🚀 go-pugleaf

In-Reply-To: <1993Jan11.090344.4952@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu

> 
> There is a problem here: in German compounding, masculines and neuters
> generally do not add -s, though some do.  Conversely, while many femi-
> nines do add -s, many others do not: nouns in -e more usually add
> -n or else drop the -e.

True enough, but I was concerned to find *some* analogy which would
explain the -s-, and although it may be true that they *generally* do
not (though I'd like to see the statistics), usage is so fluid that I
don't think it's a fatal objection

> And a second problem: genitives can still precede nouns in German, as
> the second example above proves (it's the title of a play written after
> the Second World War).

Ah yes, but it's surely recognized as archaic/literary, certainly not
everyday usage.

>
> A final mystery is why *all* German feminines lack genitive -s.  In Indo-
> European, the morphology of masculine and feminine i-stems was identical,
> and had -s,
> as may readily be seen by looking at Greek and Latin.  But in Old High 
> German they're different for some reason.  To wit:
> 
>                         Masc.           Fem.
>         Nom. Sing.      gast 'guest'    anst 'favor'
>         Gen. Sing.      gastes          ensti
>         Nom. Plural     gesti           ensti
> 
> Somehow -s survived in the masculine, but not in the feminine.  Apparently
> the patterning of *other* masc. resp. fem. categories is to blame.

Could the answer lie in the coalescence of the masc. a-stems and
i-stems in the singular? Perhaps the fem has the `correct' reflex of
IE *-eis and the masc has taken over the reflex of *-os from the
a-stems. Just a thought, I haven't checked the phonology.

Peter
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Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
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