Re: [tied] PIE athematic neuters

On Thu, 09 Mar 2006 14:08:24 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>Here's something that puzzles me: PIE athematic neuters seem to show an
>regularly added extra mora in the vocalism of their nom./acc.sg., and it
>isn't clear to me what kind of process may be responsible for this extra
>length. I know that Jens explains some of the forms in question as old
>collectives with final *h2, but I have several reservations concerning
>this explanation.
>
>First, the structure of the neuter stems where the lengthening occurs is
>usually CVCR-/G (G = glide) and I find it difficult to believe that the
>lengthening caused by *h2 would have operated across this type of
>cluster, e.g. in the acrostatic type of ***de:rw-h2 > **de::rw > *dóru
>(weak stem *déru- < *de:rw-'). My impression is that the actual regular
>collectives are those like *wédo:r (beside *wódr., gen. *wédns).
>
>Secondly, the wholesale survival of collectives and the equally
>wholesale loss of non-collectives at the same time seems an odd thing to
>propose. What happened to the "plain" words for 'water', 'tree', etc.?
>
>Thirdly, we see the same thing e.g. in acrostatic adjectives like
>*h1we:s-u-s (genus communis) vs. *h1wos-u (neuter) (judging from the
>forms that have survived analogical levelling). Note that here the
>nom.sg. *-s of the common gender fails to change the quality of the root
>vowel!
>
>The extra length occurs in the following types:
>
>*k^e:r(d), *je:kWr. (preserving their long root vowels), and possibly
>all proterokinetic and amphikinetic neuters. The fact that neuters are
>never hysterokinetic is striking. The root vowel of athematic neuter
>stems _systematically_ attracts accent and resists reduction in the
>nom./acc.sg., which may point out to original length.
>
>The acrostatic type represented by *doru, *h2oju, *g^onu, *h1wosu (weak
>stems *deru-, *h2aju-, *g^enu-, *h1wesu-), where the *o supposedly
>reflects underlying _overlength_ (whatever its phonetic realisation),
>always shortened in this type (presumably at a time, in pre-PIE, when
>the final sonorant was not yet vocalised and so the long vowel was
>followed by a consonant cluster). Here we also have such *-r/n-
>heteroclita as *wodr. and *potr., which may be ancient *-nt-
>participles, i.e. *we:d-nt- etc., with a long vowel in the verb root
>plus another mora yielding the attested *o.
>
>Any ideas?

My views on the length issue are somewhat diffrent, as you
know. I regard forms like *doru(r) or *wodr as having
underlying **a: or **u: vocalism, while original **i: yields
*e:, which has the advantage that the two types become
fundamentally one. Posttonic lengthening (after light roots
only) explains the vocalism of the proterodynamic type
(*h2ák^-ma:n *h2ak^-mán-a:s => *h2ákmon-, *h2k^ménos), while
the amphidynamic type is a special development of roots
containg long *u: and *i: (e.g. if the water root is from
*u:d, not *wa:d-: *ú:d-an ~ *u:d-án-a:s ~ *u:d-án-a(i) =>
*wódr, *udnós, *udén(i), with accent shift in the oblique if
a long vowel follows). I have explained this better and
more at length the past...

Now I too have been wondering about the peculiarities of the
neuter in this respect, and I've had a suspicion for quite
some time now: what if it's not a peculiarity of the neuters
that they have heavy stems, but that it's a peculiarity of
heavy stems that they are neuter? The nominative and
accusative endings *-z and *-m are asyllabic and the only
ones to be so, and a soundlaw that drops them after a heavy
/ long vowel syllable is not unthinkable.

What do you think?


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...