Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1980, Blaðsíða 211

On the Dental Accretion
209
basis of pairs such as kanstú and kanst, where the long form was the
basic variant (on the evidence of the Icelandic imperative singular), the
following rule was established: the short form = the long form minus
the final ú. (E.g. kanst = kanstú minus ú.) This rule was generalised to
all dissyllabic long forms in -tú, e.g. to gertú, from which it produced a
new clipped form gert. Nowadays all monosyllabic 2. p. sg. pres. ind.
forms end in -t in Faroese.
Also in the old West Germanic languages the short 2. p. sg. pres. ind.
developed a dental accretion (e.g. OE. gœs of gán was replaced by
gœst, OHG. tuos of tuon was replaced by tuost). I see the origin of the
new -t of the 2. p. sg. pres. ind. in the same kind of clipping as has been
posited above for Icelandic and Faroese: on the basis of pairs such as
OE. canstu, canst, OHG. kanstu, kanst, where the long form was the
basic variant (on the evidence of the Icelandic imperative singular) the
following clipping rule arose: the short form = the long form minus the
final u. E.g. OE canst = canstu minus u, OHG. kanst = kanstu minus
u. This clipping rule was generalised to all long 2. p. sg. pres. ind. forms,
e.g. to OE. gœstu (and there arose gæst) and to OHG. tuostu (and there
arose tuost). Subsequently the dental accretion spread even to the 2. p.
sg. forms outside the present indicative.
University of Ljubljana,
Y ugoslavia
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íslenskt mál II 14