Some dialectal derivatives of PGmc * ƀūwa - ‘dwelling, farm’

This article charts the evolution of several problematic nouns, viz. Old Norse bygg ‘grain; barley’, Old English bēow ‘grain’ (?), and Old Frisian bē ‘crops’ (?), analyzing their common ancestor, the dialectal Proto-Germanic * ƀewwa- ‘grain’, as a vṛddhi-derivative from the nominal * ƀū̆wa- ‘dwelling; farm’. Old Saxon beo ‘harvest’ (or ‘field’), while usually added to this group, may or may not be directly related. Also an alternative phonological analysis of ON bygg is provided, arguing that during its evolution from * ƀewwa- it underwent not raising to * biggwa- (as commonly assumed), but was broken to * bioggwa- , and that its vowel y reflects secondary raising and monophthongization. Finally, a new historical analysis is presented for the Old Norse verb byggva / byggja ‘inhabit’, interpreting it as a j- denominative, built from PGmc * ƀū̆wa- ‘dwelling; farm’.