Re: IE lexical accent

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 enlil@... wrote:

> Jens:
> > I do'nt "have to recognize" any single one of them. Actually 2. and
> 3. are internal conflict. 4. makes no sense at all,
>
> First of all, it's "don't". Second of all, I've already explained how
> the fact that 3ps *-t is found medially while inanimate *-d never is
> is the deciding factor for which stop gets voiced. Those in
> exclusively final position will be voiced sometime in the Late IE
> period, as was the nominative *-s [-z], something we both in fact
> agree to. As always, my theory not only explains the voicing of *-s,
> it also is able to keep the only logical etymology of that morpheme
> intact.

That remains a mere postulate, so I don't have to recognize it one bit,
not even if it is developped into a seperate arguement that titulates
you.

>
> But... My theory just evolved again. Don't worry, just minor changes
> involving MIE and eLIE phonotactics and vowel systems.

Sounds frustrating when a complete recast is called for.

> Here is the
> latest:
>
>
> A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF SYNCOPE RESISTANCE
> -----------------------------------------
> After more analytical restructurings of my existing theory, I just
> realized that all "clipped" suffixes (those that became asyllabic) are
> all _word-final_.

You are speaking of desinences consisting of a single consonant. So what
could they be except word-final? About time that was realized by whoever
didn't see it already.

> Nominative *-s, 3ps *-t, collective *-x and inanimate
> *-d all qualify as word-final morphemes. That is, other suffixes are
> not suffixed to them at the time of Syncope. (This would just imply
> that the indicative *-i developped just after this in early Late IE,
> which isn't much of a problem considering that I've always known that
> the suffix developped around this time period based on other
> considerations and logical chronology of events.) However, suffixes
> like *-no- are not word-final (except for in the later vocative case)
> and are followed by case suffixes and plural/collective markers.
>
> So this means that "clipping" isn't an exception to an exception at
> all. It's not even an exception. It definitely obeys Syncope.

Only if there was a vowel for it to work on, which remains to be
demonstrated.

> Now,
> only the medial morphemes like *-no- seem to evade it. Since I've
> noticed other stems, even without suffixes, keeping final vowels
> because of phonotactic contraints after Syncope (to avoid triconsantal
> clustering in final position), there are less "exceptions" by this and
> the small residue that's now left can be explained by the already
> existent restraints on permissible syllable shapes in eLIE.

Words like *méne 'of me', *téwe 'of thee', *pénkWe 'five' would not
have three consonants even without their final vowels; *nókWt-s 'night'
and participles in *-ont-s have three final consonants despite the
anti-clipping pseudorule; an s-aorist like *dé:yk^-s-t 'pointed' has
four; and forms like acc. *gWén-H2-m 'woman' and *H1nóH3-mn 'name'
*acquired* final three-consonant clusters by the very process of
"Syncope"; Ved. jánima 'birth' from *g^énH1-mn even acquired four.
What nonsense is this?

> That means that Syncope Resistance was the foremost strategy to
> stopping dysphonic clusters, particularly in final position. The other
> strategy was a-Epenthesis which _added_ the neutral vowel *a to break
> up clusters that would otherwise occur in initial position such as
> *a-ktwa 'eight' (> *okto:u).

Your socalled "a-Epenthesis" is nothing but a stolen object. It is my
observation of a sonant infix surfacing as -o- or zero depending on root
structure which you dismiss in a cavalier fashion despite the
comprehensive evidence and replace by a simple dreamed-up postulate of
its being in reality zero, an impossible analysis for which you have
offered no evidence at all. Your conduct represents dishonest
scholarship at its lowest point. It was not so long ago that writers on
this forum weere called to order and admnished to keep to normal ethical
standards of scholarly discussions. I am sure the mail is still sitting
there in the list; maybe someone could help us locate it again?

> What about the aorist *-s-? Well, it lengthens the preceding vowel
> like the nominative does. This is because of the loss of a vowel by
> Syncope on a monosyllabic sigmatic suffix and is nothing more than
> compensatory lengthening. Now, if the aorist is truly a medial
> morpheme, why does the lengthening suggest clipping as if it lost a
> vowel by Syncope?

Because it's a wrong rule. They can be spotted by their failure to work.

