Volume 144, Issue 2

Inflection classes that have many members often gain members from classes that have fewer. While this tendency is often pointed out in diachronic linguistics, the American psycholinguist Charles Yang (2016) goes further. He claims this to be always the case, so that minority classes cannot be productive at the expense of majority classes, and that productivity actually can be predicted. By this view, productivity is a direct function of type frequency; there are no other factors determining whether a pattern is productive. The claim of this paper is that type frequency is not the only factor determining productivity, and that while Yang’s approach, the ›Tolerance Principle‹, is interesting, it cannot be upheld in its present form. The paper presents an example of suppletion spreading in Germanic, and it presents examples of minority patterns spreading in North Germanic. Parallels outside of Germanic are pointed out. Also, it is argued that Yang’s (2016) analysis of English verb inflection and German noun inflection is insufficient, so these important case-studies, presented in favour of the Tolerance Principle, do not support it. In general, the paper emphasises the importance of ›local generalisations‹ and of seeing language as a ›system‹ of low-level regularities, not all-encompassing rules. While type frequency certainly seems important for productivity, inflectional morphology is a complex matter; productivity is also influenced by various factors of a more structural nature.

The gold horn B from Gallehus, datable to about AD 400, bears the following runic legend: ek, Hlewagastiz Holtijaz, horna tawidō ›I, H. H., made the horn‹. The Proto-Nordic weak verb taujan * – a causative ›to make sth. being added together, add together‹ → ›to make, produce‹ – is unlikely to have had a dedicatory meaning. The nominative endings in Hlewagast-iz and Holt-ijaz indicate that the language of the inscription is Proto-Nordic ( urnordisch ), seeing that the regular endings in WGmc. would be * -i , -ija and in EGmc  -s , * -īs . The first element of Hlewagastiz appears to be related to OIcel . hlé  n. ›lee, shelter‹ rather than to an otherwise unrecorded Germanic counterpart to Gk. κλέ(ϝ)ος ›fame‹. The second anthroponym, Holtijaz , is unlikely to be a patronymic ›son of * Holtǣ ‹, for * Holt(a)nijaz would be the form to be expected here. From a morphophonological point of view, Holtijaz may be a byname denoting place of origin (either ›of the wood‹ or ›from Holt‹), but there is no earlier evidence available in support of such a formation. More probably, we are dealing with the second constituent of a double name PNord. Hlewagastiz Holtijaz with parallels, for example, in Early Gmc. Harigasti Teiwǣ , Ostrogoth. Gunthigis Baza and West Franc. Berthchramnus Waldo .

The article combines an analysis of the ›Egerer Passionsspiel‹ with the fundamental question of the aesthetics, textual economy and function of late medieval Passion plays; it includes references to other genres and media of the Passion. According to the thesis, the Passion plays are characterised by the contradictory structure of two opposing representational concepts which are to be distinguished: the textual staging of violence and the representation of suffering. Both, as well as the becoming of Jesus as object resp. subject, are closely linked as textual processes with the bringing forth of the body of Jesus in the text. In contrast to other genres and media of the Passion, Passion plays potentially aim at a ›de-automation‹ of the transformation of violent events in the sense of suffering that was automated in medieval Passion culture.