s - Wyższa Szkoła Filologiczna we Wrocławiu

16
Elżbieta Adamczyk
their literary genres and, accordingly, alongside the translated prose fragments
of religious texts, the original Germanic verse was included. 7
4.2. Analysis of the Old English material
The complete list of nouns which were subject to the qualitative and
quantitative investigation comprised of the following nouns: (a) cealf (cælf)
‘calf’, cild ‘child’, dǣg (dōgor) ‘day’, ǣg ‘egg’, hrēð ‘glory’, lomb ‘lamb’; (b)
ǣgor/ēgur ‘sea, flood’, alor (aler) ‘alder-tree’, ēar (eher, æhher) ‘ear of grain’,
gycer ‘acre’, hālor ‘health’, hōcor ‘mockery’, hrīðer, hrȳðer ‘horned cattle’,
hrōdor ‘solace’, (masculine) nicor ‘water-monster’, 8 salor ‘hall’, sigor ‘victory’,
stǣner ‘stony ground’, stulor ‘theft’, *wildor ‘wild animal’. Of these, the
following nouns were not found in the investigated sample: ēgur, hālor, hrīðer,
salor, wildor. The synchronic variation between the archaic and novel inflection
was attested in the paradigms of the following nouns: cealf (cælf), cild, dǣg,
lomb, hrēð, ēar, nicor. The remaining words from this group did not testify to
any alternation (ǣg, stǣner). It must be noted that the interpretation of some of
the forms can be problematic, if not impossible. An example here is dogor
which is directly related to dǣg, yet the OE dǣg merged at some point with
a parallel a-stem dæg, making unambiguous interpretation impossible. Following
standard historical accounts and relying on the opinions quoted there (Brunner
1965, Ross 1937), the present analysis took into consideration only those
forms of dǣg which are attested in the Northumbrian dialect of Old English, in
particular in the Lindisfarne Gospels, where its origin as an s-stem is reflected
in the spelling variant doeg.
The findings from the quantitative analysis are demonstrated in tables 3 and
4 below. Italics were used to present the result for the cases which cannot provide
any reliable information about the restructuring process in the paradigm
(the nominative/accusative sg.). An identical procedure was applied to the Old
High German part of the analysis.
7
8
One needs to be aware of an evident oversimplification inherent in such a selection of the OE
and OHG material. Both languages are characterized by a considerable amount of dialectal
and temporal variation, which needs to be taken into account in any more detailed investigation.
The present analysis, being a pilot study to a more comprehensive research project, did
not aspire to be exhaustive and was accordingly designed to only tentatively frame the general
tendencies present in both languages.
Problematic here seems the OHG nichus (nihhus) ‘crocodile’ which serves as counterevidence
to the origin of the OE nicor as an s-stem (cf. ON nykr). See Classen (1915: 85–86)
for an alternative explanation of the OE nicor.