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

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

> Jens:
> > It does not matter that such a system is rare, for it is not

assumed

> > except for a single passing stage in the prehistory of the

language.

> > It is not claimed that all stages of the language were

typologically

> > uncommon on all points, on the contrary practically all we know
> > about it is quite commonplace. But it is totally unwarranted to
> > demand that, in a long series of stages there is not one that is
> > typologically abnormal.
>
> Congratulations. You've just proven that you have double

standards :)

>
> You hit my hand with a ruler for my Final Voicing rule, which

admittedly

> is uncommon, and then when the tables are turned and you are

responding

> to your own uncommon solution you feel free to state

hypocritically, "But

> it is totally unwarranted to demand that, in a long series of

stages

> there is not one that is typologically abnormal." Erh... wha? It's

okay

> for you but not for me?!

You may be right, and we both stand corrected. So, which is it gonna
be, are your final voicing and my one-vowel system both possible or
both impossible?

> At any rate, what you say is off-course. It _does_ matter how rare

any

> given solution is and how many of these rare solutions you amass

into

> a theory. While I have to defend the Final Voicing rule with the

knowledge

> that it is not often found in other languages (a solitary

improbable rule

> in a large package of secure ones, btw), you have to contend with

not only

> the abstract monovocalism (itself rare) but also the **further**

solutions

> you directly build upon it (eg: phonemic double-long vowels).

No, I am not using the one-vowel analysis for anything at all. I
only responded to a long series of lecturings about its self-evident
wrongness, statements that fly in the face of observations anyone
can make. Whether it is right or wrong is of no consequence for any
of the analyses concerning the growth of IE ablaut and morphological
peculiarities that I have presented.

> > After all this is nothing but statistics,
>
> Indeed. This is exactly what I'm saying and it is what

disqualifies much

> of your account of Pre-IE.

And now we see how much:

> Since I've come to find that some of your rules are worth salvaging
> because they are based on something hard to neglect, I've

reformulated

> them so that they rely on linguistic universals rather than

freakshow

> monstrosities. We don't need to lose much if we simply rework our

rules

> into something more oft-found. I don't understand your obsession

with

> using your well analysed phenomena to support linguistically

improbable

> conclusions.

No, I see you don't. It will seem that many of the regularities
displayed by the material are rejected by you, but insisted upon by
the language.

> > That would explain that in all the other stages we see a near-

violation

> > of a presumed universal in the extreme paucity of vowel

variation in

> > the IE *lexicon*.
>
> Effectively, we are in agreement. I had just finished saying that

while

> I don't believe that IE truly had the same pattern as Sanskrit

(there

> are some noteworthy differences), I do think that the way in which

the

> vowels evolved, particularly in the Late IE period, helped to

create the

> appearence of near-monovocalism. As I mentioned, if unaccented *e

is

> reduced to eLIE *a and then ultimately splits up into *e and *o

(our

> thematic vowel), it appears as though *e is both *e and *o at once.
>
> Translation: It _appears_ that all instances of both *e and *o

derive

> from eLIE *a, and further back, from *e. However, as always, there

is

> a danger in generalization. This is your peril.

Well, if they *did* that, that is what we should find out about
them. Are we not after the truth? Now, it was not that way, and I'm
not saying that. The thematic vowel was created under the accent.

> Jens about the rarity of languages that only allow one vowel in the
> vocalism of the verb root:
> > Where would I get that information? How many have seven vowels?
> > Quite many, sure, but *how* many? Why would I know that?
>
> You hardly need to "get that information". You use your noodle.

Such

> a thing is going to obviously be rare. Yet it appears you claim

that

> some prestage of IE had only one vowel *e. This is untenable based

on

> simple common sense. I don't know of any such language on the

planet

> and I stick to what I'm familiar with: languages with multiple

default

> vocalisms in the verb stem.

The quest for the truth does not go by what you already know. It
should be pursued with an open mind.

> > Semitic strikes me as quite appropriate here.
>
> No doubt. If it can be agreed that Semitic affected, whether

indirectly

> or directly, the course of IE in terms of vocabulary, it could have
> also affected it in other ways, namely grammatically.

That would help, but does it have to? Is it good for Semitic to be a
loner, and is it good for typology if Semitic is a loner?

