Re: Octha or Ohta?

> Those who accept a marginal ablaut pattern involving a primary PIE
> *a usually work with something like *a: (strong grade) vs. *a (weak
> grade), as in Gk. (w)ágnumi 'break' vs. (w)é(w)a:ge 'is broken' from
> *wa(:)g^- (Jasanoff 2003: 31, 150). Some of the Germanic Class VI
> strong verbs could belong here, e.g. pres. *skaB-a/i-, pret. *sko:B-
> 'scratch, shave' (< *ska(:)bH-). *ma:gH-/*magH- could well be a root
> of this type, the question is only why the expected pattern of
> *maG-/*mo:G- was levelled out in favour of the short vowel. Note,
> however, that Germanic has a long vowel in both pret.sg. and pl. in
> Class VI, as in Goth. sko:b/sko:bun, while one would in principle
> expect sko:b/*skabun. It seems that this vowel contrast was utilised
> to distinguish the present from the preterite. There was no such
> need in the case of preterite-presents, so instead of following the
> example of Class VI they generalised the one or the other allomorph
> completely; hence *o:G- and *maG-, each with the same vowel
> throughout. Another similar case might be *mo:t- 'be allowed to,
> have to', but I'm not aware of any extra-Germanic cognates.

There's a similar example in Danish. We used to inflect verbs for number (but not person) in the present. For three preterito-presents it looked like this:

inf. ville, pr.sg. vil, pr.pl. ville, pret. vilde
inf. kunne, pr.sg. kan, pr.pl. kunne, pret. kunde
inf. skulle, pr.sg. skal, pr.pl. skulle, pret. skulde

Unfortunately (or fortunately) Danish developed
-ld- > -ll-, -nd- > -nn-, rendering the above pronounced as

inf. ville, pr.sg. vil, pr.pl. ville, pret. ville
inf. kunne, pr.sg. kan, pr.pl. kunne, pret. kunne
inf. skulle, pr.sg. skal, pr.pl. skulle, pret. skulle

which because of its ambiguity of course in practice became

inf. ville, pr. vil, pret. ville
inf. kunne, pr. kan, pret. kunne
inf. skulle, pr. skal, pret. skulle

this undermining causing, I suspect, the invasion in other verbs of the sg. form -er into the plural (formerly -e). The resulting chaos meant that Danish officially gave up inflecting verbs for number around 1900, but stll dragging on the three above as

inf. ville, pr. vil, pret. vilde
inf. kunne, pr. kan, pret. kunde
inf. skulle, pr. skal, pret. skulde

to the grief of many, until 1948, after which the paradigm is as in the one above that.


Torsten