Miscellaneous notes on Gothic historical morphology

The contribution addresses three problem areas of the comparative grammar of Germanic languages: a) the historical phonology behind the accusative and the vocative singular of Gothic non-neuter u-stems (-au ~ -u), b) the historical development of the 1st person singular active optative preterit ending in Gothic (-jau), and c) the evolutionary history of the two Gothic accusative plural nasal stem endings -ans and -nuns. The explanation of the Gothic accusative ending -au is matched to the problem of the 1st sg. optative in -jau, for which an original diphthong as the result of contraction of Proto-Germanic *-i̯ēų (and subsequent shortening in the prehistory of Gothic) is considered. In the same vein, the accusative singular ending -au is traced back to *-ē/ōų. The explanation offered for the problematic Gothic accusative singular nasal-stem ending -ans leans on the possibility of regular apocope in the inherited sequence *-anunz < PIE *-on-m̥s in trisyllables. As far as Proto-Germanic is concerned, the variant ending -nuns (attested in aúhsnuns to aúhsa ‘ox’) < PIE *-n-m̥s is argued to be archaic: although -ans appears to represent the regular reflex of amphidynamic inflection inherited from Proto-Indo-European, its vowel is most probably secondary.