From: caotope
Message: 64584
Date: 2009-08-03
> > > No, it's /n,W/ in the donor ar-/ur-/ and geminate language. It*amb ~ *amm basically (~ *om in Mari & Mordvinic _tumo_). Nasality found in all cases.
> > > 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 isYes, I'm fine with that.
> > 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.You're now linking this to IE nasal infixes? Slo down a bit.
> 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.*uNa is a misreconstruction, this points unambiguously to *-w-. (Relying on the UEW for reconstructions is a bad idea.) It's a fun idea to relate this to the traditional "water" roots, but that would likely have to go back a lot farther than typical European substrate words. That, and the lack of evidence nasality, then leaves _nass_ basically unconnectable. Of course, we can suppose anything, but allowing everything to alternate with everything is pseudoscience. We need patterns.
>
> 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.)Place of Articulation. And before you ask, "coronal" is the cover term for dental/alveolar.
>
> What's POA?
> > A question I have not seen mention'd here is - is the nasalThis is compatible with later rehaping.
> > alternation limited to the labial and velar POAs, or does it also
> > appear with coronals?
> > > > > > 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?
> > The idea is that some of the "alternation" we
> > are seeing would be modifications specific to the individual
> > languages;
>
> But the supposed donor language could be a number of related dialects.
> > > > _duppe_ works from *-mp- as well."Original" on the IE side - economicity at every step.
> > >
> > > 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 spontaneouslyYeah, again, I can accept that. But not that there is only ever a single substrate word, and all the alternation is because the IE 'lects interpret things differently (as you write in the quote at the top of the message).
> > 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_ rootPotentially any that has multiple forms of the same complex.
> > > > 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.You still keep talking like there's only a single language that covers all of Europe. This can obviously have not been the case. We're more likely talking about a lost family, maybe more than one, with a time depth of several millennia.
> > > I don't follow you. The a/u alternation is what we find in theThere are many, many possible pathways that can turn /a/ into /u/.
> > > 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.
> > Another thought: original *o, interpreted as *a/*u byBoth of *o *o~ are possible. Surely you're not saying that there exists nasal alternation in EVERY case?
> > Germanic/Balto-Slavic?
>
> Possible, but then we don't catch the nasalized variants.