[tied] Re: Monovocalism: sequel

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

>
> MONOVOCALISM
> ------------
>
> > I have been driven to declare repeatedly and consistently that I

do

> > not advocate a monovocalic system for the final phase of PIE,

[...]

>
> One way or another you must choose. Without focusing on one

opinion at

> a time, one never allows oneself to uncover any falsehoods in it.

That

> leads to stagnation.

A 1-vowel system is unacceptable for the PIE we reconstruct.
Was there a 1-vowel system once in the prehistory of PIE? Very
probably.

> If the above is indeed your position while still obsessing on IE's
> apparent monovocalism, then you must surely also believe as you

later

> entertain that the single vowel may be "only apparent, and that it

was

> in reality more than one phoneme in an old period before the

advent of

> *a and *o from secondary sources."
>
> If that was what was behind your nebulous stance, I then agree but

I

> had even stated the above previously and was met with opposition!

I know, and my opposition still stands with regard to what we were
talking about. You were making claims, not I. You were making the
sweeping and arrogant claim that lack of vowel oppositions is
impossible in human languages; in fact we were only talking about
lexical oppositons, but that was not too clear at the moment. I
first pointed to Sanskrit which exemplifies very fine what you said
just could not be. Later I pointed to Semitic for an example of what
really matters in the case of IE. Whether or not it applies to IE is
a matter concerning things we cannot know. There is no evidence
within IE of a varied origin of IE //e//, you just insist it has one
anyway, based on the sheer belief that a language cannot be the way
Sanskrit is known to have been. I had to protest against that. That
is the extent of my involvement in this.

>
> THEMATIC VOWELS
> ---------------
> First off, I can accept an alternation of *kWrto-/*kWrti but I

can't

> bring myself to include *kWrtu- in this.

It ought to be quoted as *kWér-tu- given the regular opposition of
ablaut grade and accent placing vis-à-vis the two others. It does
not need anybody's blessing. Now, /u/ is a phoneme of the language,
so it is not unexpected if there is more than one thing that
contains it. That seems to be important for what follows:

> In my mind, it is *kWr-t-u-
> with a morpheme *-u- seen in other situations such as with the n-

infix

> *-nu-.

What would such a morpheme be doing here? You are denying
descriptive facts seen by everybody who has really looked into it if
you separate formations in -tu- from those in -to- and -ti-. The tu-
stems mean exactly the same as the ti-stems, only -ti- is very
frequently compounded, and -tu- never is. The form in -tó- is the
adjectival counterpart.

> The n-infix is known both in isolation and combined with other
> suffixes that occur in isolation such as with the transitive to

form

> *-nex-.

And is there a transitive morpheme in that? Exactly where is that,
and how does it sound?

Both *-ne-w-/*-n-u- and *-ne-H-/*-n-H- have the old
factitive/causative morpheme *-n(e)- infixed before the last
consonant of the basis. Adjectives are frequently u-stems, why I
just do not really know, and u-stem adjectives can form nu-
factitives, as Hitt. tepu- 'little' : tepnuzzi 'makes small', Vedic
dabhnóti 'harms, defeats'; Gk. thrasús ' daring', Ved.
dhr.s.n.óti 'dares' (function based on middle voice?). I only know *-
ne-H- from presents made from roots in H, as Ved. krin.á:ti, OIr.
crenaid 'buys' from *kWri-ná-H2-ti.

>This then can only mean that *-u- is a morpheme in its own
> right, either in IE itself or in pre-IE.

The w/u of *k^l.-né-w-ti 'hears' is a part of the root *k^lew- as
analysed by Saussure. In *dh(e)bh-né-w-ti it is the adjective suffix
of opaque affiliation; its closest relatives are *-ró- and its
compositional variant *-i-. Its function is the same as that of the
thematic vowel in derived ("secondary")¨adjectives. But the riddle
has not been solved yet.

> Further substantiation of *-u-
> exists in words like *pek-u- "herd" (< *pek- 'to comb (as of

wool)')

> and probably *gWehW-u- "cow" (< *gWehW- 'to graze'). These are just
> not related to thematic stems in *-o- or *-i- at all.

