Northwest Germanic

[ualarauans]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at ...> wrote:
>
> > - the z>R>r evolution
> 
> I suspect that the 'r' colouring is quite early in NWG. This could
> explain the lowering of short high vowels before original /z/ in 
some
> dialects, as in OE mé, ON mér : OHG mir, Go. mis. But the 
evolution of
> vowels in Old English suggests that Proto-Germanic /z/ and /r/ were
> still distinct phonemes in England until not long before the 
earliest
> written texts (excepting runic inscriptions), and the distinction
> lasted even longer in Scandinavia.

Get. 22 Fervir = Go. *fairhveis pl.

> > Other arguments, like the distinctions s-z, e-i, o-u may be 
shared 
> > archaisms (otherways said: the loss of these distinctions is an 
> > innovation of Gothic).
> 
> Just to clarify: the s-z distinction wasn't lost, per se, in 
Gothic.
> It was cancelled out in final position, but the voiced form was
> restored before inflectional endings and when an enlitic particle 
was
> added, thus: 'hatis' (nom.sg.): 'hatiza' (dat.sg.); 'wileis' :
> 'wileizu'; weis : weizuþ-þan; sums : sumzuþ-þan (although 'sumsuh' 
is
> also attested). It's not clear whether spellings like 'wopeid' and
> 'giutid' reflect an analogous restoration of voiced forms in
> pronunciation; I suspect it's more likely that they are just 
analogous
> spellings, but that's just my guess. The 'z', and voiced fricatives
> generally, were often replaced with the corresponding voiceless
> fricative by paradigmatic analogy in the preterite of strong verbs,
> and in causative verbs by analogy with the strong verbs from which
> they derived: Go. us-kiusan, us-kusun : OE ceosan, curon; Go.
> ur-reisan, ur-raisjan : OE rísan, ráeran. But there is no general
> confusion of medial 'z' and 's' in Gothic: 'hazjan', 'nasjan' (but
> never *hasjan or *nazjan). 

There's Slavic evidence for Go. *ga-nazjan.

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