In linguistics, Old Dutch ( Modern Dutch : Oudnederlands ) or Old Low Franconian (Modern Dutch: Oudnederfrankisch ) is the set of dialects that evolved from Frankish spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages , from around the 6th or 9th to the 12th century. Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords in French.
100-558: Old Dutch is regarded as the primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch language. It was spoken by the descendants of the Salian Franks who occupied what is now the southern Netherlands , northern Belgium , part of northern France, and parts of the Lower Rhine regions of Germany. It evolved into Middle Dutch around the 12th century. The inhabitants of northern Dutch provinces, including Groningen , Friesland , and
200-586: A prothetic h , which points also to West Flemish in which the h was frequently dropped or, in the written language, added before vowels (compare abent in the Latin version). However, it has been postulated that the text could equally well be Old English , more specifically Old Kentish . nu saget mir einen kuning other greven, the an uren got wille gelouven, that se sagent, that ist gelogen, thes ist thaz arme volc bedrogen. Translated as "Mention one king or earl who wants to believe in their god, what they say
300-547: A better designation (despite the prestige of science and of its language). In the case of French , for example, Latin is the superstrate and Gaulish the substrate. Some linguists contend that Japanese (and Japonic languages in general) consists of an Altaic superstratum projected onto an Austronesian substratum. Some scholars also argue for the existence of Altaic superstrate influences on varieties of Chinese spoken in Northern China . In this case, however,
400-480: A discipline, the initial dominant viewpoint was that influences from language contact on phonology and grammar should be assumed to be marginal, and an internal explanation should always be favored if possible. As articulated by Max Mueller in 1870, Es gibt keine Mischsprache ("there are no mixed languages "). In the 1880s, dissent began to crystallize against this viewpoint. Within Romance language linguistics,
500-575: A dominant adstrate in North India . A different example would be the sociolinguistic situation in Belgium , where the French and Dutch languages have roughly the same status, and could justifiably be called adstrates to each other having each one provided a large set of lexical specifications to the other. The term adstratum is also used to identify systematic influences or a layer of borrowings in
600-667: A fusion of Roman and Germanic societies was occurring. During the period of Merovingian rule, the Franks began to adopt Christianity following the baptism of Clovis I in 496, an event that inaugurated the alliance between the Frankish kingdom and the Roman Catholic Church . Unlike their Gothic , Burgundic and Lombardic counterparts, who adopted Arianism , the Salians adopted Catholic Christianity early on; giving them
700-680: A geographic sense. The oldest known example, wad 'mudflat', is already mentioned c. 107–108 AD in Tacitus ' Histories (Book 5), in Latinised form as vadam (acc. sg.), as the name of a village, Vada , probably reflecting Early Germanic *wada . The word exclusively referred to the region and ground type that is now known as the Wadden Sea . However, since the word existed long before Old Dutch did (and even before its parent language, Frankish ), it cannot be considered part of
800-697: A given language from another language, independently of whether the two languages continue coexisting as separate entities. Many modern languages have an appreciable adstratum from English, due to the cultural influence and economic preponderance of the United States on international markets and previously colonization by the British Empire which made English a global lingua franca . The Greek and Latin coinages adopted by European languages, including English and now languages worldwide, to describe scientific topics, sociology, medicine, anatomy, biology, all
900-532: A language requires knowledge of the structure of the substrate language. This can be acquired in numerous ways: One of the first-identified cases of substrate influence is an example of a substrate language of the second type: Gaulish , from the ancient Celtic people the Gauls. The Gauls lived in the modern French-speaking territory before the arrival of the Romans , namely the invasion of Julius Caesar's army. Given
1000-660: A large group who decided to hijack some Roman ships and return with them from the Black Sea ;– reaching the Atlantic after causing chaos through Greece, Sicily and Gibraltar. It has been proposed that the meaning of the term Frank changed over time and that these pirate Franks were actually Frisii , or some other coastal people. Centuries before the Vikings , the term "Saxon" came to refer to coastal Germanic groups specialised in raiding Roman territories by boat, whereas
1100-432: A new language. The term is also used of substrate interference, i.e. the influence the substratum language exerts on the replacing language. According to some classifications, this is one of three main types of linguistic interference : substratum interference differs from both adstratum , which involves no language replacement but rather mutual borrowing between languages of equal "value", and superstratum , which refers to
