> >It isn't lost finally following a consonant? Examples?
>
>Any n.pl. in *-@2 (Skt. -i, elswhere, including Hitt., -a).
Examples?
>It was transferred to the i-stems (nom.sg. in *-is), based on the
>oblique stem *k^rdi-. The base is however a nominative form >*k^e:rd-.
>It's true that we have no direct examples of nom. *k^e:rd, >but on the
>whole, I'd say the vowel length had nothing to do with the >*loss* of *-d.
Says you. If there's no attestation, what are you buggin' me for? :)
Now, to the meat of the topic:
>>- First, in Mid IE, there were only two vowels, *a and *e (schwa).
>>- Suddenly, unaccented schwas were slaughtered
>> and didn't survive :(
>>- Then the accent changed from stress to tonal. Hooray!
>>- Some accent patterns changed as well. Boo!
>>- The remaining schwas fractured into *e (front) and *o (back).
>>- This change was dependent on the new accent _at the time_.
>> - *� > *e
>> - *e > *o
>>- Then the tonal accent did a few more twists and turns
>> to try and cover up its earlier evil deeds.
>
>I'll take it this is kinda like the "traditional" account of *e vs. >*o
>gradation (with all the devilish details taken out). I've never >liked the
>idea. I see no phonetic justifaction at all for unstressed
>whatever > /o/. Most o's (or at least a good many of them) are
>stressed anyway. Take, for instance, all the o-grade monosyllables
>(*nokwts, *po:ds, *wodr, etc. etc.).
Before I get into this, I just realized yesterday that MidIE actually DOES
have unstressed syllabic *i, *u, *m, *n, *l and *r! I have to change things
a bit because otherwise reduplication in *i (like *(s)tistex-) makes no
sense. Now, I can say that *(s)tistex- derives from an earlier MidIE form
*t-is-tex- with infix/prefix *is- (Hittite /is^-/). It would otherwise be a
very messy reconstruction... like **te-eis(e)-tex-?? So, Early MidIE "water"
is now *wat:n with final nasal vowel and, while we're at it, "bull" should
be *ist�ure with initial *i-. So beware of the updates and sorry for the
confusion. (Mental note: Must update my site)
Now, let's see... First we have Hittite /nekuz/ which looks like *nekWt- to
me, rather than *nokWt- in postAnatolian languages. Could *nokWt- simply be
a later o-grade variant?
As for *po:t (your *po:ds), it appears to be an ancient root noun. Whether
you like to reconstruct it with a nominative *-s or not, it has no bearing
on the length of the vowel which predates the nominative (acc. *po:dm). No
compensatory length happenin' here. But wait! How to account for the *o:? Oh
my, it would almost seem that I've gone up the creek... but lo! I arise from
the ashes! Apparently, it comes from MidIE *pa:t:- (from a hypothetical verb
**pat:-). Stressed *a, closed unstressed *a or *a: become labialized in Late
IE to *o. (I have some exciting things yet to elaborate on concerning
stative o-grade's like *woid-)
Going now to *w�dr, it would also appear to be derived from an *-a- stem.
This is surely an old word too. In Early IE it would be *w�t:an in the
nominative (gen. *wet:an�se) with an archaic inanimate *-an suffix that
appears elsewhere, like Early IE *kWetw-an "four". The "plural" of *w�t:an
would have been *wet:�n-xe (later *wed�:r). Note the ancient *a/*e
alternation due to penultimate accent differences? Nifty huh? Anyways, yet
again *a becomes *o. No biggy.
Now, I mentioned the o-grade stative thingie, remember? What does this have
to do with anything? Well, in case you didn't notice, IE conjugation is one
of the biggest problems to justifying an accentual origin to *e/*o ablaut.
We have things like *bher-e-si or *woid-xa which seem to almost mock me in
defiance. Well, no longer, dammit!
Turns out (and I wish someone told me this sooner), the whole damn
conjugation has resisted the *e/*o ablaut from the beginning! The reason?
Vowel harmony. It seems that non-stative verbs model themselves around
e-grade while stative verbs model themselves around o-grade. Why?? Vowel
harmony, that's why! But how exactly? I'll illustrate:
Imagine you're a hunter-gatherer speaking Mid IE around 5500 BCE. You have
the following set of stressed vowels to choose from: [*a, *@]. (Remember, I
write MidIE schwa as *e.)
Check out the singular non-stative endings:
*-em
*-es
*-et
Now, check out the singular stative endings:
*-xa
*-ta (or *-txa if you must)
*-a (later, becoming *-e)
Notice a pattern? Non-stative endings all contain schwa *e whilst the
stative endings persist with *a. The vowel harmony, therefore, involved the
assimilation of the verb root with the suffix vowels starting in MidIE. So,
in the non-stative we have things like *ber-em "I carry" but stative
*wait:-xa "I know". Ain't that real purdy? Later, most *a's become *o,
leaving a form *woid-xa which otherwise leaves us to ponder its obscure
origin.
The scary result of this revelation is that the original vocalism of these
IE verbs is lost. It will present a challenge for Nostraticists (at least
the ones who don't believe in alien conspiracies)... but thank god for
Etruscan and Lemnian which weren't affected by those vowel harmony rules,
eh?
I have a bunch more to say but I'm sleepy now. Must get sleep. Need sleep.
Zzzzzz.
- gLeN
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