From: Glen Gordon
Message: 2137
Date: 2000-04-17
>From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>______________________________________________________
>Reply-To: cybalist@egroups.com
>To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
>Subject: Re: [cybalist] The long awaited athematic answer to the athematic
>question... Oy veh.
>Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 20:44:07 +0200
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Glen Gordon
> To: cybalist@egroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2000 2:23 AM
> Subject: [cybalist] The long awaited athematic answer to the athematic
>question... Oy veh.
>
>
>
>
> Glen writes:
>
> Early Anatolian and Tyrrhenian languages attest to the fact that the *-s
>nominative was not as widespread as it later would come to be. There is
>also the matter of IE compound word formations which attach a bare stem to
>another before terminating with suffixes, as if the bare stem was the
>earlier state of affairs. Inanimates also don't have this *-s marker and
>some have no endings at all. If we can accept that an earlier IE had no
>animate nominative *-s, then we must also accept that action nouns lied
>bare, identical to the root (ie: IE *geno-s < Old IE *k:ene, noun and 3ps).
> Another reason to accept this is that the athematic Tocharian 3rd person
>appears to be /-a"s./, from a demonstrative *se according to Pedersen,
>attached to a BARE root! Comments?
>
> Glen,
>
> Whoever told you that the animate *-s nominative wasn���t as widespread
>in the ���early Anatolian��� languages as in any of the later branches was
>a bloody liar. You can do what you like (within the bounds of reason) when
>venturing a deeper reconstruction, but there are comparative constraints on
>what may legitimately be claimed for PIE. What you say is simply untrue of
>PIE as reconstructible with any methods known to me.
>
> There���s a single termination in compounds just because they are
>compounds (combined stems), and not phrases (strings of words). It���s a
>universal tendency, and not an IE curiosity. The very existence of
>compounds is motivated by the wish to avoid redundancy in frequently
>occurring collocations. ���As if the bare stem was the earlier state of
>affairs��� is just an ���as if��� clause, not a legitimate conclusion.
>
> What���s this *geno-s ���action noun���? I hope you don���t mean the
>genus/genos/janas word, which is neither an action noun, nor animate.
>
> I���m not sure what the Tocharian form is supposed to prove. It
>doesn���t even go back to Proto-Tocharian (Tocharian A pik���� ���writes���
>= Tocharian B pink��M; A luk���� ���illuminates��� = B luk����M).
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Second, a reduplicative like *bhi-bher-ti or even the late IE past tense
>in *e- is a derived form and therefore lacks thematic - so it is already
>accounted for. So is *wemh- which is not necessarily a derivative but
>rather assumed as such by IE speakers who analysed it as *wem-h- (also
>*leikW- misanalyzed as *lei-kW-). Theories that claim that the thematic is
>an ancient object marker don't even begin to explain this above pattern
>well at all. Why should the "object marker" be lost in the past tense or in
>these derived forms? Sounds far fishier than my idea. Let's not confuse the
>matter with inane side theories.
>
> I don���t support that theory; I just cited it amongst other historical
>attempts to ���explain��� the thematic vowel. There have been quite a few
>of them, also along the lines you propose (though without the
>Indo-Tyrrhenian and Steppe backgroud, as far as I know). You���re very
>quick at calling other peoples��� theories inane or quack, without as much
>as having a look at what they actually wrote.
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Third, there is a misunderstanding on your part and so I will try to
>clarify: The _athematic_ ACCENTUATION is the most ancient BUT the
>_thematic_ VOWEL is also most ancient. A verb lacking thematic vowel is NOT
>ancient
> even though its accentuation is. In all, an athematic verb is either
>derivative in some form or fashion or is foreign. The adoption of athematic
>verbs would have occured before the regularisation of accent on thematic
>stems. Hope that makes better sense now.
>
> It does. Thanks.
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> The mobility of accent in *nebhes- is the proper result of my theory, by
>the way, since the stem is athematic and the idea that Semitic *napi��tu
>"soul" was loaned into early IE with the meaning of "cloud" or "mist" is
>hardly
> speculative on both semantic and phonetic grounds. To boot, the strange
>nature of the root all the more cements the likelihood of this view (a
>disyllabic indivisable root -> rather long for an ancient word; a root form
>ending in *-s for no apparent reason; a stem that could be so well
>explained in Semitic just like *septm, if only those crusty IEists would
>accept the concept of foreign loans in early IndoEuropean, which surely
>must have occured.)
>
> *nebHes- itself isn���t mobile; I just said that there were OTHER
>archaic-looking mobile *-(e)s neuters, such as those functioning as
>infinitives in older Vedic, or as Hittite ais, Gen. issas ���mouth���.
