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.

Addenda to Bibliography:

To pg. 12 fn. 7 add to the general bibliography for Celtic Ball and Muller 2009 which refers to the second edition of Ball, Martin and Nicole Muller (eds.), The Celtic Languages. Routledge: New York. This edition is a significant improvement over the first in that it has essays covering the Medieval stages of the Celtic languages by David Stifter (Early Irish) and David Willis (Old and Middle Welsh). Joe Eska discusses "The Emergence of the Celtic Languages" and (together with D. Ellis Evans) "Continental Celtic."

Another second edition which should be added is Horrocks 2010 (Geoffrey C. Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers. Chichester/Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell) replacing Horrocks 1997 on pg. 18, fn. 53. See the review at BMCR.

My Cliched Cover Image!

All I can say is "oy!" Strangely, I happen to know to varying degrees the authors of these other books with Poussin on the cover.  Peter Bing was my first Greek teacher and Mario Erasmo was a grad student at Yale when I taught there, though I never taught him. I had no idea that these covers were out there.  I guess the image is just too good to pass up. Sorry, guys! I should have gone with David's Oath of the Horatii.