Re: Please help me bury a dead horse

Andrew, Torsten, and Joao-

Thank you all, so much, for your assistance. It really is appreciated.
You'll all be receiving packages of unmarked, non-sequential bills. Please ignore the red dye, I had a bit of difficulty with the withdrawal process!

Seriously, thank you very much.
-Aydan

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "andythewiros" <anjarrette@...> wrote:
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> OHG <irmin->, OE <eormen->, ON <jörmun-> can only come from PGmc *ermina-, *ermana-, or *ermuna- (probably in that order too, with regard to the respectively OHG, OE, and ON words). Suffix alternation *-ana/-ina/-una (as well as *-ala/-ila/-ula and *-ara/-era/-ura) was relatively common in early Germanic, sometimes persisting into the attested languages. The form <airmana-> is based on Gothic *aírman-, in which in Gothic orthography <aí> represents the [E] sound from PGmc *e before *r and *h (also *i before *r and *h). But the PGmc form is *ermana-, not *airmana-. *Airman- is merely the Gothic _spelling_ of *erman-, not the original root. By the way, Gerhard Köbler says that *ermana- probably meant "enormous, huge".
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> > > Which leads to the million dollar question - can the PGmc *Airmana-/*ermana- develop out of PIE *ser-(2) or *ser-(3) ??
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> Absolutely not. PIE *s- was never lost in initial position in Germanic. The only cases where it might appear to have been lost are cases in which *s-mobile occurred in PIE, e.g. *ker- beside *sker- 'cut'. However such alternations always occurred in PIE only, in PGmc the *s- was always preserved if it occurred in PIE (and did not occur if it did not occur in PIE - hence it is theoretically possible to find words in Germanic with *sk- < PIE *sk- beside words with *h- < PIE k- which are related in meaning; I don't know any proven examples although I can speculate that OE hy:dan 'hide' might be related to OE scu:a 'shade' (and some other words) because of an s-mobile alternation in PIE. Note however that Germanic initial h- always comes from PIE *k- or *k'-, never from PIE *s- as in the examples mentioned above. Greek Herme:s, Hermae as well as Germanic *ermana- can not have derived from *kerm- or *k'erm-, and again *ermana- can definitely not have derived from *serm-.
> As to your other questions regarding the origins of Hermae and Herme:s, I must defer to the other experts on this list.
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> Andrew
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