Jens:
>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),
Ugh. The locative ending is a new concept to IE. This case was
originally without ending. We see *pe:dsu because it is an artifact
of an earlier locative *pe:d, which is simply the lengthened weak
form *ped-. Why is it lengthened? Simple. There was once an
automatic rule where all stressed monovocalic words were
lengthened. Since the locative was monovocalic here, it was
lengthened. No triple-morae required. This monovocalic lengthening
is seen throughout IE.
As for *hWre:g-, I would like to admit a mistake that I made. I
remember now that, yes, *hWre:g- (as opposed to *pod-) _is_
lengthened... but it just emphasizes my point that the accusative
always shows the default form of the strong case. In this case
the default form is *hWre:g- and thus the accusative is *hWre:gm.
The default form of "foot" is *pod-, hence accustive *podm.
The nominative, despite what would otherwise be extra lengthening
from the ending, remains *hWre:gs, not **hWrogs. There is no
such thing as a "triple morae" rule in any stage of pre-IE.
You may ask why *hWre:g- is lengthened in the first place then.
There are two possibilities, and I'm not sure yet which one it is.
Either *hWre:g- was originally *re:g- (mistakingly associated with
*hWer-) and thus lengthened because the noun was monovocalic in
MIE (hence from MIE *rek:, pronounced [rE:k]), or it was lengthened
during early Late IE by analogy with all other root nouns which had
been automatically lengthened in Mid IE by the same lengthening rule.
>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.
The lexical vowel is in the _accusative_, a **strong** case. Why look
to a weak case for this vowel?? And we _do_ expect the long vowel
in the locative.
>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 *p�d-m, *n�kWt-m, etc. But if I depart from that, making
>the -o- the underlying vocalism I wreak havoc.
Wreak havoc with what? Preconceived ideas? I think it's a havoc
worth wreaking. Your theory is built on an assumption -- that
everything can be explained as length contrasts, including
contrasts in vocalic quality. This is absurd and overly mathematical.
It's not how language works. It's precisely like adding appropriate
laryngeals to all words containing *a or *o, simple because one
can't fathom that such vowels existed in IE. Ah the silent footsteps
of madness creep up behind us all.
= gLeN
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