From: Rob
Message: 39493
Date: 2005-08-03
--- In Nostratic-L@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:
> --- In Nostratic-L@yahoogroups.com, "Rob" <magwich78@...> wrote:
>
>
> > We are pretty sure of the outcome (i.e. the attested alternations
> > of the "thematic vowel"). What I don't think we're sure about is
> > the process(es) that produced them.
>
> But if you really are informed of the facts, how can you not see
> the difference between vowels in stem-final position and all other
> vowels of the language? The 21-year-old Saussure saw it.
I am 22. :)
Of course I can see that, on the surface, stem-final vowels seem to
be different from the other vowels of the language. What I'm
wondering is whether appearances are deceiving here. My inclination
thus far is that they are.
You correctly point out that the alternations in stem-final vowels
appear to operate independently of accent. Alongside this there is
the alternation of stressed and full-grade vs. unstressed and zero-
grade or o-grade. These processes do not seem to affect
the "thematic vowels". To me, that means the "thematic vowels" were
recent within IE and/or were stressed to begin with. Coupled with
these things are the indications that, by the time of latest IE, the
earlier accent patterns were no longer being followed. One can see
that most of the transparent (i.e. recent) compounds in IE had
recessive accent. Furthermore, zero-grade syllables could obviously
carry accent in latest IE: witness *wl'kWos 'wolf' and
*septm' 'seven'. All this seems to me like evidence of the accent
weakening from one of stress to one of pitch.
Looking at the o-stem masculine nouns, we have the following:
Nom. sg. *-os pl. *-o:s
Acc. sg. *-om pl. *-ons
Gen. sg. *-osyo pl. *-o:m
Dat. sg. *-o:i pl. *-o:is
Abl. sg. *-o:d pl. *-o:is
Ins. sg. *-o: pl. *-o:is
Loc. sg. *-oi pl. *-oisu
In my opinion, this can be traced back to an earlier scheme:
Nom. sg. *-o-s pl. *-o-es
Acc. sg. *-o-m pl. *-o-ns
Gen. sg. *-o-s-yo pl. *-o-om
Dat. sg. *-o-ei pl. *-o-eis
Abl. sg. *-o-ed pl. *-o-eis
Ins. sg. *-o-e? pl. *-o-eis
Loc. sg. *-o-i pl. *-o-isu
That is, there was a non-alternating stem vowel in *-o to which the
case endings were agglutinated. My source here is Sihler's New
Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (1995).
Looking at the o-stem neuter nouns, we have the following:
Nom./Acc. sg. *-om pl. *-a: < *-ex
The other cases are the same as for the masculines. Where you see a
common thematic vowel in both the singular and plural here, I see
suppletion. In other words, I do not consider the vowel in *-ex to
have the same origin as that in *-om.
Looking at the a:-stem neuter nouns, we have the following:
Nom. sg. *-a: pl. *-a:s
Acc. sg. *-a:m pl. *-a:ns
Gen. sg. *-a:s pl. *-a:om
Dat. sg. *-a:i pl. *-a:is
Abl. sg. *-a:d pl. *-a:is
Ins. sg. *-a: pl. *-a:is
Loc. sg. *-a:i pl. *-a:isu
Again, this looks like it can be traced to an earlier scheme, with *-
a: < *-ex:
Nom. sg. *-ex pl. *-ex-es
Acc. sg. *-ex-m pl. *-ex-ns
Gen. sg. *-ex-s pl. *-ex-om
Dat. sg. *-ex-ei pl. *-ex-eis
Abl. sg. *-ex-ed pl. *-ex-eis
Ins. sg. *-ex-e? pl. *-ex-eis
Loc. sg. *-ex-i pl. *-ex-isu
The obvious conclusion here is that there was a stem-formant *-ex to
which the case endings were agglutinated. It also seems that this
formant is identical to the neuter plural ending *-ex.
Finally, I think the common element in all of these endings is that
the stem-formant was originally *stressed*. That's probably what
your "special articulatory prominence" is. Non-alternating stress
means non-alternating stressed vowel. Thus these stem-formants were
spared the metaphorical ravages of zero-grading (if that process was
still productive when the stem-formants came to be used).
A question remains of why the vocalism in the o-stems is
regularly /o/ *and* stressed, when the usual pattern is stressed
and /e/ vs. unstressed and /ø/ or /o/. My tentative answer is that
stressed /o/ comes from earlier stressed /a:/.
