From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 40759
Date: 2005-09-27
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jens Elmegård Rasmussen" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 7:13 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: IE thematic presents and the origin of their thematic
vowel
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, glen gordon <glengordon01@...>
wrote:
> Jens' initial claim:
> > Because it was **még^-eH2 that became *még^H2.
>
> Jens explains:
> > Certainly it's athematic, the vowel of the ablauting
> > suffix //-eH2-// is not the thematic vowel.
>
> But the athematic feminine suffix is *-ih2 so we
> expect *megih2.
The suffix //-eH2-// belongs to the stem of the adjective
meaning 'big' and is not a feminine marker. The fem. was *még^-H2-
iH2 (Ved. mahí:, Hitt. mekki-).
> > It is all based on the derivation of the Vedic
> > acc. mahá:m from *még^-oH2-m. [...]
>
> Only Vedic. That doesn't carry much weight in IE
> and I don't know where the hypothetical feminine
> in **-oh2- comes from. The feminine is *-eh2 with
> *e due to Schwa Diffusion because *-h2 was unvoiced.
> There can be no **-oh2 unless it is *-o-h2.
Vedic archaisms generally carry quite a lot of weight. Again, the
segment *-oH2- is not a feminine marker, but a bound allomorph of a
suffix pertaining to the adjective itself. Its structure is as in a
normal acc.sg. like *H2ák^-mon-m. , Gk. ákmona.
Jens
***
Patrick:
I am pretty sure Jens will not want to discuss this further as his views on
the following matters (of my opinions) are on record but since, in the
course of my investigations, I spent such an inordinate amount of time on
this word, I will share what I think I found.
1) The pre-PIE form was *magh(a); the quality of initial root vowel is
established by Sumerian mah, 'large';
2) The quality of the final vowel of the root is established by PIE *meg^-,
an alternative form to *meg^h-; only words with final *-*gha in pre-PIE were
de-aspirated to -*g in PIE;
3) That the final consonant of the root was, indeed, pre-PIE *gh is showed
by Egyptian mH, 'full', where H represents Nostratic *k?xa or *k?xe, pre-PIE
*gha or *ghe. Sumerian -h, on the other hand, cannot come from *k?xe, but
only *k?xa, so the Nostratic form is *mak?xa leading to pre-PIE *magh(a);
4) The PIE palatalized dorsal can come from pre-PIE *ghe, but we have
established the final was -*a; therefore, the palatalization must come from
an additional formant, namely pre-PIE -*ye, PIE -*y, '-like';
5) Therefore, the pre-PIE was *maghye-, PIE *meg^(h)i-;
6) The question remains open as to whether the -*i formant was a part of the
feminine formation or had an identity outside of it. We have PIE feminines
in both -*ia: (also > -*i:) and -*a:;
7) Whichever, the simplest feminine formant is pre-PIE -*Ha, which results
in PIE -*Ha > *-a:. It is incorrect to reconstruct the PIE feminine
as -*a/eH or -*eH2;
8) Pre-PIE and PIE formants were originally independent words; no formant
was simply formed by randomly plucking a consonant or vowel from the ether,
and arbitrarily assigning it a grammatical function. This is simply not the
way languages work. If a formant had the form **eH(x), it would mean that
the word underlying it was *HeH since no PIE root (word) can begin with a
vowel;
9) It is also possible that, instead of pre-PIE -*Ha, 'feminine', we are
dealing with -*?a, 'stative', which also results in PIE -*?a > -*a:. I
discount this possibility because I have not seen the stative formant added
to an adjective in -*i(:);
10) It is vaguely possible that, instead of pre-PIE -*Ha, 'feminine', we are
dealing with -*ya, 'collective', which results in PIE -*i(:). This might
account for the palatalization but I discount this possibility because I do
not believe that -*ya can become PIE -*Ya:.
***
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