Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/gans

Is it true that in Dutch and German the word - in its nominative singular - hardly underwent any changes since the Proto-Indo European time (5000-6000 BC)? That would be really fascinating. Morgengave (talk) 08:08, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

It seems so. There's no way to be absolutely sure, though. It's possible that, at least sometime in its history, an extra ending was added that was later lost again. For example, we know that in Old Norse, some feminine consonant stems had -ō > -u added to the nominative at one point, because those forms later show u-mutation when attested although the -u itself was lost again. Or perhaps the ending was never added but the u-mutation was added by analogy. For example, nótt is attested beside nátt (“night”), and tǫnn (“tooth”) also shows this. And we also know from Vulgar Latin that certain nouns had endings added to them when they didn't have them before (consider Old French denz /dents/ from Latin dens/dentem, which shows the nominative was reformed). So this kind of thing can and does happen, and it could have occurred in the history of this word too. There's no way to know for sure. —CodeCat 13:48, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Well... the phonology did change more than the orthography might suggest. Granted, I don't know what PIE orthography translates to in terms of IPA. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:02, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

That's true. The PIE was probably pronounced [ɡʱans] while the Germanic and Dutch words are [ɣɑns]. However, the plural has changed significantly, from [ɡʱanses] through [ɣɑnsiz] to [ɣɑnzə(n)]. —CodeCat 13:39, 10 December 2012 (UTC)