Re: [tied] Bader's article on *-os(y)o

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Rob" <magwich78@...> wrote:

> It has been hard to keep up with all of the activity on here.

This

> is my first reply of many.

Keep'm comin', Rob.

> I agree that the 'thematic vowels' of nouns and those of verbs

have

> very different origins.

That saddens my heart. I think we need no more than a rule
about "stem-final vowels". When final in a stem IE vowels act the
way the thematic vowels do, they *are* thematic vowels. We do not
have to be concerned with their origin which we most cannot unravel
any more than we can motivate that one root noun ends in /d/,
another in /p/.

> My observation has been that *o is very common before nasals. In

the

> thematic declensions, *o exists only before nasals: 1sg *-om(i),

1pl

> *-ome(-), 3pl *-ont(i). Everywhere else, the vowel is *e.

However,

> *o also seems to be prevalent before nasals elsewhere.

Only if you are talking thematic. In athematic paradigms there is *-
mé:n vs. *´-mo:n just as there is *-té:r vs. *´-to:r. If you *are*
talking thematic, you are comparing the allomorphy of thematic verbs
with that of thematic nouns and pronouns. I believe it has been
proved to everyone's satisfaction that the rules are basically the
same, and that the regular forms are widely retained in verbs and
pronouns, and less so in nouns. Thematic nouns are o-stems and show
much more /o/ that would be expected on the basis of the rules
observed in the verbs and pronouns, but even nouns have e-relics,
and they all conform to the rules of verbs and pronouns: The word-
final *-e is like the imperative *-e, and the fem.-collective *-e-H2
(> *-a-H2) is like the 1sg middle sec. *-e-H2, prim. *-e-H2-i (> *-a-
H2, *-a-H2-i) which must underlie Greek -oma:n and -omai (with -om-
from the active), Skt. -e.

> On Piotr Gasiorowski's website, he lists aorists "derived from
> duratives" as having an accented thematic vowel. I think that
> perhaps all original aorists were this way. E.g. there was a

basic

> distinction between *bheugt "is/was fleeing" and

*bhugét "escaped."

I do not think there is any such pattern in IE verbal morphology.
The unextended root *bhewg- was used an an aorist stem, its present
being originally of the nasal infixing kind, and secondarily either
of the ye/o-suffix structure (Lat. fugio:); also secondarily the
aorist subjunctive became a present, as Gk. pheúgo:. This brings it
into line with the material of the other language, and of the other
verbs.

> The durative forms had the accent shifts typical of the athematic
> paradigm, while the aorist forms kept the stress on the "suffix"
> (otherwise, the plural aorist and durative forms would have been

the

> same).

It turned out that way with many verbs over time, but only due to
the secondary use of old aorist subjunctives as new present
indicatives. The old functions must have been close. Karl Hoffmann
strongly stressed the point than the aorist injunctive was
interchangeable with the aorist subjunctive in the expression
of "Koinzidenz", i.e. expressions like "I swear, I apologize" where
the content is identical with the speech act. This is the ultimate
in present tenses and should qualify as a present also.

> In historically reconstructed PIE, things have become very
> muddled. The ancient accent distinction had become a relic, with

new

> inflections being the temporal augments (*e- and *-i), the

sigmatic

> aorist, reduplication, etc.

I would assume that all of this is just as old as the short forms of
the root aorist and the root present. It just expressed functional
shadings which have only been retained to varying degrees in
dufferent branches and have therefore been open to many
misinterpretations, especially by scholars apparently in desperate
need of a quick high profile.

> Furthermore, some earlier durative-
> aorist pairs had sufficiently diverged in meaning to be treated as
> completely separate concepts. In this light, I think it's at

least

> possible that the conservative-accented thematic paradigm (e.g.
> *bhéromi) was a later innovation.

*bhér-e-ti (1sg *bhéro: if you ask me) is a classic example of an
aorist subjunctive turned present indicative. There is nothing
mysterious or late about it, except for its new function.

>
> As a side note, I have a theory whereby the Greek "secondary

aorist"

> is actually primary. E.g. ephugon 'I fled' < *e-bhugóm, elipon 'I
> left' < *e-likWóm.

The general explanation of this, which I accept, is that it reflects
old root aorists which of course had ablaut, so that e.g. the 3pl
would be *bhug-ént. Adjusted to the thematic classes with 3pl in *-o-
nt this then gave rise to a type with zero-grade + accented -é-/-ó-.
For a few verbs, as *wid-é-t 'saw', *H1ludh-é-t 'ascended' this form
had been reached already before the disintegration of the
protolanguage.

[Glen:]

> > ? Do you know about the acrostatic pattern? The thematic stem

accent

> > _was_ regularized to the initial syllable in both verbs and

nouns.

