GEN.so
des Herzens, DAT.SG dem Herzen, ACC.SG das Herz, and plural Herzen
throughout. With this inflection, as it was shown, not only is inflection
class membership strongly marked (three inflectional features in the
lexicon), the general structure principles of the system are also contra-
dicted (specification of case features, no formal equality of the markers
for ACC.SG and DAT.SG). Since one cannot expect anything else in such
cases, there is a strong tendency for removal of lexical case features.
The corresponding change occurred quite early (cf. Paul 1917:40), but
was not accepted by the standard language until rather late. The result
is that Herz today inflects considerably like the type Ohr (des Herzes,
dem/das Herz, die Herzen). The marked -plural remains, however. So
it loses two lexical features, and behaves according to the general
structural principles of the inflectional system. (It is not uninteresting
that the plural form die Herze is also used in the language of the medi-
cal profession instead of die Herzen (DUDEN 1991: 334). This inflec-
tion thus corresponds to the unmarked inflection of non-feminines
ending in a consonant.)
In the first two cases, the words change from the marked to the
unmarked class. In the third case, a word changes from an extremely
marked to a less marked class. The markedness regarding the inflection
class membership is reduced.
Second. If the phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic

properties of the words in the assumed fashion are responsible for the
inflection class membership, then a change of the properties relevant
to inflection should tend to cause a corresponding change in the inflec-
tion, so that new markedness is prevented from coming into the system,
or in the case it has come into the system, new markedness is removed
again. One can frequently observe such changes.
EXAMPLE 4. Change of phonological properties. If collective nouns

of the type Gebirge lose the final vowel -e of the base form as in the
case of Gebüsch, Gestell and Genick in the course of language history,
then the PSC (c), which assigns 0-plural, no longer holds. All these
nouns losing the final vowel are consequently captured by the PSC (e)
then; das Gebüsche-die Gebüsche become das Gebüsch-die Gebüsche).
The words have taken the unmarked inflection class membership for
the new phonological structure.
EXAMPLE 5. Change of phonological properties. In modern German,
there are certain orginally feminine words like Kartoffel and Trüffel
with the -plural marker according to the PSC (b) which are more
recently treated also as masculines.12 Then, their plural forms are de-
rived unmarkedly without any suffix according to the PSC (c); cf. die
Trüffel-die Trüffeln > der Trüffel-die Trüffel.
EXAMPLE 6. Change of semantic properties. The word Bär is an
animate non-feminine with (lexically specified) -plural and conse-
quently also has the marker -n in GEN.so, according to PSC (1): des
Bären. By compounding, the inanimate noun Rammbär 'a building
device' was derived from it. Then, according to PSC (m), the GEN.so
is not *des Rammbären but des Rammbärs. Exactly the opposite, the
word Typ, which is originally inanimate and therefore has S-GEN.SG
following PSC (m), is used in the modern language frequently in the
meaning 'guy', and hence animate. It shows a strong tendency toward
unmarked class membership, i.e. toward the forms des, dem, den Typen
according to the PSCs (1) and (n).
In all these cases, words change their inflection classes, if the proper-
ties relevant to their inflection change. The formation of new marked-
ness regarding the inflection class membership is thus prevented or
removed.
Third. If a great number of words are specified for their inflection class
membership in the lexicon and accidentally have at their disposal a
general independently given property which was not relevant for the
class membership before, then they should tend to use this property for
inflectional class assignment if markedness can be reduced in this way.
Examples of this type of change can also be found, cf. a very instructive
case from the history of German:
EXAMPLE 7. In early Old High German, the feminines ending in -a

partially inflect as o-stems with the ΝΟΜ.PL marker -a like era 'honour,
respect, ornament'-NOM.PL era and partially as η-stems with the
ΝΟΜ.PL marker -un like zimga'tongue'-NOM.PL zung n. Here, the two
classes are (more or less) equally strong. In such a case, there is accord-
ing to the principle (6) no reason to consider one of these classes as
unmarked and the other as marked. Let us remark that there is also no
uniform change direction from one class to the other. The words merely
vacillate unsystematically between the classes. The words of both
classes are thus specified for their inflection in the lexicon as a- or n-
plurals, respectively, i.e. they are equally marked. Such a constellation
puts a considerable burden on the lexicon and therefore rather seldom
occurs, also from a cross-linguistic point of view. Thus, reduction of
markedness takes place soon. The upshot is an accidentally unequal
distribution of concrete and abstract nouns to the two classes. In the n-
declination, the concrete nouns strongly predominate, among others all
feminine person markings ending in -a like diorna 'virgin', quena
'woman' and wituwa 'widow' also belong to this class. By contrast, in
the o-declension, the abstract nouns predominate. With these require-
ments, the property of animacy for inflection class membership can be
used, a semantic property that previously played absolutely no role in
the inflectional system. Thus, the concrete nouns of the type zunga and
the abstract nouns of the type (era can be evaluated as 'normal', i.e.
unmarked, which accordingly requires no specification of inflectional
class in the lexicon. This concerns then the majority of the feminines
ending in -a. The rather small subclasses of the abstract nouns of the
η-declination of the typefasta 'fast' and of the concrete nouns of the
(o-declination of the type wamba 'belly' form then the respective
marked subclasses, whose words in the lexicon must have inflection
information. This new constellation has as consequence numerous class
shifts, as expected. In Middle High German (where the final vowel -a
has become -e) many originally concrete o-nouns like br cke, erde and
str ze changed into the η-class. Originally abstract noun like ere and
minne '(friendly) thought, love' used as names for persons, especially
show how strong this tendency toward class change is. These new
concrete nouns consistently changed to the η-declination in Middle High
German. On the other hand, the few originally abstract noun of the
η-declension like faste in Middle High German inflected primarily

according to the (o-declension.
Here, the criteria for inflection class membership of the words are
reanalysed by referring to a new independently given semantic property
in order to reduce markedness. The remaining marked cases show the
tendency to remove their lexical specifications, entirely corresponding
to examples 1 and 2.13
Despite their individual differences, all the changes in inflection class
membership of words we considered above have in common the prop-
erty that either markedness with respect to class membership is reduced,
or the formation of new markedness is prevented. Here, we can of
course discuss only a few corresponding changes; further relevant
examples for the individual types of change are found not only in
German, but also in other languages like English, Icelandic, Latin,
Russian and Hungarian.
It is crucial that one can justify the assumptions about markedness
and the resulting consequences, which are warranted on purely syn-
chronic facts, by the actual changes in the system. This concerns not
only the individual markedness evaluations, but also the concept of
markedness regarding inflection class membership in general. Dia-
chrony confirms hypotheses about the synchronic structure of the sys-
tem, entirely in the sense of Kiparsky's quotation mentioned above.
6. Conclusions
The analysis proposed here for the inflectional system of German nouns
is based on three requirements, namely, on the diachronically justified
concept of markedness regarding inflection class membership, on the
specification of the inflectional properties of the words on the basis of
markers (i.e. not on the basis of paradigms or inflectional classes) as
well as on the existing implicational relations between them, and on
the 'minimalistic' formulation of these implication relations, i.e. the
PSCs. On these grounds, there emerges a picture of German noun
inflection, which beyond the case considered, reflects the general
inherent structure of inflection systems with competing inflection
classes:
(a) In the lexicon, not all words are specified for their inflection rela-
tions; rather, only those whose inflections deviate from the dominat-
ing regularities in the system, i.e. the marked cases, are so specified.
They are marked with respect to the category markers that do not
correspond to the dominant regularities. The paradigms of these
words form the unproductive area of the inflection system, i.e. its
periphery.
(b) On account of the types of category markers appearing in the lexi-
con, the difference between marked but regular cases on the one
hand and irregular cases (exceptions) on the other hand results. The
irregular words are those in which the otherwise general derivability
of markers from other markers does not work.14
(c) The ordering of the PSCs reflects the hierarchical structuring of the
inflection system. From the form of the PSCs, i.e. from the features
occurring in them, the superimposed structural principles of the
inflection system arises.15 The paradigms of the words whose inflec-
tion exclusively follow the PSCs (i.e. words without lexical specifi-
cation for inflection) constitute the productive core of the inflection
system.
Future research on inflectional morphology will have to decide how

adequate these results are.
Notes
1. Phonologically, the words form a natural class. They end in a branching rhyme.
2. Cf. a series of relevant publications by different authors, especially Carstairs (1987)
and the articles in Plank (1991).
3. For the status of PSCs cf. Wurzel (1990: 206ff.).
4. The canonical structure of noun paradigms holds for Modern German, where the
old DAT.SG marker -e is no longer available.
5. Cf. the system of PSCs in section 4.
6. It should be noted in this position that the very marked status of the word Hen
is not expressed solely in the number of lexical features. It contradicts additionally
certain general structure principles of the German noun inflection; cf. section 4.
7. The author thanks Paul Kiparsky for important advice concerning this section.
8. The assumption that non-feminines ending in a consonant, a diphthong or a long
vowel with j-plural are marked, seems to contradict the treatment of corresponding
words in modern German because a big group of them show a j-plural. However,
these nouns are either abbreviations whose inflection is not dealt with here, cf.
die LKWs, Profs and so on, or words from English whose 'chic' s-plurals are
taken over for sociolinguistic (i.e. non-grammatical) reasons; cf. die Fans, Songs,
Teams (and also some feminines like die Bars).
9. This is true of the traditional inflection of this word. Cf. Ex. 3 in section 5.
10. The corresponding DAT. PL form actually has a agglutinative structure. In a form
like (den) Hund-e-n the marker -e represents the plural and the marker -n the
dative (in plural).
11. Butcf. n. 4.
12. In the case of Trüffel, this is also accepted by DUDEN (1991: 728).
13. This case is also interesting, insofar as speakers in early Old High German (as
shown by the facts in the history of the language) did not choose the formally
simplest solution with respect to the markedness evaluation for the n- and the (o-
feminines, and arbitrarily interpreted one of the two class memberships as un-
marked, which would unburden considerably the lexicon. This would seem to
indicate that the simplest possible grammar is chosen only, when the facts really
clearly justify this. Apparently, speakers make no arbitrary decisions in the case
of markedness evaluations.
14. In the system of German nouns, these are among others words whose case mark-
ers cannot be derived from the plural markers, i.e. that also have case markers
in the lexicon as Herz (cf. schema 4).
15. Observe that these structural principles would be extremely obscured, if one
would not exclude the marked cases, which current descriptions of the German
noun inflection clearly show.
References
Carstairs, Andrew
1987 Allomorphy in Inflexion. London/New York/Sydney: Croom Helm.
DUDEN
1991 Rechtschreibung der deutschen Sprache. 20th edn. Mannheim/Leipzig/
Vienna/Zurich: Dudenverlag.
Kiparsky, Paul
1968 Linguistic universals and linguistic change. In: Emmon B ach and Robert
Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Paul, Hermann
1917 Deutsche Grammatik, Volumes II and III: Flexionslehre. Halle:
Niemeyer.
Plank, Frans (ed.)

1991 Paradigms. The Economy of Inflection. Berlin/New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Wurzel, Wolfgang
1984 Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. (Studia Grammatica XXI.)
Berlin: Akademie-Verlag
1990 The mechanism of inflection: lexicon representations, rules, and irregu-
larities. In: W. U. Dressler, H. C. Luschützky, O. E. Pfeiffer and J. R.
Rennison (eds.), Contemporary Morphology, 203-216. Berlin/New
York: Mouton de Gruyter.
1994a Grammatisch initiierter Wandel (with A. Bittner und D. Bittner).
Bochum: Brockmeyer
1994b Gibt es im Deutschen noch eine einheitliche Substantivflexion? Oder:
Auf welche Weise ist die deutsche Substantivflexion möglichst
angemessen zu erfassen? In: K.-M. Kopeke (ed.), Funktionale Unter-
suchungen zur deutschen Nominal- und Verbalmorphologie, 29-44.
Tübingen: Niemeyer.
On the origin and development of the Central
Franconian tone contrast
Carlos Gussenhoven
I . Introduction
Phonological change traditionally divides into analogical change, where
generalisations of various sorts are extended to new forms, and phono-
logical change proper. An example of the former type is the introduction
of a long vowel in the singular forms of originally short-voweled Mid-
dle High German nominal stems like [tag] 'day', which had come to
have a long vowel in the plural forms, [taiga] 'days', on account of
Open Syllable Lengthening (OSL). As a result of this analogical length-
ening, the phonological form of the stem uniformly came to have a long
vowel. Within the category of phonological change proper, Kiparsky
(1988,1995) distinguishes two types. First, there are changes involving
lexical rules, which allow exceptions, and whose effects may display
lexical diffusion. For instance, the replacement of [u:] by the fronted
[y:] in the eastern dialects of Middle Dutch occurred on a word-by-word
basis, as evidenced by Kloeke (1927), who showed that in those dialects
[muis] 'mouse' may have a back vowel and [hy:s] 'house', earlier
[huis], a front vowel. Second, there are changes involving postlexical
rules, which come closest to the Neogrammarian ideal of gradual, ex-
ceptionless change. We may divide postlexical phonological changes
further into those that allow the new sound to merge with an existing
sound, which may well show some lexical diffusion in that the merger
in some words may be ahead of others, and those which, spectacularly,
lead to the creation of novel phonological representations (novel for the
language in question, that is).1 Thus, Kiparsky's categorisation of sound
change is as shown in Figure 1.
This chapter investigates four instances of postlexical change which
gave rise to novel representations. It will be argued that for a correct
understanding of the motivation for such changes, postlexical phonolog-
ical changes must be carefully dissected into the phonetic change and
its phonological interpretation. The phonological 'change' occurs when,
216 Carlos Gussenhoven
Sound change
Analogical change Phonological

(paradigm uniformity} change proper
Lexical Postlexical
phonological change phonological change
(lexical diffusion) (Neogrammarian change}
novel old structure:

structure merger
Figure 1. Kiparsky's categorisation of sound change
usually in the course of the acquisition process, language users analyse

a set of speech forms differently from how their elders represent them.
The motivation for the new phonological representation is provided by
discrepancies between the traditional phonological representation and
the output of the phonetic implementation: speakers can only deviate
so much from a natural realisation of phonological forms. When viewed
purely as a different way of representing phonetic forms, the motivation
for such phonological change is therefore neither sociological (speakers
are unaware of the phonological shapes of their own or other people's
morphemes, and thus cannot pride themselves on them or be ashamed
of them), nor phonetic (the new representation will not make things
easier to say or easier to perceive), but lies in the previously unnatural
relation between how we represent speech and how we articulate it.
In this chapter, we will trace the history of a lexical tone contrast
in a group of West Germanic dialects, from its origin, the tonogenesis,
to the current situation in one such dialect, that of the city of Roermond
in the Netherlands. In doing so, four points will be identified at which
young speakers must have decided to adopt representations that differed
from those of the earlier generation, as discrepancies had arisen between
the old representations and their phonetic output. Speakers may in fact
have a variety of reasons for allowing discrepancies between phonologi-
cal representations and phonetic forms to arise. Sometimes, the only
motivation is social: speakers desire to sound like those they value and
The Central Franconian tone contrast 217
can identify with (Labov 1963), which may necessitate an increase in

the distance between phonological representation and phonetic form.
In such purely socially induced cases, it is probably always possible to
identify a non-social motivation for the origin of the new behaviour,
which lies at some point in the recent past, within a different subgroup
of the speech community. One of the four changes in the tonal phonol-
ogy of Central Franconian, a change that introduced a lexical tone into
the phonology, will be argued to be a case of this kind. Briefly, what
happened was that an innovation which arose as a result of an analogi-
cal ,change, viz. the analogical lengthening of short vowels in singular
noun forms whose plurals had undergone vowel lengthening as a result
of Open Syllable Lengthening (OSL), was emulated by a group of
speakers who could ill afford to adopt a lengthened vowel, as this move
would have obliterated the contrast between singular and plural forms
in their dialect. The representation of the phonetically lengthened vowel
as a long, i.e. bimoraic vowel, was thus unavailable to this group of
speakers, and the tonal interpretation of the lengthened vowel arose as
a spectacular solution to their problem.
The more common reason for allowing discrepancies to arise be-
tween phonological forms and phonetic outputs is ergonomic, in the
sense that forms may be laborious from an articulatory point of view
or inefficient from a perceptual point of view (Martinet 1952, and more
recently e.g. Flemming 1996; Boersma 1998). The three subsequent
phonological innovations which we will identify in the history of the
tonal phonology of these dialects are examples of this. After the new
lexical tone had spread through the lexicon, and words containing it
were used in the rich array of intonational contours of the dialect, a
number of instances of poor ergonomics must have become apparent.
In two cases, contrasts were no longer clearly distinguishable, while
in one case, a particular form had become hard to pronounce. The three
phonetic changes that were made to remedy these inefficiencies received
novel representations, because the older representation had by then
become unreasonably abstract. Clearly, therefore, it is important to
distinguish the phonetic change from the decision to employ a particular
phonological representation, since these events are essentially different
phenomena. Changes in the phonetic implementation are made either
because of speech ergonomics or for purely social reasons. The choice
of a representation is guided by considerations of naturalness (in the

sense of keeping the connections between representations and outputs
reasonably direct), as well as by considerations of morphological ergo-
nomics, which favour the maintenance of a one-to-one relation between
morphemes and phonological forms.
The relation between Neogrammarian change and phonological
markedness as presented in this chapter differs from that in Kiparsky
(1995: 641). In Kiparsky's view, the reason why phonological systems
turn out to be typologically well-behaved in spite of the fact that pho-
netic change is non-structural, i.e. purely phonetically conditioned, is
that children refuse to incorporate the perhaps sometimes fanciful
innovations introduced by their elders. It is the language learner that
"selectively intervenes in the data, favouring those variants which best
conform to the language's system. [.. .] Even 'impossible' innovations
can be admitted into the pool of phonetic variation; they will simply
never make it into anyone's grammar". In the view defended here, the
language learning child will duly incorporate any phonetic innovations
into the phonology, sometimes bending over backwards in doing so.
The reason for the trend towards unmarked systems is sought in the
motivation that adult speakers have for steering their phonetic outputs
towards variants that are economically favourable from the point of
view of production and perception. The existence of this trend may be
obscured by the circumstance that phonetically changed forms are
sometimes motivated by considerations that have nothing to do with
speech ergonomics, an example of which is the change that gave rise
to the lexical tone in Central Franconian, as well as by the fact that a
decision to improve the articulation of one form, or the perceptibility
of one contrast, need not exclusively lead to less marked representa-
tions. Two examples of such decisions leading to marked effects are
given in this chapter. One is the introduction of falling intonation to
express interrogative meaning in the dialect of Roermond. This move
improved the perceptibility of the lexical tone distinction, but the im-
provement was at the cost of a typologically less common relation
between intonational form and intonation function. Another example
is the remarkable feature of locating intonational boundary tones to the
left of a lexical tone, if this lexical tone occurs on the last mora of the
intonational phrase (Gussenhoven to appear a, to appear b). While this
move greatly simplified the relation between the phonetic output and
the phonological representation, it is typologically unusual, to the extent
that I know of no other example.
1.1. The lexical tone contrast
The geographical distribution of the tone contrast, the 'polytonic' area,

is given in Figure I 2 . The area roughly coincides with Wiesinger's
Central Franconian dialect area (1983a: 855), and Letzebuergesch and
the Limburgian dialects to the east of the German frontier in
Luxemburg, Belgium and the Netherlands. The situation for the dialects
in the Netherlands is the least precarious, with social support generally
strong throughout the area. In Belgium and Germany, the dialects are
subject to erosion, and are being replaced with forms from the regional
or national standards, while the tone contrast in Letzebuergesch, the
socially widely supported language of Luxemburg, may have disap-
peared (cf. Goudaillier 1987).
Phonetic descriptions in the dialectological literature give a variety
of characterisations of the difference between the two tonal patterns
and use different terms to refer to them (Frings 1916, 1922: 279;
Goossens 1959; Heike 1962, 1983; Wiesinger 1975; de Vaan 1999),
some of which are given in (1). In this chapter, the terms Accent 1 and
Accent 2 will be used; they will be indicated in transcriptions by super-
script T and '2', respectively, after the word concerned.
(1) StosstonlSchärfung (also: Tone 1 [Schmidt 1986], Accent 1 [Gus-

senhoven and van der Vliet 1999]). Short; sudden end; sometimes
ending with glottalisation; in final position 'zweigipflig' intensity;3
falling pitch
Schleifton/Dehnung (also: Tone 2, Accent 2). Long; sustained;
'zweigipflig' tone; level pitch, rising pitch.
More recently, it has been stressed that the tonal shape of the word
accents depends on the intonation pattern used, and the contrast will
thus take a different form depending on whether it occurs with declara-
NETHERLANDS GERMANY
Venlo /
>——..-> Tegelen «7
\ Weert D sseldorf
*"-·\.Α '
•s •'Roermond •
./ MaasBracht Solingen
j I
v
AHasselt/
i
" ·^v.
K ln
φ /Maastricht
Tongeren ··'·"'.'""·—-^ φ Aachen
Moresaet"^ Bonn
BELGIUM
Koblenz'
Mayen
\LUXEMBURG? φ Trier Bad Kreuznach

V·· /'? ·
\ / · /'
\r. -v Luxemburg·"
FRANCE
Figure 2. Geographical distribution of the lexical tone contrast. Adapted from

Gussenhoven and Bruce 1999.
tive or with question intonation, or whether it is focused or unfocused,

with details varying from dialect to dialect (Schmidt 1986; Gussenhoven
and van der Vliet 1999; Gussenhoven to appear a).The picture that
arises from the latter two studies is that phonologically, the contrast is
between a Η-tone on the second sonorant mora of the stressed syllable
(Accent 2) versus its absence (Accent 1). Our initial question, therefore,
is this: why should some words at some stage in the history of West
Germanic have come to be interpreted as having a Η-tone at the end
of their stressed syllable? The second question is: what effect did the
introduction of this Η-tone have on the intonational system? The second
question will be related to the intonational system of the dialect of
Roermond, which, in addition to displaying other remarkable features,
orders the lexical Η-tone after the final intonational boundary tones,
when the lexical tone is on the IP-final mora.
This chapter is organised as follows. In Section 2, earlier attempts
at explaining the origin of the lexical tone contrast are reviewed and
their inadequacies pointed out (cf. also Schmidt 1986, which is still the
most comprehensive survey of the literature). Section 3 presents the new
account. Section 4 traces the development to the present-day tonal
system in the dialect of Roermond. Section 5 offers a conclusion.
2. Segmental correlates of the lexical tone contrast and earlier

tonogenesis theories
In the dialectological descriptions of the distribution of Accent 1 and

Accent 2, three phonological correlations are identified. For our pur-
poses, we can largely ignore the various dependencies among them in
the descriptions of the various dialects (see Schmidt 1986; de Vaan
1999 for more details).4
1. Vowel height. Within the class of long vowels, Accent 1 occurs on
syllables with Middle High German (MHG) [e:, 0:, o:, as:, a:]
(where [0:,ae:] are umlauted [or, a:]), and Accent 2 on monosyllabic
words with MHG [i:, yi, ui] and the diphthongs MHG [ei, cey, AU].
2. Consonant voicing. Accent 2 occurs on syllables followed by a
voiceless obstruent in the onset of the next (unstressed) syllable.
3. Apocope. The loss of a reduced word-final schwa in disyllables
(henceforth APOCOPE) is correlated with Accent 1 in the remaining

monosyllable.
In this section, it will be argued that none of these factors is to be held

responsible for the origin of the lexical tone, and that the first two
factors are at best contexts that influenced the distribution of the lexical
-tone, once it had arisen independently. The influence of the third
factor is not phonetic, but is to be explained by analogy, in a way to
be made explicit in Section 3.
2.1. Vowel height
High and low vowels differ in duration. There have been suggestions
linking the emergence of the tone contrast with the correlation between
degree of vowel opening and duration. The generally accepted explana-
tion is that low vowels require a greater degree of tongue lowering, or
tongue and jaw lowering, than high vowels, thus requiring more time
(e.g. Catford 1977: 197). According to Bach (1921) (cited from Frings
1934) the natural tendency of high vowels to be short and of low vowels
to be long was counteracted by the speakers of Central Franconian, who
thus made high vowels somewhat longer (Accent 2) and low vowels
somewhat shorter (Accent 1) than they would naturally be otherwise.
The idea here is that all vowels ideally occur in the same durational
unit, and that Accent 1 arose "[um denen] ein Normalmaß der Dauer
und damit der von ihnen erforderten Energie zu geben" (Bach 1921:
280). This account fails empirically. The natural correlation between
vowel height and duration may give rise to phonological quantity differ-
ences between high and non-high vowels, as is the case in standard
Dutch (Nooteboom 1972: 45, Booij 1995: 5), quite in line with the
general finding that phonological patterns are, often at some remove,
phonetically motivated. A situation in which high vowels become longer
for being high is typologically unsupported (Jespersen 1913: 181).
A second duration-based explanation is by van Wijk (1939), which
was recently drawn attention to, and supported, by de Vaan (1999).
Van Wijk stressed that Accent 1 not only occurs on non-high vowels,
but also on vowels that preceded voiced consonants, both of which tend
to be longer than high vowels and vowels that precede voiceless conso-
nants, respectively, and proposed that Accent 1 developed in syllables
with these phonetically longer vowels. He takes his case to be strength-
ened by the fact that a contrastively falling intonation developed in
Kashubian on long vowels when originally short vowels were length-
ened, but remained level-toned. Van Wijk is not troubled by the circum-
stance that in Franconian the phonetically longer vowels developed
Accent 1, but that in the present-day dialects, vowels with Accent 1 are
generally shorter that their counterparts with Accent 2. According to
van Wijk, this discrepancy is caused by a subsequent transfer of pho-
netic length to phonetic intensity: syllables with Accent 1 are pro-
nounced with greater (impressionistic) intensity, in particular at the start
of the syllable, than syllables with Accent 2. In the light of current
knowledge, this scenario is implausible. First, it is not clear what the
extra intensity amounts to (I do not find that the two word accents differ
in RMS intensity, the measure commonly traced by speech analysis
systems), and second, it is not clear that intensity and duration are
traded off against each other in speech production or in phonological
change.
Vowel height is generally correlated with rate of vocal cords vibra-
tion, a phenomenon known as 'intrinsic pitch': higher vowels have
higher pitch than lower vowels, all else being equal. Together with
consonantal pitch perturbations, intrinsic pitch is referred to as
microprosody5. One explanation for this correlation between vowel
height and pitch is the pull that a raised tongue body exerts via the
muscles and the ligaments between the tongue root and the thyroid,
which may have a tensing effect on the vocal cords (Hombert 1978;
Ohala 1978; Laver 1997: 454ff). There are no reports of tonogenesis
triggered by vowel height, and I do not know of accounts of tonogenesis
in Franconian based on intrinsic pitch. It would indeed be an unlikely
scenario: listeners would have to reinterpret the pitch difference be-
tween, for example, [i] and [e] as contrastive, high-toned /i/ and low-
toned III (with or without a concomitant vowel height difference). At
best, the phonologically different vowel heights could become associ-
ated with pre-existing, different tones: high vowels might be favoured
in high-pitched contexts, low vowels in low-pitched contexts. From the
distributional statements in the literature involving vowel height, it may
be concluded that this is what happened in Franconian. But if so, the

tonal contrast preceded the emergence of the correlation.
2.2. Consonant voicing
Although to different degrees, vowels are universally longer before

voiced consonants than before voiceless consonants. The explanation
is that duration is here used as an enhancing feature signalling the
contrast between voiced and voiceless post-vocalic obstruents: a longer
vowel suggests a shorter consonant, and since, for aerodynamic reasons,
voiced obstruents are shorter than voiceless ones, longer vowels are
typically used before voiced obstruents. The enhancing nature of the
durational difference is suggested by the observation that languages with
considerable (gradient) devoicing, like English and Swedish, rely more
on the difference in vowel duration than languages that have less
devoicing, like French and Arabic (cf. Kingston and Diehl 1994, with
reference to data like those in Kluender, Diehl and Wright 1988). In
Section 2.1, Bach's and van Wijk's attempts to base the tonogenesis
on this durational difference were already discussed.
The effect of laryngeal specifications of consonants on the rate of
vocal cord vibration of following vowels (consonantal perturbations)
is well known, and phonological reinterpretation of the effect is well
attested (Hyman 1973; Ohala 1978; Hombert 1978; Kaji 1999). The
most probable explanation for the differential effect of voiced and
voiceless consonants on the following vowel is physiological, rather
than aerodynamic. Two different physiological explanations have been
put forward (cf. Hombert 1978; Ohala 1978). One is that vocal cord
stiffness, which is required for the voicelessness gesture, leads to high
FO when voicing is begun, relative to the slack posture of the vocal
cords during voicing (Halle and Stevens 1971). The other explanation
is to be found in the vertical displacement of the larynx: lowering the
larynx is an efficient way of increasing the volume of air inside the
pharynx during voiced obstruents, as it facilitates glottal flow, and thus
voicing. Because the larynx is higher during voiceless consonants, the
effect might in part be attributed to this difference in larynx height. It
appears to be difficult to corroborate these theories experimentally. It
should be borne in mind that pitch perturbations are not necessarily

automatic, but may be under the control of the speaker, as shown by
Kingston and Diehl (1994). This means that their presence is not fully
dependent on the presence of the physiological conditions that are
typically responsible for creating them.
Postvocalically, tonogenesis seems to be restricted to the reinterpreta-
tion of laryngeal segments. The [h], like breathy voice, has a lowering
effect on the preceding vowel, while [?] has a raising effect. In the case
of breathiness, the lowering appears to be due to the expenditure of air
for the production of friction, while the raising effect of the glottal stop
is probably due to the tenseness or tightness of the voice just before the
glottal closure (Kingston 1985,1988). The classic paper is Haudricourt
(1954), whose account of the origin of Vietnamese tones is given in
Table I, which has been adapted from Matisoff (1999).
In the Central Franconian case, the putative tonogenesis would have
to have arisen through a re-interpretation of a voicing distinction in
coda obstruents, a type of tonogenesis characterised as "extremely rare"
by Hombert (1978: 92), and probably unattested. The only example
given by him, Maran (1971), was not in fact presented as a historical
account of the development of lexical tone, but rather as an abstract,
Table 1. Haudricourt's account of the origin of six tones in Vietnamese. A three-way

coda opposition between absence of coda, [h], and [?] was reinterpreted as mid, low
and high tone. Subsequently, the voicing distinction in onset obstruents was rein-
terpreted tonally, leading to six-way lexical tone opposition (after Matisoff 1999).
Consonantal oppositions before tonogenesis
No coda -h -?
p pa pah pa?
b ba bah ba?
Reinterpretation of coda (6th c. CE)
Mid Falling Rising
p pa pa pa
b ba ba ba
Reinterpretation of onset (12th c. CE)
Mid Falling Rising
Higher pa pa pa
Lower pa pa pa
synchronic description whereby a tone contrast is derived from an

unetymological underlying voicing contrast, an analysis which was
criticised as unhelpful by Matisoff (1973).
It thus seems unlikely that in a corner of the West Germanic dialect
area an otherwise unattested type of tonogenesis should have occurred.
More probably, the effect of the post-vocalic consonant has same expla-
nation as the effect of vowel height: once the tone contrast had arisen,
it acquired a phonetically natural distribution as determined by the
microprosody. As we will see below, it is probable that the voicing
distinction in the onset of unstressed syllables was in the process of
being lost at the time of the tonogenesis, because it came to be in the
coda of the preceding syllable as a result of variable apocope. Apoc-
opated monosyllabic forms varied with disyllables with schwa in the
second syllable, and if—for some reason—the phonological possibility
arose for having a Η-tone late in the syllable, speakers may have chosen
to have it in words with an originally voiceless consonant in the coda,
since by doing so, they were able to maintain the contrast with origi-
nally voiced consonants in the same position. At best, therefore, we can
infer a clue to the tone's origin from the consonantal connection: since
it is a post-vocalic voicing contrast that served as a haven for the tonal
distinction, the tone contrast, when it originated, might likewise have
been located in the second half of the syllable.
23. Apocope
A frequently mentioned connection between the Accent 2-Accent 1

distinction and other phonological features is the loss of post-stress,
word-final schwa, henceforth APOCOPE, which is associated with Ac-
cent 1, frequently in combination with the consonantal condition listed
above. There have broadly been three attempts to relate the development
of Accent 1 to the loss of post-stress schwa. Two of these concern the
transfer of a disyllabic prosodic pattern onto a monosyllable, while
one is based on the retention of polysyllabic shortening in trochees
in orphaned monosyllables after APOCOPE. The two variants of the
transfer account seek to transfer (a) the stress pattern and (b) the tonal
pattern.
1. Transfer of polysyllabic prosodic pattern: Stress

Leiherer (1908: § 54) sees Accent 1 as a tonal imitation in the
monosyllable of the stress pattern of the original disyllabic strong-
weak pattern: "die ursprüngliche Silbenzahl der Wörter ist verkürzt,
aber die einstige Accentabstufung der Silben zeigt in der Beto-
ningsweise der allein übrig gebliebenen Stammsilben ihren Re-
flex" (cited from Grootaers and Grauls 1930: 94). Processes that
project polysyllabic stress patterns onto monosyllables are unknown,
however. The closest parallel may be the emergence of a long
syllable from a sequence of two between which an intervening
consonant was elided, a fairly frequent process (cf. loss of intervo-
calic [y] in Turkish, Clements and Keyser 1983). In such cases,
there may be metrical repercussions if the language were to acquire
long vowels in this way for the first time, and becomes quantity-
sensitive as a result, but nothing resembling Accent 1 is to be ex-
pected.
2. Transfer of polysyllabic prosodic pattern: Tone
In his discussion of the origin of Accent l, Heike (1983) refers to
Lehiste (1978), who accounts for the origin of the Estonian falling
pitch pattern by assuming it arose from the transfer of a disyllabic
HL melody to a monosyllable. However, the Estonian case is not
comparable to the Central Franconian Accent 1. Instead of leading
to a shortening of the remaining monosyllable, in Estonian the tonal
transfer led to the development of Überlänge, i.e., trimoraic sylla-
bles, by Lehiste's account (repeated in Lehiste 1999). In addition
to short and long vowels, both of which have level high pitch, Esto-
nian has trimoraic vowels which are pronounced with falling pitch
(a phonological package deal which makes it difficult to decide
whether the tone or the third mora is underlying). Lehiste's sugges-
tion is that the tonal contour of the disyllabic was transferred to the
monosyllable, which thus acquired its falling pitch, but also its
overlong duration. Translating her account into autosegmental pho-
nology would give us schwa-deletion with retention of postlexical
L, which tone then docks onto the preceding syllable, where it re-
quires its own mora. Obviously, this account does not transfer to
APOCOPE in Central Franconian, where a shortened, not a length-
ened, monosyllable developed.6
3. Retention of polysyllabic shortening in the monosyllable

The third explanation is based on rhythmic effects on syllable dura-
tion. According to this much-cited account, the shortening of
apocopated words is due to polysyllabic shortening, as in Zahl,
zahle, zahlende, where the sound sequence [tsail] takes up less time
the more syllables there are in the word or foot (Frings 1916: 57).
In this view, Accent 1 was originally an allophonic intonational
pattern. After APOCOPE, the shortening, or Accent 1, was preserved,
and from then on contrasted with Accent 2. The durational reduction
of a stressed syllable as a function of the number of unstressed
syllables in the same trochee or word has been widely reported (e.g.
Nooteboom 1972). However, the retention of the shorter duration
typical of stressed syllables in polysyllabic words after the loss of
a weak syllable is otherwise unattested. Indeed, Frings (1934: 112)
says about his 1916 account: "Meine Erklärung hat mich nie ganz
befriedigt".
In summary, none of the three historical segmental correlates of the

