Re: IE athematics

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 1975
Date: 2000-03-30

>Look what we've done. There have been breaches of Netiquette and ad
>hominem remarks on both sides, so maybe it's time to take a step >back,
>call it quits and start talking again. For my part, I regret >saying
>anything uncivil.

Yes, I regret anything viewed as uncivil as well. You know me, I get people
going. I'm bad that way. Sorry :) Just, please, no more talk of "Old School"
and Protocrustean.

>(1) A consistent reconstruction of the phonological system and
>structure is offered, [...]

Thank you! Finally, someone dares answer that without vagueries. Alright
here's a "primer", I guess, for now, but this aspect of my theory has been
evolving extremely rapidly over the past couple of weeks, so here's what I
have today (as opposed to tomorrow):

The phonological system I reconstruct for Old IE (approx. after 7000 BCE
till about 6000 BCE) and Middle IE (c. 6000 to 5000) is virtually the same
as what we find in Common IE except that *e/*o ablaut doesn't exist nor do
the vowels *o or *e (originating from alternating accent on central schwa
*@). Thus the vowel system was:

*(@)i *(@)u
*@ (<- which I just write as *e)
*a

The selection of vowels almost seems alot like that of NWC which Bomhard has
proposed to be a potential source of early loans. But the jury is still out
on that one.

Among the stops, the voiced aspirate series is reinterpreted as simply
voiced {*b, *g, *d}, the voiced inaspirate as tenuis {*k:, *t:} and the
voiceless as itself. The nature of the tenuis consonants can still be
explained under the same typological constraints that are used to claim that
IE was spoken with ejectives (which isn't possible). Instead, the tenuis
stops are presumed to have once been ejectives to explain the lack of *p:
(from an earlier *p?). I'm confident that they were nothing but tenuis stops
well before the time of Old IE as shown by some IE-Semitic loan
correspondances which I will have to get into later.

>with correspondence rules which not only relate the initially >compared
>pairs of alleged cognates but allow you to detect further >such pairs,
>previously unsuspected of being related. This is the >closest that we can
>get to empirical testing.

First we must understand that initial consonant clusters like *pl- are the
result of lost intervening unstressed vowels. The irregularity of *s-�nti
"they are" is then explained by a loss of unstressed syllable, hence from
earlier **es-�nti (note: eszi/asanzi). There is a tendency towards syllabic
simplicity the further we delve into IE's past. Got it? Good.

Now, the penultimate accent law (PAL for short, because I'm sick of typing
it all the time) is designed to expose the regularity of the "free" accent
of IE more than anything. It is not contrary to Nostratic nor is it in any
way contradictory to the conclusions of mainstream IE studies. It works for
everyone, hooray!

Penultimate accent law:
Alternating accent between athematic roots and suffixes
are the result of a more ancient and regular accent
pattern occuring on the penultimate syllable, subsequently
obscured by an ancient loss of final vowel.

As a result of this law, most of the non-nomino-accusative case endings, for
instance, are seen to be nothing more than regularly accented disyllabic
suffixes (cf. *-�se [gen], *-�ta [abl], etc) and the plural conjugational
forms in the more ancient non-indicative conjugation shows regular accent
for the same reasons (*-�ne [3ppl]).
What's more, for the first time, the seemingly unexplainable differences in
accent and syllable structure and yet similarities in phonology between the
ablative forms in Uralic (*-ta) and IE (*-�d) can now be explained through a
Pre-IE stage with predictable penultimate accent (*-�ta). Forms with extra
vowel are attested in Tyrrhenian languages like Etruscan (Compare Etruscan
-isa and Old IE *-�se, [genitive])

The fixed thematic stress is not viewed as ancient because it is a regular
pattern - a concept that you've been beating me over the head with in terms
of Middle English and Norman French even though I understand these concepts
already...

But this is all just the tip of the iceberg, so I will put this crap on the
net in HTML format soon, eventually, some day, when I find time. Otherwise,
this'll be a 100-page essay.

>(3) I wouldn't accept explaining the obscure with the more obscure.
>This is especially important with distant relationship, where the
>well-known pitfalls of mass comparison lurk all around you. If you >want to
>demonstrate Indo-Uralic relationship, proceed stepwise and >don't bring in
>Sumerian, Dravidian or Semitic until your IU >reconstruction is solid
>enough to convince somebody else than >yourself.

Yes, you're right. Guess that's why I'm not a teacher. People who can't see
underlying patterns for themselves frustrate me and then I want to grab a
very large axe and start hacking away at living things <:( I haven't brought
Dravidian into this much at all so why are you complaining. That language is
messed up for its own reasons (vowel shifts galore, possibly a loss of *m in
some environments, preservation of an obscure pronominal set, etc, but I'll
digress).

I don't relate IE and Semitic directly to each other either, other than to
prove that they were in contact at an early time, with many loans like "six"
and "seven" which should make this contact at least self-evident... but
apparently not. The IE-Semitic contacts ironically would work against alot
of the connections proposed between AA and IE even though I'm not against
the ultimate relationship. You treat me like I'm part of the evil "New
School" but yet I'm purposely trying to take a middle road here between both
Nostraticists and conservatives. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

>See (3) above. Most people will say that if IE patterns don't conform
>to your expectations concerning Indo-Uralic, the problem must be with
>Indo-Uralic rather than the more safely established Indo-European
>patterns. Your lumping together so much uncomfortable material as
>"Semitic" looks like sweeping it all under the carpet.