> Well, the paucity of Anatolian sigmatic aorists suggests that this
> wasn't fully figured out yet. This'd be because it was only created in
> a very Late IE, just a verb stem derived from an *s-stative noun.
> Before this, one might presume that aorists were simply derived from
> duratives by conforming the verb to the pattern of *CeC-a- in MIE (ie:
> the root aorist). Tyrrhenian uses a similar verb ending to the aorist,
> as in Etruscan's 'gerundive' /ar-as/ < /ar/.

That ought to be enough to cause serious suspicion. The evidence is not
favourable and has to be tampered with, and then it still isn't right. A
poor choice.

>
> NEW THOUGHTS ON *o/*e alternation in *po:ds/*pedos
> --------------------------------------------------
> Basically the new idea is that all instances of pretonic *a directly
> become tensed to *e in early Late IE. This includes vowels that later
> show up as *i as those in *i-stems and *i-reduplicatives. In this new
> view, these *i's started out as eLIE *e. Any open-syllable *e's were
> only _later_ raised to *i, perhaps in Mid IE.

It is true that some nominal stems which show -o(:)- in their strong
forms have -e- in their weak cases. However, the collateral type with
strong-case -e:- which is parallelled by the verb shows, in my opinion,
that the underlying vowel is a long /-e:-/ for both alternants. In a few
items the result apparently was an arrangement with accented -o- vs.
pretonic -e-, but that is not a regular setting that can be parallelized
and used for the formulation of recurrent rules. In no cases do such
stems show i-vocalism. And the -i- of i-stems is never pretonic. I have
told you this already with due references, and you have already conceded
your error on this point.

> By the way, the *e in eLIE *pedás was in a _closed_ syllable because
> it is part of a CVC stem. The word is properly syllabified not as
> **/pe.dás/ but as */ped.ás/. In the eLIE perfect, 3ps *bHebHára is
> also properly syllabified as */bHebH.bHár.a/ while in the would-be
> *i-reduplicatives such as *bHebHérati it was */bHe.bHér.a.ti/. So
> naturally, the *e in an open syllable will be phonetically longer and
> more prone to rising to *i.

No matter what *you* call it, the first vowel of *pedo's is not in a
closed syllable. Again you have to change the meaning of the technical
terms to avoid confessing to a blatant error. You would have used it in
evidence if you had only said "open", for then it would be right (if
perhaps not relevant). Now you said the opposite, on record at that, so
you have to make special pleading of the most pitiful kind.

>
> Jens:
> > 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.
>
> Not only does the contrast of *-s and *-d mirror both phonetically and
> semantically the demonstratives *so and *to-, and not only is the
> suffixing of former demonstratives attested in other languages (even
> Scandinavian ones!), but also the very nature of QAR itself suggests
> overwhemingly that the loss of final vowel in these endings long
> postdated the assigment of accent. Quasipenultimate accentuation took
> shape in Mid IE.

The lexical accent is unaffected by the shape of the flexive and only
concerns the stem, but the mobility of the inflexive accent is caused by
the attraction exerted by an underlyingly syllabic flexive. The endings
of the strong paradigm forms have no such accent-shifting effect and so
apparently no old vowels either. The rules will of course work just as
well if one consistently adds an extra vowel and adjusts the
accent-shifting rule so as to be triggered only by two consonants; but
one could do the same with three or four or any higher number of vowels
one might find it amusing to put in. It should be of some interest that
this choice is based on no evidence at all. The minimum assumption is
plainly that the weak endings had *no* vowels, the strong endings *one*.

This will be modified (further down) by the possible acceptance of
subphonemic mini-vowels that do not influence the placing of the accent
(and do not do much of anything really, except perhaps provoke the use of
strong language).

>
> Luckily for me, there are yummy pecularities in accent placement.
> While it is largely predictable as to whether the accent is found on
> penultimate or antepenultimate in MIE via QAR, there are some minor
> cases where the accent had to actually be learned. Egad! Namely, in
> paradigms of animate *i- and *u-stems. If we have nominative *héwai-sa
> 'bird' (> *xewis), then genitive *hawéi-sa cannot be predicted except
> by understanding that the genitive attracts accent one syllable ahead.
> For consonant-ending stems, the genitive's accent is entirely
> automatic because the attraction of accent is accompanied by a vowel
> before the suffix -- *wát:an 'water' (*wodr) and *wat:an-ása (*wednós
> ~ *udnós) are perfectly predictable.

The same is just as predictable by the more modest assumption that the
nominative ended in a single sibilant *-s (**-z), while the genitive was
a syllable *-os (which was reduced to *-s in unaccented position i
*Hw-éy-s if that was the IE genitive). Also *ud-n-ós would come out of
**wed-n-ós with shift of the accent from the root to the ending due to
its vowel. And *wéd-n-s would come out of **we:d-n-ós if that was the
old form. We do not know the original form, cf. the insecurity of your
own reconstruction.

