Schwa-less Polysyllabic German Noun Stems of Germanic Origin“Maybe” in German (vielleicht)German help regarding the origin of a last namePhonemes: German vs. EnglishGerman object raising?Bare-NP Adverbs in German“Sei” in German mathematical textsWhat exactly is the “German Language”West Germanic Th-StoppingDid the Dutch “zee” (sea) and “meer” (lake) diverge or did the German “das Meer” (sea) and “der See” (lake) diverge from a shared linguistic heritage?Why are English and German West Germanic languages while Scandinavian Germanic languages are an own branch
How could the B-29 bomber back up under its own power?
Parse a C++14 integer literal
Why was Houston selected as the location for the Manned Spacecraft Center?
Why use nominative in Coniugatio periphrastica passiva?
Why did Nick Fury not hesitate in blowing up the plane he thought was carrying a nuke?
Eigenvalues of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a compact Riemannnian manifold
Is my company merging branches wrong?
Existence of a model of ZFC in which the natural numbers are really the natural numbers
How did Arya and the Hound get into King's Landing so easily?
On a piano, are the effects of holding notes and the sustain pedal the same for a single chord?
Why was Harry at the Weasley's at the beginning of Goblet of Fire but at the Dursleys' after?
why "American-born", not "America-born"?
Is being an extrovert a necessary condition to be a manager?
How to safely discharge oneself
Managing heat dissipation in a magic wand
What does it mean to "take the Cross"
Working hours and productivity expectations for game artists and programmers
Is there a realtime, uncut video of Saturn V ignition through tower clear?
Mikrokosmos, BB 105, Vol. 1: No. 17 Contrary Motion (1) - Can't understand the structure
What are the domains of the multiplication and unit morphisms of a monoid object?
Is presenting a play showing Military characters in a bad light a crime in the US?
Does a windmilling propeller create more drag than a stopped propeller in an engine out scenario?
Circuit construction for execution of conditional statements using least significant bit
Gambler's Fallacy Dice
Schwa-less Polysyllabic German Noun Stems of Germanic Origin
“Maybe” in German (vielleicht)German help regarding the origin of a last namePhonemes: German vs. EnglishGerman object raising?Bare-NP Adverbs in German“Sei” in German mathematical textsWhat exactly is the “German Language”West Germanic Th-StoppingDid the Dutch “zee” (sea) and “meer” (lake) diverge or did the German “das Meer” (sea) and “der See” (lake) diverge from a shared linguistic heritage?Why are English and German West Germanic languages while Scandinavian Germanic languages are an own branch
So with schwa-less I mean words ending in -e, -en, -er, -el don't count.
Some examples I've found: Arbeit, Armut, Heimat, Heirat Wollust, Habicht, Kranich
Though, I'm not sure whether Wollust counts as noun stem or a compound noun and Wiktionary tells me Armut and Heimat etymologically share the same suffix (with Kleinod and Einöde, which are also possible candidates for a list of such words). Looking at the etymologies of Arbeit and Heirat, it's not clear if they are also "explainable" the way the other ones are.
Is there a list of words like that somewhere? Are there any with three syllables? Ones where stress doesn't fall on the first syllable? Can you say all words of this kind can be explained by their etymology and no "true" German noun stem of Germanic origin is polysyllabic?
(I also found Atem, Jugend, Tugend, which, although not schwa-less, do interestingly sorta deviate from regular bisyllabic German noun roots.)
german
add a comment |
So with schwa-less I mean words ending in -e, -en, -er, -el don't count.
Some examples I've found: Arbeit, Armut, Heimat, Heirat Wollust, Habicht, Kranich
Though, I'm not sure whether Wollust counts as noun stem or a compound noun and Wiktionary tells me Armut and Heimat etymologically share the same suffix (with Kleinod and Einöde, which are also possible candidates for a list of such words). Looking at the etymologies of Arbeit and Heirat, it's not clear if they are also "explainable" the way the other ones are.
Is there a list of words like that somewhere? Are there any with three syllables? Ones where stress doesn't fall on the first syllable? Can you say all words of this kind can be explained by their etymology and no "true" German noun stem of Germanic origin is polysyllabic?
(I also found Atem, Jugend, Tugend, which, although not schwa-less, do interestingly sorta deviate from regular bisyllabic German noun roots.)
german
add a comment |
So with schwa-less I mean words ending in -e, -en, -er, -el don't count.
