[tied] Re: Nominative: A hybrid view

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Thu, 05 Jun 2003 18:30:47 +0000, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen
> <jer@...> wrote:
>
> I agree with most of what you say, but I can't resist commenting

(again) on

> the differences...
>

> But *e: has no business being in weak forms like the locative

(plural). We

> expect loc. sg. *pV:dé(i) > *pédi, and loc.pl. *pV:dsú > *pédsu

(or *pedsú

> by analogy). Oir. ís (and perhaps Alb. -posh) must be the result

of

> secondary lengthenings of *e (e.g. OIr tír < *ter-sa). The word

for

> "house" should have given loc. sg. *dém(i), like gen. sg. *déms (=

Av.

> <d&:ng>, Skt. <dan>). If the word was m. (f.) and not n., the

length in

> Av. <da,m> is analogical after the length in both the nom. *do:(m)

(*dom-z)

> and the acc. *do:m (< *dom-m). I see no reason for original */e:/

in

> either word.

I see plenty of reason. The accent of the locative is on the final
vowel of the stem - a suffix vowel appears in the full grade in the
loc.sg. of an IE word consisting of root + suffix (+ desinence),
thus neutralizing the difference between the proterodynamic and the
hysterodynamic types. That has no relevance for root nouns whose
stems are monosyllabic, their locatives of course have the unreduced
vowel grade of the lexical form. So if the loc.sg. appears (or can
be shown to have once appeared) with the vocalism /-e:-/, then
that's the lexical vowel of the root. Of course one can practically
always dream up scenarios in which the evidence we have has taken a
silly turn and so becomes useless. But why do that without
necessity, and why close one's eyes to the fact that a regular
picture emerges if the evidence is taken seriously?

If 'in the house' is *dé:m as we expect and Avestan confirms,
then 'at the foot' should be *pé:d. I do not find that, but the
unexpected long vowel of *pe:dsu must come from somewhere in the
paradigm, and of course the obvious locus is the locative singular
where we do expect to get the long vowel.

>
> >[...]
> >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:-
>
> Almost all of these, in fact.

That is not right, the type with /-e:-/ is quite well-attested; it
is Eichner's mehur type. The two subtypes do not exclude each other,
if that is what you mean: I would take the word *yé:kW-r 'liver' to
form a collective *yókW-r-h2. I do not know if the Latin ioc-forms
come from there, but they certainly do not belong in the locative as
Rix guessed in an article from his youth. Incidentally, how could
*Latin* prove that? More on this below now.

> >, 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.
>
> The Hittite forms are regularly from *wódr, *wédnos. The

collective

> *udó:r, *udéns is seen in Hitt. witar (pl.), Grk. hudó:r, Skt.

udán (loc.),

> of which udnás is a normalized G. (*udnós for *udéns).

For Hittite, that's what I was referring to with what I wrote. As
far as I can see it is without foundation in explicitly stated
arguments (!!) that the variant paradigm ablauting é/zero represents
a collateral collective. In my judgment it is nothing but a mere
guess formulated by Schindler and not supported by any objective
observations I can repeat.

[...]

> > 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.


> But the lengthening worked _before_ zero grade, when the word was

still (in

> your notation) *wé:d-or-h2...

That's what I used to believe, but I have wised up since. Actually,
the suffix only had a vowel in stems that would have ended in at
least three consonants without the suffix vowel, i.e. exactly like
the i- and u-stem types in the distribution seen by Szemerényi (and
explained by myself). Since the root of 'water' ended in a single
consonant, even adding -r-/-n- would not make the stem so long as to
demand a vowel to be inserted. Therefore, the old collective was
simply *wé:d-r-h2, which is what I need to explain the /-o-/. - Does
it not make any impression that I can now get rid of the unpleasant
form "*wé:d-or-h2", replace it by a corrected form that fits rules
that were in principle made by Szemerényi, and get short accented ó
in the root and zero-grade /r/ in the suffix free of charge, just as
common opinion reconstructs in *wód-r ? Doesn't that count for
anything? How many wrong rules would supply that?

> >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.
>
> Does this explain all the neuters with *o/*e, such as:
>
> *wodr, *wednos "water"
> *smok^wr, *smek^nos "beard"
> *g^onu(r), *g^enwos "knee"
> *h2ost(Hi), *h2est(H)nos "bone"
> *pok^u(r), *pek^wos "livestock"
> *mostr(g), *mestnos "brain, marrow"
> *h1oudhr, *h1udhnos "udder"
> *k^ouh1r, *kuh1nos "hole"
> *h2ongl, *h2englos "charcoal"
> *k^okWr, *k^ekWnos "excrement" (also *sok^r, *sek^nos)
> *sókWt(Hi), *sekWtHnos "upper leg"
> *stomn, *stemnos "mouth"
> *wosr, *wesnos "spring"
> *h1osr, *h1esnos "autumn"
> *doru, *derwos "tree"
> *woh1r, *wehros "water" ?

