Re: [tied] Re: PIE Ablaut

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jens Elmegård Rasmussen" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 5:32 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: PIE Ablaut


--- 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

***
Patrick:

Although I have Collinge's summary of the currents that have swirled around
this question, I do not have even reasonably easy access to the literature
that contains the full arguments of protagonists and antagonists -
especially those advanced after 1985.

I will, therefore, not offer any further comments on it.

I hope there is someone on the list, at a university, who does have access
to the full and current dossier on this question, and who will discuss it
further with Jens.

The only thing of which I am certain is that Brugmann's "Law", as originally
formulated, has many exceptions like ávi- and ápas; and, according to
Collinge, Hirt accumulated 67 such non-conforming etyma.

Have these questions been satisfactorily answered?

According to what I infer from Collinge, as of 1985, they had not been.

Have at it, gentlemen.

***






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