--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>
> Jens:
> >So let's try again. The alternation *po:d-s/*ped- (weak cases) is
> >derivable from underlying *pe:d-
>
> Prove it. The nominative and accusative shows *pod- with the
> expected nominative lengthening in *po:ds. The weak cases
> such as the genitive *pedos show *ped-. There is no place for
> *pe:d-.
Oh, not again ... "Foot" has *pe:d- in the loc.pl. *pe:dsu reflected
in OIr. ís 'down', Alb. për-posh 'down' (Pedersen). The basis from
which Slavic pe^s^I 'going on foot' is formed could conceivable have
acquired its long vowel by Winter's law, but the others cannot. A
word with the same o/e alternation is 'house' which forms the
loc.sg. daNm in Avestan which must reflect IIr. *da:m with a long
vowel (since *-am gives Avest. -&m). That is part one of the
evidence showing that paradigms with full grade in the weak forms
are based on structures with long-vowel root segments.
Part two was there already, for it was on the basis of the verb that
the existence of paradigms with full grade in their weak forms was
first discovered by Johanna Narten in 1968. To go with a 3sg middle
form like Vedic stáve, she noticed the long vowel grade of the
corresponding active stáuti, this pointing to IE strong *sté:w- :
weak *stéw-. She noticed a number of additional examples, most
remarkably perhaps Ved. 3sg act. tá:s.t.i vs. 3pl act. táks.ati from
a root taks.- 'work in wood'. She derived the alternation from a
type with IE -é:-/-é-, i.e. with a gradation between long and short
root vowel, both accented, and with a distribution exactly following
that of -é-/zero in the "normal" ablauting paradigms. This also goes
to show that paradigms with full grade in their weak forms have long
vowel grade in their strong forms. Narten points out cases of
obvious influence from the normal type, as in the 3pl.act. stuvánti
which must have replaced a form that would have given *stávati from
*stéw-n.ti; thus also má:rj-mi 'caress' with lengthened grade
retained, but 3pl mr.jánti with analogical zero-grade. Thus, this is
plainly an archaic formation which has lost its productivity and is
giving way to normalized replacements.
There is in a way a third act in this, to wit, suffixed nominal
paradigms with full root vowel in the weak cases, e.g. *yekW-n- in
the weak cases of 'liver' (Ved. gen. yakn-ás); these also have
strong forms with -é:-, IE *ié:kW-r. (Gk. hé:~par, Avest. ya:kar&).
Some of these forms have -o- instead of -e:-, and there is massive
influence from the normal types. An example with -o- is *wód-
r. 'water', which has various weak forms: -e- in Hitt. watar,
wetenas, zero in Ved. gen. udnás. Typical events of normalizations
included introduction of é/zero ablaut, mobile accent, and full-
grade inflectional endings, all simply copied from the bulk of
productive words and needing no explanation.
This was all left unanalyzed by the discoverers, so I added an
analysis. The verbs are easy: -é:-/-é- is like -é-/zero, only one
mora longer. Could that be the whole story? Yes it could, and I
still believe it is. The cause of the vowel gradation in the nomal
type é/zero was the changing accent, so the accent mus also have
been changing in the type alternating é:/é even if the accent is
found on the initial and the rest of the word is in the zero-grade.
All it takes is a rule of initial accent, changing the place of the
accent to the first full vowel of the word, a rule working after the
ablaut reductions have been caused by the original accent. If that
reduction still left a pre-accented full vowel (as when original
pretonic /e:/ thereby became /e/) the accent was shifted back on
that vowel, and the vowel thereby deaccented was lost (*te:k^{th}-
ént > *tek^{th}-ént > *ték^{th}-nt, Skt. 3pl prs. táks.ati).
I can therefore easily account for genitives like *dém-s, *péd-s
(whence presumably PIE *ped-ós by ending normalization), *nékWt-s by
positing the root segments with long vowels, i.e. *pe:d-ós > *ped-ós
> *péd-s (etc.). The o-alternants are harder, but if one takes stock
of their distribution, it is not diffciult to come up with a
suggestion. The /o(:)/ belong in the strong paradigm forms. There
are no neuters among the o/e root nouns, so the o-timbre may well be
associated with the nominative which could do things you would not
find in the verb. What the nominative sibilant does is lengthen (I
guess even we agree about that), so if we tag on an *-s (of the
right kind in case there are more) to the stem *pé:d- and then find
the product *pó:d-s, the natural question would be: Could it be the
lengthening, i.e. an additional quantum of length, imparted on the /-
e:-/ already long that caused it to take on o-timbre? I would say,
it seem so, and leave it at that. I'd certainly better leave it at
this here, for the phonetic justification I can now offer for it has
proved to be too much for the reader's blood pressure. There is no
need to call for mud that has already been slung. I simply observe
that where unbridled use of the rules would have produced **pe::d-s
I find *po:d-s instead, and therefor I assume that /e:/ in case of
lengthening changes to /o:/.
