PD: IE 6 (schwa) = Indo-Iranian i ???

From: Piotr Gąsiorowski
Message: 20
Date: 1999-09-15

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Piotr Gąsiorowski
To: Patrick C. Ryan
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 8:25 AM
Subject: Odp: [cybalist] IE 6 (schwa) = Indo-Iranian i ???

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Patrick C. Ryan
To: Piotr Gąsiorowski
Cc: LIST-Indo-European (2)
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 11:12 PM
Subject: Re: [cybalist] IE 6 (schwa) = Indo-Iranian i ???

 

 

----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 4:30 PM
Subject: PD: [cybalist] IE 6 (schwa) = Indo-Iranian i ???

 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 6:22 PM
Subject: Odp: [cybalist] IE 6 (schwa) = Indo-Iranian i ???

 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 1999 5:31 PM
Subject: [cybalist] IE 6 (schwa) = Indo-Iranian i ???

Dear Indo-Europeanists:

I have thought for some time that the traditional equation of

IE 6    =    Indo-Iranian i


as in IE *p6te:'r = Old Indian pita'r

is incorrect. I believe a likelier explanation is that Indo-Iranian
had a series of roots with -y that corresponded to non-Indo-Iranian
roots without -y (pe/o- vs. pey-).

Does anyone think this is even worth discussing?


Pat Ryan
eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist
www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications
 
Dear Pat,
 
Unfortunately, the correspondences that lead to reconstructing PIE 'schwa' are very regular, and there is sometimes additional evidence for the presence of a PIE laryngeal next to the zero-grade vowel. If you are interested in the details, I can give you a number of examples. In order to make your point, you would need to posit improbably massive alternation between Skt roots with i and cognate non-Indic roots without it. I do not think you would be able to provide any plausible motivation for adding a glide here and there apparently at random, sometimes in root-internal position. Note that even Iranian reflexes of schwa involve no i, so the alternation would have to postdate common Indo-Iranian!
 
On the other hand, it's likely that the differentiation between *a and schwa is not PIE but restricted to Indic and conditioned by stress. More precisely, an unstressed *a would have been raised in Proto-Sanskrit, ending up as a high vowel. W. F. Wyatt (1970) defends this position in his Indo-European /a/ (University of Pennsylvania Press). In this way we could do without a phonemic schwa in PIE, if that's what you'd like to achieve.
 
Piotr Gasiorowski
 
 
Dear Piotr and IEists:
 
I fear I have left an incorrect impression of what I was saying. I meant to write *pe/oH- and *pe/oHy-.
 
I do not dispute the presence of a "laryngeal" but am questioing whether -i is the correct I-I response of 6-.
 
As for the motivation for a -y, I could speculate but before I do, what do *you* think is the motivation for -i, which appears variably in derivatives from *po:(i)-, i.e. *poH(y)-?
 
When I see Old Indian pita'r- and Avestan pitar-, I am not sure I know what you mean when you say that "even Iranian reflexes of schwa involve no i".
 
You write "an unstressed *a would have been raised in Proto-Sanskrit, ending up as a high vowel"; I find this rather questionable. Firstly, are we certain that Proto-Sanskrit /a/ was a front vowel? I would have thought it a central vowel. And secondly, what evidence do we have for the "raising" of unstressed vowels?
 
Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE@...


(501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA


Dear Pat,

I'm sorry for the silly mistake about Iranian; I should have just said that the Iranian reflexes of "schwa" differ from the Indic ones in some positions; most importantly, Iranian has no i in internal syllables (e.g. Avestan dugdar 'daughter').
 
As for glides next to laryngeals and the alternation you mention, I refer you to my article in Indogermanische Forschungen 103 (1998), pp.70-92; the title is "Strange ablauts and neglected sound changes in PIE". I wrote it acouple of years ago, but still mean most of what it contains.
 
As for the raising of unstressed vowels, the process is quite common, not to say trivial. Many dialects of English have unstressed /i/ derived diachronically from a variety of sources, as in the second syllable of naked, palace, usage. Latin has a well-known rule raising historically unstressed a's to i's, as in cano~cecini or amicus~inimicus. The vowel in question may well be raised along the central track, becoming first high, and only then fronted; it need not be front at the outset.
 
Best regards,
Piotr