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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> >>Why can't *-(e/o)syo-d have been simplified by loss of /d/?
>
> Miguel:
> > Because I can't think of a (phonetic) mechanism that would
> > get rid of *-d.
>
> Hopefully, we will finally exhaust all possibilities of 'getting
> rid of some phoneme X' and return to our common sense (if there
> is any) that *-syo doesn't need to be anything other than with
> vowel final... ever! Hence *-syo < *-sya as always.
>
> Further, Jens can only bring himself to admit that the evidence
> for **ye- is 'ambiguous'... which is his own cute and pigheaded
> way of saying that I'm correct.

Not necessarily.

> The form doesn't exist to anyone's
> knowledge while *yo- _does_ without a doubt. So leaving Jens to
> his own self-induced confusion of ignorance and antifacts, the
> rest of us are free to focus on what we _do_ know. Since *yo-
> is found without vowel alternation as far as we know,

- which just is not far enough, for the evidence is not there -

> we _don't_
> expect *-e in *-syo anymore than we see mediopassives ending in
> *-e.

We don't have to actually *see* mediopassives ending in *-e to
discover they were there. The stem-formation of the thematic aorist
is commonly explained from a mediopassive root aorist, meaning 3sg
*wid-é. Since the mediopassive meaning was given up ("saw for
himself" -> "saw"), the form was free to take on active endings
which it did changing to *wid-ét (Skt. ávidat, Gk. eîde), to which
were formed 1sg *wid-ó-m, 2sg *wid-é-s, etc. The middle form is
retained in the subjunctive which became the Gk. future eídomai.
This presupposes a 3sg middle in *-é. I take the present form in *-
or (OIr. -berar 'is carried') to be the old thematic form,
consisting of thematic vowel "-e/o-" + 3sg middle ending /e/ +
primary marker -r (or its prestage), this giving *-e/o- + zero + -r,
i.e. *-o-r (since *-r is voiced). The productive 3sg middle *-tor
was made on this basis introducing the active -t- (a new productive
thematic middle 3sg was made to that giving *-e-tor). The
corresponding secondary ending to go with *-tor was reshaped (from *-
te or even just *-e) to *-to by elimination of the primary marker.

> So any theory based on an assumption that there should be
> **-sye is wasteful drivvel.

The necessary basis is not known. That is the awful way of the
material to say it cannot show. Only Indo-Iranian shows the old
pronominal weak-case inflection of ya- which does not help; there is
a Celtiberian dative <iomui>, but that is like <somui> replacing
*tesmo:y, so that does not help much either.

Jens