Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
>
> > But of the nouns that end in -er in the plural in German, only a few
> > are original s-stems (e.g. Kalb-Kälber, Lamm-Lämmer); German has
> > greatly expanded the number of nouns that end in -er in the plural
> by
> > taking this ending from the original (all neuter) s-stems' plural
> and
> > introducing it to the plural of neuter nouns that originally had a
> > plural form identical to the singular (e.g. <wort>). This was
> > probably done in order to make the plural forms of these neuter
> nouns
> > more distinct. The ending also was transferred to some masculine
> > nouns that originally were identical in the plural. e.g. Mann-
> Männer.
> >
>
> Oops, that rings a bell, you're right of course.
> I suspect they were trying to get rid of the s-plural, shibboleth-
> wise (the whole Caxton-story, in the archives).
>
>
> Torsten
>

I don't understand why you say "they were trying to get rid of the
s-plural", when this plural expanded from a few neuter nouns (Kalb,
Lamm, Kind, Ei, and probably a few others) to somewhere around 30-40
neuter and masculine nouns? Are you proposing that by consciously
seeking to eradicate this plural, the effect was to make it more
frequent? I don't understand why that would happen, even after
reading the entire Caxton-dispute (I didn't understand it there
either). By the way, the expansion started in OHG times, e.g. plural
<hu:sir> beside <hu:s>.

Andrew