A Comparative Grammar Of The Early Germanic Languages

Fulk’s Comparative Grammar offers an overview of and bibliographical guide to the study of the phonology and the inflectional morphology of the earliest Germanic languages, with particular attention to Gothic, Old Norse / Icelandic, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Old High German, along with some attention to the more sparsely attested languages. The sounds and inflections of the oldest Germanic languages are compared, with a view to reconstructing the forms they took in Proto-Germanic and comparing those reconstructed forms with what is known of the Indo-European protolanguage. Students will find the book an informative introduction and a bibliographically instructive point of departure for intensive research in the numerous issues that remain profoundly contested in early Germanic language history.

Authored by a well-respected authority in German linguistics, this book offers intensive scholarly analysis, recent discoveries, new methodologies, and important reinterpretations with regard to the emergence of Germanic features. It presents a much-needed scholarly discussion of the phonological and morphological history of early German from Indo-European to 800 A.D. Each chapter presents text samples as well as a discussion of the models and theories proposed regarding the emergence of many features of Germanic. It clearly identifies the problem areas of comparative Germanic with resolutions of many outstanding questions. It includes prototypical text examples for each dialect.

Additional Editors Are Franklin Edgerton, Edgar H. Sturtevant, Hans Sperber, W. F. Twaddell And Edward Sapir.

This accessible introductory reference source surveys the linguistic and cultural background of the earliest known Germanic languages and examines their similarities and differences. The Languages covered include:Gothic Old Norse Old SaxonOld English Old Low Franconian Old High German Written in a lively style, each chapter opens with a brief cultural history of the people who used the language, followed by selected authentic and translated texts and an examination of particular areas including grammar, pronunciation, lexis, dialect variation and borrowing, textual transmission, analogy and drift.