On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 16:38:05 +0100 (MET), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<
jer@...> wrote:
>Even if one might add a number of contrasting cases from younger
>scholarship (as, *bhrg^h-ro-/*bhrg^h-u- 'high', or *H2rg^-ro-/*H2rg^-u-
>'swift, shining' from the same root), the general picture is hard to
>dismiss. Where a given root is known with only one form it has -u- after
>sonants and -ro- after vowels, at least some 90% of the time. That must
>reflect something that was once a rule.
>
>I think I can understand the rule: A sonant nucleus apparently excludes
>(or, tends to exclude) *-ro-, i.e. an amass of sonants. This looks like
>cluster reduction.
>
>One might like *swáH2d-u to be a substantivized neuter on a par with
>*pélH1-u (Goth. filu, OIr. il), so that the regular adjectival form is
>*suH2d-ró- (Toch. B swa:re, i-alternant in Goth. sutis). But if a sonant
>root like *bhen^gh- formed only *bhng^h-ú-, why does *bhrg^h-ú- have
>*bhrg^h-ró- beside it? The simple answer may seem to be that the rule
>ceased to operate at some point.
It just occurred to me that there may be a problem here... Suppose the
rule (let's call it the V/R-rule) worked for quite some time, separating
V-roots with suffix -ró and R-roots with suffix -ú. In the end, we're left
with 90% separation according to the rule, and 10% doublets, exceptions
etc. All of this, I suppose, before, maybe long before, the breakup of
PIE.
But then it's hard to explain why Tocharian replaced _all_ u-stem
adjectives by ró-adjectives. I mean, what possible connection could there
be, in the mind of a post-V/R-rule Indoeuropean, between adjectives in -ú
and adjectives in -ró? Can a mere 10% relict forms keep such a
phonologically non-obvious historical connection alive synchronically?
What this suggests to me is the possibility of an alternative scenario,
where _both_ forms, -ú (< **-úr) and -ró (< **-ur-ó-), were still fully
functional and productive in pre-breakup PIE. They were also essentially
synonymous, which is why there was a tendency over time to eliminate one of
the two. In Tocharian this took the form of eliminating all the u-forms.
Elsewhere, and I mean all groups independently of each other, a natural
tendency to avoid too cumbersome consonant clusters, and the general
tendency to prefer thematic forms, may have conspired to filter out
ro-forms in the R-roots, and u-forms in the V-roots, respectively.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...