20-08-03 12:06, tgpedersen wrote:
> A vowel sequence *-yky- (vel sim.) is easily simplified to *-yk-.
> Those causatives/non-causatives would be easily confused. The remaing
> ones eg. 'ligge'/'lægge' are constantly confused in Danish. Which
> means you can't say that Gothic 'weihan' isn't originally a causative.
The confusion (cf. also Eng. lie/lay, rise/raise) is understandable in
the modern Germanic languages with eroded non-root syllables and
levelled-out consonant alternations. But at the time <weihan> existed, a
causative would have been _triply_ marked by:
(1) the Germanic a-grade (Goth. /ai/ rather than /i:/);
(2) Vernerian voicing (/g/ rather than /x/);
(3) the causative suffix /-j-/.
The Gothic verb lacks _all_ of these markings. Grammatically, there's no
chance of its being a causative. The second feature might be missing in
Wulfila's Gothic, where the elimination of Vernerian alternations was
strongly advanced, but the absence of (1) and (3) from a Gothic
causative is hardly thinkable.
>
> Who's interested in making someone fight?
>
Why do we have verbs like <provoke>, <irritate>, <vex>, <bait>, etc.?
Lots of folks go about looking for trouble.
Piotr