Central Franconian tone contrast provides a likely location for its origin.
The correlations with vowel height and post-vocalic consonant voicing
must be due to tendencies to distribute a newly arrived tone contrast
in a phonetically natural way. A hint at how the tone contrast arose may
be provided by the consonantal correlate: the contrast may have arisen
in the second half of the stressed syllable, where high tone was opposed
to low tone.
3. A new account
In this section a new account is provided of the Central Franconian

tonogenesis. It will be argued that it arose from a conflict between two
forces. One was the desire to sound like those whom one values, the
social motivation referred to in the introduction. The second was the
desire to keep morphological contrasts intact, most notably the distinc-
tion between singular and plural forms, which had come under threat
as a result of APOCOPE. In fact, Lahiri, Riad and Jacobs (1999) already
hinted that "[i]f in the dialects that did develop tone, all final unac-
cented schwas were deleted, a tonal contrast could have developed to

accentuate or re-establish a basic morphological contrast." In addition
to singulars and plurals, also dative singular forms threatened to merge
with nominative/accusative singular forms in nouns and adjectives,
while the same goes for infinitives and bare verb stems. First, to under-
score the importance that the German dialects attached to the preserva-
tion of a singular-plural contrast, a brief review is given of some solu-
tions that were adopted to achieve this.
3.1. Defences against morphological neutralisation
Around 1000-1200 CE, pairs of forms that were kept distinct because
of the presence of final [a] in one form came to be variably homopho-
nous because of APOCOPE. In addition to the solution adopted by stan-
dard Dutch and German, which consisted in generalising plural suffixes
and generalising APOCOPE in the singular, a wide variety of solutions
were adopted in the German dialects.
1. High Prussian: suspension of final devoicing. Although quite gener-
ally, obstruents are voiceless in the syllable coda in German and
Dutch, High Prussian retained the voicing in voiced obstruents
occurring before apocopated schwa. As a result, [tsvaig] Zweige
'twig' had a voiced plosive, but [taik] Teik 'dough' a voiceless one.
This distinction was utilised to differentiate singulars from plurals,
as in [brout-broud] 'loaf-loaves', [ta:k-ta:g] 'day-days' (Wiesinger
1983a: 872). This also occurred in Yiddish, some Swiss German
dialects and Appalachian English (Anttila 1972: 81,195).
2. Brandenburg, Hamburg: phonologisation of consonant-dependent
phonetic vowel duration difference. In a further twist, other north
German dialects re-phonologised the obstruent voicing contrast,
which is almost universally accompanied by a vowel duration differ-
ence, as a vowel quantity contrast, leading to the creation of Über-
länge, or trimoraic syllables. That is, phonetic lengthening before
voiced obstruents gave [deif-dei:v] 'thief-thieves', as it must have
done in High Prussian, but subsequent reinterpretation of the dura-
tional difference as a quantity distinction led to a contrast between
bimoraic and trimoraic vowels: [deif-deiif] (Wiesinger 1983a: 829),
without any tonal distinction (Kohler 1984).7 This origin of north

German trimoraicity is apparent from the fact that singulars and
plurals of stems ending in sonorants became homophones, as in the
case of [stem] 'stone SG/PL'. (This scenario thus provides one half
of the answer to the question posed by Ternes (1981) why in Ham-
burg [haus] 'house-NOM/ACC', cf. Standard German Haus, is shorter
than [haius] 'house-DAT', cf. standard German Hause, while in
Central Franconian the reverse is found; the other half is to be pro-
vided in the remainder of this section.)
3. Many dialects: generalisation of umlauted plurals. A much-used ploy
to create different singular and plural forms was the adoption of
umlauted plurals where there was no historical motivation for the
vowel fronting. Dingeldein (1983) mentions tag 'days', arm 'arms',
hiind 'dogs'.
4. Central Hessian: reverse umlaut. Where the noun stem happened to
have a front vowel, a back vowel was introduced in the singular
which might have been, but was not, the source of an umlauted
vowel in the plural, as in Dingeldein's (1983) example [füj-fij]
'fish-fishes'.
5. Central and North Bavarian: gemination of final consonant. APOC-
OPE was compensated for by the lengthening of the preceding conso-
nant according to Wiesinger (1983c: 1090), as in [fij-fiji] 'fish-
fishes' (rival analyses exist for this form).
In addition, there were various more incidental segmental effects which

led to a differentiation like [honk-hon] 'dog-dogs' (Dingeldein 1983).
To this phonological repertoire, one further feature needs to be added
for Central Franconian: tone. Many dialectological accounts report cases
in which segmentally identical forms have Accent 2 in the singular and
Accent 1 in the plural. In the contemporary dialects, the functional load
is less than that of umlaut. To take an arbitrary case, that of the dialect
of Tegelen (near Venlo), Houx et al. (1968) list nine singular-plural
pairs that differ by tone alone, as against ten that differ by tone and
umlaut, and 59 that differ by umlaut alone. It would therefore seem
useful to have closer look at the possible fate of singular and plural
forms in Central Franconian.
3.2. The development of tone as a result of 'fake' analogical

lengthening
One of the ways in which singulars might have been kept distinct from
plurals is by contrasting vowel length, something which might have
been achieved for a sizeable part of the vocabulary through OPEN
SYLLABLE LENGTHENING (OSL), which affected short vowels before
single, non-geminate consonants, as in [haiban], from [haban] (Russ
1978: 74, Dresher, this volume), a phonologisation of a well-attested
phonetic tendency (Maddieson 1985). Thus, Middle High German [tak-
taga] 'day-days' led to [tak-taiga] after OSL, a situation guaranteed
to preserve the difference between singulars and plurals even after
APOCOPE. However, a further development effectively prevented this
solution form being employed. A corollary of the desire to have differ-
ent phonological forms for different morphemes is to have the same
phonological form for the same morpheme, i.e. to have paradigm unifor-
mity, also known as Humboldt's principle. That is, it is pointless to take
the 'difference' principle to the extreme of having a different phonologi-
cal form for every simplex or complex word, as this would frustrate the
effort to recognise morphemes within words, just as it is pointless to
take the 'uniformity' principle to the extreme of having a single phono-
logical form for every simplex or complex word, which would defeat
attempts to recognise any morpheme at all (cf. Antilla 1972: passim,
Kiparsky 1982a).8
(2) Relations between phonological forms and morphological

forms are one-to-one
Principle (2) was responsible for the fact that many noun stems which
had different vowel lengths in the singular and the plural underwent
analogical changes. Usually, it was the singular which was given the
long vowel of the plural, a process known as ANALOGICAL LENGTH-
ENING (AL), but the opposite also occurred. As a result, standard
German no longer has vowel quantity alternations of this type: [taik-
'ta:gan]. OSL also applied in Dutch, somewhat earlier than in German
according to Schönfeld (1959: 32), but AL was incomplete, so that
Dutch still has a large number of nouns with a short vowel in the singu-
lar and a long vowel in the plural, like [dax-da:y9(n)].
Now imagine a situation in which both OSL and APOCOPE, but not
AL, had applied, giving [dax-da:x], a situation likely to arise in a zone
between Dutch, where OSL was early, but without follow-up AL, and
German, in which AL had already applied, i.e. a geographically interme-
diate dialect like Central Franconian. Imagine, further, that AL was
coming in from the German heartland. In such a situation, speakers
would have to resist the adoption of AL, since they risk losing the
contrast between singular and plural forms of nouns that have under-
gone OSL, ending up with the undesirable *[da:x-daix]. On the other
hand, the adoption of AL, or rather, of the auditory effect of AL, might
conceivably take place if some other way could be found to represent
a phonetically lengthened version of the singular. It is suggested that
it is this predicament which gave rise to the Central Franconian lexical
tone. Phonetic lengthening was achieved in a way that stayed well clear
of the phonetic form of the plural, and must have consisted in lengthen-
ing the short vowel while retaining its highish (intonational) pitch, a
pronunciation I will indicate by the diacritic ["]: [~dax]. Thus, speakers
'faked' AL, so as to sound like their easterly neighbours, but refused
to give up their morphological distinction. These speakers—or their
flummoxed contemporaries—must have been hard put to it to interpret
this ploy phonologically. One option might have been to overshoot the
quantity of the plural, and create trimoraic vowels, a reversal of the
durational difference, another the implementation of a push chain shift,
whereby the plural becomes trimoraic and the singular bimoraic, but
neither of these measures would have brought them much closer in line
with the speakers they were trying to emulate. The way out was to
interpret the length tonally: the high level pitch was attributed to a H-
tone at the end of the syllable, which contrasted with its absence in the
plural. This is given in (3) The phonetic implementation of declarative
intonation of the plural would have to be firmly falling, of course, in
order for this ploy to work. In (4), the reconstructed historical develop-
ment is given. (I'm abstracting away from the nature of the post-vocalic
consonant, which may still have been a stop.).
(3) a. dax b. daix

I
H
'day' 'days'
(4) Sing. Plural

Middle High German dax daya
OSL dax daiya
APOCOPE dax daix
FAKE AL [~dax] daix
Interpret duration as H dax daix
I
H
Subsequently, the phonetically lengthened vowel could be interpreted

as phonologically long, as in (5), something which could safely be done,
since the tonal distinction satisfied the requirements of (2). Indeed,
present-day Dutch Limburgian dialects confine the tonal opposition to
syllables with two sonorant moras (short vowel plus sonorant consonant,
long vowel or diphthong), and a form like (3a) could not exist. This
suggests that the location of the tone came to be restricted to a second
sonorant mora (i.e. the second half of a long vowel or diphthong, or
the sonorant consonant after a short vowel).
(5) Interpret as long vowel a. daax b. daax

I
H
A possible objection to our account might be that if the tonogenesis

followed APOCOPE, it is not clear how the voicing of the onset consonant
in the apocopated syllable can determine the choice of tone, with voice-
less consonants favouring Accent 2, if we assume that final devoicing
neutralised the voicing contrast after apocope. The explanation for this
apparent violation of the hypothesised chronology must be that all these
processes were variable. There is a wide variety of plural forms in the
dialects even to this day, and levelling of plural forms in the direction
of the national standard is still continuing in the Dutch Limburgian
dialects, for example. Thus, within the relevant dialects, apocopated and
non-apocopated plurals continued to exist after the tonogenesis.
3.3. Arguments supporting the new account
The hypothesis that Accent 2 began as faked analogical lengthening

explains a number of facts.
1. The phonetic realisation of Accent 2 is a lengthened syllable (in

addition to the tonal features), while conversely, Accent 1 is phoneti-
cally short. This connection is straightforwardly accounted for, since
the origin of Accent 2 is a lengthened vowel.
2. The tonal contrast amounts to a Η-tone late in the syllable with
Accent 2, versus no tone in Accent 1. Exactly this representation has
been independently postulated by Hermans (1985) for the dialect of
Maasbracht, Gussenhoven and van der Vliet (1999) for the dialect
of Venlo, and Gussenhoven (to appear a, to appear b) for that of
Roermond.9 The presence of a Η-tone late in the syllable was also
suggested by the fact that it came to be used in words with a voice-
less consonant in the coda or in the onset of the next weak syllable
(Section 2).
3. Accent 2 is used on singular forms, Accent 1 on plural forms, in
words that are otherwise phonologically identical, as observed at the
end of Section 3.1. Many dialects have sets of such words, both with
plurals that underwent OSL and with plurals that failed to satisfy the
conditions for that process, containing original long vowels or diph-
thongs or a short vowel plus a pre-consonantal sonorant consonant.
The latter must have arisen through the generalisation of the tonal
pattern in the former. In (6) examples are given of such analogical
tonal minimal pairs from the dialects of Maastricht (Endepols 1955),
while (7) does the same for Tongeren (Stevens 1986):
(6) [bein2]-[bein'] 'leg'-'legs'

[baeR9x2]-[baeR9x' ] 'mountain'-'mountains'
[peiRt2]-[pe:Rt'] 'horse'-'horses'
[stein2]-[stein'] 'stone'-'stones'
(7) [bRi:f2]-[bRiif] 'letter '-'letters'

[kiiPHki:!1] 'shirt'-'shirts'
[knaijn2]-[kna:jn'] 'rabbit'-'rabbits'
91 'nut'-'nuts'
4. Accent 1 is associated with apocope, as was observed in Section 2.

This is explained by the fact that the prelude to 'faked' AL was the
APOCOPE in certain plural forms, which had contrastive Accent 1
when Accent 2 appeared in the singular forms. The two phenomena
are thus in no way connected in any phonetic way, as has been
widely assumed (cf. Section 2).
5. Grootaers and Grauls (1930: 93) observe that the cognates of all
Dutch nouns with short vowels in the singular that alternate with
long vowels in the plural have Accent 2 in the dialect of Hasselt.
This is directly explained by our account: it is those forms that
developed Accent 2 in the first place10. The occurrence of Accent 2
on singular nouns whose plurals underwent OSL is highly regular
in other dialects as well. Table 2 lists the standard Dutch nouns with
'irregular' plurals, based on Lahiri and Dresner (1999), and gives
cognates in the dialects of Roermond and Tongeren (Kats 1985;
Stevens 1986) (I have added the words for 'city', 'praise', 'war' and
'spit'). Overwhelmingly, the singulars have Accent 2. As observed
above, the singulars underwent lengthening after the tonogenesis.
The plural forms have by and large lost their uninflected forms, and
only 'day' and 'way' are now unadulterated minimal pairs. For the
rest, a wide variety of largely a-historical forms have arisen in the
dialects, such as umlauted forms, the suffixes er, e, and incidental
features like d-VOCALISATION (cf. e.g. 'leaf, 'smith', Schönfeld
1959: 32ff .). In almost all cases in which segmental differences were
introduced, Accent 2 has been generalised to the plural in one of the
two dialects; in seven instances, the dialects diverge here, with one
of them retaining the older Accent 1 .
In Roermond, short vowels followed by coda obstruents do not
contrast for tone, but for the dialect of Tongeren, Stevens does mark
such syllables for tone. There are two exceptional singulars with
Accent 1 in Tongeren: 'commandment' and 'swathe'. The first two
are probably loans, the third arguably rare, and happens to be
Table 2. Reflexes in Roermond and Tongeren with long vowels of singular forms that
failed to undergo analogical lengthening in standard Dutch. A '+' in the last column
indicates that a dialect has a cognate singular form with Accent 2, while a '-'
indicates a cognate singular form with Accent 1. Short vowel-plus-obstruent rhymes
are not marked for tone in Roermond, since no contrast is possible. The data, from
Kats (1955) and Stevens (1986), have been re-transcribed in IPA notation.
Dutch Roermond Tongeren
'bath' bat baids(n) bat baijsr2 bat2 bat3R2 +
'leaf blot blaid3(r3)(n) blait2 blaijer2 bbit2 blceir1 ++
'day' dax daiys(n) daix2 daix1 doix2 doix1 ++
'roof dak daika(n) daik2 da:ks2 doik2 dceiksr2 ++
'valley' dal daib(n) da:l2 daib2 - +
'hole' yat yaita(n) yait2 yaitsr2 yo:t2 yoeits 2
++
'prayer' ysbet y3beids(n) ysbaet ysbxijs2 ysbeit2 ysbeis 2
+
'short- ysbrek ysbreik3(n) - - ysbreik2 ysbreiks2 +
coming'
'command- ysbot y3boids(n) ysbot ysboijs2 ysbot1 ysboja1 —
ment'
'refresh- yslax y3la:y3(n) yslaix2 - - +
ment'
'glass' ylas ylaizs(n) ylais2 ylaizsr2 ybis2 yloeizsr2
2
'god' yot yoids(n) yoits2 - yot yod32 ++
(GEN)
'grave' yraf yraiva(n) yraif 2 yraivsr2 yroif 2 yroivs2 +
'garden' hof ho:v3(n) hoif 2 hceif husf2 hy3f' +
'den' hoi hoib(n) hoil2 hoib2 — +
'limb' lit leids(n) lit leis1 leit2 leis2 +
'fate' lot Io:t3(n) bit 2 bits2 lot2 Io(i)t3r2 ++
'war' Oirbx oirloiy3(n) - - - —
'path' pat paids(n) pa:t2 - - +
ship' sxip sxeips(n) Jeip2 /eips2 Jfop 2
Jisps2
+
'shot' sxot sxoit3(n) J0:t2 /0it2 /y3t2 /ysts2 ++
'lock' slot sloits(n) /bit2 Jlceij1 sluet2 slystsr2 ++
'smith' smit smeid3(n) Jmeit2 /meij1 smelt2 smei1 ++
'game' spel speib(n) speil2 - speil2 speib2 ++
'spit' spit speit3(n) - - speit2 +
'town' stat steid3(n) /tat Jtaeij1 stat2 steis2 +
'staff staf staivs(n) /taif2 staeif stoif2 stceif2 ++
'step' tret treid3(n) trait2 trasij1 traeit2 trait2 ++
'vessel' vat vaits(n) vait2 vaits2 vo:t2 vceitsr2 ++
'way' wex weiys(n) waeix2 waeix1 waeix2 waeix1 ++
'swathe' zwat zwaids(n) - - zwoit1 zwoits1 -
homophonous with [zwoit1] 'bacon rind', which has Accent 1. It is

to be observed that examples of Accent 1 on originally long vowels
(e.g. Tongeren [zwom1] 'swan', [hoix1] 'high', [bryak1] 'fracture',
[diif1] 'thief [beir1] 'boar') can easily be found. Also, long vowels
arising from OSL throughout the paradigm (i.e., with singular forms
that had disyllabic stems when OSL applied) end up either with
Accent 2 or Accent 1, examples from the dialect of Tongeren of the
latter being [buax1] 'bow', [huak1] 'hook', [neif] 'nephew', [Jo:!1]
'dish', [ζειχ1] 'saw').11
6. There are frequent reports that diphthongs with Accent 2 monoph-
thongise, or that otherwise general diphthongisation is blocked or
held back by Accent 2 (cf. Peeters and Scheuten 1989; Goossens
1998; Gussenhoven and Aarts 2000). This is a puzzling fact, as one
would expect the shorter syllable rhymes (the ones with Accent 1)
to have narrower diphthongs than the longer rhymes. If, however,
the original function of Accent 2 was to create the impression of
length in a situation where true lengthening was at a premium, this
fact falls into place: subjectively, monophthongs sound longer than
diphthongs that have the same physical duration.
Thus, the origin of the Central Franconian lexical tone is indeed related
to the desire to keep morphological words distinct, to return to the hunch
expressed by Lahiri, Riad and Jacobs (1999) quoted in Section 2. Of the
two scenarios offered by them, restoration or preservation of the morpho-
logical contrast, the first, restoration, is unlikely. This would mean that
AL was first carried through so as to neutralise the morphological dis-
tinction, and that speakers subsequently provided one of the forms with
lexical tone. It would make the fact that the singular was marked with
the Η-tone arbitrary, and would not explain why speakers did not opt
for the generalisation of some segmental plural marker already available
in the language. The correct scenario is thus one whereby the morpholog-
ical distinction was prevented from disappearing. The twist to the story
is that the phonetic behaviour that led to the threat of neutralisation
seems in itself so eminently uncalled for. If only the speakers had been
content to maintain the vowel quantity difference, i.e. followed the
option standard Dutch took, nothing like a lexical tone would have been
needed and thus would not have developed in the first place.
Now that we have accounted for the origin of the Η-tone, let us
consider its fate in the tonal system of the language.
4. A reconstruction of the development of the Roermond tonal

system
The introduction of a lexical tone in a language with a rich intonational

system, as Middle High German must have been, is a potentially disrup-
tive event. Probably, the phonetic space available for (postlexical) tonal
contrasts had been utilised by the intonation system, much as is the case
in the present-day West Germanic languages. In this section, it is argued
that the lexical tone did indeed cause a series of phonological changes
leading to a marked tonal system, that of the dialect of Roermond,
described in Gussenhoven (to appear a, to appear b). Three features of
this dialect can be identified which stand out as atypical in the context
of the nontonal varieties of Dutch and German.
1. The interrogative intonation, which in nontonal varieties takes the

form of one or more rising contours, is signalled by L* Η;Ι^. That
is, the contour ends with sharply falling pitch, a pattern otherwise
unreported for Germanic, but occurring in Bengali (Hayes and Lahiri
1991) and in south-eastern Europe (Ladd 1996: 213).
2. There is a constraint on rising pitch contours within the syllable.
Configuration (8a) is replaced with configuration (8b) whenever it
arises, and thus no syllable-internal HL-contours are tolerated, except
when final in the intonational phrase (IP).
(8) a. σ b. σ
Λ Λ
μ μ μ μ
L Η ... Τ]1Ρ L L ... Τ]ΙΡ
3. When a syllable with Accent 2 is final in the IP (and the lexical tone
thus occurs on the final sonorant mora of the IP), its location is to
the right of the IP-boundary tone. For example, if the compound

UpoRtdaix2] 'day' appears at the end of a yes-no question, its repre-
sentation is not as in (9a), but as in (9b).12 Here, the first syllable has
the L*-tone, associating with the main stress; H^ are the IP-bound-
ary tones, and H is the lexical tone, Accent!.
(9) a. [TpORtdaix] b. LfpoRtdaix]

IL* ΗΗ^
K I
L*
(unattested form)
Form (9b) illustrates the remarkable case of a falling-rising contour

on a syllable which is unaccented. This pronunciation easily mis-
taken for an intonational pitch accent by speakers of standard Dutch.
It is claimed that these three phonological features developed in the

precursor varieties of the Roermond dialect, and arose in response to
unacceptably large discrepancies between phonological representations
and new, ergonomically efficient phonetic forms which replaced earlier,
more faithful forms.
4.1. The development of interrogative H,L(
Let us assume that after the introduction of the lexical Η-tone, Middle
Franconian minimally retained an intonational system with movable
focus-marking pitch accents and two intonational melodies, a falling
'declarative' or 'finality' intonation and a rising 'interrogative' or 'non-
finality' intonation. In (lOa, b), a hypothetical example is given, in
modern German.
(10) a. f \ b.
Ich seh' 'nen MANN] Siehste 'nen MANN?]
H* L L* R
Ί see a man.' 'Do you see a man?'
The word for 'man' developed Accent 2, forming a minimal pair with
the word for 'basket' in the dialect of Mayen (Schmidt 1986). The
lexical representations of these words are thus as in (1 la, b). In (12b),
the hypothesised 'declarative' representations for these two words are
given, while (13a, b) are the equivalent 'interrogative' forms. The
realisation of Accent 2 in (12b) assumes that there is some sagging of
the pitch between the targets of the two Η-tones. This assumption is
supported by the Cologne data in Heike (1962) (see Figure 3) as well
as the Mayen data in Schmidt (1986) (see Figure 4). In both cases, the
declarative Accent 2 shows a dip.
(11) a. [man] 'basket' b. [man] 'man' (cf Schmidt 1986: 196)
(12) a. b.
Ich seh' 'nen [man] ] Ich seh' 'nen [man] ]
H* L H*H L;
Ί see a basket.' Ί see a man.'
(13) a. b.
Siehste 'nen [man] ] Siehste 'nen [man] ]
L* H;
see you a basket see you a man
'Do you see a basket?' 'Do you see a man?'
An ergonomic problem in the hypothetical data in (12) and (13) lies in

the contrast between Accent 1 and Accent 2 with 'interrogative' intona-
tion. In both cases, a rise appears. Contemporary varieties of Dutch and
German have contrasts between rises from low to mid and rises from
low to high, with the former occurring in 'listing' intonations ('continu-
ation' intonation) and the latter in questions. However, this contrast can
be subtle in monosyllables. Indeed, speakers of standard German use
dB
30
20
10
Hz
500
300
200
[ da J t i- f ] [ J t i : f ]
/di Sti:f/ (die Steife, Stärke) vs. /Sti:f/ (steif)
dB
30
20
10
Hz
500
300
200
[h u · s ] [ h u : s ]
/hu:s/ (Dative von «Haus») vs. /hu:s/ (Nominativ von «Haus»)
Figure 3. Intensity and FO of two tonal minimal pairs (left
Accent 1, 'stiffness' and 'house-DAT', and right Accent 2, 'stiff'
and 'house-NOM') in the dialect of Cologne. From Heike 1962.
both types to signal non-finality, apparently interchangeably (Grabe

1998: 173). A reasonable assumption, therefore, would be that in the
'interrogative' intonation speakers aimed at reproducing the phonetic
feature of sharply falling pitch which they used to distinguish Accent
1 from Accent 2 in 'declarative' intonation. That is, they added falling
pitch to the pattern with Accent 1, mimicking the firm final fall of the
'declarative' form. This led to a reinterpretation of the older 'interroga-
tive' melody L* ( as L* HjLj
The falling pitch in a word with IP-final Accent 1 can be seen in the
bottom left panel of Figure 4: the pitch rises for most of the duration
of the syllable, and then dips down at the end. Since postlexically, no
exception marking is possible (Kiparsky 1982b), speakers had to use
the same interrogative contour, regardless of the lexical tones in the
Hz Hz
400- 400
300- 300
200- 200
100- 100-
ms
500 1000 1500 2000 500 1000 1500 2000
dB
40 -
30 -
20 -
10 -
[1?ejze-1n:>n"man·2]
II -> Ich l sehe einen l Korb l II —> Ich l sehe einen l Mann l
Hz Hz
400· 400
300 300
200 200
100 100
ms
500 1000 1500 2000 500 1000 1500 2000
dB dB
40 40
30 30
20 20
10 10
['ζει· s ,d n " m a n ] ['z ε r s ,4 n " m a n · ]

II -> Siehst Du einen l Korb II . . . II -> Siehst Du einen l Mann II . . .
Figure 4. FO and intensity of four utterances with the members of a monosyl-
labic minimal pair in final position in 'declarative' (top) and 'interrogative'
intonation (bottom) in the dialect of Mayen (Germany). From left to right, top
to bottom: Ί see a basket', Ί see a man', 'Do you see a basket?', 'Do you see
a man?' (From Schmidt 1986: 197, 200.)
utterance. Thus, the interrogative Accent 2 also has as L* H^, aug-

mented with the lexical H on the second mora, after L* (cf. (14)).
(14) a. b.
Siehste 'nen [man] ] Siehste 'nen [man] ]
L* H Hi L,
Clearly, a faithful implementation of representation (14b) would be

counter-productive, as it would neutralise the lexical tone distinction
in 'interrogative' intonation. However, there are natural limits to the
number of tones that can be pronounced per tone bearing unit. Obeying
an anti-crowding constraint like (15) would preserve the phonetic
contrast: the Ljin (14b) is left unrealised. (A constraint banning more
than two tones per mora would have the same effect.)
(15) Tone Crowding: at most three tones can be pronounced within one
syllable
Constraint (15) solves the problem for IP-final syllables. If the stressed
syllable is not final in the IP, however, it returns in full force, as the
final unstressed syllable will now have just the boundary tone sequence
j in both types of word.
4.2. The development of a ban on rises within the syllable
The contrast between Accent 1 and Accent 2 in words with non-final

stress was at this point phonologically expressed by L*-HjLj and L*H-
HjLj, respectively, where the tones before the dash occur on the stressed
syllable and those after it on the final syllable. The expected (hypoth-
esised) phonetic realisations are extremely similar, with the slope of
the rise being a little steeper in Accent 2, which has a H in the stressed
syllable itself, than in Accent 1, which interpolates from L* to a H-tone
in the next syllable. Words with final stress, like [dauf1] 'pigeon' and
[dauf2] 'baptism', from the dialect of Mayen (Schmidt 1986), will also
be in this situation if an unaccented word like ist follows in the same
IP, as shown in (17a, b).
(17) a. ^^ b.
Wenn da eine [dauf] ist ] Wenn da eine [dauf] ist ]
K l N
L* H^ L*H Hj
when there a pigeon is when there a baptism is
'When there is a pigeon.' 'When there is a baptism.'
Hz Hz
400· 400·
300 300 ·
200 200
100 100
ms
500 1000 1500 2000 1000 1500 2000
dB dB
40 40
30 30
20 20
10 10
[•venMo-'n'dau'f'Tes] ['ν ε n I D · n ' d a υ f"?es]

II -» Wenn l da l eine l Taube l ist I I . . . II -> Wenn l da l eine l Taufe l ist l
Figure 5. FO and intensity of two utterances with the members of a monosyllabic

minimal pair in pre-final position in 'interrogative' intonation in the dialect of
Mayen (Germany). From left to right 'When there is a pigeon', 'When there is a
baptism'. From Schmidt 1986: 201.
One way of improving the contrast is by pronouncing the stressed

syllable with fully low pitch in one of the two word accents, which
would then contrast with rising pitch in the other. This might at first
sight have been achieved by implementing Accent 1 in (17a) so as to
postpone the rise till the next syllable. Apparently, such a detailed
phonetic implementation rule, requiring L*-Hj to be realised as low
level followed by a sudden rise, is not how implementation works.
Possibly, too, the pitch accent was not monotonal L*, but bitonal L*+H,
as in current analyses of German (Fery 1993; Grabe 1998). In any
event, what must have happened is that the low pitch vs rising pitch
contrast was created by changing the lexical Η-tone into a L-tone. That
is, the low pitch was codified phonologically in the syllable with Accent
2, which after all had a tone available in the required location. Data
from Schmidt (1986), reproduced in Figure 5, support this assumption.
To be sure, Schmidt does not describe this contrast in these terms, and
the interpretation of his FO traces is mine. However, it is supported not
only by his FO traces (note that the pitch on 'baptism', but not that of
'pigeon', remains well below that of 'is'), but also by the facts of the
dialect of Roermond, where the lexical tone is L after L* in the same
syllable. This new contrast is shown in (18).
(18) a. v--^ b.
Wenn da eine [dauf] ist ] Wenn da eine [dauf] ist ]
l K l K
L* HjLj L* L H^
Thus, a constraint banning (8a) came to be active in the Central

Franconian dialects because of the low ergonomic quality of the
(hypothesised) contrast illustrated in (17a, b). In rule-based terms, an
assimilation rule was added to the language, changing H to L after L*
in the same syllable. If we assume that speakers make maximal
generalisations, then instead of restricting the assimilation to non-final
syllables, they will also have applied it to final syllables, where the
effect is vacuous. As shown in (19), the new representation of interroga-
tive Accent 2 on a final syllable is equally well served by a representa-
tion with lexical L as one with lexical H (cf. (14b). Here, too, the fourth
tone will be left unrealised because of (15).
(19)
Siehste 'nen [man] ] (new representation of 14b)
l
L* L H L,
K
In terms of rules, speakers thus added (20) to their grammar.
(20) Η-ASSIMILATION H -> L / (L* )σ
4.3. The origin of the infixed boundary tones
The third and last feature whose history we intend to reconstruct is the
ordering of the lexical tone and the boundary tone(s) in a situation where
the lexical tone is on the last mora of the IP: first the boundary tone(s),
then the lexical tone (cf. Section 4.1). In order to see what must have
happened, let us consider form (12b) again. Recall that on the basis of
the data in Heike (1962) and Schmidt (1986), it was hypothesised that
an IP-final 'declarative' Accent 2, which is represented H* H Lt, was

pronounced with a dip between the two high targets (cf. 21 a). A possible
development might have been to create a smooth transition between the
two high targets, followed by a fall, shown in (21b). In fact, this pronun-
ciation is currently used in the dialect of Maastricht, where it is distinct
from Accent 1 in having a lengthened, mid-pitched syllable with a final
fall, contrasting with the immediate, non-lengthened fall to low in
Accent 1 (Gussenhoven and Aarts 2000). Another development might
be to allow the dip to bottom out, perhaps at the expense of the fall at
the end. An extreme version of this variant is given in (21c).
(21) a. I \ b. I \ c.
man ] man ] man ]
H*H Ls H*H ^ H*H Li

'man'
It is suggested that it was (21c) which occurred in proto-Roermond.

Observe that the representation H*H L; has become unrealistic at this
point, certainly if the final fall has disappeared altogether: the fall-rise
would now more appropriately be a product of some HLH tone se-
quence. Evidently, a quick and easy way of achieving this would be to
switch round the boundary tone and the lexical tone. The question
would now be whether this measure would make problems for the
'interrogative' intonation of IP-final Accent 2, given in (19). The new
representation for interrogative Accent 2 would be L* HjL; H, or rather
L* LjLj H, after H-ASSIMILATION (20). This latter representation must
be regarded as identical to L* Lj H, since there is an OCP ban on tones
that are both morphologically and phonologically identical. It is now
clear that a resoundingly positive answer can be given to the question
whether what is good for the 'declarative' is also good for the 'interrog-
ative': if lexical tone and boundary tone(s) are switched round, we can
have a faithful, natural phonetic implementation of the representation
of either form, and speakers would be relieved of the task of keeping
an unrealised fourth tone in the representation. In (22a, b), the new
representations are given.
(22) a. / V_/ b.
[man] [man]
H*LH L*LH
Relative to (21c), of course, nothing has happened on the surface: it is

just that the pronunciation of the 'declarative' Accent 2 did not have
a particularly natural phonological representation. The phonological
change consisted in adjusting the representation in a way that happened
also to be advantageous for the 'interrogative' representation, but was
unobservable, since the audible change, a truncation of a complex
monosyllabic fall-rise-fall (cf. Ladd 1996: 133, Grabe 1998: 76), had
already taken place before the adjustment.
4A. The present-day situation in the dialect ofRoermond
The system reconstructed in the above sections is identical to the pho-

nology of the dialect of Roermond presented in Gussenhoven (to appear
a). To illustrate, Figure 6 gives 'declarative' (left-hand panels) and
'interrogative' (right-hand panels) realisations of sentences with
Accent 1 (top panels) and Accent 2 (bottom panels) on IP-nonfinal
syllables. The contours on the left show the effect of the lexical H as
a later peak: the realisation of H* before H in the same syllable is a
mid-pitched target. The contours on the right illustrate the contrast given
in (18a, b); the only thing which is unexpected is the early realisation
of the Hrboundary tone, for which see Gussenhoven (to appear b).
Figure 7 presents 'declarative' (left-hand panels) and 'interrogative'
(right-hand panels) realisations of the contrast on IP-final syllables.
Accent 1 shows a fully low Lj, both in the 'declarative' and in the
'interrogative'. The realisations of Accent 2 (bottom panels) can be
directly compared to the representations in (22a, b); the IP-internal
syllable TOON Tony' illustrates an IP-internal use of a focused syllable
with Accent 2. This analysis also covers the realisation of unfocused
3UU 3UU
MienERM Iztfte aan i mien hemj va Zille dien BEJN I aan dien veul? i
! i ! 1 !
i; Ai< 1! !i !1 i /fM*· I
j \ i i ! x i i r l ; . 1
i !\ i ι : u
4 ]·/ i- i · 1
• V ^*! 1 | » ι
! H*! j i L, i 1 L» ! jj..Li........ j
) 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 18 () 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.
Time (s) Time (s)
i i ; ; :
Miene ERM II fit aan miene hantj vaj Zft diene $EIN II aan diejie vool? i
! »Λ, ! ! ! !^ ;
300 1 f j.....*Y - 4 g 300
i i ΐ 1
V*. ; l""'""-v'l|VN i \^··~
100
1 H*H I _ [Lj j 1 L'Lj· 1 H, L,!
100
r) n
0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.8 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.1
Time (s) Time (s)
Figure 6. Examples of final focused Accent 1 (top panels) and Accent 2 (bottom
panels) in 'declarative' (left-hand panels) and 'interrogative' (right-hand panels)
intonations in the dialect of Roermond. Left-to-right, top-to-bottom: 'My ARMS
are attached to my hands', 'Are your LEGS attached to your feet?', 'My ARM is
attached to my hand', 'Is your LEG attached to your foot?' Analyses and pictures
produced with the program Praat (www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/). Speaker SE.
Accent 1 and Accent 2 in IP-final syllables, examples of which are

given in Figure 8, whose structure is comparable to that of Figures 6
and 7. The tonal contrast in 'declarative' intonation looks subtle in the
FO traces, but the difference is perceptually rather salient. The 'interrog-
ative' contour with final Accent 1 (top left) has Lt fully low; the corre-
sponding 'interrogative' with final Accent 2 (bottom right) was earlier
referred to in (9b).13
5. Conclusion
The reconstruction of the development from an unmarked intonation

language, the German Central Franconian dialect as spoken around
1100 CE, to the modern dialect of Roermond, which has a very striking
tonal phonology, has provided four instances of Neogrammarian change
leading to novel representations. They are:
1. the introduction of a binary lexical tone contrast (Accent 1 and
Accent 2);
2. the introduction of a falling intonation contour to express interroga-
tive meaning;
3. the activation of a constraint against rising contours within the
syllable;
4. the ordering of a lexical tone to the right of IP boundary tones, if
the lexical tone is located on the last mora of the IP.
Arguably, three of these changes, 1, 2 and 4, increased the markedness

of the language: having lexical tone is more complex than not having
Ik gae;f TOON iweei KNIEN I I ! Is-ter get gebeuijd mel dich BEIN I ;
; i ; ·
: ;
300
„ .
I I
;
·
*!" Υ
' :
ί
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JS
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A S
1 H* H H* L, ! ί : ! ; L'H.L,
i 1 i
) 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 . 18 () 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.
Time (s) Time (s)
Ikâef TOCJNeine KjNIEN II j | Is-lerget gebeufd met diene BEIN; II

