--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2006-10-05 19:42, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > Is there a theory on the market as to how this ablaut distribution
> > in athematic roots came about historically (as oppposed to one
> > which proves which cases had which ablaut grade)?
>
> Yes, Jens has presented his theory here. According to him,
> acrostatic root nouns, like Narten presents, had an underlying
> long vowel (which is why the root vocalism is never zero).
upabdá- ?
> When further lengthened in the nom.sg., the vowel developed
> overlength with an o-like offglide that eventually coloured the
> whole nucleus (*e:: > *e:o > *o:). In the weak cases the accent
> was originally on the ending, which led to the shortening of
> the root vowel, but as the result was still a full vowel,
> the accent was drawn back to it from the ending. The o-vocalism
> of the nom.sg. was generalised in the strong cases, hence nom.pl.
> *pód-es, acc.sg. *pód-m. Weak-case forms like gen.sg. *péd-s are
> only marginally attested in the historically known languages,
> since they were commonly supplanted by forms modelled on mobile
> paradigms (*ped-ós).
Given that Hittite shows that the initial root consonant may
alternate with the ablaut grades of the root vowel, I think
there are more data to be taken into consideration, on the
subject of foot-stuff.
Old Armenian:
N Sg. otn
Ac otn
G otin
D otin
L otin
Ab otane:
I otamb
N Pl. otk´
Ac ots
G otic´
D otic´
L ots
Ab otic´
I otiwk´
(obviously the instr. sg. is < *mbi "around", OHG umbi)
Where does that -n come from?
And assuming that classical
bH b p
dH d t
gH g k
gWh gW kW
is really
b Mb p
d Nd t
g N,g k
gW N,gW Kw
so that an alternation that in clasical terms looks like
bH/p is actually just b/p, and given, as noted, that Hittite
does alternate root-initial consonants, we should perhaps take
the odd "bottom" root into consideration
budhná-h "ground, bottom" Sanskrit
puthmén (< *phuth-)
"bottom (of a bowl)" Greek
fundus "bottom of a bowl, ground" Latin
bond "sole, foundation, support" Middle Irish
bodam "bottom" Old High German
bund "bottom" Danish
botten "bottom" Swedish
(cf
vand "water" Danish
vatten "water" Swedish
Two different case forms in Da. and Sw.?)
So was eg. gen.sg. *bHnd-ós "of foot" (or rather "of lower part)?
That would make a good reason why the root vowel is never zero:
it used to be, and that made the word unrecognizable, so those case
forms were reconstructed from scratch.
Torsten