Remnant Case Forms and Patterns of Syncretism in Early West Germanic

Journal article

Early stages of the Old West Germanic languages differ from the other two branches, Gothic and Norse, by showing remnants of a fifth case in a‐ and ō‐stem nouns. The forms in question, which have the ending ‐i or ‐u, are conventionally labelled ‘instrumental’ and cover a range of functions, such as instrument, means, comitative and locative. Otherwise, Germanic nouns have four major case forms: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. These early and minor ‘instrumental’ forms soon merged with the dative. Whereas Old English only shows the ending ‐i, continental West Germanic languages have frequent ‐u alongside rare ‐i (the latter only in locative function). In this paper, I argue for two interacting developments. First, I argue that the source of the rare locative ‐i forms in continental West Germanic is different from that of the instrumental ‐i forms found in Old English. I do this by analysing the morphosemantic domain of each of these minor forms on a language‐by‐language basis. Second, I argue that the divergence of the instrumental morpheme between Old English (‐i) and continental West Germanic (‐u) has a causal link with the equally divergent paradigmatic structure of the feminine ō‐stems of Old English and continental West Germanic.

Authors: Thurlwell, W

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Transactions of the Philological Society
• Publication date: 2026-01-16
• Acceptance date: 2025-12-14
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-968x.70020
• EISSN: 1467-968X
• ISSN: 0079-1636
• Language: English