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Matheliende is published quarterly by the students and faculty of Anglo-Saxon studies at The University of Georgia.
Matheliende welcomes any and all correspondence and articles pertinent to the Anglo-Saxon period. Such material should be sent to Mr. Alex Bruce, Department of English, The Univerity of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. Copyright 1996. All rights reserved.
GETTING A BITE ON THE GERMANIC DENTAL PRETERITE
By William H. Torrence
The question of the origin of the Germanic dental preterite is one of the most discussed in Germanic studies. The "weak" verb in Germanic is set against the "strong" verb. The weaks form their preterites through the addition of a dental suffix ([d], [t], etc.), while the strongs form theirs through vowel alternations (e.g.. drink, drank, drunk). Verbs forming various tenses and aspects and denoting different persons through ablaut is well known in Indo-European. The dental formation, though, is a Germanic innovation and is found only there; this form is an isogloss setting the Germanic languages apart from other Indo-European families. Gothic, as the oldest attested Germanic language, provides some of the clearest examples and will be used for illustration purposes; the observations, however, should be applicable to all of Germanic, including, of course, Old English. This article will not attempt to illustrate the many theories concerning the origin of the dental preterite; rather, this article hopes to acquaint the reader with the general structure of the Germanic dental preterite.
The vast majority of the Germanic weak verbs are secondary formations such as denominatives, causatives, iteratives, etc. That is, they are derived from other lexical items. It has been deduced that in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) only primary verbs formed reduplicated perfects. This fact is germane to a study of Germanic verb morphology because the Germanic preterite is descended from the PIE perfect (Meillet). How then to form "perfects" of secondary verbs? If one looks elsewhere in Indo-European there are clues. In Sanskrit, perfects to secondary formations are made by using periphrastic constructions having the derivative noun stem (in long a, in the accusative) prefixed to the perfect of an auxiliary verb: as 'be', kr 'make', or bhu 'be'. Thus, for the root sad 'sit' and its derivative sadayati 'causes to sit' the perfects would be formed as follows:
Turning back to Germanic, if one looks at the Class I weak verbs in Gothic, one sees that this class consists mostly of deverbatives (principally, causatives) and denominatives. These have a shared characteristic: a yod suffix e.g. nasjan 'to save', satjan 'set', merjan 'preach', etc. This yod suffix is thought to go back to a Proto-Germanic (PGmc) *iy which in turn comes from PIE *eye. This *eye which is posited as the source of the yod in Gothic appears to be the same as the *eye in the parent formation of sadayati. So, in both languages the forms point to secondary structures such as: Root + eye + Ending. The verbs of the first class provide the most striking example, but these formants are not limited to this class. The Class II weak verbs of Gothic, are equivalent to the verbs of the first conjugation in Latin (fuga > fugare) in that they are overwhelmingly denominatives (a-stem feminines). And in Gothic, verbs such as fullnan 'become full', while going back to a nasal-infix present (and thus a primary verb in structure), are semantically inchoative, i.e. derived. These are similar to the Class III weak verbs which are stative. Suffice it to say that the weak verbs of Gothic correspond in many ways to derived verbs in other Indo-European languages.
A look at the preterite paradigm of nasjan reveals an interesting pattern:
In the plural, there seems to be a reduplicated formant attached to the "root". This looks like a perfect (or imperfect) form of the PIE root *dheH1 (H1 = the first laryngeal) 'do' (Meillet and Prokosch) This root appears in Sanskrit (3 sg. perf. act. ind. dadhau 'put' and 3 sg. imperf. act. ind. adadhat) Latin (facio), and elsewhere in Indo-European. It seems that the Gothic plural forms have some verbal element and a (diachronically) reduplicated 'do' form appended to it. This fits in very nicely with the Sanskrit data because in Gothic there is a group of secondary verbs sitting there which form pasts through periphrasis with a 'do' verb (cf. Skt. sadayam-cakara). When Germanic lost its aspect system, perhaps the *dheH1 was re-analyzed and ceased to be viewed as a separate lexical item. The chronology of these events is unclear. But, while Gothic is the only Germanic language to systematically retain reduplication in its weak preterite, there are remnants of reduplicated forms of *dheH1 lying about in West Germanic:
So, in West Germanic too there seems to have been a preterite of ždož with reduplication. The singular forms of the weak preterite are somewhat odd in that they do no have reduplicated forms. Here it may be appropriate to invoke haplology at some early stage and say that for some unclear reason, it occurred in the singular, but much later in Gothic in the plural forms. But in short, it seems that the dental preterite is the result of a periphrastic perfect construction involving a verbal element and a perfect or imperfect form of *dheH1 in Germanic.
