Re: More Low German oddities, out-of-place -i-

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> Low German
> 2sg geist, 3sg geit, 123pl gaat
> 2sg steist, 3sg steit, 123pl staat
>
> Joseph Wright An Old High German Primer:
> Alemanic
> 1sg ga:m, ga:n
> 2sg ga:s(t)
> 2sg ga:t
> 1pl ga:me:s, ga:n
> 2pl ga:t
> 3pl ga:nt
>
> Franconian
> 1sg ge:m, ge:n
> 2sg ge:s(t)
> 2sg ge:t
> 1pl ge:me:s, ge:n
> 2pl ge:t
> 3pl ge:nt
>
> Otfrid
> 1sg ga:m, ga:n
> 2sg gei:st
> 2sg gei:t
> 1pl ga:me:s, ga:n
> 2pl ga:t
> 3pl ga:nt
>
> and similarly for sta:n, ste:n
> beside the longer stems gang-, stand-
> (which I think belonged in the plural)
>
>
> So it looks like the Modern Low German paradigm is faithful to the
> original. It is very likely that the -e- is umlauted -a-, so the
> original was *ga:i-s(t), *ga:i-t etc, reminiscent of Greek phereis,
> pherei. Also of the high number of Dutch verbs in -V:i-, zaaien
> "sow", waaien "wave, blow", dial. pooien "drink", which in PIE
> terminology are long-vowel verbs, which also have that -i extension.
> Looks like there was a time when the -i of the primary inflection
> could be added directly to the bare verb stem, without endings (my
> '0sg'?), seems like Jasanoff has a point there.
>

> Old Frisian (Boutkan)
> 3sg stont, 123pl stondath "stand"
> 3sg gunth, guncht "go"

These two forms make it hard to reconstruct a nice PIE paradigm. It
can't be 3sg *sta:-i(t), *ga:-i(t); 3pl *stand-ént-i, *gang-ént-i
as I used to think. But how about 3sg *sta:-i(t), ga:-i(t); 3pl
*stn.d-ént-i, *gn.g-ént-i (-> PGerm. *stundant, *gungant), with later
analogical transfer of the vowel of the present, so that they were
originally preterito-presentic? Now, p-p verbs should have weak
preterites, but we've just seen that eastern Low German could form a
preterite without the -ta-, ie. identical to the preterite of a strong
verb. It seems it fits the model anyway.


Torsten