Re: No Verner in Gothic verbs?

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

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
>
> > All your examples contain voicing before voiced -j-.
>
> There's no such thing in Germnic. My examples have *-j- because they
> are causatives and contain a suffix reflecting *-éje-

Exactly. They have *-éje- which contains a stressed syllable, so you
can't use them as an example of what Verner does in unstressed syllables.

> > In general:
> > If the outcome is the result of a choice between two types of verb
> > stem, sporadic variations is exactly what you'd expect.
>
> Also when analogy runs its course, removing an old alternation.
>
> > And you haven't cast reasonable doubt on the claim that given the
> > two stress patterns for verbs, Grimm and Verner would produce two
> > paradigms for those verb stems they affected.
>
> What stress patterns?

Those of Sanskrit, presumably those of PIE.

> Absence of stress would not have removed the effects of VL, quite
> the contrary.

I think we need some other examples to show that.

> Of the two competing paradigms one was produced by VL, the other
> can't have been created by anything but analogy.

That's the contention.

> The same process was reenacted a few centuries later in English,
> even more thoroughly. Out of the many OE strong verbs showing
> Vernerian alternations only was/were still has it.

I never claimed analogy didn't take place in PIE, quite the contrary.
You are probably aware that analogy is just one of the ways proposed
to explain the non-Vernerization of Gothic verbs, cf Collinge, eg.
"
Hirt (e.g. 1931:148, 155) preferred to believe that the physical
isolation of Gothic, which others (notably Schwarz [1951:68-69]) have
seen as explaining its spreading of voiceless spirants, rather
resulted in a staggered implementation of the common Germanic shift of
word-stress to root-syllables. Given at least two stages, one before
and one after Verner's law, the Gothic strong verbs perhaps suffered
the accent repositioning at the earlier time whereas other
morphological and lexical sectors received it at the later. This idea,
which interestingly anticipates recent diffusion-theorizing,
effectively removes all ground for the voicing of root-final spirants
in these verbs in Gothic: warþ, waúrþum etc. (although then gro:f,
gro:bum or gaf ge:bum is awkward). Adherents are not lacking, but are
heterogeneous: so the devoted but unclear Prokosch (1939: 63)
alongside the heterodox Bennett (1968:222-23).
"

This is where I got the idea, I just replaced the extra assumption of
a staggered implementation of root repositioning with the known facts
about the accent of the Sanskrit and presumably the PIE verb.


Torsten