Reconstruction talk:Proto-West Germanic/uʀgōllju

ōll?

How did this sequence of sounds arise? It strikes me as very un-Germanic. —CodeCat 03:02, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Old English orgello is strange as well. --Victar (talk) 03:39, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

What I find so strange is that there is somehow a long vowel followed by a double consonant. That could never occur in Germanic itself, and it couldn't arise from the West Germanic gemination either, because of Sievers' law (specifically: a long vowel triggers -ij-, which does not cause gemination). In fact the only source of long vowel + two consonants, that I know of, is in the Germanic sequence -Vnht-, where the n was lost and the preceding vowel lengthened. This process went a bit further in the Ingvaeonic languages, but even so, that can't apply to this word because it was triggered by fricatives. So, I think that the l must be single *gōl-. But the Old English word is still puzzling, not in the least because it has an unstressed final o, which never occurred otherwise. —CodeCat 12:30, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I took *urgōljō from another entry, but maybe a better reconstruction would be *urgōlluz, as -o is sometimes substituted for -u in Old English. That would give us *urgōll, *urgōllu in Frankish. --Victar (talk) 20:11, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I think *uzgōluz might be a better reconstruction (for Proto-Germanic..oops) Leasnam (talk) 03:33, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

It seems clear though that the OF form, orgoille, descends from some sort of -ollia root. *uzgōluz could work for the OE form, but so could *uzgōll(i)ja. Am I missing something? --Victar (talk) 04:51, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

It's possible that this word was re-analysed as an i-stem, then in West Germanic from an i-stem to a ja-stem, which produced gemination, but it was probably not *uzgōljō in PGmc. Leasnam (talk) 04:57, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, wrong entry, this is Frankish (doh), but same story Leasnam (talk) 04:59, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

EDIT CONFLICT: For Frankish, I would have thought something like *urguol(i), *orgōl(i) but I'm really not sure. Do you think the Old French word could even come from the adjective, with Latin -ia added to make it a noun ? Leasnam (talk) 05:23, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

That could work, if we use the u-stem Proto-Germanic *uzgōluz, rendering both Frankish *orgōli and *urgōl. --Victar (talk) 06:10, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought I'd just continue the discussion here since we have the above. My running theory is that it went from, Proto-Germanic *galaną > (casuitive) *gōlijaną > (adjective) *gōliz (not *gōlaz, as dictionaries cite), > *uzgōl(i)jō > Frankish *orgōl(li)ja. --Victar (talk) 05:11, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

If it was *gōliz in Pgmc, we should see i-mutation, which we don't. The OE word orgello offers us little help, because although it looks like it might come from *uzgaljō, the word in OE is indeclinable, which points to it being a reformation from an earlier word, maybe *uzgalīn/*uzgalį̄ (?). This word is enigmatic to say the least. Leasnam (talk) 05:29, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, yeah. Semantically, *gōlijaną (“to please, soothe, appease; to greet”) > *gōluz (“pleasing, wonderful, magnificent; welcoming, acknowledging, recognizing”) makes a lot of sense to me. Does *gōluz > *uzgōljō not work? --Victar (talk) 06:10, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, per Siever's Law, you cannot have *uzgōljō, it must be *uzgōlijō Leasnam (talk) 06:17, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Right, Proto-Germanic *uzgōlijō might also work. It would render Old English *orgōl, *orgōle (don't know how to account for orgello) and Old Dutch *urguola, with the Frankish forms like that in Old Saxon, *urguolia, *urgōlea? The Old English and Frankish forms could be from different roots. --Victar (talk) 06:43, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I still think Proto-Germanic *uzgōljō works best with the germination of l, like with Frankish *skallija. --Victar (talk) 06:58, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

But Proto-Germanic *uzgōljō didn't exist. Proto-Germanic *uzgōlijō would have given Old English *orgēl, *orgēle (strong noun), not orgul, orgel as we see it. There is also one other attested OE form, which is orguil Leasnam (talk) 14:08, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

