Re: [tied] Re: [pieml] PIE rhotacism

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

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2001 12:29 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: [pieml] PIE rhotacism

> I believe -n and -m (like -d and -t) are impossible to distinguish by their reflexes (merged or lost).  We know that *septm is *septm because we have *septmós, and for *dek^m(t) the Baltic evidence (des^imt etc.) is decisive. 

 

"We suspect" would be more accurate. If final *-m : *-n merged, there's no telling to what extent analogy has confused things (like, say, <kHtHo:nos> after <kHtHo:n> -- so why not *sept[m]mos after *septm?). Note that Lithuanian has <devyni> _and_ <septyni>; cf. also Germanic *sibun- (although Gk. hebdomos looks like conclusive proof of PIE *-m- in the ordinal, since its <-m-> cannot be analogical within Greek).

 

> By the same token, *newn has been postulated on the basis of e.g. Lat. nonus.  You are right that assuming a development *newn > *newm, because *newn should have given *newr, contains an element of circularity, but calling that an invitation to "opem [Freudian typo?] Pandora's box" seems exaggerated. The development *newn > *newm is plausible, given *septm and *dek^m, it's just unfalsifiable.

 

Not a Freudian slip, just a mild joke intended by the typer ;). The "Pandora" type of question I had in mind was something like: "How do you know that the animate acc.sg ending (and the thematic inanimate nom./acc.sg. ending) was *-m, not *-n?" (and no circularity, please, like "It can't have been *-n because it was not rhotacised").

> My sources (IEW, EIEC) indicate that <ageiro:> is from the root *ger- "to gather" (*n-ger- ?).

 

I suppose it would have to be analysed as *sm-gerje-, but where's the expected Attic aspirate? Post-Pokorny research (I can provide you with precise references tomorrow) has yielded more convincing etymologies for a whole set of such forms, relating them to *h2ag^- with heteroclitic extensions. Anttila connects <aga-> (*'contest, game') as in <aga-klutos> with <ago:n>, regarding the latter as originally collective. Note also the relation between <pieira> (Skt. pi:vari:) and <pio:n> (Skt. pi:van-), where *-wo:n alternates with *-wer-ih2.

>> Where do locatival adverbs like *ud-en come from?

> I'm not sure what you're referring to.

 

"Endingless locatives" like Vedic udan, ahan, Hitt. dagan. They were in fact denominal adverbs based on the bare stem and loosely connected with the corresponding declensions, which could be expected to make them resistant to analogy. Their independence is underlined by the facy that <udan> is the sole surviving member of its paradigm in Indo-Aryan.

> What I'm wondering is where do the locatival pronouns in *-r come from?  (Germanic where, there, Lith. kur~?)

 

Any evidence that it comes from *-n?

> In the cases of the vocative and the locative I most certainly reserve the right to invoke analogy: the vocative aligned itself with the strong forms and the locative (aided perhaps by early affixation of *-i) with the weak forms.

 

Nobody can deny you that right, but there's always a price to pay for invoking analogy, especially if the proposed analogical levelling is so thorough there are no relict forms to show as fossils of the older state of affairs.

 

Piotr