From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 9470
Date: 2001-09-14
----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 8:20 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Thoughts on the existence of *H1
Cleverly argued!
> I think we agree that syllabic *r must surely be *[&r] and is ergo
of a VC-form. So *CrC means *[C&rC], a CVCC-syllable, **not CVC**.
Pretend syllabic liquids never existed.
I'd question "must surely", since syllabic liquids (and nasals) no
doubt exist (did you see that Czech song I posted? The Czechs have
words like [krk], [trh], [prst], [vlk], and no schwas at all). With
regard to phonological processes like Edgerton's Law PIE *-CrCV- is
treated as a sequence of two _light_ syllables (-CVCV- rather than -
CVC.CV-). I have no problems with the idea that syllabic liquids and
nasals existed in PIE. Otherwise it's difficult to explain why, e.g.,
in Greek or Sanskrit *-VN- combinations are retained, while syllabic
nasals become [a] (not [an] or the like).
Of course in _most_ individual branches syllabic consonants came to
be pronounced asynchronically as *-VN-/*-VR- or *-RV- combinations,
but even so divergent *V values show that this development is post-
PIE. E.g. syllabic *r happens to be reflected as such in Indo-Aryan
(and possibly in Old Iranian), but otherwise gives Hittite and
Armenian *ar, Italic *or, Germanic *ur, Celtic and Albanian *ri,
Balto-Slavic *Ir/*Ur, Greek *ar/*ra, etc. It's far less trouble to
derive all these reflexes directly from syllabic *r than from
anything like *&r.
> So what if we find *-CerH1C-? This should be a trivial case as
well. Here we have *CVCVC as always, but since *H1 equals the
unmarked vowel *[&] in this case, "full" vowels like *e or *o take
precedence over the schwa. Hence here, we should most often find *-
CerH1C- > *-Ce:rC-.
Which is precisely what we don't find, except in Balto-Slavic; but
there we also have *-Ce:rC- from *-Cerh2C- [-erx-] -- the amazing
coincidence I mentioned. If you assume that compensatory lengthening
is to be expected in *-C&r&C-, it's hard to see whay it doesn't
happen in *-C&reC- or *-Cer&C- in the same branches.
> Now for the attack... If *H1 were truely either *[?] or *[h],
should we not find cases where *H1 has affected a preceding stop? If
it were *[h] we should find sequences like *dH1 becoming *dh, nicht
wahr? If a glottal stop, we should find correlations with Kartvelian
ejectives in loans that demonstrate such a thing. If the latter were
true, it would facilitate the development of ejectives in IE just
like its neighbours, yet we simply don't see such a thing aside from
highly tentatively in Armenian.
This is a valid argument. Alas, cases of aspiration in *-Ch1-
combinations may be accidentally difficult to find, since *h1 is
rarer than *h2 in positions where stops might be affected. In *dHeh1-
*dH is already aspirated, and *deh1- or *geh1- (not to mention *beh1-
) don't seem to be attested. I'll see if any examples can be found
(maybe before the *-h1en- suffix?).
P.S. Here's one example that has just occurred to me: *speh1-
'thrive, increase', Skt. spHira- 'abundant' < *sph1-ró- (like stHita-
< *sth2-tó-), cf. Latin prosper.
Piotr
----------
As regards Miguel's and Sergei's comments: I think syllabic *r in
common Slavic is a secondary development, from B-Sl *ir/ur. I suspect
that the same may apply to Sanskrit, where syllabic /r/
and /ir/, /ur/ are virtually in complementary distribution (if we
exclude loanwords). Note that "long syllabic *r" gives Skt. /i:r ~
u:r/.
Piotr
Piotr
--- In cybalist@..., "Sergejus Tarasovas" <S.Tarasovas@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
>
> > And /r./ was still syllabic in the Common Slavic period, as is
> proven
> > by the fact that the reflexes show great dialectal variety: we
have
> > true syllabic /r./ in Serbian/Croat, Slovenian, Czech and Slovak;
> > /er/, /or/ (< /Ir/, /Ur/) in Russian; /rI/, /rU/ in Church
Slavonic;
> > /&r/ (CrC) and /r&/ (CrCC) in Bulgarian; and we have /ier/ (~
> <ierz>)
> > and /ar/ in Polish [the latter form directly disproving any
> > possibility of reconstructing /Ur/ [alternating with /rU/] in
Common
> > Slavonic, as Bräuer tries].
>
> Very interesting. I can also add some Old Russian dialects had
> even /UrU/, /IrI/, /UrY/ etc (see my posting on Krivichian). If we
> assume the Balto-Slavic stage, then we have to postulate true
> syllabic /r./ for BS and, as East and West Baltic languages split
is
> usually ascribed to the middle of the I millenium BC and the
> registered Baltic languages doesn't demonstrate the syllabicity
> of /r./ in any way, we have to come to conclusion Proto-Slavic was
> much more archaic in that point in phonetical terms that the Baltic
> languages, which would be a strange exception.
>
> Sergei