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62-479: The word is from Middle Dutch and came into usage in English via French. In medieval military engineering , a berm (or berme) was a level space between a parapet or defensive wall and an adjacent steep-walled ditch or moat . It was intended to reduce soil pressure on the walls of the excavated part to prevent its collapse. It also meant that debris dislodged from fortifications would not fall into (and fill)

124-433: A barrier to keep spills from reaching the ground or navigable waterways. Most berms have sidewalls to keep liquids contained for future capture and safe disposal. [REDACTED] Media related to Berms at Wikimedia Commons Middle Dutch Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects whose ancestor was Old Dutch . It was spoken and written between 1150 and 1500. Until

186-467: A berm is a noise barrier constructed of earth, often landscaped , running along a highway to protect adjacent land users from noise pollution . The shoulder of a road is also called a berm and in New Zealand the word describes a publicly owned grassed nature strip sometimes planted with trees alongside urban roads (usually called a verge). [1] In snowboard cross , a berm is a wall of snow built up in

248-409: A berm refers to dirt and rock piled alongside a haulage road or along the edge of a dump point. Intended as a safety measure, they are commonly required by government organizations to be at least half as tall as the wheels of the largest mining machine on-site. Physical security systems employ berms to exclude hostile vehicles and slow attackers on foot (similar to the military application without

310-418: A certain ruler also created a sphere of linguistic influence, with the language within the area becoming more homogeneous. Following, more or less, the political divisions of the time, several large dialect groups can be distinguished. However, the borders between them were not strong, and a dialect continuum existed between them, with spoken varieties near the edges of each dialect area showing more features of

372-491: A corner. In mountain biking , a berm is a banked turn formed by soil, commonly dug from the track, being deposited on the outer rim of the turn. In coastal systems, a berm is a raised ridge of pebbles or sand found at high tide or storm tide marks on a beach . In snow removal, a berm or windrow refers to the linear accumulation of snow cast aside by a plow . Earth berms are used above particle accelerator tunnels to provide shielding from radiation. In open-pit mining ,

434-414: A ditch or moat . In the trench warfare of World War I , the name was applied to a similar feature at the lip of a trench , which served mainly as an elbow-rest for riflemen . In modern military engineering, a berm is the earthen or sod wall or parapet, especially a low earthen wall adjacent to a ditch. The digging of the ditch (often by a bulldozer or military engineering vehicle ) can provide

496-514: A labial or velar consonant. Some former class 1 weak verbs retained so-called Rückumlaut . These verbs had undergone umlaut in the present tense, but the umlaut-triggering vowel was syncopated in the past tense already in Old Dutch, preventing umlaut from taking hold there. Thus, senden had the first- and third-person singular past tense sande . These verbs tended to be reinterpreted as strong verbs in later Middle Dutch; sande itself gave rise to

558-426: A large-capacity snow bucket or a wedge plow to clear the tracks. Ballast regulators, machines designed to shape the profile of the crushed stone ballast that anchors the track in place, can be used without modification or refitted with purpose-built snow blades, blowers and wings to clear snow from the right of way. Locomotive-propelled Jordan ditcher/ spreaders are still sometimes used to plow especially deep snow in

620-731: A road grader, but allowing greater weights and speed along with the carriage of a road treatment applicator . Newer technology has allowed the use of articulated plow systems which can clear multiple divided highway lanes simultaneously; jurisdictions adopting this technology include the provinces of Alberta , British Columbia , New Brunswick , Ontario and Quebec in Canada, along with 21 states ( Colorado , Connecticut , Delaware , Indiana , Kansas , Maine , Maryland , Massachusetts , Michigan , Minnesota , Missouri , Montana , New Hampshire , New York , North Dakota , Ohio , Oregon , Pennsylvania , Tennessee , Utah and Wisconsin ) in

682-605: A rotating sweeper broom (sometimes called jetblade) and blowers at the rear of the plow. For sidewalks and narrow lanes small tractor plows (tracked or wheeled) are often used within Canada and the United States. When snowfall accumulates above a certain height, snowplow operators may be seen clearing the main arteries first (designated as snow routes ), in some cases for the exclusive use of emergency vehicles. Underbody scrapers are sometimes mounted on vehicles in residential and urban settings, operating on principles similar to

