--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> > >
> > > [...]
> > > The real problem here is that the words with /a/ seldom show the
> > > "upper-class" variants with /e/ and /o/.
> >
> > Class VI 'draw' vs. class I 'drive', perhaps (all of class VI strong verbs are best explained as PPGmc -a-/-a:-/-a:-/-a- >
> > PGmc -a-/-o:-/-o:-/-a-), Engl. grab vs OIc grípa, Engl. wag vs. OIc víkja "move"? Futher the OIc. class III verb exceptions gjalda "pay", gjalla "shout", hjálpa "help", skjálfa "tremble", skjalla "scold" with present root vowel /a(:)/ for /i/ (< PIE -é- before R). Other than that note the alternation -eu-/-u:- in most of the class II verbs vs. OE scu:fan, OHG su:fan; that alternation is of the same PIE/PPIE type as the -a-/-e- you were looking for. Note how large the -u:- subclass is in Dutch, as expected, I'm not convinced it grew later.
> >
> > Note also that some of the class II -u:C- subclass have -uCC- geminated counterparts: OHG su:f-, Engl. sup, sip, Schrijver's *dubb- etc, Sw class III dimpa, damp,
> > http://ordnet.dk/ods/opslag?id=437209
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_strong_verb
>
> I can't give a quick answer to the <scu:fan> business, or the geminates.
Class II strong verbs with /u:/-presents do not form an etymologically homogeneous group, so no simple explanation suffices for all. A thorough treatment requires examining these verbs one at a time, which is a job for another day. Nevertheless the fact that this subclass is significantly better represented in Dutch than in High German, along with the peculiar consonantism of some of the verbs, suggests that borrowing from Kuhn's Nordwestblock may be involved in many of them. In this posting I will focus on the verb appearing in Old English as <du:fan>. This verb and associated words illustrate the difficulties of this subclass quite well. Furthermore, since Schrijver uses some of the associated words as parade-examples for his Language of Geminates, the choice of <du:fan> enables us to gauge whether Schrijver's approach or an extension of Kuhn's approach is better suited to the problems at hand.
Old English <du:fan> 'to go underwater, dive, sink' and its weak causative <dy:fan> 'to submerge, immerse, dip' continued into Middle English as <du:ven> and <dy:ven>, which became confounded in the 12th century; eventually the strong verb disappeared and the weak one replaced it as an intransitive. Modern English <dive> has acquired a strong preterit <dove> by analogy with Class I (<drive>, <drove>), though <dived> is still in use. Old Norse <du:fa> and <dy:fa> correspond to OE <du:fan> and <dy:fan>, and ON <deyfa> is cited as a synonym of <dy:fa>. In Middle Low German we have <bedu:ven> 'to be drenched with water' and in Middle Dutch <bedu:ven> 'to sink into water', which continues into Modern Dutch as <beduiven>.
The 'dive' group of words above is generally considered related to the 'deep' group, which is well represented in Germanic. Here we have Gothic <diups>, ON <dju:pr>, OE <de:op>, Old Frisian <dia:p>, Old Saxon <diop>, <diap>, and Old High German <tiuf>, <tiof> 'deep', from which Gmc. *deupaz and Indo-European *dHeub- are readily inferred. An /o/-grade Gmc. causative *daupjan 'to dip, immerse' is reflected in Goth. <daupjan>, ON <deypa>, Faeroese <doypa>, OE <di:epan>, OFrs <de:pa>, OS <do:pian>, and OHG <touffan>. Outside Germanic we have Lithuanian <dubùs> 'deep, hollow', <daubà> 'gorge', and Old Church Slavic <dUbrI> 'gorge'.
Phonetically, the 'dive' words could represent Gmc. *du:f- (thus Pokorny, Idg. et. Wb., and de Vries, An. et. Wb.) or *du:b- (thus Watkins, AHD, and Köbler, Ae. Wb.). Pokorny refers the 'dive' group to an IE root *dHeu-p- parallel to *dHeu-b- 'deep, hollow', and suggests that *dHeu-g- 'to duck' may belong to the same master root with a different extension. De Vries goes further and derives *dHeu-r- 'door' from the same master root *dHeu- 'wickerwork'. The senses 'hollow, deep' are supposed to have been extracted from the characteristics of wicker vessels. This is ingenious, but it smacks of hyperanalysis. I do not deny that root-extensions were used in Proto-Indo-European word-formation, but until we can deduce reliable meanings for the extensions, we are on thin ice trying to connect 'deep' with 'door'. Moreover the extensions had not been productive for many centuries at the time when the Germanic languages were diverging. The real questions here are whether Common Germanic effectively had, beside *deup-, another root *deuf- or *deub- of similar meaning, and whether such a parallel root is responsible for the 'dive' group. In favor of IE *dHeup- and Gmc. *deuf-, Pokorny and de Vries cite OCS <duplU> 'hollow' and <dupina> 'hole', other Slavic words, and OHG <tobal> 'narrow valley'. This does seem to establish IE *dHeup- in the sense of 'hollow' or the like, with a Gmc. reflex, and one might well separate it in sense from *dHeub- 'deep'. Due to root-restrictions, the -p- here very likely is an extension, and I have no serious objection to -b- as another extension. But *dHeup- fails to explain the /u:/-vocalism of the 'dive' group. If the latter comes from an IE root parallel to *dHeub-, it should show the same vocalism. In fact the best example, ON <deyfa>, apparently from Gmc. *daufjan, can be regarded instead as a contamination of <deypa> (from *daupjan, from IE *dHeub-) with the -f- of <du:fa> and <dy:fa>. Similarly OE <a:-di:efan> can be understood as a contamination of <di:epan> with the -f- of <du:fan> and <dy:fan>.