> > So the accent in *bher-o-nti "they give" is on the first syllable
> > of the _stem_, always. However, on the _suffix_ in athematic *?s-
> onti
> > "they are".
>
> Yes. The question is, why was it regularized? Paradigmatic
> levelling? That is, otherwise the forms would have lost any

common

> phonetic basis?

The constant accentuation of the root of the acrostatic paradigms is
in my opinion the effect of a regular change moving the accent to
the first full vowel of every single word. The rule worked *after*
the ablaut reduction proper, so that any pretonic *short* vowels had
been lost, this leaving only short pretonic vowels as the results of
reduction of vowels that were originally long. The long vowel of the
strong forms of these paradigms retain the long root vowel as I see
it. There was no *regularization* of acrostatic paradigms whose
forms are well enough accounted for by the phonetic rules that have
to be posited anyway.

> > In nouns, thematic *wlkWo-s has initial accent, *wlkWosyo "of

the

> wolf"
> > _still_ has initial accent. Yet athematic *kwon-s and genitive

*kun-

> os,
> > the latter with _final_ accent. Get it? Thematic stems don't
> preserve
> > original accentuation.
>
> Yes, I do get it. The form *wlkWos, with syllabic (zero-grade)

*l,

> surely means that it was earlier ending-accented: *wlkWós. Any
> thoughts as to why the accent was retracted? It again seems like

a

> case of paradigmatic levelling to me, but beyond that I cannot yet
> see anything.
>
> > That's why I mention the rule of "Acrostatic Regularization" in

mid

> > Late IE that forced the accent firmly on the first syllable in
> > thematic stems to avoid their accent flip-flops. Athematic nouns
> > were relatively rarer than thematic nouns and their "flip-flops"
> > continued on.
>
> Right. By that time, the (remaining?) athematic nouns had become

a

> relic class.

This may be fatal to the theory: If new phonological rules are
posited they should apply to the whole language, especially the
parts of it that *must* have existed at the time.

>

> I agree that the athematic nouns (and verbs) must have
> preserved an earlier state of affairs.

It must be a matter of morphology. If new coinings became thematic
simply by virtue of their number of consonants, this should have
changed the words already existing in the language already.
Therefore, the "thematic craze", which is above dispute, must
reflect the generalization of a morphological pattern already in
existence. It is plain to see that the verbs had the *kWér-e-ti
structure alreday as that of subjunctives. So some subjunctives
became present indicatives (generally aorist subjunctives becoming
presents), and newly formed presents copied that structure. There
can be no *phonetic* change from athematic to thematic. In the noun,
many adjectival formations with thematic suffixes had been
substantivized by simple semantic change, so that new nouns could be
formed using these structures, again without phonetic change of one
to the other.

> Combinations of three (let alone more)
> consonants seem to be very rare in historically reconstructed

PIE.

> To my knowledge, in such combinations (where they occur), at least
> one member is a resonant or *s (as in the sigmatic aorist).
>
> Let's take *wlkWos as an example. The root-form seems to be *w-l-
> kW. Inserting unknown vowels gives us *walakWa. Penultimate

accent

> then gives *walákWa > *w@...@ > *wlakW > *wlekW. However, *wl

never

> occurs in PIE to my knowledge, so perhaps there was metathesis,
> giving *welkW.

There is the root of Lat. liqueo:, liquidus, OIr. fliuch, Welsh
gwlyb 'wet' which must be *wleykW-.

> Why, then, wasn't the form *welkWs instead of
> *wlkWos? Aha, perhaps because of that rule you mentioned, Glen,
> whereby (final) clusters of three or more consonants were not
> allowed. [...]

None of this happened where there *were* three consonants: Ved. stem
in -aN (velar nasal, acc.-añcam), Avest. -a,s^. (nasal a + retroflex
shibilant) from *-onk-s or the participles in *-nt-s. The classical
example of root nouns has long been Schindler's *H2wólk-s 'furrow'
which is allowed no existence here.

>
> It seems to me that thematic nouns had two sources.
>
> 1. "Phonotactic Constraint," as you mentioned above, to ensure

that

> clusters of three or more consonants did not occur (in word-final
> position), e.g. *welkWs vs. *wlkWós.

If that were a phonetic change it should have hit also lexicalized
archaic forms which cannot have been formed later. That is not the
case: *nókWt-s, *mléwH-m/-s/-t (Skt. ábravi:m, -i:s, -i:t), even
*dé:yk^st 'pointed out'. Root nouns ending in *-wid-s may have as
many as five underlying consonants without inserting a thematic
vowel. The thematic vowel is not epenthetic in origin.

> 2. Genitive adjectives, which I believe could encompass nominals

of

> the -tó, -nó, -ró types.

This is surely right, if only safely in the more careful
wording "adjectives of belonging". There are strong reasons to
believe that the thematic vowel has nothing to do with the -o- of
then genitive ending *-os.

Jens