Re: [tied] Germanic nominal declensions (take 2)

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 24814
Date: 2003-07-25

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 10:35:23 +0200, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

>24-07-03 23:17, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
>
>> While I'm sympathetic to Piotr's attempt to explain the Gothic masc. N. sg.
>> -a by regular sound change instead of analogy, I don't think the proposed
>> solution is viable. The N/WGmc forms (ON/OE -a, OS/OHG -o) show a
>> development exactly similar to that of the fossilized remains of the o-stem
>> ablative (Goth. -o:, ON/OE -a, OS/OHG -o), and given the unlikelihood of
>> something like *-oon in the n-stem nom. sg., I see no other alternative
>> than to invoke the Schleifton, by way of the PIE variant forms *-o:n
>> (acute) ~ *-o:~ (circumflex). Gothic has -a, not -o:, so it must derive
>> from something else, and it's not *-o:n (that gives Gothic -o:). Analogy
>> after the acc. *-an(u) is always a possibility, but my money is on a form
>> parallel with ON -e, from PIE *-e:n or *-e~. In the 3sg of the weak
>> preterite, Gothic -da/-ta does derive from someting like *-dhe:t (ON
>> -de/-te), so I don't see any immediate phonetic obstacles.
>
>That sounds reasonable to me. *-e:n would have been inherited in a few
>items (especially the 'ox' word). I only wonder why this _rare_ variant
>was generalised in Gothic and Old Norse. Paradigmatic levelling can be
>ruled out, so the only thing I can think of is the "exaptation" of *-e:n
>as a gender marker, so that feminines in *-o:n were contrasted with
>masculines in *-e:n.

Already in PIE, the HD paradigm (*-é:n, *-é:r, etc.) contains mainly
animates, while the PD paradigm (*-o:n, *-o:r, etc.) is more mixed.

>I still have doubts concerning the PIE variant (sandhi?) forms as the
>source of the apparent Schleifton in the West Germanic weak masculines.
>I'd much prefer a Germanic solution of some sort. In all the other cases
>known to me (including the fossilised thematic ablative) Schleifton is
>the result of contraction in final syllables, so I'd bet on something
>like *-aa at least in West Germanic (not that I'm sure where it comes from).

Only thing that occurs to me is *-h1en- c.q. *-h3on-, cf. Adams "Tocharian"
chapter V, "The Noun", where it is suggested that part of the Tocharian
n-stems contain that suffix. I'll read it through more carefully before I
say anything more.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...