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744-609: A snowplow at either end. This enables a snow clearance train to reverse direction quickly if it gets stuck. Alternatively, a single locomotive with bogie plows can act as a self-propelled snowplow by running light engine. Via Rail , among other railways, has integrated plow blades with the front pilots of their locomotive fleet to clear thinner accumulations of snow as trains run. Self-propelled on-track steel and rubber tired hy-rail equipment can remove snow from railroad tracks. The Pettibone Speed Swing loader and similar machines, both with and without hyrail wheels, can be fitted with

806-423: A vehicle type. Service trucks usually use a blade sized 96 in (2.4 m) and more. Common blade size for pickup trucks and full size SUVs is 78–96 in (2.0–2.4 m). Smaller ATV snow plow blades are 48–78 in (1.2–2.0 m) wide. In many countries, railway locomotives have small snowplows permanently attached to their bogies , which also serve as pilots . With others, the snowplow forms part of

868-433: A word could be found spelled differently in different occurrences within the same text. There was the matter of personal taste, and many writers thought it was more aesthetic to follow French or Latin practice, leading to sometimes rather unusual spellings. The spelling was generally phonetic, and words were written based on how they were spoken rather than based on underlying phonemes or morphology. Final-obstruent devoicing

930-475: Is piled up against exterior walls and packed, sloping down away from the house. The roof may or may not be fully earth covered, and windows/openings may occur on one or more sides of the shelter. Due to the building being above ground, fewer moisture problems are associated with earth berming in comparison to underground/fully recessed construction. For general applications, a berm is a physical, stationary barrier of some kind. For example, in highway construction,

992-556: Is unclear. The following can be said: The vowels /eɛ̯/ , /øœ̯/ and /oɔ̯/ , termed "sharp-long" and denoted with a circumflex ê ô , developed from Old Dutch long vowels. The opening diphthong pronunciation was probably widespread, and perhaps once universal, as it is nowadays still found in both West Flemish and in Limburgish, at opposite ends of the Middle Dutch language area. In the general area in between, including standard Dutch,

1054-535: The US . The first snow plows were horse-drawn wedge-plows made of wood. The earliest reference found by the Oxford English Dictionary was written in 1792 in a description of New Hampshire : When a deep snow has obstructed the roads, they are in some places opened by an instrument called a snow plough. It is made of planks, in a triangular form, with two side boards to turn the snow out on either hand. With

1116-577: The 13th century. Its characteristics are: Hollandic was spoken in the County of Holland . It was less influential during most of the Middle Ages but became more so in the 16th century during the "Hollandic expansion", during which the Eighty Years' War took place in the south. It shows the following properties: Limburgish was spoken by the people in the provinces of modern Dutch and Belgian Limburg . It

1178-401: The Middle Dutch period. The consonants of Middle Dutch differed little from those of Old Dutch. The most prominent change is the loss of dental fricatives. In addition the sound [z] was phonemicised during this period, judging from loanwords that retain [s] to this day. For descriptions of the sounds and definitions of the terms, follow the links on the headings. Notes: Most notable in

1240-408: The Middle Dutch period. A new second person plural pronoun was created by contraction of gij/jij and lui ('people') forming gullie/jullie (literally, 'you people'). Note: There are several other forms. Definite Article ( die , dat = the) Middle Dutch mostly retained the Old Dutch verb system. Like all Germanic languages, it distinguished strong , weak and preterite-present verbs as

1302-467: The Middle Dutch vowel system, when compared to Old Dutch, is the appearance of phonemic rounded front vowels, and the merger of all unstressed short vowels. Long vowels and diphthongs cannot be clearly distinguished in Middle Dutch, as many long vowels had or developed a diphthongal quality, while existing diphthongs could also develop into monophthongs. Sometimes, this occurred only in restricted dialects, other developments were widespread. Many details of

