Re: English Young (was: Indo-Iranian Vowel Collapse)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> > A couple off-topic things:
> > 1. Why is the Modern English word 'calf' and not *chealf (pl.
> > *chealver)?
>
> a) The singular derives from *kalba-m or *kalba-z - both neuter and
> masculine thematic plurals are know from Old English.
>
> b) Breaking after 'c' is West Saxon, and breaking before 'l' is
> non-Anglian.

What do you mean by "breaking"? I'm not familiar with the term,
sorry.

> c) The Norman conquest enabled the Anglian East Midlands dialect to
> become dominant.

Was the West Saxon dialect dominant beforehand?

> The broken form survives to this day in the placenames _Chawleigh_,
> _Chawton_, _Chalvey_ and _Chelvey_, and Kentich _chawlfe_
> for 'calf' is attested in the 16th century.
>
> > 2. Is Modern English 'child, children' an es-stem (*kild-iz-,
> > pl. *kild-iz-o:) as well?
>
> Well, Old English _cild_ had plurals _cildru_, _cild_ and
> _cildas_, in order of decreasing frequency, though according to
> Onions the original nominative plural was simply _cild_. It looks
> as though *kild-iz- never existed, but I wouldn't say the word
> wasn't (isn't?) an es-stem.

The plural _cildru_ would point to *kildizo: (as if from an IE word
*geldhesa:), right?

- Rob