\ \ : i ;
:
300 «300 -- | - ! ;;
200
i ! ^f__ H ι ; .c
l 200 ^4..^τ·-·^·'·νΜ^
i H*H ί H* Li H [ i
100 : | : : i
100
E : ! : i
n ! = : : !
n
0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.8 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.8
Time (s) Time (s)
Figure 7. Examples of final focused Accent 1 (top panels) and Accent 2 (bottom
intonations in the dialect of Roermond. Left-to-right, top-to-bottom: Ί give
TONY two RABBITS', 'Has something happened to your LEGS?', Ί give TONY
a RABBIT', 'Has something happened to your LEG?' (See also caption Fig. 6.)
3UU· 500
Mien VEUtzilteaari mien bein I i H se dan j ZJWARJrE knieh I I
400 : 400
! Λ"" | '
300
:
JS i · : \ 1 I .
£ 200 £ 200
"i ·i i I S !
100 1 HI; j k | 100
L* ..m i
0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1. 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.8
Time (s) Time (s)
500
MienEVOOTal aanmiehe bein II : H pse! dan eine ZJWApTE kni^n II i
1 fA ιi ιi ia ;; 4<X) .... i \
'"]" ^^
\
ί
v Ξ ! \ ^V j
-C
£ 200
; ; v^ ; : Ν 300
I
£ 200 ·"»
V!
f^
^rf-
i
f^\ ·' ι
-I
a 1.....!^^
I
ι
:
i
,
: !
H* 1 i JLiH ι 100
i> H[L,H i
ι ι ι
n
0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.8 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 l.g
Time (s) Time (s)
Figure 8. Examples of final non-focused Accent 1 (top panels) and Accent 2 (bottom
intonations in the dialect of Roermond. Left-to-right, top-to-bottom: 'My FEET are
attached to my legs', 'So do you have a BLACK rabbit?', 'My FOOT is attached to
my leg', 'So do you have a BLACK rabbit?' (See also caption Fig. 6.)
lexical tone, falling pitch to express interrogative meaning is less com-

mon than rising pitch, while lexical tones are not expected to show up
Outside' the peripheral intonation tones. The third change led to less
complexity, in the sense that contour tones are more complex than level
tones (cf. the constraint NoRiSE in Cassimjee and Kisseberth 1999;
Gussenhoven 1999, to appear a). All four changes led to representations
that are uncharacteristic of present-day West Germanic, the most strik-
ing phenomenon, that of the lexical tone contrast, having intrigued
linguists at least since 1881 (cf Schmidt 1986: 40ff).
Perhaps paradoxically, the motivation for the 'marked' changes 2
and 4 was to improve the ergonomics of the speech process, just as it
was in the case of the 'unmarked' change 3. The falling pitch to signal
interrogative intonation (change 2) was introduced in an attempt to
improve the perceptual contrast between Accent 1 and Accent 2 in IP-
final syllables; the activation of the constraint against rising pitch did
the same for this contrast in non-final syllables; and the unorthodox
linear order of lexical and intonational tones when competing for align-
ment with the right-hand boundary occurred in response to an
ergonomically very sensible truncation of a phonetically laborious form,
the declarative falling-rising-falling Accent 2 on IP-final syllables. The
unorthodox linear ordering of the tones simplified the relation between
phonological representation and the less laborious phonetic output, since
the tone string was now a much more faithful representation of the
phonetic form. It was suggested in the Introduction that, at the end of
the day, the incorporation of ergonomically motivated speech forms in
the phonologies of languages will tend to favour typologically well-
behaved systems, and in spite of the sometimes mixed effects on the
markedness of such systems, this is the main reason why phonological
systems do not assume 'impossible' shapes.
As we have seen, not all phonetic changes are ergonomically moti-
vated. An example is the vowel lengthening in monosyllabic singular
nouns whose plurals had long vowels as a result of Open Syllable
Lengthening (OSL), which behaviour was interpreted by the new gener-
ation as the presence of a lexical Η-tone (change 1). The motivation
for this behaviour was purely social: the speakers wanted to sound like
those speakers who had a long vowel in these singular forms. The long
vowel had been introduced in the singular stems in these neighbouring
dialects on the analogy of the long vowel in the plural forms (Analogi-
cal Lengthening, or AL), which long vowel in its turn was the outcome
of OSL. While OSL was motivated by speech ergonomics, and AL by
morphological analogy, the imitative phonetic lengthening served no
purpose other than making the speakers sound as if they had a long
vowel. But whatever the motivation for the phonetic change, the cogni-
tive task of finding a representation was laid at the door of the new
speakers. The reason why they, or their children, did not simply inter-
pret the lengthened vowel as a long vowel was that doing so would have
obliterated the morphological contrast between the singular and plural
forms, a danger that did not lurk in the neighbouring dialects, which
had presumably retained a vocalic suffix to mark the plural forms.
Together with the development of the Η-tone, AL thus illustrates
the effect of what we might see as morphological ergonomics, Von
Humboldt's one-to-one relation between phonological forms and mor-

phemes. In general, therefore, it is important to separate innovative
phonetic behaviour that precedes, and leads to, phonological change
from the phonological change that results from it, since the motivation
for these two events can be very different.
The reconstruction of the history of the Roermond tonal system
provides a new account of the origin of the contrast between Accent 2
and Accent 1, and—as far as I am aware—presents the first reconstruc-
tion of the history of an intonational system.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to Paula Fikkert for challenging me to give an account of the history

of the tone contrast when I spent a period of study at the University of Konstanz in
the autumn of 1998.1 thank Paul Boersma, Jan Goossens, Wus van Lessen Kloeke,
Aditi Lahiri and Michiel de Vaan for comments on draft versions of the text.
Notes
1. Often, the same phonetic process in part results in mergers and in part in novel
representations, such as British English monophthongisation of centering diph-
thongs, two of which, those in tore and tour, merged or are merging with the vowel
[o:], while two, those in tier and tear, might ultimately lead to the new
monophthongs [π] and [ε:] (cf. Wells 1982: 287, 293).
2. The map in Gussenhoven and Bruce (1999) was drawn on the basis of reports and
summaries in the literature (Wiesinger 1975; Schmidt 1986; Peelers and Schouten
1989). The main modification concerns the position of the city of Weert, which here
falls outside the area in accordance with the findings in Heijmans and Gussenhoven
(1998). Goossens (1998) and de Vaan (1999) provide similar maps, independently
produced on the basis of the literature. The eastern edge of the area is uncertain.
3. The interpretation of these characterisations will be readily apparent from the
subsequent discussion in this paper, except that of the 'zweigipflig' intensity (e.g.
Heike 1962). I take this to be a pitch fall which ends with glottalisation, followed
by a brief resumption of low-pitch vibration (cf. Schmidt's 1986: 45 reference to
Sievers 1881: 168, and de Vaan's 1999 reference to Engelmann 1910 on Vianden,
Luxemburg, where a postvocalic glottal stop is said to be part of the realisation
of Accent 1 in monosyllables.)
4. Goossens (personal communication), with reference to Schmidt's (1986) Rule B,
summarises the situation as follows: non-high long vowels developed Accent 2,

high vowels in monosyllables developed Accent 1; high vowels before a weak
syllable have Accent 2 if the latter has a voiceless onset, but, in the Ripuarian
and Mosel-Franconian dialects, Accent 1 otherwise; in the Low Franconian
dialects, Accent 1 only developed in this context if the weak syllable was
apocopated. Since Wiesinger (1975) gives apocope as the only relevant context
in L ttringhausen, in the north-east of the polytonic area, there would appear to
be a northern bias to this particular context.
5. According to Laver (1994:454), the term 'microprosody' ('microprosodic') was
introduced by A. Di Cristo and M. Chafcouloff at the Fourteenth Conference on
Acoustics (High Tatra, Slovakia) in 1976.
6. Lahiri and Dresher (1999) show that there was no such thing as compensatory
lengthening after loss of schwa in any West Germanic language. Minkova (1982),
and following her Hayes (1989), assumed that the long vowel in English words
like tale had arisen because of the preservation of the duration of the schwa after
it had been apocopated, causing the vowel in the preceding syllable to be length-
ened ([tab] —> [tail]). Lahiri and Dresher show that instead the lengthening is
due to Open Syllable Lengthening, followed by uncompensated apocope ([tab]
—» [ta:b] —> [ta:l]), the position that was held before Minkova (1982).
7. Since short vowels were unaffected before obstruents, the dialects ended up with
a three-way, not a four-way, quantity opposition, as in [wit] 'white', [wi:t] 'far',
[wi::t] 'expanse' (Wiesinger 1983c: 1089) or , in the dialect of Hassmoor, [sti<j]
'stitch', [8ΐίς] 'rise-PAST', [511:9] 'twenty four', with three different vowel dura-
tions (Kohler, T dter and Weinhold 1984).
8. For references and discussion, see also Lass (1997: 342). Wetzels (1981: 46)
identifies Meillet (1948: 12) as giving a clear paraphrase of von Humboldt's text
(Humboldt, 1836: 75).
9. Hermans (1994: 286) retracts his earlier analysis, and proposes that Stosston is
marked with L and Schleifton is toneless in underlying representations. My own
work on the phonology of these Dutch dialects dates from the early 1990s (Venlo)
and 1995 (Roermond). Before 1999,1 had no idea of how the tone could have
arisen.
10. Grootaers and Grauls correctly inferred from this observation that Stosston
developed after apocope, but on questionable grounds. They suggested that the
singulars must have received the vowel with Schleifton through analogical length-
ening from the plural, which therefore must also have had Schleifton at the time
analogical lengthening (AL) took place. This assumption leads to the problematic
conclusion that contrastive(?) Schleifton would have to have existed before
APOCOPE and AL took place, and second, that Schleifton changed into Stosston
after APOCOPE and AL. These two inexplicable instances of tonogenesis, more-
over, would not have had any functional basis, since even though in this scenario
a contrast arises between singular and plural forms which would otherwise have
been homophonous, this fact is coincidental in their account.
11. As pointed out by Aditi Lahiri (p.c.), the words in Table 2 are largely masculine
<2-stems, which had a bare stem in the nominative singular and a vocalic suffix
in the plural, which was the trigger for OSL. Thus, OSL itself is an unlikely locus
for the tonogenesis, since it systematically fails to appear in forms in Table 2 that
underwent it. As it happens, dialects further removed from the Central Franconian
heartland show a more general occurrence of Accent 2 in syllables containing
long vowels from OSL (cf. de Vaan 1999). However, if OSL were responsible
for creating the -tone, we would have expected a more general coincidence in
the heartland.
12. The segment [R] before a voiceless obstruent in the coda does not count as a
sonorant mora, and no contrast is possible on the word for 'sport'.
13. The examples in Figures 6,7 and 8 can be heard on the internet at http://lands.let.
kun.nl/projects/carloslimburg.en.html
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The origin of Danish st0d
Tomas Riad
1. Introduction
The Scandinavian languages exhibit characteristic prosodic features

known as tonal accents (Swedish and Norwegian) and st0d (Danish).
These are often taken to be different types of accent and have conse-
quently been given quite different phonological interpretations. This
is not a surprising fact in view of the rather different auditory impres-
sions they give. At the same time, the two systems are always taken to
be related, on grounds of similar lexical distribution.1 Recently, Livo-
nian st0d has been analyzed as phonologically a tonal configuration by
Kiparsky (1995a). This has inspired a tonal analysis of Danish st0d by
Ito and Mester (1997). Treating st0d as a tonal phenomenon brings the
Scandinavian accent systems together more tightly and opens up new
perspectives for understanding the historical relationship. Here, I shall
pursue this topic by drawing out some implications of the tonal analysis
of st0d and by connecting two other tone related phenomena occurring
in Swedish dialects, to the origin of st0d.
The tone accent opposition can be construed as privative in all
known dialects (Sweet 1877:155;Haugen 1963,1967; Engstrand 1995;
Riad 1998b). The marked member of the accent opposition in tonal
dialects is known as Accent 2 (or grave), and it corresponds lexically
to the unmarked member (no-st0d) of the opposition in the st0d dialects
(in simplicia), an intriguing fact. While there is no doubt that these
different prosodic manifestations of accent are historically related, the
nature of the relation remains unclear. What does seem clear is that the
tonal accent system is historically older than the st0d system (Ringgaard
1983; for a different view, cf. Liberman 1982). One of the clearest
arguments for this is the geographic distribution of st0d (cf. maps in
Kroman 1947:46; Fischer-J0rgensen 1989a: 13), and its preponderance
to expand at the expense of the few remaining tonal dialects in Den-
mark. In his assessment of the research history of accent, Kroman
(1947: 183, passim) notes that in these dialects, the tonal accent is
262 Tomas Riad
phonetically similar to that of Central Swedish. This would be one

indication that st0d develops from a conservative tonal system of the
Central Swedish type, an important fact to keep in mind when we
reconstruct the prosodic history.
Below I develop a hypothesis regarding how the transition from tonal
accent to st0d may have taken place, and how the seeming markedness
switch from Accent 2 (= no-st0d) to st0d (« Accent 1) may have come
to pass. The basic proposal is that st0d derives historically from a low
boundary tone, when that tone is in or sufficiently near a stressed syllable.
Following Kiparsky (1995a) and Ito and Mester (1997), I shall assume
that st0d is an allophonic realization of a basic tonal HL sequence.2
The search for support for this hypothesis will take us from Denmark
to Mälardalen west of Stockholm in central Sweden, where two
phenomena cast interesting light on st0d, namely Eskilstuna-curl
(1) Relationship between the accent systems
Conservative accent variety

Lexical tone distinction
Stockholm
Conservative accent variety + curl

Lexical tone distinction
Western Mälardalen
Conservative accent variety + st0d Non-distinctive tone

Lexical tone distinction Allophonic st0d
Western Mälardalen (occasionally) Eastern Mälardalen
Northern Sjcelland (tentatively)
Non-distinctive tone
Allophonic st0d
Standard Danish
and many Danish dialects
(Sw eskilstunaknorr) and generalized Accent 2. Eskilstuna-curl is a

characteristic, pragmatically motivated intonation contour associated
primarily with dialects to the south and west of Stockholm. I shall refer
to this area as Western Malardalen. Eskilstuna-curl would appear to
represent an early stage of a transition from tonal accent to st0d. Gener-
alized Accent 2 shows up in a dialect area nearby, between Eskilstuna
and Stockholm, which has lost the accent distinction. I will call this
dialect Eastern Malardalen. Contrary to expectation, it is not Accent 1
(the unmarked member of the opposition) which generalizes, but
Accent 2. It will be proposed that generalized Accent 2 can be under-
stood as a development from a previous curl system. This yields the
general relationships between the systems shown in (1).
Regarding the geographic relationships, Denmark and Malardalen
must be separate innovation areas. Eastern Malardalen, however, bor-
ders directly on Western Malardalen, and a direct historical connection
seems unavoidable, although more study of dialect geography and the
phonological conditioning is needed to fully carry the argument through.
2. St0d3
St0d is phonetically a glottal stop or creaky voice (Fischer-J0rgensen

1989a, 1989b). It is not necessarily the glottal activity itself that is of
perceptual interest, but rather the sharp drop in frequency which pre-
cedes or overlaps with the glottal activity (e.g. Forchhammer 1942).4
St0d is marginally distinctive in the Danish lexicon, though most of
the time it is predictable.5 A few pairs are given below.6
(2) st0d and no-st0d pairs

st0d no-st0d
hund [nun'] 'dog' hun [hun] 'she'
vend [νεη'1 'turn!' ven [νεη] 'friend'
laser [1ε:'SD] 'reads' laeser [le:so] 'reader'
haender [ηεη'ο] 'hands' haender [heno] 'happens'
The surface status of these pairs as minimal does not mean that the
presence or absence of st0d cannot be predicted. The notion of (pho-
264 Tomas Riad
netic) minimal pairs is misguided in this respect, and that is true of the
tone accent systems, too (Riad, in press). There are several sturdy
generalizations relating to morphology, phonology and phonetics which
guide the speaker to correct tone accent or st0d assignment. A good
demonstration of the essential predictability of tonal accent is given in
a flow chart in Bruce (1977: 18, reproduced in Bruce 1998: 52). A
similar situation, mutatis mutandi, holds for Livonian and Danish (e.g.
Basb011 1998: 40ff.). There is a small unpredictable residue which
requires lexical specification, perhaps best in the form of underlying
foot structure (Kiparsky 1995a) or otherwise as a prelinked L tone (Itö
and Mester 1997).
St0d is realized only in heavy, stressed syllables, and only if the
second mora of such a syllable is sonorant or vocalic. This is known
as st0d basis.
(3) st0d basis a. VV sen [se:'n] 'late'

b. VR sind [sen'] 'mind'
no st0d basis VO saet [sed] 'set'
lass [les] 'load'
In the core cases, st0d syllables are word-final, including both monosyl-
lables as above and polysyllables with final stress. Where an unstressed
syllable follows the syllable bearing primary stress, st0d does not occur.
(4) st0d no-st0d

sen 'late' 10be ['10:ba] 'run'
[se:'n]
natur 'nature' leve ['Ie:v9] 'live'
[na'tu:'»]
skansion 'scansion' menneske ['menssgo] 'human
[sgan'so:'n] being'
parti 'party'
[pa'ti:']
This leads to si0d~no-st0d alternation within some paradigms.
(5) gul [gu:'l] 'yellow, so' gule ['gu:b] PL

hus [hu:'s] 'house, so' huse ['hu:ss] PL
Interestingly, st0d cannot be realized on a sonorant consonant if that

consonant is itself final in the word. Adding an ending, here the definite
singular, brings out the st0d (Jespersen 1922: 157).
(6) loven [bw'wn] 'the law' lov [low] 'a law'

guden [guo'an] 'the god' gud [gu ] 'a god'
vennen [νεη'η] 'the friend' ven [νεη] 'a friend'
This also happens with enclitic pronouns: gi ham 'en 'give him it'. Final
stressed vowels, however, tend to exhibit st0d (cf. (4) above), but only
if they carry primary stress (regarding secondary stress, cf. Sections 6.4
and 6.5 below).
Beyond the phonological conditionings mentioned, there are morpho-
logical factors which influence the distribution of st0d, such as the
internal hierarchical structure of compounds (cf. (8) below).
3. St0d in terms of tones
The proposal of It and Mester (1997) is essentially that the tonal

configuration of the Danish prosodic word is HL, where Η occurs in
the stressed syllable (or syllables, in some compounds) and L occurs
on the final tone-bearing unit of the foot. When the two tones are real-
ized in different syllables, there is no st0d. When the stressed syllable
is also final within the foot, there is st0d.
This analysis is in contrast with the treatment ofst0d as a phonologi-
cal feature, e.g. [±st0d] or [creaky voice]. One obvious advantage is the
fact that we do not need to enrich the inventory of prosodic categories
by adding a category 'st0d\ Moreover, we need not autosegmentalize
a segmental feature to represent st0d (Anderson, Ewen and Staun 1985).
We also capture the observed tendency for si0d and creaky voice to
occur in or near tonal systems more directly (Fischer-J0rgensen 1989a:
143).
The tonal analysis occasions a fundamental change in the premisses
for analysis ofst0d. In particular, the st0d~no-sl0d distinction turns out
as basically allophonic in nature, indeed epiphenomenal to tonal struc-
ture. This is clearly seen in (7), where the tonal structure is identical
in the two forms, while the number of syllables varies. The tonal analy-
266 Tomas Riad
sis thus posits the same tonal contour for st0d and no-st0d, and ex-
presses the difference as one of tonal association. The fact that the
number of syllables affects the realization of the tonal sequence is a
completely natural thing, known from many tone systems. The only
quirk is that the difference between st0d and no-st0d is unusually sa-
lient, perceptually. The allophonic status of st0d has deep implications
for the understanding of its relationship to the tonal systems.
(7) Tonal structure of Danish feet (Ito and Mester 1997)
a. st0d b. no-st0d
PrWd PrWd
σ σ Different number of syllables

A I
μ (μ) μ
H Η L Same tonal configuration
3.1. Tonal markedness
We may justly ask why HL on one syllable should be executed as st0d

and be perceived as something other than a regular falling tone con-
tour. Part of the explanation for this is probably the duress under which
the tonal fall is to be realized. The crucial difference between st0d and
no-st0d is one of association, and autosegmental theory tells us that
one-to-many is a more marked configuration than one-to-one (Gold-
smith 1976). In the larger context of the Scandinavian tonal systems,
the phonetic reflex of marked tonal structure in Danish appears almost
as expected. There is a clear limit of one associated tone per stressed
syllable. As soon as a Scandinavian dialect goes beyond that, there are
noticeable consequences. Thus, most dialects require the presence of
a post-stress syllable in order to realize Accent 2. Monosyllables and

oxytones simply do not exhibit a tone accent contrast in these dialects.
The few (northern) dialects which can realize Accent 2 in a single
syllable—so-called circumflex—force a salient temporal extension of
that syllable fkasta > 2kaast 'to throw'). Moreover, some of these
systems only get circumflex under a sonority condition like that ofst0d
(Bruce 1998: 57). Other dialects avoid crowding by not associating
more than one tone per tone bearing unit (cf. Bruce 1987 on Central
Swedish; Lorentz 1995; Riad 1996, 1998b). St0d, then, would be just
another exponent of tonal crowding. If this markedness is to be re-
flected in the analysis, it would seem less natural to assume that the
mora is the tone bearing unit as Itö and Mester (1997) do. If moras
are TBUs, then two tones on a bimoraic syllable should be an entirely
natural thing. Rather, let us take the position of Pierrehumbert and
Beckman (1988: 21 ff., 119) and Riad (1998b: 84if.) and assume that
the tone bearing unit for word accents is the prosodic word, where the
point of association is the head, the syllable bearing primary stress.
The conditions of st0d—the association of a L tone to the same sylla-
ble as the H—is in conflict with unmarked tonal realization, and this
causes the marked situation of two tones in one syllable. The marked-
ness here, then, is not one of distinctivity, but one of autosegmental
association.
3.2. Correlations and mismatches
St0d in Danish and Accent 1 in Swedish and Norwegian have largely

the same lexical distribution (for general discussion, cf. Basb011 1985;
Elert 1981: 42 ff.; Linell 1972; Hellberg 1974). While the correspon-
dence is close enough to put it beyond doubt that the two are histori-
cally related, we should not stop at the correlation itself. Rather we
should take a closer look at the several well-known mismatches and
further correlations to see what patterns emerge. The first key to a
phonological understanding of st0d is to realize that it is not a lexical
accent: st0d is simply the phonetic expression for HL on one syllable.7
Unlike tonal accents, st0d is constrained by st0d basis, which limits
the corresponding lexical items considerably. St0d basis is obviously
268 Tomas Riad
a phonetic property (Basb011 1985: 5) and there is nothing to stop the

phonological presence of HL also where no-st0d is realized. The low
target (L of HL) is just not reached unless there is a sufficient duration
of sonority in the syllable coda. And unless one reaches a sufficiently
low frequency, there will be no creak or st0d. The phonologically
relevant L tone can still be inferred, though. There is no sense in expect-
ing a corresponding segmental basis for Accent 1 (or 2, of course) in
peninsular Scandinavian. Accent 1 is pure sentence intonation, and
sentence intonation is not constrained by segmental properties, such that
e.g. certain stressed syllables could not occur in the focus of a sentence
context.
A related mismatch is often seen in the fact that not all monosylla-
bles with st0d basis get st0d, while Accent 1 (phonologically the ab-
sence of lexical accent) is assigned to all monosyllables in focus posi-
tion in tonal dialects. This amounts to the identification of further
conditions on the association of HL to the same syllable. This time, it
is a phonological constraint against the association of the L tone to a
word-final mora (cf. lov [low], but loven [low'wn] above), unless that
mora is vocalic (cf. parti [pa'ti:']).
St0d basis entails a heavy syllable. St0d further requires that the
syllable is stressed, cf. Basb011 (1985: 5). Similarly, lexical tones also
requires stress. In most dialects of Swedish and Norwegian, heavy
weight is entailed by the fact that a syllable is stressed (Prokosch's law,
Vennemann 1988: 30).
It has often been noted that while tonal accent is a property of some
words, st0d is a property of some stressed syllables/feet (Basb0111985:
4; Bruce 1998: 55). Thus, a compound can contain two instances of
st0d. Directly related to this is the observation that st0d often occurs
on a syllable bearing secondary stress, while a lexical tone of a tonal
accent contour always requires a primary stress.
These mismatches are mismatches only under the faulty premise that
accent and st0d are phonologically comparable. If Danish tonal gram-
mar can assign a sequence HL to both parts of a compound, then we
expect st0d twice.8 Moreover, there is nothing strange in having a L
tone on a syllable bearing secondary stress. It is only if we insist that
st0d is a distinctive word accent that it seems odd. Thus, in order to
make a fair comparison of st0d and tonal accent of the Swedish/
Norwegian type, we must look at the distribution of Danish tones, not

ofst0d only. Consider the following compounds, consisting of two st0d-
bearing morphemes, where the first is monosyllabic.
(8) Some st0d patterns in compounds

a. sten 'stone' brosten ['bru:,sde:'n] 'bridge
[sde:'n] stone'
cf. stenbro ['sde:n,bru:'] 'stone
bridge'
b. spor 'track' vognspor ['vown- 'rails'
[sbo:'K] ,sbo:'K]
cf. sporvogn ['sbo:K- 'tram'
,vow'n]
c. driver dagdriver ['daw- 'idler'
[driivo] ,dri:w'D]
d. tale 'to speak' udtale ['uo.taei'la] 'pronounce'
[tae:b]
cf. udtale 'udta pronun-
ciation'
e. sol *sun' solskin ['so:l,sgen'] 'sunshine'
Typically, the second element retains st0d (8a, b), indeed it often gets
st0d even when it does not have it in isolation (8c, d). Also, a monosyl-
labic first element regularly loses its st0d (8a, b, e), cf. Jespersen (1922:
158f.), Fischer-J0rgensen (1989a: 9,161), Kroman (1947: 52), Ejskjaer
(1967: 24f.).
Two st0d-bear'mg words forming a compound means a basic contour
of HL+HL. When compounded, the middle L will typically not reach
as low a target as the second L, especially if the first element is just a
monosyllable. The realization of the first contour as st0d will thus be
inhibited, but this does not mean that the phonological L tone is neces-
sarily removed.
The central distribution pattern of st0d in compounds—that is on
the second element—correlates with the most productive context for
Accent 2, in conservative peninsular Scandinavian dialects, so-called
connective Accent 2 (Girding 1977; Bruce 1977,1987; Elert 1981:44;
270 Tomas Riad
Gussenhoven and Bruce 1999; Riad 1998b, in press). This is yet another
indication of the fact that st0dis no direct 'translation' of Accent 1, and
at the same time the key to where st0d came from.
Before moving on to the historical development, we should mention
one more correlation, this time between no-st0d and Accent 2. In Dan-
ish words consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an open syllable
containing schwa, st0d never occurs (Basb011 1985: 16; Fischer-
J0rgensen 1989a: 9). Apparently, such forms necessarily form a single
foot, entailing the tonal structure of (7b) above.
(9) No-st0d and Accent 2

Danish Swedish
2
femte [faemds] 'fifth' femte
2
gifte [gifda] 'marriage' gifte
2
glide [gli:09] 'to glide' glida
2
haste [hasda] 'hasten' hasta
These core no-st0d forms correlate directly to typical Accent 2 simplicia

of Swedish and Norwegian.
4. From boundary L] to st0d
The development from a tonal accent system to the st0d system turns
on the presence of a L tone sufficiently near a stressed syllable. To
demonstrate this, we shall look first at the tonal structure in conservative
tonal dialects, and then at the peculiar prosodic phenomenon of
Eskilstuna-curl in the Western Mälardalen dialect area.
Conservative realization of accents 1 and 2 occurs primarily in
Central Swedish, e.g. Stockholm, but also in Älvdalen in Western
Sweden and Stavanger on the west coast of Norway. The segmentation
of the tonal contour as well as the functions attributed to the different
tones varies between authors, but there is agreement on the tonal values
(H or L), which is what is relevant for the present discussion. The
functional separation of tones that I shall assume is as follows: lexical
H* tone, focus (or prominence) LH tone, and boundary L] tone (for
arguments and a general synchronic analysis, cf. Riad 1998b).
(10) Accent in simplicia in Central Swedish
accent 1 accent 2
LH L] H*LHL]
jag gillar TOBAK] jag gillar SENAP]

Ί like tobacco.' 'Hike mustard.'
'to bak 'se nap
The tonal configuration of an Accent 2 word in a one-word utterance

contains two peaks, while Accent 1 has only one peak. The two accents
share the intonational tones, obviously, while Accent 2 has in addition
an initial lexical tone associated with the syllable bearing primary
stress.9
The basic hypothesis is that Danish st0d emerges in the position
where the boundary L] tone of the earlier tonal system resides. The
locus of L] in Accent 1 words of Central Swedish correlates closely
with st0d in Standard Danish. Also, the boundary L] is lower than the
preceding L tone of the tonal sequence, which is here analyzed as part
of the focus tone LH. By contrast, the boundary L] in Accent 2
simplicia is further away from the stressed syllable, and hence presum-
ably less salient. The increased distance is caused by the extra tone that
Accent 2 words must house. In compounds, (connective) Accent 2 is
productively assigned on prosodic grounds (two or more stresses) and
it is hence not a lexical accent.10 In this connective realization, typical
of Central Swedish, the boundary L] is near the stressed syllable of the
last element. The arrow indicates tonal spread.
(11) Connective accent 2 in Central Swedish (compounds)
r—r
'mid-.sommar-.dansen i.e.
-Ν /\
'mid-.sommar-.dansen
'the midsummer dance'
272 Tomas Riad
The general pattern, then, is that Accent 1 and connective Accent 2 have
structures where the boundary tone is near a stressed syllable, while in
Accent 2 simplicia, the boundary tone is further away from the stressed
syllable. This pattern finds reflection in the central patterns of st0d and
no-st0d, discussed above. The correlation between st0d and boundary
L], when sufficiently near a stressed syllable, is hence quite close.
The phonetic realization of tone sequences is logically distinct from
the presence of distinctive, lexical tones. Thus, if st0d is really allo-
phonic in nature, as claimed here, one prediction is that it should be able
to occur in a tone accent system. That is, it should be possible to have
st0d as a phonetic feature that goes with boundary L] tones, without any
of the other phonological changes that have taken place in Danish (the
loss of lexical tones in particular). The most likely place to find this
should be in a dialect of the conservative Central Swedish type. These
expectations are borne out in Western Mälardalen (with a center near
the city of Eskilstuna), where pragmatically conditioned creaky voice,
and sometime st0d, patterns much like Danish st0d.
5. The Eskilstuna-curl
The Eskilstuna-curl has two impressionistic characteristics, picked up

by its two names in Swedish: curl (Sw knorr) and creak (Sw knarr).
There is a steep fall followed by an audible, often voiced release
(Fig. 1-3). The fall may also be accompanied by creaky voice phona-
tion, and laryngeal activity. Eskilstuna-curl occurs in focussed position,
preferably at the end of a phrase and constitutes the prosodic aspect of
a pragmatically conditioned hyperarticulation, which also includes so-
called Central Swedish diphthongization (Bleckert 1987; Lindqvist
1972: 13;Elert 1981: 8f.).
Already Olof Gjerdman (1918:183-185), but few after him, reported
on this prosodic feature in city dialects in Sörmland, and noted its
phonetic resemblance to st0d.12 Gjerdman notes that the creak tends to
occur before a pause (i.e. phrase finally) and in particular after certain
long vowels ([a:], [u:], [«:]). He also mentions that there is a whining
quality associated with these pronunciations.13
hHz
(B) (C)
kHz
0
100 ms
L 0 , green 5 0_ a kvah t e
Figure 1-3. Slö 'lazy', Gränsö (place name), kvalite 'quality' (from Bleckert
1987: 118)
The list of words in (12) illustrates the distribution of Eskilstuna-curl.

