Don Ringe has recently published an article on the Gothic gen. pl. ending -e (2006) which is as peculiar for the author’s self-confidence as it is illustrative of the lack of knowledge in some quarters of the Indo-Europeanist scholarly community

Kortlandt, Frederik H. H.

English

Hochschulschriftenserver - Universität Frankfurt am Main

Frederik Kortlandt – Leiden University – www.kortlandt.nl GOTHIC GEN.PL. -e  FREDERIK KORTLANDT Don Ringe has recently published an article on the Gothic gen.pl. ending -e (2006) which is as peculiar for the author’s self-confidence as it is illustrative of the lack of knowledge in some quarters of the Indo-Europeanist scholarly community. He postulates a sound change turning *-ēN into *-ōN (p. 193) in order to derive the 1st sg. weak preterit ending, e.g. Runic -do, from *-dēN < *-dhēm. He then assumes that the alleged gen.pl. ending *-ãN < *-õm was reanalyzed as *-ẽN on the analogy of the 1st sg. weak preterit ending at a stage when *-dēN had a variant *-dāN on its way to *-dōN except in ā-stem nouns (p. 197) and that the front vowel was general-ized in the Gothic gen.pl. ending -e. This is presented as “a sociolinguistically in-formed solution to an old historical problem”. The Indo-European gen.pl. ending was *-om (cf. Kortlandt 1978, with refer-ences). Like the Italo-Celtic gen.sg. form in *-iH, the form in *-om became part of the inflexional system at a comparatively recent stage. It is formally identical with the neuter form of the possessive adjective, e.g. Vedic 1st pl. asmkam, 2nd pl. yuṣmkam, Latin nostrum, vestrum, Old Norse vár (without u-umlaut), yþvar, also Armenian -c‘ < *-skom (cf. Meillet 1936: 72), cf. Old Persian hyā amāxam taumā ‘the family which is ours’ for the original syntax. The Hittite genitive in -an is a col-lective or non-referential rather than plural form (cf. Laroche 1965: 40, Pedersen 1938: 32). The ending *-om is unequivocally preserved as a nominal gen.pl. ending in Umbrian (cf. Meillet 1922), Old Irish, Lithuanian and Slavic, and its reconstruc-tion is fully compatible with the other evidence from Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Bal-tic, Greek and Indo-Iranian. Following Jasanoff (1983), Ringe reconstructs *-o(H)om for Hittite -an, Vedic -ām, Lithuanian -ų̃ and Greek -õn and claims that the reflexes in the other lan-guages are compatible with this reconstruction (p. 169). This is unfortunate be-cause the Hittite ending does not show length and has no plural meaning (see above) and because Jasanoff has a poor command of the Baltic and Slavic data and is not familiar with the pertinent scholarly literature (cf. Kortlandt 1983, 2004, 2005). The Lithuanian circumflex does not reflect contraction but the absence of a laryngeal in the Balto-Slavic ending *-un < PIE *-om (cf. Kortlandt 1978: 286-290 and 1983: 173-183). The reconstruction *-o(H)om is correct for the Greek and Indo-Iranian o-stems because these languages, unlike Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic, introduced the thematic vowel *-o- before the ending *-om in the gen.pl. FREDERIK KORTLANDT  2 form of the thematic flexion. This innovation was more recent than the creation of dat.sg. *-oei, abl.sg. *-oed, loc.sg. *-oï, nom.pl. *-oes, inst.pl. *-oois, which were con-tracted in Indo-Iranian (but not in Greek) at an early stage. In a similar way we may reconstruct *-aHom for the Greek and Indo-Iranian ā-stems, with an analogi-cal full grade before the PIE ending *-om. Here again, the introduction of the full grade suffix in the gen.pl. form was more recent than in dat.sg. *-aHei, gen.abl.sg. *-aHos, nom.pl. *-aHes, which show early contraction in Indo-Iranian. Since the intervocalic laryngeals were only preserved at morpheme boundaries in Indo-Iranian, we must conclude that the gen.pl. endings *-oom, *-aHom for earlier *-om, *-Hom were created at a stage when contraction had already taken place in dat.sg. *-ōi, *-āi, abl.sg. *-ōd, *-ās, loc.sg. *-oi, gen.sg. *-ās, nom.pl. *-ōs, *-ās, inst.pl. *-ōis. At a later stage, new intervocalic laryngeals arose from the vocalization of the syl-labic nasals, e.g. in *ma’as ‘moon’, *va’atas ‘wind’. The highly distinctive gen.pl. ending -a’am then spread to the other flexion classes. The ending was eventually replaced by -(ā)nām on the analogy of the n-stems. It follows that the endings *-oom, *-aHom cannot be reconstructed for the Indo-European proto-language. Thus, it appears that Jasanoff misled Ringe in his reconstruction of the Indo-European gen.pl. ending and saddled him with a problem which was solved a long time ago. One gets the impression that American students do not read French any more because Ringe ignores the most important articles on the subject (Meillet 1922, Vaillant 1935, Laroche 1965) and misrepresents the position taken in the only French publication he