>
> What's going on? Well, we need *hawéisa to get later *xweis. It
> appears that *i- and *u-stems get the genitive *-sa without
> intermediate *a just like vowel-ending stems for the simple fact that
> *i and *u are vocalic glides in their own right. The *-a- is a way of
> breaking up the stem from the suffix ending but in *i- and *u-stems it
> was unneeded at the time that these case suffixes had been created in
> the first place.
>
> So... why is there a difference between the genitive which has this
> interloping *a and the nominative which doesn't? Why are their accents
> different if they look the same? The simple reason is that the
> genitive was created BEFORE the nominative in IndoTyrrhenian. As in
> Uralic, the nominative was originally unmarked for both genders while
> the ancient accusative *-m was restricted to animate usage. After
> cases were synthesized from pre-existing postparticles using the
> euphonic go-between *a for consonant-ending stems (eg: Steppe *si "out
> of" > *-(a)sa), IndoTyrrhenian decided to mark animacy for _both_
> strong cases, rather than just the accusative, by postposing the
> general demonstrative *sa after the noun. At this stage, it was not a
> true case "suffix" however. It was as yet only a particle placed after
> the bare animate nominative.

You don't know any of this, and even if you did it doesn't add up.
Rather than have the pronoun form *so produce a nominative you now let
it mark a genitive, and of all genders. In the old days a vowel was
inserted you say, and later speakers could handle the form without, so
they put it on the unmarked nominative also which thereby got a marking.
However, if it was so good as a marking of the genitive, what would now
be the charm of having the nominative carry such a misleading signal? I
think this is an amendment that won't last long. You'll be back soon
with a new version.

>
> When exactly speakers considered it a true _suffix_ is hard to tell
> but it definitely was not a suffix until Mid IE when QAR had
> developped because the accent pattern evidently recognizes that the
> nominative is different from the genitive as in the *i- and *u-stems.
> This would not be possible if nominative *-sa was thought of as just
> another case ending.

If you give the prestage of the genitive two syllables and that of the
nominative one it would work again. It of course also works if you put
one vowel in the genitive and none in the nominative like normal people.

>
> So what happened exactly? Simple. An initial light accent in the
> earliest stage of Old IE gave way to a strictly penultimate accent
> some time around early Mid IE. Once postposed *sa and other particles
> were treated as suffixes, it distorted the penultimate accent since
> these morphemes were not originally part of the word. The language
> then came to allow antepenultimate accent in addition to penultimate
> as a result. Thus was born the Quasi-Penultimate Accent Rule (QAR).

>
> The inanimate suffix *-d and 3ps *-t(i) also have the same source and
> explanation. They too were from the same postparticle *ta acquired in
> Mid IE that ended up marking first 3ps duratives and then inanim.
> pronominals, in that chronological order. It's without surprise that
> they also show the same antepenultimate accentuation whenever they are
> used.

They may also ve unaccented simply because they don't have any vowels
the accent could be placed on. Sure that is "without surprise", but that
does not lead to the inference you make. And if phonemic contrast means
anything the two just do not seem to be the same element.

> In IE itself, the lingering evidence of what I'm saying is suffixes
> that 'fail to attract accent'. A desinence that fails to attract
> accent implies a desinence that postdates QAR because it is invariably
> a particle. It's brilliant really because it explains all those pesky
> asyllabic suffixes. Even mediopassive *-r... again an MIE particle
> *hWar (a bare stative literally meaning 'done' but used to mean 'via,
> by which'). How about indicative *-i? Yep, originally MIE's endingless
> locative *ei meaning "at the time, here".
>
> The rest is... erh... prehistory.

A desinence that fails to attract accent may be a desinence without any
vowel to do it with. That is simpler by any standard, but not considered
by you because it has already been said.

> > That is not what I see when I check on that.
>
> What you see concerning EA and Uralic is not what most others see
> either.

Elaborate please. But sure, most others don't know a first thing about
these matters. Where are the vowels you cling to, and what proves their
antiquity? For EA, I wrote the only book that exists on the subject.
What *are* you talking about? There are plenty of anaptyctic vowels of a
subphonemic status, but you apparently mean real vowels that are part of
the matrix of phonemes. I cannot accept that.

