Search

The onomasiological and cognitive approach to word-formation is a method of linguistics that helps analyze how the conceptual level is specified by the WF component at the system level of language. The word-formation types of the Old Germanic abstract nouns understood as “derivational schemas” (Dirven, Verspoor, 1998), jointly represent a common schema or /and schemas of high level of abstraction. But taken separately, each word-formation type represents a semantic modification of the schema / schemas which is marked derivationally. It is argued that these are the derivational suffixes of abstract nouns that function as markers of some specific “shades” of meaning. A componential analysis of the suffixes’ reconstructed semantics results in a hypothesis of their primary semantic opposition.

У статті проаналізовано категорію часу як одну з головних буттєвих (онтологічних) і мовних категорій, досліджено семантичні мотивації лексеми “Zeit” у давньогерманських мовах, взаємозв’язок між уявленнями про категорію часу та мовною формою її вираження, запропоновано сукупність бінарних опозицій на позначення сигніфікативних значень “Zeit”, які проілюстровано прикладами з німецької та деяких інших германських мов., The article suggests the analysis of the category of time as one of the major life (ontological) and language categories. The semantic motivations of the lexeme “Zeit” in old Germanic languages have been investigated as well as the relationship between the notions of the category of time and linguistic forms of its expression. A set of binary oppositions has been offered for indication of significative meanings of “Zeit” based on the German and a range of other Germanic languages.

1.Introduction The phenomenon of V-to-T movement, which is considered to oppose Romance languages on the one hand and a large majority of Germanic languages on the other hand, has been the target of analysis of the so-called Rich Agreement Hypothesis or RAH, which contends that the movement of the finite verb to the T(ense) head is caused by rich agreement morphology, that is, rich person and/or number morphology, combined or not with rich tense morphology: see e.g. Roberts (1985,1993), Platzack & Holmberg (1989), Rohrbacher (1994, 1999), or Vikner (1997), where it is stated specifically that "V-to-T movement applies if and only if person morphology is found in all tenses" (p. 201). The simplified labelled-bracketing configuration in (1a) shows in an informal way a sequence where no V-to-T applies, just the movement of V to the v head, and (1b) corresponds to a sequence where the movement of V to v is followed by V-to-T movement. (1) (1)[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] The RAH has not thus far nevertheless appeared to make precise the proper formulation of richness relative to V-to-T, and it has come to be criticised both on the grounds that there are languages with rich verbal morphology that appear to be V-in situ languages and on the grounds that there are languages with scarce verbal morphology that exhibit V-to-T movement. It must also be noted that accounting for the trigger of V-to-T movement is further complicated by the lack of consensus on the use of diagnostic tests in order to acknowledge a given language as V-to-T or V-in situ, as can be easily inferred among others from the works of Thrainsson (2010) or Koeneman & Zeijlstra (2014): such diagnostic tests are typically the ones postulated mainly since pollock (1989), namely, the placement of negation or also of medial adverbs like always or often. Thus, the order V-Neg or V-Adv would arguably indicate that V-to-T movement has applied, whereas Neg-V or Adv-V would indicate just the opposite. However, the syntactic status of negation as e.g. a phrase or a clitic, or the variable position of medial adverbs, can arguably mask the position of V itself. Also, the V2 phenomenon, that is, the movement of V up into the C(omplementiser) position above TP can prove to be an obstacle for the actual verification of the movement of V-to-T. In this paper I argue that the trigger of V-to-T lies in rich tense morphology in the sense of variations or asymmetries across teases, which happen to be provoked by the so-called stem or thematic vowel. The proposal consists in that the stem or thematic vowel segment gives rise to variations or asymmetries across tenses in certain languages, which makes the processing or derivation of verbal forms more complex or longer: such languages are V-to-T languages. In minimalist terms, the stem or thematic vowel morpheme or segment is made to correspond in the present approach with a v feature that T must value in the course of the derivation at narrow syntax. I defend the hypothesis that Germanic languages are all in their old periods V-to-T languages, in a parallel fashion to Romance languages, though later on, in contrast to Romance, they become non-V-to-T. The exceptions to the latter are: Icelandic, Yiddish and also the Faroese language in its original version, since these three Germanic languages have arguably gone on being V-to-T. (2) Because of the relevant role that must be conceded, in my view, to the historical perspective, my main focus in this paper is on Old English (OE), and I first use Romance as a testing ground for the account of V-to-T that I would like to propose. The focus of the discussion is specifically on explaining V-to-T in OE in a parallel fashion to V-to-T in a Romance language like Spanish. In order to support the present account of V-to-T I also use Icelandic on the one hand and German on the other, since these languages are very similar to each other as regards rich agreement morphology, and also rich tense morphology (in the sense of number of markers as compared to number of persons), though they have each received a different treatment in the literature. …

В статье рассматривается топонимия восточной части современной Германии, где на протяжении нескольких веков германские и славянские племена находились в тесном взаимодействии: в V II в. славяне вытеснили с этой территории германские племена, с начала Х в. здесь вновь начали селиться немцы, что привело к возникновению немецко-славянского двуязычия, к XIII в. преобладание немецкого населения стало очевидным. По мнению автора, взаимодействие народов и их языков нашло отражение в заимствовании географических названий и географических терминов, а также в германо-славянских гибридных топонимах (в терминологии автора — гибридонимах). При этом славянами были заимствованы древнегерманские («донемецкие») топонимы, а в гибридонимах отразились черты праславянского языка позднего периода. Целый ряд гибридных топонимов (Borgishain, Jenz, Leipzig, Jenzig) подвергается развернутому анализу и сводится к топонимическому типу, в котором базовый элемент представлен германской основой, а суффиксальное оформление принадлежит славянскому языку. Существенным фрагментом статьи является обсуждение терминов гибрид и гибридизация применительно к топонимии и обоснование корректности термина гибридоним в значении «гибридный оним». The article focuses on the toponymy of the Eastern part of modern Germany where Slavic and Germanic tribes were in contact during several centuries: in the 7th century the Slavs ousted Germanic tribes from this territory; then, since the early 10th century, the area started being repopulated by the Germans, which led to a Slavic-Germanic bilingualism (by the 13th century the domination of the Germanic population became evident). The author argues that these ethnic and linguistic contacts are reflected in the borrowing of geographic names and terms, as well as in Germanic-Slavic “hybrid” place names that the author proposes to call hybridonyms. The Slavs readily borrowed Old Germanic (“Pre-German”) toponyms, the hybridonyms bearing traces of the late Proto-Slavic language. The author thoroughly analyzes a number of hybrid place names (Borgishain, Jenz, Leipzig, Jenzig) reducing them to one toponymic type consisting of a Germanic stem and Slavic suffixes. A large part of the paper discusses the term hybrid and hybridization as applied to place names and seeks to theoretically substantiate the term hybridonym.

Although investigated in numerous studies, abstract nouns in Gothic have not yet been considered from the standpoint of the field approach. It is argued that this approach to the Old Germanic abstract nouns is beneficial because it enables researchers to present the attested systematic relations in the word-formation subsystem in the form of a model. This model may help reveal some underlying causes that make some word-formation patterns to be more productive than others. Besides, this field model in Gothic can be the basis for comparison with other languages, thus, it can contribute to the development of a dynamic model of the analyzed category giving an insight into the mechanisms regulating its functioning.