Re: Laryngeals Indo-Uralic

> > > *in,-s- > *i:s- > *eIs-.
> > > And you just answered the question. It would have taken place in
> > > the donor language.
> >
> > Basically an ad hoc change, then?
>
> No, since that is part of the ar-/ur- etc language.

OK, what are some other cases where nasal+s > vowel length?

> > What is the alternate *g part, if not originally part of the
> > root,
>
> It is part of the original root. *in,#- > *i:g#.

Which language exactly does that, and what other examples there are?

And isn't the Germanic vowel short in the -k- items?

> > and where do you think the *j- there come from?
>
> There seems to be an alternation *i- <> *je-, for whichever reason.

In other words: you have no idea?

And if there is also ge- (as well as even he- in Dutch?) we can probably rule out this being some sort of vowel breiking. So now it seems these would have to be post-PG loans, leaving "ice" as older.

> > > And since I assume that to be the ar-/ur-, geminate, bird
> > > language, it would have -VnC- / -V:C- / -VC:- alternations
> > > anyway
> >
> > Let's not go there, please.
>
> Don't 'us' me. If you don't want to accept that, state why or keep your opinion to yourself.

Well: as far as I gather, you seem intent on generalizing every alternation to every remotely applicable word without paying attention to details of geographic distribution, morphological distribution, semantic distribution or generally to any details at all. A "do sound changes for free" card of sorts. Oh, and let's add that you apparently on some level accept that this isn't a single substrate language as much as a family of languages, and yet make no apparent effort to distinguish the individual languages & how this alternation works in each. So saying "a substrate did it" comes across about as useful as "a wizard did it".

If you think this is a miscaracterization, feel free to trump me with some good answers to my first two questions up there.

> > How can you tell "ice" is zero-grade, and that the -s here is the
> > same suffix?
>
> I'm guessing, of course. Linguists do that.

So let me get this right:
- This word contains /s/
- A word we know in Aestian contains /s/
- Therefore, you're guessing that this word is from Aestian???

I hope I miss'd something.

> > And that still leaves it unexplained why there is a linking vowel
> > here but not in "ice".
>
> The -a- is a participle suffix.

Per what? We kno basically nothing about Aestian.

> As you can see there aren't any meaningful objections to it.

Too bad you're not the one who gets to call if there are any objections.

> > > Pokorny is only able to able to unify the "ice" root by
> > > postulating semantics-less -s- and -n- suffixes.
> > > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/60884
> > > That means that root is not PIE
> >
> > That means it isn't a *single* PIE root.
>
> OK, so you want to posit three PIE roots instead of two.

> > Again, the only choices aren't "all inherited" and "all
> > substrate".
>
> True. How is that relevant?

The irony is killing me. It's relevant in that I don't have to posit three PIE roots, I can posit one PIE root and two loanwords, and any number of similar permutations on that.

> > The fact that Germanic ends up with two forms > "ice", "icle"
> > points to one form being inherited (at least to some depth) and
> > another loan'd.
>
> No it doesn't. It's your choice among several possible alternatives.

The alternatives for their dating are:
1) both are loaned simultaneously
2) both are loaned at different times
3) one is loaned, one is inherited
4) both are inherited, and derived from a common form

The words are of different age in Germanic in 2) and 3). Which of 1) or 4) do you want to support? I believe 1), but how do you determine thay are of the same age?

> > Anyway, what DO we make of the BSlavic form? We need only need
> > nasals on the IE side for this form.
>
> Now you're making no sense at all.
>
> UEW

(snip examples)

To restate, we only need nasals *on the IE side* for this form. That is, Germanic, Celtic and Iranian do not reflect a nasal in any sense. I don't think we can by IE data alone decide which (if any) of *g *s *n is original.

Factoring in Uralic then only really tells that *s is likely to be either an innovation or unrelated. Since Uralic comes with *j- it would be best related to the *g forms. How, I couldn't tell.

(Hungarian _jeeg_ happens to be almost exactly the required form but that's too young and too east...)

> > Your "original *iN" fails immediately since this, too, is a long
> > vowel, despite no loss of *N.
>
> The ar-/ur- etc alternation is -VNC- / -V:C- / -VC:-. This is -VNV-. No fail.

Um, your other message givs the BSlavic form as *i:n with a long vowel AND a nasal.

> > Given the geographics, I'm tempted to apply Uralic influence
> > (direct or substrate-mediated) here, and keep the rest as
> > IE-internal. That is:
> >
> > Indo-Uralic #jäng-
> > Uralic inherited *jäNi
> > IE inherited *jeg'- > Germanic, Celtic, Satem Branch X
> > Iranian ends up with *eis loaned from SBX; later loaned by
> > Germanic
> > Substrate Y ends up with *i:n- either by inheritance or
> > by loan from Uralic, which is loaned to Balto-Slavic
>
> What is Substrate Y?

Simply whatever would be mediating the word to Slavic.

Altho if a single *jek- cannot be constructed for Germanic, this scenario becomes untenable. We could switch back to considering *eis the original form, but we can't explain any of the others starting from that, so it's back to square one. Sigh.

> > > > (The correspondence is also non-trivial so the point of
> > > > divergence needs to be pre-PU or pre-PIE anyway.)
> > >
> > > I don't understand the last sentence.
> > >
> >
> > Uralic *ä and IE *ei/*i: cannot be loaned from a common form.
>
> *jän,- and *in,- can.

No. One is glide+open vowel, the other a close vowel. By "common form" I mean loaning from the one and the same form; not anything like loaning from related but distinct forms.

John Vertical