That is hard to know since we do not know where stem-forming -u-
really belongs. I do not think you can peel out a common semantic
core for the u's of *pek^-u- and "cow" - certainly not one you can
use with the last element of *kWér-t-u-.

> If *ku-kleu-
> is the proper reduplication of *kleu-, it still doesn't serve to

show

> that you're right.

Right about what? I wasn't asserting anything; you were, wrongly,
and I corrected you. You found occasion to lecture us that there are
no reduplications with -u-; well, that just can't stand, and I said
so.

> Rather it undermines your viewpoint because by this
> demonstration you inadvertantly explain it away at the same time as
> nothing more than the reiteration of the *u found in the root. So

*u

> therefore can't be any reflection of thematic vowel here,

logically!

My point was actually that the term "thematic vowel" should not be
used of the vowel of reduplications! If you insist on calling the
vowel of reduplications with -i- or -e- "thematic", then -u- also
is, but only in that uncommon sense.

> Also, it would be deluded to think that having the accent on the
> thematic vowel explains "the adjectival function, expressed by the
> thematic suffix, and the agreement of ablaut and accent" since we

never

> find **bHr-o- (which you try to patch up with ad hoc o-infixing)

and so

> we can't really insist on the last part of your quote.

I don't follow. Is "since .. **bHr-o-" part of the report of my
stance, or is it part of your comment? It is true it is not found,
not even as a type it seems. It seems only to be found with such
roots as do not take -o- in the causative-iterative. Indeed I
account for that with the infix theory.

> Quantitative
> ablaut gives us nothing for the solution of this puzzle, no doubt

because

> the resultant forms we see follow the event of Syncope. That you

rely on

> this ablaut to steer you the way shows that there is a flaw in your
> reasoning.

Rightly or wrongly, it does steer me to explaining facts nobody else
has formulated any reasons for.

> On another note, while *-to- is clearly the thematicized version

of *-t-,

> can we really say that *-no- is the thematic variant of syllabic *-

n-

> when we in fact find *-r instead? I don't think so.

Why "syllabic"? Did I say that? If so, I shouldn't have. What do you
mean by "*-r instead"? Instead of what? And where? What facts are
you talking about? Do you have knowledge of an agent-noun type in *-
r in IE? The stems in *-t- and *-n- I have referred to actually mean
the same and are in complementary distribution. So sure, we can
safely say that "*-no- is the thematic variant of syllabic *-n-",
and we do in fact not find *-r instead, no matter what you think.

> At any rate, this has
> no bearing on accent since adjectives insist on final

accentuation, and

> if my genitive explanation doesn't cut it for you, these are still

the

> facts.

Right, but we would like the facts to receive an explanation. The
accentuation of the thematic vowel has now explained this very well.
And it does not lead into functional absurdities.

> Naturally forms in *-no- and *-to-, being adjectives anyway, would
> have no choice but to follow suit and conform to the accent

pattern seen

> in other adjectives.

Even a pattern must come from somewhere. The addition of the
thematic morpheme accounts very well for the model it creates. This
looks like the obvious place to start when accounting for the whole
system of contrastive accent.

> This still doesn't explain the source of the pattern
> if genitives are not the culprit.

You cannot have been reading if you can say so, for that is
precisely what it does, and what it was designed to do.

> Also, I'm aware of exceptions where a
> thematic noun may have final accentuation but this is the

exception to

> the overall rule we are discussing. It's irrelevant in regards to

the

> relationship of *deiwo- and *dyeu-, the latter containing original

accent,

> the former doing away with it in one way or another.

Yes, many things are irrelevant; that is my most frequent reason for
protesting against so many of your assertions.

> You've merely asserted once more without substantiation that *bHór-

o-

> and *bHor-ó- can only originate from the finally accentuated form

and

> that o-infixing, by our majesty's decree, is the solution. No, it

is

> a _possible_ solution that apparently still cannot be proven by

you.

It is the only explanation advanced to date of these facts that
stays free of contradiction. I never claimed it was more than that.

> I've already shown in multiple ways how the adjectival case system

is

> not original in any way.

> I've shown [...] **CASE ENDING
> MISANALYSIS**

I am very sure you have.

A suivre.

Jens