Title: Some aspects of the restructuring of the Germanic verb system
Abstract: The aim of this contribution is a comparison of the ProtoGmc. - or, simply, Germanic (Gmc.) - verbal system with the state of affairs we can reconstruct for the common PIE ancestor, in order to ascertain how conservative or innovative Gmc. has been. I will first deal with some considerations concerning reduplication in the PIE and then I will focus on the Gmc. verb system. More generally: What role does reduplication in its broadest meaning play in the Gmc. languages? Along with reduplication, preverbs are the other elements which can occur in front of the verb. They will be considered firstly from the PIE perspective and then from the Gmc. one, looking for possible differences in their use and function. The aspectual function of preverbs and/or adpositions (i.e. separable preverbs) will be compared with similar syntactic strategies in other ancient IE languages. Finally, the ablauting Gmc. system will be considered and compared with its PIE ancestor. Some general conclusions will be drawn from the comparison with the reconstructed system as well as the verbal systems attested in the ancient IE languages, which sometimes developed different typological strategies. It will be shown that Gmc. offers very conservative as well as very innovative features.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 21
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