Re: Brugmann's Law

On 2008-01-15 17:29, Mate Kapović wrote:

> A question on Brugmann's Law. It is widely known that sometimes there is
> no Brugmann's Law in Sanskrit when we would expect it and this has to be
> explained in various reasons.
> Mayrhofer's solution is that Brugmann operates only in front of *m/n/l/r
> but I find that impossible since we have forms like acc. pá:dam, nom. pl.
> pá:das, nom. pl. gá:vas etc.

I agree it's untenable.

> However, that gave me a new of the top of the head idea (probably not new,
> it's probable that it's old and that I've never seen it) - maybe Brugmann
> operates only in front of voiced consonants? This would explain rasá: ~
> Slavic rosa (no need for the laryngeal), pátis (but this is easily analogy
> to *poty-), ápas ~ Latin opus (but this could be due to *h3e-, and not
> real *o-) and, most convincingly to me: katarás ~ Greek póteros, Slavic
> kotorU, Lith. katra`s etc.

The possibility has been mentioned...

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/25937

... and looks quite attractive at first blush, given that the most
puzzling exceptions all seem to be words with voiceless obstruents.

> Now, I cannot think of an example with unvoiced consonant and Brugmann's
> Law? Any examples? I haven't really looked seriously for examples, one
> obvious candidate is nápa:t which indeed has -a:- as from Brugmann in all
> the right places (nápa:tam etc.) but according to Macdonell there is no
> *napat- attested in Vedic so one cannot see the oposition short-long.

Possible counterexamples are perfects of CVC roots such as 3sg. tatá:pa
vs. 1sg. tatá:pa (< *tetópe, *tetoph2a). Admittedly, these may be
analogical <cakára/caká:ra> etc., but the <napa:t-> case is harder to
explain, and for me, personally, the crucial piece of evidence is the
'water' root *h2ap- (nom.sg. *h2o:ps, acc. *h2opm., gen. *h2ap(V)s,
inst. *h2apeh1, nom.pl. *h2opes, loc. *h2apsu, etc.). There is no
quantitative levelling in this word in IIr., so we can trust the
lengthening in the nom.pl. á:pas (vs. its absence in the gen. apás, ins.
apá:) as evidence of Brugmann's Law.

Piotr