On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 12:10:13 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<
gpiotr@...> wrote:
>This is what I imagine happened to *de:- : in the 1sg. *de:mi and other forms where a nasal followed (also perhaps in some contracted forms like the inf. *de:n- < *de:-an-) *e: became Proto-West-Germanic *o: (e.g. 1sg. *do:m, later reduced, cf. OHG tuom > tuon > tuo), providing a new base for the whole present-tense paradigm (note that in OE o: extends to the pp. ge-do:n vs. OHG ge-ta:n, Dutch ge-daan, etc.) .
That's OK for OE, but I don't think /æ:N/ > /o:N/ is regular in the
rest of WGmc. (Du/G. *kwa:m-, *na:m ~ OE c(w)o:m-, no:m-).
Unfortunately, Gothic does not preserve the present tense of *dheh1-
(the past tense is arguably preserved in the weak preterit endings
-da, -de:s, -da, -de:dum, -de:duþ, -de:dun). In the absence of Gothic
forms, it's possible to formulate a hypothesis involving non-Gothic
"mirror Ablaut", the phenomenon whereby the normal Ablaut present /e/
~ past /o/ > /a/ is reversed to present /a/ ~ past /e/ to deal with
/o/-grade presents (which have reduplication in the Gothic preterit).
E.g. Class R1 (Goth. *hait- *he-hait-), becomes non-Gothic mirrored
Class A1: *hait- *heit- (> *he2t-); Class R2: Goth. *hlaup- *hehlaup-
-> Mirrored Class A2: *hlaup- *hleup-; Class R3: *hald- *hehald- ->
Mirrored Class A3: *hald- *held-...
Now we can imagine that a verb with /e:/ in the past tense may have
been transformed into a mirror image of Class 7 (Goth. le:t-,
le-lo:t-), i.e. present tense /o:/ vs. past tense /e:/. This is not
in fact what we see in a case like Gothic sle:p- se-sle:p / non-Gothic
*slæ:p- *sleip- (> sle2p) (analogical after R1 *hait-, *he2t-), but it
may be the origin of an alternation past tense 2sg. *de:s, present
tense 2sg. *do:s(t), then 1sg. *do:m, 3sg. *do:t, etc. replacing
whatever was the original present tense of "do" (candidates being a
reduplicated present like *dhi-dheh1-mi > **(de)da:-, or a form akin
to Latin facio:, if the remarkable Frisian forms of the verb "to do"
have anything ancient about them [inf. dwaan, pres. doch, dochst,
docht, pl. dogge; like slaan "beat" (*slahan) [slach; slagge] and sjen
"see" (*sehWan) [sjoch; sjogge]).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...