Re: [tied] Re: Syncope

On Tue, 30 Mar 2004 enlil@... wrote:

> Jens:
> > Reduction and zero are stages in the same process.
>
> Yes and no. After syncope, zero was naturally incorporated
> into a preexisting quantitative ablaut that already involved
> a simple reduction of vocalic length. (This is why _stress_
> makes the most sense for the accent of MIE because a
> large-scale vowel reduction in an unaccented syllable is
> unlikely in a tonal language.) Before this, short vowels
> only alternated with their "reduced" but not zeroed
> allophones. This evolution of ablaut kept on going and
> going like the Energizer bunny on amphetamines.
>
> In fact, Old English cu/cy "cow(s)" and Modern English
> mouse/mice clearly demonstrate how far the rules of ablaut
> had changed and even adapted to _new_ words, btw.

I don't see the relevance, but I suppose cy is regular from *ku:w-iz. And
mice from *mu:s-iz. There may be others who do not see the fine point.
Enlighten us, will you?

> So your
> disagreement with my idea of more recent "postAblaut" words
> like *wertmn appearing deceptively to follow ablaut is in
> fact stubbornly contrary to what we find. It does happen.

You need it to be the *only* thing that happens, and that is absurd. If
*wert-mn is an analogical formation, which may well be, the type it
copycats must have been that. And that in itself proves your analysis
wrong.

> We need to be aware. We can't assume that every stem and
> root in IE extends to the far reaches of Nostratic just
> by first glance.
>
>
> > Its stages have not been the issue here. It matters in my
> > old account of nominative segments like *´-mo:n from
> > unaccented *´-men-s which is first reduced to (something
> > like)*´-mon-s and only then lengthened to (something like)
> > *´-mo:ns, when IE (something like) *´-mo:n.
>
> "Something like" doesn't sound reassuring.

I get my head blown off if I take the liberty to be more specific than our
actual knowledge permits. With "something like *´-mon-s" I mean something
so *very* like *´-mon-s that we cannot tell the difference. By the
reservation I mean to grasp the fact that we only see these things through
a filter. So I am saying, in essence, that "the prestage of *-men- was
changed into what looks like a prestage of *-mon-". You do exactly the
same on a good day, I am only being more honest about it. It is VERY
unfair that you stoop to misusing this in an effort to make a fool of me.

>
> First, Szemerenyi Lengthening occurs in early Late IE during
> Syncope. It is caused by the unexpected desyllabification
> of nominative *-s' to *-s. The expected pattern is that,
> being a monosyllabic suffix, it should resist Syncope
> (ie: Suffix Resistance).

You get a much more natural explanation of that if you leave out the
unmotivated vowel of the ending. Of course a vowelless ending does not
undergo syncopation of anything. Do you have any underlyingly asyllabic
endings in your pre-PIE morphology at all?

> The lost length is compensated
> for by migrating to the preceding vowel. Unexpected clipping
> occurs for nominative *-s, 3ps *-t, inanimate *-d and *-x
> but Szemerenyi Lengthening only occurs with spirant suffixes.

I see nothing unexpected here for I do not fill the preforms full of
unobserved vowels.

> Szemerenyi precedes Vowel Shift (ie: *a > *o) and certainly
> precedes the irregular loss of *-s after *n-final stems.

I do not think the loss of the nominative marker after long vowel +
certain sonants (n,r,y) is irregular. It only is if you do not distinguish
different sources of IE /s/ (or have forgotten that you did).

> This is because Szemerenyi, which doesn't APPEAR to occur
> in thematic stems actually does apply in eLIE where
> phonotactics would disallow the clustering. This explains
> the large number of thematic stems despite Syncope. A stem
> like postSyncope eLIE *mark&- "horse" (> *marko-) or any
> stem with similar CVCCV structure shows how this works:
>
>           MIE         *marka-sa (nominative)
>           eLIE        *mark's'
>           Szemerenyi  *mark&s' (to avoid **-rks)
>           Syncope     *mark&s
>           IE          *markos

The thematic class is not restricted to words of a particular phonotactic
built, so there is no basis for this.

>
> So now that we've replaced a "something-like" theory
> with a more organized list of rules in a clear chronological
> order, we can get to work on *-mo:ns.

>
> Derivational Thematization is also an important grammatical
> rule in Late IE. Inanimate suffixes are infused with the schwa
> to produce animatized variants. This explains easily how the
> feminine in *-ex (< *-&x) derives from the inanimate collective
> in *-x and suggests that the so-called feminine ending was
> first used to denote a group of living things before being
> applied strictly to femininity... and hence more confirmation
> that the masculine-feminine-neuter system derives from an
> earlier animate-inanimate system if the classic points about
> Anatolian and agricola isn't evidence enough for you.
>
> So *-mon- < *-m&n- is an animate variant of *-mn.

It does not make sense to say that of a particular allomorph. It is true
of course of the type which has nom. *´-mo:n or *-m:én depending on
accent.

> This new
> suffix had developped in the middle of the Late IE period.

It is not a new suffix, and your constant selfassured datings appear to me
to be without any foundation.

> The lengthening was later applied to the suffix by analogy,
> eventually producing *-mo:n in the nominative.

So now we got the already-clear obscured.

> Yes, again,
> the fact that a word operates under a certain process
> doesn't mean that the word dates to then and that it isn't
> caused by analogy, lest I need to bring up OEng /cy/ again.
>
> In all, the following development is:
>
>   MIE              *-m-an (inanimate suffix)
>   eLIE             *-m'n
>   Syncope          *-mn
>   Thematization    *-mn (inanimate) => *-m&n-s (animate)
>   Schwa Diffusion  *-mn / *-m&:ns
>   Vowel Shift      *-mn / *-mons => *-mo:ns (analogy)
>   Nominative Loss  *-mn / *-mo:n
>
> Tada! Note also that *-mn (and subsquently the derivative
> *-mon-) are not affected by Rhotacization of *-n in MIE
> because of assimilation with preceding *m.

All of this was perfectly well acounted for already. What is all the new
nonsense doing here? Are we going over it again, this time backwards to
dismantle some progess? I don't follow.

Jens