Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/wesaną

Present tense of wesaną, with the sense 'I stay, I sojourn'
I would like to make the case for recognising the use of the present tense of *wesaną as a verb meaning 'stay, remain, lodge, sojourn' independent of its use in the suppletive paradigm of the verb to be.

In Gothic wisan is used in exactly that sense. Examples follow:

Gothic:  At izwis … wintru wisa (Corinthians I 16:6)

PGmc:    * At izwiz … wintrų wesō

Meaning: I will stay the winter … at your place.

Gothic:  wait þatei wisa jah þairhwisa at allaim izwis (Philippians 1:25)

PGmc:    * wait þat ī wesō jahw þerh-wesō at allaimaz izwiz

Meaning: I know that I shall stay and continue with all of you.

The Gothic corpus also turns up 9 examples of wisiþ < *wisidi, in the sense of 'stay, remain, abide'. In Gothic wisan is a strong verb class 5. In that case *wesaną is also a strong verb 5, like *sprekaną. This is consistent with its preterite *ik was, *īz wēzun.

Conceivably because of this double usage of the verb *wesaną, both as an independent verb to stay (present tense) and as the past of 'to be', West Germanic uses the alternative verbs *wezāną and *wazōną.

The derivation of those two verbs would appear to be:

*wazōną is a denominative < *wazō, sojourn (proposed by Ringe in a handout on Verner's Law)< *h₂wos-éh₂ < *h₂wes-

*wezāną is originally a factitive 'cause to stay' < *wezajanan < *h₂wes-oyéti

To understand the semantic field here, I will point out that Gothic also uses other verbs in this sense:

gastandan < *gastandaną, and

saljan, I presume to be a Gothic innovation, derived from *saliz

2001:8003:3417:5F00:F974:724D:50DE:ED5F 05:22, 17 September 2023 (UTC)


 * You may well be right. Dutch has the alternative infinitive (beside normal ), but only in non-auxiliary senses:
 * —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:30, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:30, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Only two stems?
Are these forms with "immi" or "isti" (in my native German surviving in "ist", in English or Scandinavian in all forms of the present indicative like "am", "are" or Swedish "är") really of the same stem as "sindi" or "sijo" (German "sei" or "sind" or Icelandic and Old Germanic present subjunctive)? I would perceive them to be different stems.

By the way: I think it is fascinating how in the Germanic languages some forms were replaced by (regular) forms derived from other stems. Universal-Interessierter (talk) 11:06, 18 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes, compare v.  and  v., from  v. . Indeed, it looks weird, but that's because it's a preserved archaism. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)