Re: Gmc *-ingaz, *-ungō

I can't actually find anything on Google about the etymology of these suffixes. Would anyone here happen to have a suggestion on sources that might?

In the meantime, I have drawn up some theories as to their origin with theoretical compounded roots, in an exercise of speculation. As mentioned above though, I am not aware of any etymologies given for these suffixes, so I am not aware of any extra-Germanic reflexes, which would definitely change things.

On the former, I've come across a root *h₃eigʰ-, "to go away", as listed in LIV2, which could potentially give Pre-Germanic *-h₃ingʰós, "from, coming from(?)" if it were derived from a nasal present infix form. The two nasal present reflexes of the root, Ancient Greek oikhnéō, "to go, come" and Armenian iǰanem "to come down, go down, descend", on the other hand, show a nasal suffix rather than infix, which kind of hampers this theory. (Although Beekes mentions they both may be innovations.)

On the latter, discounting the variant *-ingō, which could possibly have arisen secondarily, I assume the Pre-Germanic form *-Hn̥kéh₂ or *-Hn̥gʰeh₂, But I can't really find a root with reasonable semantics. The best I could find is *h₂neḱ-, "to reach, obtain", in which case the Pre-Germanic suffix could have been *-h₂n̥ḱéh₂, "a reaching, accomplishing".

If *-ingō isn't a secondary form, then the required root would have to be *h₁e(n)k- or *h₁e(n)gʰ-. Yet I have not found a root of such form with a reasonable semantic basis.

If there are generally accepted etymologies for these two, I would really appreciate reading them.

 

These suffixes were addressed by F. Kluge (Nominale Stammbildungslehre §§22-7, 55, 158-9).  Noting that a single denominal suffix may produce diminutives as well as derivatives indicating source, Kluge cited Skt. _ra:jaká-_ 'little king' and suggested that *-ko-, united with the syllabic */n./ in the weak stem of weak nouns, had generated the Gmc. suffixes.  Just as _ra:jaká-_ might be interpreted as a suffix *-aká- attached to the root-noun _ra:j-_ (which occurs in compounds in the RV, and the simple nom. sg. _rá:t_), Gmc. *-unga- (from PIE *(...C)n.kó-) could be regarded as a suffix used with consonant-stems.

 

This seems to be supported by the exceptionally archaic dvandva-based noun preserved in the Hildebrandslied, _sunufatarungo_ (acc. to Kluge 'vater und sohn mit ihren leuten').  R.T. Giuffrida (Hildebrandslied:  Evidence External and Internal, Germ. Stud. Sehrt 91-100) has given good reasons to believe the HL was originally composed in Gothic.  The ending is then that of a Go. wk. fem. like _tuggo_ 'tongue', here *-ungo:n-, and *-fadar- has been altered to conform to OHG consonantism.  Dvandvas inflect their final members without an /n/-extension; thus Skt. _ma:ta:-pitarau_ 'mother and father' is a C-stem.  But if Gmc. *-unga- was indeed extracted as described, it or its extension *-ungo:n- could have been applied to the 'son and father' dvandva when such dvandvas were still in use.

 

Root-nouns like 'foot' and 'tooth' acquired /u/-stem inflection in Gothic.  By a similar mechanism in Late PGmc, some obscure C-stems with suffixal *-unga- (and even obscure weak nouns ending that way, for which only *-ga- was originally suffixal) may have been interpreted as /u/-stems with suffixal *-nga-.  This allowed *-nga- to be extracted and attached to /i/-stems, in particular *kuninga- 'king' from *kuni- 'people'.  (ON _konungr_ has secondarily replaced *-inga- with *-unga-, since Finn. _kuningas_ must be borrowed from Pre-Runic Norse *kuningaz.)  When the combining form of Gmc. /ja/-stems was shortened (e.g. *xarja- to *xari- 'army-'), *-nga- could be attached to these forms also.  I suspect that OHG _hûsinga_ 'household gods' was formed to *xu:sja-, not directly to *xu:sa-.  But the ambiguity would allow *-inga- to be applied directly to /a/-stems, in particular to strong personal names to indicate their descendants, and by an easy extension, to weak personal names as well.

 

The feminine deverbal abstracts in *-ungo:-, *-ingo:- (not used in Gothic) might have developed in a similar way from simple deverbal nouns, although Kluge did not propose this (at least not in Nom. Stb.), and seems to have regarded their origin as obscure.

At any rate, while I find Kluge's explanation plausible, I do not rule out the possibility of compounds involving self-standing roots.  I tried my own exercise of speculation in that direction, but did not obtain anything worth mentioning here.

 

DGK