--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
>
> Jens:
> > 1. The accent is *final*, not penultimate or quasi-so.
[Glen:]
> Asyllabic affixes derived from syllabic morphemes are common
> enough to see. We have to recognize a pattern in IE considering
> that:
>
> 1. animate nominative *-s is related to *so
> 2. inan.nominoaccusative *-d is related to *to-
> 3. 3ps *-t(-i) is related to *to-
> 4. aorist *-s- is related to substantives in *-es-
I do'nt "have to recognize" any single one of them. Actually 2. and
3. are internal conflict. 4. makes no sense at all, and you have
given no arguments even trying to make it make sense. Even if one
accepts the lot, the inference you make is a non sequitur. We need
an argument for the choice that the presumed reductions of *so to *-
s and of *to to either *-d or *-t postdate the assignment of the
accent. I have not seen a single word in any of your postings about
this crucial point. If the alleged reduction is *older* than the
rule that assigns the stress to a given place, the rule comes out as
the one I have given, stipulating final accent. If you assign the
stress in an earlier period it comes out as penultimate. Even then
it only applies to the lexicon, not to the grammar, as is plain to
see. If you allow morphemes that do not influence the accent placing
to have an underlying vowel you must assign more than one to those
that do attract the accent. With its foundation in a Nostratic
analysis this is ironical by making the IE forms older than the
Nostratic reconstructions.
> However, this contradicts the possibility of your final accent and
> forces us to accept penultimate accent in many instances. Whilst
you
> will warp Uralic to suit your own needs, you know damn well that,
in
> the mainstream, its accusative consists of more than just consonant
> *-m. There's a vowel there too. Same thing with all Uralic endings.
> Anything else would destroy the phonotactics of that language.
That is not what I see when I check on that. It is not what I know
from Eskimo-Aleut, and I see nothing demanding it in Indo-European.
In sum, I see no basis for it at all, while all observations go
against it. I don't find the choice difficult.
[Jens:]
> > 2. It is the distance from the end of the *stem*, not the end of
the
> > word that counts in this.
[Glen:]
> If this were the case, we shouldn't have *?s-énti, but we do. So
either
> IEists still don't have a grasp of its simple grammar, or your
statement
> must be fundamentally flawed.
We should indeed have that, why not? The stem is *H1es-, and it has
a lexically given accent on its final vowel, i.e. *H1és-. The
addition of a syllabic ending then pulls the accent to the following
vowel in the usual manner: **H1es-ént > *H1s-ént, indicative *H1s-
ént-i.
I won't resort to sarcasm about those who "still don't have a grasp
of its simple grammar".
[Jens:]
> > 3. I guess we also differ when I say that the accent movement
seen in
> > paradigms works on the basis of this, and that it is separated
from
> > the lexical accent assignment by an intervening event of
*anaptyxis*
> > which creates some of the vowels to which the accent can
subsequently
> > move.
[Glen:]
> Using anaptyxis is mad considering that we _know_ that there was
Syncope
> in the past by other examples.
Many languages have both. Your irate outburst is like saying
(better, shouting) that the last vowel of Old Irish tarathar 'auger'
cannot be anaptyctic if there is syncope of the second vowel in
dat.pl. tarthraib; still Welsh which has none of this has taradr.
It's a matter of careful analysis to figure out where you have what,
but by now we should have come this far.
> So rather than inventing new excuses, we
> take Syncope to its natural limit and realize that vowelless
endings
> like *-m and *-s derive from unaccented-vowel-enriched preforms *-
am and
> *-as, just as *gnh- is the result of a stressless version of *genh-
.
Again, you forget the modality which is here "can": It is
potentially the way you choose, not necessarily.
> There is an association between lack of stress and vowel dropping.
Wow, I would never have guessed. What you apparently have not
guessed is that they could also just be consonants that just were
that way and have not lost any vowels within the time span were are
talking about.
> For your theory to operate at all, you need to assert that
asyllabic
> morphemes are NOT from syllabic antecedents which gets absurd
> considering the list above.
The list is nowhere near serious talk. It needs a *very* good and
solid argument to claim that *all* asyllabic endings have lost a
vowel after the accent was assigned by rule in an older period. Were
there no simple consonantal endings in the morphology? If the
ensuing rule were very simple and showed high milage by clearing
away a large number of irregularities it would be sensible talk. But
that just does not seem to be the case.
> Sadly, it doesn't address anything because
> you're merely restating what the accent rule is in IE as if it
should be
> reconstructed for all stages of pre-IE. But what then is reason
for the
> asyllabic morphemes. They must surely have had vowels before and
so what
> then was the rule _at THAT stage_??
We cannot know. We are not after the language of Adam and Eve, but
only after the prestage in which the accent was governed. Your
suggestion goes back two rounds of vowel loss, mine only one. I get
a large number of additional solutions by my simpler account which I
do not see your more complex rule gives you.
