Again the Oaths of Strassburg

Abstract

The Strassburg Oaths of A.D. 842 have long been recognized as occupying a place of prime importance in the documentation of the history of French, since they represent the earliest attempt to set down the spoken language. Their brevity has presented some difficulties to those who have attempted to determine their exact linguistic nature, but conversely has enabled others to form hypotheses as to their dialect which have little support save that the Oaths show nothing to contradict such hypotheses. Modern scholarship, including the rigorous techniques of descriptive linguistics, has done much to correct ill-advised generalizations of this sort. Most recent and most important among the attempts to analyze the Oaths and place them in their true perspective is the study by Robert A. Hall Jr. in Lg. 29.317-21 (1953). Hall first gives the text of the Oaths as it is generally accepted, then phonemicizes it, referring to what is known of earlier and later developments to clarify points for which criteria are lacking in the text itself. Hall assumes the consonants/p bfvmnlrtdkgc s/, the vowels /i e a o u a/, and a contrast of tenseness vs. laxness applying only to the stressed mid vowels /e o/, symbolized /A/; the vowels /a/ and /a/ both occur in final unstressed position. Hall's attempt to classify the dialect of the Oaths is based primarily on the criteria that 'The Oaths do not show any of the specific characteristics of Old North French, such as vowel-raising and diphthongization in PGRom. free syllables, or reduction of unstressed /a/ to /a/, or palatalization of /k/ before /a/, etc.' On the other hand they show no distinctive features of Old South French or South East French. Hall therefore concludes that 'Between PGRom. and the ONFr. and OSFr. literary languages, we must assume an intermediate stage showing the West Romance sound shift which is common to both of these, but showing none of the features peculiar to them individually ..., labelling it simply Pre-French. The dialect of the Oaths of Strassburg is extremely close to this stage, and we might characterize them as having been written in nearly undifferentiated, conservative Pre-French.' If this conclusion is true, attempts to localize the dialect of the Oaths 'are nearly futile'. Furthermore, as a document of such a stage of Pre-French, the Oaths would assume an importance even greater than is usually attributed to them. It is the purpose of this paper to show that such an interpretation is certainly incorrect. Hall infers the existence of final unstressed /a/ from the fact that those forms which show in both ONFr. and OSFr. a final /a/ as a supporting vowel, show in the Oaths a spelling which fluctuates between -a, -o, -e, and -u (fradre, fradra; Karle, Karlo; Deo, Deus; poblo; sendra). There can scarcely be any argument with the conclusion that this 'clearly points to an attempt on the part of the