Nordisk Filologi
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ARKIV FÖR NORDISK FILOLOGI UTGIVET MED UNDERSTÖD AV AXEL KOCKS FOND FÖR NORDISK FILOLOGI SAMT STATSBIDRAG FRÅN DANMARK FINLAND NORGE OCH SVERIGE GENOM BENGT PAMP OCH CHRISTER PLATZACK UNDER MEDVERKAN AV SIGURD FRIES EYVINI) FJELD HALVORSEN POUL LINDEGÅRD HJORTH LUDVIG HOLM-OLSEN LARS HULDÉN VALTER JANSSON ALLAN KARKER BENGT LOMAN ETTHUNDRAFJÄRDE BANDET å t t o n d e f ö l j d e n , a n d r a b a n d e t 1989 LUND UNIVERSITY PRESS Tryckt med stöd av Nordiska publiceringsnämnden för humanistiska tidskrifter Axel Kocks fond för nordisk filologi Art nr 20144 ISSN 0066-7668 ISBN 91-7966-087-8 Berlings, Arlöv 1989 Innehåll Astås, Reidar, førsteamanuensis, dr. philos., Tønsberg: Nytt lys over Stjórn II ...................................................................................... 49-72 Barnes, Geraldine, ph. d., Sydney: Some current issues in riddara- sögur research .................................................................................... 73-88 Benson, Sven, professor, Göteborg: Ordboken över Holbergs språk ......................................................................................................... 185-189 Djupedal, Reidar , professor, Trondheim: Pröver af Landsmaalet i Norge ................................................................................................... 166-180 Elmegård Rasmussen, Jens, mag. art., København: On the North Germanic Treatment of -eww- ................................................ 1-9 Fries, Sigurd, professor, Umeå, Kornhall, David, högskole lektor, docent, Lund, Pamp, Bengt, arkivchef, docent, Lund, och Platzack, Christer, professor, Lund: Litteraturkrönika 1988 190-224 Hagland, Jan Ragnar, professor, Trondheim: Islands eldste rune- tradisjon i lys av nye funn frå Trondheim og Bergen ............. 89-102 Harris, Joseph. professor, Cambridge, Mass., and Hiil, Thomas D., professor, Cambridge, Mass.: Gestr’s ‘Prime Sign’: Source and Signification in Norna-Gests þáttr ........................... 103-122 Hill, Thomas D . , se Harris, Joseph Kornhall, David , se Fries, Sigurd Looze, Laurence de, professor, Boston: Poet, Poem and Poetic Process in Egils Saga Skalla-Grimssonar .................................... 123-142 Mattisson, Ann-Christin, avdelningsdirektör, fil.dr, Gävle: Medeltida statusnamn på -holm. Ett genmäle ........................... 181-184 Pamp, Bengt, se Fries, Sigurd Platzack, Christer, se Fries, Sigurd Ringgaard, K., professor, Århus: Fleksionssystemets forenkling i dansk ................................................................................................. 160-165 Salberger, Evert, docent, Göteborg: Granby-hällen och Lidingö- hällen ..................................................................................................... 36-48 Santesson, Lillemor, forskarassistent, docent, Lund: - en förenklad M-runa? .............................................................................. 10-35 Sims, Sydney, research associate, Berkeley: Relative chronology in the Old Icelandic Homily Book ................................................ 143-159 JENS ELMEGÅRD RASMUSSEN On the North Germanic Treatment of -eww- 0. The problem . The Indo-European background of the Germanic “Verschärfung” is now known with absolute certainty. The geminated glides *-jj- and *-ww- that gave Gothic - ddj-t-ggw-, North Germanic -gg/-/-ggv-, West Germanic /-diphthong + 1)1 and «-diphthong + /w/, have been shown by Jasanoff 1978 (following a brilliant observation of Karl Hoffmann’s, cf. Hoffmann 1976:651, n. 2) to be the constant reflexes of IE *-jh- and *-uh- respectively (-h- being any of the three laryngeals) in intervocalic position, provided the preceding vowel is short. A recent review of the material (Rasmussen forthcoming) has shown this not only to be more likely than any competing theories, but indeed to be free of any serious residual problems. This theory, which really fits all the facts we can analyze, is not at all invalidated by Lindeman’s new counterargument (Lindeman 1988:70) that, since in IE the final parts of diphthongs are non-syllabic, there could never be any difference in the reflexion of a sequence -euhe- containing a laryngeal which is later dropped and an original span -eue- which never had any laryngeal in the first place. Sound laws are sometimes more sensitive to phonetic details than is here assumed. Therefore, even if /y/ as the final member of a diphthong was indeed in all probability phonetically different from its realization as [u] between consonants, it does not necessarily follow that it was for that reason completely identical with the sound realized in the position before a vowel. Then, even after the loss of ante vocalic laryngeals, a sequence that started out as -euhe- does