From: tgpedersen
Message: 59191
Date: 2008-06-10
>I could 'explain' them all those verbs as loans from Baltic Venetic,
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > >
> > > Point for consideration (?): If /a/ is always of foreign origin
> > > (since the original PIE didn't have /a/),
> >
> > Not always, cf eg. Latin schwa secundum.
> >
> > > why then didn't /a/ of foreign languages become borrowed as /e/
> > > or /o/ or some other native sound? As an example, after English
> > > lost the phonemes /y/ and /y:/, Old French /y:/ was borrowed as
> > > /eu/ (> /iu/ > /ju:/)(as in <pure>) and Old French /y/ was
> > > borrowed as /u/ (as in <punish>). So if Latin, being a
> > > descendant of PIE, didn't have any /a/ inherited from PIE, why
> > > then did they adopt an entirely new unfamiliar sound?
> >
> > Because /a/ is a more 'natural' sound than /ü/. Only few vowel
> > inventories have the latter, almost all have the former; it is a
> > naturally given extreme of the vowel triangle. English took a road
> > comparable to that of PPIE: some /a/'s became /e/, some became
> > /o/, and the empty space of /a/ was filled with foreign loans, eg.
> > 'spa'.
> >
> >
>
> I guess my point is that if Latin really is derived from a PIE that
> had no original /a/ phoneme, okay yes maybe words such as <lacus>
> and <mare> were borrowed from a coastal people who had the /a/
> sound, thus increasing the frequency of /a/ (which by your criteria
> would arise in Latin only from schwa and schwa secundum, both zero
> grades), but how do you explain verbs like <sapere>, which has a
> Germanic cognate in OS <bisebbian, afsebbian>, or <rapere>, or any
> of the duratives with /e:/ as the formant like <patere>, <manere>,
> <habere>, <tacere>, etc., leaving aside <capere> (and also <habere>)
> where the /a/ could be explained as developing from earlier /e/
> under the influence of a preceding uvular consonant (*qap-). These
> are all verbs of primary (non-derived) declension, not transferred
> into one of the secondary declensions as one would expect of verbs
> borrowed from outside PIE, or no? I'm just somewhat skeptical of
> the idea that the majority of /a/'s in Latin have to be accounted
> for as having come from outside rather than having been inherited --
> and therefore of the idea that PIE _absolutely_ had no /a/. But all
> this has been discussed very often before, I'm aware, yet I've never
> been fully convinced of the idea that /a/ did not exist. Just my
> personal feeling.