Re: [tied] Germanic decads

These forms are rare and indeed found only in the earliest texts. The idea that <sibunzo> is elliptic for unattested *sibunzo hund = ten heptads and that this reconstructed phrase is parallel to <sibuntehund> goes back to Osthoff and Brugmann; <sibunzo> has also been construed as an ordinal. Either solution implies that this sporadically attested form of the upper decads reflects something unusual and unique to OHG. I prefer the much simpler explanation of A.S.C. Ross: -zo is a reflex of West Germanic *-tox '-ty' ~ *-tux < *-téxu-, the old barytone counterpart of *-tog, with the final *-x exceptionally lost in unstressed position. This provides an exact parallel for my conjectural *sibuntexu.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 4:17 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Germanic decads

On Tue, 27 Mar 2001 01:41:56 +0200, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote: >I don't think this dialectal use of <hund> in upper decad names has anything to do with the original function of PIE *dk^mtóm as a Gen.pl. form ("of sets of ten"). There is one thing that *does* say "Gen.pl." to me, and that is the correspondence Goth -e: ~ OHG -o, as in Goth. sibunte:-hund, OHG sibun-zo (< *<hund sibun-zo> ?). According to Szemerényi, OHG <sibunzo>, <ahtozo> and <niunzo> are older than the forms <sibunzug> etc. (analogical after 20-60). So what could -te:/-zo be a Gpl. of? The parallel with Indo-Iranian s.as.-tí, ..., nava-tí- "60..90", made with a fem. collective *-ti-, however attractive, is impossible because of Grimm-Verner (we would expect Goth. *sibunde:-hund and OHG *[hund-]sibundeo), and there exists no collective suffix *-di-, as far as I know. Supposing an ad-hoc lenition of *t > *d would maybe be too ad-hoc, even given the lenitions that IE numerals are prone to (Lat. -ginta, Grk. hebdomos, ogdoos etc.).