Res: [tied] Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

From: Joao S. Lopes
Message: 62821
Date: 2009-02-05

The same "simplification" occurred through shift from Latin to Portuguese: corpus "body" (corpu, pl. corpora) and tempus "time"(tempu, pl. tempora), both s-stems became corpo (pl. corpos) and tempo (pl. tempos), "regularized" to o-stems.
 
JS Lopes


De: tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
Para: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Enviadas: Quarta-feira, 4 de Fevereiro de 2009 22:42:30
Assunto: [tied] Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic


> 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



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