The same objection applies to Watkins's parallel IE root *dHeubH- 'deep'. Köbler postulates a Gmc. *du:ban 'to dive', along with its causative *du:bjan, derived from IE *dHeub- without specifying the mechanism of derivation. I think the most plausible mechanism is the borrowing of this root into West (not Common) Germanic from the Nordwestblock, with subsequent borrowing of *du:ban and *du:bjan by North Gmc. from WGmc. In this view the NWBlock language merged aspirated and unaspirated IE mediae into plain mediae, as did Celtic, Baltic, Slavic, Messapic, and Lusitanian. As for the /u:/-vocalism, it will be noticed that Kuhn's list of NWB protoforms with initial /p/ (Anlautend P- im Germanischen, ZMaf 28:1-31, 1961; Kl. Schr. 1:361-389) has no examples of */eu/, but several of */u:/, */au/, and */u/. This suggests that the IE ablaut-series */eu/, */ou/, */u/ ended up as */u:/, */au/, */u/ in WGmc when the forms were borrowed from NWB rather than inherited to yield the usual */eu/, */au/, */u/.
It might be objected that a language would be unlikely to monophthongize inherited */eu/ but not */ou/. I do not think that the NWB language did so. Instead, I think that NWB first shifted its inherited */o/ to */a/, and along with it */ou/ to */au/, as Germanic and Baltic also did. NWB then shifted */eu/ to a secondary */ou/, yielding the ablaut-series */ou/, */au/, */u/, and this is what the West Gmc. dialects borrowed, probably in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, before secondary Gmc. */o/ had arisen from */u/ in certain environments. Now, by van Wijk's Law (Zur relativen Chronologie urgermanischer Lautgesetze, PBB 28:243-253, 1903), when a language has more than one high close vowel, whatever happens to one will happen simultaneously to the other(s). In particular if /ei/ is monophthongized to /i:/, /ou/ must simultaneously go to /u:/, which as we know happened in pre-classical Latin. The Germanic monophthongization of inherited */ei/ to */i:/ in stressed syllables can be regarded as tautosyllabic umlaut, and in fact coincident with the process by which stressed */e/ became */i/ when followed by */i/ or */j/ in the next syllable. This process in turn can be dated to the 1st cent. CE, since Tacitus still has forms like <Segime:rus>. I place the WGmc monophthongization of stressed */ou/ (in NWB loanwords) to */u:/ at the same time.
Forms with Gmc. *-pp- can be explained by Kluge's Law without invoking NWB loanwords. They could, in principle, reflect IE *dHeub- or *dHeup-, or even *dHeubH-. The meaning however is much more compatible with *dHeub- than with *dHeup-, and Occam's razor shaves away *dHeubH-. These forms include *duppjan 'to immerse, dip' (OE <dyppan> 'id.', OHG <tupfen> 'to wash', Low German <düppen> 'id.'), denominal from an abstract *duppo:-, IE *dHub-ná:-, and *duppan- 'diving bird, dipper' (OE <-doppa>), from IE *dHub-nón- 'diver'. OE <dy:pan> 'to dip' is apparently a cross of <dyppan> with <dy:fan>, and <du:fedoppa> 'pelican' is probably an appositional compound of <-doppa> with a synonymous *du:fe or *du:fa 'diver' rather than 'dove-diver, Taubentaucher', since the pelican dives after fish, not underwater doves. This noun *du:fe or *du:fa would continue a WGmc *du:bo:n- borrowed from NWB *doubo:n-, in turn reflecting an IE /e/-grade *dHéub-o:n- 'diver'. Obviously the WGmc strong verb *du:ban could not have been formed from this noun, but required a separate borrowing from NWB *doub- 'to go deep, dive'. It is not necessary to suppose that all three ablaut-grades of the verb were borrowed. Strong Class II already existed with verbs having */eu/ in the present, so it is not implausible that once the present stem *doub- had been established in WGmc (probably in the 2nd or 1st cent. BCE), the preterit singular *daub- and plural/participal *dub- would follow by analogy, since */ou/ would have sounded closer to */eu/ than to other present-stem nuclei. After monophthongization of */ou/ to */u:/ (prob. 1st cent. CE), the ablaut-grades would be *du:b-, *daub-, *dub-, just what we see in OE <du:fan>, <de:af>, <dufon>, <dofen>.
