It is a long-standing debate whether or not old Germanic languages, such as Old High German, Gothic or Old English, had a category of grammatical aspect. The position that the old Germanic languages possessed grammatical means of expressing perfective aspect as in the (contemporary) Slavic languages has been defended and criticized by various authors. Defenders of this view usually propose that verbal prefixes, especially ga- in Gothic and gi- in Old High German, were markers of perfective aspect. Olga Heindl takes up this issue in arguing that the Old High German prefix gi- did indeed have an aspectual function.

A second issue in the analysis of Old High German and Middle High German grammar is the genitive case marking of object arguments. Under certain conditions, object arguments either have to receive the genitive rather than the accusative case marker or the two cases can alternate. An interrelationship between grammatical aspect and case is known in various languages (for an overview on this topic, see Richardson Reference Richardson and Robert2012). In some Slavic languages, for example, Polish, Russian, and Czech, an alternation between accusative and genitive case marking of object arguments is well attested. An example from Polish is given in 1. As the contrast between 1a and 1b shows, the case alternation is restricted to perfective verbs. Thus, the case alternation is aspectually constrained.

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Elisabeth Leiss (Reference Leiss2000) argues that in Old High German, the accusative/genitive case alternation was restricted to perfective verbs, as it is in Polish or Russian. Building on this research, Heindl brings together the topics of grammatical aspect and genitive case marking in Old High German.

Heindl’s book can be separated into two broad parts. The first, covering chapters 2 to 4, is concerned with the notion of aspect and investigates the question of whether Old High German and Middle High German had a grammaticalized aspectual system. Part two, which covers chapters 5 to 7, analyzes genitive case marking of object arguments in the older stages of German. In what follows, a general overview of the two parts of the book is presented without discussing each chapter separately.

Heindl starts her book with a general discussion of the central notion of aspect. Since one aim of the current volume is to determine whether Old High German had a grammaticalized opposition between perfective and imperfective aspect, criteria identifying the two aspects are needed. Heindl discusses various contexts in which languages require the use of either the imperfective aspect or the perfective one, but she also shows that not all of these contexts determine the aspect choice cross-linguistically. Therefore, she focuses on those that require a certain aspectual value across languages. Such contexts are taken to be diagnostics for (im)perfective aspect. The diagnostics she uses are: i) only imperfective verbs can denote situations that happen simultaneously with a situation described by another verb; ii) only imperfective verbs can be combined with phase verbs such as to begin or to finish; and iii) the ability reading of modal verbs, such as can (in the sense of being able to do something), requires a perfective verb. These diagnostics are identified based on Slavic data and seem to be rather uncontroversial (as least for the Slavic languages). Another criterion is that perfective verbs denote complete events whereas imperfective ones do not. That criterion is also mentioned by Heindl but judged as being inapplicable to data from extinct written languages with no spoken attestations.

Having identified diagnostics for the two aspectual values, Heindl reviews the relevant literature on aspectuality in old Germanic languages (Old High German and Gothic). Prominent in her discussion is Streitberg (Reference Streitberg1891), who argues for the existence of a grammaticalized aspectual opposition in older Germanic languages. A central aspect in Heindl’s presentation is the discussion of methodological issues, as almost no authors—including Streitberg—proposed linguistic criteria for deciding whether a respective verb form is aspectually specified or not. Most often a decision is made by comparing Gothic or Old High German verbs—sometimes even out of context—with their corresponding forms in Classical Greek, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Czech, Polish, or Russian parallel texts. Such a methodological approach is judged as being inappropriate by Heindl, as the authors usually only discuss selected examples. Furthermore, in many cases it is not clear whether two situations described in two different languages are actually comparable. Whereas in one language two situations can be seen as happening simultaneously, a different author could conceive of them as occurring successively. Such issues clearly have an effect on the use of aspectual forms and indicate that a simple comparison of verb forms in, for example, Old High German and Old Church Slavonic, is not sufficient for deciding whether Old High German had a grammaticalized aspectual system.

In her own analysis, Heindl relies on the diagnostics listed above, which she applies to Old High German as well as Gothic. The analysis of texts shows that i) verbs taking the ga/gi-prefix do not combine with phase verbs, and ii) modal verbs under an ability reading combine with ga/gi-prefixed verbs. In addition, Old High German and Gothic show some infrequent occurrences of ga/gi-prefixed verbs in contexts requiring a simultaneous reading. In Heindl’s view, this is an indication that the prefixed verbs were perfective in the two languages. At the same time, simplex verbs cannot be analyzed as being imperfective, as they show up in clearly imperfective contexts as well as in perfective ones. Heindl sees simplex verbs as being aspectually neutral. Thus, for Old High German and Gothic, a contrast between aspectually neutral and perfective verbs rather than between perfective and imperfective verbs is proposed.