> > 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.
>
> Ah. I was confused by your use of stem to include the suffix in this
> case. However, we have to recognize the stem as we do in IE itself.
> So, in all cases of _paradigmatic alternations_ (please note the
> emphasis) a stem ALWAYS contains a syllable. We just never see
> anything like **pdos but we can certainly observe *pd when it is in a
> derivation to form a _new_ stem with its own paradigm. Even still, in
> that derived paradigm, we again never ever ever see the stem reduced
> to asyllabicity. It STILL has at least one syllable.

I generally do use "stem" to include suffixes as all normal
Indo-Europeanists do, but I did not do that here, because the example
*H1s-ént-i 'they are' does not have a suffix; it has a desinence which
is a different thing, especially with regard to accent assignment. It
should not cause confusion that I take pains to keep separate concepts
separate when I talk about them.

> On Syncope:
> > 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.
>
> Alright, but in this case Occam's Razor forbids me to consider
> anything but the simplest solution until some motivation based on the
> facts urges me to adopt a more complex one. What shows that IE must
> have both Syncope and clustering within a syllable? All I can see and
> all that ever appears to be needed is a simple CVC structure for MIE
> syllables.

The inflectional accent actually reveals that. In addition, it should
not be just assumed without proper reason that all IE consonants were
once followed by vowels. We have good reason to believe that an optative
form like *dwis-iH1-ént had some such shape as *dweys-yeH1-ént before
the ablaut produced zero-grade of two of its elements; it is quite
another matter when some analysts run amok and posit some such thing as
*deweyese-yeH1e-énete.

>
> So, don't be confused. I don't reject your Celtic examples as
> impossible here but I just don't see the need for it in IE when
> everything can be explained without this further complexity. I mean,
> how could one tell whether one initial cluster is truly a cluster and
> which one isn't. It would be impossible.

Then don't.

> So what 'careful analysis' shows anything? What
> is shown by any analysis is that Syncope did exist and that some
> clusters are indeed the product of Syncope. I admit to generalizing
> Syncope for all clusters but... that's Occam's Razor in practice.

A rule moving the accent to the next vowel under certain conditions will
reveal where the next vowel was. It will also reveal where potential
vowels did not exist. Am I the only one who understands this? There
*must* be others who can see it. Where are all the sensible people
reading this?

> What we gain from this generalization of Syncope to ALL clusters is a
> nice CVC syllable structure for MIE for ALL syllables that works just
> fine. Further... a-Epenthesis and Suffix Resistance would appear to be
> two strong testimonials to a _constraint_ on clustering! So I simply
> can't follow your point of view because it loses too much in exchange
> for outright ignorance and confusion.

Sure the language you are after becomes nice if you make it nice. What
if it was not nice? And there is no a-Epenthesis as you portray it. I
have myself written extensively about the constraints on clustering in
IE and its immediate prestages. The long-diphthong problem and the
ERU/ERU: alternations are of that kind. I am no stranger to restrictions
on clustering for IE. Also the main point of the o-infix theory is of
this kind. You are quite obviously right when you say you can't follow
this, but that doesn't change the language history we are out to
uncover. The regular restrictions on clustering I have found have done
away with much of the ignorance and confusion you are so mad about. I
would not be averse to presenting them on this list if anybody is really
interested in the matter.

> > Were there no simple consonantal endings in the morphology?
>
> In a sense, yes. However phonotactics forbade the direct application
> of a suffix right after a consonant. For example, the MIE durative
> requires the 'thematic' *e and the aorist a thematic *a in between the
> singular endings and the verb stem even though the suffixes are
> technically just consonants (Eg: *és-a-m 'I am'). The thematic vowel
> is not only signalling aspect, it is also there for more practical
> reasons. There is also the very ancient suffix *-m in the accusative
> and it too requires *-a- before it in consonant-ending stems as do
> most other case endings that aren't consonant-only like the genitive
> *-(á)sa.

There is no ablaut difference between present and aorist in IE. There is
therefore no reason to postulate loss of two *different* vowels where we
have no evidence for any. To make the IE accent rules work you do not
need any of the vowels you put in before the short endings. They work
fine without.

>
> Me:
> > They must surely have had vowels before and so what then was the
> rule _at THAT stage_??
>
> Jens:
> > We cannot know.
>
> Ach, _you_ cannot know because you can't be reasoned with. Every time
> I run you into a logical brick wall, you say "We cannot know" as
> predictably as a rooster crows in the morning.

