Re: a-Epenthesis: This time its personal

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> I still don't see why you turn a blind eye to phonotactics
> to explain your O-fix.

I have looked with my eyes wide open, and I have seen it does not
work. If I have been wrong in my assessment, somebody tell me
exactly how.

[...]

>
> My new hot-off-the-press definition of a-Epenthesis:
> -----------------------------------------------------
> In early Late IE, after the events of Syncope,
> Clipping and Nominative Misanalysis, *a was prefixed
> by default to all "overloaded" vowel-final stems
> or, due to association with its parent stem, *a
> was infused into the initial weak syllable.
>
> "Overloaded" just defines stems that have clumsy initial
> consonant clusters and/or initial weak syllables. "Weak"
> syllables are syllables containing *i, *u, *& or syllabic
> resonants (*m, *n, *r, *l) at the time of the rule. They
> had developped, as you might have guessed, from the
> previous Syncope. Also in the latter case of infixing,
> it seems that this was invariably with already polysyllabic
> stems.
>
> The new order of the rules is:
> Syncope
> Clipping
> Nominative Misanalysis
> a-Epenthesis
> Saussure
> Acrostatic Regularization
> Vowel Shift
>
> So it would be fair to go over the examples again and
> make damn sure that the rule makes sense...
>
> *kwan > *kwon-
> ---------------
> We have MIE *kawana becoming *kwan. It is not a vowel-
> final stem and so we don't alter it further. It
> regularly becomes *kwon- after Vowel Shift. Yippy!

I see no reason to assume *kawana. Therefore, I see no basis for the
rest.

>
> *sdas > *osdo-
> ---------------
> MIE *sat:asa becomes *sdas after syncope. It is animate
> and therefore is *sdas-s& in the nominative. After clipping
> of the nominative *-s& to *-s, *sdas-s is misanalysed as
> *sda-s. Since the stem is now vowel-final, a-Epenthesis
> ensues because of clumsy *sd-, creating *asda-s and
> finally expected *osdo-s. Perfectly normal.

Same comment.

>
> *ktwax > *okto:u
> -----------------
> MIE *kWatwaxa "eight" (merely the plural of "four") becomes
> *ktwax. The final laryngeal is uvularized (aka lowered or
> a-coloured) by preceding *a (a rule appliable elswhere that
> explains the origin of *q from allophonic *k). However
> uvularized *x is unstable and disappears in eLIE, producing
> *ktwa: as we also see with *gla:-s (> *glo:us) from MIE
> *k:alahWa. While *gl- in *gla:-s is perfectly okay, *ktw-
> in *ktwa: certainly isn't... So you know what THAT means.
>
> Yep. It becomes *aktwa: by a-Epenthesis. The only problem
> here is trying to figure out when *w disappeared but mere
> Vowel Shift would produce *oktwo: and that alone is a
> reason for a subsequently inaudible *w to go bye-bye.
> Hence *okto:u (with final pure *-o: closing to *-o:u).
>
> *xuyan > *ohWuyom (*o:uyom)
> ----------------------------
> While I admit that my initial explanation of the phonetically
> bizarre *ohWuyom (*o:uyom "egg") was a bit messy, I think
> this new explanation will now be much better.
>
> So we start with *hWawayana being a derivative of *hWawai
> "bird". After Syncope, "bird" is *hWawi and "egg" is
> *hWuyan. As you can see, the simple loss of schwa buggered
> up the association between the two words entirely.
> Misanalysis then spliced the egg word as *hWuya-n further
> divorcing it from *hWawi. Then if that wasn't bad enough,
> a-Epenthesis came along to remedy the overloading. Hence
> *ahWuya-n. We then get *ohWuyom after Vowel Shift.
> Everything still looks regular.
>
> *plhas > *polho-/*polh-u-/*pol-no-
> ----------------------------------
> While the MIE verb *paleha becomes *pleh& "he fills", the
> correlating derivative *palahasa regularly becomes *plhas
> after Syncope with syllabic *l in the first syllable. Thus,
> the first syllable is "weak". Misanalysis causes *plha-
> and thus the stem qualifies for a-Epenthesis. However,
> unlike *sda-, this is a polysyllabic stem and it begins
> with reduced *pl-. It remains undivorced from the verb
> *pleh& and so *a is _infixed_ to the first available slot,
> within the syllable *pl-. Thus *palha- > *polho-. Now,
> *polho- is free to create new derivatives like post-
> Saussurean *polno- or *polh-u-, for example. In *sda-, the
> *a is not infixed because the origins of *sda- from
> fullgrade *sed- are shattered by post-Syncope desyllabi-
> fication of the core root. Whereas an association between
> *pelh& and *plhas is far more natural for the layman
> speaker since *plh- still contains a syllable. Thus
> infixing was preferred to preserve the association.

None of the o-forms can be shown to have existed in PIE.

>
> Conclusional (or possibly Dillusional) Thoughts
> ------------------------------------------------
> Finally, a note on weak syllables. Since *kwon-/*kunos
> must derive transparently from the Syncope stage, we are
> forced to reconstruct eLIE *kwan-/*kunas (from MIE
> *kawana/*kawanasa). While everything here is phonetically
> regular, it admits to the fact that weak syllables WERE
> allowed at that stage (ie: *kunas with weak *ku-). The
> explanation for the a-Epenthesis rule then is that it
> occured to avoid _strong_ stems with initial weak roots.
> The rule would have been that only weak case forms or
> other paradigmatically derived forms could contain
> initial weak syllables such as kun-as "of the dog" which
> wasn't a stem on its own since it derived from full
> *kwan-. For hypothesis sake, a valid derivative stem then
> could never be **kun-a-, but *kwan-a- was allowed.
>
> Also, as with *sda-, the addition of *a (with initial
> glottal stop implied) produced a new structure *(?)asda-
> that started with CVC- (ie: *?as-). The only monosyllabic
> vowel-final stems left at this point were pronominal
> (*ta- "this, that" > *to-).
>
> The implication of this new slant on a-Epenthesis only
> underlines what can already be deduced otherwise. Roots
> such as *dngHu-, *suxnu- and *wlkWo- cannot derive from
> this early stage and were created or changed at a later
> stage of Late IE when phonotactics began to allow weak
> initial syllables in strong stems too and even (gasp!)
> accented zero-grade syllables as with *suxnu-.

You are in essence saying that IE has no old initial clusters of any
complexity, right?

The position of the infixal /o/ is very plainly sensitive to the
position of the root-vowel, for when it is metathesized it moves
right into the position where the root-vowel is. That is, of course
if it *is* metathesis, which I think it is, this meaning that the
old prefix moved to the position *before* the root vowel. Its
ability to find the root vowel implies that there was only one root
vowel at the time of the metathesis. If the o-form were only a
phenotype of zero-grade it could not sensibly be expected
to "remember" where the root vowel had disappeared from. Since it
plainly does, the theory is wrong.

Jens