Re: Reasons (was [tied] Re: Some thoughts...)

--- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> On 04-10-08 21:44, Sean Whalen wrote:
>
> > Comparative? This is mainly an internal
> > reconstruction.
>
> It was in Saussure's time, when the "sonant
> coefficients" were used
> mainly for explaining minor ablaut patterns, but now
> it's as comparative
> as anything else: you can directly compare things
> like Anatolian aitches
> with Greek prothetic vowels, Indo-Iranian
> aspiration, failure of
> Brugmann's Law, Balto-Slavic intonations etc. It all
> amounts to good
> comparative evidence.

I agree PIE needs to be constructed by comparison
of its daughters. This has already been done fairly
well. My goal is to observe irregularities in this
reconstruction and perform an internal reconstruction
to discover its older form, possibly to help create
comparative studies with other language families.

> For example, assuming f at an early stage, what
> > happened to it later? If f>s, does the treatment
> of s
> > appear different in any two environments, and thus
> can
> > be attributed to two underlying sounds? Since I
> had
> > already decided -a'ms>-a'm_>-a:'m to account for
> > n/m/s/etc.-stems' nom. sng. but thematic acc. pl.
> a'ms
> > didn't change, probably pl. -f. This further was
> > confirmed by -fi>-fu in loc. pl., not explainable
> by
> > an unrounded C (as loc. sng. -(a)wi>-(a)wu).
>
> You ignore the rather solid evidence (defended here
> eloquently by Jens
> Rasmussen) that the nom.sg. *-s was once a voiced
> segment). The crucial
> part of the demonstration is the behavious of the
> thematic vowel, with
> its *-e/o- allomorphy clearly governed by the
> phonation of the following
> segment. If thing are so, the difference was between
> *z and *s at least
> at the time when the *-e/o- rule was operative.

I've never heard this evidence; s could easily have
a voiced allophone. My rule is: a-tone>o/_w, m, n,
xv, x (possibly others, possibly different depending
on syllable structure).

> > Similarly, if palatal(ized) nj existed, what
> did it
> > change into? Probably either n or y. Two of the
> most
> > common V affixes are n and y, could they be the
> same,
> > and in what environment would n become either?
> Also,
> > suyus/sunus. I determined laws that work to do
> > describe this.
>
> Well, there are arguments for the original identity
> of some instances of
> alternating *n and *r, or some instances of *s and
> *t, or *n and *t, or
> even *h1 and *t -- all of them still tentative at
> this stage. One
> problem for your account is that there is no
> functional relationship
> between *-jo- and *-no- (as opposed e.g. to *-n�-
> and *-t�-, which both
> form quasi-participles, or to *-r/-n- in the
> heteroclita). I'd also like
> to see your detailed explanation of the 'son' words
> before I believe
> that they are phonologically conditioned variants of
> the same underlying
> protoform (rather than related words with different
> derivational histories).

Athematic imperfect affix -n(e)- and thematic
-ye/o- both from -nja`- (after C) and -nja- (after V).
I've already sent my derivation for forms of "son".

> >>The fact that *h3
> >>seems to have had a voicing effect on any
> preceding
> >>stop suggests that
> >>it was voiced itself... etc.
>
> > Since all the fricatives are voiceless, it's
> not
> > unlikely one or all had voiced allophones. If not
> > before, they were almost certainly voiced when
> they
> > became syllabic.
>
> The whole point about *h3 is that it seems to have
> been _distinctively_
> voiced. Otherwise the voicing would not have any
> assimilatory effect, as
> visible in *h2ap-h3on- > *abon- or *pi-ph3-e-ti >
> *pibeti.

Well, I don't know much about this, so all I can
say is that these examples both have p>b, which might
be a way to regain instances of b lost when b>w. It's
possible that only xv had a voiced allophone in my
reconstruction; I really can't say.

> Judging from
> their phonetic effects, the three laryngeals were
> something like *h, *x,
> and *G (the latter two in the
> velar-uvular-pharyngeal range) rather than
> anything parallel to *k^, *k, *kW. Even the O-colour
> of *h3 was not
> necessarily a consequence of lip-rounding: note that
> *kW, *gW and *gWH
> don't colour any *e's in PIE!

Well, no stops have any effect on all vowels. It's
possible the round feature is at the end of the sound
and stops block the feature from spreading.

> > I think o/e/0 shifts make it almost certain there
> > was one vowel in the past that changed sound for
> some
> > reason, tone seems to do it.
>
> Here I suppose most people (including myself) will
> agree with you in
> principle. The question is if we have any right to
> reconstruct
> distinctive tone values for PIE just in order to
> account for the basic
> ablaut of *e : *o. If we do, we don't really explain
> anything -- it's a
> case of "obscurum per obscurius". If you write that
> nouns were mostly
> marked with one of the tones and verbs with the
> other, you're only
> restating what everyone knows -- that nouns often
> show the o-grade and
> verbs often show the e-grade. I can't see any
> simplification in your
> model. It trades off one kind of complexity against
> another.

But the features I have are found in other
languages and explainable by known processes. Why
shouldn't someone try to make a reconstruction of the
V? Even if most fail, we may gain insight from a few.

> > See some of the derivations I sent for the
> > different cases of "sister" and "dog". If
> swa`fa'r-
> > is the underlying stem, gen. affix -a's deletes
> tone
> > to get swa`far- and the toneless a will be
> affected by
> > later a-deletion rules. When simplification
> causes
> > only one tone per word: swe'sros. The tone of the
> > final syllable is the only tone for kuxva'n-, so:
> > kuxvno's. By analogy with words with only final
> tone
> > (common), morphemes like -su'/-su (and all
> tone-marked
> > plural affixes) are simplified to their most
> common
> > form, thus swesrsu' instead of swe'srsu.
>
> The same forms are adequately accounted for in some
> derivational models
> (discussed here more than once in the past) that
> only have recourse to
> independently required lexical accent (surfacing as
> stress) and don't
> employ primary tonal contrasts. They are superior to
> your tonal solution
> by being more parsimonious.

The presence of tones explains many things, not
just nouns with shifting stress.

Your message was truncated due to length, but
pherei:phoros as tithe:ti:tho:mos. I also have
laryngeal coloring as my last rule; it comes after all
cases of a>e/o.





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