Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

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

>
>
> >
> > But I thought OHG had no plurals in <-s>,
>
> No, but PIE did, so they the must have been abolished it at some time.
>
> > and especially not in neuter nouns. I don't think the Germans would
> > have felt obliged to avoid *<Worts> or *<Wortes> as the plural of
> > <Wort> because I don't think that form ever existed.
>
> No, but <woordes> vel sim. must have occurred in Dutch and Low German
> (certainly in English) among non-native speakers.
>
> > So I don't see the process you describe operating in the case of
> > the spread of <-er> with umlaut in German.
>
> The insistence on illogical exception forms like neuter plurals in -er
> with umlaut even where they are not warranted is a way to keep the
> rabble and foreigners in their place, like insisting on 'fungi' over
> 'funguses'
>

OK I get what you're saying, but remember OHG extended neuter plurals
in <-ir> (e.g. <hu:sir>) long before the Hansa and its period of
widespread trade. I doubt that it developed primarily as a reaction
to foreigners and the rabble. I would put it in much the same
category as the extension of the plural <-en> to originally strong
feminines as well as weak feminines, i.e. a natural internal change.

> In the 1600's, in the Gouden Eeuw, Golden Century in Holland, the word
> 'arm' had two plurals, 'arms' and 'armen'; after the decline, 'armen'
> prevailed. The first form would of course be the one you heard from
> non-native Dutch speakers, those who used Dutch as a trade lingua

franca.

>
>
> > I don't know where German did get its few noun plurals in <-s>,
> > maybe it's from the Seemannsprache you have mentioned, or from
> > Mittelniederdeutsch, or perhaps French, since it seems to be
> > commonest among words of foreign origin.
>
> I didn't say Seemannsprache.

OK, I misunderstood the following:


"with exception of foreign words and 'low' words that are marked as
specifically Northern and part of a see culture (eg. Jungs "mates")."

> I think you need to read up on the history of the Hanse ('scuse my
> attitude).
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League
>
> It is like this:
> Northern Germany was the Hanse, and the Hanse was Northern Germany.
> The Hanse(atic League) spoke platt (Low German) and Low German was the
> language of the Hanse. The Hanse Diets kept their minutes part in
> Latin, part in Low German; *never* in High German. If Columbus hadn't
> discovered America, moving Europe's center of gravity to the west and
> producing Holland's Golden Century, the Hanse would still be powerful
> and might have become a separate state, speaking another language than
> High German. And Middle Low German was the trade Lingua Franca of the
> North Sea and the Baltic, thus it became creolized; it played a
> similar role to the development of the grammar and vocabulary of
> Danish, Swedish and Norwegian as the one of Northern French to English.
>
>
>
> Torsten
>

OK, I read it. I actually wish Low German had survived as a national
language, if only because I always thought Old Saxon was the prettiest
(on paper) Germanic language, while remaining conservative, and it
"deserves" a modern representative with full literary development
(weird reasoning, I know -- perhaps I'll end my responses to this
thread with that).

Andrew