OHG had <arn>, pl.
<ernî> (a masculine i-stem) beside <aro> (an n-stem, with the
*-n invisible in the Nom.sg.). It's the latter consonantal base (directly
comparable with Goth. ara and the Hittite stem) that looks more primitive, while
OHG arn < *ar-n-i- represents a more recent extension based on the nil
grade of the suffix, as do Old English earn < *ar-n-a- and
Scandinavian örn < *ar-n-u-. The life-cycles of consonantal stems in IE
languages often involve such vocalic appendices and declension shifts. The
English word may very likely have been a pre-English u-stem that was abducted
(alongside numerous other nouns, like "flood", "beaver", "thorn", "winter",
etc.) by the more productive strong masculine declension.
The "bear" word is also an old "weak"
n-stem (OE bera and OHG bero represent *ber-o:n-), while björn < extended
*ber-n-u-.
To sum up, there is a historically
underlying *-n- in _all_ these forms, and the most common Germanic
extension thereof is *-n-u- (other branches have their own favourite
variants).
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 1:12 PM
Subject: [tied] Bear, eagle
Loose thought:
W.Germ.
N.Germ.
bear bjørn
(adel-)aar ørn 'eagle'
Were they PGmc a(?)/n-stems
(term just invented)?
Torsten