Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/knudaną

North vs. West Germanic

Aren’t these really just two separate verbs? This strange amalgamation with zero grade present seems very convoluted to me. There seem to be numerous examples of North Germanic and West Germanic not agreeing on the forms of semantically equivalent and etymologically related words in a similar way. On this page we even already have a link to an alternative form, *knuttōną, which seems to have the same meaning. Wouldn’t it be a simpler and more credible explanation that this is a regular verb with full e-grade that continues in West Germanic languages and there is one more separate formation *knudōną that continues in Old Norse? I can’t see that there is any evidence for knoða being a strong verb in Old Norse, whereas there is clear evidence of class 2 weak conjugation. Is the reasoning that a single lexeme having both ablaut grades better explains the irregular position of the epenthetic -u- in the zero-grade (as opposed to an expected **kund-)? Can such analogy not also happen between related lexemes? (@Rua, JohnC5, Stardsen, Leasnam) – Krun (talk) 11:39, 11 April 2018 (UTC)