Okay. I've been listening to the back-and-forth interplay between
Miguel and Piotr on the subject of the proposed PreIE *-n>*-r sound
change and I think it's time I spoke up on my thoughts.
First of all, Piotr devilishly uses *uden to downplay the likelihood
of the early sound rule as if it were absolutely certain that this
form dates back to the time of the sound change which is, in my
examination, likely to have occured an entire millenium before
common IE. Since a lot can happen in a millenium, I think there
is ample room indeed for analogical changes to have occured after
*-n became *-r.
It's also unfair to whip out a single form without fully examining
how it relates to the rest of the paradigm and the history of that
paradigm. Further, I find *weden/*uden suspect because the vocalism
of the second syllable should have been *-o-, given the alternation
*wodr/*wedo:r. I think it's time to explain what really happened...
Now, the Penultimate Accent Rule, that Miguel unfortunately resists
to his theorizing detriment, is justified because it serves to
efficiently explain unintuitive accent shifts in both declension
and conjugation as well as to unify seemingly unconnected paradigms
together. It is its efficiency that I offer as proof of its reality
and makes the idea of an PreIE loss of final vowels unavoidable.
The above rule combined with Vocalic Constraint Theory and
my new understanding of paradigmatic alternations in stem vocalism,
allow me to reconstruct the following Mid IE paradigm for *wodr,
after the proposed sound change of *-n>*-r had occured:
nom-acc/loc/voc sg. *w�t:er
gen.sg *wet:en-�se
gen.pl *wet:en-�ne
Here, the above forms regularly change to *wodr, *wednos and
*wednom without problems. We also see that *wet:ar-xe (*wedo:r)
was coined at this time, showing the original vocalism
alternations. The locative form wasn't any different from the
nominative at this point in time aside from the lack of the
postpositional *se of the nominative amongst animate forms (eg:
NOM *kewane se // LOC *kewane bei). Also note that the weak case
forms regularly show *wet:en-.
With the loss of final vowels came a new mobile accent pattern. The
paradigm changed as follows:
nom-acc/loc/voc sg. *w�t:er
gen.sg *wet:en-�s
gen.pl *wet:en-�n
Then, all other unstressed vowels (aside from strengthened vowels)
began to drop and vocalic resonants started to form...
nom-acc/loc/voc sg. *w�t:r
gen.sg *wet:n-�s
gen.pl *wet:n-�n
It was at _this_ point, one sunny day in 5100 BCE, that a
unique locative form began to develop independently from the
nominative forms because the locative came to be associated with
the weak cases. Naturally, this new form then was nothing other than the
endingless weak case stem *wet:n- with "weak case accent". That
is to say, it was given accent on the final syllable just like in
the other weak case forms seen above. Of course, with the original
vocalism of the final syllable lost, a dummy vowel *e was inserted
therein. This gave:
nom-acc/voc sg. *w�t:r
loc.sg. *wet:�n
gen.sg *wet:n-�s
gen.pl *wet:n-�n
When this happened, it opened up the door for more of these special
locative forms elsewhere (that is, until the locative was finally
given its own ending *-i). From forms such as these, it would seem
that a new class of denominal adverbs also developed which were
nothing more than zeroed versions of the endingless, accent-final
locative.
There. The mystery is solved. Any more questions?
- love gLeN
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