Re: Re[4]: [tied] Re: *a/*a: ablaut

On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:03:15 +0100, "fournet.arnaud"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:

>The plene spelling.
>
>Anyway, the length of /e:/ in Hittite is irrelevant (all
>short /e/'s are lengthened when stressed in Hittite). What
>matters is the Ablaut /e:/ ~ /0/. In a word like *k^é:rd,
>*k^r.d-', the evidence supports that overwhelmingly. We have
>*/e:/ in Armenian sirt, Greek kê:r, Old Prussian seyr,
>Hittite ki:r and Skt. ha:rdi; and we have zero grade in
>Greek kardía, Latin cor, OIrish cride, Lithuanian s^irdis,
>OCS sIrdIce, Hittite kardiyas and Sanskrit hr.d-.
>
>Anatolian *pé:r, *pr.nás
>(Pre-PIE **pí:r-an).
>
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>=================
>
>I've looked at the data
>in the Chicago Hittite dictionary.
>
>The word house is
>written NOM. E-er
>with a logogram E "house".
>The logogram is also used
>for oblique cases
>Either par-ni- or E-i
>
>What is the reason why
>E- should be written pe:r or pi:r ?

<É-er> should be pronounced /pé:r/, just like <É-na-as^>
should be pronounced /pá:rnas/. What else could it be? This
is confirmed by the compound word <pí-ir-s^a-ah-ha-na-as^>,
said of (domestic) livestock.

>This looks like a conventional
>reading for something we don't know.
>
>Is there a single attestation
>of NOM. E being rendered
>otherwise than logogrammatically ?

No. As you can see in the CHD, there is only a Gsg.
pé-e-r[i-as^] KUB 51.56:4 (secondarily built on the model of
<ké:r>, Gsg. <ká:rdias^>, for regular Gsg. <pá:rnas>), and
it shows plene spelling.

Plene writing of vowels was used inconsistently by the
Hittite scribes (not nearly as consistently as plene writing
of consonants to indicate voiced-voiceless (lenis-fortis),
and even there we have many inconsistencies). In general,
though, there is enough material to be certain in most cases
whether a vowel is short [c.q. a consonant is voiced] (never
any plene spellings) or a vowel is long [c.q. a consonant is
voiceless] (enough plene spellings to rule out scribal
error).

The evidence clearly shows that in Hittite _all_ stressed
/e/'s were long, whether etymologically short or long. As I
already mentioned, the evidence from the other Anatolian
languages (e.g. Lydian <bira>) shows that in the case of
<pé:r>, the length _is_ etymological.


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