Re: Person distinctions in languages?

On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 00:59:11 +0100, Steven Williams <feurieaux@...> wrote:

> --- "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...> schrieb:
...
>> which would rather use ['gRy:s@] or, less northern,
>> ['g_0Ry:s@] (which I believe is completely
>> equivalent to ['kRy:s@]).
>
>Yeah, the pronunciation I learned as a foreigner is
>something like [gRy:s@]. Am I right to interpret the
>[r] phonetically as an alveolar tap or trill, rather
>than the typical German uvular approximant?
Exactly. It's also used in Swiss standard German ['kry:s:e].


>> Note that the [@] in the ending is totally unrelated
>> to the [@] in the diphthong and that the dialectal
>> consonant length is distinctive (e.g. /pIs/ 'be!'
>> or 'until' vs. /pIs:/ 'bite').
>
>Whoa, the imperative of 'sein' in that dialect is not
>'sei(en Sie)'? How does that work out historically?
>Did German historically have more than one rootword
>for 'be', like Old English, like maybe a stem that
>gave the modern /sein/, /sind/, /sei/, /seien/, /seid/
>and so on, and another that gave the /bin/, /bist/?
>
>I know PIE had something like *hes, *wes and *bhu for
>'be' in various meanings; does anyone know how they
>transmitted to the Germanic languages, esp. German and
>English?
The distribution of the different forms on the three roots varies between
the Germanic languages (included within German dialects) (I hope there are
no major mistakes):

*hes:
English: is (3s), am (1s)
German: ist (3s), sind (pl), sein (inf), sei!
Swiss German: isch (3s), sy (pl), sy (inf), gsy (pp) (|y| is /i/)

*wes:
English: was (pret s), were (pret pl)
German: war (pret), gewesen (pp), (Wesen 'being')
Swiss German: wär (pret coni), (Wäse 'being')

*bhu:
English: be (inf), be!, been (pp)
German: bin (1s)
Swiss German: bi (1s), bis! (|b| is /p/)


The alternation of s and r is called rhotacism. The original consonant was
s. German _war, warst_ is indeed a case of generalization. I don't know why
the s is preserved in _(ge)wesen_, but I guess there must be an explanation.

kry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

Reply