In Middle High German, the use of gi-prefixed verbs changed. The contexts in which they appeared became more restricted than in Old High German. A new development was the use of these verbs as infinitival complements of modal verbs. Based on a discussion of the relation between modality and grammatical aspect in Slavic languages—essentially Russian—Heindl argues that nonepistemic modality favors perfective verbs. Thus, the use of ge-prefixed verbs in the context of nonepistemic possibility (ability reading and alethic possibility reading) demonstrates that the prefixed verbs still had a perfective interpretation in Middle High German. Accordingly, gi-prefixed verbs do not show up in modality contexts (for example, in the context of necessitive modality) disfavoring perfective aspect in Slavic languages.

A further development in the Middle High German period was that in combination with the negative particles nie and nimmer as well as with ie ‘always’, ge-prefixed verbs were now preferred. Although the use of gi-prefixed verbs is much more restricted in Middle High German than in Old High German, Heindl argues that their occurrence in typical perfective contexts shows that the prefix still had an aspectual function in the later period.

Based on the evidence mentioned above, Heindl argues that Old High German and Gothic had a grammaticalized means of expressing perfective aspect. As in the Slavic languages, perfective aspect was expressed by prefixation. In contrast to the Slavic languages, however, simplex verbs were aspectually neutral and not simply imperfective. This view of simplex verbs as aspectually neutral clearly separates Heindl from other authors (for example, Leiss), who argue that they were imperfective.

The second part of the volume is concerned with the genitive case marking of object arguments. Contemporary German still has a (small) set of verbs that require genitive marking of their object argument, but the number of such verbs was much higher in the older stages of the language. A basic distinction can be drawn between verbs requiring genitive marking of the direct or indirect object, and verbs allowing for an accusative/genitive alternation. The latter type is an instance of (symmetrical) differential object marking (a term not found in Heindl’s book). By discussing previous analyses, Heindl shows that genitive marking did not have a single functional motivation, such as expressing partitivity. She argues in particular contra Donhauser (Reference Donhauser1998), for example, that genitive marking cannot be connected with the expression of grammatical aspect. Donhauser (Reference Donhauser1998) states that accusative marking is associated with the expression of perfective aspect, whereas the genitive is related to imperfective aspect. Heindl shows convincingly that accusative- as well as genitive-marked arguments both show up in typical perfective as well as imperfective contexts.

Heindl compares the case alternation found in older stages of German with similar alternations found in Finnish (Finno-Ugric) and the Slavic languages. Finnish shows an alternation between accusative and partitive case marking, which is, as argued by various authors, related to the expression of aspect. Partitive case marking is interpreted as a way of indicating that an event—particularly, an event in progress—is incomplete and therefore imperfective. In the Slavic languages, an alternation between accusative and genitive case marking is found. The Slavic languages—except Serbo-Croatian—restrict the case alternation to perfective verbs (see 1 above). In these languages, the case alternation is used for the expression of partitivity. However, genitive case marking is not restricted to such contexts because it is also used in cases of negation. Heindl argues that this choice of the case marker in the context of negation has an aspectual effect. As an illustration, she presents the Russian examples in 2 (examples 179a,b, p. 206; the glossing is added). Following Heindl, the sentence in 2a has a stative interpretation. It is not a particular activity that is negated here; rather, 2a says that Ivan is in the state of having not read newspapers. In contrast, 2b does express the negation of a particular activity. Whereas in 2b a certain reading event is negated, sentence 2a, according to Heindl, is used for describing a habit of Ivan.

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Heindl argues that the type of case alternation found in the older stages of German is closer to the Slavic type than to the one found in Finnish. In both Finnish and Russian, the case alternation is related to the expression of nominal partitivity, but, as Heindl notes, they differ in their interpretation. The alternation results in a progressive reading in Finnish but leads to a stative interpretation in Russian. Thus, the function Heindl attributes to genitive case marking in Russian, as well as in Old/Middle High German, is stativizing a predication. One argument in favor of the view that Old High German did not show the Finnish-type case alternation is that in the former, genitive case marking did not result in a progressive interpretation. This becomes especially clear in Middle High German, where, as Heindl argues, the partitive function became lost and the stativizing function of genitive case marking took over. Data that speak in favor of this view include i) some stative verbs that require genitive case marking of their object argument (as in 3a), and ii) genitive marking of the object of dynamic predicates that results in a stative reading (as in 3b,c). The Middle High German example in 3a is cited from Herzog Ernst (example 198, p. 220). In 3b,c, also cited from Herzog Ernst (p. 222, examples 204 and 205), the contrast between accusative and genitive case marking of object arguments is shown. In 3b, a situation of carrying a plate is described, whereas in 3c the same verb is used as a psych predicate.Footnote 1

