Re: [tied] IE lexical accent

On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 01:58:17 +0200 (CEST), Jens Elmegaard
Rasmussen <jer@...> wrote:

>There remains the question of the distribution of proterodynamic vs.
>hysterodynamic which I used to take simply as a lexical given.
> [..]
>For this to work some suffixes must be given vowelless underlying
>structures. The double appearance of n-stems, Greek ákmo:n vs. poimé:n may
>be given an explanation in terms of the "contrastive accent" which plays
>on top of all this and causes some confusion: A shepherd is a person, so
>poimé:n may have secondarly introduced final accent (the tómos/tomós and
>ápas-/apás- variation). This has the charm of uniting ákmo:n with the
>neuter type ónoma which is also root-stressed. This demands that the
>suffix be posited without vowels: **-mn(t)-, not "**-men(t)-". Since all
>roots end in consonants, this suffix could not escape vowel insertion to
>*-men(t)-, but, I submit, only after the period of lexical accent
>assignment. So it was a stem *H1néH3-mn(t)- that was accented on its last
>vowel, which was in this case that of the root; after the change to
>*H1néH3-men(t)- the addition of a gen. morpheme *-os moved the accent to
>the second vowel, this giving PIE *H1n.H3-mén-s as generally
>reconstructed.

This seems to differ from earlier accounts. Is that correct?

I'm not sure I understand the advantage of this approach
with the underlying vowel-less suffixes (*-tVr vs. *-mn(t)).
You still need a special mechanism to explain <poimé:n>, so
why not leave things as they were: all suffixes have an
underlying (short) vowel, and accentuation on the root or on
the suffix is a lexical given (apparently governed by
animacy). I still think that's a nicer explanation, than
one in which some suffixes are, for some unknown reason,
vowelless, and others not.

Shouldn't that be *H1n.H3-mn-ós?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...