On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:15:13 +0000, elmeras2000 <
jer@...> wrote:
>[MCV:]
>> But e.g. apas- is.
>
>That *is* a tricky one indeed. It is very hard to anything in the
>order of closed syllables here (*Hop-s- or *HopH-os). If opus/ápas-
>is taken at face value, then the PIE form, phonemically /H3épos/,
>phonetically had a special o-like vowel in its first syllable. That
>is not in itself impossible, although I thought I had found a
>decisive example, which happens to speak against it:
>
>Ved. stya:ya- (with ni- in the middle voice 'coagulate'), which I
>have analyzed as *stiH3-óye- with the suffix of iteratives, based on
>a root *steyH3- (perhaps better *stayH3-) seen in Gk. sô:ma (*stiH3-
>) and Goth. stains. In LIV the root is put down as *styeH- with a
>note that my observations rather speak for the opposite
>vocalization. My analysis was meant to overcome those obstacles.
>
>If correctly derived, sty-á:ya- from *stiH3-óye- would prove that
>underlying /e/ (as here in the suffix *-eye-) does undergo
>coloration all the way to full merger with /o/ of other sources.
>
>Now, stya:ya- is also a lone example, and it takes very few
>surprises for it to be wrong.
Specifically, if the root is indeed *styeH rather than *steyH, stya:yate:
can be *styoH-ey-e-toi.
>I do not know of other examples of the type of ápas-, but perhaps
>others do?
There's the other s-stem anas- (Lat. onus), with *h3o- (*h3e-) before a
voiced consonant.
>Perhaps it deserves to be looked into again if we really know that
>Brugmann's law also applies to /o/ before voiceless stops: are
>káti 'how many', katará- 'which of two', práti 'against', páti-
> 'master' really *all* analogical?.
I agree with your previous statement that páti- is analogical (although for
different reasons: I think the original nom.sg. of the word was *pótyo:n,
as preserved in Toch.B. petso).
káti, práti, katará are indeed problematical. I don't believe in the
"Kleinhans (or Pedersen) formulation": Brugmann's law applies to *o (but
not *h3e) in _all_ open syllables (except in final position). Perhaps the
last parenthetical condition can be invoked here, and we have to analyze
*kWo + *ti, *pro + *ti and *kWo + *teros, i.e. these words were formed
_after_ final *-o had already been shortened.
>Pedersen believed it applied
>only before sonants. Hajnal recently made a case for full
>application of the law, since that demands the least amount of
>Zusatzannahmen.
The treatment of Brugmann's law in Collinge ("The laws of IE") has six
pages of this back-and-forth, ranging from Burrow's assertion that *o
_always_ gives /a:/ in Sanskrit (even in closed syllables!), through
Brugmann's own initial formulation (*o > a: in open syllables), the
Kleinhans amendment (*o > a: in open syllables, provided a nasal or liquid
[voiced segment?] follows), to Hirt's total dismissal of the law.
I am with Brugmann (the Brugmann before he retracted his own law). The
rule is simply that *o gives *a: in open syllables, no matter what the
following consonant. As to the concrete examples and counterexamples given
in Collinge's discussion, I have the following remarks to make:
pá:dam (*pod-m.) -- this incorrect: Brugmann's law predates vocalic
resonants, and thus *podm has a closed syllable. The length here has been
carried over from the nom.sg. *po:ds.
bharama:n.a- (*bher-o-mh1no-) -- Not a counterexample at all: *o is
followed by three consonants (Brugmann's law predates the vocalization of
laryngeals).
ápas- (*h3ep-os/es-) -- OK, *h3e- not *Ho-.
ávi- (*h2owi- or *h3ewi-?) -- If *h2owi-, analogical after oblique *h2awy-.
páti- (*poti-) -- Analogical (it's remarkable that outside of Sanskrit, the
analogy has worked the other way, generalizing strong *pot-i- over weak
*pet-y-).
páda: (ins.sg.) -- Not a counterexample at all, because reflecting oblique
*ped-.
vá:cam (*wokWm.) -- See pá:dam: analogical after nom.sg. *wo:kWs.
cakára (*kWe-kWor-h2a) 1sg.pf.
caká:ra (*kWe-kWor-e) 2sg.pf. -- as explained by Kuryl~owicz: the 1sg. has
a closed syllable (ending *-h2a), the 3sg. an open one (ending *-e).
ánas- (*h3enos) -- As ápas-
rátha- (*rotHos) -- Brugmann's law predates the formation of voiceless
aspirates: *rotH- makes a closed syllable.
Interesting is the sentence "Viredaz (1983) links PIE /e, o/ with North
West Caucasian /a, a:/, suggestively, as the basic minimal vocalism in each
case", which predates my own insight by seventeen years or so. This of
course means that the nature of Brugmann's law is interpreted very
differently by me. It is not a lengthening of *o in Indo-Iranian under
certain circumstances, but the retention of length (*o < **a:) in
Indo-Iranian under the same circumstances (open syllable). Other phenomena
suggestive of the same thing are the facts that *o is not coloured by
laryngeals (just like *e: isn't), and that in Tocharian, *o does not behave
like a short vowel (the short vowels *e, *i and *u are all reduced to
Pre-Tocharian *ä, while *o gives /e/, as does *e:). There is to my
knowledge no evidence in Tocharian for a distinction between *o and *h3e,
as there is Skt., but then again *h2e/*a in Tocharian is also not reduced
to *ä, but surfaces as /a:/, so that is consistent.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...