Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > But of the nouns that end in -er in the plural in German, only a few
> > > are original s-stems (e.g. Kalb-Kälber, Lamm-Lämmer); German has
> > > greatly expanded the number of nouns that end in -er in the plural
> > by
> > > taking this ending from the original (all neuter) s-stems' plural
> > and
> > > introducing it to the plural of neuter nouns that originally had a
> > > plural form identical to the singular (e.g. <wort>). This was
> > > probably done in order to make the plural forms of these neuter
> > nouns
> > > more distinct. The ending also was transferred to some masculine
> > > nouns that originally were identical in the plural. e.g. Mann-
> > Männer.
> > >
> >
> > Oops, that rings a bell, you're right of course.
> > I suspect they were trying to get rid of the s-plural, shibboleth-
> > wise (the whole Caxton-story, in the archives).
> >
> >
> > Torsten
> >
>
> I don't understand why you say "they were trying to get rid of the
> s-plural", when this plural expanded from a few neuter nouns (Kalb,
> Lamm, Kind, Ei, and probably a few others) to somewhere around 30-40
> neuter and masculine nouns? Are you proposing that by consciously
> seeking to eradicate this plural, the effect was to make it more
> frequent? I don't understand why that would happen, even after
> reading the entire Caxton-dispute (I didn't understand it there
> either). By the way, the expansion started in OHG times, e.g. plural
> <hu:sir> beside <hu:s>.
>
> Andrew
>

On second thought, you must be talking about hypercorrection, I guess:
"Don't say <lembir>, say <lamb> (etc.)" leads to the belief that if
<lamb> is correct, then all words that were the same in the plural,
like <wort>, must be corrected forms for original forms with <-ir>,
thus a rebellious folk starts to believe that the folksy forms must be
forms with <-ir>, so rebelliously they start adding <-ir> to all nouns
that were identical in the plural. So instead of retaining the
inherited plural in only a few nouns, they come to believe that this
was the true inherited plural in many other nouns, even though it was
not, and therefore adopt it out of a sense of purism or desire not to
be corrected. Is this more or less what you are saying? It sounds so
complicated and therefore unlikely to me. I prefer my idea of a
simple desire to have a distinct plural form for neuter nouns (and any
nouns that were identical to the singular in the plural), so they
adopted and dispersed the s-stem plural <-ir>. Maybe someone has
written a paper that addresses this question?

Andrew