mentions (Vendryes 1927), claiming that its author does not make clear what the source of the Gothic ending -e could have been (p. 172) while Vendryes makes it perfectly clear that the origin of the ending must be sought in the i-stems (1927: 368). It seems to me that Indo-European studies require a wider background and knowledge of the relevant languages. The Gothic gen.pl. endings -e and -o represent the full grade suffixes *-ei- and *-ā- of the i- and ā-stems before the lost ending *-om. The main piece of evidence is the absence of a formative suffix before the ending -e in the i-stems, e.g. gaste ‘guest’, mahte ‘might’, cf. suniwe ‘son’, auhsne ‘ox’, broþre ‘brother’, which implies that -e is the phonetic reflex of the formative suffix in the i-stems (see further Kort-landt 1983: 171). The spread of -e from the i-stems to other flexion classes so as to replace the zero ending which developed from PIE *-om has a clear parallel in modern Russian, where -ej was generalized after soft stems at a recent stage. The introduction or restoration of the formative suffix before the PIE ending *-om is found not only in Sanskrit -ānām, -īnām, -ūnām, but also in Greek -ōn < *-āsōm, Latin -ārum, -ōrum, Old High German -ōno, etc. Ringe objects to my reconstruc-tion *-eiom for Gothic -e that “all the other evidence suggests that the regular out-come of such a sequence was PGmc. *-iją > Gothic -ei (=/ī/), which might even have been shortened to -i” (p. 173). In fact, there is no such evidence and there is no reason to suppose that *-eiom ever merged with *-i(j)om, as Ringe imagines. The lowered reflex of *ē in saian ‘sow’ and waian ‘blow’ as opposed to *ī in fijan ‘hate’ GOTHIC GEN.PL. -e  3 and  frijon ‘love’ rather suggests that we may expect -e in *-eiom versus -i in *-i(j)om, as in acc.sg. hairdi ‘shepherd’, and I maintain that this is exactly what we find. Thus, I think that the phonetically regular development is attested in kuni ‘race’ < *-iom, hairdi < *-iom, nom. hairdeis < *-ios, bandi ‘band’ < *-ī, acc. bandja < *-iām (cf. Beekes 1990), nom.pl. gasteis < *-eies, gaste < *-eiom, ipv. nasei ‘save’ < *-eie, 3rd sg. waurkeiþ ‘work’ < *-ieti, 3rd pl. waurkjand < *-ionti, nasjand < *-eionti (cf. Kortlandt 1986), ipv. habai ‘have’ < *-ēie, 3rd sg. habaiþ < *-ēieti, 3rd pl. haband < *-ēionti (cf. Kortlandt 1990). The desyllabification before -a- in nasjand and waurkjand was more recent than the loss of intervocalic *-i-, which was more re-cent than the loss of the final vowel in nasei, gaste, habai, cf. dat.sg. þamma ‘this’ < *-ē. REFERENCES Beekes, Robert S.P.  1990  Le type gotique bandi. La reconstruction des laryngales (Paris: Les Belles Lettres), 49-58. Jasanoff, Jay 1983  A rule of final syllables in Slavic. Journal of Indo-European Studies 11, 139-149. Kortlandt, Frederik 1978  On the history of the genitive plural in Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, and Indo-European. Lingua 45, 281-300. 1983  On final syllables in Slavic. Journal of Indo-European Studies 11, 167-185. 1986  The Germanic first class of weak verbs. North-Western European Language Evo-lution 8, 27-31. 1990  The Germanic third class of weak verbs. North-Western European Language Evo-lution 15, 3-10. 2004  Balto-Slavic accentuation: Some news travels slowly. Baltistica 39/1, 13-17. 2005  Noises and nuisances in Balto-Slavic and Indo-European linguistics. Baltistica 40/1, 9-11. Laroche, Emmanuel 1956  Études de linguistique anatolienne. Revue Hittite et Asianique 23, 33-54. Meillet, Antoine 1922  La forme du génitif pluriel en ombrien. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 22, 258-259. 1936  Esquisse d’une grammaire comparée de l’arménien classique (Vienne: Mékhitha-ristes). Pedersen, Holger  1938  Hittitisch und die anderen indoeuropäischen Sprachen (København: Munks-gaard). Ringe, Don 2006  A sociolinguistically informed solution to an old historical problem: the Gothic genitive plural. Transactions of the Philological Society 104/2, 167-206. Vaillant, André 1935  Le génitif pluriel en *-on. Revue des Études Slaves 15, 5-11. FREDERIK KORTLANDT  4 Vendryes, Joseph 1927  Sur le génitif pluriel des substantifs en germanique. Indogermanische Forschungen 45, 364-369. 

A rule of final syllables in Slavic.

A sociolinguistically informed solution to an old historical problem: the Gothic genitive plural.

Balto-Slavic accentuation: Some news travels slowly.

Esquisse d’une grammaire comparée de l’arménien classique

Études de linguistique anatolienne.

Hittitisch und die anderen indoeuropäischen Sprachen

La forme du génitif pluriel en ombrien.

Le génitif pluriel en *-on.

Le type gotique bandi. La reconstruction des laryngales (Paris: Les Belles Lettres),

Gothic gen.pl. -e

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Hochschulschriftenserver - Universität Frankfurt am Main