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#17327656966421200-584: A number of disparities separate Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old English and Old Dutch. One such difference is that Old Dutch used -a as its plural a-stem noun ending, while Old Saxon and Old English employed -as or -os . Much of the grammatical variation between Old Dutch and Old Saxon is similar to that between Old Dutch and Old High German. It is also found that Old Dutch had lost the dual number for its pronouns, unlike Old English, which used wit to refer to "the two of us". Old Dutch would have used we both to refer to that and to refer to many more people in
1300-472: A relationship with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and their subjects in conquered territories. The division of the Frankish kingdom among Clovis’s four sons (511) was an event that would repeat in Frankish history over more than four centuries. By then, the Salic Law had established the exclusive right to succession of male descendants. This principle turned out to be an exercise in interpretation, rather than
1400-661: Is vowel reduction . Back vowels ( a , o ) in non-stressed syllables are rather frequent in Old Dutch, but in Middle Dutch, they are reduced to a schwa : The following is a translation of Psalm 55 :18, taken from the Wachtendonck Psalms ; it shows the evolution of Dutch, from the original Old Dutch, written c. 900, to modern Dutch, but so accurately copies the Latin word order of the original that there
1500-479: Is Proto-Indo-European *mori 'sea', found widely in the northern and western Indo-European languages, but in more eastern Indo-European languages only in Ossetic . Although the influence of the prior language when a community speaks, and adopts, a new one may have been informally acknowledged beforehand, the concept was formalized and popularized initially in the late 19th century. As historical phonology emerged as
1600-585: Is a 9th-century baptismal vow that was found in a monastery library in the German city of Mainz but was written in the Dutch city of Utrecht . The sentence translates as "And I renounce all the deeds and words of the devil, Thunear, Wōden and Saxnōt, and all those fiends that are their companions". It mentions three Germanic pagan gods of the early Saxons which the reader is to forsake: Uuôden (" Woden "), Thunaer and Saxnōt . Scholar Rudolf Simek comments that
1700-515: Is a lie, that's how the people are being deceived", this fragment comes from an important source for Old Dutch: the Rhinelandic Rhyming Bible (Dutch: Rijnlandse Rijmbijbel ; German: Rheinische Reimbibel ). The verse translation of biblical histories is attested only in a series of fragments from different writers. It contains Old Dutch (Low Franconian), Low German (Low Saxon) and High German (Rhine-Franconian) elements. It
1800-606: Is based on the consolidated dialects of Holland and Brabant . During the Merovingian period, the Central Franconian dialects were influenced by Old Low Franconian (Old Dutch), resulting in certain linguistic loans which yielded a slight overlap of vocabulary, most of which relates to warfare . In addition is the subsumption of the High German consonant shift , a set of phonological changes beginning around
1900-410: Is less common today in standardized linguistic varieties and more common in colloquial forms of speech since modern nations tend to favour one single linguistic variety, often corresponding to the dialect of the capital and other important regions, over others. In India , where dozens of languages are widespread, many languages could be said to share an adstratal relationship, but Hindi is certainly
2000-502: Is little information that can be garnered on Old Dutch syntax . In Modern Dutch, recasting is necessary to form a coherent sentence. Old Dutch texts are extremely rare and much more limited than for related languages like Old English and Old High German . Most of the earliest texts written in the Netherlands were written in Latin , rather than Old Dutch. Some of the Latin texts, however, contained Old Dutch words interspersed with
2100-592: Is posited that some structural changes in French were shaped at least in part by Gaulish influence including diachronic sound changes and sandhi phenomena due to the retention of Gaulish phonetic patterns after the adoption of Latin, calques such as aveugle ("blind", literally without eyes, from Latin ab oculis , which was a calque on the Gaulish word exsops with the same semantic construction as modern French) with other Celtic calques possibly including "oui",
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#17327656966422200-520: Is rooted in the study of etymology and linguistic typology . The study of unattested substrata often begins from the study of substrate words , which lack a clear etymology. Such words can in principle still be native inheritance, lost everywhere else in the language family, but they might in principle also originate from a substrate. The sound structure of words of unknown origin — their phonology and morphology — can often suggest hints in either direction. So can their meaning: words referring to
2300-603: Is synonymous with Old Dutch . Depending on the author, the temporal boundary between Old Dutch and Old Frankish is either defined by the onset of the Second Germanic consonant shift in Eastern Frankish, the assimilation of an unattested coastal dialect showing North Sea Germanic -features by West Frankish during the closing of the 9th century , or a combination of both. Some linguists use the terms Old Low Franconian or West Frankish to specifically refer to
2400-464: Is that those languages were very much alike. Irlôsin sol an frithe sêla mîna fan thên thia ginâcont mi, wanda under managon he was mit mi The Wachtendonck Psalms are a collection of Latin psalms , with a translation in an eastern variety of Old Dutch (Old East Low Franconian) which contains a number of Old High German elements. The example sentence above translates as "He will deliver my soul in peace from those who attack me, for, amongst many, he
