Re: [tied] Re: Unreality...

On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 enlil@... wrote:

> Jens:
> > The rules that change *e into *o comprise: reduction of unaccented *e
> > to *o; change of stem-final *e to *o before [+voice]; later,
> > contraction of [e.o] (the product of lengthened /e:/) yielding PIE
> > /o:/.
>
> Hmm.

[...]

> The reason why I don't attribute *e/*o to *e instead is because this
> screws up the plural in *-es. There is a minimal pair in eLIE between
> *-&-s (the thematic singular > *-o-s) and the athematic plural in *-es.
> This is the very reason why *-es is not reduced to **-&s as expected
> in the first place!

That is at best one of many possibilities, not necessarily the right one.
But sure, there is a difference between the thematic nominative singular
in *-os and the athematic nominative plural in *-es in PIE, so it is
natural to assume that the two wre different in all its prestages also.

> A merger would destroy thematic plurality, so these
> two vowels must be kept distinct.

The thematic type had nom.pl. *-oy, so a clash with a vowelless variant of
*-es was hardly imminent.

> However, I honestly can't think of an
> example of unstressed **-as in eLIE, only *-&s, so perhaps one might
> rather say that *& is really a surface *a. Or in your terms, that *e/*o
> comes from a weakened *o instead. Of course it doesn't make sense
> in your terms because your vowels are all wrong.

This is only an attempt to specify which of the alternants of the thematic
vowel alternation e/o is the basic one. The parameter is one of sonority,
as I note with some satisfaction that you accept my observation that /o/
belongs before voiced segments, /e/ elsewhere. We know that the vowel that
later surfaced as /o/ was caused also by lack of accent. Lack of accent
cannot lengthen, as I understand the popular alternative to my
interpretation of the thematic-vowel rule to be, but it can lower the
tone. Indeed, both can lower the tone. Therefore I have suggested that
both events that led to PIE /o/ in alternation with /e/ were caused by
tonal lowering. That makes it unnecessary to invent original vowel
timbres different from the ones we reconstruct for PIE.

> (Damn, I'm a rude
> sonuvab*ch.)
>
> The explanation that *e: is a contracted *eo is weak. It simply suffices
> to accept that *e: is a lengthened *e as we always find it. Don't the
> facts as they are found in IE count for anything?

You must have copied something wrongly here; I do not recognize such a
statement. I did say that PIE *ó: is from *éo, itself from hiatic *ée, the
realization of superlong /é::/. Perhaps that is what you are choking on.

Jens