Re: [tied] IE genitive

>
> Jens:
>>I would take it up as a good suggestion if it had not been disproved
>> over and over again. But yes, most ablaut was caused by the accent; and
>> yes, unaccented short vowels used to be deleted. Only, that does not
>> mean that all unaccented short vowels are of a younger make,
>
> Strangely, you are only serving to back yourself _into_ my theories
> since I do _not_ think that _all_ unaccented short vowels were
> deleted! Please note the "paradigmatic resistance", as we seen in
> *pedos (not **pdos), that I just grilled Miguel with! It is the
> fact that we never see asyllabic stems in paradigm-derived forms
> that shows us that, indeed, the *e here is probably from *& which
> failed to disappear in Mid IE *p&d-as& despite being unstressed.

Well, fine up to a point. The basic argument against accepting the
thematic vowel as "old" (meaning as old as the ablaut or older) is the
idea that they would have been lost if they were that old. That makes
sense if (1) there is a rule deleting all unaccented short vowels, (2)
nothing else develops into the thematic vowel, and (3) the thematic vowel
is always unaccented. Prerequisite (2) is unknown, and (3) is false. I'll
come back to that.

> However, thematic vowels are just different from all this. Starting with
> what we know about them...
>
> Thematic vowels are found in both verbs and nouns. We see it just
> as well in *bHer-e-ti and *bHer-o-mes as we do in *to-m and
> *ekw-o-syo. Due to this, despite Miguel's pleas, thematic vowels
> do not seem to have any inheirant meaning attributed to them.
> There is no evidence that they are meaningful morphemes. Therefore, the
> reason why they present themselves in so many differing words
> must involve a trivial, subconscious process in the language,
> rather than a conscious and meaningful one.

There is very solid evidence that the thematic vowel meant something,
either on its own or as part of suffixes ending with it. It formed
ordinals from cardinals, and subjunctives from injunctives, both without
any apparent assistance. It is a frequent component of suffixes that are
stressed on it, and by the force of that stress, reduces the rest of the
word to zero-grade. That's what we find in adjectives in *-ró- and
participles in *-tó- and in present stems in *-sk^é/ó-. Accent on this
vowel is here feeding the ablaut.

> The thematic vowel alternation *e/*o appears to be best explained
> by originally being the same vowel with trivial vowel lengthening
> before voiced segments (something we see in a number of other
> languages). The lengthened counterpart must have become *o and the short
> counterpart became *e over time. At any rate, they were once one vowel,
> to be certain.

I am flattered that this is being accepted. I am sure it's basically true.
I don't know why you are so bent on calling it length, though. Anyway, it
certainly appears that IE stem-final -o-/-e- alternated in dependency of
voice vs. voicelessness in the following segment. So, a single vowel, oh
yes.

> So, they are not a morpheme and they were a single vowel, which we may
> write as *&. Thus for thematic words like *ekwo-, the
> antecedent form appears to be *ekw&-. The funny thing about these
> thematics however is that they both have this "most peculiar" vowel AND
> there accent has been secondarily regularized to the initial
> syllable. Funny hunh? We know that it has been regularized for the
> simple fact that it does not exhibit the more unintuitive pattern
> seen in athematics like *kwon-. Surely, we would not pick the
> acrostatic pattern as representative of anything ancient because
> it is too regular to be real! (Or perhaps, Jens, you would for sheer
> arguments sake...)

I'm struggling to follow ... Many, very many, thematic stems are not
stressed on the initial. What is funny here? You funning us?

>
> Given this, thematics and their thematic vowels in both verbs and
> nouns show nothing but innovation. They do not exhibit the more
> ancient pattern seen elsewhere and cannot possibly represent it.
> So, we must suspect that the thematic vowel is also an innovation.

Ironically, if the thematic structure is subjected to normal ablaut, it
comes out the same: Pre-ablaut *perk^-sk^é-t, 3pl *perk^-sk^e-ént would
become first *prk^sk^é-t, *prk^sk^e-ént; then, with the initial accent
rule (which I see is accepted by Miguel) *prk^sk^é-t, *prk^sk^é-ent; then,
with continued ablaut reduction, *prk^sk^é-t, *prk^sk^é-nt; whence
finally, with the thematic vowel rule, PIE *prk^sk^é-t, *prk^sk^ó-nt. The
fact that the thematic vowel is never followed by the accent means that it
must date back to a time preceding the initial accent rule. Now, ablaut
worked also *after* the initial accent rule, because it was fed by it.

> To conclude that it is most ancient ignores all the facts.

Oh yeah? I must conclude the opposite.

> As I've said, this innovation is the misanalysis of genitival stems as
> "thematic" stems plus a nominative *-s, which is why we still
> have adjectives with final accent. This is because the acrostatic
> regularization only operated on nouns and verbs.

