Comparative Studies in Early Germanic Languages Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS) This series has been established as a companion series to the periodical Studies in Language. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs Editors Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen University of Vienna / Arizona State University University of Munich Editorial Board Bernard Comrie Christian Lehmann Max Planck Institute, Leipzig University of Erfurt and University of California, Santa Barbara Marianne Mithun William Croft University of California, Santa Barbara University of New Mexico Heiko Narrog Östen Dahl Tohuku University University of Stockholm Johanna L. Wood Gerrit J. Dimmendaal University of Aarhus University of Cologne Debra Ziegeler Ekkehard König University of Paris III Free University of Berlin Volume 138 Comparative Studies in Early Germanic Languages. With a focus on verbal categories Edited by Gabriele Diewald, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka and Ilse Wischer Comparative Studies in Early Germanic Languages With a focus on verbal categories Edited by Gabriele Diewald Leibniz University Hannover Leena Kahlas-Tarkka University of Helsinki Ilse Wischer University of Potsdam John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (16th : 2010 : Pécs, Hungary) Comparative Studies in Early Germanic Languages : With a focus on verbal categories / Edited by Gabriele Diewald, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka and Ilse Wischer. p. cm. (Studies in Language Companion Series, issn 0165-7763 ; v. 138) This publication comprises the papers presented at a workshop on the “Contrastive study of the verbal categories and their grammaticalisation in Old English and Old High German” held at the 16th ICEHL in Pécs, Hungary, in August 2010. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English language--Grammar, Comparative. 2. English language--Grammar, Historical. 3. Germanic languages--Grammar, Comparative. 4. Germanic languages--Grammar, Historical. 5. Grammar, Comparative and general-- Grammaticalization. I. Diewald, Gabriele, editor of compilation. II. Kahlas- Tarkka, Leena, editor of compilation. III. Wischer, Ilse, 1959- editor of compilation. IV. Title. PE1075.I57 2013 429’.56--dc23 2013020757 isbn 978 90 272 0605 3 (Hb ; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 7145 7 (Eb) © 2013 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa Table of contents Introduction 1 Gabriele Diewald, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka & Ilse Wischer *haitan in Gothic and Old English 17 Robert A. Cloutier Incipient Grammaticalisation: Sources of passive constructions in Old High German and Old English 41 Robert Mailhammer & Elena Smirnova Passive auxiliaries in English and German: Decline versus grammaticalisation of bounded language use 71 Peter Petré Causative habban in Old English: Tracing the Development of a Budding Construction 101 Matti Kilpiö Remembering ( ge)munan: The rise and decline of a potential modal 127 Matthias Eitelmann The emergence of modal meanings from haben with zu-infinitives in Old High German 151 Anne Jäger Hearsay and lexical evidentials in Old Germanic languages, with focus on Old English 169 Olga Timofeeva Markers of Futurity in Old High German and Old English: A Comparative Corpus-Based Study 195 Gabriele Diewald & Ilse Wischer The Verb to be in the West Saxon Gospels and the Lindisfarne Gospels 217 Christine Bolze Aspectual properties of the verbal prefix a- in Old English with reference to Gothic 235 Vlatko Broz  Comparative Studies in Early Germanic Languages Þǣr wæs vs. thâr was: Old English and Old High German existential constructions with adverbs of place 263 Simone E. Pfenninger On gain and loss of verbal categories in language contact: Old English vs. Old High German 289 Theo Vennemann Index 313 Introduction Gabriele Diewald, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka & Ilse Wischer Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany / University of Helsinki, Finland / University of Potsdam, Germany 1.  Verbal categories and their diachronic development in Old English and Old High German This publication comprises the papers presented at a workshop on the “Contras- tive study of the verbal categories and their grammaticalisation in Old English and Old High German” held at the 16th ICEHL in Pécs, Hungary, in August 2010. To provide a wider view on historical comparative corpus analyses in the field of verbal categories in Early Germanic and on the interrelation between these catego- ries in their development, the volume is expanded by some additional papers on related topics. Although our focus is on the early stages of English and German, other Germanic languages are also examined. English and German are closely related. Even after their separation in the first centuries AD they have had a long history of contact and interrelated develop- ment. Nevertheless they have moved in different directions from a typological per- spective. While there are certainly similarities in their increase in analytic forms, there are even more differences in the development of the structure of grammati- cal categories (particularly the verb). Thus, while English developed an aspectual system, German did not. Instead German kept and even refined a complicated system of mood marking, whereas in English the grammatical category of mood has been lost. Even the two categories that in both languages showed a trend in the same direction (i.e. tense and voice) contain fundamental disparities as far as the internal structuring of the paradigms and their values are concerned. In order to indicate the scope of topics brought together in this volume, some introductory notes on the verbal categories and their members in early Germanic are useful. Early Germanic verbs were inflected for person, number, mood and tense. The tense system was reduced to present and past compared to six or seven tenses in Greek and Latin. The two languages under closer examination here, Old English (OE) and Old High German (OHG), had an unmarked non-past tense form and a past tense marked by a dental suffix or by vowel gradation respectively. 