Selected Writings of Irmengard Rauch

Rauch, Irmengard; Carr, Gerald F.

Selected Writings of Irmengard Rauch

by Irmengard Rauch (Author) Gerald F. Carr (Author)

English Studies

Series: Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics, Volume 98

Summary

Selected Writings of Irmengard Rauch represents that portion of Irmengard Rauch’s articles which center on contemporary and historical Germanic linguistic phenomena. They thus speak to the principal North, East, and West Germanic dialects. Her authored books The Old High German Diphthongization: A Description of a Phonemic Change (1967); The Old Saxon Language: Grammar, Epic Narrative, Linguistic Interference (1992); Semiotic Insights: The Data Do the Talking (1998); The Gothic Language: Grammar, Genetic Provenance and Typology, Readings (2003, 2011); The Phonology/Paraphonology Interface and the Sounds of German Across Time (2008) stand on their own. Her contributions to linguistic fieldwork are documented in BAG—Bay Area German Linguistic Fieldwork Project (2015).
Rauch’s writings spanning half a century, from the early sixties to the present, encompass an array of subjects from the state of the art, to multiple language components, that is, segmental and prosodic phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic topics informing Germanic languages, as well as to literature and to nonverbal communication. Linguistic and interdisciplinary methods imbue all of her writings. At the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where Generative Grammar made early inroads, she was trained as an American structuralist, reaping the benefits of the functionalist Prague School, preceded by Saussure, the Neogrammarians, Darwin, Rask, Grimm (all 19th-century instigators of linguistics as a science), and of the founding of the LSA. Since the early seventies she opened her methods of analysis to the semiotic approach of Locke, Saussure, and Peirce. Consequently, Rauch’s writings exploit the combined approaches of linguistics and semiotics. These are the inextricable work-horses, which in combination, enhance her arguments detailing given linguistic problems that define the field of General and Germanic Linguistics and thus feed the multi-disciplinary research interests of both seasoned researchers and neophytes.

