To the memory of Edgar Polomé, who inspired with his keen interest in Germanic and Indo-European

Modern German existentials with impersonal es gibt are attested only rather late in the German tradition (from late Middle High German, in the fourteenth century), have few compelling cognate constructions (if any) elsewhere in Germanic, and thus are usually taken to be an extension of other senses (e.g., ‘give, produce, yield’) of the verb geben. It is noted here, though, that parallels with existentials based on verbs meaning ‘have, take’ cognate to geben can be found elsewhere in Indo-European, in particular in Old Irish and Latin. When viewed against the backdrop of there being several verbs in Indo-European meaning both ‘give’and ‘take’, these facts suggest an interpretation wherein the existential sense of geben is the archaism, and the meaning ‘give’is a Germanic innovation.*

The words discussed here are vaguely connected, for all three may originally go back to sound complexes designating objects capable of swelling and making frightening noises. In boy, we probably have a blend of *boi ‘devil’ and *bo ‘little brother’. (A close parallel is German Bube.) The etymon of beacon seems to be *bauk-, which, like OE būc ‘stomach’, referred to swelling. Its original meaning was ‘portent’ ‘banner’ and ‘signal fire’ were added to ‘portent, sign’ under the influence of the word for ‘token’. A reflex of another word that denoted an inflatable object is buoy, borrowed from Middle Dutch.

In this paper evidence for the phonological status of the velar nasal in Older Germanic is reviewed with particular reference to the innovation in the runes of a character for the sound. It is demonstrated that none of this evidence presents an unambiguous solution to whether the velar nasal is phonemic or phonetic. However, by taking the mapping processes that occurred during the invention of the runes as one of “prototypically significant sound” to character, a sufficient reason for the innovation of this rune is proposed.*

This paper considers the linguistic status of West Germanic alliterative, formulaic, syntactically tight pairs. These hendiadys binomials are phonetically interwoven, phrasally autonomous units. Echoic reduplication, including hendiadys, is a common way for language to generate iconic forms. Building on recent work on sound-symbolic expressives, iconicity, and the significance of poetic features (compression, phrasal symmetry) for language, this study argues that alliterative binomials are fundamentally affective, with proverb-like sentential characteristics, deriving idiomatic force from their iconically self-signaling structural properties. Like Stabreim, phonetically reinforced and with reciprocally highlighted components, they define a cohesive utterance (saying, phrase, metrical line). In this they share phrase-level contour properties with Behaghel's Law, which shapes the linguistic structure of day-to-day poetics, particularly in fixed idioms. The inquiry examines phrasal syntax, phrase-level iconicity and expressive symbolism, and the poetics of folk-discourse genres, reflecting language's structure.*

In the Heliand, type E (/ / × /) shows a graded preference for the b-verse according to the composition of its first three positions. In Beowulf, by contrast, the same metrical type occurs with consistent preference for the b-verse. This paper claims that the gradation of type E unique to the Heliand arose as a consequence of the reorganization of the first drop of type A, whereby the traditional binary categorization of the normal and heavy drops was replaced by a single prototype-based graded category, as demonstrated in Suzuki 2000.

Proto-Germanic *þe-na-z (Old English, Old Saxon, Old High German, Old Norse) is traditionally understood as ‘child, follower, servant’, connected with Greek teknon ‘child’, both from *tek- ‘to beget’.

This is unfounded; the meaning ‘child’ is unattested, the traditional etymology highly improbable. Proto-Germanic *þe-na-z is from *tek- ‘to stretch out one's hand, touch, receive’, designating basically ‘follower, retainer’, thus a technical term of Germanic Gefolgschaftswesen. Pertinent textual passages, the theory of Germanic heathen baptism, and the rites whereby a warrior is accepted into a lord's retinue are crucial for the analysis.