Re: [tied] *h3 (More deja-vu)

On Mon, 30 Sep 2002, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> On Mon, 30 Sep 2002 19:24:43 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
> <jer@...> wrote:
>
> >[MQV:]
>
> Why MQV?  My first last name start with a velar stop, not a uvular one
> :-)

Hey, sorry about that, MCV, let's see if I can any of the other stuff
right. It's not that easy - thus, I also misread your notation *&1s- to
mean something *different* from /H1s-/ although of course it means the
very same thing (I write schwa in ASCII this way myself, since the
"computer sign" makes the rest of the word disappear in the cybalist).
This makes some of my silly statements null and void. Sorry again.

> >[MCV:]
> >> Put differently: Hittite zero-grade forms like as-, ad- (*&1s-, *&1d-)
> >> force me
> >> to accept that PIE had no words starting with a vowel, but they do not
> >> force me
> >> to accept something as unnatural as that the initial phoneme in all
> such
> >> cases
> >> was /h-/.
> >
> >I do not see how Hitt. as-, ad- can force one to any such inference.
>
> The inference that these roots began with *h1-, I presume.

No, the inference that there were no words in the language beginning with
a plain vowel. The fact that *these* words had /H1C-/ does not exclude
others from having /VC-/.

>
> >[MCV:]
> >> I accept that PIE had a /h/ (since it had /bh/, /dh/ etc.), and I
> accept
> >> that in
> >> cases like *h1t > *th, *h1 must have been /h/. On the other hand, in a
> >> form
> >> like *h1wih1k^m.tih1, I'm willing to bet that the first two *h1's were
> >> surely
> >> [?], not [h], and I suspect the last one was [ç] (that's three, and
> I'll
> >> stop
> >> here).

[JER:]

> >Some of the cases of -Ht- > -th- actually have -H2- which is then found
> to
> >aspirate to both sides. So the statement that such a thing *must* be /h/
> >is false for (at least) one of them.

[MCV:]

> I was talking about *h1t, not *h2t.  OK, let's make that: "and I accept
> that in cases like *h1t > *th, *h1 must have been /h/, given what is
> otherwise
> known about *h1 (e.g. that it wasn't something like /x/ or /X/)."

If /H2/ was any of the last-mentioned, i.e. [x] or [X] (velar fricatives
of different degrees of backness), and underlying *-H1t- and *-H2t- *both*
produce PIE *-th-, then this cannot be reason enough to determine /H1/ as
not a velar fricative. I do it on the basis of its disappearance, its
syllabic reflex /e/ in Greek, its aspiration, and its distinct lack of
breaking (after high vowels in Greek, Armenian and Tocharian).

[JER:]

> >As long as the case story of 'twenty' is not parallelled by
> >anything really resembling it, it remains a case story and, being a
> >numeral, may quite well be a spontaneous event with no claim on the
> status
> >of regularity. All I see is lack of the initial *d-, which is not so
> >strange since the second part has /dk^-/ underlyingly. We are yet to
> find
> >a rule replacing the second -d- with simple length, but that is a
> separate
> >problem encountered with all decades.
>

[MCV:]

> The point is that /d/ > /?/ is a more likely development than /d/ > /h/
> (especially if there used to be something glottalic about *d).
>

[JER:]

> >I am not quite sure whether the
> >first part is in the stem-form of *dwo-, which in compounds always
> >surfaces as *dwi-, or is instead inflected in concord with the final
> >ntr.du. with an ending *-iH1 - or both for that matter. Since
> >*(d)wi-(d)k^mt- and *(d)wi-iH1-(d)k^mt- equally yield einzelsprachlich
> >*wi:k^m.t-, I see no way of really knowing. Still, if Greek /ewi:k-/
> >points to *H1wi-, as I am quite willing to believe, then the first part
> >was most probably inflected; for that would give *dwi-iH1-dk^mt-iH1, in
> >which the initial could then be not only dissimilated (against the
> second
> >-d- while it was still there), but also assimilated, a series of events
> >that would account fully for the resulting PIE *H1wi-iH1-(d)k^m.t-iH1. I
> >find it very strange that you take the two last laryngeals to be
> >originally different: to me they are the same morpheme in concord: "two
> >tens".
>

[MCV:]

> I analyze it as *dwi- (the compound form of "2") > *h1wi-, followed by
> *dk^m.tih1 > *h1k^m.tih1, the dual of "decad", where the first two *h1's
> have
> (irregularly) developed from *d, and were most likely phonetically [?],
> not [h].
> The interpretation as two morphemes in concord I think fails becuase the
> n.du.
> of "2" is *dwoih1.

You could say by the same logic that the stem of 'two' being *dwo-, its
compositional form cannot be *dwi-, but it is. Thus, if a stem *dwo- can
appear as *dwi- in the first part of a compound, couldn't an inflected
form *dwo-yH1 do the same in a tight juxtaposition like the ones we have
in the inflected decadic numerals? We have no way of knowing except from
looking at the forms we find. - There still is the possibility that the
PIE (inflected) form was *wiH1-(d)k^mtiH1, and that Greek /ewi:-/ reflects
a funny metathesis of the elements to *H1wi:-. Greek is notorious for
doing funny things with laryngeals and semivowels, and numerals offer a
setting that just may make it even funnier. For the candidates of what
preceded *w- in 'twenty' we are not down to a choice between [?] and [h],
it may also have been zero.

Jens