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

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

> Defend it, man, or drop your case!
>
> > What intuition, if that is what it is, is in a position to

inform you

> > that the present aspect and the perfect stem should be parallel?
>
> If aorists and perfects are normally athematic and duratives are
> thematic, there is an unintuitive rift between the two groups. It
> just so happens that QAR and the other rules I've devised

beforehand

> lead me straight to differing _uniform_ vocalisms for durative on

the one

> hand in *e and aorists and perfects in *a on the other. For

example,

> we seem to have an MIE perfect *ba-bára-he 'I have carried' with

uniform

> use of *a throughout the reduplicated stem. This yields eLIE
> *bHebHár-xa because the first *a is preserved by Paradigmatic

Resistance,

> the second *a is accented and is preserved, and finally the *e in

the

> suffix is reduced to *a [&]. All is normal. From here, it's pretty
> straightforward and we get *bHebHor-xe after Schwa Merger and

Vowel Shift.

All of these rules need substantiation. Where are the parallels that
prove they are rules at all? What wisdom underlies the underlying
form? None of this is explained.

> BTW, Paradigmatic Resistance also explains how other instances of

MIE

> *a become strengthened *e, such as MIE *pát:-sa and pat:-ása,

vocalically

> uniform as the paradigm once was, becoming eLIE *pa:ds/*pedás >
> *po:ds/*pedós. All these rules are supporting each other in unison,
> indicating that my solution is too damned clever to be off-base.
>
> These rules go further to predict the uniform *e-vocalism of

reduplicated

> duratives like *bHibHereti. I am led to MIE *be-bere-ta, yielding
> after Syncope *bHabHérat in the non-indicative and a new indicative
> *bHabHérati fashioned from locative demonstrative *-i. Now, here is
> where unaccented *a becomes *i pretonically, yielding *bHibHérati.
> Acrostatic Regularization shoves the accent back and Schwa Merger

yields

> *bHíbHereti as a result. Notice that the first unaccented *e here

in MIE

> normally survives syncope to become *a. Therefore there is no

Paradigmatic

> Resistance that is necessary in the perfect showing *a-vocalism.

So this

> explains why the reduplicated *e in the reduplicated durative

becomes

> eLIE *a (later *i) while reduplicated *a in the perfect becomes
> strengthened *e.

The reduplicated present NEVER has the structure "*bHíbHereti". This
again is contra-hoc: You explain this, because it is NOT found. It
is lucus a non lucendo.

Even within the system of your rules, why do you place the accent on
the second syllable in the oldest form "*be-bére-ta"? Is that QAR?
Quasi-what accent r-what, placing the accent on the second or third
vowel from the end? Something like the accent rule of Latin? Why do
you give it the vowel *e? Why does it change to *a in syllables
adjacent to the accented one, and later further to *i before the
accent? If you are so serious about phonetic naturalness, is it
really wise to have /a/ as an intermediate stage between /e/
and /i/? The natural hierarchy would rather seem to be a-e-i. Is
there a particular reason for your surprising choice?

What is the basis of the funny structures you depart from, which I
understand to be durative *be-bere- and perfect *ba-bara-? In this
the reduplication plays no role in accounting for the /o/ (your a)
of the perfect, although o/zero is found in *three* reduplicated
stem-types and only there. And since the repeated -e- of the present
is taken to yield a reduplication with -i-, you have no way of
accounting for the principled appearance of -e- in the reduplication
of present stems that alternate *si-sékW-ti, *sé-skW-n.ti . Anyway,
the departure from wrong forms is lethal.

> Again, we only arrive at such a uniform vocalism in MIE if we

accept

> certain things that you remain stubborn about, such as the

conclusion

> that *i is the reflex of 'thematic vowel' when preceding the early

Late

> IE accent.

It *is* the reflex of the vowel of reduplications in cases where the
accent follows immediately. If you choose to go against the
terminology of the field by calling it "thematic", then it is indeed
a case of a thematic vowel becoming i before the accent, but it
applies only to reduplications and only when the accent is on the
immediately following (underlying) syllable. And if we choose to
call sardines whales I have eaten two whales today.

> So as a result, this all indicates with a fair degree of certainty
> that the durative had *e-vocalism throughout the stem and the

perfect

> had *a-vocalism throughout its stem and when reduplication occured,
> the reduplication also reflected the proper aspectual vocalism.

