From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 16967
Date: 2002-12-02
----- Original Message -----
From: <alexmoeller@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: <Mvinerean@...>
Sent: Sunday, December 01, 2002 11:57 PM
Subject: [tied] evolution
> ger: bin, bist, ist, sind, seid,sind
> rom: sânt,esti,este,sîntem,sînteti,sînt
>
> ger: sage,sagst,sagt,sagen,sagt,sagen
> rom: zic,zici,zice,zicem,ziceti,zic
> The question here is : how does it happen in two languages, different as
> family, we find the same fonological stamps, specialy when one is a
> "romance" one and the another a germanic one ( with 2
> Lautverschiebungen).
> Please do not think just at a simple coincidence. There are more
> exemples here; I limited myslef to give just 2 but if someone want more,
> I can give more.
The similarity of Ger. ist, sind to Lat. est, sunt (and their Romanian reflexes) requires no special explanation. They derive from PIE *h1esti, *h1senti (or, in the case of Latin, its analogical variant *h1sonti). The pattern is still visible in many other languages, cf. <jest>, <sa,> in Polish. Neither of the consonant shifts affected the cluster *st in Germanic (except that it became [St] word-initially in German, but this does not apply in the case of <ist>). In *-nt- the stop *-t- first became fricative *-þ- ("th"), which could undergo Vernerian voicing to *-d-, so that we find both *-anþ and the voiced variants *-and/*-ind in Germanic. In Old High German *sind became <sint> (through regular devoicing), and of course [-nt] is also the modern pronunciation despite the spelling.
<zic> and <sag-> are completely unrelated and whatever similarity you see between them _is_ simply accidental. Rom. zic < Latin di:co, with regular palatalisation of the initial.
Piotr