[tied] Re: No Verner in Gothic verbs?

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

>
> On 2007-07-05 20:55, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > The *-sm- > *-zm- part follows from you assumption, so is not
> > permissible as an example. We might as well have *-sm- > *-mm-
> > directly.
>
> I wonder. While *-sm- is normally preserved as such in Germanic, the
> assimilation to *-mm- is regular in low stress words such as *h1esmi
> or pronominal forms (like dat.sg. *to-sm-o(:)i > *þammai).

And from that one might conclude that *-sm- > *-mm- in unstressed
environments. No more.

> > 'sind' might have -nd from other 3pl's where it's from PIE
> > *-´nt(i), ie. a stressed syllable.
> >
> > Non licet.
>
> The problem is, no present form has ever been accented on the final
> *-i in any type of conjugation. And as *h1senti was disyllabic, the
> _only_ stressable syllable was the initial. It _should_ have become
> PGmc. *sinþi, but somehow we always get reflexes of *sinði even in
> those languages which otherwise generalised the oxytone variant --
> like OE, which has pres. pl. -aþ < *-a:þ < *-aNþ as if always from
> *-ó-nti EXCEPT in the conjugation of 'to be', where the plural is
> <sind>.

Aha.
Brunner, Altenglische Grammatik, §427, Anm 1
"
...
Die Kurzform sind entspricht got. sind, ahd. sint, idg. *sentí. sint
ist wohl eine zuerst im Satznebenton entstandene Form mit Verlust des
Stimmtons, § 224. sindon, -un haben die Endung des Ind. Pl. der
Praeteritopraesentia. Es ist kaum wahrscheinlich, daß in den je einmal
vorkommenden syd (Fehler für syð ?) Codex Wintoniensis, sydun (desgl.
f. syðun ?) Reste des aus einem idg. *sénti zu erwartenden germ. sïþ
vorliegen; es sind dies eher Schreibfehler durch Weglassen des
Striches über i(y) zur Bezeichnung des folgenden n. Ebenso sind sinð,
synð Codex Wintoniensis wohl Schreibfehler für sind, synd.
"

If it is kaum wahrscheinlich that examples to the contrary are
anything but Schreibfehler, then yes.
I think those short auxilliary finite verbs would have a tendency to
end up in the Wackernagel position (rather, Collinge thinks so), where
they would typically end up before the subject, which would often be
stressed on the initial syllable, in other words, they'd be in a
pretonic position, which is different from the posttonic position of
an unstressed preverbed verb.

> The form must have seemed so obscure to the Anglo-Saxons
> that they sometimes attached an extra plural ending to it (<-on>,
> borrowed from the preterite). To sum up, it seems the *t > *þ in
> *h1senti was affected by VL, and having _no stress at all_ was the
> only way in which the word could have deserved such a treatment.

But if so, why not *zind?


Torsten