From

> there, it stands to reason that the aorist probably distinguished

itself

> from the other two aspects by containing a different vocalism from
> the other two while using durative or durative-like endings. In

this

> way, it remained unique and prevented it from disappearing right

up to

> IE times.

The ó/zero alternation also occurs in the reduplicated aorist and in
the derived (present) stem of the intensive. Both of these are
refuplicated just like the perfect. Therefore the ó/zero vocalism is
apparently rather a consequence of the reduplication. I regard it as
caused by dissimilation in a preceding stage of (full or partial)
repetition of the root.

> > Why is the present aspect patently parallel with the aorist in

the

> > selection of personal endings and so unparallel with the perfect?
>
> In a nutshell, two reasons:
>
> 1) It nicely makes irregular things regular and uniform

No, it does not. Why is the perfect out of line?

> 2) My rules that work for other phenomena such as QAR,
> eLIE phonotactics and Paradigmatic Resistance are
> predicting the uniform vocalism as a describe for MIE.

Incomprehensible. If these are later events that work on the facts
of your "MIE" it means that they *presuppose* or *permit* a uniform
vocalism. That indeed looks like a virtue, but only if the forms you
depart from are motivated.

> >> Do I use "hundreds of names"? No. An exaggeration.
> >
> > But you should. There should be a new name each time there has

been a

> > change. So this is poor design.
>
> You're now trying to find fault in silly things.

Yes, silly things should not be allowed to stand.

> > But we can't have each opponent calling each generation's

language by

> > names that are not shared by the group of discussants.
>
> There's no fear of that. I haven't seen anyone use any names at all
> because they haven't bothered to figure anything out yet about pre-

IE.

They are given no chance because you are not communicating. You may
have a message, and I have been wasting much time to figure out what
it might be, just to see if I could learn from it. I yet have to see
where that might be. Others less persistent hardly stand a chance of
getting through the thick noise of your arrogant presentation.

> I still keep on seeing people, learned and amateur alike,

expressing

> their very vague observations of pre-IE but nothing has really been
> seriously detailed by anyone from what I've seen. People seem more
> concerned with learning what everybody else knows instead of

getting

> their hands dirty and doing a little discovery.
>
>
> > This is destructive to the debate.
>
> It's destructive to the debate if you don't think clearly about

what

> you're saying. I try to be as precise as possible about my views of
> pre-IE so that I know exactly where I went wrong. If I never stand
> firmly on _one_ specific point of view, I'll never be able to stand
> still long enough to know what's right or wrong. It's this

hyperactivity

> that probably prevents most other people from developping detailed
> thoughts on the exact processes of pre-IE.
>
>
> >> Do you mean here that *woid-, being unreduplicated, is

not "normative"

> >> compared to other perfects?
> >
> > Yes.
>
> Well, the lack of reduplication isn't based on the form of the

word,

> so what then is it supposed to be, in your view?

It's a reduced word, allegro speech you know. Even written English
has _dunno_ beside _don't know_. This is a case of the latter form
replacing the former.

> > No, it does matter, for the full picture of its forms shows very
> > definitely that it has been reduplicated.
>
> I can just as well reconstruct *wa-wait:a-he for the 1ps perfect

and

> would still yield *woid-xe but only if it can be explained why the
> reduplication was lost here. I don't see any motivating factor.

Allegro does it. There's little to it.

> >> Here we go again. It's "not of phonotactic origin", but what is

the

> >> _evidence_ in one short paragraph? These are still idle

assertions.

> >
> > There is much more solid evidence showing exactly what you

refuse to

> > even observe than could possibly be contained in one short

paragraph.

>
> My philosophy is that if someone can't explain something concisely,
> they don't know enough about what they're talking about, or
> they just don't have any evidence. I know it's a strong view of

yours

> but I wish I could see your reason for it.

Pretonic not vanishing o, deleting H, reducing mn, attracting the
accent in heavy roots, disappearing in complicated structures, and
prefixed before r- and HT-. Zero does not do this, nor any vowels.

I have published the reasons in detail. A succinct summary is found
in one of the earlier postings. You have read that and needed more,
now you need less. Your philosophy makes you hard to serve.