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A final question Heindl raises is why genitive case lost its stativizing function in contemporary German. She argues that the same function has been taken over by other means. For Old High German and Middle High German, Heindl proposes that verbs were often ambiguous—in fact, she argues that they were polysemous—between a stative and a dynamic reading, whereas this ambiguity has been resolved in New High German. Thus, the stativizing function of genitive case can be seen as a disambiguation function that was no longer needed after the verbs became lexically disambiguated in the modern language.

Heindl puts forward a very interesting analysis of grammatical aspect and genitive case marking in older stages of German. A notable advantage of her approach is that she proposes clear criteria for identifying typical contexts for (im)perfective predications. The analysis of gi-prefixed verbs as being perfective is convincing. Her analysis also demonstrates that unprefixed verbs were not, in fact, imperfective but instead aspectually neutral. Thus, Old High German as well as Gothic did not have fully grammaticalized aspectual systems.

The second part of the book is interesting as well, but less convincing. The reason for that is that Heindl’s criteria for identifying the stativizing function of genitive case marking are not as stringent as the ones she formulates for grammatical aspect. The stativizing function is demonstrated using a couple of sentences, with less rigor for Middle High German than for Russian. This is naturally the case, since all one has for Middle High German are texts without access to native speaker judgments. Thus, the application of stativity tests is impossible, and one has to rely on Heindl’s judgments of the examples presented. Unfortunately, the sentences are not given in context, which is required to justify their interpretations.

Two minor issues that need to be mentioned are the way Heindl presents examples and the relevant literature covered in her analysis. It is surely a weakness of the book that it does not provide a morpheme-by-morpheme glossing or even a word-by-word translation of most examples discussed. This holds for examples from Old and Middle High German as well as for Gothic, Russian, and Finnish sentences. It is very hard to verify Heindl’s analysis of the various examples if one is not familiar with the languages and therefore cannot distinguish the meaning of individual sentence components. The second issue is that some relevant literature is not referred to. Most crucially, Olga Kagan’s Reference Kagan2013 book on genitive objects in Russian has not been cited (to mention just one missing reference). Since the discussion of genitive case-marked object complements in Russian is quite central in the second part of Heindl’s analysis, Kagan’s book would have been highly relevant.

There are two further critical points that deserve a deeper discussion. The first one concerns Heindl’s comparison of the Old High German and Gothic aspectual system with the one found in the Slavic languages. What the two systems have in common is verbal prefixes that derive perfective verbs. However, those verbal prefixes are not inflectional markers; they are derivational morphemes as the resulting perfective verbs often differ in meaning from their base. Heindl finds a further parallel between the old Germanic and the Slavic aspectual systems: Perfective aspect affects telicity and often results in a definite interpretation of object arguments. On p. 101, she writes: “Der perfektive Aspekt in den slavischen Sprachen ‘telisiert’ Ereignisse, das im Skopus eines perfektiven Verbs befindliche Objekt wird gequantelt und bekommt infolgedessen eine definite Lesart” [Perfective aspect in the Slavic languages makes an event telic, an object in the scope of a perfective verb gets quantized and as a result receives a definite reading.]Footnote 2 A minor issue regarding this quotation is that telicity is not a property of events but of event descriptions. The same event can be described by either a telic predicate (for instance, drink the tea) or an atelic predicate (drink tea).

More crucial is Heindl’s claim—at least for the Slavic languages—too strong. This is shown by the Polish examples in 4. The verb in 4a is perfective, but the predication is not telic, as the unacceptability of the time-span adverbial indicates. The object argument is not quantized, and the cumulative mass reading remains. Herbaty is interpreted as ‘unspecific amount of tea’ rather than ‘the tea’. The same holds for the object argument of the perfective verb in 4b. The mass noun is 4b is not marked by the genitive case, but it can get a quantification and definite as well as a nonquantification and indefinite interpretation, depending on the context.