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1364-506: The New York City Street Cleaning Bureau. Good Roads is therefore unofficially credited as the originator of the modern snow plow, though their horse drawn steel blade road graders were used to clear roads of snow as early as the company's founding in 1878 under their original name American Road Machinery. Good Roads patented the first four-wheel grader in 1889 thus making it the first pull grading apparatus patented in

1426-624: The Old Dutch long ā , and "soft-long" ā being the result of lengthening. These two vowels were distinguished only in Limburgish and Low Rhenish at the eastern end, and in western Flemish and coastal Hollandic on the western end. The relative backness of the two vowels was opposite in the two areas that distinguished them. The closing diphthong /ɛi̯/ remained from the corresponding Old Dutch diphthong. It occurred primarily in umlauting environments, with /eɛ̯/ appearing otherwise. Some dialects, particularly further west, had /eɛ̯/ in all environments (thus cleene next to cleine ). Limburgish preserved

1488-524: The United States. Unlike most early snow plow manufacturers, Good Roads continues to manufacture snow removal equipment today under the name Good Roads Godwin, now located in Dunn, North Carolina. In the early 1920s Good Roads often advertised in The American City magazine that "...three out of every four snow plows in use throughout the whole United States are Good Roads Champions." By the mid-1920s Good Roads

1550-463: The advent of Modern Dutch after 1500 or c.  1550 , there was no overarching standard language , but all dialects were mutually intelligible. During that period, a rich Medieval Dutch literature developed, which had not yet existed during Old Dutch . The various literary works of the time are often very readable for speakers of Modern Dutch since Dutch is a rather conservative language. Several phonological changes occurred leading up to

1612-545: The advent of rail travel and later, the automobile, a number of inventors set about to improve existing snow plows. In the US, the "snow-clearer" is said to have been patented as early as the 1840s, for railways. The first snow plow ever built specifically for use with motor equipment was in 1913. It was manufactured by Good Roads Machinery in Kennett Square, PA. and was designed to meet the exacting requirements outlined by engineers of

1674-413: The dative singular, a remnant of the late Old Dutch inflection. In some rare occasions, the genitive singular was also endingless. Some nouns ended in -e in the singular also; these were primarily former ja-stems, which were masculine or neuter. A few were former i-stems with short stems. Nouns of this type tended to be drawn into the weak inflection by analogy. The following table shows the inflection of

1736-493: The diphthong wherever it was preserved in High German. The closing diphthong /ɔu̯/ has two different origins. In the vast majority of the Middle Dutch area, it developed through l-vocalization from older /ol/ and /al/ followed by a dental consonant. In the eastern area, Limburg in particular, it was a remnant of the older diphthong as in High German, which had developed into /oɔ̯/ elsewhere. L-vocalization occurred only in

1798-430: The distinction was mostly lost. Class 3, which retained a clear distinction that did not rely on vowel length, was levelled in favour of the o of the plural. In classes with a lengthened vowel in the present, the singular imperative often appears with a short vowel instead, e.g. les , drach . An alternative form, with final -e by analogy with the weak verbs, also occurs. The eastern dialects occasionally show i in

1860-458: The eastern market until the 30s when the halftracks were supplanted by the much faster four-wheel drive trucks. In 1923, the brothers Hans and Even Øveraasen of Norway constructed an early snowplow for use on cars. This proved to be the start of a tradition in snow-clearing equipment for roads, railways and airports, as well as the foundation of the company Øveraasen Snow Removal Systems. Today snow plows are produced by numerous companies around

1922-436: The exact phonetics are uncertain, and seemed to have differed by dialect. The overall system is clear, however, as almost all the vowels remain distinct in modern Limburgish: /iː/ , /iə̯/ , /eɛ̯/ , /eː/ and /aː/ appear in modern Limburgish as /iː/ , /eː/ , /iə̯/ , /æː/ and /aː/ respectively. The vowels /ie̯/ , /yø̯/ and /uo̯/ developed from Old Dutch opening diphthongs, but their exact character in Middle Dutch

