Me:
> Epenthesis without motivation. This is not a valid solution. The
> vowel *e is there to disambiguate it from any singular forms, that's
> it.
Jens:
> The two would not even be identical without the vowel of *-es, so
> that cannot be "it".
Yes it can. In IE terms, we distinguish between *-os and *-es. The
former is what we see in singular thematic nominatives, the latter
in plural athematic nominatives. Had *-es been **-os, we'd have
confusion between derived thematics and plural athematics. Had *-es
been solely *-s, we'd again have large-scale confusion with the
singular nominative in *-s.
So, given what I know now of MIE, this all makes sense. The ending
*-es in MIE was simply preserved to avoid confusion.
> And by any honest evaluation it is an irregular point in your account
> and therefore a distinct weakness.
You have the same weakness, if not a greater one, because you need
to add a vowel (and why *e instead of *a or *o is anyone's guess) and
you provide no clear motivation for it.
> I manage to unite form and function in the nom.pl. of all types.
As do I. You're not unique.
> The acc.sg. is analogical (for expected "*xék-mn-m" actually)
Exactly. And I'm going to be punished for my use of analogy when
you can't even explain a single paradigm without resorting to that
tactic.
> When you invoke analogy it does not seem to bother you much.
Should I cry? Should I send you all pictures of my terrible dismay?
What does that statement mean really? When I exhaust possibilities,
I consider analogy.
> The nom.pl. is fully regular by my account. The acc.sg. has to be
> explained by analogy in my theory, which is admittedly a weakness.
You admit to a lot of weaknesses at this point. It's time to consider
another solution.
> I need analogy only for the acc.sg., and only for the standardized
> form, not for the vestiges of the regular form.
But why? If we can see that the lengthening of the nominative is
caused by *-s itself, then the accusative is simply the same stem as
the nominative plus *-m. Now, the kicker is that this can only make
sense if *-s and *-m have the same syllabicity. And you know what
that means, dontcha.
Yes, that's right: *-s < MIE *-sa and *-m < MIE *-am.
In that way, by QAR, the strong cases are given antepenultimate
accentuation for disyllabic stems. As I explained the rule, 2-syllable
stems can ONLY have accent on the first syllable of that stem (by
way of penultimate stem accentuation). So the pattern is a quasi-
penultimate throughout the strong cases and penultimate accent in
the weak cases like the genitive.
> You said that "only unaccented *a disappears, while unaccented *e
> remains in early Late IE as *a (which later goes on to become
> alternating *e/*o)". Then why is the vowel of the genitives not
> lost?
Paradigmatic Resistance. We cannot have gen.**pd-os because we'd have
a ghastly asyllabic root in a paradigm. This is not feasible. A
root MUST have at least one syllable in all paradigmatic forms.
To be clear, _deriviational_ forms may allow asyllabicity in the
root as in the classic example of *?d-ont- "tooth" where *ed- has
been crushed by accent tides. To understand when PR applies, one must
evaluate whether the form is part of a larger system (declension) or
whether it forms a new stem on its own.
So because of PR, MIE's *a in this instance was _preserved_ as eLIE
*a, contrary to Syncope. Note that this preservation is in alignment
with the development of plural *-es and is therefore somewhat of a
'regular irregularity'. Now, since eLIE unaccented *a is phonetically
schwa, it eventually rises pretonically to *e in closed syllable
or *i in open syllable. Here, we get *e and therefore *pedos without
problems.
> [...] how can there then be a stem alternant *ped- as in Latin?
Derived from the genitive *pedos, of course, and *pedos is the
result of *a in the root being preserved during Syncope.
> Your formulation makes one expect -i-, by the way.
No, because pretonic unaccented *a is not in an OPEN syllable like it
was in a initial thematic stem of a compound or in reduplicated
presents like *ba-bér- (> *bHi-bHer-).
Jens:
> If "the unaccented short *a becomes *o before voiced *n" is meant to
> reflect a rule restricted to the position before voice, why does it
> also work for *´-yos-m, *´-yos-es of comparatives? Vedic nápa:tam,
> nápa:tas also points to *népot-m., népot-es. I see no correlation
> with voicing outside of thematic stems. Where do you see it?
For *nepot-, the eLIE form had accent on the second syllable, derived
from earlier MIE *nepáta. The accent has shifted to the initial. The
same is probably true for the comparative.
= gLeN