Re: [tied] The "Mother" Problem

----- Original Message -----
From: "elmeras2000" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2005 2:20 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] The "Mother" Problem




--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Mate Kapovic" <mkapovic@...>
wrote:
>> Thus, we can conclude that it's at least a little bit hasty to
reconstruct
>> PIE *meh2te:r with the end stress on the basis of Vedic ma:tá: and
OHG
>> muoter as is often done.

>It's been sitting there for a while now, but I just find time to say
>what I think is important: I think it is even more hasty to choose
>an option that goes against the evidence.

Well, I would say that evidence is contradictory. Germanic & Vedic point to
one thing and Greek to another.

>The reconstruction of *-
>té:r at least accounts for those parts of the evidence that cannot
>easily be explained as secondary. The initial accent of Lith. mó:te:
>and Slav. *ma´´ti can be explained by Hirt's Law,

Of course, BSl. is inconclusive here since it can be an outcome of Hirt's
Law or the outcome of the simple PIE barytone as in Greek. But I think it's
methodologically incorrect to adduce *meh2te:r as an example of Hirt's Law
as is often done since the example is not reliable because of the accent in
Greek.

>and the initial
>accent of the Greek nominative mé:te:r, which disagrees with weak-
>case forms like gen. me:trós anyway,

One could argue that Greek went the same way as Vedic & Germanic (unifying
the pattern of *ph2te:r and *meh2te:r) but that the process was not taken to
the end (i.e. the nominative remained different).

>can be analogical on the
>vocative mê:ter, but it is hard to see what would have caused a
>secondary change from radical to suffixal accent to appear in both
>Vedic and Germanic.

Well, I think that the influence of the word for "father" on the word for
"mother" is quite uncontroversial. It would be a simple analogy and it could
have easily happened separately in Germanic and IIr.

Mate