Scheinbare Wurzelerweiterung a fronte: Obskurierte Präfixkomposita im Germanischen

Abstract

To a certain extent, some of the Germanic verbs are still etymologically unclear, a matter of fact which is not necessarily due to a substrate influence, as some scholars believe. However, we will not pursue any substrate theories for the Germanic vocabulary here. Instead, the new approach of univerbation etymologies is being adopted, which makes it possible to operate with known Indo-European word material and yet create new etymologies for old “problem verbs”. The analysis of the Germanic (etymologically obscure) verbal root as a “neo-root”, being a univerbation of preverb and verbal root, has already been successfully utilized in the etymologization of Germanic *falla-nan ‘to fall’, *fanha-nan/*fanga-nan ‘to catch’ and Gothic fraisan ‘to try’, which paved the way for further univerbation etymologies. In the present study, the focus is on etymologically obscure or problematic Germanic verbs, which possibly reflect a univerbation of a verbal root and the Indo-European preverb *pe- /*po-. These are the newly discussed verbs of the present study (besides the already mentioned Gmc. *falla-nan ‘to fall’ and Gmc. *fanha-nan/*fanga-nan ‘to catch’): Gmc. *fara-nan ‘to walk, ride’, *feha-nan ‘to rejoice’, *felha-nan ‘to hide’, *feta-nan 'to find', *feta-nan ‘to give birth’, *falþa-nan/*falda-nan ‘to fold’. The present paper not only offers a thorough etymological discussion of these verbs, but also addresses important questions of historical syntax and prosody, the answers to which lend additional weight to the proposed etymological interpretations.