Re: [tied] Re: Germanic nominal declensions

Thank you for the very full and clear quote. I still don't like it much,
but that is beside the point. It rather seems to me that tautosyllabic
/-r/ has a finger in many examples; is there a regular development of
*-air (+ vanishing material) to *-e:2r in some of the languages? And for
<Stiege> dialect borrowing is the easy way out; for <hier> and the
reduplicated preterite I would guess at secondary lengthening of short
/e/. That leaves very little - and little to make rules from.

Jens

> [...JER:]
> >It seems van Coetsem's theory of an a-
> >umlauted variant of original /ei/ being PGmc, /e:2/ is based on the
> >lone example of OHG stiega (Gm. Stiege) which is derived from
> >*steigha:.

[MCV:]

> I don't think so.  Van Bree's account ("Leerboek voor de historische
> grammatica van het Nederlands", 1977) is as follows:
>
> "Van Coetsem starts from a number of CGmc. vowel alternations in words
> which are apparently etymologically connected:
>
> e:/i/i:   cf. Goth. he:r/himma (daga) / Du. hij (MDu. hi)
> e:/i:     cf. OHG sce:ro, Du. schier / Goth. skeirs
> e:/ai     cf. Germ. schief / Du. scheef with ê, ON skeifr
>
> Therefore, in CGmc the alternation e:/i/i:/ai in etymologically connected
> words was possible.  Comparative linguistics shows that the last three go
> back to PIE *i, *ei and *oi [bla bla bla]  Van Coetsem therefore derives
> e:
> as well as i: from ei and explains the e: by a-Umlaut.  For his theory he
> has the support of the parallel development of biphonemic eu to eo and iu
> repectively.
> An important part of the theory is the paradigmatic Ausgleich which led
> to
> the early disappearance of the alternation i:/e:, e.g. in the 1st
> category
> of the 1st Class [of strong verbs --mcv]: this [alternation] fell outside
> of the Umlaut-system which otherwise only affected short vowels."
>
>
> In other words, van Coetsem's theory is based on more than OHG stiega.
> In
> all etymologically transparent case of Gmc. *e:2 (and it's true there
> aren't many of them), there are Ablaut variants with Gmc i, i: or ai.
> Given the completely parallel case of PIE *eu -> Gmc. *eo or *iu, Van
> Coetsem's hypothesis is highly satisfactory: the PIE "diphthongs" were
> biphonemic, and their early development in Germanic runs completely
> parallel to that of the constituent elements separately.  Therefore:
>
>       without   with
> PIE   a-Umlaut  a-Umlaut
> *oi   ai        ae
> *ou   au        ao
> *ei   ii = i:   ee = e:2
> *eu   iu        eo
>
> Ausgleich subsequently completely eliminates *ae and *ao in favour of
> /ai/
> and /au/, and almost all cases of *ee (e:2) in favour of /i:/, except in
> a
> few isolated words such as Eng. here, we[*]; Du. schier, Fries; German
> schief.
>
>
> [*] parallel to Skt. vayam (*wei-om)?  ON vér with analogical *-z.  Cf.
> Gmc. *ik (*eg^) ~ *ek(a) (*eg^-om).
>
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...
>
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