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

From: enlil@...
Message: 33289
Date: 2004-06-25

Jens:
> It does not matter that such a system is rare, for it is not assumed
> except for a single passing stage in the prehistory of the language.
> It is not claimed that all stages of the language were typologically
> uncommon on all points, on the contrary practically all we know
> about it is quite commonplace. But it is totally unwarranted to
> demand that, in a long series of stages there is not one that is
> typologically abnormal.

Congratulations. You've just proven that you have double standards :)

You hit my hand with a ruler for my Final Voicing rule, which admittedly
is uncommon, and then when the tables are turned and you are responding
to your own uncommon solution you feel free to state hypocritically, "But
it is totally unwarranted to demand that, in a long series of stages
there is not one that is typologically abnormal." Erh... wha? It's okay
for you but not for me?!

At any rate, what you say is off-course. It _does_ matter how rare any
given solution is and how many of these rare solutions you amass into
a theory. While I have to defend the Final Voicing rule with the knowledge
that it is not often found in other languages (a solitary improbable rule
in a large package of secure ones, btw), you have to contend with not only
the abstract monovocalism (itself rare) but also the **further** solutions
you directly build upon it (eg: phonemic double-long vowels).


> After all this is nothing but statistics,

Indeed. This is exactly what I'm saying and it is what disqualifies much
of your account of Pre-IE.

Since I've come to find that some of your rules are worth salvaging
because they are based on something hard to neglect, I've reformulated
them so that they rely on linguistic universals rather than freakshow
monstrosities. We don't need to lose much if we simply rework our rules
into something more oft-found. I don't understand your obsession with
using your well analysed phenomena to support linguistically improbable
conclusions.


> That would explain that in all the other stages we see a near-violation
> of a presumed universal in the extreme paucity of vowel variation in
> the IE *lexicon*.

Effectively, we are in agreement. I had just finished saying that while
I don't believe that IE truly had the same pattern as Sanskrit (there
are some noteworthy differences), I do think that the way in which the
vowels evolved, particularly in the Late IE period, helped to create the
appearence of near-monovocalism. As I mentioned, if unaccented *e is
reduced to eLIE *a and then ultimately splits up into *e and *o (our
thematic vowel), it appears as though *e is both *e and *o at once.

Translation: It _appears_ that all instances of both *e and *o derive
from eLIE *a, and further back, from *e. However, as always, there is
a danger in generalization. This is your peril.


Jens about the rarity of languages that only allow one vowel in the
vocalism of the verb root:
> Where would I get that information? How many have seven vowels?
> Quite many, sure, but *how* many? Why would I know that?

You hardly need to "get that information". You use your noodle. Such
a thing is going to obviously be rare. Yet it appears you claim that
some prestage of IE had only one vowel *e. This is untenable based on
simple common sense. I don't know of any such language on the planet
and I stick to what I'm familiar with: languages with multiple default
vocalisms in the verb stem.


> Semitic strikes me as quite appropriate here.

No doubt. If it can be agreed that Semitic affected, whether indirectly
or directly, the course of IE in terms of vocabulary, it could have
also affected it in other ways, namely grammatically.

Now here, what you're using the example of Semitic for is to prove that
it is possible for a verb to alternate vowels to convey different
tensual, modal or aspectual nuances. This was not in question. I was
trying to get across that a verb system that only allows _one_ vocalism
in the stem or root is rare, if not non-existent. Evidently, Semitic
allows many different vocalisms using all of *a, *i and *u (both
short and long).

So indeed, Semitic is quite appropriate here for not only the grammar
of IE but also the grammar of all stages of pre-IE where there had
assuredly been varied vocalism of the verb stem _at every stage_ just
like in Semitic and many other languages.


Jens bites his own arm off:
> If Semitic is allowed to have vowel oppositions for morphological
> purposes only, why is that a priori disallowed for IE?

Precisely! Why, Jens?


> The examples you quote all have morphologically conditioned vowels
> in IE, quite Semitic style.

Ugh, here comes a mouthful. You aren't understanding my position.

Of course, I agree and my version of pre-IE, right back to IndoTyrrhenian,
shows similar morphologically conditioned vowel alternations. I've stated
before that I think that the IndoTyrrhenian perfect aspect had a pattern
of *a-vocalism while the durative preferred *e-vocalism. The aorist
lied somewhere in between, perhaps with the perfect's *a-vocalism as
the typical pattern while using durative endings, a kind of hybrid
reconcilliation between the other two aspects. All of this, I said,
speaks of early regressive vowel harmony between suffix and verb stem
with which early Altaic shares as a Proto-Steppe isogloss.