By Alex Bruce
Gazing on the crumbled walls of an ancient Roman bath, the speaker of "The Ruin" contemplates, in ironically and tantalizingly fragmented verse, the transience of earthly creations. He ruminates on the culture that produced the wondrous building, using his imagination to fill those halls again with the laughter of gold-adorned men. Yet the speaker, though nearly overwhelmed by the mere presence of the ruined structure, does not lament the passing of these people. He understands the way the world works; as he states so matter-of-factly, wyrd seo swithe takes all away. Or at least, that appears to be the speaker's attitude; a closer exploration of the poem suggests that while the speaker does note the great power of Wyrd, he knows that some things are not bound by fate to pass away. The speaker's long and thoughtful contemplation of the wall begins to suggest that he recognizes the ability of men to transcend their mortal, Wyrd-bound nature through the creation of great works.
One might suppose that "The Ruin" is a lamentation, a poem expressing grief over the loss of the beautiful culture which created the walls still standing. Certainly the speaker describes, at length, the supposed former glory of the buildings and its inhabitants. And much of his language suggests mourning for the culture's passing:
Beorht waeron burgraeced, burnsele monige,
heah horngestreon, hereswig micel,
meodoheall monig [mann] dreama full,
oththaet thaet onwende wyrd seo swithe.
Crungon walo wide, cwoman woldagas,
swylt eall fornom secgrofra wera. (21-26)
Fate has destroyed these people and their joy, their meadhalls and beautiful treasure. The speaker does not profess to understand exactly why these things must pass; he only appears to note that such passing is inevitable.
Yet though the speaker readily acknowledges that Wyrd, powerful and beyond human control, has ended that era, we must note how the speaker continues to dwell on what Wyrd could not destroy. The very buildings amaze the speaker; clearly, they inspired him to consider their former inhabitants, but we should consider that his musings are not limited to those inhabitants. The walls, crumbled as they are, speak to him; their presence reminds him that not everything passes away. Apparently, Wyrd did not offer satisfactory explanation for man's purpose and transient nature; in fact, Wyrd offered no explanation for why we exist and must pass. Thus the speaker had to look for fuller answers, and in doing so he discovered an alternative.
The speaker perceived that though we must die, our works and creations, such as the great building now in ruin, continue. Through their building, the "giants" found a way to live beyond their years. We can surmise that the speaker, recognizing this, now sees that human existence can transcend death. Knowing that our works do not die with us allows us to see some meaning in our existence. We are more than our corporeal existence; we are a part of all we create. If the speaker of "The Ruin" is indeed searching for some answer, meaning, or purpose to human existence, it seems that this wall, which has brought back to life men dead for 100 generations, has helped him find that answer.
By Cathy Coone-McCrary
In the following article, I discuss how I have incorporated Old English into my own poetry. First, I should give some background on the poem I will be discussing. Entitled "Fate," it deals with how my husband Joe and I met. Since I am a cynic, I had always assumed that lovers just drifted together randomly, the very idea of fate smacking of those contrived, hard-to-believe romance novels. However, after I met my husband, we began noticing how unlikely our union was. He is from New Jersey and I from Georgia; we grew up 840 miles and several states apart. While I had schoolgirl fantasies of meeting a man from behind the Iron Curtain and conducting a love affair as dangerous as it was absurd, I certainly never envisioned marriage to a man from New Jersey! If I had gone to graduate school at Chapel Hill or if a broken leg had not kept Joe from going into the Navy, we would never have met. However, in 1990, we both decided to come to the University of Georgia, where we met through a mutual acquaintance. Because our meeting was so unlikely, I decided to write a poem about "fate," or the whole idea of God pre-determining our love. In taking on such a subject, I had to balance between being hackneyed and sounding like Shirley McClaine.
The poem is in nine sections. In section VI, I speculate on whether my husband and I knew each other in a "past" life. I don't believe in reincarnation per se; however, it did seem as if we had known each other for years: there was this funny sense of deja vu. So I decided to bandy about the question of whether we had been lovers in some previous time. For a few years, I had been trying to work in some unexpectedly beautiful lines from Aelfric's Colloqium, where the tenth-century scholar is teaching his students Latin. (In class, we of course read the Old English translation of the Latin.) In one particular section, Aelfric asks a merchant what he does. The merchant replies by saying he sells paellas [silk robes], sidan [silk], win [wine], and ylpesban [ivory], among other precious goods. This passage was evocative, conjuring up a sensuousness not present in poems like Beowulf, where swords clang iron on iron. And the language itself was mellifluous, not the usual hard, guttural sound of Old English, which, as my husband says, sounds like incantations to raise the dead. I had tried to work the lines into a batch of poems I was writing from the perspective of an Anglo-Saxon woman who falls in love with a Norwegian marauder during the eleventh-century Viking raids in England. While I had to abandon that project due to time constraints, I continued to look for a convenient place to work the lines in. In section VI of this poem, I finally managed to do that, envisioning myself as an Anglo-Saxon woman whose Viking lover brings her "paellas and sidan,/win and ylpesban."
"Counting Down Our Small Time"
To my husband, Joseph Lorn
I.
