Re: [tied] jer / full vowel question

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 47194
Date: 2007-01-30

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 01:38:40 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>On 2007-01-29 23:42, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>
>> The pattern seems to be *téwe ~ *twé => *twé-bhy- (vs. *méme
>> ~ *[m]mé => *[m]mé-g^hy- c.q. *méwe ~ *m[w]é =>
>> *m[w]é-g^hy-), which gives Skt. táva ~ tvá- ~ túbhy- vs.
>> máma ~ má- ~ máhy-, Slavic tébe ~ tob- vs. méne ~ *mon-,
>> with different kinds of levellings, assimilations and
>> dissimilations going on.
>
>Just a thought: how about the old orthotone forms being reduplicated?
>
>**m-wé m-we > *mé me > *méme ~ *méne
>**t-wé t-we > *t(w)é we > *téwe
>**s-wé s-we > *s(w)é we > *séwe
>
>The meaning of the original elements:
>
>*m-, *t-, *s- person markers
>*-we suffix forming personal pronouns
>
>The *w was lost after labials earlier and more consistently than after
>coronals, which accounts for the different pattern of dissimilations.
>
>The enclitic forms were simply:
>
>**m-we > *me
>**t-we > *twe, *te
>**s-we > *swe, *se

My explanation is slightly different: I think that the
element *-mé/-wé in the acc/gen of personal pronouns is
cognate with the normal accusative ending *-m. The
difference is one of accentuation. Ultimately I would
reconstruct the form as *mwa (the accusative in *-a of a
demonstrative/relative pronoun *mu).

**mu-mwá > *m&mWé > *mé (acc), *méme (> *méne) (gen)
**tu-mwá > *t&mWé > *twé (acc), *téwe (gen)
**su-mwá > *s&mWé > *swé (acc), *séwe (gen)

The genitive forms appear to be derived from the accusative
forms through some kind of vrddhi.

The structure of the plural/dual oblique is similar:

pl.
*mu-atu-mwá > n.smé ~ nó(:)s
*tu-atu-mwá > usmé ~ wó(:)s
*su-atu-mwá > [smé]
du.
*mu-iku-mwá > n.h3wé ~ nóh3
*tu-iku-mwá > uh3wé ~ wóh3
*su-iku-mwá > [sh3wé]

Again, the variants nó(:)s etc. seem to be built by some
kind of vrddhi (n&smé > n&:s(me) > nós), although different
from the one in the singular.

As to túbhyam / tobojoN, I would say that Skt. /u/ is either
zero-grade of *twe-bhy-' (but the accent speaks against
that), or /ú/ is here a full-grade variant of /wé/,
something which I would normally only expect in case of a
morpheme boundary (but if the analysis *tewe < *te-mWe is
correct, there _was_ a morpheme boundary here once). Under
the former hypothesis, Slavic /o/ could be a reinforced /U/,
which again seems unlikely; under the latter hypothesis, we
would have Slavic /we/ > /o/, which is a sporadic
development I need in other cases as well (e.g. 1pl. verbal
ending *-mós < *-mWés).


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...