Re: Prenasalization, not ejectives cause of Winter's law?

From: tgpedersen
Message: 46118
Date: 2006-09-19

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> Rick Derksen
> (Old Icelandic jarpi "hazel grouse", rjúpa "ptarmigan"
> and their Germanic and Balto-Slavic cognates, in
> Language Contact; Substratum, Superstratum, Adstratum
> in Germanic Languages)
> quotes Henning Andersen for the following summary
>
> Proto-Slavic
> xxxxxxxxxx simple complex
> full grade e:rb erimb
> zero grade i:rb rimb
>
> Proto-Baltic
> xxxxxxxxxx simple complex
> full grade e:rb erumb
> zero grade i:rb rumb
>
> of his proposal to account for substrate NWEuropean substrate
> words meaning "hazel grouse", "ptarmigan", "rowan tree" and
> "speckled".
> Derksen emendates it to
>
> Proto-Slavic
> xxxxxxxxxx simple complex
> full grade erHb e:re/imb
> zero grade irHb re/imb
>
> Proto-Baltic
> xxxxxxxxxx simple complex
> full grade erHb e:ru:b, erumb
> zero grade irHb rub
>
> and remarks that it is tempting to ascribe the laryngeal to
> Winter's law, but that the complex Baltic form (Latv. rubenis
> "black grouse") precludes that. Apart from that, if this is
> a freak form, Derksen's summary shows an alternation between
> a voiced unaspirated produced lengthening and a nasal, in other
> words *-V:rb-/*-VrVmb-. Now suppose that voiced unaspirated are
> not preglottalized as claimed but instead prenasalised, as
> Pulleyblank has proposed, that alternation would be instead
> *-VrHb-/*-VrMb-. That means that positing voiced unaspirated
> as prenasalized can account for Winter's law as well as
> positing them as preglottalized.
>
>

I'll carry on this conversation with myself as usual (sigh!).
In the same tome it so happens that there's an article
Michiel de Vaan: 'Reconsidering Durch rups, German Raupe 'caterpillar'
Odd that they don't refer to each other I thought.
As for the author's idea that the -s of rups is related to German
'rülpsen' "belch", yes - and no. I looked up Ernout-Meillet on
similar forms, and they have ructus "belch", but also "that which
is belched up", which, given the circumstances at the time, might
have been something not dissimilar to 'rups' (the delicate
cybalister might want to skip to the next posting here).
As for the seemingly un-warranted -s, cf. Danish ribs, pl. id.,
Sw. dial. rips, "red currant", according to Dansk Etymologisk
Ordbog from Arabic through Medieval Latin, which I'm hesitant
to accept because of the strange apparent s-plural, which is
found in Danish otherwise exclusively (North Germanic has
no s-plural) in the collective 'høns' "chickens, hens" ('høne'
"hen", 'høner' "hens") and 'østers' "oysters" (Sw. 'ostron'
sg and pl. with a suffix otherwise reserved for fruit and
berries), which all makes me suspect the NWEuropean (IE?)
substrate had an s-plural, which eventually 'bled through' to
Dutch, Platt, and especially English (cf *puk^-s-a- "fox" vs.
Goth. fauho < *fuho:n "female fox").
As I said, I perused Ernout-Meillet, after having set the bar
as low as I thought responsible, namely to a substrate
*(w)(-r/l)N,kW- (-> *(w)(-r/l)Mp-) with possible loss of the
auslaut consonant and an 'extensions' -dh- (the w- in anlaut
corresponding to a rule of Wilczak's proposal for a Germanic
substrate, with eg. PIE we:los -> e:los -> PGerm. a:l-
"eel"), and caught

ructus "belch, what is belched up"
rumpo:, ru:pi:, ruptus "break",
but the majority of the cases E-M cited had to do with boils
bursting, puss and gore all over the place
rudis "rude, coarse"
rudus "stone rubble",
rudus, raudus "unprocessed ore, block of copper"
cf. OHG aruz "ore"
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/25888
ruo: "destroy"
luo: "dissolve, destroy"
ru:s, ru:ris "the country"
re:po: "crawl" (as a reptile, cf. German Robbe "seal")

and here a few Danish ones:
rav "amber"
ræv "fox"
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/18743
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/44292
jærv (from Norwegian) "wolverine"

It is surprising that the authors of the first article,
its many words for "rowan-berry", supposed the favorite food
of grouses, didn't pounce on the 'rowan' etymon itself.
According to DEO it is a loan from Danish 'rønnebær', itself
a derivation from something containing 'rauD-' "red".
Nothing in the word points to that last -D-. It is
interesting, though, that the Danish saying equivalent
to Aesop fable about the fox and sour grapes is:
"De er sure, sagde ræven om rønnebærrene". Generally,
it is assumed the substitution took place for
alliteration, but no one knows. Foxse are supposedly not
particularly fond of rowanberries.


This is all very confusing semantically. Can we find a subsuming
sense for all this? Yes, its "nature, the chaotic and disgusting
opponent of culture". I think the words for "grouse" and
"ptarmigan" were once adjectives meaning "wild(-colored)"
describing, as they saw it, the wild cousin of their domesticated
fowl (cf. Danish 'agerhøne'). The adjectives meaning "reddish,
striped" (cf. 'rust') were meant to describe foodstuff in its
"natural" unpreserved state, full of rot, maggots and decay
(which, very unscientifically, I assumed to be a Southern
European attitude to Nature).

(On a similar use of an adjective, cf PIE *g^omb- "plug, tooth"
leading to the more specific *g^omb- edent- "eating plug" ->
*edent- "tooth" (and not "eating one"!))

And BTW, we should include
*wl.kW-os "wolf"
*wl.p-es "fox"
lynx
all animals of darkness and destruction, 'robbers'

Obviously this is a 'frontier' word. The fact it is not
reconstructible in PIE shows it must be a LBK-Rössen frontier
word, something to do with the mysterious hinterlands they
traded with. Surpring that it is so little distorted, the
LBK dialects must have been rather similar.

But perhaps it has a cousin in Old Chinese?
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/44457

And I think I'll add som Møller, too:
"
assyr. erpu 'Wolke', erpitu, urpatu 'eine dunkle, schwarze Wolke',
irpu: 'umwölkt, cloudy', urpanis^ Adv. 'like clouds'.
"


Now, the interesting part is the Latin verb

rumpo:, ru:pi: , ruptum

since this might offer an explanation of where the n-infix
came from. Now, Jens has shown that Winter takes place
only in syllables immediately preceding the stress. As far
as I can tell, n-infixes happen only in thematic stems.
Thematic stem were originally stressed on the thematic vowel.
Therefore, if Winter-lengthening is caused by voiced
unaspirated stops being prenasalized, and n-infix is caused
by prenasalized stops, it is only right that they occur in
the same environment, namely before the stressed syllable.


Torsten