Principles of reconstruction.

[Justïn]

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.

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Justïn <justinelf@> wrote:
> >
> > Okay, Prim. Germanic, I'm finding, is *batham.
> 
> Good, you're on target so far.
> 
> > So...I'm looking 
> > through Wright's Grammar...and I'm a little overwhelmed...It's 
been a 
> > little more than 20 minutes and, as it's not the most user 
friendly 
> > text, I'm not sure where to find something that actually compares 
PG to 
> > how it evolved into Gothic.
> 
> Yeah, it took me a while to find my way around there too.  Be 
patient,
> explore, and feel free to ask here if you have any questions.  If I
> hear of a short cut, I'll let you know...  Meanwhile, try § 161 on 
p.
> 76 in Ch. IX "The Gothic Development of the General Germanic
> Consonant-System", which refers back to § 132 on the history of
> Proto-Germanic *'b'.  The gist is this: initial 'b' in English
> corresponds to Gothic 'b' (as in Go. 'broþar' : Modern English
> 'brother')--no catch there.
> 
> > I found a comparison chart but it didn't 
> > tell me what to do with initial B, medial TH, or final -M, let 
alone 
> > the morpheme -AM, so I'm a little lost right now...
> 
> The *'am' inflexion indicates that the word is what Wright calls a
> neuter a-stem (some books cite this ending as *'an', a later form). 
> When Wright talks about a-stems, he means words that had *'a' before
> certain endings in Proto-Germanic, words such as the masculine
> *dag-a-z and the neuter *wurd-a-m / *wurd-a-n.  The reason for
> reconstructing this ending is (1) the fact that the word is neuter 
and
> declined like other words known to belong to this group in the early
> Germanic language where it occurs; (2) lack of other sound changes
> such as doubling (=gemination) of the 'þ', or i-mutation of the root
> vowel, that would suggest a different ending; (3) comparison with 
the
> corresponding group of neuter nouns other Indo-European languages
> (e.g. Latin 2nd declension nouns ending in -um, Greek in -on, 
Sanskrit
> in -am).
> 
> Just to confuse things further, some books give slightly different
> names to the declensions based on the vowels that they had in
> Proto-Indo-European rather than what the vowels were in
> Proto-Germanic.  So here, for example, Lehmann uses the term o-stems
> where Wright uses a-stems; Lehmann has â-stems (hopefully that 
should
> come out as an 'a' with a macron (a horizontal line over it) where
> Wright uses the term ô-stems.  That's because PIE 'o' became PG 'a',
> and PIE 'â' became PG 'ô'.  Right now, that probably seems 
impossibly
> complicated, but once you get to finding your way around the Gothic
> paradigms, and the grammar of early Germanic languages in general, 
it
> will be fairly obvious which system someone is using.
> 
> http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/books/pgmc03.html#3_3_1
> http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/books/pgmc00.html
> 
> Wright's Ch. V "The Gothic Development of the Primative Germanic
> Vowels in Unaccented Syllables", § 87.1 is the place to look for 
this:
> "Final -m became -n. [...] final -n, was dropped in prim. Germanic
> [i.e. Proto-Germanic] after short vowels and the preceding vowel
> underwent the same treatment in Gothic as if it had been originally
> final, i.e. it was dropped with the exception of 'u' [...]"  Which
> gives us Gothic *'baþ' (*'bath'), a strong neuter noun belonging to
> the a-stem declension (Wright § 181-2, pp. 86-7).
> 
> > I really, really want to do this, so I'm looking more for a hint 
than 
> > the answer, really...but just very overwhelmed.  I wish I'd been 
able 
> > to study linguistics more but determined to learn this with or 
without 
> > the best formal education.
> 
> Everyone's got to start somewhere.  I was just as confused a few 
years
> ago!
>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/gothic-l/attachments/20080209/229ae8f4/attachment.htm>