Some examples I've found: Arbeit, Armut, Heimat, Heirat Wollust, Habicht, Kranich
Though, I'm not sure whether Wollust counts as noun stem or a compound noun and Wiktionary tells me Armut and Heimat etymologically share the same suffix (with Kleinod and Einöde, which are also possible candidates for a list of such words). Looking at the etymologies of Arbeit and Heirat, it's not clear if they are also "explainable" the way the other ones are.
Is there a list of words like that somewhere? Are there any with three syllables? Ones where stress doesn't fall on the first syllable? Can you say all words of this kind can be explained by their etymology and no "true" German noun stem of Germanic origin is polysyllabic?
(I also found Atem, Jugend, Tugend, which, although not schwa-less, do interestingly sorta deviate from regular bisyllabic German noun roots.)
german
So with schwa-less I mean words ending in -e, -en, -er, -el don't count.
Some examples I've found: Arbeit, Armut, Heimat, Heirat Wollust, Habicht, Kranich
Though, I'm not sure whether Wollust counts as noun stem or a compound noun and Wiktionary tells me Armut and Heimat etymologically share the same suffix (with Kleinod and Einöde, which are also possible candidates for a list of such words). Looking at the etymologies of Arbeit and Heirat, it's not clear if they are also "explainable" the way the other ones are.
Is there a list of words like that somewhere? Are there any with three syllables? Ones where stress doesn't fall on the first syllable? Can you say all words of this kind can be explained by their etymology and no "true" German noun stem of Germanic origin is polysyllabic?
(I also found Atem, Jugend, Tugend, which, although not schwa-less, do interestingly sorta deviate from regular bisyllabic German noun roots.)
german
german
edited 3 hours ago
user3482545
asked 4 hours ago
user3482545user3482545
686
686
add a comment |
add a comment |
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
I found an article "The structure of the German root", by Chris Golston and Richard Wiese (published online on ResearchGate in 1998; originally published in the book Phonology and Morphology of the Germanic Languages). The analysis in this article is based on a database adapted from a list made by Wolf Dieter Ortmann (1993), who created his database based on entries in root dictionaries, mainly Augst (1975).
The article has a footnote saying "At a later stage, we plan to make the database available through the internet" (p. 68-Researchgate). I haven't been able to find it, though.
On page 75 (Researchgate), the article says that there were 131 roots in the database with two syllables like Arbeit. This excludes words where the second syllable is schwa or a schwa + resonant/syllabic resonant, but the database includes some items considered "nativized loans" (Golston and Wiese give the examples "Abenteuer ‘adventure’, add- ‘add’, Akt ‘act’, Scharlach ‘scarlet fever’") (p. 68-ResearchGate). Also, the roots seem to be of all word classes: Golston and Wiese mention "[ʔalaın]
‘alone’" as a two-syllable root.
Golston and Wiese say that there were only five three-syllable roots in the database:
The five roots in our corpus that violate the alignment constraints twice are all loans and felt to be such by most speakers: [ʔaleːgʀo] ‘allegro,’ [baldʀiaːn] (name), [ʔɛnziaːn] (name), [feːbʀuaʀ] ‘February,’ and [januaʀ] ‘January.’
(page 75-Researchgate)
Based on this, I'm fairly certain that three-syllable noun stems would be extremely marginal if not nonexistent.
Without a look at the database, it's hard to tell how many of the two-syllable examples are "nativized loans": Golston and Wiese say that the database includes 792 roots of that type, so they could potentially account for almost all of the 131 two-syllable roots in the database.
Some of these do seem to be compounds: allein is transparently all- + ein-, cognate with English "alone" (all + one). It's also noteworthy that all five of their three-syllable roots are of Latin origin.
– Draconis
1 hour ago
add a comment |
There may be a few, but I can't think of any that you haven't already mentioned.
The reasons go back to Proto-Germanic. At some unknown point (after Grimm and Verner but before Common Germanic split, so probably within 100BCE - 100CE), the original Proto-Indo-European stress disappeared. Instead, Proto-Germanic stressed all words on the first syllable, and started to reduce unstressed vowels to nothingness.
At this point, no matter how long the original Proto-Germanic root had been, it began to collapse into a monosyllable: *ēmaitijǭ > OE ǣmette > ME amte > ModE "ant". This wasn't complete by the time Proto-Germanic split apart, and didn't go all the way in all the languages—but German, English, and Norse kept running with it, and took it as far as it could go.