Presumably the motivation in forming the OE tautological compound <du:fedoppa> was to avoid confusion with *du:fe 'dove', unattested in OE but represented in ME <do(u)ve> and in other Gmc. languages. This brings up another point. This bird-name is found in WGmc, in ON <du:fa>, and in Goth. <du:bo:>. Following Kuhn's viewpoint in the paper cited, we may expect NWB loanwords to WGmc to be occasionally borrowed further into NGmc, but seldom or never into Gothic. We must thus regard *du:bo:n- 'dove' as Common Germanic. The inherited */u:/ likely represents the zero-grade */uh2/, and the IE root involved is *dHeuh2bH-. As a rough diagnostic, then, if WGmc */u:/ agrees with Goth. /u:/, we have Gmc. */u:/ and no basis to suppose a NWB loanword. But if WGmc */u:/ corresponds to Goth. /iu/ reflecting */eu/, we can at least suspect a loanword, or the influence of one, in WGmc. For example OE <scu:fan> st. II 'to shove' corresponds to OFrs <sku:va> and ON <sku:fa>, but Goth. <af-skiuban> (likewise OHG <scioban> and the OE variant <sce:ofan>) requires */eu/. Here (by the processes outlined above) IE *skeubH- became *skeub- in both Gmc. and NWB, and the NWB present stem was borrowed into Western Common Gmc. as *skoub-, later monophthongized to *sku:b-, which competed with the inherited Gmc. present stem *skeub- and even spread to North Gmc., but there was no such competition in East Gmc.
We are now in a position to examine the set of words given by Schrijver (and cited by Torsten in message #62677) as evidence for a Language of Geminates. These include ON <du:fa> and LG <düppen> already covered above, Dutch <duypen> 'to hang one's head' which can be assigned to Gmc. *daupjan above, and Norse <duppa> 'to dive' which can be regarded as a denominative from Gmc. *duppo:- or *duppan- above. The nasalized forms, Norse <dump> 'hole, pit, pond', etc., have been adequately explained by Pokorny as reflecting IE *dHumb- 'Erdvertiefung (mit Wasser gefüllt)', an ordinary zero-grade nasalized derivative of *dHeub- 'tief'. The remaining words are Faeroese <duffa> 'to bob in the water, schaukeln' (said of a boat), Norse <dubba> 'to stoop', and MD <dubben> 'to immerse'. To these last might be added Norse <dobbe> 'swampy land' and MLG <dobber> 'buoy, fishing bobber' (also in Dutch in both senses, and New York English (W. Irving) as 'bobber').
I believe the forms with -bb- are best explained as derived from *dub-, the zero-grade NWB form of IE *dHeub-. The gemination in this case might have arisen regularly in WGmc, or it might have occurred already in NWB words. The reason for suspecting the latter is that some OE and OHG words containing geminated mediae and etymologizable in a similar way lack the /j/-umlaut expected from WGmc /j/-gemination. Of course, a systematic study of WGmc words with geminated mediae is a job for another day. In this case, NWB *doub- 'to go deep, dive' was presumably associated with zero-grade nouns such as *dubjan- 'diver', *dubno:- 'depth', etc. If WGmc /j/-gemination produced the -bb-, the protoforms of the words above were likely *dubjo:n-, *dubbjo:n- 'deep spot, Tiefe, Vertiefung' vel sim. with a denominal verb *dubjan, *dubbjan 'to go deep, go down, dip, bob'. If (as I consider likely) NWB already had nouns with *-bb-, this could have arisen in principle either from *-bj- or *-bn-, and the WGmc denominal verb might have been *dubbjan or *dubbo:jan. More study is required in order to exclude various possibilities.
Finally, Faeroese <duffa> can hardly be a NGmc word. Since it is a maritime term, borrowing from a Dutch or Low German dialect in which WGmc *-b- was regularly reflected as -ff- is likely. Several words of this type are found in standard Dutch such as <gaffel> 'pitchfork', <schoffel> 'hoe', and <doffer> 'male dove, Tauber' (one would expect *duiver on the basis of <duif> 'dove', pl. <duiven>). Probably Faer. <duffa> was borrowed from such a dialect in which WGmc *du:ban 'to dive' was reflected as *du:ffen, so that <duffa> is historically the same verb as ON <du:fa> and the rest.
All in all, the words cited by Schrijver as evidence for a Language of Geminates do not require any new substrate. They can be explained adequately as ordinary inherited words, as loans from Kuhn's NWBlock substrate, or as loans between different Germanic languages.
DGK