Re: [tied] Germanic without the Schleifton

On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 21:20:39 +0200, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

>A few remarks concerning the development of long-vowelled final
>syllables in Germanic.
>
>(1) Inherited long vowels
>
>*-o: < pre-Gmc. *-a:, *-o:
>Goth. -a, NWGmc. *-u
>
>*-o:n < pre-Gmc. *-a:m (as in acc.sg. of strong f.), or as in weak f.
>Goth. -o:, ON -a, OHG/OS -a, OE -e (< *-æ < *-a).
>
>The effect of the nasal consists in the preservation of length in Gothic
>and the lowering of the vowel (raised to *-u when non-nasalised) in
>NWGmc. We can posit
>
>PGmc. *-o:n > *-o:~ > Goth. -o: (denasalised), NWGmc. *-a~ (> -a)
>
>
>(2) Contractions
>
>(2.1) The gen.pl. of a-stems (PIE o-stems)
>
>Leaving aside the special case of Goth. -e:, we have *-o-om > NWGmc.
>*-o: > ON/OE -a, OHG/OS -o
>
>This is different from the development of both *-o: and *-o:~. The vowel
>was originally long in Proto-NWGmc., which suggests a late contraction
>(later than the raising and shortening of inherited *-o:). If instead of
>reconstructing an accentual contrast we suppose that PGmc. had
>uncontracted (disyllabic) *-a.a < *-a.an (the final nasal simply lost
>after a short vowel) < *-o-om, we get the following changes:
>
>(a) merger of *-o: and *-a.a in Gothic (both shortened in auslaut,
>yielding /-a/);
>(b) contraction of *-a.a > *-o: in NWGmc.

I don't think it really matters that much whether we reconstruct tonal or
syllabic oppoitions (*ó: ~ *õ:, *-oí ~ *-oi~ or *-o: ~ *-oo, *oy ~ *oï).

Just to clarify one point: the "ablative" adverbs have Goth -o:, ON/OE -a,
OS/OHG -o. Assuming hiatus rather than Schleifton in PGmc., the PGmc form
must have been *-aa(d) [c.q. *-aa(t) if we had PIE *-o:d instead of *-o:t].
Is it the final consonant that preserved length in Gothic -o: (not *-a),
and is it the fact that the consonant wasn't *-z or *-s what prevented
length to be maintained in OHG -o (not *-a:)?


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