--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
> <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
> > I can see only two objections:
> >
> > a) Polysyllabic stems
> > b) Unpredictability of stress.
>
> The
> desired extra vowels have been put in just for this purpose. As I
> have just written in a response to Tom Brophey, the monosyllabic
> nature of the IE root is not a thing to be given up lightly.
> > There are many roots currently reconstructed as ending in *-h2g^
> which
> > may actually be compounds of *h2eg^ (make that **hag^) 'lead', so
> it
> > is not obvious that these are insuperable objections.
> >
> > So what is the problem with these roots?
>
> What "many roots" are you talking about? Would (Pokorny-notation)
> *pa:g^/k^- 'fix' be a compound? Would *wa:g^- 'split'? Of course
> everything has a prehistory, but is it always transparent to us?
'Many' does seem to be an overstatement. I thought the lists I'd seen
were longer. There's been some previous discussion here, epitomised
by
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/24015 and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/23999 . Neither
*pa:g^/k^- 'fix' nor *wa:g^- 'split' was listed in those postings.
Incidentally, are there any deeper thoughts on the origin of
*pa:g^/k^- 'fix'? I'd like to show it's unrelated to the
Proto-Malayo-Polynesian roots *ipen / *lipen / *nipen / *ngipen
'tooth'. The question arose when I was trying to show that English
_fang_ and Thai _fan_ 'tooth' were totally unrelated. Thai _fan_
appears to derive from a proto-form very close to *lipen ( -
proto-form cited as *l-p&n for the Kra branch, with & = schwa), and
the Austronesian element in Thai appears to be closely related to PMP.
I'm not completely sure the -n- seen in various derivatives of PIE
*pa:g^/k^ is *historically*, as opposed to synchronically, an infix.
I can't convince myself that pnh2g^ > pah2g^ didn't happen in pre-PIE.
Richard.