Excerpt

Cover
Title
About the author(s)/editor(s)
About the book
This eBook can be cited
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 “Wolfram’s Dawn-Song Series: An Explication” (1963)
1
2
3
4
Notes
2 “A Problem in Historical Synonymy” (1964)
1
2
3
Notes
3 “Staging in Historical Phonemics: GMC. *ō > OHG uo” (1965)
1
2
3
4
Notes
4 “Phonological Causality and the Early Germanic Consonantal Conditioners of Primary Stressed Vowels” (1967)
1
2
3
4
Notes
5 “The Heliand Verses 5–7 Again” (1968)
1
2
3
4
Notes
6 “Heliand i-Umlaut Evidence for the Original Dialect Position of Old Saxon” (1970)
1
2
3
4
5
Notes
References
7 Review Articles—Rapport Critique (1971)
Notes
8 “The Germanic Dental Preterite, Language Origin, and Linguistic Attitude” (1972)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Notes
References
9 “Old High German Vocalic Clusters” (1973)
1
2
3
4
References
10 “Some North-West Germanic Dental Conditioners and Laryngeal Effect” (1973)
0
1
2
3
4
References
11 “Were Verbs in Fact Noun Subsidiaries?” (1974)
1
2
3
References
12 “Die phonologische Basis des Deutschen: unter- und überphonemische Faktoren” (1975)
I
II
Fußnoten
Literaturverzeichnis
13 “Semantic Features Inducing the Germanic Dental Preterit Stem” (1975)
1
2
3
4
5
Notes
References
14 “What Can Generative Grammar Do for Etymology? An Old Saxon Hapax” (1975)
0
1
2
3
4
Notes
References
15 “Linguistic Method: Yesterday and Today” (1976)
Note
References
16 “Where Does Language Borrowing End and Genetic Relationship Begin?” (1978)
1
2
Notes
References
17 “Semantic Naturalness in Word-Building: East German nur-” (1979)
0
1
2
3
4
5
Notes
References
18 “Inversion, Adjectival Participle, and Narrative Effect in Old Saxon” (1981)
I
II
III
IV
References
19 “Towards a Schwa in Gothic” (1981)
1
2.1
2.2
2.3
3
Notes
References
20 “What Is Cause?” (1981)
I
II
III
References
21 “Historical Analogy and the Peircean Categories” (1982)
I
II
III
22 “Uses of the Germanic Past Perfect in Epic Backgrounding” (1982)
1 Introduction
2 Morphology
3 Meaning and Syntax
4 History
5 Pragmatics
6 Epic Reporting
References
23 “On the Modality of the Article” (1983)
1
2
3
4
References
24 “‘Symbols Grow’: Creation, Compulsion, Change” (1984)
References
25 “The Mendacious Mode in Modern German” (1986)
1
2
3
4
References
26 “Old Saxon hell, Drawl and Silence” (1987)
Narrativity
Silence as a Narrative Strategy
Old Saxon hell
Drawl
Notes
27 “How Do Germanic Linguistic Data React to Newer Literary Methods?” (1988)
1
2
3
4
5
6
Notes
References
28 “The Impact of Language (Morphology) on Luther: Sapir-Whorf Redux” (1988)
1 Luther in View of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
2 Aufruhr and Method in Morphology
3 Luther’s Function Words: Greek δὲ
References
29 “The Saussurean Axes Subverted” (1988)
1 Introduction: A Quasi Pre-Philological Function
2 Historical Text and Interlanguage
3 Cognizing a Historical Text: The Old Saxon Heliand
4 Conclusion: Synchrony: Diachrony Subverted
References
30 “Evidence of Language Change” (1990)
1 Linguistic Evidence: Inviolable
2.1 Datable Documents
2.2 Documents as Sources of Evidence
3.1 Loans and Grammatical Reflexes of Contact
3.2 Loan and Contact Evidence
4.1 Earlier Grammarians
4.2 Grammarians as Witnesses for Evidence
5.1 Reconstructed and Typological Materials
5.2 Evidence from Reconstruction
5.3 Evidence from Typology
References
31 “Early New High German e-Plural” (1991)
1
2
3
4
5
Notes
References
32 “On the Nature of Firsts in Language Chance” (1991)
References
33 “Another Old English–Old Saxon Isogloss: (REM) Activity” (1992)