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1984-454: The former ja-stems, had an -e even in the strong and copular form, e.g. die vrouwe is clein e "the lady is small". Middle Dutch pronouns differed little from their modern counterparts. The main differences were in the second person with the development of a T-V distinction . The second-person plural pronoun ghi slowly gained use as a respectful second-person singular form. The original singular pronoun du gradually fell out of use during

2046-650: The game from the top of the hill. Berms are also used as a method of environmental spill containment and liquid spill control. Bunding is the construction of a secondary impermeable barrier around and beneath storage or processing plant, sufficient to contain the plant's volume after a spill. This is often achieved on large sites by surrounding the plant with a berm. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires that oils and fuels stored over certain volume levels be placed in secondary spill containment. Berms for spill containment are typically manufactured from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or geomembrane fabric that provide

2108-719: The inner end. In Canada purpose-built snowplow cars (based on a box car with a cupola above and behind the blade) are in use in areas where significant snow falls (especially in Western Canada, Newfoundland and Northern Ontario). These cars were influenced by the Russell Plow from the United States and used in Canada in the 1880s. Most of the Russell-type plows have been retired for smaller custom-built railplow or snow blades attached to hopper cars or locomotives. Conventional operation may see one or two locomotives running together with

2170-524: The language. The general practice was to write long vowels with a single letter in an open syllable and with two letters in a closed syllable. Which two letters were used varied among texts. Some texts, especially those in the east, do not do so and write long vowels with a single letter in all cases (as is the predominant rule in modern German). Middle Dutch nouns inflected for number as well as case . The weakening of unstressed syllables merged many different Old Dutch classes of nominal declension. The result

2232-481: The masculine noun dach "day", feminine dâet "deed" and neuter brôot "bread". Weak nouns were characterised by the ending -en throughout the plural. The singular ended in -e . The following table shows the inflection of the masculine noun bōge "bow, arc". Middle Dutch adjectives inflected according to the gender, case and number of the noun they modified. The Germanic distinction between strong and weak, or indefinite and definite inflection,

2294-758: The modern zond , mirroring strong class 3. Snowplow A snowplow (also snow plow , snowplough or snow plough ) is a device intended for mounting on a vehicle, used for removing snow and ice from outdoor surfaces, typically those serving transportation purposes. Although this term is often used to refer to vehicles mounting such devices, more accurately they are known as winter service vehicles , especially in areas that regularly receive large amounts of snow every year, or in specific environments such as airfields. In other cases, pickup trucks and front end loaders are outfitted with attachments to fulfill this purpose. Some regions that do not frequently see snow may use graders to remove compacted snow and ice off

2356-469: The modern period in Limburgish, and the distinction between /ol/ and /al/ was preserved, being reflected as ów and aa respectively. Phonological changes that occurred during Middle Dutch: Middle Dutch was not a single homogeneous language. The language differed by area, with different areas having a different pronunciation and often using different vocabulary. The dialect areas were affected by political boundaries. The sphere of political influence of

2418-468: The neighbouring areas. Middle Dutch has four major dialects groups: Flemish, Brabantic and Hollandic are known as West Franconian, while Limburgic is known as East Franconian (not to be confused with the High German dialect East Franconian ). In a finer classification there are: Brabantian was spoken primarily in the Duchy of Brabant . It was an influential dialect during most of the Middle Ages, during

2480-448: The obstacle deflector below the bufferbeam. Bolt-on versions also exist, and these attach to the bufferbeam or front coupler. However, larger snowplows exist, which tend to be conversions rather than purpose-built vehicles. Steam locomotive tenders , large diesel locomotive bogies and various freight vehicles have been used, with the snowplow body mounted on the original frames. They are one-ended, with conventional coupling equipment on

2542-428: The past participle. In classes 6 and 7, there was no distinction between the two different vowels of the past tense. In classes 4 and 5, the difference was primarily one of length, since ā and â were not distinguished in most dialects. The difference between ê and ē , and between ô and ō , found in classes 1 and 2, was a bit more robust, but also eventually waned in the development to modern Dutch. Consequently,

