Jens:
> Let me help: The root was *pleH1-; ablaut reduction caused zero
> grade *plH1-, and analogy created a new full-grade *pelH1-.
So then, you're saying that *pleh-, *plh- and *pelh- all
co-existed within IE itself just before the breakup of IE,
right? I can certainly see why disallowing *polh-no- would
be to your advantage but its perpendicularity to your
steadfast beliefs will not make it go away on its own.
> But stress *is* the obvious feature to have caused unaccented
> short vowels to vanish.
Thank you for agreeing. We both accept the alternative
possibilities (eg: tonal accent) but we see the optimal
solution (ie: stress). That's all I wanted. You are slowly
being assilimated.
> It is also invalid if we *do* understand your statement fully,
> I'm afraid. Even gradual processes may have been of a number
> exceeding one to create these losses.
I'm afraid, you don't understand me fully and I'm actually in
agreement with what you say here. I'm merely stating
that there is a single event of syncope unless evidence can
show otherwise but I say "event" without any reference to its
duration or to its inner complexities as you mention above.
Even if some vowels were lost first before others over a span
of twenty years, we still have a single event of syncope the
way I'm using the word. We need only a single unaccented
syncopated vowel *a [&]. Whether these instances of *a were
lost all at once or in parts over many decades is just
nitpicking the subject to death. We can debate these specifics
some other day once we are in agreement about Syncope itself.
>> Yet you won't agree that reconstructing initial consonant
>> clusters in a post-Syncope stage is unnecessarily complex?
>> I think you do agree, but you'd rather not admit it.
>
> I take this to read "in a pre-Syncope stage".
Yes, sorry about that. Got drowsy midway through the
typing.
> No, a priori it is only a possibility, and its degree of
> complexity is not deterring,
Yes, it *is* deterring for the simple fact that we can't
distinguish a truely old pre-Syncope initial cluster, if
there were any, from one genuinely caused by Syncope.
Therefore, to be unbiased and scientific, we dare not make
a distinction that we aren't qualified to make until we
have some predictable method of doing this based on logic
and facts. Since we damn well know that some initial
clusters were created out of syncope like *dyeu- for
example, being transparently based on *dei-, we must
unbiasedly presume that all initial consonant clusters
were created in the same manner until evidence presents
itself contradicting that hypothesis. So far I've seen
no such proof and everything that shows otherwise. It is
entirely bias to assume without reason that *stex _wasn't_
produced by Syncope when other roots with initial
clustering clearly were.
So, if you wish to claim what you claim, you must support
it with something tangible because you can't insist on a
distinction such as this that is otherwise unfounded and
arbitrary. How do you know that *stex- didn't have a lost
vowel that broke up the cluster when others did? If you
don't know, how can you assume it? You can't.
(Hold that thought. There's more on that below in relation
to O-fix/a-Epenthesis.)
> so there is no reason not to keep it open.
The distinction that you make is unfounded and this
added complexity is unmotivated. Complexity that
is unmotivated is dismissable until proven to be
required. You haven't proved it. Therefore, while a
possibility I do admit, your view is dismissable.
> Are you positing pre-ablaut *dheweghe-meneH1ené- for IE
> *dhugh-m.H1nó-, Sanskrit duha:ná-?
That's a bit ridiculous. This question assumes that
*dHugHmhno- is a pre-Syncope stem for one thing. In
opposition, this word is not sufficiently ancient in my
mind because it contains a complex polysynthetic suffix
*-mhno-, suggesting that this word is restricted to the
final and post-Syncope stage of IE. The ending's
etymology (down below) may also date it to relatively
recent times. Also, we shouldn't expect the mediopassive
mood itself to have been necessarily very ancient. From
what I've concluded so far, the mediopassive, while
starting to form in MIE (although only as a phrasal
pattern), still must not have been as extensive as it
came to be.
So there is another reason for me to be suspicious of the
age of your given stem. Of course though, you'll without
a doubt reject my analysis if I simply leave you with my
MIE-based arguement. That's fair actually. So...
If one visualizes or draws out the verbal system of
Reconstructed IE on paper in grid form, we see a larger,
outer layer of active-middle contrast that must surely be
most recent in formation and it envelops the more internal
contrast of durative-aorist-perfect which then must be more
ancient (quite ancient actually). Gaps and inconsistencies
in the more outlying contrast, specifically gaps in the
mediopassive mood, also support my conclusion that the
mediopassive and hence *-mhno- cannot be reconstructed
very far back at all.
