The long awaited athematic answer to the athematic question... Oy v

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 2094
Date: 2000-04-12

The answer is... YES!!!
Get it? An athematic answer? Hahahaha... Ah, nevermind. Tough crowd, tough
crowd. Well, folks, this is a long one...

First, I'd like to say that I goofed on the root "to fill" - I should be
writing *ple?-. Your insistance, Piotr, on H1=/h/ is confusing but then so
are these damn Pokorny roots that are the only reconstructions I can find at
the public library. The explanation of *ple?- as related to Semitic *m-l-?
is all the more satisfying if there is no **pel(h)- form present.

The connection you make between Old English and Pre-IE with the example of
"love" and "lufian" is interesting but irrelevant. In Common IE, the bare
verb root was obviously not a word, unlike English, but it certainly would
have been in Pre-IE before the *-s nominative was in place.

Early Anatolian and Tyrrhenian languages attest to the fact that the *-s
nominative was not as widespread as it later would come to be. There is also
the matter of IE compound word formations which attach a bare stem to
another before terminating with suffixes, as if the bare stem was the
earlier state of affairs. Inanimates also don't have this *-s marker and
some have no endings at all. If we can accept that an earlier IE had no
animate nominative *-s, then we must also accept that action nouns lied
bare, identical to the root (ie: IE *geno-s < Old IE *k:ene, noun and 3ps).
Another reason to accept this is that the athematic Tocharian 3rd person
appears to be
/-a"s./, from a demonstrative *se according to Pedersen, attached to a BARE
root! Comments?

Second, a reduplicative like *bhi-bher-ti or even the late IE past tense in
*e- is a derived form and therefore lacks thematic - so it is already
accounted for. So is *wemh- which is not necessarily a derivative but rather
assumed as such by IE speakers who analysed it as *wem-h- (also *leikW-
misanalyzed as *lei-kW-). Theories that claim that the thematic is an
ancient object marker don't even begin to explain this above pattern well at
all. Why should the "object marker" be lost in the past tense or in these
derived forms? Sounds far fishier than my idea. Let's not confuse the matter
with inane side theories.

Third, there is a misunderstanding on your part and so I will try to
clarify: The _athematic_ ACCENTUATION is the most ancient BUT the _thematic_
VOWEL is also most ancient. A verb lacking thematic vowel is NOT ancient
even though its accentuation is. In all, an athematic verb is either
derivative in some form or fashion or is foreign. The adoption of athematic
verbs would have occured before the regularisation of accent on thematic
stems. Hope that makes better sense now.

The Hittite suffix -nin- is purely Anatolian as far as I know and is nothing
but a double n-infix. At any rate, this and the other suffixes in your list
(-ah-, -es-), simply conform to the general rule where derived forms are
treated as athematic (modal suffixes, reduplication, misanalyzed
derivatives, past, yadayada...). Suffixes like *-ske- and *-ye- are thematic
because they were created late, somewhere in the fourth or fifth millenium
BCE from existing suffixes elsewhere... technically, they ARE athematic
though :)

We have already delved into the origin of *-dhe- from *dhe?-. The suffix
*-ye- could very well be a relative pronoun since it is associated with
denominative formations anyway, something we've also already discussed. The
form *-ske- is interesting because the form in Sanskrit appears as -ccha-
which would seem to imply IE *-skWe-, no? Even if not, a suffix like
**-skWe- would have every reason to be simplified to *-ske- and the
advantage of analysing it as such is that we can now explain the strange
cluster suffix as an *-s- aorist alongside *-kWe "and". The two suffixes
could be combined easily to form a repetitive meaning.

The mobility of accent in *nebhes- is the proper result of my theory, by the
way, since the stem is athematic and the idea that Semitic *napis^tu "soul"
was loaned into early IE with the meaning of "cloud" or "mist" is hardly
speculative on both semantic and phonetic grounds. To boot, the strange
nature of the root all the more cements the likelihood of this view (a
disyllabic indivisable root -> rather long for an ancient word; a root form
ending in *-s for no apparent reason; a stem that could be so well explained
in Semitic just like *septm, if only those crusty IEists would accept the
concept of foreign loans in early IndoEuropean, which surely must have
occured.)

I'm not concerned with whether "eye" and "heart" were neuters in Late IE
since IndoAnatolian didn't have a "neuter" gender, Piotr. We're talking
about whether the forms are animate or inanimate in this stage of IE. I
could swear I had a similar discussion with people on another IE list
concerning the _animacy_ of "heart". I had assumed that "heart", at least,
was "inanimate" because they showed up as neuters lacking accusative *-m in
Late IE as you point out. To my surprise, I was hearing the direct opposite.
I recall something like Hittite /karatan dai/ which seems to display an
_animate_ form with *-m. Is it possible that you are getting two stages of
IE confused? What is your explanation for the infix -t- in Greek opt- if it
isn't from IE? Certainly if *-t- did once exist, there would be phonetic
motivation to lose it in the nominative and then subsequently throughout the
paradigm but I don't see a motivation to add a -t- in Greek.

