Re: dhuga:ter

On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:00:00 -0500, "Patrick Ryan"
<proto-language@...> wrote:

>I am willing to keep an open mind on this subject; and I have no axe to
>grind (almost). The only impact on my own hypotheses would be to shift the
>probabilities slightly on the phonological nature of some or all
>'laryngeals' from my postulated [h] for all to [G]/[x] for, at least, some.
>
>First off, I would call attention to the fact that we do _not_ reconstruct
>PIE *senek-.

No, it's */seneh2-/ (i.e. *[senah2-]).

>The proposed 'hardening' seems to occur after PIE 'unity'.
>
>Would you agree with that, Miguel?

I'm not positive whether there are any cases in, say,
Anatolian. It is in any case late-PIE or post-PIE.

>Therefore, technically, it is improper to call it a PIE phenomenon though it
>seems to be widespread.
>
>Secondly, the theorized hardening apparently occurs with all 'laryngeals',
>suggesting a phonological identity that would make variegated responses to
>them by adjacent vowels problematical.
>
>Thirdly, the fact that the proposed 'laryngeal' is only perhaps
>predominantly 'hardened' makes one wonder about the lack of (almost, at
>least) complete regularity we have a right to expect in any given language.
>
>If we take the context in which it allegedly occurs oftenest, -*(i)H(a)+*s.
>in my opinion, the frequent lengthening of vowels cerates another problem;
>there is nothing about -*g or -*k that should lengthen a preceding vowel. In
>this model we have to assume Spiderman capabilities for *H: 1) it lengthens
>the preceding vowel without losing any integrity, and then 'hardens' into
>*g/*k.

The presence or absence of lengthening almost certainly has
to do with paradigmatic leveling. If we had nom. *senáh2-s,
acc. *senáh2-m => *senáks, *sená:m, this can in principle be
leveled to:

*-á:(s), *-á:m
*-á:ks, *-á:km. (c.q. *-á:ks, *-á:gm.)
*-áks, *-ákm. (c.q. *-áks, *-ágm.)

All variants are attested.

>[...]
>My last objection, or really observation, is that I am not aware of this
>'hardening outside of PIE-derived languages though my bet is that Richard
>does.

There is an obvious parallel in German Fuchs /fUks/ "fox"
and similar words. German is PIE-derived, of course, but the
hardening of the velar here is clearly a totally independent
phenomenon.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...