PIE Word Formation (1)

Here's the promised new topic:

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Proto-Indo-European Word Formation (1)

1. Nomina: Nouns (Substantives) and Adjectives

Preliminaries

PIE nouns and adjectives (including declinable numerals) fall into the
same classes and are declined in the same way. The general structure of
a typical PIE nominal STEM (i.e. a noun or adjective stripped of
inflectional endings), excluding compounds and morphologically opaque
words, is as follows:

St- = Rt-S1-S2...-SN-; St- (stem), Rt- (root), -S- (derivational suffix)

That is, such a stem consists of a further unanalysable lexical morpheme
(ROOT) followed by a string of SUFFIXES. In the process of
word-derivation suffixes are attached one at a time, always at the end
of the string, so that the structure is in fact a hierarchy of lexical
domains:

[Rt-]
[[Rt-]-S1-]
[[[Rt-]-S1-]-S2-]
...

Nouns and adjectives can be derived not only from other nomina but also
from verbs and undeclinables. In the minimal case, there are no suffixes
at all, and the stem seems to consist of a bare root: St- = Rt- (e.g.
*gWHen- 'slayer' from the verb root *gWHen- 'slay'). Such simple
structures are known as ROOT NOUNS. Actually, since PIE allows "zero
derivation" (as in Eng.: to ride --> a ride; a hand --> to hand), i.e. a
change of word-class without adding a visible suffix, root nouns can be
viewed as stems derived from roots by means of adding a morphological
zero (NULL SUFFIX). Null suffixation is also possible with more complex
structures, e.g. turning adjectives into substantives. It may cause an
accentual shift (again as in Eng.: to convért --> a cónvert)

Most suffixes contain a single consonant (or one of a very limited set
of suffixes), which may be preceded by *e (e.g. *-er-, *-en-, *-es-,
*-ent-), but in the prehistory of PIE frequently co-occurring
combinations of primitive suffixes must have been fused into
phonologically more complex strings like *-went-, *-men-, *-ter-, etc.,
whose internal structure has been obscured, so that they act as unitary
morphemes. Some of such complex suffixes may originally have been second
elements of compounds, reduced beyond recognition (cf. English -ly < OE
-li:c <-- *li:ka- 'shape, form, body').

A stem is called THEMATIC if it ends in *-e/o-. The term is confusing,
since "theme" is just elegant variation for "stem", so all "stems"
should be "thematic" by tautology, but the traditional nomenclature
reflects a mental shortcut: as the _vowel_ in question stands at the end
of a stem, it is called the THEMATIC VOWEL, and the adjective is
mechanically applied to the stem itself. In PIE nomina the thematic
vowel is traditionally written *-o-, since it normally acquired this
colour across declensional paradigms, but originally it must have been a
conditioned variant of *-e-; the latter quality is visible when exposed
in word-final position (as in the voc.sg. *wl.kWe vs. nom.sg. *wl.kWos
'wolf', acc.sg. *wl.kWom, etc.). Also in collectives (including neuter
"plurals") and feminine thematic adjectives, when an original thematic
vowel is followed by *h2, the result is *-ah2 = {eh2}, not {oh2}:
*now-a-h2 'new (f.)', etc. In some morphological environments the
thematic vowel may be "replaced" by *-i/j-, and there are reasons to
believe that it actually _changed_ into *-i/j- at some point in its
prehistory.

The addition of a suffix may result in changing the vocalism of the
immediate derivational base. In particular, a suffix with a full vowel
usually "steals" the accent from the stem, causing the latter to lose
its vowel. Thus from the root *pleh1- 'fill' we get the verbal adjective
*pl.h1-nó- 'full'. Similar shifts may be caused by accented inflectional
endings. As a consequence, only one underlying vowel per stem is
realised in the surface form. This happens especially in the most
archaic layers of PIE derivatives; in those formed at a later date, when
ablaut rules were no longer active phonetic processes, the base normally
retains its vocalism and the alternation of strong and weak forms is
restricted to the last suffix of the base (or doesn't occur at all).

In addition to SIMPLEX stems (consisting of one root plus zero, one or
more suffixes) PIE makes extensive use of COMPOUNDS (two or even more
stems combined into a single word). In typical compounds, only the final
element is inflected. Special types of complex stems include
UNIVERBATIONS (when an original phrase has become "fossilised" as a
lexical unit, e.g. *[dem-s]-[poti-] '[house-GEN.SG.] + [master]'), and
REDUPLICATIONS, when a root is preceded by a copy of itself. The copy is
rarely complete; in most cases only the initial consonant is copied,
followed by *-e- or *-i-, as in *kWe-kWl-o- 'wheel'. By contrast to
reduplicated verb stems (of which there are several classes),
reduplicated nons and adjectives are rare in PIE and mostly belong to
"expressive" vocabulary. It seems that nominal reduplication ceased to
be a productive derivational device early in the history of the language.

Piotr

PS: This will be followed by a more detailed discussion of the general
principles of nominal derivation in the format of questions and answers.
The warm-up questions will be my own, but I hope for some feedback from
the list-members.