Remnant Case Forms and Patterns of Syncretism in Early West Germanic
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19230770 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Will Thurlwell (0000-0001-6635-8417, Wolfson College, University of Oxford Linton Road OX2 6UD Oxford UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-16 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Transactions of the Philological Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0079-1636 • E-ISSN: 1467-968X |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-968x.70020 |
| OpenAlex | W7124600933 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
Early stages of the Old West Germanic languages differ from the other two branches, Gothic and Norse, by showing remnants of a fifth case in a ‐ and ō ‐stem nouns. The forms in question, which have the ending ‐ i or ‐ u , are conventionally labelled ‘instrumental’ and cover a range of functions, such as instrument, means, comitative and locative. Otherwise, Germanic nouns have four major case forms: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. These early and minor ‘instrumental’ forms soon merged with the dative. Whereas Old English only shows the ending ‐ i , continental West Germanic languages have frequent ‐ u alongside rare ‐ i (the latter only in locative function). In this paper, I argue for two interacting developments. First, I argue that the source of the rare locative ‐i forms in continental West Germanic is different from that of the instrumental ‐i forms found in Old English. I do this by analysing the morphosemantic domain of each of these minor forms on a language‐by‐language basis. Second, I argue that the divergence of the instrumental morpheme between Old English (‐ i ) and continental West Germanic ( ‐u ) has a causal link with the equally divergent paradigmatic structure of the feminine ō ‐stems of Old English and continental West Germanic
Divergence (linguistics) · Genitive case · Germanic languages · Locative case · Morpheme · North Germanic languages · Old English · Syncretism (linguistics) · Linguistics and language evolution · Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
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Um (> -on) as Marker of the Instrumental Singular in Old English and Old Frisian
Another Old Frisian 'Instrumental Singular' in -um?
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A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages
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Two archaic forms in the Ruthwell cross inscription
| Highly cited | No |
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