Re: [tied] IE lexical accent

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> The reason is that I like to think of these suffixes as
> erstwhile independent words. I can see how desinences may
> have no underlying vowel, but if suffixes were once separate
> words, I'd expect them to always have an underlying vowel.
>
> This is of course just an impression of mine, subject to
> revision, and it's hard to offer solid proof of why suffixes
> must once have been independent words. The best argument is
> perhaps that it's the suffix, after all, which carries the
> case endings. This is perfectly understandable if deriving
> from Gruppenflexion of a noun phrase consisting of two
> independent entities: the root and the suffix.

I see it a little differently, but not much. I have noticed that the
vocalism of suffixes is completely monotonous, being only /e/ or
what comes from it. It is even worse if the /e/ is secondary itself. IN
the desinences however I notice other vocalisms also: gen. *-os, even
instr.pl. *-bhis, loc.pl. *-su, perhaps allative *-a(i), imperative *-dhi
which may all take the accent and reduce the rest of the wprd to
zero-grade. I therefore find it difficult to regard the desinences as more
reduced than the suffixes. I would suppose the desinences were once
independent words (perhaps very long ago, seeing that some of them do not
contain vowels I can detect), while the suffixes were unaccented parts of
the words. The reduction outside the first syllable looks like the
structure of German, so of course it would be nice if the original accent
was *initial* and not final a I have just said. However, these things
change. I feel quite sure that stems with final accent do exist, and I
also feel sure the initial accent was the rule at even an earlier time. I
still feel insecure with regard to the part played by semantics in it
all.

I am quite willing to accept that the suffix *-t(e)r- when forming
oxytone agent nouns did so due to its high degree of animacy. That would
allow its identification with the action noun suffix *-t(e)r of *-tr,
*-ten- (Lat. iter). That would mean the suffix was originally vowelless,
so this changes by the minute now.

> >> Shouldn't that be *H1n.H3-mn-ós?
> >
> >Oh no, the stem ends in -C-mn, whence *-C-men already in the lexical
> >form; the addition of a syllabic inflectional morpheme *-os causes
> >the accent to move onto the next vowel, which is here the anaptyctic
> >vowel of *-men-. The form is reflected in OIr. anmae, und underlies
> >Ved. -manas. In the Ved. man-stems it is only the instr.sg. that
> >reduces the cluster -mn-, so the genitive and the dative certainly
> >had full grade in the suffix *-mén-s, *-mén-ey.
>
> The G. and D. are given as na:mnah. and na:mne: in an online
> source, the reference for which I cannot find now.

Your forms are correct. There are Avestan examples of *-man-s, as
cas^-m&:ng (cas^man- 'eye', the equivalent of Gk. tékmar). But 'name' is
terrible of course.

Jens