I guess the rule you are after is the one that produced asyllabic
simple inflectional morphemes for the entirety of Eurasiatic (your
Steppe?) by cliticizing following pronominals into single
consonants. Since the result is seen in the other branches also it
can hardly be a separate event peculiar to Indo-European.
> (Prediction: Jens will say "we
> cannot know", whereupon I will think "Load of horse doodoo").
You *have* learned something by now. I still have to learn to fathom
the depth of some of your more subtle arguments.
[Glen:]
> The reason for the asyllabic morphemes is Syncope, plain and
simple. So
> the accent naturally will not be found in those syllables except
when
> later analogies apply to rework the former accent. We need no
special
> prop-vowel. If one may derive *pertu-s from an MIE form, we'd
expect
> *pértau-sa and this would fully explain it. The genitive would be
> *partéu-sa and this would fully explain *prtéus. The former
pattern now
> is more regular. We can see that accent shift is fully predictable
> by QAR; we see that *e becomes *a when unaccented; we see that all
> instances of *a are dropped after Syncope; we also see that the
> nominative ending *-sa is related to the free form *sa (> *so).
This is
> a much clearer account of pre-IE than you have offered.
I don't see any of this. If anybody else does I would appreciate it
if they could explain it to me, and perhaps to others who do not see
it either in case I am not the only one.
[Jens:]
> > I do not accept the derivation of the nom. *-s from a syllable *-
so,
> > nor of the pronominal neuter *-d from a syllable *-to, but even
if I
> > did it would not matter.
[Glen:]
> It would matter. You would no longer be able to assert final
accentuation
> and you'd be more in line with my penultimate solution. This is
why you
> deny it so stubbornly.
[Jens:]
Right, and I would not be able to assert regular inflectional accent
as known in the field throughout its history. I would not be able to
ascribe any importance to the testimony of the language itself but
would have to ask you every time.
The language itself tells me that there is accent movement with
morphemes which have allomorphs like *-so, *-ey, *-eH1, *-oom, *-
bhyos, *-bhis, *-su, *-we, *-me, *-te, *-ent, *-H2e, *-tH2e:s, *-e,
*-dhi, but not with morphemes which are always *-s, *-m, *-H2, *-
H1y, *-ms, *-m, *-s, *-t, or zero. That makes a statement I can
decode in good faith. Thus instructed I can move on and figure out
why there can be morphemes of the structure *-es, *-e that do not
change the accent, but only because the calculation with vowel
insertion leads to a regular morphology. I then leave out what does
not fit anything I can understand yet, such as the endings of the
perfect singular *-H2e, *-tH2e, *-e which do not attract the accent,
while the middle-voice endings of basically the same structure
do.
> > I do not thereby exclude that they are ultimately independent
words,
> > indeed I have analyzed *gWhén-m 'I kill' as "a killer (am) I";
>
> Lame. We don't need this conjecture. It suffices as an athematic
verb.
> The end.
Well, thank you, it's of course even better without the "lame
conjecture". Then there is no basis for a vowel, and no basis to
make a rule from. I only wish you had added an argument.
> > I see a potential support for this in their being also just
single
> > consonants in Uralic (Finnish -n, -t).
>
> These endings ARE all syllabic. Ask a Uralicist if you've
forgotten.
And what might he say? Miguel's Tour of Proto-Nostratic Grammar
(hoping for your permission, Miguel) says this
"-
PROTO-URALIC RECONSTRUCTION
Taking all of this together, I arrive at the following Proto-Uralic
reconstruction:
STATIVE
1. *-k
Based on the Hungarian objective and Selqup stative.
2. *-n
Based on Zyryen, Ob-Ugric, Magyar (-sz < -*n?) and Samoyed.
3. *-0
Reflected in all branches.
1. *-(g)-m&-n'
2. *-(g)-d&-n'
There is no clear evidence for dual (g), but logically it must have
been there.
3. *-g&n'
This is just the nominal dual ending (Ostyak -G&n, Vogul -G, Samoyed
*-kan').
1. *-d-m&-k
Plural -d- based on Mordvin -ta-mk.
2. *-d-d&-k
Plural -d- based on Mordvin -ta-dk
3. *-t
This is just the nominal plural ending.
-"
The Tour also reconstructs a plural in *-t for the noun. The same
ending is asyllabic in Eskimo-Aleut (*-t, morphophonemically a
dental spirant with subphonemic voicing, i.e., "edh"). In all three
families, the simple markers are single consonants, while complex
morphemes expressing combinations of person and number have vowels,
either by anaptyxis (as I am inclined to assume) or by retention
under conditions not offered by the simple endings (which could also
be possible). The branches look very much alike. I have not made any
use of it, but I do not regard it a drawback if my analysis happens
to produce underlying forms that come close to the combined
testimony of this larger field.
Jens