Garry W. Davis: Entstehung und Alter der hochdeutschen Lautverschiebung in Wermelskirchen

Davis and Iverson (1995) contend that the shift of pre-OHG *p, t, k began word-internally after short vowels and only later spread to other environments. This view is supported by the pattern of the shift of pre-OHG *p, t, k in the dialect of Wermelskirchen just north of the Benrath line. In this dialect, *p, t, k shift only after short vowels, as attested by Hasenclever (1905, 42–44): VfKn ‘open’, asKn, V :t, jasKn ‘to eat’, gi tKn, gVs, jKgVsKn ‘to shoot’, and more recently by Joest (2003): o pe`n ‘open’, äse`n, o o t, je`jäse`n ‘to eat’, scheete`n, scho s, je`scho se`n ‘to shoot’. As a result of this partial shift, shifted and unshifted consonants alternate in the same grammatical paradigm due to variation in vowel gradation. Some assume that the alternation of shifted and non-shifted consonants attested in the Wermelskirchen dialect must be of recent origin, however, resulting through dialect mixture of Ripuarian and Low Franconian varieties between the Benrath and Ürdingen isoglosses that are often referred to collectively as ‘Bergisch’.

Using Joest’s (2003) dictionary of the Wermelskirchen dialect, a corpus of 406 root morphemes was identified that contain sequences of short vowel + /p, t, k/. Upon analysis, it was determined that the majority of these forms originated from the shortening of the pre-OHG geminates *-pp-, -tt-, -kk- > /p, t, k/ in the Wermelskirchen dialect, or are loan borrowings that postdate the consonant shift. A smaller number of words did not have clear etymologies, but many of these appear to be word creations that postdate the shift, or forms that resisted the consonant shift even south of the Benrath Line. Only about four percent of the corpus constitute clear exceptions to the shift after short vowel (et ‘it’, dat ‘that’, etc.), and some of these are comparable to exceptions to the shift in shifted dialects elsewhere.

Sporadic examples of shifted /f, s, x/ after short vowels are attested elsewhere just north of the Benrath line. These words are unlike the well known high-frequency short forms (ich, mich, -lich, etc.) that are traditionally associated with the area between the Benrath and Ürdingen lines. Together with examples of unshifted *p, t, k after long vowels south of the Benrath line, these relicts constitute further evidence that the shift began after short vowels before extending to other positions. Forms with shifted /f, s, x/ along the northern rim of the Benrath line may be evidence that a Wermelskirchen-type shift once extended over a larger area, or they may be remnants of independent incipient shift areas.

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