Reconstruction talk:Proto-West Germanic/gernō

Old Frisian

@Mnemosientje West Germanic *-ō is normally reflected in Old Frisian as -a, like in Old English. This descendant has the ending, -e, which is the ending also found in many Old English adverbs, but doesn't seem to descend directly from *-ō. I'm not sure whether that indicates *-ō was replaced by some other ending at some point, or whether the two existed side by side from the beginning. —Rua (mew) 10:26, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

@Rua I was not sure either; I was following Philippa's entry for gaarne in listing cognates but did not include the OE for that reason, as we currently claim it is derived using another suffix, which I understand may also be the suffix in ON gjarna. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 10:29, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Ringe says this about the issue:

The productive formation of adverbs in the northern WGmc dialects is distinctive. A productive PGmc formation in *-ō̄ can be reconstructed from Goth. -o, OS, OHG -o, and ON relics like víða ‘widely’; the productive ON suffix -liga can reflect PGmc *-līkō̄. But a corresponding northern WGmc ending -a appears only in a few fossilized adverbs, e.g. OE sōna ‘immediately’ (= OS sāno), ġeāra ‘long ago’. The usual northern ending is OE, OF -e. This presumably reflects PGmc *-ē and/or *-ē̄; the former seems to be reflected in Gothic place adverbs such as neƕa ‘near’, faírra ‘far’, etc., the latter in Goth. hidre ‘hither’ and other place adverbs. The details of this formation’s development remain obscure.

So if Ringe doesn't know, then I guess it's not surprising we can't figure it out either. —Rua (mew) 10:34, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Guess we could reconstruct an alt-form with the -e suffix to account for Anglo-Frisian? ON seems completely unknowable as the -e and -o suffixes seem to have merged, so I suppose it's OK to leave it on the PGmc entry, perhaps with a note that it may in fact point to a PGmc in -e with a secondary development in WGmc (except Anglo-Frisian) to a suffix in -o, or that both the -e and -o forms may have existed in PGmc... — Mnemosientje (t · c) 10:47, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if there are any examples of the *-e form in West Germanic outside OE and OF. We know that both were present in PG, so if not, then it seems that the two groups went in opposite directions and ousted the "other" suffix in favour of their "own". That may make it difficult to reconstruct the original situation for each lexeme; it could have had the *-o variant or *-e and we'd never be able to tell. Aside from that, can we even tell whether OE and OF reflect *-ē (long, Gothic -a) or *-ê (overlong, Gothic -e)? —Rua (mew) 11:07, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Does OSX hwanne count? Anyway, I forgot about the long/overlong issue for e as well, that complicates it even more :s — Mnemosientje (t · c) 11:19, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, good find! Now for one that is attested in Gothic as well... —Rua (mew) 12:36, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Seems that's attested in OHG as well, spelt wanne. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 13:20, 8 January 2020 (UTC)