Looking at verbs, we seem to find a similar situation (imperfect
active indicative is used here):
1sg *-om 1pl *-omes
2sg *-es 2pl *-etes
3sg *-et 3pl *-ont
These endings obviously look like a combination of "theme vowel" and
personal ending. As you yourself have expertly pointed out, this
theme vowel is identical to the subjunctive suffix. Furthermore, we
more or less agree that the thematic forms came from earlier
subjunctives. Okay, so what causes the alternations in the vocalism
of the suffix, then? It seems to me that, again, the 1sg and 3pl o-
vocalism can be explained by rounding (and consequently backing) in
the presence of a coda nasal (especially a labial one). In my
opinion, the 1pl can be explained as being due to analogy with the
1sg. The e-vocalism elsewhere fits in with the usual pattern of
stress and /e/, which means that this stem-formant, too, was stressed
to begin with.
I don't expect you to agree with everything here (if anything at
all!) and I'm not trying to persuade you that I'm necessarily right.
Rather, I'm just sharing my analyses with you so that you have a
clearer picture of where I'm coming from.
> > Furthermore, the fact that the "thematic vowel" alternations are
> > independent of the accent proves nothing to me, because it seems
> > clear from the known evidence that IE's accent system at the time
> > of its break-up was different from that which produced much (if
> > not most) of the phenomena we see in the language, most notably
> > the full-grade/zero-grade alternations and, by extension, the
> > syllabic resonants.
>
> That is nonsense. The effect of the accent on the distribution of
> full grade and zero grade is very transparent and immediately
> obvious. Why would it only be the stem-final vowels that have
> failed to keep that old dependency transparent over time? You are
> staking everything on a coincidence.
From the above, I hope you can see that the stem-final vowels also
seem to fit in with the "old dependency". However, it seems that
they were added after the accent ceased to be mobile (i.e. additional
syllables no longer attracted the stress).
> > > > Put another way, there does not seem
> > > > to be any conditioning phenomena that can separate
> > > > the "thematic vowel" from the other alternating vowels in
> > > > IE. So, either your rule is true everywhere for the general
> > > > e/o vowel, or it is not.
>
> The thematic vowel rule is true for the thematic vowel and
> blatantly false if tentatively applied to other vowels.
Nothing new, there.
> I understand you just don't like the language, but sorry this is
> the way it presents itself.
You misunderstand. It's not a question of liking or disliking the
language. For me, it's a question of "What are the facts, and why
are they the way they are?"
> > > > One example will suffice to disprove it: *(xW)ré:gs 'king',
> > > > which under your rule would have been *(xW)ró:gs.
>
> No, there is no thematic vowel in that. It refutes *your* stance.
My stance is not one where your rule applies everywhere in IE. We do
agree that to posit such a rule for the entirety of the language
would not hold, because the facts say otherwise. My point was, in
the absence of any conditioning factors, a phonetic rule that effects
a given sound must do so wherever that sound exists in a language.
So, as you said before, the question is whether there were any
conditioning factors over the thematic vowel. Again, my tentative
answer is that there don't seem to have been any that could satisfy
your proposed rule.
> > Again, "except for the thematic vowel" implies that there was
> > some kind of conditioning factor over the thematic vowel.
> > However, there does not seem to be one.
>
> There must have been, and you could be more helpful if you joined
> the search for its nature instead of just shouting noise to deny
> the facts.
All I will say to this is that there is no reason to get personal
here.
> > I am fully aware that there is no ban on /e/ + voiced segment in
> > IE. My point was, given that and the apparent lack of any
> > conditioning factor over the thematic vowel, your hypothesis does
> > not seem to be correct.
>
> But if the /e/ *is* the thematic vowel, there *is* a ban on /e/ +
> voiced segment. May that fact not be even addressed?
I would not really consider it a fact, as my analyses seem to
indicate that there was not just one "thematic vowel". In other
words, we are both taking the facts and making inferences from them.
Our inferences here happen to be different. The question is whose
are more correct, not who is looking at the facts and who is dreaming
things.
> > Finally, I do not think that I attributed any "nonsense" to you.
> > If I am mistaken, please point it out.
>
> By saying "which under your rule would have been *(xW)ró:gs" you
> most certainly did.
If you'll note above, I never claimed that you claimed that your
proposed rule extends beyond the "thematic vowel". I was saying that
*if* your rule was extended as such, we would expect to see *(xW)
ró:gs instead of *(xW)ré:gs. Since that is not what we see, your
rule could not be extended that way. That was my point.
> > With all due respect, what do you think we are talking about
> > here? I, for one, am not trying to distort the evidence into
> > something it is not. Nor do I consider this to be an area where
> > it is okay to talk about how things "should (have) be(en)". So I
> > would appreciate it if you would not imply otherwise.
>
> But you constantly refuse to accept what the language shows.