The *a-vocalism isn't just some fluff I thought up for no reason to
make pretty reconstructions for Proto-Steppe either. It happens to show
how similar the durative and perfect once were in pre-IE and how they
became so different. It happens to iron out some irregularities of IE
morphology nicely into something more uniform while still tying so
intrinsically into all the other rules I've devised. This is a tight
little package, if I do say. Just like its creator >:)

In order to derive the preform of 1ps perfect *woid-xe properly, I am
forced by my theories to reconstruct nothing other than *wait:a-xe with
accent on the third-to-last syllable (first syllable here) in order to
conform with QAR, as well as to perfectly reflect the attested accent in
the later form.

I cannot reconstruct **wait:-xe because, by allowing medial -CCC-, it
violates the same phonotactics that effect a-Epenthesis (your former
O-fix/R-fix rule) and other eLIE restructurings during the Syncope stage.
So my rules give me no artistic freedom, nor should they. I am forced
to reconstruct *wait:a-xe and only that.

It first yields eLIE *waid-xa but the final *-a in the suffix becomes *e
just as do all thematic vowels word-finally in the vocative case which
also come from the same unstressed *a. The second *a has disappeared
regularly through Syncope. After Vowel Shift, *waid-xa becomes *woidxe
without problems. The evolution of the entire paradigm of *weid- in fact
has no problems from the MIE stage to the last moment of Common IE.

How is the durative and perfect similar? Well, the following
demonstation will only end up justifying my other ideas such as the view
that that there was always at least two vowels at any stage of pre-IE and
how Syncope only obliterated *a, not *e. Let's say we take an MIE 1ps
durative *bér-e-m. It becomes eLIE *bHeram after Syncope. This of course
is the secondary form which later yields *bHerom on schedule. Note that
the durative has its own special 'thematic vowel' *-e- mirroring the
vocalism of the stem in MIE which via the Syncope stage is _reduced_ to
*a. On the other hand, as I stated above, 1pp *wait:-a-xe is the preform
of *woid-xe and here too there is a thematic vowel, this time *-a-, that
again mirrors the stem's vocalism. Syncope obliterates the thematic
vowel of the perfect while retaining the thematic vowel of the durative,
all because of trivial vocalic differences. This is why perfects don't
seem to partake in thematicism.


> I have just published my account of that; it was *surprisingly* easy
> to explain.

I'm sure. It's easy when you especially don't take language universals
into account.


> Narten presents are made form the *same* roots that have underlying
> short *e in other forms. It is a purely morphological matter.

A morphological matter based on what exactly?


On the loathsome *a-vocalism in some verbs:
> Even with an unexplained residue, the distribition of vowel timbres
> in IE is so uneven that it demands an explanation. You are simply
> looking the other way and ordering me to do the same.

I'm not looking away. I'm looking at it directly. You are stating
that there is a lopsidedness in the vocalism of the verb, preferring
*e to all others. I can't but agree. However, where you would take
that tendency and generalize it, I simply take it for what it is,
a tendency. You can't explain the *a-verbs and in fact you do what you
charge me of doing: turning away.

In contrast, I can account for them as residue from the Vowel Shift that
occurred in the last half of the Late IE period. While this would
explain *mad- nicely as I said previously, in this specific case there
is the other nagging possibility that the preform is eLIE *mxad- from
an earlier MIE aorist stem *maxad-. I have to suspect that it is another
Semitic loanword, looking suspiciously like a Semitic adjective (cf.
Akkadian /haddu/ 'to rejoice'). That might be a possibility in this
particular case.


> There are no such rules. A root shape *med- is perfectly permissible
> for IE, and so is its conditioned variant *mod-.

Yes, **med- is permissible and *mod- can be conditioned from it, of
course. The only thing is that I don't feel the need to deny what is
attested, and if there are certain verbs with *a-vocalism, as would
be natural anyways, then I don't see what the problem is. We see
Latin /madeo/ and /madidus/.


> What is the meaning of "grade" here? You speak of the roots as
> lexically different. Where does a gradation come in?

I mean that while the tendency would have been towards *-e- for
inheirently durative verbs, it doesn't negate the possibility that
there were other stem vowels allowed. All one has to do is migrate
a few inherient aorists into the durative and voila. Presto change-o, a
new oddball verb! Presumably, in MIE, there would be some verbs
(antecedents of the pesky *o-verbs that you deny) of the form *CaC-e-,
an irregular but understandable situation where the thematic vowel is
*-e- for the durative but the stem still contains *-a- like an aorist
from whence it's from.


> The original form of the thematic vowel was accented.

As you say all the time: "This cannot be known". :P

But seriously, all indications show that the thematic vowel was
unaccented. In the rarer cases where the accent was placed on the
thematic vowel, it can be explained away by other means. We have
aorists with accented thematic vowel which through me for a loop
for a while until I caught wind of the connection with the
subjunctive. The subjunctive isn't caused by a 'thematic vowel'. It's
caused by an accented suffix, the accent being explained by QAR.


> Not if it does not fit the facts, as it patently doesn't.

