Re: Gmc. w-/g-, j-/g-

At 5:16:06 PM on Monday, December 19, 2011, dgkilday57 wrote:

[...]

> 1. ON <bnere> 'rubbed'. Gothic <bnauan>, only attested
> in the present, has the same formation as <bauan> 'to
> dwell', OHG <bu:an>, to which <biruun> 3pl. pret. belongs.
> Koebler reconstructs Gmc. *b(i)no:wwan as the pres. inf.

Goth. *bnauan is actually attested only in the pres. part.,
<bnauandans>, in Luke 6:1 in the Codex Argenteus. As it
happens, ON <bnere> is also a hapax, occurring once in the
third book of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great where
another ms. apparently has <gnere>.

> 2. ON <gnere> 'rubbed'. If this is not modelled after
> the foregoing, it likely belongs to the root cited by
> Pokorny (IEW 436-7) as *gHne(:)u- 'nagen, kratzen, reiben'.

> 3. ON <grera> 'greened up, grew'. Koebler reconstructs
> Gmc. *gro:an, but the corresponding OE forms have /w/
> throughout the paradigm.

Which I believe is generally taken to have been a hiatus
breaker in inflected forms that was reanalyzed as part of
the stem.

> 4. ON <rera> 'rowed'. Usually considered reduplicated,
> but again the OE forms have /w/ throughout.

As above.

> 5. ON <sera> 'sowed'. Usually considered reduplicated,
> but Go. <saiso> shows that the pret. sg. did not voice the
> root-anlaut.

Verner's law alternations between voiced and voiceless
fricatives in strong verbs were almost always leveled in
favor of the voiceless variant in Gothic, so I'd interpret
the evidence exactly the other way round: ON <sera> shows
that it *did*. It's possible that the very marginal OHG and
ON strong past -Vr- infixes began with reanalysis of the
small handful of Vernerian variants that *weren't*
immediately leveled. (This appears to be Ringe's view.)

[...]

> 8. NU <leort> 'allowed'. Usually considered reduplicated
> like <leolc> 'jumped', but the dissimilation required is
> ad hoc.

It's not common in OE, but it's quite common elsewhere.

Brian