Another Old Frisian 'instrumental singular' in -um ?
Old Germanic displays some eleven instances of datives which formally seem to be plurals, although we would expect singular forms. It has long been clear that all instances may reflect a special use of the plural. In the present article, it is argued that this actually is the only possibility, becau...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Neophilologus 1999-07, Vol.83 (3), p.421-426 |
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Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | Old Germanic displays some eleven instances of datives which formally seem to be plurals, although we would expect singular forms. It has long been clear that all instances may reflect a special use of the plural. In the present article, it is argued that this actually is the only possibility, because we cannot reconstruct a singular case form that would have yielded the forms concerned. The only Old Frisian example of the phenomenon under discussion would be melokon < *melukum in the First Riustring Codex (I, 44-5): ". . . thet lond thet flat fon melokon and fon hunige", i.e. 'the land that overflowed from milk and honey'. It is argued that Codex Unia (Apographa p. 22v°) ". . . ther bi willa jefta bi dumhedum op hlapt, and thi mena fere thi[t] riocht verwint alle keran and alle pligan . . ." represents a second Old Frisian instance of such a dative plural with singular meaning. |
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ISSN: | 0028-2677 1572-8668 |
DOI: | 10.1023/A:1004577917823 |