Re: germanic conlang

On Wed, 14 Nov 2001 01:24:01 +0100, Lukasz Korczewski
<lucasso@...> wrote:

><appearing>
>BTW
>there's an idea toying with germanic languages on my mind. strictly
speaking
>west germanic with north germanic to help judging which word to choose. but
>i have some problems:
>1. i'm lacking with any systematized collection of PG words and guessing is
>not what i like the most. can anyone help me? oh, here's a good example -
>"to help". in english it's a weak verb but in other germanic languages it's
>strong. in PG it was also strong, but what were it's basic forms (i mean
>perfect and past participle).
Hello.

'Help' seems to be a 3rd class verb at least in Proto-West-G. I'm not
sure about Scandinavian and Gothic.

In PWG, forms are grouped in a slightly different way than you said:

(1) Present stem (present indic. and subj., imper., inf., pres. pple):

help-, e. g. Old High German "short" inf. _hel(p)fan_ '(to) help'.

(2) Preterite 1st and 3rd sg., indicative:

halp-, e. g. Old High German _hal(p)f_ '(I) helped'.

(3) Preterite 2nd sg., 1-3 pl. indicative, preterite subj.:

hulp-, e. g. OHG _hul(p)fum_ 'we helped', _hul(p)fi_ 'you=thou helped(est)',
             _hul(p)fî_ '(I) would have helped'

(4) Past participle - the PWG vowel must be same as in (3) if the latter
is different from (2):

hulp-, e. g. OHG _gi-hol(p)fan_ '(which is) helped' (with vowel affected
             by "breaking").

However, Gothic doesn't follow exactly the same pattern, so PG condition
is not so obvious. I guess you could assume some analogical levelling for
your conlang, like in all modern (nat)langs.

>is there anyone with good knowledge of PG and
>the historical evolution of germanic (esp. west germanic) languages?
It depends on what you call "good". I'm aware of a few points where no
final "good knowledge" seems possible...


Basilius

Reply