Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1982, Page 96

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Faroese Bird-Name Origins
is entirely plausible; one may compare inter alia Greek laíein
’to sound’. Nevertheless, the formal details remain obscure, and
we accordingly turn our attention to these.
We deal first with the West Germanic words. They are fe-
minine and evidently stem from a single ancestor. It could be
Falk-Torp’s postulate suitably amended to *laiwazikon, where
-ikon is identifiable as an archaic diminutive, cf. Kluge, 35.
However, this is not the only permissible reconstruction; *lai-
wizikón is equally possible, and superior, for it yields a more
tangible morphology, as can next be shown.
It is to be expected that a termination so ancient as -ikón
will have ’been attached to the stem of the basic word. We
therefore posit a neuter s-stem, nom.acc. *laiwaz (for the ter-
mination cf. Lat. genus, both Lat. -us and Gmc. *az going back
to IE ’:'-os), inflecting stem ’Haiwez- (cf. Lat. gener-, originally
:>genes-), a noun of imitative origin with the meaning ’song’
and used to name the lark, thus another example of the employ-
ment of an abstract noun in this function, cf. Svanur ’swan’
below. To this stem, the suffix -ikón was subsequently added
after the analogy of other bird names, cf. Kluge, 24, 32f., giv-
ing *laiwezikón whence by normal evolution *laiwizikón (e
becoming i due to following i) literally ’songster’.
We now notice the surprising N. Fris. lásk for expected *lárk,
cf. W. Fris Ijurk. The North Frisian name, here normalised fol-
lowing láásk of the archaic language of Fohr and Amrum,
occurs with appropriate variation in all the dialects except that
of Sylt, where lórki is found, but pretty obviously a Danicism.
As there seems no possibility of explaining s for r in terms of
internal North Frisian change, we conclude that N. Fris. lásk
must represent an independent development of the Common
Germanic form postulated above. It has then evidently des-
cended via a contracted *laiwizkón, realised as *laiwiskón, thus
preserving as a sibilant a consonant otherwise regularly rhota-
cised.
The North Germanic forms may now be considered. OSwed.
lærikia f. will continue an earlier *laiwrikia; it requires no ima-