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The IE Congress at Copenhagen University
The etymology of kone ’wife’.
The etymological dictionaries from the last 50 years state the Proto-German form of Nordic kone as *kwunōn, PIE gʷn̩ōn, but also operate with another ablaut PG form, *kwenōn, PIE gʷenōn, which is supposed to be the mother of East and West German: Gothic qino, Eng. queen etc.
1st SCEPTICISM. You are always uncomfortable with several basic forms of what at first looks like one and the same Germanic word. But, granted that there is no natural way from we, wi to u, o, or the other way round, there is no escape.
2nd SCEPTICISM. It is far worse that the honourable etymologists, in order to explain gen.pl. kwenna in Old Norse, insert the East-West Germanic ablaut form in this sole paradigm position of Old Norse, Old Dan. etc. This is unique. – Ásgeir thinks that the gen.pl. form is an admixture of an unrelated word. But that does not reduce one’s discomfort.
3rd SCEPTICISM. Alongside gen.pl. kwenna there is a variant, kwinna. No one has realised that this variant is fatal to the theory of two basic forms. The variant is clearly a regular Pre-Germanic development e > i + nasal + C. The other, kwenna, is then analogous (morpheme preserving). To what? Naturally to forms with we + single C in the other positions. But the other positions were supposed to have the ablaut form -u- in Nordic! Here the old theory breaks down.
4th SCEPTICISM. -wi- in gen.pl.reigns supreme in Old Danish-Swedish and has lead to Dan. kvinde (presumably together with 1st components of compounds). Outside Danish-Swedish, -wi- is found in gen.pl. in Old Norse, as mentioned, but also in the Viking Age – which appears from Jan de Vries’ Great Britain forms: Manx runes 1050-1100 cuinu, loan > OIr. cuiniu, loan > Scotch Gaelic coinne. So the Vikings have donated their -we-, -wi- from c. 850, whereas -u-, -o- does not seem to be developed yet. It appears, in the homeland, in 935: kunu (Jelling minor). Now the case is clear: However -we/wi- has become -u-, the Proto-Germanic basic form is one and the same for all Germania: *kwenōn.
THE LAST SCEPTICISM. The very first condition for Proto-Germ. *kwunōn, surely, was that there is no acceptable way between -we- and -u/o-. There is. And it has been known for long. My teacher of Old Norse, Stefán Karlsson, lectured in 1964 – and it was no private hobbyhorse – that everything would fall into place in the 4th ablaut class if koma and pret. kom and sova were considered an innovation of resp. *kwema, kwam, *sweva. They would thus have the expected e in inf./pres. like bera, skera etc. and the expected a in pret.sg., as well as the connection to samkwæ:mi, samkvem, kwāmu, kwæ:mi, and swevn ’sleep’, swæ:va ’sedate’ would be clear. Also Harry Andersen has a comment to the same effect.
There is no overall treatise on we, wi > u, o. But ever since Stefán let his remark fall, I have collected examples of this sound development in Nordic. The Golden Dissertation must wait, but it is almost superfluous: It appears from the many examples that we are not dealing with a proper sound law, but rather a reduction tendency (actually two, see below) going on for centuries and still being active. Probably, it only works in unstressed syllable causing only a few times per generation a word to change permanently into the reduced form.
ON. hwersu > Icel. hosso, hvorsu, hvursu ’how’. Similar forms in Far. and Norw. dial.
*Nē wæjt ek hwærr > ON. nQkkurr (normal, among many), OSwe., ODan. nōkor.
ON. hwærr > Icel. hver, hvur ’who of >2’.
ComNord. æjnnhwærr > OSwe. ennor ’someone’.
OEastNord. hwīlīkinn >hwilken > OSwe. hulken, Scania hukken ’which’.
PrimNorse. *kwema >ComNord. kuma ’come’.
Proto-Germ. *kwerriz > ON. kwirr > Icel., Far. kyrr(ur) ’calm’with i-mutation of u.
Proto-Germ. *swestriɣīniju n.pl. > *swi- > ComNord. systkini ’siblings’. Before i-mutation.
