Re: Family terms [was: Kluge's Law in Italic?]

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

>
> W dniu 2012-02-13 22:03, dgkilday57 pisze:
>
> > I do not see how the laryngeal in *p&2te'r- can be syllabic if the one
> > in *st&2-to'- (I prefer *st&4-to'-) is non-syllabic. And if Olsen
> > explains Italic *-flo-/*-fla:- on the basis of *-&1/2tlo-/*-&1/2tleh2-,
> > she has another can of worms in Latin <status> and all the rest not
> > reflected as *stafus etc.,
>
> You mean *stadus < *staTos, don't you? The "ruBl" rule isn't applicable
> here.

I intended Oscan <statu's> nom. pl. masc. 'erected (objects)', i.e. 'statues', from the Tablet of Agnone, whose orthography guarantees short -a- here. Yes, Latin would have had *stadus under my assumptions. I wanted to use a non-Latin example, and botched the job in haste.

> > since she effectively posits her *-tH- from
> > *-&1/2t- falling together with *-dH- in Proto-Italic.
>
> In Olsen's scheme, *st&2tós has a syllabic allophone of *h2; at any
> rate, it doesn't follow a vowel or a syllabic sonorant, which I think is
> the required condition. Therefore, Olsen does not predict *stadus
> instead of <status>

My botched point was to compare <status> with <stabulum>. Goose and gander, unless having two consonants after the laryngeal in the alleged protoform *st&2tlo- is supposed to matter. In that case we still have <statio:> with two following consonants (*st&2tjon-, *st&2tjo:n(s), whatever, I am unsure of the original suffix-ablaut).

> > Olsen's whole scheme looks like a way to justify denying
> > *-dHlo-/*-dHleh2- by lumping the reflexes together with *-tlo-/*-tleh2-,
> > and while this may be ingenious per se, the ramifications are starting
> > to look as complicated as a system of Ptolemaic epicycles. I think the
> > Copernican thing to do is to accept *-dHlo-/*-dHleh2- (which need not be
> > primary, since *-dH- was a root-extension and *-lo'- a suffix).
>
> If you are interested in her full argument (which won me over), I have
> to refer you to her own work:
>
> Olsen, Birgit Anette. 1988. The Proto-Indo-European Instrument Noun
> Suffix *-tlom and its Variants. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of
> Sciences and Letters.
>
> -- 2008. "How many suffixes did Proto-Indo-European have?". In Jens
> Elmegård Rasmussen and Thomas Olander (eds.), Internal Reconstruction in
> Indo-European: Methods, Results, and Problems, Copenhagen: Museum
> Tusculanum Press, 187-204.

I will look for these. In the meantime, Greek <stathmo's> 'stall' and Germanic *sto:d- 'stood' (and most likely Oscan <Staf[ii]anam> acc. sg. fem. 'Stabian, leading to Stabiae') show that the 'stand' root could be extended by *-dH-, so that those who object to *-dHlo- as a productive PIE suffix could simply segment the protoform of <stabulum> as *st&2dH-lo' (or as I prefer with *h4).

> One of my problems with *-dHlo- being really *-tHlo- was Slavic *-dlo-,
> but I now accept that the voicing of *t (and, by extension, *tH) before
> laterals and nasals is practically regular in Slavic (cf. *sedmI <
> *setmi- < *septm-V-).

Nothing to do with that Greek chestnut <he'bdomos> then?

> > MnE <sister> (and some of the pronouns) show Danish influence which was
> > less pervasive in Chaucer's dialect, so this particular comparison is
> > not compelling.
>
> Scandinavian influence accounts for <sister> (rather than *swester), but
> not for <father> and <mother> with the "wrong" intervocalic obstruent
> (fricative rather than plosive).

All right, more is going on here than Scand. infl., and my objection to the use of this comparison was unjustified.

> > I do not deny the trickiness of kinship terms, of
> > course, and I think recomposition did occur in the PIE terms. The basic
> > suffix of *&2/4ner- 'man' was probably agential, with *p&2ter- derived
> > from *peh2-t- 'watch for a long time, guard and feed, graze' etc.
>
> Why not simply *p&2-ter-, with the normal agent suffix? It would
> contrast with the occupational term *páh2-s-tor-. The extended stem
> *pah2-s- is well attested (including Hitt. pahs-), which can't be said
> of *pah2-t-.

That might work better, but it leaves *&2/4ner- out. The 'foster' group seems to work better with *pah2-t-.

> > With
> > the fading of the prolongative sense of *-t-, *dHug^H&2ter- 'milker,
> > milkmaid' was then formed analogically (root *dHeug^H-, as in Skt. -duh
> > 'milking'). Greek in this view absorbed the laryngeal, *-g^H&2- > -ga-,
> > as in <me'ga>. The root of 'mother' was *meh2- or *meh4- 'suckle' (Lat.
> > <mamma> is dialectal like <Juppiter>, but <ma:milla> shows the Roman
> > Latin vocalism; if *ma:ma 'breast' had /o/-grade, it must be *meh4-).
> > The double laryngeal in *m&2&2ter- or *m&4&2ter became *-a:- in the
> > daughter languages. In my view, only *&4 can aspirate *t (and only in
> > Indic; I believe the cluster became the unvoiced fricative *tT in East
> > Augmentian (i.e. Armeno-Indo-Iranian), *t elsewhere).
>
> I would be surprised if a globally occurring nursery term like <mama>
> (Quechua mama 'mother', Xhosa umáːma 'my/our mother', etc.) had anything
> to do with laryngeals. I'm inclined to think that the 'mother' word was
> simply something like *ma:ter-, with the *ma:- part "borrowed" from baby
> talk, and the *-ter- part analogical to 'father' (babbling lexicalised
> and grammaticalised, if you prefer). The fact that *ma: does not conform
> to the PIE root-structure constraints is immaterial. Nursery "roots" and
> onomatopeias make their own laws.

Georgian <mama> 'father' and <deda> 'mother' demolish the alleged universal connection between /m/ and 'mother', 'breast', 'milk', etc. I am more inclined to think that words which are merely felt to be imitative (like Eng. <bang>, <twang>, etc. which do have etymologies) or infantile have greater staying power.

> Of course interaction between children and adults works both ways. In
> some IE languages at least, forms like <tata> or <papa> could have
> originated as imperfect imitations of *p&2ter-.

Yes, and the imitations might well have originated with parents, dumbing down speech in an attempt to get infants to echo the sequences. "Baby's first word" ... as though Baby could even comprehend the notion of word without syntax. The parents should have adopted a parrot instead.

DGK