Principles of reconstruction.

[ualarauans]

I hope other razdalaisarjos won't mind my prompting you a bit. Let's 
restore the Proto-Germanic stage for each word. This form is usually 
given in etymological dictionaries and is what you'll normally have 
to start with.

1. bath < *baþan (neuter a-stem)
2. wood < *wiðuz (masculine u-stem)
3. dwarf < *dwergaz (masculine a-stem)
4. edge < *agjô (feminine ô-stem)
5. elbow < *alinô (feminine ô-stem) + *bugan- (masculine n-stem)
6. owl < *uwwilôn or *uwwalôn (feminine n-stem)

Note the asterisk (*) is put before all non-attested forms – that's 
a scholarly convention. But you don't have to necessarily mark them 
in a text written in Neo-Gothic, of course.

OK, what do we do first? Let's start with the "bath". *baþan 
consists of the root baþ- + stem vowel –a- (that's why it is called 
a-stem) + Proto-Germ. neuter ending –n. This ending had been dropped 
before Gothic started to be written, so just take it away and don't 
care about it. The rest so far is *baþa. The next step is to remove 
the second –a, because in nominative singular (this is the 
grammatical form of nouns to be reconstructed) Gothic a-stems had 
dropped its stem vowel too. Our result is *baþ, and that's the 
correct Gothic reconstruction.

Now, the "dwarf". You should know that the short [e] (like in PG 
*dwergaz) is written as aí (or ai) in the Wulfilan script. So, our 
root is *dwaírg-. What's with the ending? Is it also dropped? No, 
not all of it. The –a- disappears, that's right, but the final Proto-
Germ. –z does not. It just gets voiceless [s]. So, the correct 
reconstruction is *dwaírgs.

Why did we drop PG –an totally and kept –s  from PG –az? Well, 
that's what did happen in Gothic. Hence the rule: in nominative 
singular Gothic neuter a-stems have no ending, only the root, and 
masculine a-stems have the ending –s.

Let's make one more step. In the list of words you have to deal with 
there are also masculine u-stems. What happens with them? The stem 
vowel –u- stays, unlike the –a- in a-stems, and the final –z gets –s 
again. So, now you know what the Gothic form of PG *wiðuz looks 
like, don't you? Note that [ð] is written as -d- in the Gothic 
script.

Feminine ô-stems (those which end in –ô) in Gothic end in –a. 
Masculine n-stems end in –a too (because the final –n- disappears), 
although this is coincidential and in nominative singular only. 
Feminine n-stems drop the final –n- and end in plain –o.

I'm afraid I said much. Too much, that is. Hope Llama will not damn 
me for destroying his plan...

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Justïn <justinelf@> wrote:
> 
> 
> Would dwarf be dwers?  I'm not sure but it seems like the -e- 
should
> undergo some kind of vowel change...I'm just having a hard time
> figuring it out with the grammar.

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