Re: [tied] Acc. plural of o- and eh2-stems (was: The disappearanceo

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 4:21 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Acc. plural of o- and eh2-stems (was: The
disappearanceof *-s -- The saga continues)

> You must be referring to the Leiden doctrine that acute vowels always
> reflect laryngeals or Winter's lengthening. I do not accept that.

I don't really have a strong opinion on this. Just a thought, Slavic has
initial accent in G. sg. of u-stems *'synu < *suHnows but desinential stress
in L. sg. syn'u < *suHne:w in a. p. c (cf. L. sg. 'grade < *ghordhoy in
o-stems with initial accent). Maybe that could point to the acute on the
lengthened-grade vowel.

>In my
> opinion the regular tone on lengthened-grade vowels in disyllables is
> acute. The many alleged examples of circumflex have in my opinion all
> arisen in monosyllabic forms.

I don't really get this. Maybe you could elaborate on this and convince
me...

> > Wouldn't Stang's law be disappearance of the laryngeals, *w and *y
before
> > final nasal? That's why there's no acute in BSl from PIE A. sg. *-eh2m?
>
> Some say that. I can't know if they are right. There is acute in the Greek
> form, so it also causes a problem.

Why? It only points to no contraction being present there (cf. G. sg.
*-eh2es > -a:s > -e:s with circumflex in Greek), doesn't it?

> I have supposed the form to have sandhi
> variants, monosyllabic (acute) *-aH2m before vowels, but disyllabic
> (circumflex) *-aH2m. before consonants and zero.

I don't understand this as well...

> > We can assume that *-n- was dropped already in PIE (and then later
> > reappeared analogically) but that doesn't directly influence the
question
> > of
> > A. pl. of o-stems. Also, the *-n- could have been dropped later
> > independantly in Germanic and IIr and kept (regularly) in BSl, Lat and
> > Greek.
>
> In that case you are not making much comparative linguistics out of the
> potential of the languages. Rather you are avoiding it at all costs.

I was actually thinking myself about recontructiong just *-eh2s with no *-n-
in a. sg. sometime ago, but I realised that we have to put a secondary *-n-
then back in Latin, Greek, Lithuanian, Slavic etc. so that kind of put me a
little bit of that idea.

> Sure, the nom.pl. could have taken the form of the acc.pl., and the gen.
> could have followed in its footsteps. That actually was my own suggestion.
> I shocked the audience of the Idg.Gs. at the congress in Berlin in 1983 by
> saying that in a discussion, and the speaker promised to include it in the
> published version of his paper, but never did. In recent years I have seen
> it appearing all over the place, quite possibly mediated by the late
> Jochem Schindler. Meanwhile I have myself moved on a little. I now would
> also like to integrate the Latvian -as which is used for all three forms.
> That is a non-nasalized form. I don't see how a nasal-less acc.pl. can
> have been introduced by analogy, so acc.pl. *-a:s will seem to be
> inherited. This apparently leaves only the scenario I have chosen.

So what would we get from *-a:ns in Latvian?

Mate