1
2
3
4
References
34 “Old Saxon Barred Vowel” (1992)
References
35 “Icon Destruction and Icon Construction” (1992)
References
36 “The Old English Genesis B Poet: Bilingual or Interlingual?” (1993)
Abstract
1 Introduction
2 The Nature of the Interfering Language: Old Saxon
3 Genesis B 790–820
4 Evidence from Empirical Studies
5 Timmer’s Lexical Evidence Reconsidered
6 Conclusions
References
37 “Toward Germanic Schwa: Old Saxon Evidence” (1993)
1
2
3
4
References
38 “Formal and Less Formal Rules” (1995)
1 Linguistic Formalism
2 Old Saxon Non-noun Nominal Inflection
3 Psychological Reality
References
39 “On the BBC/A&E Bicentennial ‘Pride and Prejudice’” (1997)
Abstract
1
2
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
2.8
2.9
2.10
3
3.1
3.2
Note
References
40 “Feature Spreading in Old High German and Old Saxon: Umlaut, Monopthongization, Pragmatics” (1999)
1
2
3
4
References
41 “Syntax des Altniederdeutschen (Altsächsischen)” (2000)
1 Prädikatskonstituente
1.1 Einfaches Nominal
1.2 Komplexes Nominal
1.3 Präposition (anstatt Kasus)
1.4 Adverbial (mittels K oder präp Umschreibung eines K)
1.5 Infinitiv
1.6 Partizipium Präsentis
1.7 Partizipium Präteriti
1.8 Satz
2 Argumentskonstituente
2.l Artikel
2.2 Quantor
2.3 Genitiv
2.4 Adjektiv
2.5 Satz
3 Modalitätskonstituente
3.1 Tempus
3.2 Modus
3.3 Aspekt
3.4 Polarität
3.5 Diathesis
4 Weitere fakultative Kongruenzregeln
4.1 Numerus
4.2 Genus
4.3 Flexion
4.4 Kasus
4.5 Person
4.6 Modus
5 Satzfolgetypen
5.1 [α X1 [Subj] [V] [Obj] →
5.2 [α X] [V] [Subj] [Obj] →
5.3 [α X] [Subj] [Obj] [V] →
6 Komplexverbstellung (Sebst Aussage-S)
7 Nominalstellung
8 Präpositionstellung
9 Adverbialstellung
10 Einige pragmatische Phänomene der Syntax
10.1 Direkte Rede
10.2 Anbindungsstrategien
10.3 Nicht-lineare Syntax-Erscheinungen
10.4 Zur Dialektsyntax
11 Notationskonventionen
Literatur (in Auswahl)
42 “Analogy’s Hidden Triggers” (2001)
References
43 “Paralanguage: Evidence from Germanic” (2001)
The Audible and the Visible
The Visible
Vocal Segregates (Virtual)
Vocal Characterizers (Virtual)
Vocal Qualifiers (Virtual)
Conclusion
References
44 “Historical Pragmatics: Pervasive Evidence from Old Saxon” (2002)
1 Phonological Component
2 Morphological Component
3 Syntactic Component
4 Lexical Component
5 Discourse Level
References
45 “The Newly Found Leipzig Heliand Fragment” (2006)
Abstract
1 Discovery
2 Transliteration and Translation
2.1 Transliteration
2.2 Translation
3 Comparison with Extant Manuscripts
3.1 MS. C compared
3.2 Root syllable contrasts
3.3 Inflection contrasts
3.4 Physical contrasts
4 Implications
Notes
References
46 “Gender Semiotics, Anglo-Frisian wīf, and Old Frisian Noun Gender” (2007)
0 Introduction
1 Linguistic Gender and Semiotic Effect
2 Anglo-Firsian wı¯f
3 Old Frisian Noun Gender
Notes
47 “Exapted ‘oh’: How Does It Fit into the Prosodic Hierarchy?” (2012)
Notes
48 “The Power and the Glory of Sound” Sebeok Fellow Address, Semiotic Society of America (Pittsburgh, PA—29 October 2011) (2012)
References
49 “Hic et nunc: Evidence from Canine Zoosemiotics” (2013)
Abstract
1 Introduction
2 Zoosemiotics
3 Empirical Evidence: Part One
4 Empirical Evidence: Part Two
5 Conclusion
References
50 On Gothic in the Computer Age (2014)
Abstract
References
51 “On Consonantal Conditioners Again and the Case of the Rising Short Old Frisian IU” (2015)
References
52 “Toward Schwa in Gothic Again and Its Melody” (2017)
1
2
3
4
References
Published Writings of Irmengard Rauch
Books
Special Issue of Journal
Articles
Foreword
Reviews
Index
Series index

