Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1980, Blaðsíða 208

206
Janez Oresnik
The earliest Old English and Old High German had non-imperative
short forms in s and long forms in stu. The short and the corresponding
long forms were morphological variants of the 2. p. sg., with the long
forms having the status of the basic variants. Therefore the short forms
tended to be made from the corresponding long forms by aid of a
clipping rule: the long form minus tu = the short form. E.g. OE.
gœstu minus tu = gœs, OHG. tuostu minus tu = tuos. However, there
was also another clipping rule in the language, formulated on the basis
of the short and long forms in the preterite-present verbs and in the
verb „to be“ (OE. eart, earð, arð, OHG. bist), in Old English also in
the verb willan (wilt). The short forms of these verbs were, OE. wást,
canst, eart, wilt, etc., OHG. weist, kanst, bist, etc. The corresponding
long forms were, OE. wástu, canstu, eartu, wiltu, etc., OHG. weistu,
kanstu, bistu. Here again the long forms were the basic variants, from
which the short forms were made by aid of the following rule: the long
form minus u = the short form. E.g. OE. wástu minus u = wást, OHG.
weistu minus u = weist.
This clipping of u, whose position was relatively strong because it
had been abstracted from forms of much used verbs, began to compete
with the clipping of tu. In Old English, the competition was to begin
with limited to dissyllabic long forms (e.g. gœstu), because the clipping
of u had been abstracted precisely from dissyllabic long (and mono-
syllabic short) forms (e.g. from canstu, canst). In Old High German,
the competition was to begin with limited to the pres. ind. sg., no doubt
because the verbal forms from which the clipping of u had been ab-
stracted (e.g. kanstu, kanst) also pertained to the pres. ind. sg.16 Ex-
amples of the operation of the clipping of u outside its original domain:
OE. gœstu minus u yielded gœst, OHG. tuostu minus u yielded tuost.
For a time forms such as the inherited OE. gœs and OHG. tuos on the
one hand, and the innovations OE. gœst and OHG. tuost on the other,
competed with each other, until the clipped forms (e.g. OE. gœst, OHG.
tuost) won the day, presumably because they were more than the
original short forms (e.g. OE. gœs, OHG. tuos) similar to their respect-
ive basic variants (e.g. to OE. gœstu, OHG. tuostu). The implication is
16 There is no indication that in Old High German the competition between
the two clipping rules was originally limited to dissyllabic long forms, as was the
case in Old English.