Thinking on Syncope, mediopassives and reduplication

Something that concerns me in these discussions so far is the annoying
confusion that appears to result when we speak of the origins of the
"thematic vowel". In reality, perhaps we should speak of it as the
"alternating vowel", the one that shows alternations between *e and
*o depending on the presence of voice in the following consonant. In
that way, the actual "thematic vowel" that most IEists recognize and
the alternating vowel seen in suffixes like *-tor- can be united without
anymore ignorant confusion that only serves to take concentration off of
this phenomenon. As long as we confuse the thematic vowel for the more
general alternating vowel, we won't see that the alternating vowel is
actually free to ablaut under certain conditions.

Lately, I've convinced myself at this point that there are two phonemic
vowels in early Late IE, *e and *a, and this is an idea I'm not letting
go of anytime soon. The unaccented *a is what would become the
"alternating vowel" (either *e or *o) later on. The unaccented *e of eLIE
however remains *e no matter what (or *i sometimes). So eLIE unaccented
*a could theoretically become accented because of some derivational
process, whereby when _re-unaccented_ it mimicks the pattern of ablaut
already present in *?es-/*?s- because of a general morphophonological rule
of ablaut. If the mediopassive, already present as a conjugational form
in eLIE, were secondarily given accent on the suffix vowel (which is
unaccented *a, the later "alternating vowel"), then we would see just
what we find. We'd end up with a vowel that appears to alternate between
*e and *o when comparing the perfect and middle forms, but which also
ablauts, thanks to the accentual innovations brought upon the early
mediopassive.

Don't buy my distinction of unaccented *e and unaccented *a? Read on
then.

We can see the difference between the underlying two distinct vowels when
we observe the *e of the plural which not only never alternates with *o,
but doesn't even show the expected reflex of *o before voiced *-s as we
find in the thematic nominative! This is simply because while the thematic
nominative is *-a-s in eLIE, the plural was eLIE *-es. We can also see
that 1pp *-mes does not come from **-mas in eLIE but rather *-mes with *e,
further proven by the variant *-men which should have been **-mon if
that vowel were the alternating vowel. So as you can see, we always
need at least TWO vowels, not one, in any stage of pre-IE. The contrast
is phonemic.

I've revised my rule on Syncope such that the placement of stress accent
determines the fate of the MIE vowel. After accent, *a is obliterated
while *e lowers to take its place. Thus, we can say that there is a
laxening tendency for posttonic vowels. Before accent, we see an
opposite tendency towards tension where both *e and *a both merge to *e.
When the vowel is accented, we simply see preservation -- in a sense,
a balance between laxness and tenseness. Any instance of pretonic *a
btw, is replaced by the Syncope-concurrent rule of a-Epenthesis created
to resist awkward phonotactics (eg: MIE *kWatWáha "eight" > *aktwáx) as
well as by newly coined words.

This is my new rule and we can see then that in MIE *pat:ása 'of the
foot', we immediately expect eLIE *pedás with an alternating *a/*e
pattern in the declensional paradigm of a root *pad-. This example shows
both the laxening of posttonic *-a to null, as well as the tensing
of pretonic *a to *e. Of course, Vowel Shift takes care of the rest
to produce genitive *pedos. Quite simple. After Syncope, we'd also
immediately see a new contrast of thematic *xegra- 'field' with *xegre-
before accent. Further, we then can consider the morphologically governed
rising of pretonic *e to *i in thematic stems as a later phenomenon.

However, while we can understand that MIE 3ps perfect *babáre can
straightforwardly become eLIE *bHebHára without fuss, we have a new
problem with reduplicated presents. If the rule of Syncope is true and
explains everything else, we cannot fully reconcile it with this rule
unless we accept that it was created **after** Syncope. This now works
so that while the 3ps perfect *bHebHára has already developped,
*bHe-bHérti is newly created. The former is considered to be from a solid
root *bHebHar- (since it is not simply reduplication which would yield
**bHabHar-, nor is it possibly derived from the stative) while the
latter reduplicated present _is_ considered to be simple reduplication,
an addition of reduplicated syllable *bHe- to an existent root *bHer-
which already forms the durative. So *e in *bHebHára retains pretonic *e,
ultimately becoming *bHebHórxe because the vowel is part of the root,
just as the *e of *pedós is considered part of the root *ped-. In
eLIE *bHebHérti, the pretonic *e is considered morphologically seperate
from the CVC core *bHer-, leaving it free to rise to *i. This creates
*bHibHérti. Likewise, terminating *-e in pretonic alternate thematic
forms like *xegre- becomes *i as well because the syllable is clearly
open.

Hmm. New idea, perhaps we can think of the rule of tense *e to *i this
way:

Pretonic eLIE *e is expected to further rise to *i in open
syllables unless morphological analogy interferes.

"Morphological analogy" in this case would be the association that the
declined form has with the root such that *pedos is perceived to be
*ped- (where *e is in a closed syllable) plus *-os despite being
syllabically *[pe.dos]. This morphological analogy then would affect the
presence or absence of half-lengthening of short pretonic *e, the seed
that would later create the *e/*i alternation.

So... I'm thinking that the reduplication of the perfect predates the
reduplicated present at this point. Certainly, the reasons for
reduplication in both forms cannot be the same and must date from
different times anyway. In the perfect, the reduplication appears to have
had an emphatic or terminative effect but in reduplicated presents, it
must have been to indicate the plurality of the action.


= gLeN