Analogy with systir ’sister’ possible, but unlikely in the richly alternating ComNord., where,
furthermore, systir itself is an analogy (instead of *swistir) with acc. systur (with combinatory u-
mutation) – and because it typically referred to brothers in the male dominated society.
ComNord. *sweva >MediNord. sova ’sleep’.
Proto-Germ. *swikniz ’blameless’ (cf. Goth. swikns;OEng. swicn sb. ’clearing of charge’) >
*sukniR > ON. sykn with i-mutation of u. A direct development wi > y is not known.
Proto-Germ. *swimdilōn > ON., Norw. dial. sundla ’feel dizzy (impers.)’.
ON. swimra > Norw. dial. sumla ’feel dizzy (impers.)’.
Proto-Germ. *karla-swefti (var. *-sefti) ’spear side’ > *-swifti > *-sufti > ON. -syft (along with the
unreduced -swift; also -sift < var. form). – Also in other words this root (= sik pron., Sif ’Thor’s
wife’, ON. swili ’wife’s sister’s husband’) proves to have doublets *se/swe. – -syft can only be <
i-mutated u.
PrimNorse. *twe- and/or *twī-teɣu (with shortened ī) > ON. tuttugu ’20’.
Proto-Germ.*hajla-wandija > ON. hæjlendi, hæjlyndi ’health’.Here, too, our development is seen
before the i-mutation.
ON. þannweg > þannug (> þannig) ’in that way’.
ON. QndwegiQndugi ’seat of honour’.
ODan. [4we̝ł] > Jutland [w̩ł = oł] ’will’, fx ['de̝ w̩ł α 'e̝ɲc Bse̞ːj] »That will I not say.«
ComNord. dagwerðr ’breakfast’ and nāttwerðr ’supper’ >ON. dQgurðr (whence Jutl. dɔwər),
nātturðr.
ON. Qndwerðr Qndurðr ’opposite, in front’.
Proto-Germ. *īk-, ajk-wernan- > *æjkurn ’squirrel’. Germ. Eichhorn, ON. íkorni, Norw. ēkorn,
īkorn, all have popular etymology from horn. The condition for this is wern > urn, else the
phonetic distance is rather too big: wern vs. horn.
ComNord. wika > ODan. ukæ.
ON. BjQrgwin > BjQrgyn ’Bergen’ with y from the other cases: BjQrgwinju > BjQrgynju with i-
mutated u. Correspondingly, all place names in -win.
ComNord. *Sig-win > ON. Sigyn
ComNord. *Qwð-winr (cf. Eng. Edwin) »rich friend«ON. Qwðunn.
PrimNorse *An(d?)-windaR ON. Qnundr, OSwe. Anunder, ODan., Norw. dial. Anund.
ComNord. *Jarwindr (RunSwe. Jarwinder) > ON. JQrundr, ODan. Jorund, Jarund.
ON. forwista forusta, forosta, forysta ’command’. (I cannot explain y).
The development consists in two reductions: First unstressed full vowel (4i, 4æ, 4a) > 4ə, a reduction which is doubtless universal among languages. Then a ə-assimilation of wə > w̩, where w̩ equals phonetically u/o depending on the actual w-articulation of the dialect. (Da.Rm. §32). This reduction may not be universal, but it is wide-spread, cf. all those European languages that have ə-assimilation in -əl, -ən, -ər, fx Eng. ['ə ̞wən > 'ə ̞w̩n] Owen.
My instances strongly suggest that the reductions have occurred in non-fortis. Fortified by the fact that in numerous cases they only appear optionally along with the older full form. Although we do find som instances in modern Danish of these two reductions occurring with primary stress, e.g. [ə 'sən’, ə 'sn̩’] ...og sådan. ’...and stuff.’, I believe all the given examples to have evolved outside fortis. Those few forms, then, the contexts of which point to fortis must have had salient non-fortis combinations, like en uges tid ’a week’s time’ or in the 2. part of a compound: cryci-uku »Cross-week«, ’Easter week’, adelkone ’main wife’, trællekone ’thrall wife’.
