Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/wōpijaną
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This Proto-Germanic entry contains reconstructed terms and roots. As such, the term(s) in this entry are not directly attested, but are hypothesized to have existed based on comparative evidence. |
Proto-Germanic
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Proto-Indo-European *weh₂b- (“to call, shout, complain”). Cognate with Proto-Slavic *vabiti (“to lure”).
Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]*wōpijaną
Inflection
[edit]The evolution of this verb's conjugation is unusual and controversial. Unlike usual expectations, it is weak in Gothic and strong class 7 with a reduplicated preterite in Old English. Orel and Ringe disagree on how this situation arose.
- Orel believes that there were two separate, but related homophonous verbs in Proto-Germanic, with the weak verb being the *-janą derivative of the strong one.[1]
- Ringe believes that independently, Old Norse and Gothic made the strong verb weak due to analogy.[2]
- Kroonen makes no comment about this verb's paradigm, and in fact the verb is not mentioned at all in his Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic.
Conjugation of *wōpijaną (strong class 7 j-present)
Conjugation of *wōpijaną (weak class 1)
Related terms
[edit]Descendants
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Vladimir Orel (2003) “*wōpjanan”, in A Handbook of Germanic Etymology[1], Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 470
- ^ Ringe, Donald (2006) From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (A Linguistic History of English; 1)[2], Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 250: “wōp-, wewōp-” "It is true that this verb is strong only in [West Germanic] (where it often means ‘weep’); both Goth[ic] wopjan ‘call’ and [Old Norse] œpa ‘cry out’ are class I weak verbs. However, since transfer of a j-present into the first weak class is surely an easily repeatable change, it seems reasonable to reconstruct this as a strong verb for [Proto-Germanic]."