not necessarily become identical with the product of old *-eue-: it may have turned into something like -eu.e- still pronounced in two syllables. Another possibility could be the common place event of compensatory lengthening, geminating the -«- being used to keep the original word length intact when one phoneme vanishes. One way or the other, the result will be a structure /-eyye-/ which is what we constantly have in Germanic. I have thereby added the further restriction that the preceding vowel, in addition to being short, must also be located in the first syllable of the word, for “Verschärfung” to be triggered after it. I also suggested the chronological amendment to the traditional view that some “Verschärfung” be ascribed to Proto-Germanic already, so that the further development of the velarization of the geminated glides to stops in East and North Germanic and the return to an unvelarized articulation in 2 Jens Elmegård Rasmussen West Germanic simply represent two equally likely, and completely inde pendent, commonplace adjustments. In the list of material appended to the paper mentioned I point out that North Germanic never presents the expected reflex of (pre-)PGmc. *-eww- (IE *-euh- + vowel), i.e. -jçggv- (-yggv- being expected only if the *-e- is umlauted to but constantly adds an unexpected -y- which gives -y- as the invariable vocalism. I shall here present and discuss the relevant examples in somewhat greater detail. 1. The verb byggua/byggia ‘build, dwell’, normally considered aya-verb in Norse, does not fit its most obvious comparandum, Ved. bhávati ‘becomes, is’, unless the -y- is secondary and the pre-Gmc. stem may be posited as *bhéuh-e/o-. Such a derivation would be all the more attractive, since the corresponding aorist Ved. à-bhü-t , Gk. ecpü, OChS by, Alb. fø-1, is certainly continued in the Germanic near-synonym ON búa, OS, OE, OHG büan , Goth, bauan ‘dwell; live in’. While there would be good sense in deriving a y-prs. from an aorist stem by backformation, there would be little motivation to add -y- to a present stem which was already sufficiently distinct from the corresponding aorist. One would therefore like to posit the ancestor form of ON byggja without a *-i~. 2. The cereal name ON bygg, dat. byggve ‘barley’, by its -y- from w- umlauted -i-, points to the one-time presence of a -y- in the suffixal part, a fact which is borne out by the form of the word as a loanword in Norwegian Lapp, bivgge, in which the retention of the strong-grade consonantism throughout the inflection is a sure sign of the loss of -y-, cf. Vilh. Thomsen 1869:67 and 81. The Nordic vocalism here shows the same t-umlauted form as in, e.g. ný ‘new m oon’ < ntr. *néuiom as opposed to tré ‘tree’ < *dreuom (an early thematicization of *dór-u , *dr-éu-s), the immediate preforms of which must have been *niu and *treu respectively. The West Germanic languages, however, have no trace of the supposed -y- in OE bëow (ntr. a-st.) or OS gen. pi. beuwo ‘of the crops’. Again, one would indeed like to identify the Norse word with that of WGmc., and in fact the protoform pointed to by the latter group, PGmc. *beww-a-< IE *bHeuh-om , would be a perfect example of the well-known wordtype *uérg-o-m ‘work’, *uérdh-om ‘word’ ‘ The Alb. verb, prs. binj (mod. standard bij) ‘spring forth, blossom’ (Meyer 1891:36f.; implausibly rejected by Çabej 1976:228-30 and 1976a:66 in favour of a connection with either Skt. bhinádmi ‘split open’ or Slav, biti ‘strike’), aorist Tosk biva, Geg bina, simply continues /bl-/ (cf. even the unextended Tosk 3. sg. bi-u given by Kristoforidhi), the regular Alb. reflex of monosyllabic *bhü-s, *bhü-t. The nj- present has been created by backformation in the usual way. I may add that, since so many IE languages point to a monosyllabic 3. sg. *bHuh-t, one can hardly consider OLat. faut (synchronically subjunctive) and Lith. bùvo descendants of the original 3. sg. form *bhuáhr t. Given the deviating syntactic function of fuat, one might contemplate accepting this as a case where, by the time the IE speech community fell apart, the aorist indicative had already become *é-bHuhr t with generalization of the weak grade stemming from the dual and plural, while the injunctive still retained its original shape *bkuáhr t. On the North Germanic Treatment of -eww: 3 etc. The root would, again, be that of Ved. bhávati, cf., for semantics, Gk. cpuTÓv ‘plant’. 3. A third example where Norse is alone in pointing to the presence of a -j- is the verb ON bryggja ‘brew’ as opposed to OE brëowan , OS breuwan, OHG briuwan (later brüwan). The WGmc. forms unambiguously point to PGmc. *breww-i!a- from pre-Gmc. *bkreuh-elo-. The IE root was *bHerhu- (Rasmussen ms., part I, ch. 2), from which weak-grade forms like the ptc. *bhruh-tó-s underwent regular metathesis, so