Now, that takes care of *pó:d-s and *dó:m (m-stems lose the sibilant
in the nom., Gk. chthó:n, chío:n), and in a way also of *nókWt-s,
given the existence of the additional rule that the vowel of the
nom. is shortened if the stem ends in two consonants (as seen from
the shortness of Sanskrit nominatives in -an, -an* from *-ants, *-
anks, which are retained in Avestan). The accusatives are a bit
tricky, but not much: Acc.sg. forms like *pód-m., *nókWt-m. are
analogical on the "normal type" which has lengthening in the
nominative and short vowel in the acc.: Gk. ané:r, acc. anér-
a 'man'. So the acc.sg. is formed like this: Take the vowel of the
nominative, only short, and add /-m/.
There is another morpheme that causes lengthening just like the
sibilant of the nominative, namely the laryngeal of the collective.
Already Johannes Schmidt pointed out that ntr. forms like Gk.
húdo:r 'water' were in origin collectives (a pair retaining both is
Gk. tékmar, tékmo:r 'sign, omen' from *kWék^-mr./-mo:r), since the
same lengthening appears in a number of ntr.pl. types, such as the s-
stems in Avestan and Old English. Accepting all of that, I can now
utilize it to explain the o-type of suffixed neuters, such
as 'water'. If 'water' can have a young collective in húdo:r, could
*wód-r perhaps be based on the old type of collective? It would look
like this: *wé:d-r-h2 > *wé::drh2 > *wó:drh2 > *wódrh2. I have
assumed, again, that a lengthened /e:/ yields a long /o:/, and that
the ntr.pl. marker acts like the nom.sg. marker also in the point
that a long root vowel is shortened if the stem ends in two
consonants. That would lead us to *wódrh2 with the collective marked
still sitting on the form. But if *-h2 was still synchronically
identifiable as a plural marker in neuters, and this was now just
used as the word in the singular, it would not be surprising if the
*-h2 was simply taken away, since its message was not meant. And
that leaves the form *wód-r, Hitt. wa:tar, to go with weak cases
with *wéd-, Hitt. gen. wetenas.
Now, that ought to amount at least to serious motivation for
considering the possibility that the ó(:)/é type is based on
paradigms with an original root vocalism /e:/.
>
> >Now, the root *H3reg^- does form a stem Skt. ra:j-, Lat. re:g-,
> >but none of the paradigms we have shows any alternation.
>
> ?? Why can't you just accept the accusative case form with *hWreg-
> as the default strong stem form as we find with *podm? Yes, the
> nominative causes lengthening in both these roots. We needn't
> be confused as you are about what-if scenarios that may or may
> not be true. The most probable and simplest solution wins out.
I don't understand what you're driving at, do you? The acc. of Skt.
r:aj- is rá:jam, and that of Lat. re:x is re:gem with a long vowel.
All cases of the paradigms have a long vowel. How can that show us
that the length only belonged in the nominative?
>
> >The fact that it forms a long-vowel athematic present may
indicate that it
> >*is* in fact like the root of 'foot' in the respect here of
relevance.
>
> Assuming that the verb is not a denominal using the nominative form
> of the noun.
That's an adverbial clause only. I read the elliptical statement to
mean that by seeing such an indication I overlook a possible
derivation of rá:j-mi as a denominative verb from a noun *H3ré:g^-s,
*H3rég^-m. in which the verb has adopted the special vocalism of the
nominative. This is a suggestion so strange that I am not sure I
read your English correctly. Do I? And, if I do, what is the
principle you are alluding to? I know of *no* denominative verbs
that took the vowel from a lengthened nominative. Is there a single
example of that?
>
> >At least the two types of tr-stems, the acrostatic *do'h3-to:r,
gen.
> >*do'h3-tr-s "(habitual) giver" and the hysterokinetic *d&3-te':r,
gen.
> >*d&3-tr-o's "(occasional) giver" (semantics and IE paradigms from
Tichy,
> >correcting Benveniste), which are derivable by my rules from
> >*de:H3-te'r- and *deH3-te'r- respectively, show that it is not
*always*
> >a property of the root that determines which kind of ablaut type
we get.
>
> I don't recognize your rules. This paragraph is assumptive.
Perhaps, but consistent. The rules are the same as set forward in
the above. It may be noted that the o-grade root nouns as
reconstructed by Schindler has a semantic note of the resultative or
*the habitual* about them. Greek phó:r, Lat. fu:r 'taker by habit;
thief' is a good example. Deriving that type from a structure with
long root vocalism I get the semantic shade right - adding no new
rules and changing nobody's descriptions.
> Concerning o-grade verb roots:
> >I don't think there are any such verbal forms at all.
>
> Hmm. Then what is *bHohg- for example?
Perhaps *bheH3g- (thus LIV). What made you decide the laryngeal is
not /H3/ which would allow the vowel to be /e/? But it could also
have been reduplicated; this type never retains its reduplication in
Greek. We only know the reduplication from Indo-Iranian and from the
accent traces it has left in the Balto-Slavic forms.
Jens