On 2006-08-13 01:48, tgpedersen wrote:
>> and Gothic gen.sg. -is < *-es(j)o
>
> As I suggested, that might be from <noun> es-jo "<noun> its",
> cf the same construction in Norwegian, Dutch and Jysk, which
> would explain the e-grade.
But what would this *es(j)o have been attached to? A form of the noun
stripped of all inflections (not yet lost in early Germanic!) and even
of the thematic vowel? One could imagine haplological reduction like
*wulfas(a)-esa > *wulfesa, but is it really more economic than the
direct change of *wulfas --> wulfis in Gothic due to the influence of
pronominal <is>, <þis>? In the rest of Germanic we find a reflex of
*-os(j)o, which reflects the normal IE gen.sg. ending of thematic nouns.
This ending itself is probably of pronominal origin (with the o-timbre
of the thematic vowel restored in nouns already in the protolanguage),
but that's a much older story.
Piotr