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The Oaths of Strassburg: Phonemics and Classification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Robert A. Hall Jr.
Robert A. Hall Jr.*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

It has been customary in Romance philology to study and analyze texts in terms of their orthographical tradition, even where—as in the case of the famous Oaths of Strassburg of 842—their phonology has been the subject of intensive discussion and interpretation. At the present stage of linguistics, however, this is not sufficient; since every written document represents an act of speech, it is our job to determine as closely as possible exactly what we assume that act of speech to have been, and to analyze its systematic aspects just as we would those of living informants, as far as our evidence permits, making use of historical and comparative linguistic data for synchronic interpretation. This analysis we should then present in consistent structural terms, to make it most usable in further historical and comparative work. It is our intention to do so here for the Oaths of Strassburg, presenting (1) each of the Oaths in its traditional orthography, with a translation; (2) a discussion of the phonemic system that we assume for the Oaths on the basis of descriptive and historical criteria; (3) a tentative phonemic transcription of the Oaths; and (4) a discussion of the implications of this re-interpretation for our classification of the language of the Oaths.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 29 , Issue 3: July-September , September 1953 , pp. 317 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © 1953 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 References are to the following works, cited by authors' names alone; abbreviations in this list are explained in the author's Bibliography of Italian linguistics (Baltimore, 1941).

G. Baist, Alfranzösisch dh (ð) in altenglischen und altdeutschen Lehnworten [with F. Kluge], ZRPh. 20.322-34 (1896).

G. De Poerck, La diphtongaison de ẹ et de ọ en ancien français et la palatalisation de ū, Handelingen van het Negentiende Vlaamse Filologencongres 141-7 (Brussels, 1951).

A. Ewert, The Strassburg Oaths, TPS 1935.16-35.

R. A. Hall Jr., The reconstruction of Proto-Romance, Lg. 26.6-25 (1950).

P. Marchot, Petite phonétique du français prélittéraire (Fribourg, 1901).

J. Melander, review of Tabachowitz Etude [below], StN 6.164-70 (1934).

W. Meyer-Lübke, Die Strassburger Eide und die vokalischen Auslautsgesetze, ZRPh. 12.526-7 (1888).

R. Politzer, Free tonic closed e in the Oaths of Strassburg, RPh. 5.318-20 (1952).

W. Suchier, review of Tabachowitz Etude [below], LBl. 59.265-6 (1938).

A. Tabachovitz, Etude sur la langue de la version française des Serments de Strasbourg (Uppsala, 1932).

A. Tabachovitz, Quelques remarques complémentaires sur la langue des serments français (Härnösand, 1936).

W. von Wartburg, review of Ewert [above] and Tabachowitz Quelques remarques [above], ZRPh. 57.655-6 (1937).

A. Wallensköld, Les serments de Strasbourg, Philologische Schriften . . . Karl Voretzsch dargebracht 87-104 (1927).

The foregoing list does not pretend to be a complete enumeration of all the discussions of the Oaths of Strassburg. For a bibliography to 1932, see Ewert 32-5.