2500-683: Is uncertain, Childeric I and his son Clovis I , who gained control over Roman Gaul were said to be related, and the legal code they published for the Romance speaking country between the Loire and the Silva Carbonaria , a region the Franks later called Neustria , was called the Salic law . Their dynasty, the Merovingians , were named after Childeric's father Merovech , whose birth
2600-459: Is usually considered a West Flemish dialect, but certain Ingvaeonic forms might be expected in any of the coastal dialects of Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon or Old Dutch. However, the -n of the third-person plural hebban , which is absent in both Old English and Frisian, identifies the language as Old Dutch ( Old High German habent uses a different stem). Hagunnan and hi(c) have
2700-664: The Carbonaria Silva from a fort named Dispargum , which was in "Thuringia". The most common interpretations of these names are neither in Salian Batavia nor in Toxandria. In 451, Chlodio's opponent Flavius Aëtius , de facto ruler of the Western Roman Empire , called upon his Germanic allies on Roman soil to help fight off an invasion by Attila 's Huns . Franks answered the call and fought in
2800-644: The Chauci during the Roman Empire, most of whom apparently became Saxons . (The difference between Saxons and Franks in the earliest records which mention them is not clear.) In 358, the Salians came to some form of agreement with the Romans, which allowed them to keep settlements south of the delta in Toxandria, between the rivers Scheldt , Meuse , and Demer , roughly the area of the Campine , which contains
2900-595: The Ripuarians . Recent scholarship, however, has often questioned the ethnic significance of both these terms. Various etymologies are proposed. The ethnonym is unrelated to the name for the dancing priests of Mars, who were also called Salii . In line with theories that the Salians already existed as a tribe outside the Roman Empire, the name may have derived from the name of the IJssel river, formerly called Hisloa or Hisla , and in ancient times, Sala , which may be
3000-574: The Salians ( Latin : Salii ; Greek : Σάλιοι, Salioi ), were a northwestern subgroup of the early Franks who appear in the historical record in the fourth and fifth centuries. They lived west of the Lower Rhine in what was then the Roman Empire and today the Netherlands and Belgium . The traditional historiography sees the Salians as one of the main divisions of the Franks alongside
3100-546: The Salii were pushed from their home in Batavia (the civitas of Nijmegen ), into Toxandria (both within the empire), by the non-Roman Chamavi . The account implies that they entered into the civitas of Tongeren . The first historian to say that the Salians had been pushed into the empire from outside was Zosimus , but his description of events seems to be confused and derived from others. The account of Zosimus, that
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3200-892: The Sami languages . Relatively clear examples are the Finno-Ugric languages of the Chude and the " Volga Finns " ( Merya , Muromian , and Meshcheran ): while unattested, their existence has been noted in medieval chronicles, and one or more of them have left substantial influence in the Northern Russian dialects . By contrast, more contentious cases are the Vasconic substratum theory and Old European hydronymy , which hypothesize large families of substrate languages across western Europe. Some smaller-scale unattested substrates that remain under debate involve alleged extinct branches of
3300-587: The Somme in northern France . These Franks, headed by a certain Chlodio , conquered an area which included Turnacum (the modern Belgian city of Tournai ) and Cameracum (the modern French city of Cambrai ). According to Lanting & van der Plicht (2010), this probably happened in the period 445–450. Chlodio is never referred to as Salian, only Frankish, and his origins unclear. He is said by Gregory of Tours (II.9) to have launched his attack on Tournai through
3400-779: The find at Bergakker , it would seem that the language already had inherited this characteristic from Old Frankish whereas Old Saxon and Old High German are known to have maintained word-final voiced obstruents much later (at least 900). Notes: In unstressed syllables, only three vowels seem to have been reliably distinguished: open, front and back. In the Wachtendonck Psalms, the e and i merged in unstressed syllables, as did o and u . That led to variants like dagi and dage ("day", dative singular) and tungon and tungun ("tongue", genitive, dative, accusative singular and nominative, dative, accusative plural). The forms with e and o are generally found later on, showing
3500-426: The "us" group, much like Modern Dutch and English. Old Dutch naturally evolved into Middle Dutch with some distinctions that approximate those found in most medieval West Germanic languages. The year 1150 is often cited as the time of the discontinuity, but it actually marks a time of profuse Dutch writing whose language is patently different from Old Dutch. The most notable difference between Old and Middle Dutch
3600-564: The '- logy ' words, etc., are also justifiably called adstrata. Another example is found in Spanish and Portuguese , which contain a heavy Semitic, particularly Arabic, adstratum. Yiddish is a linguistic variety of High German with adstrata from Hebrew and Aramaic , mostly in the sphere of religion, and with Slavic languages , which were linked geographically to Yiddish-speaking villages in Eastern Europe for centuries up until
