"whose"

[Leo A. Connolly]

"David L. White" wrote:

>> Not that it matters here, but wasn't the OE genitive form _hwæs_
>> (_hwaes_, if your machine can't handle the digraph), which points to PIE
>> _o_ rather than _e_?

>> Leo Connolly

>         Yes, the OE form is "hwaes", but I was (over-)generalizing to the
> rest of Germanic, where /e/ seems to have been the rule.  The usual view is
> that OE /ae/ got there simply by a difference of opinion about whether to
> use /o/ or /e/ in IE.

Certainly possible, since other genitives show both vowels.

> Another possibility that occurs to me is that there
> might have been a change of unstressed /e/ after /w/ (voiced or voiceless)
> to /ae/, but I do not know if this checks.

I don't think so.  Why would it have been unstressed in an interrogative
like that?