> Concerning eLIE's intolerance of -CCC as I formulate it:
> > There is no rule complying with this brand of common sense as you
> > call it. Whoever issues such a statement must have knowledge of a
> > different treatment of IE clustering across the boundary between
> > root and flexive in primary word-formations in dependency of the
> > number of consonants that are brought together.
>
> Yes, exactly. The phonotactics of eLIE are not the same but in

order

> to arrive at this understanding, we need to understand the rules
> that have been logically devised previous to it and their reasons.

I've

> described where *bHe:rst comes from, whose explanation is based
> on Clipping (itself dependent on Szemerenyi Lengthening and

Syncope)

> to explain the vocalic length caused by aorist *-s- (from a nominal
> ending *-es) and 3ps *-t (from *-ta, a demonstrative).

Both analyses in terms of "clipping" are pure inventions. There is
no basis for the assumption of an extra vowel in the nominative
marker, nor is there any for the marker of the sigmatic aorist. By
contrast the two agree in showing /s/, and if the lengthening effect
is credited to that phoneme (or the special *kind* of /s/ involved)
there is no problem. The two events do support each other in
showing /s/, not in showing an underlying vowel which is something
you just choose to say. There is no evidence for earlier presence of
a vowel in the 3sg marker *-t either. There is no principle stating
that desinential markers (vaguely) reminiscent of pronouns have an
underlying structure -CV and not just -C.

> Other examples can also be explained by these and other rules that
> have substantiated themselves independently.

By other rules certainly, but not by these.

> > Whether a root ends in one, two or even three consonants, it is

treated

> > the same;
>
> Yes, but just in the latest form of IE as it has come to be. We

need to

> discuss the individual cases of -CCC and all the rules I have

listed

> plus their proofs to understand this. Unfortunately, this

particular

> topic is a very complicated one. It's not like accentuation which

is

> certainly easier in comparison.

If your rules had *any* basis this would be a fundamental part of
the grammar. Now, the grammar has no such paragraph; you are
standing firmly with both feet in the air.

> > Your terminology is not everybody's. Not that I care much, but

for

> > heaven's sake, let me be patient, so what is QAR?
>
> I've discussed this many times before: The Quasi-penultimate

Accentuation

> Rule. It was formerly the Penultimate Accentuation Rule (PAR) but I
> realized that phonotactics and some unexpected problems in

accentuation

> which arise with items like *woid-xe showed that penultimate

accentuation,

> while good, didn't explain the IE accent enough.

You can't expect anybody to remember that abbreviation if the core
word "penultimate" is not represented in it.

> Instead, it turned out that a quasi-penultimate accent, one which

allowed

> the accent to either be on the second- or third-to-last syllable

of a

> word described the IE situation much more completely. The

interesting

> pattern allowed me to push the age of the animate nominative

further

> back to IndoTyrrhenian by allowing *-sa in MIE. Ironically, it

also shows

> that while the accent has two different positions for the word as

whole,

> the stem itself could ONLY have penultimate accent, similar to my

previous

> conclusion to begin with. So while the accentuation I describe

sounds

> like it's unpredictable with two possible accentual positions in

the

> word, it is in fact completely predictable.
>
> So *kawána-sa (> *kwo:n) defies former PAR but is regular under QAR
> and shows a fixed _penultimate_ accent on the stem *kawana-, the

only

> syllable that the accent can be found on by this rule. When a

disyllabic

> suffix steals the accent, as with the genitive, the accent has

absolutely

> no choice but to migrate to the penultimate syllable on the

suffix. Thus

> *kawan-ása (> *kunós).
>
> Frankly, a robot couldn't have come up with a better rule :)

But this is based on a single word. You always invoke *k^uo:n, which
is not even a word of known derivation. Any robot can add a syllable
and predict the accent is on what precedes it.

> > The subjunctive of the perfect of *weid- turns up with irregular

but

> > identical forms in Indic, Greek and Celtic. That cannot be an
> > innovation.
>
> It was a feature that certainly existed in IE itself. I meant an
> innovation in a late stage of _pre-IE_.

And how produced? Why can't you use PIE for the reconstruction of
pre-PIE? What tells oyu that the subjunctive is original with
present stems but not with aorist or perfect stems? Where is the
basis of your assumptions?

