Re: [tied] Bear, eagle

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 6661
Date: 2001-03-21

OHG had <arn>, pl. <ernî> (a masculine i-stem) beside <aro> (an n-stem, with the *-n invisible in the Nom.sg.). It's the latter consonantal base (directly comparable with Goth. ara and the Hittite stem) that looks more primitive, while OHG arn < *ar-n-i- represents a more recent extension based on the nil grade of the suffix, as do Old English earn < *ar-n-a- and Scandinavian örn < *ar-n-u-. The life-cycles of consonantal stems in IE languages often involve such vocalic appendices and declension shifts. The English word may very likely have been a pre-English u-stem that was abducted (alongside numerous other nouns, like "flood", "beaver", "thorn", "winter", etc.) by the more productive strong masculine declension.
 
The "bear" word is also an old "weak" n-stem (OE bera and OHG bero represent *ber-o:n-), while björn < extended *ber-n-u-.
 
To sum up, there is a historically underlying *-n- in _all_ these forms, and the most common Germanic extension thereof is *-n-u- (other branches have their own favourite variants).
 
Piotr
 
----- Original Message -----
From: tgpedersen@...
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 1:12 PM
Subject: [tied] Bear, eagle

Loose thought:

  W.Germ.     N.Germ.
  bear        bjørn
  (adel-)aar  ørn  'eagle'

  Were they PGmc a(?)/n-stems (term just invented)?

Torsten