Jens:
>If the underlying base denoted something to which the wolf belongs, then
>of course the wolf be "of (that thing)", and the genitive expressing this
>would be open to reanalysis as an adjective characterizing "the one of
>(that thing)", and in substantivized use it could simply come to mean
>that. By having zero-grade the word wolf is revealed as older than the
>ablaut proper, while the substantivization, by accenting the zero-grade,
>is revealed to be younger than the ablaut.
Disagree. I assume that you're using "ablaut" to mean "loss of unstressed
vowels", which shouldn't be confused. The former is a long-standing
morphological process, the latter a single and abrupt event marking a
severe change in accent, pronunciation and syllabics which provoked
morphological change.
The accentuation shows that the _accent_ is unoriginal, not that
the entire form is "younger than the ablaut". The zerograding does not
reveal that it is "older than the ablaut" -- It merely shows us that the
word
is from a time when quantitative ablaut and the position of accent once
correlated, which could be long after the loss of unstressed vowels.
To summarize:
1 - loss of unstressed vowels
2 - quantitative ablaut and accent correlate
3 - accent changes occur (acrostatic reg. among others)
4 - quantitative ablaut and accent no longer correlate
So, *wlkWos shows us that the accent change occured at stage 3,
whereas the form as a whole shows us that it dates to stage 2 or
earlier.
This is how we should properly proceed with the etymology of this word.
Given the grading, the accent is expected to be final. So we begin by
postulating that this was once the case, but by doing so, it now appears
strongly that this word was originally an adjective -- an intriguing but
efficient conclusion.
Due to the zero-grading, the adjective itself has been formed while ablaut
was in full operation, not necessarily during the abrupt event of vowel
loss, because ablaut had obviously become a morphological process
occuring long after the vowel loss. We don't know whether *wlkWos
predates vowel loss by simply looking at the word.
We musn't assume too boldly and by doing this, Jens, you've skipped
a logical step. At any rate, I think we both agree about the adjectival
origin of this word.
>I'd say, great enough to be taken seriously. Still, as I have made
>explicit, there are other reasons to have doubts. The vowel difference
>between the pronominal genitive *-e-s-yo and the nom. in *-o-s points
>to an older difference between the two sibilants involved,
This is another leap of logic. We observe that the thematic vowel
alternates based on voicing. Therefore, the thematic vowel was once
a single vowel. We observe that the likeliest solution is to propose that
this single vowel has been lengthened (seen readily in many languages),
not rounded or derounded (which is NOT seen in many languages), by
the following voiced segment. Thus, we must conclude that the
unexpected *o before the nominative has been secondarily lengthened.
However this is acceptable because the nominative lengthens vowels
elsewhere in athematic declensions. But then, of course, we must
wonder what has caused the lengthening.
Well, it is assuredly unacceptable to propose that the most commonly
used suffix in IE employs the most uncommon phoneme in IE. That's
why the theory of a nominative in **-z(zzz) is ridiculously assumptive,
opposing linguistic common sense, and therefore not worthy of further
consideration. The theory is an example of a simplicity of solution that
becomes too absurd to be truely logical and efficient.
The real and less problematic solution is "clipping". Since it's logical to
presume that the origin of the nominative *-s relates to the commonly
used demonstrative *so-, unproblematic in terms of phonetics and
function, we may observe that the terminating vowel of a nominative
in original *-s& must have been lost. However, because of lack of
accent, the loss must have occured after the major event of losing
unstressed vowels. (I've already justified my penultimate accent rule
time and time again, therefore I can employ it here.)
We all know that loss of a vowel can cause compensatory lengthening,
one of the most simple and everyday linguistic processes we can use.
Thus, we can now trivially unify thematic *-o- and athematic nominative
lengthening together as a single process of lengthening by the
nominative suffix, as well as explain the lengthening of the nominative
in the first place via compensatory lengthening.
Jens, will now resist the above logic as usual so I will restress that Jens
uses the most _unusual_ linguistic processes to explain IE: the most
common case suffix with a most uncommon phoneme imaginable, a
strange process of vowel rounding by voicing (??), and the feably
justified abuse of a distinct phoneme **z, which is otherwise only
an allophone of *s in the IE we all know of. (Please don't forget our
discussion of the origin of vowel length where Jens again reconstructed
an equally unsual three-way length contrast for pre-IE which is too
rare to be considered.)
In comparison, I use compensatory lengthening, regular IE phonemes,
and lengthening by voice, all of which are trivial things that require no
further assumptions. Jens says I "misapply" Occam's Razor. Last time
I checked, Occam's Razor was about efficiency of solution and avoiding
the multiplication of hypotheses. I've demonstrated more than
adequately that my solutions conform to this principle.
That rare processes are being used by Jens shows us all that he is
multiplying hypotheses exponentially, forcing us to swallow _rare_
processes that automatically require assumptions that IE must have
used these rare processes. It's easier to assume that IE was just a
normal language.
- gLeN
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