The Riustring Old Frisian -ar Plurals: Borrowed or Inherited?

Abstract

Rolf Bremmer (2007) concludes that the language of the Old Frisian Riustring manuscripts shows traces of copying from texts written in other Old Frisian dialects, notably from the Ems region. The strongest indication for his hypothesis comes from the masculine plural ending -ar, which is the rule in Ems Old Frisian but the exception in R1 and absent from other Riustring manuscripts. In this contribution, Bremmer’s hypothesis is partly confirmed, but augmented with the reconstruction of an indigenous Riustring plural ending -ar in masculine a-stem nouns denoting an animate subject, which appear substantially more often in the nominative. Nouns with a higher frequency of occurrence in the accusative take the plural ending -a. This is taken to reflect a former Proto-Frisian situation, with the ending -ar in the nom. pl. of masculine a-stem nouns against -a in the acc. pl., similar to Old Norse. The earlier distribution had become lexicalised by the time of Riustring Old Frisian. Some of the attested instances, however, are better explained as remnants of a copying process from Ems Old Frisian.

Taking Stock of Old Frisian Studies: 1992-2021

“…Despite the reduction of declensional class diversity, Adamczyk concludes that ‗the amount of inflectional archaism still retained in Old Frisian in its classical stage is much higher than expected in the light of the existing accounts and its late attestation date' (307). Versloot (2017b) claims to have found indirect evidence for an earlier nominative-accusative contrast in the masculine a-stems in manuscript R1 and traces of archaic instrumental and locative case-endings in manuscript E1 (Versloot 2017c).…”

“…A Latin psalter interverbally glossed with Old Frisian words from around 1200 already shows Low German interference (Bremmer 2007a: 226-227). A full analysis of the extent to which Low German influence is present in the various Old Frisiansome of which contain Middle Low German texts toomanuscripts is still wanting, but some inroads into this field, notably with respect to Old East Frisian, have been made (Bremmer 1996(Bremmer : 9-10, 1997(Bremmer , 2008b2017b). In the course of the fifteenth century, Low German replaced Frisian as a written medium in the lands east of the River Ems (Vries 2006).…”

“…The latter dual development has been much discussed (cf. de Vaan 2011;Versloot 2017); fronting of Gmc a > e (e.g., stef ‗staff'); breaking of e and i before χ, χt, χs (e.g., tiuche < *tehhō-‗parcel of land', riucht < *reχt-‗right', Modern West Frisian mjoks < OFris *miuchs < *mehsa-‗dung'); labio-velar breaking of i > iu [ju] (e.g., niugen < *nigun < *newum-‗nine', siunga < *sigwan-‗to sing; loss of final -n in infinitives, in endings of oblique forms of nouns and adjectives, in some numerals and in prepositions, e.g., setta ‗to set' (inf. ), thes alda boda (gen.) ‗of the old messenger', būta ‗outside' (prep.…”

“…plural -ar in strong masculine nouns (e.g., bāmar (cf. Versloot 2014Versloot , 2017b; personal pronouns hiu ‗she' and hia ‗they' begin with h-(with Old English) instead of s-(as in Old Dutch, Old Saxon, Old High German) (cf. Stiles 2017); the use of the adverb thēr ‗there' as a relative particle.…”