From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 14217
Date: 2002-08-04
>> >1. Alternation ó / zero depending on accent. This is practicallyObviously, the quality of the root vowel here was /o/. However, it
>only seen
>> >in reduplicated verbal categories
>>
>> There are some examples of ó/zero in the nouns as well (e.g.
>> *pónt(e)Hs, *pn.tHés).
>
>I took pains to present matters in the simplest way possible (without
>deliberately telling lies), so I left out the
>section "Lexical //o//", in part because I am not fully sure that
>*is* the correct understanding, but this is one of the principal
>cases in point. I see no reason at all for the root's having -o- in
>*pónt-o:H2-s, *pn.t-H2-ós other than the mere fact that a root must
>have *some* vowel timbre, and why would /o/ be excluded? That would
>make /pont-/ the unconditioned form of the root concerned, and, being
>a short vowel, its /o/ would alternate with zero. For this particular
>lexeme, the analysis has the slight drawback that the underlying root
>form cannot be used directly for Germanic *finth-i/a- (Goth. finthan,
>Eng. find). However, that obstacle can be overcome by the assumption
>of ablaut normalization in Germanic where e-a-zero-zero was
>productive with roots of the structure CVRC-. I therefore draw no
>inferences from pons, póntos, poNtI, hun concerning IE ablaut. But I
>admit that the o-vocalism is kind of unusual, so if I could create a
>rule to derive the o from an old e here, I would not hesitate to use
>it.
>>>thus (1) perfect *kWé-kWór-e, 1plI wasn't thinking of Iranian, but of Sankrit neuter nouns like áhar
>>>*kWe-kWr.-mé, (2) intensive *wr.-wórt-mi, 3pl *wér-wr.t-n.ti, (3)
>>>causative aorist, athematic kind, 3sg *H1gi-H1gór-t > Ved. áji:gar
>>>'awakened', as opposed to the thematic kind (old middle?) *wé-wkW-e-t
>>>> Ved. ávocat 'spoke'.
>>
>> The reduplicated aorist has o-grade? I see only evidence for
>> zero-grade (aji:gar can be from *aji:gr.).
>
>No, Indic /-ar/ is full grade; *-r. yields /-ur/; you are no doubt
>thinking of Iranian which has /-ar/ also from *-r. And, from svap-,
>the corresponding form is sís.vap (2sg inj.), it's no use making that
>a zero-grade. I chose velar roots in my presentation in order to show
>the lack of palatalization.
>> >3. A related regularity has produced nom.sg. with /o:/ from stemsThat fails to explain the -n-.
>with
>> >underlyingly long /e:/, as *pe:d- 'foot' => nom. *pó:d-s. All such
>cases
>> >are animate and contain the nominative marker (or its effects)
>>
>> What about *wódr, *wédn(e)s?
>
>I left that out too to avoid provoking the wolves. You may recall an
>earlier discussion we had where I referred to my analysis of the o-
>type of heteroclitics (and the like) as original collectives-turned-
>singular (published in the Schindler memorial volume, Compositiones
>Indogermanicae, Praha 1999). If the weak cases have -e-, we have to
>depart from long -e:-; to get that to have o-timbre can be handled by
>lengthening, and, hurrah, the old collective marker *-H2 lengthens.
>In 'water' I then posit *wé:d-r-H2 (using, for the underlying form,
>the Szemerényi-inspired rule that some suffixes are vowelless if the
>stem ends in less than three consonants, as is here the case with /-
>Vd-r/); in that form, the collective desinence will lengthen
>producing *wó:dr-H2, and the cluster preceding the desinence will
>subsequently cause shortening, the expected result being thus *wód-r-
>H2. If the collective meaning is lost (how much water is "a lot"?),
>there may be backformed an unmarked "singular" *wód-r., which, I
>submit, is what we have. I therefore take *wód-r. to be a collective
>form, while *yé:kW-r. 'liver' is the undisturbed singular of that
>particular lexeme. The presence of the collective marker is confirmed
>quite strongly by Skt. ásthi 'bone', which has -o- in most languages,
>but also shows -a- (Welsh as 'rib', asgwrn 'bone'), and so, again,
>must be based on *-e:- which is shortened in weak cases, producing
>*H2ést- > *H2ást-, and lengthened before the collective marker to
>give *H2ó:st-H2 > PIE *H2óst-H2/*H2óst-&2 (Skt. ásthi with aspiration
>and schwa).
