Re: *a/*a: ablaut

----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:43 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: *a/*a: ablaut


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

How come there exists also *weik- "kill", *ghleidh- "glide" ("shine"),
*wes- "be present"? Is it possible that these are words from an IE
substrate?

***

No substrate, I think. Just different finals.

First though: why *wa:g^- and *weik-?

Second: why gla:- as against *ghle(i)-?

Do the consonants not have to match up for us to make any valid inferences?

Third: I am not sure *wa:s- and *wes- are actually semantically related.




> 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)

I thought someone showed that these were actually e:/zero roots, thus
not so different from the standard ablaut pattern?

***

Piotr will have to address that. I simply have no information on it.

***

> 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


I was wondering whether o-grade could be explained as having arisen in
svarita, ie. posttonic position, and all cases where this is
traditionally not so as coming from decomposition?

> (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).

Whenever I read him, I see the trunk, I see the tail, I see the foot,
so I assume it really is an elephant. Or is it?

> 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: (secondarily also short *a).
>
> These two vowels never alternated with each other in one and the
> same root.

But almost. What is strange in that analysis is how little weight
*a(:) seems to have had in IE; it's usually one of the most important
vowels. Then there's Kuhn's observation of 'a-fashion' in agricultural
terms, early ones have the ablaut vowel, late ones have *a, as if the
former were adopted before PPIE *a > e, o, zero, the latter after.


Torsten

***

[a] is the lazy vowel - no movement front or back or upward required.


Patrick

***