Re: [tied] Proto-German *u:r-

On Mon, 07 Mar 2005 12:46:53 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>On 05-03-07 08:20, Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
>
>> On 05-03-04 17:22, João Simões Lopes Filho wrote:
>>
>>>But *usro- > *ustra- in Germanic.
>>
>> Not with Verner's Law.
>
>At any rate the EIEC article suggests that -sr- > -zr- > -:r- (with
>compensatory lengthening) is a possible development. I haven't given
>much thought to it before, but it's an interesting problem, since if
>Verner's Law applies to *-sr-, this means that the insertion of -t- is
>_very_ young in Germanic (younger than VL); otherwise, any *-sr- would
>have ended up as *-str- whatever the stress pattern.

I don't think that's much of a problem. I have the feeling
that Verner's law is one of the oldest Germanic soundlaws
anyway, and -sr- > -str- is one of things that is so common
that it can happen at any time. We certainly needn't
attribute it to a common Balto-Slavo-Germanic stage or
anything like that.

>What a shame the
>sequence is so rare! Can anyone propose any examples or counterexamples?
>The only comparable case I can think of off hand is *wesró-m > *wezraN >
>*we:ra > ON vár 'spring'.

Sounds good, as does "hair".

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