[tied] Re: PIE Ablaut

From: Jens Elmegård Rasmussen
Message: 41066
Date: 2005-10-05

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
> wrote:
>
> > The example you gave to prove your point: cakara/caka:ra has a
long,
> > checkered history of disputation. My best guess at present is that
the
> > lengthened vowel was simply introduced to provide a means of
> differentiating
> > 1st and 3rd persons.
>
> Actually, _caka:ra_ can also mean 'I did'! It also goes against
> statistical tendency for the 3s rather than the 1s to be specially
marked.

There is not a single example of that in the Rigveda. Macdonell's list
of forms actually occurring (Vedic Grammar, p. 356) contains, for this
structure, cakara, jagama, jagrábha, tatápa, papana, bibháya, mimaya,
raran.a, s'is'raya, s'us'ráva. All 1sg examples of the type caka:ra
are from post-Rigvedic texts.

Some of the examples are of course from set. roots and thus not
diagnostic. But even they have a long vowel in the 3sg by analogy:
e.g. 3sg bibhá:ya, jagrá:ha, jajá:na, juhá:va, niná:ya, vivá:ya. This
opposition must be based on something, which can only be the regular
difference between cakára from *kWe-kWór-H2a and caká:ra from *kWe-
kWór-e. It's a psychological mystery to me that Kurylowicz could bring
himself to recant this brilliant explanation. I see no chance it could
be wrong and therefore no chance Brugmann's Law could be wrong either.

Jens