Some of the data was collected from three informants (one from
Eskilstuna, the other two from Flen, a town nearby). I have also in-
cluded some examples from Bleckert (1987), taken from a major data
collection of the Eskilstuna dialect made in the early 70s (Nordberg
1972; Pettersson and Forsberg 1970). The symbol "" represents the
locus of the L] tone, the central point of the curl. I have paid attention
to the curl aspect rather than creaky voice. One column is called "curl-
basis" inviting the analogy with st0d basis. This does not mean that all
cognate Danish forms have st0d, however. Note that marks in the "curl-
basis" column refer to the sonority of the nearest stressed syllable.
274 Tomas Riad
(12) Distribution of Eskilstuna-curl (Western Malardalen)

Examples in context "Curl- Accent Location Translation
basis"
han bar blivit sa star \/ 1 [•stur'r] 'big'
. . . sä stör och läng \/ 1 ['bD':] 'long'
Olle är knapp * 1 ['knep:(0)] 'crazy'
jorden är platt * 1 ['platiOl 'flat'
han har bott i flera städer V 1 ['stet'der] 'cities'
mina nummer ^ 1 ['man": er] 'numbers'
mina nunnor v 2 ['nttn:ur°] 'nuns'
dorn är stora v' 2 ['stu:ra°] 'big' (pi)
dorn är mänga v/ 2 ['morj:a°] 'many'
dorn är knäppa * 2 ['knep:a°] 'crazy' (pi)
. . . platt som en pann-kaka \/ 2 conn. ['parj^ka^ka] 'pan cake'
Kalle fick ut-delning V 2 conn. ['tt^dei'lnirj:] 'dividend'
. . . Stina fick kvar-skatt * 2 conn. ['kva:(r),skat:O] 'back-tax'
. . . vid sitt bok-bord v 2 conn. ['bu'.k.bu:"^] 'book table'
. . . heia efter-middan * 2 conn. ['efter.midân] 'afternoon'
. . . gammaldags bagar-madam v 2 conn. ['baigarma.dam:"] 'baker madam'
When the low target has been reached, creaky voice is common. This
is indicated in the careful transcription used in Bleckert (1987). A few
of his examples are given below.14 Creaky voice is typically attained
in the stressed syllable, a fact that firmly places the boundary L] tone
inside the stressed syllable.
Examples Page "Curl- Accent Location Translation

basis"
Västeras 63 V 1 [Veste1ro:°s] place name
Gränsö 63 7 2 ['Grcn, s0:°] place name
brödsäd 126 V 2 ['br0:d, sae:°d] 'breadstuffs'
utanför 78 V 2 ['«:tan, foe:°(r)] Outside'
knivsmed 124 v/ 2 ['kni:v, sme:°(d)] 'knife smith'
When the second mora is voiceless, the curl is much less clearly real-
ized (e.g. knapp ana platt, in (12) above). With heavy emphasis, how-
ever, the curl may continue after a voiceless coda (so-called 'rebound').
The following examples illustrate the situation when the low target
is not reached within the stressed syllable. The creak then occurs after
the stressed vowel or in post-stress syllables.
(14) tio dar 62 V 1 [tie 'da:j:] 'ten days'

koncern-träffarna 87 * 2 [kon'se:r\.,tref:°aiia] 'corporation meetings'
Finally we have a case where the laryngeal activity accompanying the

curl occasions st0d, according to the transcription in Bleckert (1987).
(15) spiksmed 37 v' 2 ['spi:k,sme:"(d)] 'nail smith'
The Western Mälardalen dialect has the conservative, two-peaked

realization of Accent 2 (cf. (10) and (11) above). One difference vis-a-
vis other tonal dialects nearby (e.g. Stockholm), beside the hyper-
articulation and the related diphthongization and creak, is the tendency
for the boundary tone to be realized on the last stressed syllable even
if there are unstressed syllables left before the word end. This is pre-
sumably an effect of the hyperarticulation, but an interesting one since
it may be instrumental in the transition to a later accentless system like
the Danish.
For Danish, the hypothesis is that a situation like that in Eskilstuna
developed in the Sjaelland innovation area. The curl would at some point
develop into st0d, phonetically a question of degree. So far, the curl-
st0d connection has been assumed on the basis of observations and
evidence available in Mälardalen in Sweden. To make the case stronger,
one should ideally find indications of curl in Danish dialectology. We
find something almost as good, namely tonal dialects with retained
lexical accent + allophonic st0d, in northern Sjaelland. Kroman (1947:
53ff.) offers a detailed report on this important expectation.
6. Transition to the Danish system
The Danish st0d is not just an extreme variant of Eskilstuna-curl. The

distribution of st0d is a subset of the loci for boundary L], while the
Eskilstuna-curl is in principle coextensive with boundary L], given the
right pragmatic conditions. The narrowings indicate a categorial change,
if only between allophonies. Loci where Eskilstuna-curl is merely less
prominent, become non-loci for st0d, whereas loci for prominent
Eskilstuna-curl (albeit variable with pragmatics), become obligatory
276 Tomas Riad
st0d loci. The requirement of a stressed syllable and st0d basis are thus
codified. The categorial change is also real on a phonological level. A
given syllable in a given context either has st0d or doesn't have it. Even
if realization is variable between a creak and a glottal stop in Standard
Danish, regular st0d is always present in the appropriate stressed sylla-
bles of a given person's speech. With Eskilstuna-curl, the phonetic
variation is more in the range of regular tonal activity. While one would
probably be right in saying that the boundary L] of the Eskilstuna-curl
dialects is typically salient, it would not be right to say that all boundary
L] tones have creaky voice. Indeed, one of Bleckert's results for diph-
thongization is that it is conditioned by factors of different kinds, in-
cluding vowel quality and quantity, phrasal context, degree of emphasis,
even extra-linguistic factors like social stratum (Hammermo 1981). The
further—and crucial—difference between Danish st0d and Eskilstuna-
curl dialects resides in the grammar. Eskilstuna-curl dialects remain
regular tonal dialects, i.e., Accent 2 is the marked member of a distinc-
tive tonal opposition, manifest as a lexical H* tone vs. no tone. In
Standard Danish, the tonal distinction has been lost. The implication
of the works by Kiparsky (1995a) and Ito and Mester (1997) is that
there are no lexical word tones in Danish. There is only different associ-
ations of the HL tonal sequence, predictable from phonetic, phonologi-
cal and morphological information. This means that reanalysis must
have taken place in the transition from a curl system to a st0d system.
6.1. Regulating L]
The step from an Eskilstuna-curl system to the Danish st0d system

involves regulating the behaviour of the boundary L]. As mentioned,
the L] tone is particularly prominent when it occurs in a stressed sylla-
ble. And when stressed syllables become particularly prominent (under
emphasis etc.), a boundary tone one or two syllables away would tend
to be drawn into the stressed syllable.
In Danish, this variation becomes grammatically codified. One
change is that the L] tone associates to a real syllable, rather than sim-
ply aligning with the end of the focus domain. Another change is that
association is obligatory and regularly realized in one of two ways: st0d
when the syllable is shared with a H tone (under stress), and no st0d
when the L] tone has the syllable to itself (unstressed). Realization of
tone requires sonority in the segments of the syllable rhyme. This
phonetic fact lies behind st0d basis, which thus follows from the phono-
logical control of association of tones. If a syllable lacks st0d basis the
L tone will not be realized. No special provision has to be made for the
association rules. Lack of sonority does not mean that a tone is missing,
only that it is not heard. The locus of the L tone is the last syllable in
the prosodic word, otherwise the last syllable of the stem, depending
on foot structure (Ito and Mester 1997). The phonologization of curl
as st0d also means that the pragmatic conditioning goes away.
The codification of the Eskilstuna-curl pattern as a regular st0d
pattern presupposes a development in the Eskilstuna-curl stage, namely
a leftward shift of the tonal sequence. This gives us a prediction which
we can check by a comparison of the tonal contours of accent in
Eskilstuna and Stockholm, respectively. The focus tone in Stockholm
is LH and the first tone of the contour is the one which is associated (in
Accent 1 and compound Accent 2). If st0d in Danish is HL in a stressed
syllable, and if it has developed from a tonally conservative dialect, via
a curl system like that in Eskilstuna, then, in order for the boundary L]
tone instantiating curl to get into the stressed syllable, the preceding
tones must also shift to the left (lest there be three tones in one syllable).
This prediction is borne out. Consider the comparison of the focus-to-
boundary tone transition in stressed syllables in Stockholm and
Eskilstuna, in (16). Note that both of these dialects belong to the same
conservative, Central Swedish accentual variety (cf. Gärding 1977:46f.).
In Stockholm, the H tone of the focus LH contour occurs late in the
stressed syllable or early in the beginning of the post-stress syllable,
in Accent 1 words as well as in Accent 2 compounds (Meyer 1937;
Carding 1977: 46). The only difference is that in the one case it is the
primary stress, in the other, a secondary stress. In Eskilstuna, the H tone
occurs right at the beginning of the stressed vowel (clearly seen in
Figure 1-3 above). The contrast between Stockholm and Eskilstuna is
due to the different behaviour of the boundary L] tone in these dialects.
In Stockholm, L] aligns with the end of the word (Bruce 1987). In
Eskilstuna, it associates to the stressed syllable—this is the curl—
forcing the preceding tonal sequence to the left.
278 Tomas Riad
(16) Comparison of tonal contours
Stockholm Eskilstuna (emphatic)
Accent 1
Connective
Accent 2 kon'ce:rn-,träffarna] kon'ce:rn-,träffarna]
l K
H* LH L] H* (L)H L]
sto:r 'big'
konce:rn-träffarna 'the corporate meetings'
If the shifted tonal sequence were phonologically stable rather than

dependent on pragmatic factors, it would mean that the focus tone
changed values, from LH to H only. Interestingly, if we pursue the tonal
dialectology further to the west we arrive at the Dala-Bergslagen sys-
tem, where the focus tone is indeed H and where the lexical tone, too,
has shifted value, from H* to L*. Bengt Nordberg (p.c.) reports that this
tonal variety can also be found in Eskilstuna nowadays. (17) depicts
this dialectal tone shift.
(17) Effect of curl on the overall accent contours
Lexical Focus Boundary
H* LH L] Central Swedish: Stockholm

Central Swedish: Eskilstuna (emphatic)
H* (L) H L]
Danish before st0d
(H) L* H L] Dala-Bergslagen
The Eskiltuna-curl can thus be seen to occasion a transition from

one tonal system (Central Swedish) to another (Dala-Bergslagen). The
thrust of the argument to follow is to explain how it can also lead into
a non-distinctive system with st0d (Danish), and into a non-distinctive
system without st0d (Eastern Mälardalen), i.e. what we call generalized
Accent 2.
To get to a Danish system from the curl system, then, the lexical
accent system must also be reanalyzed, in fact lost. The regularization
of the boundary tone behaviour does not in itself entail the loss of
distinctive accent (witness Eskilstuna and further Dala-Bergslagen), but
this development can be seen to prepare the ground for the reanalysis
which causes the loss of lexical accent.
6.2. The first reanalysis: H = stress
The reanalysis which removes the distinctive lexical tones involves the
equation of H tones to stress. The unmarked pitch contribution to the
phonetics of stress is high pitch. In a stress system without tone accents,
then, a H tone will be interpreted as a stress, modulo the presence of
the other phonetic cues (duration, loudness) used in that system. The
proposed reanalysis involves the transition to such an unmarked system,
where H tones come to mean stress. The strong prediction that this
hypothesis makes is that we should find new stresses where the un-
associated H tones of the previous system occur. As we shall see, this
prediction is borne out.
The argument involves several issues. We will first review which
H tones are unassociated. Then we shall look at the specific prosodic
properties within the tone accent system that make a reanalysis likely
in the first place. This should single out a system of the Eskilstuna type
as a more likely candidate for reanalysis than the other tonal systems
of Scandinavia. Thereafter we shall review the corroborating evidence
of new stresses in Danish and what factors influence where they show
up and where they don't. Finally, we turn to the Eastern Mälardalen
dialect, where a similar loss of lexical accent seems to have taken place,
but without the development of st0d prosody.
280 Tomas Riad
There are two H tones to reckon with in the Accent 2 tone sequence
of a tonally conservative dialect like Central Swedish: H*LHL]. The
first is the lexical tone, which always associates to primary stress. The
second H is part of the focus tone LH which signals the fact that some
word is focussed (rheme) in the utterance. In Stockholm (Central Swed-
ish), this H tone is not associated to a tone bearing unit, but rather floats
off the preceding L, which may or may not be associated, depending
on the availability of free, stressed syllables (Bruce 1987; Gussenhoven
and Bruce 1999; Riad 1996, 1998b).15 This is illustrated below, in the
crucial contexts, namely on the one hand Accent 1 and connective
Accent 2 (compounds), and on the other hand Accent 2 simplicia. The
latter is the odd one out.
(18) Stockholm (Central Swedish)
One stress, LHL]

Accent 1,
simplex 'syifilis 'syphilis'
Two stresses, H* « LH L]
connective Accent 2, |
compound 'sommar^danserna 'the summer
dances'
One stress, H*LHL]
Accent 2,
simplex 's o f f a 'sofa'
The boundary tone behaviour discussed above leads to the Western

Mälardalen curl pattern, where the focus tone is a H tone, which associ-
ates to the same syllable as the boundary L]. This yields the structures
in (19).
(19) Tonal structure of Eskilstuna-curl
One stress, H L]
Accent 1, [/
simplex 'sy: fills
Two stresses, H* (L) H L]

connective Accent 2, [/
compound ' sommar-, danserna
If the tonal grammar were based on these contexts alone, there would
in fact be no evidence of a distinctive lexical tone. The pattern is fully
compatible with a simpler grammar which says that stresses get a H
tone, and that boundary L] associates to the last stress, hence a system
very similar to Danish, as described by Itö and Mester (1997). The
forms which require some change by reanalysis are the Accent 2
simplicia (soffa), which contain a structure where some tonal material
including a H tone is separated from stress in a clear way. By the pro-
posed reanalysis the association of the focus H tone becomes obligatory.
In Accent 2 simplicia, the vast majority of which are disyllabic, the
focus H tone would associate with the post-stress syllable.
(20) Lexical Accent 2 reanalyzed
One stress, H*HL H*HL

Accent 2, V V
simplex 'soffa Da. 'so:fa
The reanalysis amounts to positing stresses in those syllables where the

focus tone associates, since tones only seem to associate to stressed
syllables in Scandinavian dialects. If the TBU is a stressed syllable/foot,
and if focus H becomes associated by reanalysis also in simplicia
containing only one stress, then it follows that a secondary stress must
be added. And we should be able to find it. Before turning to the Danish
evidence which bears out this prediction, let us motivate the reanalysis
internally to Central Swedish for the Accent 2 simplicia. Thus, we
282 Tomas Riad
should not only rely on changes in Accent 1 and connective Accent 2,

but preferably also find some pattern in Accent 2 simplicia which
compromises the distinctive part of the system.
There are two sources of internal support for the hypothesis. One
is the typological deviance that the Eskilstuna system acquires because
of curl. The other is neutralization of secondary stress under Accent 2.
6.3. Typological deviance
Consider the typological overview of several Scandinavian dialects

below (Riad 1996,1998b). Within this description, they cover the extant
variation with regard to tonal make-up.16
(21) Tonal typology

Lexical Focus Boundary
H* LH L] Central Swedish (Stockholm) , AI vda-
len
H* L H] Göta, Oslo, Värmland
L* H L] Malmö, Dala-Bergslagen, Bergen,
Narvik, Gotland
[ Accent 1
[ Accent 2 ]
The typology is strikingly homogeneous, despite the tonal transitions

that have no doubt taken place (cf. (17) above). (1) Tones always appear
in the same order. (2) The obligatory contour principle is everywhere
respected, i.e. H and L alternate. (3) Associating tones require stressed
syllables (prosodic heads) as tone bearers. (4) The lexical distribution
of accent is largely the same across dialects. There are very few known
tonal interactions like flops or deletions which challenge the typology.
(5) The lexical tone and the focus tone are never identical.
The last property derives in part from the OCP, but is not trivial.
In Western Mälardalen, the development of curl occasions a tonal shift
that leads to identical values (H) for the lexical tone and the focus
tone, viz. an anomaly within the typology. As mentioned, Western
Mälardalen today exhibits signs of transition from the Central Swedish
type to the Dala-Bergslagen type. For the transition to take place, the
curl should exert sufficient pressure to shift all preceding tones
leftwards, including the lexical tone. In the middle of the process,
however, the dialect is relatively vulnerable to reanalysis. This brings
us to the second internal reason for reanalysis: neutralization of second-
ary stress.
6.4. Secondary stress neutralization under clash
Connective Accent 2 is in reality a prosodic pattern which is predictable

from the number of stresses. Any word containing more than one stress
gets connective Accent 2. This includes compounds but also several
derivations. In Riad (1998a), I argued that (tonal) Accent 2 originates
precisely from the prosodic context of two adjacent stresses, i.e. clash
(Nespor and Vogel 1989). Over time, originally stressed endings come
to lose stress and acquire tonal information instead. Thus, endings come
to induce Accent 2 by virtue of being carriers of a lexical tone, rather
than by virtue of adding a secondary stress to some form, and thus
getting Accent 2 via the prosodic generalization of two or more stresses.
Of the many derivational suffixes which occur with Accent 2, some
carry stress (e.g. -het, -dom, -skap), some carry a lexical tone (e.g. -ing,
-ad, -else). Inflectional endings are all unstressed, but many of them
induce Accent 2 (e.g. plural -ar, infinitive -a, weak masculine -e), an
indication of historical heavy weight and stress (in Proto-Nordic or
later). Interestingly, the diachronic transition from stress information
to tone information is largely covert, because of the distributional
overlap, and crucially, because of a pattern of neutralization of second-
ary stress under Accent 2. This is illustrated in (22).
The second syllable of each word pair in (22a,b) is pronounced
identically in normal speech, an indication of neutralization of the
stressed/unstressed distinction. The same goes for the derivational forms
in (22c, d), modulo the segmental differences. This pattern of neutraliza-
tion is fully productive in contemporary Central Swedish, and obviously
relates to stress clash. In longer forms, which are more rare and nearly
always compounds, the tonally marked secondary stress (the last one
if there are several) is very salient.
284 Tomas Riad
(22) Neutralization of connective and lexical Accent 2

a. connective (compound) b. lexical (simplex)
X X > X. χ
2l 2l
brand-,iruw 'fireman' vs. hemmufn 'estate'
2l 2l
kvar-,skafi 'residual tax' forskai 'researched'
2l 2l
ben-,vi'ff 'bone white' skrivii 'written'
c. connective (derivation) d. lexical (derivation)
X X > X. χ .
2l 2l
sjuk,dom 'illness' vs. sjukling 'ill person'
2l 2l
klok,skap 'wisdom' sjuklig 'sickly'
2l 2l
tank,full 'pensive' varelse 'being; creature'
2l 2l
bar,bar 'portable' mattnad 'fullness'
The target group for reanalysis of H tones as stresses in the transition

from a distinctive to a non-distinctive tonal system are the Accent 2
simplicia, viz. forms of the (22b) group. In such forms, the focus H tone
floats above the second, unstressed syllable. Given what we have said
about neutralization and connective Accent 2 so far, it should be clear
that whether the focus H tone is associated or not is prosodically
masked information. Our example is soffa 'sofa'.
(23) Masked association in lexical Accent 2
Stockholm
'soffa oneTBU
H*LHL]
Eskilstuna
(emphatic) ' s o f (,) f a two TBUs
Κ
H*(L) HL]
A reanalysis would thus not involve a big change on the surface. The
generalization that would be attained is that all instances of Accent 2
become instances of connective Accent 2, a regular, prosodically based
and non-lexical pattern of the dialect. Lexical accent would thereby be

lost. From the perspective of the language learner, the syllable in the
post-tonic neutralization context may be either stressed or unstressed.17
The simplest grammar is the one which has connective Accent 2 but
no lexical tones, and so, it seems logical for the reanalysis to take place.
Hardly anyone will notice. The proposal for Danish, then, is that lan-
guage learners posit secondary stresses in positions where there were
no stresses before. And we find them in present-day Danish in a pattern
known as slumrende 'slumbering' st0d.
6.5. Slumbering st0d and new stresses in Danish
The examples in (24) are taken from Jespersen (1922), Hansen (1943:
18), Basb011 (1985: 24ff.) and Brink et al. (1991). The absence of st0d
in the forms in the leftmost column is phonologically regular, cf. (6)
above.
(24) Slumbering st0d

No st0d St0d Gloss
rhododendron [Kodo rhododen- [Kodo plant name (pi.)
'dendKon] dronner 'den.dKon'o]
cosmea [kos 'me: a] cosmeaer [kos'me:,ae:'rj] plant name (pi.)
madding ['maöerj] maddingen ['ma.oerj'gn] 'bait' 0 (def.)
kr0bling ['kKoeblerj] kr0blingen ['kKoebilerj'an] 'cripple' 0 (def.)
Anton ['anton] Antoner ['an,ton'D] pers. name (pi.)
venlig ['venli] venlige ['ven.lir'i] 'friendly' (pi.)
underlig [Onoli] underlige [On3,li:'i] 'strange' (pi.)
rotor ['Bo:to] rotoren ['Ko:,tD:'3n] 'rotor' (def.)
sofa ['so:fa] sofaen ['so:,fx:'3n] 'sofa' (def.)
sofaer [so:,fae:'D] (pl.)
pasha f'pa:sa] pashaen ['pa:,se:'cn] 'pasha' (def.)
pashaer ['pa^sei'o] (pl.)
inka t'erjka] inkaer ['eo,ke:'3] •Inca' (pl.)
nabo ['nseibo] naboer ['ns:,bo:'D] 'neighbor' (pl.)
Basb011 (1985) and/or Brink et al. (1991) mark the underlined vowels
as carrying secondary stress. Cognates in Central Swedish demonstrably
have no secondary stress, as can be ascertained by a compound test in
286 Tomas Riad
which the form in question is added at the end of a compound. The

focus tone goes to the last secondary stress.
(25) The compound test

'jatte-.matningen not *'jatte-matlningen 'the huge bait/feeding'
'badd-.soffa not *'badd-sof,fa 'sofa-bed'
As Basb011 remarks (1985:28), forms likesofaen ['so:,fae:'3n] havestfid

occurring in a syllable where few would have expected stress. Neverthe-
less, it is independently clear that st0d only occurs in stressed syllables.
If our hypothesis is right, this seeming contradiction can be understood.
The analysis presupposes that the tonal system preceding st0d in
Sjaelland must be of the Central Swedish type, i.e. have two peaks and
use connective Accent 2. Both features are conservative (Riad 1998a).
For completeness, the Danish structure corresponding to (23) above
is given below. We choose the definite form where the st0d shows up.
(26) Masked secondary stress
Danish
(regular) 's ο , f a ' en twoTBUs
l\
H(L)HL]
General reanalysis and the pattern of slumbering st0d might lead us to

expect to find st0d in all Danish cognates of Swedish/Norwegian Ac-
cent 2 words. As is well known, however, the general correlation is
between Accent 2 and no-st0d. Some things apparently limits the effects
of reanalysis. Considering the synchronic segmentals of Danish, it is in
fact expected that the large classes of Accent 2 simplicia should lack st0d.
Recall that in the slumbering st0d cases, the final syllable of uninflected
forms (sofa, rhododendron, etc.) apparently do not provide sufficients^
basis. Only if a 5i0i/-neutral, syllabic inflection (definite -dn, plural -dr}
is added does st0d emerge. Clearly it is the suffixation (viz. nonfinality),
which licenses st0d. This amounts to a special condition, since open
stressed syllables can usually get st0d, under primary stress (cf. (4))
and when the vowel is long. These properties are missing in uninflected
forms like sofa. I will assume that the secondary stress of sofa and the
other uninflected forms occurs in a neutralization context for stress,
much as in (22) above. Basb011 (1985: 24ff., 28) provides an analysis
which is at least compatible with that assumption. Thus, st0d will never
develop unless there are alternations which allow for its realization.
However, there is a more obvious source to bleed rampant st0d in
former Accent 2 simplicia, namely vowel weakening. This is a very
general and pervasive process in Danish (Skautrup 1944: 224ff.), as
opposed to most Swedish dialects. In the case of sofa the second vowel
is a full vowel, a necessary condition for st0d (Basb011 1986: 77), but
relatively unusual outside of primary stress. The large classes of
Accent 2 words exhibit schwa in their second syllables. Hence they lack
st0d basis and come out with no-st0d in Danish. It is a hard and fast
generalization that schwa cannot support st0d.
(27) Bleeding reanalysis

Infinitives glaede ['glae:oa] 'to please'
hoppe ['hobs] 'to jump'
Weak masculines tanke-n ['tarjga-n] 'thought/the'
mave-n ['mae:vo-n] 'stomach/the'
Weak feminines gade-n ['gae:cte-n] 'street/the'
kone-n ['ko:na-n] 'woman/the'
Words that do not get a secondary stress will not get st0d in inflected
forms, and so lose the second H tone in the reanalysis. The net result
for Danish is that the set of words that install a new stress is limited,
although the process is productive e.g. in loanwords. Participating
frequent suffixes like -ing and -lig moreover make it clear that the
pattern as such is not peripheral.
We shall now turn to the dialect of Eastern Mälardalen where the
same reanalysis has taken place, only to a dramatically greater extent.
7. Generalized Accent 2 in Eastern Mälardalen
In dialects which lose the accent distinction, it is usually the unmarked

Accent 1 which generalizes, while lexical tone of Accent 2 goes away.
288 Tomas Riad
This is what has happened in Bergen, Överkalix, Eastern Uppland,

Finland-Swedish. In Eastern Mälardalen, however, one finds an intrigu-
ing accentual pattern where the tonal contour of Accent 2 is generalized
in all polysyllables that have a post-tonic syllable. Thus, lexical tone
accent has generalized and become predictable from stress and syllable
structure. The area borders on the curl-area, and there are good reasons
to assume a connection between the two phenomena, especially in the
light of what has been said about the Danish development.
In (28), data illustrating the distributional pattern is compared to the
standard distribution found in Central Swedish generally (including
Stockholm and Eskilstuna). Accent is marked by a raised figure, which
is shadowed for those forms where accent is predictable on phonological
grounds.
(28) Generalized Accent 2, Eastern Mälardalen
Stockholm, Eskilstuna Eastern Mälardalen Gloss
J
a. "bok 'bok 'book'
'ka'nel 'ka'nel 'cinnamon'
2 2l
b. 'bil-ar bil-ar 'cars'
2 2l
'spela spela 'play'
2 2l
'led-ig led-ig 'free'
prin2'sessa prin2lsessa 'princess'
2l
c. "bil-en bil-en 'the car'
21
''fott-er-na fott-er-na 'feet'
21
''spring-er spring-er 'runs'
for"tala ôr'tala 'to slander'
d. jag ska ''ta den jag ska 2lta den will take it'
2l 2l
e. mellan1mal mellan,mal 'snack'
^mid.sommar.dans '''midiSommarâns 'midsummer dance'
In Eastern Mälardalen, the accent distinction has been lost as a lexical

word accent. Instead tonal accent is now completely predictable from
the number of syllables: monosyllables and oxytones (28a) get the
Accent 1 contour, all polysyllables with at least one syllable following
the syllable bearing primary stress get the Accent 2 contour (28b,c).
Furthermore, the domain for this prosody appears to be the prosodic
word, rather than the lexical word, viz. (28d). Compounds retain the
connective pattern (28e).18
On the face of it, it would seem that a marked tonal pattern has
generalized in the polysyllables, an unexpected thing. Normally, the

marked property should go away and unmarked structure—here
Accent 1, viz. no accent—should generalize. Connecting this phenome-
non with Eskilstuna-curl and st0d makes for a less surprising hypothe-
sis. Geographically, the Eskilstuna-curl area and the generalized
Accent 2 area are right next to each other, divided by a sharp boundary
(Staffan Nyström, p.c.), a fact that might suggest that generalized
Accent 2 is a further development of curl, much like the Danish system,
but without st0d. Grammatically, the generalized Accent 2 pattern is
indeed quite similar to Danish: there are no distinctive tones, while the
shape of the tonal contour varies as an allophonic function of stress
placement and the number of syllables.
7.7. The first reanalysis
In Danish, it was suggested, Accent 2 was lost by the reanalysis of H

tones as plain markers of stress rather than as (sometimes) carrying
lexical information. For Eastern Mälardalen the same reanalysis—i.e.,
positing secondary stresses in all Accent 2 forms, simplicia included
—goes half the way. On top of that, the melodic pattern must have
undergone further reanalysis involving a generalization relating to the
number of syllables, counting from the primary stressed syllable. The
last point is crucial, since none of the alternations between st0d and no-
st0d, caused e.g. by adding a prefix (häret [ ] 'hairy', behäret
[be'hüi'DÖ] 'with hair') or suffix (f0l [f01] 'foal',/0/<?m? [f01'JiK>] 'the
foals') to a disyllabic word have a counterpart in Eastern Mälardalen.
The first reanalysis is precisely the same as in Danish. Curl causes
a shift in the tonal sequence which leads to the equation of H tones with
stress. Whether or not st0d develops as a phonetic realization is an open
question—the reconstruction does not turn on that fact as such. The
important part is the fact that all instances of Accent 2 become instances
of connective Accent 2. Again, this is no generalization of a marked
feature, but of a productive prosodic pattern (two stresses —> connective
Accent 2), which has no part in a grammatical opposition. The lexical
tones evaporate. The big difference vis-a-vis Danish is the fact that the
Mälardalen area is unaffected by vowel weakening. Therefore, the
290 Tomas Riad
generalization of connective Accent 2 gets very wide extension. This

is what makes for the second reanalysis.
7.2. The second reanalysis
While the first reanalysis leads to a simplification of the grammar, the

result is not stable. The whole body of former lexical Accent 2 words
now get Accent 2 the connective way, by virtue of the two stresses they
contain (one old, one new). However, the new secondary stress will
always stand in a stress-neutralizing context (compare Danish no-st0d
in uninflected sofa). This fact made covert reanalysis possible in the first
place, but post hoc it entails abstractness, since the secondary stresses
installed by the first reanalysis will never show on the surface. In the
case of Danish, the affected group of words is both well-defined and
fairly small, and contrasts with a more general pattern—no-st0d in post-
tonic syllables—under the right conditions. Also, the very pattern of
slumbering st0d, which brings out an alternation between uninflected
and inflected forms, safeguards the continued existence of the new
secondary stresses. In Central Swedish, inflection will not affect the
status of secondary stress ('soffa, 'soffan, not *'sof/ari). It remains in
a clash with primary stress, as it does in Danish, but there is no phonetic
cue (like st0d) which unequivocally signals stress. Thus, chances are
that another reanalysis will take place, one which allows for a simpler
grammar compatible with the data (cf. Kiparsky 1995b: 655f.).
This the second reanalysis is a hypercorrection of sorts, where the
tonal contour of former Accent 2 is connected with syllable structure,
more precisely the presence of a post-tonic syllable within the prosodic
word. This reanalysis is what spreads the tonal contour to the polysyl-
labic Accent 1 forms (' 'bilen >2'bilen,forl 'tala >for2'tala, etc.). Mono-
syllables and oxytones are unaffected, of course, and so are compounds.
The latter retain the same connective Accent 2 pattern as the rest of
Central Swedish (Bloch 1998).
The two reanalyses are logically distinct, a fact that shows in the
qualitative differences of distribution of the old Accent 2 pattern in
Danish and Eastern Mälardalen, respectively. However, there is no
knowing whether they took place separately or in one go in Eastern
Mälardalen. The reanalyses might not be very old, but the phenomenon
is about to disappear with the great influx and infrastructural changes
in the area in the twentieth century (Larsson 1999). One indirect indica-
tion of the age of generalized Accent 2 is the fact that it shows signs
of simplification. In particular, the second tonal peak is optional in
certain positions (Bloch 1998). This peak is occasioned by the focus
tone (LH) in Stockholm. In Eastern Mälardalen, the whole contour
(HLH) would make up the focus tone (after generalization), and so,
simplification is more or less expected. The fact that more has not
happened internally to the dialect might indicate that the phenomenon
as such is not very old. At the same time, nothing in principle would
block the hypothesis that it is as old as the Middle Ages.
7.3. A previous proposal
On the basis of the geographic distribution, Nyström (1997: 220) pro-

poses that the accent loss began as an innovation in Stockholm, initiated
under Low German influence during the Hanseatic period (fourteenth
and fifteenth century), and that it subsequently spread to the surrounding
countryside. At a later point, the accent distinction would be reintro-
duced in the city. Such a course of events is assumed for the city of
Bergen in western Norway (Lorentz 1995: 42), where the Hanseatic
league had an office. Today, the city of Bergen has the accent distinc-
tion, whereas the surrounding area lacks it. However, the important
difference between these two cases is that in Bergen it is the expected
pattern of Accent 1, that is no accent, which becomes general after the
loss of the distinction. In Eastern Mälardalen, it is the Accent 2 contour
which generalizes, and unless this fact can be accounted for, the lan-
guage contact hypothesis does not seem viable. Everywhere else where
the accent distinction has been lost under language contact it is Accent 2
that goes away (Överkalix, most Swedish dialects in Finland).
8. Times of origin
Before concluding we should briefly review the time of the origin of

Scandinavian tonal prosodies, from the perspective of the hypotheses
292 Tomas Riad
laid out above. Locating the origin of tonal accent and st0d in time is
a task that involves several different questions. The phonetic origin of
each phenomenon is older than the phonological, if we by phonological
mean the presence of lexical tones and stable association of HL to one
syllable, respectively.
The lexical tones emerge by reanalysis of the pattern known as
connective Accent 2, which is based on the presence of two stresses
(Riad 1998a). This regular phonological, non-distinctive pattern might
have generated the tonal contour of Accent 2 for a long time, before
some morphemes containing the secondary stress underwent reanalysis,
swapping the stress (or the heavy weight causing stress) for a lexical
tone. The reanalysis as such is covert and still ongoing today, working
its way through the Swedish morphology. All inflections that occur with
Accent 2 are tonally marked today, but several of the derivations still
get Accent 2 by way of the connective Accent 2 assignment, as we saw
in (22). At any rate, the late Proto-Nordic period (c.900) is a good
guess for the origin of lexical tones. All forms that had two stresses
shortly before that time, today have one stress and Accent 2. Around
the same time, long vowels of inflections like plural *-o:z and dative
*-/: had shortened (-ar, -il-e). If we take the loss of quantity as a sign
of the loss of secondary stress, which seems fair, then that is the origin
of lexical tones.19
Turning to st0d, the origin is later, but how much later is difficult
to establish. See Fischer-J0rgensen (1989a: 17ff.) for an assessment of
the value of internal evidence proposed by different scholars. In its
structurally controlled form, st0dis a specifically Danish phenomenon,
which does not spread beyond Sjaelland in the east. Thus, it seems fair
to assume that it must be later than around 1100 when the East Nordic
dialects—Swedish and Danish—begin to exhibit separate developments.
Skautrup (1944: 238ff.) and many others have connected the develop-
ment of st0d with vowel weakening and apocope, sometimes also with
'increased stress' in the root syllable. In view of what we have said
about the conditions for Eskiltuna-curl, both proposals fit quite well.
'Increased stress' should in that case be understood as 'in positions
where special emphasis might occur'. Recall that Eskiltuna-curl typi-
cally occurs phrase-finally and under emphasis. If the Eastern Malar-
dalen system is related to the adjacent curl system the way we have
proposed, it should not take much more for st0d to be phonologized.
The apocope theory also allows for the development of st0d, but in a
different way. St0d would in that case be seen as an example of tonal
stability. A syllable bearing a L tone deletes and the L tone relinks to
the preceding syllable, which already contains a H tone, yielding the
desired configuration. Neither theory pinpoints the origin of st0d in
time, however. Geographically, Standard Danish st0d is contained
within the vowel weakening area rather than the apocope area (Skautrup
1944: 226, 242). In West Jutlandish, where apocope is the most perva-
sive, st0d actually has a quite different distribution (Ringgaard 1960).
If the systems are historically related—though many think not—it seems
more likely that apocope affects an already extant st0d system in partic-
ular ways. Areal linguistics has tended to consider Sjaelland and Fyn
(Central Danish) as the innovation center.
There is a written record that possibly refers to st0d from 1510 where
Hemming Gadh (a Swedish clergyman, politician and diplomat) states
that "the Danes press the words out as if they would cough, and seem
to take pains to twist the words in their throat before they come out"
(cited in Fischer-J0rgensen 1989a: 17). The first explicit (and therefore
definitely reliable) description of st0d is given by H0ysgaard (1743).
If we accept the 1510 record, however, the statement could probably
be taken to mean that the st0d is phonologized, rather than occasional
as in present-day Eskilstuna. If we also assume that it did not develop
before vowel weakening, which is clearly attested in runic inscriptions
from around 1100 and on (Skautrup 1944: 225), then we have a period
of four hundred years, sometime during which st0d will have developed.
How long it would take for occasional st0d to become phonologized
is an open question. One might consider the fact that Eskiltuna-curl (and
sometimes st0d) has been around for at least a hundred years without
becoming phonologized. Gjerdman's description is from 1918 and his
informants are presumably adults. One must also take into account the
question of dialect spread. Presumably, phonologized st0d would have
a better chance to spread, than occasional st0d.
9. Conclusion
The hypothesis laid out in this article ties together several phenomena
observed in Scandinavian dialects. When applied to Danish, the tonal
294 Tomas Riad
analysis of st0d proposed for Livonian by Kiparsky (1995a) allows for

a direct connection between the distributional patterns of, on the one
hand st0d in Danish and, on the other, boundary L] in varieties of the
conservative tonal dialect of Central Swedish. A transition from conser-
vative tonal to st0d is supported by the Western Mälardalen (Eskilstuna)
dialects which exhibit a very close similarity with Danish, both phoneti-
cally (curl, creak and sometimes st0d) and with regard to distribution.
The crucial difference between Western Mälardalen and Danish is
grammatical in nature and concerns the status of st0d/cun within the
tonal system. Western Mälardalen retains the tonal distinction, curl
being basically optional. In Danish, the distribution of st0d is structur-
ally controlled. The proposal, then, was that curl developed in Denmark
much as it has in Western Mälardalen, but that it became phonologized.
One effect of curl, easy to observe in Western Mälardalen, and here
assumed as parallel for Danish, is that the tonal contour gets compressed
such that the coincidence of H tones and stresses increases—dramat-
ically if cun/st0d is phonologized as in Danish. Together with the
regular neutralization of secondary stress when adjacent to primary
stress and the regular connective Accent 2 pattern in any word contain-
ing two or more stresses, this increase leads to reanalysis of the accent
system (simplification) as a direct function of stress, doing away with
the lexical tonal distinction. The hypothesis turned out to predict the
existence of stresses in otherwise etymologically unmotivated positions.
Those stresses we found in the Danish slumbering st0d pattern. While
vowel weakening has made this a small pattern in Danish, absence of
vowel weakening allows for a much more extensive pattern in the
Eastern Mälardalen area, which is geographically directly connected
with the curl area in Western Mälardalen. The Eastern Mälardalen
pattern of generalized Accent 2 exhibits loss of the tonal distinction,
just like Danish, but also displays further generalization of the now non-
distinctive Accent 2 melody to all prosodic words containing a post-
tonic syllable.
We thus have parallel developments in Danish and Central Swedish
dialects, where support for the development in each area has been drawn
from known fact in others. This is methodologically crucial for the parts
that require historical reconstruction, since the origins of tone accent,
st0d and generalized Accent 2 cannot be studied in written records.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Carlos Gussenhoven and Hans Basb011 for discussion and
comments on the content of this paper, and Lars Bleckert for permission to reproduce
his FO tracings of the Eskilstuna data. I would also like to thank my Western
Mälardalen informants Chris Persson, Anki Olsson Nystrom and Staffan Nystrom.
Notes
1. An overview of early treatments of the origin of Danish st0d is given in Kroman

