Re: [tied] Nominative: A hybrid view

From: fortuna11111
Message: 22218
Date: 2003-05-24

Miguel,

your comments are highly appreciated, but I will need some time to
digest all that you have said (including devouring the literature on
the subject). I am still on the level of asking "how do historical
linguists think". :-) When I get into the thought model, I may even
start producing thoughts and not questions. I hope you have
patience :-)

Eva


--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 May 2003 08:56:57 +0000, fortuna11111
> <fortuna11111@...> wrote:
>
> > The vowel in
> >> >Abl. Sg. m/n is long, but it does include a thematic vowel
> >plus /a/,
> >> >or it could be an /a:/. Sanskrit alone, I guess, does not
allow
> >any
> >> >conclusions on the length of the vowel.
> >>
> >> Actually, it does. Skt. -a:t can in principle reflect
> >> *-{e:|a:|o:}{t|d}, so the length is a given.
> >
> >Yes, that's clear, but in a word like as'va:t (sorry, I have no
idea
> >how to type all those symbols, so I type them after the word and I
> >hope it's readable so) you have /as'v-a-/ whereby the /a/ is the
> >thematic vowel, so to get a long vowel, the ending could contain
> >an /a/ or an /a:/. So unless you compare with other languages, it
> >is hard to say if the vowel in the ending is short or long, since
> >*e, a, o also become /a/ in Sanskrit.
>
> That's a different question. The ending of the o-stem (thematic)
> ablative can be shown to have been long (*-o:t), and in fact can be
> shown to have been contracted from *-o-Vt (because Lithuanian has a
> circumflex accent, not an acute: Gen. (< Abl.) rãto < *rotHõ:(t) vs.
> Ins. ratù < *rotHó:). What you are asking is whether the athematic
> ending *-Vt could itself have had an original long vowel.
>
> For that we have to look for athematic ablatives, which are rare.
> Athematic nouns do not have a separate ablative, so we can only
> compare the pronominal forms. The normal Sanskrit pronominal
ablative
> has the thematic ending -sma:t (*-sm-o:t) with *-sm(o)- inserted
> between the root and the ending, but the personal pronouns still
have
> -at (mát "from me", tvát "from you"; analogical asmád "from us",
> yus.mát "from you (pl.)"). The pronouns *is and *yos also retain
> adverbial forms á:t and yá:t (besides asmá:t and yásma:t with *-sm-
).
> This all indicates that the ending was *-ot with a short vowel
("from
> me" *m-od, "from you" *tu-od, "from him" *é-od (contracted to a:t in
> Skt., but in Slavic ego/ewo, in Latin eo:), "from whom" *yó-od).
>
> Now personally I believe that this short *o was originally a long
> vowel, but that's a different story.
>
> >> Some time ago, I suggested here that the Slavic adjectival and
> >> pronominal genitive ending -ego/-ogo (northern Russian /-Ivó/ ~
> >> /-&vó/) can also be derived from the ablative endings *-eo(t),
> >> *-oo(t), with glides /h/ (> /g/) or /w/ (> /v/) to break the
> >hiatus.
> >
> >That sounds interesting, but I would, of course, wonder how one
> >would explain genitive taking on the ablative ending. Is this
often
> >the case in other languages?
>
> It is always the case in Balto-Slavic, at least where a separate
> ablative form exists, which is in the pronouns and the o-stems.
>
> Lithuanian has o-stem genitive -õ, pronominal genitive also -õ (e.g.
> *is "he" = jìs -> G. jõ; *so/*tos "this" = tàs -> tõ).
>
> Slavic has o-stem genitive -a, pronominal genitive -ego (*is "he" =
> *jI, G. jego) or -ogo (*tos "this" = tU, G. togo, *kWos "who?" =
> *kU(to), G. kogo).
>
> The o-stem genitive obviously derives from the Ablative in *-õt.
The
> pronominal genitives, if we assume PIE *e-ot and *to-ot, can also be
> derived straightforwardly: Proto-Balto-Slavic probably had *eo(t)
and
> *to:(t). In Lithuanian *eo became *eo:/*jo: by analogy from *to:
(and
> the o-stems' -o:). In Slavic *to: became *too by analogy from *eo,
> leading to togo and (j)ego.
>
> As far as I know, in the whole of Balto-Slavic the original
> o-stem/pronominal PIE genitive (*-osyo; *esyo, *tosyo) only survived
> in the single Slavic form *kWesyo > OCS c^eso "of what?". (Modern
> Slavic lgs. have generally normalized this to c^ogo or c^ego, but
> Slovenian still has c^ésa).
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...