Re: [tied] More prefixes. Was Re: Eggs from birds and swift horses

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, Exu Yangi wrote:

>
> >From: "Brent J. Ermlick" <brent3@...>
> >
> >I'm slightly bothered by the paucity of prefixes in PIE. The only other
> >prefix
> >that I know of offhand is the negative *n-.
>
> How about s-, the s-called "s mobile".

I do not see the s mobile form derivatives. The variants look just like
sandhi variants, i.e. the same words as the s-less forms, just in a
different realization.

>
> Just to throw up a bit of mud, I wonder sometimes if, perhaps at an older
> stage of the language, the grammar was more infixonial. That is, like
> Hittite -ni(n)- so we get roots CVC- becoming CVni(n)C-. Because of their
> early split, the Anatolian languages often preserve what the rest have
> lost,
> although the only ACTIVE infix in Hittite that I know of is -ni(n)-

Hitt. -nin- is already well explained as *-nen-, a compromise of -en- and
-n-. The distribution of -ne/in- and -ne/i- is purely phonetic, the longer
form being restricted to the position before CV (single consonant +
vowel). This is Strunk's observation.

> Prime candidates might be the "misterious" volwel lengthening (currently
> attributed to stress or surd/sonant consonants or the dark of the moon)
> which could be (HERETIC WARNING: DO NOT REAL THE FOLLOWING TWO WORDS IF
> YOU
> ARE NOT ABLE TO THINK HERETICAL THOUGHTS) infixed laryngeals. There is a
> lot
> of evidence to think they were not, but that has been wrong before.
> Anomalies usually conceal things of great historical importance, and that
> particular one just begs to be explained. By the time of the anatolian
> break-off, the only active infix was -ni(n)-, but I have never heard of
> another infix-using language which had only one infix. Possible, but
> unlikely.

You haven't heard of Sanskrit?

>
> A good, solid examination of the corpus looking for detritus of this type
> might be interesting.

Don't you think this has been done? What mysterious vowel lengthenings do
you have in mind? There are several, and most of them have very good
explanations. My infixal -o- is in a way an infixed laryngeal, but it only
rarely creates a long vowel.

Jens