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2604-482: The rate of surface runoff . The berms either reduce the velocity of the water , or direct water to areas that are not susceptible to erosion, thereby reducing the adverse effects of running water on exposed topsoil . Following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the construction of berms designed to prevent oil from reaching the fragile Louisiana wetlands (which would result in massive erosion)

2666-411: The second- and third-person singular present indicative forms, instead of e . This is a remnant of older i-mutation in these forms. Umlaut is also sometimes found in the past subjunctive in the east. Middle Dutch retained weak verbs as the only productive class of verbs. While Old Dutch still had two different classes of weak verbs (and remnants of a third), this distinction was lost in Middle Dutch with

2728-478: The so-called "Brabantian expansion" in which the influence of Brabant was extended outwards into other areas. Compared to the other dialects, Brabantian was a kind of "middle ground" between the coastal areas on one hand, and the Rhineland and Limburg on the other. Brabantian Middle Dutch has the following characteristics compared to other dialects: Flemish, consisting today of West and East Flemish and Zeelandic ,

2790-479: The soil from which the berm is constructed. Walls constructed in this manner are an obstacle to vehicles , including most armoured fighting vehicles but are easily crossed by infantry . Because of the ease of construction , such walls can be made hundreds or thousands of kilometres long. A prominent example of such a berm is the 2,700 km (1,700 mi) Moroccan Western Sahara Wall . Berms are also used to control soil erosion and sedimentation by reducing

2852-577: The streets. Snowplows can also be mounted on rail cars or locomotives to clear railway tracks. A snowplow works by using a blade to push snow to the side to clear it from a surface. Modern plows may include technology to make it easier to perform the work and stay on the road. These include Global Positioning System receivers, head-up displays and infrared cameras. Large custom snowplows are commonly used at major airports in North America . These plows have oversized blades and additional equipment like

2914-528: The subjunctive became distinguished from the indicative only in the singular but was identical to it in the plural, and also in the past tense of weak verbs. That led to a gradual decline in the use of the subjunctive, and it has been all but lost entirely in modern Dutch. The seven classes of strong verb common to the Germanic languages were retained. The four principal parts were the present tense, first- and third-person singular past tense, remaining past tense, and

2976-406: The three main inflectional classes. Verbs were inflected in present and past tense, and in three moods: indicative, subjunctive and imperative. The weakening of unstressed vowels affected the distinction between the indicative and subjunctive moods, which had largely been determined by the vowel of the inflectional suffix in Old Dutch. In Middle Dutch, with all unstressed vowels merging into one,

3038-456: The trench). Security berms are common around military and nuclear facilities. An example is the berm proposed for Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vermont. At Baylor Ballpark , a baseball stadium on the campus of Baylor University , a berm is constructed down the right field line. The berm replaces bleachers, and general admission tickets are sold for fans who wish to sit on the grass or watch

3100-435: The underlying phonemic value. However, by and large, spelling was phonetic, which is logical as people usually read texts out loud. Modern dictionaries tend to represent words in a normalised spelling to form a compromise between the variable spellings on one hand and to represent the sounds of the language consistently. Thus, normalised spellings attempt to be a general or "average" spelling but still being accurate and true to

3162-608: The vowels merged with the "soft-long" vowels during the early modern Dutch period. The vowels /eː/ , /œː/ and /oː/ , termed "soft-long" and denoted with a macron ē ō , developed through the lengthening of Old Dutch short vowels in open syllables, but also frequently before /r/ . They were simple monophthongs in all Middle Dutch dialects, with the exception of western Flanders where /eː/ later developed into /ei̯/ . They might have been close-mid but also perhaps open-mid [ɛː] , [œː] and [ɔː] , as in modern Limburgish. There were two open vowels, with "sharp-long" â developed from

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3224-465: The weakening of unstressed syllables. The past tense was formed with a suffix -ed- , which generally lost its e through syncope and thus came to be directly attached to the preceding stem. This triggered voicing assimilation, so that t appeared whenever the preceding stem ended in a voiceless consonant. This phenomenon remains in modern Dutch. Unsyncopated forms, which retain the fuller suffix -ed- , are sometimes found, especially with stems ending in

