Re: o-grade thoughts

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2006-08-29 01:26, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > BTW, I reread the parts of Jens' 'Studien zur Morphophonemik
> > der indogermanischen Grundsprache' where he introduces his
> > R-infix which explains (part of) IE o-grade (I had gotten
> > the impression from somewhere that he derived that infix
> > ultimately from an R-prefix, but I can't find it in the text?).
> >
> > Any way, two things he doesn't explain (as far I could tell)
> >
> > 1) the o-grade of perfect sg.
>
> That's a different phenomenon, connected with other kinds of
> o-reduplication (see below). The o-grade of the perfect is
> specifically accented, to begin with, whereas the o-grade
> resulting from infixation is typically pretonic -- except
> in cases of evident accent shifts.

Erh, and? How does the first statement follow from the last?
You're saying that since the o-grade of perf sg is accented
and that of derivations isn't, they are the results of different
processes?

> > 2) the semantics of that R-affix: what does/did it mean?
> >
> > So I had an idea:
> > suppose that prefix was PPIE *a- (or *an- ?) and that it was
> > identical to the verbal augment PPIE *a, PIE *e-, and
> > that it changed the vowel of the root it was prefixed to
> > by means of some type of 'progressive umlaut' (the e-grade
> > of the augment in its classical sense would then be because
> > it was only joined to the verbal root at a late time, after
> > ablaut had run its course)?
>
> It has already been pointed out on this list that the phonological
> features of O-fixations are similar to those of second elements of
> compounds. So little has remained of the first member, however,
> that its full form can hardly be recovered through internal
> reconstruction within IE.

You mean to say that nothing has remained, only its effects,
just as with the first member in my proposal.

> Nevertheless, Jens provides rather
> good arguments in favour of regarding the infixed *O as some
> kind of sonorant whose vocalised reflex is visible as PIE *o.

But I have identified the mysterious O-affix, which consists of
a phoneme which occurs nowhere else in all of PIE, with
1) the augment
2) "Schrijver's a-"
both morphemes we know already, with a good semantic match
(at least in the first case, we can only guess at the semantics
of the second), thereby reducing the number of entia ... etc.
Occam is on my side.

> Had it been a real full vowel originally, we would
> expect accent retraction in all O-fixations.

Not if the prefix vamoosed fast enough, see below.

> > In other words
> > perf
> > PPIE 3sg *a-man a -> *am-an a -> *am-on e -> PIE *mon-e
> > (cf double negation in Afrikaans 'nie <verb> ... nie')
> > PPIE 3pl *ma-man-an -> *me-mnen- etc
> >
> > Note the two different syllabifications.
> >
> > The perf. sg. can't always have had reduplication; two full
> > vowels in the stem is one too many.
>
> A _reduplicated_ stem by definition provides more room.

Erh, meaning what?

> The perfect is not the only IE reduplicated category with
> the o-grade. We also have the intensive with full(er)
> reduplication, *CeR-CoRC-, best preserved in Indo-Iranian.
> The original pattern must have been something like 3sg.
> *gWH(e)n-gWHón-ti 'strikes and strikes' (with some
> reshaping reflected as Ved. jáNgHanti, note the absence
> of palatalisation in the second syllable), 3pl.
> *gWHén-gWHn-n.ti (i.e. *C(e)R-CóRC-/*CéR-CR.C-).
> Thirdly, the athematic reduplicated aorist with the
> probable structure *Ci-CóRC-/Cé-CR.C-. It's still disputable
> whether non-intensive athematic reduplicated presents had the
> shape *Ci-CóRC- (like the aorist) or *Ci-CéRC- in the singular.
> Both possibilities have been argued; the plural was *Cé-CR.C-
> in either case. What the perfect has in common with these
> formations is its disyllabic but athematic structure, so the
> vowel contrast between the two syllables may be a manifestation
> of a more general dissimilatory tendency (*CeRC-CoRC-, with later
> simplifications, not unlike <ding-dong>, <criss-cross>,
> <bric-à-brac>, <Zizou> etc. -- note that in such "ablaut
> reduplication" the typical vowel pattern is front/back, also
> in languages unrelated to English or French). This is also
> Jens's explanation, independent of his O-fix theory.

But semantically, reduplication, meaning plurality, made no
sense in the sg and must have been introduced analogically.

I note with relish that the PPIE *-a-a- -> PIE *-i-o- tendential
pattern seems to be as general as PPIE *-aCa- -> PIE *-iCo-.
In the sg of the perfect, that would mean that PPIE *aman- ->
*imon- which could go either way of -> *mon- (with a rule giving
loss of "i-grade" in anlaut) or -> *mimon-/*memon- by analogy with
the plural. Now I have a theory of the o-grade of the sg of the
perfect, and that theory reduces, not increases the number of entia
in PIE. What do you have? Your move.


Torsten