Thus, in these three languages, almost all native Germanic roots are monosyllables, unless this would create an illegal consonant cluster. (This exception is why we see the native word "harvest" with two syllables, because the sequence *rvst isn't valid in English—compare German Herbst.) German also reduced most vowels in endings to schwa, where English went one step further and deleted them entirely: *xagatusjǭ with its feminine ending became OHG hagzisse > German Hexe, but OE hægtesse > ME hegge > English "hag".
So while there might be a few surviving polysyllabic Germanic roots in German, like Arbeit, I wouldn't expect many. There were plenty of such roots in Proto-Germanic, but sound changes have been working tirelessly to destroy them ever since.
P.S. I was taught that an Old Norse root was always a single syllable, without exception: anything longer was a compound, and consonants were deleted all over the place to keep the syllables pronounceable. But I don't know if this is actually true or not. Knowing how unpredictable language is, I'm cautious about any sort of "always".
add a comment |
Your Answer
StackExchange.ready(function()
var channelOptions =
tags: "".split(" "),
id: "312"
;
initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);
StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function()
// Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled)
StackExchange.using("snippets", function()
createEditor();
);
else
createEditor();
);
function createEditor()
StackExchange.prepareEditor(
heartbeatType: 'answer',
autoActivateHeartbeat: false,
convertImagesToLinks: false,
noModals: true,
showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
reputationToPostImages: null,
bindNavPrevention: true,
postfix: "",
imageUploader:
brandingHtml: "Powered by u003ca class="icon-imgur-white" href="https://imgur.com/"u003eu003c/au003e",
contentPolicyHtml: "User contributions licensed under u003ca href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"u003ecc by-sa 3.0 with attribution requiredu003c/au003e u003ca href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/content-policy"u003e(content policy)u003c/au003e",
allowUrls: true
,
noCode: true, onDemand: true,
discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
);
);
Sign up or log in
StackExchange.ready(function ()
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
);
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
StackExchange.ready(
function ()
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2flinguistics.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f31490%2fschwa-less-polysyllabic-german-noun-stems-of-germanic-origin%23new-answer', 'question_page');
);
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
I found an article "The structure of the German root", by Chris Golston and Richard Wiese (published online on ResearchGate in 1998; originally published in the book Phonology and Morphology of the Germanic Languages). The analysis in this article is based on a database adapted from a list made by Wolf Dieter Ortmann (1993), who created his database based on entries in root dictionaries, mainly Augst (1975).
The article has a footnote saying "At a later stage, we plan to make the database available through the internet" (p. 68-Researchgate). I haven't been able to find it, though.
On page 75 (Researchgate), the article says that there were 131 roots in the database with two syllables like Arbeit. This excludes words where the second syllable is schwa or a schwa + resonant/syllabic resonant, but the database includes some items considered "nativized loans" (Golston and Wiese give the examples "Abenteuer ‘adventure’, add- ‘add’, Akt ‘act’, Scharlach ‘scarlet fever’") (p. 68-ResearchGate). Also, the roots seem to be of all word classes: Golston and Wiese mention "[ʔalaın]
‘alone’" as a two-syllable root.
Golston and Wiese say that there were only five three-syllable roots in the database:
The five roots in our corpus that violate the alignment constraints twice are all loans and felt to be such by most speakers: [ʔaleːgʀo] ‘allegro,’ [baldʀiaːn] (name), [ʔɛnziaːn] (name), [feːbʀuaʀ] ‘February,’ and [januaʀ] ‘January.’
(page 75-Researchgate)
Based on this, I'm fairly certain that three-syllable noun stems would be extremely marginal if not nonexistent.
Without a look at the database, it's hard to tell how many of the two-syllable examples are "nativized loans": Golston and Wiese say that the database includes 792 roots of that type, so they could potentially account for almost all of the 131 two-syllable roots in the database.
Some of these do seem to be compounds: allein is transparently all- + ein-, cognate with English "alone" (all + one). It's also noteworthy that all five of their three-syllable roots are of Latin origin.
– Draconis
1 hour ago
add a comment |
I found an article "The structure of the German root", by Chris Golston and Richard Wiese (published online on ResearchGate in 1998; originally published in the book Phonology and Morphology of the Germanic Languages). The analysis in this article is based on a database adapted from a list made by Wolf Dieter Ortmann (1993), who created his database based on entries in root dictionaries, mainly Augst (1975).
