Me:
> Of course, it's not "reckless" because it follows the
> most recent rules of IE -- a lack of regard for
> quantitative ablaut.
Jens opposes:
> That is simply not true. QUANTITAtive ablaut has indeed
> worked here.
Where? In *suxnu-? In *wlkWo-? In *muhs- "mouse" too?
Damned if I can see it. It's obvious by the more unusual
zeroing of _accented_ syllables that the general pattern
of quantitative ablaut does not apply to these words. The
question is why.
Well, either these words originally operated under normal
ablaut and then deviated by a more recent rule or rules,
or they are recent already and this process of quantitative
ablaut no longer applies as strictly as it evidently
did before, based on patterns like *kwon-/*kun- that we
see almost everywhere else.
If they are more recent, we don't need to surmise about
a hypothetical rule that _may_ (but very possibly may not)
have swayed these forms from the normal ablaut pattern.
Assuming first thing without basis that they must be
sufficiently ancient forms that once operated under ablaut
is more pointless conjecture because what we immediately
see is that they do _not_.
Rather, since we can see as the system evolves that
zeroed verb roots were becoming productive elements in
derivative words, irregardless of accent, we can simply
explain these forms during a "postAblaut" stage. (Though,
calling it a postAblaut stage might be a misnomer since
ablaut still operates here, but to a looser degree.)
Now, taking *wlkWo- for example, even Mr Burrow mentions
the painfully obvious in The Sanskrit Language: This is
just a nominal derivative of an adjective, explaining
away the accented zero syllable by accent alternation.
Adjectives have accent on the thematic vowel but the mere
alternation of accent came to nominalize these adjectives.
The accent alternation is the direct result of Acrostatic
Regularization during a mid-Late IE stage. Acrostatic
Regularization is the cause of Stage II Phonotactics
where zeroed syllables were now allowed in the first
syllable of strong forms of stems. However, because
the accent is _on_ the zeroed syllable, the form is
purely Stage III, the last layer of Late IE before
Reconstructed IE. The accent was placed on that first
syllable to make it a noun. So *wlkWo- doesn't follow
ablaut because it operates under these younger morphological
rules that violate it.
With *muhs-, either there is a sound rule causing *ou > *u,
let's say, or the word is formed with a zeroed syllable
because it is also a deverbal noun, yanked perhaps from
an aorist form where this zeroing came to occur in Late
IE.
In fact, this "derived-noun-from-a-zeroed-verb-root" idea
works very well for all these more aberrant stems and
all allowable in the morphology known to IE.
= gLeN