From: stlatos
Message: 70902
Date: 2013-02-08
>This assumption takes the price of regularity to unacceptable heights. Optionality is better.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" wrote:
> > More corrections. I must stop quoting words from memory, which is wrong 4 out of 5 times.
> > The soundlaw which I am assuming assimilated an occluded labiovelar in articulation to a preceding labial. This must have operated before the soundlaw which converted Proto-Gmc. *-Vnx- to *-V:x-, or there would be no nasal preserved in any form of Gmc. '5', no matter what analogical processes occurred later. I have not determined whether the labializing soundlaw occurred before or after Grimm's Law. If it occurred after, something like this would be expected:
> >
> > PIE *penkWe '5', *pn.kWto- '5th'
> > Early PGmc *finxWe, *funxWta-
> > Later ... *finx(W), *funfta-
> > Later ... *fi:x, *funfta-
>
> Everything takes longer than I think it will. Sean's comments on 'wolf', 'finger', and 'fist' required revising the theory, so I will address these words first. His other comments will be answered under the appropriate headwords. It was impractical to attempt to interweave this material with one of his highly abbreviated posts.
>
> 1. 'Wolf'. Inventing archaic root-noun inflection to get an occluded labiovelar in the nom. sg. is a poor way to explain the labialization. It is better to suppose that labialization occurred in the nom. sg. following syncope of the stem-vowel, and then spread to the other cases.
>
>This assumption has several ramifications for Germanic soundlaw chronology.
>There aren't any really good ety. to prove that. Optionality is also seen in gWHo- > wa- or ba- (warm, bane), and gWH>w/_N (in dream) is sim. to the optionality in bHn > bn / wn :
> Indo-European *kWo- regularly becomes Gmc. *xa- unless the labiovelar is restored by analogy (as in the interrogatives).
>Early Gmc. loanwords to Finnic (e.g. Finnish _kuningas_ 'king') have -as for IE *-os, showing that the stem-vowel shift *-o- > *-a- preceded syncope in the ultima. Had the delabialization *xWa- > *xa- also preceded this syncope, the nom. sg. 'wolf' would have developed as *wl.´kWos > *wúlxWos > *wúlxWaz > *wúlxaz > *wúlxs. Therefore, the delabialization *xWa- > *xa- must have followed the syncope which preceded the postulated labialization of occluded *xW. The nom. sg. thus developed as *wl.´kWos > *wúlxWos > *wúlxWaz > *wúlxWs > *wúlfs.
>Only if your revised theory is true. The unlikelihood of all above is only more ev. against it.
> Old Norse _ulfr_ represents Runic Norse *wulfaR (cf. _stainaR_ 'stone', _þewaR_ 'servant', etc.). This cannot directly continue *wúlxWaz, or there would be no basis for the labialization in Norse.
> The inherited Gmc. feminine was apparently formed with the ablauting _deví:_-suffix *-jáh2-/*-íh2-, like Gothic _mawi_ 'girl', acc. _mauja_, to _magus_ 'boy'. Here _mawi_ regularly continues Gmc. *maGWí:, but _mauja_ has been levelled from expected *magja (Gmc. *maGWjó:N) by the influence of _mawi_. ON _ylgr_ 'she-wolf' represents RN *wulgiR, which has been normalized to /i/-stem inflection, following paradigmatic levelling in the opposite direction. The nom. sg. would have regularly developed as *wl.kWíh2 > *wulxWí: > *wulGWí: > RN *wulwi(R), the acc. sg. as *wl.kWjáh2m > *wulxWjá:n > *wulGWjó:N > RN *wulgjo. The RN nom. sg. *wulgi(R) evidently replaced internal *-w- with *-g- from the cases which had full grade of the _deví:_-suffix.That is too complicated, with analogy unlikely to be of that form. It ignores the great variation in KW, not only in Gmc.:
>
> Proto-West Germanic replaced *wulxWí: with *wulfí: after the masc. *wúlfs while Verner's Law was still operating, immediately yielding *wulBí: 'she-wolf'. This is not to say that /a/-syncope and occluded /xW/-labialization preceded the onset of Verner's Law, which might create serious chronological difficulties. It means that grammatical change was a living feature of Proto-Germanic for some period of time, perhaps several centuries, before the original accent was superseded by the familiar root-based accent. During this period, the phoneme /f/ was realized as [f] word-initially, in the cluster [ft], and when immediately preceded by the accent; otherwise [B]. When PWGmc speakers transferred /f/ from the masc. 'he-wolf' to the fem. 'she-wolf', it preceded the accent in 'she-wolf' and automatically was realized as [B]. The resulting WGmc *wulbi developed into Old English _wylf_ and Old High German _wulpa_.
>