Jens:
> Well, if no other idea that works can be suggested it does seem to
> be the only one. It accepts much more of the language as we find it
> and is free of contradiction, which cannot be said of yours. To say
> that the first syllable of, say, *bhor-éye-ti is just /bhr-/ is
> absurd, for /bhr-/ could just have been realized as is.
But I didn't say that. I was expressing the idea that the
causative POSTdates the process of ablaut. Therefore the
first syllable of *bhor-eye-ti is just *bhor- in the *o-grade.
There is no *bhr- in the causative. There never was.
This seems to be a simpler idea than what you're suggesting
because there's nothing immediately problematic about the
*o-grade here other than that it doesn't follow quantitative
ablaut but then neither does *wlkWo-, *suxnu- or many other
items like *?su-. To be sure, the more ancient layer follows
ablaut, but clearly there is a more recent layer that DOESN'T
follow it that we have to contend with. So I would say that
the causative is the most recent of paradigms. There's nothing
"ancient" about it.
Applying O-fix on causatives then is assumptive because you
haven't shown how it must be sufficiently ancient _first_
before infixing the forms to death.
> So it's o-grade, but not ablaut?
Ugh, now you're playing a semantic game. We were specifically
discussing QUANTITATIVE ablaut, which is what I was referring
to here when I casually said "ablaut". The *o-grade here of
course is the QUALITATIVE ablaut. If you confuse the two,
you'll only cause confusion in this discussion because I
consider qualitative ablaut (*e/*o) as being much older than
quantitative ablaut (*e:/*e/ZERO). In fact, I think qualit.
ablaut is ultimately a product of regressive vowel harmony
during the IndoTyrrhenian stage, a shared feature with an
early form of Altaic. Theoretically then, Tyrrhenian should
show traces of it. Time will tell.
So now the rest of the paragraph is based on your hyperliteral
interpretation of what I wanted to convey.
> I do not think the language is so poorly known that there
> can appear new categories like this out of nowhere. If the
> causative were so young it would be derived from something
> we know about and by a process we can trace.
Yes, I'm in accord! The causative has o-grade (which, as
I said, IS _qualitative_ ablaut but not quantitative ablaut,
obviously) and it is followed by *-(e-)ye-, which derives
simply from the relative stem from which we get *yo-. It
was tacked on to the verb to mark an indefinite object
(ie "someone" or "something"), thereby transitivizing
intransitive verbs. So with *mon-e-ye-, the semantics are
effectively "to think somebody", or rather "to cause someone
to think"... kinda like what I'm doing :)
The uses of the relative stem were productive elsewhere,
such as in denominal verbs in *-ye- and in duratives,
and in thematic stems to disambiguate the nominative from
the genitive (ie: *-s-yo). Its use in the causitive to mark
an indefinite object is particularly "synthetic" and thus
emphasizing its youth. Certainly later than Syncope,
otherwise we'd expect it to follow quant.ablaut better,
wouldn't we.
Again, I see that there is nothing "ancient" about the
causative. As we both see, it violates normal quantitative
ablaut, one of the ancient processes in IE that we can
be sure of. It doesn't follow any other ancient pattern
either, unless we use O-fixing without restraint but we
could almost apply that to any instance of an o-grade
and it wouldn't tell us much. Maybe *wlkWo- is really
*wlkWOe- :)
So it's overdramatic to say that I'm just calling it
"young and reckless" out of the top of my head. Given
the idea above, the causative can indeed be young
because its derivation is indeed transparent. Of course,
it's not "reckless" because it follows the most recent
rules of IE -- a lack of regard for quantitative ablaut.
> The very fact that it has a Narten counterpart should
> also be ranked as a sure sign of its extreme antiquity.
Not the sure sign I was looking for. Why is it "sure"? And
define "extreme" in "extreme antiquity". It just sounds
like you're mixing the date of the use of morphemes together
in a particular word with the date of the morphemes
themselves. Those dates aren't the same just as the dates
of the first instance of *wertmn versus the first instance
of *wert- or of *-mn aren't the same.
> In a few very specific cases the element appears prefixed,
> so there it is a prefix.
Wait, a minute. What did I miss? Prefixing of *o- occurs
in causatives? What causatives?
> In the categories that have this vocalism we find laryngeal
> deletion which is absurd with a vowel and does not occur any
> real vowel, not even -o- from other sources.
Following the interpretation that laryngeals are "Saussured"
because of anti-structure zeroed syllables during Syncope,
there could certainly be some laryngeals that "appear" to not
follow the rule, particularly if they postdate Syncope and
Saussure's Rule. Why then must we pursue this further? What's
so special about these not-so-missing laryngeals?
> We also find a variant form without the -o-, restricted to
> specific root structures of a make that invites the
> interpretation that the element had become an infix here
> too but was lost before it was syllabified.
I'll pass on the invitation for now. The above makes it
sound like your rule isn't as ironclad as we would hope it
to be.
> If instead the appearance of -o- in the relevant categories
> is ascribed to phonotactic causes and dated to a period
> younger than the appearance of stress-triggered zero-grade,
> the account becomes absurd. For if the -o- of *wort-éye-ti
> is there only to avoid a structure "/wrt-éye-ti/", surely
> the same element would have been inserted in the participle
> /wrt-tó-/ or the root noun /wrt-/, which is not the case
> (Skt. vr.ttá-, vr.'t-).
Now since I don't believe that O-fixing exists in causatives
as you say, the above doesn't apply. Simply, the causative
is an action with stative vocalism and a relative clause
appended to it. I'm thinking a date sometime during mid
Late IE, some 500 years or so before the diffusion of IE,
so I guess it's kinda "extreme antiquity". It would be
before Schwa Diffusion (*& > *&./*&) when causatives
like these were first used.
So I'm thinking that our *mon-eye-ti comes from a purely
mLIE construct *mané-y&-ti. Similarly mLIE *hWna:mn-y&-ti >
*hWno:mn-ye-ti "to name something" or *wagH&-y&-ti "to
wagon something" > *wogHe-ye-ti (well, only if wagons
existed c.4500 BCE!)
> In actuality the structures your fancy alternative vowel
> insertion is meant to avoid are not prohibited by the
> language at all, but are in fact quite common.
Absolutely! Simply because the syllabic patterns allowed
in MIE or in early Late IE are more restricted than they
later become. There's hardly anything strange about that.
= gLeN