Looking for a place to live,
.
we ended up by the railroad tracks:
claptrap houses and an ivy tower of rust,
trains painting the darkness with light.
We said the names of our unborn children:
Joseph Lance, Sylvia Elene.
I had been there before, with another man.
We had driven to the edge of town,
past the sad churches,
love a ragged shirt I was cold in.
Cursing, the man I mistakenly loved
fidgeted with the radio.
Later that night, he would leave me,
slamming doors, his car wrenching out of sight.
I did not yet know you,
crying, a hard silence between me and that man.
Hours away, you were bound south,
driving through Virginia and the Carolinas,
thinking of your girlfriend in the Jersey night,
how she had reached out and said I love you, remember that.
When you drove into the hot Georgia night,
I lay in the darkness,
watching the ceiling for lights,
thinking every car would bring back the man I loved.
One mile from me, you stepped out onto the red earth,
stretching toward the stars.
You didn't know you had come for me.
II.
The first year we met,
you and I lived in Normaltown,
walnut trees trailing green lace over the honeysuckle grass.
Those Cassiopeia nights, we drank wine
and made love under a picture of the blue earth.
Then we would walk through the brown thrushes
to the mansion next door, its windows gaping,
bits of chandelier littering the weeds.
As the dead waltzed in the rusted gazebo,
we kissed, our feet thick with clay.
III.
I was a sixteen-year-old electric with sin in your hometown:
Whores in orange shimmery dresses,
pink-sequined transvestites and the hellfire prophets.
I jaywalked and stared straight up at the skyscrapers,
the men of God screaming Sodom and Gomorrah!
Remember Sodom and Gomorrah, brothers and sisters!
Under the snow of my habit,
I was tropical-bodied dreaming of love in the far places--
in Russia a spy smoking Virginia Slims
and seducing a Communist with a key to the bomb.
We would meet among the broken factories.
Crazy in love,
I passed you like any other stranger on the street,
then flew south over New York City,
not knowing you would come a thousand miles for me.
IV.
Love is hard as snow.
My mother slept all one summer to have me,
and you were born dead,
your face blue.
In a basement of one light, you fought your drunken father,
fielding his Marine's punches without crying,
and my mother held me back in the darkness,
saving my life for you.
We wrapped our pain in bandages
and trudged toward each other, under a sky of bombs.
V.
We could have lived on different stars,
light years apart.
I could have loved a monk on the Irish Sea
or a caveman in France,
and you might have lain abed with Catherine the Great,
her body like summer in Russia.
But, strange miracle,
we drifted together like revellers in a Mardi Gras parade.
Then we saw and kissed.
VI.
How long have we known each other?
Was I once a maiden in a castle by the sea,
weeping because you lay dead in the Holy Land?
Or were you a Viking in dragon ship,
bringing me paellas and sidan,
ylpesban and win?
White-stallion Spaniard,
did we first make love on the beaches of South America,
my black hair spread like a blanket on the sand?
Now we find each other again,
like pearls in a sea of corral.
VII.
My body's white, painful flower bloomed toward you,
walking in the darkness.
Oh when you came like a flock of opal-winged birds
into the Vatican of my body.
I blossomed, a leopard orchid under your sun.
VIII.
We trace our faces in pictures of the dead--
a dark man in striped vest, leaning on an ivory cane,
a woman under a thorntree,
her hair laced with Easter lilies.
We love as they did, so others can come after us.
On a dusty map of Ireland in your motheržs house,
our names are 50 miles apart.
Maybe our ancestors never met.
Or maybe they were lovers,
a priest leading a girl with gold hair
among the Celtic crosses
to the lush green grass and a midnight lake.
They must have met in a windmill or belltower.
Maybe she died in labor, bearing their only child.
Maybe he was killed by her father,
his skull battered in by an anvil.
From that child came us.
IX.
Our ancestors made love under a falling sky.
They were blacksmiths and men who killed their landlords,
living in towns like Castlewellan and Carrickmacross.
They lived under volcanoes and avalanches
and worked in the hot vineyards,
longing for the sea.
Lost brothers and sisters,
they came to a strange country, for us.
In pictures, they are sad,
sagging under their small bundles,
the city of money behind them.
They walked the streets of New York
in worn hats, hawking newspapers.
Some came south,
the red Alabama land waiting for their lean-to's.
Our ancestors threw their bodies toward us,
shotputs hurled into darkness.
They carried us like holy water,
their names left on the walls for us to find.
So we could be here, now,
holding hands as they did
and counting down our small time.
The Germanic Dental Preterite
Meillet, Antoine. General Characteristics of the Germanic Languages. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1970.
Prokosch, E. A Comparative Germanic Grammar. Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America, 1939.
Whitney, W. D. Sanskrit Grammar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1889.
The Ruin
"The Ruin." The Exeter Book. Ed. G. P. Krappe and E. V. K. Dobbie. ASPR 3. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936. 227-229.