Yet again: syllabicity

Patrick C. Ryan proto-language at email.msn.com
Sun Jun 6 15:25:53 UTC 1999


[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Friday, June 04, 1999 4:50 PM

Leo mused:

> No, I'm not pulling your leg.  I do wonder, though: is "early language" a
> distinct entity of some sort?  I had not taken it that way, thinking you
> meant it rather as a collective for "early languages".  Unless, of course,
> you were shifting the stress to the second syllble to indicate plurality:
> early lan-GUAGE.

Pat:

I think he's got it! ({:-))

Pat, previously:

>> The data I think that may support this hypothesis are the different forms
>> of the (e.g.) IE verb for momentary and durative: durative *'CeC(V) and
>> momentary *C0'CV (Lehmann 1974:186). Since early transitive verbal roots can
>> be analyzed as *CV (object) + *CV (verbal idea), a pluralization of the
>> verbal idea indicates repetition leading to perfectivity; the pluralization
>> of the object indicates multiple objects leading to an interpretation of
>> imperfectivity.

Leo commented:

> Unless you posit humongous numbers of consonant and vowel phonemes, don't you
> then have a problem that the total number of phonetically different roots
> would have been (C+1)(V), i.e. the number of consonants + 1 (for no consonant
> at all) times the number of vowels?  Awfully limiting.

Pat answered:

Yes, it certainly was limiting. It led to each of the 90 monosyllables
having the strangely wide semantic ranges (by our standards) that many
reserachers (like G. A. Klimov: 1977) have noticed in certain ("active")
languages, like *MO = blood, juice; *FO = ear, leaf. But the process is
still residually present today since how similar really are the 'limbs' of a
tree and human being?

These limitations were the source of the impetus for compounding: to narrow
the semantic ranges of these monosyllables.

 Pat, on vowel retention:

>> There can be many explanations for the retention of the principally
>> stress-unaccented vowels as you well know. The likeliest is that the
>> period during which lack of stress-accent caused zero-grade stem forms had
>> passed.

Leo queried:

> But then, what happened to the expected *_bhr.te'_ from the period while the
> rule still operated?  Such forms abound.  The Germanic strong preterite,
> which reflects ablauting PIE perfect formations, still shows weak grades in
> the plural.  So retention is no explanation, although a new analogical
> formation would work -- that is, if one could find an old form with plural
> e-grade to provide the analogy.

Pat attempts an answer:

The only answer I can offer is that I believe all plural forms originated
quite a bit later than singular (really, number-neutral) forms.

Pat continued:

>> Another: the necessity for differentiation of 3rd sing and 2nd pl.
>> overrode normal patterns (if still operational). Etcetera.

Leo objected:

> With different grade of the root, there was surely differentiation.  It's
> the e-grade of the root and the thematic vowel that requires explanation, not
> that of the suffix.

Pat responds:

If I am interpreting what you are saying correctly, you are asking why the
present/aorist thematic inflection had no ablaut. I can only answer with
Beekes (1995:235): "We can thus say nothing more about the inflection. . ."

>> Leo, on another subject:

>>> How so, if you are also claiming that PIE was ergative?  In ergative
>>> languages, the morphological subject of an agent-patient sentence
>>> (barring "antipassive" or the like) is precisely the patient, not the
>>> agent.

Leo, on VP marking:

> No, I'm no trying to cause confusion; I just think you don't realize the
> implications of what you're claiming.  Some languages don't mark any NPs on
> the verb, a great many mark only one, and some mark more (Basque can have up
> to three).  When only one is marked, it is almost invariably the
> morphological subject.  Accusative languages normally make the
> highest-ranking noun phrase (by a hierarchy of "deep cases" of the sort
> proposed by Fillmore 1968) the morphological subject; for an agent-patient
> sentence, this will be the agent.  Ergative languages normally make the
> patient the morphological subject.  (I say "normally" because many languages
> can upset the process by passive or "antipassive" formations, and some verbs
> may make unusual choices.)  When only one NP is marked on the verb, it is
> this morphological subject -- i.e., in ergative languages, the patient in an
> agent-patient sentence.