3700-407: The (very sparsely attested) varieties of Old Dutch spoken prior its assimilation of the coastal dialect. Old Dutch itself is further divided into Old West Dutch and Old East Dutch, with the descendants of Old West Dutch forming the dominant basis of the Middle Dutch literary language and Old East Dutch forming a noticeable substrate within the easternmost Dutch dialects, such as Limburgish . Before
3800-433: The 1881 Lettere glottologiche of Graziadio Isaia Ascoli argued that the early phonological development of French and other Gallo-Romance languages was shaped by the retention by Celts of their "oral dispositions" even after they had switched to Latin. In 1884, Hugo Schuchardt 's related but distinct concept of creole languages was used to counter Mueller's view. In modern historical linguistics, debate persists on
3900-494: The 5th century. Old Dutch is divided into Old West Low Franconian and Old East Low Franconian ( Limburgian ); however, these varieties are very closely related, the divergence being that the latter shares more traits with neighboring historical forms of Central Franconian dialects such as Ripuarian and Moselle Franconian . While both forms of Low Franconian were instrumental to the framing of Middle Dutch , Old East Low Franconian did not contribute much to Standard Dutch , which
4000-474: The 5th or 6th century that partially influenced Old Dutch, and extensively influenced Central Franconian and other Old High German dialects. Old English , Old Frisian and (to a lesser degree) Old Saxon share the application of the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law . Old Dutch was considerably less affected than those other three languages, but a dialect continuum formed/existed between Old Dutch, Old Saxon and Old Frisian. Despite sharing some particular features,
4100-564: The English-speaking world through the work of two different authors in 1932. Both concepts apply to a situation where an intrusive language establishes itself in the territory of another, typically as the result of migration . Whether the superstratum case (the local language persists and the intrusive language disappears) or the substratum one (the local language disappears and the intrusive language persists) applies will normally only be evident after several generations, during which
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4200-465: The Franks were strongly associated with the inland Rhine region. In the later period when the Salians first appear in the record, the term Frank was not associated with seafaring or coastal tribes. Their origins before they lived in Batavia are uncertain. Much later, it was only Zosimus, and not Ammianus Marcellinus whose work he possibly partly followed, who claimed that the Salians had once lived under
4300-580: The Germani using names of people which may only be poetic: "Salian now tills his fields, the Sygambrian beats his straight sword into a curved sickle". (The Sugambri had apparently long ago been defeated and moved by the Romans.) From the first half of the fifth century onwards, a group of Franks pushed south west through the boundary of the Roman inhabited Silva Carbonaria and expanded their territory to
4400-584: The Indo-European family, such as " Nordwestblock " substrate in the Germanic languages, and a "Temematic" substrate in Balto-Slavic , proposed by Georg Holzer . The name Temematic is an abbreviation of "tenuis, media, media aspirata, tenuis", referencing a sound shift presumed common to the group. When a substrate language or its close relatives cannot be directly studied, their investigation
4500-473: The Latin text. Also, it is hard to determine whether a text actually was written in Old Dutch, as the Germanic languages spoken at that time were not standardised and were much more similar to one another. Several words that are known to have developed in the Netherlands before Old Dutch was spoken have been found, and they are sometimes called Oudnederlands (English: "Old Netherlandic" or "Old Dutch") in
4600-525: The Netherlands, contains an Old Dutch translation of an Old High German (East Franconian) commentary on Song of Solomon , written by the German abbot Williram of Ebersberg . The translation was done by a monk of the Abbey of Egmond , and so the manuscript's other name is Egmond Willeram . The text represents an imperfect attempt to translate the original into the local Old Dutch vernacular. The text contains many Old Dutch words as well as mistranslated words since
4700-544: The Norman Conquest of 1066 when use of the English language carried low prestige. The international scientific vocabulary coinages from Greek and Latin roots adopted by European languages (and subsequently by other languages) to describe scientific topics (sociology, zoology, philosophy, botany, medicine, all " -logy " words, etc.) can also be termed a superstratum, although for this last case, " adstratum " might be
4800-517: The Old Dutch period, the distinction between the feminine ō -stems and ōn -stems began to disappear, when endings of one were transferred to the other declension and vice versa, as part of a larger process in which the distinction between the strong and weak inflection was being lost not only in feminine nouns but also in adjectives. The process is shown in a more advanced stage in Middle Dutch. Old Dutch reflects an intermediate form between Old Saxon and Old High German. Like Old High German, it preserved
4900-602: The Psalms suggests that they were originally written in the 10th century. Thes naghtes an minemo beddo vortheroda ich minen wino. Ich vortheroda hine ande ne vand sin niet. This example sentence taken from the Leiden Willeram translates as "All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him". The manuscript, now in the library of the Leiden University in