> Now here, what you're using the example of Semitic for is to prove

that

> it is possible for a verb to alternate vowels to convey different
> tensual, modal or aspectual nuances. This was not in question. I

was

> trying to get across that a verb system that only allows _one_

vocalism

> in the stem or root is rare, if not non-existent. Evidently,

Semitic

> allows many different vocalisms using all of *a, *i and *u (both
> short and long).

That's not what I read about some of the Semitic languages. But if
it's correct and vowel oppositions are really *lexical* and not
merely morphologically conditioned as I can read, the prestage of IE
we're talking about is not quite like Semitic.

> So indeed, Semitic is quite appropriate here for not only the

grammar

> of IE but also the grammar of all stages of pre-IE where there had
> assuredly been varied vocalism of the verb stem _at every stage_

just

> like in Semitic and many other languages.

You do not know every stage.

> Jens bites his own arm off:
> > If Semitic is allowed to have vowel oppositions for morphological
> > purposes only, why is that a priori disallowed for IE?
>
> Precisely! Why, Jens?

Indeed, why?

> > The examples you quote all have morphologically conditioned

vowels

> > in IE, quite Semitic style.
>
> Ugh, here comes a mouthful. You aren't understanding my position.
>
> Of course, I agree and my version of pre-IE, right back to

IndoTyrrhenian,

> shows similar morphologically conditioned vowel alternations. I've

stated

> before that I think that the IndoTyrrhenian perfect aspect had a

pattern

> of *a-vocalism while the durative preferred *e-vocalism. The aorist
> lied somewhere in between, perhaps with the perfect's *a-vocalism

as

> the typical pattern while using durative endings, a kind of hybrid
> reconcilliation between the other two aspects. All of this, I said,
> speaks of early regressive vowel harmony between suffix and verb

stem

> with which early Altaic shares as a Proto-Steppe isogloss.

No, I am not understanding your position. I refuse to consider
Etruscan evidence here, it's putting the cart before the horse. I
can explain most of the IE vowel alternations by rules working after
the rise of zero-grade. For some, however, I have to go further back
and have the process unfold during time of the vowel losses. I
cannot know how much further back in time this is - it could be a
month of a thousand years, we just can't tell. Thus, some of the
oldest events creating o-vocalism could in principle be shared by
external relatives, but most could not. The dissimilatory o-vocalism
of old reduplicated verbal categories can have *any* age - except
that use of /o/ for variation would be strange if the language did
not have it already. The weakening of unaccented /e/ to /o/ must
postdate the invention of the contrastive accent, for otherwise
there would be no e-grade forms with it, but the rise of the
contrastive accent could itself have any age. The weakening of the
thematic vowel to /i/ must antedate the accent retraction seen in
reduplicated structures which in turn antedates the rise of zero-
grade. If the /i/ of reduplications is of the same vintage, the
reduction of the thematic vowel and the vowel of reduplications
to /i/ falls between two events of accent retraction onto the
reduplicator, being older than retraction from underlying root-
vowel /e/, but younger than retraction from a thematic vowel. Again,
these events can have any age preceding the main ablaut.

> The *a-vocalism isn't just some fluff I thought up for no reason to
> make pretty reconstructions for Proto-Steppe either. It happens to

show

> how similar the durative and perfect once were in pre-IE and how

they

> became so different. It happens to iron out some irregularities of

IE

> morphology nicely into something more uniform while still tying so
> intrinsically into all the other rules I've devised. []

What is the charm about maximum similarity between "durative"
and "perfect"? Because of the unknown time frame you could be right,
but it does not seem knowable. I deem it very unwise to design names
for these stages, for we will need hundreds of names, and they will
be changing all the time as we work on the finer tuning. Therefore I
have simply presented my phonetic rules in linear order without
prejudice about their age in absolute values.

> In order to derive the preform of 1ps perfect *woid-xe properly, I

am

> forced by my theories to reconstruct nothing other than *wait:a-xe

with

> accent on the third-to-last syllable (first syllable here) in

order to

> conform with QAR, as well as to perfectly reflect the attested

accent in

> the later form.

The form *woid-xe is not normative for IE morphology at all. Rules
based on it cannot be very good.

