Questions tagged [proto-germanic]
Proto-language for the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages
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questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Why is the word "wherefore" not "whatfore" and the word "therefore" not "thatfore" and related anomalies
There is a pronominal adverb in many germanic languages that is a conjunction of the descendants of the proto-germanic words *hwar (where) + *furi (for/fore) which means something very similar to "for ...
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How was excession expressed in Proto-Germanic?
The state of excession (of an adjective) is indicated differently accross Germanic languages.
West Germanic Languages (E: too long, Du: te lang, G: zu lang) build it by the use of descendants from ...
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(proto-)Germanic evidence for Late Latin vowel length
I would like to find a list of borrowings illustrating the reflexes in (proto-)Germanic of Latin long and short vowels. In particular I would like to find substantiation to the standard claim that it ...
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Nominal umlaut alteration in German
I am trying to understand how umlaut came to be as a marker for various inflectional forms in Germanic. The obvious answer is that there was i-umlaut, a-umlaut, u-umlaut, R-umlaut, breaking and ...
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What influenced the fact in almost all European languages the word human "man" means a male?
Why "werman" (OldEnglish man as male) became simply Man (human) and "wifman" (OldEnglish man as female) became woman?
Man in English (man, human)
Homme in French (man, human)
Mann ...
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Why do Germanic languages signal stressed short vowels by writing orthographically closed syllables?
In learning spelling and pronunciation rules for English, German, and Swedish, I always assumed that Germanic languages tend to distinguish stressed short and long vowels according to orthographic ...
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Why does Old Norse ‘Óláfr’ have á instead of ei?
The Proto-Germanic (PG) diphthong *ai generally becomes ei in Old Norse (ON), except regularly before an original *h and commonly before r (but only from PG *r, not from rhotacised PG *z).
Examples ...
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Why Proto-Germanic *frēgō is reconstructed?
Why Proto-Germanic *frēgō is reconstructed on the following forms (not *fragō PIE o-grade of *frehnaną )?
from wiktionary
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a-stem genitive singular in NW Germanic languages
This is a classic problem and I'm not sure I expect a good answer to it, but it's worth it anyway. The question is partly about what appears to be some specious reasoning around Verner's Law forms and ...
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What is the term for PIE yo > Gothic ji / Proto-Slavic jь?
What is the term for PIE *yos > Gothic ji?
PIE *kóryos > Gothic harjis
What is the term for PIE *yos > Proto-Slavi jь?
PIE *gʷoyh₃-o-s > Proto-Slavic *gojь
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What is the term for PIE a, o > PGmc a merging?
PIE a, o > Proto-Slavic o has a name "Квантитативное выравнивание" ?quantity alignment?
Does PIE a, o > PGmc a have a special term?
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What recent (since 2014) work is there on the origin of the Indo-European 1st person singular nominative ego (etc.)?
I have an article by Hamp from 2011 and one by Blažek from 2014, but need to know if there is anything more recent, so I can cite it in an article that needs to be finished yesterday.
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Proto-Germanic an-stem Nominative Singular
I've seen the reconstruction of this ending as *-ô in both the masculine and neuter forms on Wiktionary(I don't have the best sources), but that can't be correct. *-ô agrees with West Germanic and ...