Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

How did the Scottish Lowlands come to speak Lowlands Scots, given that this apparently happened a while before Scotland started to be governed from London?

Old English was spoken in the Scottish Lowlands, and Middle Scots just evolved from Old English there.

What I was wondering was how Old English had ended up in the Scottish Lowlands in the first place.

The Kingdom of Northumbria.

[Glass Half Baked]

Are there any sound changes that differentiate Scots from English that predate ~1100? I always though Scots was an early offshoot of Middle English.

[Richard W]

What I was wondering was how Old English had ended up in the Scottish Lowlands in the first place.

At one level, they only became Scottish by conquest from the English.

The dating and mechanism for the Germanicisation of eastern Britain is not certain, though it seems to have been helped south of the Wall by the settlement of Germanic foederati. The idea that the east was Germanic before the Roman conquest does not seem to go away. Elite dominance was certainly at play, and might even be relevant for making English 'West Germanic' and the English be ale-swilling beer drinkers.

[Raphael]

What I was wondering was how Old English had ended up in the Scottish Lowlands in the first place.

The Kingdom of Northumbria.

Thank you!

The dating and mechanism for the Germanicisation of eastern Britain is not certain, though it seems to have been helped south of the Wall by the settlement of Germanic foederati. The idea that the east was Germanic before the Roman conquest does not seem to go away. Elite dominance was certainly at play, and might even be relevant for making English 'West Germanic' and the English be ale-swilling beer drinkers.

Huh? I've never heard of an idea that the east was Germanic before the Roman conquest before. I don't think I even heard of Germanic foederati in England. Until I read your post, I assumed that the Romans left first, and then the Germanic tribes arrived.

[Otto Kretschmer]

When did the Grimm's Law take place?

[WeepingElf]

When did the Grimm's Law take place?

Short answer: Nobody knows.

Long answer: There are reasons to assume that it happened late, as the oldest Celtic loanwords in Germanic are affected by it. But there are other reasons to assume that it happened early, as Verner's Law, which is usually considered happening after it, relies on the original PIE mobile accent which probably did not survive very long in Germanic. A possible solution is to have it happen in two stages. In the first stage, the PIE voiceless stops were aspirated, which may have happened very early. In the second stage, aspirates stops (both voiceless and voiced) were spirantized, which may have happened very late. These two changes may have been as much as 2000 years apart from each other, giving more than enough time for Verner's Law, accent retraction and the devoicing of voiced unaspirated stops to happen between them (Verner's Law could easily have happened before spirantization as it could just as well operate on aspirated stops as on spirants). The oldest Celtic loanwords would also have entered Germanic within this interval, with the Celtic voiceless stops rendered as aspirated stops because they were aspirated in both languages (most Celticists assume that the Proto-Celtic voiceless stops were aspirated in most environments).

[Richard W]

Huh? I've never heard of an idea that the east was Germanic before the Roman conquest before.

It seems to have originated with Oppenheimer, who claims genetic support for it.. One can connect the idea with the Belgae, whom Caesar says were mostly sprung from the Germans. It meshes nicely with evidence of continuity from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England, but it seems to be an unnecessary hypothesis.

I don't think I even heard of Germanic foederati in England.

My primary source is the Oxford History of England: Volume I B: The English Settlements by J. N. L. Myres. (My copy is currently in hiding.) They're also referred to in Wikipedia's Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain with a different source given.

I've also seen claims that the so-called forts of the Saxon Shore were actually supply depots for the said foederati (or whatever). Hengist and Horsa are in keeping with such a tradition continuing after Roman abandonment.

[Raphael]

Huh? I've never heard of an idea that the east was Germanic before the Roman conquest before.

It seems to have originated with Oppenheimer, who claims genetic support for it.. One can connect the idea with the Belgae, whom Caesar says were mostly sprung from the Germans. It meshes nicely with evidence of continuity from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England, but it seems to be an unnecessary hypothesis.

I don't think I even heard of Germanic foederati in England.

My primary source is the Oxford History of England: Volume I B: The English Settlements by J. N. L. Myres. (My copy is currently in hiding.) They're also referred to in Wikipedia's Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain with a different source given.

I've also seen claims that the so-called forts of the Saxon Shore were actually supply depots for the said foederati (or whatever). Hengist and Horsa are in keeping with such a tradition continuing after Roman abandonment.

Thank you, interesting.

[Jonlang]

Is there a name for what's going on in English the structure subject + be + infinitive when talking about intent or even firm future events, e.g.I am to go next week; David was to see it for the first time. And do any other languages do a similar thing?

[Travis B.]

I am on my way from Chicago back to Wisconsin after having been in central California and then taken the train from there to Chicago, and aside from the plain people I encountered everyone spoke some variation on General American except me and my daughter. It felt weird, like... is how I'm used to speaking that different?

[Linguoboy]

Is there a name for what's going on in English the structure subject + be + infinitive when talking about intent or even firm future events, e.g.I am to go next week; David was to see it for the first time.

It's pretty similar to the so-called going-to future, just without the going. And like that construction, I don't know that it has a special name. I'd just called call it a copula + infinitive construction.

And do any other languages do a similar thing?

