Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 62864
Date: 2009-02-06

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2009-02-05 22:33, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
>
> > By the way, I thought that the OHG representative of the IE o-stem
> > plural, i.e. <-a:>, was the regular outcome of PGmc *-ôz < PIE *-
ôs,
>
> More likely acc.pl. *-anz > *-a~ > -a(:), used for the nom.pl.
>
> > while OE <-as> and OS <-os> represented the outcome of a PIE *-
ôses,
> > which occurs sometimes as Vedic <-a:sas>. In any case I've never
> > heard of any stage of German having auslaut <-s> in the
nominative or
> > accusative plural of IE o-stems.
>
> _All_ Germanic strong masculine plurals (except that seen in OHG)
can be
> derived from *-o:ziz ~ *-o:siz < *-o:s-es without any serious
difficulties.
>
> Piotr
>

Right. How about the OHG strong feminine o:-stem plurals, e.g.
nom./acc. pl. <geba:>? What explains the <-a:>? Is it from an
accusative ending that first shortened the ending (*-o:nz > *-onz or
*-a:nz (PIE) > *-anz, then *-anz/onz > *-a~ > *-a:) then nasalized
it, finally becoming a long <a:>?

While I'm on the topic, what explains the OHG and OS strong feminine
dat. sg. <-u>? Is it because the *-i of *-o:i raised the long vowel
to *-u: before the *-i was dropped? But why doesn't the same thing
happen in OE? And why does the fem. gen. sg. *-ôz appear as <-a> in
OHG/OS (OE <-e>), why not *-o -- and if the gen. sg. *-ôz appears as
<-a> couldn't that also be why OHG has <-a(:)> in the masc. nom. pl.
of IE o-stems? (And by the way, I find it interesting that the
dative singular in OHG/OS is reversed from the situation in Slavic,
i.e. OHG/OS masc/neut <-e> = Slavic <-u> while OHG/OS fem <-u> =
Slavic <-e>). I hope you haven't talked about this at length
previously, I apologize in that case, maybe you can just tell me what
heading I should research in the archives.

Andrew