It is perhaps most fair to restrict oneself to roots,
rather than derivative stems when discussing and
demonstrating the extent of Syncope. The zeroed root
*dHugH- itself can be derived from MIE *deuga which is in
fact the 3ps of the verb. The final vowel of this verb (which
automatically lacked vocalic contrast in final position
as opposed to initio-medial vowels where both *e and *a
are required to make sense of IE) was retained due to Suffix
Resistance, an avoidance of desyllabicization or annihiliation
of one-syllable suffixes like 3ps *-a (> thematic *-e/o-) or
participle endings *-ta (> *-to-) & *-na (> *-no-) for
example. Hence the survival of a contrast between athematic
and thematic verbs from the MIE stage.
Looking at it another way, a grammatical analysis of MIE
would bring us to the conclusion that the 3ps of a verb,
whether it be ending in a vowel (*kWera "she creates",
*palewa "it rains") or not (*wes "he remains", *ei "she
goes") lacked any suffix for person. However the thematic
vowel obviously came to be identified as a durative affix by
the time of Syncope. So Suffix Resistance preserved what
would have been an otherwise lost vowel. Surviving instances
of MIE *a regularly become eLIE *& and later IE *e or *o
depending on the voicing of the following consonant. Since
the resulting thematic eLIE *-&- came to be seen as a durative
marker, it was dropped in non-durative formations or outside
the conjugational paradigm when forming nouns, adjectives,
etc. So the stem *dHugHmhno- by that token cannot be
reconstructed to MIE as a whole. If it were to exist in
MIE based on the etymology of it, it would have to have been
something crazy like **dauga-na-?an-ása (*-(a)na [locative]
> *-om [gen pl], *?an (?) [agent] > *-hon- and *-(a)sa
[genitive] > *-os [gen sg]) but we cannot connect it directly
with *dHugHmhno- then by any sane rules and it would have
become **dHughnhons- instead. I have no doubt that this
word is too recent to be of relevance.
> What evidence is there for the root-final vowel in this?
> What evidence is there for a root-final vowel anywhere?
The presence or absence of thematic vowel in conjugation
is the remnant of pre-Syncope *-a in the verb root. Thus
*es-t < MIE *es while *bHer-e-t < MIE *bera. So the
thematic vowel is the evidence.
With a root like *leikW- "leave", the MIE equivalent
necessitates a terminating vowel based on syllabics:
*leikWa. Since there was a difference between MIE durative
endings *-em/*-es/*-a and aorist *-am/*-as/(-a), Syncope
caused a standardized loss of *a in the aorist (hence
root-aorists). Just after Syncope the durative was
*-&m/*-&s/*-&t in the singular versus aorist *-m/*-s/NIL,
producing 3ps *leikW > *likW-t. (Btw, zero-grading of some
aorist roots was a later, analogical process.)
> And what evidence is there for a vowel between /n/ and
> /H1/ here?
The suffix -mhno- is a composite suffix. Since there are
many such composite suffixes recognized in IE, my
statement is well-[gr/f]ounded.
Here, we should recognize the ending as a string of *-m-,
*-hn- and an adjectivizing accented thematic. The first,
*-(o)m- is the genitive plural normally used to derive
collective nouns (*yug-om = "that/those which is/are
yoked"). It is optionally reinforced by *-hon-. Both
*-om and *-hon- were zero-graded according to normal
Late IE quantitative ablaut rules because of the
accent-stealing thematic vowel. The combined effect is
a participle ending *-mhno- but while the suffix itself
may conceivably derive from a hypothetical MIE form (even
though I really don't think it is), there's no guarantee
when the suffix was applied to the verb here or whether
it follows ancient or more recent rules. Chances are,
the rules the word demonstrates are relatively recent.
So one could never derive any sensible MIE form out of
*dHugH-mhno- as a whole based on both its syllabics and
internally reconstructed morphology but we can predict
the MIE equivalent of *dHeugH- itself without problems.
> What evidence is there for a vowel following the /n/
> of the suffix /-men-/ anywhere?
I don't know. What evidence is there? Now you're asking
me to prove something that I didn't state existed.
>> I in no way stated that IE itself cannot tolerate such
>> mediofinal clusters. I merely stated that the stage previous
>> (the Mid IE stage) only tolerated a CV(C) syllable structure.
> I understood that and objected to it, referring to pre-ablaut
> pre-PIE.
Since you misunderstand lots of things in your comments
above about my theory, you can hardly object to something
you don't understand yet, can you? Part of it is my fault
because I really need to put up a website on my current
ideas so that I can refer them to it. There's a lot to it.
> If the roots are really *steH2- and *ped- they would both
> be monosyllabic. That could be a principle which you would
> miss if you insist on a choice based only on a dream of
> simplicity. When it is observed that the o-infix formations
> move the prefix into the position where the monosyllabic
> theory places the root vowel it is confirmed that that
> vowel was indeed the first vowel in the root, and that
> some roots consequently had initial clusters already in
> pre-ablaut times.
