Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 72 (2014), 1-3 WEST GERMANIC *ÞÞ AND *ÞM IN DUTCH by Michiel de Vaan ‒ Leiden Abstract This article discusses the Dutch reflexes of the voiceless geminate dental fricative *þþ. It turns out that it regularly yields s(s) in all Dutch dialects, as opposed to tt in Frisian. Dutch words showing t(t) either continue a West Germanic geminate stop *tt, or they were borrowed from Frisian (viz. zwette). Some Dutch words containing West Ger- manic *þm show an alternation between d and s(s), e.g. adem vs. asem ‘breath’. It is argued that d arose from variants with a vocalization as *þVm, whereas sm continues the cluster *þm. 1. Introduction Whereas most of the relevant handbooks state that West Germanic *þþ yields ss in Dutch (van der Meer 1927: 105, Schönfeld/van Loey 1964: 57f., van Bree 1987: 157), some words also show the reflex tt. The latter is sometimes regarded as a feature of the Frisian substrate in coastal Dutch (most recently by Bremmer 2008: 293), but the available evidence has not yet been discussed in its entirety. Since in some lexemes ss and tt occur in neighbouring dialects which are far removed from possible Frisian substrate influence, as is the case for southern Dutch pessem / pettem discussed by Goossens 2004, 1 it appears a priori unlikely that all instances of tt are due to Frisian in- fluence. Some Dutch words containing West Germanic *þm show an alter- nation between d and s(s), the best known case being adem versus asem ‘breath’. It seems likely that the rise of the s(s) in *þm is histo- rically connected to that of ss from *þþ. Van Helten 1896 already ex- plained the d in Middle Dutch adem ‘breath’ and vedemen ‘to fathom’ 1 Goossens (2004: 479) writes: “Ik moet dus de vraag of de pessem(en)/pettem(en)- lijn de grens tussen twee klankwettig verschillende ontwikkelingen van de gegem- ineerde þ is, open laten.” My answer is given in section 3.3.d below. The research for this paper was conducted as part of the NWO-VIDI postdoc project ‘The Dawn of Dutch’ (2009–2014), project nr. 276-70-014. I am grateful to Rolf H. Bremmer Jr. for comments on a first draft of this paper. 4