Rob:
>> I don't think this suggests anything. The perfect
>> reduplication can go back to MIE in my theory
>> with the form *CeCáC- without problems.
>
> Well, that's your theory. :)
I never said otherwise :) I was simply giving a
different solution to the same problem for the
sake of comparison. The idea is that one of our
views is more efficient.
> I agree. Regarding nouns, however, it seems that
> reduplication is more likely to be employed for
> plurality in languages that otherwise had no
> morphological number distinctions [...]
Yes, and no this didn't happen in nouns in IE but
this is a moot issue.
> We see at least two (if not three) different
> occurrences of reduplication in IE. The first
> (major) one is that of the i-reduplication and the
> e-reduplication; the second is that of the
> intensives where the entire root syllable is
> preserved.
Well naturally, complete reduplication is more likely
to be more recent than the partial reduplication. So
I have to agree. However, I still object to loosely
grouping *i- and *e-reduplication together without
explanation.
The vowel difference must be adequately explained and
I think that Schwa Diffusion involving pretonic *&
explains more than your ideas have so far:
*C&CéC- [iterative] > *CiCeC-
*CeCáC- [perfect] > *CeCoC-
You can see that while the source and mechanism
behind the perfect reduplication remains obscure in
the earlier stages, the phonetics behind the iterative
are straightforward particularly in the stage before
Schwa Diffusion where the common e-grade stem *CeC-
is simply extended with a partially reduplicated
syllable with *&.
(This change of pretonic *& > *i can also help
explain variant nouns stems with *-i- in exchange for
thematic *-o- without there being apparent semantic
difference. The issue again is the original thematic
vowel *-&-, becoming alternating *o/*e posttonically,
but also non-alternating *i pretonically in must have
been compounded stems originally.)
This process of reduplication using schwa is most
natural and so far seems to be the most efficient
explanation of the eventual difference between the
*e- and *i-reduplication. The use of *e-reduplication
in place of *i-reduplication would be a subsequent
phenomenon via typical analogical simplification.
So you're simply sweeping the *e/*i vowel difference
into the proverbial closet, but it's still knocking
on the door to be let out. Do you hear its faint
cries? "Knock, knock! Let me out! Knock, knock!" :)
> Furthermore, I wonder if i-reduplication is from
> an earlier combination of participle/gerund plus
> finite verb (e.g. awkward English "running, he
> runs").
Now doesn't this above idea sound far more complicated
and unnecessary than what I propose, involving a
simple vowel shift?
Rob:
> I wasn't trying to apply your theory. Rather, I was
> applying my own.
Ah, well in my theory, Syncope of MIE *béras- would
normally yield **bers- if no other rules had applied.
I guess I misunderstood where you were going with
that. I'm not sure why stressed *e would _lower_ to
*a in your theory, which seems to go against basic
Vowel Theory.
= gLeN
__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com