Intensive Reduplication

[Vidhyanath Rao]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Patrick C. Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>>> 1) Obviously, *Heyew  is not a canonical IE root form.
>>> 2) Would you consider the original root *Hey- and -w a root extension?
>>> 3) Would you consider the possibility that the root is *yew- and that *He
>>> is a preverb which may or may not have been present in the earliest IE?

> Nath wrote:

>> There seems to be little reason to assume the existence of preverbs that
>> were fused with verbs in PIE. Within Benvensite's theory of root shapes, we
>> have to consider Hyew a stage II extension from an Hey. But for late PIE, I
>> think that extended roots need to be considered distinct lexical items
>> anyway, so the point is moot.

> Pat comments:

> In order to regard *Hyew as a w-extended form of *Hey, it is necessary to
> demonstrate that existence of the root *Hey in the *appropriate meaning*.---
> either alone or with other root extensions.

> Can you do it?

No. But this is a criticism of Benveniste's theory. After all not all roots
we can reconstruct for the stage of PIE just before it started breaking up
can be connected to CeC shape roots. Are you proposing prefixes to account
for every one of them?

Once we reject Benveniste's theory, we need to add a 4) to your list above,
namely that Hyew was the original simple root. That is perfectly fine with
me too.