Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/erþaburgz
Latest comment: 1 year ago by Burgundaz in topic a/ō
a/ō
[edit]This should be ō, I see no reason for the connective vowel to be "a". I have no idea how to change it though. Hrabnaz (talk) 18:52, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
- Why would it be ō? The default thematic connecting vowel in Germanic was -a-, just as -i- in Latin (from earlier -o-) and -o- (... mostly) in Ancient Greek. There doesn't seem to be any sign that compounds contained -ō- either, for instance, we'd expect Old High German **erdaburg, not erdburg, or Old Norse **jǫrðborg, not jarðborg. The fact that the default connecting/thematic vowel was -a-, and that it largely disappeared in the Northwest Germanic languages, is why Old Northwest Germanic languages appear to compound as though with bare stems, otherwise we'd expect some sign of intermittent -a- or -o-/-u- in such compounds. Compare Old English ġifu < *gebō, but ġif-heall < *geba-hallō. Burgundaz (talk) 14:42, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
- I'm just going off of what I see in the majority of compounds that have an ō-stem word as the first component.
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/er%C3%BE%C5%8Dfallaz
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/er%C3%BE%C5%8Dfastuz
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/er%C3%BE%C5%8Dhnuts
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/er%C3%BE%C5%8Dkundaz
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/r%C5%ABn%C5%8Dstabaz
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/%C3%9Eeud%C5%8Dbal%C3%BEaz
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/%C3%9Eeud%C5%8Dberhtaz
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/%C3%9Eeud%C5%8Dr%C4%ABks Hrabnaz (talk) 02:40, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
- Ah, gotcha. I guess you could say, since there is no concrete evidence either way since it's a reconstructed language, it can't be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Germanic didn't compound like that. But as I stated above, what little evidence there is does point to Germanic compounding largely just like Latin and Ancient Greek did, with simple thematic -o- representing the o-/-eh₂ class of nominals, because again, if *erþō compounded as *erþō-, we would definitely expect some sign of such formations from Old High German (-a- or -u-) or Old Norse (possible labial umlaut).
- But regardless of my own opinion, the only real (extensive) source that lists compounds in older Germanic is Orel's "A Handbook of Germanic Etymology", which follows the same assumption, where all compounds involving *erþō appear as *erþa-, (pages 85-86), e.g. *erþa-bazjan, *erþa-burgz, and so on. Burgundaz (talk) 20:39, 9 December 2022 (UTC)