The Development of Aspirated Fricatives in Gothic

A contact-linguistic perspective

Author
ORCID logoSeiichi Suzuki | Kansai Gaidai University
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027214836 | EUR 120.00 | USD 156.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027246899 | EUR 120.00 | USD 156.00
 
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This book presents three major hypotheses concerning the development of fricatives in Gothic. First, Gothic introduced aspiration or a phonological feature [spread glottis] to the fricative system. Second, this acquisition of aspirated fricatives should be explained as a contact-induced change. Specifically, a Gothic/Greek bilingual community may be held responsible for initiating and diffusing the contact change. Third, I claim that this contact-driven featural enrichment prompted an array of radical restructurings of fricatives in their phonological and morphological organizations in Gothic, notably the occurrence of Final Devoicing in contrast to the nonoccurrence of medial voicing, the elimination of Verner’s Law effects in strong verbs, the operation of Thurneysen’s Law, and the apparently irregular split of PGmc. */fl-/ to Go. /fl-/ and /þl-/. Thus, privileged by a Lower Danube community largely composed of Greek/Gothic bilinguals, this cluster of mid-fourth-century innovations came to define the phonological and morphological identities of Biblical Gothic.
[Studies in Germanic Linguistics, 9] 2024.  xix, 155 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CFF: Historical & comparative linguistics

Main BISAC Subject

LAN009010: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2024013402 | Marc record