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	Acknowledgments

Preparation of the portion of Irmengard Rauch’s writings offered in this volume required a team of devoted researchers from the University of California, Berkeley. The editors gratefully acknowledge the unstinting work of Vera Feinberg, Christopher Hench, Zainab Hossainzadeh, Lindsay Preseau, Timothy Price, Evelyn Roth, Scott Shell—all premier linguistic researchers. Lastly, the production expertise of Peter Lang’s Jackie Pavlovic is without equal.

Permissions to reprint the original articles were granted by:

University of Michigan, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures: “The Saussurean Axis Subverted,” dispositio XII (1988), 35–42; University of Michigan, Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures: “Some North-West Germanic Dental Conditioners and Laryngeal Effect,” Husbanding the Golden Grain: Studies in Honor of Henry W. Nordmeyer, eds. L. Frank & E. George (1973), 255–264; Peter Lang International Academic Publishers: “Die phonologische Basis des Deutschen: unter- und überphonemische Faktoren, “Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik VI (1975), 62–71; and “Toward Germanic Schwa: Old Saxon Evidence,” Vielfalt des Deutschen, eds. K. J. Mattheier, K-P. Wegera et al. (1993), 61–66; and “Feature Spreading in Old High German and Old Saxon: Umlaut, Monophthongization, Pragmatics,” New Insights in Germanic Linguistics I, eds. I. Rauch & G. F. Carr (1999), 201–210; and “Analogy’s Hidden Triggers, New Insights in Germanic Linguistics II, eds. I. Rauch & G. F. Carr (2001), 159–166; and “Historical Pragmatics: Pervasive Evidence from Old Saxon,” New Insights ← ix | x → in Germanic Linguistics III, eds. I. Rauch & G. F. Carr (2002), 211–219. University of Wisconsin Press, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System: “Phonological Causality and the Early Germanic Consonantal Conditioners of Primary Stressed Vowels,” Approaches in Linguistic Methodology, eds. I. Rauch & C. T. Scott (1967), 47–61. Elsevier: “‘Heliand i-Umlaut Evidence for the Original Dialect Position of Old Saxon,” Lingua 24 (1970), 365–373; and “Das germanische reduplizierte Präteritum—Gunnar Bech, (det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Historiskfilsofiske Meddeleiser 44, 1). Copenhagen, Munksgaard 1969. 54 pp. kr. 14.–. Lingua 27 (1971), 215–233. Semiotic Society of America: “‘Symbols Grow’: Creation, Compulsion, Change,” The American Journal of Semiotics 3 (1984), 1–23; and “The Power and the Glory of Sound,” The American Journal of Semiotics 28 (2012), 5–17. Società editrice il Mulino Spa: “Were Verbs in fact Noun Subsidiaries?” Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Linguistics, ed. L. Heilmann (1974), 609–615. Wachholtz-Verlag: “Inversion, Adjectival Participle, and Narrative Effect in Old Saxon,” Niederdeutsches Jahrbuch 104 (1981), 22–30. Institute for the Study of Man, Washington D.C. www.jies.org: “What is Cause?” Journal of Indo-European Studies 9 (1981), 319–329; and “Uses of the Germanic Past Perfect in Epic Backgrounding,” Journal of Indo-European Studies 10 (1982), 301–314. De Gruyter Mouton: “A Problem in Historical Synonymy,” Linguistics 6 (1964), 92–98; and “Staging in Historical Phonemics: Gmc. *ô > OHG uo,” Linguistics 11 (1965), 50–56; and “The Heliand Versus 5–7 Again,” Folia Linguistica II (1968), 39–47; and “Where does Language Borrowing End and Genetic Relationship Begin?” Approaches to Language, eds. McCormack & Wurm (1978), 245–255; and “Semantic Naturalness in Word-Building: East German Nur-,” Linguistic Method: Essays in Honor of Herbert Penzl, eds. I. Rauch & G. F. Carr (1979), 13–17; and “The Impact of language (Morphology) on Luther: Sapir-Whorf Redux,” Languages and Culture: Studies in Honor of Edgar C. Polome, eds. M. A. Jazayery & W. Winter (1988), 535–549; and “Evidence of Language Change,” Research Guide for Language Change, ed. E. Polome (1990), 37–70; and “Old Saxon Barred Vowel,” On Germanic Linguistics: Issues and Methods, eds. I. Rauch, G. F. Carr, & R. Kyes (1992), 245–252; and “Icon Deconstruction and Icon Construction,” Signs of Humanity / L’Homme et ses signes I–III, eds. G. Deladelle et al. (1992), 401–405; and “Formal and Less Formal Rules,” Insights in Germanic Linguistics I: Methodology in Transition, eds. I. Rauch & G. F. Carr (1995), 265–273; and “87. Syntax des Altniederdeutschen (Altsächsisch),” Sprachgeschichte: Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung, eds. W. Besch et al. (2000), 1263–1269; and “Paralanguage: Evidence from Germanic,” Semiotica 135 (2001), 147–156; and “Hic et Nunc: Evidence from Canine Zoosemiotics,” Semiotica 196 (2013), 229–242; and “On the Nature of Firsts in Language Change,” Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Linguists, eds. W. Banner, J. Schildt, & D. Viehweger (1991), 1432–1434; and “The Germanic Dental Preterite, Language Origin, and Linguistic Attitude,” Indogermanische Forschungen 77 (1972), 215–233. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag: “The Mendacious Mode in Modern German” Els Oskaar Festschrift, ed. B. Narr & H. Wittje (1986), 343–351; Boydell & Brewer: “How do Germanic Linguistic Data React to Newer Literary Methods?” Germania: Comparative Studies in the Old Germanic Languages and Literatures, ed. D. Calder & T. Craig Christy (1988), 97–111; Universitätsverlag Winter: “Old Saxon hell, Drawl, and Silence,” Althochdeutsch: Festschift für Rudolf Schutzeichel, eds. R. Bergmann, H. ← x | xi → Tiefenbach, & L. Voetz (1987), 1145–1151; and “Toward Schwa in Gothic Again and its Melody,” Sprachwissenschaft 42, 3 (2017), 231–245. Taylor and Francis Group: “Another Old English-Old Saxon Isogloss (REM) Activity,” De Gustibus: Essays for Alain Renoir, ed. J. Foley (1992), 480–493. Westermann Gruppe: “Wolfram’s Dawn-Song Series: An Explication,” Monatshefte LV (1963), 92–98; and “On the Modality of the Article,” Monatshefte 75 (1983), 156–162. Cambridge University Press: “The Old English Genesis B Poet: Bilingual or Interlingual?” American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures v. 5, no. 2 (1993) 163–184. John Benjamins Publishing Company: “Historical Analogy and the Peircean Categories,” Proceedings of the III International Conference on Historical Linguistics. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Ed. P. Maher) (1982), 359–367; and “On Gothic in the Computer Age,” NOWELE 67 (2014), 231–236. Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis: “On the BBC/A&E Bicentennial ‘Pride and Prejudice,’” Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 2 (1997) 327–346; and “The Newly Found Leipzig Heliand Fragment,” Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 11,1 (2006) 1–17; and “On Consonantal Conditioners Again and the Case of Rising Short Old Frisian IU,” Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 20, 1(2015) 29–37.

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	Introduction

The Selected Writings of Irmengard Rauch are exactly that. In her wealth of book and article publications, they represent a portion of her articles which center in General and Germanic linguistic phenomena. They thus speak to the principal North, East, and West Germanic dialects in various stages of their developments enhanced by cross-linguistic comparison with proximate and distant related languages. An overriding factor is the consistent application of novel general linguistic methods and the application of semiotic method. All components of language: segmental and prosodic phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic find representation in these articles. Beyond that, non-verbal communications, including silence, play a role. The 52 articles are some of the writings in tandem with her books, in particular her 1992 The Old Saxon Language: Grammar, Epic Narrative, Linguistic Interference; her 2003/2011 The Gothic Language: Grammar, Genetic Provenance and Typology; and her 1998 Semiotic Insights: The Data Do the Talking.

The structure of each article embodies the exploitation of an original take/insight, a breakthrough thought, on a given, often intransigent, linguistic phenomenon, thus, e.g., “Paralanguage: Evidence from Germanic” (2001) offers a solution to a defining problem of the phonetics of the Old Saxon digraphs <uo, ie>, by resorting to paralanguage with the conclusion, “[l]ong marginalized as ← xiii | xiv → secondary or even linguistically irrelevant, the maturing of linguistic semantics/pragmatics validates the mainstreaming of paralanguage as a linguistic enterprise for both contemporary and historical data.”