Here's my table again, just in case you "rejected it out of hand":

OIE *merec-/*merece "remember/(he) remembers"
MIE *merc-/*merc(e)
IE *mers-/*mers-t,*mers-ti

OIE *hWegWec/*hWegWet:em "eye (nom/acc)"
MIE *hWegW(e)c/*hWegWtem
IE *hWekWt-s/*hWekWtm

OIE *kerec/keret:em "heart (nom/acc)"
MIE *ker(e)c/*kert:em
IE *kert-s/*kerdm

Also, Piotr, the perfect/imperfect thing that you're confused about is
exactly what's found in Encyclopaedia Brittanica concerning the IE division
of verbs into "imperfect" (*leikW-), "perfect" (*steH-) and "stative" (*es-,
*woid-). Stative verbs could neither be perfect nor imperfect. However,
imperfects could be made perfects and vice versa. I often call the imperfect
"active" and the perfect "stative" still acknowledging the special nature of
verbs like *es- and *woid-. The active/stative (or imperfect/perfect)
mirrors the mi-class and hi-class system of Hittite and it's evident that
the imperfects and perfects of late IE languages such as Sanskrit and Greek
are derivative from a system that classified verbs into such an
active/stative system. This is nothing new so don't fly off the handle at me
about it. Ask your colleagues.

(The active/stative scenario is another reason why a quack theory like
explaining a thematic *-e- as an "object marker" REALLY doesn't work in the
grand scope of IE studies).

Of course, this eventually gets into how the asigmatic aorist fits into this
- it doesn't. Besides the fact that this aorist isn't part of the more
ancient system seen in Anatolian languages (as we both agree), we also see
in Sanskrit that imperfect and aorist forms sometimes have the same form,
leading to a strong suspicion that this mood wasn't fully worked out in
Common IE.

By the way, there are verbs like Sanskrit ya:- "to go" which would seem to
have accent on a lengthened thematic vowel from a supposed Common IE *ye:-,
based on its IE counterpart *ei-. This is untrue. It is the extension of
*ei- by means of an accented modal affix *-e?-. Thus *y-e?-ti > *ya:ti. Note
*y-e?- was athematic. :)

This is probably the source of your aorists like *petH-/*ptaH-,
*molH-/*mloH-, etc, although we would then have to re-adjust your
reconstructions to *petH-/*ptH-e?-, *molH-/*mlH-e?-. Then again, you did say
they were late _East IE_ forms and therefore subject to internal innovations
that may be beyond the scope of Common IE, so it begs the question of why
you are concerning me with this at all?

As with all other accented modal affixes, the accentuation is explained
through penultimate accent and loss of vowel. Here *-e?- would be derived
from Old IE *-e?e (Again, in earlier forms of IE, it is likely that verb
stems could stand on their own as a word, based on the previous arguements
concerning the dubious archaicy of 3ps *-t and nominative *-s).

- gLeN

PS: The Narten present couldn't have existed in IE unless we're
talking about laryngeals. I recall mention
of /stau'ti/ supposedly coming from *ste:u-? Why? As far as T.
Burrow in "The Sanskrit Language" conveys, the accentuation on
-u was the norm for athematic strong forms of stems ending in
-u before consonant initial suffixes like the 3rd person
singular -ti. Don't we find this same accentuation in duals
and in the word for "cow"? So... why isn't this just *steu-?

Second, the *o/*e ablaut is interesting and I've never heard of
it before but it makes sense to me in the context of this Pre-IE
theory of mine. It should be viewed as earlier *a/*@ ablaut
caused by early penultimate accent on stems with *-a-.
The schwa would later divide into accented *e and unaccented
*@ but in order to avoid obscure alternations in a paradigm,
*@ became *e whether accented or not in less common verbs.
Thus, we have the regular *es-/*s- ablaut but the not-so-regular
*a/*e ablaut in *kank-/*kenk- and *sag-/*seg-.

Later, a labialization of *a to *o was the result amongst labial
consonants like *p or *m (*pod-/*ped-) as is found in the
thematic vowel of the 1ppl, genitive plural, etc... and
unaccented *e became *o following an accent.

And I figure it must have been *kank- NOT **konk- otherwise
how does the *k- become palatalized in Sanskrit, folks?

Tada! A gLeNolOgiCaL stance on Ablaut.


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