Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Goth. aleina

On pg. 169 fn. 11 I claim that Go. aleina 'ell' which would normally be phonologized as /ali:na/ is a mistake for *alina with a short medial syllable.  This may indeed be correct but there is some evidence that might support the reality of long i, viz. MW elin 'ellbow' which points to a proto-form *oli:na:. I see there is an article that I will have to read by Dirk Boutkan in Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik Vol. 41, 1995 that seek to justify *ali:na for all Germanic.


Update: Boutkan makes a good case that the Germanic forms can be derived from a Proto-Germanic *ali:no:. He further argues that the word is a loan from Proto-Celtic *oli:na: which come from *ole:na: a derivative of the hysterokinetic n-stem continued in Gk. ὠλήν (usually ὠλένη). I'm not sure if that is the best way to handle these complicated data.

1 comment:

  1. Maybe you were right with your suggestion that got. aleina is a writal error for +alina < *o(:)lena:; the Celtic form could intead stem from *o(:)le:na:, as Boutkan thought. Difficult word.
    Best, Sergio

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