Re: [tied] PIE Stop System

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 03:04:03 +0000, Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>I've always been curious about those etyma. They are clearly unusual
>since they contain an otherwise "reduced" vowel in an accented syllable.
>I've considered the possibility that in some instances an early Late IE
>*Vi/Vu may have become PIE *i/*u when it otherwise shouldn't have.
>
>In pronouns like *tu:, I'm sure that the vowel has been simply reduced
>from earlier *teu. The reduction here can be explained as a special
>development of pronouns and demonstratives (such as *i- < *ei,
>*kWi- < *kWei, etc). However, *mu:(h)s "mouse" is strange.
>
>On the other hand, one idea I have to explain it involves possible
>early Late IE rules of syllable shape vis-a-vis laryngeals. If we
>reconstruct *mu:hs "mouse" in the nominative, *u is long as all
>vowels are in the nominative form, while the presence of *h ensures
>that *u always appears long in other case forms. The realization
>of an accented *u here then can be explained as the product of
>an early Late IE nominative *mouh-s& becoming in this special
>case *mu:h-s, rather than **mo:uh-s due to the presence of the
>laryngeal which would otherwise make the one syllable unusual
>in its spoken length and complexity. Thus this etymon might be
>the result of syllable restructuring and simplification.
>
>I suspect that this same syllable restructuring might be to blame
>for other otherwise unsolvable oddities in IE morphology.
>
>Thoughts?

Yes, I already used this rule (see e.g. my "Morphology 14a": "udder"
*h2ouh1dhr. ~ *h2uh1dhr. and "hole" *k^ówh1r. ~ *k^uh1r.). The rule
applies principally in the oblique forms of these words, where we have
*h2uh1dhn-, *k^uh1n- for expected *h2euh1dhn-, *k^euh1n-, but it may be
analogical in the strong forms, where e.g. Greek has maintained ou- in
oûthar "udder". So I would formulate it as:

*éyH, *éwH -> *iH, *uH (unstressed *eyH and *ewH also give *iH and *uH,
but we don't need a separate rule for that). I would exclude *oyH and
*owH, except by analogy.


I was going to add that I think Piotr also had suggested something similar,
but he's already answered himself.


I'm not sure, though, if the rule applies to *mu:s, because I'm not
convinced we have a laryngeal here. If the original shape was *mu:s,
oblique *mus- (as claimed in IEW, EIEC and suggested by Greek mu:s, muós),
then the length in the nominative is Szemerényi lengthening of *mus-s and
there is no laryngeal. In that case, we have to find another explanation
for *mus-.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...