Re: [tied] Animate Dual in -h3 (was: IE Roots)

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 11:01:32 +0000, Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>>As I fully expected, the point I was making has not been addressed.
>
>That's because there is nothing to address. We are talking about
>Pre-IE. The Common IE dual is in *-o:- (*h3 is not attested).

What does that mean "*h3 is not attested"?

>There
>is nothing about a Pre-IE *h3 that explains the presence of the
>later *-u any better than a long vowel, or hell, even *u itself!

*h3 was a labialized laryngeal [HW], so there's eveything about it that
explains the presence of later *-u and *-u- in *gWih3- > *gWi:w-,
*ok^toh3-os > Lat. octa:vus, *pih3-om > Slavic pivo, etc.

>Reject if you will (and you no doubt will because it's not your idea
>and you like to reject ideas that aren't your own) but I personally
>explain the *u as the by-product of final *-o: -- That's it.

No, that can't be it, because:

1) the -u also appears in non-final position (e.g. dual G *-ous etc.).
2) the o-stem instrumental sg. also ends in *-o: (*-o(:)h1), and there's no
off-glide -u there.

>Very
>simple. Ultimately, yes, I strangely agree with you that the *-o:u
>ending in *okto:u and *dwo:u was once *-a-xe (with a laryngeal,
>although technically *h2). Here, *-xe is a collective (otherwise
>becoming inanimate collective *-x and animate, later feminine,
>*-ax) attached to a stem ending in *a.
>
>Hence the following scenario starting with Mid IE:
>
> *t:Wa-xe/*kWetWa-xe "two/eight"
> > *dWax/*aktWax (unstressed vowel loss)
> > *dwa:/*aktwa: (uvularized *x > NULL)
> > *dwo:/*okto: (vowel shift: *a > *o)
> > *dwo:u/*okto:u (final *-o: > *-o:u)

And why is the feminine ending not *-o:u then?

>>One more point: why was the PIE dual *ok^toh3 borrowed
>>into Kartvelian as *os^txw?
>
>The Kartvelian form is the word for "four", which is thought
>to be borrowed from IE *okto:u "eight", although we are then
>forced to assume that Kartvelians knew the IE word was a
>dual, while strangely treating it like a singular.

I think we're rather forced to assume that the Kartvelians had no idea the
IE word was a dual. They borrowed the Semitic word *?arba¿- "4" as "8",
and the PIE word *ok^toxW "8" as "4".

>The sibilantization
>of plain *k is a typical feature of satem languages and suggests
>that, if it is borrowed, it is a late post-IE loan.

Not necessarily. IE *k^t is always borrowed as *s^t in Kartvelian.

>While you'd
>leap to the conclusion that is certain evidence of a laryngeal
>in IE, there is the nagging concrete possibility that it was merely
>IE *t that was interpreted as *tx in Kartvelian, without there ever
>being a laryngeal present.

Why should *t have been interpreted as *txw? It isn't in *r.k^tós "bear" >
Kartv. *das^tw.



=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...