5000-559: The Rhine to get around other Frankish tribes who effectively protected the Roman frontier, and into the Roman river delta. The emperor Julian the Apostate took the opportunity to allow the Salii to settle in Toxandria, south of Batavia, where they had previously been expelled: "[Julian] commanded his army to attack them briskly; but not to kill any of the Salii, or prevent them from entering
5100-606: The Rhineland or Ripuarian Franks. The Lex Ripuaria originated about 630 and has been described as a later development of the Frankish laws known from Lex Salica . On the other hand, following the interpretation of Springer the Lex Salica may simply have meant something like "Common Law". Apart from some isolated fragments, there is no record of the Salian Frankish language but it is presumed to be ancestral to
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#17327656966425200-409: The Roman Empire, living in the Rhine delta in the modern Netherlands. Although often treated as a tribe it has also been argued by Matthias Springer that this might represent a misunderstanding. All of the classical mentions of them seem to derive from one mention by Ammianus Marcellinus of "Franks, those namely whom custom calls the Salii ". Ammianus, who served in the Roman military, reported that
5300-413: The Roman territories, because they came not as enemies, but were forced there [...] As soon as the Salii heard of the kindness of emperor Julian the Apostate, some of them went with their king into the Roman territory, and others fled to the extremity of their country, but all humbly committed their lives and fortunes to Caesar's gracious protection." The Salians were then brought into Roman units defending
5400-507: The Salians had been pushed into the empire as a single tribe, is still often accepted. In this case, their homeland may have been between the Rhine and the IJssel in the modern day Dutch region of the Veluwe , Gelderland , and they may have given their name to the region of Salland . It has also been proposed that the Salii might have been one of the peoples making up the large nation of
5500-464: The Salians' original residence. Today this area is called Salland . Alternatively, the name may derive from a proposed Germanic word * saljon meaning friend or comrade, indicating that the term initially implied an alliance. In that case, the name may have originated in the empire itself, or the river and/or region might be named after the inhabitants (rather than the reverse). The Salians, unlike other Franks, first appear living inside
5600-651: The Visigoths and the Alemanni , his sons drove the Visigoths to Spain and subdued the Burgundians , Alemanni and Thuringians . After 250 years of this dynasty, marked by internecine struggles, a gradual decline occurred. The position in society of the Merovingians was taken over by Carolingians , who came from a northern area around the river Meuse in what is now Belgium and the southern Netherlands. In Gaul,
5700-576: The absence or presence of the Second Germanic consonant shift . With the exception of Dutch, modern linguistic research has challenged the direct diachronical connection to Old Frankish for most of the varieties grouped under the broader "Franconian" category. Nevertheless, the traditional terminology of the West Germanic varieties along assumed Late Classical tribal lines, typical of 19th and early 20th century Germanic linguistics, remains common. Within historical linguistics Old Low Franconian
5800-400: The actual influence of such languages being indeterminate. In the absence of all three lines of evidence mentioned above, linguistic substrata may be difficult to detect. Substantial indirect evidence is needed to infer the former existence of a substrate. The nonexistence of a substrate is difficult to show , and to avoid digressing into speculation, burden of proof must lie on the side of
5900-512: The advent of Old Dutch or any of the Germanic languages, Germanic dialects were mutually intelligible . The North Sea Germanic dialects were spoken in the whole of the coastal parts of the Netherlands and Belgium. Old Frisian was one of these dialects, and elements of it survived through the Frisian language , spoken in the province of Friesland in the North of the Netherlands. In the rest of
6000-495: The aforementioned terms. Old Low Franconian , derives from the linguistic category first devised by the German linguist Wilhelm Braune (1850–1926), who used the term Franconian as a wastebasket taxon for the early West Germanic texts that he could not readily classify as belonging to either Saxon , Alemannic or Bavarian and assumed to derive from the language of the Franks . He subsequently further divided this new grouping into Low , Middle and High Franconian based on
6100-409: The battle of the Catalaunian Fields in a temporary alliance with Romans and Visigoths , which temporarily ended the Hunnic threat to Western Europe. The Notitia dignitatum listing Roman military units in the 5th century mentions the Salii iuniores Gallicani based in Hispania , the Salii seniores based in Gaul. There is also record of a numerus Saliorum . While their relationship to Chlodio
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#17327656966426200-407: The beginning of Old Dutch morphology. The word ann , found in the partially-translated inscription is coined as the oldest Dutch by linguists Nicoline van der Sijs and Tanneke Schoonheim from Genootschap Onze Taal . They attribute that word to the ancestor of the modern Dutch verb root gun , through the addition of the prefix ge- . (An English cognate probably survives in to own (up) in
