Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/fraleusaną

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Missing etymology (unattested verb)[edit]

Wouldn't this probably be a verb derived from *lausaz [1], or is it, judging from this page [2], that both words came from the PIE stem? Skomakar'n 10:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's very rare, if not completely unheard of in Germanic, for strong verbs to be derived verbs. This is because they show ablaut, and this is a feature that was only present in primary (underived) verbs in Indo-European. It's therefore *lausaz that is derived from the verbal stem *lews- (from which *leusaną, which didn't survive in any languages as far as I know), rather than the other way around. —CodeCat 13:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure which is derived from what, but Icelandic does have the verb leysa [3] as opposed to the adjective laus. I don't know if this is later derivation or not. Similarly, Swedish has the verb lösa. Skomakar'n 15:43, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
-ey- in Old Norse and Icelandic is the umlaut of -au-, so the original form of this verb must have had -au- and an umlauting -i- or -j- following it. It was probably a verb *lausijaną, which is a class 1 weak verb. These verbs tend to be derived from other verbs (as causatives) or from nouns and adjectives. So in this case, *lausijaną (to make loose) is derived from *lausaz (loose) which in turn is an ablaut variant of the Indo European stem *lews- (probably "to be loose" or a similar meaning). If a Germanic verb *leusaną had existed and survived in ON or Icelandic, it would have been ljósa or ljúsa. —CodeCat 16:47, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I suspected so. Thanks for confirming. Skomakar'n 14:02, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]