Re: What is a "regular (endocentric) thematicization"?

Semitic languages, especially Arabic, are even much more complex (Just
think in PIE there were five ablaut grades vs. a theoretic maximum
of... 81 in Semitic words!)

2013/8/21, r_brunner <rbrunner@...>:

>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
> <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:
>>
>> 2013/8/18, r_brunner <rbrunner@...>:
>> > The Wiktionary entry at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/war#Tocharian_B
>> > for
>> > the Tocharian B word for "water" gives a PIE form *udrom as the
>> > probable
>> > origin for this and states that *udrom is a "regular (endocentric)
>> > thematicization".
>> >
>> > I could not find out what this means. Does this say that already in PIE
>> > there might have been a special form *udrom of the "water" word and say
>> > something how that form might have developed?
>>
>> 'Thematicization' means that a thematic vowel *-o- is added to a
>> consonantal stem, in this case *udr-. 'Endocentric' has two meanings:
>> 1) in derivational morphology, it's a derivation without suffixes and,
>> precisely, based on the weak stem (= stem of the Genitive case) of the
>> basic word, in this case *udr- (Nominative *wed-Å r, Genitive *ud-r-os,
>> stem *ud-r- + ending *-os);
>> 2) in thematicizations and compositional morphology, an endocentric
>> derivation keeps the same referent of the basic word, while an
>> exocentric one gets possessive meaning (e.g. *'udro-, with root
>> accent, should mean 'water', while *udr-'o-, with suffixal accent,
>> should mean 'having water').
>>
>> In this case both meanings of 'endocentric' seem to have been
>> conflated together, since *udr-o- is both base on weak stem *ud-r- and
>> provided with the same referent 'water'
>>
>> >
>> > I traced the info back to the entry for "war" in "A Dictionary of
>> > Tocharian
>> > B" by Douglas Q. Adams, so it's probably reasonably up-to-date, but
>> > that
>> > entry does not include more explanation concerning this.
>> >
>> > And what is *udrom in the root-suffix-ending scheme? *ud-r-om? With
>> > what
>> > roles for suffix "r" and ending "om"?
>> >
>> zero grade for both root (*ud-) and suffix (*-r-) implies a basic
>> word with a hysterokinetic or amphikinetic paradigm (hysterokinetic =
>> strong stems with zero-grade root, accented full or lengthened suffix
>> and zero ending, weak stems with zero grado root and suffix and
>> accented full-grade endings; amphikinetic = strong stems with
>> full-grade accented root, zero-grade suffix, and lengthened ending,
>> weak stems with zero grado root and suffix and accented full-grade
>> endings, although in strong stems the lengthened grade can affect the
>> suffix instead of the ending);
>> the ending *-o-m exhibits thematic vowel, in the thought of our
>> most regretted Jens a sort of postponed article, with the marker of
>> non-animate gender in direct cases
>>
>
> Thanks for this extensive information!
>
> The more I learn about PIE the more I am amazed about the PIE
> root-suffix-ending word formation scheme. I have some difficulty to really
> grasp that a language could form words in such a highly systematic way.
>
> Were linguists surprised when they had finally puzzled this together, or are
> there precedents? Are there other - current, living - languages that have a
> similar system of word formation?
>
>