Re: Rozwadowski's Change

From: dgkilday57
Message: 65463
Date: 2009-11-25

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> > > > > *tout-/tu:t-s-k^ant-/-k^unt- (metathesis in Lith. tukst- ?)
> > > > > in which *tout-/tu:t-s is genitive of *tout-/tu:t- "all;
> > > > > totality" and ka^nt-/k^unt- is my usual "troop" word is good
> > > > > enough for me. "Troop of all".
> > > > > And I'm beginning to wonder whether the IE formant
> > > > > -ent-/-ont- is related.
> > > >
> > > > At the time-depth in question, would we not expect the first
> > > > element of such a compound to exhibit the stem-form, as in
> > > > Alamanni, Alaric, Teutorix, etc.?
> > >
> > > Erh, what is the time depth in question? My idea is that the
> > > whole *tout-/tu:t-s-k^ant-/-k^unt- thing is a loan anyway and
> > > that that form is not necessarily the one the word had at the
> > > time of borrowing (ie. it might have had some phonetic
> > > development within the unknown donor language itself).
> >
> > It had to antedate Grimm's shift.
>
> Which happened around the beginning of our era, according to Kuhn's data.
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/29016
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/34439

If memory serves, the Ems is the Amisia in Tacitus, so Emer-gewe is to be expected; the form Ems must have had no vocalic extension after the stem, *ames- or whatever it was, thus no rhotacism. With Coriovallum/Heerlen and the like we have Celtic/Gmc. doublets which cannot reliably date the shift, since the Germans did not have to live there DURING the shift. Indeed if the shift occurred just as the Germans were expanding into the NWB, we would expect all, or nearly all, of Kuhn's anlautend-/p/ words to have exact anlautend-/f/ equivalents. As for LL <toacula>, remodelling after <novacula> and similar words explains the /k/.

> > For me to be convinced that such a formation, with genitival /s/
> > between two consonants in the middle of a compound, could exist in
> > any IE language at the time and place in question, I would need
> > other plausible examples.

All right, you gave me *dem-s-pot-, and if 'thousand' is parallel, its formation must be quite archaic.

> I have a suspicion that IE once had an endingless nominative, like a good accusative language should, and that the present -s suffix is the old genitive suffix which being used in bound constructions and that s-stems came about or formal subjects came to be seen as a nominative marker, hence the confusing, which NB is not constrained to IE, for some strange reason
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/63871
> which same confusion is the reason for the appearance of IE s-stems.
>
> And notice, BTW, that Finno-Ugric (etc) also has that mysterious dental 'extension'.

Mostly in place-names, so it is parallel to the dative /n/ in Gmc. names, if not to the FU locative. Hardly equivalent to your theory of PIE /s/.

Thanks for quoting the interesting archaeological material, which I have no time to discuss today, unfortunately; also I have no knowledge of loanword stratification in the Caucasian languages.

DGK