Re: [tied] IE vowels: The sequel.

Jens:

> When thematic noun stems appear as i-stems in the second part of
> compounds the word is a bahuvrihi and so accented on the first part
> (Vedic gandhá- => dhu:má-gandhi-).

I think you're misunderstanding. What I'm objecting to is the statement
that *i is simply the unaccented version (in any position) of the thematic
vowel which I think is untrue. I'm not denying that *i is the unaccented
version of the thematic vowel _under certain conditions_ (namely,
pretonically).

So this is why I state that both *-o- and *-i- are found equally
unaccented. This is what we find. You have examples showing unaccented
*-o- and unaccented *-i-... Well that's not the issue! The issue
is _accented_ thematic *-i-. To that, you say what I already can figure
out myself: "End-stressed i-stems are not very common." Exactly! That's
because the *i is simply the reflex of the thematic vowel _before
accent_.

When accented *i-stems do occur, they are derivatives of *i-nouns,
forming new *i-adjectives that are effectively semantically identical
to their *o-adjective counterparts, both versions being stressed on
the final syllable as is the pattern of adjectives. Thus we could have
both *xargós or *xargís, it doesn't matter much but the etymologies of
both forms are slightly different.

> Yes, sort of, it's the way I have just shown.

Not really. You're only admitting to exactly what I'm saying: That
*i-stems accented at the end are uncommon, just as we should expect
if eLIE's "thematic vowel" *a [&] is raised, when preceding accent,
to *i. I wish you wouldn't drag the *u-stems into this either since
they really _do_ have a historical *u at the end of them, just like
*suxnu-, *peku- and such.

> We have evidence enough to believe that *bher- formed
> lengthened-grade (Naerten) verbal forms, as the Tocharian ipf. of
> pär- 'carry' which is based on *bhe:r-; perhaps *bhér-e-t(i) is
> based on the acrostatic structure and has set the model for the type
> as such.

Or... everything about *bHéreti is as we expect it to be.


Jens lumps everything together now:

> Yes, the pure thematic forms were adjectival in origin, and they
> generally show accent on the suffix. That, however, has nothing to
> do with suffixal formations containing suffixes of the structure *-
> Ce/o- [...] There is no way one can derive the accented thematic
> vowel of *pr.k^-sk^é-ti 'asks'

This drivvel has nothing to do with the adjective/noun thematic stem
pairs in question or *o/*i alternations. Topic derailment.

> For the sake of the argument, of what was *H2ug-ró-s 'strong' (Ved.
> urgá-) the genitive?

This has been addressed a long time ago: Adjectives did not originally
agree with the noun. This only started during the time of Nominative
Misanalysis since genitival adjectives were misunderstood as being
in agreement with animate nominative nouns. So there is **no** genitive
of what would have been *xugrás in eLIE, since it already **is** a
genitive. Taking a noun *kwa:ns "dog", we'd simply have a phrase like
*/kwa:n-s xugrás/, the accusative being */kwánm xugrás/ at that time.
There are no grammatical problems with that.

> Only in the sense that you are changing the subject and whoevber
> cares to read your post loses the thread; *-om is not collective.

We've gone over this with examples like *yugom and *pedom. You have
your peculiar slant on it and I don't agree with it.

> No, it means it could be so. Many other languages have it differently,
> what if *they* are parallels?

Really? Which ones? You're the only one drawing blanks now.

> There was indeed an interplay of oxytone adjectives and barytone
> substantives. It quite probably had indeed come about by the
> formation of adjectives which had added an accented thematic vowel;
> the system tómos : tomós may well be a reflexion of this. It is
> connected with very grave difficulties however to derive the
> thematic vowel itself by simple resegmentation of genitives.

Yet again, you reject the idea but you don't give succinct points
in your favour. You've "been there, done that" but your experience
doesn't impress me if you can't even share what you've actually
learned from it.

> As I said, that's what I once thought too. I got wiser.

Goody for you. You're just a wiseguy now, aren'tcha :)

> Typo? I claim that *-i- is, in a series of archaic remains of a
> morphological variation later given up, the *unaccented* counterpart
> of the thematic vowel. The facts are all in Wackernagel's and even
> Brugmann's handbooks; Benveniste added many observations saying the
> same thing.

Alright, then it seems the matter between us is simply the idea of
whether *i is the reflex of thematic *o pretonically or not. I've
been claiming it is so far.

> No, I consider the -e- of the nom.pl. in *-es an anaptyctic vowel.

Alright. I guess I will have to accept that at the very least we
both understand the *e here is affected for one reason or another.
You say it's anaptyctic, I say it avoids reduction to *a to keep it
distinct from other endings. One way or another the *e here is odd,
so at least we have a point of agreement.

> Indeed, in so far as this means that *o was an intermediate stage
> between *e and zero. We see this when unaccented *e is lengthened
> and then survives as */o:/.

It should be apparent that the reduction of unaccented *e to *o (by
added rounding??!) is far less natural than *e being reduced to *a [&]
by plain ol' deperipheralization found in a whole slew of languages
worldwide. Again, you take the stubborn exotic route and I still don't
understand why.

> I did not need this help. We all agree that unaccented short vowels are
> lost in most positions. I do not think they were lost in stem-final
> position where we find the thematic vowel instead, but I have yet to
> consider several options as to the cause of this.

You "do not think" they were lost in stem-final position but you have
no evidence against it. So while you have no arguement against it, you
feel the need to treat stem-final position differently than other
positions but... based on nothing. Hunh? Ridiculous.

> In this we work alike. However your odd names of stages have had the
> effect of a shield behind which you have been hiding. Nobody else (I
> would believe) knows what your labels mean, at least I do not know it,

You personally don't keep track because you think you know everything
and nobody else has a right to contribute. Whatever. As for others,
the way they can understand my supposedly mysterious labels is to
follow my posts carefully or ... god forbid, ask questions! I purposely
try to word my posts such that the labels I give can be understood by
context. Some unfortunately find that asking questions is a forboding
and humiliating task. I can't help them, really.

> and I do not really care,

I can see that but should I really care whether _you_ care? There are
at least 5,999,999,999 other people in the world besides you. Let's
not get too full of ourselves now.


= gLeN