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Author: Peter
Email: penteract at oe dot eclipse dot co dot uk
Date: 2005-02-26 10:22:37
Subject: Re: How is Gothic 'weihs' pronounced?
>
> You know, after I made that post, I thought, "Wait a second- wouldn't the *j delete?" If there earlier form were *wikjana, then the *j ought to delete as it does in *framjana > fremman.
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> The thing I can't figure out is this. If the *o is still there when gemination occurs, wouldn't the *k in *wikojana fail to geminate since the *j isn't adjacent to the *k? But if the *o was deleted first, then wouldn't the *j subsequently be deleted? If there were an earlier form *wikkojana, then how do we explain the geminate?
Hi Sean,
Yes, I think that's right. Gemination wouldn´t normally happen in Class 2 weak verbs: lufian, macian, wunian, etc. There are however a few which behave mainly like Class 2, but with irregularities suggesting that they once belonged to Class 3 (in a lot of cases this is supported by Gothic & OHG). Mostly this just involves a palatal -g- in place of syllablic -i-, or contracted preterites, but Campbell does have a couple of examples of gemination: Northumbrian wæcca, for WS wacian; and the WS variants fetian & feccan.
(He explains the gemination in Class 3 (habban, secgan, libban, hycgan) as the result of a vanishing ablaut grade of the stem vowel -æ-. If I´ve understood this right, the lack of i-umlaut in habban, hæbbe, hæbbende is due to analogy with other parts of the verb: hæfst, hæfþ, hæfde, hæfd, hafa.)
So, could wiccian have been Class 3 originally? That could account for gemination of *wit- or *wic-, if either of these were the root. The 3rd weak conjugation originally had connotations of "duration" or "being in a state of" or "remaining as such", hence murnan, sorgian, þolian, wunian, libban, swigian, wacian, hlinian. But I can´t really see how that applies to feccan "fetch", secgan "say", losian "perish". Still, if the emphasis of wiccian was "to perform the role of a witch", "to do what a witch does", then Class 2 might seem a more likely way to form the verb, but if the original meaning was "to be ????", "to continue in a state of being something" (knowing?, in a trance?), maybe that would account for it. But I'm just guessing here.
Another thought: this root -wit- also appears in words relating to the desire to know (OE fyrwit "curiosity"), looking (Lat. videre; Goth. fairweitjan, ON forvitnast), and testifying to what one has seen (MnE bear witness, Goth. weitwodjan). Could wiccian have had at first the literal meaning of "scrying", or "reporting back on what one has scried"?
Peter