Re: *a/*a: ablaut

From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 52813
Date: 2008-02-12

Thank you again for making the efforts I know are necessary to gather and
organize this material. I really appreciate it more than you know.

But you really did not answer my first question (I think) unless I choose to
read between the lines.

I am sure you already suspect that I am going to try to argue that aspirated
non-stops and voiceless aspirated stops (*ph, *th, and *kh) are responsible
for "underlyingly" long vowels coming into PIE.

But, first things first.

Regardless of how they are analyzed into segments, would you agree that
*wa:g^-, *gla:dhu-, and *wa:s- came into PIE with long vowels in place?


Patrick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 7:38 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] *a/*a: ablaut


> On 2008-02-12 14:01, Patrick Ryan wrote:
>
> > Would it be accurate to say that the evidence is sufficient to warrant a
> > belief that
> >
> > *wa:-g^-, *gla:-dh-u-, and *wa:-s- came into PIE with long vowels in
> > place?
>
> I wouldn't divide them like that. With the possible exception of some
> peripheral lexical areas (nursery words, onomatopoeia) I don't think *CV
> roots existed in PIE even if the vowel was underlyingly long.
>
> > I presume you can point to analogous roots in *e: and *o:?
>
> As far as I can see, *e:-roots are secondary (*e:/*e ablaut is found in
> roots which also display the normal *e/*o/zero alternations). I don't
> thing the evidence for fundamental (non-apophonic and non-laryngeal) *o
> is conclusive. It's therefore possible that all *o's, both short and
> long, are derived in PIE. My impression is that *a: represents the basic
> reflex of a pre-PIE open vowel in metrically strong positions, while *a
> is the weak allomorph of the same, i.e. *a: is primary and *a is
> secondary.
>
> One still unsolved problem in PIE morphophonology is the existence of
> two acrostatic ablaut patterns: *e:/*e (as in Narten presents, sigmatic
> aorists and some root nouns) and *o/e (as in *po(:)d-/*ped-). Jens
> Rasmussen has some very interesting ideas concerning the latter
> alternation, but I find his solutions only partly satisfying and don't
> quite believe they can be considered definitive, especially if there's
> any truth in Jasanoff's analysis of o-grade verbs in Hittite and IE
> (Jens denies that, but I've been re-reading Jasanoff and can't resist
> the feeling that he makes some really good points in his book). Whoever
> is right, apophonic *o may behave similarly to *e:, revealing its
> "strong vowel" character (Brugmannian length of *o in open syllables in
> Indo-Iranian also suggests that it was originally some kind of tense
> vowel in opposition to short/lax *e).
>
> To sum up, I'm inclined to believe that pre-PIE had at least two
> non-high vowel phonemes: a mid one ([-high] and [-low]; let's symbolise
> it *E, though I don't insist that it was front; it may have been
> schwa-like), and a [+low] one (let's use the symbol *A). They developed
> as follows:
>
> *E > *e (secondarily also *e:, apophonic *o(:), zero; *a and *o when
> coloured by adjacent segments -- especially, though not exclusively, *h2
> and *h3).
>
> *A > *a: (sevondarily also short *a).
>
> These two vowels never alternated with each other in one and the same
> root.
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
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