From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 18306
Date: 2003-01-30
----- Original Message -----
From: <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 12:18 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Fw: Sorok i devianosto
> I assume you deduce the -i- from the a/e alternation in the attested
> forms. However:
> I vaguely recall a rule /e/ > ON /a/ > Da /e/. But I forgot what the
> conditioning context was, before /r/ (ON, ODa jarn, Da jern) or
> after /j/ (ON ek > ODa, Sw jag > Da jeg).
Breaking (*e > ja) was a type of A-umlaut that took place (most consistently in East Scandinavian) before a syllable containing (pre-ON) *a (the "broken" form <jak> corresponds to early Runic <eka> rather than <ek>), e.g. seldan- > sjaldan (Da. sjælden). OIc. serkr (pl. -ir; Sw. särk, etc.) is a masculine -i-stem, and this _unambiguously_ points to *sarkiz (breaking is impossible in an -i-stem, and an old *e would have been raised to /i/ in this kind of context, cf. the silk word: silki < selk-ja-.
Piotr