Re: [tied] Re: Gypsies again

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: <smykelkar@...>
Sent: Saturday, October 01, 2005 5:55 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Gypsies again


> I just received the following message from a former member. The 2nd and
> 3rd
> references of his are relevant for Romany origins, so I'm passing on
> *without comment* the claim that pre-Sanskrit never had an a/e/o split. I
> can't remember us actually spending any significant time discussing it.
>
> Incidentally, we still haven't tried Kazanas's test paper - the question
> on
> the perfect in Section 14 of
> http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/documents/SPIE.pdf does not look
> simple
> to answer!
>
> Richard.

***
Patrick:

The paper is interesting but has one glaring fault: the author believes that
introspective observation of his own sound production has some evidentiary
value for general linguistic principles. It does not.

Otherwise, he makes valuable points about PIE vowel-grades.

In all Proto-European (abstracting Proto-European from
Proto-Anatolo-Indo-European) languages, we have abundant evidence of a
phoneme which I prefer to call the Ablaut-phoneme, and indicate by *A; it
has the expressions in real languages of <e>, <o>, and <Ø>.

Desperate as the attempts have been to identify it, there are _no_ traces of
this Ablaut-phoneme in Anatolian or Indian.

Therefore, we must consider the Ablaut-phoneme strictly a Proto-European
phenomenon, developed _solely_ by the Proto-European languages.

Most of us, I hope, do not doubt that an earlier stage of the language which
was the basis for Proto-Anatolo-Indo-European (and others) had three vowels:
*i, *a, and *u.

I do not know how many list-members would agree with me (and, I presume,
Miguel) in reconstructing a phase, which I term Pontic (what do you call it,
Miguel?), in which earlier *i and *u became *Ya and *Wa somewhat less early
while *a remained unchanged (*W and *Y are glides indicating respectively
palatalization and velarization).

We can say that there was a reconstructable Proto-Anatolo-Indo-European
language through the Pontic period but after *Y palatalized dorsals and *W
velarized coronals, the ways parted for Proto-Anatolo-Indian and
Proto-European. Proto-Anatolo-Indian retained <a> (and <Ø>) while
Proto-European changed <a> to *A and also retained zero-grade (<Ø>).

Palatal glides were eliminated in both branches both the velar glides were
retained.

There is no vRddhi-lengthening in Proto-European as there is in
Proto-Anatolo-Indian; and this is quite possibly due to the fact that PAI
did not have *e/*o variations to secondarily mark grammatical inflection so
vRddhi filled this gap.

The point which the author attempted to make regarding gun.a and vRddhi
being two superior grades seems rather to be much the tempest in a teacup.
For the life of me, I cannot see any significant difference or advantage in
it over the present practice of classifying syllables as zero-, *e-, or
*o-grade.

***