(1947, ch. 8). See also Fischer-J0rgensen (1989a: 17ff., 143ff.).
2. Some dialects, notably the Copenhagen variety, now have a LH contour (Eli
Fischer-J0rgensen, p.c.). For several FO tracings of st0d, see Fischer-J0rgensen
(1989a: 184-191).
3. The presentation concerns Standard Danish st0d only, while West Jutlandish st0d
and other varieties which have quite different distributions are left aside
(Ringgaard 1960; Ejskjaer 1967). The description only mentions a few central
generalizations and the reader is therefore referred to Basb011 (1985) for a more
thorough presentation and further references.
4. Forchhammer (1942) argues that the steep fall of pitch is more likely (than a rise)
to cause the compression, which is typical of st0d. HL would hence seem to be
a favourable contour for st0d. Fischer-J0rgensen (1989b:21) describes it like this:
". . . the first part of a syllable with st0d is characterized by a relatively high FO
and often a somewhat raised intensity, whereas the second part is characterized
by a considerable decrease of intensity, and often of FO, accompanied or replaced
by irregular vibrations, and moreover by a relatively weak fundamental and weak
glottal flow."
5. In Livonian the distinctive use ofsi0d is even more marginal (Kiparsky 1995a).
Most of the time, st0d is predictable from phonological processes whereby a
syllable acquires an extra mora.
6. Phonetic transcriptions are broad. In particular, Danish vowels with st0d are
always marked as long, despite some regular phonetic variation depending on
segmental context and position in the word (cf. Brink et al. 1991: 1573 ff.).
7. Already the fact that st0d corresponds to Accent 1, i.e., the absence of lexical
accent, should make us prepared to find that st0d is not a lexical accent in the
same sense as Accent 2 is lexical in Swedish and Norwegian.
8. There is no need to expect both HL sequences to be functionally the same. One
might compare with the Stockholm tonal sequence which is HLHL, but contains
only one lexical accent.
9. The basic tonal grammar is largely consistent across Swedish and Norwegian
dialects. For recent typologies, cf. Lorentz (1995) and Riad (1998b).
296 Tomas Riad
10. Still, I shall refer to the first tone of the sequence as the "lexical tone".
11. Other dialect areas which exhibit connective Accent 2 are Göta, Dala and Narvik
(northern Norway), cf. Riad (1998b).
12. Liberman (1982: 68) cites this work in his discussion of the st0d to tone accent
hypothesis.
13. An area comprising Sörmland, Västmanland and adjacent parts of Östergötland,
Närke and southern Dalarna is sometimes referred to as the "whine belt" (Sw
gnällbältet).
14. I have marked creak with underscore in the places where Bleckert uses four
commas.
15. The segmentation of the tone sequence differs between these works but that does
not affect the correctness of the observation, obviously.
16. Malmö has here been put in the same category as Bergen and Dala (contra Bruce
and Carding 1978, Fintoft et al. 1978, Riad 1996, 1998b). I thank Gösta Bruce
for pointing out the great similarity between Malmö and Bergen to me. There are
differences between dialects within this group, but they do not relate to tonal make
up, but rather to grammatical behaviour of focus tone.
17. Other factors than direct perception are going to determine the grammatical status.
In the forms in (22a) above, the morphological status of the elements of com-
pounds will make for the positing of stress, of course, but in (22c,d) the morphol-
ogy does not help, since both categories of suffixes have the same grammatical
status. Prosody will bring out the difference e.g. in longer compounds, not a very
frequent context.
18. This well-known yet largely unstudied pattern is partly documented in Källskog
et al. (1993) and has recently been described by Nyström (1997), who provides
an overview of the Eastern Mälardalen system and its dialect geography. Bloch
(1998) is a recent study of the synchronic phonology of generalized Accent 2,
which establishes the fact that the tonal contour is of the Central Swedish type.
Generalized Accent 2 has been largely lost in the younger generation, except in
place names (Larsson 1999).
19. Others have proposed that the distinction arises in the first two centuries of the
second millenium, since that is when we allegedly find minimal pairs (Oftedal
1952; Garding 1977 and references therein). Surface minimal pairs are however
epiphenomenal to the installment of lexical tones (Riad, in press).
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Prosodic variation in 'Lutgart'
Paula Fikkert
1. Introduction
Contrary to word stress in Modern Dutch (cf. Kager, Visch and Zon-
neveld 1987; Kager 1989; van der Hülst 1991; Trommelen and
Zonneveld 1989,1990; Nouveau 1994; Booij 1995), word stress in the
older stages of the language is seldom discussed, although according
to the handbook descriptions word stress seems to have been different
from Modern Dutch (cf. Schönfeld 1947; Franck 1910; Van der Meer
1927; Van Bree 1977, 1987; Le Roux and Le Roux 1969). One of the
few exceptions is Zonneveld's (1992, 1993a, 1998) investigation of
word stress in 'Lutgart'. Zonneveld comes to the conclusion that in the
past 700 years not much has changed with respect to Dutch word stress
and that the stress system in 'Lutgart' is very similar to that of Modern
Dutch. While Zonneveld analysed the meter in 'Lutgart' from the per-
spective of the Modern Dutch stress system, the analysis presented in
this paper takes as its starting point the (hypothesised) prosodic system
of Old Dutch and early Middle Dutch. I argue that the prosodic system
of 'Lutgart' resembles that of the old and early middle stages of Dutch,
which is fairly similar to that of the other West Germanic (WGmc)
languages. It still has the Germanic Foot (Dresher and Lahiri 1991), and
moreover, Open Syllable Lengthening (OSL) is not yet complete (Lahiri
and Dresher 1999; Dresher, this volume). This latter argument chal-
lenges the assumption of all Middle Dutch grammars, namely that OSL
took place in Old Dutch and was completed in Middle Dutch. The only
evidence given for this assumption comes from rhyme. However, as we
will see, rhyme in 'Lutgart' does not seem to motivate this assumption.
Another major conclusion in Zonneveld's work, which is challenged
in this paper, is that prosodic variation in 'Lutgart' is due to the status
of schwa as a stress attractor. He argues that this confirms his syn-
chronic analysis of Modern Dutch, which also assumes the stress attract-
ing nature of schwa (Trommelen and Zonneveld 1989; Kager and
Zonneveld 1986; Kager, Visch and Zonneveld 1987). I will, however,
302 Paula Fikkert
argue that the variation is not due to the nature of schwa per se but is
due to prosodic preferences at stake at the time of 'Lutgart'. Variation
is found only in certain environments which partly coincide with those
where English showed Trisyllabic Shortening (TSS) (Lahiri and Fikkert
1999). Dutch did not have TSS but chose a different way of dealing
with less preferred prosodic structures, as we will see in Section 5.
The claims brought forward here rely heavily on comparative evi-
dence from investigations of changes in the prosodic systems of the
West Germanic languages:
(1) WGmc-> Old English (OE)-» Middle English (ME) -» Modern English
Old High Middle High German Modern German
German (OHG) (MHG)
Middle Dutch (MNL) Modern Dutch
Although meter does not play a central role in this paper, evidence from
metrics will be used, as well as evidence from rhyme, loans and spell-
ing, to shed light on what the prosodic structure of that period was (cf.
Kiparsky and Youmans 1989). Central to the investigation are the
different types of prosodic variation found in 'Lutgart'.
This paper is organised as follows: First, a description of the prosodic
system of WGmc and of Modern Dutch is given in Section 1. After
providing some general facts about 'Lutgart' in Section 3, Zonneveld's
analysis of the prosodic structure of 'Lutgart' will be discussed in
Section 4. Section 5 is a detailed discussion of the types of variation
found in 'Lutgart' and gives an alternative analysis based on the
prosodic system of the older stages of other WGmc languages, while
in Section 6 it is argued that Open Syllable Lengthening had not yet
taken place in the language of 'Lutgart'. Section 7 discusses the fact
that many instances of prosodic variation are levelled out in Modern
Dutch. In Section 8, Middle Dutch will be compared with Middle
English, which chose a different strategy to repair sub-optimal prosodic
structures. Finally, Section 9 summarises the main conclusions.
2. Prosodic structure of older West Germanic and Modern Dutch:

a comparison
There is ample evidence that word stress in the older stages of the West
Germanic languages was different from the modern situation (see

Lahiri, Riad and Jacobs 1999 for an overview). Stress was by and large
initial in West Germanic, i.e. stress usually fell on the first syllable of
either the word or the root. Most Middle Dutch grammars mention that
stress was still predominantly initial and attribute non-initial stress to
three different groups of words (cf. Schönfeld 1947; Franck 1910; Van
der Meer 1927; Van Bree 1977, 1987; Le Roux and Le Roux 1969).
First, prefixed verbs (and some prefixed adjectives) have word stress
on the root, resulting in non-initial word stress, as in Middle Dutch and
Modern Dutch overbruggen 'to bridge over'. Second, certain suffixes
(mostly native ones) attracted stress to the syllable immediately preced-
ing the suffix in so-called 'compounding derivations'; later, new 'com-
pounding derivations' followed the same pattern by analogy, as in
drie-hoek-drie-hoek-ig ('triangle-triangular'; lit. 'three-corner-adj.
suffix') (Schönfeld 1947). Third, loan words maintained main stress
in their original position. Schönfeld (1947: 102) remarks:
Daarentegen hebben de vele Franse woorden en suffixen over't algemeen nun
eigen accent behouden, en zodoende werkten ze ertoe mee, dat het gevoel voor
de accentuering van de eerste syllabe verzwakte en dat dus de kans op
verschuivingen in inheemse woorden en woordgroepen toenam. [The many
French words and suffixes, on the contrary, generally kept their original accent,
and therefore weakened the feeling for accenting the first syllable and increased
the chance for stress shifts in native words and word groups].
Although it is undoubtedly true that French loans influenced the

prosodic structure of Dutch, the question still remains why this could
happen in Dutch (and German) but not in English, where French loans
did not retain final word stress. Contrary to the situation in Middle
Dutch main stress in Modern Dutch is not assigned from the word
beginning but from the end of the word: stress falls on one of the last
three syllables.
While discussing the stress pattern of Middle Dutch none of the
Middle Dutch grammars mentions foot structure. For West Germanic
it has been argued that the older stages had a resolved moraic trochee,
often referred to as the Germanic Foot (Dresner and Lahiri 1991). This
is a quantity-sensitive trochee where the head of the foot must have two
moras. In West Germanic feet were built from left to right (i.e. from
the word beginning) and main stress was on the leftmost foot. Long
304 Paula Fikkert
vowels and closed syllables counted as heavy in West Germanic. It has

been proposed that the Germanic Foot was still prevalent in Middle
English (ME) (Lahiri, Riad and Jacobs 1999; Lahiri and Fikkert 1999;
Lahiri and Dresher 1999), and that the stress system changed in early
Modern English (cf. Halle and Keyser 1971; Minkova 1997; Lahiri and
Fikkert 1999; Redford 1999). In this paper, I will claim that early
Middle Dutch also had the resolved moraic trochee, i.e. the Germanic
Foot. Modern Dutch, however, has been analysed as having an uneven
trochee (Kager 1989), or a moraic trochee (Lahiri and Koreman 1988),
and even a syllabic trochee (Booij 1995).
Another aspect of West Germanic prosody that is relevant for Middle
Dutch is the destressing of feet. Dresher and Lahiri (1991) argue that
final non-branching (i.e. monosyllabic) feet underwent destressing in
Old English. This mainly affected inflectional suffixes, which never
bore stress. Old English had already shortened all long vowels in final
syllables. The only heavy final syllables (monosyllabic feet) subject to
final destressing were therefore closed syllables with a short vowel.
Destressing in Old English could easily be reinterpreted as consonant
extrametricality by the language learner. In German (and probably also
in Dutch) the situation was different, since long vowels in closed sylla-
bles did exist in the older stages of those languages, as in OHG hanöm
('cock' DAT.PL) andzungun ('tongue' NOM/ACC.PL). Moreover, Dutch
and German had many derivational (native) suffixes consisting of a
superheavy syllable that bore at least secondary stress and are still
superheavy to this day (cf. Dutch/German -loosl-los, -heidl-heit, etc.).
Note that most native suffixes were reduced syllables in English (-less,
-ness). Also Romance loans entered the Dutch and German languages
with final stress, many of them having superheavy final syllables. It
seems, therefore, that in general superheavy syllables are exempted
from the destressing rule in Dutch and German; i.e. they seem to behave
as if they were equivalent to a branching foot. In other words, in Dutch
mostly monosyllabic feet ending in -VC were subject to destressing.
This special status of monosyllabic -VC feet in Dutch has been pre-
served into Modern Dutch and is accounted for in many different ways:
some claim that final syllables, except the superheavy ones, are made
extrametrical (cf. Trommelen and Zonneveld 1989). Others claim that
a monosyllabic -VC foot is made extrametrical (cf. Lahiri and Koreman

1988; Kager 1989).
Except for the special status of final monosyllabic -VC feet, the
situation in Modern Dutch is quite different from the one of early West
Germanic. Most, but not all, authors agree on the following two points
for Modern Dutch: (a) feet are built from right to left, main stress
falling on the rightmost foot, and (b) the foot is a quantity-sensitive
trochee (cf. Kager 1989). The exact form of the foot is still a matter of
dispute, but in any event the Modern Dutch metrical pattern is not the
same as in early Germanic. Quantity also is different: in Modern Dutch
only closed syllables count as heavy, long vowels do not. The differ-
ences are summarised in (2):
(2) Prosodic structure in older West Germanic versus Modern Dutch

Older West Germanic Modern Dutch
• initial main stress · main stress on one of last three
syllables
• Germanic Foot · Quantity-sensitive moraic
trochee
• Quantity: VV and VC are · Quantity: closed syllables are
heavy heavy
• final defooting of non- · extrametrical -VC
branching feet syllables/feet
The question, of course, is how and why the prosodic systems of the
West Germanic languages changed so dramatically. The goal of this
paper is to gain more insight into the prosodic structure of the Middle
Dutch language at the time of 'Lutgart'. The main questions addressed
are the following:
(3) Main questions

(i) What was the foot structure at the time of 'Lutgart'? Was it
still the Germanic Foot, or had it already changed?
(ii) When did OSL become active in the language?
(iii) When did stress shift to the right edge?
(iv) Why did Romance loans keep their own stress pattern?
306 Paula Fikkert
3. The meter of 'Lutgart'
3.1. General facts
The 'Sente Lutgart', i.e. the 'Copenhagen Lutgart'1 is a very elaborate

Dutch adaptation of Thomas van Cantimpre's 'vita piae Lutgardis',
done probably by Willem van Affligem, who was born in Mechelen,
studied in Paris, and went to Affligem and Sint-Truiden, where he died
in 1297 in the function of abbot (Van Veerdeghem 1899, Knuvelder
1982; Gysseling 1985). 'Sente Lutgart' is the earliest Middle Dutch
work of considerable length; it counts 20,406 pairwise rhyming lines.
It was probably written between 1263 and 1270. Only books two and
three still exist.
The work describes the life of the holy woman 'Lutgart' who was
born in Tongeren in 1182. In 1194 she entered the Benedictine convent
in Sint Truiden and moved to the convent Les Awirs, or Aywieres, near
Liege in 1206. There she stayed until her death in 1246. Her love for God
was remarkable and also determined her relationship to people. During
much of her life she abstained from food (except for bread and beer) as
a penance for the sins of her fellow men. Almost immediately after her
death the original Latin prose version was written. The Dutch adaptation
is much more than a translation: it is a poem written in a rich style.
3.2. Meter in 'Lutgart'
The meter of 'Lutgart' is remarkable in that it is the only Middle Dutch

text written in a pure iambic meter. According to Zonneveld, the defini-
tions given for Chaucer's iambic pentameter by Halle and Keyser
(1966) are also by and large applicable to 'Lutgart'. They are given
in (4):
(4) Metrical principles for Chaucer's iambic pentameter (Halle and

Keyser, 1966: 380-381)
(a) Principle I
The iambic pentameter verse consists often positions to which
may be appended one or two extrametrical syllables.
(b) Principle II
A position is normally occupied by a single syllable, but under
certain conditions, it may be occupied by more than one sylla-
ble or none.
Condition 1. Two vowels may constitute a single position,
provided that they adjoin or are separated by a liquid or nasal
or by a word-boundary, which may be followed by h-, and
provided that one of them is a weakly stressed or unstressed
vowel.
Condition 2. An unstressed or weakly stressed monosyllabic
word may constitute a single metrical position with a preceding
stressed or unstressed syllable.
(c) Principle III
A stress maximum is constituted by a syllable bearing linguisti-
cally determined stress that is greater than that of the two sylla-
bles adjacent to it in the same verse. A stress maximum may
only occupy even positions within a verse, but not every even
position need be so occupied.
However, a few changes are needed for the principles to hold for the
meter of 'Lutgart'. First, 'Lutgart' is written in a rhyming iambic te-
trameter. It ideally consists of eight (instead of ten) positions: w s w
s w s w s, as in 1. 9 in (5), to which one extrametrical syllable may be
appended to create a feminine rhyme (11.1-4,8), which is actually very
frequent. This extrametrical syllable must contain a schwa, i.e. it cannot
have a full vowel (Zonneveld 1992, 1993a, 1998).
(5) First lines of 'Lutgart'

00001 Nu hebbic v met wären warden
00002 En deel der uiten uän lutgärden
00003 Uerclart gi heren ende vrowen
00004 Daer ic in mi te goeder trowen
308 Paula Fikkert
00005 Gepinet hebbe al sonder wane

00006 Tehoudene äl den seluen gänc
00007 Jn didsche. ende in den seluen wegen
00008 Te gäne. die ic vänt geslegen
00009 Jn din latine uore mi.
Line 7 shows that the number of syllables can be higher than 9. The
underlined schwas in (5) and (6) are in elision position (see Halle and
Keyser's Principle II): they form one position with the following vowel:
'synaloepha'. This not only occurs in the context of schwa plus vowel,
but also if schwa is followed by a word starting with /h/, as in (6a) or
a coronal consonant, as in (6b); and occasionally if schwa is following
by a word starting with a /w/, as in (6c):
(6) Contexts for elision

a. 00016 Ende häre wel geräkde leuen
00017 Dat si daer leidde hebdi gehoert
00061 Die loegene hören ouer wäer
00123 Na hären wesene häre werke
00144 Want älse hi heft gesegt al ut
00248 Dies dochte hen alien wel geuoege
00391 AI clägende hebdi dis uerlijt
b. 00169 Ende nit onthouden dät men seit
04544 Ende däer dat sacrament ontfinc
04001 Dat gi uwes sinne wordt so uroet
2
00275-3 Jnt beilege länt van ouer zee
3
c. 00237 Dien häestelike was cont gemäect
Occasionally, there are other instances where a foot seems to consist

of more than two syllables. One could account for those cases by
assuming that elision also applies word-internally (7a), indicated
by double underlining. Instances where a position is not occupied are
rare (7b):
(7) Feet with more or less than two syllables

a. 00473 Daer si uolleuede4 in groten eeren
00598 Die met geproeueder heresien
b. 00170 Dat es uerloren arbeit

02372 Siin orconde was däer te crane
05453 Däer si sere in was verwerret
Line-initial and line-final positions often behave differently from line-

medial ones. In line-final position, i.e. in rhyme position, no unstressed
syllables with full vowels occur. Here, word stress is sometimes shifted,
since the rhyming element must bear stress. This poses a limit on the
kind of variation, as shown in (8): viant can occur with initial or final
stress line-internally, but only occurs with final stress line-finally. It
seems that the notion of stress-maximum (cf. Principle III) is not appli-
cable in line-final position (Zonneveld 1992, 1993a, 1998).
(8) No variation line-finally

13548 Hi vindt din viant wel so koene
12197 Dats die viänt die feile ghir
13551 Dat gi die plache dint viänt
(13552) En rumet nit. want hi in hant)
In line-initial position inversion of the iambic stress pattern may occur

(which, according to Zonneveld, occurs always phrase-initially), as
shown in (9a); (9b) gives examples of inversion line-internally, which
is not very frequent:
(9) Line-initial inversion

a. 01003 Weder si quäet sijn ochte goet
01633 Tuschen den uiant ende häre
02815 Allen sonderen best teuromen
03024 Coenlic uermeten dis dat si
11765 Brüder damäes van bellengem
12516 Koninc philips van vrankerike
01451-3 Wären si päpen ochte clerke
02672-3 Vrowen sybflien oc verlijt
b. 01131 Met slägen groet sonder getäl
04517 Die bat ouer die urowe goet
09698 Die si ouer die nonne dede
310 Paula Fikkert
Of course, the most important principle for analysing the prosodic

system is Principle III. According to Zonneveld, the basic rules for
'Lutgart' are: (i) all monosyllabic content words bear stress; (ii) all
polysyllabic words with one full vowel bear stress on that vowel; (iii)
stress in words with more than one full vowel falls where the Modern
Dutch speaker would expect it. This means more or less that stress-
maxima correspond to even positions, but unstressed syllables can occur
in even position. The focus here is on those cases that run against the
intuition of the Modern Dutch speaker, since many of those cases show
variation in word prosodic structure as well.
4. Previous analyses of word stress in 'Lutgart'
As mentioned before, studies of word prosodic structure of earlier

stages of Dutch are rare. One of the most detailed is Zonneveld's
(1992, 1993a, 1998) insightful work on the stress pattern of 'Lut-
gart' in which he arrives at two main conclusions. First, he claims
that word stress is by and large the same as in Modern Dutch, and
second, that the attested variation in 'Lutgart' is due to the stress-
attracting nature of schwa. Both conclusions will be discussed and
challenged below.
4.1. Word stress in 'Lutgart' according to Zonneveld
Based on a metrical analysis of 'Lutgart' Zonneveld arrives at the

observations in (10), concluding that word stress at the time of 'Lutgart'
was very similar to word stress in Modern Dutch.
(10) Zonneveld's observations regarding main stress in 'Lutgart'

a. Words ending in a vowel have penultimate stress: grade,
glorie, sententie, remedie, ymaginatie; the only exception
(other than a few names): baillu, and possibly Golgatha.
b. Disyllabic words ending in a VC rhyme have final stress:
proces, rabat, David. In trisyllabic words it is difficult to de-
cide whether main stress is final or initial: Nazareth, Betlehem,
Gabriel. The only longer word ending in a closed syllable

which has penultimate stress is Zacharias.
c. Words ending in VVC have final stress too: parloer, Damaes,
jueel, amoreus, kappelaen, latijn, abijt, paradijs, digniteit.
d. Words ending in VCC also have final stress: convent, prosent.
In trisyllabic words it is most likely also final: argument,
iugement.
As mentioned in the introduction, the standard analysis of Dutch word

stress assumes that moraic trochees are built from right to left, and
closed syllables count as heavy. Main stress is assigned to the final
foot. However, either final -VC feet (Lahiri and Koreman 1988) or
-VC syllables (Trommelen and Zonneveld 1989; Kager 1989) are
made extrametrical and will not receive main stress. Superheavy
syllables are not made extrametrical, hence they usually receive main
stress.
From this short description it can be seen that, although (lOa, c, d)
follow the rules for Modern Dutch word stress, words ending in a stress-
bearing -VC rhyme (lOb) do not (cf. Trommelen and Zonneveld 1989;
Kager 1989; Nouveau 1994; Lahiri and Koreman 1988). We will come
back to this issue below.
4.2. Prosodic variation and schwa
Zonneveld's second conclusion is that the attested stress variation in

'Lutgart' is largely due to the stress-attracting nature of schwa (Zon-
neveld 1992). He observes that variation occurs in complex words
(including compounds, pseudo-compounds like lichame, antwerde,
ambacht, bisschop, bispel, prefixed and suffixed forms). If a complex
word ends in a schwa, stress is invariably on the syllable immediately
preceding schwa (lla); absence of the final schwa results in initial
stress (lib). A few exceptions occur: disyllabic complex words and
proper names with final stress occur (lie), as well as complex words
where stress does not fall on the syllable immediately preceding
schwa (lid).
312 Paula Fikkert
(11) Prosodic variation and schwa

a. 00709 Mettin ijonfrowen int geuoch
03758 Gewärech gnoch litteeken gäf
10894 Dat cläre ansichte van der vrowen
02224 Gereecht vonnesse wert gegeven
01034 Die seide gods urindinne mäer
14422 Van din ambächte ende hoe si dingen
02552 Die die uiände meest onttreden
b. 01814-3 Dat ämbacht dätten weder deinsen
04060 Dat säl v ämbacht wesen däer
00255-3 Droch hi dat ämbacht van meestrien
02129 Dit bispel dat ic 'v uerträc
02133 Daer ic dat bispel äve las
01495 En orconscäp dat hört te häre
02148 Din uiant quäet. din bosen ghir
07099 Die viant die se wilde vellen
c. 07970 Wrachte här ämbacht die godes minne
0676-3 Heft dänt thomäs die predekäre
0548-3 Want die uiänt fei ende quäet
12197 Dats die viänt die feile ghir
0323-3 Oude ende ijonge orlof genomen
d. 13397 Bi desen bispele es verclärt
0412-3 Die allen orconden dat gi mi
14283 Si bat vor coninge ende grauen
04235 Wat uonessen es 'v gegeuen
According to Zonneveld (1992), the forms in (1 Ic) and (l Id) indicate

pure confusion with respect to the stress rule before schwa. Alterna-
tively, they need to be seen as infrequent exceptional cases. In the next
sections, I argue that this variation is neither due to the nature of schwa,
nor to exceptional lines, an argument that has been brought forward by
Halle and Keyser (1971) to account for the stress pattern in words like
'brimstone' in Chaucer. Rather, this variation is caused by conditions
on foot structure in relation to the metrical conditions that are at stake
in 'Lutgart'.
From the discussion above it is clear that forms containing more
than one full vowel are of interest to us, because they conflict with what
Hanson and Kiparsky (1996) have named the principle FIT:
(12) FIT: Languages select meters in which their entire vocabularies

are usable in the greatest variety of ways. (Hanson and
Kiparsky 1996: 294)
The words that possibly conflict with FIT are mostly Romance loans,
prefixed and suffixed words, and compounds.
5. Evidence for West Germanic word stress in 'Lutgart'
In this section we consider the prosodic variation in 'Lutgart' from the

viewpoint of the early West Germanic prosodic system. In other words,
we assume the following:
(13) Assumptions regarding the prosodic system of early Middle Dutch

a. Stress is by and large initial, i.e. stress usually falls on the first
syllable of the root.
b. Germanic Foot (Dresher and Lahiri 1991): a quantity-sensitive
uneven trochee, in which the head of the foot must have two
moras.
c. VV and VC both contribute to weight.
d. Feet are built from left to right.
e. Destressing of final non-branching feet.
An examination based on these assumptions reveals that variation

basically occurs in two types of prosodic words: those consisting of two
monosyllabic feet (H)(H), i.e. feet consisting of a single heavy syllable,
and those consisting of two feet of which the first is monosyllabic and
the second branching (H)(HL), as can be seen in (14a, b), where H stand
for heavy, L for light, defooted feet are underlined and bold indicates
the position of stress, as attested in 'Lutgart'. A subtype of (14b) is the
one in (14c) where two prosodic words are combined in a compound
structure. That is, either these forms have variable stress in 'Lutgart'
or they have stress patterns different from the intuition of the speaker
of Modern Dutch. Some examples of the respective form types are
314 Paula Fikkert
given in (15), where vowel length is marked above the relevant vowels:
(14) Variation in prosodic forms

Form Expected Attested structure
structure
a. HH (H)(H) (H)(H) and (H)(H)
b. HHL (H)(HL) (H)(HL) and sometimes (H)(HL)
c. HLL (HL)L (H)(LL) and sometimes (HL)L
(15) a. ambacht, torment, äuont, blischap, bernart, bischop, viant,

mesdaet, örlöf, anschi(j)n, bispel, kerkhof
b. abdesse, ambachte, erminge, ermoede, kinnesse, uonnesse
c. lic-hame, bli-schape, bi-spele
We will discuss the variation in cases with two unequal feet, (H)(HL)
in Section 5.1, and in Section 5.2 the forms with two equal feet, (H)(H)
are discussed.
5.7. (HKHL)
Word prosodic structures of the type (H)(HL) with stress on two adja-
cent syllables have a stress clash. The clash can in principle be resolved
in two ways: delete stress either from the first (main stress) foot or from
the second. The structures with non-branching first and a branching
second foot predominantly have stress on the branching foot, as can be
seen in the data in (16a), but cases with the predicted initial word stress
pattern are also attested, as shown in (16b). It seems irrelevant whether
the word is monomorphemic or a compound, prefixed or suffixed form.
(16) a. 02552 Die die uiände meest onttreden

02547 Jegen die cracht_uan din uiände
14422 Van din ambachte, ende hoe si dingen
00439 Met besechheiden uän ambachte
03758-3 Gewärech gnoch litteeken gäf
02918 AI noch orconden uän lutgärden
00249-3 Die äbsolueerde met orloue
00157 Daer toe bekiren. die bispele

10894 Dat cläre ansichte van der vrowen
01655-3 Dat mi tongoede al wärt dat leuen
02224 Gerecht uonnesse werdt gegeuen
01034 Die seide gods urindinne mäer
08954 Dat hi eerliker ende bat
12139 Nit äf en mochte die schonheide
11924 Die uän menscheiden droch figure
12079 Te home was. dat van blischäpen
04716 Die doet ghaelinge es ouer comen
05398 Die ons ermingen die noch leuen
05487 Was die woninge uän hen beeden
b. 13979 Te bispele, ouden ende ijongen
13998 Scrifturen. bispele. ende wort
04235 Wat uonnessen es 'v gegeuen
00412-3 Die allen orconden dät gi mi
02372 Sun orconde was däer te crane
In the forms in (17a, b) no stress clash occurs: stress can be on the first
and on the second foot, since there is an intervening unstressed syllable.
Even in words with the structure in (17c) where the heads of two feet
are adjacent, there is an intervening syllable which seems to be enough
to avoid a stress clash. In words with the structure of (17d) the second
foot is made stressless. Of course, none of these forms does tell us
anything about the location of main stress.
(17) a. (HL)(H) äduocäet, brudegoem

b. (LL)(H) stedekijn, wiuekin
c. (LH)(H) besechheit, sälechheit
d. (H)(H)(H) wonderlic, werdechheit
Another way to look at the structure (H)(HL) is the following: The

situation in which the main stressed foot is less complex than the sec-
ondary stressed foot seems to be marked (cf. Dresher and van der Hülst
1993,1995,1998; Lahiri and Dresher 1999; Lahiri and Fikkert 1999).
Ideally, the main stressed foot is at least as complex as secondary
stressed feet. The Middle Dutch language of 'Lutgart' apparently chose
316 Paula Fikkert
to shift stress to the more complex second foot, consisting of two sylla-
bles. English, in contrast, chose restructuring of the word by applying
Trisyllabic Shortening, which also had the effect of improving the
prosodic structure of words (see Section 8).
5.2. (H)(H)
Words consisting of two heavy syllables, i.e. two feet, also have a stress
clash. Since final non-branching feet generally undergo destressing in
West Germanic, one would expect to find initial word stress, and this
indeed is the predominant pattern in 'Lutgart', as shown in (18a),
although final stressed forms also occur (18b).
(18) a. 04060 Dat säl v ämbacht wesen däer

00255-3 Droch hi dat ämbacht van meestrien
11507 Die ämbacht hidden däer gedregen
02148 Din uiant quäet. din bosen ghir
07099 Die uiant die se wilde uellen
13548 Hi vindt din viant wel so koene
02129 Dat bispel dät ic 'v uertrac
02133 Däer ic dat bispel äue las
01619-3 Her bernart here want gi mi
08540 Want hi was uromech ende koene
03405 Dat leelic sin ut hären ogen
04029 Dat hi es leelic ochte ontwert
00536 Want sine Schönheit was uerloren
01426 Hir äf die wärheit onderuonden
07641 Dat es die doefheit quäderhände
07760 Van harre doefheit die si suär
01071-3 Van derre werschap op den dach
03348 Dar was die blischap härde groet
b. 13551 Dat gi die pläche dint viänt
13127 Hare ogen. want die viänt
03361 Dat die uiant hare äne leide
01053-3 Was dis ambächts aldäer geplon
05098-3 Dats mijn ämbacht in hemelrike
00323-3 Oude ende ijonge orlof genomen

08405 Met st den din orlof genomen
00245-3 Want bsolutie ende afflaet
01498-3 Die bruder was ende hit bernart
Table (19) shows exactly where the variation occurs in (H)(H) words,
and where not. The number of instances in which the form is attested
in line-final position is given in parentheses.
(19) Frequency of selected words with the pattern (H)(H) in 'Lutgart'

'σσ σ'σ σ'σ3 'σ'σ
Monomorphemic
ambacht 14 12(5) 17
bernart 1 2(2) — —
5
bis(s)chop 1 2(2) l
ijacop/b 3 HD — —
v/inant 75 36 (25) 11(9) 1(1)
ihesus 24 2(1) — —
brabant 2 10(8) — —
convent — 28 (19) 11(3) -
thomas 4(2) — —
abijt 15(11) 1
ada(e)m 4 4
alart 1 — —
Prefixed words
mesdaet 1 2(2) 10 (8) -
rl f 12 9(3) 6 3(2) -
anschi(j)n 8 10(9) — —
bispel 28 4(2) 2 (2)7 3
angaen8 1 — —
onrecht 1 39
mesdaen/doen 10 (8)
af(f)laet 10
afhonst l
318 Paula Fikkert
(19) (cont.}
' ' ' 9 ' '
Compounds
kerkhof 2 1(1) -
Suffixed words
bodsc(h)ap10 3 — —
warheit 2 2(2) -
bliscap 14 1(1) -
doefheit 3 — —
u/vnheit 13 1(1) -
schuldech 18 — —
Numbers in parentheses indicate how many instances occur in line-final
position.
The following observations can be made. First, we can see that many
finally stressed cases occur line-finally, where a very strong constraint
against extrametrical syllables with full vowels holds: there are no cases
of extrametrical syllables with full vowels in 'Lutgart' (Zonneveld 1992,
1993a, 1998). However, this does certainly not account for all variation.
Second, some words do not show any variation at all. Most strik-
ingly, Romance loans with the same (H)(H) structure do not show any
variation: they invariably occur with final stress, as shown in (20):
(20) 00904-3 Behoert noch in torment tesine

02601-3 Noch däer en es torment noch pine
02773 Nutt een pulment met uwen broede
00654-3 Dan een pulment met brode allene
09160 Die hem consent uan herten geuet
13277 Hadde hi uan herten din consent
02828 Do was gesproken dit sermoen
00244-3 Daer hi sermoen ten uolke dede
01475 So quäm hi gäende in dät parloer
05758 Ende int parloer en teken mäket
00232-3 Genämt was hi bruder jordäen
00321-3 Bruder jordäen die iäcopijn
Prosodlc variation in 'Lutgart' 319
Most Romance loans—this is particularly true for the Romance suffixes

—end in superheavy syllables (-VVC or -VCC), a fact also reflected
in the spelling (see also Section 6). These superheavy syllables seem
to be regarded as branching feet (cf. Hayes 1995: 163-164), i.e. they
are analysed as having the structure (H)(HL), and stress is preferred on
the branching foot. Seen in this light, the Romance words were able to
keep their original final stress, without disturbing the prosodic con-
straints of the language.
Even though this same analysis could be extended to native words
(and has been for Modern Dutch (cf. Langeweg 1988; Zonneveld
1993b)), this does not work for words like ambacht and viant. Whereas
these words vary in stress in 'Lutgart', in Modern Dutch variation is
levelled out in favour of initial stress, making them exceptional with
respect to the words stress rules of Modern Dutch. I assume that in these
cases the final coronal obstruent does not add weight to a heavy sylla-
ble. A similar analysis is proposed to account for the fact that certain
-VCCcorona, syllables count as light under consonant (cluster) extra-
metricality in Middle English (Lahiri and Fikkert 1999).
Similar to Romance loans, suffixed words with the structure (H)(H)
where the final foot contains a strong native suffix, such as -doem, -
heit, -lijk, -scap, -kijn, -line, -are, -ech, -inghe, -ine, -ich, -nisse, etc.,
which according to many authors (cf. Franck 1910: section 11; Le
Roux and Le Roux 1969) always carried secondary accent, usually do
not show any variation in 'Lutgart': they invariably have stress on the
first foot. They sometimes occur in line-initial position, which could
be interpreted as line-initial inversion, as in (2la). The only exceptions
seem to be instances of the word ermine ('poor one'), as shown
in (21b):
(21) a. 03505 Seerlic mesbäerende utermäten