Wrong, Jens. I often (but not always) do not accept your inferences
about what the language shows. The ones that I do not accept are
those that I find untenable. We are not arguing over facts here; we
are arguing over explanations for the facts.
> [snip]
>
> > True, but there's also the question of accent change and whether
> > it happened during the development of IE. I think it did.
>
> But *consistently* so that a thematic vowel is never found to
> alternate with zero in dependency of the accent? Why is this honour
> peculiar to the thematic vowel?
It seems readily apparent to me that the zero-grading process did not
operate throughout the history of IE. What's interesting is that the
forms in IE with the fullest vocalism also seem to be the most
recent. (An example here is *pélekus 'axe', which is probably a
loanword.) Now, from what I understand, apocope and syncope are far
more likely with stress-accent than with pitch-accent. Given this, I
have concluded that, by the end of IE, the language had pitch-accent,
not stress-accent.
> You are simply giving up on the facts and just dreaming up some
> others that will suit you, in blatant contrast to your proclaimed
> ideals.
Why would I do that? How could I benefit from doing such a thing? I
can't think of any answer here; can you?
In other words, you are again mistaken about me.
> > True, but it did not have to start out that way. I keep seeing
> > connections between the 1sg, if indeed from *-ó-x or *-óx, and
> > the 1sg middle and perfect endings.
>
> But this is the 1sg active, primary ending, of thematic stems, and
> only that. Why would that be specially connected with either the
> middle voice or the perfect?
It is "only that" in the language traditionally reconstructed by IE
linguists, and which must be what the language looked like at its
very end. We are trying to dig deeper than that.
To answer your question, I can say that it is not uncommon in
languages for non-active forms to develop into active forms. This
process occurred in many early IE descendants, notably Latin and
Greek. Perhaps it is not unreasonable to posit that the parent
language itself underwent a similar process.
Then again, the *-o: 1sg ending may be the result of sandhi, as you
seem to suggest.
> > > It is prs. *bhéro:, inj. *bhérom. Clearly *bhéro: occupies
> > > the position where one would have expected to see **bhéromi.
> > > Cowgill toyed with the idea that it represents the direct
> > > phonetic development from some such preform, and I tend to
> > > agree.
> >
> > What do you think the phonological processes looked like? That
> > is, how do you think **bhéromi became *bhéro:?
>
> Much like expected *-oy-bhis ended up being *-ooys in the
> instrumental plural of o-stems.
Well, how did that happen? What were the phonetic developments?
> > > That the account does not add up. Is that not a problem?
> >
> > Explain, please.
>
> We are running around in circles. I did explain that, and you said
> it was a good point. You then say you have no problem with a wrong
> verbal voice, but that just casts doubt over your scholarly ideals.
Latin _sequo:r_ is translated into English as "I follow" -- that is,
with an *active* voice in English, although the verb is
morphologically *passive* in Latin. If I understand you correctly,
you seem to be saying that the morphologically passive verbs with
active semantics in Latin are impossible. Obviously they are not.
I was hoping that you would explain what exactly you meant by "the
account does not add up".
> > With all due respect, how is the evidence being disqualified here?
>
> By being taken to be misleading. If you consider the evidence
> misleading, you get leeway. If you do that a lot, you get so much
> that nothing will have any probative value; that is where you stand
> now, and that is what I take pains to avoid. I am sure some
> evidence is misledaing in the sense that it has changed before we
> got to see it, but if there is not a core of regularity there is no
> probative value.
So if you think the evidence leads somewhere and I think it leads
somewhere else, you are necessarily right and I am necessarily
wrong? I do not want to play that game.
It seems to me that we are discussing where the evidence leads, so
there is no way to say how it can be taken to be *misleading*.
> > The possibility of connections between 1sg prs. act. "thematic" *-
> > o: if from *-ox, the 1sg prs. mid. *-x-o-i (vel sim.), and the
> > 1sg prf. *-x-e notwithstanding?
>
> We actually have it combined with the thematic vowel in the middle
> voice which is *-a-H2-i, secondary ending *-a-H2.
Where does the *-a come from?
> I cannot imagine what system could contain also active *-o-H2,
> secondary *-o-m. Why would the primary active have the same form as
> the secondary middle except for a difference in selection of
> thematic-vowel variant, which is then prim.act. *-o-H2, sec.mid. *-
> e-H2 ? If it could be proved to exist it would be another matter,
> then I would accept the facts and get cracking at a way to
> integrate them into a wider picture, but I do not depart from self-
> chosen silliness.
Unfortunately I cannot say anything of consequence to this yet, but I
will look deeper into the matter.
- Rob
--- End forwarded message ---