An unstressed e and lax i easily become ə. More open vowels are farther from ə and are not as easily reduced to this sound. But of course it happens. Here come some examples:
ON. hwatwetna > hotwetna ’whatever’.
OSwe. kwað pret. > koð ’quoth’.
Com.Nord. (ON., RunSwe., OGotl.) kwam pret.kom ’came’.
ComNord. swav pret. (ON. swav, OGotl. <svafu> pret.subjv.) Scand. sov ’slept’.
ODan. en wal 'sild *en wəl 'sild > en w̩l (= ool) 'sild ’(a stick with) 80 herrings’.Hereafter a new
distinct form: fortis 'o:’l <ol>.
ComNord. warð pret. > ODan. urth ’became’. See next.
ComNord. wærða > OEastNord. warða > ODan. urthæ ’become’. Correspondingly, ODan. pres.
urthær. Might be by analogy with pret.pl. urðu, part. urðinn, but unlikely that these should outdo
the whole present and pret.sg. warð.
In the Rök-stone’s <tualf>’12’, c. 800, <a> can only mean a or Qor open æ. Whichever, we have our development since all the Nordic languages got tolv.
If my sound development has been drawn up correctly, it must be easy to find outside Germanic. I have a single instance but have not followed up the matter. Latin sodālis ’companion’ comes < PIE. *swedhālis ’habitual dealings’ with we > o in non-fortis – right by the book.
It seems obvious to me, that there is a gap in our Nordic records of phonetic developments, viz. the multilingual, infortis sound_law/double_reduction wi/we/wa u/o. Can it be true that no one has written about such an obvious thing? No. Andreas Heusler 1931 has seen the tendency in OIcel.:
§87.2: Postkonsonantisch wa und we sind oft zu o geworden; die genaueren Bedingungen sind fraglich: got. qam : kom »kam«, got. twalif, altschwed. inschr. tualf : tolf »12«; vielleicht got. twans tiguns: *twattogo > tottogo »20«; got. qinō : urn. *kwenō[n LB] > kona »Weib«; ae. swefan : sofa »schlafen«. Dagegen kuenna Gen. Plur., kuenkostr »Heiratspartie« und andere Komposita, suefn »Schlaf« mit bewahrtem we vor mehrfachem Konsonanten. ...
However, this is just the top of the iceberg. Above I have given many more examples, from several idioms and analysed the phenomenon into two reduction tendencies. But, alas! What should have been my main topic, the PIE and PG root of kone, has been pre-empted by the very same Heusler – which I stumbled across some days after the congress:
§235.2: Der Gen. Pl. zu kona »Weib« lautet kuinna und (in Prosa gewöhnlich) kuenna. Die erste Form heischt ein urg. *kwen-nōm,... ; kuenna ist Umformung von kuinna aus der Zeit, bevor kwen- in den übrigen Kasus zu kon- geworden war (§ 87, 2). Das Wort hat weder in Wurzel noch Suffix Schwundstufe: es hält in allem zu den Formen von got. qinō.
Of course my vanity was wounded. But the inner Ehrlichmann triumphed: When the great Heusler and I agree, and do so with the same arguments advanced in 1931 resp. 2009, it’s got to be true.
Literature
Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon: Orðsifjabók. Reykjavik 1989.
Andersen, Harry:Oldnordisk Grammatik. Kbh. 1962.
Brink, Lars & Jørn Lund:Dansk Rigsmål I-II. Kbh. 1975.(Da.Rm.)
de Vries, Jan:Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Leiden 1962.
Hellquist, Elof:Svensk etymologisk ordbok. 3rd ed. Lund 1948 (1st ed. 1922).
Heusler, Andreas: Altisländisches Elementarbuch 3. udg., Basel 1931 (1st ed. 1913).
Katlev, Jan:Etymologisk Ordbog. Cph. 2000.
Nielsen, Niels Åge:Dansk Etymologisk Ordbog 4th ed. Cph. 1989 (last rev. 1985. 1st ed. 1966).