Re: [tied] Re: o-grade thoughts

On 2006-08-30 12:14, tgpedersen wrote:

>> I'm doing nothing like that. I'm just referring to Jens's
>> theory that the O-fix does NOT derive from the root vowel
>> historically, and so is NOT its ablaut variant.
>
> You might think you said that, but you didn't.

OK, now I have said so explicitly, so you don't have to read between the
lines.

> On the other hand, if everybody else uses special pleading,
> why shouldn't I? I believe you also appealed to special
> circumstances with *-eje/o in Slavic?

Guilty as charged. The behaviour of *-éje- in Balto-Slavic is hard to
understand, but at least this seems to be an inner problem of that group
of languages. I haven't given it much thought yet in the light of my new
proposal concerning the origin of the causative/iterative. I'll try to
do so at my leisure and I'll report the conclusions, if any.

> Probably, and then ablaut came around.

A reduplication is a kind of compound (of a lexical stem with itself).
To what extent word-internal ablaut rules affect the structure depends
on how far the compound structure has been obscured. Something like
*g^í-g^n-e-ti shows all the normal ablaut reductions, but is still
recognisable as a reduplication. An intensive present like
*gWH(e)n-gWHón-ti is more compound-like and has, accordingly, less
reduction.

>>> Except for the plural of perf. or iteratives (OHG bebo:n =
>>> contract muscles in fear several times).
>> That's iterativity again, not plurality.
>
> That's misunderstanding again.

On whose part?

> With this scheme, your -ei- would not stick out against an
> expected -oi-, since it would be -ei- that was expected.

In all other cases the active perfect participle is formed from the same
stem as the finite verb; that's what makes *wéid-wo:ts exceptional.

Piotr