An irrelevant arguement. The stem *stex- could never be at
risk of a-Epenthesis and the o-grade *ste-stox- is merely
ablaut, a more ancient and seperate process that has
nothing to do with this phonotactic restructuring or
"affixing". We must seperate instances of *o-grade which
were used for the perfect-stative in conjugation and
those that clearly have nothing to do with that. For
example, there is little that's intrinsically stative or
perfect about *ohWuyom, especially considering that it's
not a normal looking *o-grade verb if it were so. It's also
impossible to ignore the probable connection with the
noun *hWawi-. This surely cannot be confused with the
perfect *o-grade. Similarly, *osdo-, while based on *sed-
is clearly not based on what would be its normal o-grade,
*sod-. So you are lumping o-grades together that don't fit.
Mixing *o-grades caused by syllabics versus those caused by
simple vowel alternations in conjugational paradigms is
haphazard. The O-fix, in fact, if anything is a better
example of a theory that is overly simplistic which
demands further complexity to account for these facts.
In eLIE, just after Syncope, *stex- is to be trivially
reconstructed as *steh-, so there is clearly then no
motivation to apply a-Epenthesis to restructure the
unproblematic syllabics. The a-Epenthesis (or the
unmodified O-fix) does not bar us from formulating an
MIE stem for *stex- that conforms to an ordered CV(C)
pattern. We in fact have two logical options: *asteha
or *sateha, both conforming to CV(C). Take your pick.
Another thing. Since your theory as is apparently lacks
a credible motivation for the infixing in the first place
despite the sober rationality of the analysis, we must
remedy the glaring flaw.
We then see that syllabic theory ellucidates on the
cause of this process because it can be predicted by the
syllabics of the word at that point in time when and
where to apply the "O-fix". There is a resistance against
clusters of more than two consonants, putting aside the
pseudofix *s- of course. The a-Epenthesis process (merely
a modified O-fix) shows that an eLIE syllable then could
only be shaped as (C)CV(C)(C), not quite as Japanese-like
as MIE but not as complex as we see in later words like
*bHe:rst (CVCCC).
Since the necessarily modified O-fix rule shows a
syllabically simpler IE in the past, your rule when
improved in fact seems to betray your arguement.
> Let me be clearer still: You are confusing the theoretical
> maximum with the applicable maximum.
I'm aware of the two. On the other hand, you're confusing
theory with reality. With theory, we attempt to approximate
reality but we can do no more than approximate it as best
we can. It would be like making a polyhedron with as many
sides as is possible in order to approximate a sphere.
Your complaint is by analogy like complaining that a cube
isn't a sphere. Well, of course a cube isn't a sphere, but
a theory has to start at the beginning before it can
properly evolve and adapt to new facts. There is simply
no other place to start but at the bottom and the only
reason why it's lonely at the top is because no one's
got there yet :)
> You should not assume greater simplicity than the facts
> allow,
While I appreciate and even agree with your methodological
stance in principle, you're now speaking in general terms,
void of specifics as to what exactly you object to in my
theory. If the previous text was proof against something,
I failed to see the strength in it. If anything, you seem
to be wanting to overcomplicate things for no reason.
> but you do, even before you take a proper look at the
> facts. And some of the time you have bad luck.
And do you have a horseshoe in your pants or are you just
happy to see me? I think it's fair to say that we *all*
have "bad luck". It's the natural part of learning and
discovery. Even artificially intelligent programs make
errors and their mistakes are the only things that
help them learn. It's only logical, really. I will have
no shame in being burned by the fire that elders told
me not to touch if it causes me to learn from it.
> [Reconstructed Indo-European] incidentally can also have
> more than two consonants in medial position, even before
> the operation of the ablaut, so that point of your account
> is also incorrect.
To say that because I think that rules in IE itself don't
apply to an earlier stage makes my theory wrong is
completely absurd. Yes I can see that *wertmn has three
consonants in a row. So what? I can also see that it is a
derived stem that may or may not be reconstructable to MIE.
Apparently you ignore this purposely. Again, you're using
derived stems to prove me wrong in an illogical fashion.
The root *wert- by itself is indeed pressable into my
CV(C) grid. A root like that would suggest MIE *werta.
Being that we are, at least for the purposes of proving
or disproving each others views, both ignorant of the
exact age of derived stems like *dHugHmhno- or *wertmn,
they cannot be allowed in this courtroom. Agreed?
We should stick to roots since they are the heart and
basis of later IE.
> My biased imagination actually lost. I used to dream some
> of the dreams you still believe, [...]
Well, I'm glad that you found God but Confuscious say
"A man not aware of his dreams is asleep." I think it
was Confuscious. No wait, maybe it was in a fortune
cookie I ate from Jim's Chinese Take-Out. Well, whatever.
You gotta take wisdom where you can find it nowdays :\
= gLeN