Re: [tied] "-ila" as germanic suffix.

----- Original Message -----
From: "alex" <alxmoeller@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 8:49 PM
Subject: [tied] "-ila" as germanic suffix.


> I got the book which George recomaned ( The world of the Huns by Otto J.
Maenchen-Helfen) me and I have a question. Which is the linguistic evidence
that the "-ila" is a Germanic suffix before III century AC and after V or VI
century AC?

The suffix was in fact *-ilo:n (*-il-o:n), and the resulting forms belonged
to the so-called weak (nasal stem) declension. The final *-n was lost in the
nom.sg. in the historically attested languages but was kept in originally
inflected cases (as in Lat. homo:/hominem), so that e.g. the acc.sg. of
<attila> was <attilan> in Gothic. *-ilo:n formed diminutives; a good example
is Wulfila's name (*wulf-ilo:n 'little wolf').

The suffix occurs in all subbranches of Germanic, so there's every reason to
believe that it was inherited from Proto-Germanic. After the 5th/6th cc. it
is well attested in literary Germanic languages (cf. Old English diminutives
in -ela, f. -ele), so no other evidence is needed.

Piotr