Re: Dating *e > *i in Germanic

> On point 2, Tacitus has Segestes, Veleda, and Venethi (= OHG Winida) but Segime:rus
> and Segimundus (= Ammian's Sigismundus with a different stem-formation). Evidently
> the unstressed *e was first raised before nasals. This material is in Streitberg 1896
> (p. 55), one of Ringe's sources (indeed one of the best comprehensive sources on
> Germanic, despite its age).

Do you mean to suggest that this would have been the same change as *eN > *iN in stressed syllables, which would then have been the earliest change of its sort?

 

DGK:  No.  If that were so, /a/-umlaut of *i resulting from prenasal *e would be necessary to explain OE _cwene_, OHG/OS _quena_ 'woman' (remodelled in Gmc. as wk. fem. retaining /e/-grade, cf. OIr _ben_, OPr _genna_, etc.), OHG _neman_, OIce _nema_ 'to take' (cf. Grk. _némein_ 'to allocate'), OHG _breman_ 'to roar, growl, murmur' (cf. Lat. _fremere_ 'id.').  But Tacitus already has Got(h)ones against Pliny's Gutones, so /a/-umlaut of *u had occurred by T.'s time, and in all probability /a/-umlaut of *i also.  This makes me doubt that stressed *eN > *iN describes an actual event (apart from the occluded-nasal situation *eNC > *iNC which occurs in borrowings from classical Latin as well as native words).  Stressed /e/ in the words mentioned above could just as easily be a retention.

 

Likewise, I doubt that /a/-umlaut of *u was blocked by a simple nasal (as opposed to a nasal cluster), cited at the start of point 1 in your earlier post.  A counterexample is provided by ON _kona_, MHG _kone_ wk. f. 'woman' which must be built on the zero-grade *gWn.h2- > PGmc *k(W)un(h2)o:n-.  With this word there is no "later raising *o > *u" as you suggested for other examples (none actually quoted).

> On point 3, I arrived at a similar conclusion supporting "late" /i/-umlaut of *e (and
> *en,C > *in,C), and was forced to regard Fi. _teljo_ and _rengas_ as borrowed from Early
> NGmc, not Late PGmc, on the basis of studying 'wolf'.

The shift *o > *a in Germanic is not a lower bound for the loaning of _rengas_ and _kuningas_, though. Proto-Uralic did not allow 2nd syllable *o - this arose in Finnic by *aw > *o (difficult to date, could have included an intermediate stage *ou) and *aj > *oi (from which *oi > *o only during the early 2nd millennium in individual dialects), and seems to have even after these remained a disfavored stem vowel, until the influx of loans from Germanic with PG *-o:. Finnic would for a long period have adopted any word ending in *-os or *-oz with the ending *-as. There are indeed no **-os-stems in the Finnic languages (as distinguished from *-o-kse-stems such as _tule-_ "to come" : _tulos, tulokse-_ "result"; these only occur in derivatives anyway, never in loans.) Cf. _porsas_ "pig" (not **porsos), whose 1st-syllable *o is generally considered an archaism. Although I suppose loaning not directly from IE but from a precedessor of Mordvinic *purc´@..., which can go back to not only *porc´Vs but also *parc´@..., cannot be ruled out...

 

DGK:  Thanks very much for the Uralic comments.

> Indo-European labiovelars lose their labial component in Common Germanic before *-a-
> only when this *-a- matches *-o- in IE branches which maintain the original phonemic
> distinction. If the Gmc. *-a- reflects a sonant laryngeal, the labial component is
> retained. Thus Gmc. *xalsa- 'neck' (Gothic _hals_, etc.) < Proto-Indo-European
> *kWólh1so- (Latin _collum_), but Gmc. *kWaB-janaN 'to plunge, dip, dive' (Old Norse
> _kvefja_) < PIE *gW&2/4bH- (Greek _baphênai_ 'to be dipped, dyed'). Similarly the
> labial component is lost before Gmc. *-o:- only when it represents an /o/-colored long
> vowel from PIE *-eh3-, *-oh{x}-, or original *-o:-, not an /a/-colored one from PIE *-eh2-
> or *-eh4-. Thus Gmc. *ko:N acc. 'cow' (Old Saxon _ko:_, Old High German _kuo_,
> _chuo_) < PIE *gWó:m (Grk. _bôn_, Umbrian _bum_, etc.), but Gmc. *xWo:stan- 'cough'
> (Old English _hwo:sta_, OHG _h(w)uosto_) < PIE *kWeh2/4s- (Albanian _kollë_ 'cough' <
> *kWa:s-la:, cf. Sanskrit _ká:sate:_ 'coughs').

This is an interesting proposal. I've also been looking for evidence that PIE *o was phonetically labial, which seems to be difficult to establish. However, this evidence does not seem unambiguous: how do you establish *kW- and not *k- in "neck"? If only Old English consistently maintains PG *KWo: and *Ko: separate, but has the different formation _cu:_ for "cow", can you really rule out PG *kWo:N? And of course, what of the demonstrative stem *xWa-?

_j.

DGK:  1.  If these 'neck' words are not assigned to *kWel(h1)-, they require a new root *k(^)el- 'to turn' vel sim. just for them.  This is not particularly parsimonious and leads to bad public policy.  Anyone who disagrees with a soundlaw (or a borrowing) can simply invent a new root.  The result is etymological anarchy.

 

2.  In Gmc. lgs. not reflecting *ko:N, 'cow' rhymes with 'sow':  OE _cu:_, _su:_ (more commonly _sugu_ of different formation); OIce _kýr_, _sýr_; OSwed _ko:_, _so:_ (OIce raising of *u: by /R/-umlaut; East Norse *o: from NGmc *u: retained in West Norse as in _gno:a_ vs. _gnúa_, _bo:a_ vs. _búa_, etc.).  This can hardly be a coincidence.  Moreover there is no trace of the expected Late PGmc nom. sg. *kauz from *gWó:us (as in ON _naust_ 'boathouse', Osthoff's shortening preceded *o > *a in this combination, *o:us > *ous > *aus).  Evidently this nom. sg. was replaced by *ku:z after *su:z 'sow', since *u: was felt to be closer than *au to *o: of the acc. sg.  Some of the individual Gmc. lgs. generalized the vowel from the acc. sg., others from the new nom. sg.  This irregular development gives no reason to doubt the earlier reduction of *kWo(:) to *ko(:) in PGmc.

 

3.  Analogical levelling is as common as dirt.  Interrogative-relative words like Go. _hwan_ 'when' (PIE *kWóm, Old Latin _quom_, Lat. _cum_) reflect Gmc. *xW- restored from forms in which it preceded *-i- or *-e- and remained as such, e.g. Go. _hwis_ 'whose' < Gmc. *xWes(s) < PIE *kWésjo.  On the other hand ON _kefja_ (beside _kvefja_) is levelled after the strong preterit _ko:f_, which shows regular delabialization in the PIE /o/-grade *gWoh2/4bH-.  That */w/ in the PIE sequence *k^wo- was not deleted is shown by 'wheat', OE _hwæ:te_ etc., referred to Gmc. *xwait(t)ja-, derived from *xwaitta-, this by Kluge's Law from PIE *k^woit-nó-, from *k^weit- 'to bleach, blanch, whiten' vel sim.  Thus, although Early Proto-Germanic as a centum language reflected both PIE *k and *k^ as *x (later *G under Verner's conditions), it kept *xWo- distinct from *xwo-.  The subsequent delabialization in the former sequence did not entail /w/-deletion in the latter.