On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Glen Gordon wrote:
>
> Jens:
> >As verbal roots, their radical elements are *ped- 'go, fall'[...]
> >and *H3reg^- respectively. The root noun 'foot' is based on a
> >lengthened-grade root form *pe:d-, and the root present of 'govern'
> >has lengthened grade in Skt. ra:j- (3sg ra:s.t.i), so it is hard to see,
> >let alone prove, a fundamental difference in their vowels.
>
> Well, that takes the cake. I show the strong forms *pod- and *hWreg-
> which demonstrate all too clearly that they contain a different vowel
> and Jens rejects that which is right before his eyes. I don't get it.
So let's try again. The alternation *po:d-s/*ped- (weak cases) is
derivable from underlying *pe:d- as I have shown on many occasions. Now,
the root *H3reg^- does form a stem Skt. ra:j-, Lat. re:g-, but none of the
paradigms we have shows any alternation. Therefore we are not told by the
evidence whether the form we have is that of the nominative with its
lengthening, i.e. **H3reg^-z > PIE *H3re:g^-s (which ought to form acc.
*H3reg^-m, gen. *H3rg^-os, etc.), or some un-lengthened form which just
had a long vowel from the beginning; the latter possibility could be that
of a vocative *H3re:g^, and the lost nom. of this would be *H3ro:g^-s, and
the lost gen. would be *H3reg^-s or its replacement *H3reg^-os. The fact
that it forms a long-vowel athematic present may indicate that it *is* in
fact like the root of 'foot' in the respect here of relevance. Even so it
should be remembered that we do not even know whether "Narten ablaut" is a
property of individual roots or instead belongs to a given paradigm. At
least the two types of tr-stems, the acrostatic *do'h3-to:r, gen.
*do'h3-tr-s "(habitual) giver" and the hysterokinetic *d&3-te':r, gen.
*d&3-tr-o's "(occasional) giver" (semantics and IE paradigms from Tichy,
correcting Benveniste), which are derivable by my rules from *de:H3-te'r-
and *deH3-te'r- respectively, show that it is not *always* a property of
the root that determines which kind of ablaut type we get.
>
> >I do not know what you mean when you say "o-present".
>
> Presents containing *o in the nucleus of the root that have not been
> reduplicated.
I don't think there are any such verbal forms at all. And I don't think
there is even a secondarily dereduplicated "o-present" in an individual
language formed from a root that has *only* -o-. You are talking about a
verbal category which can in principle be formed from any root, in which
case they all take -o-. That does not distinguish any set of roots
lexically in contrast to others. Let us hear something more about the
verbal type you have in mind.
>
> >These are not properties ascribable to the root vowels,[...]
>
> Exactly. Why? Because underlying all IE forms are at least _two_
> pre-IE vowels.
I am sure there are, but that has no logical place in this particular
argument. We can't prove their existence just by assuming they are there.
Jens