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Perfective verbs are not necessarily telic (for example, Filip 2000, Borik Reference Borik2006, Fleischhauer & Czardybon Reference Fleischhauer and Czardybon2016), nor are their object comple-ments necessarily quantized or definite (for example, Filip 2000, Czardybon & Fleischhauer Reference Czardybon, Fleischhauer, Gerland, Horn, Latrouite and Ortmann2014, Czardybon Reference Czardybon2017).

Heindl, following Leiss Reference Leiss2000, argues that in Old High German and Gothic, perfective aspect had a telic function like the one she attributes to the perfective aspect in the Slavic languages. As shown above, such a claim does not, in fact, hold for the Slavic languages, and it is doubtful whether it can be proven for the older Germanic languages. Whether an argument has a definite interpretation or whether a predication has a telic reading can only be decided by native speaker judgments. As indicated by 4b, a definiteness effect can be due to context, and it is hard to show that the object argument of gisah in the Old High German sentence in 5 necessarily has a definite interpretation. This would require showing that in each context of use, the object only ever gets a definite interpretation and never an indefinite one. Such a proof, as far as I know, has not been presented so far.

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Thus, either the aspectual system in Old High German and Gothic is unlike the one found in the contemporary Slavic languages, or perfective aspect did not have a necessarily telic and quantizing function in the older Germanic languages.

The second issue concerns the interpretation of genitive-marked object arguments in Russian and in Finnish. A major interpretation of genitive-marked arguments is the partitive one. Under a partitive interpretation, it is not the entire referent that is affected by the process denoted by the verb, but rather just part of it. Heindl discusses partitivity without mentioning pseudo-partitive interpretations (for example, Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001). Yet in the examples she presents, the genitive-marked object argument receives a pseudo-partitive reading, as in 6 (example 172, p. 202). The sentence is translated—and interpreted—not as ‘I cooked some of the mash’ (which would be a real partitive interpretation), but as ‘I cooked an unspecific amount of mash’.

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Heindl is claiming that there is sufficient evidence for the view that the genitive marking of object arguments had the same functional basis in older stages of German as it has in contemporary Slavic languages. However, given that there is still no consensus on the exact interpretation of, for example, genitive-marked object arguments of verbs of consumption (eat, drink), this claim is weakened (see, for example, Piñwn Reference Piñwn and Amy1993 and Rozwadowska & Willim Reference Rozwadowska and Willim2004, who propose different analyses for such genitive-marked arguments in Polish). Not only does Heindl argue that the partitive interpretations of the genitive in the Slavic languages and in older stages of German were the same; she explicitly argues that this partitive interpretation differs from the reading of partitive case-marked object arguments in Finnish. However, at least in Estonian, which is closely related to Finnish, the partitive marking also receives a pseudo-partitive reading, as shown in 7, very much like the genitive marking in Heindl’s example in 6.

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Heindl is vague with respect to the notion of partitivity; she merely speaks of specific partitivity (“spezifische Partitivität”, p. 209) or of a quantificational function, and does not explicitly address semantic issues. As a result, there is no clear distinction between the two types of partitive reading: the one that emerges in Finnish and Estonian on the one hand (partitive-marked arguments) and the one in Russian, on the other (genitive-marked arguments). This lack of clarity is because she does not talk about the semantics of the respective constructions.

Finally, it seems difficult to equate the partitive interpretation of genitive-marked object arguments in Old High German and in Russian, but at the same time argue for a difference with respect to Finnish. This issue is crucial in light of Heindl’s claim that perfective aspect has a telicizing function and requires quantized object arguments. A telic reading can only be achieved with a real partitive interpretation of the object argument, whereas a pseudo-partitive interpretation results in atelicity. Again, one reaches a stage where native speaker judgments are necessary but cannot be acquired for the languages under discussion.

Heindl’s book is a very worthwhile contribution to the discussion of aspect and genitive-marked object complements in Gothic, Old High German, and Middle High German. Especially the first part of the book, concerned with grammatical aspect, is quite convincing as Heindl proposes clear criteria for identifying aspectual interpretations. At different stages of the analysis, Heindl talks about semantic issues and cannot present unanimous evidence that, for example, perfective verbs are always telic. As mentioned above, the comparison with Slavic languages further casts doubts on such claims.

The book can be seen as a contribution to the field of historical linguistics as well as an interesting crosslinguistic comparison of aspect and its interrelation with case marking in some European languages. Overall, the book is a valuable contribution to the field of historical Germanic linguistics, and despite the criticism presented above, Heindl develops a valuable proposal that may serve as a point of departure for further exploration.