>>>Why would we have IE *dhor-, *tog-, *bhor-, butAha. So it's the *s, not the *y, that makes it different from
>>>*k^ubh-, *bhug-? I have investigated the matter at length and found that a
>>>given root-structure type consistently uses either the form with -o- or
>>>the form with zero in such formations, thus also *tomH1-áH2 (Gk. tomé:),
>>>*tois-áH2 (Lith, tiesà) like *g^onH1-éye- (OE cennan, Ved. janáyati) and
>>>*tois-éye- (Lith. taisýti).
>>
>> I can see no difference in principle between a syllable structure -eys
>> and a structure -ewg (except for the voicing of the final consonant).
>> Do you have an explanation?
>
>It is a descriptive fact of many, many languages that the phoneme /s/
>has a combinatory ability far exceeding that of the other phonemes.
>English has words beginning with str-, but not ktr- or ltr-; you
>have /nekst/ ("next"), but not *neklt or *nekpt; you have marks, but
>not *markp or *markw. That is why I chose to treat /s/ as a
>phonological category of its own, a strategy that proved quite
>justified by the facts I found.
>"Blocking of zero-grade" is not an option,OK, I can accept that. But my question was in essence whether we also
>for that would not explain the vanishing of laryngeals and the
>reduction of -mn-, events that demand articulatory crowding of
>consonants. The syllabification of the retained -R-'s (if now we call
>them that) will have to wait until zero-grade has been reached and
>the result is one massive array of consonants (mostly a very long
>monosyllable). In *that* intermediate stage, which may have been
>shortlived, given its complex nature (which, however, is still not as
>extreme as that of Modern Georgian or Itelmin), laryngeals were
>weakened, but to begin with not lost entirely: In *pRrH2mnéH2, the
>first H2 was reduced (let me call the product h2 with lower-case h);
>in a sense, laryngeals in that environment were on Death Row, waiting
>for the inevitable execution. Now, in *pRrh2mnéH2, or already
>*pRrh2néH2 in case -mn- was processed earlier, which we can't know,
>the -R- was syllabified in a *relatively* early period which comes
>now, changing the form to *porh2néH2. In a comparable derivative from
>a light root, as *kRr-m(n)-é-z, the was no such vocalization yet. At
>some unknown point in time after the early round of infix
>syllabification the weakened laryngeals were lost (h2 > zero). Now,
>while we are still waiting for the second round of infix
>syllabification (in lighter sequences), the INITIAL ACCENT RULE is
>born, changing *por(h2)néH2 to *pórneH2, but not affecting *kRrméz.
>Then, finally, we have R > o (and thematic vowel to e/o depending on
>voicing), this giving *pórneH2 and *kormóz, whence PIE *pórnaH2 and
>*kormós.
>> Perhaps, then, one of the two phenomena has a differentI was insinuating no such thing. I merely hinted at the possibility
>> explanation than that of heavy clustering. Was there something
>> about *R itself that caused laryngeals to disappear? Did the retraction
>> of the stress have something to do with the loss of the laryngeal (or
>> viceversa: maybe there are some clues in the later development of
>> Balto-Slavic accentology?).
>
>I utilized the evidence of Balto-Slavic accents to the complete
>despair of my critics (including the evaluation board of my thesis in
>the mid-1980's). Taking the evidence collected by Illic^-Svityc^ and
>his school, and going on in the same vein, I found that BSl. showed
>the exact same picture as Greek. I am not above learning, but I do
>not accept the insinuation that I disregarded Balto-Slavic.