Re: [tied]

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

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2001 2:32 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] <pir>

> Also Hitt. haras, haranas "eagle"; memiyas, memiyanas "word, thing", etc., and other examples like the OInd. i/n-stems.  I think that, at least in most of these cases, the -n- was originally part of the root, and was lost in the nominative in various ways (**-ni > *-n^ > *-i; maybe **-nu > *-{nw} > *-u in the "tree"-words above; possibly regular
loss of -n- in the cluster -ns for the Hitt. examples, cf. acc.pl. -us < *-ns).

 

In <haras> we very likely have *hara: < *H(V)ro:n plus an analogical -s, which is why I didn't include it among my examples. I have doubts about the derivation of sius (<DINGIR-us>) from *siuns, since the Nom.pl. siwannes would imply Nom.sg. *siwa(s), IMO. I prefer to assume that <sius> had a by-form *siw-an-/siu-n- (with PIE *-on- or *-h1on-), formally corresponding to Germanic weak nouns, and that the attested pattern is suppletive, with the simpler variant surviving in the Nom./Voc. I can't check it at the moment, but I recall that the root ablative <É-ir-za> 'from home' and the root locatives <É-ir/É-ri> 'at home' (*per, *peri) are also attested beside <parnaza> and <parni>.

>> The reconstruction *per-r is a little suspect as far as I'm concerned (I'd expect a different vowel pattern in a Root-r/-(V)n- heterocliton).

> Something like **pé:r(r), **prén(o)s (like *yé:kwr, *y[e]kwén[o]s) or **pó:r, **pérn(o)s (like *wódr, *wédn[o]s)?  The pattern *pe:rr, *prnós looks indeed hysterodynamic, which is strange for a neuter and a heteroclitic.

Precisely.

>> I am aware that according to current revisions Egyptian <3> was originally a rhotic (uvular [R] or emphatically trilled [rr]) according to one camp of Egyptologists, or some kind of lateral according to the other camp; but the interpretation of <r> as [l] is new to me. What is your authority for that (and for the date)? What is the evidence for a lateral rather than, say, a tapped [r]?

> The date is from Kammerzell "Zur Umschreibung und Lautung", in the introduction to Hannig's "Grosses Handwörterbuch".  That the phoneme transcribed as <r> was originally /l/ (c.q. comes from PAA *l) is the unanimous opinion of Kammerzell, Loprieno ("Ancient Egyptian") and Schenkel ("Einführung in die altägyptische Sprachwissenschaft").  To be sure, some *l's surface in Egyptian as <n>, <3> or <j>, but <r> is always from *l.

 

[PAA >  AE]

*l      r/n/3, j
*r      3

Thanks for the references, but it seems that the whole interpretation is really a matter of opinion. The reconstruction of Middle Kingdom pronunciation via PAA smacks of obscurum per obscurius, seeing, in particular, how insecure PAA reconstructions are and what untidy Egyptian reflexes are being derived from PAA *l. Couldn't the <r>/<3> contrast have been between /r/ (tapped): /rr/ (strongly trilled, or /R/, or anything "emphatic")? Supposing MK Egyptian lacked distinctively lateral phonemes, the substitution of <r> for foreign /l/ (as in Japanese or Korean) would have been natural, while Egyptian words with <r> would have been borrowed into other languages with a rhotic.

 

Piotr