>
> Not speculative on semantic grounds? You must be kidding, or have a very
>liberal attitude towards semantic derivations. This particular one is NOT
>IMPOSSIBLE, but still SPECULATIVE. The neuter *nebHos (*nebHes-) isn���t
>strange at all; we also have *gen(h)os, *nemos, *wekWos, etc., all with the
>same vocalism ��� a highly productive pattern, in fact. To be sure,
>there���s no *nebH- directly attested as a verb root, but this may be an
>accidental gap, since *nebhos is not alone in IE. We have *nebH-(e)lo- (as
>in nebula), and the zero grade in *mbH-ro- (Greek aphro-, Latin imber). The
>semantic range of all these words is clearly meteorological: cloud, sky
>(Hittite, Slavic), mist, foam, rain. Something like ���mist/cloud over���
>would work better as the prototypical meaning.
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> I'm not concerned with whether "eye" and "heart" were neuters in Late IE
>since IndoAnatolian didn't have a "neuter" gender, Piotr. We're talking
>about whether the forms are animate or inanimate in this stage of IE. I
>could swear I had a similar discussion with people on another IE list
>concerning the _animacy_ of "heart". I had assumed that "heart", at least,
>was "inanimate" because they showed up as neuters lacking accusative *-m in
>Late IE as you point out. To my surprise, I was hearing the direct
>opposite. I recall something like Hittite /karatan dai/ which seems to
>display an
> _animate_ form with *-m. Is it possible that you are getting two stages
>of IE confused? What is your explanation for the infix -t- in Greek opt- if
>it isn't from IE? Certainly if *-t- did once exist, there would be phonetic
>motivation to lose it in the nominative and then subsequently throughout
>the paradigm but I don't see a motivation to add a -t- in Greek.
>
>
> Here's my table again, just in case you "rejected it out of hand":
>
> OIE *merec-/*merece "remember/(he) remembers"
> MIE *merc-/*merc(e)
> IE *mers-/*mers-t,*mers-ti
>
> OIE *hWegWec/*hWegWet:em "eye (nom/acc)"
> MIE *hWegW(e)c/*hWegWtem
> IE *hWekWt-s/*hWekWtm
>
> OIE *kerec/keret:em "heart (nom/acc)"
> MIE *ker(e)c/*kert:em
> IE *kert-s/*kerdm
>
>
> Glen, the IE part of these reconstructions is absolutely indefensible,
>pace Glen Gordon [above]. Consequently, it would take a leap of faith to
>trust the deeper reconstructions. Instead of changing or modifying your
>examples so that they can at least be seriously discussed you just give me
>the same old rubbish again. Is this an application of the Bellman���s
>���rule of three���? (���I have said it thrice: / What I tell you three
>times is true.���) If so, I���m not going to wait for another presentation.
>I gave you a fair warning the first time, and feel free to reject the table
>out of hand, right now.
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> Also, Piotr, the perfect/imperfect thing that you're confused about is
>exactly what's found in Encyclopaedia Brittanica concerning the IE division
>of verbs into "imperfect" (*leikW-), "perfect" (*steH-) and "stative"
>(*es-,
> *woid-). Stative verbs could neither be perfect nor imperfect. However,
>imperfects could be made perfects and vice versa. I often call the
>imperfect "active" and the perfect "stative" still acknowledging the
>special nature of
> verbs like *es- and *woid-. The active/stative (or imperfect/perfect)
>mirrors the mi-class and hi-class system of Hittite and it's evident that
>the imperfects and perfects of late IE languages such as Sanskrit and Greek
> are derivative from a system that classified verbs into such an
>active/stative system. This is nothing new so don't fly off the handle at
>me about it. Ask your colleagues.
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> I���m not confused, Glen. The EB presentation of the aspect system is
>deceptively short, but you didn���t read it with care. The author attempts
>to explain too much in three short paragraphs. He fails to draw a clear
>distinction between ���aspect��� as an inherent semantic category (the
>nature of action associated with a given root), ���aspect��� as expressed
>with lexical means (as in derived iterative, inchoative or
>���progressive��� stems), and ���aspect��� as a paradigmatic category (the
>traditional present/aorist/perfect = imperfective/perfective/stative
>triad). At any rate, he is careful enough to emphasise the distinction
>between ���perfect��� and ���perfective��� (something YOU confuse), and
>besides he doesn���t classify *es- as ���stative��� but as
>���imperfective��� (which it should be, the Hittite form being es-mi).
>
> Piotr
>