Old Norse gen.sg. -ar in Thematic Nouns

Description

Germanic inherited multiple endings for the gen.sg. of thematic nouns, namely PIE *‐os(i̯)o > PGmc *‐as(j)a as in OE dæġæs,OS dagas and PIE *‐eso > PGmc *‐esa in Got dagis, OHG tages. In North Germanic, runic forms such as godagas (Bjorvand 1991:98) point to PGmc *‐asa; the forms in Literary Old Norse add little to the discussion, as the ending ‐s in e.g. dags conceals the original syncopated vowel. 
Absent from the discussion, however, are ON thematic nouns with gen.sg. ‐ar, e.g. eiðar, vegar. Noreen (1884:109) concludes such endings to have been taken from the i‐ and u‐stem declensions; indeed in some cases original thematic nouns have completely shifted declension, as seen in pl. forms such as nom. vegir, acc. vegu for older vegar, vega. On the other hand, an ending ‐ar borrowed from other declensions is unlikely, as it would have caused syncretism with the nom.pl.; in the case of gen.sg./nom.pl. eiðar this syncretism was resolved in the opposite direction early in Icelandic, namely a new gen.sg. eiðs based on other thematic nouns (Faroese, however, preserves the older gen.sg. eiðar).
Instead, this paper argues gen.sg. ‐ar to be an expected ending in thematic nouns, in the form of a voiced Verner’s variant *-azja next to unvoiced *‐asja, both from PIE *‐osi̯o. ON gen.sg. ‐s can only have derived from thematic nouns with accented endings, e.g. *u̯iH‐ró‐si̯o (Ved vīrásya) > PGmc *wirasja > PN *wiras > ON vers. In thematic nouns with root stress, however, we should expect a voiced silibant to have developed in the ending, e.g. *h2u̯éh1‐(e)nt‐osi̯o (Ved vā́tasya)>PGmc *windazja, *windaiza > PN *windair > ON vindar (found in compounds such as vindar‐blástr). That the ending derives from PIE *‐osi̯o (Ved ‐asya, Faliscan ‐osio, Homeric Gk ‐οιο) and not PIE *‐oso (Gk τοῦ? See Boutkan 1995:175‐6, Olander 2015:136 ff. and references) can be seen in the preservation of the vowel a, which must derive from a diphthong *ai via metathesis of the voiced cluster *‐zj‐ > *‐iz‐. The resulting diphthong *ai in the ending *‐aiza would have resisted syncope in Proto‐Norse, contracting instead and developing identically with e.g. the gen.sg. ending of i‐stems PGmc *‐aiz > ON ‐ar (perhaps influenced by u‐stem *‐auz > ‐ar). Such a metathesis of *‐zj‐ is seen in unstressed position in e.g. *tosie̯h2s (Ved tasyāḥ) > PGmc *þaizōz > ON þeirar (see e.g. Ringe 2006:207‐8, though note *tósie̯h2s with root stress would yield PGmc **þasjōz, not *þaizōz). Finally, this paper takes into account evidence from pronouns such as þess and
hvers. While the root vowel in the Old Icelandic forms could derive from either *e or *a, the umlaut vowel æ in Old Norwegian þæss points to PGmc *þasja < PIE *tosi̯o (Hom
τοῖο); however, the earliest manuscripts may indicate þess < PGmc *þesa (Got þis) < PIE *teso. 

Bjorvand, H. (1991), ‘Der Genitiv Singular der indoeuropäischen o-Stämme im Germanischen’, Indogermanische Forschungen 96, 96–117.

Boutkan, D. (1995), The Germanic ‘Auslautgesetze’: A New Interpretation, Rodopi, Amsterdam.

Noreen, A. (1884), Altnordische Grammatik I: Altisländische und altnorwegische Grammatik unter Berücksichtigung des Urnordischen, Max Niemeyer, Halle.

Olander, T. (2015), Proto-Slavic Inflectional Morphology, Brill, Leiden.

Ringe, D. (2006), From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, University Press, Oxford. 

Period	23 Oct 2015
Event title	27th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference
Event type	Conference
Location	Los Angeles, CA, United StatesShow on map