Re: The sectors of ablaut.

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>
> Oh Jens, it's so hard to get you to accept the facts.
>
> It is painfully obvious (so painful that I could at any moment have
> dangerous heart murmurs) that the rule that exists in IE,

that "the accent

> moves a syllable towards the end of the word if the flexive has an

allomorph

> that forms a syllable", is not intuitive. It's a complex and

_learned_ rule.

>
> If it is so complex, how did it come to be so? Again, more

obviousness:

> The "complex" rule must have been once _less_ complex. Why did it
> become more complex? Certainly not because of any conscious

processes

> since accent has no inheirant semantic weight on its own.
>
> So we conclude that the accent patterns were once less complex and
> automatic unconscious processes worked to complicate the

accentuation.

>
> (Say yes if you agree at this point)

I do not agree. Normally phonological rules gets more and more
general, i.e. simpler, over time. You won't get me to insist on the
opposite as a basic principle.

>
> Now, you assume, and I stress ASSUME, that the acrostatic (initial

accent)

> must be the most ancient because it appears to represent this most
> uncomplicated system that we are looking for. Strangely, we both

agree

> that some farout stage of IE had an initial accent. However, there

is no

> simple way in which to derive the hystero- or proterodynamic accent
> patterns from an initial accent system without an intermediary

system.

I am not saying that the acrostatic type as we have it is the oldest
type in the bag. I am saying that, at some period before the origin
of the varied paradigm typology of PIE, there must have been initial
accent - or at least accent on the initial part of what remains of
the words down to the time periods we can operate upon.

> While we would both derive the IE accent system from a single

initial accent

> pattern of ancient, the acrostatic pattern seen in IE CANNOT be

ancient

> or representative of this earlier stage because it is TOO regular

to have

> completely resisted change for aeons! To believe this introduces

unnecessary

> hypothesis.

I did not say it was, but it could well have been, and its being
regular would probably have supported rather than prevented its
survival.

> But that intermediary system that we need is in fact, a regular

penultimate

> accent pattern because this is the only accent pattern that can

describe the

> hystero- and proterodynamic types effectively.

I see no reason to give priority to precisely that possibility. It
would be even simpler to have the principle just emerge as we find
it. I just do not think we can bridge the gap here. We can see from
overall phonotactics that there once was an initial accent, and we
do not find that any more, so it has changed. But the types we find
do not emerge by application of any consistent rule. We shall
probably have to assume that important decisive factors have been
lost. The accent may be the only trace remaining of whatever caused
the accent to be placed where we have it. Then the game is up.

> This is a self-evident conclusion, I'm afraid, so, yes, we DO know

that the

> cause of the accent mobility is an earlier penultimate accent.

It would be nice if we did. But that is not so.

Jens