Re: auðaz? = o:ðaz? ?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Lisa" <eris@...> wrote:

> I've meant to post a number of things in the past year, but I managed
> to get very side-tracked in real life. Now that I've started up my
> hobbies again, I've found myself having issues with figuring out a
> particular name set. I was hoping one of you might be intrigued to
> the point of assisting me before I pull my hair out. ;)
>
> To start off:
>
> OHG - ót - property/estate/territory
> OHG - uodal - property/estate/inheritance
> Go - oþal - property/estate
> Go - auðs(?) - estate/property
> OIc/ON - óðal - property/inheritance
> OIc/ON - auðr - riches/wealth
> OSax - ód - estate/wealth
> OE - e:ðel - homeland/territory/estate
>
> I could not find "doublets" for the last two, as you can see.
> Further, I do not understand how /e:/ in OE evolved [not from OS ód???
> but] from either PGmc /au/ or /o:/. I don't recall seeing that
> before. Are there other OE examples of this happening? Is it a
> strange dialectal thing? Or am I missing something?
>
> Modern names from this root or roots include:
> G - Ottilie, Otto, Udo
> Sp - Ódalis, Odalís
> F - Odette, Odile
> E - Odalys, Othello, Otho, Otis
> (Also, I believe Odo was used in Norman French.)
>
> Now...
> PGmc > OHG > ModHG
> au > ou/o: > au
> o: > uo > u:
> So... Assuming the word in PGmc was *auðaz, this should have produced
> /o:do/ and/or /oudo/ in OHG (Odo, for example?), but assuming the word
> was *o:ðaz, it should have produced /uodo/ in OHG (and Udo in ModHG),
> correct?
>
> In my search online to find information, since I couldn't find
> anything futher at home, I thought I would mention that Etymonline
> lists, under the word 'estate'
> (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=estate&searchmode=none),
> "M.E. ethel (O.E. æðel) "ancestral land or estate, patrimony."".
> Funny, as I kinda thought 'æðel' (from PGmc *aþal) was "noble" and
> 'eðel' (from PGmc i'mnotsurewhat?) was "homeland/territory/estate".
> So more confusion.
>
> At any rate, to wrap things up, I have seen one PGmc glossary
> (http://members.aol.com/rlongman1/protogp.html) list *audaz to mean
> "property". Why was it not listed as *auðaz? And what about the
> alternate words in many of the daughter languages, many of which
> contain /al/?
>
> What's going on here? Were there two separate words (one that started
> with /au/ that had a voiced interdental fricative and one that started
> /o:/ that had an unvoiced interdental fricative and perhaps /al/ in it
> at/near the end) with somewhat similar meanings in PGmc, or was there
> only one word with dialectal forms that had slightly different
> meanings in PGmc? Or am I just crazy in the head? I'd appreciate any
> thoughts or futher examples that I failed to mention.
>
> I don't recall seeing anything in other IE daughters that would
> coincide with this/these PGmc root/roots. (Hence the borrowing into
> Latin of what ended up as the English word 'allodial'. ?) Do you
> know if it/they was/were substrate and not IE in origin?

1. Proto-Germanic *d and *ð are the same phoneme.

2. Onions gives the stem as *o:þ-, *aþ-, and regards the 'noble'
meaning as coming from the same stem.

3. The OE form is attested as <oeþel> as well as _e:þel_, so the vowel
here is an umlaut of *o:. The noun suffix shows a far bit of variation:

OE: -el, -la, -le, -ol, -l
OS, OHG: -il, -al, -la
ON: -al, -ill, -ull

Gothic apparently only shows -ils, and Old Frisian -le.

Given these forms, umlaut does not seem particularly predictable,
though there should be a correlation with vowel while it survives.

4. Proto-Germanic *au > German au before labials, but not in other
environments, e.g *auzon > German _Ohr_ 'ear'.

I can't shed any light on ON auðr or Gothic auðs(?). Perhaps they are
indeed another word.

Richard.