And I'll continue to say this every time it's called for.

If you insist on the silly question: If there was a prestage in which
the shortest endings were always syllables, the IE accent should of
course also be predictable from that. It would be a rule much like the
one we have: The lexical accent is on the last vowel of the stem, where
it stays if the word is combined with a light inflectional particle,
whereas a heavier one causes the accent to move to the next vowel there
is. Whether that accent movement had already occurred or was only in
store for a later time cannot be decided on that basis.

> I fortold:
> > (Prediction: Jens will say "we cannot know", whereupon I will think
> "Load of horse doodoo").
>
> Jens:
> > You *have* learned something by now. I still have to learn to fathom
> the depth of some of your more subtle arguments.
>
> Load of horse doodoo.

I think it is appropriate to remind you once again of the moderator's
admonition. This is a blatant example of the things that make it a
liability to be part of a list of this kind.

> > The language itself tells me that there is accent movement with
> morphemes which have allomorphs like *-so, *-ey, *-eH1, *-oom, [...]
>
> And this observation doesn't demonstrate a clear conclusion, only a
> meaningless pattern (if it really is a pattern considering that the
> nominative has a zero-allomorph in *kwo:n and that the perfect endings
> are all rejected under your ad hoc analysis). All it does is encourage
> anyone to imaginatively find their own differing solutions from the
> same "pattern" because there is no inevitable conclusion that can come
> from any of this.

That is not a *meaningless* pattern: syllabic flexives move the accent,
asyllabic flexives do not. In Latin and Greek the accent often moves if
a syllable is added, if by other rules. That is not a silly idea, but
one based on unbiased observation.

>
> You always take from examples specifically designed to be unencumbered
> by clarity so that your solutions can be unencumbered by reality.

Please translate, anyone. Where have I used unclear examples if that is
what you mean?

> > Then there is no basis for a vowel, and no basis to make a rule
> from. I only wish you had added an argument.
>
> IE 1ps *gHwenm likely comes from MIE *gwénam and causes no problems
> because I now see that athematic verbs can have once been thematic by
> way of Syncope.
>
>
> > And what might he say? Miguel's Tour of Proto-Nostratic Grammar
> (hoping for your permission, Miguel) says this
>
> Whatever.
>
> At any rate, in regards to the pronominal endings in my correlative
> ProtoSteppe and Boreal stages, we can indeed say that these endings
> are "consonant-only" as long as we grasp that go-between vowels are
> absolutely unavoidable by way of the limited allowable syllable shapes
> of those protolanguages. I don't agree that Eskimo-Aleut just strung a
> whole bunch of consonants together in Kartvelian-style without vowels
> in-between and these analyses don't even require us to do so.

That could at best be the *result* of an investigation, not a point of
departure! What's the idea in even bothering to look at the facts if
one's mind is made up already? Yours plainly is. But maybe the fronts
will meet here if the vowels you are so adamant about are really there
only in a subphonemic capacity which make them unable to influence the
accent placing. Then the proper wording will be that flexives of strong
paradigm forms contain no vowels or only subphonemic vowels, while
weak-form flexives contain fully phonemic vowels. It is then a
difference in "vowel size" that is crucial here.

> > The Tour also reconstructs a plural in *-t for the noun.
>
> That's nice but it's just wrong. It has to be *-it because it explains
> the palatalization in Altaic of resulting *-r^, it shows up in
> Tyrrhenian as *-er with *e (Yes, we SEE that vowel in /clen-ar/
> 'sons').
>
> This is all just a fantasy of yours, Jens, to hold onto a corrupt
> analysis of *-es. My theory doesn't have problems with the form. It
> doesn't need to come up with a smokescreen like "the *e just popped
> out of thin air somehow". Of course, we have no choice to explain *-e-
> here but my theory just analogically dissimilates a vowel that would
> have otherwise have become *o in IE. There are even other cases of an
> expected unaccented *a becoming *e in eLIE, as in *pat:ása > eLIE
> *pedás
> > *pedos.
>
>
> > The same ending is asyllabic in Eskimo-Aleut (*-t,
> morphophonemically a dental spirant with subphonemic voicing, i.e.,
> "edh").
>
> No. It's still in reality *-&t. The schwa is what remains of Steppe
> *i. But this is a matter of nitpicky analysis. Grammatically it may
> indeed be said that it is a single-consonant and *& is just a
> 'filler'. I just don't want it to be said that there is no vowel
> in-between.

