Re: [tied] IE genitive

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen <jer@...>
wrote:

> Could you get this important message across to other scholars, for

I

> have not been able to do so? I was treated as a complete idiot in a
> Festschrift article only a few years ago because I had assumed
> precisely that. Not that I had presented the rule as an invention

of

> mine, I was just applying what I assumed to be common knowledge on
> problems I came by.

I've been assuming the same up to now. That's what students are
taught here in Lithuania, that's what is stated in all the treatments
of Lithuanian historical grammar I've happened to read. I'd like to
come across a paper where the counter-arguments are presented.
Probably such stuff is among prohibited imports in Lithuania.

> I don't know for what reason, but there seems to
> be a strong opinion against the obvious in this matter.

Could you reveal their identities? On occasion, I'll try to stir up
some Lithuanian linguists against them.

> > As for the polysyllabic part (+acute (on /au/, /ei/ or /ai/) ->
> > [+circumflex]/_# in both mono- and polysyllables), the examples

are

> > rather trivial: <sakau~> 'I say' < *saká:u, <sakei~> 'you (2sg.)
> said' <
> > *sakéi, <sakai~> 'you (2sg.) say' < *saká:i).
>
> Yeah, I had a feeling that would be the basis of it. It is not
> evidence I would trust too firmly. For in what sense can one really
> say that sequences like *-a:- + *-o: and *-a:- + *-ai were ever
> acute?

Probably because we find broken tone in Z^emaitian dialects (<sakâu>
< *sakáu, <darâ.> < *darái, <darê.> < *daréi) -- analogically
restored after reflexives (*sukáusi, *sukáisi, *vedéisi, cf. probably
analogical circumflexes in reflexives in Auks^taitian -- including
Standard Lithuanian -- <sukau~si>, <sukai~si>, <vedei~si>) or just
retained; also because the endings in question attract stress by
Saussure's law (<sa~ko> ~ <sakau~>). By the way, dou you believe in
<nes^ù> < nes^úo < *nes^ó:? I'm not sure of anything anymore.

But the verbal endings is not the only basis for that. Consider
examples like geriau~(s) 'better' (< geriáu(s)) ~ geriáusias 'the
best'. Or let's play an intellectual game: provide me with an example
of acuted -áu, -éi, or -ái in Standard Lithuanian (recent truncations
like táu < ta~vi(e) or tám < ta~mui don't count).

> > [...] The rule [of circ. in monosyll., JER]
> > works both in open and closed syllables.
>
> I completely agree.

Endzeli:ns, who was the first to formulate the rules under question
in their complete form (in 1922) would have been happy to know that.

Sergei