> I cannot reconstruct **wait:-xe because, by allowing medial -CCC-,

it

> violates the same phonotactics that effect a-Epenthesis (your

former

> O-fix/R-fix rule) and other eLIE restructurings during the Syncope

stage.

> So my rules give me no artistic freedom, nor should they. I am

forced

> to reconstruct *wait:a-xe and only that.

The infix is not of phonotactic origin. Like most other things it is
sensitive to phonotactic factors in its further development, but
that is a completely different matter. There is no constraint
excluding a sequence of three consonants across a stem + flexive
boundary. Words with three consonants in that position are treated
exactly like words having only two. The idea is pure invention.

> It first yields eLIE *waid-xa but the final *-a in the suffix

becomes *e

> just as do all thematic vowels word-finally in the vocative case

which

> also come from the same unstressed *a. The second *a has

disappeared

> regularly through Syncope. After Vowel Shift, *waid-xa becomes

*woidxe

> without problems. The evolution of the entire paradigm of *weid-

in fact

> has no problems from the MIE stage to the last moment of Common IE.

It is completely contrary to the rest of IE morphology to have a
thematic vowel follow a desinence. It is also contrary to IE
phonology to have a thematic vowel leave the placing of the accent
unaffected. The thematic vowel in its full shape (not -i-) was not
created from an unaccented vowel, quite the contrary. The irregular
forms of the root *weyd- can be derived from normal *we-wóyd-/*wé-
wid- by dissimilation (haplology) giving *wóyd-/*wéyd-. The
unreduplicated weak form *wid- is analogical. If retention of the
vowel in the 1sg of the perfect in *-H2e is regular, why is the
vowel lost in the middle voice which has accented *-H2é vs.
unaccented *-&2? Why is the paradigm of *weid- which "has no
problems" not followed by other examples?

> How is the durative and perfect similar? Well, the following
> demonstation will only end up justifying my other ideas such as

the view

> that that there was always at least two vowels at any stage of pre-

IE and

> how Syncope only obliterated *a, not *e. Let's say we take an MIE

1ps

> durative *bér-e-m. It becomes eLIE *bHeram after Syncope. This of

course

> is the secondary form which later yields *bHerom on schedule. Note

that

> the durative has its own special 'thematic vowel' *-e- mirroring

the

> vocalism of the stem in MIE which via the Syncope stage is

_reduced_ to

> *a. On the other hand, as I stated above, 1pp *wait:-a-xe is the

preform

> of *woid-xe and here too there is a thematic vowel, this time *-a-

, that

> again mirrors the stem's vocalism. Syncope obliterates the thematic
> vowel of the perfect while retaining the thematic vowel of the

durative,

> all because of trivial vocalic differences. This is why perfects

don't

> seem to partake in thematicism.

But these are differences you put in without motivation, just to
have different things to write different rules about. And how do you
account for the existence of a perfect subjunctive?

> > I have just published my account of that; it was *surprisingly*

easy

> > to explain.
>
> I'm sure. It's easy when you especially don't take language

universals

> into account.

No universals are violated or even strained by the explanation of
the intensive and the hi-conjugation.

> > Narten presents are made form the *same* roots that have

underlying

> > short *e in other forms. It is a purely morphological matter.
>
> A morphological matter based on what exactly?

Strange question, how could anyone know? Some specific roots show
forms with an extra mora in a number of formations. There are
apparently no aorists of this kind, so the simple guess is that it
expresses durativity in a very direct way (an iconic linguistic
sign).

> On the loathsome *a-vocalism in some verbs:
> > Even with an unexplained residue, the distribition of vowel

timbres

> > in IE is so uneven that it demands an explanation. You are simply
> > looking the other way and ordering me to do the same.
>
> I'm not looking away. I'm looking at it directly. You are stating
> that there is a lopsidedness in the vocalism of the verb,

preferring

> *e to all others. I can't but agree. However, where you would take
> that tendency and generalize it, I simply take it for what it is,
> a tendency. You can't explain the *a-verbs and in fact you do what

you

> charge me of doing: turning away.

You apparently won't accept that the lopsidedness has a causation to
it at all. I have pointed to possible causes which you just dismiss
without showing any knowledge about the matter at all.

