Re: [tied] Demonstratives

On Sun, 04 Apr 2004 20:54:53 +0400, Âàäèì Ïîíàðÿäîâ
<ponaryad@...> wrote:

>> Hitt. we:s and Gothic we:s are from *wey-es.
>
>Before accepting, it needs to be determinated whether intervocaloic *-y- was lost in Hitt. and Goth. I don't know about Gothic, but Hittite doesn't seem to have such a soundlaw.

Yes it has. Melchert, p. 130: "Intervocalic */y/ is
regularly lost in Hittite".

>> Ladefoged & Maddieson, "The sounds of the world's
>> languages", p. 356:
>
>> Labialization is the most widely found secondary consonantal
>> articulation, both with respect to the number of different
>> types of segments with which it co-occurs, and the number of
>> lanmguages in which it is found. It is especially common
>> with velar obstruents and, relative to their frequency, with
>> uvulars. Many languages, including such varied ones as
>> Amharic, Wantoat and Guaraní, permit labialization only of
>> such back consonants [] Other languages, including certain
>> Australian and Caucasian languages, permit labialization of
>> a much wider range of consonants, including those whose
>> primary place of articulation is labial. Examples from
>> Arrernte are given in table 10.10
>
>> Table 10.10 shows the labialized phonemes of Arrernte:
>> labial dental alv. postalv. retrofl. velar
>> stop pW t_W tW t^W t.W kW
>> nasal mW nW n^W n.W NW
>> prestop. pmW tn_W tnW tn.W kNW
>> prenas. mpW nt_W ntW nt^W nt.W NkW
>> lat. l_W lW l^W l.W
>> rhotic rW jW r.W
>
>
>Your example is from an Australian language. Also languages of the Caucasus are mentianed. Which of them do possesse this?

I see that Starostin reconstructs them for Proto-NW
Caucasian (Abxaz-Adyghe). Like PIE, NW Caucasian has also
lost the vowels *i and *u, and the vocalic features of
labialization and palatalization have been transferred en
masse to the consonants. Something similar no doubt
happened in PIE.

According to L&M, labialized labials also occur in living
languages of the Caucasus (and elsewhere), but I wouldn't
know off-hand which ones.

In any case, there's nothing impossible about labialized
labials. They're just more likely to be lost quickly than
labialized dentals, which are more likely to be lost than
labialized velars. PIE has only retained the labialized
velars *kW, *gW and *ghW as full-fledged phonemes. There
are traces of *sW and *tW. The labialized labials can only
be deduced from irregular sound correspondences within IE
(*m ~ *w [1pl. *-men ~ *-wen], *p ~ *kW [*wl.p- ~ *wl.kW-
"wolf"], *bh ~ *ghW [*bhen- ~ *ghWen- "beat"], etc.).

>>>> Hittite zi:k comes from *ti:-g (Palaic ti), and the acc. tuk
>>>> (Palaic tu), as well as all the other oblique forms (tuel,
>>>> tuedaz etc.) show that the pronominal root was *tu(:), as it
>>>> is everwywhere in IE. Hittite/Palaic -i: in the nominative
>>>> is a special development of *-u: > *-y: > -i: in the Auslaut
>>>> (there is an exact duplicate of that soundlaw in Albanian).
>>>> Hitt. zi- comes from *ti- not from *si-.
>>>
>>>As long as I know, the development *-u: > *-y: > *-i: does not exist in Hittite. Do you have more examples on it?
>
>> The rule is confirmed by H. Craig Melchert, "Anatolian
>> Hitorical Phonology", p. 84. There are no other cases of
>> -u:, so the rule is, as Melchert says, "unverifiable". It
>> is, however, the only logical explanation of Hitt. zi:- and
>> Palaic ti. Hitt. zi comes from *ti-. Hittite and Palaic ti
>> (acc. tu) must be connected with PIE *tu(:).
>
>So, the hypothesis is a week one. Note that in Hittite verbal 2nd person singular really both -si and -ti exist (and the latter's consonant does not change into /z/). It seems very probable that both of these endings could have their source in two different stems of the corresponding pronoun.

Hittite 2sg. -ti is the hi-conjugation ending, presumably
from *-th2a-i. Even if it were from *-th2-i directly, that
does not consitute evidence against the solid soundlaw *ti >
(z)zi: the cluster *th2 might simply have merged with *dh
here, and the regular outcome is *dhi > ti (and *di > si).

>In fact, the question on Hittite palatalization *ti > zi is not so clear as it is commonly assumed. Sometimes it no doubt exists, but there are examples where the palatalization is not found.

Such as?

>Note also that verbal 2Sg. -t and 3Sg. -s exist in Tocharian. Perhaps even Germanic sometimes demonstrates the same: cf. English 3Sg. -s vs. archaic -th (and German -t). Also Germanis 2Sg. -st can be a result of 2Sg. *-s and 2Sg. *-t contamination. These Anatolian, Tocharian and Germanic facts allow to assume that in PIE verbs both 2Sg. -s vs. 3Sg. -t and 2Sg. -t vs. 3Sg. -s were possible.

I don't see the relevance of English 3sg. -s. German 2sg.
-st is 2sg. *-s plus the 2nd. person pronoun *þu, du (e.g.
bis du > bistu > bist du). Tocharian does have an
undeniable 2sg. ending *-t, but it's not necessary to derive
that all the way back to PIE: it is most likely either a
middle/stative ending *-th2a(-), or an agglutinated personal
pronoun *tu.

>> The phoneme *tW must have been rare. I see the same in PIE,
>> where *tW > *sW is mostly found in morphological items
>> (plural, 2nd. person, demonstrative), and in only a handful
>> of lexical items.
>
>It is a very strange situation when certain sounds are more used in suffixes than in roots.

It's rather common, actually. To give just one example: in
PIE, the long diphthong *-o:i is very common in grammatical
endings (dat.sg., ins.pl.), but very rare elsewhere.


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