To the extent that they have been correctly reconstructed, I'd be
inclined to say yes. In *h2óst-h2/*h2ast- we even have the
collective marker sitting on the word in Skt. ásthi. One could
assume the same for há:rdi 'heart' which basically alternates *k^érd-
/k^rd- and is neuter.

>
> The problems I have with your explanation are the following.
>
> - the accusatives are explained away as analogical

For the accusatives that can't be helped. Of course I would have
liked to see the lexically given vowel of the root in accusatives
such as *pód-m, *nókWt-m, etc. But if I depart from that, making
the -o- the underlying vocalism I wreak havoc. Then I lose what I
had just gained, i.e. the correspondence with the "heavy" ablaut
type seen in the verb. In that case the neat parallel between é:/é
and é/zero observed in the verb turns up in the noun as ó/é which
strangely also has a parallel é/zero. That really cries out for an
explanation.

> - the neuters are explained away as "old" collectives

Only where they have taken the special form with -o- peculiar to the
collective. Those with /-e:-/ are the corresponding non-collectives.

Why does it bother you less that húdo:r must also be derived from a
collective form?

> All *o(:)'s are then the result of lengthening of *e: by *-s or *-

h2

> (Szemerényi lengthening).

These o(:)'s are, I don't know what you mean by "all o(:)'s".

>
> On the other hand, if we take a fresh look at the data, we see

that the

> lengthening caused by *-s or *-h2 is already accounted for (nom.

*po:ds

> with long *o: vs. acc. *podm with short *o, collective *udo:r with

long *o

> vs. *wodr with short *o). It seems unnatural to apply the

lengthening

> twice. Moreover, why was it not applied twice in the HD type

(*p&2tér-z

> (1)-> *p&té:rz (2)-> *p&2té::r = p&2tór ?).

Hey, this is a gross mistake, have you been thinking that way all
along, or is it just a sign of fatigue? The lengthening rule is not
applied twice anywhere. The underlying long vowel of the acrostatic
paradigms is not to be ascribed to any "Szemerényi lengthening". We
do not know what caused some paradigms to work with long root
vowels; I would guess it had functional causes, but that lies
deeper. Where I can operate, the two types é:/é (which has the
variant ó/é) and é/zero are simply taken as given. I can reduce them
to an opposition of /e:/ : /e/, using the same morphology to work
on the inputs to grind out the results we find. Then 'foot' does get
parallel with 'father'.

> A much simpler solution, in accordance with the fact that *o(:)/*e

is many

> times more frequent than *e:/*e, is to reformulate your otherwise

splendid

> theory using instead of */e:/ a long vowel that became /o/ when

stressed,

> /e/ when unstressed. The natural choice is **a:, of course: /á:/
> /ó:/ is
> trivial, and so is shortening of unstressed long vowels (a: > a,

and then

> *e, just like short **a).

Why did it not do that in a verb? There were no lengthening factors
in verbs, so /é:/ remained unchanged. I am getting the same rules to
work for the language as a whole. If you have to separate the
phonology of the noun from that of the verb, it is not simpler.

>
> The nominatives with /o:/, accusatives with /o/ and weak forms

with /e/ now

> become fully regular, as do the collectives with /o:/ and neuters

with /o/:

>
> *pá:d-z > *po:ds *wá:d-an > *wódr *wad-á:n-h2 > *udó:r
> *pá:d-m > *podm.
> *pa:d-ás > *péds *wa:d-án-âs > *wédnos *wad-a:n-ás > *udéns
> *pa:d-á > *péd(i) *wa:d-án-a > *wédn(i) *wad-a:n-á > *udén(i)

So that's why you quoted Gk. húdo:r with the wrong accent! The IE
form must have been *wéd-o:r, cf. full grade in Hitt. wita:r and the
initial accent in Greek.

> Of course, this simplification does force us now to look for a

different

> solution in the handful of cases where we _do_ have /e:/ ~ /e/

(e.g.

> *yé:kWr.t, *yékWnos), as well as for the cases where the

accusative _does_

> deviate from the nominative (*pontoh2s, *ponth2m.). While we're

at it, we

> can also try incorporate some of the cases of nominal Ablaut o ~ 0

(e.g.

> *póntoHs, *pn.tHós).

, Latin etc.)

Don't you think I have tried? For now I have to put it down
as "lexical /o/" pure and simple, i.e. "cause unknown".

>[..., ..., ...]
>
> But I digress....

I have tried to stick to the point.

Jens