From: Rob
Message: 36121
Date: 2005-02-04
> I use it all the time. Specifically, I have attributed the rise ofMaybe I'm missing something here, but how can "the IE accent [be]
> vrddhi in collectives to the old accent opposition which
> apparently in some cases is so old that it feeds the ablaut. A
> fine case would be Latin fa:num as against Oscan fíísnú 'temple'
> which would reflect *dh&1s-nó-m, coll. *dhéH1s-na-H2. If other
> cases of vrddhi are substantivized adjectives, they could be
> explained by the same process. You spoke the magic word yourself
> when you said that the IE accent is assigned by considerations of
> animacy. Both collective and substantivization imply a distinct
> lowering of the degree of animacy which could motivate leftward
> accent movement - which would lead to the observed forms if
> applied early enough. So I, for one, am very sure the accentual
> difference between base-word and collective is of PIE age. The
> process lived on, however, and in younger forms it works without
> vowel gradation - and in an intermediate stage it produced
> barytone forms with -o-.