Re: [tied] How many laryngeals?

The ending *-s occurs in the Nom.sg., and so does a lengthened vowel, but the fact that they occur in the same environment doesn't automatically establish a cause-and-effect relation between them.

*-s does not cause lengthening in genitives like *gHosteis, *suHnous or *drous (not to mention thematic *-o-s, which may just not be ancient enough). On the other hand, we have long-vowelled neuter Nom.-Accs. like *wedo:r, *ph2uo:r, *ke:r(d). The presence of *-s is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for "nominative lengthening" (not that I'm sure what caused it).

What I'm gonna say now is unorthodox, but -- shh... -- I doubt if *-eh2 > *-a: is true word-finally. Compensatory lengthening preserves syllable weight, and final consonants are typically "weightless" (non-moraic) under normal conditions. I'd rather expect *-e:h2 > *-a:h2 > *-a: and *-eh2 > *-ah2 > *-a (Nom. and Voc., respectively, exactly like *ph2te:r, Voc. *ph2ter, cf. z^ena vs. z^eno in Slavic). Greek also reflects unlengthened Nom./Acc. coll. n. *-ah2 > *-a (cf. eugene:s m./f. vs. eugenes n.).

It's extremely doubtful if Latin -ik-s can be regarded as a direct reflex of *-ih2-s. Martinet was a great enthusiast of "laryngeal hardening" in derivations like *seneh2-s > senex (: *seneh2-to-s

> sena:tus), but these analyses have been shown to be flawed in too many

respects to be taken seriously. I'm tempted to reconstruct the oldest stratum of feminines in *-i: as *-éi-h2 > *-i:h2 -- a "closed inflection" paradigm with Gen.sg. *-i-ah2-s > *-(i)ja:s), etc. (e.g. *smeih2 > *smi:h2, Gen. *smijah2s 'one (f.)').

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2000 3:01 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] How many laryngeals?

On Fri, 24 Nov 2000 09:39:34 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote: >_I_ know it ain't compensatory, but many people believe it is. Sorry, I thought you had in mind something like Szemerényi's **-ers > **-err > *-e:r (plus the idea of analogical spread of lengthening to *wo:kWs, etc.). I have in mind something along the lines of what Jens Rasmussen claims: the lengthening was caused by the *-s itself, independent of whether it later disappeared or not. Which is why I dragged in the sigmatic aorist. And which is why I don't think the a:-stem's nom.sg. *-ah2 is to be construed as *-e:h2. Maybe if there was an *-s there once, but Latin -a (*-eh2) vs. -ix (*-ih2-s) makes me doubt that.