Re: [tied] Re: Syncope

On Tue, 30 Mar 2004 enlil@... wrote:

> First, before talking about the genitive *s-yo,
> I may as well expose my grave error in another
> "Syncope" post. Paradigmatic Resistance is an
> exception to Syncope as I've mentioned before so
> I'm incorrect that *barena would have become
> **bHr-en-t in the 3pp since the root cannot be
> zeroed like this in a paradigm. This Syncope is
> resisted. Only *es-, being so used and abused,
> was given the priviledge of zeroing in the
> plural, abnormally putting aside Paradigmatic
> Resistance.

But there are other examples where "the root [is] zeroed like this in a
paradigm". What about Skt. ghnánti, Hitt. kunanzi? And Skt. root aor.
3pl akran, agman reflecting IE *kWr-ént, *gWm-ént? What evidence is there
to indicate that this cannot be done?

> Now for *-s-yo.
>
>
> Abdullah:
> >> Would you, please, be so kind to further explain it
> >> through all paradigm?
>
> Jens:
> > Sure, but that's too easy, for the IE form is not
> > inflected. We only have the *idea' that, say,
> > *wiH1rósyo *póde 'the man's two-feet' or *tésyo
> > *póde 'his two-feet' in origin consists of a genitive
> > made from a stem + zero-grade of /-os/, [...] plus
> > an uninflected form of the relative pronoun *yó-s [...]
> > The original form would have had inflection in
> > concord with the possessum, in this case an animate
> > nom.-acc. dual *yó:(w),
>
> I disagree.

I would be more surprised if you agreed.

> There's no case agreement here at the
> moment when mLIE *-y& was tacked to the genitive
> ending because the relative pronoun was meant to
> be inclined in the endingless LOCATIVE case.

Why would that have *-o? This is a thematic stem where /o/ only appears if
conditioned.

> So the intended meaning would not be "(the) two feet
> which (are) his". It would be "(the) two feet which
> (are) with him". Other languages like my favourite,
> Turkish, use this locative pattern to denote a
> possessive.

Why would a relative pronoun referring to a nom.-acc. dual be in the
locative singular?

> So to make it simple, we might simply say
> that *-yo was not only tacked on for practical
> reasons in order to distinguish itself from a
> homophonous or near homophonous nominative, but also
> to reinforce the genitive meaning of the form by
> adding "with".

Different languages can be very unparallel.

Jens