Re: Octha or Ohta?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> W dniu 2012-01-31 21:39, dgkilday57 pisze:
>
> > But the other preteritive presents show no reduplication, and this
> > appears to be a conserved archaism, since OE <wa:t> corresponds to Lat.
> > <vi:di:>, Grk. <oida>, Skt. <veda>, all without reduplication.
>
> Well, unreduplicated (or dereduplicated) *woid-/*wid- is exceptional
> already at the PIE level. Whatever the correct explanation of the length
> in Goth. o:gan, Germanic has a lengthened grade beside *aG- in this
> family of words, and *o:G- _is_ one of the nine or so Germanic
> preterite-presents with secure IE etymologies. A minor umlaut pattern
> like PIE *a: ~ *a (as in Jasanoff's "*a:-perfects") is another
> possibility, but if so, I would expect the strong allomorph e.g. in the
> associated s-stem, which has a short vowel both in Gk. ákHos and in
> Germanic *aGiz- 'fear' (Goth. agis, OE ege, etc.), hence my marginal
> preference for Ringe's reduplication analysis.
>
> As for <magan>, LIV (Zehnder) reconstructs a PIE root present *magH-
> with invariable vocalism and treats plural forms like OHG, OS, OFris.
> mugun as late and analogical. This verb is one mighty can of worms :)

Yes. I do not have the LIV, but Osthoff's paper in PBB vol. 15 makes clear that the forms with -u- are not ancient. Zehnder's invariable vocalism would exclude Doric <ma:khos> etc. from this group. On the other hand Skt. <magha-> etc. can hardly contain a zero-grade laryngeal.

As a wild guess, I wonder whether *h2 (or perhaps *h4) could have interacted with a following *gH so as to reduce the resulting cluster. Verner once suggested that the sounds corresponding to our traditional "voiced aspirates" were actually voiced affricates before the Gmc. Lv., and if *h2 was an approximant or fricative with velar articulation, perhaps *h2gH was actually realized as *xgG > *GgG > gG, that is, what we write as *gH. Then the normal grade *meh2gH- would be colored to *mah2gH- and reduced to *magH-. But the zero-grade would retain the approximant allophone *m&2gH-, falling together with normal grade in non-InIr lgs. and with /o/-grade *moh2gH- > *mogH- > *mag- in Gmc.

Now I have to explain the Greek forms with -a:-, so I have only shifted the problem.

DGK