Re: [tied] Re: for Alvin

On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 11:25:53 -0000, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>As for your presumed Dacian postponed masc.(?) article -o, cf. in
>Busbecq's list of Crimean Gothic words:
>Rinck sive Ringo : Annulus
>
>http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcs/germ/got/krimgot/krimg004.htm
>
>http://www.geocities.com/erwan-ar-skoul/gothmod.htm
>
>This guy
>
>http://www.geocities.com/erwan-ar-skoul/gothmodgramm.htm
>
>tries to interpret that as meaning Crimean Gothic had a postponed
>article (masc. -o).

Feminine, actually. But Busbecq's account quite clearly states that Crimean
Gothic article was <the> or <tho> (anteposed).

>Since I'm trying to trace the trail of some very human "Wodan" and
>his wildes Heer, raging army, I'm trying to find whatever remains I
>can of a postponed article in "Thuringian". This makes very little
>sense since 1) the Thuringians were wiped out first by the Saxons,
>then by the Franks, and 2) the Saxon-Thuringian "Kanzleisprache"
>became later the model for Standard High German, so I'd have to look
>for something which occurs in Standard German, but is missing in the
>dialects, a difficult task. But one example might be found in <Friede
>auf Erden> "peace on earth", with the old "weak" inflection, used in
>other languages to indicate definiteness, vs. <Friede auf der Erde>.
>Cf Danish <fred på jorden> "peace on the earth" vs <fred på
>jord> "peace on earth".

Peace on earth, vrede op aarde. These are simply expressions that predate the
grammaticalization of the article in Germanic.

>It just occurred to me that this corresponds exactly to what we see
>in Latin nom. -o:, oblique -on-. Cf. Miguel's posting.

In the Latin n-stems, oblique -in- and -on- are both possible (m. homo hominis,
Cicero Ciceronis; n. nomen nominis).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...