> In contrast, I can account for them as residue from the Vowel

Shift that

> occurred in the last half of the Late IE period. While this would
> explain *mad- nicely as I said previously, in this specific case

there

> is the other nagging possibility that the preform is eLIE *mxad-

from

> an earlier MIE aorist stem *maxad-. I have to suspect that it is

another

> Semitic loanword, looking suspiciously like a Semitic adjective

(cf.

> Akkadian /haddu/ 'to rejoice'). That might be a possibility in this
> particular case.

Well, then that item may be out. Are you insensitive to the very
thought that you could be right and your explanations could do away
with the entire recalcitrant material?

> > There are no such rules. A root shape *med- is perfectly

permissible

> > for IE, and so is its conditioned variant *mod-.
>
> Yes, **med- is permissible and *mod- can be conditioned from it, of
> course. The only thing is that I don't feel the need to deny what

is

> attested, and if there are certain verbs with *a-vocalism, as would
> be natural anyways, then I don't see what the problem is. We see
> Latin /madeo/ and /madidus/.

It is not natural anyways that very few roots have *a, if all others
have it otherways.

> > What is the meaning of "grade" here? You speak of the roots as
> > lexically different. Where does a gradation come in?
>
> I mean that while the tendency would have been towards *-e- for
> inheirently durative verbs, it doesn't negate the possibility that
> there were other stem vowels allowed. All one has to do is migrate
> a few inherient aorists into the durative and voila. Presto change-

o, a

> new oddball verb! Presumably, in MIE, there would be some verbs
> (antecedents of the pesky *o-verbs that you deny) of the form *CaC-

e-,

> an irregular but understandable situation where the thematic vowel

is

> *-e- for the durative but the stem still contains *-a- like an

aorist

> from whence it's from.

The alleged *o-verbs do not have a special *lexical* vocalism. These
are forms that can be formed by any root, just like other verbal
stem-formations. And why on earth is it called an aorist? Or is this
becoming a debate by proxy?

> > The original form of the thematic vowel was accented.
>
> As you say all the time: "This cannot be known". :P

Well, many things can't, but this can really be observed.

> But seriously, all indications show that the thematic vowel was
> unaccented. In the rarer cases where the accent was placed on the
> thematic vowel, it can be explained away by other means. We have
> aorists with accented thematic vowel which through me for a loop
> for a while until I caught wind of the connection with the
> subjunctive. The subjunctive isn't caused by a 'thematic vowel'.

It's

> caused by an accented suffix, the accent being explained by QAR.

Well, if you now choose to use the term thematic only about vowels
nobody else would call by that name, you could end up being right
(and incomprehensible). But yes, the suffix of the subjunctive was
originally accented in my view as well.

> > Not if it does not fit the facts, as it patently doesn't.
>
> But it does! The prevalence of thematic vowels in IE, which you

cannot

> deny, is due to the prevalence of unaccented *a in eLIE. This is

indeed

> normal for a natural language. However, I can see that you're still
> brooding over the prevalence of accented *e and ignoring

everything else.

> It's clear enough to everyone else that such a prevalence does not

mean

> that only *e was allowed in **all** positions. This is

overgeneralization.

But if the different vowels are restricted to different positions,
they do not contrast. However, that is not what I mean. The thematic
root-present type is very plainly a transfer from the subjunctive,
mainly the aorist subjunctive. It's a well-known observable and
ongoing process which is repeated by younger material in the
individual languages.

> > The thematic vowel behaves the same whether it was accented or

not.

>
> The tendency is for the thematic vowel to be _unaccented_ more than
> it is found accented. When it is accented, it can be shown to be a
> recent state of affairs, either because of shifts in accent or

because

> of other considerations. They tend not to conform to the earliest
> patterns of IE ablaut. More below.

That is not so with pronouns at all. It is not the normal
accentuation of formations with suffixes of the structure *-Co-
which practically all accent the thematic vowel.

> > However, in very archaic remains, unaccented thematic vowels are
> > reduced to /i/,
>
> A convenient assumption that isn't a posteriori in any way

whatsoever.

Oh, it is indeed based on very clear evidence which is even quite
well known. I'll come back to that.

...

Jens