This is usual method of forming the future tense of imperfective verbs in West and East Slavic, e.g. Polish Jutro będziemy się śmiać. "Tomorrow we will be laughing." (Lit. "Tomorrow we.will.be ourselves to.laugh.")

[Travis B.]

Is there a name for what's going on in English the structure subject + be + infinitive when talking about intent or even firm future events, e.g.I am to go next week; David was to see it for the first time.

It's pretty similar to the so-called going-to future, just without the going. And like that construction, I don't know that it has a special name. I'd just called call it a copula + infinitive construction.

Like the "be-going-to future" it is really a prospective aspect, because just like be going to you can construct a "future in the past" with it. "We were to go to Summerfest but decided not to when buckets of rain started coming down."

I am not aware of a specific name for it. One thing to note to, say, non-native English-speakers is that it is not exactly synonymous with be going to because it has connotations of be supposed to or be scheduled to in some usages, e.g. "I am to give a talk on zeptoscript at the next Forth meeting, but I will have to work around my daughter's work schedule".

[jal]

I am not aware of a specific name for it. One thing to note to, say, non-native English-speakers is that it is not exactly synonymous with be going to because it has connotations of be supposed to or be scheduled to in some usages, e.g. "I am to give a talk on zeptoscript at the next Forth meeting, but I will have to work around my daughter's work schedule".

That's what I understood. I would use "so" instead of "but" in that last sentence though.


JAL

[Glass Half Baked]

I just came across an interesting theory, although it has been around for over thirty years apparently. The idea is that vowel shifts in western South Slavic languages can be used to find the now-erased boundary between Eastern and Western Romance.

In Romanian et al., the back vowels collapse into two, while the front vowels collapse into three, with the low-mid vowel then becoming a diphthong. In northern Italy and parts west, this three-way vowel with frequent diphthongization also applies to back vowels. Whatever Romance languages existed in between have mostly been replaced by Slavic languages.

Like the other Slavic languages, western South Slavic inherited a low-mid or low front vowel, which in this case became a diphthong. In other words, the front vowels consisted of three heights, with the lowest one becoming /ie/, more or less exactly what happened in both Eastern and Western Romance.

However, in Slovenia and northern Croatia, a parallel shift occurred with the back vowels, with /o/ becoming /uo/. In other words, in the bulk of western South Slavic, there is a vowel shift occurring only in the front vowels that closely matches what happened in attested Balkan Romance languages, while north and west of a certain point there is symmetrical diphthongization that sort of matches what happened in more westerly Romance languages of Nothern Italy. This would place the boundary between the two spheres at the river Kupa in Croatia, and very loosely corresponds to the boundary between the Roman province of Italia at its greatest extent and the provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia Superior.

Obviously, this is only true if vowel shifts in Slavic languages are influenced by changes occurring or recently occurred in Romance. It’s always possible that the ways in which the various languages dealt with a crowded vowel space happen to line up geographically by sheer coincidence. What do you think? Is it likely that this split in western South Slavic mirrors the split in Romance?

[MacAnDàil]

Old English was spoken in the Scottish Lowlands, and Middle Scots just evolved from Old English there.

What I was wondering was how Old English had ended up in the Scottish Lowlands in the first place.

The Kingdom of Northumbria.

Yes, specifically that the northern part of this kingdom was conquered by Scotland at the Battle of Carham in 1018.

Are there any sound changes that differentiate Scots from English that predate ~1100? I always though Scots was an early offshoot of Middle English.

Scots is indeed an offshoot of Middle English: https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/history-of-scots/. Some sound changes may be different from Modern English however, as there were differences among different kinds of English.

Old English was spoken in the Scottish Lowlands, and Middle Scots just evolved from Old English there.

There was also significant migration from England significantly after the Norman conquest from as far south as the English midlands, and I've seen a claim of significant Danish immigration, though that might be a description of the origin of the immigrants from England. At any rate, it was more than just the survival of the English of Lothian. After the conquest of Lothian from Northumbria, Gaelic apparently made significant inroads.

Indeed, there was also signifcant immigration from France and the Netherlands. That is why Scots is closer to Middle English than the early OE spoken in what is now East Lothian and the Borders.

[Zju]

Are portmanteau words a recent phenomenon of the past few decades? Folk etymology of sand notwithstanding, is there an example of such word from before XX century?
I've been left with the impression that they're an artifact of mass adoption of writing and literacy, and of some level of recent metalinguistic awareness.

[Richard W]

Are portmanteau words a recent phenomenon of the past few decades? Folk etymology of sand notwithstanding, is there an example of such word from before XX century?
I've been left with the impression that they're an artifact of mass adoption of writing and literacy, and of some level of recent metalinguistic awareness.

Yes. 19th century Jabberwocky contains eminent examples, with some etymologies vouched for by the author.

[Zju]

I was thinking more like antiquity, or dunno, early middle ages.

[zompist]

Looking at lists of portmanteaus, I couldn't find anything before the 19th century.

But sound change can approximate it... how about the word won't?

It's a centuries-old process in Chinese. E.g. Fújiàn derives from Fúzhōu + Jiànzhōu.

[Travis B.]

But sound change can approximate it... how about the word won't?

The preterites and past participles of weak verbs in Germanic are essentially portmanteaus of the verb stem with the PGmc source of English did, which was a reduplicated version of the PGmc source of English do.