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In:Historical Linguistics 2023: Selected papers from the 26th International Conference on Historical Linguistics,Heidelberg, 4-8 September 2023
Edited by Jadranka Gvozdanović
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 371] 2026
► pp. 121–139

Another vista on 2nd-person singular -st in West Germanic

The role of supervescence

 | Indiana University
 | Ohio State University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
To anchor socio-historical linguistics, we derive from ‘uniformitarianism’ (well known, and copiously discussed in Janda & Joseph 2003) the innovative concept of ‘supervescence’. The latter denotes a situation, first discussed in Joseph (2006), where seemingly parallel changes in later stages of related languages are explained as reflecting proto-language variation that was inherited as sociolinguistically submerged — as stigmatized — in each branch, but then “bubbled up” to the surface (better: “supervesced”) separately, as sociolinguistic conditions subsequently altered. A supervescence approach offers insights into the long-standing conundrum posed by the change from -s to -st as a West Germanic 2.sg. verb-ending, whereby the new perspective obviates multiply invoking the notion of (co-)drift, which tends to be unrevealingly overworked (cf. Janda & Joseph 2023b).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: On uniformitarianism and supervescence
  • 2.Supervescence and 2nd-person singular -st in West Germanic:
    Data, a map, and hypotheses
  • 3.On the superiority of supervescence over co-drift in accounting
    for West Germanic 2.sg -st
  • 4.Supervescence and innovative allophones,
    whether stigmatized or non-stigmatized
  • 5.Uniformitarianism and supervescence revisited
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
References (41)
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