Typological comparison of German, English, and Scandinavian is made, e.g., with Chinese, African, Turkish, French, and Eskimo in (1974) with its question title “Were Verbs in Fact Noun Subsidiaries?” Cross-linguistic reconstruction pervades the strenuous unearthing of the etymology of the Old Saxon lud ‘sexual potency’ in “What Can Generative Grammar Do for Etymology? An Old Saxon Hapax” (1975). It results in requiring “a modification in Pokorny’s assignment (1959: 685) within the same root, which not only brings it into a different immediate semantic scope but accordingly into a different dialect provenience.” “Early New High German e-Plural” (1991) lays out arguments that an ENHG period can be legitimately claimed on the basis of language internal evidence which traces the grammaticalization of a formerly apocopated -e. The methods of Feature Geometry are applied, e.g., in “Feature Spreading in Old High German and Old Saxon: Umlaut, Monophthongization, Pragmatics” (1999), while, e.g., “Analogy’s Hidden Triggers” utilizes an Optimality Theoretic approach.

Predictive linguistics is not missing from Rauch’s scholarly arguments, so, e.g., “Die phonologische Basis des Deutschen: unter- und überphonemische Faktoren” (1975), where she considers syllable final devoicing plus gemination before sonant in Modern German [ze:k-knən] ‘bless’. She concludes, “[d]as linguistische Vorhersagen in der Phonologie ist äußerst spekulativ, doch sind genügend theoretische und praktische, diachronische sowie synchronische Tatsachen vorhanden (davon wurden einige hier besprochen), um eine ernsthafte, durchgreifende Untersuchung zu rechtfertigen, die den Wahrscheinlichkeitsgrad der zukünftigen Konsonantengemination in dem Nachneuhochdeutschen festsetzen könnte.”

Acoustic phonetics and universals are also appealed to in predictive linguistics as well in many other articles. “What is Cause” (1981) demonstrates that the cause for the well-known change of Tetak Czech labials to dentals in the fourteenth century can be satisfied, she writes, by the fact that,

the Tetak sharped labial was at least 51% dental acoustically and physiologically, i.e., the sharped labials were, so to speak, more acute than grave. Spectrographically the second formant was raised from the first, the mouth cavity was narrowed by the advancement of the tongue toward the alveolar ridge and the teeth with the accompanying dilation of the pharyngeal cavity. ← xiv | xv →

Such facts are understood as “compulsory/brute force,” which is the phenomenological category of “Secondness” in Semiotic method.

… predict the direction of analogy in the declension of the Latin word wōks, because of the compulsion of an internal private law of Latin, that is, within the genes of Latin, which will not allow -w- between consonants anywhere in the language, accordingly making the Latin sequence wōkws impossible. Once this compelling factor within the very existence of Latin is identified, the direction of the analogy is completely predictable. We are back at the scientific basis of linguistics—a concern which neither time nor linguistic persuasion had diminished since the nineteenth century. The predictability which semiotic Secondness lends to linguistic causation hypotheses should then be most welcome in assuring the scientific status of linguistics.

Analogy itself embodies Peirce’s phenomenological category of “Firstness”, that is, iconicity, factual similarity.

The search for universals through typological studies in the several grammatical components of language is explored in “Evidence of Language Change” (1990), which finds that “[w]here tendencies or statistical universals end and universals begin is often impossible to determine.” Yet the appeal to universals runs necessarily throughout Rauch’s articles, most recently in “Toward Schwa in Gothic Again and its Melody” (2017). In arguing for Gothic schwa she observes the phonetic generalization that “[a]lthough often referred to as ‘reduced,’ vowels under weakened stress are full vowels like any other short vowel, but they tend phonetically toward centralization,” which bespeaks, in the concept of Trubetzkoy (1969: 69–70), a linear system, rather than an angular system. Prosodics infuse “Toward Schwa in Gothic Again and its Melody” and, in fact, have ever been an ingredient of her writings, even during mid-nineteenth century segmental structuralism. In early discussions with students and colleagues on given linguistic phenomena, she was often heard raising the question, “What about the suprasegmentals involved?” Thus, e.g., in “Phonological Causality and the Early Germanic Consonantal Conditioners of Primary Stressed Vowels” (1967), suprasegmentals are not neglected as co-conditioners. Here (fn. 11) she fittingly quotes Martinet (E. Palmer, trans., 1960: 190): “… in the final analysis ← xv | xvi → the elements of disequilibrium result from the changing needs of the speakers of a language; … it is probably through the agency of prosodic facts, like the accent, that needs of communication have their most direct repercussions on phonological systems.” “Exapted ‘Oh’: How Does It Fit Into the Prosodic Hierarchy?” (2012) displays nicely the marriage of prosodics with semantics. Certainly Rauch’s 1997 extensive raw-data study of the multi-modality “Pride and Prejudice” film (see below) yields as well the sine qua non of prosody.

