Re: Proper methodology (was: RE: [tied] Re: Mother of all IE langua

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 28027
Date: 2003-12-06

Miguel:
>Addition of a glide (w-, y-, h-) to an initial vowel is nothing to be
>surprised of. [...] Albanian <u> ~ <ju> "you (pl.)", which is derived
>from *usme, not *ju(:)s (PIE *y- does not give Albanian j-). In Greek,
>all initial u-'s became hu- [...] In Slavic, u- becomes wU- > vU-.

Albanian is the only relevant thing here. Your Greek evidence is to do
with _regular sound change_ and Slavic consists of a more natural
initial labial closure /w-/ before /u/ that exists in many other languages.
I recall Lappish doing the same.

However even if we take Albanian for granted, this doesn't make
the prothesis more likely than erosion. Common sense is common sense.

In order to make the former more likely, you must somehow better
support how *y- was an _addition_ not a subtraction. I'm not even
sure how you could do that... so good luck, eh :)


>Japanese? You know that's not a valid comparison.

How is it not? Regular nouns being used like pronouns. It certainly IS a
valid comparison.


>*nu is not a noun.

It's meant as an example of an endingless verb stem being used as a
complete word in IE. And we also know that statives are given *o-
vocalism. Since *o < MIE *a, *ya:u would be the 2pp and from an
endingless stative noun. The later IE counterpart would inevitably
be a thematic **yow-o-s because it was trying to phase out
athematic stems.


>What counts is the facts. All apparent cases of *yeu- can be explained as
>*yeuh1- [...] How to interpret the facts is another matter.

Alright, but since *-g- is not a uvular in *yeug-, maybe you should
listen to your own advice and accept facts!

The difference between endings is a matter of different extensions being
used. The *g-extension is used elsewhere (probably from an agglutinized
emphatic particle *ge). The *h-extension is also used elsewhere apparently
for intransitives expressing a change of state such as *hroudH-eh- "to
become red, redden" and *sen-eh- "to grow old, age".


>Speaking of Caucasian cognates/borrowings, the NE Caucasian word for "yoke"
>is also interesting: *ruk.(k.)-

Only for a seperate thread. But not for this one.


>You mean *w�yes?

Alright, then if *-es is "always" full grade (although that certainly
isn't the case for the accusative plural *-ns), then it would seem
that we must interpret the *-s in *yus as a fossilized nominative.
I thought you wanted to derive *-s in *yus from the plural.


= gLeN

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