A Glottometric Subgrouping of the Early Germanic Languages

Abstract

Historical Glottometry, introduced by Alexandre François (2014), is a wave-based quantitative approach to language subgrouping that is used to calculate the overall strength of a linguistic subgroup using metrics that capture the contributions of linguistic innovations of various scopes to language diversification, in consideration of the reality of their distributions. It primarily achieves this by acknowledging the contribution of areal diffusion to language diversification, which has traditionally been overlooked in cladistic (tree-based) models. In this thesis, the development of the Germanic language family, from the breakup of Proto-Germanic to the latest period of the early attested daughter languages (namely Gothic, Old English, Old Norse and Old High German), is accounted for using Historical Glottometry. It is shown that this approach succeeds in accounting for several smaller, nontraditional subgroups of Germanic by accommodating the linguistic evidence unproblematically where a cladistic approach would fail. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank first and foremost Dr. Kenneth VanBik of San José State University for serving as the driving force in my desire to pursue an education and career in linguistics. His encouragement was always incessant and steadfast, and his approach to teaching will always be my golden standard. An equal serving of gratitude goes to my other committee members, Drs. Soteria Svorou and Julia Swan, for their valuable contributions to this thesis. I would also like to thank my good friend, California State Parks Docent Bill Rhoades, whose constant, refreshing support for my academic endeavors has been much appreciated. Finally, I would like to thank my mother, Susan Agee, whose continued unconditional support for my studies has not been without appreciation. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES.

Using Historical Glottometry to Subgroup the Early Germanic Languages

“…Innovations that are exclusive to each of the attested languages, which are much more numerous, are not included in the Appendix, but a tally of them is presented in section 4.2. Also, as the innovations listed in the Appendix may not always be obvious from their label, or may require further explanation, the reader is referred to the complete list with details presented and discussed in full throughout the appendices in Agee 2018.…”

“…Otherwise, where an identical innovation is not too repeatable (that is, it is not a routine change that commonly affects languages), and there is no compelling reason not to assume a shared development, this approach has generally been taken in the spirit of the glottometric method. In such cases, the reader is encouraged to remember that the given analysis is one out of several possible perspectives on the matter (see Agee 2018 for full discussion). Decisions with respect to some uncertain innovations have been made one way or the other depending on where the evidence points, and a few particularly inconclusive innovations have been excluded altogether.…”

“…It is supported by 66 exclusive innovations and 21 encompassing innovations. Of its exclusive innovations, 24 are phonological, 23 are morphological, and 19 are lexical (see Agee 2018). The subgroup is crosscut 9 times in the data, yielding a cohesiveness of 90.6% and a subgroupiness of 59.81.…”

“…It has been identified as a subgroup since before Ingvaeonic was established as one: It was apparently not until Wrede 1919 that Old Saxon was also proposed to be one of the “North Sea Germanic” languages. Of its exclusive innovations, 4 are phonological, 4 are morphological, and 3 are lexical (see Agee 2018). It is apparently only crosscut 6 times in the data, giving it a 95.5% cohesiveness and a 10.51 subgroupiness.…”

“…Throughout the remainder of this paper, the innovations that have contributed to the linguistic history of the early Germanic languages are classified and processed using Historical Glottometry. The reader is encouraged to refer to the appendices in Agee 2018 for an exhaustive list of the innovations considered for this study and their discussions.…”