[tied] Re: PIE genitive plural *-o:m, a possible analysis

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2006-04-25 12:40, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> >>>> Nouns of
> >>>> the type *po:d-s 'foot', *nokWt-s 'night', *wo:kW-s 'voice',

*do:m

> >>>> 'house', etc., are free-occurring lexemes, not bound forms.
> >>> Of course they are. I said they originated in bound forms.
> >> And why should anyone believe that?
> >>
> >
> > I have thought of setting up a system of bribes for that to

occur. In

> > the meanwhile I find solace in Grassmann's biography.
>
> My question was serious.

I'm always willing to consider a serious specific question.


If you think that nouns like *po:d-s developed

> from second members of verbal compounds with a governed first

member,

> then you're clearly wrong for the following reasons:
>
> (1) I'm not aware of _any_ examples of verbal compounds with an o-

grade

> root noun as the second element. If a true agent root noun occurs

in

> such a context (and it was observed already by Schindler that o-

grade

> root nouns were _not_ ordinary nomina agentis) it is accented and
> e-grade in the strong cases (as in Skt. nr.-hán- 'man-killing'

[note the

> palatalisation of *gWH], Lat. -spex, -ceps) and belongs to the
> hysterokinetic accentual type (dat. nr.-gHn-é).
>
> (2) If you say that *h3re:g^-s has a long *e: because *-h3ro:g^-s
> 'fixer' was rarer than a free-occurring e-grade root noun, this can

be

> taken to imply that the attested o-grade root nouns represent those
> second members of compounds that were more frequent and therefore

more

> successful. Do you mean that compounds with FOOT as the second

member

> were more frequent than FOOT itself?
>

Linear B is full of '<so-many>-po' 's "<so many>-footer"'s, and no
feet at all.

> Non-verbal exocentric compounds like *h2rg^i-po:d-s 'swift-footed'

are

> of course possible, but don't ask me to believe that they were
> overwhelmingly frequent when compared with *po:d-s (I could

consider a

> bribe, but it would have to be adequately high).

See above.

>Besides, such compounds
> are specifically non-verbal, so neither *-h3ro:g^-s 'fixer' nor

anything

> of that sort could occur in them as an agent noun governing an

object

> (as in Eng. problem-fixer)
>

> (3) In o-grade root nouns the underlying verb is very often
> intransitive, which means that such a root noun could not occur in
> verbal governing compounds at all.
>


> Finally, the original question was not so much about the vowel

grade of

> *h3re:g^- but about its anomalous long vocalism across the

paradigm.

> Even in a language like Latin, which levels out numerous

allomorphic

> features, we have <pe:s> but <pedis> (unlike <re:gis>), and this

unusual

> behaviour of h3re:g^- as opposed to other root nouns, whether e-

grade or

> o-grade, recurs in branch after branch.
>

True.


Torsten