At 9:47:08 AM on Tuesday, July 15, 2003, Miguel Carrasquer
wrote:
A few comments -- excessively long, and with a couple of
questions, because I'm trying to work through them myself --
from a source a bit more recent than Loewe, but still dated
(1960):
> o-stems:
> PIE PGmc
> Acc. *-om *-aN
> n. *-om *-aN
> Runic -a, ENWGmc. -0. P. Ramat suggests that the famous
> inscription "ek hlewagastiz holtijaz horna tawido" is
> perhaps better translated as "I Hlewagastiz [son] of Holt
> made [these] two horns", but I don't know if that is meant
> as a suggestion that *-aN had perhaps already been reduced
> to -0 in Runic, or as a suggestion that perhaps the dual
> was still alive in Germanic at that early stage. In any
> case, he reconstructs PGmc. *-aN.
Richard von Kienle, _Historische Laut- und Formenlehre des
Deutschen_, 1960, puts the loss of final *n in PGmc., making
it PIE *-o-m > PGmc. *-a-n > PGmc. *-a.
> Gen. *-osyo *-asa
> Runic -as, OE (West-Saxon) -æs > -es, OS -as. Gothic -is
> comes from the pronominal ending *-esyo > *-esa. Loewe
> suggests that OS -es and OHG -es cannot come directly from
> *-esa, which would have given *-is (*e > *i when
> unstressed), and represent contamination between -as and
> -is, but I very much doubt that. I think *e before *a
> simply gives /e/, even in unstressed position. Any more
> recent suggestions?
Kienle is more or less of your opinion, except that his PIE
starting points lack *y; he derives the runic and OE endings
from PIE *-o-so and the Gothic, OS -es, and OHG -es from
*-e-so, from the pronominal ending seen in *kWe-so 'wessen'.
As for OS -as, he points out that there are a number of
examples of OS <a> for <e> in final syllables, 'was wohl
Ausdruck der Vokalabschwächung ist', so that OS -as is of
uncertain evidentiary value.
> Dat. *-o:i *-ai
> Loc. *-oi *-ai
> North and West Germanic -e could come from either Dat. or
> Loc. Gothic -a cannot come from either (we'd expect -ai),
> so it's a instrumental.
Kienle takes North and West Gmc. -e to be from the Dat. and
offers three possible sources of Goth. -a, namely:
(1) On the basis of Goth. <hWamma> 'wem?' and <hWammeh>
'jedem' he suggests PGmc. * -é: from a PIE Ins. *-é: --
why?
(2) PIE Ins. *-ó:
(3) He sees no problem with a derivation from PIE Loc. *-oi.
It's not clear why he considers this a possibility but
not derivation from PGmc. *-ai < PIE *-o:i. Any idea
what he has in mind?
> pl.
> The nominative in *-oi is unattested in Germanic. PIE
> *-o:s would have given PGmc. *-o:z, which explains Goth
> -o:s and ON -ar, but not OE -as, OS -os. The
> reconstruction is thus:
> PIE *-ó:ses *-o:siz
> *'-o:ses *-o:ziz
> which explains all the forms (Goth. -o:ss > -o:s, ON
> *-o:ziz > -arr > -ar, OE/OS *-o:siz > *-as). OHG -a is
> the acc. form.
Kienle doesn't mention OE -as but gets all the rest from
PGmc. *-o:z < PIE *-o:s < *-o-es (or as he would have it,
PGmc. *-õz < PIE *-õs < *-o-es). He takes the OHG to be -a:
(which he says is certain in Notker, though he allows that
there may also have been -a from the Acc.); this he derives
from PGmc. *-õz. He derives OS -os from PGmc. *-õs and
says that Goth. -os could be from either PGmc. *-õz or *-õs.
OS -as is then supposed to be the result of vowel weakening.
> The Dat/Abl. was PIE *-oios, *-oibhios or *-obhios, Ins.
> *-o:is. In pre-Germanic, the Ins. was probably regularized
> to *-obhis > *-amiz and merged with *-obhios > *-amjaz to
> *-amiz (Goth. -am). ON and OE have -om and -um
> respectively as they have in all declensions, OS and OHG
> have -um. I'm not sure about ON -om, but -um seems
> derivable from n-stem -n.-bhi(o)s and u-stem -u-bhi(o)s,
> replacing o-stem *-am(iz).
Kienle would derive the lot from PGmc. *-amiz. He first
says that Goth. -am and OHG -um point to PGmc. *-o-m..., for
which runic ON <borumR> 'den Bauern' establishes a final
*-z. For the intervening vowel he points to OE Dat.pl.
<ðæ:m> with i-umlaut from *þaimiz. This PGmc. *-amiz he
takes to be from a PIE *-o-mis, mentioning Lith. <rankomis>
'mit den Händen'. The vowel in ON -om from runic -umR may
be misleading: at least one source says that /u/ (written
<o> or <u>) is the only vowel that occurs before retained
/m/ in weakly stressed syllables (apart from some analogical
optative forms). And now that I dig a bit further, Kienle
appears to make a similar claim for OS and OHG: PIE *o
appears as /u/ before /m/. As additional evidence he
adduces the 1.pl.ind.prs. of the strong verbs, e.g., Goth.
<nimam>, OHG <nemume:s>, from PIE *-omes.
Brian