02616 Cirlic gecronet utermäten
05041-3 Qualic genoemen. binnen scheen
03024 Coenlic uermeten dis dat si
06010 Eerlic uan gode wärt ontfäen
b. 05623 Dat ic ermine ende ic kaitijf
08369 Mar ic ermine die tesen stonden
320 Paula Fikkert
The lack of variation here might be accidental. As we have seen before,

syllables with secondary stress can appear in uneven positions in
'Lutgart'. However, just as with compounds and monomorphemic
words, we would have expected to find variation in the stress pattern
of words with the prosodic structure (H)(H). Nevertheless, there seems
to be a strong tendency to have stress on the root rather than on the
suffix. In most instances of disyllabic suffixed forms both the base and
the suffix consist of a superheavy syllable. It may the case that
superheavy syllables are regarded as (HL) feet. In that case, a word like
coenlic has the structure (HL)(HL) where stress is initial. It would also
explain why a word like ermine ends up having final stress: it would
have the structure (H)(HL) where the second foot is more complex as
the first, and therefore receives main stress (Section 5.1).
An alternative and more tenable explanation could be that feet
containing suffixes have a different status than feet that are (part of)
a monomorphemic word. This then suggests that these suffixes, which
were independent words, have been grammaticalised in 'Lutgart' and
reduced to suffixes (cf. Schönfeld 1947; see also Lahiri, this volume).
Thus, originally they had the structure in (22a) and grammaticalised
into (22b):
(22) a. [CN)WdCN)Wd]Compound
b. [('N)wd suffix]Wd
These suffixes seem to be extrametrical if they consist of a monosyl-

labic foot. Alternatively, one could hypothesise that in 'Lutgart' native
suffixes are reanalysed as level II suffixes, and attached after stress
assignment. However, this analysis cannot account for the following
fact. Under attachment of an inflectional ending these derivational
suffixes are disyllabic. When attached to a monosyllabic base they have
the prosodic shape (H)(HL), where stress is predominantly on the
second foot, independent of the morphological nature of the word
(Section 5.1). In other words, there seems to be an interaction between
the nature of the prosodic structure of the final foot and the morphologi-
cal status as a derivational suffix. If the final foot is more complex than
the initial one, the final foot tends to receive stress. If both feet are
equally complex, there is a strong preference to have main word stress
on the root, rather than on the suffix. Romance suffixes invariably

receive stress, but might not yet be considered suffixes. A similar
analysis is proposed for English words with the suffix -ity (cf. Lahiri
and Fikkert, 1999).
Prefixed words show similar behaviour: many prefixed words (both
verbs and nouns!) such as af(f)laet, afhonst, mesdaen, onrecht, etc., have
stress on the root, and show no variation. Here, the prefix often consists
of a heavy syllable, whereas the base has a superheavy syllable: they
could be analysed as having a (H)(HL) structure, accounting for stress
on the second foot. However, alternatively, the prefixes could have lost
their status as independent words at the time of 'Lutgart' and are re-
duced to bound morphemes. Again, in cases of two feet of equal com-
plexity there seems a preference for stress on the root.
A look at Modern Dutch reveals that it kept stress on the root in
suffixed words, whereas in prefixed words stress falls on the prefix in
nouns like onrecht, but on the stem in verbs like misdaan, suggesting
that nouns were reanalysed at a later stage. I will leave this issue for
future research.
6. Open Syllable Lengthening
So far, we have only discussed words with an initial heavy syllable,

since table (19) only gives words of the shape (H)(H). If Open-Syllable
Lengthening had been a 'fait accompli' at the time of 'Lutgart', all
stressed initial open syllables with originally short vowels would have
been lengthened, and all words should then fall under the categories
described in the previous section. However, on the assumption that
Open Syllable Lengthening had not yet taken place, those words still
have a different prosodic structure: (LH) or (LL). Some LH forms are
given in table (23). There are very few native words where two full
vowels occur in adjacent syllables.11 Strikingly, all LH forms have all
initial stress, even if an ending is added to the disyllabic form, as shown
in (24).
322 Paula Fikkert
(23) LH(L) words

LHL ' ' ' ' 9
c/köringen - - 14 -
c/köninc 84 - l -
besech 15 - -
menech all - many -
sälech 8 - 7 -
mönek l - 5 -
(24) 10836 Die coninc uän din paradise

03819-3 Conueers noch monek hem en dochte
01438-3 Si doedden moneke ende nonnen
09203 Met coringen suar 'vtermäten
14283 Si bat vor coninge ende grauen
01696 Daer si uan menegerhände wise
00470-3 Sijn metten sälegen int getäl
Why does a word like coninc invariably have initial stress, while erming
does not? This is not due to confusion about the behaviour of schwa,
as suggested by Zonneveld. Rather, it seems that these words have
different prosodic structures, relating to different stress patterns, particu-
larly in the trisyllabic forms with an inflectional ending. Whereas both
coninc and coninge comprise one foot, erming and erminge consist of
two feet. This can only be understood if we assume that OSL had not
yet applied and that the Germanic Foot was still prevalent. The different
structures are given in (25):
(25) No OSL; Germanic Foot

([L H] ) ([L H] L) (H) (H) (H) (H L)
co nine co nin ge er ming er min ge
All Middle Dutch grammars assume that OSL was completed by the
time of the first Middle Dutch texts (Franck 1910: § 13; Schönfeld
1947: § 30; Van Bree 1977: § 29.4). There is not much evidence for
this claim. The spelling in MNL texts is not very helpful. In 'Lutgart'
only originally long vowels are written long, although by no means
consistently so. In addition, some Romance loans are also spelled with
Prosodic variation in 'Lulgart' 323
long vowels. Original short vowels, however, are not written long. This
in itself is not evidence that OSL did not apply, since it was entirely
predictable which vowels would have been lengthened by OSL, and
there is no need to reflect it in the spelling.
The only evidence given for assuming OSL comes from rhyme: it
is claimed that originally long vowels and vowels lengthened by OSL
can be rhyme-fellows, with the exception of originally long and length-
ened ele, which qualitativily different. However, 'Lutgart' predomi-
nantly has rhyming pairs where either both have originally long vowels,
or both have originally short vowels (cf. also Franck 1910: §§ 13, 39).
Therefore, even the evidence from rhyme does not convincingly show
that OSL had been completed in 'Lutgart'.
7. Analogical levelling or reanalysis of inflectional suffixes?
Table (19) shows that many words occur in 'Lutgart' both with the
prosodic structure (H)(H) and (H)(HL), like ambacht-ambachte and
viant-vlande, where in the disyllabic forms stress can fall on either
foot with a preference for the initial foot, but in the trisyllabic forms
stress is predominantly on the final foot. Thus, the alternations in (26)
exist:
(26) Disyllabic Trisyllabic

Preferred Less preferred Preferred Less preferred
(äm)(bacht) (am)(bächt) (am)(bächte)
(vO(ant) (vT)(änt) (vi)(ände) (vi)(ande)
In Modern Dutch these words invariably have initial stress. One could
explain this by assuming that some analogical levelling has taken place:
the plural has taken the form of the singular, resulting in paradigms with
the same prosodic structure (Kurylowicz's second law, cf. Hock 1991:
Ch. 10). It could also be due to a reanalysis of inflectional endings12
as level II suffixes. This means that these endings are attached after
stress is assigned, i.e. they have no influence on the prosodic shape of
the base. Stress is assigned to a disyllabic base, where initial stress is,
324 Paula Fikkert
for some reason, preferred. However, the question remains open why
some superheavy final syllables do not bear stress (see discussion in
Section 5.2). Interestingly, Modern Dutch still shows variation in
prosodic word structures in certain cases. First, non-native words in -or
and -on show vowel lengthening and stress shift on that vowel before
the plural suffix -en, as in the following forms (cf. Booij 1995: 82):
(27) Singular Plural

doctor doktören 'doctor'
professor professören 'professor'
demon demönen 'demon'
elektrön elektrönen 'electron'
These are all loans that entered the language in early Modern Dutch.
Second, prosodic variation also occurs in words suffixed with what used
to be a strong native suffix (Kloeke 1975; Kooij 1985; van Beurden
1987), deriving adjectives, as shown in the following words: vijand vs.
vijandig and ambacht vs. ambachtelijk. This is still productive. Appar-
ently, distinctions in singular-plural pairs are more prone to undergo
paradigm levelling, than related nouns and adjectives. Lahiri and Fikkert
(1999) reached a similar conclusion for Middle English: differences in
vowel length in the singular-plural were levelled out, contrary to those
in pairs like sincere-sincerity.
8. Prosodic changes in Middle English and Middle Dutch
We have seen in the previous sections that in Middle Dutch main stress
was on the final branching foot if the first foot was not branching; i.e.
in words with the structure (H)(HL) stress was not on the initial, but
on the final foot. Exactly the same forms were being restructured in Old
and Middle English (Lahiri and Fikkert 1999). Whereas Dutch still had
long vowels in closed final syllables, this syllable type did not exist any
longer in Old English (Hogg 1992). Therefore, the only contrast in final
syllables was between closed (heavy) and open (light) syllables. Final
syllables never bore stress: open light syllables never constituted the
head of a foot, and if closed syllables formed a foot on their own, they
were subject to the final destressing rule, which destressed final non-
branching feet (Dresner and Lahiri 1991). This state of affairs could
easily have led to a reinterpretation of final destressing as final conso-
nant extrametricality (CEM) in Old English. The effect of introducing
Consonant Extrametricality is to increase the uniformity of metrical
patterns by abolishing the distinction between final H and final L sylla-
bles. Furthermore, since a light syllable can be the weak member of a
foot where a heavy syllable cannot, many previously defooted final
syllables can be included into a foot under a Consonant Extrametricality
analysis, as in (28a). On the other hand, these changes had some less
desirable results. First, Consonant Extrametricality led to an increase
in words where the second foot is branching while the main stressed
foot is not (28a, b). Assuming that the stressed foot is preferably more
complex than or as complex as its dependent, this is not an optimal
configuration. Whereas Dutch chose to improve this structure by shift-
ing stress, in English Trisyllabic Shortening (TSS) improved these
metrical structures, as can be seen in (28a). TSS also improved another
set of less optimal structures. Consonant Extrametricality led to many
more stranded syllables word-finally (28c, d). A final heavy syllable
can form a foot on its own, even though it is subject to defooting, but
a final light syllable does not have enough weight to support a foot of
any kind; when the weak branch of the preceding foot is occupied, it
remains stranded. This situation is also less than optimal on the assump-
tion that languages prefer to parse syllables into feet whenever possible.
TSS improved these metrical patterns too.
(28) Metrical structures and TSS (from Lahiri, Riad and Jacobs 1999)
Old English ME 1: CEM ME 2: TSS Examples
(a) (H)(H)(H) (H)(HL) ([LH]L) *heringes > heringes
(b) (H) (HL) - ([LH]L) *laverke > laverke
(c) (HL)(H) (HL)L ([LL]L) *cicenes > cicenes
(d) (HL) L - ([LL]L) *clavere > clavere
Why did the two languages choose different strategies for improvement
of sub-optimal structures? Although both still had the Germanic Foot,
there were other differences between the two languages. First, English
did not have a vowel length contrast in final syllables, whereas Dutch
326 Paula Fikkert
did. Therefore, Final Defooting was not easily reinterpretable as conso-

nant extrametricality in Dutch. Second, a huge number of Romance
loans entered the Dutch language with final stress, while this was not
the case in Middle English (cf. Lahiri and Fikkert 1999). In the medi-
eval period the French influence on English was not as overwhelming
as in Dutch. French loans where adopted with the prosodic preferences
of the languages at the time of borrowing: they entered with initial
stress in English, but could be adopted with final stress in Dutch, as
shown in (29):l3
(29) English 'Lutgart' Modern Dutch

Latin latijn, latine latijn
process proces proces
prison prisoene
paradise paradijs paradijs
medicine medicine medicijn
vision uision visioen
9. Conclusions
In this paper I have argued that the word stress system at the time of
'Lutgart' was not the same as that of Modern Dutch, but was more
similar to that of the other West Germanic languages in the old and
middle periods; i.e. the Germanic Foot was still prevalent and stress was
in principle assigned from left to right. This claim differs significantly
from the conclusion as formulated in Zonneveld's manuscript (1998:
304) "there are no compelling reasons to arrive at a conclusion other
than that very little appears to have changed with regard to Dutch word
stress between 'Lutgart' and us" [i.e. Modern Dutch/PF].
It has furthermore been argued that, contrary to the established view
(cf. Franck 1910; Schönfeld 1947; Van Bree 1977), Open Syllable
Lengthening was not a fait accompli in early Middle Dutch, and that
the language still had open syllables with short vowels. Only by assum-
ing that OSL had not yet applied can we understand why stress in words
like coninc and coninge invariably is initial: both forms comprise one
foot, a ([LH]) and a ([LH]L) foot respectively. If OSL had applied, we
would have expected to find variation in the stress pattern, particularly

in the case of an inflectional ending.
In addition, it has been shown that variation in the prosodic structures
of 'Lutgart' is not due to the stress-attracting nature of schwa, as argued
in Zonneveld (1992,1993a), but is due to complex interactions between
prosodic preferences and morphological structure. Variation mainly
occurred in words with the prosodic structure (H)(H) or (H)(HL). (H)(H)
words could have stress on either syllable, largely depending on two
factors: (a) the position in the line, (b) the morphological structure of
the word. In line-final position final stress is obligatory; otherwise, there
seems a preference for initial stress, unless the first foot is a prefix. In
that case, stress preferably falls on the root, independent of the syntactic
category of the word; i.e. there is no difference between the prosodic
behaviour of prefixed nouns and verbs in 'Lutgart'. Conversely, if the
second foot is a suffix, stress tends to fall on the first foot. Turning to
(H)(HL) words, stress is clearly preferred on the second foot. I argued
that this is so because the main stressed foot prefers to be more or at
least equally complex than secondary-stressed feet. This preference
overrules the preference for stress on the root-initial syllable: if the
second foot contains a suffix plus an inflectional ending, stress is still
preferred on the final foot. This preference is reinforced by the large
number of Romance loans with final stress entering the language. By
allowing stress to shift and by analysing superheavy syllables as branch-
ing structures, Romance loans can now be incorporated into the language
with final stress, contrary to the situation in English. A question remain-
ing unanswered is why not all superheavy syllables are reanalysed as
constituting branching feet, particularly not the native superheavy suf-
fixes. It seems the language prefers to have stress on the root, reinter-
preting superheavy native suffixes as heavy, rather than superheavy.
The structure (H)(H) never arose in Old/Middle English, since all
final syllables were light for stress purposes (for various reasons). Old
English had words with the less optimal (H)(HL) structure, but chose
to restructure these by way of Trisyllabic Shortening: (H)(HL) structures
evolved into ([LH]L) feet. This development also explains the differ-
ence in stress pattern for Romance loans in Dutch and English.
Finally, prosodic differences between singular and plural forms are
levelled out in both in English and in Dutch, although differences
328 Paula Fikkert
remain present in other paradigms in the language. This raises the

question whether levelling is more likely to occur in some paradigms
than others, and whether inflectional endings are more prone to lead
to grammatical changes, than derivational endings, which will require
more in depth studies of change and variation in prosodic structure.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Jennifer Fitzpatrick-Cole, Carlos Gussenhoven, Astrid Kraehenmann,

Aditi Lahiri, Michael Redford, and Wim Zonneveld for their detailed comments which
have led to many improvements. This work has been supported by the DFG (German
Science Foundation), SFB 471 'Variation and change in the lexicon', Project A4 and
by the KNAW (Royal Dutch Academy of Science).
Notes
1. Aside from the manuscript that is kept in Copenhagen and originates in Brabant,
there also exists another adaptation of the 'vita piae Lutgardis' which originates
in Limburg and is kept in Amsterdam.
2. "-3" indicates that the line comes from book 3; no indication means it comes
from book two (dander boech).
3. The possibility of 'synaloef also occurs with uwe (which can thus be mono- or
disyllabic) plus any word (cf. Zonneveld 1992, 1993a, 1998):
00301 Vwe grade die mi so beuerde

11305 Jc ben vwe portie ende v schät
versus 01795 Ende die mi 'vwe wonden groet
00361 Ende 'vwe gräcie sendet mede
4. This could also indicate that in the word 'leven' (Got. liban) Open Syllable
Lengthening had not yet applied. The sequence 'leue' consists of two light
syllables, which form the head of the foot. See section 5.
5. This form is in line-initial position and could be reinterpreted as initially-stressed
assuming line-initial inversion.
6. Four forms are in line-initial position and could be reinterpreted as having initial
stress (line-initial inversion).
7. Three times the trisyllabic form occurs with initial stress
8. Next to the disyllabic form, trisyllabic anegaen is found.
9. Once it occurs line-initially.
10. Also bodeschap is found.

11. With Romance loans it is hard to tell what the original vowel length has been (see
(Luick 1907; Bliss 1952; Lahiri and Fikkert 1999) for a similar discussion with
respect to Romance loans into English), or how it has been borrowed.
Many unstressed vowels—at least in inflectional endings, but many more
instances—had already been reduced to schwas at the time of 'Lutgart', since no
variation occurs in the following words (cf. de Vries 1992; van Wijk 1949):
werelt < OS werold, OE weorold

maget < OHG magad, OS magath
dochter < OS dohtar, OE dohtor
hemel < OHG/OS himil
meester < OHG meistar, OS mestar
These words have invariably initial stress, whereas words like viant and brabant,
with two full vowels show variation in their stress patterns. The question remains
why some words kept two full vowels while in most cases unstressed vowels were
reduced. I leave this issue open.
12. Possibly (native) derivational suffixes were reanalysed as level II suffixes as well,
although may have occurred later.
13. A different explanation is that English and Dutch borrowed a different kind of
French: Anglo-Norman, which was borrowed into English, had undergone consid-
erable change in comparison to the Parisian version of French, which was bor-
rowed into Dutch and German.
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The revenge of the uneven trochee: Latin main
stress, metrical constituency, stress-related
phenomena and OT
Haike Jacobs
1. Introduction
Prince and Smolensky (1993) have provided an analysis of Latin stress

which is based on Mester (1994) and which, by one and the same con-
straint hierarchy, provides an account of both the distribution of stress
in Latin and the various stress-related shortening processes in Latin.
Unfortunately, their analysis can be shown to be empirically incorrect.
On the one hand, Mester's account of the facts is in need of modifica-
tion, and on the other hand no account is provided for the stress-related
syncope processes. Taking both facts into account it will be shown that
Prince and Smolensky's analysis faces a number of theoretical and
empirical problems. The purpose of this paper is to point out where the
OT-analysis of Prince and Smolensky fails and to provide a more
succesful OT-account of Latin stress and stress-related phenomena.
2. Latin stress in Prince and Smolensky's account
Mester (1994) has presented a number of arguments against a trimoraic

or uneven trochee analysis of Latin stress. The first argument is based
on two shortening processes termed iambic and cretic shortening.
Iambic shortening occurs when a LH word becomes LL. Cretic shorten-
ing occurs when a word-final cretic HLH sequence is transformed in
a HLL sequence. Iambic shortening also may apply word-internally,
but then the condition is that the H syllable must be a closed syllable.
That is, a syllable that is H because of a long vowel is not affected.
Mester argues that shortening crucially does not take place in words
ending in a sequence LLH or HH, which can in a moraic trochee analy-
sis be exhaustively parsed as (LL)(H) and (H)(H) respectively, but only
in cretic words which cannot be exhaustively parsed, but have a, what
334 Haike Jacobs
he calls, "trapped" medial syllable: (H) L (H), as in, for instance dicit
> dicito 'say (IMP.PUT)', and, in iambic words which can only be
exhaustively parsed after shortening of the final H: LH > (LL), such
as, for example, νϊη> νϊη 'man (GEN. so, ΝΟΜ. PL)' . This is considered
crucial evidence for a bimoraic and against a trimoraic analysis for
Latin. A trimoraic analysis could also account for iambic shortening
in LH words, but not for Cretic Shortening, given that HLH can be
exhaustively parsed as (HL)(H) under a trimoraic analysis.
Based on these observations, Prince and Smolensky (1993: 56-66)
account for the Latin shortening processes (which manifested them-
selves in Pre-Classical, but not in Classical Latin) as a direct by-product
of one basic parse. Shortened forms are among the candidates that are
evaluated for /HLH/ and /LH/ inputs. That is, the optimal output for
HLH is (H)(LH-) and for LH it is (LH-), whereas for an HLL input the
optimal output is (H)(LL) (main stress is indicated by underscoring;
shortening by '-').
The following constraints are assumed, which are divided into three
sets, (la) presents the constraints responsible for the shape of the feet
and (Ib) gives the constraints responsible for the position and parsing
of feet. The constraints in (la) and (Ib) were identical for Classical
and Pre-Classical Latin. Finally, (Ic) provides the position/parsing
constraints that were ordered differently in the two periods.
(1) a. FOOT FORM
Lx ~ PR: A member of MCAT corresponds to a PrWD
ΡτΒΐΝ: Feet are binary at some level of analysis (μ,σ)
RHTYPE (T): Rhythm type is trochaic
RHHRM or *(HL): Rhythmic harmony
b. POSITION/PARSING
NoNFiNALiTY (F, σ) » EDGEMOST (σ, R)
because (LL) > L(LL)
No head of PrWd is final in PrWd (both head foot and head
syllable) dominates the constraint that forces the main stressed
syllable to be located at the right word edge.
EDGEMOST (σ, R) » PARSE-O
because L(LL)L > (LL)(LL)
The revenge of the uneven trochee 335
Parse syllables into feet is dominated by stressed syllable loca-

tion.
EDGEMOST (σ, R)» PK-PROM
because HLLL > HLLL
Stressed syllable location dominates Η is a better peak than L
c. SHORTENING vs. STABLE QUANTITY
WSP » PARSE-μ
because #(LH-)# > #(LH)#
because (H)(LH-)# > #(H)(LH)#
Weight-to-Stress: heavy syllables are prominent in foot structure
and on the grid dominates the constraint demanding moras to
be parsed
PARSE-G » PARSE-μ
because (H)(LH-)# > (H)L(H)#
The ranking assumed for pre-Classical Latin is the one in (Ic), where
WSP » PARSE-G » PARSE-μ has the effect of producing iambo-cretic
shortening. In Classical Latin the ranking is changed into PARSE-G »
PARSE-μ » WSP, which has the effect of creating stable quantity. For
instance, an ouput (am ) with a final long vowel will be evaluated better
than (amo) with a final shortened vowel, as a violation of the WSP-
constraint is less important than fully parsing all moras. Similarly,
dicit , for instance, will be optimally parsed as (H)(LH) and not as
(H)(LH-) with a final short vowel. The analysis thus adequately ac-
counts for shortening in #LH# and -HLH# cases.
Before pointing out some problems that occur when more shortening
facts and when the syncope facts are taken into account, let us first
notice that the analysis has no direct way for accounting for main stress.
Sometimes main stress is on the final foot as in L(LL)L, (LL)L, (H)L
or (LL) cases, but other times on the prefinal foot: as in (H)(LL) and
(H)(LH) cases. In general it is either the last or the first foot that re-
ceives main stress in languages. The End Rule of previous derivational
theories is specifically designed to promote the first or last foot to main
stress. Hayes' (1995) End Rule final/initial has been translated in OT
terms in a more general way than EDGEMOST in (Ib) above. McCarthy
336 Haike Jacobs
and Prince (1993) propose the constraint ALIGN-HE AD which demands

that the left or right edge of the Prosodic Word is aligned with the left
or right edge of the head of the Prosodic Word (i.e. its main stressed
foot). Kager (1999) proposes the constraints RIGHTMOST and LEFT-
MOST (cf. Kager 1999), which demand that the head-foot be final or
initial. It is clear that in the analysis proposed by Prince and Smolensky,
these constraints have to be dominated by NONFINALITY in order to
get main stress on a prefinal foot. We will show below that these con-
straints together predict quarternary stress systems, which do not exist.
The reason why Prince and Smolensky make reference to both the
stressed syllable and the stressed foot in the constraint NONFINALITY
is clear. In an LH-word the optimal parse must be (LH) in Classical and
(LH-) in Pre-classical Latin (the amö versus amo example given above),
instead of either L(H) or (LH). If no reference to the stressed syllable
were made, L(H) would be better than (LH). Both violate
NONFINALITY of the stressed foot and L(H) would not, contrary to
(LH) violate WSP. The candidate (LH) wins because it has only one
violation of NONFINALITY: only the stressed foot is final, but not the
stressed syllable. Reference to the stressed foot in NONFINALITY is
necessary in order to achieve the effect of exhaustive parsing/footing
of post-main stressed syllables.
Additional problems show up when we consider more empirical
facts. Let us first consider shortening. As mentioned above, Mester
crucially excludes cases of shortening in words of the form LLH# or
HH#, which can be exhaustively parsed as (LL)(H) and (H)(H) respec-
tively, but not in cretic words which cannot be exhaustively parsed and
have a so-called "trapped" medial syllable: (H) L (H), nor in iambic
words which can only be exhaustively parsed after shortening of the
final H: LH > (LL). However, there seems to be no reason to believe
that shortening did only apply to iambic or cretic words and did not
affect other heavy final syllables. Niedermann (1931: 71-72) and
Lindsay (1894: 207-208) state that there is a tendency to shorten every
long vowel in a final syllable. Niedermann (1931:71-73) provides some
crucial examples involving sequences LLH and HH, such as animal
(GEN animälis) 'living being,' calcär(GEN calcäris) 'spur,' /zcior(GEN
lictoris) 'lictor,' and light scansions of the final H in the same sequence
in examples from Terence and Ennius, such as, mandebät 'to chew
(IMP.3SG),' audlret 'to hear (IMP.3so)' and canto 'tosing(PKES. ISG)'

(cf. Lindsay, 1894: 207). Benloew (1847: 180) gives some more exam-
ples, such as, sermö 'conversation,' pulmö 'lung,' ambö 'both.' It goes
almost without saying that the constraint-based analysis summarized
in (1) above cannot handle the cases of shortening in LLH# and HH#
words, because (LL)(H) will be evaluated better than (LL)(H-) and
(H)(H) better than (H)(H-).
Second, the analysis cannot account for syncope in HLH# and HLL#
cases where the targeted vowel (indicated by boldface) is in the strong
position of the foot: (H)(LH) (H)(LL). Although in the first case we
might compare or evaluate, for instance, an (H)(H) output with an (H)
(LH-) ouput for an /HLH/ input and thus consider either output as a
way of exhaustive parsing of an /HLH/ input, this cannot be done in
other cases where syncope applied. Mester (1994), basing himself on
Lindsay (1894:173), states that Early syncope (Preclassical and Classi-
cal Latin) is restricted to cases where HLH becomes HH, as in for
instance, iürigö > iürgö 'quarrel' ISG.PRES or aevitäs > aetäs 'age'
NOM.SG, which is considered another way of resolving a medial trapped
syllable. Crucially Mester claims that syncope does not apply to LL
feet. Mester concludes (1994:43): "as a process predominantly affect-
ing post-tonic light syllables stranded between heavy syllables, it re-
ceives a natural interpretation in a strictly bimoraic theory as a way of
resolving trapping situations." However, Lindsay (1894:170-173; 178-
185) offers a more precise description, and distinguishes between Early,
Classical, and Late Latin syncope. Early syncope took place when main
stress was still on the initial syllable ("The old accent law" Lindsay
1894: 178-181). Classical syncope occurred when main stress was
either on the penult or antepenultimate syllable ("syncope under the
Paenultima Accent Law" Lindsay 1894: 183-185). With respect to
Early syncope he states "it seems to have been the law of Early Latin
that e and fin the syllable after the accent always suffered syncope . . .
The Early Latin accent fell on the first syllable of each word, so that
every and e in a second syllable not long by position must have suf-
fered syncope." Some examples involving syncope in LL (initial and
post-tonic) sequences based on Niedermann (1931) and Lindsay (1894)
are peristroma > perstroma 'bedspread,' frigdaria 'refreshing' beside
fngidus 'cold,' caldarius 'room for hot baths' beside cälidus 'hot',
338 Haike Jacobs
'warm' all from Lucilius (second century BC), and, mimsterium > min-
sterium, misterium 'function, task' from Flaute (third/second century
BC) show the application of syncope in LL sequences. A somewhat
larger list is given in (2).
(2) ävicaps > aucaps 'bird catcher'

lamina > lamna 'metal plate'
propiter > propter 'nearby', 'because of
ravicus > raucus 'raucous', 'hoarse'
sölidus > soldus 'solid' (Lex Municipalis, J. Caesar)
ülina > ulna 'arm'
jügera > jugra 'field' (Lex Agraria Thorius, III BC)
compösftus > compostus 'to put together p.p.'
pösitus > postus 'to place p.p.'
bärica > barca 'barque'
posmo > pono 'to place ISG'
alfter > alter 'the one', 'the other'
cälefacere > calfacere 'to heat' Quintilian (I AD)
olefacere > olfacere 'to smell'
potesum > possum 'tobe able ISG'
ferime > ferme 'almost'
välide > valde 'very', 'strongly'
The forms in (2) show abundant application of syncope to LL feet.

Given that syncope applies within a foot, it cannot be stated as "a
process predominantly affecting post-tonic light syllables stranded
between heavy syllables" and, hence, obviously cannot be adduced as
evidence for strict bimoraicity in Latin. Given that syncope both applies
to word-inital HL- and LL- sequences, as the forms in (2) show, Lahiri,
Riad and Jacobs (1999) describe syncope as providing evidence for a
quantity-sensitive (uneven trochee) main stress foot and as a foot-based
process able to affect all post-tonic (that is, both after secondary stress
and after main stress) light syllables.
To summarize, an adequate OT-analysis of Latin stress and stress-
related phenomena should account for both syncope and shortening as
direct results of one and the same parse or constraint hierarchy. Let us
restate the two main problems for Prince and Smolensky's OT-analysis
discussed in this section. First, reference must be made to the foot with
main stress in the constraint NONFINALITY, which as we will argue
below, predicts the existence of nonexisting quarternary stress systems.
Second, the analysis cannot account for all cases of shortening nor for
syncope in LL-sequences. In the next section we will provide a modi-
fied account that is not thwarted by the same problems.
3. A unified OT-account of Latin stress and stress-related

phenomena
3.1. Main stress
Let us start with the main stress problem. It is clear that by demanding
that the head foot must not be final, an output (H)(LL) will be favored
over an output (H)(LL) for an HLL input. The implicit idea here is that
any foot in an ouput candidate can possibly be the one with main stress.
Comparing a number of different candidates against the constraint
hierarchy will result in selecting the optimal candidate. As mentioned
above, this implies that the constraint responsible for main stress
EDGEMOST or alignment constraints such as ALIGN-HEAD (McCarthy
and Prince 1993) or RIGHTMOST (ALIGN HEAD-FOOT, R, PRWo,
R) or LEFTMOST (ALIGN HEAD-FOOT, L, PR\VD, L) (cf. Kager
1999), which demand that the head-foot be final or initial and which
are OT-translations of Hayes' (1995) End Rule final/initial must be
dominated by the constraint NONFINALITY. As shown in (Ib) EDGE-
MOST dominates PARSE-O. However, if PARSE-O is reranked above
NONFINALITY and EDGEMOST, a quarternary stress system is pre-
dicted, as shown in (3). Quarternary stress systems do not exist, al-
though a quarternary pattern sometimes does occur in languages (cf.
Jacobs (1999) for a more detailed account). In (3) we assume right-to-
left footing (expressed by high ranked ALIGN-Ρτ-R (every foot must
be right-aligned with the right edge of the Prosodic Word)). Further-
more, for clarity' s sake, we have considered a quantity-insensitive stress
system.
340 Haike Jacobs
(3) σ σ σ σ PARSE-O NoNFiN(F) Al-Ft-R EDGEMOST

«s- (σ σ)(σ σ) σσ σσσ
σ(σσ)σ *|* σ σσ
(σσ)σσ *|* σσ σσσ
(σσ)(σσ) *! σσ σ
"«· σ(σσ)(σσ) * σσ σσσ
(σσ)σ(σσ) * σσσ! σσσσ
σ(σσ)(σσ) * *! σσ σ
(σσ)(σσ)σ * σ#σσσ! σσ
«®· (σσ)(σσ)(σσ) σσ#σσσσ σσσ
(σσ)(σσ)(σσ) *! σσ#σσσσ σ
σ(σσ)(σσ)σ *!* σ#σσσ σσ
If we simply omit reference to the main stressed foot in the constraint

NoNFiNALiTY, the unattested quarternary systems will no longer be
possible (cf. Jacobs 1999) and main stress in Latin will always be on
the last foot, as we will show next.1 The constraints we assume are
listed in (4).
(4) Position/Parsing
a. NONFINALITY: A foot may not be final
b. ALIGN (PRWo, R, FT, R)
c. PARSE-O
d. WSP
Constraint (b) is essentially similar to EDGEMOST, although we will

show below that there is, in fact, a difference between the two. Con-
straints (c) and (d) are identical to the ones in (1). The constraints in
(4) (and with NONFINALITY doubly simplified) will always yield main
stress on the final foot, as we will show now. A foot will never be final
except under compulsion of the higher ranked constraint: ΡτΒίΝ. This
accounts for monosyllabic words. This also means that HH will be
optimally parsed as (H)H and not as (H)(H), given that the parsing of
the final syllable (which avoids a violation of PARSE-O) results in a
violation of the higher-ranked modified NONFINALITY constraint, as

illustrated in (6c) below. A bisyllabic input LH will still be (LH) and
not (L)H which violates ΡτΒίΝ. Both L(H) and (LH) violate
NONFINALITY, but (LH) will be evaluated better, given that, although
it violates WSP, it avoids a violation of PARSE-O ranked above WSP,
as shown in (6b) below.
Furthermore, we will leave the Foot Form constraints in (la) unal-
tered except crucially for the constraint banning the uneven trochee:
*(HL) (cf. Prince and Smolensky 1993). We assume that this constraint
in Latin is dominated by PARSE-G. This will give us the constraint
ranking in (5).
(5) Undominated: Lx « PR, ΡτΒΐΝ, RHTYPE (T)

Crucially ranked:
NoNFiN » ALIGN (PRWo,R,FT,R) » PARSE-O » WSP
*(HL)
The constraint ranking in (5) implies that HLL will optimally be (HL)L,
and that HLH will be optimal if (HL)H, as illustrated in (6e) and (6d).
The joint effect of these modifications (NONFINALITY simplified
(neither reference to main foot nor to stressed syllable) and *(HL)
dominated by PARSE-O) will result in main stress being located always
on the last foot.
In (6a-e) we have listed several tableaux for relevant parsings, where
the top three constraints of (5) are collectively listed as FxFoRM and
where for clarity's sake we have marked the stressed syllable for every
foot. Also every foot in the ouput candidate is evaluated. The optimal
candidates resulting from the different inputs are considered to be
formal Classical Latin forms, where no syncope or shortening has
applied.
342 Haike Jacobs
(6) £
bH"
oi ο
FlFORM
NONFlN
55
sS W
l
<£
(Λ
&
<
Οι
(Χ
00
£
£
^
#
a. /HL/ (HL) *! *
*r(H)L σ *
H(L) *! * *
*
(HL) *! * *
b. /LH/ (L)H *! σ *
*
<^(LH) * *
L(H) * *!
(LH) *! *
c. /HH/ (H)(H) *!
«sr(H)H σ * *
H(H) *! * *
(HH) *! *
d. /HLH/ H(LH) *! * **
i®- (HL)H σ * * *
(H)L(H) *! *
(H)LH σσ! ** *
H(LH) *! * * *
(HL)(H) *! *
e. /HLL/ (H)LL σσ! **
•^ (HL)L σ * *
H(LL) *! * *
(H)L(L) *! * *
(H)(LL) *!
(HL)(L) * *| * * *
The constraint hierarchy assumed thus far incorrectly predicts main

stress in LHL words, as shown in tableau (7).
(7) α
S z OH
I ο
rt
Ο L· ζ W
e« ρ, /—Ν
•J
06
Ε
/LHL/ £
Ο
3 00
a. L(HL) *! * *
b. «s- (LH)L σ * *
c. (L)H(L) *! * *
d. (L)HL *! σσ! ** *
e. L(H)L σ **
Candidate (7b) is better than either candidate (7 a) or (7e) which both

have main stress on the correct syllable. If we disregard (7a) which
violates NoNFiNALiTY, then it is clear that (7b) is better than (7e)
because of the relative ranking of PARSE-σ and WSP. It should be
noticed also, that under the old constraint EDGEMOST (σ ,R), candidate
(7e), which we actually want to be the optimal one, would be preferred
over candidate (7b). Now, if we look back at the tableaux in (6) we can
see that the only case where this ranking is crucial is in LH-words. If
the ranking was inverted the optimal output for an /LH/-input would
be L(H) instead of (LH).
To get main stress on the correct syllable in these /LHL/ cases, we
could specifiy for the constraint (4b), which aligns the right-edge of the
Prosodic Word with a foot, that alignment should take place with a
quantity-sensitive foot. At first sight, this might seem useful as it opens
a way of accounting for mixed stress systems, where quantity-sensitivity
is restricted to the last foot, but where secondary stresses are expressed
by quantity-insensitive feet. For Latin, we could specify that the left
edge of a Prosodic Word is aligned with a quantity-insensitive foot, and
the right edge of a Prosodic Word with a quantity-sensitive foot. How-
ever, there are two main problems with such an approach. First, for the
specific /LHL/ case this still does not solve the problem, because it is
344 Haike Jacobs
not clear whether the foot in (LH)L must be considered a quantity-

sensitve foot. If (LH) for an #LH# word is considered to be one (cf.
(6b)), (LH)L in /LHL/ should be one too, which means that we still
cannot force /LHL/ to become L(H)L. Second, the fact that secondary
stress is insensitive to quantity, whereas main stress is sensitive should
be expressed by the constraint hierarchy itself (i.e. by the relative
ranking of WSP with respect to the Alignment constraints ALIGN
(PRWD, R, FT, R) and ALIGN (PnW , L, FT, L).
Suppose next that a constraint is added which simply prevents a
heavy penultimate syllable from being skipped. Although this brute
force solution seems to be able to do the job, and, also accounts for the
fact that in Latin the penultimate syllable was the only syllable where
weight mattered for stress distribution (a situation which remained
largely intact in most of the contemporary Romance languages), it is
not a very attractive one, because it is a rather clumsy expression of the
fact that only the last foot in Latin was sensitive to quantity.
In order to get main stress on the correct syllable in these LHL-cases
we have to rank WSP above PARSE-O. This is illustrated in (8).
(8) α
S β5
ο £ (Χ ο
Η £ ζ ω
ο ζ ΗΗ (Χ,
C/5
/LHL/ Ο ο J-J οο <:

