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

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

> On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 02:29:38 +0100 (MET), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
> <jer@...> wrote:
> >
> >1. Is there a distinctive accent in Arabic? I had the impression

it was

> >automatic and of no historical value.
>
> The rules are automatic. For Classical Arabic, the accent is on
> (1) the penultinate syllable if it is closed/long (e.g. kitá:bun)
> (2) the antepenultimate when it is closed/long and the penultimate

short,

> or when the word has three short syllables (e.g. ká:tibun, kátaba)
> (3) the closed/long syllable before the antepenultimate when the
> penultimate and antepenultimate are both short; on the first

syllable if

> there is no such long syllable (e.g. muká:tabatun, kátabatuhuma:)
> (from: A.S. Tritton, Arabic).
>
> What the historical value of the Arabic accent is, I'm not sure.
> Abstraction made of prefixes such as mu-, ma- etc, within the

general

> Semitic framework (triliteral CV-CV-CV), there are basically two

choices:

> stress on the first or on the second syllable. Both seem to occur
> (including CCVC- and CVCC- with complete reduction of the

unstressed

> syllable [the pattern CCVC tends to get a prefix ?a-]).
>
> Verbs have various prefixes and/or suffixes, some of them with a

long

> vowel, so there's a bit more room for variation there. I wouldn't

want to

> get into the details, because I'm not sure of them.

This makes the Arabic accent as useful for comparative purposes as
that of Latin. I am still at a loss to guess where Brockelmann has
his Ethiopian accent marks from. His short comparative grammar is
more than anything a contrastive treatment of Hebrew and Aramaic
with Arabic serving as background, a sort of living protolanguage,
and Akkadian and Ethiopian being added as interesting footnotes. The
accent pointed to by the Hebrew-Aramaic vocalism is different from
that of Arabic.

> >2. What is the evidence to show that the old accent was not

influenced by

> >the mimation/nunation?
>
> The modern languages have mostly lost not only -n/-m, but also the

case

> endings themselves. The final vowel (except in cases of

contraction) was

> never stressed, whether followed by nunation/mimation or not. In

languages

> like Akkadian, where in the construct state the final vowel was

entirely

> missing (C.S. s^ar vs. Nom. s^arru(m) / Acc. s^arra(m) "king"),

that

> presumably also had no effect on the accentuation of the word.



>
> >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.
>
> See my afterthought. Brockelmann et al. were probably using a

historical

> transcription with /u:/ for /u/, and, presumably, /i/ and /u/

for /&/.

> I'm still puzzled about the stress.

Fine, that's what we're talking about. You are terribly
misrepresenting Brockelmann's notational practice, though. Original
*i and *u which have developed into shwa, are written accordingly,
with an <e> with a superscript shortness diacritic (as in metrics).
The full /u/, on the other hand, is given as /u:/ (<u> with a
macron). Its origin is mostly *u:, but I would suspect it could also
come from *un. At least I would like to really *know* about that.

> >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'?
>
> I don't know why the Ge'ez numerals end in -u (alternative forms

in -ä

> [accusatives?] are also given in the web page I mentioned by Jouni

Maho.

> For ordinary nouns, the nominative in -u should have given -& in

Ge'ez, and

> was subsequently deleted (just like the genitive in -i > -& > -0),

leaving

> only an accusative in -ä.

Unfortunately, Maho's web page did not help me much when I looked at
it. It contains no phonology and no accents, only morphological
charts given information I had already. It only claims to contain
class-room notes from a course he attended. The -tä forms (with
short a) are indeed accusatives according to my source, M.Chaine,
Grammaire éthiopienne, Beyrouth 1938.

I find the occurrence of nunation in the numerals quite bewildering.
The -t- forms practical all end in -tun, but the short forms only
have -un here and there.

Your information that the nunation does not influence the accent is
confirmed for Proto-Semitic by Sarauw who says so explicitly. That
would demand a special status for *sab(atum to yield säb(ätú.

I remain curious as to where this leads, and I'm gonna need some
*real* literature to find out, what I have is fortuitous and dated.
For now, I have not yet seen anything to make me discard the thought
that a special kind of Semitic accent in a form with mimation could
be reflected in *septm.´ . Perhaps it should be remembered that it
does not have to be pan-Semitic, it just has to be some existing
language old enough to serve as the donor of a loanword entering
some prestage of Proto-Indo-European. However, if the story of *-C-m

> Semitic *-C-um is to be correct, it must be older than Proto-

Semitic.

Jens