Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/bēganą
Where does -ē- come from?[edit]
Why do we reconstruct -ē- when most daughter languages have -a- or -æ- (from i-umlaut)? Besides, a reference to some source would be nice. I checked in Kroonen's Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, but this specific lemma was not there. Bezimenen (talk) 14:25, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
- Don't see any problem with the reconstruction. What would you suggest changing? —Rua (mew) 14:45, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
- Well, I thought for a second about short -a-, but the reflex in Old High German immediately disproves this hypothesis. The bigger problem is actually with the proposed pre-Germanic *bʰēgʰ-. Clearly, such a root did not exist in early Proto-Indo-European. It descends either from an earlier *bʰeh₁gʰ- or from a Narten-like long-grade of *bʰegʰ-. Unfortunately, the available data does not suffice to differentiate between the two, so I had to ask for further insights. I guess I should have put the accent on this issue in the first place, instead of doubting the reconstruction. Bezimenen (talk) 14:17, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Etymology from *bʰeh₁ǵʰ-[edit]
Previously, the etymology claimed origin from Proto-Indo-European *bʰēgʰ-. Except for IEW (Pokorny), I couldn't find any other source, which suggests this reconstruction. LIV reconstructs *bʰeh₁ǵʰ- which appears more plausible. Of course, if I missed some source, feel free to revert the edit. Bezimenen (talk) 18:56, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
bega belongs to the root of this word, but we have no entry for the etymon of Gothic *bega that underlies it. I am not sure it could have been a Gothic formation as opposed to a Gothic inheritance from Germanic, as the suffix -𐌰 in Gothic is only productive as forming agent nouns, I think. The -a in *bega might rather be the -a of the ō-stems, but I am not sure how that word-formation would work technically speaking and so I am not sure how to handle this. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 10:48, 18 December 2020 (UTC)