Reconstruction talk:Proto-West Germanic/balkō

Middle Dutch

@CodeCat, why do you think Middle Dutch balke must come from Proto-Germanic *balkô? Proto-Germanic *balkuz fits just as well. --Victar (talk) 14:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Here is the morphology from a script I use.

* Proto-Germanic: *balkuz */bɑl.kuz/
** Proto-West-Germanic: */bɑl.ku/
*** Proto-North-West-Germanic: */bɑl.ku/
**** Old Low Frankish: */bɑl.ku/
***** Old Dutch: */bal.ku/
****** Early Middle Dutch: */bal.kə/
******* Late Middle Dutch: *balke */bal.kə/
***** Vulgar Latin: */bal.kʊs/
****** Proto-Western-Romance [– late 5th c.]: */bal.kos/
******* Proto-Gallo-Ibero-Romance [late 5th – mid 9th c.]: */bal.kos/
******** Early Old French [mid 9th – late 11th c.]: */balk/
********* Late Old French [late 11th – early 14th c.]: *bauc */bauk/

--Victar (talk) 14:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

The Middle Dutch schwa can't come from a final -u, because it would have been lost in Old Dutch. Compare Proto-Germanic *flōduz > Old Dutch fluot > Middle Dutch vloet. Admittedly, the feminine gender is odd, but the same seems to have happened to bloeme as well. —CodeCat 14:54, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@CodeCat: Final -u was very sporadic in all West-Germanic languages. It stands to reason this was the case in ODut as well, making Old Dutch fluot not surprising at all. --Victar (talk) 15:17, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, if you look at the case of Proto-Germanic *friþuz, it seems to have rendered Old Dutch fritho, and I bet if we had more texts, we would find Old Dutch *frithu as well. --Victar (talk) 15:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

That's because *friþuz had a short stem. -u and -i were lost after long stems, preserved after short stems in West Germanic. In some cases, the ending was lost even after short stems, but this was probably analogical. —CodeCat 15:32, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

My point was *friþuz example was that you can indeed get ODut -o from -uz, and by extension, -e in MDut, if that wasn't apparent. But secondly, I don't think the loss of -u was a regular as you're making it. Take Old High German bresto from Proto-Germanic *brestuz. --Victar (talk) 18:13, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

bresto is an n-stem, per Köbler, so that makes it a descendant of *brestô instead. Yes, you can get -o from -u in Old Dutch, I wasn't disputing that; the two endings were in free variation, with -o appearing later. But this only occurs after a short stem, after a long one the vowel disappears. —CodeCat 18:20, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

If we're saying that's consistently the case, I'll move this to Frankish *balk. --Victar (talk) 18:44, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I believe this is the generally accepted history. I haven't personally seen any long-stemmed nouns retaining a final -i or -u either. The reverse is not true, some short-stemmed nouns did lose their -i. A consequence is that Middle Dutch has both stat and stēde from *stadiz. Note that the -i was lost early enough to take the umlaut with it too. —CodeCat 18:58, 17 May 2017 (UTC)