Standing

There are two roots for "stand" in Germanic, *stand- and *sta:-
It would be fun if they could be united.

I'll make some assumptions to make it work.

1) There are two primary 3sg endings, *-ti (Skt. bharati) and
*-i (Gk. pherei). I'll assume that *-i is a locative ending,
*-t- (and *-m- and *-s-) meaning "at him" (and "at mee" and
"at thee", respectively), and that the stem *bhere- is a
nominal form of the verb, ie. a participle or a verbal noun.
Thus, originally *bhere-ti and *bhere-i were different forms
which I will call 3sg and 0sg. Note BTW that the '0sg' is similar
to the Hittite hi-conj. 3sg, except for vocalism (e-grade vs.
o-grade).

2) I assume *-i was the ending of the present and zero the ending
of the preterite (as in Hittite), thus the original '0sg' preterite
was the bare verbal stem. I further assume that there was at a
time some rule *-VC -> *-V:, which would then apply in the '0sg'
preterite.

3) As I mentioned before, I think PIE voiced unaspirated stops
were actually prenasalized and that *-V´D- -> *-VD, *-VD´- ->
*-VND´- (for V vowel, D unaspirated stop, N homorganic nasal)

So
PIE *stad- ->
PPGerm pres.
'0sg' *sta:i,
(loss of auslaut consonant with compensatory lengthening)
3sg *stand-énti
(*-d´- -> *-nd´-)

I know the argument is full of holes, but I think they can be fixed.


Torsten