Re: [tied] The Penultimate Accent Rule

On Fri, 02 Nov 2001 02:07:40, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>Miguel bites:
>>>*wat:er (> wódr) -> coll. *wet:ár-xe
>>>*t:áreu (> *dóru) -> coll. *t:eráu-xe
>>>*k:Wa:u (> *gWo:us) -> coll. *k:Wáu-xe
>>
>>Well, seriously now, how does your "penultimate accent rule" explain
>>the difference between the paradigms of *ph2té:r(s), *ph2trós and
>>*máh2te:r, *máh2tr(V)s?
>
>To match your seriousness, might I ask how you can expect a
>rule to solve ALL problems at the same time?

I would expect a rule about accent/stress to solve all problems
related to accent/stress.

>The penultimate
>accent rule accounts for the _overall_ irregularities in accent
>existant in IE. It can't account for changes that have happened
>later such as the acrostatic regularisation of thematic nouns,
>for instance, or the prehistorically improper accentuation of
>*máh2te:r.
>
>IE *pxte:r/*pxtros is perfectly expected by the PA rule and if the
>word were in fact an ancient root, we'd expect it to end in a vowel
>at one time. Unfortunately, it's a recently created term and
>likewise so is *maxte:r.

So the irregularity was just created recently out of nothing?

>So, your question is laced with an assumption that these words are
>ancient.

They are. Even if they weren't, how do you explain the threeway
distribution of the surely ancient suffix -men (or -ter, or -h1en, or
in fact *all* PIE suffixes ending in [at least] *-i, *-u, *-m, *-n,
*-l, *-r):

I. (n.) N. '-mn, G. -mén-s
II. (an.) N. '-mo:n, G. -mn-ós
III. (an.) N. -mé:n, G. -mn-ós

>The paradigms of *xawi- "sheep" & *k^wo:n "dog", for example,
>are better choices. They are certainly ancient roots. The PA rule
>is simply that a stem with accent on final syllable is indicative
>of a lost final vowel.

Let me see if I have this straight: *k^wó:n dropped a final vowel,
*h3ówei didn't. But why? If you don't give the why, nothing is
explained! And why did *k^wón drop the first vowel (surely, the word
derives from *k^VwVn-, otherwise we would have had *kWo:n), and why
didn't *h3ówi? (The answer to that last question is, of course,
because *k^Vwón- was accented on the 2nd syllable, and *h3ówVi- on the
first).