Re: [tied] All of creation in Six and Seven

This is most illuminating, but also intriguing in several points. Permit
me a few follow-up questions and comments:

1. Is there a distinctive accent in Arabic? I had the impression it was
automatic and of no historical value.

2. What is the evidence to show that the old accent was not influenced by
the mimation/nunation?

3. I have a Geez grammar spelling 'seven' as /sa-be-(a-tu/, /sa-be-(u/.
(I use /.../ here only to set off what belongs to the word from what does
not). The part on the writing system notes the vowels of the signs here
given as /sa/, /be/, /(a/ with a diacritic of shortness, while /tu/ and
/(u/ are given without, but the system contains no specifically short u. I
guess you are right that one could say that the -u is thus not
phonemically long. However, old *short* /i/ and /u/ have developed into
the Eth. central vowel /e/ (with diacritic of shortness). The writing is
not with -Cu-u.

4. Isn't lack of reflex of the nunation in the Geez noun just a matter of
grammatical reduction - a reduction not occurring in the numerals? If
there is a real phonetic rule against accenting the nunation, could it not
have been set aside in cases where the function of that element was a
different one?

5. Supposing - only for the sake of the argument - the added particle does
cause final accent in the Geez numerals, as Brockelmann writes (on a basis
unknown to me), could it not have done the same in the kind of Semitic
from where pre-PIE took the loanword 'seven'?

Thank you for your comments and references, I'll have a closer look.

Jens

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 18:59:59 +0000, elmeras2000 <jer@...> wrote:
>
> >Your fem. sab`ú: agrees exactly with Brockelmann's fem. form. The
> >masc. (which I referred to as feminine in my posting for reasons we
> >all know) is given as sab`atú: by Br., and as sab`atu: by Grande
> >without accent marking, but with a long final vowel (B.M.Grande,
> >Vvedenie v sravnitel'noe izuc^enie semitskix jazykov, M. 1972). In
> >both forms the -ú: corresponds to Arabic -un.
>
> That's impossible, because Arabic -un normally corresponds to Ge'ez -0.
> Unlike what happens in the nouns, the nominative -u has apparently been
> mostly preserved in the Ge'ez numerals, so the only explanation I can
> think
> of for these forms in -u: is that they are the numeral <sab`atu> + the
> definite article -u (< *-hu), which I believe _is_ stressed.
>
> >By Sarauw's rule a structure *sab`atum should have accent on *-úm. I
> >do not understand why you explicitly apply the rule to mean accent
> >on -át-.
>
> Because mimation and nunation do _not_ affect the place of the stress.
>
> >Is Brockelmann's accent marking wrong? If so, why did he
> >give it? The rule seems to work fine in the fem., which corresponds
> >to Arabic sab`un and has indeed accented the reflex of -u- + final
> >nasal.
>
> I hope you don't mean in Arabic, where the stress is sáb`un (and the -un
> isn't even written, as usual). 
>
> As to Ge'ez, the feminine is actually given as Ge'ez <sab`u>, <säb`u> or
> <sêb`> in all modern sources I have (Lipin'ski, Jouni Maho's website
> http://www.african.gu.se/maho/downloads/geeztables.pdf), and as <sab`u:>
> only in Möller's 1911 Semitic-IE vergleichendes Wörterbuch.  Möller
> doesn't
> give the masculine, so all I have is <sab`atu>, <säb`âtu>, <säb`âtä> and
> <säba`tu>.
>
> We must be dealing with some obsolete convention for transcribing Ge'ez
> including the article -u.  Come to think of it, Ge'ez doesn't even have a
> grapheme /u:/ (nor a phoneme), so that must definitely be -Cu-u.
>
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...
>
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