Λ Α "^ ι> DH
L(HL) *! *
(LH)L σ *! *
(LH)L *! σ *
«^ L(H)L σ **
In (9) we summarize the rankings:

(9) Undominated: Lx « PR, ΡτΒΐΝ, RHTYPE (T),

Crucially:
NoNFiN » ALIGN (PRWo,R,FT,R) » WSP » PARSE-O »
*(HL)
Simplifying NONFINALITY and tolerating the uneven trochee as a
constituent, not as a primitive foot-type but one resulting from con-
straint interaction permits an account of Latin main stress which does
not lead to the predicted existence of unattested stress systems (i.e.
quarternary ones). Moreover, it receives independent motivation as it
is necessary to account for Latin syncope, which we will demonstrate
in the next section.
3.2. Syncope and vowel shortening
In order to account for vowel shortening and vowel syncope, we assume

the constraints in (10).
(10) a. *VV# Avoid a long vowel in final position

b. *V IN (x.) Avoid a Vowel in the weak position of a foot
c. PARSE-V Parse underlying Vowels
d. WSP Heavy syllables are prominent in foot structure
and on the grid
It should be noted that the constraint (lOb) which is going to be respon-

sible for syncope is similar to Loehken's (1997) *PL (aw) ("Vokale in
unbetonten Silben haben keine Ortsmerkmale") or to Kager's (1997)
REDUCE (Weak syllables dominate no vocalic features). A ranking
PARSE-V, WSP » *VV#, *V IN (x.) accounts for stable quantity and
no syncope, whereas a ranking *VV#, *V IN (x.) » PARSE-V, WSP
accounts for both syncope and shortening. The former ranking is as-
sumed for Classical Latin and the latter for Pre-Classical and Late Latin.
It might be more precise, given the optional nature of the processes, to
say that for the periods before and after Classical Latin, the constraints
in (10) would either be floating or crucially non-ranked. A complete
overview of the ranking assumed thus far is given in (11).
346 Haike Jacobs
(11)
NONFlNALITY
ALIGN(PRWD, R, FT, R)
WSP *VlN(X.)
PARSE-V *vv#
*VV# WSP
*VlN(X.) PARSE-V
(Classical (Pre-Classical
Latin) and Late Latin)
PARSE-O
>(HL)
In (12) we compare the optimal candidate of each tableau in (6) with

the output which would result if the bottom four constraint of (11) are
ranked in the Pre-Classical and Late Latin fashion, that is we take into
account syncope and shortening. In (12) a syncopated vowel is indi-
cated by placing angled brackets around the syllable and a shortened
vowel by '-'.
(12)
X S>
z u
>
^H
| OH
00
C/3
OS
<:
# * £ eu
a. /HL/ <sr (H)L
(H)<L> *!
b. /LH/ (LH) *! *
«^ (LH-)
c. /HH/ (H)H *! *
^ (H)H-
d. /HLH/ (HL)H *! * *
(HL)H- *!
ra· (H)(L)H- *
(H)<L>H *! * *
e. /HLL/ (HL)L *!
«· (M)(L>L *
In tableau (12a) the optimal output is similar to the first one in tableau
(6a). This difference is one of the reasons why syncope is formulated
as a foot-based constraint. The surfacing of the final light syllable in
(12a) does not violate the syncope constraint. If syncope were reformu-
lated as post-stress vowel deletion, the second form in (12a) would be
the optimal one.
Syncope is also correctly predicted to apply in #LLa# words and to
pre-tonic LL feet, as in sol(i)dus or cal(e)facere, respectively (cf. (2)
above). In (13) we have provided tableaux showing the optimal parse
for solidus. We have left the constraint *(HL) out of consideration.
348 Haike Jacobs
(13) /LLH/ ό?*»

Η
S ζ Ο
Pi
Ο
u<Λ
ζ - ξ
0 ^ ΡΗ
UH
ο t/3 Pi
l·. 5 < & ΡΗ

(L)LH *! σσ! ^
*
**
•er (LL) H σ *
*
L(LH) *! *
*
(L)L(H) *! * *
(L)(LH) *! * *
(LL)(H) *! *
In (14) we have again compared the optimal candidate of (13) with

other possible candidates under the syncope-shortening constraint
ranking.
(14) /LLH/ *V IN (X .) *VV# WSP PARSE-V

(LL)H *! *
«· (L(L)H) = (H)H * *
It should be noticed that the application of syncope transforms the

first syllable in solidus into a heavy one, as indicated in (14) which
again shows that exhaustive parsing is not the motivating force behind
syncope. The two light syllables in the optimal output in (13) as well
as the remaining syllable in the optimal output in (14) are both perfect
feet.
Let us summarize the discussion so far: the inclusion of the uneven
trochee as a possible foot resulting from constraint interaction permitted
us to straightforwardly identify the foot with main stress in all cases,
viz. the last foot. Moreover, the uneven trochee allowed a straightfor-
ward account of the cases where syncope did apply, which was impossi-
ble both under Mester's account and under the OT-account provided
by Prince and Smolensky. The reason why the uneven trochee cannot
be accepted as a primitive foot type will not be dealt with here, but can
be demonstrated on the basis of Latin enclitic stress (cf. Jacobs 1997).
There is one last problem to deal with. Syncope is, contrary to
fact, predicted to apply in LL- and LH-words. Let us consider again
(12b), where we have left one output candidate out of consideration.
After vowel shortening, syncope should apply to the foot (LH-).
That is, an output candidate (H) should be optimal. We cannot relate
the non-application of syncope to a violation of undominated ,
given that the initial light syllable will become a heavy one. Tableau
(15) illustrates this for possible output candidates for an LH input,
such as ämö.
(15) /ämö/ * V l N (X .) *VV# WSP PARSE-V

(am)(o> *
(ämö) *! * *
w w\
( amo) *!
There are two possible ways of preventing syncope from applying in

these cases. One would be, much in the same way as phonotactic con-
straints2 that govern the application of syncope, to assume that a high-
ranked constraint demands that the final syllable must remain intact as
it conveys important morphological information (case, number, gender
etc.). A second more direct way would be to assume that the constraint
FxBiN is not an undominated constraint, but, in fact, is dominated by
NoNFiNALiTY. This will have the effect of not grouping together into
one foot the two syllables of LL- and LH-words. This is illustrated
in (16).
350 Haike Jacobs
(16) z o
P-H 2 Z Q ώ
2 (Χ
Ο W 3
J ^ 00 £
H pi
2 U. < o: &
b. /LH/ (LH) *! L ^*
«sr (L)H * σ * *
L(H) *! *
a. /LL/ (LL) *!
** (L)L * σ *
L(L) *! *
The non-application of syncope to LL- and LH-words follows automati-

cally from the constraint hierarchy, given that the final syllable is not
part of the foot.
4. Summary
In this paper we have modified Prince and Smolensky's OT account

of Latin stress. We have shown that their analysis had two main prob-
lems. On the one hand, reference must be made to the foot with main
stress in the constraint NONFINALITY, which as we have shown pre-
dicts the existence of nonexisting quarternary stress systems. Second,
the analysis could not account for shortening in all cases nor could it
account for syncope in LL-sequences.
We have argued that the simplification of NONFINALITY and the
inclusion of the uneven trochee as a foot type resulting from constraint
interaction allowed a straightforward analysis of Latin main stress,
without leading to unwanted typological predictions. Furthermore, we
have shown that simplifying NONFINALITY and allowing the constraint
*(HL) to be dominated (the uneven trochee) was independently needed
to provide a straightforward account of the cases where syncope did
apply.
Notes
1. There is a striking directional asymmetry in previous foot-extrametricality. It

typically only occurs in rightward (when footing is from left-to-right), but not in
leftward stress systems. As shown in Jacobs (1999), NONFINALITY as modified
here directly explains the asymmetry.
2. In Classical Latin, syncope is clearly subject to phonotactic constraints. The output
is always compatible with the phonotactic constraints of the langue, a situation
which changes in Late Latin. In this article we will not go into the details.
References
Benloew, Louis
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Hayes, Bruce
Jacobs, Haike
1997 Latin enclitic stress revisited. Linguistic Inquiry 28: 648-661.
1999 Constraining constraints: NONFINALITY and the typology of foot-
extrametricality. Linguistics in the Netherlands 1999,111-120. Amster-
dam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Kager, Rene
1997 Rhythmic vowel deletion in optimality theory. In: I. Roca (ed.), Deriva-
tions and Constraints in Phonology, 463^499. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
1999 Optimality Theory: A Textbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Lahiri, Aditi, Tomas Riad and Haike Jacobs
Systems in the Languages of Europe, 335-422. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Lindsay, Wallace
1894 The Latin Language (2nd edition). New York/London: Hafner.
[1963]
Loehken, Silvia
1997 Deutsche Wortprosodie. Abschwächungs- und Tilgungsvorgänge. (Stu-
dien zur deutschen Grammatik 56.) Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.
McCarthy, John and Alan Prince
1993 Generalized alignment. Yearbook of Morphology, 79-153.
352 Haike Jacobs
Mester, Armin
1994 The quantitative trochee in Latin. Natural Language and Linguistic
Theory 12: 1-61.
Niedermann, Max
1931 Photätique historique du latin. 2nd edn. Paris: Klincksieck.
1993 Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar.
On the (non-)existence of High Vowel Deletion
Richard M. Hogg
1. Introduction
Was there really a phonological rule of High Vowel Deletion (hence-

forth HVD) in Old English? It has to be acknowledged that it is some-
what late in the day to be asking that question. Furthermore, the answer
to the question seems entirely obvious, namely, that of course there was
such a rule. How else, for example, can we account for the variation
in the nominative-accusative plural of Old English neuter nouns such
as scipu 'ships' but word 'words', except by assuming that there was
a phonological rule which deleted a word-final -u after a heavy syllable,
as in word < *wordu7
And, of course, the evidence is much more extensive than this single
type suggests. Final -/ is equally lost in various parts of the paradigm of
original /-stem nouns such asflcesc 'flesh', final -u is lost in the nomina-
tive singular of a heavy-stemmed feminine noun such as lär 'learning',
and parallel loss occurs in the FEM.NOM.SG and NEUT.NOM.PL of strong
adjectives such as blind 'blind'. Nor is HVD restricted to positions after
a heavy monosyllabic stem. Much of the interest in this phenomenon
which has been aroused over the past two decades is due to the apparently
odd environment in which the deletion occurs, that is to say, and to use
without prejudice the traditional terminology, either after one heavy
syllable or two light syllables. Thus we find werod 'troops', not
**werodu. However, if the first syllable of the stem is heavy, as in
NOM.SG heafod 'head', then, in forms where the inflexion is a closed
syllable, the medial vowel is lost due to HVD after a heavy syllable, e.g.
heafdes GEN.SG. But where the inflexion consists only of -M, as in the
NOM .ACC. PL, then the medial vowel is retained, although the final vowel
is sometimes lost, hence heafudu, heafud 'heads', or, with original medial
-i-, wolcenu, wolcen 'clouds'. It is also possible to find forms where
neither -u- is lost, e.g. heafudu. At least, that is the situation in The
Vespasian Psalter, probably the most usual source of evidence for the
discussions which have taken place. On the other hand, in West Saxon
354 Richard M. Hogg
the preferred form of the NOM.ACC.PL is heafdu. I shall return to this

variation and the issues which it raises at several points below.
It should be quite clear from the above that it is impossible to ac-
count adequately for the morphophonology of Old English nouns and
adjectives (see Section 3 for the situation regarding verbs) without
invoking some variant of HVD. Given the title of this paper, therefore,
I ought now to make it quite clear what the focus of this paper is in-
tended to be. Here the negative element is perhaps the easier to define.
The primary focus of attention in discussions of HVD over the past two
decades has been the proper formulation of rules and/or constraints
which can account for the rather wide variety of Old English forms
which appear to be the result of HVD. This discussion started, perhaps,
with Kiparsky and O'Neil (1976) and continues up to at least Idsardi
(1994), as far as published papers are concerned, and other papers will
no doubt soon see the light of day. One reason for supposing that the
discussion is not concluded is that it is quite clear that none of the
published analyses provide a watertight solution, and certainly none of
them has received an unquestioning welcome. But a more important
reason in the present context is that, as far as I can tell, many of the
points that I want to make are largely analysis-independent.
This is not to say that any criticisms which I may make of a particu-
lar analysis are necessarily valid for all existing analyses. But my
intention is not to criticise—or favour—any particular analysis, but
rather to suggest that there is a substantial set of problematic issues
associated with all accounts of HVD, and that that set of issues has been
largely ignored or marginalised. And, I want to argue, it turns out that
they are critical to a proper understanding of the relevant phenomenon.
Not, I hasten to add, that I have any immediate solutions to these issues.
In those terms, the conclusion of this paper should prove singularly
unhelpful. The best that I can hope to offer is some suggestions about
the kinds of criteria which a new account of HVD must satisfy.
Rather than making an attempt to provide a new account of HVD
which might be more acceptable than those offered so far, what I want
to do here is to consider a number of problems regarding HVD which
have been, to a greater or lesser extent, ignored in the search for a
viable statement of the environment in which HVD is supposed to have
occurred. For, what I want to argue is that, right from its apparent
inception as a phonological rule in the grammar of Old English, HVD

had properties which are characteristic of highly marked rules. This
markedness of HVD, I shall also argue, has clearly visible consequences
in the morphophonological history of Old English.
Amongst the issues which I want to discuss are the following: (1) the
opacity of HVD; (2) systematic morphologisation; (3) dialectal varia-
tion; (4) apparent deletion of non-high vowels; (5) incompatible deriva-
tions. In this discussion I shall sometimes distinguish between HVD
in final open syllables, i.e. the type of HVD found in word < *wordu
'words', and HVD in medial open syllables, i.e. the type of HVD
foundin heafdes < *heafudes 'head' GEN.SG. I shall refer to both by
their traditional names, that is, respectively, apocope and syncope. I
could say that this is merely a matter of convenience, something which
may make the following discussion easier to follow, but that would be
being economical with the truth, and perhaps that is true. However, it
may be that the collapse of apocope and syncope into a single rule could
be an error. However, I am content with the claim that at present noth-
ing of substance hangs upon this issue, which remains to be resolved.
Finally, before we turn to a consideration of the problems I have
listed above, it should be noted that during the course of this paper, and
particularly in Section 2,1 shall briefly consider a radically different,
constraints-based, approach to HVD within the framework of Optimality
Theory. But I wish to emphasise that that discussion does not in itself
purport to offer an alternative explanation of the phenomena under
discussion, which in any case would be outside the limits of this paper.
Rather, the optimality account presented below is initially confined to
the sole purpose of illuminating some of the difficulties which face a
rules-based account. In the conclusion to this paper I shall, however,
present some issues which may suggest that a constraints-type analysis
may be the most fruitful avenue to pursue in search of a viable alterna-
tive to the present types of analysis.
2. The opacity of HVD
One of the most striking features of HVD in Old English is that it is

obviously opaque, specifically in that there are a great many surface
356 Richard M. Hogg
outputs which meet the structural description for the operation of HVD.
Of particular interest here are forms such as WS heafdu 'heads'. Under
one interpretation of the change, where /u/ deletes after a heavy syllable,
the result of HVD upon an underlying form such as /haeafudu/ will be
/haeafdu/. This latter form, of course, shows -u in the canonical environ-
ment for HVD, namely in final position immediately after a heavy
syllable.
It is, of course, well known that opaque rules do exist in synchronic
grammars. Therefore it is equally clear that there can be no absolute
restriction on their occurrence. Thus the above demonstration does not
disprove the existence of HVD. However, I assume that it would be
generally agreed that opaque rules do constitute a subset of the larger
set of marked phonological events. And so, at best, HVD deletion, to
the extent that it is opaque, must be considered to belong to the set of
marked rules.
Clearly, a possible response to this is "so what?". More illuminating
might be a response along the lines that such a rule, by virtue of its
opacity, implies that the associated underlying representations are more
likely to be subject to some kind of morphological reanalysis. This is
exactly the approach taken by Kiparsky and Ο'Neil (1976). Indeed they
suggest the following principle (1976: 550):
Underlying representations supported by alternations governed

by opaque rules are less well entrenched than underlying repre-
sentations supported by alternations governed by transparent
rules.
A not dissimilar approach is taken by Dresher and Lahiri (1991:279-

283). We might therefore expect, as Kiparsky and O'Neil argue, that
in the course of time HVD would be morphologised. As these authors
state, the situation is more complex than that, but I see no reason to
doubt the general line of argument. Indeed, I shall argue later in this
paper that many of the later modifications of HVD may well be, at least
in part, a consequence of this opacity.
Yet that does not seem to me to be the full story in this particular
case. For the opacity of HVD is much more serious than the above
discussion might suggest. The real difficulty with HVD is fairly
straightforward. If HVD is opaque to the extent that the rule is of the

form A —» B / C and surface outputs show A in the environment C,
what must not be overlooked is that in this case most surface examples
of A in the environment C occur precisely as the result of the applica-
tion of the rule A —> B I C. To take our representative instance, HVD
is rendered opaque by an example such as heafdu, where -u occurs after
a heavy syllable as the result of HVD operating on underlying
/haeafudu/ and thereby deleting -u- after a heavy syllable. Aside from
technical issues such as how the principles of rule application might
be formulated in order to prevent the unwanted re-application of HVD
which would give surface **heafd, the question has to be asked about
whether such a manoeuvre could ever be legitimate.
Might it not be preferable to claim that, where a proposed rule is
opaque because it is of the form A —> B / C and itself produces an
output of the form A / C, rather than excluding re-application of the
rule, we should instead exclude the rule itself by means of a general
principle, such as that no rule may have the form A —> B / C if the
result of that rule is that A re-occurs in the environment C? And since
even that stipulation might reasonably be regarded as an ad hoc, unprin-
cipled restriction on the properties of rules, we might simply be left
with the observation that such a rule would be even more highly marked
than other instances of opacity, with whatever consequences that might
be held to bring, see further Section 7.
If we accept, at least for the present, that the opacity of HVD, if it
is indeed of the type described immediately above, is such as to sit
uncomfortably within a rules-based account, then it is of some interest
to consider briefly what might be the situation within an Optimality
Theory account of HVD. There is a quite obvious reason for making
such a comparison. The type of opacity which we have been discussing
here is embedded with a rule-based derivational theory: opacity is
determined by the interaction of rules and derivations. Therefore, since
Optimality Theory offers a constraint-based non-derivational account
of phonology, there must be at least a prima facie supposition that it
will of necessity produce an account which is radically different from
that offered within a rule-based theory, for opacity can no longer be
defined in the same way. As Kager (1997:497) says: "one cannot, and
should not, directly transfer the conceptual categories of rule-based
358 Richard M. Hogg
theory into OT. As I have shown, 'surface opacity with respect to

metrical structure' is not a categorical problem for a constraint-based
theory which views the surface form as the primary level at which
generalizations interact."
Let us now turn to a 'bare-bones' OT account of HVD. For the sake
of comparison at least, it is necessary in this account to mimic as
closely has possible the kind of rule-based account outlined above,
rather than attempt to provide a totally different account which might
or might not lead to a more satisfactory account of the relevant phe-
nomena. That is to say, it is useful to determine whether or not, and
under what conditions, it is possible to replicate within OT the type of
analysis which is normally presented within a rule-based account. If
nothing else, this will allow an initial comparison of the issues to be
undertaken.
Let us firstly assume that in OE the foot is a moraic trochee
—see, for example, Hayes (1995: 118), Mutton (1998). Then, if we
take an input form /haeafudu/ = *heafudu 'heads' this will have the
structure:
(1) *
(* )
(μμ) μ μ
([haea] fu du
Leaving aside, as irrelevant to the issue at hand, the role of higher

ranking constraints such as ΡτΒΐΝ, four constraints seem to be critical.
The first of these is PARSE-G, i.e. all syllables must be parsed by feet.
The other two constraints are sub varieties of MAX, which states that
every segment in the input has a correspondent in the output. MAX-MID
LOW requires input-output correspondence for non-high vowels, whilst
MAX-HIGH requires input-output correspondence for non-low vowels.
Finally, there is a constraint forbidding superheavy rhymes, i.e.,
*VVCC. Since unparsed final -a is freely found, e.g. heafda 'head',
GEN.PL, it is quite clear that MAX-MID LOW is higher ranked than
PARSE-σ. On the other hand, HVD can be restated as due to MAX-HIGH
being lower ranked than PARSE-O, for the latter is the constraint which
will forbid unfooted high vowels whilst the former requires input-output
correspondence for high vowels Thus we find the following constraint
ranking:
*VVCC, MAX-MID-LOW » PARSE-O » MAX-HIGH
The following tableau results:
(2) /haeafudu/J *VVCC MAX-MID-LOW PARSE-σ MAX-HIGH

(haea).fu.du **!
«*· (hseaf).du * *
ι®- (hsea).fud * *
(haeafd) *! *
As can be seen from (2), the above constraint ranking predicts, other
things being equal, that there should be free variation between heafdu
and heafud. As far as I am aware, there is, within the parameters that
we have imposed, no other potential constraint which would create a
preference for one form over the other.
Interestingly, this comparison does reveal a contrast between a rule-
based account and a constraint-based account. In the former, as we have
seen, the single form heafdu is predicted as grammatical (provided that
no additional information, such as morphological structure, is used).
That a single form should be generated is, of course, expected, and more
forms could only be generated if a rule were made optional, as in
Dresher's account of the variation between heafod and heafodu in the
Vespasian Psalter. On the other hand, the optimality tableau in (2)
shows, again provided that no additional information of a morphological
character is introduced, free variation between heafdu and heafud (for
the variant OE form heafod, see n. 5).
It is important to stress at this point that the presence or absence of
any of the above forms in any one or more Old English dialects is not
relevant, except to the extent that all the forms are genuinely attested.
Furthermore, the purpose of the comparison is as restricted as its results,
and hence the conclusions that we can draw are equally restricted. In
particular, it would be improper to conclude, as I have been at pains
360 Richard M. Hogg
to emphasise above, that the above discussion somehow implies that

a constraint-based approach is more—or less—adequate than a rule-
based approach. Rather, all that we can conclude is that, given equiva-
lent sets of rules and constraints, the two types of approach make criti-
cally different predictions about the grammatical status of the set of
linguistic forms under consideration. I have to confess that I am not sure
what the exact meaning of "equivalent" is in this context. But the
important point is that the set of rules and the set of constraints and the
set of relative orderings of each were together intended to have the same
effect, i.e., that all that was left as a distinction were the different sets
of theoretical principles.
There may, however, be one conclusion to be drawn. Where this
rather odd subtype of opacity occurs, a standard rule-based approach
has little to offer other than classifying the rule as opaque. This has
important predictive power, especially in terms of the rule being suscep-
tible to morphologisation. On the other hand, the OT account suggests
that absolute free variation will occur. If it were possible to claim that
a consequence of this would be that one form would be preferred over
another on other grounds, for example, morphological ones, this might
well be a significant advantage for the optimality account. This is an
issue to which we shall return in our conclusion.
But whatever the case may be, the one clear conclusion to be drawn
is rather more theory-independent, namely that HVD (or some equiva-
lent thereof) is highly marked, even in its historically earliest form. One
might therefore attempt an alternative analysis which dispenses with
HVD (or its constraints-based equivalent). For example, consider the
possibility that HVD might actually be two separate rules, one of syn-
cope, which deletes medial high vowels after a heavy syllable or its
equivalent, and one of apocope, which deletes final high vowels in the
same environment. This is the position held in many non-generative
accounts of the phenomena, see Hogg (1992: §§ 6.18ff.)
Consider then a putative underlying form such as /haeafudu/. If syn-
cope precedes apocope, then syncope will feed apocope and the surface
output will be **heafd\ if apocope precedes syncope, then apocope will
fail to apply (at least under most such interpretations of HVD) and then
syncope will apply, giving the correct surface output heafdu. Thus extrin-
sic rule ordering of syncope before apocope will produce the desired
results, without resort to a stipulation that HVD must not re-apply.

Obviously, the rule of apocope, however it is stated, will be opaque under
this type of analysis, but the opacity will not be the result of the applica-
tion of apocope itself and may therefore be theoretically more acceptable.
Various questions arise here, such as whether the postulation of two
separate but very similar rules is an artificial procedure, or whether an
analysis which avoids opacity caused by the output of a rule being identi-
cal to the environment in which the rule operates is preferable on a priori
grounds to an analysis which does not avoid such opacity. It is also
possible, at least in principle, to conceive of an optimality tableau in
which constraints were so ranked as to mimic separate rules of syncope
and apocope, and therefore this issue may well be theory-neutral.
For the moment, I want to leave the question of opacity and its
impact on the plausibility or otherwise of a synchronic rule of HVD at
this point, or, rather, at this question mark. For me, at least, this does
not in itself resolve the issue of the acceptability of proposing such a
rule, or even of how to choose between competing analyses, but rather
it is one factor which has to be taken into account when making a more
final decision. Let us, instead, turn to the next issue.
3. Systematic morphologisation
Most recent studies of HVD have, either explicitly or implicitly, re-

stricted themselves to a discussion of HVD with respect to nouns and
adjectives and, sometimes, weak verbs. However, as far as I know, only
two important studies have discussed the status of HVD with respect
to strong verbs. There is more than one reason for this, for example the
fact that the relevant phenomenon occurs mainly in Anglian dialects
(although it is partially present in early Kentish). But the critical reason,
a cynic might suggest, is because the evidence is somewhat embarrass-
ing. Whilst strong verbs with a light stem, as in classes IV-VI, e.g.
faran, show the expected Anglian ISG.PR.IND form with inflexional
-«, e.g. Ps(A)/earw Ί go', the strong verbs of classes I-III, which have
a heavy stem, equally show -u, e.g. bidu Ί wait', although the predicted
application of HVD would, after a heavy syllable, produce the unat-
tested type **bid.
362 Richard M. Hogg
Of the studies which we must note here, only one gives a purely
phonologically based explanation of this apparent failure of HVD,
namely Keyser and O'Neil (1985: 134-135). Their suggestion is that
the underlying shape of the ι so inflexion is /o/ rather than /u/, which
will therefore escape HVD, after which it may be raised to /u/. There
are many objections to this analysis. Firstly, it creates another means
whereby HVD is opaque. Secondly, it necessitates the postulation of
three underlying unstressed vowels, where on the surface there are never
more than two. Thirdly, the arguments which they use to justify under-
lying /o/ in these cases could equally well be posited for the medial
vowel of West Saxon heafdu, which it would then be impossible to
delete. Fourthly, they use evidence from Northumbrian of the end of
the tenth century to account for phenomena in Mercian in the middle
of the ninth, thus confusing both geography and chronology. More
simply, Keyser and O'Neil fail to note the massive amount of evidence
to show that [u] and [o] are, in traditional terms, allophones of the same
phoneme, and that this accounts for the spelling variations which they
have observed.
The other account we have to consider is that of Dresher (1978:198),
who notes the unpredicted occurrence of -u in strong verb inflexion,
and concludes that "we must stipulate that the pres.ind. Is suffix u is
not susceptible to VD". I am quite certain that Dresher is correct in this
conclusion, and my quarrel with him is rather that he does not consider
what the implications of such a stipulation might be for the status of
HVD.
In order to see what these implications are, we need to step back
slightly from the particularities of the rule in question, and ask ourselves
how phonological and morphological changes come to be incorporated
within the grammar of a language. The usual kind of model, whether
generative or non-generative, supposes that low-level phonetic variation
becomes encoded or phonologised, so that synchronically the variation
becomes rule governed. Such a rule has the shape of A —> B / C D
where A, B, C and D are all phonological elements (or null). Such a
rule may eventually become morphologised, either as a morphologically
conditioned phonological rule, or, see Anderson (1992), as a purely
morphological rule.
For our present purposes, however, the exact details of morpho-

logisation are not terribly relevant. What is relevant, and important, is
that this kind of view, even if it is modified to incorporate such con-
cepts as lexical diffusion of sound change, does not appear to allow the
introduction of morphological change unmediated by an earlier, purely
phonological change. Now if we assume that such a view is correct,
then we have to suppose that HVD is in origin a purely phonological
rule, and that only at some later stage does it undergo some degree of
morphologisation. This morphologisation process would result, in this
particular instance, in the ISG.PRES.IND inflexion -u being prevented
from undergoing HVD. This is the stage which Dresher (1978) de-
scribes.
However, if at one time HVD was purely phonological and if, fur-
thermore, HVD is a sound change which occurred not long before the
time of earliest texts such as the Vespasian Psalter, which is a reason-
able assumption given that HVD must have occurred later than t-umlaut,
see, for example, Hogg (1992: §§ 6.22-23), then it might be expected
that the morphologisation process would have left behind some relics
of the earlier phonological status. But that does not happen at all. All
the evidence we have, therefore, is that HVD first comes into the lan-
guage as a morphologically based, rather than purely phonological, rule.
It is almost certainly worth noting here that within Optimality Theory
there is nothing to prevent morphological constraints being ranked
higher than purely phonological ones at all times, see for example the
discussion of correspondence theory in Kager (forthcoming) and the
discussion in the conclusion to this paper.
It is particularly interesting to note that there is comparative evidence
which tends to confirm that this morphologisation of HVD must have
occurred in the earliest stages of the process and with significant regu-
larity. This evidence is from Old Saxon, where HVD has many of the
same phonological properties as in Old English, see, for example,
Holthausen (1921: §§ 137ff., § 153). But, in Old Saxon, as in Old
English, the verbal paradigm shows consistent retention of -u in
ISG.PR.IND, e.g. bindu Ί bind'. Such morphological equivalence sug-
gests that there was a common element of instability in the operation
of HVD in the two languages. Whatever the reason for this, it is a
364 Richard M. Hogg
further demonstration of the marked nature of HVD as a phonological

rule. Again, this is a matter to which we shall address ourselves in the
conclusion.
4. Dialectal variation
Although some writers on the topic of HVD have paid attention to the
question of dialectal diversity, this has not always been so, not even in
some recent contributions, such as Idsardi (1994). And, for historical
reasons, most attention has been paid to the phenomenon in the
Vespasian Psalter dialect, presumably under the influence of Dresher
(1978). The concentration on the Vespasian Psalter dialect is, in a very
real sense, unobjectionable. Nevertheless, there is a real issue here, that
a frequent consequence of that concentration has been a failure to place
the phenomena in that one dialect in the wider context of Old English
dialect variation generally.
I don't want to pursue this issue immediately, but I do want to
emphasise its importance. At various points in this paper I refer to
dialectal variations in the implementation of HVD, and to specific
dialect forms, such as, but not only, the well-known variation of VP
heafod ~ heafodu vs. WS heafdu. Now what must not be ignored is that
there are serious questions of ontology which arise from these dialect
issues. All of these can be found within a single question, namely, what
do we mean by the term "the grammar of Old English"? In other words,
is a rule such as HVD intended to be dialect-specific or pan-dialectal?
If it is the latter, then how do we cope with inter-dialectal contradic-
tions, such as the contrast between VP and WS mentioned above. If it
is the former, what means, if any, should we have for explaining rela-
tionships of, for example, comprehensibility between dialects, or the
emergence of different rules, or different variations of a single rule,
according to dialect? I should point out here that I am using dialect in
a slightly odd sense, for I intend it to cover diachronic as well as
synchronic variation. That is to say, the dialect of jElfric's Homilies
differs from that of the Vespasian Psalter both in dialect geography and
in real time. These are genuine issues, and therefore, when, for example,
Idsardi (1994: 528) cites on the same page sealfode, which can be
nothing other than a West Saxon form, and monge, which must equally
be an Anglian form, and the point is not so much that he is being care-
less, but that he obscures the critical ontological issues.
One familiar example of such obscuration may be taken from the
optimality tableau presented in (2) above. That tableau suggested that
heafdu and heafud were in free variation. Now whilst this may be a very
broadly accurate characterisation of inter-dialectal variation in Old
English, it is patently not true of any one given dialectal variety of Old
English. For example, if we consider the Vespasian Psalter dialect,
there are no examples in that dialect of heafdu, whilst in West Saxon
texts heafdu dominates overwhelmingly (aside from a variation dis-
cussed in Section 5) and the forms heafod, heafodu are so rare as to
make their status as normal West Saxon forms suspicious. At the very
least these latter two forms are far too rare in West Saxon to be allow-
able as evidence of free variation. Since apparent free variation between
dialects is not free variation at all, but, rather, dialect differentiation,
this shows that, contrary to the initial impression given by an overall
view of Old English dialects, free variation of the type suggested by (2)
simply did not occur.
5. Apparent deletion of non-high vowels
The problem which I want to raise in this part of the paper has already
been discussed by me elsewhere (Hogg 1997), and therefore I shall be
as brief as possible. The problem arises in one Old English dialect
which has sometimes been ignored in recent studies, namely the Late
West Saxon dialect associated with the texts of JElfnc. It could be
argued that this renders the present argument irrelevant, because the
texts concerned are too late to be of relevance to the question of the
synchronic status of HVD, which had been fully morphologisedby then.
However, that is not obviously so, for a number of reasons. Firstly, Late
West Saxon is the dialect of the overwhelming majority, perhaps 80-90
per cent, of the Old English material available to us, including, at least
in a modified form, most of the poetry. Secondly, the texts are contem-
poraneous with, or not significantly later than, Northumbrian material
and some Mercian material which is regularly considered. Thirdly, the
366 Richard M. Hogg
term "Late" is somewhat misleading, since it is not primarily a chrono-

logical term, see Hogg (1992: § 1.10) and references therein. And
fourthly, and perhaps most interestingly in the present context, the
jElfrician texts are remarkably conservative in, for example, their
spelling of unstressed vowels and inflexions, generally being at least
as conservative as the Early West Saxon, Alfredian, texts, which are
often considered.
Assuming, therefore, that the characteristics of LWS are relevant to
the current discussion, what is the problem which arises? The first, and
essential, point to make is that HVD operates in a quite predictable
fashion over a large group of words. Thus the plural of word is word,
the plural of werod is werod, and so on. Similarly, plural forms such
as heafdu 'heads' or witu 'punishments' are frequent. In other words,
the situation appears to be exactly as expected, at least in comparison
with other West Saxon texts such as those associated with Alfred.
Yet the problem is easily stated. For although the inflexional forms
appear to be predictably distributed in line with HVD as it operates
generally in West Saxon, so that zero-inflexion is found after one heavy
syllable or two light syllables, when the inflexion is retained, it does
not always have the shape -u. There is an alternative form of the
inflexion, namely -a. Furthermore, this form is probably slightly more
frequent than -H. For example in Mlfncian texts heafda occurs as
ΝΟΜ. ACC.PL six times, whilst heafdu occurs four times. Monosyllabic
stems, such as scipa ~ scipu 'ships', show precisely the same variation.
It does not appear to be possible to provide a phonological explana-
tion for this variation, although that may be the force of the comments
in Campbell (1959: § 377). The first reason for denying that the change
is phonological is that it is found only with the ΝΟΜ.ACC.PL inflexion.
Thus in a feminine noun such as gifu 'gift', the ΝΟΜ.so is always of
that shape, and is never, as far as I can tell, replaced by g if a. The second
reason is connected with the explanation offered by Campbell, namely,
that the back vowels have fallen together and that therefore -u and -a
would be interchangeable. Leaving aside the more complex question
of whether or to what extent unstressed back vowels had fallen together
by the time of jElfric, it has to be noted that the reverse replacement
of -a by -M, which under the circumstances of the two vowels falling
together would have been not only possible but indeed probable, giving
inverted spellings in for example, the GEN.PL heafda as **heafdu, does

