The emergence of etymological spellings 1. Separating morphemes

The decrease of possible variants and the increase of more consistent forms also had an impact on the spelling of cognates and of corresponding mor-phemes in word paradigms. A consistent graphical unit could be used as a basis for etymological spellings: it was utilized to denote that words be-longed to the same morphological paradigm. From this point, it was only a small step to establishing and maintaining invariant forms in singular and plural (<kind/kinder>).

Over the course of the 16th century, morphemes were increasingly seg-mented as parts of written words. This key step towards an etymological principle can be proved by the change of Latin-style spellings of <v> and

<u> according to their position in the word. Until then, <v> had been placed at the beginning of words, and <u> within the word or in final posi-tion, e.g., vnter ‘under’ (with <v> for [ʊ]), vater ‘father’ (with <v> for [f]), but herunter ‘down’, großuater ‘grandfather’, within the word. Now, dur-ing the 16th century, compounds were segmented into their morphemes, i.e., her+vnter or groß+vater, and written with the <v> marking the initial position of a word even within compounds. Therefore, one can discover a

<v> within written words for the first time. This change in spelling habits happened slowly and subtly; it was never a point of interest in scholarly discourse. This situation differed from that of French. Baddeley (1996: 292) shows that the variant spelling of initial segments after apostrophes (qu’un/qu’vn, d’un/d’vn) was noticed and mentioned by the grammarians, but otherwise very little internal segmentation of morphemes took place. In German, the principle of word internal constant spellings of lexemes also applied to compounds that contained a morpheme ending in <ſ>, such as biſher ‘until now’ or auſſage ‘testimony’. Those compounds were now writ-ten with final <s>: bisher, ausſage according to the spelling of bis ‘until’

and aus ‘out’. This segmentation of written word-forms set the foundations for etymological spelling regulations.

Further proof of the segmentation of morphemes can be found in hy-phenation. It was explicitly underlined by the grammarians of the day that hyphenation should go hand in hand with a morphological analysis. In the 1520s, Valentin Ickelsamer, the author of the first German grammar, gave the example of the word Buchſtabe ‘letter’, lit. ‘rod of beech’ which should be separated as Buch=ſtab=e (beech+rod+suffix) and not Buch=ſta=be because otherwise nobody would know what ſta meant (cf. C8v). He obvi-ously focussed on the semantic process of decoding by the reader. But alongside the theory we also encounter similar examples of word separation in practice. Examples such as jar=en ‘years’, zung=en ‘tongues’, Buͤch=er

‘books’, beſitz=ung ‘possession’, her=aus ‘out of’ show that, in particular, plural morphemes, suffixes or prepositions in adverbs were separated mor-phologically in the 16th century.

3.2. Umlaut spellings

Although morphological segmentation increased significantly during the 16th century, etymological spellings existed only “in principle”. As a spell-ing regulation, etymological spellspell-ings did not come under a more general rule until the 18th and 19th centuries. This fact is of great importance, since it shows that this historical development ran counter to the general applica-tion of a rule which was formulated, recommended, sancapplica-tioned and execut-ed by administrative acts.

The change from <e> to <aͤ> in words that had cognates containing an

<a> (e.g., kelte > kaͤlte ‘coldness’ to align it with kalt ‘cold’) was based on a necessary preliminary: the re-analysis of the a-umlaut as a morphological spelling. This was not so easy to begin with. In the Upper German written dialects, a tradition of phonographic spellings of the more open e-variants by <aͤ> already existed. In the course of the 16th century, this innovation spread out from the South to other German regions (cf. von Bahder 1890:

104–153, Moser 1929: §70, Hatz 1986, Ruge 2004: 57–104). The West Central German area was the gateway allowing the progression of the um-laut spelling into Central and Northern German regions. Only there was the spelling re-analyzed as a morphological spelling. It is a highly plausible presumption that the innovation was spread via trade or by journeyman typesetters.³ Their trails were in a sense channelled, and thus not only pro-ceeded along the beaten paths of the trade routes. They also followed other affinities, such as religious ones. It was by no means coincidental that such innovations diffused from the Catholic South to Catholic Cologne (cf.

Hoffmann 2003 and 2004). We do not know whether the <aͤ> therefore initially had a rather unsavoury reputation as the “orthography of the Counter-Reformation” in the eyes of Protestants. However, this may be an important point in explaining resistance to the innovation: the area that was most resistant to this change was the one that is usually considered the most innovative, influential and trend-setting German region: Upper Saxony, the domain of Luther. So, the surprising reluctance to utilize the new letter might be explained by the fact that the <aͤ> was seen as a “Catholic” variant and thus one that was to be avoided as far as possible by Protestants.

