Re: Uralic Loanwords in Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> W dniu 2010-02-15 17:32, Torsten pisze:
>
> > I'd argue 'paradigm regularization' instead of 'morphological
> > truncation' (it would be better motivated).
>
> Whatever the mechanism, the final result was morphological
> truncation. One can suspect that the actual sequence of events was:
>
> (1) levelling the vocalism: *seGaz/*siGiziz -> *siGiz/*siGiziz
> (2) reinterpreting the nom.sg.: *siGiz = *siGi- + -z (with change
> of gender)
> (3) adjusting the rest of the paradigm -> *siGi-z, gen. siGi:z, etc.

A consequence of my idea that the origin of the m.sg.nom. *-s is the -Vs of m./n.sg. used as a subjctive genitive with the originally non-finite (dependent) which became the mi-conjugation, and that there therefore also existed in PIE an endingless m.sg.nom. with which the -s m.sg.nom. was confused, is that there would have existed already in PIE two nom.'s of that paradigm: *sego and *segos (the former by 's-subtraction' in analogy with the consonant stems.

As for the gender change, that is usually frowned upon as a method, since it's rare. However it's possible that in a construction with a 'partitive genitive' subject, the subject would be understood as as neuter. Some outsider might interpret the equivalent of Russ. 'vody ne bylo' (correct?) as the genitive construed as a neuter noun.

> > Well, a paradigm -#/-es- *is* reflected in West Germanic.
>
> Only its fragments are. In Old English, for example, there is no
> trace of a reflex of *-s- in any singular forms of the
> <lamb/lambru> type. They were refashioned early into ordinary
> a-stem case forms, so that we get e.g. gen.sg. <lambes> rather than
> **lember < *lamBiziz or the like. The -r- (< *-z-) suffix became a
> redundant plural marker.
>
> > I was wondering if 'Aestian' *gl-ás-/*gl-azá- (ablautless,
> > Rozwadowski's change) might be a s-stem neuter, based on a
> > reclassified genitive (-> nominative)?
>
> I'm afraid I don't quite see what you mean. I'd be grafteful for
> some details of the proposed scenario.

I see in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balto-Slavic_languages#Vowels
that some think Rozwadowski's change was an inner-Slavic phenomenon, which at least Andersen disagrees with
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65418
and I believe Udolph found something similarly geographic about the river names, without drawing conclusions from it, although I can't find it now.

Andersen finds the a-variant in the West Slavic area. I postulate a pre-Slavic language there (Venetic? ar-/ur- language?) with pre-ablaut long vowels, as in PPIE (a:, u:, i:), not as in PIE (e/o/zero, eu/ou/u, ei/oi/i). A s-stem neuter would have been *´-a(s)/*-ás- (and with an added collective ending -á(x) it would have been *-as-á-), not *´-o(s)/*-és- (*-sá-).


Torsten