Re: Verner's Law (Germanic)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@>

wrote:

>
> > Yes, but I have a further question: did the same devoicing

occur

> in OHG, to account for its genitive singular (a-stems) in -es? And
> why does it have -e- if this ending is truly from *-oso?
>
> The OHG ending was borrowed from pronouns such as <des> (from
> *tes(j)o, with accented *e).
>
> > And if such devoicing did not occur in ON (to explain the

nom./acc.

> pl. ending -ar), why doesn't ON have -r as the genitive singular
> ending of a-stems instead of -s?
>
> Probably the same explanation as above. The Gmc. genitive

singualar of

> a-stems is one hell of a problem because of the massive

contamination

> with pronominal forms, happening independently in several dialects.
>
> > I thought the more accepted explanation for the pan-Germanic
> genitive singular of a-stems was that it is pronominal in origin,

from

> *-eso, on the analogy of *teso, *kWeso, forms of the genitive

singular

> of *so and *kwis/kwos (beside *tosjo, *kWosjo and others).
>
> There is no pan-Germanic gen.sg. of a-stems. Goth. -is is clearly

of

> pronominal origin (< *-es(j)o-, and the *e vocalism contaminated

also

> the Gothic gen.pl.), while in West Germanic there are unambiguous
> reflexes of nominal *-os(j)o-. Under my WGmc. devoicing scenario,

both

> *-ása (in original oxytone stems) and *-aza (in barytones) yield *-

as

> > AFris. *-æs > OE -æs, -es.
>

How about this:

N1-<es(j)o> N2 is actually N1 es(j)o N2; 'N1's N2' is 'N1 his/its
N2' as in Norwegian and Dutch today.


Torsten