Re: [tied] The phonetic value of PIE *h3 and the 'drink' root.

From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
Message: 13972
Date: 2002-07-08

Dear Sergei and List,

let me comment on your stimulating mail:

On Sun, 7 Jul 2002, sergejus_tarasovas wrote:

>
> [...] I would only like to note that the
> analogical levelling proposed for Slavic seems a bit tricky to me,
> especially considering deverbals like *pivo 'drink', *pijanU 'drunk'
> and *pivIca 'drunkard', which don't look like recent formations.

Then what *do* they look like? And if they are very old, how can we know
they have not been refashioned on the way? To me they look like
indications that there was a nucleus of truth to Martinet's notion of a
change H3 > w under unknown conditions in PIE. Of course, we'd need to
know what that nucleus was.

>
> Baltic (especially Old Prussian) indeed shows a strong support for
> the *po:-, whatever be it's origin (though the accent is not very
> clear):
>
> OPruss. inf. (<sup.) _p(o)u:ton_, inf. _poutwei_, _pou:t_ 'to drink',
> 2pl imp. _poieiti_, _pogeitty_, _puieyti_, _puietti_ (lege  *puieyti),
> 2sg imp. _pogeis_.
> On this base Maz^iulis reconstructs sup. *po:tun, inf. *po:t(wei)
> (that's easy!) and 2pl imp. *po:jaiti, 2sg. imp. *po:jais resp. pres.
> *po:ja- (he considers the imperative forms to be barytones, hence
> unstressed *o: > unstressed *u: > (open) *u).

You mean "non-barytones", as M. writes. That is contrary to Hirt's Law,
but still may be correct, if analogical, reflecting as it does a
productive stem-formation of younger reshaping.

> OPruss. _poadamynan_ 'süsse Milch', if from *po:dam-in-a- 'drinkable'
> (with dialectal merger of *o: and *a: like in _da:t_ 'to give'),
> would point to an alternative West Baltic pres. *po:da-, probably
> from *po:- + *-da-, cf. Lith. _vérda_ 'is boiling'.
>
> It's quite possible, that Lith. _puota`_ (acc. _puo~ta,_) 'feast'
> also belongs here, if from deverb. adj. *po:ta: 'what is drunk' (with
> acute->circumflex metatony, sometimes accompanying derivation adj. ->
> subst.).

Exactly! That's what nouns derived from adjectives by change of accent
placing get if they are formed in so late a period that there were no more
acutes to be handed out. It's all in the timing - that's why it hit the
Slavic loanwords also (kny~gaN and all that).

> As to the phonetic status of *h3, I'm still not sure that this _only_
> example envolving *peh3i- is enough to state it was voiced.

It's not based on this alone anymore. Most scholars however accept only
this item, or at most Hamp's brilliant analyis of Celtic *abon- 'river'
along with it, this being *H2ap-H3Vn- with the "Hoffmann suffix" of
belonging (actually a compositional part forming mass nouns, including
mass possession when they are bahuvrihis). By the change *-pH3- > -b- the
Celtic loss of *-p- (Skt. gen. ap-ás, nom.pl. á:p-as) is prevented.
Birgit Olsen has found a rather substantial number of examples of
derivatives with this suffix which, when added to stems in -t- (or perhaps
better, in -s-/-t-), or to stems in -k- (in part from hardened
laryngeals), turn these into derivatives in *-don- and *-gon-
respectively; thus Latin de-adjectival abstracts in -tu:s, -tu:t-is have
synonyms in -tu:do:, -tu:dinis; and vora:x, -a:cis forms vora:go:,
-a:ginis. Particulars are on their way in the press, you'll have to wait a
litttle while. The new examples (some of which were in fact presented in
the Pedersen memorial volume of 1994) have extracted píbati and afon from
their isolation.

Jens

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