Re: [tied] Re: Mi- and hi-conjugation in Germanic

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 23:20:16 +0000, elmeras2000
<jer@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>> >[JER:]
>> >> >The word ve^dró is a vrddhi formation *we:d-r-ó- 'associated
>with
>> >> >water'.
>> >>
>> >> I doubt it. The length looks like Winter's law.
>> >
>> >Length looks like length, sure. A cluster /dr/ is one of the
>> >barriers to the operation of Winter's lengthening.
>>
>> Another fine example is *udráh2 > vy"dra (Latv. ûdr(i)s,
>> Ved. udrá-).
>
>You make it sound as if this is just another one out of a million.

I meant it was another fine example of my jábloko-rule (like
the others I found when looking for something completely
different: i"go, and perhaps ju"gU [if connected to Grk.
augé:], and then (j)u"tro if connected to ju"gU).

For Winter's lengthening before -dr- it's not just another
example, it's the one that first to mind when thinking about
vêdró.

>I don't think I know of any examples of apparent lengthening before
>media + sonant other than vêdró and vy"dra. For vêdró independent
>length is a very obvious possibility. For vy"dra I only notice that
>the feminine (or generic) form of an animal name is combined with
>vrddhi in Lith. várna (1) and Germanic Huhn. I would therefore
>assume that the most likely explanation of its length is that the
>vowel was long already before any working of Winter's law. If Lith.
>ú:dras (3) and Latv. ûdrs have taken over the long vowel from ú:dra
>(1), then vy"dra does not need to have ever changed the position of
>its accent. The BSl. forms would be masc. *u:drá-s, fem. *ú:dra:,
>levelled from *udrá-s, *ú:dra:; if one distinguishes the genders it
>is precisely masc. udrá-, fem. húdra: that is quotable from Sanskrit
>and Greek (whose masc. húdros is then due to levelling).

Is it really necessary to set up a whole zoo of analogies,
when there's a simpler solution: Winter's lengthening works
in both vy"dra and vêdró? What's so terrible anyway about
Winter's law working before -dr-? Note that the phonetics
of -dr- are very different from the phonetics of -dn- (where
Winter's law indeed didn't work).

In your 1992 article, you present the counterexamples Lith.
gie~dras (gaidrùs), Latv. idrs, OCS dUbrU and pigùs (~
*pigrós). The Latvian word I find unclear (and Grk. oi~dos
is barytone). The OCS word doesn't exist (it's dUbrI, Old
Russ. dIbrI, which may have a different etymology, or have
its vocalism after *dUbnó). That leaves gie~dras/gaidrùs
and *pigros, of which the first can easily have acquired
*-dh- from the word of identical meaning reflected in Slavic
as védro (Russ. vëdro) [a remarkable a.p. a word, by the
way], and in English as "weather". And pigùs may not be a
replacement of *pigros after all, but simply a barytone
u-stem, secondarily mobilized, like su:nùs.

I've looked if there were any other non-lengthenings in
Slavic. I found only bedrò and jeNdrò. In the case of
jeNdrò lengthening may simply be there as it is in vêdrò, we
just don't see it. The word bedrò (also bedrà, after the
plural), pl. R. bëdra "thigh" is used mainly in the plural,
where Winter's lengtening is blocked by the accent
(*bhédrah2). A singular *bêdro could hardly not have adopted
the vocalism of the plural.

>The failure of vêdró to cause accent retraction is harder to account
>for if one accept a theory saying that clusters of this kind should.
>One of your own recent postings (Febr.25, on the Nostratic-L list)
>contained the very interesting observation that Slavic iterative
>verbs with lengthened root vowels show acute on high vowels and
>circumflex on non-high vowels. My guess, which you did not like, was
>that they were not of equal length; that was only an immediate
>reaction to a piece of information that was new to me, but it could
>perhaps come in handy here. Suppose the accent retraction caused by
>(non-strident) clusters did not work in vêdró because the vowel was
>*too* long, perhaps disyllabic in some sense (I simply do not know
>what a syllable is), then the weight of the segment that mattered
>for the question of retraction could have been too light, but heavy
>enough in other cases.
>
>> >> I wasn't just referring to peró of course. It was shorthand
>> >> for (from Zaliznjak's Old Russian list): licé, loz^é, mytó,
>> >> peró, plec^é, pljuc^é, bIrvInó, veretenó, volokUnó, govInó,
>> >> gumInó, kopIjé, okUnó, pisImó, polotInó, pIs^enó, res^etó,
>> >> sedIló, sukUnó, sIrdIcé, tenetó, tolokUnó, jajIcé.
>> >
>> >Those that had final accent would keep it there
>>
>> So you agree with me that there were three AP's in
>> Proto-Balto-Slavic.
>
>At least. Longer words offer room for more variation. Was that ever
>in doubt?

Well, yes. The Moscow school works with only two PBS accent
paradigms.

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