[tied] Re: IE lexical accent

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> 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.

Nothing tells you that Syncope has anything to do where you see only
consonants. You are simply assuming older vowels to be deleted by
the syncope rule. We only know that such a rule operated where we
have alternations that preserved the vocalized variants under the
accent. Where there is no alternation we have no evidence to tell us
whether to posit, say, *-m or *-me or *-em. We can see, however,
that the *shortest* desinential morphemes of the language leave the
accent unchanged, and this is one of them. That looks like a good
reason to make the preform as short as can be, i.e. *-m.

If one wants the endings *-m, *-s, *-t to be derived from full
syllables or indeed fully vocalized independent words, it is easy to
imagine that such a prestage existed at a still earlier time. That
prestage could then be a prestage of more than just IE.

If one operates under the assumption that all "stand-alone"
morphemes are full syllables with real vowels in them, one would
have to deny the possibility of reconstructing anything like the
living Slavic languages which have prepositions such
as /k/, /s/, /v/. They do come from separate words, and they are
being phonetically fused with the following word, but the "kooky"
stage where they have no phonetic vowels in most connections is very
much alive. I see no reason pre-PIE *-m, *-s, *-t (or their
corrected representatives) could not have the same status at the
time of the operation of the syncope rule.

> > 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.
>

This is moving around in circles. You are only repeating the sadly
insufficient evidence which you interpret in a completely arbitrary
way, and really without any principle. What if there is nothing
corresponding to the nominative *-s in the other branches? Does that
automatically make the nearest thing that looks like it its exact
match? There is nothing independently interesting about the *-o of
*so, for all pronouns have the thematic vowel when they are
independent words. We do not know what they have if they are used as
desinences welded on to a preceding stem. And of course we do not
even know that that is what the nom. *-s is. The grand parallel case
is said to be *to-d, but that is not parallel at all. If they were,
*so should be *so-s (and *to-d should be *to-t). I have in fact
posited *so-s as a prestage of *so, but you won't have that,
presumably because it may backfire.

Do we have enough etymologies combining IE desinences with external
material to show us what the genetic match of the IE nom. *-s would
to be in the other Nostratic branches? I don't think so. How can we
know it would not be zero?

> > 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?

You know that already: a morphophoneme //m//. Why this charade?

> > 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.

They said the same.

> > 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.

I cannot follow this. Is there anyone reading this which is willing
to explain it to me?

> > 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.

Sure thing.

> > 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.

A very unsure thing. Sihler's stative is the perfect; Oettinger's
stative is the middle voice; the stative of most other scholars is
the derivative type in *-eH1-. Now you are using the word stative to
designate the presumed prestage of the hi-conjugation.

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

perfect.

>
> Exactly.

Then we don't need a "stative" for its prestage, the perfect will do
fine.

> > 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.

It has not been for want of trying, but a derivation of the middle
voice on the basis of the system offered by the categories you do
acknowledge for the stage of syncope has never been found to work.
Especially, why would an ablauting vowel *-e be added to the
consonants of the desinential morphemes of the perfect? And why
would the accent be placed on the desinential vowel by the very
rules that operated before the syncope stage? And by what functional
reasoning has all that been added to the stem of the present and
aorist (and even the perfect) to express a passive note?

Jens