Re: [tied] Re: Earth and Thorn

----- Original Message -----

From: mkapovic@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 3:58 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Earth and Thorn

>
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: elmeras2000<mailto:jer@...>
>   To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com<mailto:cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
>   Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 11:13 AM
>   Subject: [tied] Re: Earth and Thorn

>   We have seen that, according to Sturtevant, these signs are _not_
> differentiatable.
>
>   Jens writes that the vowel of this word should be reconstructed as /e:/.
> He apparently bases that on occasional spellings like <te-e-kán>; again,
> dead wrong, according to Sturtevant, who writes on p. 37:
>
>   "IN Akkadian, vowels are frequently written double (U-2-UL 'not',
> BE-E-EL 'lord'). A similar usage is characteristic of Hurrian writing,
> including the Mitanni letter. In Akkadian writing an extra vowel sign
> may indicate a long vowel, but in Akkadian texts at Boghazköy the double
> writing of short vowel is unusually frequent. There is therefore no
> reason to infer vowel length from the insertion of an extra vowel sign
> in Hittie words. Hittite e-es-zi is the constant spelling of the word
> for 'is', which must be identified with Skt. asti, (Greek) ésti, Lat.
> est."

If you read anything written after 1952, you would have know that Hitt.
e:s^zi is expected because the vowel is regularly lengthened under the
stress.

 

***

Patrick:

 

Thank you so much for the information.

 

So, you are saying that "post-classical" studies hold that the plene writing of e-eš-zi means that we should interpret the spelling to mean that the word was pronounced /é:s-tsi/.

 

Does up-to-date theory now hold that all plene spellings indicate vowel length? Or is the spelling immaterial?

 

Does that mean we should accept /e:/ as an allophone of /e/ under special conditions (+ root, +stress-accent)?

 

Fair enough. Is the new insight that any root-vowel under stress-accent was lengthened? So that <te-kán> should be intrepeted as /dé:gan/ regardless of whether plene spelling was employed or not?

 

***

 

 

>   We should also ask ourselves if we have ever seen a reconstructed PIE
> form like *dhe:g^hóm, which is what Jens seems to be proposing for the
> prototype for his Hittite te:kán. I have not. Perhaps some of you
> readers have. If so, I would like to know about it.

I have never seen *dhe:g^hóm. But that's not what Jens wrote. Jens wrote
*dhég^ho:m - now *that* I saw many times in the literature. In Hittite *dh
> t, *g^h > k, *e > e: under stress, unaccented *o: shortens regulary and
yields /a/ and *-m# > -n. Nothing strange about it.


 ***

Patrick:

 

Is there then some other new rule, not governed by stress-accent, which lengthens the /o/ of *dhég^hom? 

 

***