del LCAP:

There are a few alternate forms or forms that do not conform to the derivation of endings from PIE to PG and from PG to each of the daughter languages as it has thus far been laid out. It is necessary to take a closer look at these forms, not only to account for their origin, but also to observe what factors are involved when verbal endings are reshaped and what conditions contribute to the rise of alternative forms.

3.4.1 North Germanic

Although we have a relatively large number of examples of 1st person singular forms in Runic Norse, there are unfortunately no examples of 1st person plural forms (cf. Krause 1971:121-123). Krause (1971:126-128) reconstructs *-amR/-umR in the present indicative, *-um in the preterite and in the optative *-ēm (pres.) and *-īm

(pret.). The oldest texts available to us in Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian illustrate the regular development of these endings and we find -um in all classes of verbs in the present and preterite indicative and -im in the present and preterite optative.34

Already in some older texts, but not the oldest ones, we find alternative forms of the 1st person plural without the final -m, when the relevant personal pronoun immediately follows the verb form. The pronouns involved are either vit ‘we two’ (dual) or vér ‘we’ (plural) (Noreen 1970:358). The explanation for this is that the labial feature of the final nasal and the labial feature of the initial consonant of the personal pronoun caused the boundaries between the verb form and the pronoun to be blurred and then wrongly parsed by certain speakers and this is reflected in the spelling of the oldest texts. There are also alternative pronominal forms, 1st person dual mit and 1st person plural mér, which show the nasal feature of the final -m of the verb ending having moved to the initial labial phoneme of the pronoun following a similar blurring of word boundaries in inverted syntactic context. These alternative m-form pronouns are limited to Old Norwegian and are most commonly found postverbally but not exclusively so (Noreen 1970:203).

These alternative forms in Old Norse illustrate the close connection between a verb ending and a personal pronoun. The examples cited above demonstrate how a verb ending can lose some phonetic material on the account of following pronoun. There are also examples of the opposite development, namely that a phonetic feature of the personal pronoun becomes part of the ending. An example of such a development is attested in Modern Icelandic where the 2nd person singular form of verbs acquired the dental fricative of the 2nd person pronoun þú ‘you sg.’, (cf. Thórólfsson 1925:112). Thus ON conjugation of sjá ‘see’ in the present indicative, 1st sg. sé, 2nd sg. sér, 3rd sg.

34

Old Swedish shows the ending -um/-om in the optative from earliest texts (Noreen 1904:476). The development is only regular for the 2nd class of weak verbs but has spread from there to the other verbs and was also reinforced by the indicative endings (loc. cit). A similar change of the 1st person pl. optative endings from -im to -um took place in Middle and Modern Icelandic as well but solely motivated by the indicative endings.

sér, becomes in Modern Icelandic 1st sg. sé, 2nd sg. sérð, 3rd sg. sér. From these examples we can see that the boundaries between the ending and a pronoun are often unclear in the minds of the users of the language, including the people that wrote down the texts from which we derive our linguistic knowledge. It is important to keep this fact in mind when we investigate different theories concerning the origin of the OHG 1st person plural ending.

There is some evidence in Old Danish for 1st person plural endings that end in a vowel -a -e, or -æ (Brøndum-Nielsen 1973:66-67). These are explained either as regular 3rd person plural forms in -a that have further spread to the 1st person plural or as shortened forms of the ending -um in inverted forms (-u) which we already discussed. These short forms show a regular secondary phonological development of unaccented final vowels in Old Danish, i.e. : -u > -e or -æ and -a > -e or -æ.

All the alternative endings found in the North Germanic languages can be accounted for by phonological alternations and regular sound-law They all show the same origin in the regular ending, -(u)m.

3.4.2 East Germanic (Gothic)

In East Germanic or Gothic we have the ending -m as well as an optative ending -ma. The second ending is not easily explainable and has no obvious cognates in the other Germanic languages. Most authorities trace it back to a PG *-mē (Krahe/Meid 1969b:131, Krause 1968:261). This view entails assuming two variants of the present/aorist secondary ending in PG; *-mē besides regular *-me. Such lengthened secondary ending is allegedly independently attested in Lithuanian reflexive forms such as sùkom÷s ‘we turned ourselves’. Therefore it is possible that this lengthened secondary ending is a PIE phenomenon that survived in Germanic as well. The existence of such a lengthened secondary ending is nonetheless a complication that we would like to avoid if possible.

Theoretically the final -a in the Gothic ending could go back to other long vowels than *ē or a diphthong. Prokosch (1939) reconstructs a PIE ending with a final *-ā as a potential ancestor of the Gothic ending (see section 3.6.2.2). This is not the only possibility as PIE *-ā and *-ō (= PG *-ō) as well as PG *-ai and *-ōm can all give final -a in Gothic, i.e. ō-stem fem. nom. sg. PG *rūnō > Goth. rūna; 3rd person sg. middle PG *beraðai > Gothic bairada and ō-stem fem. acc. sg. PG *rūnōm > Goth. rūna. Hypothetically the Gothic ending -ma could thus go back to PG *-mō, *-mai and *-mōm besides the commonly reconstructed *-mē.

These hypothetical endings do not bring us much closer in explaining the origin of the Gothic ending. If we want to avoid reconstructing an alternative secondary ending *-mē it is perhaps possible to account for the Gothic ending by assuming a different origin. This can be done by postulating that besides the regular secondary ending *-me we had an alternate form *-mo, which can be accounted for by the same early PIE rule of unaccented *e > *o that is discussed in sections 2.2.3.2 and 3.2.1. If we imagine that this ending *-mo could be strengthened by a particle -i we would have a late PIE preform *-moi, a potential ancestor of PG *-mai. This form is only hypothetical and not supported by any independent evidence. Of course it is very unlikely hat this ending ever existed but the point remains that *-mē is not the only possible ancestor of the Gothic ending. This ending is discussed in more detail in section 3.6.2.2.

3.4.3 West Germanic

West-Germanic languages in the Ingvaeonic area have eliminated the distinction between persons in the plural of verbs (most prominent of those being Old English and Old Saxon). The 1st person plural verb form has been analogically replaced by the 3rd person plural form in the present and preterite indicative and optative, through a process of paradigmatic leveling. Therefore all comparison with the 1st person plural forms in these languages is useless, but for one exception. The 1st person plural

imperative (adhortative) forms in OE are not like the present indicative plural forms. Here the ending is commonly imp. -an vs. ind. -(e)ð (Brunner 1965:269).

It is possible that this ending continues the regular Germanic 1st person present indicative ending which is otherwise lost (PG *-am > OE -an).35 It is also possible that the ending goes back to the present optative plural forms which originate from the 3rd person plural where we find an early OE ending -æn, which later can have the forms -an and -en (Brunner 1965:277-278). If this first person plural ending in -an represents the OE reflex of an old PG 1st person plural ending, it points to an origin in the regular present indicative ending in final -m from PG *-m(i)z, cognate with the endings we find in North and East Germanic.

3.4.4 Summary and conclusions

This survey of peculiar 1st person forms found in the Germanic languages has shown us that the majority of the forms can be explained by assuming some secondary development in the individual languages. It is clear that the alternative endings found in North and West Germanic can ultimately trace their origin back to PG primary ending *-m < *-m(i)z or secondary ending *-m < *-m(e.) The only exception to this is the Gothic ending which is not easily explained, but could also reflect some pre- Gothic or late PG development.