3286-539: The winter of 1919, Carl H. Frink, owner of a tire and machine shop in Clayton (New York), manufactured and equipped a bus with a steel V-blade snowplow for Fred I. Dailey's Clayton to Watertown bus line. In 1920, Frink equipped a Linn halftrack with a snowplow and side-blades for F.W. Carpenter's Black River Bus Lines and started his snowplow business. The Linn Co. immediately started to equip their halftracks with snowplow and heavily promoted their superior traction; they dominated

3348-426: The world and available for different kinds of vehicles such as service trucks, pickup trucks, SUVs and ATVs. They are installed using model specific or universal hardware and mount to the frame of the vehicle to ensure durable connection. There are manual, power and hydraulic operating snow plows. All necessary mounting hardware usually comes in set with a plow. Snow plow blades are available in various sizes depending on

3410-585: Was a general distinction between strong and weak nouns. Eventually even these started to become confused, with the strong and weak endings slowly beginning to merge into a single declension class by the beginning of the modern Dutch period. The strong nouns generally originated from the Old Dutch a-stem, i-stem and u-stem inflections. They mostly had a nominative singular with no ending, and a nominative plural in -e or, for some neuter nouns, with no ending. Most strong nouns were masculine or neuter. Feminines in this class were former i-stems, and could lack an ending in

3472-399: Was fairly minimal in Middle Dutch, appearing only in the masculine and neuter nominative singular. These forms received an -e ending when a definite word (demonstrative, article) preceded, and had no ending otherwise. Adjectives were uninflected when connected through a copula. Thus, even for feminine nouns, no ending appeared: die vrouwe is goet "the lady is good". Some adjectives, namely

3534-442: Was manufacturing snow plows of various shapes and sizes for use on a wide variety of motorized equipment. Other snow plow manufactures began to follow suit as motorized plows were proven more efficient than other methods of snow removal. Carl Frink of Clayton, New York , USA was also an early manufacturer of truck-mounted snowplows. His company, Frink Snowplows, now Frink-America , was founded by some accounts as early as 1920. For

3596-465: Was not clearly tied to one political area, instead being divided among various areas, including the Duchy of Limburg (which was south of modern Limburg). It was also the most divergent of the dialects. Kleverlandish ("Kleverlands") was spoken around the area of the Duchy of Cleves , around the Lower Rhine . It represented a transitional dialect between Limburgish and Middle Low German . Middle Dutch

3658-402: Was proposed early on, and was officially approved by the federal government in mid-June, 2010, after numerous failures to stop and contain the oil leak with more advanced technologies. In coastal geography, a berm is a bank of sand or gravel ridge parallel to the shoreline and a few tens of centimetres high, created by wave action throwing material beyond the average level of the sea. Earth

3720-527: Was reflected in the spelling, and clitic pronouns and articles were frequently joined to the preceding or following word. Scribes wrote in their own dialect, and their spelling reflected the pronunciation of that particular scribe or of some prestige dialect by which the scribe was influenced. The modern Dutch word maagd (" maiden ") for example was sometimes written as maghet or maegt , but also meget , magt , maget , magd , and mecht . Some spellings, such as magd , reflect an early tendency to write

3782-484: Was spoken in the County of Flanders , northern parts of the County of Artois and areas around the towns of Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer . Though due to their intermediary position between West Flemish and Brabantian , the East Flemish dialects have also been grouped with the latter. Flemish had been influential during the earlier Middle Ages (the "Flemish expansion") but lost prestige to the neighbouring Brabantian in

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3844-511: Was written in the Latin alphabet , which was not designed for writing Middle Dutch so different scribes used different methods of representing the sounds of their language in writing. The traditions of neighbouring scribes and their languages led to a multitude of ways to write Middle Dutch. Consequently, spelling was not standardised but was highly variable and could differ by both time and place as various "trends" in spelling waxed and waned. Furthermore,

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