"The Old English and Frankish forms could be from different roots."--I think this is correct. I don't think a PGmc reconstruction can be created for the noun based on the descendants; it can only be made for the adjective. Then I think each daughter language created a derivational noun based on different schemes productive in each, and the result is what we see in OE, OHG, and FRO. But if you're trying to reconstruct Frankish you'll still run into a problem with the l, as it would still give *urguolija, no j-gemination Leasnam (talk) 14:24, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

We don't know if Proto-Germanic *uzgōljō existed or not. Old French orgoille sure make it look like it did. So my question is, now can we get Proto-Germanic *uzgōljō from Proto-Indo-European *gʰel-? --Victar (talk) 17:19, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

That's speculation. There is too big of a gap between Old French and Proto-Germanic. We cannot adequately create Proto-Germanic entries based solely on evidence from Old French. More evidence is needed. We should at least move Proto-Germanic *uzgōljō to Proto-Germanic *uzgōlijō, otherwise, you're bending the rules in order to make an assertion work, which is never sound science Leasnam (talk) 17:36, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Leasnam, ALL reconstructions are speculations. We're in the business of speculations here, where normal rules of Wiktionary simply don't apply: WT:RECONS. Proto-Germanic *uzgōlijō is a speculation like any other. I'm just trying to work out what scenarios are possible, and see which fits best. --Victar (talk) 19:15, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Throwing this out there, but Osthoff's law could explain Proto-Germanic *uzgōljō > *uzgoljō > Old English orgol, orgello, if I'm not mistaken. --Victar (talk) 19:44, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Osthoff's law would reduce ō to a, not to o. There was no short o in Proto-Germanic. From what I can gather though, almost all evidence agrees not with long ō in the second syllable, but short u. Keep in mind that in the Vulgar Latin of the time, short u and long ō were the same phoneme, so this is not an issue for the Romance side of things. —CodeCat 20:15, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Right, I'm just trying to figure out the OE form. Even Proto-Germanic *uzgaljō would have given us Old English orgæl, Old English orgel via i-umlaut. --Victar (talk) 20:57, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it would have given Old English orgel (oblique orgelle) Leasnam (talk) 21:17, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I believe the only descendant that shows a long vowel is OHG (urguol). Can this somehow be accounted for ? Leasnam (talk) 21:22, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Does it have a long or short l? —CodeCat 21:33, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Short. (urguoli) Leasnam (talk) 21:51, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

urguoli might also be a derived adjective form. We also have urgili (adj) and urgilo (adverb) in OHG. --Victar (talk) 21:58, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Wouldn't a derivative show the length of the l ? I would think so Leasnam (talk) 22:02, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

The OHG is an adj and adv. No noun. It would be funny to imagine, but what's the possibility that PGmc only had an adj for this word, which was inherited by OHG, then adopted by Proto-Romance and turned into a noun by adding -ia, then it was borrowed by Old English as a noun ? Old English does hsow the form orguil as mentioned above... Leasnam (talk) 22:07, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Hah, good points. Yeah, I tried searching for a date for Old English orguil. I'm guessing it's a very late influence from the OF form. --Victar (talk) 22:32, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

12th century (c. 1175) I suppose Leasnam (talk) 01:56, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

@Mahagaja, Victar, Leasnam This is still a problem. Any ideas? —Rua (mew) 10:10, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Not from me; this conversation is above my payscale when it comes to Germanic historical linguistics. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:14, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

And I don't get paid at all...I'm just a damn-fool slave lol :p Leasnam (talk) 17:24, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

HAH, wow, May 2013. Well, I'll look through my sources to see if I come up with anything new. --{{victar|talk}} 17:49, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I moved PG *uzgōlaz too *uʀgōl, which at least gives us the shelter of some ambiguity. @Rua what's the consensus of the productivity of vṛddhi-derivatives (or whatever you want to call them) in PWG? If we want to say it was productive, than I would just go with saying PWG *gōl is a vṛddhi-derivative of PWG *galan, and start with that. --{{victar|talk}} 01:06, 22 March 2020 (UTC)