Piotr, what IE patterns don't conform to my expectations, besides the
thematic fixed accent which doesn't need to be explained since it's
obviously a regular (and hence recent) system? Are you still pining over the
"basic" verbs arguement? It doesn't make sense. If you can define "basic"
for me more accurately then perhaps your points raised will seem more
logical.

If you mean the "most common" then you have no case. There remain many
common verbs like *bher- or *gen- which are not of Semitic origin and they
seem to be quite common verb forms still. Of course, they are CVC thematic
roots. We wouldn't expect "render" to be ancient not only because of its
boring regularity but also because of its form.

The Semitic connection serves to explain the yet unexplained athematic which
is evidently not ancient. What's more, the Semitic forms I was
reconstructing by conjecture based on the IE forms are apparently real. The
form is attested in Akkadian where a triliteral root is of the form Ca:CiC-
in the active participle. Thus the case of IE *weid- = Semitic *wa:di`u gets
stronger every day.

>Wrong. The regular pattern in historically attested Germanic is that >of
>weak verbs like "love : loved". The ablauting strong verbs were a
>non-productive, dying-out category already in Gothic, Old English and
>Old High German.

I'm afraid _you_ are wrong. We were talking about the _regular_ pattern not
the _commonest_ pattern. I look for forms that cannot be explained other
than through previous stages of a given language because of their
_complexity_ and _irregularity_. Perhaps weak verbs were popular,
whoop-dee-doo! I don't care about them. They are regular and therefore
uninteresting to me. Whereas, the lie/lay example that you gave shows a
pattern that is definitely very irregular and thus quite ancient. Plus the
verb "to love" is in no way relatable to French without getting weird (love
< Fr "l�-bas", a pick-up line used by French women to gain the attention of
men?), and there is no motivation to do so because a substantial amount of
these verbs likewise have no direct French correlations. Don't be silly.

In contrast, almost all athematic verbs have demonstrable, direct Semitic
counterparts and the IE athematic, because of syllabic constraints, cannot
be ancient - there's a definite difference.

>French loans followed the productive English pattern.

And? The point here is that there was no motivation for the Middle English
speakers to subject the innocent French loans to Germanic ablaut torture,
was there? The lack of initial consonant clusters in early stages of IE
shows a tendency towards LESS syllabic complexity! How can we possibly view
the athematic as ancient when it promotes tonnes of vowel clusters by its
very nature?? Boy, you're really fighting against the stream, aren't you?

Plus, the hypothetical Semitic forms of these athematic roots seem to all be
of the form *Ca:CiCu where the Ayin of the triliteral root is a
non-semivocalic phoneme. (You know, Pe-Ayin-Lamed? Are there any Jews in the
house? Oy veh...) Forms with a semivocalic Ayin, or those perceived by the
IEs to have one, strongly tend to be interpreted with a final thematic vowel
(the Semitic declensional suffix). Forms like *wadi`u would be mistakingly
misinterpreted by Middle IE speakers as *weide (` doesn't seem to be
perceived) with the same metathesis as in *gadyu > *gheide (gheidos) "goat".
On the other hand, *a:s^is^u ends up Middle IE *es without thematic because
the last consonants are both non-semivocalic. Gee, all the data between
Semitic and Middle IE would imply that this Semitic dialect that IE was in
contact with had a strong pre-penultimate accent (third last syllable), but
I digress because I know that I have to explain this in small, itsy bitsy
steps for you heathens :)

>As you observed yourself in an earlier posting, French conjugations
>were not borrowed together with French verbs.

Huh??? Excuse me? I'm sure I didn't say this in that way. We have
"dependent" (Fr. d�pendant) and "depend" (Fr. d�pend [3rd person]) along
with "render" (rendre [infinitive]). Perhaps you mean the _complete set_ of
conjugational endings weren't borrowed? Anyways, I don't see where you're
getting at.

It would almost seem that some verbs look like causitives in *s- like
*ter-/*ster-. I seem to recall a language with *s- causitives as well as the
verb *ter- with the same damn meaning as in IE, a language with numerals
like *sweks and *septm and animals like *gadyu and *tawru... Let me think...
Ah, yes, I remember now, it's called SEMITIC! Ach, you're killin' me with
your incessant opposition. Your assimilation is inevitable.

>I don't see a reason for a different interpretation of PIE grammar.

There isn't, but you misinterpreted what I'm saying.

>One more thing. Just out of curiosity: where do you find reflexes of
>the "reconstructed" verb *pelh-? I mean the "underived form", of ?>course.

Well, look, Piotr. Regardless of whether *pelh- itself is attested without
any suffix whatsoever, there's no reason at all to assume that it wasn't
there just to find any lousy point to oppose me with.

There are forms with an _un-reduplicated_ stem present (Sanskrit pu:rnah,
epra:t; Greek eple:toi) and we do see *plh-n�- reconstructed in many a
textbook which is nothing more than a participle suffix on a root *pelh-.
How "derived" do you need it to be? There's absolutely no reason I can think
of to presume that *pepelh- is the true form unless perhaps you think of it
as of echoic origin. What are you trying to state here exactly anyway?

-------------------------------------------------
gLeNny gEe
...wEbDeVEr gOne bEsErK!

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