Well, Eskimo and Aleut did in fact use fillers with some consonants, and
after clusters. But that was a nonphonemic vowel, the fifth vowel of
Eskimo morphophonemics, a mere conditioned variant of zero. If the /e/
of IE *-es may be one such filler I could accept it in case the
nominative lengthening (in a version I'm afraid Szemerenyi would not
have liked much) could operate right through it, and the cluster-induced
shortening was not blocked by it, in the relevant stages of pre-PIE:
*H2nér-[¤]z-c > *H2né:r-[¤]z-c > *H2nér-[¤]z-c > *H2néres. (I write the
subphonemic vowel by ¤, which looks like a small sun on my computer, the
upper-case companion of the number 4; if I had it I would use the degree
sign). I have no objection to the presence of a subphonemic vowel provided
it does not interfere with the rules I see working. The coming and going
of a subphonemic vowel even seems to be a shared feature of Uralic and
Eskimo-Aleut, and it seems to fit the other branches very well also.

This is a rare instance of a rewarding outcome of the frustrating
discussions we have had. Though I am mostly forced to just read past
your many unfounded guesses which are shamelessly presented as if you
really know something, I also occasionally, if rarely, very rarely
indeed, encounter little oases in the desert. This certainly is one. It
takes a toll on my tolerance that I have to read through all the abuse
to find such little rare glimpses of what it was all supposed to be, the
effect that if we join forces we can make music together.

That anaptyxis is the key word is clear from such examples as

Greenl. /natiq/, erg. /naqqup/, pl. /naqqit/ 'floor'
Chapl. nat&q, erg. natX&m, pl. natX&t 'floor'.

This is from /natR-/, processed with insertion of an anaptyctic vowel
(which I here write with ¤) before the final consonant in uninflected
and inflected forms alike:

*natR > *nat¤R > PE *nat&q
*natR-m > *natR¤m > PE *natR¤m
*natR-d > *natR¤d > PE *natR¤t

In some contexts the inerted vowel -¤- merges with -&- (the "fourth vowel"
of Eskimo linguistics), but in some it keeps its independent status.
Phonetically, the inserted vowel was higher than the underlying -&-.

There is no anaptyxis in R-final stems which instead delete the uvular
/R/ with compensatory doubling of the nearest preceding consonant:

*aluR > PE *aluq 'footsole' (WGr. /aluq/, Chapl. aluq)
*aluR-m > PE *allum (WGr. allup, Chapl. alum)
*aluR-d > PE *allut (WGr. allut, Chapl. alut).


Stems in velars (*g for spirant g) do have anaptyxis however:

*cavig > PE *cavik 'knife, iron' (WGr. savik, Chapl. savik)
*cavig-m > PE *cavig¤m (WGr. saviup, Chapl. savig&m)
*cavig-d > PE *cavig¤t (WGr. saviit, Chapl. savig&t)


I also find anaptyxis obvious for a Finnish example like:

lapsi 'child, nom.pl. lapset, gen.pl. lasten. The last two obviously
have vowel insertion:

-ps-t > -pset
-ps-t-n > -psten > -sten

The reduction of the cluster ps reveals lack of an original vowel before
the plural -t.

If the Altaic plural needs a vowel the variant with anaptyxis is ready
to serve.

>
> Ultimately however, *i is part of the morpheme in Proto-Steppe because
> it is *i that is reflected in the resultant forms, not *u and not *a.

In my estimate it is phonemically zero. Even in later periods it has not
merged with any of the independent vowels.

Thus, if it is insisted upon that the desinantial morpheme of PIE
nom.pl. *H2nér-es 'men' had a vowel already in a much earlier period, I
will have to posit

*H2nér-z-c [xnér¤zc] (with due reservation as to the exact phonetics
of the sibilants) which is the processed as if the anaptyctic vowel is
not there, i.e. going to *H2né:r¤zc > *H2nér¤zc > PIE *H2néres.

If however, it is to be avoided that contact influence between
consonants can take place right through an anaptyctic vowel, then it
must be assumed that the Eurasiatic anaptyxis did not survive into IE,
but that instead a new anaptyctic vowel emerged in the exact same place
where the old one had been eliminated. None of the scenarios is excluded
by anything we know.

There is the complication that the IE form is a nominative plural, not
just a plural. That may make the form different from its nearest
external comparanda, in which case there should be no basis for a
religious-sounding rejection of the analysis that imposes itself on the
basis of IE alone.



Jens