RE : [tied] Re: North of the Somme

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "caotope" <johnvertical@...> wrote:

>
> > No, it's /n,W/ in the donor ar-/ur-/ and geminate language. It
> > manifests itself in the receiving IE and FU languages as
> > /-mm-/-mb-/-mp-/-bb-/-pp-/
> > /-n,n,-/-n,g-/-n,k-/-gg-/-kk-/
> > Alternation is what we find in the receiving languages.
>
> I can accept that not having /N_w/ themselves, IE languages would
> substitute things like *m, *gg, *Nk in its stead. I however see no
> possible motivation for alternation as wide as *mm *mp *mb *bb *pp
> entirely upon loaning.

You'll like this one: Russ dub, Polish da,b, Estonian tamm "oak"
(/a,/ nasal /a/).

> The acceptors contrast all of those; it is
> also unlikely that they all would be allophonic in the donor.

No, but note that many are verbs, it might be paradigm alternation.
I once proposed that the supposed n-infix appeared originally in those number/person where stress fell on the following syllable of a latently pre-nasalized voiced stop.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/46161

And is this coda position only, or do we have initial nasal/stop alternation? If not, I would quite certainly take at least the vacillating nasality as a sign of phonemic alternation.

How about the "apple" and "water" words?
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/64461
cf UEW
omena ~ omæræ 'Apfel' FW and
un,a 'Strom; strömen' FU

Since I've added the Schrijver's language of bird names to the two others the initial a alternates with zero, letting the following /n,W/ (supposedly) become initial and degenerate to ma- (malum; madeo:) na- (;Grm. nass), wa- (;Sw. våt).

> (Or perhaps vowel nasality, but that could only explain *mp ~ *p, not *m ~ *p, nor POA vacillation.)

What's POA?

>
> A question I have not seen mention'd here is - is the nasal
> alternation limited to the labial and velar POAs, or does it also
> appear with coronals?

See above.

>
> > > > > and I'm not sure what you are getting at with "dup-".
> > > >
> > > > You will be, after you read Schrijver's article:
> > > > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62677
> > > > Search 'dup'.
> > >
> > > That racks up the alternation count a lot actually. How do we
> > > figure they're ALL original alternation and not later
> > > reshaping?
> >
> > Reshaped by what? Why would you assign some of them to a
> > substrate and leave some in PIE to influence them later?
>
> You misunderstand. The idea is that some of the "alternation" we
> are seeing would be modifications specific to the individual
> languages; not that there are substrate roots, PIE roots and
> interplay between them.

But the supposed donor language could be a number of related dialects.

>
> > > _duppe_ works from *-mp- as well.
> >
> > That's a halfway solution.
> > You can always try the compromise solution between trying to jump
> > an obstacle and not trying. The results are rarely satisfactory.
>
> I'm trying to gauge how many original forms we REALLY need.
> Obviously, the less, the better.

I agree. Use /n,W/ as much as possible and be happy.

> It's ludicrous to posit one substrate root which spontaneously
> splits into some two dozen different roots upon being loan'd into
> Germanic.

Not if it had a couple of centuries first to split into dialect which were then all steamrollered by the likes of Germanic, Baltic and Slavic.

> > > There may also be secondary influence from the _deep_ root here
> > > and there.
> >
> > Except that the 'deep' root would be part of the loaned complex,
> > so there would be nothing for it to influence.
>
> No - the roots are distinct on the Germanic side. They would have a
> lot of time to influence one another during their evolution towards
> attestation.

In which language? BTW Kuhn links in the articles in the files section the place name Dover to his ar-/ur- language. Since it's obviously a cognate, that links ar-/ur- language to the *dub- root and thus to the language of geminates.

> > > I sense a methodological issue here. We are supposed to accept
> > > an a/u alternation, and at the same time, reduce all consonant
> > > alternations to parallel development? Even when parallel forms
> > > end up in the same language?
> >
> > I don't follow you. The a/u alternation is what we find in the
> > receiving languages, the original vowel would have been something
> > like /a,/, a nasal /a/ (Slavic /a,/ becomes Russian /u/).
>
> OK. That may work for Russian, but not so much for Germanic.

Slavic to Russian is a separate issue. I just wanted show with an example that /a,/ -> /u/ has happened before. If the substrate had /a,/ that might have split into /a/ and /u/.

> I think a distributional analysis of a-variants and u-variants is
> needed before we can call it an allophonic/loaning adaptation issue.

Kuhn discussed the distribution of apa/upe in river names.

> Another thought: original *o, interpreted as *a/*u by
> Germanic/Balto-Slavic?

Possible, but then we don't catch the nasalized variants.

I have a problem with matching the a/u alternations with a/o: alternations. The Germanic class VI verbs, now ablauting a/o:/o:/a might once have been either a/a:/a:/a or o/o:/o:/o.



Torsten