Semantics, another not quite fashionable interest at the time of her first writings has informed Rauch’s work throughout. Her early (1964) “A Problem in Historical Synonymy,” while questioning whether true synonymy exists, offers a set of features to disambiguate Old English ofermod, ofermede, oferhygd, ofermetto occurring in the Genesis B where they are uniformly glossed ‘pride’ by J. F. Vickrey, Jr. (1960). The search for meaning continues unabated, indicated in the title of some articles, e.g., “Semantic Features Inducing the Germanic Dental Preterite Stem” (1975) or “Sematic Naturalness in Word-Building: East German nur” (1979). The challenges posed by the Germanic dental preterite, “the most debated topic of Gmc. grammar” according to Prokosch (1939: 194), are pursued further in “The Germanic Dental Preterite, Language Origin, and Linguistic Attitude” (1972). Semantically, syntactically, and phonologically, with appeal to child and pidgin languages, Rauch proposes that Germanic verbs with dental preterite, which include the preterite-present verbs, the weak verbs and the optative reflexes of IE *wel-, are the unmarked force, rather than strong verbs, in the genesis of the Germanic verb conjugation. She concludes: “An attempt is made in the grammar fragment presented here to combine linguistic approaches without prostituting them. Linguistic history reveals that exclusivity can also breed casualties.”

To be sure, linguistic method and semiotic method visible in every article, under the aegis of the latter method opens the door to cross-disciplinary approaches. “Another Old English–Old Saxon Isogloss: (REM) Activity” (1992) reaches out to today’s laboratory experience of dream activity, since by the Uniformitarianism Principle processes operative in the past can be inferred from processes operative in the present. Of all the Germanic languages only the semantics of Old Saxon drôm is attributed to both the glosses ‘joy, mirth’ and ‘dream’. Rauch finds that,

The sense features that converge in the semantics of OS drôm are thus the exuberant, hallucinatory, hypnotic state in wine drinking (under drugs) parallel to the frenetic, hallucinatory, hypnotic state of the sleeping brain in dreaming, and in turn parallel to the slackened exterior body in wine drinking and the slackened exterior body in sleep. ← xvi | xvii → Uniquely in Germanic, OS drôm attests to a bundle of senses which are relational opposites, for example, ‘dead’ : ‘alive;’ ‘resting’ : ‘working;’ ‘real’ : ‘unreal.’ These sets of converses certainly underscore the “deceit” of the dream perception. The set of OS drôm senses is thus eminently accountable by the most recent REM dream sleep theories.

Rauch’s “On the BBC/A&E Bicentennial ‘Pride and Prejudice’” is rife with a confluence of varying approaches demanded by the rich filming of Austen’s blockbuster work. She meticulously details the visual and the audible in this spectacular six volume centennial production. She exploits the premise of the binomial noun phrase “Nature and culture (in harmony),” verbalized in the pivotal volume IV, which is seminal to the film and around which the entire film can be reconstructed. She writes:

… in presenting the semiotics of the story line, we seek in particular data from the film (sections 2.1–2.10) which configurate noun phrases (noun phrases also generate sentences) with visual phrases, their recursion, and configuration into the prism which is “Pride and Prejudice”.

Absence of linguistic segmentals and suprasegmentals—that is, silence—punctuates this screen play. The galvanizing first proposal of Darcy to Lizzy (vol. III), Rauch explains,

“… consists of 48 seconds of silence crowded with 10 filmic shots alternating between an agitated, hesitating Darcy and a wondering, waiting Lizzy. The SOUND OF SILENCE punctured by a small set of dim, barely audible sounds of movement (steps/shuffling) interspersed by weak bird twitter, and finally by human breathing. Absent the visual, the slight paralinguistic sounds are inadequate to decode the semantics of the 48 silent seconds. The data of set (III) can be schematized approximately, i.e., minus sound spectography, as follows (n = noise; t = bird twitter; b = breathing; upper case = louder): (III) nnn n/b n/t n/b N nnnNn n/b n n n/t b B B.”

The understanding of this spectacular sequence is enchanced by Rauch’s appeal to still another method, viz. Space Grammar, which by Fauconnier (1994:xxxviii) discovers “the extraordinary underspecification of cognitive mental space configurations by language”. Rauch finds that the set (III) data “demonstrate that the trade-off between linguistic substance and extralinguistic substance in Space Grammar is scalar and inversely proportional—both operations familiar to natural language and to natural grammar.”