not occur. It seems far more likely that we are dealing with a morpho-
logical replacement here, as is hinted at by Pope (1967-1968: 183).
Now if that is so, if -a is becoming the dominant NOM.ACC.PL
inflexion of nouns such as scip and heafod, gradually replacing the
historical -w, then it becomes difficult to maintain the position that a
NOM.ACC.PL such as werod is derived from an underlying form of the
type /werodu/ by a synchronic rule of HVD. There is at least as good
an argument (by which I mean a rather poor argument) for assuming,
as the type weroda, scipa becomes dominant, that the underlying forms
would be /weroda/, etc. But if that is the shape of the underlying form,
then the surface output cannot be derived by HVD, since /a/ is, obvi-
ously, not a high vowel. And in any case, the GEN.PL weroda must have
as its underlying form/weroda/without any apocope, an absolutely clear
demonstration that NOM . ACC . PL werod cannot in this context be derived
by a phonological variant of HVD. Exactly the same issues confront
an optimality approach, where a re-ranking of MAX-MID-LOW and
PARSE-G would be equally impossible. From this it follows that in LWS
the existence of inflexional zero or inflexional -ul-a must be assigned
lexically rather than phonologically. Such an analysis suggests that HVD
has been, or is being, lost from the synchronic grammar of Late West
Saxon. Once more, we shall return to this issue in our conclusion.
6. Incompatible derivations
One of the most well-known and difficult, and hence interesting, fea-
tures of HVD is that there are several competing forms occurring in the
same dialect which appear to be underivable, or derivable only with
difficulty, if their underlying forms are identical or, in the case of
different lexical items, directly parallel. The best known of such cases
is the alternation in the Vespasian Psalter between NOM.ACC.PL heafud
and heafudu.
Amongst the earlier attempts to handle this alternation, Dresher
(1978: 152-153) argues that HVD applies irregularly. This appears, at
least at first sight, to be observationally adequate, but it can scarcely
be argued to have any further explanatory power. Keyser and O'Neil
368 Richard M. Hogg
(1985: 139-140; 144-145) offer a very different solution. In order to

derive heafod they invoke a rule of Trisyllabic Shortening, which
shortens a long vowel (or diphthong) before two unstressed vowels.
Whilst Trisyllabic Shortening may be a possibility in some stages of
English, the change is generally recognised to be not earlier than the
eleventh century and at odds with the metrical evidence from Old
English poetry. Thus the rule appears to be an ad hoc manoeuvre to
produce the correct outputs. In order to derive heafodu, Keyser and
Ο'Neil assume "a split in the Vespasian Psalter between two dialects",
which seems odd, if not impossible, and certainly meaningless, given
that there is a single scribe responsible for the only text. In the alleged
second dialect Keyser and Ο'Neil replace Trisyllabic Shortening "with
the ... ad hoc rule which places stress . . . on the syllable immediately
preceding the final -u in substantival forms". Not only is the rule ad
hoc, and directly contrastive with Trisyllabic Shortening, it is wholly
unsupported by any Old English evidence, and denied by later develop-
ments following the loss of medial [u].
More recently, Idsardi (1994: 529) has suggested that in forms such
as /miklu/ and /haeafudu/ there is an initial empty consonant cluster
position before final -u and that the variation in surface forms may be
due to the acceptability of stranding an empty consonant. Idsardi's
proposal is essentially a reworking of Dresher's (1978) suggestion that
the inflexion is lexically specified so that it is attached to stems by a
word boundary. To the extent that Idsardi's solution essentially replaces
Dresher's morphophonological account by a quasi-phonological dia-
critic, that solution is quite unacceptable.
Dresher's solution enables one to draw a quick sigh of relief, because
it enables one equally to account for the presence of inflexional -u in
the weak verb hem Ί praise', as Dresher (1978: 144-145) himself
notes. The question must then arise as to why the same solution is not
applied to strong verbs, which would be a further generalisation, see
Section 2 above. But other questions also have to be considered. Firstly,
what kind of process permits the introduction of this special morpholog-
ical boundary in an environment which can only be specified in phono-
logical terms, namely word-final unstressed -w? Secondly, if the envi-
ronment is specified phonologically, it can be applied successfully only
to those nouns with a disyllabic stem, but it must be applicable to any
verb, regardless of stem structure. It cannot be applied to monosyllabic

nouns such as word, where -u is regularly deleted. In terms of Lexical
Phonology, HVD would be operating not with respect to boundary
markers, but on different cycles, and there seems to be no motivation
available to substantiate such a claim.
What I should like to suggest goes beyond the argument that all these
phonologically-based analyses are unacceptable in their own terms.
Rather, I want to suggest that such a concentration on phonological
issues obscures the real problem. Keyser and O'Neil's analysis simply
declares the existence of two dialects without any attention to what this
might correspond to in the real world (which in fact would appear to
nothing at all). Idsardi converts Dresher's morphophonological solution
into an empty phonological constituent. Surely, however, Dresher's
perception that there is a morphological issue here is correct. The
translation of that into phonological language prevents us from asking
the serious morphological question.
A traditional approach seems to me to be of rather more interest,
even if it too is eventually unable to provide a solution. Such an ap-
proach would claim that of the two forms heafod and heafodu, only one
can be purely phonological. The other must be the result of some ana-
logical process. As Campbell (1959: § 574.4) says, "analogy often
occurs". In itself such a statement is obviously unsatisfactory, but it can
be turned into a more interesting question: what kind of analogical
process might have occurred? In my view, at least, the answer to this
question is exceptionally revealing, the answer being "none". Let me
explain why I believe this to be so.
Assume that either of the available forms could be the phonologically
expected output. If the expected output were heafod, then what process
could account for the appearance of heafodul I would want to argue
that in order for analogy to occur, there has to be a reasonable propor-
tional formula which might be applied. In this example, the only reason-
able formula would be based on the behaviour of other disyllabic nouns.
But those nouns regularly show 0-inflexion, e.g. werod. Unless we were
prepared to extend our concept of a reasonable proportional formula
to monosyllabic short-stemmed nouns like scip, for which there can be
no justification, no such formula seems applicable to this hypothesised
analogy.
370 Richard M. Hogg
If the expected output were heafodu, then it obviously follows that

a suitable proportional analogy is easily found, namely a noun such as
werod. But there is a second condition which it seems appropriate to
impose upon such analogical change, namely that it should increase
morphological transparency or permit distinctions between crucial
morphosyntactic categories. But the assumed analogical form heafod
has the clear disadvantage that the ΝΟΜ. ACC.SG and NOM. ACC.PL forms
will now be identical. We can therefore argue that the proportional
analogy will not take place because the result is disadvantageous from
a critical morphological point of view.
A reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that the traditional concept of
analogy is no better than any generative account at explaining what is
going on here. But this discussion has at least one positive feature. For
it demonstrates that analogy can be controlled and defined, that it is not
a merely ad hoc process to be used whenever all the available phonolog-
ical accounts are implausible. It is only by denying a plausible analogi-
cal account that we remain able to use analogical accounts in other
contexts where the kind of constraints I have mentioned are not vio-
lated. There is a further conclusion to be drawn too, which is that
analogical changes serve to increase morphological transparency. As
we shall see in the conclusion to this paper, to which we now turn, is
may be crucial to a further understanding of the processes involved in
HVD.
7. Conclusion
Let us review the situation. It is universally agreed that unstressed final

high vowels were lost in Old English after a heavy syllable or two light
syllables. In other words, it is accepted that there was some process
which had both diachronic and synchronic consequences and which had
a phonological basis. This is not a trivial claim, even if it is demonstra-
bly insufficient. But from then on, matters get more difficult.
Firstly, there are phonological difficulties. The opacity of HVD
(Section 2) may not be fatal, it is at least significant. Secondly, there
are problems of morphology, both in terms of clear signs of morpho-
logisation (Section 3) and variation in the form of the relevant inflexion
(Section 5). Thirdly, there is the question of how to deal with dialect
variation (Section 4). Fourthly, there is the inadequacy of analogical
explanations (Section 6) for interaction of dialect variation and
morphologisation.
What, then, is to be done? There is no space in this paper to offer
any more than some suggestions towards an alternative approach, but
it may be possible to make those suggestions. If we consider the variety
of difficulties summarised in the preceding paragraph, then, I would
suggest, two dominant issues emerge. These are: (i) morphologisation;
(ii) dialect variation. The question of opacity, which is where we started,
seems to me to be a red herring. It should not be seen as the problem
itself, but, rather, as a symptom of the problem. That, of course, does
not lessen its importance, at least as a diagnostic.
What I should like to suggest is that the core issues are in the area
of morphology. In particular here, it seems to me that the evidence of
Old Saxon is of special interest. As noted at the end of Section 3, Old
Saxon shares the phenomenon of HVD with Old English. Thus in
Old Saxon in neuter plural nouns we can find exact parallels to cases
in Old English, hence OSax fatu 'vessels' ~ word 'words' ~ watar
'waters'. It must be noted that in the treatment of polysyllabic forms
there are several differences between Old Saxon and Old English, but
these are not presently relevant. A particularly important point is that
in the strong verb system of Old Saxon the ι SG ending is regularly -u
even after a heavy syllable. Thus we find examples of the type bindu
Ί bind', just as in Old English.
Holthausen (1921: § 402) gives an explanation echoed by other
writers, whether talking of either Old Saxon or Old English: "Die
langsilbigen starken Verba und ya-St mme sollten nach § 153 ihre
Endung verlieren, haben sie aber nach dem Vorbild der kurzsilbigen
wiederhergestellt." But, as pointed out in Section 3, there is no evidence
to support the view that restoration of -w was the result of analogy. The
argument is, as far as I can tell, theoretical. That is to say, it relies on
the assumption that HVD was a phonological change which therefore
proceeds in a proper neogrammarian manner. However plausible that
may be, there is an alternative possibility.
We might suggest that HVD was from the outset morphologically
restricted, better, perhaps, constrained from operating over verbal stems.
372 Richard M. Hogg
In essence, this is the position held by Dresher (1978). The question

which can only be asked in this present context is whether or not it is
possible to construct an OT account which not only avoids the difficul-
ties of an analysis in terms of Lexical Phonology, but which is also
well-motivated in terms of the procedures permitted in terms of OT
itself.
If an OT account is to be possible, then, there are major issues to
be considered. Thus the perhaps dubious status of output-output corre-
spondence and sympathy theory need to be addressed, see here Orgun
(1996), Kiparsky (1998, this volume) for a critical view of sympathy
theory. Equally, it may be necessary to evaluate the type of LEVEL
constraint advocated by Raffelsiefen (this volume) and whether such
a constraint is either required or even compatible with an interleaved
Lexical Phonology. As I understand Raffelsiefen's account, it appears
to be a variation of output-output correspondence, and hence incompati-
ble with an interleaved approach. Whatever the conclusions, it will be
clear that the "bare bones" analysis of HVD given in Section 2 above
is quite inadequate.
Some of the issues which arise in this context are discussed more
fully in Bermudez-Otero and Hogg (forthcoming), which is an attempt
to reconsider the evidence for HVD in Late (Êlfrician) West Saxon
with a view to presenting an interleaved OT account which also assesses
the possible diachronic history of HVD and its eventual loss. Neverthe-
less, some problems certainly remain, whether or not that account is
plausible. Thus, for example, in Early as well as Late West Saxon, there
is variation between -u and -a and it is quite clear, as we argued in
Section 4, that this cannot readily be accounted for within the phonol-
ogy and that it is probable that here we are dealing with a distinct and
purely morphological issue
It seems appropriate to end here. For what I want to stress is that I
am doing neither of two things. Firstly, I am not trying to mount a
destructive attack on a variety of generative analyses of HVD. Most of
the issues which I have discussed are equally difficult for traditional
approaches, some more so, some less so, that is all. And secondly, I am
not trying to provide any solutions, for the issues which surround HVD
are as puzzling to me as to anyone. I do not claim to have provided any
answers.
All that I am trying to do is point out some serious difficulties which

surround HVD, difficulties which have sometimes been ignored, and
sometimes confronted. But whichever is the case, these difficulties have
persisted. Essentially, as we have seen, they revolve around the three
issues of opacity, morphologisation and dialect variation.
Furthermore, I hope that it has been demonstrated that the difficulties
discussed above are remarkably theory-neutral, in that they apply not
merely to traditional neogrammarian-type approaches and standard
generative approaches, but also to the very different view of phonology
pertaining within Optimality Theory. Quite what this means for the
future of HVD, I do not know. For the fundamental paradox remains,
that HVD, or, more probably, some variant thereof, remains an essential
part of the grammar of Old English. How to retain that essential and
abide by general theoretical principles is a question that at the moment
remains unsolved. Nor is this merely an issue for the student of Old
English, for HVD is one of the major phonological eventsunderpinning
the arguments for the existence of the Germanic foot advocated by
Dresher and Lahiri (1991). What are the consequences for the Germanic
foot if HVD never occurred, and how does this affect our understanding
of foot typology, in which the Germanic foot is normally considered
a marked type, see Hayes (1995)?
More generally still, and with reference to the primary concern of
this volume, the one thing that emerges from the present discussion is
that HVD is a highly marked phonological rule, both by virtue of its
opaque interaction with itself and because of the rapidity with which
it seems to have been morphologised. If this is true and if HVD ever
existed, then we have to ask ourselves whether or not any consequences
at all follow from the existence of highly marked processes. If no
consequences follow and HVD is treated with no more suspicion than
any other phonological rule, we might then have to ask ourselves, in
the spirit of Lass (1980), whether the concept of a marked rule or
process has any meaning at all.
374 Richard M. Hogg
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for their comments to Aditi Lahiri, Elan Dresner, Paul Kiparsky, Renate
Raffelsiefen, Tomas Riad and the other participants at the Maurach conference, which
have helped to make this a better (or at least less bad) paper than it originally was.
I am especially grateful to Ricardo Bermudez-Otero for his help and advice in the
revision of this paper and for helping me towards a better understanding of OT.
Notes
1. This would, for example, be the type of derivation envisaged in Dresher's rule of
Vowel Deletion (Dresher 1978: 140). Dresher assumes that in the Vespasian
Psalter dialect final /u/ is, in essence, morphologically marked as extrametrical,
thereby rendering the rule inapplicable in this context. Keyser and O'Neil's (1985:
139) rules also predict heafdu, but have further, and here irrelevant, complexities.
See, however, section 6 for further discussion.
2. Particularly relevant here is Kager's (1997) discussion of opacity and OT. Although
the examples he discusses are not identical to the case here in terms of opacity,
the fact that rules of syncope and apocope and their equivalent constraints are
crucial issues in that paper make it particularly relevant to the present discussion.
Kager (forthcoming) offers further discussion which is extremely relevant to the
present issue, but it is beyond the limits of this present paper to consider the kind
of approach presented there. It is perhaps sufficient to note that in this second paper
by Kager an appeal to morphological structures and relationships is critical. We
shall see further below that HVD is indeed heavily influenced by the morphological
system.
3. Holthausen (1921: § 153, Anm. 1-2) cites more extensive preservation of -u and,
conversely, loss of -u after light syllables. These types are scarcely relevant to the
present issue.
4. Unfortunately there is no evidence from Old Frisian which would demonstrate the
same phenomenon there, since in Old Frisian the historical inflexion was replaced
by -e, an interesting parallel in itself, this time with the West Saxon dialect of Old
English.
5. Medial -o- is due to lowering of the unstressed vowel and is not relevant to the
issue at hand, for details see Hogg (1992: § 6.55 ff.).
6. The situation in other varieties of Old English is similar to that in West Saxon.
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Index of subjects
α-stems 25, 50, 63, 64, 65, 119 n. 16, voicing alternation 60
253 n. 10 vowel-length alternation 50-51, 53ff.
ίζ-nouns 50, 61, 63, 65 analogy Iff, 64, 117,369-371
ablaut 92, 96 analogical extension 144
classes 92ff analogical change 18, 26, 27, 30, 33,
grades 94,98, 115 34,43, 105-106, 162 n. 12,215,
abstractness 217,231,370
and the Alternation Condition 176 analogical creations 6
of basic representations 175 analogical lengthening 217, 231-232
accent Accent 2 234
pitch accent 239, 244 'fake' 231-237
tone accent 261 analogical levelling 106-107,
word accent 219, 223, 244 162 n. 12, 173
Accent 1 221 analogical pressure 159
apocope 226-228, 235 false analogy 5
geographical distribution 22Iff morphological analogy 251
Accent 1/2 219ff., 234 apocope 48, 229, 221-222, 226-228,
and st0d 262ff 361,367
high vs. non-high vowels 252 n. 3 schwa 134ff
interrogative intonation 240, 247 uncompensated 253 n. 5
non-final stress 243 Yiddish 59
number distinction 230 see also High Vowel Deletion
Accent 2 Ausl utverh rtuii!> see Final Devoicing
and analogical lengthening 234 auxiliary 113
and voiceless consonants 233 grammaticalisation 73
connective 269-272, 280, 283-284 reanalysis 72
declarative 246, 247 reduction in Bengali 114
generalized Accent 2 263, 287-290,
296 n. 18 back-formation 184
interrogative contour 242, 245 bimoraic theory 337
markedness shift to Accent 1 262 branching foot 314
monophthongisation 237 breathy voice 225
neutralization of secondary stress 282
pitch 240 change
position 238-239,251 ergonomic 217
reanalysis 289-291 Neogrammarian ideal 215
vowel length 254 n. 10 phonetic implementation 217
adjectives 19,40, 125, 128, 132, 153, 161 sound change 5
attributive 177-179, 185, 186,353 see also analogy
verbal adjective 118 n. 6 class membership versus lexical represen-
allomorphy 22-24,66, 105, 115-117 tation 65
stem allomorphy 23, 40 cline 71
suffix allomorphy 22, 25 cliticisation 72, 113
allophones 362 Coda Law 139
alternation 17, 23ff, 44 n. 6, 47 compensatory lengthening 48, 253 n. 5
derivationally related 183 compound tenses 78
paradigmatic alternation 48 compounds 265
378 Index of subjects
concatenation 99 generative grammar 159

linear vs hierarchical structure 114 Germanic Foot 301, 303
consonant shift grammar change 10, 40^2
German 63 grammar optimization 43
High German 61, 68 grammar simplification 9-10
consonant voicing 221,224-226 grammaticalisation 71,72,73,
constraint ranking 153-155 171ff
constraint reordering 131 'be' in Bengali 74ff
creaky voice 265, 274 'to do' 99ff
cretic shortening 333 auxiliary 113, 114
decomposition 90, 113
declension shift 64 degrammaticalisation 177
declensional class 56, 65 perfect 86,90
decomposition 90, 113 PGmcdon 99
defecti veness 146 progressive 82, 90
defooting 325 speed 186
degemination 84 stages 186-187
Dehnung 219 Grimm's law 96
see also Accent 2
dental preterite 73 Head Law 139
in Germanic 91-113 High Vowel Deletion
devoicing 60, 172 morphologisation 356, 361-364
final devoicing in Yiddish 59 opacity 355-361,362,371
syncope vs. apocope 360, 361
enclitic pronouns 265
epenthesis /-nouns 100, 102ff
optional vs. obligatory 178-179 i-stems 25, 44 n. 7, 102, 103, 105, 107,
word-final schwa-epenthesis 166 n. 47 108, 119n. 16, 120 n. 17,353
Eskilstuna-curl 272-275, 276 iambic shortening 333
development into st</>d 276ff implicational relations 203
tonal structure 281 incoherence 60
exceptional plurals 60-61 inflection class membership
extrametricality 374 n. l and markedness 208
C-extrametricality 29, 325 criteria 211
consonant 304, 325, 326 inflectional classes 193
foot 305,311,320,351 n. l inflectional paradigms 173,194-197
mora 20, 35, 38 innovation
syllable 304,307,311,318,319 analogical 40-42
in noun declension 27
Final Devoicing 130, 171 ff in verb conjugation 31
fortis 174 intonation
fronting 80, 83, 84, 114, 118 n. 3 declarative 241
and vowel harmony 88 interrogative 241-242
fusion 71 listing 240
intonational contours 217
geminate 61 intrinsic pitch 223
geminate affricate 74
gemination 80, 95, 109, 110, 111 /u-nouns 100, 102ff
Old English 120 7«-stems 16-19,23,28, 127
vs. umlaut 100 and -jan verbs 32
West Germanic 68, 109 reranking 39
jo-stems 127 o-stems 23, 24

jo-stems 23, 24 obstruent
Junggrammatiker 4 final 178
stem-final 178-179
laryngeal specification 224 syllable-final 174
larynx lowering 224 voiced 174
levelling 63 voiced vs. voiceless 174
analogical 173 opacity 10, 76
analogical in Old Norse 106-107 Open-Syllable Lengthening 47ff, 215ff,
directionality 58-63 301,321-323,326
paradigm 116 and trisyllabic shortening 68 n. 2
paradigmatic 67, 133 Middle Dutch 68 n. 3
lexical diffusion 215
lexical specification 200, 203 paradigm
lexical tone contrast 219-221 disyllabic 51-52
lexicon 197ff implicational relations 196-197
linearity 90 word-and-paradigm model 152
loan word adoption 131 paradigm structure conditions 194ft"., 201
loans feminine/non-feminine 205-206
French 326 inanimate masculines 206
Romance 326, 327, 329 Paradigm Uniformity 16
paradigmatic alternations 57
markedness Iff, 116, 129, 157 perfect
change in the inflectional Bengali 73, 78, 85-90
system 206-210 see also grammaticalisation
inflectional class-membership 198 periphrastic tenses
inflectional systems 199 see compound tenses
marked rules 373 phonetic variation 218,362
markedness shift 262 phonological word 71, 81, 114, 132
scale of 198-199 formation 71
unmarked 129, 162 n. 12, 164 n. 30, positively specified markers 203
175, 197, 218, 248, 250, 261 ff., preterite
287-288 dental 73,91-113
voicing opposition 175 formation 99
metrical constraints 20 Old High German 108-113
moraicity 232 weak 93-94,96-99, 101, 103
morphological contrast 228-229 progressive 73, 78-85
morphological distinction 237 reanalysis in Bengali 82
morphological ergonomics 251 see also grammaticalisation
morphological inertness 184 Prokosch's law 268
proportion 1
prosodic hierarchy 162 n. 14
naturalness 218 Prosodic Word 343
neogrammarians 4 quantity-insensitive stress system 339
Neogrammarian change 249 quarternary stress system 339
Neogrammarian descriptions 159
neutralisation 237 raising 80
nomina actionis 160 n. 2 re-categorisation 178, 181
non-neutralising positions 175 adverbs 177
novel phonological see also (de)grammaticalisation
representations 215-216 re-phonologisation 229
380 Index of subjects
reanalysis 113-114, 166 n. 47 in compounds 269

hierarchical structure 114 relation to tone 270
morphological 356 relation to tone 262ff
reconstruction slumbering st0d 285-287
tonal system 238-247 S toss ton 219
reranking 38, 39, 153-155 see also Accent 1
restructuring 114-115 stress shift 305
Dutch 63 stress-attraction 311
German 62,63, 171ff strong declension 145ff
Latin 66 strong verbs 92, 193-194
Middle English 48 Structuralist grammar 159
nominal stems 24-27 suffix
Old English 50 inflectional 8Iff.,96, l l l f f . , 139,
144ff., 178, 182, 196, 203ff., 229
Schürfung 219 declensional 64
see also Accent 1 derivational 82, 97ff., HOff., 182
Schleif ton 219 see also allomorphy
see also Accent 2 superheavy rhymes 358
schwa deletion superheavy syllables 304
and sentence intonation 163 n. 16 syllabic restructuring 48
schwa loss syllabic wellformedness 158
adjectives 127ff syllabification 183
feminine count nouns 144-150 in Gothic 19-22
in suffixless words 149 syllable margins 20
masculine nouns 150-152 syncope 80, 83, 109, 120 n. 16, 337,361
neuter nouns 155-158 and shortening 338
verbs 134-144 134 and vowel shortening 345-350
shortening rules 57 see also High Vowel Deletion; umlaut
sibilant assimilation 80
Sievers* Law 15—45 tenuis 174
sonority constraints theme vowels 100
violations 183 tonal prosodies
sonority hierarchy 139 origin in Scandinavian 292-294
spelling 179 tonal shape 219
stability tone
and sonority 161 n. 7 infixed boundary tones 245-247
Level Stability Effect 134-158 segmentation of tone 296 n. 15
vs. loss 125 tone bearing unit 267
word-final schwa 159 Tone Crowding 243
stem 137-138 Tone 1 see Accent 1
allomorphy 40 Tone 2 see Accent 2
disyllabic 53-58 tonogenesis 216
formatives 100-102 transparency 76, 104, 184
heavy 64ff., 101 ff trapping 334
heterosyllabic 54 trimoraicity 230
light 47f, 101 ff trisyllabic shortening 53, 368
monosyllabic 55 trochee 358
phonological 71
stem extensions 107-108 umlaut 95, 195,205
st0d and front vowels 109
historical development 275ff and syncopy in Old Norse 102-106
bleeding 109 von Humboldt's principle 231, 251-

reverse umlaut 230 252
see also gemination vowel coalescence 77, 87
uniformity principle 231 vowel fronting 78
Universal Grammar 60 vowel harmony
upgrading 179 see fronting 88
particles 180-181 vowel height 221, 222-224
productivity 180 Vowel Lowering 84
variation wa-stems 29
dialectical 364-365 weak declension 145 ft"
free 365 weak verb 92-96, 107, 193-194
synchronic 364 Weight Law 142
Verner's law 96 word-and-paradigm model 152
Voice Stability Effect word stress 313-321
counter-examples 165 n. 41 word-formation 184
voicing contrast 229 zero-marking 185,203
Index of names
Affligem, Willem van 306 Halle, Morris 9,306,312

Aristarchus 4 Hansen, Aage 285
Aristotle 3-4 Hanson, Kristin 313
Harris, James 35
Bach, A. 222 Haudricourt, Andre-Georges 225
Basb011, Hans 285, 286, 287 Hayes, Bruce 253 n. 5, 335
Beckman, Mary 267 Heike, Georg 227, 240
Bermudez-Otero, Ricardo 68 n. l Hermans, Ben 234, 253 n. 8
Bleckert, Lars 273, 274 Heyse, J.C.A. 132
Brink, Lars 285 Hogg, Richard M. 360
Brockhaus, Wiebke 175 Holthausen, Ferdinand 48, 374 n. 3
Bruce, Gösta 264 Hombert, J.-M. 225
Brugmann, Karl 4 Hooper, Joan 15
Bybee, Joan 71 Hopper, Paul 71
Houx, J.H. 230
Calabrese, Andrea 19 H0ysgaard, J. Pedersen 293
Campbell, Alistair 366 Humboldt, W. von 253 n. 7
Carstairs, Andrew 212 n. 2
Chatterji, Suniti K. 79, 85 Idsardi, William J. 354, 364, 368ff.
Chaucer, G. 306-307,312 Ito, Junko 261, 262, 265, 276, 281
Chomsky, Noam 9
Clements, G.N. 227 Jacobs, Haike 228-229,237, 338, 351 n. l
Jeffers, Robert 162 n. 13
Diehl.R.L. 225 Jespersen, Otto 285
Dingeldein, Hienrich J. 230
Dresher, B. Elan 19, 64-65, 66, 117, 235, Kager, Rend 336, 357, 374 n. 2
253 n. 5, 304, 359, 364, 367 Källskog, Margareta 296
Drosdowski, Günther 160 n. l Keyser, Samuel J. 227,306,312,362,367ff.
King, Robert D. 59, 68 n. 5, 176
Erdmann, Peter 48 Kingston, John 225
Esper, Erwin 10 Kiparsky, Paul 9-11, 15, 19, 117, 119,
Fikkert, Paula 324 176,207,211,215-216261,262,
Fischer-J0rgensen, Eli 292 276,294,313,354,372
Forchhammer, J. 295 n. 4 Kloeke, G.G. 215
Frings, Theodor 228 Koziol, Herbert 134
Kroman, Erik 261, 295 n. l
Garrett, Andrew 33 Küpper, Heinz 177
Gjerdman, Olof 272, 293 Kurytowicz, Jerzy 8-9, 58, 323
Glück, Helmut 165 n. 43
Goossens, J. 252 n. 3 Lahiri, Aditi 19, 47, 64-65, 66, 100, 117,
Grauls, J. 235, 253 n. 9 228-229, 235, 253 n. 5, 11,237,
Grimm, Jacob 172 304, 324, 338
Grimm, Wilhelm 172 Lass, Roger 99, 253 n. 7
Grootaers, L. 235, 253 n. 9 Laver, John 253 n. 4
Gussenhoven, Carlos 234, 252 n. 3 Leed, Richard 161
Lehiste, Ilse 162 n. 13,227
Hall, T.Alan 162n.ll Leiherer, E. 227
Index of names 383
Leskien, August 4 Riad, Tomas 19, 228-229, 237, 267, 283,

Lexer, Martin 160 n. 1, 164 n. 31 338
Liberman, Anatoly 296 n. 12
Lindsay, W. 336,337 Sapir, Edward 7
Löhken, Sylvia 165 n. 42 Sarrazin, G. 48
Schmidt, J.E. 240, 244
McCarthy, John 335-336 Schönfeld, Moritz 231,303
Manczak, W. 8 Shields, Kenneth 118
Maran, La Raw 225 Sievers, Eduard 139
Matisoff, James 225, 226 Smolensky, Paul 15, 162 n. 15, 333ff,
Meillet, A. 253 n. 7 348
Mester, Armin 261, 262, 265, 276, 281, Stampe, David 15
333, 348 Stockwell, Robert P. 68 n. l
Minkoff, M. 48 Sussure, Ferdinand de 6
Minkova, Donka 48, 51, 53, 56, 68 n. 1, Sweet, Henry 48
134, 253 n. 5
Ternes, Elmar 230
Niedermann, Max 336 Tops, Guy A.J. 91
Nordberg, Bengt 278 Traugott, Elisabeth C. 71
Nystrom, Staffan 291
Vaan, M. de 222, 252 n. 3
O'Neil, Wayne 354, 362, 367ff Varro 4
Orgun, C.O. 372 Vennemann, Theo 15, 139, 142, 161 n. 9,
Osthof, Hermann 5 163n. 17, 176,268
Vliet, P. van der 234
Pagliuca, William 71 Voyles, Joseph B. 109
Paul, Hermann 5-6, 127
Perkins, Revere D. 71 Wetzels, W.L.M. 253 n. 7
Pierrehumbert, Janet 267 Whitney, William Dwight 4
Plato 3-4 Wiese, Richard 162 n. 11
Prince, Alan 15,162 n. 15,333 ff., 336,348 Wiesinger, Peter 219
Wijk, N. van 222-223
Raffelsiefen, Renate 372 Wilmanns, W. 128
Reis, Marga 68 n. 4 Zonneveld, Wim 301,306,310
Index of languages
Anglo-Norman 48, 329 n. 13 German 61-63, 125ff, 130, 162 n. 15,

Arabic 182 232, 244, 304
Bavarian 180-182
Bengali 71-90,99,238 North Bavarian 230
Colloquial 74, 80, 81 Central Bavarian 230
Literary 74, 79, 80 Brandenburg 229
Middle Bengali 79, 118 n. 5 Central Hessian 230
colloquial 177
Dala-Bergslagen 278-279 Cologne 240
Danish 261-296 early Middle High German 173-174
Copenhagen 295 n. 2 Early Modern German 68 n. 5
West Jutlandish 293, 295 n. 3 early Old High German 210, 213 n. 13
Dutch 60-61, 62, 63, 222, 231-232, 237, Hassmoor 253 n. 6
231-232 High German 68 n. 4
Hasselt 235 High Prussian 229
Limburgian dialects 219,233 late Old German 173-174
Maasbracht 234 Low Franconian 252-253 n. 3
Maastricht 234, 246 Low German 184, 291
Middle Dutch 67, 68 n. 3,215, Mayen 240
303ff. Middle High German 67, 125ff, 179,
early Middle Dutch 313 181, 187-188,210-211,215,231,
Roermond 221, 234, 235-237, 238, 238
239, 244 Mosel-Franconian 252-253 n. 3
Proto-Roermond 246 Old High German 6, 61, 93, 94ff,
Tegelen 230 108-113, 172, 180-181
Tongeren 234-237 Ripuarian 252-253 n. 3
Venlo 234 Swiss German 229
Vianden 252 n. 4
English 50, 67, 172, 211, 224, 253 n. 5 Germanic 91-113, 135
American English 161-162 n. 10 North Germanic 100
Anglian 365 Proto-Germanic 17, 24, 93 ff., 135
Appalachian English 229 West Germanic 47 ff., 60, 68 n. 4,
early Modern English 304 94ff., 173, 216, 221, 226, 238, 250,
Middle English 47ff, 134, 304, 253 n. 6, 30Iff.
324-325 Gothic 91,93, 94ff
Old English 6-7, 49ff, 68 n. I, 92, 93,
94-95, 255ff, 304, 324 Hungarian 211
West Saxon 356, 364
Early West Saxon 366 Icelandic 211
Late West Saxon 365-366
Estonian 135, 227 Kashubian 223
Franconian Lardil 135

Central 68 n. 3, 215ff Latin 66, 211
Middle 239 Classical 336,345,351 n. 2
French Late 345
Old French 182 pre-Classical 334, 336, 345
Index of languages 385
Letzebuergesch 219 Swedish 224,261,262,267

Livonian 264, 294, 295 n. 5 Älvdalen 270
Central Swedish 270-271, 280, 288,
Norwegian 261,267, 268 290
Bergen 291 dialects in Finland 291
Stavanger 270 Eastern Mälardalen 263, 287-290
Eskilstuna 272-275
Old Norse 99, lOOff, 107 Malmö 296 n. 16
Överkalix 291
Proto-Nordic 135,283,292 Western Mälardalen 272, 275
Proto-Slavic 161
Vietnamese 225
Russian 211
Yiddish 60-61,64, 176,229
Scandinavian dialects 266-267, 282-283

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Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme

Analogy, levelling, markedness : principles of change in pho-

Analogy as optimization: 'exceptions' to Sievers' Law in Gothic 15

Analogical levelling of vowel length in West Germanic 47

Hierarchical restructuring in the creation of verbal morphology

Constraints on schwa apocope in Middle High German 125

Morphological re-activation and phonological alternations:

Inflectional system and markedness 193

On the origin and development of the Central Franconian tone

The origin of Danish st0d 261

Prosodic variation in 'Lutgart' 301

The revenge of the uneven trochee: Latin main stress, metrical

On the (non-)existence of High Vowel Deletion 353

Index of subjects 377

Index of names 382

Index of languages 384

If distance d is unknown, but its relation to c is known to be similar to

1557 Recorde Whetst. C ij, If any one proportion be continued

these proportions..that conference or comparison is named

Another form of analogy noted by the Greeks is that of inferring

1774 Goldsm. Nat. Hist. 1.143 Some philosophers have perceived

supposed to be of an inductive nature but not amounting to a

The message is that the adequacy of such analogies depends on whether

1857 Berkeley Cryptog. Bot. §25 We understand by analogy those

In all these disciplines, scholars employing the method of analogy are

concern is reflected throughout the history of the use of analogy. For

1659 B. Walton Consid. Considered 264 There [is]..a particular

Thus analogy referred to paradigmatic regularities of language, but not

versal linguistic process. Whitney (1867), in speaking of children's

(2) Analogous proportions in German nouns

Thus given the proportion Tag:Tage=Arm:x, is given a value and a

was oratörem:orator = honorem:x, x=honor. But if the change was

(3) Earlier Old Late Old English/

According to Sapir, the dative singular changed by analogy to the

(4) Paradigm of -nouns

The proportion he suggested was döm:döme =föt:x, x-föte. But propor-

(NOM.PL):worda (GEN.PL)=/ef (ΝΟΜ.PL):*, x=/eia. Thus the associa-

(5) Alternation in the 3MASC.DECLN. in Latin

(6) SINGULAR PLURAL

That is, as a result of normal sound change the number distinction in

(7) SINGULAR PLURAL

grammatical system. The point of departure has been that examining

1. This short commentary is not intended to be a comprehensive history of analogy

Osthoff, Hermann and Brugmann, Karl

1. Lexical representations as a site of optimization

Suppose the phonological rules/constraints of the language are such that

(1) Underlying: /A/ /B/

constraints dominated at the level of output representations. The most

2. The aftermath of Sievers' Law in Gothic ya-stems

(2) Masculine nouns Neuter nouns

DAT harja herdja kunja riikja

The alternation in the masculine (harjis vs. herdiis) is ultimately due

(3) Masculine nouns Neuter nouns

there is no morphologization. In fact, the change from (3) to (2) is a

(4) a. The introduction of -w in the declension of -\va stems, e.g.

Secondly, unlike previous analogical accounts it provides a rationale

(6) Neuter adjectives Weak jan-verbs

left-headed bimoraic feet (moraic trochees). The main idea is that

(7) a. GEN.SG /hari+is/ —> [har].\jis] (not *ha.nis because an LH

The metrical constraints are complemented by constraints on syllable

(8) a. V.CRV (VC.RV would have an initial three-mora syllable)