Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/-slą

Variants

There seems to be some variation in the suffix, showing up as *-isl- and *-islij-. It might be possible the -i- was picked up from applying the suffix to weak class 1 verbs, while the latter seems to show attachment of the collective suffix *-ją.

Gothic possibly attests the former variant in 𐍃𐍅𐌰𐍂𐍄𐌹𐌶𐌻 (swartizl, “black ink; that which darkens”), likely derived from a weak verb *swartijaną, and showing Verner alternation. It shows up only once though, and there's a formally similar word 𐍃𐍅𐌰𐍂𐍄𐌹𐌶𐌰 (swartiza), which serves to make the situation even more unclear. Anglom (talk) 03:14, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

@Anglom In case this still interests you nearly 4 years later.. regarding the Gothic -- Lehmann has various things to say on this one, but the bottom line is that he seems to treat 𐍃𐍅𐌰𐍂𐍄𐌹𐌶𐌰 (swartiza) as a variant, nothing more (significantly, the differing forms are found in the exact same place in Corinthians II, just in different mss. - namely ambrosianus A for the variant without the -l- and B for the variant with the -l-). Personally I think the version without -l- may be a misspelling/reading, due to the similarity of the 𐌰 and 𐌻 letters. Generally, the longer form seems to me to be the more likely to be the accurate/original one -- why would a scribe add rather than drop a letter? The latter seems more likely due to the similarity of the letters. Perhaps worth noting that I've seen other cases in the literature where it's likely that these two letters were mixed up by scribes or readers due to their similarity -- or at least this was brought forth as a hypothesis (though I can't really recall a specific one right now on the spot..) — Mnemosientje (t · c) 10:32, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

That is pretty interesting, thanks! Anglom (talk) 18:15, 26 September 2018 (UTC)