But it does! The prevalence of thematic vowels in IE, which you cannot
deny, is due to the prevalence of unaccented *a in eLIE. This is indeed
normal for a natural language. However, I can see that you're still
brooding over the prevalence of accented *e and ignoring everything else.
It's clear enough to everyone else that such a prevalence does not mean
that only *e was allowed in **all** positions. This is overgeneralization.


> The thematic vowel behaves the same whether it was accented or not.

The tendency is for the thematic vowel to be _unaccented_ more than
it is found accented. When it is accented, it can be shown to be a
recent state of affairs, either because of shifts in accent or because
of other considerations. They tend not to conform to the earliest
patterns of IE ablaut. More below.


> However, in very archaic remains, unaccented thematic vowels are
> reduced to /i/,

A convenient assumption that isn't a posteriori in any way whatsoever.

Instances of thematic *-i- are as commonly unaccented as *-o-. Where
we find oscillation between the two, accent differences are simply
not attested without lurking variables. For one thing, it's established
that the shift of accent is partly dependent on the morphological
differences of noun and adjective. Yes, we see that adjectives have
accented thematic (regardless of *o or *i, btw) but we also find them
unaccented in nouns too. Which one is the deciding factor? Well, while
the accent of nominative adjectives are simply fixed to the last
syllable, nouns enjoy a wide array of accent patterns. As we all know,
the acrostatic paradigm is the most regular of all, with the others
showing the older state of affairs (accent alternation). We also see
the same acrostatic pattern of thematic nouns in thematic _verbs_ like
*bHer-e-ti.

It's clear then that the acrostatic pattern covers thematic stems of all
word types except adjectives and that the adjective is the one that must
hold any trace of the original accent in the thematic noun/adjectives
pairs. As I've said, the fact that the them.nom. adjective looks just
like a genitive is not to be ignored. Anatolian confuses the two, it would
seem, as do many other languages. Even in Mandarin, adjectives are formed
in the exact same way as genitives without speakers being in any way
confused (eg: xiao-de haizi "the small child", Gelan-de shu "Glen's
book"). Hence, the genitival origin of adjectives is painfully clear.

The eLIE confusion between genitive *-ás and an already existent thematic
nominative *-a-s is a natural mistake that serves to also explain the
resulting adjective-noun case agreement as well as the supposed 'accent
on thematic vowel'. But there's more. In fact, the occurence of *-o-m in
the neuter adjective, with a clear relationship to inanimate collectives
in *-om, which in turn are based on the plural animate genitive,
emphatically terminates any counterarguement. All the evidence, including
a universal association between adjectives and genitives in countless
languages from Etruscan to Mandarin, emphatically shows that IE adjectives
were previously genitive constructs in IE, thereby explaining the special
adjectival accent in the first place.

So ironically this just plays into my hands and supports all that I'm
saying. Once there was confusion between genitive-derived adjectives
and thematic nouns, a new morphologically-driven shift of accent
occured between finally-accented adjectives and initially-accented nouns.
This was brought about by plain ol' common sense analogy by the speakers
of IE in general.

You claim that *i is the accented variant of *o but the evidence doesn't
show this at all. Unsubstantiated. The data simply shows that *i is a
variant of *o, either accented or unaccented in both cases. The nature
of the adjectival accent can only be understood by understanding its
relationship to genitives.


>> To have the plural *-es be properly etymologized and connected to
>> other Steppe languages, we need a contrast of at least *e and *a
>> in all stages of pre-IE.
>
> No, an opposition between vowel and zero will do.

You must be joking. It is in fact the zero-grade that is testimony
to a previous alternation of accented *e with a reduced unaccented *a
in MIE. That unaccented vowel drops causing the odd pattern. Again,
another language universal where unaccented vowels tend to drop off.
Most people working on pre-IE or Nostratic understand the need for
Syncope already. I guess you can't be helped.


> Indeed, it is a prestage of PIE. It is beyond the method to tell us
> how much older that prestage is, so you may call it what you like.

Actually, it's not beyond our methods at all. I would hope that any
respected comparative linguist pays attention to chronological order.
The names are simply a mnemonic to remember this order for me and for
any others who wish to understand what I'm saying. By nailing myself
to a strict chronological order, it allows others to cross-examine
the current form of my theories and identify any paradoxes which will
then help me evolve better versions in the future.

Since it is above you to pay attention to this important detail, you
don't allow anyone to question you and you fall back on your mantra
of "This is beyond our understanding". Like a psychological resistance
against admitting to being incorrect as if being incorrect were somehow
a reflection of your own worth, which it of course isn't, but I guess
people with PhD's like to think that way. My god, if it were, with all
the mistakes I've accomplished over the years, I'd be completely
worthless, hehe. You sir, are an intriguing case study. Now I am off,
further psychoanalysis will resume tomorrow as soon as I wash away my
worthlessness with some hard liquor :)


= gLeN