Re: [tied] Re: IE lexical accent

Jens on the consonant-only endings like *-s:

> Once syllabic - sure, but when was that? [...] Now, as soon
> as you are out of radar range where comparative linguistics cannot
> control you, you shout, Here it is, there must be syllabic forms here!
> But nothing tells you that the prestage you cut back to when rolling
> back the few changes we call ablaut is different from PIE (and Sanskrit)
> in this particular sense.

"Nothing" is a total overstatement. Syncope tells me at what point these
syllabic endings turn asyllabic since the motivation for their vowel
loss (together with all the other examples) is then painlessly supplied a
la Razor.

Now, Syncope doesn't happen immediately before Reconstructed IE. I figure
there were probably a thousand years between it and the IE we're
discussing. So you can dramatize all you want that I'm positing
syllabicity for asyllabic endings "as soon as I'm out of radar range of
comparative linguistics" but that's not even true. I have to be _a
thousand years_ out of radar range before I feel safe to propose it.

> What could really decide it would be evidence from the closest relatives
> within Nostratic.

Yes, indeed. And there happens to be no trace of a nominative *-s outside
of IE. The fact, if you're really interested in facts at this point, is
that a marked nominative is highly unusual. We'd expect a bare nominative
instead and, yet lo and behold, the bare nominative is what we find in
all language groups that are considered related to IE. There is no marker
in Uralic at all. The closest to *-s that we find is *-sa, used for the
3ps... but this has a vowel on the end of it and it's relationship to IE
*so is apparent... but then so is the relationship between *so and *-s
which must surely be an IE-unique innovation based on EVIDENCE FROM THE
CLOSEST RELATIVES WITHIN NOSTRATIC!

My, you can be frustrating.

> It seems to me that the flexives that do have credible counterparts
> outside IE have no more vowels in Eurasiatic than they do in IE.

Only if you're talking about accusative *-m perhaps. Although yet again
a vowel is still present between it and the stem in Uralic and the EA
*natR&m example would seem to indicate similar conclusions. Even in IE,
*-m is _syllabic_. So... what on earth are you talking about?

> Perfect *and* stative? So the two are separate categories?

Yes.

> Experts of both IE and Etruscan I have spoken with declare themselves
> unable to see any serious connection.

Half of the problem lies in the translation of the texts that is going
on as we speak. Then there's the question of how well these experts in
Etruscan are aware of other related languages like Rhaetic, Lemnian
or even EtruscoCypriot.

> I also fail to grasp the terminology underlying the curious statement
> that an antipassive interpretation of the perfect would make it an
> imperfect (sic?).

Based on Kabardian's example.

> You apparently operate with the following categories:
>
> durative = imperfect active
> aorist = imperfect stative
> perfect = perfect active
> stative = perfect stative
>
> This does not look right. Anatolian has its hi-conjugation, and we
> cannot find the counterpart of the perfect.

Yes. A merger of aorist into the durative to form the mi-conjugation and
a merger of perfect into the stative to form the hi-conjugation.

> The Rest has its perfect, and we cannot find the counterpart of the
> hi-conjugation in it.

Yes. A merger of stative into the perfect.

> In my view the hi-conjugation is a special turn taken by the perfect.

Exactly.

> Your system has no place for the middle voice of the present

The middle would be formed on the basis of perfect, or perhaps stative.
The endings show this clearly. That category only later came to
be "fundamental" as you say.


= gLeN