Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/dewaną

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Conjugation[edit]

I have left the Conjugation off, as I cannot find any refernce indicating the proper strong verb class. Does anyone know it? Leasnam (talk) 22:10, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An alternative form of the infinitive, *dewaną, seems to point to Class 5 as the nearest (dewanan, daw/dēw-, dewanaz). Leasnam (talk) 22:19, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
*dewaną seems like the only possibility because we know that the root ablauted, since *daw- is also attested. deyja and dīegan are not from this verb, though, but from *dawjanan. —CodeCat 23:30, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As for the verb class... well I think this may actually be a special case. Normally, roots with -ew- belong to class 2, but in this case the zero grade would end up as past plural *dwun, participle *dwanaz which is obviously difficuly for speakers to understand. Gothic is helpful here because the past participle is attested as diwano (which is itself an inflected form). So that means this verb was a class 5 strong verb, believe it or not: *dewaną, *daw, *dēwun, *dewanaz. —CodeCat 00:10, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]