Re: [tied] Timing of ablaut

On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 19:17:24 +0200 (CEST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<jer@...> wrote:

>> Wouldn't a form *sta:inV- also give circumflex?
>>
>With lengthened-grade PIE /a:/? No, that yields acute (Lith. íes^kau). I
>am not sure whether it is relevant here (have lost your point a bit),
>but long-diphthong roots form o-infix derivatives with acute in BSl.,
>i.e. a root *steH2y- should form **stóyH2-no-, not *stóy-no-; the latter
>can apparently only come from *stVyH-.

The point I failed to make clearly was that ste^na/stains would be a
thematized r/n-stem, and since the r/n-stem in question is *sta:yr. (the
usual prototype of Greek stéa:r), the thematized version should be
*sta:inos/*sta:ina:. I don't think <íes^kau> is quite parallel in
structure (but I'm not sure what the underlying structure of íes^kau is).
In terms of the place of the laryngeal, *staHinos would be more analogous,
I think, to the a:-stem dat/loc *-ah2(a)i, which has circumflex in B-S.

>> I don't accept unmotivated /a/.
>
>I accept anything I find.

Filtered through a theory, of course.

>I am in no position to tell God what kind of
>world to give us to analyze. I do try and reach for the simplest
>understanding possible, but when things prove impossible I accept the
>verdict of the material. Sometimes, however, a nice solution has only
>been impossible *to me* because I got something wrong. The matter at
>hand is particularly tenacious.

Yes, there are /a/'s which I cannot understand (hopefully, which I cannot
_yet_ understand). But in this case, assuming *h2 in the root (given the
obvious semantic ties to *stah2-, not hard to do) explains the /a/ in the
most simple way for me.

>> >
>> >If this is from 'stand',
>>
>> It isn't.
>
>Well, you did write this (Sept. 24): "The connection with *steh2-, as
>suggested in EIEC, seems appropriate for the semantics of the cognate
>group." But okay, fine, it does not have to be that way.

The connection I meant with with *steh2- is "Benvenistean", so to speak,
like, say, *wer- and *wert-.

> >[...]
>> The fact is that we have *sti(:)a:, from which the verb *stya:-ye- is
>> derived.
>
>I do not understand the legend "*sti:a:". If you have /H2/ preceding the
>/y/ in the underlying form as you plainly do, the zero-grade *stH2i-
>should have aspirated /th/.

Yes, unless metathesized.

>> >Then I see no valid positive evidence for a distinction between /H3e/
>> and /o/ in the way Brugmann's law works in Indo-Iranian.
>>
>> You would't.
>
>I would if you had adduced any, and that goes for the future also. I
>still do not exclude that there may be such a difference, only I have
>seen no valid evidence for it.

I'm satisfied with *h3ep- for the moment. It's only a single example, and
it _may_ perhaps be *h3epH- (but surely needn't be), so more evidence would
certainly be welcome.

>Now, on closer inspection I believe one must accept that the accentuation
>of the form "styá:yate" given by Pokorny and Monier-Williams from where I
>have quoted it, is not based on nothing, even if textual attestations are
>limited to unaccented stya:yata:m. The classification of the verb as
>belonging to "present-class I" is made by Pa:n.ini himself. Since the old
>accent was obviously living in Panini's time, there is little point in
>toying with the possibility that the stem /stya:ya-/ was accented on
>/-yá-/ and not on the root. If that is credible - and I don't see how it
>couldn't be - all analyses of the present stem as either a denominative, a
>factitive or a stative are out of the question

I hadn't considered the accent...

Not _completely_ out of the question, however. Macdonell says:

"The causative accents the penultimate syllable of the stem, as
krodh-áya-ti 'enrages'; the passive, the secondary intensive, and the
denominative, accent the suffix -yá-; e.g. pan-yá-te 'is admired',
rerih-yá-te 'licks repeatedly'; gopa:-yá-nti 'they protect'"

However, there is a footnote to this:

"A certain number of unmistakable denominatives, however, have the
causative accent; e.g. mantrá-ya-ti 'takes counsel'(mántra)."


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