--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
> On 04-10-07 19:37, Sean Whalen wrote:
>
> > I've only increased the number of consonants by 5
> > (if you count b) and put the laryngeals within the
> > structure instead of deciding their nature by
> fiat.
>
> Well, their nature should be decided from the
> available comparative
> evidence, not from structural expectations. E.g. the
> articulation of *h2
> is likely to have involved a uvular component, since
> otherwise its
> A-colouring effect would be difficult to account
> for.
Comparative? This is mainly an internal
reconstruction. If complaints that PIE phonology seem
artificial and not like any real language have helped
create glottalic reconstructions I thought I'd go for
the opposite approach (assuming more traditional
reconstructions are nearly accurate, but incomplete or
representing a short stage between other more natural
stages). I made assumptions and tried to find if
their consequences matched any realities.
For example, assuming f at an early stage, what
happened to it later? If f>s, does the treatment of s
appear different in any two environments, and thus can
be attributed to two underlying sounds? Since I had
already decided -a'ms>-a'm_>-a:'m to account for
n/m/s/etc.-stems' nom. sng. but thematic acc. pl. a'ms
didn't change, probably pl. -f. This further was
confirmed by -fi>-fu in loc. pl., not explainable by
an unrounded C (as loc. sng. -(a)wi>-(a)wu).
Similarly, if palatal(ized) nj existed, what did it
change into? Probably either n or y. Two of the most
common V affixes are n and y, could they be the same,
and in what environment would n become either? Also,
suyus/sunus. I determined laws that work to do
describe this.
> The fact that *h3
> seems to have had a voicing effect on any preceding
> stop suggests that
> it was voiced itself... etc.
Since all the fricatives are voiceless, it's not
unlikely one or all had voiced allophones. If not
before, they were almost certainly voiced when they
became syllabic.
> You seem to have
> assumed a priori that the
> PIE sound system _must_ have been neatly
> symmetrical. It's an arbitrary
> assumption -- phonological systems with gaps or
> skewed subsystems are
> common enough.
I assumed a more symmetrical system in the past to
see what would happen. I wouldn't have kept it if I
couldn't make it work and explain irregularities in
PIE.
> > Also, vowels reduced by two and all short.
>
> But there is some extra machinery to compensate for
> that ;-). You
> introduce two marked tones to pre-encode the
> expected vocalism. It looks
> just like a trick of notation, i.e. a
> pseudo-explanation.
I think o/e/0 shifts make it almost certain there
was one vowel in the past that changed sound for some
reason, tone seems to do it. Also, they're not
pre-encoded, there are rules to delete a tone
immediately followed by an affix with a tone. This
allows one underlying form for each noun, verb, etc.,
with various surface forms.
See some of the derivations I sent for the
different cases of "sister" and "dog". If swa`fa'r-
is the underlying stem, gen. affix -a's deletes tone
to get swa`far- and the toneless a will be affected by
later a-deletion rules. When simplification causes
only one tone per word: swe'sros. The tone of the
final syllable is the only tone for kuxva'n-, so:
kuxvno's. By analogy with words with only final tone
(common), morphemes like -su'/-su (and all tone-marked
plural affixes) are simplified to their most common
form, thus swesrsu' instead of swe'srsu.
Also, I don't rely on pre-marking to account for
e/o variation in pHyo:, pHyeis, pHyei, pHyomen, etc.
> > I don't
> > think h1 was always non-coloring, either
> (yi-yoh1-h2e
> > with o>e (Greek he:ka), dhi-dhoh1-h2e (Latin
> fe:ci:)).
>
> If this non-self-evident analysis is correct. For
> familiar
> counterexamples, see Germanic *do:- and Gk. tHo:mos
> 'heap' (cf.
> tHe:mo:n, both from *dHeh1-).
So, in Greek there was definitely analogy to change
*tetHo:- to *tethe:-, but no possibility that any
analogy would create o:/e: on model of o/e? What's
the explanation for fe:ci:? Do you mean the perfect
didn't always have o?
Even if there was lack of coloring in certain
environments, that isn't just a consequence of my
theory (*-oh2 but *-ah2a, turned to Greek -o: and -e:
(then reanalyzed and becoming -ome:)).
> >> What's wrong
> >> with *str- being just *str-?
> >
> >
> > Nothing's wrong with it, but it seems it wasn't
> so.
>
> I suppose it seems so to you, but why? PIE had *spr-
> and *skr- as well,
> so why insist on *str- being a special case?
No, str- doesn't need to be a special case; sr- is.
Even if str- and sr- once existed side by side (since
a-deletion could turn stara'- to stra'- it's hard for
me to determine) there would be a time with no sr-.
Since sr->str- (and only this, not sn->stn-, etc.)
there is no sr- in PIE until f>s (so, fr>sr) and
probably some cases of sara'>sra' will create sr-,
too, unless sr->str- is a lasting rule and still in
effect.
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