Re: [tied] Germanic nominal declensions

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

>
> Acc. *-om       *-aN
> n.   *-om       *-aN
> Runic -a, ENWGmc. -0.  P. Ramat suggests that the famous inscription "ek
> hlewagastiz holtijaz horna tawido" is perhaps better translated as "I
> Hlewagastiz [son] of Holt made [these] two horns", but I don't know if
> that
> is meant as a suggestion that *-aN had perhaps already been reduced to -0
> in Runic, or as a suggestion that perhaps the dual was still alive in
> Germanic at that early stage.

I have heard about it, but how can anyone even think that? Surely, the
language of the Gallehus horn must be from the area of West or North
Germanic, and in both /*-o:/ (properly the masc.du. form, which must then
be taken to have spread to the neuter much as it did in Greek) develops
into /-u/ (and u-Umlaut). Is <-a> really seriously meant as an
intermediate stage between *-o: and *-u? It hardly gets any better if one
derives the ending from a retained IE neuter dual *-o-yH1, since all
other i-diphthongs end up as Runic -e or -i. I find it hard not to
characterize the whole idea as utter nonsense.

Jens