Re: [TIED] E-lim-mi-nate the negative...

----- Original Message -----

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2000 2:28 PM

Subject: [TIED] Accentuate the positive...

IE thematic adjectives are thought by many to be of the same origin as genitives, especially given the Hittite form of thematic genitives in -as (*-os). Many thematic nouns seem to be of adjectival origin, so perhaps the whole class developed as a result of adjective nominalisation. *wlkWos is initially stressed ('acrostatic') despite the zero vocalism, but this may be a relatively late shift (cf. contrasts like tómos 'slice', tomós 'cutting, sharp'; it seems that accent retraction could be used to distinguish thematic nouns from adjectives).

 

To me, *p@...:r/*p@... is practically the same pattern as *po:t-s/*ped-ós, with stress shifting from the stem to the inflectional ending. This contrasts with 'flexion fermée', where the stress and vowel alternation is confined within the stem.

 

Your derivation of *-e:r from **-e:n raises a number of questions. There is no *r/*n alternation in "animate" (i.e. non-neuter) paradigms. If you claim that *r was somehow borrowed from inanimate heteroclita, why did it replace *n also in the weak cases (gen., dat., loc.)? Also, even if the older form had been eliminated from paradigms, I would expect it to leave some traces in derivationally related words; but all derivatives from *p@... that I know have *r, not *n, and the same is true of other -er animates (from well-known family terms to agent nouns in *-te:r/*-to:r; note that NEUTERS in *-t@..., such as *ei-t@... 'path, route' are heteroclitic!).

 

Piotr


>(1) acrostatic: fixed accent on the root syllable  (*wekWos :*wekWes-os);
>(2) proterokinetic: accent alternating between the root and the    suffix
>(*gen-u : * g(e)n-eu-s);
>(3) amphikinetic: accent alternating between the root and the
>    inflectional ending (*pod-es: *ped-om);
>(4) hysterokinetic: accent throughout on the last syllable    (*p@...:r :
>*p@...);
>(5) mesostatic: fixed accent on the suffix    (*dHeus-o-s, *dHeus-o-i).

Alright. From what I've figured out so far, #2, #3 and #4 are related
paradigms. They hold direct evidence of the old penultimate accent law at
work and everything can be seen to be regular once the old final vowels are
restored in the right places:

         *genu/*geneus      <-  *k:eneu/*k:eneu-se
         *podes/*pedom      <-  *pet:e-se/*pet:e-m
         *p@...:r/*p@...  <-  **pextene/**pextene-se

The last example *p@...:r cannot be ancient because of its suffix *-e:r
which was the result of confusion with the similar inanimate ending *-r
which alternated with *-n in the non-nominoaccusative cases. The original
animate ending was in fact *-e:n which is also attested in other words. Mid
IE **pextene/**pextene-se would have become **p@...:n/**p@...(e)nos.

The first paradigm (acrostatic) is obviously the result of an attempt to
regularize the accent in cases where the accent would otherwise flip-flop
from one syllable to the next on the very same root.

The last paradigm is still kind of hard for me to explain. Could it be
partly linked with the *-e:- suffix found in verbs (the so-called accented
thematic)? The only suggestion I can make for why the accent should fall on
the _final_ syllable in the mesostatic is that these words are relatively
recent, acquiring a final accent for whatever  grammatical reason within the
scope of Mid to Late IE grammar. However, the mesostatic still conforms to
the penultimate accent pattern in the non-nominoaccusative cases as in the
other three "mobile" paradigms.

Suggestions to explain this last paradigm? For instance, perhaps, as I say
the formation is linked to *-e:-, a modal suffix. It may have began as an
infixed demonstrative *e within the verbal stem to denote the perfective
(something like Mid IE *ei-e?-e in the 3ps, later IE *ye:- with accent on a
merged long vowel). Perhaps, this suffix gained other functions outside the
verb, eventually helping to create thematic adjectives (*da:neu-o-), and
then creating a class of nouns that inherited this odd pattern of accent on
final syllable (*wlkWo- "wolf" seems related to this).

Just a thought. I would appreciate others.

- gLeN