Re: Asian Migration to Scandinavia

On 2008-10-21 07:42, Brian M. Scott wrote:

> At 4:08:22 PM on Monday, October 20, 2008, raucousd wrote:

> > It never crossed my mind. I'm basically quoting G&I plus
> > Mallory & Adams and I'm fairly sure it never crossed their
> > minds either. A form like Easter based on *aster, looks
> > like breaking, a very common feature of Anglo-Saxon
> > vowels.
>
> The OE is <e:astre>, nom. pl. <e:astron>, from PGmc.
> *austro:n-; PGmc. *au > OE /e:a/ is regular. (It also isn't
> an instance of breaking, which was not triggered by a
> following /s/.)

What should be pointed out to Raucous D is that breaking is not a
randomly occurring "common feature" but a conditioned process, normally
triggered by syllable-final /l, r, x/ (with minor complications,
irrelevant here). It affects front vowels (before liquids, only short
ones) and cannot _lengthen_ them (and the diphthong <e:a> [æ:a] in
<e:ast>, <E:astor>, <E:astre> etc. was _long_); the results of breaking
can be seen e.g. in <earm> 'arm' (= [æarm], with a _short_ diphthong) <
*ærm < *arma- (short *a was fronted in Anglo-Frisian). The _only_ thing
that the vowel of <E:astre> can come from is PGmc. *au, which of course
matches the related forms in the rest of Germanic.

Piotr