From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
Message: 14095
Date: 2002-07-20
On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
> >>
> >> Type (C) is found mainly in the end-stressed instrumental (Arm. also
> >> dative?):
> >> Sanskrit:
> >> I. **-o-yh2-át > *-oyh2áh1 > *-oyya: > -aya: (no Brugmann
lengthening)
> >> Slavic:
> >> I. **-oyh2áh1 + -m > *-oj(j)a:m > -ojo~
> >> Armenian:
> >> fem. obl. *-oyyV(:)(C) > -oj^
> >>
> >> Elsewhere we have type (A).
> >
> >[JER:] You are inventing rules and types of PIE just to suit a single
> >language, and only a single inflectional type of that language. That
> falls
> >flat on its face if the -y-'s of the IIr. a:-inflection are regarded
as
> >analogical, i.e. as part of endings that were adjusted to the other
> >feminine type, which had gen. in -ya:s, dat. in -yai, instr. in -iya:.
> If
> >you add that to -aH- (or *-a:-) you get precisely -a:ya:s, -a:yai,
> -aya:.
>
> I've always found that extremely unconvincing. My solution is so much
> nicer.
That a: are influenced by i: stems is generally assumed also for the
gen.-dat.-loc. -i of Armenian a-stems; for the gen.-dat. -e of Albanian
a-stems; for OIr. gen. -e of a:-stems. I would add also the "i-Motion" of
Luwian and Lycian. I think one must accept scenarios like these here and
there. Thus there is no probative force in analyses concocted only to
avoid them.
>
> >The Arm. form in -oj^ is locative, commonly explained as a sandhi
> variant
> >of the locative particle *-dhi; it does not turn up in the inflection
of
> >old a-stems, but has its place in the "ea"-stems which are properly
old
> >neuter io-stems.
>
> Not so. -oj^ appears as the GDL(Ab) of kin "woman", an eh2-stem, and
> of mi "one", an ih2-stem. The ea-stems are only in part neuter
> io-stems (incorporated into the fem. declension due to n.pl. in
> *-yah2). The type mainly represents former feminine *yah2-stems.
> Significantly, -oj^ does *not* occur in the originally masculine
> "wo-stems" (< io-stems).
I have done you wrong by misreading your Arm. statement to be also about
the instrumental. Sorry about that.
The "ea-stems" alternate between io-stem inflection in the sg. and ea-stem
inflection in the pl., with the exception of the instr. sg. in -eaw which
is rather obviously back-formed from the instr.pl. in -eawk'. Therefore,
the type is basically o-stem in the sg., a-stem in the pl., that must be
old thematic neuters. Therefore, if they have loc.sg -oj^, the -o- is not
at all unexpected and there is little basis for diagnosing it as a
feminine sign.
I kept knoj^ and mioj^ out of the discussion because their relevance is
unclear. Birgit Olsen, The Noun in Biblical Armenian (Mouton de Gruyter
1999) 172, arrives at an analysis by bringing in the word aloj^ 'lamb'
which she derives from *H1lm.bhiH2, taking -amy-/-any- to yield regularly
-oj^- (via a nasal o). In like fashion she then derives *oj^ from gen.
*sm.-yaH2-s (or dat. *sm.-yaH2-ay, etc), taking it to have been
secondarily adjusted to the nom. mi, the result being mioj^. For 'woman'
she departs from a vr.ki:s-type extension also underlying Gk. gunaik-
(whose -k- she gets from a nom. with *-iH2-s > *-ik-s before), this giving
gen. *gWn.H2íH2os > *kany- > *koj^ -> *kinoj^ > knoj^. I have to battle
with mixed feelings here, because I am married to her and try to avoid the
stigma of being biased. She has countered my objection based on akanj^k'
"ears" by insisting that unkn is an nt- not a simple n-stem (Gk. pl.
ouata).
>
> >> [Jens:]
> >> >Give me a rule that explains the coming and going of -p- in IE,
> >> >not Sanskrit alone, and I'll take it under advisement.
> >>
> >[Miguel:]
> >> The causative suffix is in origin the verb *ey-e-ti (Hitt. iyami
"ich
> >> mache", píjami "schicke hin", uijami "sicke her"). I don't know why
> >> Sanskrit chose the variant with preverb *p(e)- to make the causative
> >> of roots ending in a laryngeal (and a few others).
> >
> >[JER:] But 'make; send' must be the verb corresponding to Gk. hí:e:mi,
> >i.e. IE *H1yeH1-.
>
> Why *must*?
Because it meets the semantics of Gk. hie:mi, med. hiemai exceedingly
well. The middle voice iyattari 'marches' ir practically identical with
híetai 'is being sent, is marched off'. Still, I must confess that the
possibility that the elusive -p- belongs to a preverb opens vistas where
nobody has seen any. But even so, the matter is of course far from
settled. For one thing, the segmentation *ey-e-ti is not even a given. The
causative only has this stem formation in the present aspect, and since
there are so many derived present stems with suffixal *-ye/o-, it demands
*very* strong motivation not to draw the -y- to aspect-forming suffix.
>
> >> [Jens:]
> >> >Greek épion is no
> >> >more secondary than Greek aorists at large, for the 3pl would have
> been
> >> >*pH3i-ént with that structure in any case.
> >>
> >[Miguel:]
> >> The point is that é in *pH3i-ént is not the thematic vowel, which I
> >> believe would have absorbed the *y.
> >
> >[JER:] the type is found in, e.g., Skt. syáti 'binds', dyáti 'binds',
> >chyáti 'cuts', all without that absorbtion.
> [...] In syáti, dyáti and chyáti we're dealing
> with laryngeals again.
Yes, that's what makes them parallel. Why claim deletion of /y/ in
*-Hy-e/o- with thematic vowel as against *-Hy-e- with a normal vowel, if
you observe it in neither case?
Jens