Old English cyme and the Proto-Indo-European aorist optative in Germanic

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11210%2F18%3A10389924" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11210/18:10389924 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=zGLgCx-2iq" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=zGLgCx-2iq</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12147" target="_blank" >10.1111/1467-968X.12147</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Old English cyme and the Proto-Indo-European aorist optative in Germanic

Original language description

Although it has long been known that the Germanic subjunctive continues the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) optative, and several Germanic strong presents appear to continue reinterpreted PIE aorist subjunctives, the fate of PIE aorist optatives as a morphological category in Germanic has never been explicitly considered. Taking as a starting point Old English cuman &apos;come&apos; and its cognates, the author argues that if the present indicative goes back to the PIE aorist subjunctive *gwém-e/o- of the root *gwem- (cf. Vedic gámat(i), Gāθā Avestan jamaitī), this at once explains why the OE present subjunctive cyme with its synchronically irregular i-umlaut continues the PIE aorist optative of the same root, attested e.g. in Avestan jamiiāt̰. The root vowel of cuman is the result of either language-specific sound changes as in Old Norse koma and later Old High German coman or, more probably, backformation to cyme; the latter has apparently also taken place in Old Frisian kuma ~ koma, Old Saxon kuman and so may be dated to the period before the breakup of the Ingvaeonic dialect continuum. The remainder of the paper discusses other potential reflexes of PIE root aorist optatives in Germanic, and offers an explanation for their disappearance.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60203 - Linguistics

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2018

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Transactions of the Philological Society [online]

ISSN

1467-968X

e-ISSN

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Volume of the periodical

117

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

16

Pages from-to

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UT code for WoS article

000460303400005

EID of the result in the Scopus database

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