Re[2]: [tied] re: German vocalism

At 3:51:53 PM on Wednesday, May 18, 2005, alex wrote:

> daniel prohaska wrote:

>>> 1) is the German "au" from anything else as an older
>>> "u"?

>> Yes. Instances of Germanic /au/ where they haven't been
>> monophthongised to OHG /o:/ before certain consonants,
>> i.e. NHG <Baum>, <glauben>, <Haupt>.

> mmmmmm.. here seems to me to be something else. I know
> that even if looks pretty appropiate, the Latin pomus is
> not considered to be cognate with Germanic from of baum,
> boom, beam etc. The notion of "haupt" is condiered tough
> to be congate with Latin "caput"; "glauben" points too a
> form more appropiate to Slavic "luba" and the "u" there
> should be seen stil in OHG "gilouba", Dutch "geloof",
> etc...

No. Gmc. *au before dentals and Gmc. /h/ monophthongized to
/o:/ (Goth. <dauþus>, <rauþs>, <auso>, <laun>, OHG <tôd>,
<rôt>, <ôra>, <lôn>), but otherwise it normally became OHG
/ou/, which gives NHG /au/.

<Haupt> is from OHG <houbit>, which shows precisely this
development: the Gmc. vowel was *au, as is clear from OHG
<houbit>, OE <héafod>, ON <ho,fuð>.

> Apparently, looking at the IE cognates even a PGmc "au" is
> from an older "u".

No, it isn't. Gmc. *au is from PIE *au and *ou.

Brian