2 Gabriele Diewald, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka & Ilse Wischer Additionally, forms of have or be could be combined with the past participle of a verb to form perfect-like structures, although their status as periphrastic may be rather called into question. Reference to future events was made by the indica- tive or subjunctive in the present tense in combination with temporal adverbials or other contextual clues. Additionally, in OE there existed particular uses of the “be/become-copula” in constructions with future reference besides combinations of (pre)modal verbs and infinitive to express futures with modal colouring. Thus, the early Germanic languages, having been drastically reduced in their number of tenses, seem to have used their resources in various similar but not identical ways to create new grammatical means of expressing temporal distinctions. A grammatical category of aspect did not exist in the early Germanic lan- guages, although residues of aspectual markers may be attested. They become obvious in the use of prefixed verb forms. In example (1) geworhte ‘made’ is used in a perfective sense, while the same verb without a prefix in example (2) denotes an imperfective meaning. (1) forðam on VI dagum Crist geworhte heofonas & eorðan, ‘because Christ made heaven and earth in VI days,’ (ALFRED’S INTRODUCTION TO LAWS, HC,1 p. 26f.) (2) & sæt þær þa hwile þe mon worhte þa burg æt Tofeceastre mid stanwealle, ‘& was sitting there while they were building the fortress at Toucester with a stone wall,’ (CHRONICLE MS A EARLY (O2), HC, p. (102) A closer comparative look at the use of prefixed verbs with regard to their aspec- tual function in OE and OHG is presented in Wischer and Habermann (2004). Focusing particularly on ge-/gi-verbs in the OE Orosius and the OHG Tatian, the authors come to the conclusion that “the diverging path of development with regard to aspect seems to begin already in these early stages” (262). Although an aspectual distinction can also be attested in OHG (cf. example (3)) the prefix gi- is not used as frequently and systematically as ge- is in OE. (3) q uando mortui audient uocem filij dei. & qui audierint uiuent. thanne thie toton horent stemma gotes sunes inti thie sia gihorent lebent. ‘Then the dead (will) hear the voice of God’s son, and those who will have heard it (will) live.’ (Tatian2 137, 26–28) 1.  HC = Helsinki Corpus. 2.  St. Gallen Cod. 56, Masser, ed. (1994, 265–389), cf. also Wischer & Habermann (2004: 277). Introduction 3 A similar aspectual function compared to that of ge-/gi- can be signified by the OE verbal prefix a-, which is the topic of Broz’ article in this volume. Broz expands the study to cognate forms in Gothic and even includes a comparison with Croatian verbs, which are morphologically marked for aspect. Besides the existence of aspectual residues in the form of verbal prefixes there have emerged analytical constructions with have or be and past participle in OE and OHG, which can also have a perfective sense, as in example (4). (4) þonne þu þas word gecweden hæbbe genim þone æppel … ‘when you have spoken those words, take the apple …’ (QUADRUPEDIBUS, HC, p. 9) Again, differences in frequency and use have been observed between OE and OHG. In OE, such periphrastic constructions appear to be more frequent than in OHG. At least in Tatian they are extremely random (cf. Wischer & Habermann 2004). In OE, habban had even developed an additional causative use, which is the topic of Kilpiö’s paper in this volume. The category of mood, comprising inflectional distinctions between indica- tive, subjunctive and imperative, interacts with notions of modality and temporal- ity. For OHG, the functional-semantic field of modality with regard to its linguistic expressions has recently been analyzed on the basis of Bible texts in a dissertation by Monika Schönherr (2010). Several papers in this volume deal in depth with specific problems relating to modality, futurity, and evidentiality in OE and/or OHG, often from a comparative perspective. The shift from Proto-Indo-European active structure to Germanic transitive structure brought about the development of a new active/passive voice system. Modern English and Modern German differ not only in the use of the auxiliary in passive constructions, but also in their syntactic patterns. While in English even indirect objects can become the subject of passive sentences, which is not pos- sible in German, German, on the other hand, possesses an impersonal passive (Es wird getanzt) and the so-called dative passive (Sie bekamen die Betriebserlaubnis entzogen), both of which do not exist in English. The reasons for such a diverging development may be discovered in a historical comparative analysis. This is what Petré in the present volume attempts at with regard to the different auxiliaries used in English and German. These differences are all the more remarkable as the source items for each involved construction as well as the general mechanisms of grammaticalisation are very similar. It is assumed that these differences in the pathways and direction of grammaticalisation can be put down to different language contacts to a substan- tial degree, but also to differences in the original situation in the oldest attestable periods of each language.