--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002 1:06 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: A "Germanic" query
>
>
> >> Old English lost *x between vowels and also when preceded by a
liquid and followed by a vowel (e.g. <seolh> 'seal [Phoca]' vs. pl.
<se:olas> from *selxo:s), but not in <-rhl-> (<earhlic> 'cowardly',
etc.).
>
> > That doesn't count. Two morphemes, i.e. <-rh-> + <-l->. You'd
expect <-x-> to be restored in that case.
>
> I wouldn't. <se:ol-as> is also bimorphemic, and yet the <h> is
not restored. The boundary between the base and unstressed <-lic>
was "close", as in ordinary derivation, not "open" as in compounds:
we have <he:alic> from <he:ah>.
>
>
> > All right. Let's take two mutually exclusive statements
>
> > 1) All <x>'s vanished at the same time
>
> > 2) <x> vanished in some contexts sooner than others
>
> > "Ad hoc pleading" must, as I understand your term, involve
assuming an unusual state of affairs. Now which one is the "usual"
state of affairs? I have argued for 2). Any German village between
Hamburg and Munich in 19th century Germany would have illustrated 2)
in the case of the second German sound shift (ik/ich, maken/machen).
Your own "seal" example is a case of 2). Why do you then claim that
1) is the usual state of affairs?
>
> "Ad hoc" means that you posit a "rule" that produces your example
and is not needed for anything else. You claim, in fact, that *x was
lost in such a restricted environment that the loss affected the word
*erxlaz only -- at any rate, there are no other examples of
positional h-loss anywhere in Runic at the time when <erilaz> was
attested (not even _gradual_ loss, as in Old English; that happened
later). All that in order to save the derivation of <erilaz> via
*erxlaz from Pre-Germanic *erklos and to identify the latter with
<hercules> or <he:raklee:s>.
>
> Piotr
1) At some stage before Runic <x> was everywhere to be found.
2) In Runic hr-, hr- and -VhV- are documented.
3) At some stage after Runic <x> was nowhere to be found.
Therefore, in Runic <x> was everywhere to be found. To claim
otherwise is unscientific. Have I understood you right?
Nah, I don't think I want to wear that shirt. ;-)
And of course I would claim that -rxl- was affected everywhere,
knowing full well that the corpus of Runic is so limited that even a
Piotr couldn't find examples to the contrary.
As for such a rule being "needed", yes, true, a justification for it
would have to be extralinguistic, something like this:
The Etruscan, Greek and Romans knew Hercules under that or a similar
name, so did the Scythians, says Herodotus, and the Armenians. Now if
Tacitus informs us that the Germani knew Hercules, was it then under
that or under another name? Which is more likely? I'd say under the
Hercules name. And what would that be in the Germanic of that time?
Etc...
But from another point of view I'd tend to agree with you: If the
Heruli fell out with the Dani, and if the language of the Dani (and
environs) later dropped the -x-, and further Snorri (that indexed
author) seems to oppose "their" vs. "our", the "old" vs.
the "present" language, and the former has West Germanic features,
wouldn't the <eril-> whatever have been associated with <x>? I sense
an old shibboleth, <x> vs. nothing, here. Sacred vs. secular?
Torsten