Re: [tied] Bader's article on *-os(y)o

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> Whoa, watch out with that line of reasoning, Rob. It's not solid.

Perhaps not. I understand the examples you gave below. It's my
understanding that grammatical gender comes about from some other
morphological process -- it's not ad hoc, at least not at first.
That doesn't mean that exceptions are made due to later
phonological/morphological conditions.

Assuming that the original PIE gender distinction was an animate-
inanimate distinction, a house is hardly capable of animacy. Now,
that doesn't mean it can't be classified as animate, but not on a
logical basis.

> So you can't just assume that because "house" is logically an

inanimate

> concept that it will without exception be reflected in that gender

in

> the language. Grammar is hardly logical. You have to accept that a
> language's gender system will have strange exceptions to the rule,

even

> in IE.

I accept that. However, grammar has to be logical, or else it would
not make any sense at all. Still, the forces of reanalyzation,
shifting semantics, and phonological change all take their toll on
the regularity of a language.

> What drove the "replacement of accent" is the very thing you

reject --

> nominalization of an adjective. I indeed think that *wlkWós would
> have been the underlying adjective, perhaps meaning "howling" and
> perhaps further based on an echoic verb *welkW- "to howl".

I think this is very possible -- I didn't reject the possibility that
*wlkWos was earlier an adjective. Is there indeed an attested root
*welkW- "howl"?

> Yes, *kwon- (Sanskrit /svan-/ with /sv/) shows two seperate

phonemes in

> the onset, *k and *w. However, in *kWetwores (Sanskrit /catvara/

with

> /c/ reflecting a palatalized *kW, not *kw) the sound *kW is a

_single_

> phoneme that can't be divided any further.
>
> You might distinguish the two by pronouncing a 'light' w in *kW

versus

> a 'heavy', no-holds-barred w in *kw. In the first, it is merely a

slight

> rounding of the lips that is barely perceptible to English ears.

Pronounce

> that kw-sound as you would after being in a freezer for thirty

minutes.

> It helps if you live in subzero conditions like Winnipeg during

winter :)

>
> As for *kw, you could pronounce it like the French would with major
> liprounding action. Ask a French person to pronounce /quack/ and

you'll

> see what I mean. It's almost like koo-ack :)
>
> Hope that clarifies.

Yes it does, thanks. It confirmed my earlier intuition.

- Rob