At 7:16:30 PM on Thursday, June 23, 2005, Andrew Jarrette
wrote:
> 2. What is the origin of the Old Norse masculine n-stem
> nom. sg. ending -i? My first guess is that it might be
> from an ending *-e: which was an alternative to *-o:. But
> as *e: became ae: in Germanic, such an ending would more
> likely show as -a, would it not?
PIE *-e:n is the source that I've seen given, a rarer
variant of *-o:n. (I've a faint recollection that at some
point Miguel and Piotr came to the conclusion that Gothic
masc. sing. nom. <-a> in n-stems might well have the same
source, but I can't at the moment confirm it.) If memory
serves, the resulting *-æ: actually does appear as runic
<-a> in some very early inscriptions; later pre-literary
inscriptions have <-e>, as I believe do the earliest MSS.
But Piotr can doubtless tell you much more.
Brian