This paper presents an account of st-(middle) verbs in Icelandic that treats -st as the head of a functional phrase-object agreement (AgrO)- and argues that, consequently, st-formation is a syntactic rather than a lexical process. Supporting evidence includes the fact that -st is a clitic rather than an inflectional or derivational element attached to the verb. This analysis has the advantage that st-verbs, which on the surface appear disparate in their interpretation (e.g., reflexive vs. passive), can be unified under a single syntactic operation. The differences in interpretation fall out from argument structure properties of individual verbs. A consistent mapping between morphology and syntax is obtained.*

The peripheral location of Scandinavian dialects with preaspiration supports the view that preaspiration was present in Common Scandinavian. Sound changes in Common Scandinavian and resulting morphophonemic alternations in the older Scandinavian languages exhibit the articulatory timing characteristic of preaspiration and sonorant devoicing and further bolster the argument that Common Scandinavian is the terminus ad quem for the origin of preaspiration. Dialectal and historical data also indicate that preaspiration is primarily, but not exclusively, a West Scandinavian phenomenon. Finally, it is argued that the reconstruction of preaspiration and sonorant devoicing for Common Scandinavian motivates the development of West Jutlandic stød and the distribution of Common Danish stød in West Jutlandic.

Shannon (1990) argues that the notions of lexical aspect (Aktionsart) and transitivity are a central part of perfect auxiliary variation. This paper builds on Shannon's (1993, 1995) analyses of perfect auxiliary selection in German and other related languages. Shannon accounts for perfect auxiliary variation by means of prototypes for high transitivity and high mutativity as well as the notion of Aktionsart. This paper examines the transitivity/mutativity parameters and the concept of Aktionsart using the examples of perfect auxiliary + past participle found in the Old Saxon Heliand. An examination of some 150 examples reveals that the choice of auxiliary can be explained by Aktionsart and a definition of transitivity that is characterized by conceptual imagery.

This article contains arguments for a revised classification of a number of so-called free datives in German. In particular, a distinction is drawn between an ergative dative of inaction construction and an agentive dative of affect. The construction grammar framework is employed to argue that the unique semantics of the dative of inaction (a potential agent fails to prevent an adversative, mutative event) are associated with the abstract syntactic form of the construction as a whole, not with its constituents. Because its semantics are constructional, i.e., not strictly predictable from the semantics of its constituents, the dative of inaction is considered a grammatical category distinct from the dative of affect, which has compositional semantics.

In this short paper, the author takes a closer look at Einar Haugen's (1906–1994) writings in as far as they touch upon the historiography of linguistics. After a sketch of his scholarly background and the role he played in the Linguistic Society of America generally and, more particularly, as a historian of linguistic thought from his well-known LSA presidential address of 1950 onwards, Haugen's treatment of the so-called First grammatical treatise comes under closer scrutiny. In particular, the author discusses two expressions in Haugen's 1950 edition of the text that seem to have given rise to much speculation, namely, the word grein and the (probably juridical) phrase skipta máli. It is argued that Haugen and others—notably Hreinn Benediktsson—are at best overinterpreting them by assigning modern structural phonologist meanings to the words, turning them into metalinguistic terms. It is maintained instead that the First Grammarian had made a practical argument in favor of the addition of four vowels not found in the five-vowel Roman alphabet necessitated by the facts of Old Icelandic, and that the text was basically a pedagogical treatise on orthographic requirements and not a precocious phonological discussion.

An examination of the verb forms in Brother Hermann's Middle High German verse epic, Leben der Gräfin Iolande von Vianden (c. 1283 in the neighborhood of Luxembourg), is undertaken in the categories of loan words, athematic verb forms, class shifting in strong verbs, the ge-perfective prefix, and apocopation and addition of final n. The last category is developed to situate Iolande, which consists of approximately 5,963 lines of rhymed couplets, in the context of Old High German and Middle High German historical development.

In this brief paper it is proposed that the problematic Gothic genitive plural suffix in -ē may derive from a grammaticalized deictic particle. Typological and specifically Indo-European evidence for the derivation of genitive markers from deictic particles is presented in support of this hypothesis.

Evidence suggests that Germanic languages resisted the spread of historical umlaut processes. We propose that examples of such superficially varied umlautless residues all yield to a single coherent phonological account. Specifically, these vocalic assimilations show strong preferences for reducing more extreme differences in place of articulation between trigger and target while failing to assimilate articulatorily closer vowels, so that triggering /i, j/ first and most consistently mutated /a/ and last and least consistently mutated /u(:)/. This vocalic cline interacts with the consonantal material intervening between trigger and target, so that obstruent clusters (especially velar or labial) are prone to inhibit umlaut. In both cases, the smaller the phonetic difference between target and trigger, the less likely umlaut is to occur. While umlaut failure has long been consigned to the margins of theories of umlaut, we argue that it is crucial, providing a snapshot of how umlaut unfolded across western and north Germanic.