6300-412: The coast of North Holland , spoke Old Frisian , and some in the east ( Achterhoek , Overijssel , and Drenthe ) spoke Old Saxon . Within the field of historical philology, the terminology for the oldest historical phase of the Dutch language traditionally includes both Old Dutch as well as Old Low Franconian . In English linguistic publications, Old Netherlandic is occasionally used in addition to
6400-470: The coastal region, these dialects were mostly displaced following the withdrawal to England of the migrating Angles , Saxons and Jutes , who gave rise to Old English. It was largely replaced by Weser–Rhine Germanic dialects, spoken by the Salian Franks . It spread from northern Belgium and the southern Netherlands to the coast and evolved into Old Dutch. It has, however, a North sea Germanic substrate . Linguists typically date this transition to around
6500-477: The cultural, economic and political advantages that came with being a Latin speaker, the Gauls eventually abandoned their language in favor of the language brought to them by the Romans, which evolved in this region, until eventually it took the form of the French language that is known today. The Gaulish speech disappeared in the late Roman era, but remnants of its vocabulary survive in some French words, approximately 200, as well as place-names of Gaulish origin. It
6600-438: The details of how language contact may induce structural changes. The respective extremes of "all change is contact" and "there are no structural changes ever" have largely been abandoned in favor of a set of conventions on how to demonstrate contact induced structural changes. These include adequate knowledge of the two languages in question, a historical explanation, and evidence that the contact-induced phenomenon did not exist in
6700-483: The earliest in the language. It translates as "I tell you: I am setting you free, serve". The phrase was used to free a serf . A lito (English: half-free ) was a form of serf in the feudal system , a half-free farmer, who was connected to the land of the lord for whom he worked but not owned by that lord. In contrast, a slave was fully owned by the lord. The Old Dutch word and the Modern Dutch counterpart laat are both etymologically and in meaning undoubtedly related to
6800-420: The empire from other Frankish raiders. Ammianus Marcellinus (late 4th century), on the other hand, mentions the Chamavi, normally considered Frankish, as the Germanic tribe who had entered the empire in this area at this time. Unlike the Salii, these Chamavi were expelled from Roman lands. Their grain was disappointingly unready for Roman use. In a poem from 400, Claudian celebrates Stilicho 's pacification of
6900-449: The family bond was made clear by the Salic Law , which ordained that an individual had no right to protection if not part of a family. While the Goths or the Vandals had been at least partly converted to Christianity since the mid-4th century, polytheistic beliefs are thought to have flourished among the Salian Franks until the conversion of Clovis to Catholicism shortly before or after 500, after which paganism diminished gradually. On
7000-401: The fragment is translated as "All birds have started making nests, except me and you, what are we waiting for?" The text is dated from around 1100 and written by a West Flemish monk in a convent in Rochester , England . For a long time, the sentence was commonly but erroneously considered to be the earliest in Dutch. However, it could be considered the oldest Dutch non-religious poetry. The text
7100-474: The gradual reduction of the articulatory distinction, eventually merging into a schwa ( /ə/ ). A short phrase from the gospel book of Munsterbilzen Abbey , written around 1130, still shows several unstressed vowels distinguished: That was a late monument, however, as the merging of all unstressed short vowels was already well underway by that time. Most likely, the difference was maintained only in spelling traditions, but it had been mostly lost in speech. With
7200-498: The headings. Notes: Final-obstruent devoicing of Proto-Germanic [β] to [f] occurred across the West Germanic languages, and thus also in Old Dutch. Old Dutch spelling also reveals final devoicing of other consonants, namely: Final devoicing was countered by the syllable-initial voicing of voiceless fricatives, which made [v] and [f] allophones of each other. Final devoicing appears much earlier in Old Dutch than it does Old Saxon and Old High German. In fact, by judging from
7300-460: The influence a socially dominating language has on another, receding language that might eventually be relegated to the status of a substratum language. In a typical case of substrate interference, a Language A occupies a given territory and another Language B arrives in the same territory, brought, for example, with migrations of population. Language B then begins to supplant language A: the speakers of Language A abandon their own language in favor of
7400-416: The introduction of new scribal traditions in the 12th and 13th century, the practices were abandoned, and unstressed vowels were consistently written as e from that time onward. Notes: Old Dutch was spelt using the Latin alphabet. The length of a vowel was generally not represented in writing probably because the missionaries, who were the ones capable of writing and teaching how to write, tended to base
