Re: [tied] Evening/Night (was Re: The "Mother" Problem)

On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 20:52:24 +0000, Rob
<magwich78@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>> >Why, then, don't we see Attic Greek *heîsperos?
>>
>> Some forms have */e/ [Gr. hésperos, Lat. vesper,
>> Balto-Slavic *wekeras], others have */(V)i/ [We. ucher <
>> *woiksero-, Arm. gis^er].
>>
>> As I mentioned, the root "change" shows the same variation
>> *weik- vs. *wek- (~ *wenk-). For the nasal-infix variant,
>> the forms given in Pokorny Lith. úkanas "trübe", ùnkna
>> "shadow", Lat. umbra < *unksra: "shadow" may also be
>> relevant (*wnks-n/r-?).
>
>The nasal-infix is understandable, of course. However, I don't
>understand what would produce an alternation like *weik- ~ *wek-.

There are simply two roots *weik- and *wek-, with the same
meaning, which both may have been in the shaping of the
"evening" noun. I think it likely that the two are
ultimately related, but that's not essential.

>> >Where does the aspiration in the Greek form come from?
>>
>> From *w-. This is regular in the context *w...s- (hennu:mi
>> < *wes-nu-, hestía < *westia:).
>
>Sorry, I should have specified. I was talking about the /ph/ in
>Greek pséphas 'darkness'.

Presumably from the suffix -&2s > -as, which usually
replaces original -ar < -r. in Greek.

>> >Also, IE was presumably SOV at the time of its breakup. So, such
>> >a compound would have 'transition' at the end, not at the
>> >beginning (since it seems to be the headword).
>>
>> Hamp, if I understand correctly, suggests a phrase *<weiks
>> ksperos> where *weiks is a (root) noun in the nom. and
>> *ksperos is genitive.
>>
>> My source is Olsen TNIBA, p. 179, where Hamp is quoted in a
>> footnote as "an old compound ... *ueik-ksperos (perhaps
>> originally a syntactic phrase, and, if so, possibly with
>> *-ks- by haplology for *-ks-ks-)".
>
>However, since IE was primarily left-branching, possessives
>overwhelmingly preceded their headwords. So we should expect
>*<ksperos weiks> instead.

Greenberg's universal #2 is "in languages with prepositions,
the genitive almost always follows the governing noun, while
in languages with postpositions it almost always precedes".
PIE had prepositions, or at least was in the process of
converting postpositions into prepositions.


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