Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/fulką

This Proto-Germanic entry contains reconstructed terms and roots. As such, the term(s) in this entry are not directly attested, but are hypothesized to have existed based on comparative evidence.

Proto-Germanic

Etymology

From *fulkaz (“crowd, army”), of uncertain origin. May ultimately be from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁-gós, from *pleh₁- (“to fill”). Compare Latin plebs (“common people”).

Descendants of *pъlkъ (“troop”), such as Old Church Slavonic плъкъ (plŭkŭ, “army division”), show f > p substitution, which simply could be a result of the word being borrowed before that sound became a standard phoneme in the languages thanks to loanwords from Greek and Latin (later solidified from more loans featuring f from other languages as well). Some also speculate the possibility of the word being borrowed before Grimm's law even started, but the presence of voiceless -k- in place of -g- would disprove this, (otherwise, *pъlgъ would be expected). Romanian pâlc (“herd, flock”) and Lithuanian pulkas (“crowd”) are borrowed from Slavic.

Orel's connection with Welsh ôl (“track, trace”) is unlikely, considering the latter's likely origin from Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- (“alien, other”).[1]

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈɸul.kɑ̃/

Noun

*fulką n

  1. troop, army

Usage notes

The meaning of ‘crowd, group’ and later ‘people, tribe, nation’ is an extremely recent, though near-universal, innovation in meaning in the modern Germanic languages. Proto-Germanic used the terms *þeudō (“tribe, people”) and *liudiz (“men, people”) for that meaning instead.

In most Modern Germanic languages, descendants of the terms *þeudō (“tribe, people”) and *liudiz (“men, people”) have become archaic, if not fully obsolete. Any Modern language where descendants of either lemma is still a valid word that can be used in everyday conversation, *fulką still became the main word used for groups, crowd or people in general (with *þeudō (“tribe, people”) and *liudiz (“men, people”) being used in some other way).

The meaning probably stayed as ‘army, troop’ for a long time, and probably the only meaning in East-Germanic, as *pъlkъ (“troop”) is hypothesized to be from Gothic *𐍆𐌿𐌻𐌺 (*fulk). The term then acquired the meaning of ‘crowd, group’ of any kind (evidenced by Proto-Samic Proto-Samic *fuolkkē (“family”) and Proto-Finnic Proto-Finnic *hulkka (“crowd, group”) before finally being used as ’folk, people, tribe’ in the modern Germanic languages.

Inflection

Declension of *fulką (neuter a-stem)
singular plural
nominative *fulką *fulkō
vocative *fulką *fulkō
accusative *fulką *fulkō
genitive *fulkas, *fulkis *fulkǫ̂
dative *fulkai *fulkamaz
instrumental *fulkō *fulkamiz

Derived terms

Descendants

References

  1. ^ Vladimir Orel (2003), “*fulkan”, in A Handbook of Germanic Etymology‎[1], Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 117
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