No less methodologically innovating is Rauch’s introduction of canine informants beside human informants in fieldwork considerations dealing with space and time. “Hic et nunc: Evidence from Canine Zoosemiotics” (2013) offers ← xvii | xviii → evidence in answer to the Welbyan question, “[d]oes the animal ask ‘when’?” (Welby 1903 in Petrilli 2009: 392). Welby argues that “[y]ou can speak of space of time but not of a time of space (Welby 1907 in Petrilli 2009: 450), underscoring the fact that space is primary and time is derivative to it. Rauch writes:

The linguistic evidence from the canine fieldwork data bears out the cognitive primacy of space …. Standard dog commands codify space linguistically in at least half of the eight commands, while none indicate time linguistically; they thus appear devoid of time, although futurity might be inferred with verbs.

Rauch finds further that

… canine gestural data as evidenced linguistically by human surrogates confirm strongly Welby’s conviction of ‘the backwardness of the sense of Time in animals … and children having a keen sense of Space’. … Thus spatial adverbial/prepositional deixis abounds in the … data. The comparatively meager temporal adverbial deixis highlights aspectual or space in time perception, bearing witness to Welby’s ‘it is not time … It is succession’. …

Rauch’s writings are steeped in linguistic methodology, ever reaching into cross-disciplinary approaches. Some of her articles have a primary methodological focus, thus, e.g., “Linguistic Method: Yesterday and Today” (1976). This forty year old article segues exceedingly well into the decade later “How Do Germanic Linguistic Data React to Newer Literary Methods?” (1988). Both articles are absolute in their understanding that linguistic method is in essence scientific; it is its defining characteristic. Its center is language. In “How Do Germanic Linguistic Data React to Newer Literary Methods?” (1988) she writes:

… [the] scientific method, characterized by such features as intellectual uncertainty and curiosity, data selection and judgment, hypothesis formation and testing, and hypothesis reapplication or modification, provides a most secure as well as eminent operating procedure for the linguist; yet he shares this procedure with other men of science. Quite obviously, we look then to the subject matter itself of linguistics—language, a fundamental human activity. It is, however, quite another step to the spectacular realization that language is not just a feature of human behavior, but that it is to be isolated as the human act per se. Thus the object of linguistic science is the most fundamental act of human behavior.

Rauch’s tireless pursuit, in all of her publications, of the definition of language finally rests in her working definition reiterated in “The Power and the Glory of Sound” (2012): ← xviii | xix →

Language is signifying through an illative-type process. While this definition transcends such moot questions as language ability, i.e., the possession of humans or of humans and nonhumans, and language behavior, i.e., a function of communication or of thought, it nevertheless invites exploitation of Blanchard’s … seminal idea that ‘… there is at work in the perceiving mind (of man, infant, ignorant man, and animals) an implicit universal’.

In “Linguistic Method: Yesterday and Today” (1976) Rauch offers four of the principles fundamental to linguistic method which help establish its scientific status: the structural principle, the principle of minimal opposition, the principle of simplicity, and the principle of generalization. She concludes:

When we undertake to consider the language of man, who is capable of reflection, of developing and preserving a value system, and of projecting into the future, we undertake to comprehend man’s unique position in evolution. From this focal point, linguistic method is only in its infancy; new principles await discovery without a necessary abandonment of the old ones. We in fact have no choice: The study of language cannot retrogress; it is integral to the irreversible evolutionary dynamism which is the ever heightened consciousness of man.

This final thought is a nod to Teilhard de Chardin, (The Phenomenon of Man, Bernard Wall, trans. [New York, 1960]) cited in her article (referred to above) “Phonological Causality and the Early Germanic Consonantal Conditioners of Primary Stressed Vowels” (1967). fnn. 5, 6.

A dozen years later Rauch’s metatheoretical tour de force “How Do Germanic Linguistic Data React to Newer Literary Methods?” (1988) reaches out to the cross-disciplinary model of post-structural literary methods. In developing a road map for the emergence of literary post-structuralism she turns to Saussure “who elevated linguistics to ‘the master-pattern for all branches of semiology’” and whose structural dictum of “difference” propelled literary thought, which in turn charged Saussure with a flaw. She writes:

In essence, the flaw in Saussure is that he does not develop the concept of difference far enough. The linguistic sign does take its existence and therefore its meaning from differences, that is to say, relationships within the system, and Saussure holds that the meaning or ‘signified’ is as inalienably united with the form of the signifier in the sign as are, he says, two sides of a piece of paper. This concept, then, leads to the linguistic principle of biuniqueness or isomorphism, whereby we aim to disambiguate and identify unequivocally any linguistic entity. … (However, the Deconstructionist enterprise) challenges the possibility of an absolute, univocal meaning as well as the distinction between signifier and signified. ← xix | xx →

Saussure’s semiology and Peirce’s semiotics infuse the discussion, and the nature of “language” again dominates, thus, Rauch underscores Kristeva’s, prescient observation (Kristeva in Sebeok 1975; 47): “What semiotics has discovered in studying ‘ideologies’ … as sign systems is that the law governing, or, if one prefers, the major constraint affecting any social practice lies in the fact that it signifies, i.e., that it is articulated like a language.” The magnitude of the language debate is mind-boggling. Rauch observes:

