Re: [tied] Nominative: A hybrid view

From: Jens Elmegård Rasmussen
Message: 22715
Date: 2003-06-05

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

> First, what I _actually_ said was that IE *okto:u was misanalysed
**by
> its own speakers** to be a dual simply because it ended in the same
> way as *dwo:u. This misanalysis occured sometime in Late IE. So
> obviously Common IE had some sort of dual, although not fully
> developped, by the time Anatolian split away. My position is simply
> that the dual is not ancient (ie: that it is any more than a
thousand
> years old).
>
> Second, whether Kartvelian *otxo- is a borrowing from IE or not
> has absolutely no bearing on whether IE's dual was fully worked out
> or not.
>
> Third, there's nothing that says *otxo- is a loanword from IE
*okto:u.
> It could just as well be a native word and afaik there is no
instance
> of a stem **okto- which would be necessary to validate your as-of-
yet
> empty belief.

You have lost me by now: If you reject any connection between Kartv.
*otxo 'four' and IE 'eight', then what is your basis for the opinion
that speakers of PIE took *(h)ok^tó:(w) to be a dual form? Why
reject all the rest and still accept this?

So the dual was a short-lived experiment, an ephemeral fashion that
quickly passed? It certainly was not destined to success if you look
at it this way, for a crazier experiment is hardly conceivable. Why
would speakers suddenly get the idea that a pair of animate nouns
should end in *-e, and of inanimates in *-iH1? Why would they form a
dat.-abl.-instr. dual of a shape producing Sanskrit -(:)bhya:m and
Celtic *-obiN - why the final nasal here if none of the same cases
has one in either sg. or pl.?? And where did they get the
inspiration to form a genitive dual in IIr. *-a:s and a loc.du. in *-
au? Where did the extension *-yH- of Skt. dváyos, Lith. dvieju~N,
Goth. twaddje come from? It would look like the neuter dual
desinence *-iH1 carried through the paradigm, but what is the model
for such an "innovation"? And how could they hit upon the whim that
the 1st person dual of the verb was to have the consonant -w- as
opposed to -m- of both singular and plural?

In short, why is it that everything we can see in the dual forms, is
different from any model we know could have been used to form
innovations, if such they are?

The only unbiased answer is of course that the dual was not an
innovation, but, quite the contrary, it was an archaic burden losing
its necessity and being jettisoned by most of the languages at one
time or another. A few have not got that far yet (Slovene, Sorabian,
dialectal Lithuanian), but things take time.

Since there are excellent candidates for comparanda with the IE dual
forms outside of IE - these combinations are among the few really
good ones offered by Nostratic Studies - it is exceptionally ill-
advised to consider the dual category an innovation. The story of
the dual is therefore also useless as an indication of the special
status of Anatolian within IE.

[...]
> If Armenian can take silly turns, IE can too. Plus, calling it
a "silly
> turn" is a
> subjective assessment.

We are talking morphology here, not soundchange. The course taken by
Armenian in morphological terms is quite commonplace, being mostly
dominated by losses. So, right, why can't Anatolian?

[...]
> The pronominal endings for example are transparently built on
> other pre-existing pronominal endings.

Some are in fact, not "built on", but parallel to, forms of the
plural. I actually believe they all are, but not by rules of such
late periods as are demanded by your scenario. How for example did
Indo-Iranian get 1du acc. *a:va, if the 1sg was *ma and the 1pl was
*asma? All three have excellent Greek equations in the set no:~e,
me, ámme. And again, how for example did they hit on Skt. táyos =
OCS toju?


> >Why are the dual forms the *least* transparent set we have?
>
> A subjective arguement dependent on a matter of perspective.
> If we choose to be blind, then we're blind.

I am not being blind, on the contrary I am doing the job of
analyzing the difficult forms. And they open up to a persistent
analysis, but only if the time perspective is lengthened so as to
include a number of soundchanges so old that anything they have
operated upon *must* have existed in the prehistory of Anatolian
also.


> >And why do the dual endings look so similar to dual forms outside
> >Indo-European?
>
> Again, more illogical arguements. This supposed "similarity" must
be
> further proven. Your viewpoint is by no means generally agreed
> upon. I shouldn't have to logically account for someone else's
> "huntches".

Well, we are doing pioneering work here, so we have no standards of
receptance to go by. Even if we did, it's part and parcel of
scholarly work to move ahead from where we stand. I have been very
specific in pointing out the minute agreements between dual forms in-
and outside of IE, and I have presented an unbiased analysis of the
clear parts, leaving the unclear parts alone (an attitude of
restriction I do not share with many). That is not an illogical
argument. Now, you are banking on a negative verdict to be some day
turned in by the unclear parts of the facts to overthrow what is
already shown conclusively by the clear parts of the evidence. It is
on that hunch alone, and on no facts at all, that you are basing
your whole darling theory of the passing nature of the dual in Indo-
European. That just does not meet serious standards.

Jens