Besides this possible reluctance on the part of Protestants in the East Central German area, there is another striking observation. The umlaut spellings spread both geographically and also to an increasingly greater number of words in the lexicon. However, it was done in an irregular and disorderly way. Old and new spellings coexisted side by side, at least in the hitherto-studied printed texts (cf. Ruge 2004 and Voeste 2007). The typeset-ters who were responsible for this mixing of variants did not seem to be disturbed by it at all. They set words with an umlaut and without one side by side, thus applying and ignoring the morphological principle in the same expression (cf. the variants Fraͤwlein and Frewlein ‘young noble lady’, derived from Fraw ‘lady’ in figure 7). The change in favour of an etymo-logical spelling took place over time, but it was not a planned innovation.

On the other hand, for a long time, spellings with umlaut might have been an additional help to coin new variants. For this reason, the spellings were not predictable: a form such as <naͤchte> ‘nights’ did not necessarily bring about <maͤchte> ‘powers’: the typesetters in the 16th century preferred

<mechte> despite <macht>. Similarly, they set <taͤglich> ‘daily’ alongside

<nemlich> ‘namely’ and disliked <naͤmlich> in spite of <name>.

Figure 7. Variants of Fraͤwlein in a list from Rostock (Kurtze Jedoch Gruendliche und Warhafftige Relation 1596: C r)

Obviously, we have to consider that there has never been one single event that affected all possible cases under examination. The data argues against the general application of a rule. Nevertheless, language historians have proposed to attribute the role of spelling watchdog to the grammarians and their metalinguistic scholarly discourse. It is true that the grammarians put

the etymological principle into words at an early stage, first and foremost Fabian Frangk in his chancery book (Ein Cantzley vnd Titel büchlin, printed in 1531 in Wittenberg, Upper Saxony). Unfortunately, it was the Upper Saxons who resisted the new spellings until the 1580s – that is, 50 to 60 years after Frangk’s remarks.⁴

3.3. The transfer of geminate consonants

In German, word forms that contain written geminate consonants can pass them on to their cognates. It nowadays is a general rule that the consonants are written double even when followed by another consonant (cf. the ex-amples of stellen ‘to put’ and its cognates in table 1). However, the initial steps to this rule only developed during the 16th century. At the beginning of the century, we only find geminates in words that go back to an equiva-lent Middle High German counterpart, where the geminates were actually pronounced. The Early New High German writers still doubled letters as in mitte ‘middle’, halle ‘hall’, ſonne ‘sun’, even though the consonants were no longer pronounced this way. The writers maintained the pattern, but they changed the ends: geminates indicated a preceding short vowel, as well as a following neutral vowel, schwa. But in Early New High German, other Middle High German words without geminates were also “infected” with this historical spelling. In the course of the 16th century, scribes and type-setters started to generalize this pattern. As a result, they even applied it to cognate forms without the necessary structural preconditions (<blat> ‘leaf’

> <blatt> according to <bletter>/<blaͤtter>, <blattes>).

Table 1. Examples from the paradigm of stellen ‘to put’

inflection derivation composition

stellen Stelle Stellordnung

ich stelle Vorstellung Stellenpool

du stellst Angestellter Stellwerk

er stellt bestellbar Bestellschein

Again, etymological spellings prove to be indications of a logographic pat-tern formation, of the development of conventions in written language.

While segmental-phonographic writing rules are based on phonological structures, etymological spellings can be regarded as grapho-phonological

hermaphrodites. Their input form is a graphic form and not a phonological one. Or, to be more precise, their defining characteristic is an explicit (Eisenberg 1988) or supporting phonological form (Maas 1989) – usually the plural or the genitive form – whose graphic reproduction serves as a basis for the etymological spelling (cf. table 2).

Table 2. The derivation of the etymological spelling <blatt> ‘leaf’

(cf. Eisenberg 1993: 87ff.)

Stages in the derivation of <blatt>

phonological structure [blat]

segmental-phonographic form <blat>

explicit or supporting form [blɛtɐ], [blatəs] ‘leaves’, ‘of the leaf’

graphic reproduction <bletter>/<blaͤtter>, <blattes>

etymological spelling <blatt>

An examination of texts from the 16th century reveals a somewhat surpris-ing inconsistency in this regard: some consonants, such as <t>, <l> or <f>

are easily doubled, independently of their vocalic or consonantal context.

We often find them succeeding a long vowel or a diphthong as in <verrat-ten>, <biet<verrat-ten>, <heuttig>. But on the other hand there are letters such as

<m> that are rarely doubled, and then only after a preceding short vowel.

That is why one cannot speak of an increasing trend towards transferring geminate consonants to their cognates. During the 16th century, we have to consider the graphetic form of the letter. Is it a “Giacomettic” letter, like

<t>, <l>, <f>, or a “Rubenesque” one, like <m>? Giacomettic letters are doubled in every given context, presumably for aesthetic reasons, whereas Rubenesque letters are only doubled for syllabic – and for etymological reasons.