Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1985, Side 99

JÖRUNDUR HILMARSSON
Reflexes ofl.-E. *suH2nto-/-on ‘sunny’
in Germanic and Tocharian*
The Indo-European comparative/contrastive suffix *-tro- is pre-
served in Germanic with only the contrastive function intact, cf. Krahe/
Meid (1967:179). However, in the double series of words denoting the
directions and the four cardinal points, Gmc. *nurþra-, *sunþra-,
*austra-, *westra- and *nurþa-, *sunþa-, *austa-, *westa-, the indivi-
dual Germanic languages do not seem to make a sharp semantic dis-
tinction between the formations in *-tro- and *-to-. A quite faint indi-
cation of a functional distribution might perhaps be seen in the fact that
(according to von Richthofen’s dictionary) OFris. suth is used only as a
noun, whereas suther is an adverb (also used as an adjective beside suth-
ern). Furthermore, MHG. sund is only a noun, whereas sunder is used
both as a noun and an adverb. Elsewhere the one form has ousted the
other or there has been a complete functional merger. Thus Olcel. has
only suðr (noun and adverb) in free use, whereas in compounds there is
also found sunn-lsuö- (*sunþa-) beside suðr- (*sunþra-). OE. has súþ
(only adv.), with the stem *sunþra- found in the adj. súþerne. OS. has
suth, suthar (adverbs), and OHG. sundar (adv.) beside sund-lsundar-
in compounds. The stem form *sunþa- is also found with the adverbial
suffix *-na in most Germanic languages, cf. Olcel. sunnan ’from the
south’, OE. súþan ‘id.’, OHG. sundana ‘from/in the south’.
If one is allowed to draw any conclusions from this material (con-
firmed by the forms and semantics of the other direction words), the
Old Frisian and the Middle High German forms would seem to indicate
that Gmc. *sunþra-, *nurþra-, *austra-, *westra- served originally as
adverbs, but *sunþa-, *nurþa-, *austa-, *westa- as nouns. This conclu-
sion would harmonize with the statement of Krahe/Meid (op.cit., p.
* This is the preliminary version of a paper soon to appear, extended and modified in
Die Sprache.