From: tarasovass
Message: 71528
Date: 2013-11-08
---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <grzegorj2000@...> wrote:>>A good question. A specialist in OHG would be needed... However, as I know, h and hh (ch) are distinguishable in texts. If ch (or hh) in nechein (attested in these two forms) comes from *h < *x < IE *k, why it is doubled? Are there more examples of doubling the Germanic *x in German?>>I think there are no doubts about ne- in nechein: it is a negation particle. So, ch- is at the beginning of the root. I do not know a single example of OHG ch- < h- < x- < IE *k, and I do not think that negation could form an exception. There are examples of ch- in the initial position but everytime such a ch- comes from Germanic k- (IE g*).Let me address this first.
The expected outcome of PIE *nékWe in North West Germanic would be */nih/ [nix]. This is according to the rules which I think are more or less commonly accepted: syncope, word-final loss of labialization (cf. OHG <noh> 'still, yet' < PIE *núqWe), the phonetic lenition [x] > [h] not operating in the position not before a sonorant (for the rules see, for example, _Joseph B. Voyels. Early Germanic Grammar. Pre-, Proto-, and Post-Germanic Languages. Academic Press, 1992_). Thus we would have */nih ainaz/ [nix ainaz] 'not a single one' before the univerbation which probably not happened before the time of the Second Sound Shift. The latter caused a complementary distribution of the two allophones of OHG /x/, viz., [xx] word-internally after a vowel and [x] otherwise. This created an immediate phonotactial problem for the now univerbated [nixein], which must have been resolved either by weakening -- /nihein/ -- or strengthening -- /nixein/ [nixxein] -- at a speaker's discretion. In such case one would expect an orthographical vacillation in the attested forms -- and that's exactly what is attested: we have, on one hand, <nihein>, <nehein> <niheim>, <nihēn>, <nehēn>, <neiein>, <nēn>, and, on the other hand, <nihhein>, <nichhein>, <nehhein>, later <nechein>, <nechīn> (I took the material from _Rudolf Schützeichel. Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch. 7., durchgesehene und verbesserte Auflage. De Gruyter, 2012 _).
Remarkably, we have the same vacillation in deh(h)ein 'any, no' (<t(h)ehein>, <thegein>, <theihein>, <thihein>, <thein>, <dehein>, <deein> vs. <thihhein>, <dehhein>, later <dechein>, <dihhein>, <dichhein>) which -- whatever be its (obscure) origin -- is, too, clearly a compound with *ainaz as a second element (cf. the discussion on p. 151 in _Wilhelm Braune, Althochdeutsche Grammatik I Laut- und Formenlehre. 15 Auflage, bearbeitet von Ingo Reiffenstein. Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2004_, which is the standard reference for OHG). I don't know how to explain this wobbling spelling starting from Gmc. *k.
Sergei