Yet again: syllabicity

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 1999 8:31 PM

> On Sun, 6 Jun 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

<snip>

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

Jens commented:

> I, Jens, intrude: But secondarily created forms ought to be even more
> transparent than older forms. And it is a point in your reasoning that the
> material utilized to differentiate *bhe'ret and *bhe'rete (and **bhe'rt
> which does not appear to exist) was not distinctive. How, then, could it
> be available?

Pat responds:

Jens, with the best of intentions, I cannot understand what you are asking
here. Could you express it differently and more explicitly.

 <snip>

Pat, previously:

>> 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.

Jens asked:

> Have you any examples of a language just "differentiating" by using what
> must have been, up till then, non-existing phantom-variants which were
> suddenly invented without any model? Though often heard in attempts to
> explain morphological systems - no, you are not alone - this just appears
> impossible.

Pat responds:

Sorry, Jens, again I cannot grasp what you are asking here. Cam you spell it
out more explicitly?

Jens continued:

> And why would an older stage of the language be as in Sumerian? What if
> the Indo-Europeans really _meant_ what they said and intended the system
> to be the way we find it? Then we could have almost exactly the situation
> I see for Indo-European. That would be an even closer parallel - by what
> rule is it inferior?

Pat responds:

There is no reason why an older stage of IE should have the same
inflectional patterns as Sumerian has, I remarked only because I found it
curious.

In Goettinger Beitraege zur Sprachwissenschaft, Heft 1, 1998, Gordon
Whittaker has an article entitled "Traces of an early Indo-European language
in southern Mesopotamia", which, I think is very interesting. Have you read
it?

Your final comments in this paragraph seem more an emotional release than an
argument, if you will forgive my saying it.

Pat

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