Depends who you ask (Beekes or most other
authors). I find this phonetic explanation curious in view of the fact that in
those cases where stress-pattern contrasts are well preserved, *-o- is the
predominant vocalism of stressed syllables, while *-e- is usually either "weak"
or innovated at a late stage (the so-called secondary full grade). I think that
the vowel of the reduplication syllable is *-e- precisely because that syllable
was unaccented. Note that this *-e- remains constant while stress
alternates between the second and the third syllable, e.g. in the perfect (NOT
"preterite") conjugation:
Ce-CóRC-V : Ce-CRC-V'
If the stress had been originally on the
first syllable, why are there strong forms with *-o- and weak forms with the nil
grade of the root?
Most verb forms functioned as unstressed
sentence clitics (even in old Germanic verse verbs don't normally alliterate
because of their inherited metrical weakness), which accounts for the prevalence
of *-e-vocalism in non-denominal verbs, while *-o- is commonly found in deverbal
nouns and adjectives. Of course, morphological processes in late common IE freed
*-e/o- ablaut from its dependence on stress and each vowel acquired new
grammatical functions, but the older stages remain partly
visible.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 10:59 AM
Subject: [tied] e/o
As I understand
it, there is agreement that at an early stage of IE,
the vowel /e/ arose in
stressed syllables, and /o/ in unstressed ones
(and then some more etc).
This is a phonetic explanation. But then
there is the -o- of the pret. sing.
stem, part of the ablaut pattern.
This -o- seems to be the conditioned by
inflection. Confusion.
The older the IE language, the more reduplication
it has in verbal
inflection. So I wondered, suppose reduplication was once
mandatory,
then you would have forms like CéCoCC (assuming that the
(pre?)
reduplicated syllable was stressed). Yes?
Sorry for the sloppy
formulation.
Torsten