The article has a footnote saying "At a later stage, we plan to make the database available through the internet" (p. 68-Researchgate). I haven't been able to find it, though.
On page 75 (Researchgate), the article says that there were 131 roots in the database with two syllables like Arbeit. This excludes words where the second syllable is schwa or a schwa + resonant/syllabic resonant, but the database includes some items considered "nativized loans" (Golston and Wiese give the examples "Abenteuer ‘adventure’, add- ‘add’, Akt ‘act’, Scharlach ‘scarlet fever’") (p. 68-ResearchGate). Also, the roots seem to be of all word classes: Golston and Wiese mention "[ʔalaın]
‘alone’" as a two-syllable root.
Golston and Wiese say that there were only five three-syllable roots in the database:
The five roots in our corpus that violate the alignment constraints twice are all loans and felt to be such by most speakers: [ʔaleːgʀo] ‘allegro,’ [baldʀiaːn] (name), [ʔɛnziaːn] (name), [feːbʀuaʀ] ‘February,’ and [januaʀ] ‘January.’
(page 75-Researchgate)
Based on this, I'm fairly certain that three-syllable noun stems would be extremely marginal if not nonexistent.
Without a look at the database, it's hard to tell how many of the two-syllable examples are "nativized loans": Golston and Wiese say that the database includes 792 roots of that type, so they could potentially account for almost all of the 131 two-syllable roots in the database.
Some of these do seem to be compounds: allein is transparently all- + ein-, cognate with English "alone" (all + one). It's also noteworthy that all five of their three-syllable roots are of Latin origin.
– Draconis
1 hour ago
add a comment |
I found an article "The structure of the German root", by Chris Golston and Richard Wiese (published online on ResearchGate in 1998; originally published in the book Phonology and Morphology of the Germanic Languages). The analysis in this article is based on a database adapted from a list made by Wolf Dieter Ortmann (1993), who created his database based on entries in root dictionaries, mainly Augst (1975).
The article has a footnote saying "At a later stage, we plan to make the database available through the internet" (p. 68-Researchgate). I haven't been able to find it, though.
On page 75 (Researchgate), the article says that there were 131 roots in the database with two syllables like Arbeit. This excludes words where the second syllable is schwa or a schwa + resonant/syllabic resonant, but the database includes some items considered "nativized loans" (Golston and Wiese give the examples "Abenteuer ‘adventure’, add- ‘add’, Akt ‘act’, Scharlach ‘scarlet fever’") (p. 68-ResearchGate). Also, the roots seem to be of all word classes: Golston and Wiese mention "[ʔalaın]
‘alone’" as a two-syllable root.
Golston and Wiese say that there were only five three-syllable roots in the database:
The five roots in our corpus that violate the alignment constraints twice are all loans and felt to be such by most speakers: [ʔaleːgʀo] ‘allegro,’ [baldʀiaːn] (name), [ʔɛnziaːn] (name), [feːbʀuaʀ] ‘February,’ and [januaʀ] ‘January.’
(page 75-Researchgate)
Based on this, I'm fairly certain that three-syllable noun stems would be extremely marginal if not nonexistent.
Without a look at the database, it's hard to tell how many of the two-syllable examples are "nativized loans": Golston and Wiese say that the database includes 792 roots of that type, so they could potentially account for almost all of the 131 two-syllable roots in the database.
I found an article "The structure of the German root", by Chris Golston and Richard Wiese (published online on ResearchGate in 1998; originally published in the book Phonology and Morphology of the Germanic Languages). The analysis in this article is based on a database adapted from a list made by Wolf Dieter Ortmann (1993), who created his database based on entries in root dictionaries, mainly Augst (1975).
The article has a footnote saying "At a later stage, we plan to make the database available through the internet" (p. 68-Researchgate). I haven't been able to find it, though.
On page 75 (Researchgate), the article says that there were 131 roots in the database with two syllables like Arbeit. This excludes words where the second syllable is schwa or a schwa + resonant/syllabic resonant, but the database includes some items considered "nativized loans" (Golston and Wiese give the examples "Abenteuer ‘adventure’, add- ‘add’, Akt ‘act’, Scharlach ‘scarlet fever’") (p. 68-ResearchGate). Also, the roots seem to be of all word classes: Golston and Wiese mention "[ʔalaın]
‘alone’" as a two-syllable root.
