`tun' in Bavarian again

[Thomas McFadden]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Hello all,

Thanks to everyone who responded to query I sent a few weeks ago on the
odd behavior of this Bavarian verb.  I just wanted to summarize briefly
the suggestions that have been made, and make a few comments, along the
lines of what seems to be standard now on the Linguist List.

Horst Simon suggested Nuebling's 2000 book on `Prinzipien der
Irregularisierung'.  She discusses the irregular short verbs in a number
of gmc. lgs., and while she doesn't talk about Bav. specifically, it turns
out that a similar pattern is found with `tun' in some Swiss dialects.
Here it seems that the plural forms show umlaut, on analogy with the modal
verbs, but this doesn't seem to work as a full explanation for the Bav.
forms (see below).

Paul Hopper and Werner Abraham both point out that `tun' does function as
an auxilliary in Bav., which could create pressure for it to have vowel
alternation between singular and plural, like the preterite-present
modals.  This explanation seems to be on the right track, but it runs into
problems phonologically, because there is no modal verb in Bav. that shows
the ua/ea alternation which could serve as the basis for this analogy.
One might expect ua/ia on the basis of the Bav. equivalent of muessen (ue=
umlauted u), but that's not what we get.  So we still have a bit of a
mystery (unless it turns out that there is a change ia>ea that applied in
this environment, which is a distinct possibility).

Wolfgang Schulze reports being taught that the plural vowel ea has been
imported from the subjunctive (standard German taete ae=umlauted a) , i.e.
it's an outcome of umlaut.  But the Bav. outcome of MHG umlauted a is
a somewhat front a, not a diphtong.  So actually this is a possible
explantation for the plural forms that exist in some dialects of Bav. dan,
dads, dan, but won't work for the more common dean deads dean.

manaster at umich.edu (sorry, there was no name in the email) points out that
the cognate verb is also suppletive in Yiddish.  There the infinitive and
past participle have an o in the stem, while the inflected forms have u in
both singular and plural.  In fact my recent curiosity on these Bav. forms
arose out of conversations with a colleague about some unexpected
behavoirs in Yiddish verbs and how they might be connected to similar
facts of Bav.

So for the time being, we still have no full account for what's going on,
but some of the pieces of the problem are becoming more clear, and if
there's a way to get ea out of ia, which I suspect there might be, then we
might have something (although if that's the case, I'd imagine that
someone already figured it out, and I just haven't found their story yet).
Thanks again to all those who responded.

Tom