Re: [tied] Re: Various loose thoughts

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 35954
Date: 2005-01-16

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:29:13 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer
<mcv@...> wrote:

>
>On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:42:41 +0000, Sergejus Tarasovas
><s.tarasovas@...> wrote:
>
>>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>>> And indeed Saussure's
>>> law in the ins.pl. (-ah2mí:s (Hirt)=> -áh2mi:s (Saussure)=>
>>> -a:mí:s (Leskien)=> -omìs).
>>
>>I may well be missing something from your accentological conception
>>sketched recently in one of your messages, but if *-áh2- of *-áh2mi:s
>>doesn't yield Lithuanian acute, then what on earth *does* yield it?
>>And if it yields, how could Saussure's law operate on it?
>
>No, I was just being stupid.

Having now inspected Kortlandt's reply to Olander a little
closer, I may accidentally have been not that stupid.
I'm referring of course to the Lith. a.p. 2 forms Dpl.
ran~koms, Lpl. ran~kos(u/e), Ipl. ran~komis. If somehow
Lithuanian had metatonized the acute on these plural forms
of the a:-stems to a circumflex, then that explains the
failure of Saussure's law in the a.p. 2 paradigm, and
restoration of end-stress in the mobile Ipl. (-o~mi:s >
-omí:s) and, counterfactually, the Dpl. (-o~mo:s > -omó:s)
becomes a possibility. Note that it doesn't matter whether
the ictus had come to rest on the *-ah2- by Hirt's law, as I
maintain, or had always been there, as by Olander's
proposal, so the point is not terribly relevant in the
context of this discussion.

Mate wrote:
>He [Thomas] posites *-mus < (reduction) *-mas < dial. PIE *-mos.

I don't understand what (reduction) means exactly. Maybe it
would help if there were other examples in Lithuanian of
such a reduction of /a/ to /u/ (near /m/?).

Anyway, it occurred to me that if the ending was indeed
*-mas (stressed of course [as I must stress] in the mobile
paradigms: *-más), then the retraction of the accent in the
whole Dpl. can easily be explained by Nieminen's law:
o-stems: *-amàs => *-àmas > *-àmus > -áms
a:-stems: *-a:màs => *-á:mas > *-á:mus > -óms
i-stems: *-imàs => *-ìmas > *-ìmus > -ìms
u-stems: *-umàs => *-ùmas > *-ùmus > -ùms
pronoun: *-iemàs => *-ie~mas > *-ie~mus > -íems

The loc.pl. *-Vsù and ins.pl. *-Vmí:s remain end-stressed,
as expected.

Even if "reduction" of *-mas to -mus is not acceptable, and
the Dpl. ending comes from *-Vmó:ns as suggested by Old
Prussian, the whole thing can still follow analogically from
Nieminen's law in the pronouns, if the ending was *-(ie)mas
only there, as suggested again by Old Prussian.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...