Re: [tied] Re: Nominative Loss. A strengthened theory?

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 enlil@... wrote:

> Jens:
> > I cannot know, for the relevant attested forms are all ambiguous.
> > However I am not in need of anything special, but YOU ARE.
>
> Strange considering that you require **ye- which you admit to being
> "ambiguous" (aka "not found") in order to promote your unneeded
> "solution" for why there's *-o in *-syo.

Well, I call the attested forms ambiguous, and they are found, but don't
help.

> Newsflash: *-o is just
> there because it's supposed to be. You purposely dismiss the obvious
> and can't stand the fact that there's a final *-o in IE. Patently
> nuts.

I am not protesting against word-final *-o in IE, but I have yet to see an
stem-final /o/ that is not from levelling of an alternation e/o. The stem
must comprise the /y-/ and the following vowel, so the /o/ of a presumed
form *yo is stem-final. That makes us expect *-e which is not what is
found here. That indicates that the analysis is wrong or unfinished.

> I'm sorry you can't accept IE, but them's the facts and other
> instances of *-o exist and certainly don't all require **-z.
>
> Unless you have NON-ambiguous evidence concerning **ye- to supply
> us with, your above diatribe is ironically self-descriptive. In fact,
> you have nothing left to say at all.

That is putting it on its head. Whoever advances a theory against rules
that appear to work otherwise places himself under a strong obligation to
justify the deviation.

> > Now, your theory now demands an endingless form with *-o.
>
> Either it demands the endinglessness that we see, or it demands a
> suffix that we don't see. The choice is very clear. We see what
> we see. Your rebuttals are now devolving into pointless assertions
> without facts because ultimately you have none to support your view.
> There's no reason why *-s ~ *-z would disappear here and no reason
> why we even need to apply it. Stop this ennui.


> > So your theory dies if the relative pronoun did alternate in the
> > way normal for IE pronouns.
>
> No, it doesn't matter either way, but in the specific instance of
> *-syo, we must reconstruct former *-sya, not *-sy&, because this
> is based on two unavoidable facts:
>
>      1) it ends in *-o (duh!), ergo no
>         'alternation-inducing' schwa of e/mLIE

There are no such concepts in the real world, but since it is worded in
negative form, okay.

>      2) no instance of **ye- can be found ANYWHERE

Which isn't saying much. Nobody can know that this is not precisely what
the Indo-Iranian forms continue.

> This doesn't mean that an enclitic *y& can't exist alongside a
> full form *ya, but the two reasons above completely forbid the
> use of *y& to reconstruct the original form of the thematic
> genitive. Only *ya can logically apply here. That's it.

I do not know what the notation with *y& and *ya is trying to say (unless
it is *ye and *yo in which case it adds nothing but only repeats a
mantra).

> > No, I'm showing anybody interested what danger your theory is in.
>
> Yes, the danger that it makes more sense than what you can offer.

Then what *is* the sense offered by "genitive/nominative + loc. of
relative + head noun"? And if it makes no sense, what is the point in
insisting on a locative which at best has a surprising form? The only
locatives I know from thematic stems have the shape *e-i 'in that (case),
if', levelled *-o-i (Gk. Isthmoi~, OCS vlUce^), *-o-r (Goth. hwar, thar)
which do not support *-o (nor *-e for that matter, which is posited only
by the desire to use the same rules for word-final as found to apply in
other cases of thematic stems).

Since there *are* pronominal genitives in *-esyo, the part preceding the
-yo cannot be an original nominative, hence must be the genitive. That is
not a problem. But the advocated syntax by which "the wolf's eye" has
allegedly come to be expressed as "the wolf's where the eye" has not been
explained yet. It is of course not saved simply by discrediting the
opinion that an endingless locative should have *-e and not *-o.

Jens