Re: [tied] fable (another deja-vu)

Once upon a time there lived a king who had no son ...

'wVns &'pOn & 'taIm D& 'lIvd & 'kIN hu: 'h{d n&U 'sVn ...

'w&ns u'pAn & 'taym ð&r livd & kiN huw 'h{d no 's&n ...

There once was a childless king ...

A king there was, and he a sonless man ...

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: P&G

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2002 11:19 AM

Subject: [tied] fable (another deja-vu)

Some time ago I mentioned in discussion some modern attempts at a fable - albeit a different fable - in the style of Schleicher's Eine Fabel of 1868 (which was updated by Hirt in 1939 and Lehmann & Zgusta in 1979).

If anyone is interested, I stumbled across it again, at JIES 22 1994, p67, called "PIE a multiangular view". Scholars were invited to give their version of the PIE for a Sanskrit tale beginning a:si:d ra:ja:

I can't type out all versions of the whole tale here, but I thought you might be interested in (a) which scholars were involved (b) a taster of what they do - so I've given the first two sentences, and (c) the very different approaches of some of them. (I'll do my best with the diacritics.)

Sen Subhadra Kumar

   nu re:k's e:st. sos n.putlos e:st

Y L Arbeitman

E re:g~s es=t.   so n.~pu~t-lo-s es~t-i.

E P Hamp

   to re-'k's e'H(e)est.   so n.putlos e'h(e)est

W P Lehmann

   po'tis ghe ?est.   so'-kwe n.g.?to's ?est.

M Mayrhofer

   nu re:k's eh1est.   sos n.putlos eh1est.

J Puhvel

e-'st re-'g'.   g'o'nEos e'sme:y ne:st.

W Winter

   e:st nu re:ks

It is interesting to compare Arbeitman's algebraic approach to Winter's more naturalisic one, and to see the variety of different ways of writing the same PIE phoneme. The choices of different vocabulary and word order, I think, tell us less. Each scholar justifies his particular choices in the JIES article.