*hwaʀ

Reconstruction

Wiktionary reconstructs *hwaʀ "who?",^[1] *hwaz in Ringe and Taylor.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *hwaz (“who”),^[2][3] which Kroonen cites by the stem *hwa-.^[3] Word-final *-z in monosyllables developed differently in the north and the south of West Germanic: in the north it was lost with compensatory lengthening, giving Old English hwā and Old Frisian hwā, while in the south it survived and became r.^[2] Old Saxon hwē and Old High German wer go back to a variant *hwiz ~ *hwez of uncertain age, with the same treatment of the final *-z.^[2]

Morphology

An interrogative pronoun, built partly on a stem *hwa- and partly on *hwi- ~ *hwe-, the Proto-Indo-European stems having merged in Proto-Germanic; it had no distinct feminine and no plural.^[4] Ringe and Taylor's Proto-West Germanic paradigm has the masculine-feminine nominative *hwaz (perhaps *hwiz), accusative *hwanā, genitive *hwes (perhaps *hwas), an uncertain dative *hwa(m)mē and the instrumental *hwī, and the neuter nominative-accusative *hwat.^[5] Old English and Old Frisian generalised the a-stem, except in the Old English instrumental, while Old Saxon and Old High German generalised the stem with a front vowel, except in the neuter nominative-accusative.^[5]

Evidence

The pronoun is attested in all the West Germanic languages: Old English hwā, Old Frisian hwā, Old Saxon hwē and Old High German wer.^[2] Old Dutch has it as wie, which ONW records in the Old Low Franconian psalms of the 10th century and in Williram's commentary of about 1100, where it appears as ⟨Wer⟩.^[6] Köbler lists the psalm forms ⟨hue⟩, ⟨uue⟩ and ⟨uuie⟩, and notes that ⟨hue⟩ could also be Old Saxon.^[7]

Competing analyses

Ringe and Taylor reject the view that *hwaz and similar words lost *-z because they were unstressed, since it does not account for Old English mā (“more”) and cū (“cow”) or for the retention of *-z in Old High German.^[2] Hogg and Fulk, by contrast, explain Old English hwā by a loss of final *-z that began in the unstressed form, which then spread to stressed positions, where its vowel was lengthened.^[8]

Rösel based a primary division of Germanic, Gothic, Scandinavian and English against Saxon and Old High German, on doublets inherited from Proto-Indo-European; reviewing him, Kuhn accepted only one such set, the distribution of *hwaz and *hwez, and rejected the division itself as tree-diagram thinking.^[9] Kroonen too sets masculine *hwaz, as in Gothic, against *hwiz in Old Saxon and Old High German,^[3] and Berr derives the Gothic, Old English and Old Frisian forms from Proto-Indo-European *kʷos, the Old Norse, Dutch and Old High German ones from *kʷes.^[10]

Meanings

1. who?^[2][1]

Old English and Old Frisian also used the pronoun for "someone",^[11][12] and Old Saxon and Old High German for "anyone".^[13][14]

Reflexes

• Old English: hwā (“who, someone”)^[11]
• Old Frisian: hwā (“who, someone”)^[12]
• Old Saxon: hwē (“who, anyone”)^[15]
• Old Dutch: wie (“who”)^[6]
• Old High German: wer (“who, anyone”)^[14]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. *hwaʀ
2. ^ a b c d e f g Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 86
3. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 261
4. ^ Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 124
5. ^ a b Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 125
6. ^ a b Oudnederlands Woordenboek (2009–), Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, Leiden; gtb.ivdnt.org, p. s.v. wie
7. ^ Köbler, Gerhard, Altniederfränkisches Wörterbuch, online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. we
8. ^ Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell
9. ^ Nielsen, Hans Frede (1989), The Germanic Languages: Origins and Early Dialectal Interrelations, Tuscaloosa / London: University of Alabama Press, p. 92
10. ^ Berr, Samuel (1971), An Etymological Glossary to the Old Saxon Heliand, Berne / Frankfurt: Herbert Lang, p. 215
11. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. hwā
12. ^ a b Hofmann, Dietrich; Popkema, Anne Tjerk (2008), Altfriesisches Handwörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. s.v. hwā
13. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altsächsisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. hwē
14. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. wer
15. ^ Tiefenbach, Heinrich (2010), Altsächsisches Handwörterbuch / A Concise Old Saxon Dictionary, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter, p. s.v. hwe