[tied] Re: Thematic vowel etc

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 09:58:23 +0000, tgpedersen
> <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >> My question still stands: where have you ever seen an
> >> asyllabic demonstrative? If the demonstrative is weakened
> >> to a definite article, it may occasionally become assylabic,
> >> but not if it remains as a demonstrative. Case in point is
> >> Slavic tU, which should have become asyllabic after the loss
> >> of the yers, but didn't (Russ. tot, Pol. ten, etc.).
> >>
> >
> >But we're talking about two different things.
> >As you probably know, Sturtevant thinks of the IE demonstratives

as

> >composed of sentence connective + enclitic pronoun (*so- + *-os ->
> >*sos, *to- + *-om -> *tom etc).
>
> I didn't know that, but it strikes me as an utterly
> unhelpful proposal.
>

Erh, I see.

> >Now suppose those enclitic pronouns
> >were also the source of case endings (noun + *-os, noun + *-om

etc).

> >In that case it might make sense with a rule that reduced the
> >unstressed /o*/ of the case endings to /&/, and later to zero

(noun

> >+ -&s, noun + -&m), but *sos, *tom etc could never become +s&m,
> >+t&m, since there's no way the /o/ could escape the stress.
>
> Only the case endings of the o-stems can be explained as
> deriving from thematic vowel + enclitic pronoun (*-os, *-om,
> *-osyo, etc.). For all the other nominal declensions, there
> is absolutely no reason to think so (just look at the
> genitive).
>

Yes, if we leave it at /o/. But we don't have to.

Example:
t-ós <nóun>-os <nóun>-os
->
tós <nóun>-&s <nóun>-&s
(since the suffix of the demonstrative is stressed, the /o/ is not
reduced to schwa)
The same NP without demonstrative:
<nóun>-&s <nóun>-&s
This doesn't sound right; we want to bracket the NP better, copying
the ending from the demonstrative:
<noun>-ós <noun>-&s
(the German trick)
which is now
<adj>-ós <nóun>-&s
and becomes
<adj>-ós <nóun>-s

Voilà! Suffix-stressed adjective and athematic noun.

> At no point is an asyllabic demonstrative to be
> reconstructed.
>

I find it difficult to argue against impersonal statements. But I'm
afraid I'm at fault here. What I meant and should have said is that
only the demonstratives have non-syllabic _stems_, not that the
demonstratives themselves are non-syllabic.

Torsten