On 05-02-19 12:59, tgpedersen wrote:
> Gothic has wato, watins "water". Is this the Hoffmann suffix, and if
> so, what is it doing in a paradigm that is heteroclitic elsewhere
> -er, -in- etc? Are there two 'nominatives', one in -o:, one in -er,
> or is the latter a 'forgotten case'?
No, it isn't the Hoffmann suffix. It is a surviving root noun, as
opposed to Eng. water etc., which was converted into a thematic neuter,
*watra- < *wodr-o-, in early Germanic, at a time when the *-r nominative
was still used. Gothic generalised the *-n- of the oblique cases,
turning *wato: into a subtype of weak noun (in this case, declined
exactly like <namo:> 'name') -- a fate which befell various kinds of
consonantal stems in Germanic, cf. *nefan- < *nepot-, *me:nan- <
*meh1not-, *sunn-an-/-o:n- < *sh2wol-, *auz-o:n- < *h2aus- etc.
Gothic also has fo:n 'fire', gen. funins, dat. funin, with some pretty
odd restructuring of *ph2wo:r, *ph2un-, which presumably became
*fo:r/*fun-in- and then *fo:r > fo:n by analogy, late enough for the
*-n- to have been preserved.
Piotr