Jens:
> I can't repeat everything I know in every sentence. The r/nt-stems
> have the same loc.sg. *-en and *-en-i with the same form regardless
> of the presence or absence of the *-i. My theory about it is that it
> is juncture-final and that there used to be an enclitic marking the
> locative case. It takes a following enclitic to explain the funny
> accentuation on the last slot of the stem regardless of the lexical
> accent. The enclitic must have been lost; perhaps it consisted of a
> short vowel which was always pre-accented.
Ironically, QAR would predict such an ending. It would be *-a... BUT
I was questioning in my head about this just tonight after I posted
that I didn't think the locative case in *-i is very old and that it
was previously endingless (as the *-syo issue shows as well as the
suspicious fact that *to- needs another root *sm- to complete its
locative form among even more facts that I didn't even mention yet
that show that I'm right). I stick by my statement.
With a form like *weden with final accentuation, we can either assume
that it is ancient and pre-Syncope or we can say that it is a product
of analogy from the other weak case forms in *wed(e)n- like the
genitive.
If we assume that it is ancient as you do, QAR would take us
immediately to a theoretical MIE form *wet:én-a. This would properly
yield *wedén (or *udén) and then we can apply *-i to get *wedéni.
Fine but...
Then we end up with a problem of accentuation since the locative
is the only case that would appear to have accent placed _on_ the
stem and on a different syllable from that of the nominoaccusative
which otherwise does the same thing! Thus while we have *wát:an with
accent on the stem and we have *wet:an-ása with accent on the suffix,
this theoretical *wet:én-a is on its own path.
Now one could take that to mean that there is something wrong with
that form. But then, there's nothing apparently wrong with *udén and
yet it shows the same difference of accent from *wodr even though
no suffix is attached to it all.
On the other hand, *uden also can be brought about by more recent
analogies of accent since this same odd accent can be taken to be based
on the prevalent pattern of eLIE accent where when it alternates in a
paradigm, it takes the last syllable (with or without case ending).
Thus with a weak case prototype *weden-, one attaches *-as to it to get
genitive *wedn-ás or one can leave it endingless for the locative to
get *wedén, the accent being on the last syllable of the endingless
stem instead. No problems now.
So which does one choose? I choose the one that's less bizarre and
follows the rules better. In other words, I choose the option that
*wedén was brought about in eLIE and does not show the locative as
it existed in MIE. The form *wedén then is still ancient and predates
the locative in *-i of Stage III Late IE, but not ancient enough to
show the older locative which should have been identical to the
nominoaccusative form in MIE.
To sum up, *wedén dates specifically to eLIE, but *wedéni to a
postAcrostatic period of Late IE (during stage III phonotactics).
= gLeN