> I should add that there are a few languages with ergative casemarking but
> accusative verb agreement.  So yes, there is no *law* that verb agreement
> markers in an ergative language will *always* refer to the patient; but
> overwhelmingly they do.  So I'm trying to say that in suggesting that
> those of an ergative PIE did not, you are proposing a typologically unusual
> system, probably without realizing it.  BTW, what do you mean by "ergative"
> or "accusative context"?

Pat responds:

First, by "ergative" or "accusative" context, I meant nothing more sinister
than simply "ergative" or "accusative(/nominative)" construction.

Second, there is, as you know, no necessity for a language to have been
consistent at any given time; in fact, as languages change, there must be
periods of inconsistency as adjustments toward relative consistency are
being made.

Third, I suspect that when IE was primarily ergative, personal endings as a
system had not yet been developed. Only a third person number-neutral verb
form was possible.

A possibility for a verbal inflection at this very early stage may be what
Beekes, among others, characterizes as simply *-e as found in the third
person singulars of the present/aorist thematic and the perfect; the method
of differentiation being --- at least of one stage --- simply the Ablaut of
the stem vowel: perfect *bho{'}re vs. present/aorist *bhe{'}re.  I also
speculate that IE was a mixed system, so that the ergative construction
showed up in a perfective context; the patient agreement marker being *-0;
while in an imperfective context, the *effective* agent agreement marker was
*-y (for Beekes simple *-e).

This situation, in turn, grew out of a pre-Ablaut more consistently ergative
system in which only two verbal forms existed: a passive perfective:
*bhere{'} (*bher- + *-He, patient marker) and a passive imperfective
*bherey (*bher- + *-He, patient marker + *-y, imperfective marker), which
would be almost exactly the situation I see for Sumerian.

[ moderator snip ]

Leo wrote:

> I will look, I promise.  But I will not accept this identification.  Why not?
> Because it depends on one dental stop + one unidentified vowel.  We do not
> even know that either the stop or the vowel is the same in both languages.
> The words belong to different morphological-syntactic categories: noun in
> Egyptian, gender+case marker in PIE.  The only semantic correlation is that
> after all, loaves are things.  This identification is, as I just said, beyond
> the pale of anything that could be called linguistic *science*.  Given the
> limited number of phonetically distinct roots available under your proposals,
> the most one could say was that the two were *homonyms*.  But homonyms are
> not identities, any more than the let ball has been let through.

Pat writes:

I hope when you do look you will agree (but I am not holding my breath
either) that the semantic ranges of the monosyllables are well within the
parameters demonstrated to exist in many languages (as documented by Klimov
and others).

As for your other objections, let me try to address them.

a) "Because it depends on one dental stop + one unidentified vowel."  I
believe the vowel can be identified in two ways: by the fact of <t> in
Egyptian, which can only derive from an earlier *T(H/?)O; *T(H/?)A/E shows
up in Egyptian as <d>; for a full argument, see my Afrasian essay; and the
fact that Sumerian cognates, like du{6}, 'mound, hill, lump' establish the
vowel as deriving from *O (though Sumerian <u> can *also* derive from *AV,
*EV, *OV); all this is detailed in my Sumerian essays.

b) "The words belong to different morphological-syntactic categories: noun in
Egyptian, gender+case marker in PIE."  As, I am sure you know, -t is a gender
marker in Egyptian (feminine and collective) as well. In my Proto-Language
essays, I try to establish that the earliest monosyllables were all essentially
nominal so that all inflections are grammaticalized nouns. As for the IE case
marker (I presume you mean *-d), I believe it derives from *T[?]A, 'hand', and
is cognate with the Sumerian use of -da as an instrumental (for usual -ta).

c) "The only semantic correlation is that after all, loaves are things.
This identification is, as I just said, beyond the pale of  anything that
could be called linguistic *science*."
I believe the ultimate reference of *T[?]O is to the human torso, which was
inanimately interpreted as 'lump'. The meanings 'loaf (lump of dough)',
'hill (lump of earth)', collective ('lump of related objects'), etc. seem to
me to be justifiably related.

d) "Given the limited number of phonetically distinct roots available under
your proposals, the most one could say was that the two were *homonyms*." If
I am correct in assuming that these monosyllables constituted the earlier
morphemes, then there are theoretically *no* divergent morphemes that may
phonologically approximate to become homonyms.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN (501) 227-9947; FAX/DATA (501)312-9947 9115 W. 34th St.
Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803 and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit
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meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)



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