7500-591: The intrusive language exists within a diaspora culture. In order for the intrusive language to persist, the substratum case, the immigrant population will either need to take the position of a political elite or immigrate in significant numbers relative to the local population, i.e., the intrusion qualifies as an invasion or colonisation . An example would be the Roman Empire giving rise to Romance languages outside Italy, displacing Gaulish and many other Indo-European languages . The superstratum case refers to elite invading populations that eventually adopt
7600-479: The language of the native lower classes. An example would be the Burgundians and Franks in France, who eventually abandoned their Germanic dialects in favor of other Indo-European languages of the Romance branch, profoundly influencing the local speech in the process. A substratum (plural: substrata) or substrate is a language that an intrusive language influences, which may or may not ultimately change it to become
7700-406: The languages they have replaced. Several examples of this type of substratum have still been claimed. For example, the earliest form of the Germanic languages may have been influenced by a non-Indo-European language , purportedly the source of about one quarter of the most ancient Germanic vocabulary. There are similar arguments for a Sanskrit substrate , a Greek one , and a substrate underlying
7800-458: The modern Dutch province of North Brabant , and adjacent parts of the two bordering Belgian Limburg and Antwerp Provinces . The first mention of Franks in the area was about 286 AD, during the reign of emperor Probus (276–282), when Carausius was put in charge of defending the coasts of the Straits of Dover against Saxon and Frankish pirates. In the time of Probus there is also record of
7900-539: The modern family of Low Franconian dialects, which are represented today by Dutch and Flemish dialects, and Afrikaans . Before the Merovingian takeover, the Salian tribes apparently constituted a loose confederacy that only occasionally banded together, for example to negotiate with Roman authority. Each tribe consisted of extended family groups centered on a particularly renowned or noble family. The importance of
8000-450: The natural landscape, in particular indigenous fauna and flora, have often been found especially likely to derive from substrate languages. None of these conditions, is sufficient by itself to claim any one word as originating from an unknown substratum. Occasionally words that have been proposed to be of substrate origin will be found out to have cognates in more distantly related languages after all, and therefore likely native: an example
8100-560: The other hand it is possible many Salians in Gaul were already Arian Christians, like contemporary Germanic kingdoms. Substratum (linguistics) In linguistics , a stratum ( Latin for 'layer') or strate is a historical layer of language that influences or is influenced by another language through contact . The notion of "strata" was first developed by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1829–1907), and became known in
8200-399: The other language, generally because they believe that it will help them achieve certain goals within government, the workplace, and in social settings. During the language shift, the receding language A still influences language B, for example, through the transfer of loanwords , place names , or grammatical patterns from A to B. In most cases, the ability to identify substrate influence in
8300-457: The recipient language before contact, among other guidelines. A superstratum (plural: superstrata) or superstrate offers the counterpart to a substratum. When a different language influences a base language to result in a new language, linguists label the influencing language a superstratum and the influenced language a substratum. A superstrate may also represent an imposed linguistic element akin to what occurred with English and Norman after
8400-529: The same name outside the Roman Empire, saying that they had been forced away by Saxons, and had come to share control of Batavia with the Romans. Whatever their origins, Zosimus says they were being pushed out of Batavia by a Saxon group known as the "Kouadoi", a Greek spelling of " Quadi " which some authors believe might be a misunderstanding for the Frankish Chamavi, who were mentioned by Ammianus. According to Zosimus, these Saxons had used boats on
8500-412: The scholar claiming the influence of a substrate. The principle of uniformitarianism and results from the study of human genetics suggest that many languages have formerly existed that have since then been replaced under expansive language families, such as Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Uralic or Bantu. However, it is not a given that such expansive languages would have acquired substratum influence from
8600-434: The scribe must have been unfamiliar with some Old High German words in the original. It could nevertheless be regarded as the first book written in Old Dutch. However, since the book never left the abbey, it cannot be regarded as the start of a Dutch literature and did not influence later works. Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu, uuat unbidan uue nu. Arguably the most famous text containing Old Dutch,
8700-513: The sense of 'to acknowledge, concede'.) Its modern meaning is roughly "to think someone deserves something, to derive satisfaction from someone else's success", and it is commonly translated as "grant" or "bestow". Maltho thi afrio lito Glosses to the Salic law code (the Malberg glosses ) contain several Old Dutch words and this full sentence written in the early 6th century, which is likely