Bloomfield’s statement that ‘language produces society’ and the Foucault-Derrida assertion that ‘the human sciences intermingle to create man’ interdigitate extremely well with Peirce’s understanding of language and man: ‘It is that the word or sign which man uses is the man himself. For, as the fact that every thought is a sign, taken in conjunction with the fact that life is a train of thought, proves that man is a sign; so, that every thought is an external sign, proves that man is an external sign. That is to say, the man and the external sign are identical, in the same sense in which the words homo and man are identical. Thus my language is the sum total of myself; for the man is the thought^’. …

To be sure, the Peircean phenomenological categories are at work in the two linguistic changes presented, viz. the evolution of the Old High German Otfrid’s /ia/, and the development of the Germanic preterite tense, both changes are conventionalizations, i.e. law, and are thus representative of Peirce’s phenomenolocial category of Thirdness. The concept of analogy, itself Firstness (see above) is further refined by the distinction between indexical analogy and iconic analogy driving these linguistic changes.

This Introduction has aimed to point out some of the salient insights which drive Rauch’s lifetime research. Her Selected Writings include only a fraction of her creative production as found in her books and other articles (see below Published Writings of Irmengard Rauch). Her writings spanning half a century, from the early sixties to the present, encompass an array of subjects from the state of the art, to phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic topics informing Germanic and other languages. The nature of linguistic method imbues many, if not all, of her writings. She seizes and utilizes the most recent/current linguistic approaches. Trained as an American structuralist, repeating the benefits of the Prague School and of the founding of the Linguistic Society of America, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where Generative Grammar made early inroads, since the early seventies she opened her methods of analysis to the semiotic approach of Locke, Saussure, and Peirce. Consequently, Rauch’s writings exploit the combined approaches of linguistics and semiotics. These are the inextricable work-horses, which in combination enhance her arguments detailing a given linguistic problem. ← xx | xxi →

In my Preface to her Festschrift Interdigitations: Essays for Irmengard Rauch (1999), I revealed that I “fell under the spell of the enthusiastic young professor with an infectious interest in Germanic Linguistics.” It is not otherwise now, in our 53rd year as gibenkeon endi gibeddeon ‘bench and bed partners’ (Heliand: Fit 2). This book is dedicated to Christopher, Gregory, Karen, and Mary Carr.

Gerald F. Carr
January 2018

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Wolfram’s Dawn-Song Series

An Explication

[Monatshefte LV (1963), 366–74]

The ordinary dawn-song, familiar enough to both the Eastern and Western literatures of the world as a form of lyric poetry, is, nevertheless, a variant determined by a set of partially undefined but restricting characteristics. A dawn-song is temporally and spatially limited; it must relate to the (a) sad parting of (b) secret lovers (c) at dawn, prompted by (d) some kind of warning in (e) a rather indeterminate, matter-of-course setting. The theme is often structurally reinforced by use of techniques such as the refrain, stanzaic Wechsel, and the like.

It is, therefore, comparatively simple to recognize a dawn-song whether it occur as part of a dialogue between Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Act III, Scene 5 (“Wilt thou be gone? …”), or as the very charming, deceptively unsophisticated and ancient poem “Slafest du, friedel ziere? …” This last, presumably by Dietmar von Aist, is frequently considered the earliest German dawn-song.1 To be sure, it complies with all the requirements above, but a certain view existing in the dawn-song scholarship holds songs like this one to be defective in that the warning of day is not signaled by the watchman in person.² Still, the problem can be interpretively resolved by substituting the bird in the poem (“ein vogellîn sô wol getân”) for the watchman.³ The rejection of such a replacement is crucial, ← 1 | 2 → however, because if the person of the watchman is a sine qua non, then all that has gone before Wolfram on German soil is, as de Boor writes, “höchstens Vorklang oder Anklang des Tageliedes,”4 and Wolfram’s own songs can be understood according to the role the watchman plays in them, since “die figur des wächters sei ‘die crux aller forschungen über das tagelied’.”⁵

Details

Pages: XXII, 622
Year: 2019
ISBN (PDF): 9781433136078
ISBN (ePUB): 9781433136269
ISBN (MOBI): 9781433136276
ISBN (Hardcover): 9781433136061
DOI: 10.3726/978-1-4331-3607-8
Language: English
Publication date: 2019 (January)
Published: New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2019. XXII, 622 pp., 51 b/w ill., 17 tables

Biographical notes

Irmengard Rauch (Author) Gerald F. Carr (Author)

Irmengard Rauch is Professor of Germanic Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley. Her honors include a Guggenheim, a Festschrift, and the Eighth Sebeok Fellow. Gerald F. Carr is Professor Emeritus, California State University, Sacramento. He is co-editor of over a dozen collections of linguistics and semiotic research.

Selected Writings of Irmengard Rauch

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Table Of Contents

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Biographical notes

Key Subject Areas