Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1980, Blaðsíða 207

On the Dental Accretion
205
2.2
In this section I shall discuss a similar phenomenon of the old West
Germanic languages: the addition of t to the final s of the 2. p. sg. of
verbs. E.g. OE gœs > gœst of gan, OHG. tuos > tuost of tuon (Sievers
1951:297-98; Braune 1975:258). The ensuing discussion will be limited
to Old English and Old High German, where this matter has been best
documented and investigated.
The facts of the Old English case, as reported in this paragraph, are
taken from Sievers (1951:297-98). The oldest Old English 2. p. sg.
desinence in the present of the non-preterite-present verbs and in the
preterite of the non-strong verbs was (ended in) s, e.g. bindes, demes,
pret. démdes, sceoldes. The s was used in the early texts „oft noch fast
ausschlieszlich“, so that there can be no question of -st being inherited
from pre-literary times. Younger texts have mostly -st. Its t is due to
a faulty analysis of the s-forms to which the personal pronoun þu had
been added enclitically. E.g. gœs þu > gœstu (such long forms do occur
in the texts), and from the latter gœst arose. The ít-forms appeared
earliest in the monosyllabic 2. p. sg., more precisely, in the 2. p. sg. pres.
md. of the contracted verbs and of the verbs in -mi.
The facts of the Old High German case, as reported in this para-
graph, are taken from Braune (1975:258). The oldest Old High German
2. p. sg. desinence in the present of the non-preterite-present verbs and
ln the preterite of the non-strong verbs was (ended in) s, e.g. pres.
nimis, salbös, pret. salbötös, scoltös. Since this desinence is the only
one used „in den altesten Quellen“, there can be no question of -st
being inherited from pre-literary times. In the ninth century a t began
to occur after s, first in Franconian, then, in the tenth century, in Upper
German. „Entstanden ist die Endung st aus den Formen mit enklitisch
angefiigtem thu, du.“ (The long forms in suffixed thu, du occur already
in early texts.) -st is due to a faulty analysis of the long forms, probably
under partial influence of bist15 and of the 2. p. sg. pres. ind. of the
Preterite-present verbs. This idea goes back to Scherer (1878:331).
The faulty analysis mentioned in the two preceding paragraphs can
be rnade more explicit with the help of the analogous Icelandic develop-
ment, discussed earlier in the present paper.
of
1,1 Rlst is either an early clipped form, or its t stems from the 2.p.sg.pres.ind.
the preterite-present verbs, or is analogy after ist, according to the handbooks.