Why would a genitive give up its -s and create a verbal stem out of the
stump? What is a truncated genitive doing in *bhéro-nti 'they carry'?

>
>>I have since realized I overlooked the obvious, namely its position:
>> the them.vow. is the only vowel occurring in stem-final position. I am
>> not sure what that exactly means, but it apparently imparted a special
>> kind of resistence on the vowel.
>
> It apparently changed the accent too :P Or rather, the more efficent
> solution: The thematic vowel and all words formed by it are an
> innovation of the Late IE period AFTER the loss of unstressed schwa that
> had triggered zero-grading in late Mid IE.

I see no acrostatic regularization in the thematic class (I suppose you
mean structures like *bhére-ti and *wérg^o-m by that, but I do not feel
sure about it, for it means disregarding *prk^-sk^é-ti, *gWm.-yé-ti,
*wid-H1-yé-ti and the noun types *yug-ó-m, *k^m.tó-m, *H2ug-ró-s,
*mr.-tó-s, even mid.ptc. *dhugh-m.H1nó-s, and can you really have
overlooked all that?). If Indo-European stem-formation is described for
what it shows, it should be accepted that a stem could also end in a
vowel. In that case the vowel simply behaved the way we see the thematic
vowel behaving. Stem-final vowels alternate by special rules, other vowels
go by normal rules. Stem-final vowels can be accented and unaccented, they
still alternate the same. This of course begs the question: What is so
special about stem-final position that a vowel positioned there will go
haywire and make this kind of spectacle of itself? I do not know, I see no
synchronic reason for it, so I am compelled to store it in the dark
corners of prehistory: It looks as if it dates back to a time when that
position had a more salient status that would justify this behavior. Was
it a word-boundary? I can't know, nor, I'd say, can anyone else. Except
for the unexplained status of the juncture, this account strips the
thematic vowel of much of its flavor and all of its mysticism. In addition
it brings the full story in under a coherent understanding, not just one
half of the evidence.

>>Anyway, it is a descriptive fact that vowels in this position alternate
>> in a way all their own, and totally uninfluenced by the
>>accent. [...] The thematic vowel shows alternations governed by the
>> phonetic property of the following segment [...]. Since the VERY
>>SPECIAL status of the thematic vowel must have its phonetic
>>justification VERY FAR back in prehistory,
>
> Correction: Since the "very special" status of the thematic vowel
> doesn't operate under the earliest rules we know of in preIE, and
> because it is otherwise surrounded by clear innovations (such as
> the acrostatic accent) there is no logical reason to assume that it is
> ancient.

It is the opposite that follows logically: Since even "the earliest rules
we know" produce structures that were not hit by the thematic vowel
alternation, such structures missed the train - they are too young.

>>Therefore, the thematic type is not younger than the ablaut.
>>If it were, we would find the same e/o alternation depending on the
>> voicing of the following segment with other vowels also, which we do
>> not.
>
> No, the thematic vowel was not THE unaccented vowel of Late IE by
> the time e/o alternation came into being. Miguel is helping me
> piece together in my head the syllabic rules of each period with
> his enqueries but perhaps I can show better by examples rather than
> trying to come up with exact wording that covers every detail.
>
> It does make sense, because only *& has observably lengthened before
> voiced segments as can be seen by its results. However unaccented
> vowels other than *& do not appear to be lengthened to any
> appreciable degree to have formed the same alternation. So we see
> the following happening (after acrostatic regularization):
>
> mLIE PIE
> *dekm *dekm 'ten' (unaccented *m)
> *kunas *kunos 'of the dog' (unaccented *u)
> *pedas *pedos 'of the foot' (unaccented *e)
> *kW&s-y&: *kWesyo 'of what' (unaccented *&)
> *bHer&nt *bHer&:nt *bHeronti 'they carry' (unaccented *&)
> *ekw&m *ekw&:m *ekwom 'horse [acc]' (unaccented *&)
>
> Notice how nothing but unaccented *& is lengthened before voiced
> segments. Again, unaccented *e in *pedas results from the Mid IE
> paradigmatic resistance rule which preserves the vowel of
> paradigm-derived forms even when the root is unaccented. So this
> totally covers all bases without logical conflict.

Now, accent has no part in it, and a three-quarter-genitive appearing as a
verbal stem is somehow unappealing to me. And I wonder how pronouns can
have *tóm, *tód, *tóy with the same rule applying to a monosyllables, if
it is supposed to apply only to unaccented vowels.

For what it's worth, I accept your reconstructions: PIE *k^unós, *pedós,
*kWésyo, *bhéronti, *(H1)ék^wom are fine and generally accepted forms.
It's how it got that way we apparently just can't reach any agreement
about.

Jens