Jens:
> What rule is that? Let's have five more examples.
Choose any root noun.
Me:
> Mono-syllabic nominal forms are always given added length.
Jens:
> Not true.
Counterexample? I don't know of a clear one.
> You can get *wed-n- by shortening **we:d-n-,
We see an alternation of *o and *e, so that's enough problem to deal
with without inventing more, such as your unsubstantiated lengthening.
The collective form *wedo:r doesn't need to be an "analogical creation"
(and you say _I_ rely on analogy?!) if you get our head straight about
*o/*e alternation. Based on the *e of the first syllable, we can safely
see that the accent was on the second syllable when the word was first
coined. The form being *wadá:rx in eLIE, it later raised pretonic
unaccented *a to *e (*wedá:rx). Vowel Shift and other changes would
produce the target form *wedo:r without any pathetic plea to analogy.
The origin of the form lies in late MIE where it was *wat:ár-ha. The
accentuation obeys the penultimate rule.
> I would suppose the lengthened-grade root vocalism expressed a note
> of durativity or habituality, perhaps also collectivity.
Or nominality... but I admit I can't think of a strong arguement in its
favour. It's a pattern that I see and I've pursued it.
> If the thematic nominative in *-o-s were a resegmented old genitive
> in *-os it should not be possible for it to be unaccented which it
> often is.
Yes it is possible. You forgot a point I was making on that...
Acrostatic Regularization
The accent alternation between nominal and adjectival thematic stems was
facilitated by Acrostatic Regularization. The rule only affected nouns
while adjectives kept the original accent on the final syllable. The
accent difference came to be a morphological rule when converting
adjectives to nouns.
It was at the very point when adjectives and nouns were differentiated
by accent position that this adjectival category developped. Adjectives
were then free to misanalyse their unchanging genitive endings as
nominatives just like their accompanying nouns were marked in, at which
point adjectives adapted the nominal paradigm to suit new requirements
for _case agreement_. It's a small change from */newos ekwom/ "new horse"
(ie: morphologically either */new-os ekwo-m/ or */newo-s ekwo-m/) to
*/newom ekwom/ (ie: *newo-m *ekwo-m). It's a trivial change that can
easily have took place in this language over time and further explains
the use of *-m in the inanimate, borrowed from thematic inanimate nouns
in *-om just as the animate *-s was borrowed from thematic animates.
There can't be a more fulfilling explanation of IE adjectives than that.
> And its vocalic part should not alternate the way the thematic vowel
> does, seeing that the vowel of the genitive ending alternates in a
> totally different way.
The alternation of the thematic vowel is not based on accent. Everything
indicates that the genitive was originally accented *-ás except in a few
cases of *-s which are predictable. The thematic of adjectives was
_unaccented_ and therefore free to lengthen before voiced consonants
and not before voiceless ones.
>> Alright. Let me see if I understand correctly. You're saying that
>> the durative and the aorist were both athematic at one time.
>
> Yes.
So then, why is the thematic added again? Subjunctive transferring?
My god, not more analogy?! My solution doesn't require it.
> Yes. It was apparently an ongoing process before and after the
> disintegration of the protolanguage. Some original subjunctives had
> already become indicatives in PIE, others followed in the individual
> branches.
This seems untenable considering that thematic verbs are far more
common than athematic ones. Something's fishy with your account. I'm
siding with the _majority_ and explaining the _minority_ of cases that
don't fit.
> Durative ("present")
> inj. *gWhén-t
>[...]
> Punctual ("aorist")
> inj. *kWér-t
Hmm. I think the overwhelming advantage to my position is that I
only have to explain a handful of verbs, whereas you have to explain
how a whole onslaught of aorists became duratives. You don't even
attempt to attain logical simplicity.
Of course, I'm not saying that subjunctives can't be made into duratives.
I guess I can see how they can but I hardly think that this can be a
widespread, large-scale process. There's no motivation for such a deluge
of subjunctives into the indicative category. None.
> Perhaps they were all _aorist_ subjunctives.
This just seems completely lopsided grammatically. Do you have any
respect for markedness? I'm sure that markedness has been violated by
your account.
> No, read again, it's the other way around. I do not assume syncope
> for Finnish, and I do not need it. You assume an underlying vowel in
> the ending *-it, which in some forms is not present, so I ask you by
> what rule you made it disappear. That sounds fair to me.
Alright. With IE, the rule is clear because that is the language group
that I've been zeroing in on for so long. This is the rule of Syncope
and indeed we have *-s in the accusative plural *-m-s. The motivation
for preservation, as I've long said, is to differentiate it from the
thematic nominative. Tyrrhenian shows *-er (Etruscan /-ar/) and is
even present in Minoan. The *e in both IE and Tyrrhenian reflects earlier
*i in Proto-Steppe.
Uralic itself shows *-t but the "loss" of vowel here is a mirage given
that all nominal stems have been made to end in vowels! So naturally,
*-it will give way to a vowel-ending stem to produce what appears to
be a plural *-t in favour of the stem vowel. Furthermore, the strict CV(C)
shape of the syllables in Uralic (the same syllable rule found in
ProtoSteppe) would forbid the cooccurence of two vowels, so one of these
vowels was destined to go. Now, you don't expect the vowel of the suffix
to be given priority over the vowel of the stem, do you? The lack of vowel
here is straightforward if we take into account how Uralic works. If we
don't and reinvent it in your image, we lose sight of simple things like
this. We don't need any more rules other than this.
> What *is* the point? The gen.sg. morpheme *is* *-os. In pronominal
> forms like *tóysoom we do seem to have a collocation of a plural
> stem and the genitive morpheme (*-s, zero-grade of *-os).
Ugh. The point, yet again, is that the genitive originally did not
mark plurality because it served to mark the indirect object, an entity
in the sentence without prime focus in the topic. The form *toiso:m is a
synthetic hodgepodge of suffixes lying around since early Late IE and
does not represent anything terribly ancient except for the pronominal
plural in *i which is connectable to the same suffix found in Uralic and
EA to mark plurals.
> It is anybody's guess what *-oom is.
The genitive plural of the Late IE period.
= gLeN