Re: Renfrew's theory renamed as Vasco-Caucasian

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

>
> You wrote
>
> OHG stantan as Infinitive.
> ==========
> A.F :
> Kluge has ste:n and sta:n

Ah, so you do have Kluge! What does he say about 'Ufer'?

> as infinitives for Old High German.
> Forms that also exist in Nederlants.
>
> How do you account for this form ?
> when other languages have stand/stant ?

I think in pre-proto-Gmc. it was something like this:
*stedu, *ste-i, *ste-i, ... *stand-énti >
*stedu, *steist, *steit, ... *standen

with abnormal 'reduced' a-grade instead of zero grade in the plural
(as in *arun "are", further in the 'go'-verb), and *-V´NdV- > *V´dV-,
*-VNdV´- > *-VndV´-. From this, the verb was generalized, differently
in each language.

> Old English has
> Ic stande ; thu stentst ; he stent.
>
> And Modern German has :
> Ich stehe ; du stiehst ; er stieht.

Ich stehe ; du stehst ; er steht, actually.

> Many mails, written by other people, have provided
> considerable indication that :
> 1. Native speakers of Germanic languages
> do not know how many 'to be" verbs exist in Old English,
> They happen to mis-count them as being three,
> although they are four.

That's me! I think there are three. But some people miscount them as
being four.

> 2. Old Norse has plenty of forms
> that do not concord with one another as regards apophony.
> See previous mails.

Erh, what?


Torsten