At 5:13:41 AM on Saturday, October 11, 2008, afyangh wrote:
> Maybe this has already been dealt with before,
> but I have not been able to find a reference in the archives.
> What is to be thought about the suffix -ock, that appears
> in hill-ock, bull-ock, etc ?
> Substrate, which substrate, possibly Indo-European or not
> ?
Krahe & Meid, III, §153, discuss suffixes with Gmc. /-k-/,
masc. /-ka/ and fem. /-ko:/, with linking vowel /-aka-/,
/-ika-/, /-uka-/, etc. They're especially frequent in
Anglo-Frisian, Dutch, and Low German; outside of these
branches they're not very productive, but they are found
throughout Gmc. Gothic: <ahaks> 'Taube', <anaks>
'plötzlich', <alakjo:> 'insgesamt', personal names <Adica>
(masc.), <Edica> (masc.), <Hildico> (fem.). OHG: <altih>
'alt', <altihho> 'der Alte, Greis', <altihha> 'anicula',
<armih> 'arm', <armihha> 'paupercula', <uui:pihha>
'Weiblein', <fulihha> 'weibliches Fohlen' (folo), <sperch>
'Sperling', <zittaroh> 'Krätze' (OE <teter>, OI <dadrú->,
<da-dru-ka-> 'Ausschlag'); and NHG <Molch> (MHG <mol>). ON:
<máki> 'Möwe' (beside <már>), <kráka> 'Krähe', <ilki>
(beside <il>) 'Fusssohle', <jarki> 'Fusskante'; also Swed.
dial. <kräveka> 'Krebs', <räveka> 'Füchsin' (<räv> 'Fuchs'),
<tillika> 'Hündin' (NIc. <tylla>), <pullka> 'Hühnchen', NIc.
<brúnka> 'braune Stute', <eyrna-blaðkur> 'Ohrläppchen' (=
<eyrna-blað>); also ON hypocorisms <Sveinki> (from
<Sveinn>), <Brynki> (from <Brynjólfr>), <Bokki> (from
<Bo,ðvarr>), and OGutn. <Ormica>, a formation still
productive in NIc.
I omit the much longer lists of examples from the areas
where it was more productive.
The suffix is especially common in animal and plant names,
feminizations, diminutives, and hypocorisms. (The current
editors of the OED take it to be basically diminutive in
nature.)
They point out that it ought to derive from PIE *-g-, which
however is very rarely attested compared with PIE *-k-, most
often as an extension of something ending in a nasal, as in
OIr. <mong>, Welsh <mwng> 'Mähne', Dan. <manke>
'Pferdenacken' beside OHG <mana> 'Mähne', OI <s'r'.nga-m>
'Horn' (beside Goth. <haurn>), Av. <as&nga-> 'Stein' (beside
<asan->). However, it also occurs as an extension of
elements ending in a vowel, e.g., Gk. <ptéruks, -ugos>
'Flügel' (paralleled in OE <fetharac>), <órtuks, -ugos>
(also <-ukos>) 'Wachtel', <pHaruks, -ugos> (later nasalized)
'Windröhre' (other examples omitted); Lith. <vãnagas>
'Habicht, Falke'; OI <árbha-ga-> (beside <arbha-ká->)
'klein'. Finally, beside OHG <kranuh> there is Arm.
<krunk>, whose /-k/ should also go back to PIE *g. Thus, we
have to reckon with the possibility that at least some
instances of the suffix go back to PIE *-g-.
However, they note a second possibility. In North Sea Gmc.,
where the suffix is most common and most productive, many of
the words in which it appears, especially those with the
earliest attestations, are etymologically opaque, and they
often have initial /p-/. Since PIE *b- is rare, they
conclude that in so far as these words aren't borrowed from
Latin or Romance, they are likely to derive from a pre-Gmc.
IE substrate in northwestern Europe. The idea is that the
unshifted k-suffix in words borrowed from this NWB language
would have fallen together with the inherited (and
subsequently shifted) PIE *-g- suffix and remained
productive in the region of the original NWB substrate, with
some limited productivity elsewhere in Gmc. as a result of
contact and population movements.
Brian