Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/wesaną

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Latest comment: 26 days ago by Caoimhin ceallach in topic Only two stems?
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Present tense of wesaną, with the sense 'I stay, I sojourn'

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I would like to make the case for recognising the use of the present tense of *wesaną as a verb meaning 'stay, remain, lodge, sojourn' independent of its use in the suppletive paradigm of the verb to be.

In Gothic wisan is used in exactly that sense. Examples follow:

Gothic: At izwis … wintru wisa (Corinthians I 16:6)

PGmc: *
At izwiz … wintrų wesō


Meaning: I will stay the winter … at your place.

Gothic: wait þatei wisa jah þairhwisa at allaim izwis (Philippians 1:25)

PGmc: *
wait þat ī wesō jahw þerh-wesō at allaimaz izwiz

Meaning: I know that I shall stay and continue with all of you.

The Gothic corpus also turns up 9 examples of wisiþ < *wisidi, in the sense of 'stay, remain, abide'. In Gothic wisan is a strong verb class 5. In that case *wesaną is also a strong verb 5, like *sprekaną. This is consistent with its preterite *ik was, *īz wēzun.

Conceivably because of this double usage of the verb *wesaną, both as an independent verb to stay (present tense) and as the past of 'to be', West Germanic uses the alternative verbs *wezāną and *wazōną.

The derivation of those two verbs would appear to be:

*wazōną is a denominative < *wazō, sojourn (proposed by Ringe in a handout on Verner's Law)< *h₂wos-éh₂ < *h₂wes-

*wezāną is originally a factitive 'cause to stay' < *wezajanan < *h₂wes-oyéti

To understand the semantic field here, I will point out that Gothic also uses other verbs in this sense:

gastandan < *gastandaną, and

saljan, I presume to be a Gothic innovation, derived from *saliz

2001:8003:3417:5F00:F974:724D:50DE:ED5F 05:22, 17 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

You may well be right. Dutch has the alternative infinitive wezen (beside normal zijn), but only in non-auxiliary senses:
Daar moet je wezen.That's where you need to be.
Je hoeft niet bang te wezen.You don't need to be afraid.Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:30, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Only two stems?

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Are these forms with "immi" or "isti" (in my native German surviving in "ist", in English or Scandinavian in all forms of the present indicative like "am", "are" or Swedish "är") really of the same stem as "sindi" or "sijo" (German "sei" or "sind" or Icelandic and Old Germanic present subjunctive)? I would perceive them to be different stems.

By the way: I think it is fascinating how in the Germanic languages some forms were replaced by (regular) forms derived from other stems. Universal-Interessierter (talk) 11:06, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes, compare Latin est ((s)he is) v. sunt (they are) and Sanskrit अस्ति (asti) v. सन्ति (santi), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ésti v. *h₁sénti. Indeed, it looks weird, but that's because it's a preserved archaism. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Caoimhin ceallach That sounds fascinating. Since this alternation is visible in so many Indo-European languages with different forms of the other suppletive stems in the copula, it should indeed be an inherited one. But many younger "regularization" tendencies seem to have treated them as different stems. And I would assume, that in Proto-Indo-European itself, they might have been the product of suppletion in unreachable ancestors. Universal-Interessierter (talk) 10:30, 28 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
You're right, they would be treated as different stems in for example German, because they are no longer part of a wider pattern. As for Proto-Indo-European, it is indeed likely that it contained the same kind of irregularities that were remnants of even older patterns. It's just that we can't say anything specific about them because we don't have the data. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 23:18, 28 July 2024 (UTC)Reply