Talk:Old Norse morphology

To-Do List

From the main article. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 20:58, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Information required to document these items may likely be mined from texts that have already been referenced in the article. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 05:21, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

1. Nouns
   1. Strong declensions - Feminine and masculine i- and r-declensions. Expertise in OEN declension appreciated.
   2. +Negative suffix
2. Adjectives/Pronouns
   1. +Demonstratives (sá, þessi, hinn/hitt)
   2. Definite article: Note on limited usage and rarity in verse due to awkwardness of meter.
   3. +Adverbs
3. Verbs
   1. Redone present-preterite & suffix tables using the format of the strong and weak tables
   2. +Personal suffix
   3. Weak verbs: Derivation of dental suffix from an obsolete cognate of "to do," according to Cleasby-Vigfússon (Remarks on Strong, Irregular Verbs)

Dialectal morphology

A notable complaint about Old Norse, largely I feel due to the sources for morphology, is that it is or was biased towards OWN, particularly OIC. Besides noting which paradigms merged in the dialects, what are some suggestions for improving the bias? I think we should go with neutralized versions of earlier Old Norse morphology and leave the ca. 13th-15th century tables for the individual languages' articles. One example of a neutralization would be using Ʀs in their proper locations, because the Western paradigms are easily inferred from this. Another would be using the diphthongs in the ablaut patterns, rather than the Eastern monophthongized vowels. Obviously, if a paradigm is drastically different, extra tables would be created, rather than distorting the paradigms beyond application to any of the dialects. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 03:43, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Strong neuter tables

I've created these in my sandbox, but I'm worried about putting them up because the division of the stems into A-like and I-like is my doing, and the identification of nęs, klæði & ríki with the yo stems and iyo stems. In addition, I don't know the stem classification of kǫtt-like masculines, which hǫgg would, I further assume, be identified with. I do, however, have explicit identification of barn and tré with o (armr) and u (sonr) stems. But if my intuitions can be supported by further research, I'd hate for the tables, and the proposition of this division, to remain completely unmentioned. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 00:28, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Neuters have been added. I see no other o stems for hǫgg and the like to share ancestry with. However, I cannot post some information on the feminine A declension without first confirming the class of nouns in heiðr, ęrmr, &c. which I suspect to be iyā. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 11:03, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Worked around by referencing in terms of the Norse stems, but those PIE/PGmc stems need to be added anyway for complete coverage. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 12:12, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Old Norse morphology, removed information

(copied from --91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:25, 24 January 2012 (UTC)'s talk page)

Hello. The information on the gender of the past participle was sourced. Although there were weak verbs with an unrelated -inn, which you might have been thinking of, the past participles in -inn are in fact the article, and past participles are declined for gender whether they're weak or strong. In the future, if you question sourced content, please read the sources, and if a claim is not represented in the source tag it with {{check source}} or {{citation needed}}. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 12:49, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

First, the link to the source is dead and not preserved on the Internet Archive, so I can't read it (and can doubt that it has been interpreted correctly). Second, the past participles in -inn are not "in fact the article". They have nothing to do with the article historically, they have no definite or pronominal meaning as it does (to produce their sort-of definite form, you have to decline them with the special weak endings). They existed in Proto-Germanic long before the suffixed article arose in Old Norse (e.g. *kumanaz for kominn). So no, the verbal and adjectival endings in -inn are in no way definite, and conversely, it is strange to say that the definite nouns "are turned into" adjectives just because the definite article declines with strong adjectival endings: the nouns still function syntactically as nouns and they also preserve their nominal endings before the article. And by the way, I never wrote that weak participles don't decline for gender.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:58, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I have now read the sources on the other site, which isn't dead (http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/), and as far as I can see, the source does not claim anywhere that the ending of the strong verbs "is" the definite article (nor does it equate definite nouns with adjectives). As for policy practice, I'm not obliged to use those tags rather than remove the information immediately - the burden of proof (WP:BURDEN) is on those who want to keep the information. In this case, I felt that the claim merited immediate rewording - in any case, by saying that the two are phonetically identical, I preserved your basic insight, just without the historically misleading wording that identifies the two things.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:22, 24 January 2012 (UTC)