8800-477: The simple implementation of a new model of succession. No trace of an established practice of territorial division can be discovered among Germanic peoples other than the Franks. The later Merovingian kings responsible for the conquest of Gaul are thought to have had Salian ancestry, because they applied so-called Salian law ( Lex Salica ) in their Roman-populated territories between the Loire and Silva Carbonaria , although they also clearly had connections with
8900-494: The six cases of Proto-Germanic: nominative , accusative , genitive and dative . A fifth case, the instrumental , could have also existed. The -s ending in the masculine plural was preserved in the coastal dialects, as can be seen in the Hebban Olla Vogala text where nestas is used instead of nesta . Later on, the -s ending entered Hollandic dialects and became part of the modern standard language. During
9000-479: The sixteenth century. Lipsius made a number of separate copies of what appeared to be the same material, but the versions do not always agree. In addition, scholars conclude that the numerous errors and inconsistencies in the fragments point not only to some carelessness or inattentiveness by the Renaissance scholars but also to errors in the now-lost manuscript out of which the material was copied. The language of
9100-477: The superstratum refers to influence, not language succession. Other views detect sub strate effects. An adstratum (plural: adstrata) or adstrate is a language that influences another language by virtue of geographic proximity, not by virtue of its relative prestige. For example, early in England 's history, Old Norse served as an adstrate, contributing to the lexical structure of Old English . The phenomenon
9200-467: The three different verb endings in the plural ( -on , -et and -unt ) while the more northern languages have the same verb ending in all three persons. However, like Old Saxon, it had only two classes of weak verb, with only a few relic verbs of the third weak class, but the third class had still largely been preserved in Old High German. Salian Franks The Salian Franks , also called
9300-427: The verb root laat (English: 'let go', 'release'), which may indicate the fairly free status of such person in relation to that a slave. The Old Dutch word lito is particularly recognisable in the verb's past tense lieten . End ec forsacho allum dioboles uuercum and uuordum, Thunær ende Uuôden ende Saxnôte ende allum thêm unholdum thê hira genôtas sint. The Utrecht Baptismal Vow , or Old Saxon Baptismal Vow ,
9400-448: The vocabulary of Old Dutch but rather of Proto-Germanic . Haþuþȳwas. Ann kusjam logūns. This sentence has been interpreted as "Haþuþyw's. I/He grant(s) a flame (i.e. brand, sword) to the select". It was discovered on a sword sheath mounting , excavated in 1996 in the Dutch village of Bergakker and is perhaps better described as Frankish than Old Dutch (Frankish was the direct parent language of Old Dutch). The text however, shows
9500-622: The vow is of particular interest because it is the sole instance of the god Saxnōt mentioned in a religious context. One of many baptismal vows, it is now archived in the Vatican Codex pal. 577. Sometimes interpreteted as Old Saxon, a number of Dutch scholars have concluded the Baptismal Vow was actually written in the 8th century in Old Dutch. The difficulty in establishing whether the text was written in Old Saxon or Old Franconian
9600-842: The word for yes, while syntactic and morphological effects are also posited. Other examples of substrate languages are the influence of the now extinct North Germanic Norn language on the Scots dialects of the Shetland and Orkney islands. In the Arab Middle East and North Africa , colloquial Arabic dialects, most especially Levantine , Egyptian , and Maghreb dialects, often exhibit significant substrata from other regional Semitic (especially Aramaic ), Iranian, and Berber languages. Yemeni Arabic has Modern South Arabian , Old South Arabian and Himyaritic substrata. Typically, Creole languages have multiple substrata, with
9700-491: The written language on Latin, which also did not make a distinction in writing: dag "day" (short vowel), thahton "they thought" (long vowel). Later on, the long vowels were sometimes marked with a macron to indicate a long vowel: ā . In some texts long vowels were indicated by simply doubling the vowel in question, as in the placename Heembeke and personal name Oodhelmus (both from charters written in 941 and 797 respectively). Old Dutch may have preserved at least four of
9800-531: Was associated with supernatural elements. Childeric and Clovis were described as Kings of the Franks, and rulers of the Roman province of Belgica Secunda . Clovis became the absolute ruler of a Germanic kingdom of mixed Galloroman-Germanic population in 486. He consolidated his rule with victories over the Gallo-Romans and all the other Frankish tribes and established his capital in Paris . After he had defeated
9900-471: Was likely composed in the northwest of Germany in the early 12th century, possibly in Werden Abbey , near Essen . Phonologically, Old Dutch stands in between Old Saxon and Old High German , sharing some innovations with the latter, and others with the former. The table below lists the consonantal phonemes of Old Dutch. For descriptions of the sounds and definitions of the terms, follow the links on
10000-407: Was with me." Probably based on a Central Franconian original, very little remains of the psalms. They were named after a manuscript that has not survived but was the source from which scholars believe the surviving fragments must have been copied. The manuscript was once owned by Canon Arnold Wachtendonck. The surviving fragments are handwritten copies made by the Renaissance scholar Justus Lipsius in
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