Golston and Wiese say that there were only five three-syllable roots in the database:
The five roots in our corpus that violate the alignment constraints twice are all loans and felt to be such by most speakers: [ʔaleːgʀo] ‘allegro,’ [baldʀiaːn] (name), [ʔɛnziaːn] (name), [feːbʀuaʀ] ‘February,’ and [januaʀ] ‘January.’
(page 75-Researchgate)
Based on this, I'm fairly certain that three-syllable noun stems would be extremely marginal if not nonexistent.
Without a look at the database, it's hard to tell how many of the two-syllable examples are "nativized loans": Golston and Wiese say that the database includes 792 roots of that type, so they could potentially account for almost all of the 131 two-syllable roots in the database.
edited 2 hours ago
answered 2 hours ago
sumelicsumelic
10.7k12358
10.7k12358
Some of these do seem to be compounds: allein is transparently all- + ein-, cognate with English "alone" (all + one). It's also noteworthy that all five of their three-syllable roots are of Latin origin.
– Draconis
1 hour ago
add a comment |
Some of these do seem to be compounds: allein is transparently all- + ein-, cognate with English "alone" (all + one). It's also noteworthy that all five of their three-syllable roots are of Latin origin.
– Draconis
1 hour ago
Some of these do seem to be compounds: allein is transparently all- + ein-, cognate with English "alone" (all + one). It's also noteworthy that all five of their three-syllable roots are of Latin origin.
– Draconis
1 hour ago
Some of these do seem to be compounds: allein is transparently all- + ein-, cognate with English "alone" (all + one). It's also noteworthy that all five of their three-syllable roots are of Latin origin.
– Draconis
1 hour ago
add a comment |
There may be a few, but I can't think of any that you haven't already mentioned.
The reasons go back to Proto-Germanic. At some unknown point (after Grimm and Verner but before Common Germanic split, so probably within 100BCE - 100CE), the original Proto-Indo-European stress disappeared. Instead, Proto-Germanic stressed all words on the first syllable, and started to reduce unstressed vowels to nothingness.
At this point, no matter how long the original Proto-Germanic root had been, it began to collapse into a monosyllable: *ēmaitijǭ > OE ǣmette > ME amte > ModE "ant". This wasn't complete by the time Proto-Germanic split apart, and didn't go all the way in all the languages—but German, English, and Norse kept running with it, and took it as far as it could go.
Thus, in these three languages, almost all native Germanic roots are monosyllables, unless this would create an illegal consonant cluster. (This exception is why we see the native word "harvest" with two syllables, because the sequence *rvst isn't valid in English—compare German Herbst.) German also reduced most vowels in endings to schwa, where English went one step further and deleted them entirely: *xagatusjǭ with its feminine ending became OHG hagzisse > German Hexe, but OE hægtesse > ME hegge > English "hag".
So while there might be a few surviving polysyllabic Germanic roots in German, like Arbeit, I wouldn't expect many. There were plenty of such roots in Proto-Germanic, but sound changes have been working tirelessly to destroy them ever since.
P.S. I was taught that an Old Norse root was always a single syllable, without exception: anything longer was a compound, and consonants were deleted all over the place to keep the syllables pronounceable. But I don't know if this is actually true or not. Knowing how unpredictable language is, I'm cautious about any sort of "always".
add a comment |
There may be a few, but I can't think of any that you haven't already mentioned.
The reasons go back to Proto-Germanic. At some unknown point (after Grimm and Verner but before Common Germanic split, so probably within 100BCE - 100CE), the original Proto-Indo-European stress disappeared. Instead, Proto-Germanic stressed all words on the first syllable, and started to reduce unstressed vowels to nothingness.
At this point, no matter how long the original Proto-Germanic root had been, it began to collapse into a monosyllable: *ēmaitijǭ > OE ǣmette > ME amte > ModE "ant". This wasn't complete by the time Proto-Germanic split apart, and didn't go all the way in all the languages—but German, English, and Norse kept running with it, and took it as far as it could go.
Thus, in these three languages, almost all native Germanic roots are monosyllables, unless this would create an illegal consonant cluster. (This exception is why we see the native word "harvest" with two syllables, because the sequence *rvst isn't valid in English—compare German Herbst.) German also reduced most vowels in endings to schwa, where English went one step further and deleted them entirely: *xagatusjǭ with its feminine ending became OHG hagzisse > German Hexe, but OE hægtesse > ME hegge > English "hag".
