Re: [tied] Germanic nominal declensions

16-07-03 18:38, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> There's the point quoted by Peter:
> -- Streitberg says "That at one time nasal vowels had come into existence
> -- in the accusative is shown by the fact that older northern runic
> -- inscriptions already have apocope of -a in absolute auslaut.., whereas
> -- an -a that follows a nasal survives."

I haven't got the book to hand and don't know what particular data made
Streitberg arrive at such a generalisation, but I suspect that most of
those <-a>'s that follow a nasal occur in the particularly frequent word
<staina> (<horna> is of course another example). There are however cases
of <-a> from *-an < *-om in other contexts, eg. acc.sg. <hagila> (on the
Kragehul spearhead, 6th c.), acc. <auja> 'good luck' (believed to be a
*-ja- neuter).

> Did I not mention Skt. -a:sas? Apparently not. There are several
> possibilities:
>
> (1) Skt. and Germanic independently added -es to the PIE pl. ending *-o:s
>
> (2) PIE already had a variant *-o:s-es, inherited by Skt. and Gmc., lost
> elsewhere.
>
> (3) The Skt. and Gmc. forms are not related: Gmc. being an innovation *-o:s
> + *-es, but Skt. continuing *-os-es, where *-os would be the old nom.pl.
> ending (stressed thematic vowel + unstressed *-es > post-zero-grade *-os
> [cf. Gsg. *-é-esyo > *-ósyo, Lsg. *-é-ei > *-oi vs. Dsg. *-e-éi > *-o-éi >
> *-o:i]), which, for understandable reasons [confusion with Nsg.], was
> either extended with *-es or replaced by newly created *-o + *-es > *-o:s
> [both present in Sanskrit].
>
> (4) The Skt. and Gmc. forms _are_ related, both from *-oses as per
> possibility (3), but in Germanic, *-oses > *-o:ses by analogy/merger with
> *-o:s.

Since both Germanic and Sanskrit seem to have the "mainstream" plural as
well, and there's no support for *-o:ses from other quarters, I think
independent innovation is more likely than the other possibilities.

> I'm struggling to understand the vocalism of the feminine n-stems (-o[n]-
> in ON, -un- in OS, -u:n- in OHG). In OHG obl. zungu:n, the fact that
> "tongue" was an uh2-stem might be relevant, but would the u: spread to all
> feminine n-stems?

I think the Germanic weak nouns deserve to be dealt with in a whole new
thread. Hogg (1992) discusses the NWGmc. raising of *[o(:)] (including
instances of *[o] considered to have been allophones of */a/) when
followed by *u in the following syllable, or directly by *m. In the
acc.sg./pl. of weak feminines we'd expect *-o:n-u- > *-u:n-u- > *-u:n,
spreading analogically in some dialects, while e.g. OE acc.sg./pl.
tungan (rather than *tungon) is the result of levelling out in the other
direction.

Piotr