A Comparative Study of West Germanic Language Histories: Varying Degrees of Inflectional Syncretism in English and German

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the relationship between two languages within
the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family:
English and German. I begin with an overview of each language’s
history, with special focus on Old High German (OHG) and Old
English (OE), Middle High German (MHG) and Middle English
(ME), and Modern German (MG) and Present-Day English, in order
to address the increased inflectional syncretism exhibited in English
as compared to the relatively conservative inflectional preservation of
Modern German. The Lord’s Prayer will be used to illustrate the case
syncretism exhibited in English and the contrastive preservation of
the case system in German. I will focus on changes in morphology,
but will also discuss phonological changes as they relate to inflectional
syncretism throughout the history of these languages. I will also explore
the syntactic repercussions of these changes and relevant factors which
have contributed to the conservation of many inflectional aspects in
German no longer active in the English language.