The language of the First Riustring Manuscript, dating from ca. 1300 AD, represents the most archaic stage of Old Frisian. The mainly legal texts are famous for their historical value. However, a grammatical treatise of this important codex is still lacking. This book is meant to meet this need. It contains an inventory of the linguistic evidence as well as a synchronic study of the grammar. Moreover, historical linguistic problems are discussed wherever relevant. The book is intended for all students of Old Frisian, not just linguists but also legal historians, philologists, historians, and others.
The language of the First Riustring Manuscript, dating from ca. 1300 AD, represents the most archaic stage of Old Frisian. The mainly legal texts are famous for their historical value. However, a grammatical treatise of this important codex is still lacking. This book is meant to meet this need. It contains an inventory of the linguistic evidence as well as a synchronic study of the grammar. Moreover, historical linguistic problems are discussed wherever relevant. The book is intended for all students of Old Frisian, not just linguists but also legal historians, philologists, historians, and others.
Like its two predecessors, Aspects of Old Frisian Philology (1990) and Approaches to Old Frisian Philology (1998), Advances in Old Frisian Philology combines contributions by specialists of medieval Frisian studies with papers by international specialists from adjacent fields who have been invited for the occasion to bring their expertise to the discipline of Old Frisian. Together, the diverse approaches considerably advance our knowledge of and insight into various aspects of Old Frisian philology.
In this volume, Germen de Haan gives a multi-faceted view of the syntax, sociolinguistics, and phonology of West-Frisian. The author discusses distinct aspects of the syntax of verbs in Frisian: finiteness and Verb Second, embedded root phenomena, the verbal complex, verbal complementation, and complementizer agreement. Because Frisian has minority language status and is of interest to sociolinguists, the author reviews the linguistic changes in Frisian under the influence of the dominant Dutch language and, more generally, reflects on how to deal with contact-induced change in grammar. Finally, in three phonological articles, the author discusses nasalization in Frisian, the putatively symmetrical vowel inventory of Frisian, and the variation between schwa + sonorant consonants and syllabic sonorant consonants.
This is the first text book to offer a comprehensive approach to Old Frisian. Part One begins with a succinct survey of the history of the Frisians during the Middle Ages, their society and literary culture. Next follow chapters on the phonology, morphology, word formation and syntax of Old Frisian. This part is concluded by a chapter on the Old Frisian dialects and one on problems regarding the periodization of Frisian and the close relationship between (Old) Frisian and (Old) English. Part Two consists of a reader with a representative selection of twenty-one texts with explanatory notes and a full glossary. A bibliography and a select index complete the book. Written by an experienced teacher and researcher in the field, An Introduction to Old Frisian is an essential resource for students and researchers of Frisian, Old English and other ‘Old’ Germanic languages and cultures, and for medievalists working in this area. The second unrevised 2011 reprint of the original edition contains several corrections.
La 4e de couv. indique : "As early as the 1st century AD, learned Romans knew of more than one group of people living in north-western Europe beyond their Empire's Gallic provinces whose names contained the element that gives us modern "Frisian". Those apparently were Celtic-speaking peoples, but that population seems to have completely replaced in the course of the convulsions that Europe underwent at the transition from the Ancient world to the Early Medieval in the 4th and 5th centuries. The importance of linguistically Germanic Frisians as neighbours of the Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Saxons and Danes in the centuries immediately following the fall of the Roman Empire in the West is widely recognized, and yet these folk themselves remain enigmatic, and the details of their culture and organization unfamiliar to many. The Frisian population and their lands are the focal point of this volume, although, as is shown, we often have to approach and to understand these people through comparison with, or even through the eyes of, their neighbours. Empirically, this perspective embraces all of the coastal communities of the North Sea region, and their connexions with the Baltic shores. Twelve separate but complementary papers present the most up-to-date discoveries, research and interpretations, following the story of the various Frisians through from the Roman Period to the next great period of disruption and change introduced by the Viking Scandinavians. Methodologically, the thorough combination and integration of linguistic, textual and archaeological evidence offers a new multidisciplinary template and sets new standards for Early Medieval studies."
The book is a comprehensive corpus study of analogical developments in the nominal morphology of four Northern West Germanic languages: Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon and Old Low Franconian. It examines the patterns of reorganisation of the nominal paradigms, focusing on the analogical interdeclensional shifts of nouns affiliated with historical minor classes. The wide scope and comparative nature of the study facilitate identifying the major patterns of inflectional restructuring, both language-specific and those of a more general character, demonstrating that the process was far from random. By framing the investigated phenomena quantitatively, the study affords insight into the dynamics of the changes, their scope in individual languages, the mechanisms underlying the restructuring process and the factors conditioning it. The book may be of interest to both historical linguists who may appreciate its descriptive aspects as well as morphologists concerned with the mechanisms of morphological processes, especially analogy.
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