Re: [tied] Thoughts on the existence of *H1

On Sat, 15 Sep 2001 17:53:42 -0000, "Sergejus Tarasovas"
<S.Tarasovas@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
>> Yes. I was referring to the accent at the time of PIE Nullstufe (to
>> explain zero-grade in Greek, full-grade in Baltic, and probably
>> Armenian). The road from PIE accentuation to Balto-Slavic
>> accentuation is a difficult one, passing through changes known as
>> Dolobko's, Dybo's, Ebeling's, Endzeli:n's, Fortunatov's, Georgiev's,
>> Hartmann's, Hirt's, Hjelmslev's, Illich-Svitych's, Kortlandt's,
>> Leskien's, Meillet's, Nieminen's, Pedersen's, Saussure's,
>Shaxmatov's,
>> Stang's, van Wijk's and other Laws.
>
>An impressive list (one would wish to add Kuryl/owicz and Stang). A
>honest remark would be that most of the _conceptions_ (not just laws)
>behind those names (the correct spelling of one of which is of course
>Endzeli:ns) are mutually exclusive rather than mutually completing.

Indeed. I merely meant to stress that the field is a highly complex
one. Maybe, as in the case of a number of recently solved
mathematical conundrums, it will only be possible to solve the laws of
Balto-Slavic accentology with the aid of computer programs...

>Speaking seriously, as there are a number of theories connecting the
>emergence of PIE /*o/ with the stress, why exactly the stressed root
>could help /*o/ to be born in your opinion?

The stressed root prevents Nullstufe. Whether the vowel under the
stress is /e/ or /o/ is a different matter altogether. My personal
opinion is that */o/ was originally a long vowel **/a:/ (while */e/
comes from short **/a/). This explains the phonetics (/a:/ > /o:/ >
/o/ is a very common development, while /a/ > /ae/ > /e/ is not
uncommon either) and things like Brugmann's Law (in Indo-Iranian /o/
is still long /a:/, under certain conditions, in open syllables).

Since the stem is otherwise *genh1(u), the long vowel is not original
here, but the result of some lengthening rule. In general, the
thematic vowel seems to be added very often to an o-grade (lengthened)
form of the root.