Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/ēþmô

@Victar, Rua pinging recently active editors on these entries; does anyone know why Kroonen lists strong a-stem descendants (from what I can tell) under this weak form instead of *ēþmaz? From a quick look I did only the Frisian seems to show a weak descendant, but I admit to not having investigated this word much just now. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:13, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps out of a desire to connect it to cognates, and thus show what he perceives as the "more original" form. Other than that I don't know. —Rua (mew) 12:27, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

I guess it kinda makes sense to suppose an originally weak declension, as *-mō (which does seem to be a logical way to trace this term's derivation from its apparent Indo-European root) and its ablaut variants typically yield an-stem nouns in Germanic from what I can tell. Going along for the sake of argument with Kroonen's reconstruction: if I'd have to explain the proliferation of strong reflexes in Germanic as compared to weak reflexes, the only guess I can make is that sometime already in PGmc a strong variant may have been created based on the earlier weak one (&existing alongside it &mostly replacing it)? Not sure why such a change from weak to strong would happen, though, and I'm still not sure why Kroonen makes no mention of this problem. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 13:11, 18 November 2019 (UTC)