On 2006-01-24 23:13, andrew jarrette wrote:
> By the way, I noticed that no one offered an explanation of Germanic
> class VI and VII verbs. I imagine it's already been talked about in
> this forum. Can someone let me know whether I should (bother to)
> search the archives or not? Also, are there essays or other works on
> this subject that anyone knows of?
Search the archives by all means; the topic has been raised before. As
for the literature, see e.g. (among others):
Voyles, Joseph B. 1980. "Reduplicating verbs in Northwest Germanic".
Lingua 52, 89-123.
Bech, Gunnar. 1969. Das germanische reduplizierte Präteritum.
Copenhagen: Munskgaard.
D'Alquen, Richard. 1997. "Non-reduplication in Northwest Germanic".
NOWELE 31-32, 69-91.
Mottausch, Karl-Heinz. 1998. "Die reduplizierenden Verben in Nord- und
Westgermanischen Sprachen: Versuch eines Raum-Zeitmodelle". NOWELE 33,
43-91.
Briefly, Class VII roots are those with the fundamental vocalism *æ:,
*ai, *au or *aRC (in Germanic terms), i.e. original roots with *eh1 and
presents with the vocalism *o (or *a) plus a resonant. In the preterite,
they reduplicate in Gothic; some of them show residual traces of
strongly restructured reduplication in the Anglian dialects of OE
(leolc, leort, blefla, (on)dreord, reord, heht, speoft, beoft), and to
an extremely limited extent also in Old Norse and Old High German.
Generally in NW Germanic, the original reduplication has been replaced
by vowel infixation, producing a new long vowel from contraction, e.g.
*x-é-ait > *xéet > OE he:t as an alternative to Angl. heht, whose
reduplication pattern is analogically modelled on cases like the following:
*le-loh1d-/*le-l(h1)d- > PGmc. *lelo:t/*leltun > Anglian leort, leorton
(with the pl. allomorph generalised) from le:tan (WS læ:tan < *læ:t-an-).
The origin of Class VI is a controversial matter. The preterite vocalism
is *o: even in Gothic. It seems that Class VI is the o-grade counterpart
of the e-grade Classes IV and V, which show a lengthened vowel
reinterpreted as e-infixation in the originally weak-grade (and once
reduplicated) preterite plural forms. Class VI has an analogical
*o-infix also in the preterite singular, as a functional substitute for
reduplication.
Piotr