From: tgpedersen@...
Message: 6683
Date: 2001-03-22
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen@...
> To: cybalist@...
> 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
--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> 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
>
Aha.
But what I thought was: original nothing/n stem, English generalizes
the nom., North Germanic generalizes the oblique form, which would
bring the PGmc inflectional paradigm of 'bear' and 'eagle' in line
with the Hittite inflectional paradigm for 'eagle'?
Question 2: Has the 'eagle' anything to do with that *arya- word (cf
Dutch 'noble-eagle')? Highness and such?
Torsten