> > Then that would reduce the number of individual a's.
>
> Yes, Vowel Shift reduced the number of individual *a's but they
> were not abolished completely, nor would they have been.
>
> > So you ascribe the vocalism of the hi-conjugation to the lexical
> > vocalism of the specific roots concerned? Could you explain and
> > justify that? Is it credible that roots with a specific vocalism
> > formed their finite forms with *inflections* of their own?
>
> The *o-grade is not an inflection in all cases. That would be like
> saying that because we have English "sing" and inflected "sang",
> we must think of "can" as the past tense. Why are YOU assuming such
> a funny thing?

No, I mean of course: Why does the hi-conjugation use other personal
endings than those of the present/aorist system if what really
separates them is just the lexical identity of the root?

>
> > The normal vocalism observed in the root aorist is *e. This even
> > comprises the aorist stems found in Hittite.
>
> This would do just as well. If that's the case, we'd have to

reconstruct

> MIE *CeC-a- as the antecedent form of these stems, still with

different

> vocalism from duratives in *CeC-e-. The thematic *-a- in the

aorist would

> still be lost by way of Syncope.

Root-presents and root-aorists are structured identically in IE. Why
do you insist on forcing separate underlying forms upon them? We
even see them moving in and put of each other's quarters: Vedic
déhmi and léhmi for instance are originally aorists, but since no
one could see that *dhéyg^h-m. and *léyg^h-m. were aorists and not
imperfects they could be transferred and thuis came to form presents
with primary endings.

> >> Not that "plainly". Evidently your idea is dependent on the

antiquity

> >> of the aorist subjunctive which I don't accept. The subjunctive

was

> >> originally unspecific to aspect, I figure.

This is not observed anywhere; some have thought it was, but they
based their opinions on reduced systems that do not even reflect any
of the IE subjunctive forms. Why would a modal system totally
different from its reflexes have to be posited for PIE? And if that
is granted, why would an earlier stage have to be equipped with a
modal system completely different from that? There should be a very
good and solid reasons for such suggestions, and none is given.

> > There are retained present, aorist, and perfect subjunctives

that agree

> > with each other in all corners of the IE territory where there

is a

> > subjunctive at all.
>
> Yes, I won't bother questioning that, but I question the

_antiquity_ in

> pre-IE of these forms as I was trying to explain. I've said that

the

> subjunctive is not a thematic vowel but derived from a special

affix

> *-he-.

So you have, but there is no reason I should believe you. There is
no observable difference of stucture between the present indicative
type *bhér-e-ti (or *bhér-H1e-ti if you will) and the present
subjunctive type *H1éy-e-ti (or *H1éy-H1e-ti if you will) or the
aorist subjunctive type *kWér-e-ti (or *kWér-H1e-ti if you will).
You give no reasons for forcing different underlying forms upon them.

> It would derive from a bare verb stem, plus or minus the thematic
> vowel, and a postfixed ending. If we think about what the function

of

> subjunctives really are and how they are used, we notice that they

are

> often secondary 'imaginary-time' verbs in subordinance to the main
> 'real-time' verb. In other words, it suggests a relative clause.
>
> It wouldn't be too farfetched to expect that *bHerehet (*bHere:t)

is

> nothing more than the reflex of eLIE *bera-he, originally unmarked

for

> person and perhaps with a more liberal usage as simply a verb for a
> relative clause, affixed with postfixed *e to indicate 'then'

or 'thus'.

>
> This account would also explain why the marker *-he- follows a

thematic

> verb, which is kind of irregular in IE morphology -- It's only

based on

> the unmarked non-person-specific form of the verb. The verb is also
> necessarily in the aorist here, to indicate a timeless or, in this

case,

> imaginary ('non-time') action.

The optative marker *-yeH1- also follows the thematic marker of a
thematic stem. There is nothing surprising about the order of the
elements in the subjunctive. Your own analysis in terms of old
dependent clauses (which is close to my own in this point by the
way) will seem to make it a very archaic thing in IE morphology.

> Unfortunately, this idea works against the notion that

subjunctives had

> always marked aspect in the past. It would have us believe as a

result

> that aspect-marking came later to subjunctives.

The wording in "the notion that subjunctives had always marked
aspect in the past" is not unambiguous. In fact I do not understand
it: Did subjunctive forms earlier express a particular aspect? Or
did they have an aspect function which was morphologically marked?
The latter is true, but not what you have said earlier. Is the
statement meant to express that the subjunctive did not vary with
the verbal aspect, but used the same form for the present and the
aorist aspect ("unspecific to aspect", as per above)? This view is
frequently seen, but is based on misinterpreted evidence.

Jens