Re: [tied] Ablaut and accent

On Wed, 23 Apr 2003 18:16:06 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<jer@...> wrote:

>
>
>On Wed, 23 Apr 2003, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 23 Apr 2003 00:19:50 +0200 (CEST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
>> <jer@...> wrote:
>>
>> >Outside of the main debate: Armenian has final stress, but still accepts
>> >words like tasn, eLungn, ezr, astL. Surely such a language should not be
>> >alarming to Indo-Europeanists. It does not follow from that, however, that
>> >the possibility was utilized exactly in the case under discussion.
>>
>> No, but it follows from the fact that the accusative singular is a
>> strong case. If the desinence had been syllabic, it would have
>> attracted the accent. It didn't, so *-m was not syllabic.
>
>I'd say that's a fair way of presenting it. Another could be to say there
>are degrees in this: Full vowels attract the accent, syllabic consonants
>do not. Do we agree that strong paradigm forms have flexives without
>original vowels, while those of weak paradigm forms do have vowels in
>them? I believe that is exactly correct.

Your initial accent rule works in such a degreed way, so agreed.

However, in the relevant timeframe, when those weak and strong
flectional forms arose, (Pre-)PIE was a rather different language than
the one we're accustomed to. For one thing, zero grade had not
happened yet, so there were no syllabic consonants at all in former
unstressed syllables. The only place where syllabic consonants may
have been present is precisely in the endings of the strong nominal
and verbal forms, and the inventory we have is the following:

nom.sg. *-s (perhaps *-z at the time)
acc.sg. *-m
collective *-h2
1sg. active *-m (perhaps *-mW at the time)
2sg. active *-s (perhaps *-sW at the time)
3sg. active *-t (and perhaps *-s(W) in the preterit)
1sg. stative *-h2
2sg. stative *-th2

I think that's it. Assuming *h2 was still fully consonantal, that
leaves only *-m as a possible candidate for a syllabic resonant, at
the time.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...