Re: "There can be"

You won't get pairs of short and long /a/ from ablaut, since
Germanic had only a short /a/.  All long /a:/s have developed
later, partly from compensatory lengthening but mostly from
open syllable lengthening -- and in Scandinavian from the quantity
shift where short syllables got their vowel lengthened.

/BP

2008/4/14, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>:
> Hi!
>
>
>  Andreas Johansson  writes:
>  > Quoting Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:
>
> >>...
>
> >> True. Though apparently more accurate wording is "...whereas strong
>  >> verbs in the preterite no longer do"; at least, if I understand this
>  >> bit from the WP article correctly: "In the older stages of the
>  >> Germanic languages (Old English, Middle High German) the past tense of
>  >> strong verbs also showed different ablaut grades in singular and
>  >> plural."
>  >
>  > Written Swedish had this well into the 20th century, eg. _jag
>  > sprang, vi sprungo_ "I ran, we ran" (today simply _jag sprang, vi
>  > sprang_). In speech they were mostly gone generations earlier.
>
>
> Modern Dutch has this for a few strong verbs, while German, with very
>  similar forms, has dropped it.  Probably it is the same phenomenon:
>
>       I   saw         we  saw
>       ich sah  /a:/   wir sahen  /a:/
>       ik  zag  /a/    wij zagen  /a:/
>                 ^-short
>
>  IIRC, there is no such length pair (except maybe totally irregular
>  verbs) in the present tense.
>
>  I wonder whether a verb form in my native dialect of German has
>  related reasons, or is different.  The problem is that it is in the
>  present tense, not the past tense:
>
>                 he says      we  say
>                 er sagt      wir sagen
>   standard:         /a:/      /a:/
>   my dialect:       /a/       /a:/
>                     ^-short
>
>  This is not a general rule, but it is part of the verb paradigm, e.g.,
>  there is no difference in the following verb:
>
>                 he asks      we  ask
>                 er fragt     wir fragen
>   standard:         /a:/      /a:/
>   my dialect:       /a:/      /a:/
>
>  Any ideas?
>
>
>  **Henrik
>

--
/ BP