Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/skrīaną

skrīhanan vs skrīanan

I did this one on faith: I found only one source linking the OHG scrīan with OE scrēon. Only the OE word shows the medial 'h' to my knowledge, and that vestigially in oblique forms. The OHG shows vestiges of the s-aorist (scrirun 'they cried'). The OE word may not be directly related to the OFries, Osx, and OHG words, but probably distantly they are. Perhaps someone can shed some light? Leasnam (talk) 18:43, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

M. Philippa does help out in this respect. On the page http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/schreien which is a weak verb from the same root, she reconstructs the root with no -h-, so the base PIE root was simply *skrey- (or *sḱrey, the two fell together since Germanic is a centum language). Note that she writes the reconstruction as *skreian, but according to our reconstruction rules that would be *skrīanan. She doesn't mention the OE word, strangely, but she does list some other words that have the same root but with another consonant added. She also lists a possibility of this being an s-mobile and lists ON verbs in hrí- as possible cognates without the s-.

The OHG past tense in -r- probably isn't a vestige of the s-aorist, but the reduplication of class 7 strong verbs beginning in s- (which was sez- > ser-) and r- which had spread to other verbs. Ringe mentions this in his book, although he doesn't give examples where it had taken place. If it did happen in this verb, that would be unusual though, because this is a class 1 verb and not a class 7 verb. Maybe it was added as a way to avoid a hiatus that would have turned into the diphthong -iu- otherwise, but there are no other examples of -r- being used for this purpose in OHG that I am aware of.

The OE word does match up because OE lost -h- by regular sound change, as in Template:termx and *sehwaną. The fact that OE has -h- in this word is very suspect though, precisely because it ought to have been lost. I really wonder what etymological source it could have. I don't find any reference to forscrīhan in Koebler's dictionary of Old English, nor the expected forscrēon. —CodeCat 10:26, 9 August 2012 (UTC)