So while there might be a few surviving polysyllabic Germanic roots in German, like Arbeit, I wouldn't expect many. There were plenty of such roots in Proto-Germanic, but sound changes have been working tirelessly to destroy them ever since.
P.S. I was taught that an Old Norse root was always a single syllable, without exception: anything longer was a compound, and consonants were deleted all over the place to keep the syllables pronounceable. But I don't know if this is actually true or not. Knowing how unpredictable language is, I'm cautious about any sort of "always".
add a comment |
There may be a few, but I can't think of any that you haven't already mentioned.
The reasons go back to Proto-Germanic. At some unknown point (after Grimm and Verner but before Common Germanic split, so probably within 100BCE - 100CE), the original Proto-Indo-European stress disappeared. Instead, Proto-Germanic stressed all words on the first syllable, and started to reduce unstressed vowels to nothingness.
At this point, no matter how long the original Proto-Germanic root had been, it began to collapse into a monosyllable: *ēmaitijǭ > OE ǣmette > ME amte > ModE "ant". This wasn't complete by the time Proto-Germanic split apart, and didn't go all the way in all the languages—but German, English, and Norse kept running with it, and took it as far as it could go.
Thus, in these three languages, almost all native Germanic roots are monosyllables, unless this would create an illegal consonant cluster. (This exception is why we see the native word "harvest" with two syllables, because the sequence *rvst isn't valid in English—compare German Herbst.) German also reduced most vowels in endings to schwa, where English went one step further and deleted them entirely: *xagatusjǭ with its feminine ending became OHG hagzisse > German Hexe, but OE hægtesse > ME hegge > English "hag".
So while there might be a few surviving polysyllabic Germanic roots in German, like Arbeit, I wouldn't expect many. There were plenty of such roots in Proto-Germanic, but sound changes have been working tirelessly to destroy them ever since.
P.S. I was taught that an Old Norse root was always a single syllable, without exception: anything longer was a compound, and consonants were deleted all over the place to keep the syllables pronounceable. But I don't know if this is actually true or not. Knowing how unpredictable language is, I'm cautious about any sort of "always".
There may be a few, but I can't think of any that you haven't already mentioned.
The reasons go back to Proto-Germanic. At some unknown point (after Grimm and Verner but before Common Germanic split, so probably within 100BCE - 100CE), the original Proto-Indo-European stress disappeared. Instead, Proto-Germanic stressed all words on the first syllable, and started to reduce unstressed vowels to nothingness.
At this point, no matter how long the original Proto-Germanic root had been, it began to collapse into a monosyllable: *ēmaitijǭ > OE ǣmette > ME amte > ModE "ant". This wasn't complete by the time Proto-Germanic split apart, and didn't go all the way in all the languages—but German, English, and Norse kept running with it, and took it as far as it could go.
Thus, in these three languages, almost all native Germanic roots are monosyllables, unless this would create an illegal consonant cluster. (This exception is why we see the native word "harvest" with two syllables, because the sequence *rvst isn't valid in English—compare German Herbst.) German also reduced most vowels in endings to schwa, where English went one step further and deleted them entirely: *xagatusjǭ with its feminine ending became OHG hagzisse > German Hexe, but OE hægtesse > ME hegge > English "hag".
So while there might be a few surviving polysyllabic Germanic roots in German, like Arbeit, I wouldn't expect many. There were plenty of such roots in Proto-Germanic, but sound changes have been working tirelessly to destroy them ever since.
P.S. I was taught that an Old Norse root was always a single syllable, without exception: anything longer was a compound, and consonants were deleted all over the place to keep the syllables pronounceable. But I don't know if this is actually true or not. Knowing how unpredictable language is, I'm cautious about any sort of "always".
answered 3 hours ago
DraconisDraconis
14.7k12359
14.7k12359
add a comment |
add a comment |
Thanks for contributing an answer to Linguistics Stack Exchange!
- Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!
But avoid …
- Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.
- Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.
To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.
Sign up or log in
StackExchange.ready(function ()
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
);
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
StackExchange.ready(
function ()
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2flinguistics.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f31490%2fschwa-less-polysyllabic-german-noun-stems-of-germanic-origin%23new-answer', 'question_page');
);
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
Sign up or log in
StackExchange.ready(function ()
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
);
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
Sign up or log in
StackExchange.ready(function ()
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
);
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
Sign up or log in
StackExchange.ready(function ()
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
);
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown