From artabanos at mail.utexas.edu  Sat May  1 22:06:34 1999
From: artabanos at mail.utexas.edu (Tom Wier)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 17:06:34 -0500
Subject: -t versus no consomant in 3p sg verb forms in common IE
Message-ID: <SAT.1.MAY.1999.170634.0500.>

Anthony Appleyard wrote:

>   But re Greek present {luei}: did this form come from *{lueit}?; or
> perhaps it never ended in a {-t} in the first place. IE *{lueti} would >
> Attic Greek **{luesi}.
>   Perhaps in early IE times the final -t was only present when the verb
> had no noun subject, and ultimately derives from an adhering postposited
> pre-IE subject pronoun.

Well, consider another fact:  intervocalic /s/  in Greek was lost sometime
after the fricativization that you mentioned above:  *lueti > *luesi, which
with the loss of /s/, would produce /luei/, which is the attested form.

[ Moderator's comment:
  The Attic development of Pre-Greek *t > s takes place after the loss of
  intervocalic *s, or we'd never have had any evidence for it.  It is therefore
  irrelevant to Mr. Appleyard's question.
  --rma ]

=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos at mail.utexas.edu>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and
oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil
spirits at the dawn of day. - Thomas Jefferson
========================================================


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May  1 14:18:42 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 09:18:42 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <SAT.1.MAY.1999.091842.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 1999 4:44 PM

<snip>

>> The main problem, however, is one that I think we run into far more often
>> than we generally recognize, and that is that some linguists *contrive* very
>> complicated rules to be able to ascribe a common origin to forms that are
>> simply not commensurable.

> It only makes things worse if you reconstruct _against_ the rules: The
> dual forms mentioned can all derived from *-e, the Greek one alone also
> from *-H1, but then the forms indeed are not commensurable. BTW, I fail to
> see the serious objection (if it is meant to be one): What is complicated
> by deriving /-e/ of one language and /-e/ of another from a common
> protoform *-e ?

But this is not what Beekes is doing. On pp. 194-195 (comp. IE Ling.), he
attempts to ascribe the common basis -*H{1}e to the animate consonant stems.

He then proceeds to identify an inanimate (neuter) -*iH{1}.

I would maintain that the great majority of the (animate and inanimate)
forms can be more simply from *-y.

 <snip>

> It even looks as if Beekes considers the IE languages more closely
> related to each other than to Egyptian.

Ha! But, of course, so do I.

>> I interpret these facts (and others) to indicate that Nostratic had a
>> collective suffix -w(V), and that this suffix was one of those employed
>> to form a dual in IE.

> I fail to see that such a morpheme has left any palpable imprint on IE.
> But show us where!

>> I would analyze Sanskrit -a:(u) as (C)wa in opposition to Beekes' -H{1}e.

>> [ Moderator's comment:
>>   The final -u in the Sanskrit dual is not Indo-European, but an Indic
>>   development that is not present even in Iranian.
>>   --rma ]

In every such case, we have the option of identifying an innovation, or, far
less likely but still possible, a retention of an original feature in only
one branch.

> It is present in Goth. ahtau, Skt. aSta:/-au, Av. ashta. It appears to be
> a special Indic _choice_ out of an Indo-Iranian pair of sandhi variants
> which proceed from an IE pair of variants.

Based on the Egyptian evidence, I prefer to see the -*(u) of *okto:(u) as a
numeral-siffix rather than a dual. I am aware of several attempts to
identify a 'four' root that might have served as a basis for a dual meaning
'eight' though, IMHO, they have not been successful.

<snip>

>> Of course, there are sporadic forms like Greek no{'}: from *no:wi, combining
>> *ne/o + *wi:, 'two', and a 'laryngeal' is not necessary to explain the <o:>
>> in a stress-accented open syllable; a mechanism as simple as transference of
>> length back to the stress-accented syllable from *-wi: could explain it.

> Are you talking about a metathesis of quantity, *nowi: > *no:wi? If so,
> what makes you think that was a rule? Or is it an invention - mother
> of comedy, huh - like some of my early stages?

Well, I thought it was generally accepted that stress-accent in an open
syllable could be lengthened, and that stress-unaccented syllables are
shortened. Have I just invented that?

> [... On the 1st person dual pronoun:]

>> I [...] would go the further step of suggesting that a 'laryngeal' is not
>> required to be reconstructed at all.

> Then what would be the enclitic form meaning "us two" in IE? */no:/ ending
> in a long vowel?

I am going to pass the wand. What do you think it is?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May  1 16:56:18 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 11:56:18 -0500
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <SAT.1.MAY.1999.115618.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 1999 10:42 AM

> On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> [...]
>> (JER:)

>>> Even so, the non-occurrence of the very FORM *mwe (in any
>>> function) does look as strong evidence for a rule *mw- > *m-.

>> Not strong! Not evidence! This seems completely illogical to me.

> But you can't deny the existence of *te and *se along with *twe and *swe,
> a variation for which there seems to be no tangible reason.

If you ever find anything really "tangible" in our speculations, please let
me know. If I cannot bottle it, I would at least like to photograph it.

What is so "intangible" about supposing that *te is the basal form, that
there was an inflection - *-wV which produced -*twe, and that the original
significance of -*twe being lost, both forms came into use as bases for
other forms but with a bias towards the form with -*wV for the nominative
(through its former topical use): -*tu/u:?

> Nor can one
> deny that *me *te *se look parallel (and inflect in very parallel
> fashion). Is the non-occurrence of a **mwe to join the w-forms *two *swe
> then not a thing to be noted and explained? What if we do have rules to
> explain it - isn't it then worth talking about?

I cannot but agree with the anticipation of both your questions but, it
seems, that *mwe probably never got as well established as a topical because
of the suppletion of *eg^-.

> [On Gk. mo:^mar : amu:'mo:n as reflecting *mwoH-/*muH-:]

>> Irrelevant to the question of the pronominal form *mwe but, in any case,
>> why not *mouH-/*muH?

> Because the Gk. full-grade form is not **mow(V)-, but /mo:-/.

And, are you asserting, that IE *mow(V)- could *not* result in Gk. mo:{^}-?

<snip>

>> Why do you not give us your best
>> arguments for proposing a non-Hittite <m/w> alternation *outside of the
>> pronoun series*?

> I am not sure there was such an alternation elsewhere. I have found two
> cases where in-depth analysis leads me to postulate *-G-m- (G being the
> dual marker, I suggest a voiced velar fricative, but do not insist on it)
> as an older form of what I find surfacing as *-w- or *-H3w-. In one case
> the *-m- is the 1st person marker, in the other it is the marker of the
> accusative. Since I cannot believe that the 1st person and the accusative
> was one semantic entity, the homonymy must be accidental, so that the
> covariation can only be due to real phonetic change, i.e. a sound law
> *-Gm- > *-Gw- (~ *-w-).

This is where it would be very helpful to extend your view beyond IE. Even
though Nostratic and early IE might have a vowel system similar to Sanskrit
(basically monovocalic), the language that preceded Nostratic may not have
been so structured.

And, I think it was not. I think it had a *me, in which the <e> was not
subject to apophony, and thus was truly phonemic --- which meant
'converser', and generally covered the semantic range of the 1st person.

I think it also had a *ma, in which the <a> was not subject to apophony, and
thus was truly phonemic --- which meant 'on', and was transfered to serve as
an accusative for animates.

<snip>

> Your task is to demonstrate the youth of the dual. You could do this by
> showing us that its forms are derived according to rules of younger
> periods than those of the plural. In that case the dual should be more
> directly transparent than the plural. If anything, the dual is more
> _opaque_ than the plural. If the y's of some dual forms are there to
> differentiate, then demonstrate that such is their business elsewhere and
> that they have been implemented by the pertinent rules.

> [...]

>>>> I do not assume that the basal form is *tu(:), and so cannot justify
>>>> migrating <u>'s.

>>> Then why not change your assumption about 'thou' and get the benefits?

Whether you agree with my reasons for those assumptions or not, until I find
better reasons, and make other assumptions, I will have to stick to what I
have said.

And, although you do not seem tofeel that Egyptian evidence is very
significant, one of my reasons is the Egyptian pattern of (for the second
person singular) -T, for possessive and verbal affix vs. Tw, an "accusative"
and stative "subjective".

 <snip>

> I would be serious even over a beer. The "benefits" I'm talking about
> comprise the possibility to explain more in a coherent and principled way,
> in general experience no bad measure for closeness to the truth, if not
> without its pitfalls.

I learned a long time ago not to be "too" serious when drinking.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat May  1 16:43:04 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 17:43:04 +0100
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SAT.1.MAY.1999.174304.0100.>

>> Pat said:

>>> I do not dispute that 'laryngeals' were consonantal in Nostratic but by
>>> Indo-European, I believe their consonantal had been lost except for
>>> Hittite.

>> (c) Reduplication of roots beginning with a laryngeal.   We find an
>> unexpected -i-: e.g. gan-igm-at < Hgen-Hgn-.

>I am not really sure why this is unexpected.

I don't understand your argument, Pat.   If the H's had lost their
consonantal value, as you claim, then they are either vowels or
non-existent.
(a) If they were vowels, there is no explanation for the non-appearance of
them at the beginning of these sanskrit roots.
(b) If they were non-existent, they could not magically produce an -i- when
the root is reiterated.

In other words,
(a) an original IE *Vgen  would not produce the attested root gan, but
*Vgan.
(b) an original IE root *gen would not produce the attested gan-i-gm-, but
gan-gm-.
(c) Only an original IE root *Hgan can produce this pattern of attested root
gan, but repeated gan-i-gam < Hgen-Hgn.

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May  1 17:16:16 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 12:16:16 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SAT.1.MAY.1999.121616.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 1999 6:36 PM

> On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> [...]

>> Rich continues:

>>> Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage of
>>> Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a
>>> language, it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may
>>> alternate with other sounds in the language because of morphological rules
>>> or unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.

Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

> I think he violates an even more fundamental rule: If a segment is opposed
> to zero, it exists!

Differo, ergo sum.

But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
certain.

> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg in
> *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does not
> detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
stress-accentuation: *"-t(i) and *-"te.

IMHO, the morpheme for the second and third persons, containing <t>, has a
unitary origin: *T{H}O, 'tribe-member'.

<snip>

> Thus, in Sanskrit, short /a/ is the only true vowel demanded to allow
> an unambiguous notation of all (normal) words. This is a one-vowel system
> of the kind dismissed as a typological impossibility for PIE. - I rush to
> add that the acceptability of this analysis for Sanskrit does not make it
> correct for PIE which, for completely independent reasons, appears to need
> at least the vowels /a, e, o/ on the phonemic level - and even long /a:,
> e:, o:/ and underlying /i, u/ (opposed to /y, w/!) on an abstract
> morphophonemic level.

> In Sanskrit, as in PIE, the rules stipulating a given sonant/semivowel to
> appear syllabic or nonsyllabic are relatively clear. Such an element is
> nonsyllabic when contiguous with a vowel, otherwise it is syllabic. Only
> Sievers and a touch of analogy compromise predictability.

Well, whatever else we may agree or disagree on, I am truly gratified that
we can see eye to eye on this. I tried to make this point with Allan Bomhard
for seven years (approx.), and could never succeed in getting him to see
it --- nor its implications for Nostratic.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May  2 08:53:57 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 09:53:57 +0100
Subject: The Neolithic Hypothesis (Germanic)
Message-ID: <SUN.2.MAY.1999.095357.0100.>

Steve said:>
>1) no -s or *-s is a 3rd.p.sg. personal marker: Hittite, Tocharian, Germanic.
>3) *-(i)sk-: Armenian.
>4) s-preterite: Italic, Celtic, Albanian.
>5) s-aorist: Greek, Indo-Iranian, Slavic(-Baltic).>>

Firstly, did a number 2 get omitted?  I'd be interested.

Secondly, if the Italic form is not classed with the Greek, then the
Sanskrit cannot be either.  Italic, Greek and Sanskrit share the formation,
but the meaning is differently handled in all three languages.  The Sanskrit
aorist is not the Greek aorist - it has, if anything, a perfective meaning.

Greek:
 Aorist: secondary endings:  "timeless" or, with augment, narrative past.
 Perfect:  perfect endings:   state resulting from previous action

Sanskrit:
 Aorist:  secondary endings:  narrative past, occasionally state resulting
from past action.
 Perfect:  perfect endings:  narrative past (often parallel to aorist or
imperfect, and not distinguishable from them)

Latin:
  Endings:
    Aorist endings survive in 3 sing, and possibly 1 plural;
    Perfect ending survives in 1 sing and possibly 1 plural;
    Others are unclear:  2 sing and plural is possibly a blend of aorist and
perfect endings, and 3 plural shows an adaptation of the perfect in -r;

 Stem Formation:
    All but one of the IE forms can be attested, often on the same root:
eg, from pango:
 (i) pepigi (zero grade reduplication, i.e. either generalised from the
plural or an aorist form, as also found - on different roots - in Greek and
Sanskrit);
 (ii) panxi  (early form:  s-aorist)
 (iii) pe:gi (early form - long vowel aorist)
      The one form that cannot be found in Latin is the reduplication-plus-o
grade which is the commonest form in Greek and Sanskrit.   All Latin
reduplications have zero grade, and all o grade forms lack reduplication.

Meaning:
  narrative past or near past (like English "I have done")
  It is often said that it also had the same meaning as the Greek
resultative perfect, but this develops only after contact with, and profound
influence by, Greek.  Cicero's "vixerunt" (literally "they have lived")
meaning "they are dead" would be a true Greek perfect - but this usage is
perhaps not native to Latin.

So Latin and Sanskrit both fail to distinguish aorist from perfect as Greek
does, although their "failure" takes different forms.

Peter


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun May  2 09:26:15 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 09:26:15 GMT
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.16.19990427222041.3837e5c8@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu>
Message-ID: <SUN.2.MAY.1999.092615.GMT.>

"Roslyn M. Frank" <roz-frank at uiowa.edu> wrote:

>On that note, I'm curious. Miguel, did you come across any reference to a
>feminine form for <chandro> as "gandul, etc." in the dictionary you are
>using. What exactly was the source you were using? (Thanks in advance for
>the bibliographic reference).

The word does not appear in any of my Spanish dictionaries, or so
I thought, until I happened to see it in my 1954 (6th) edition of
the Espasa (Diccionario Enciclope'dico Abreviado):

CHANDRO. adj. Ar. Perezoso, desalin~ado, holgaza'n.

[Where Ar. stands for "Aragone's"]

That's all.  I then did an Altavista search for "chandro", which
yielded two or three Web pages containing Aragonese vocabularies,
confirming what the Espasa says, but not adding any further
information (e.g. about the etymology of the word).  FWIW:

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/6243/diccionario.html
http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Dell/5055/curiosi.html

It's probably merely a coincidence that, apparently, Chandro is
also a name to give to your GSD (German Shepherd Dog), as
officially recognized by the Verein fuer Deutsche Schaeferhunde.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au  Mon May  3 09:31:49 1999
From: jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au (Jon Patrick)
Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 19:31:49 +1000
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 23 Apr 1999 17:12:32 +0100."
 <Pine.GSO.4.03.9904231615090.1931-100000@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <MON.3.MAY.1999.193149.1000.>

    Date:       Fri, 23 Apr 1999 17:12:32 +0100 (BST)
    From:       Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>

    On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:
   [LT]
    [on my claim that Pre-Basque did not permit plosive-liquid clusters]

    [A plosive is any one of /p t k b d g/;
    a liquid is any one of /l ll r rr/.]
    [JP]
    > Further to Larry's assertion that the plosive-liquid cluster was not
    > available in early euksara and have been elimenated I have found the
    > following entries made by Azkue that he asserts are native words.

I note that my original reference referred to native words and hence the
diversion of this response into "ancient" words is just that.

    [JP]
     Larry would you say that there is not one word in this list that is
    > not problematic for your thesis>, that is you can source every single
    > one of these words from outside euskara. I would be certainly
    > grateful for the source of each of them.
   [LT]
    Let's start with a couple of clarifications.

    First, I claim only that Pre-Basque did not permit such clusters.  In
    fact, these clusters apparently remained impossible in Basque for quite
    a few centuries after the Roman period, but eventually, under Romance
    influence, they became acceptable in Basque.  Today they are moderately
    frequent.

    Second, there is a big difference between a word which is *native* and a
    word which is *ancient*.  These two are independent.  For example:

    <snip>
    Third, Azkue does not claim that the words entered in his dictionary are
    native.  On the contrary, he declares explicitly, in section IX of his
    prologue, that he is entering words of foreign origin which are well
    established in Basque -- and a very sensible policy this is, too.
    It would have absurd to produce a dictionary of Basque which excluded
    such everyday words as <liburu> `book', <lege> `law', <bago> `beech',
    <diru> `money' and <eliza> `church', merely because these are of foreign
    origin.

As you presented in a later message and which arrived as I was preparing this
response the relevant section of Azkue's dictionary is Section XXIV.5, which
states that the words in uppercase are primitives or non-derivatives  "les
mots en capitales ou majuscules sont primitifs ou non derives" (pardon the
lack for accents)
These are the words I sent to you in the previous email. I believe my comment
"he asserts are native words" is a valid interpretation of his work. I was
particularly concerned that your first email did not reference this section
and was going to refer you to it. Now it appears that you are aware of the
section and was remiss in not referring to it in your first message.

   [LT]
    That said, I cannot possibly comment on every word in Jon's long list.

Why not? They constitute the whole corpus of material that Azkue has presented
which is contrary to your claim. I doubt that any such list has ever been
compiled before for basque scholars to investigate. Here is the perfect
opportunity for you to settle once and for all if your claim can be
substantiated. Do you have no wish to explore and re-investigate old knowledge
no matter how well established it is, in the light of new evidence? Is there
no  sense of true scientific exploration in your spirit where everything is
always up for reappraisal?

In terms of examples you have chosen and the tone of the remainder of your
message I can only say I feel you have totally compromised you usual high
standards of scholarship. You were asked:
" Larry would you say that there is not one word in this list that is
 not problematic for your thesis,..."

and you chose not to answer that question. Rather you selectively ignored the
bulk of the evidence and chose the most extreme examples of the total set to
covertly ridicule my attempt to explore and understand this claim and in the
end divert the topic to a comic play off on words. As basque scholars know,
you included, the Azkue dictionary has its flaws but it is also a fine piece
of scholarship, and you have applauded his work in your own book, so any
material based on his dictionary deserves close scrutiny, despite the fact we
know we will find some clear mistakes.
 I have seen many examples in this list and on other lists where you have
insisted that claims for phenomena are unjustified because there is no
supporting evidence. Yet in this case you are prepared to omit evidence that
can be rightfully presented for appraisal. Can we expect that on other
occasions you have also played fast and free with omitting legitimate evidence
for appraisal because it didn't suit your case?

yours
jon

[ moderator snip ]

Jon
______________________________________________________________
The meaning of your communication is the response you get


From sharadj at wipinfo.soft.net  Wed May  5 05:31:49 1999
From: sharadj at wipinfo.soft.net (Sharad Joshi)
Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 11:01:49 +0530
Subject: language comparisons
Message-ID: <WED.5.MAY.1999.110149.0530.>

[ Moderator's comment:
  I will make an exception and post any replies which are also CC'd to the
  author, who is not a list member.
  --rma ]

Apologies in advance if this is off-topic. If so, please point me in right
direction, i'll walk out.

Where can i find comparison of grammers of the existing languages. If
there are any pointers on the net, it would be best.

Thank you in advance
Sharad.

P.S.  I am not subscribed to this list, so please mail me personally.


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Fri May  7 12:42:30 1999
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 15:42:30 +0300
Subject: Grimm's Law and Predictability (ex Re: The Neolithic
 Hypothesis)
In-Reply-To: <cfc805b8.2456973d@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.7.MAY.1999.154230.0300.>

On Tue, 27 Apr 1999 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 4/26/99 3:32:41 PM, whiting at cc.helsinki.fi wrote:

><<Predictability and repeatability are
>indeed the hallmarks of a sound scientific theory.>>

>I'm happy we agree about something, more or less.

Actually, I suspect that we would or could agree about a great
deal if you could curb the tendency to jump on the first conclusion
that comes along without looking to see where it is going or even
which direction it is headed in.  This method will always get you
somewhere, but it will seldom get you where you really want to go.
When the evidence seems to disagree with your assumptions you
should question both the evidence and your assumptions.

><<But they are the results of hypothesis testing, not the basis for
>hypothesis formulation and testing. >>

>Scientifically valid hypotheses (be they right or wrong)
>"predict" results and this is the basis of experimentation.  The
>term "predictability" may be somewhat arbitrary, but once again
>it is the common term of art.

But scientifically invalid hypotheses can also "predict" results
that may be the basis of experimentation.  And such hypotheses
are sometimes apparently confirmed by experimentation.  But
eventually it (usually) gets figured out that the results that
were "predicted" by the invalid hypothesis were also predicted
by another hypothesis that no one had even thought up yet.

You are quite correct that this is a term of art.  These people
are playing a game called Vetenskap.  The game is played by
bringing your scientific research to the attention of a small
committee based in Sweden.  First prize in Vetenskap is an
all-expense-paid trip to Stockholm to meet the King of Sweden.
Oh, and while you are there, you get to pick up a medal and a
certificate and about a million dollars in cash.  There is no
second prize.  Now since, as we have already agreed,
predictability is an important aspect of good science, people
who are playing Vetenskap want to make it clear that their
scientific work predicts so they make extensive use of terms
like "our hypothesis predicts" to express the idea that "our
hypothesis accounts for."  Since good science predicts, they
want to make sure that everyone knows that their hypothesis
predicts and therefore is good science.  Not everyone who uses
this terminology is playing Vetenskap at the top level, but there
is still tough competition for research funds, so, as you say,
"hypothesis predicts" is the common term of art.

But we seem to have undergone quite a role reversal here since
the days when you rather stridently asserted that

     There should be NO question that "usage" overwhelmingly says
     that the "definition" of a word is the "dictionary
     definition."

in response to my observation that

     Contrary to popular opinion, dictionaries do not define
     words (Academies do that, or try to) but only record
     usage.

Now you are claiming that the "dictionary definition" is
irrelevant and usage determines meaning entirely, while I am
constantly dragging out the dictionary to show that a word
is not defined the way that you use it.

<snip of three quotations obviously obtained from a web search
for the phrase "hypothesis predicts">

>What is most relevant about the three quotes above (as well as
>thousands of others) is that they all include the phrase
>"hypothesis predicts."  As a matter of language the two terms
>very often come together in this way in scientific usage.  And
>this reflects clearly an understanding that the "predictions" of
>the hypothesis are what is being tested.

But this is not the issue.  It is already agreed that hypotheses
can make predictions and these predictions can be tested by
experiment so you are wasting your time demonstrating something
that doesn't need to be demonstrated while everyone else is
saying "ho hum" and "so what?"  No one questions that some
hypotheses make predictions or that you will find a lot of
references on the web by searching for "hypothesis predicts."
You will also find a lot of references by searching for "bus
plunges" but this does not mean that it is a necessary
characteristic of busses to plunge or that anything that plunges
is a bus.

So one could paraphrase your little homily about "hypothesis
predicts" to apply to "bus plunges":

     As a matter of language the two terms very often come
     together in this way in journalistic usage.  And this
     reflects clearly an understanding that the "plungings"
     of the busses are what is being described.

And this does not prove anything more about the definition of
"bus" or "plunge" than the original does about the definition of
"hypothesis" or "predict."  The simple fact is that "predict" is
not part of the definition of "hypothesis" and "hypothesis" is
not part of the definition of "predict."  "Bird" and "fly" are
often linked as subject and predicate, but this does not mean
that all birds fly or that anything that flies is a bird.

So your contention

    The basic idea is that a hypothesis or premise ought to
    predict observable results.  Otherwise it cannot be tested.

is not only a non-sequitur, it is a non-sequitur based on a false
premise.  Some hypotheses do not make predictions with observable
results.  Hypotheses that do not make predictions with observable
results can still be tested for scientific validity.

Obviously you only know of one kind of hypothesis (the kind that
predicts) and you only know of one way to test a hypothesis (by
experimentation to verify predictions).  And this limited
perspective keeps you from being confused about what you think a
hypothesis is (something that predicts) and what predictability
is (something that can by hypothesized about [with a hypothesis
being, of course, something that predicts]).  This is so circular
that I'm surprised that you didn't meet yourself on the way back.

>Whether that is philosophically right or wrong is another
>matter.

I know this will come as a shock to you, but scientific method is
a philosophical concept.  It belongs to a branch of philosophy
called epistemology which deals with knowledge (scientia) and its
limits.  Basically epistemology tries to clarify what we know and
how we know it.  So whether scientific method or some particular
aspect of it is "philosophically right or wrong" can hardly be
considered "another matter."  Scientific method *is* a philosophy,
and whether a method is scientific or not *is* a philosophical
matter.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Mon May 10 05:41:35 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 00:41:35 -0500
Subject: The Indo-European Hypothesis [was Re: The
 NeolithicHypothesis]-Second post
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.004135.0500.>

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
> Also, the traits of a particular microbe do not transfer to other unrelated
> strains.  If common traits, they develop independently.  In language,
> effective traits can be borrowed in their full maturity.

Actually, that is a common feature of microbes and language.  Viruses
and bacteria can mix genes.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Mon May 10 13:49:53 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 08:49:53 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.084953.0500.>

Dear Peter and Nostraticists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Whale <peter at petegray.freeserve.co.uk>
Sent: Friday, April 30, 1999 2:59 PM

> SOmeone (depedning how many arrows there were before the quote) said:

>>. IE CiC does not show up in AA as normal C-C but rather always
>>>as C-y-C.

> Perhaps this is because only words with AA C-y-C were suggested as cognates.
> Nostratic is still very young - so is this a case of theory coming before
> evidence?

In an effort to accumulate cognates, the quantity of which would tip the
balance of evidence, Nostraticists have overlooked no possible cognates ---
even when the phonology was totally bizarre.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Mon May 10 17:16:52 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 12:16:52 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.121652.0500.>

Pat Ryan wrote in response to the following:

>>>> Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage of
>>>> Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a
>>>> language, it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may
>>>> alternate with other sounds in the language because of morphological rules
>>>> or unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.
>
>Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

More precisely, we must say that it *could indicate* a semantic difference.  In
English, /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct, even though _either_ means
the same no matter how it is pronounced in that word.  Nor do they
indicate a semantic difference in the context /l_t/, there being no word
*_leet_ to contrast with _light_.  It's the semantic difference between _meet_
and _might_ that shows that /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct; we cannot
say that phonemes ever *produce* a semantic difference.

[stuff omitted]

>But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>certain.

He doesn't.  For his "pre-stress" stage, he specifically posits "A
non-segmental phoneme /^/, syllabicity" (_PIEP_, p. 112).  For the stage
"pre-IE with phonemic stress", /^/ is non-segmental, like the phonemes /"/
("maximum stress") and /'/ ("minimum stress"), but he asserts that /"^/ (a
sequence? or simultaneous?) "becomes segmental; allophone [e]" (_PIEP_ p. 113).
(This is a non-standard use of the word "allophone"; the more modern
"realization" would have been much more appropriate.)  But he adds: "In the
neighborhood of resonants it [i.e. /^/ -- LAC] combines with segmental phonemes
[i.e. the resonants -- LAC] in simultaneous articulation:..."  Thus /y^/ yields
[i], etc.  In these two stages his /^/ is most emphatically *not* segmental,
which is what I and some others have been hollering about: it makes no sense to
say it's not.

It's not clear quite what he means for the "period of non-distinctive stress".
He says that [e e: e{sub}] are no longer allophones of /^/ but rather separate
phonemes.  I assume he means them to be segmental at this stage, but he doesn't
actually say so.  Ditto the subsequent "stage of pre-IE with distinctive
pitch".

>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg in
>> *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does not
>> detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

>With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>stress-accentuation: *"-t(i) and *-"te.

Won't work.  Consider the perfect active, where the 3.sg. desinence is PIE -e,
but the stress was on the root (as demonstrated by accent in Greek and
Sanskrit and failure of Verner's Law to operate on Germanic preterite singular
forms, though the plurals were affected; we might also note that the form had
o-grade vocalism rather than zero or reduced grade, as in the plural).
(Yes, it is true that most Greek perfects are reduplicated, and the
reduplication has the accent in the singular.  But the few unreduplicated
perfects do accent the root: _o^de_ 'he knows'.  And augmented or not, thee
plural forms do accent the desinence.)

>IMHO, the morpheme for the second and third persons, containing <t>, has a
>unitary origin: *T{H}O, 'tribe-member'.

Given the tone of recent discussions, I'd best not say what I think of that
proposal.  Let's settle for a notational matter.  Angled brackets are used to
indicate *graphemes*, i.e. units of *written notation*.  <t> means very
precisely "lower-case t", not any kind of raw sound [t] or phoneme /t/ or
morpheme {t} (all standard notations, by the way).  It's OK to fudge by simply
italicizing everything, but don't use a specific notation if you don't mean it.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From roz-frank at uiowa.edu  Wed May 12 00:42:50 1999
From: roz-frank at uiowa.edu (Roslyn M. Frank)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 20:42:50 -0400
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <372d1224.63540508@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.204250.0400.>

At 09:26 AM 5/2/99 GMT, Miguel Carrasquer Vital wrote:
[snip]

>The word does not appear in any of my Spanish dictionaries, or so
>I thought, until I happened to see it in my 1954 (6th) edition of
>the Espasa (Diccionario Enciclope'dico Abreviado):

>CHANDRO. adj. Ar. Perezoso, desalin~ado, holgaza'n.

>[Where Ar. stands for "Aragone's"]

>That's all.  I then did an Altavista search for "chandro", which
>yielded two or three Web pages containing Aragonese vocabularies,
>confirming what the Espasa says, but not adding any further
>information (e.g. about the etymology of the word).  FWIW:

>http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/6243/diccionario.html
>http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Dell/5055/curiosi.html

If it is limited to Aragonese there is still a good chance that we may be
talking about an Euskeric etymology, although as you suggested, there is an
alternative path that would derive it from a proper name. The difficulty
that I see with the second possibility is that if it were the correct
explanation, one would have expected a wider distribution of the item,
e.g., in other dialects. What do you think about that line of argument?

>It's probably merely a coincidence that, apparently, Chandro is
>also a name to give to your GSD (German Shepherd Dog), as
>officially recognized by the Verein fuer Deutsche Schaeferhunde.

Huh?

Thanks, Miguel, for all the info. I'm leaving in a few days for Euskal
Herria. But when I return in August I promise to dig out all my old notes
on this "chandro" fellow.

Ondo ibili,
Roz


From alderson at netcom.com  Mon May 10 19:35:58 1999
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 12:35:58 -0700
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9904272250360.7516-100000@rask> (message from Jens
 Elmegaard Rasmussen on Tue, 27 Apr 1999 23:44:07 +0200 (MET DST))
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.123558.0700.>

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote on Tue, 27 Apr 1999:

>>[ Moderator's comment:
>>  The final -u in the Sanskrit dual is not Indo-European, but an Indic
>>  development that is not present even in Iranian.
>>  --rma ]

>It is present in Goth. ahtau, Skt. aSta:/-au, Av. ashta. It appears to be a
>special Indic _choice_ out of an Indo-Iranian pair of sandhi variants which
>proceed from an IE pair of variants.

The final <au> in Gothic is a spelling of [O], and does not bear on the
presence or absence of a final *-u in the Indo-European dual, nor is it
entirely clear that the word for '8' is a dual.

The Skt. -u is an extension from the u-stems via sandhi variants to the other
stem formations.  Or so I was taught.

								Rich Alderson


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon May 10 19:42:53 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 15:42:53 EDT
Subject: The Neolithic Hypothesis
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.154253.EDT.>

>X99Lynx at AOL.COM writes:

>-- all what years?  Virtually all our Mycenaean documents date from the same
>period.>>

>What are you talking about?

the 200 years (maximum) mentioned by the moderator, of course.  In fact,
it's less than that, since the _majority_ of our Linear B tablets, those from
the mainland, come from the destruction level of the palaces -- and the
palaces fell at roughly the same time.

>[ Moderator's comment: The Mycenaean documents span roughly 200 years, very
>little time speaking in historical linguistic terms.  The objection is
>warranted and hardly without meaning.

-- exactly.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon May 10 19:46:58 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 15:46:58 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.154658.EDT.>

>xkl.com writes

>I can't disagree with this.  But as early as @600 ace Fredegar has the Frank
>king Dagobert remitting a 500 hide tribute owed by the Saxons in exchange
>for  their defending the border against the Wends

-- that's what I said, east of the Germans, south of the Balts, west of the
Iranians.

The linguistic frontier between Germanic and Slavic fluctuated, just as that
between Slavic and Baltic and Slavic and Iranian did.  But their relative
positions never changed much, and neither did the fact that they were in
continuous contact from PIE times on.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon May 10 19:57:04 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 15:57:04 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.155704.EDT.>

X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>What does this mean?

-- that people usually aren't aware of the overall process of linguistic
change, and that it's not something they set out to do, generally.

>Intentionality is the difference.

-- and there's very little intentionality in the evolution of language.
Nobody said:  "I'm tired of Anglo-Saxon, let's invent Middle English".

Anglo-Saxon segued imperceptibly into Middle English, which merged by an
infinity of gradual steps into Modern English.  These are, to a large extent,
artificial categories, just as "homo erectus" and "homo sapiens" are.  There
was no point at which you could draw a line and say "this is AS" or "this is
Middle English".  It's a continuum.  That's how living languages change.

The acquisition of native languages is a childhood process.  Do you remember
learning to speak your native language?  No?  I didn't think so.

The closest linguistic evolution gets to "intentionality" is a decision to
adopt a slang term because it's "cool" or fashionable.  And this is, from an
individual p.o.v., the choice of a _word_, not a language.

Bilingualism sometimes promotes linguistic change precisely _because_
language is never completely under conscious control.  It's almost impossible
to shed an "accent" in a second language learned as an adult, because an
adult no longer has the linguistic plasticity of a child.  Those options have
been foreclosed.

Likewise, it's extremely difficult not to drop words from the original
language into the second, because that vocabulary -- the one picked up
unconsciously and spontaneously as a child -- is wired in at a more
fundamental level than that learned later.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon May 10 19:58:47 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 15:58:47 EDT
Subject: The Indo-European Hypothesis [was Re: The
 NeolithicHypothesis]-Second post
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.155847.EDT.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Also, the traits of a particular microbe do not transfer to other unrelated
>strains.  If common traits, they develop independently.  In language,
>effective traits can be borrowed in their full maturity.

-- ah, you weren't aware of recent research showing that bacteria (and other
species) exchange genes?

[ Moderator's comment:
  Not even all that recent--there were pictures in my highschool biology
  textbook more than thirty years ago of single-celled critters exchanging
  nuclear material.

  But let's not lose sight of the fact that this is only an analogy, and we'll
  avoid drifting from the linguistics of the matter.
  --rma ]


From vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu  Mon May 10 21:18:35 1999
From: vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 17:18:35 -0400
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.171835.0400.>

> [ Moderator's note:
>   Greek _hippos_ is usually taken to be a development of *ek'wos.  This is
>   one of the animal names that extends across the family.
>   --rma ]

Lehmann (Theoretical bases) says that this is (probably?) borrowed because
of the -k'w- [surely initial k'w- exists.]. And if my memory serves me
right, Sihler says that this is the sole reliable example of -k'w-
developing into -pp- in Greek (other centum languages have the same reflex
for labiovelar kw and for k'w.] Any comments?

-Nath


From jer at cphling.dk  Mon May 10 22:27:56 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 00:27:56 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <002e01be93dd$a520d380$ed9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.002756.0200.>

On Sat, 1 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[...(On dual of nouns)]
> But this is not what Beekes is doing. On pp. 194-195 (comp. IE Ling.), he
> attempts to ascribe the common basis -*H{1}e to the animate consonant stems.

I wasn't targeting, but I do think the ending was *-e, not *-H1e. However,
proving lack of /H1/, the least stable of the laryngeals, is not easy,
and the rules may still hold surprises. Barring that, if the Skt. dual
sva'sa:rau 'two sister' is to continue an IE *swe'-sor-e (with -au for
expected *-a on the analogy of thematic stems), the *-o- must be in an
open syllable since it has come out long. Then -i: and -u: of i/u-stems
are analogical on the form -a: of the a-stems.

> He then proceeds to identify an inanimate (neuter) -*iH{1}.

He is right in that.

> I would maintain that the great majority of the (animate and inanimate)
> forms can be more simply from *-y.

Not the ones we find, if they are to be treated by the phonetic rules we
normally accept.

> > It even looks as if Beekes considers the IE languages more closely
> > related to each other than to Egyptian.
>
> Ha! But, of course, so do I.

Oh yeah? You have been known to act as if you didn't; as in:

[... (On the dual form of IE '8'):]
> Based on the Egyptian evidence, I prefer to see the -*(u) of *okto:(u) as a
> numeral-siffix rather than a dual. I am aware of several attempts to
> identify a 'four' root that might have served as a basis for a dual meaning
> 'eight' though, IMHO, they have not been successful.

[... (Vocalism of 'we two'):]
> Well, I thought it was generally accepted that stress-accent in an open
> syllable could be lengthened, and that stress-unaccented syllables are
> shortened. Have I just invented that?

I think you have.

[...]
> > Then what would be the enclitic form meaning "us two" in IE? */no:/
> > ending in a long vowel?

> I am going to pass the wand. What do you think it is?

I'm not that much of an oracle, but my guess is *noH3 which stands to the
accented form *nH3we' as does *nos to *nsme', and in parallel fashion
*woH3 for 'you two' : accented form *uH3we' (apparently dissimilated to
*uH3e') which would match the 2pl *wos : *usme' - provided /m/ develops
into /w/ in the position after the dual marker /H3/.

Jens


From jer at cphling.dk  Mon May 10 22:50:51 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 00:50:51 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <003701be93f3$a8cd10a0$ed9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.005051.0200.>

On Sat, 1 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[...]
> What is so "intangible" about supposing that *te is the basal form, that
> there was an inflection - *-wV which produced -*twe, and that the original
> significance of -*twe being lost, both forms came into use as bases for
> other forms but with a bias towards the form with -*wV for the nominative
> (through its former topical use): -*tu/u:?

That you have to postulate a change before you even start. You are
disqualifying the evidence which points in a different direction than you
want to go. And it is _very_ unsatisfactory to have the preform of *swe
'oneself, sich' be a nominative.

[...]

> > [On Gk. mo:^mar : amu:'mo:n as reflecting *mwoH-/*muH-:]
[...]
> > And, are you asserting, that IE *mow(V)- could *not* result in Gk. mo:{^}-?

Of course I am.

> <snip>

> Whether you agree with my reasons for those assumptions or not, until I find
> better reasons, and make other assumptions, I will have to stick to what I
> have said.

That may be a very basic difference of attitude. Look, I would change _my_
assumptions even if I had come up with _no_ reasons of my own, but only
saw that _yours_ were good. Are you rejecting the dialectic ideal of
scholarly progress?

Jens


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue May 11 08:45:04 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 09:45:04 +0100
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <E10gp82-0006jb-00@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.094504.0100.>

On Mon, 3 May 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

[not too sure why this is on the IE list, but here it is]

[ Moderator's reply:
  Because it continues to return to IE, especially Romance, data for the
  prehistory of Basque, and provides Basque data as a check on the developments
  in Romance.  But if you wish to move this particular discussion to another
  forum, please feel free.
  --rma ]

[on my claim that Pre-Basque did not permit plosive-liquid clusters and
Jon's query in terms of words in Azkue's 1905 dictionary of Basque
containing such clusters]

> I note that my original reference referred to native words and hence the
> diversion of this response into "ancient" words is just that.

I am mystified.  My assertion was about the Pre-Basque of some 2000
years ago, and about nothing else whatever.  As I pointed out earlier,
words in Pre-Basque did not contain such clusters, regardless of whether
they were native or borrowed.  So, it is `ancient' which is relevant
here, not `native'.

[LT]

>     Third, Azkue does not claim that the words entered in his dictionary are
>     native.  On the contrary, he declares explicitly, in section IX of his
>     prologue, that he is entering words of foreign origin which are well
>     established in Basque

[JP]

> As you presented in a later message and which arrived as I was
> preparing this response the relevant section of Azkue's dictionary
> is Section XXIV.5, which states that the words in uppercase are
> primitives or non-derivatives "les mots en capitales ou majuscules
> sont primitifs ou non derives" (pardon the lack for accents)

> These are the words I sent to you in the previous email. I believe
> my comment "he asserts are native words" is a valid interpretation
> of his work. I was particularly concerned that your first email did
> not reference this section and was going to refer you to it. Now it
> appears that you are aware of the section and was remiss in not
> referring to it in your first message.

No, not at all.  My reference to section IX was not a response to you at
all, but to somebody else who had commented on Azkue's use of upper case
for certain entries.  I was only commenting on that point.

I'm afraid I can't agree that your interpretation of Azkue's "primitifs
ou non derives" as `native' is valid.  It seems perfectly clear that
what Azkue means here is, in modern terminology, `monomorphemic', and
not `native'.  Even if there could be any doubt about this, Azkue
explains clearly in section XXIV.5 what he means.  To the best of my
knowledge, Azkue nowhere uses the term `native', or any equivalent, in
his prologue.

>    [LT]
>     That said, I cannot possibly comment on every word in Jon's long list.

> Why not? They constitute the whole corpus of material that Azkue has
> presented which is contrary to your claim.

No.

First of all, Azkue has not presented any material at all which is
contrary to my claim.  My claim is about the Pre-Basque of 2000 years
ago.  Azkue's book is a dictionary of the Basque of the 16th-19th
centuries, a completely different period during which Basque has plainly
tolerated plosive-liquid clusters.  Azkue's dictionary has not one word
to say about Pre-Basque.

Second, your list was hundreds of words long.  Do you really think I
have so much time on my hands that I can afford to devote days to
ferreting out known or probable etymologies for every single word in
that list?

> I doubt that any such list has ever been compiled before for basque
> scholars to investigate. Here is the perfect opportunity for you to
> settle once and for all if your claim can be substantiated. Do you
> have no wish to explore and re-investigate old knowledge no matter
> how well established it is, in the light of new evidence? Is there
> no sense of true scientific exploration in your spirit where
> everything is always up for reappraisal?

The problem is that the entries in Azkue's dictionary are of no
relevance whatever to the nature of Pre-Basque.

Specialists believe that Pre-Old-English had only 16 consonants.
Any decent dictionary of modern English will reveal that the language
now has 24 consonants (in most accents).  Would anybody regard this
observation as casting doubt on the validity of the claim about
Pre-Old-English?

English has changed its phonology substantially in the last 1500 years
or so.  And, of course, Basque has changed its phonology in the last
2000 years.

Old English had no phonemic voiced fricatives; modern English has four
of them.  Pre-Basque did not tolerate plosive-liquid clusters; modern
Basque does.  These things happen.

> In terms of examples you have chosen and the tone of the remainder of your
> message I can only say I feel you have totally compromised you usual high
> standards of scholarship. You were asked:
> " Larry would you say that there is not one word in this list that is
>  not problematic for your thesis,..."

> and you chose not to answer that question.

Sorry, but I did answer it.  I pointed out that the terms `native' and
`ancient' are utterly independent, and that my claim was about ancient
words, not about native ones.

> Rather you selectively ignored the bulk of the evidence and chose
> the most extreme examples of the total set to covertly ridicule my
> attempt to explore and understand this claim and in the end divert
> the topic to a comic play off on words.

No, nothing of the sort.  If I've inadvertently offended you, then I
apologize, but that was never my intent.  All I did was to select a few
representative words from the list whose origins were familiar or
obvious, and point out that these words, of varying origins, could not
be ancient in Basque.  No ridicule was intended.

> As basque scholars know, you included, the Azkue dictionary has its
> flaws but it is also a fine piece of scholarship, and you have
> applauded his work in your own book, so any material based on his
> dictionary deserves close scrutiny, despite the fact we know we will
> find some clear mistakes.

Agreed, and in fact the late Luis Michelena devoted a fair amount of
time to uncovering the mistakes in Azkue's dictionary.  In my book The
History of Basque, I myself point out some of the major shortcomings of
the dictionary which users should be aware of.  But the bottom line is
that a dictionary of modern Basque is of no direct relevance to the
nature of Pre-Basque.

>  I have seen many examples in this list and on other lists where you
> have insisted that claims for phenomena are unjustified because
> there is no supporting evidence. Yet in this case you are prepared
> to omit evidence that can be rightfully presented for appraisal. Can
> we expect that on other occasions you have also played fast and free
> with omitting legitimate evidence for appraisal because it didn't
> suit your case?

Gee whiz, Jon -- you seem to be really cheesed off for some reason, and
I can't imagine why.

Azkue's dictionary is of no relevance here.  What *is* relevant, as I
pointed out briefly in an earlier posting, is the treatment of Latin
loans into Pre-Basque.  In these loans, plosive-liquid clusters were
*invariably* eliminated in one way or another.  This shows clearly that
the phonology of Pre-Basque did not permit such clusters -- or, in plain
English, that the speakers of Pre-Basque could not pronounce them.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 11 12:56:23 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 07:56:23 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.075623.0500.>

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 1999 11:43 AM

[ moderator snip ]

> I don't understand your argument, Pat.   If the H's had lost their
> consonantal value, as you claim, then they are either vowels or
> non-existent.
> (a) If they were vowels, there is no explanation for the non-appearance of
> them at the beginning of these sanskrit roots.

I think there may be two explanations for their non-appearance initially:

1) the effects of stress-accent;

2) a restriction on the number of segments that can be re-duplicated.

> (b) If they were non-existent, they could not magically produce an -i- when
> the root is reiterated.

Agreed.

> In other words,
> (a) an original IE *Vgen  would not produce the attested root gan, but
> *Vgan.
> (b) an original IE root *gen would not produce the attested gan-i-gm-, but
> gan-gm-.
> (c) Only an original IE root *Hgan can produce this pattern of attested root
> gan, but repeated gan-i-gam < Hgen-Hgn.

To be explicit, I am saying that I think it is possible for Vgen to be
reduplicated as *gen-Vgen, possibly through *VgenVgen.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From ctp at germsem.uni-kiel.de  Tue May 11 00:08:33 1999
From: ctp at germsem.uni-kiel.de (Christian Petersen)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 02:08:33 +0200
Subject: East Germanic
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.020833.0200.>

Dear fellow Indo-Europeans,
apart from subscribing to the list, may I draw your attention to some
Gothic pages:

http://www.egroups.com/list/gothic-l/
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~dla/gothic.html#data
http://users.skynet.be/wulfila/

gawair~i
Christian T. Petersen, Kiel University, Germany


From ALDERSON at xkl.com  Wed May 12 01:51:29 1999
From: ALDERSON at xkl.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 18:51:29 -0700
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <000801be9100$8b723da0$c19ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.185129.0700.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote, on Tue, 27 Apr 1999:

>First, let me tell you that I appreciate your taking the time to write a
>magisterial summary of the questions involved.

Hardly magisterial, indeed barely satisfactory, but thank you.  John Lawler at
Michigan used to have a copy of a post of mine on Natural Phonology on his web
site at UMich; I tried to find it before nattering on.

>Rich writes:

>> In structuralist terms, two phones in complementary distribution *must* be,
>> cannot *not* be, allophones of a single phoneme.  (Although a lemma
>> requiring something called "phonetic similarity" was inserted into the
>> theory when it was pointed out that in a pure framework, the English phones
>> [h] and [N], as in _hang_ [h&N], must be allophones of a single phoneme...)
>> Therefore, in the prevailing structuralist framework of the 1940s, Lehmann
>> *had* to define *i and *u as allophones respectively of *y and *w.

>Pat writes:

>Lehmann was under no obligation to be consistently structuralist, and your
>assumption that he was is pure conjecture. By "syllabicity", Lehmann
>indicated that he was quite willing to strike out on uncharted paths. If the
>evidence had indicated anything different, I am positive Lehmann would have
>embraced the position it made mandatory.

One of us has obviously missed something here.  Lehmann's work is *very much*
"consistently structuralist"--that was the point I was making.  Were he not so
consistent, he would not have been forced to make the incorrect claim about
*i *u vs. *y *w.

>Leo writes:

>>>> just as PIE syllabic [M N L R] were allophones of /m n l r/.

>Pat writes:

>>>The syllabic status of [M/N/L/R] is a totally unrelated matter. These become
>>>syllabic when deprived of the stress-accent.

>Rich writes:

>> So the fact that all *six* resonants pattern the same is irrelevant?

>Pat writes:

>In my opinion, it is a mistake to include [Y/W] among the resonants.
>Phonologically, [j] is the voiced palato-dorsal fricative; [w] is the voiced
>bilabial fricative. *And they do not pattern the same*.

If you wish to maintain that stance, we have nothing further to discuss.  The
patterning of all six resonants as a class is a well-established fact of Indo-
European linguistics.

Further, [j] is phonologically *nothing*, although *phonetically* it is (or may
be) a "voiced palato-dorsal fricative".  Its exact phonetic characteristics are
irrelevant to the placement of *y within the phonological system of PIE (under-
stood as a set of oppositions), just as the exact character of *d (plain voiced
stop or glottalic egressive stop) is irrelevant.  (The same thing is true,
_mutatis mutandis_, of [w] vs. *w.)  Thus, to argue against the patterning of
the resonants on the basis of its possible phonetic interpretation is to miss a
very big point.

>Rich writes:

>> That *ey/oy/i parallels *en/on/.n by accident?  Then you disagree with
>> Lehmann?  What of his god-like status?  Never mind, rhetorical questions.

>Pat writes:

>I do not consider Lehmann god-like although I do believe that most people on
>their best days will not equal what has has written on his worst. I also do
>not shrink from disagreeing with his written opinions but, in view of his
>sagacity, I do so with great caution.

>And I reject the idea totally that *ey/oy/i and *ew/ow/u parallel *en/on/n{.}.

And as I noted above, we then have absolutely nothing to say to one another.

>> ... the only way to demonstrate that an analysis is valid is for it to
>> explain not only historical but synchronic phenomena in more than one
>> language).

>Pat writes:

>You surely would include diachronic phenomena, would you not?

For "historical" in my original wording, I expected everyone to understand
"diachronic"; I'm sorry that that was not clear.

>Rich continues:

>> Natural Phonology is, as well as process-oriented, constraint-oriented and
>> hierarchical:  The presence of certain phonological entities entails the
>> presence of others.  Thus, vowel systems are constrained:  Certain kinds of
>> vowel system are more stable than others, and unstable vowel systems rapidly
>> turn into stable systems by either eliminating contrast or by adding
>> contrast.  In addition, processes which are not repressed may increase
>> distinctions between vowels in the system (long vowels may become tense, for
>> example, or a distinction in palatality vs. labiality may arise as in Arabic
>> short /a/ vs. long /a:/ = [&] vs. [O:]).

>Pat writes:

>Although this is not really an argument against the point you are making,
>Arabic long /a:/ does not become [o:]; this is reserved for reductions of
>/aw/.

What happened was this:

1.  An original three-vowel system /i u a/, with length, developed allophonic
variants [& O:] of /a/ under lengthening processes.  Cowgill argued this as the
source of Brugmann's Law in Sanskrit in a paper presented at the LSA in the
early 70's; it solved the *e/*o problem for me, so I have adopted it.

2.  New compensatory length oppositions arose with the loss of various obstru-
ents in different environments.

3.  Next to certain laryngeals (*H_2 and *H_4), /a/ developed a third allophone
[a]; next to *H_3, /a/ also became [O].  Thus, a phonemic opposition arose.

4.  A system /i & a O u/ is unstable, so the process of raising evened out the
oppositions to /i e a o u/.

>Pat writes:

>IMHO, this is incorrect. If we accept Trask's definition of a phoneme as "the
>smallest unit which can make a difference in meaning" and restrict "meaning"
>to "semantic difference" vs. grammatical difference, then a language in which
>CaC, CeC, CiC, CoC, CuC, etc. represent different grammatical stems of a root
>CVC, which has *one*, meaning, then the "syllabicity" in the root makes no
>difference, and hence cannot be considered "phonemic".

But this is the very point I was making:  The definition you cite from Trask is
structuralist, rather than psychological, and not the definition of the phoneme
used by Natural Phonology.  Further, even in a structuralist definition, one is
not allowed to restrict the word "meaning" as you wish to do, and so your argu-
ment for a "non-phonemic vowel" falls apart.

>But, why all the fuss about monosyllabicity when Sanskrit provides us with the
>next logical outcome of a language that, at an earlier stage, was monovocalic
>(at least, phonemically).

>Anything other than <Ca> in Sanskrit is a result of <Ca> + <H>, <w>, or <y>,
>or a combination thereof. That is why Sanskrit does not bother to indicate an
><Ca> in its writing system (only <C>). Only combinations of <Ca> + <?> *need*
>to be indicated.

Sanskrit was never monovocalic, phonologically speaking.  There is more than
one source, for example, of [e:]--see, for example, _dive dive_ "from day to
day", where the first _dive_ is the expected sandhi variant of the ablative
_divas_ "from (a) day".  Thus, again, your analysis fails to explain the facts.

								Rich Alderson


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 12 02:32:44 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 21:32:44 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.213244.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 12:16 PM

> Pat Ryan wrote in response to the following:

>>>>> Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage
>>>>> of Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a
>>>>> language, it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may
>>>>> alternate with other sounds in the language because of morphological
>>>>> rules or unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.

>> Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>> difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

> More precisely, we must say that it *could indicate* a semantic difference.
> In English, /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct, even though _either_
> means the same no matter how it is pronounced in that word.  Nor do they
> indicate a semantic difference in the context /l_t/, there being no word
> *_leet_ to contrast with _light_.  It's the semantic difference between
> _meet_ and _might_ that shows that /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct;
> we cannot say that phonemes ever *produce* a semantic difference.

Well, there is no set of relationships in IE wherein *CeC is semantically
different from *Ce{sub}C. That, IMHO, demonstrates conclusively that
[e/e{sub}] is not phonemic. As for [e:], I do not believe it is an allophone
but rather the product of *He/e{sub}.

>> But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>> certain.

> He doesn't.  For his "pre-stress" stage, he specifically posits "A
> non-segmental phoneme /^/, syllabicity" (_PIEP_, p. 112).  For the stage
> "pre-IE with phonemic stress", /^/ is non-segmental, like the phonemes /"/
> ("maximum stress") and /'/ ("minimum stress"), but he asserts that /"^/ (a
> sequence? or simultaneous?) "becomes segmental; allophone [e]" (_PIEP_ p.
> 113).  (This is a non-standard use of the word "allophone"; the more modern
> "realization" would have been much more appropriate.)

Leo, c'mon. Give Lehmann a break. He used "phoneme" for "syllabicity" because
there really was not a recognized term then for his analyzed parts of /"^/,
realized as [e]. But, I will grant you this point: I am guilty of what I
accused you. I understood Lehmann in "my" terms rather that the terms he was
actually employing. I can see that his terminology could have been improved but
I still believe his basic idea (as I understood it) has merit.

> But he adds: "In the neighborhood of resonants it [i.e. /^/ -- LAC] combines
> with segmental phonemes [i.e. the resonants -- LAC] in simultaneous
> articulation:..."  Thus /y^/ yields [i], etc.  In these two stages his /^/ is
> most emphatically *not* segmental, which is what I and some others have been
> hollering about: it makes no sense to say it's not.

I have to agree that a simple extension of the principle to resonants creates
just the kind of problems you have identified here.

<snip>

>>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a
>>> 3sg in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course
>>> does not detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

> Won't work.  Consider the perfect active, where the 3.sg. desinence is PIE
> -e, but the stress was on the root (as demonstrated by accent in Greek and
> Sanskrit and failure of Verner's Law to operate on Germanic preterite
> singular forms, though the plurals were affected; we might also note that the
> form had o-grade vocalism rather than zero or reduced grade, as in the
> plural).  (Yes, it is true that most Greek perfects are reduplicated, and the
> reduplication has the accent in the singular.  But the few unreduplicated
> perfects do accent the root: _oi^de_ 'he knows'.  And augmented or not, the
> plural forms do accent the desinence.)

As for the 3rd sg. perfect active, -e is understandable on the same principle
if we consider the earlier form to have been -e: (from *-He), reduced to -e in
a stress-unaccented syllable.

>> IMHO, the morpheme for the second and third persons, containing <t>, has
>> a unitary origin: *T{H}O, 'tribe-member'.

> Given the tone of recent discussions, I'd best not say what I think of that
> proposal.

If you have *reasons* for rejecting this as a possibility, do not hesitate to
let us all know.

> Let's settle for a notational matter.  Angled brackets are used to indicate
> *graphemes*, i.e. units of *written notation*.  <t> means very precisely
> "lower-case t", not any kind of raw sound [t] or phoneme /t/ or morpheme {t}
> (all standard notations, by the way).  It's OK to fudge by simply italicizing
> everything, but don't use a specific notation if you don't mean it.

Noted.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Wed May 12 09:16:56 1999
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 10:16:56 +0100
Subject: Mycenaean (Standardization)
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.101656.0100.>

At 12:41 pm 29/4/1999, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>>In 1741, Parliament specifically narrowly defined "cattle":  >>

>-- in other words, the official, written language was changed to bring it
>more into line with popular spoken useage.

>Selah.  My point is proved.

Utter nonsense, twaddle, just blethering.  Definitions in statutes are
given for the purpose of understanding the statute, and do not - cannot -
have a wider function.  Unless the legislature is _completely_ out of its
mind.  [You may think so from time to time; I could not possibly comment.]

Legislation can appear to have an indirect effect, eg when it embodies
educational policy, and there is a general publicly provided school system
teaching the centrally determined syllabus, but that is confounding the
messenger and the message.

There are other government influences, which may help determine the common
speech of the people: possibly Modern Hebrew (I have no direct source for
this) is a case in point; the origins of standard Modern English include
15th century Chancery usage; and 20th century Irish Gaelic owes a lot to
the need of the civil service to devise a wide range of technical terms and
usages.  But that is clearly not a good example - there is a wide gulf
between what is written in the Department of Finance or the Department of
Education (eg) and what is spoken in Gaoith Doire &c.

What evidence do we have that the good folk of Argos, Knossos, Pylos,
Tiryns, wherever, spoke the language of the tablets?  Maybe the tablets
show a version of Greek which is a short branch off the main thread of the
story, cf the Rgveda language in the history of Indian.

[ Moderator's comment:
  *Somebody* in those cities knew the language, and wrote in it.  Whether or
  not everybody spoke the same language is in a sense irrelevant for the status
  of Mycenaean as a South Greek dialect (like Arcado-Cypriot and Attic-Ionic).
  --rma ]


From edsel at glo.be  Wed May 12 11:14:15 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 13:14:15 +0200
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?(Chandro)
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.131415.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv at wxs.nl>
Date: Monday, May 10, 1999 3:01 PM

>"Roslyn M. Frank" <roz-frank at uiowa.edu> wrote:

>>On that note, I'm curious. Miguel, did you come across any reference to a
>>feminine form for <chandro> as "gandul, etc." in the dictionary you are
>>using. What exactly was the source you were using? (Thanks in advance for
>>the bibliographic reference).

>The word does not appear in any of my Spanish dictionaries, or so
>I thought, until I happened to see it in my 1954 (6th) edition of
>the Espasa (Diccionario Enciclope'dico Abreviado):

>CHANDRO. adj. Ar. Perezoso, desalin~ado, holgaza'n.

>[Where Ar. stands for "Aragone's"]

>That's all.  I then did an Altavista search for "chandro", which
>yielded two or three Web pages containing Aragonese vocabularies,
>confirming what the Espasa says, but not adding any further
>information (e.g. about the etymology of the word).  FWIW:

>http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/6243/diccionario.html
>http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Dell/5055/curiosi.html

>It's probably merely a coincidence that, apparently, Chandro is
>also a name to give to your GSD (German Shepherd Dog), as
>officially recognized by the Verein fuer Deutsche Schaeferhunde.

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

[Ed Selleslagh]
May I suggest another approach that might reconcile both views/facts?

Could it be that 'chandro' is actually derived from Basque 'etxe(ko)andre',
meaning 'lady of the house', and later, in Aragonese dialect, first meant
some figure of authority, then some similar person but one that exploited
his position, and finally anyone with similar behavior?
There is a precedent: 'senyorito': originally the junior master, later the
lazy rich layabout son. 'Caballerito' has a somewhat similar history.

In Dutch, 'knecht' is a male servant, a far cry from 'knight' in English,
but with the same (probably Saxon) origin. In West-Flemish dialect,
'knecht(je)' means a young boy, cf. Eng. 'maid'/'maiden' etc.

This is a very common type of shift, especially when words pass into another
language.  In English e.g., terms of French origin (veal, pork, mutton...)
have a 'nobler' meaning than the Anglo-Saxon/OE original (calf, pig, swine -
the latter actually being of an older, Latin origin, 'suinus', an
adjective - , sheep,...) - or ordinary French for that matter - , because of
well-known historic facts.

Ed.


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Wed May 12 14:59:18 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 09:59:18 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.095918.0500.>

Pat Ryan wrote:

>>But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>>certain.

I replied:

>He doesn't.  For his "pre-stress" stage, he specifically posits "A
>non-segmental phoneme /^/, syllabicity" (_PIEP_, p. 112).  For the stage
>"pre-IE with phonemic stress", /^/ is non-segmental, like the phonemes /"/
>("maximum stress") and /'/ ("minimum stress"), but he asserts that /"^/ (a
>sequence? or simultaneous?) "becomes segmental; allophone [e]" (_PIEP_ p.
>113).  (This is a non-standard use of the word "allophone"; the more modern
>"realization" would have been much more appropriate.)  But he adds: "In the
>neighborhood of resonants it [i.e. /^/ -- LAC] combines with segmental
>phonemes [i.e. the resonants -- LAC] in simultaneous articulation:..."  Thus
>/y^/ yields [i], etc.  In these two stages his /^/ is most emphatically *not*
>segmental, which is what I and some others have been hollering about: it makes
>no sense to say it's not.

I must qualify this last statement.  In and of itself, there would be no
difficulty in saying that /^/ was non-segmental if we were talking only of the
fact that /y/ (already segmental) can appear as syllabic [i] in the right
environment.  But it is hard to see why it would have had to combine with a
non-segmental /^/ to do so.  The larger difficulty concerns the treatment of
/^/ between consonants: if it's actually "between", we would expect it to be
segmental, and Lehmann would have to produce powerful evidence to claim
anything else .  He doesn't even try to prove it.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed May 12 15:34:33 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 10:34:33 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
In-Reply-To: <37283DA5.CB182381@ufl.edu>
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.103433.0500.>

[snip]
Reminds me of the use of "ass" in older Biblical
>translations: "Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's ... ass".  :-)

	So why didn't this word's homonym come into American English as
"arse" with an /R/?
	Was <ass> "buttocks" borrowed from later British English or from
New England or Southern English?

[ Moderator's comment:
  When I lived in Connecticut, I met people who made a distinction between
  "arse" and "ass" consistently, not as a learned item but in casual speech.
  --rma ]


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed May 12 15:26:17 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 17:26:17 +0200
Subject: IE thematic dual
In-Reply-To: <199905101935.MAA20395@netcom2.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.172617.0200.>

On Mon, 10 May 1999, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

[... (JER: Goth. ahtau has diphthongal form of them.dual., like Skt.
as.t.au, ergo the -u was IE already:)]

> The final <au> in Gothic is a spelling of [O], and does not bear on the
> presence or absence of a final *-u in the Indo-European dual, nor is it
> entirely clear that the word for '8' is a dual.

But what can then be the source of the Goth. -au, how ever pronounced?
Both *-o: and *-a: give Goth. <-a>. And can one really reduce the weight
of Kartvelian "otxo" 'four' to nil? I know people are biting each other's
heads off over the exact shape of the protoform, and perhaps also over the
direction of borrowing (supposing any of the two families was the source).
Does this not still leave the unbiased observer with the impression that
the word for 'eight' _was_ an o-stem dual at one point?

> The Skt. -u is an extension from the u-stems via sandhi variants to the other
> stem formations.  Or so I was taught.

I cannot disprove that. Still, is it likely? Are there so many u-stems
that they can have reasonably been used as models for the thematic stems,
including pronouns? - And does the parallelism between *to- + *-e and
perf. *ple-ploH1- + *-e emerging as ta:(v) and papra:(v) count for
nothing?

Jens


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed May 12 15:36:39 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 10:36:39 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
In-Reply-To: <4e65c6a.2459dff1@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.103639.0500.>

That is true but "athletic supporters" are still called "jock straps" in
America

>>Yet we also see "resurrected taboo words" such as "jock," which formerly
>>meant "penis" and now means "athlete" [at least in America] and even
>>"jockette" for a female athlete

>-- if a word stays out of circulation long enough, it loses its 'ooomph' as a
>forbidden term and can be reused, if it hasn't been altogether forgotten.

[ Moderator's comment:
  I think the two writers are actually saying the same thing:  Were the word
  "jock" still in (common) use in the meaning "penis", it would not have been
  extended to the meaning "athlete" no matter what an athletic supporter was
  called.
  --rma ]


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed May 12 15:48:02 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 10:48:02 -0500
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <372d1224.63540508@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.104802.0500.>

a gandul is a "pigeon pea" and is about half the size of a sweet pea
I think it's only used as "lazy" in Spanish slang and I seem to remember
seeing it used that way in literature of the Siglo de Oro --but it's been
many years since I've read that stuff

>"Roslyn M. Frank" <roz-frank at uiowa.edu> wrote:

>>On that note, I'm curious. Miguel, did you come across any reference to a
>>feminine form for <chandro> as "gandul, etc." in the dictionary you are
>>using. What exactly was the source you were using? (Thanks in advance for
>>the bibliographic reference).

>The word does not appear in any of my Spanish dictionaries, or so
>I thought, until I happened to see it in my 1954 (6th) edition of
>the Espasa (Diccionario Enciclope'dico Abreviado):


From petegray at btinternet.com  Wed May 12 18:02:31 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 19:02:31 +0100
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.190231.0100.>

  Pat said:

  >To be explicit, I am saying that I think it is possible for Vgen to be
  >reduplicated as *gen-Vgen, possibly through *VgenVgen.

Thanks for the clarification.  Do you have any evidence of this happening
elsewhere?

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 12 20:04:31 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 15:04:31 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.150431.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 5:27 PM

> I wasn't targeting, but I do think the ending was *-e, not *-H1e. However,
> proving lack of /H1/, the least stable of the laryngeals, is not easy,
> and the rules may still hold surprises. Barring that, if the Skt. dual
> sva'sa:rau 'two sister' is to continue an IE *swe'-sor-e (with -au for
> expected *-a on the analogy of thematic stems), the *-o- must be in an
> open syllable since it has come out long. Then -i: and -u: of i/u-stems
> are analogical on the form -a: of the a-stems.

Of all the arguments employed to explain divergent forms, analogy is surely
the weakest because it implies a *mistake* on  the part of native speakers
of the language. Were Sanskrit speakers all **childs**?

Now, I have two questions:

1) If no IE syllable may begin with a vowel in a root, and affixes derive
from grammaticalized morphemes, why should we expect any affix to originally
be simply -V?

2) If view of what you have written below about length and its connection
with open syllables, would you mind explaining why an open syllable seems
sufficient grounds to you above to explain the length of Sanskrit <a:>?

I expect that the better explanation is that a termination of *-yeu has
become *-e:u (compensatory lengthening), and that the length has been
metathesized to the foregoing syllable.

>> He then proceeds to identify an inanimate (neuter) -*iH{1}.

> He is right in that.

Well, then it is incumbent upon you to provide the definitive argument for
the existence of the "pure vowel" [i], which has eluded every IEist who has
put his pen to it.

>> I would maintain that the great majority of the (animate and inanimate)
>> forms can be more simply from *-y.

> Not the ones we find, if they are to be treated by the phonetic rules we
> normally accept.

Well, generalizations are less than illuminating. Why not give a few
examples if you believe this?

>>> It even looks as if Beekes considers the IE languages more closely
>>> related to each other than to Egyptian.

>> Ha! But, of course, so do I.

> Oh yeah? You have been known to act as if you didn't; as in:

> [... (On the dual form of IE '8'):]

>> Based on the Egyptian evidence, I prefer to see the -*(u) of *okto:(u) as a
>> numeral-siffix rather than a dual. I am aware of several attempts to
>> identify a 'four' root that might have served as a basis for a dual meaning
>> 'eight' though, IMHO, they have not been successful.

I do not see that as an example of "believing" that IE languages are less
closely related to each other than to Egyptian, which I find utterly
ridiculous.

> [... (Vocalism of 'we two'):]

>> Well, I thought it was generally accepted that stress-accent in an open
>> syllable could be lengthen, and that stress-unaccented syllables are
>> shortened. Have I just invented that?

> I think you have.

See above.


>>> Then what would be the enclitic form meaning "us two" in IE? */no:/
>>> ending in a long vowel?

>> I am going to pass the wand. What do you think it is?

> I'm not that much of an oracle, but my guess is *noH3 which stands to the
> accented form *nH3we' as does *nos to *nsme', and in parallel fashion
> *woH3 for 'you two' : accented form *uH3we' (apparently dissimilated to
> *uH3e') which would match the 2pl *wos : *usme' - provided /m/ develops
> into /w/ in the position after the dual marker /H3/.

This is the least logical proposition that I have seen you advance. So
enclitic *noH{3} just conveniently drops a *-we{'}? and *nos just drops an
inconvenient *-me? and a stress-unaccented enclitic *woH{3} modifies its <w>
to /u/ in *uH{3}we{'}? {3}.

I think you are engaging in free association.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 12 20:40:28 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 15:40:28 -0500
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.154028.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 5:50 PM

> On Sat, 1 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:


>> What is so "intangible" about supposing that *te is the basal form, that
>> there was an inflection - *-wV which produced -*twe, and that the original
>> significance of -*twe being lost, both forms came into use as bases for
>> other forms but with a bias towards the form with -*wV for the nominative
>> (through its former topical use): -*tu/u:?

> That you have to postulate a change before you even start.

And what change is that?

> You are disqualifying the evidence which points in a different direction than
> you want to go.

I am discounting an alternate interpretation of the evidence.

> And it is _very_ unsatisfactory to have the preform of *swe 'oneself, sich'
> be a nominative.

Well, perhaps it your view but not in Pokorny's, where we find *swe listed
under *se as *s(e)we, and "*se- und *s(e)we-, Reflexivpronomen fu{"}r alle
Personen, Gechlechter und Numeri".  *swe means simply 'self', and, as such,
is no case-dependent as compounds like *s(w)e-bh(o)- surely show (cf. also
Armenian <in-kn>).


>>> [On Gk. mo:^mar : amu:'mo:n as reflecting *mwoH-/*muH-:]

>>> And, are you asserting, that IE *mow(V)- could *not* result in Gk.
>>> mo:{^}-?

> Of course I am.

Then, of course, you are wrong in view of Greek <no:{^}i>.

>> <snip>

>> Whether you agree with my reasons for those assumptions or not, until I find
>> better reasons, and make other assumptions, I will have to stick to what I
>> have said.

> That may be a very basic difference of attitude. Look, I would change _my_
> assumptions even if I had come up with _no_ reasons of my own, but only
> saw that _yours_ were good. Are you rejecting the dialectic ideal of
> scholarly progress?

If I were, would we be discussing this? And though you have persuaded me of
very little, I have acknowledged revising my views *recently* when presented
with arguments from some other list-members. That is not to say that you may
not persuade me at some future point of a view of yours.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Wed May 12 23:08:29 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 23:08:29 GMT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
In-Reply-To: <acc3840c.245a828a@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.230829.GMT.>

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>Where I do find *g > z is the first SL palatization - before original front
>vowels.  (I have here as example, OCS ziv~, cf. Lith gyvas.)

That's OCS <z^ivU>, with /Z/ not /z/.  PIE *gwiHw-.

>The second also yielded g > z, but where the front vowel has occured because
>of monophthongisation (example OCS cena, cf Lith kaina.)

Yes. the second palatalization yields /dz/, usually simplified to /z/.

>Also, if this *g behaved like a /k/ in satemization

??

The developments in Slavic are:

PIE       *k^     *k(w)       *g^     *g(w)(h)

"satem"   s       [k]         z       [g]
1st Pal.          c^                  z^
2nd.              c                   (d)z

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 13 01:28:37 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 21:28:37 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.212837.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/11/99 9:19:29 PM, JoatSimeon at AOL.com wrote:

<<>Intentionality is the difference.

-- and there's very little intentionality in the evolution of language.
Nobody said:  "I'm tired of Anglo-Saxon, let's invent Middle English".>>

Quote me in full and it will be obvious that I wasn't talking about the
intention to invent a language.

Language developed as a means to other ends.  The intention behind language
is not language.  The intention is first of all to communicate.  The
intentionally refers to the objective not the means.  Language without
communication would be useless.

The intention behind wheel was not to make a wheel or make a new kind of
wheel.  The intention behind the wheel was transportation.

What logically must drive language is the goal of communication.  No one had
to say let's invent Middle English.  All they needed was to percieve and
intend to communicate in another way.

Form follows function.

Regards
S. Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 13 01:35:02 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 21:35:02 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.213502.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/11/99 9:01:46 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

><<>I can't disagree with this.  But as early as @600 ace Fredegar has the
>Frank king Dagobert remitting a 500 hide tribute owed by the Saxons in
>exchange for their defending the border against the Wends

-- that's what I said, east of the Germans, south of the Balts, west of the
Iranians.

The linguistic frontier between Germanic and Slavic fluctuated, just as that
between Slavic and Baltic and Slavic and Iranian did.  But their relative
positions never changed much, and neither did the fact that they were in
continuous contact from PIE times on.>>

If you look back at what I originally wrote, it was in response to your
derision of pots.  The only way we know what you are saying is pots.  And in
the middle of the first millenium bce, the pots seem to say that the
proto-Slavs (according to some sources) are not in contact with
proto-Germanics.  Check back to see what I wrote.  It may be helpful.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 13 04:14:35 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 00:14:35 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.001435.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/10/99 3:27:35 AM, our moderator wrote:

<<[ Moderator's comment:
  *g does not > **s in Slavic, but to *z.
  --rma ]>>

But *g >*z is also the formula for the first palatalization - so how could *g
> *z  be part of the first change from *PIE - unless of course the same
change happened twice?  My best understanding is that the first
palatalization is reconstructed to have occurred a bit later than the
original split-off from *PIE.  And the first palatization affected *g (> z)
*k and *x only so far as they immediately preceded a front original vowel.
In the examples I gave - 'siedczy', 'snac', 'snowac'  - all closely related
to *g^no(H3) in meaning - the /n/ separates the *g from the original front
vowel.

In other for any initial *g to have gotten to the first palatalization, it
would have had to survived satemization.  In which case, either *g was
unaffected by satemization (contrary to mcv's statement) or only borrowings
with *g were left to undergo the Slavic palatalizations.

Now, remember that mcv wrote: "<<The Slavic palatalizations are not
applicable here, only the satem palatalization *g^ > z.  Cf. znaju "I know"
from *g^en(H3)-
"to know".>>

(And I must go back to my point that <<'sto' (hundred), 'dziesiec' (ten) in
Polish>>  means that if satem palatalization yielded *k > *s as far as those
forms are concerned, then satemization must have preceeded the first
palatalization.  Otherwise, *k would have merely yielded the voiceless dental
affricative /c/ with many examples (OCS cena 'price', cf. Lith 'kaina))

And once again I think it should be an indication that something in the
analysis is out of whack when mcv writes: <<Slavic hasn't preserved *gen(H)-
except in the derivation ze~tI (*gen(@)tis) "son-in-law, sister's husband".>>
 How could such an extensively used root throughout the rest of IE disappear
entirely from Slavic?  It seems like a mistake doesn't it?

And this all seems to based on the *g > *z formula.  And it creates a
situation where a huge number of very fundamental words must be considered
borrowings.  How and when were such words as "gniazd-" (nest), 'gno-ic'
(fertilizer), "go-ic" (care for, heal), "god-y" (wedding), "gniesz-" (pressed
together, grouped), 'gnac', 'gon-ic' (chase), 'geba' (mouth), 'koh-ac' (love,
marry), 'krzek' (spawn), 'nasie' (seed), 'narod' (born), 'siewca' (seedling),
and 'kolano' (knee) were borrowed into Polish - and what words they must have
replaced - is difficult to see (for this naive observer, anyway.)

<<Might this suggest that 'znac' and similar forms might be borrowings coming
after satem?

[ Moderator's reply: No.--rma ]>>

I'm not sure how that can be ascertained, especially since the Slavic
palatalization do precisely the same thing after satemization.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 13 05:13:43 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 01:13:43 EDT
Subject: Mycenaean (Standardization)
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.011343.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/12/99 10:03:40 PM, gordonselway at gn.apc.org wrote:

<<Utter nonsense, twaddle, just blethering.  Definitions in statutes are
given for the purpose of understanding the statute, and do not - cannot -
have a wider function>>

That's interesting.  But not necessarily true.

A case in point.  Unfortunately, just recently , I must have heard the word
'FEMA' repeated at least fifty times by some folks who used it very much in
the context of ordinary speech.  What they were using word referring to a
situation, an action and a consequence that was thoroughly originated in the
language of government.

The next time you ask for "whiskey" at a bar, consider that it was the law
that defined the word that makes it predictable what you get in response.
Ask for a "pound" of meat and realize that modern weights and standards are
the result of governmental action not common usage.  Before government
defined it in a statute, the "gasoline" someone offered you might not have
been something you would have wanted to put in your car.  And in London,
before Parliament acted, if you were a country bumpkin and pledged your
"cattle" to a London banker, you may have thought you were pledging your
livestock, but you were possibly pledging - per London usage - everything you
owned.

Language's first function is communication.  Ambiguoty can interfere with
that communication to the point where it has adverse social consequences.  It
is really a bit naive to think that government can have no effect on such
situations.  And the next time you hear it called the King's English, be
assured that it was therefore not expected that anyone at all could change it
as they wished.

Mallory in ISIE identifies the three leading "agents" of language change in
three "persona": the soldier, the priest and the merchant.  All three have in
the past been identified as having interests intricately wound up in what we
know as "government."

<<What evidence do we have that the good folk of Argos, Knossos, Pylos,
Tiryns, wherever, spoke the language of the tablets?  Maybe the tablets
show a version of Greek which is a short branch off the main thread of the
story, cf the Rgveda language in the history of Indian.>>

I believe Linear B Greek was called "archaic Greek" before someone noticed it
was a dead ringer for Aeolian.  I really don't know what the writings can
tell us about the early standardization of a language.  But I do know that it
would be a mistake to think that they can't tell us anything - at least
without closer examination.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 13 05:53:49 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 01:53:49 EDT
Subject: The Indo-European Hypothesis [was Re: The
 NeolithicHypothesis]-Second post
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.015349.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/11/99 5:50:34 PM, fortytwo at ufl.edu wrote:

<<X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
Also, the traits of a particular microbe do not transfer to other unrelated
strains.  If common traits, they develop independently.  In language,
effective traits can be borrowed in their full maturity.

Actually, that is a common feature of microbes and language.  Viruses
and bacteria can mix genes.>>

Notice I said traits.  Must note here first of all that genes and traits are
not the same thing.  Very important difference.  In most instances,
transferred genetic material in bacteria do not affect the traits manifested
in the individual organism.  The transfer only becomes effective after
reproduction.  The gene changes, but the current traits do not.  (And of
course the transference of genes between strains is limited; it does not
happen between all strains of bacteria and is qualified by the viability of
the resulting traits.  Viruses are a difference matter altogether.)

As far as the analogy with language goes, within a single generation, a
sheepherder can turn into a computer programmer - or a French speaker into an
English speaker.  But a single generation is not enough to turn an e.coli
amicus into an e. coli virilus or a sheep into a computer programmer.

Regards,
Steve Long


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Thu May 13 06:14:44 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 01:14:44 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.011444.0500.>

Rick Mc Callister wrote:
>         So why didn't this word's homonym come into American English as
> "arse" with an /R/?

It's my understanding that "ass" began as a *euphemism* for "arse",
which later disappeared from most dialects of American English.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 13 06:46:44 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 01:46:44 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.014644.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Alderson <ALDERSON at xkl.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 1999 8:51 PM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote, on Tue, 27 Apr 1999:

> Further, [j] is phonologically *nothing*, although *phonetically* it is (or
> may be) a "voiced palato-dorsal fricative".  Its exact phonetic
> characteristics are irrelevant to the placement of *y within the phonological
> system of PIE (understood as a set of oppositions), just as the exact
> character of *d (plain voiced stop or glottalic egressive stop) is
> irrelevant.  (The same thing is true, _mutatis mutandis_, of [w] vs. *w.)
> Thus, to argue against the patterning of the resonants on the basis of its
> possible phonetic interpretation is to miss a very big point.

My specification of the phonetic characteristics of [j] and [w] was to
suggest that they are properly fricatives of the dorsal and labial series,
and to put them in a separate class (semivowels) is misleading.

Furthermore, contrary to your assertion, they [j/w] do not pattern the same
as [m/n/l/r]. Just one example: initial stress-unaccented *nV in Sanskrit
becomes <a>; initial stress-unaccented *jV in Sanskrit does not become <a>.

[ moderator snip ]

> What happened was this:

> 1.  An original three-vowel system /i u a/, with length, developed allophonic
> variants [& O:] of /a/ under lengthening processes.  Cowgill argued this as
> the source of Brugmann's Law in Sanskrit in a paper presented at the LSA in
> the early 70's; it solved the *e/*o problem for me, so I have adopted it.

[ moderator snip ]

You are, of course, free to *believe* anything you wish but just the first
premise in this description is untenable because unprovable: an original /i
u a/.

>>Pat writes:

>>IMHO, this is incorrect. If we accept Trask's definition of a phoneme as
>>"the smallest unit which can make a difference in meaning" and restrict
>>"meaning" to "semantic difference" vs. grammatical difference, then a
>>language in which CaC, CeC, CiC, CoC, CuC, etc. represent different
>>grammatical stems of a root CVC, which has *one*, meaning, then the
>>"syllabicity" in the root makes no difference, and hence cannot be considered
>>"phonemic".

> But this is the very point I was making:  The definition you cite from Trask
> is structuralist, rather than psychological, and not the definition of the
> phoneme used by Natural Phonology.  Further, even in a structuralist
> definition, one is not allowed to restrict the word "meaning" as you wish to
> do, and so your argument for a "non-phonemic vowel" falls apart.

I think you may be a bit overly "school"-oriented. I still that Lehmann was
under no obligation to be consistently structuralist; and I do not feel a
similar restraint myself.

>>But, why all the fuss about monosyllabicity when Sanskrit provides us with
>>the next logical outcome of a language that, at an earlier stage, was
>>monovocalic (at least, phonemically).

>>Anything other than <Ca> in Sanskrit is a result of <Ca> + <H>, <w>, or <y>,
>>or a combination thereof. That is why Sanskrit does not bother to indicate an
>><Ca> in its writing system (only <C>). Only combinations of <Ca> + <?> *need*
>>to be indicated.

> Sanskrit was never monovocalic, phonologically speaking.

I disagree, strongly.

> There is more than one source, for example, of [e:]--see, for example, _dive
> dive_ "from day to day", where the first _dive_ is the expected sandhi
> variant of the ablative _divas_ "from (a) day".  Thus, again, your analysis
> fails to explain the facts.

In my opinion, this analysis of _dive dive_ is totally erroneous. This is
clearly a reduplicated dative.

Also, I am curious if you can cite a non-arguable ablative in -as that
becomes -e: in sandhi?

Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From edsel at glo.be  Thu May 13 10:16:59 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 12:16:59 +0200
Subject: IE thematic dual (Gothic <au>)
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.121659.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Subject: IE thematic dual

>On Mon, 10 May 1999, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

>[... (JER: Goth. ahtau has diphthongal form of them.dual., like Skt.
>as.t.au, ergo the -u was IE already:)]

>> The final <au> in Gothic is a spelling of [O], and does not bear on the
>> presence or absence of a final *-u in the Indo-European dual, nor is it
>> entirely clear that the word for '8' is a dual.

>But what can then be the source of the Goth. -au, how ever pronounced?
>Both *-o: and *-a: give Goth. <-a>.

[Ed Selleslagh]

May I add a very down-to-earth remark: in Antwerp Dutch dialect (of Frankish
origin), in certain positions (depending on the phonetic history of the
<o:>), <o:> is always pronounced <au>, like in 'auto' ('car'), pronounced
<ottau>; or 'over' (same as in English) ==> <auver>. Maybe the Goths did
exactly the same, and wrote it. [In other words with a different phonetic
history for the <o:>, it is pronounced <u:@>, like in 'lopen' ('to run')]

I do believe that present-day phonetic phenomena are relevant, even when
dealing with languages that died out many centuries ago, and especially when
these are related to the modern language.  Not all wisdom comes from
Sanskrit, which is not even a kentom language, and as such, in a way, one
step farther away from PIE, because of the satemization (I won't restart the
discussion about this term or the y>g>y issue).


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 13 13:47:52 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 15:47:52 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <13450628935.15.ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.154752.0200.>

On Tue, 11 May 1999, Rich Alderson wrote:

[snip]

>Sanskrit was never monovocalic, phonologically speaking.  There is more than
>one source, for example, of [e:]--see, for example, _dive dive_ "from day to
>day", where the first _dive_ is the expected sandhi variant of the ablative
>_divas_ "from (a) day".  Thus, again, your analysis fails to explain the
>facts.

But even so, the preform *divaz-dyvai, supposing it is correct (and it is
a _very_ good idea), may be analyzed as /dyvas-dyvay/ and so makes do with
only one phoneme that is always syllabic. Would you not agree that the
vowel was /a/ at one time - and still is synchronically in one stage of
abstraction - in both cases?

Jens


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 13 14:47:39 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 09:47:39 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.094739.0500.>

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 1999 1:02 PM

>   Pat said:

>   >To be explicit, I am saying that I think it is possible for Vgen to be
>   >reduplicated as *gen-Vgen, possibly through *VgenVgen.

> Thanks for the clarification.  Do you have any evidence of this happening
> elsewhere?

I know that this is a bit late in the game to be asking this question but
where did we get this Sanskrit form in the first place? I cannot find it in
Whitney's _Die Wurzeln, Verbalformen und Prima{"}ren Sta{"}mme der
Sanskrit-Sprache_.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 13 15:05:05 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:05:05 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <001201be9cb2$d19a1380$87142399@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.170505.0200.>

On Wed, 12 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> [ moderator re-formatted ]

> Dear Jens and IEists:

[ moderator snip ]

> Of all the arguments employed to explain divergent forms, analogy is surely
> the weakest because it implies a *mistake* on  the part of native speakers
> of the language. Were Sanskrit speakers all **childs**?

I'm sure all speakers of Sanskrit were children at one time. Aren't you
in effect dismissing the existence of analogy as a factor in language
change? In the case of the non-neuter dual, the Sanskrit form -a:(v)
corresponds fully with the evidence from the other languages, only
elsewhere the other stem-classes use a different morpheme that can
everywhere continue an IE *-e. So, the other languages distinguish
o-stems stems from non-o-stems in this point, Sanskrit does not. English
has -s in the genitive sg. and pl., most related languages only in the sg.
The two problems are quite parallel, and analogy is known to be the answer
in the latter case, what's wrong with suspecting in the former?

> Now, I have two questions:

> 1) If no IE syllable may begin with a vowel in a root, and affixes derive
> from grammaticalized morphemes, why should we expect any affix to originally
> be simply -V?

Oh boy. I'm not saying the non-neuter was _originally_ *-e, I'm saying it
was (o things look as if it was) in the IE protolanguage. I am not sure
there were no vowel-initial roots, it is mostly very hard to prove that
something as hazy as *H1 was not present. On the other hand, there is
absolute certainty that IE did have vowel-initial affixes. You may take
the gen.sg. ending, whether you want to posit as *-os or as *-es, there is
no place for "-Hos" or "-Hes"; the 3pl active ends in *-ent, certainly not
"-Hent" (I am speaking of the full forms, I know there as zero-grade
variants, but they are plainly derived from the fuller variants by rule).
As for the ultimate origin of the dual *-e, I have given that question a
good deal of thought, and perhaps we are not so far apart in this. Form a
purely IE point of view, the form *-e is odd in a point which seems ti
have caused no concern to anybody else, namely its being a strong case.
For strong and weak inflectional forms are normally (and I believe,
ultimately completely) distributed by a phonetic principle: The stress
simply shift one syllable towards the end of an inflected stem if the
added flexive has an underlying vowel. Thus, there is not stress shift
before *-m, *-s, *-t of the sg. active, for there is no syllable to go to,
and hense these are strong forms; by contrast before *-me, *-te, *-ent,
and those of the dual and the whole of the middle voice (e.g. *-H2e) there
is a stress shift, so these are weak forms. Likewise in declension, where
*-s, *-m, *-H2 and zero leave the accent where it was (strong forms),
while *-os, *-ey, *-VH1, *-oom, *-bhyos, *-bhis, *-su do cause the accent
to move (weak forms). Only the dual in *-e and the nom.pl. in *-es seem
reluctant to fall into line. I have managed to explain the nom.pl. *-es
from an earlier vowel-less sequence *-z-c (i.e., two different syllables,
one marking the nom., the other the pl., in that order, structurally
parallel with the acc.pl. in orig. *-m- + sibilant), the calculation
giving at the same time phonetic explanation of all the many other
oddities of the nom. pl. forms, esp. the type in *-'-or-es, *-'-on-es: Why
is the -o- not lost? Why is it o, not e? Why is it not long? Why has the e
not been lost? And, of course, why is the e not accented? All of this is
explained by **-z-c where there was no vowel to shift to: An unaccented
-e- is first reduced to -o-; then the nom. sibilant ("-z-") lengthens
(result now *-'-o:r-zc); then short unstressed vowel are lost (but this
form does not have any, so the rule operates vacuously here); the a long
vowel is shorted before word-final triconsonantal clusters containing the
nom. sibilant (result now *-'-or-zc, much like nom.sg. of prs.ptc.
**-ent-z, through **-ont-z and *-o:nt-z with length at the critical time
when short unaccented vowels were lost, is shortened to *-ont-z, PIE
*-onts); from *-'-or-zc to the actual *-'-or-es the road is short: it
takes a vowel insertion, and since we have no contrasting evidence to stop
us we may just postulate a change to *-'-or-ezc before the last step, the
well-known change of all sibilant clusters to plain /s/, creates the
IE output *-'-ores which everybody posits on different grounds already.
Thus encouraged, one would like to derive the dual *-e from something
ultimately in equal fashion. Now, since the pronouns make one posit /H3/
as the morpheme of the dual, one may simply toy with an older form in
*-H3. From a consonant stem like *H2ner- 'man', the form PIE *H2ne'r-e
would then have to be derived from an older form *H2ne'r-H3. This entails
the postulate that word-final *-H3 developed an auxiliary vowel after a
preceding consonant, i.e. went to *-eH3. I know of no IE words in
unaccented *-eH3, nor any words in *-C-H3, so the postulate that this gave
*-C-eH3 and then lost the H3 to yield IE *-e would contradict nothing we
know, and so could be correct. - Note, however, that even without this
possibility of a principled understanding I would still have to posit *-e,
for that is what the existing evidence gives you.

> 2) If view of what you have written below about length and its connection
> with open syllables, would you mind explaining why an open syllable seems
> sufficient grounds to you above to explain the length of Sanskrit <a:>?

Brugmann's law simply records the fact that IE short *-o- in an IE open
syllable turns up in Indo-Iranian with length, i.e. as IIr. /-a:-/. I see
no problem with such a phonetic rule pertaining to one of the IE braches.
In terms of phonetic naturalness, it is okay, for [o] is more sonorous tha
either [e] or [a], and open syllables do accord more space for lengthening
than closed ones, ergo, if only one of the three vowels e,a,o should come
out longer than the others, it would be o; and if it should be sensitive
to the syllable structure, it is expected to work better in open than in
closed syllables.

> >> He then proceeds to identify an inanimate (neuter) -*iH{1}.

> > He is right in that.

> Well, then it is incumbent upon you to provide the definitive argument for
> the existence of the "pure vowel" [i], which has eluded every IEist who has
> put his pen to it.

Neither Beekes nor I see the i of *-iH1 as underlyingly syllabic; in
phonemic terms it may just as well be given the notation *-yH1. And,
hurrah, it is a strong case, i.e. contains no underlying vowels.

> >> I would maintain that the great majority of the (animate and inanimate)
> >> forms can be more simply from *-y.

> > Not the ones we find, if they are to be treated by the phonetic rules we
> > normally accept.

> Well, generalizations are less than illuminating. Why not give a few
> examples if you believe this?

*H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e; u-stem. *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:. What
_is_  the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

[... (On "us two" in IE):]

> (JER:)

> > I'm not that much of an oracle, but my guess is *noH3 which stands to the
> > accented form *nH3we' as does *nos to *nsme', and in parallel fashion
> > *woH3 for 'you two' : accented form *uH3we' (apparently dissimilated to
> > *uH3e') which would match the 2pl *wos : *usme' - provided /m/ develops
> > into /w/ in the position after the dual marker /H3/.

> This is the least logical proposition that I have seen you advance. So
> enclitic *noH{3} just conveniently drops a *-we{'}? and *nos just drops an
> inconvenient *-me? and a stress-unaccented enclitic *woH{3} modifies its <w>
> to /u/ in *uH{3}we{'}? {3}.

> I think you are engaging in free association.

I'm trying to make sense of it all in a principled way that respects the
evidence of IE itself where there is some. It may be illogical to
abbreviate wordforms when forming enclitic variants of them, but many
languages plainly do that. It's like numerals and greetings, you get all
sorts of reduced shapes in allegro speech, since people already understand
the message at the beginning (sometimes even before). The Lithuanian
dative jam 'to him' is not from some enigmatic m-form in IE, its older
form was jamui, a perfectly regular dative, from which it has been
abbreviated by no known rule whatsoever.

Jens


From stevegus at aye.net  Thu May 13 14:56:20 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steven A. Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 10:56:20 -0400
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.105620.0400.>

> Moderator's comment:
>   When I lived in Connecticut, I met people who made a distinction between
>   "arse" and "ass" consistently, not as a learned item but in casual speech.

Which brings to mind the other question of the effect of language
taboos, that of taboo deformations.  "Heck is a place for people who
don't believe in Gosh," &c.

You would expect "arse" to yield something like /aas/, rather than /aes/
in most varieties of non-rhotic English, since /ae/ does not seem to be
possible before /r/ for most people, and in most brands of non-rhotic
American, at least, the lingering influence of /r/ still prevents it
from appearing.  My understanding is that the /ae/ > /a/ or /aa/ that
marks southern British English only occurs before /s/, /z/, /th/, /f/,
and perhaps a couple more, but not /r/.  This might be another taboo
deformation.

Back when I was in college, it was widely held that you had to make
special exceptions to ordinary rules of phonetic development for words
like "wolf," because they were worship-words that were deliberately
changed.  I don't have Beekes in front of me, but I seem to recall being
somewhat surprised when he discussed a number of these words and made no
reference to this hypothesis.  Is it no longer needed?

Steven A. Gustafson, attorney at law
Fox & Cotner:  PHONE (812) 945 9600   FAX (812) 945 9615
http://www.foxcotner.com

Sports only build character if you are the kid nobody wants on
their team.


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 13 16:09:32 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 18:09:32 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <002301be9cb7$acc51d20$87142399@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.180932.0200.>

On Wed, 12 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> Dear Jens and IEists:

>  ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
> Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 5:50 PM

> > On Sat, 1 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> >> What is so "intangible" about supposing that *te is the basal form, that
> >> there was an inflection - *-wV which produced -*twe, and that the original
> >> significance of -*twe being lost, both forms came into use as bases for
> >> other forms but with a bias towards the form with -*wV for the nominative
> >> (through its former topical use): -*tu/u:?

> > That you have to postulate a change before you even start.

> And what change is that?

The change in function. Quite often theories are rejected because they are
"ad hoc", the assumption being that in principle anyone can explain
anything if he is allowed to make the necessary extra assumptions. Still,
the easiest ad hoc solution ought at least to be specified, so as to be
evaluated on its own merits and to be kept in mind reconsideration in
case additional evidence later emerges. But you theory is not "ad hoc", it
is "ad aliud": it simply explains something different from what we find.
To be of interest, such a theory must have something _very_ elegant and
simplyfing about it, otherwise there is hardly a chance it could be true.

> > You are disqualifying the evidence which points in a different
> > direction than you want to go.

> I am discounting an alternate interpretation of the evidence.

That may be put down as a plea of guilty.

> > And it is _very_ unsatisfactory to have the preform of *swe 'oneself, sich'
> > be a nominative.

> Well, perhaps it your view but not in Pokorny's, where we find *swe listed
> under *se as *s(e)we, and "*se- und *s(e)we-, Reflexivpronomen fu{"}r alle
> Personen, Gechlechter und Numeri".  *swe means simply 'self', and, as such,
> is no case-dependent as compounds like *s(w)e-bh(o)- surely show (cf. also
> Armenian <in-kn>).

Pokorny also knew that sich, se, sego did not form a nominative. The lack
of "Kasus" in the enumeration of the global function of the pronoun is
eloquent. - That derivatives or compounds containing the reflexive stem
can occur in all cases is a consequence of the complex meaning of the
result and does not reflect a nominative case meaning of the reflexive
itself. By the same logic, you might say that Lat. no:s 'we, us' could be
the singular, just because there is a derivative noster that can be used
in all the forms an adjective can have.

> >>> [On Gk. mo:^mar : amu:'mo:n as reflecting *mwoH-/*muH-:]

> >>> And, are you asserting, that IE *mow(V)- could *not* result in Gk.
> >>> mo:{^}-?

> > Of course I am.

> Then, of course, you are wrong in view of Greek <no:{^}i>.

I have never derived Gk. no:^i 'us two' from any IE or post-IE preform
with *now(V)-. I have derived the acc. no:^e from *nH3we via
Proto-Gk. *no:we, this equating the form with the IIr. stem /a:va(-)/.

Jens


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu May 13 16:32:56 1999
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max W Wheeler)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:32:56 +0100
Subject: Taboo replacements
In-Reply-To: <l03130305b35f502a2d5d@[207.120.3.58]>
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.173256.0100.>

On Wed, 12 May 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> That is true but "athletic supporters" are still called "jock straps" in
> America

[snip]

> [ Moderator's comment:
>   I think the two writers are actually saying the same thing:  Were the word
>   "jock" still in (common) use in the meaning "penis", it would not have been
>   extended to the meaning "athlete" no matter what an athletic supporter was
>   called.
>   --rma ]

Athletic supports are called jock straps in British English too, but
until this correspondence I had no idea why (which sort of supports
rma's point).

Max
___________________________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975; fax: +44 (0)1273 671320
___________________________________________________________________________


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu May 13 16:43:49 1999
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max W Wheeler)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:43:49 +0100
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <l03130306b35f5246ac0a@[207.120.3.58]>
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.174349.0100.>

On Wed, 12 May 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> a gandul is a "pigeon pea" and is about half the size of a sweet pea
> I think it's only used as "lazy" in Spanish slang and I seem to remember
> seeing it used that way in literature of the Siglo de Oro --but it's been
> many years since I've read that stuff

<Gandul> doesn't seem to be slang in contemporary European Spanish, nor
does it seem to have the meaning `pigeon pea' there. García de Diego
says it's from Arabic <gandur> `majo' (I haven't got Corominas DCEH
handy).

BTW <gandula> is `deck-chair' in Catalan; a nice metonymy.

Max
___________________________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975; fax: +44 (0)1273 671320
___________________________________________________________________________


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Thu May 13 17:30:50 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 12:30:50 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.123050.0500.>

Pat Ryan wrote, concerning whether PIE [e] etc. were phonemic:

>>> Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>>> difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

I replied:

>> More precisely, we must say that it *could indicate* a semantic difference.
>> In English, /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct, even though _either_
>> means the same no matter how it is pronounced in that word.  Nor do they
>> indicate a semantic difference in the context /l_t/, there being no word
>> *_leet_ to contrast with _light_.  It's the semantic difference between
>> _meet_ and _might_ that shows that /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct;
>> we cannot say that phonemes ever *produce* a semantic difference.

Pat responded:

>Well, there is no set of relationships in IE wherein *CeC is semantically
>different from *Ce{sub}C. That, IMHO, demonstrates conclusively that
>[e/e{sub}] is not phonemic.

With Lehmann, I agree that [e e{sub}] were originally allophones of a single
phoneme, however that phoneme must be analyzed.  But the stress system of
(pre)-PIE changed, and that changed things greatly.  At one point, [e{sub}] was
a predictable variant of [e] under weak stress.  But later, the occurrence of
[e] and [e{sub}] was no longer predictable.  More than meaning, it is the
*unpredictability* of one form or another that requires them to be analyzed as
separate phonemes.  Once speakers could no longer know from the stress pattern
of a word which to say, it was one more fact to be remembered about the word --
which in systems which understand phonemes as *psychological* entities,
(essentially, all post-structuralist systems), is sufficient. -- Needless to
say, the contrast was not instantly exploited for semantic purposes, at least
in the sense that new roots were introduced which differed from alreathy
existing roots precisely because one had [e], one [e{sub}].  But quantitative
ablaut came to play a very large role in the verb system, as well as in the
declension of certain nominal types.  Germanic strong verbs (called "irregular"
in English) exploit ablaut to this day.  The reflexes of the difference do not
differentiate roots, but they still differentiate verb tenses.  That would be
impossible if they weren't separate phonemes!

(I should add, by the way, that most Indo-Europeanists reject /e{sub}/, and
apparantly also [e{sub}].  But the reason is what they see as lack of evidence
for it, not some theoretical problem.)

>As for [e:], I do not believe it is an allophone
>but rather the product of *He/e{sub}.

This just plain won't work.  Consider the word for 'father' in Greek and
Sanstrit:
			Greek		Sanskrit
	Nominative	pate:'r		pita:
	Genitive	patro's		pituh.
	Dative		patri'		pitre:
	Accusative	pate'ra		pitaram
	Vocative	pa'ter		pitah.

Surely the long vowel of the nominative  cannot derive from /He/: if so, at
least the accusative and vocative should have shown the same development.  The
[e:] of which Lehmann speaks is traditional PIE lengthened grade.  It occurs in
specific morphological forms, in part old, in part through later extension
(verb tenses in many languages).  It has nothing to do with laryngeals;
although I grant that sequences VH yield V: in many forms in many IE languages.
(HV normally yields a short vowel, not a long one, except in Sanskrit, which
has an abnormal number of long vowel reflexes.  "Laryngeal metathesis" seems
likely for Sanskrit, but (peace, brethren and sisteren!) not elsewhere.

[my stuff on Lehmann's /^/ omitted]

>Leo, c'mon. Give Lehmann a break. He used "phoneme" for "syllabicity" because
>there really was not a recognized term then for his analyzed parts of /"^/,
>realized as [e].

I didn't object to Lehmann's calling /^/ a phoneme.  Like any good
structuralist or post-structuralist, I accept the idea that some phonemes are
non-segmental.  My objection is only to his claim that /^/ was, for some
reason, non-segmental.  Only his notion that there were originally no other
vowel phonemes could possibly support such a claim, and even then it's
unacceptable for all sorts of other reasons.

Someone wrote:

>>>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg
>>>> in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does
>>>> not detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

Pat replied:

>>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

I responded:

>> Won't work.  Consider the perfect active, where the 3.sg. desinence is PIE
>> -e, but the stress was on the root (as demonstrated by accent in Greek and
>> Sanskrit and failure of Verner's Law to operate on Germanic preterite
>> singular forms, though the plurals were affected; ...

Pat suggested:

>As for the 3rd sg. perfect active, -e is understandable on the same principle
>if we consider the earlier form to have been -e: (from *-He), reduced to -e in
>a stress-unaccented syllable.

I know of no evidence for a laryngeal there -- and one piece of evidence
against.  Skt. _cakara_ 'I have done' reflects PIE _*kwe-kwor-Ae_, where A is
an a-coloring laryngeal.  The short -a- of the root, where -a:- would be
expected by Brugmann's Law, is often taken as evidence for a laryngeal in the
desinence: Brugmann's Law operated only on -o- in open syllables.  But the
3.sg. is _caka:ra_ < *_kew-kwor-e_ -- Brugmann's law operated in the open
syllable.  (Not all accept this argument: the 1.sg. can have -a:-, presumably
by analogy, and some deny Brugmann's Law altogether.  But in any event I know
of no evidence *for* a laryngeal there.  Do you have any?)

>>> IMHO, the morpheme for the second and third persons, containing <t>, has
>>> a unitary origin: *T{H}O, 'tribe-member'.

>> Given the tone of recent discussions, I'd best not say what I think of that
>> proposal.

>If you have *reasons* for rejecting this as a possibility, do not hesitate to
>let us all know.

Indeed I do.  You are, in effect, positing a nominal stem (not pronominal, if
it has the meaning you attribute to it) which is shorter than any other in the
language.  Or do you mean the pronoun underlying Lat. _is-tu-d_, Gk. _to-d_,
English _tha-t_ (the dental is a pronominal desinence)?  And what is {H} in
your reconstruction?  Without a lot of explanation, your reconstruction (and in
particular your gloss) cannot be accepted.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu May 13 20:24:17 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 21:24:17 +0100
Subject: arse & ass
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.212417.0100.>

> [ Moderator's comment:
>   When I lived in Connecticut, I met people who made a distinction between
>   "arse" and "ass" consistently, not as a learned item but in casual speech.
>   --rma ]

NZ English distinguishes between the two in casual speech as well - but in a
school of mine there was a Scottish teacher who used to pronounce "ass" the
way I would pronounce "arse".   So we seem to have:
(a) dialects with /&/ for both
(b) dialects with /a/ for both
(c) dialects which distinguish them;  but different dialects may distinguish
different groups of words.   For example, my ancient and decidedly RP
rhyming dictionary gives only "farce" and "sparse" for the sound I use for
"arse".   It rhymes crass, gas, lass, mass  (in my speech all with /&/) with
grass, brass, class, pass, glass (in my speech all with /a/).

Peter


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 13 22:27:53 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 00:27:53 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905131742580.13194-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <FRI.14.MAY.1999.002753.0200.>

On Thu, 13 May 1999, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote:

[In a reply mail to Patrick C. Ryan]

> Pokorny also knew that sich, se, sego did not form a nominative. [...]

Trying to avoid kicking up a storm: Did I write sego? Sorry, I meant
sebja.

Jens


From Anthony.Appleyard at umist.ac.uk  Fri May 14 07:04:21 1999
From: Anthony.Appleyard at umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 08:04:21 +0100
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <FRI.14.MAY.1999.080421.0100.>

In discussion re `ass' = "donkey" and also being the USA word for UK
"arse",
Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:-

> So why didn't this word's homonym come into American English as "arse"
> with an /R/?  Was <ass> "buttocks" borrowed from later British English or
> from New England or Southern English?

> [ Moderator's comment:
> When I lived in Connecticut, I met people who made a distinction between
> "arse" and "ass" consistently, not as a learned item but in casual speech.
>  --rma ]

I heard once of a German word `assloch' = "anus". Perhaps there is
influence here from German immigrants: compare the USA English word
"burg" = "town" taken from German, and a USA habit of mispronouncing UK
placenames ending in "-burgh" as if they were spelt "-burg".

And in the case of the English word "hart" becoming disused, as in
previous discussion, there is also an ambiguity-causing homophony with
"heart" here to affect matters.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Sat May 15 19:03:34 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 15:03:34 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <SAT.15.MAY.1999.150334.EDT.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Quote me in full and it will be obvious that I wasn't talking about the
>intention to invent a language.

-- you spoke of the "invention" of German, didn't you?

>The intention is first of all to communicate.  The intentionally refers to
>the objective not the means.

-- nobody said "let's communicate!" either.

Humans communicate the way horses run and tigers stalk.  It's what we do.

>All they needed was to percieve and intend to communicate in another way.

-- they didn't do that, either.  All they intended to do was talk, and they
did -- and you can talk just as effectively in any language, in any era of
the human race.

Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.


From wirix at tin.it  Sat May 15 20:40:51 1999
From: wirix at tin.it (Wilmer "Xelloss" Ricciotti)
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 22:40:51 +0200
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905121703390.1522-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <SAT.15.MAY.1999.224051.0200.>

In latin we have the following perfects, depending on the verb:

- a 'weak' perfect obtained in the most verbs using the -vi/-ui
characteristic (and the first question I have is: where does this
characteristic come from? is it cognate to the *wos/*ws characteristic
we have in greek perfect participles (lelykos, lelykyia, lelykos <
lely-kWOS, lely-kWSja, lely-kWOS))?

- a sigmatic perfect ('scripsi' from 'scribo'), which comes from the old
aorist

- a perfect obtained using the 'doubling' (I don't know if it's the
correct term in english) ('mo-mordi' from 'mordeo', 'de-di' from 'do'),
which is a typical indoeuropean characteristic for the perfect

- perfects obtained by lenghtening a vowel in the stem ('lEgi' from
'lego') or without characteristic ('lui' from 'luo')

- perfects obtained from a different stem ('fui' from 'sum')

What I can't understand is the criterion which was used to choose for
the new pefect an aorist form instead of a perfect one and vice versa.
Where does the -i ending for the 1st pers. sing. in the perfect come
from? In greek we have -a in the perfect as well as in the aorist and in
forms completely cognate to latin ones as 'oida' (< woid-a) is to
'vid-i' (< void-i) or as 'fe-ci' is to'(e)the-ka' ('cappatic' aorist
from tithemi) (here latin conserves even the -k-, and extends it to the
present tense).

Where does the (archaic) -ere ending for the 3rd pers. pl. in the
perfect come from? I've been told that -ere is the old perfect ending,
while -erunt is the old aorist one...

Well I think that's all, at the moment.

Bye
--
Wilmer Ricciotti - Italy
wirix at tin.it


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Sat May 15 23:11:50 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 01:11:50 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <000c01be9d0c$7e2561a0$3d9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.011150.0200.>

>> Sanskrit was never monovocalic, phonologically speaking.

>I disagree, strongly.

>Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

>Pat

Since the ante-voiced sandhi form of -as is -o Pat is right in finding -e
simply incredible. But I also find the idea of "monovocalic Sanskrit"
hair-raising.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Sun May 16 23:25:57 1999
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 19:25:57 -0400
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.192557.0400.>

>The intention behind wheel was not to make a wheel or make a new kind of
>wheel.  The intention behind the wheel was transportation.

>What logically must drive language is the goal of communication.  No one had
>to say let's invent Middle English.  All they needed was to percieve and
>intend to communicate in another way.

>Form follows function.

Actually, it's the other way round.    people tool around inventng all sorts
of gadgets, most of which are lost with their inventors.  Wheels were
invented all over the world.  Everywhere people were faced with "OK, what
are we going to use this for?" once they'd "invented" a given artefact.  It
was only in areas with large domesticable animals, which could pull loads
many tmes larger than what a human could do,  that people found a "use" for
what had started out as a clever toy (the wheel), and remained so in many
parts of the world. (see Diamond, "Guns, Germs, and Steel").

The same phenomenon often happens in linguistic change - oftne distinctions
arise, and different functions have to be found for them (cf. English of and
off, the -a/-u genitive alternaton in Polish (see Janda "Back from the
Brink" fro an excellent exposition).

Function often follows form.


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sun May 16 03:27:26 1999
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 23:27:26 -0400
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <SAT.15.MAY.1999.232726.0400.>

Nik Taylor wrote:

> Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>> So why didn't this word's homonym come into American English as
>> "arse" with an /R/?

> It's my understanding that "ass" began as a *euphemism* for "arse",
> which later disappeared from most dialects of American English.

As I understand it, 'ass' /&s/ is a relic of sporadic early (15th c.)
/r/-loss evidenced by such forms as <Dasset> 'Dorset' and inverted
spellings like <farther> 'father' in the Cely papers.  'Arse' /A:s/, on
the other hand, shows the later (17th - 18th c.) southeast English
/r/-loss following the vowel lengthening before /rC/ and /r#/.

Peter wrote:

> NZ English distinguishes between the two in casual speech as well - but in a
> school of mine there was a Scottish teacher who used to pronounce "ass" the
> way I would pronounce "arse".

I believe that the RP long-short contrast /A:/ - /&/ is neutralized to
/a/ in Scots Standard English.

Brian M. Scott


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Sun May 16 04:45:36 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 23:45:36 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <SAT.15.MAY.1999.234536.0500.>

>I heard once of a German word `assloch' = "anus".

The German word is _Arschloch_ with /s^/.  The /r/ is weak, but distinguishable
from *Aschloch 'ash hole'.

(Since this is a historical list, after all, I should point out that the German
word is now vulgar but was once respectable.  It appears in Old High German as
_arsloh_, used to gloss Latin _anus_.)

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From ek at idiom.com  Sun May 16 05:09:47 1999
From: ek at idiom.com (ek)
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 22:09:47 -0700
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <SAT.15.MAY.1999.220947.0700.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Well, until this discussion I had always thought that jock straps were worn by
jocks (football players etc) which also supports his point.
-eva

On Thursday, May 13, 1999 9:33 AM, Max W Wheeler [SMTP:maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk]
wrote:

> On Wed, 12 May 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>> [ Moderator's comment:
>>   I think the two writers are actually saying the same thing:  Were the word
>>   "jock" still in (common) use in the meaning "penis", it would not have
>>   been extended to the meaning "athlete" no matter what an athletic
>>   supporter was called.
>>   --rma ]

> Athletic supports are called jock straps in British English too, but
> until this correspondence I had no idea why (which sort of supports
> rma's point).

> Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>

[ moderator snip ]


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun May 16 14:59:58 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 09:59:58 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.095958.0500.>

Dear Anthony and IEists:

[ moderator snip ]

In actual usage among German immigrants in the USA, I have heard only
<Arschloch>.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun May 16 16:35:38 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 11:35:38 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.113538.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 1999 10:05 AM

> On Wed, 12 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>> Of all the arguments employed to explain divergent forms, analogy is surely
>> the weakest because it implies a *mistake* on the part of native speakers of
>> the language. Were Sanskrit speakers all **childs**?

> I'm sure all speakers of Sanskrit were children at one time. Aren't you
> in effect dismissing the existence of analogy as a factor in language
> change?

No, I am not. What I tried to do is to suggest that 'analogy' as an
explanation is to be *least* preferred because each "mistake" is sui
generis; no "mistake" implies that another mistake *will* be made only that
it *might * be made,

> In the case of the non-neuter dual, the Sanskrit form -a:(v)
> corresponds fully with the evidence from the other languages, only
> elsewhere the other stem-classes use a different morpheme that can
> everywhere continue an IE *-e.

That, IMHO, is a big "ONLY"; "correspond" means something a little more
restrictive to me. I fail to see how OCS C-st. -i, and u-stem -y  (for nom.
masc./fem.) "corresponds".

> So, the other languages distinguish o-stems stems from non-o-stems in this
> point, Sanskrit does not. English has -s in the genitive sg. and pl., most
> related languages only in the sg.  The two problems are quite parallel, and
> analogy is known to be the answer in the latter case, what's wrong with
> suspecting in the former?

There is nothing wrong with a suspicion that is in keeping with the data.

>> Now, I have two questions:

>> 1) If no IE syllable may begin with a vowel in a root, and affixes derive
>> from grammaticalized morphemes, why should we expect any affix to originally
>> be simply -V?

> Oh boy. I'm not saying the non-neuter was _originally_ *-e, I'm saying it
> was (o things look as if it was) in the IE protolanguage. I am not sure
> there were no vowel-initial roots, it is mostly very hard to prove that
> something as hazy as *H1 was not present. On the other hand, there is
> absolute certainty that IE did have vowel-initial affixes. You may take
> the gen.sg. ending, whether you want to posit as *-os or as *-es, there is
> no place for "-Hos" or "-Hes";

Sorry that I did not make clear that my objection to *-e was principally
directed towards the termination of the perfect. Beekes reconstructs most
dual forms as containing [H{1}] and, formwise, I have no problem with that.
As for the genitive, I reconstruct *-s(V), with the final vowel falling off
due to stress-accent of a preceding syllable: "Ce/oC + sV -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

> the 3pl active ends in *-ent, certainly not "-Hent" (I am speaking of the
> full forms, I know there are zero-grade variants, but they are plainly
> derived from the fuller variants by rule).  As for the ultimate origin of the
> dual *-e, I have given that question a good deal of thought, and perhaps we
> are not so far apart in this. From a purely IE point of view, the form *-e is
> odd in a point which seems to have caused no concern to anybody else, namely
> its being a strong case.  For strong and weak inflectional forms are normally
> (and I believe, ultimately completely) distributed by a phonetic principle:
> The stress simply shifts one syllable towards the end of an inflected stem if
> the added flexive has an underlying vowel. Thus, there is not stress shift
> before *-m, *-s, *-t of the sg. active, for there is no syllable to go to,
> and hence these are strong forms; by contrast before *-me, *-te, *-ent, and
> those of the dual and the whole of the middle voice (e.g. *-H2e) there is a
> stress shift, so these are weak forms. Likewise in declension, where *-s,
> *-m, *-H2 and zero leave the accent where it was (strong forms), while *-os,
> *-ey, *-VH1, *-oom, *-bhyos, *-bhis, *-su do cause the accent to move (weak
> forms). Only the dual in *-e and the nom.pl. in *-es seem reluctant to fall
> into line. I have managed to explain the nom.pl. *-es from an earlier
> vowel-less sequence *-z-c (i.e., two different syllables, one marking the
> nom., the other the pl., in that order, structurally parallel with the
> acc.pl. in orig. *-m- + sibilant),

Why not simply *-s(V)s(v)?

> the calculation giving at the same time phonetic explanation of all the many
> other oddities of the nom. pl. forms, esp. the type in *-'-or-es, *-'-on-es:
> Why is the -o- not lost? Why is it o, not e? Why is it not long? Why has the
> e not been lost? And, of course, why is the e not accented?

There is no doubt that these are all good questions.

> All of this is explained by **-z-c where there was no vowel to shift to: An
> unaccented -e- is first reduced to -o-; then the nom. sibilant ("-z-")
> lengthens (result now *-'-o:r-zc); then short unstressed vowel are lost (but
> this form does not have any, so the rule operates vacuously here); the a long
> vowel is shorted before word-final triconsonantal clusters

For some languages, perhaps. But for IE, a tri-consonantal cluster of this
form is not likely to have been a realized phenomenon at *any* stage of IE.

> containing the nom. sibilant (result now *-'-or-zc, much like nom.sg. of
> prs.ptc.  **-ent-z, through **-ont-z and *-o:nt-z with length at the critical
> time when short unaccented vowels were lost, is shortened to *-ont-z, PIE
> *-onts); from *-'-or-zc to the actual *-'-or-es the road is short: it takes a
> vowel insertion, and since we have no contrasting evidence to stop us we may
> just postulate a change to *-'-or-ezc before the last step, the well-known
> change of all sibilant clusters to plain /s/, creates the IE output *-'-ores
> which everybody posits on different grounds already.

For whatever it may be worth, on the strength of comparative data (which
most will not accept), I do not believe the genitive -s and plural -s had a
voicing contrast, rather an earlier difference of vowel: plural /so/;
genitive /se/.

> Thus encouraged, one would like to derive the dual *-e from something
> ultimately in equal fashion. Now, since the pronouns make one posit /H3/
> as the morpheme of the dual, one may simply toy with an older form in
> *-H3.

I do not believe that the data "make" us posit /H{3}/ as a dual formant.

> From a consonant stem like *H2ner- 'man', the form PIE *H2ne'r-e would then
> have to be derived from an older form *H2ne'r-H3. This entails the postulate
> that word-final *-H3 developed an auxiliary vowel after a preceding
> consonant, i.e. went to *-eH3. I know of no IE words in unaccented *-eH3, nor
> any words in *-C-H3, so the postulate that this gave *-C-eH3 and then lost
> the H3 to yield IE *-e would contradict nothing we know, and so could be
> correct. - Note, however, that even without this possibility of a principled
> understanding I would still have to posit *-e, for that is what the existing
> evidence gives you.

I think one important factor that should be considered in these equations is
the example Beekes gives on p. 195 of Greek <o{'}sse>, 'pair of eyes', which
he derives from *ok{w}-iH{1} THROUGH *ok{w}-ye. We could, just as easily,
posit a dual in -y and forget about the laryngeal.

>> 2) If view of what you have written below about length and its connection
>> with open syllables, would you mind explaining why an open syllable seems
>> sufficient grounds to you above to explain the length of Sanskrit <a:>?

> Brugmann's law simply records the fact that IE short *-o- in an IE open
> syllable turns up in Indo-Iranian with length, i.e. as IIr. /-a:-/. I see
> no problem with such a phonetic rule pertaining to one of the IE branches.
> In terms of phonetic naturalness, it is okay, for [o] is more sonorous than
> either [e] or [a], and open syllables do accord more space for lengthening
> than closed ones, ergo, if only one of the three vowels e,a,o should come
> out longer than the others, it would be o; and if it should be sensitive
> to the syllable structure, it is expected to work better in open than in
> closed syllables.

This is interesting speculation but I believe that IE displays far more -a:-
than -o:-. Is that not true?

>>>> He then proceeds to identify an inanimate (neuter) -*iH{1}.

>>> He is right in that.

>> Well, then it is incumbent upon you to provide the definitive argument for
>> the existence of the "pure vowel" [i], which has eluded every IEist who has
>> put his pen to it.

> Neither Beekes nor I see the i of *-iH1 as underlyingly syllabic;

If there is a school that does not accept /i/ as syllabic, I suggest you
think about changing schools.

> in phonemic terms it may just as well be given the notation *-yH1. And,
> hurrah, it is a strong case, i.e. contains no underlying vowels.

In view of Sanskrit o-stem <yuge:{'}>, I am not sure what the cause for
jubilation is.

>>>> I would maintain that the great majority of the (animate and inanimate)
>>>> forms can be more simply from *-y.

>>> Not the ones we find, if they are to be treated by the phonetic rules we
>>> normally accept.

I claim to accept every established phonetic rule that you do but we differ
in their application.

>> Well, generalizations are less than illuminating. Why not give a few
>> examples if you believe this?

> *H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e;

In view of Gk. o{'}sse, why not?

u-stem. *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

> What _is_ the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

The majority of the attested forms, there being no /i/ in IE..

> [... (On "us two" in IE):]

>> (JER:)

>>> I'm not that much of an oracle, but my guess is *noH3 which stands to the
>>> accented form *nH3we' as does *nos to *nsme', and in parallel fashion *woH3
>>> for 'you two' : accented form *uH3we' (apparently dissimilated to *uH3e')
>>> which would match the 2pl *wos : *usme' - provided /m/ develops into /w/ in
>>> the position after the dual marker /H3/.

>> This is the least logical proposition that I have seen you advance. So
>> enclitic *noH{3} just conveniently drops a *-we{'}? and *nos just drops an
>> inconvenient *-me? and a stress-unaccented enclitic *woH{3} modifies its <w>
>> to /u/ in *uH{3}we{'}? {3}.

>> I think you are engaging in free association.

> I'm trying to make sense of it all in a principled way that respects the
> evidence of IE itself where there is some.

IMHO, this is the least principled of your arguments heretofore --- some of
which, however, are thought-provoking and interesting.

> It may be illogical to abbreviate wordforms when forming enclitic variants of
> them, but many languages plainly do that.

Not in my opinion. I believe that emphatic variants are marked by expansions
of the underlying forms found in enclitics.

> It's like numerals and greetings, you get all sorts of reduced shapes in
> allegro speech, since people already understand the message at the beginning
> (sometimes even before).

Some holes do not improve with additional digging.

> The Lithuanian dative jam 'to him' is not from some enigmatic m-form in IE,
> its older form was jamui, a perfectly regular dative, from which it has been
> abbreviated by no known rule whatsoever.

I prefer to think that there is no enigma involved in *me; that it was
expanded in some languages by H{1}e- for semantic distinctiveness and
perhaps emphasis; that a topical  (and later, simply more distinctive) form
of *me was *mew (seen in Hittite -mu); and that this (once) inflected form
was *also* expanded by H{1}e-, and finally inflected for the dative (-ei),
producing jamui. I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun May 16 17:15:14 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 12:15:14 -0500
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.121514.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 1999 11:09 AM

[ moderator snip ]

<snip>

> > And what change is that?
>
> The change in function. Quite often theories are rejected because they are
> "ad hoc", the assumption being that in principle anyone can explain
> anything if he is allowed to make the necessary extra assumptions. Still,
> the easiest ad hoc solution ought at least to be specified, so as to be
> evaluated on its own merits and to be kept in mind reconsideration in
> case additional evidence later emerges. But your theory is not "ad hoc", it
> is "ad aliud": it simply explains something different from what we find.
> To be of interest, such a theory must have something _very_ elegant and
> simplyfing about it, otherwise there is hardly a chance it could be true.

I believe, with Beekes, that IE was once an ergative language; and that the
absolutive form in IE was -0. I assume that the attested accusative *te
maintains the form of the absolute before the introduction of animate
accusatives in -m. In the datives *toi and *tebh(e)i, we see it retained
also. If *tu/u: were the underlying form, we should expect **twi and
*tubh(e)i generally (although this probably explains the Greek forms, e.g.
in s-.

Additionally, the Hittite enclitics -du and -ta clearly point to an early
competition between the basal forms (-ta from *te) and the expanded form
(-du from *twe).

If IE had a topical inflection in -w, it is precisely among the conservative
pronouns that we would expect it to manifest itself.

>>> You are disqualifying the evidence which points in a different
>>> direction than you want to go.

>> I am discounting an alternate interpretation of the evidence.

> That may be put down as a plea of guilty.

That may be characterized as a Star Court proceeding.

>>> And it is _very_ unsatisfactory to have the preform of *swe 'oneself,
>>> sich' be a nominative.

>> Well, perhaps it your view but not in Pokorny's, where we find *swe listed
>> under *se as *s(e)we, and "*se- und *s(e)we-, Reflexivpronomen fu{"}r alle
>> Personen, Gechlechter und Numeri".  *swe means simply 'self', and, as such,
>> is not case-dependent as compounds like *s(w)e-bh(o)- surely show (cf. also
>> Armenian <in-kn>).

> Pokorny also knew that sich, se, sego did not form a nominative. The lack
> of "Kasus" in the enumeration of the global function of the pronoun is
> eloquent. -

Do not confuse dependence with function. "I myself am going". Is "myself"
not a nominative depending on another nominative?

> That derivatives or compounds containing the reflexive stem
> can occur in all cases is a consequence of the complex meaning of the
> result and does not reflect a nominative case meaning of the reflexive
> itself.

I think you should read Pokorny's definition again: "urspru{"}nglich
'abseits, getrennt, fu{"}r sich', DANN Reflexivpronomen..."

> By the same logic, you might say that Lat. no:s 'we, us' could be the
> singular, just because there is a derivative noster that can be used in all
> the forms an adjective can have.

I hope I never succumb to such a logic.

 <snip>

>> Then, of course, you are wrong in view of Greek <no:{^}i>.

> I have never derived Gk. no:^i 'us two' from any IE or post-IE preform
> with *now(V)-. I have derived the acc. no:^e from *nH3we via
> Proto-Gk. *no:we, this equating the form with the IIr. stem /a:va(-)/.

My dictionary shows <no:{^}e> *only* as a poetic variant of <no:{^}i>. Do
you have different information?

I reject unequivocally your H{3} as a part of the reconstruction.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun May 16 19:38:11 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 14:38:11 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.143811.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 1999 12:30 PM

<snip>

Leo writes:

> With Lehmann, I agree that [e e{sub}] were originally allophones of a single
> phoneme, however that phoneme must be analyzed.  But the stress system of
> (pre)-PIE changed, and that changed things greatly.  At one point, [e{sub}]
> was a predictable variant of [e] under weak stress.  But later, the
> occurrence of [e] and [e{sub}] was no longer predictable.  More than meaning,
> it is the *unpredictability* of one form or another that requires them to be
> analyzed as separate phonemes.

Pat responds:

I think a useful distinction to be made is whether we *can* predict the
occurences --- limited by our imperfect understanding of the
stress-accentual fluctuations  ---  and --- if we had a better understanding
of them, whether we could predict them.

Leo continues:

> Once speakers could no longer know from the stress pattern of a word which to
> say, it was one more fact to be remembered about the word -- which in systems
> which understand phonemes as *psychological* entities, (essentially, all
> post-structuralist systems), is sufficient.

Pat responds:

Whether we can "know" and whether the speakers then could have known is,
again, to me, two separate questions.


Leo continues:

> -- Needless to say, the contrast was not instantly exploited for semantic
> purposes, at least in the sense that new roots were introduced which differed
> from already existing roots precisely because one had [e], one [e{sub}].  But
> quantitative ablaut came to play a very large role in the verb system, as
> well as in the declension of certain nominal types.  Germanic strong verbs
> (called "irregular" in English) exploit ablaut to this day.  The reflexes of
> the difference do not differentiate roots, but they still differentiate verb
> tenses.  That would be impossible if they weren't separate phonemes!

Pat responds:

This is one of those questions in which it is hard to decide if the dog is
chasing his tail or the tail is teasing the dog.

On a non-IE scenario, a phoneme can easily be identified as marking a
semantic difference: English cat / cot.

In IE, we simply do not find that CeC is a semantically different morpheme
from CoC. Now, as you have rightly identified, these variations *do* mark
grammatical distinctions. You obviously prefer to define forms indicating
different grammatical employments as semantically different; I do not
because, if we did, we would be forced to say that cat / cats  are
*semantically* different. I do not think you would be willing to go this
far, would you?

 <snip>

Pat comments:

>> As for [e:], I do not believe it is an allophone but rather the product of
>> *He/e{sub}.

Leo answers:

> This just plain won't work.  Consider the word for 'father' in Greek and
> Sanstrit:
> Greek Sanskrit
> Nominative pate:'r pita:
> Genitive patro's pituh.
> Dative patri' pitre:
> Accusative pate'ra pitaram
> Vocative pa'ter pitah.

Pat argues:

I have no reason to think that the analysis of this word is other than as a
compound of the root plus the suffix of the nomina agentis -ter (not
**te:r).

Leo continues:

> Surely the long vowel of the nominative  cannot derive from /He/: if so,
> at least the accusative and vocative should have shown the same development.

Pat interjects:

Correct, I do not believe that the e: of this word derives from /He/; I also
do not believe it is original. In view of *ma:te{'}r, and in view of the
fact that we have no IE root of the form *p6-, considering that *p6te:{'}r
is obviously an analogous formation, I believe the likeliest scenario for
the long vowel is a metathesis of laryngeal (or, just simply, the feature
length): *pV:(H)-ter -> *p(6)-te:r.  On the basis, the /e:/ is simply an
allophone of /e/, hence, cannot be phonemic. If the long vowel of the
nominative were original rather than a result of easily understood
phonlogical developments, it *would* show up as more than -0- in, e.g. the
genitive.

Leo continues:

> The [e:] of which Lehmann speaks is traditional PIE lengthened grade.  It
> occurs in specific morphological forms, in part old, in part through later
> extension (verb tenses in many languages).  It has nothing to do with
> laryngeals; although I grant that sequences VH yield V: in many forms in many
> IE languages.  (HV normally yields a short vowel, not a long one, except in
> Sanskrit, which has an abnormal number of long vowel reflexes.  "Laryngeal
> metathesis" seems likely for Sanskrit, but (peace, brethren and sisteren!)
> not elsewhere.

Pat responds:

An /e:/ which is the result of phonological processes or morphology still
cannot be considered a phoneme IMHO. For me to accept the phonemic status of
[e:], I would need to see two roots: Ce/oC and Ce:/o:C, with different
meanings. And yes, I meant to write e:/o:. If e: is phonemic, we should
expect to see it participating in Ablaut.

 <snip>

Leo re-opens a subject:

> I didn't object to Lehmann's calling /^/ a phoneme.  Like any good
> structuralist or post-structuralist, I accept the idea that some phonemes
> are non-segmental.  My objection is only to his claim that /^/ was, for some
> reason, non-segmental.  Only his notion that there were originally no
> other vowel phonemes could possibly support such a claim, and even then it's
> unacceptable for all sorts of other reasons.

Pat responds:

I understand your concerns; and you have convinced me that Lehmann should
have expressed this differently.

Leo picks up on:

<snip>

> Pat suggested:

>> As for the 3rd sg. perfect active, -e is understandable on the same
>> principle if we consider the earlier form to have been -e: (from *-He),
>> reduced to -e in a stress-unaccented syllable.

Leo responds:

> I know of no evidence for a laryngeal there -- and one piece of evidence
> against.  Skt. _cakara_ 'I have done' reflects PIE _*kwe-kwor-Ae_, where A is
> an a-coloring laryngeal.  The short -a- of the root, where -a:- would be
> expected by Brugmann's Law, is often taken as evidence for a laryngeal in the
> desinence: Brugmann's Law operated only on -o- in open syllables.  But the
> 3.sg. is _caka:ra_ < *_kew-kwor-e_ -- Brugmann's law operated in the open
> syllable.  (Not all accept this argument: the 1.sg. can have -a:-, presumably
> by analogy, and some deny Brugmann's Law altogether.  But in any event I know
> of no evidence *for* a laryngeal there.  Do you have any?)

Pat responds:

1) On general principles, since inflections are grammaticalized morphemes,
and IE has no morphemes beginning in a vowel, any inflection that manifests
itself apparently as a V, should be, ab origine, be presumed to be HV.

2) For whatever interest in may be, I published in Mother Tongue an essay
describing the differences between the person as vocalic differences, each
proceeded by H{1}, i.e. /?/:
<http:/www/geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/PERSPRO1.htm>

Please do not attribute all my views of 1990 to me now, however.

 Leo continues:

> Indeed I do.  You are, in effect, positing a nominal stem (not pronominal, if
> it has the meaning you attribute to it) which is shorter than any other in
> the language.

Pat responds:

Shorter than *se? or *me?  But, I am cheating a little. But, here I think
the humor hides the truth. I do not believe that the earliest Nostratic had
what we would properly call pronouns. I believe all pronouns are only nouns
in a specialized use.

Leo asks:

> Or do you mean the pronoun underlying Lat. _is-tu-d_, Gk. _to-d_,
> English _tha-t_ (the dental is a pronominal desinence)?

Pat responds:

Yes, I believe that there was a *noun*, which would have the reflex of *to
in IE, which meant 'tribal member', and was used in various positions that
we would characterize as pronominal or inflectional. We even have an
extended form of this *to in *teuta:-, 'people (probably better 'tribe')'.

Leo then asks:

> And what is {H} in your reconstruction?

Pat answers:

Nothing esoteric --- simply aspiration.

> Without a lot of explanation, your reconstruction (and in particular your
> gloss) cannot be accepted.

Of that I am very well aware.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 16 19:38:16 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 20:38:16 +0100
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.203816.0100.>

   Pat said:

> I know that this is a bit late in the game to be asking this question but
> where did we get this Sanskrit form in the first place? I cannot find it in
> Whitney's _Die Wurzeln, Verbalformen und Prima{"}ren Sta{"}mme der
> Sanskrit-Sprache_.

No, you won't find it in Whitney (notice he says the "primary stems").
Whitney lists all the various forms actually found (or cited in the
grammarians) from a particular root, such as which of the 10 possible
present formations a root shows, which of the 12 possible infinitives, which
of the 7 possible aorist formations, and so on.   (Incidentally, similar
variety is concealed in Latin , since the classical language standardised
one form for each verb at the expense of the others - pango, for example,
shows pepigi, pe:gi and panxi, but only the first became "standard".)

What Whitney does not show, is derivative stems, compounds, and so on.   A
root may form several other derived "stems" which function as new verbs.   A
few of these become treated as root verbs, and are listed independently in
Whitney, but most are not in Whitney, and need to be found in a good
dictionary.

The particular form I cited is an intensive, where the entire root, or
almost all the root, is repeated.   The first occurrence normally has -e-
grade (guna) although some other strengthened forms (e.g. infixed -r-
or -n-) are also possible.  The second occurrence has zero grade.

For example, ru "to roar" forms roru:yate < reu-ru-;   di:p "to shine"
forms dedi:pyate < dei-di-; and so on.   Kram "to stride" forms camkramyate
"to step to and fro".  Note the "c" showing that the first vowel derived
from IE -e-.

Some of these insert an -i- between the two occurrences of the root, e.g.
(sam)jari:harti "destroys repeatedly"  (Note again the "j" showing an IE -e-
vowel).  A second example is  the form which provoked this discussion.
The presence or absence of this -i- (or -i:-) has no justification within
Skt and appears random - until we recognise that it is present in roots with
an initial laryngeal.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 16 19:45:00 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 20:45:00 +0100
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.204500.0100.>

Anthony said:
> I heard once of a German word `assloch' = "anus".

The German is Arschloch, and simply means arse-hole, both literal and
metaphorical.

Peter


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sun May 16 21:01:26 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 16:01:26 -0500
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.03.9905131738380.25791-100000@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.160126.0500.>

[ moderator snip ]

><Gandul> doesn't seem to be slang in contemporary European Spanish, nor
>does it seem to have the meaning `pigeon pea' there.

	To a Spanish-speaker outside of Spain, it's slang or, at best, a
regionalism, just like the word <majo>.

	BTW: what do they call arroz con gandules in Spain?


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sun May 16 21:09:14 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 16:09:14 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
In-Reply-To: <373BCAF4.47C6D72D@umist.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.160914.0500.>

In German isn't the word arschloch? The Germans who settled in the US were
principally from the Rhine valley, so any German influence would come from
that area but I think a more logical explanation can be found in some
American or British dialect

>I heard once of a German word `assloch' = "anus". Perhaps there is
>influence here from German immigrants: compare the USA English word
>"burg" = "town" taken from German, and a USA habit of mispronouncing UK
>placenames ending in "-burgh" as if they were spelt "-burg".

[snip]


From vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu  Sun May 16 21:20:08 1999
From: vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 17:20:08 -0400
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.172008.0400.>

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

> Also, I am curious if you can cite a non-arguable ablative in -as that
> becomes -e: in sandhi?

> Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

I don't know of >non-arguable< as that becomes e: in Sanskrit, but it did
occur in some MIA dialects. Pali sermons often begin with bhikkhave <
bhiks.avas, which can only be a generalization of a sandhi variant.

And in a different message:

> I know that this is a bit late in the game to be asking this question but
> where did we get this Sanskrit form [I think ganigam-/ganigm] in the
> first place?

The forms in RV are gani:ganti (6.75.3) and ganigmatam (10.41.1).  The n for
the m of the root makes me wonder if the i(:) is original. We find inserted
i in bharibhrati and (ni)ghanighnate from *bher and *ghen and I would be
very surprised if these two roots ever had an initial laryngeal.

-Nath


From jer at cphling.dk  Sun May 16 21:57:36 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 23:57:36 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <01JB5AXJBFQA95EEE3@LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.235736.0200.>

On Thu, 13 May 1999 CONNOLLY at latte.memphis.edu wrote:

> Someone wrote:

>>>>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg
>>>>> in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does
>>>>> not detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

> Pat replied:

>>>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>>>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>>>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

Pardon my gate-crashing, but I was the "someone", and perhaps I should be
clearer: There is no disputing that the PIE thematic verb formed a 3sg
injunctive *bhe'r-e-t and a 2pl injunctive *bhe'r-e-te; if you prefer
imperfects, you may add the augment in any form you think it had in PIE.
The fact will remain that one form is an *-e longer than the other,
everything else being the same. That extra *-e makes a difference all by
itself and so is phonemic, even under an (erroneous) analysis that
accepts only one vowel for PIE.

Jens


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Sun May 16 09:32:36 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 11:32:36 +0200
Subject: Taboo replacements
In-Reply-To: <373BCAF4.47C6D72D@umist.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.113236.0200.>

>I heard once of a German word `assloch' = "anus".

It's /Arschloch/, and though it does maintain the anatomical meaning in the
margin, its main use is that as a somewhat less-than-polite form of
address. Try to say it to a cop, and you'll know what I mean (it is of
course /asshole/). The range of pronunciations oscillates about forms with
and without an audible -r- in German as well (whether I myself have an
r-less form or rather one with -r- I'm unable to tell, since, it goes
without saying, I've never pronounced this word ;-).

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From edsel at glo.be  Mon May 17 18:56:45 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 20:56:45 +0200
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
Message-ID: <MON.17.MAY.1999.205645.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Max W Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Date: Sunday, May 16, 1999 3:31 AM

[ moderator snip ]

><Gandul> doesn't seem to be slang in contemporary European Spanish, nor
>does it seem to have the meaning `pigeon pea' there. García de Diego
>says it's from Arabic <gandur> `majo' (I haven't got Corominas DCEH
>handy).

>BTW <gandula> is `deck-chair' in Catalan; a nice metonymy.

>Max

[Ed Selleslagh]

According to my Spanish-Dutch dictionary (Van Goor's Handwoordenboek, 4th
ed.) 'Gandul' has two meanings: 1. (familiar) lazy, etc., 2. soldier of an
old Moorish army corps in Africa and Granada (no etymology given).  I wonder
if 1. stems from 2. The meaning 'pigeon pea' is not mentioned.
'Gandula' is quoted as regular Spanish for deck-chair vel sim.

Ed.


From edsel at glo.be  Mon May 17 18:38:25 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 20:38:25 +0200
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
Message-ID: <MON.17.MAY.1999.203825.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv at wxs.nl>
Date: Monday, May 10, 1999 3:01 PM

[ moderator snip ]

>That's all.  I then did an Altavista search for "chandro", which
>yielded two or three Web pages containing Aragonese vocabularies,
>confirming what the Espasa says, but not adding any further
>information (e.g. about the etymology of the word).  FWIW:

>http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/6243/diccionario.html
>http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Dell/5055/curiosi.html

[snip]

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

[Ed Selleslagh]

Miguel,
I don't know if you noticed that in the first of these two web pages, the
Aragonese-Castilian dictionary mentions Ar. MUGA - Cast. LIMITE.  This is
unmistakably pure Basque! So, a Basque origin for CHANDRO wouldn't be
improbable at all.

Ed.


From ddcars at gte.net  Mon May 17 22:41:41 1999
From: ddcars at gte.net (Douglas Carswell)
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 18:41:41 -0400
Subject: Gaelic consonants
Message-ID: <MON.17.MAY.1999.184141.0400.>

I've been studying Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic mostly) and some of the other
Celtic languages and have recently wondered what is considered a Gaelic
allophone? Would an aspirated version of of a word consist of a
different phoneme in the language? An example:

    Gaelic        English translation
    cù                 dog
    mo chù          my dog
    ar cù             our dog

Would ch be considered an allophone of c in this case since it's form
depends on the preceding word? The meaning of dog doesn't change. But
what about:


        Gaelic        English translation
        cù                dog
        a chù            his dog
        a cù              her dog

Here it does change the meaning. But, it changes the meaning of the word
before it. Or I guess you could say, it changes the meaning of the noun
phrase. Would this be considered a different allophone of c or would it
be a different phoneme altogether?
To make it even more confusing, some words have no aspirated form. e.g.:

        Gaelic        English translation
        mo làmhan        my hands
        a làmhan           his/her hands

Although, I have heard that there are some dialects that make an
aspirated l a little more sonorant than a non-aspirated l which would
give a slight distinction. Again, would it be an allophone or a
different phoneme?

I wonder if anyone more familiar with Gaelic or Celtic languages would
be able to tell me a little bit about the manifestations of aspiration
on the Gaelic phonemic system.

Thanks,
Doug Carswell


From petegray at btinternet.com  Tue May 18 19:56:01 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (Peter)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 20:56:01 +0100
Subject: Latin perfects
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.205601.0100.>

Thanks, Wilmer,  for the interesting questions on the Latin perfect, some of
which have answers, some of which don't, and some of which are disputed.

> - a 'weak' perfect obtained in the most verbs using -vi/-ui

One theory, (which I think is true, but I don't know how much agreement
there is about it), is that:
(A) -vi/ui was added only to stems ending in a vowel or laryngeal.   The
vowel is sometimes obscured or lost by the time we get to meet the verb, but
often recoverable.   Here's some details:
(a) The Latin 1st, 2nd, and 4th declensions all have a vowel suffix on the
stem (eyo / -yo) hence the "choice" of the -vi / ui perfect, giving the
regular -avi, -ui, -ivi
(b) About half of the other forms which have -ui, the irregular verbs, end
in laryngeals, which of course have been lost before the time of the written
language.  Examples are:
crepo, crepui (laryngeal shown by Sanskrit -is- aorist)
domo, domui (a well known laryngeal root)
tono, tonui (laryngeal appears in the long -i:- in the imperfect in
Sanskrit:  asta:ni:t, and elsewhere)
Likewise vomui, volui, enecui, genui, colui, posui, serui
(c) I do not know whether the other half of the irregular -ui roots ended in
laryngeals or not.
(d) As far as I know, all of the irregular forms in -vi are laryngeal roots,
with the single exception of iu:vi, discussed below.  For example, fo:vi,
mo:vi, la:vi, ca:vi etc.

(B) -s- was added only to roots which ended in a consonant.   This appears
to be invariably true, although it may not be true that all roots ending in
a consoant were given the -s-.   Normally the vowel was also lengthened,
although there are some exceptions, such as coxi (short o), but this word at
least must be late in formation.

(C) In addition, there were survivals of other forms:
(a) reduplication (what you call "doubling").   In Latin this always has
zero grade, and never the -o- grade whcih is regular in Greek and Sanskrit.
(b) -o- grade.   In Latin this is never found with reduplication, and by
classical times is disguised by vowel changes.  You find it in iu:vit <
iouvit, vi:dit < voidit, vi:cit, li:quit, fu:git, fu:dit, etc.   (oi
normally > oe > u:, but after v, or between l and a labial or labiovelar it
> i:)
(c) lengthened grade.  There are traces of this throughout IE (e.g. a few
Germanic perfect plurals, a few Greek perfects, etc).  In Latin it is more
complex because long vowels were also produced through phonetic changes from
reduplicated perfects, such as e:git < h1e-h1g-it, or se:dit < se-sd-it, or
from -o- grades, such as iu:vit < iouvit.   The best example in Latin is
probably venio, ve:nit, which has parallels in the Germanic plural qe:mum.
scabo, sca:bi remains a mystery.

(D) The few short vowel perfects were originally reduplicated, but have lost
the reduplication, for example, tuli, fidi, -peri etc.

(E) Perfects without change usually have the prefect form obscured.   This
is true of the -uo, -ui forms you mention, but also of mandi, verri, and
many of the others.  It may be true of them all.   Bibo, bibi remains a
mystery.

It is important to recognise that the distinction of aorist and perfect
which is familiar from Greek is found in no other IE language in quite that
form.   Sanskrit distinguishes the forms of aorist and perfect, but the
meanings, when they are distinct, are reversed.    Most IE languages have no
such distinction.    So it is not such a surprise that Latin, too, has
merged the two forms.   In fact many verbs show a variety of forms for the
perfect, e.g. pango has pepigi, pe:gi and panxi.

As for the endings, Latin has a muddle of aorist and perfect forms.   The 3
sing is aorist, the 1 plural could be either, the 1 sing is perfect, and the
3 plural and 2 sing and plural seem to be a blend.   You m ention the 3
plural in particular.   There is dispute, and details are not clear, but it
looks like a cross between the -nt of the aorist, and an -r which is found
in some other IE languages in some forms, such as Tocharian, and the perfect
in Sanskrit.   Celtic also has a blend of -nt and -r , but the other way
round.   Generally Celtic has retained the two sets of endings, but with
asbolutely no difference in meaning.

The origin of the -vi/-ui form is disputed, and variously connected with the
perfect participle (as you do), or with a u stem noun form, or derived
phonetically from a laryngeal, or developed by analogy.   No one knows.

The 1 sing was originally in Latin not -i but -ai, though that doesn't
answer your question about the origin of the -i.  The best guess might be
that it is the same as the -i added to make the present (or primary)
endings -mi, -si, -ti, etc.

Hope that helps

Peter


From stevegus at aye.net  Tue May 18 21:10:04 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steven A. Gustafson)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:10:04 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.171004.0400.>

Wilmer "Xelloss" Ricciotti wrote:

> What I can't understand is the criterion which was used to choose for
> the new pefect an aorist form instead of a perfect one and vice versa.

Going mostly from memory, I doubt that any criteria can really be
pinpointed.  Latin verbs in a number of tenses show some strong signs of
being taken apart and reassembled after someone mixed up the pieces, and
lost a few along the way.  Classical Latin is a highly artificial
literary creation.

The most obvious such process occurred in the Latin 'future,' which in
some verbs was made with a verbal suffix from -bhu; and in other verbs
the "future" is really the old subjunctive, and a new subjunctive was
shoehorned in, made mostly of the old optative.

In Classical Latin, we associate the first future with the "first and
second conjugations," verbs with a stem-vowel of -a or -e:  but dialect,
vulgar, and archaic evidence shows that it was not quite so cut and
dried in the unpolished world of ordinary speech.

A Faliscan cup inscription from Praeneste goes "foied vino pipafo cra
carefo," CL "hodie vinum bibam cras carebo."  Obviously in this closely
related dialect the -bhu future attached itself to the cognate word of
-bibere-; in Latin that would yield *bibebo, which even the Pope
couldn't say with a straight face.

Similar confusion reigns during the vulgar period, where graffiti show
endless confusion between subjunctive and future endings, and forms like
-audibo- are attested.  These verb forms were apparently subject to much
confusion in the non-literary language, and had to be reorganized yet
again; even in Romance languages with relatively conservative verb
systems, like Castilian, the future has been made over.  (It is possible
that given the phonology of VL, -monebis- sounded like it was really a
contraction for -monere (h)abes-, since short 'i' and 'e' fell together
in many areas, and h- was dropped.)

Which may not directly answer your question, but the point is: the Latin
verb endings are reshuffled in a major way, in an ongoing process, in
which the attested forms of CL are but one stop along the highway.
There appears to have been a large random element when the final
decision came down as to what was considered classical.  Analogy and
shoehorning have largely refitted the grammatical options that were "in
the air" in the Latin dialects into the standardized literary language.

My vague general understanding is that the perfect personal endings
represent the old "secondary" endings, given a fairly extensive
analogical remodelling, which may have as much to do with the
substitution of -erunt for the archaic and poetical -ere in the perfect
as anything else.  (All the rest of the 3pl forms have -nt- somewhere in
there.)

I will see if I can find anything in any of my Latin books about where
the -i came from.  It may have been added by analogy in the first
place.  Again, vulgar and Romance evidence suggests that the -i- in the
-vi perfets was apparently not present on the lips of many speakers;
some Romance forms seem to require *amaut, &c., instead of CL -amavit-.

Given this further evidence of tinkering by arbiters of elegance, you
have to wonder how "reliable" the attested forms of the literary
language are on details like this.

"Truth is the successful effort to think impersonally and
inhumanly."
             --- Robt. Musil, -The Man Without Qualities-


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 18 21:05:55 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 16:05:55 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.160555.0500.>

Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 1999 6:11 PM

>>> Sanskrit was never monovocalic, phonologically speaking.

>>I disagree, strongly.

>>Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

>>Pat

> Since the ante-voiced sandhi form of -as is -o Pat is right in finding -e
> simply incredible. But I also find the idea of "monovocalic Sanskrit"
> hair-raising.

It is sincerely nice to have Ralf-Stefan's fine input to the list again.

Looks like I won one, lost one. Hope I can stay at zero or better.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue May 18 21:58:56 1999
From: alderson at netcom.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 14:58:56 -0700
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <199905102137.OAA02906@netcom2.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.145856.0700.>

On 29 Apr 1999, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

>On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> Rich continues:

>>>Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage of
>>>Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a language,
>>>it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may alternate
>>>with other sounds in the language because of morphological rules or
>>>unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.

>I think he violates an even more fundamental rule: If a segment is opposed
>to zero, it exists! Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology
>would oppose a 3sg in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.
>This of course does not detract from the stimulating effect of the book -
>just look at us!

I believe that we have stated the same argument from two slightly different
perspectives.

>[... PCR:]

>> But, why all the fuss about monosyllabicity when Sanskrit provides us with
>> the next logical outcome of a language that, at an earlier stage, was
>> monovocalic (at least, phonemically).

>I believe this is right even synchronically, barring words of marginal
>phonological integration: In Sanskrit,
>	[a:] is identical with /a/ +/a/
>	[i] is a realization of /y/
>	[u] is a realization of /v/
>	[i:] is identical with [i] + [i], thus a realization of /yy/
>	[u:] is identical with [u] + [u], thus a realization of /vv/
>	[r.] is a realization of /r/
>	[r.:] is identical with [r.] + [r.], thus a realization of /rr/
>	[l.] is a realization of /l/
>	[e:] is a realization of /ay/
>	[o:] is a realization of /av/
>	[a:u] is a realization of /aav/
>	[a:i] is a realization of /aay/

One can just as easily argue that [y] is a realization of /i/, [w] realizes
/u/, and so on, when the vocalic phoneme is collocated with another vocalic
phoneme, if one wants to accept this sort of deep-level phonology.  The better
analysis, in my opinion, is to accept that the vowels /i(:) a(:) u(:) e: o:/
are all phonemic, and deal with the other surface realizations as the result of
*morphophonemic* rules, not phonological rules or processes.

>Thus, in Sanskrit, short /a/ is the only true vowel demanded to allow an
>unambiguous notation of all (normal) words. This is a one-vowel system of the
>kind dismissed as a typological impossibility for PIE. - I rush to add that
>the acceptability of this analysis for Sanskrit does not make it correct for
>PIE which, for completely independent reasons, appears to need at least the
>vowels /a, e, o/ on the phonemic level - and even long /a:, e:, o:/ and
>underlying /i, u/ (opposed to /y, w/!) on an abstract morphophonemic level.

>In Sanskrit, as in PIE, the rules stipulating a given sonant/semivowel to
>appear syllabic or nonsyllabic are relatively clear. Such an element is
>nonsyllabic when contiguous with a vowel, otherwise it is syllabic. Only
>Sievers and a touch of analogy compromise predictability.

It is the compromised predictability that requires us to see both vowels and
resonants as phonemic, with some morphological rules creating interactions
between them, in a synchronic description of Sanskrit.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue May 18 22:14:23 1999
From: alderson at netcom.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 15:14:23 -0700
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <199905110145.SAA27049@netcom2.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.151423.0700.>

On 1 May 1999, "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>Dear Jens and IEists:

> ----- Original Message -----
>From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk
>Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 1999 6:36 PM

>> On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>> Rich continues:

>>>> Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage of
>>>> Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a
>>>> language, it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may
>>>> alternate with other sounds in the language because of morphological rules
>>>> or unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.

>Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

Phonemic vowels are not defined only in contrast to other phonemic vowels, but
in contract to non-vowels as well.  Thus, only if there were no obstruents of
any kind in a language might one be entitled to argue that a vowel was not
phonemic (but one might also wish to deny the status of language to such an
object of wonder).

Further, your definition of "semantic" is sorely lacking if it excludes the
meanings associated with so-called "grammatical morphemes", a seemingly _ad
hoc_ definition constructed only to allow you to deny the phonemic status of
vowels you would like to ignore.

>> I think he violates an even more fundamental rule: If a segment is opposed
>> to zero, it exists!

>Differo, ergo sum.

>But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>certain.

But he explicitly denies it!

>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg in
>> *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does not
>> detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

>With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>stress-accentuation: *"-t(i) and *-"te.

The difference between *-t and *-te is best explained by the fact that they are
two different lexical items, morphemes meaning "3rd singular" and "2nd plural"
respectively.  Anything else does violence to any reasonable reconstruction of
PIE based on the actual data.

								Rich Alderson


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 18 22:51:56 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:51:56 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.175156.0500.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 1999 2:03 PM

>> All they needed was to perceive and intend to communicate in another way.

> -- they didn't do that, either.  All they intended to do was talk, and they
> did -- and you can talk just as effectively in any language, in any era of
> the human race.

> Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
> English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.

Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development from the
simple to the complex.

My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
hence, less explicitly expressive.

As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a statement
that a language which can does not exhibit.

As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much greater range
of semantic inclusion than other languages. This also is a source of
potential ambiguity that is not shared by languages that have differentiated
semantic ranges more finely.

Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible linguistic
discussion.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From stevegus at aye.net  Wed May 19 00:11:07 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 20:11:07 -0400
Subject: Minus quam perfectum
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.201107.0400.>

As promised, what I have been able to glean about the origins of the Latin
perfect inflexions from books:

According to R. L. Palmer's -The Latin Language-, pp. 272-275, the Latin
perfect, since it was used as both perfect and aorist, "comprises stems drawn
from both these series of tense stems."  He proposes no rule to tell which ones
will be picked.

"The type of perfect most characteristic of Latin, that in -vi, is not found
elsewhere."  He does observe that it is probably ancient, in that it often
exhibits a different ablaut grade from the present stem, giving -sero-, -se:vi-
as his example.  He believes that it came originally from the aorist of *bhu,
*bhuei > *fu(v)ei, and that this -vei spread by analogy to whole classes of
vowel-stem verbs.

As to the origin of the distinctive personal endings, Palmer says:

1sg -i = the middle ending -e from Sanskrit and Slavonic, representing -ai
or -Hai;

2sg -isti = the element -is-, which Palmer thinks is the same ending you see
in the -eram and -issem groups, + IE -tha, plus the -i from 1sg, > -is-thai >
-isti

3sg. -it, with -t brought over from the primary inflections

3pl -erunt again has this -is suffix, plus -unt > -ont from the primary.  He
relates the archaic alternative -ere to the -r endings of the passive.

Beekes, p. 239, by contrast, simply observes: "Latin has added -i to all its
singular endings and the 3pl.  In 2sg. and pl. the -is- is unclear."

My comment: all of these explanations look pretty ad-hoc to me.

---
With wind we blowen; with wind we lassun;
With weopinge we comen; with weopinge we passun.
With steringe we beginnen; with steringe we enden;
With drede we dwellen; with drede we wenden.
                                  ---- Anon, Lambeth Ms. no. 306


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Wed May 19 04:58:55 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 23:58:55 -0500
Subject: Gaelic consonants
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.235855.0500.>

Douglas Carswell wrote:
> Would ch be considered an allophone of c in this case since it's form
> depends on the preceding word?

No.  Allophones are predictable from purely *phonetic* grounds, such as
the English aspiration rule, that is [t] (as well as [p] and [k], of
course) after /s/ or before approximates or syllable-finally, [t_h]
elsewhere, thus [t_hIl], [stIl], [tr_0Il], [k_h&t].  Since <c> and <ch>
(which isn't a difference of aspiration, IIRC, isn't is [k]/[x]?) can
both occur in the same phonetic environment in Scots Gaelic, they're
separate phonemes.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 19 06:04:21 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 01:04:21 -0500
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.010421.0500.>

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 16, 1999 2:38 PM

> Some of these insert an -i- between the two occurrences of the root, e.g.
> (sam)jari:harti "destroys repeatedly" (Note again the "j" showing an IE -e-
> vowel).  A second example is the form which provoked this discussion.  The
> presence or absence of this -i- (or -i:-) has no justification within Skt and
> appears random - until we recognise that it is present in roots with an
> initial laryngeal.

I understand how you would like to interpret the -i- of the reduplicated
form (as the residue of a laryngeal) but aside from this, is there any
evidence in the *un*reduplicated form of your postulated initial laryngeal?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 19 06:53:56 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 01:53:56 -0500
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.015356.0500.>

Dear Nath and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Vidhyanath Rao <vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Sunday, May 16, 1999 4:20 PM

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

>> Also, I am curious if you can cite a non-arguable ablative in -as that
>> becomes -e: in sandhi?

>> Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

> I don't know of >non-arguable< as that becomes e: in Sanskrit, but it did
> occur in some MIA dialects. Pali sermons often begin with bhikkhave <
> bhiks.avas, which can only be a generalization of a sandhi variant.

Thanks for this input.

> And in a different message:

>> I know that this is a bit late in the game to be asking this question but
>> where did we get this Sanskrit form [I think ganigam-/ganigm] in the
>> first place?

> The forms in RV are gani:ganti (6.75.3) and ganigmatam (10.41.1).  The n
> for the m of the root makes me wonder if the i(:) is original. We find
> inserted i in bharibhrati and (ni)ghanighnate from *bher and *ghen and I
> would be very surprised if these two roots ever had an initial laryngeal.

The <bharibhrati> example is interesting. I was leaning towards a suspicion
that the -i- in ganigmatam was perhaps inserted to prevent the immediate
juxtaposition of n-g, which, if producing the dorsal nasal, would have
produced a possibly ambiguous (-sounding) reduplication of gan-.
Incidentally, contrary to what I wrote earlier, <ga{'}ni:gam-> is listed on
pg. 34 in Whitney as an intensive. Although I cannot find any indication
with the materials I have here, is it possible perhaps that the intial
gan(i)- with the strange <n> is perhaps a Sanskrit reflex of something
related to IE *gagina?

Also, in the case of <bharibhrati>, the perhaps intrusive <i> seems to be
preventing an analysis of <bharbh->, which would have lost some phonological
continuity if modified to <**barbh->?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 19 07:53:25 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 02:53:25 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.025325.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Alderson <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 5:14 PM

<snip>

>> Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>> difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

> Phonemic vowels are not defined only in contrast to other phonemic vowels,
> but in contrast to non-vowels as well.  Thus, only if there were no
> obstruents of any kind in a language might one be entitled to argue that a
> vowel was not phonemic (but one might also wish to deny the status of
> language to such an object of wonder).

> Further, your definition of "semantic" is sorely lacking if it excludes the
> meanings associated with so-called "grammatical morphemes", a seemingly _ad
> hoc_ definition constructed only to allow you to deny the phonemic status of
> vowels you would like to ignore.

Pat responds:

Well, I would term dog/cat different semantically. You seem to me to be
suggesting that dog/dog's are different semantically. If you had to
distinguish between the two kind of "semantic" differences, what word would
you use to differentiate the second situation from the first?

>>> I think he violates an even more fundamental rule: If a segment is opposed
>>> to zero, it exists!

>>Differo, ergo sum.

>>But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>>certain.

> But he explicitly denies it!

Pat admits:

I have already granted this point in a posting to Leo & List. Lehmann could
have expressed himself a little better on this point --- perhaps a case of
slicing atoms vs. slicing slices.

>>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg
>>> in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does
>>> not detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(i) and *-"te.

> The difference between *-t and *-te is best explained by the fact that they
> are two different lexical items, morphemes meaning "3rd singular" and "2nd
> plural" respectively.  Anything else does violence to any reasonable
> reconstruction of PIE based on the actual data.

Pat responds:

Hopefully we can try to integrate insights that may have been obtained in
languages prior to and outside of PIE to PIE questions.  Taking into
consideration the fact that every "pronominal" form we know, **when**
subjected to additional analysis, reveals a nominal form that is neutral
with regard to person so that we must assume that the personal assignment of
the pronoun is arbitrary, and bearing in mind the stress-accentual
differences in the verbal paradigm between singular and plural inflections,
and considering IE *to (better *te/o), I do not believe that any violence is
done to any reasonable reconstruction of IE if we assume that:

1) IE had a morpheme *te/o of non-personally restricted semantic range,
which

2) could be employed in a number of personal contexts:

     a) 2nd p. s. pronoun: *te

     b) 2nd p. pl. inflection: -*te

     c) 3rd p. s. inflection: *-t(V)

     d) demonstrative: -*to (**te/o)

To ascribe individual origins to each of these employments of what I
maintain is one morpheme is difficult since how could they be distinguished?
They all can be referred to *te/o.

And even these employments of this versatile morpheme do not exhaust its
presences in IE, for it occurs also in collectives -*tV, and as expanded
verbal in *te(:)u-.

To paraphrase, you're talking a major morpheme here.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 19 08:05:14 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 03:05:14 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.030514.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens ante portas and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Sunday, May 16, 1999 4:57 PM

> On Thu, 13 May 1999 CONNOLLY at latte.memphis.edu wrote:

>> Someone wrote:

>>>>>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a
>>>>>> 3sg in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course
>>>>>> does not detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at
>>>>>> us!

>> Pat replied:

>>>>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>>>>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>>>>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

> Pardon my gate-crashing,

C'mon in. But, the water is murky.

> but I was the "someone", and perhaps I should be clearer: There is no
> disputing that the PIE thematic verb formed a 3sg injunctive *bhe'r-e-t and a
> 2pl injunctive *bhe'r-e-te; if you prefer imperfects, you may add the augment
> in any form you think it had in PIE.  The fact will remain that one form is
> an *-e longer than the other, everything else being the same. That extra *-e
> makes a difference all by itself and so is phonemic,

If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I. My
point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV since there
is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

> even under an (erroneous) analysis that accepts only one vowel for PIE.

And I thought perhaps we on a similar wavelength after what you wrote about
Sanskrit!

For PIE, I reiterate that I believe the situation was as you described so
masterfully for Sanskrit - monovocalic. For later IE, the situation is
considerably more complex.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed May 19 09:34:52 1999
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max W Wheeler)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 10:34:52 +0100
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <001f01bea097$8bf13820$0a01703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.103452.0100.>

On Mon, 17 May 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> According to my Spanish-Dutch dictionary (Van Goor's Handwoordenboek, 4th
> ed.) 'Gandul' has two meanings: 1. (familiar) lazy, etc., 2. soldier of an
> old Moorish army corps in Africa and Granada (no etymology given).  I wonder
> if 1. stems from 2. The meaning 'pigeon pea' is not mentioned.
> 'Gandula' is quoted as regular Spanish for deck-chair vel sim.

Curiously, then, Sp. <gandula> 'deck chair' is not in DRAE 1992, nor in
Moliner's Diccionario de uso del español, nor in the online Diccionario
Anaya, which does have:

gandul, -a
I. Del ár. gandur = fatuo.
      1. (adjetivo, -a, femenino, sustantivo masculino). Vago.
      2. (adjetivo, -a, femenino, sustantivo masculino). Bribón.
      3. (sustantivo masculino). Individuo de una tribu de indios mejicanos.

      FAM. Gandulear, gandulería, gandulitis.
      SIN. 1. Holgazán, indolente, perezoso, poltrón. 2. Pícaro, tunante.
      ANT. 1. Trabajador.

Max
___________________________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975; fax: +44 (0)1273 671320
___________________________________________________________________________


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed May 19 10:52:44 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 11:52:44 +0100
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <001e01bea097$8b7d40a0$0a01703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.115244.0100.>

On Mon, 17 May 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> Miguel,

> I don't know if you noticed that in the first of these two web
> pages, the Aragonese-Castilian dictionary mentions Ar. MUGA - Cast.
> LIMITE.  This is unmistakably pure Basque! So, a Basque origin for
> CHANDRO wouldn't be improbable at all.

With respect, I think it is most unlikely that Basque <muga> `boundary,
frontier' is native in that language.

First, it has a seemingly impossible form for a native word of any
antiquity.  Pre-Basque apparently had no */m/ at all, and word-initial
/m/ in native words derives from no source other then */b/ in the
configuration */bVn-/ -- not possible with <muga>.

Second, the word occurs very widely in western Romance.  According to my
sources, we find <muga> not only in Aragonese but also in Old Catalan,
and we have <mougue> in Bearnais.  Similar and apparently cognate nouns
and derived verbs occur in most of Ibero-Romance and in much of
Gallo-Romance, with a possible but uncertain outlier in Sardinian.
These various Romance forms sometimes have /b/ in place of /m/, and /o/
or /ue/ in place of /u/.  One source also reports a similar word in
Breton.

The word has been intensively studied by Vasconists and Romanists for
generations.  There is something of a consensus that the source is an
item of the variable form *<muga> ~ *<moga> ~ *<buga> ~ *<boga>.  But
the origin of this item is much debated.  Some Romanists label it
"pre-Roman", which is Romanist code for "we haven't a clue where it
comes from".  Inevitably, several people have tried to see it as of
Celtic origin, though more than one Celtic source has been proposed, all
of them with conspicuous asterisks.  At least one person has tried to
trace it back to an IE root.  But nobody seems to want to see the word
as being of Basque origin: the form is wrong, and there is no parallel
for such widespread diffusion of a Basque loan into western European
languages.

Finally, I might note that, while Basque <muga> means `limit, frontier'
today, as its apparent cognates commonly do in neighboring languages, in
our earliest Basque texts the word more usually means `boundary-stone'
-- that is, a stone marker set up to mark a boundary.  This sense is
usually rendered today by the compound <mugarri> `boundary-stone', with
<harri> `stone'.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Wed May 19 10:39:04 1999
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 06:39:04 -0400
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <003201be9fbf$aa7f6c40$0bd3fed0@patrickcryan> from "Patrick C.
 Ryan" at "May 16, 99 12:15:14 pm"
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.063904.0400.>

Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
	. . .
>
> Do not confuse dependence with function. "I myself am going". Is "myself"
> not a nominative depending on another nominative?

In this sentence "myself" is indeed a nominative in apposition to "I",
but it doesn't correspond to the reflexive meaning meaning of
PIE *se. Here "I myself" has an emphatic meaning, somewhat like
Greek "ego:ge".

*se, on the other hand, always refers back to the subject of the clause;
this usage is retained in all reflexes that I know of.

Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Wed May 19 14:46:08 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 09:46:08 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.094608.0500.>

>Leo writes:

>>With Lehmann, I agree that [e e{sub}] were originally allophones of a
>>single phoneme, however that phoneme must be analyzed.  But the stress
>>system of (pre)-PIE changed, and that changed things greatly.  At one
>>point, [e{sub}] was a predictable variant of [e] under weak stress.
>>But later, the occurrence of [e] and [e{sub}] was no longer
>>predictable.  More than meaning, it is the *unpredictability* of one
>>form or another that requires them to be analyzed as separate
>>phonemes.

>Pat responds:

>>I think a useful distinction to be made is whether we *can* predict
>>the occurences --- limited by our imperfect understanding of the
>>stress-accentual fluctuations  ---  and --- if we had a better
>>understanding of them, whether we could predict them.

I concede that the real question is whether speakers of some particular time
could select the correct form solely on the basis of phonological environment
(including stress and whatever other suprasegmentals may have been relevant).
If they could, then [e e{sub}] were allophones of a single phoneme, and any
semantic difference would be attributable to the difference in the phonetic
environment.  Whether we could know the details is irrelevant; it's their
phonemes, not ours, and they were the ones who had to know.  And while we're
the ones with the theory, they're the ones who really know.

Yes, our knowledge comes from detective work and is necessarily uncertain.  But
we must agree that it's worth doing, else we wouldn't be at it like this.  So
the distinction would seem useful only as a way of weaseling out of the
consequences of a proper understanding of phonological principles which (if
they are to have any validity at all) must apply to *all* languages, modern and
ancient, attested or reconstructed.

[stuff omitted]

Pat responds to remarks on ablaut in Germanic::

>This is one of those questions in which it is hard to decide if the
>dog is chasing his tail or the tail is teasing the dog.

>On a non-IE scenario, a phoneme can easily be identified as marking a
>semantic difference: English cat / cot.

>In IE, we simply do not find that CeC is a semantically different
>morpheme from CoC. Now, as you have rightly identified, these
>variations *do* mark grammatical distinctions. You obviously prefer to
>define forms indicating different grammatical employments as
>semantically different; I do not because, if we did, we would be
>forced to say that cat / cats  are *semantically* different. I do not
>think you would be willing to go this far, would you?

Look, if you can't find a semantic difference between _cat_ and _cats_, I
shudder to think what your kitty-litter bill must be.  Yes, I do claim that
many (not all) so-called "grammatical morphemes" such as plural -s have
semantic meaning.  And you should too, if you think about it.  Below you make
an extraordinary claim: that all verb agreement markers were originally nouns
(there being no original pronouns).  If this were so, wouldn't these markers
have had *exactly* the same sort of semantic meaning that you postulate for
roots?

 <snip>

Pat commented earlier:

>>>As for [e:], I do not believe it is an allophone but rather the
>>>product of *He/e{sub}.

[Leo called attention to the long vowel in the nominative singular of Gk.
_pate:r_, Skt. _pita_ 'father.]

Pat argues:

>I have no reason to think that the analysis of this word is other
>than as a compound of the root plus the suffix of the nomina agentis
>-ter (not **te:r).

	[stuff omitted]

>I do not believe that the e: of this word derives from /He/; I also do
>not believe it is original. In view of *ma:te{'}r, and in view of the
>fact that we have no IE root of the form *p6-, considering that
>*p6te:{'}r is obviously an analogous formation, I believe the
>likeliest scenario for the long vowel is a metathesis of laryngeal
>(or, just simply, the feature length): *pV:(H)-ter -> *p(6)-te:r.  On
>the basis, the /e:/ is simply an allophone of /e/, hence, cannot be
>phonemic.

Several comments:

First, the idea that the family words contain an agent suffix, though old, is
without basis.

Second, the idea that sequences of the type VHCV (where C is a stop, not a
resonant) were metathesized to VCHV, whence VCV:, is, to say the least, novel.

Third, the *historical origin* of the [e:] has nothing to do with its
*synchronic* phonemic status at any given stage of PIE.  Whether it results
from laryngeal metathesis or through the lengthening of a stresses final
syllable of a root with no desinence (not my idea, but a good one) has nothing
to do with whether it is an allophone of /e/.

>If the long vowel of the nominative were original rather
>than a result of easily understood phonlogical developments, it
>*would* show up as more than -0- in, e.g. the genitive.

No one is claiming that _e:_ in _pate:r_ is original.  You, I, and Lehmann all
agree that it was somehow secondary.

[stuff omitted]

Pat responded:

>An /e:/ which is the result of phonological processes or morphology
>still cannot be considered a phoneme IMHO. For me to accept the
>phonemic status of [e:], I would need to see two roots: Ce/oC and
>Ce:/o:C, with different meanings. And yes, I meant to write e:/o:. If
>e: is phonemic, we should expect to see it participating in Ablaut.

Pat, I regret to have to say so again, but you simply do not understand what a
phoneme is.  Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
*meaning*.  Do study up on this.

As for ablaut, e:o ablaut is attested for traditional lengthened grade e: and
for traditional "original" e: i.e. eH.  Beside Gk. _pate:r_ 'father' we find
both _phra:to:r_ and _phra:te:r_ 'member of a clan' (orig. 'brother').  And for
Gothic _saian_ 'sow' < *seH- we find reduplicated preterite (originally
perfect) _sai-so_ < _*se-soH-_.

<snip>

[Leo asks for evidence that 3.sg.perfect -e resulted from -He, as Pat claimed.]

Pat responds:

>1) On general principles, since inflections are grammaticalized
>morphemes, and IE has no morphemes beginning in a vowel, any
>inflection that manifests itself apparently as a V, should be, ab
>origine, be presumed to be HV.

Since when is "general principle" a response to a request for evidence and
examples?  Isn't your claim that no IE morphemes began with a vowel an enormous
thesis that needs in-depth analysis?  It also seems to be a thoroughly novel
thesis as well: while others have claimed that IE *roots* could not begin with
a vowel, I have not until now seen that claim made for *other* morphemes.

Let me give you one case to consider.  What do you think of the thematic vowel
morpheme {-e/o-} (curly brackets being the proper notation for morphemes),
which is found in both nominal and verbal forms?  Is there *any* evidence for a
laryngeal there, since the morpheme was never initial?

I would also suggest that you review *carefully* the concept of the morpheme
before answering.  Many authors insinuate, or even claim, that the morpheme is
the minimal unit of *meaning*.  Though common, this is simply wrong.  The
morpheme is the minimal significant unit of word formation, and hence the
smallest unit capable of *bearing* meaning.  That's rather different.  Some
morphemes (the thematic vowel is one such) have no obvious meaning.  (This is
not to say that thematic and athematic verbs formed from the same root must
therefore have the same meaning.  Rather, we must say that root + {-e/o-} may
have a different meaning than bare root.  This is not surprising, since in
living languages, compound verbs need not have a meaning equivalent to the sum
of the parts: _understand_ is semanticly not "under" plus "stand".)

>2) For whatever interest in may be, I published in Mother Tongue an
>essay describing the differences between the person as vocalic
>differences, each proceeded by H{1}, i.e. /?/:
><http:/www/geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/PERSPRO1.htm>

>Please do not attribute all my views of 1990 to me now, however.

How are we to know what to believe and what not to?

[stuff omitted]

>I do not believe that the earliest Nostratic had what we would
>properly call pronouns. I believe all pronouns are only nouns in a
>specialized use.

Typologically, this is acceptable; certainly it seems right for Japanese.  But
the Japanese "pronoun" words look and act like nouns in every way, which cannot
be said of the IE set.

[stuff omitted]

Pat said:

>Yes, I believe that there was a *noun*, which would have the reflex of
>*to in IE, which meant 'tribal member', and was used in various
>positions that we would characterize as pronominal or inflectional. We
>even have an extended form of this *to in *teuta:-, 'people (probably
>better 'tribe')'.

But that still doesn't answer my question about the extraordinary brevity of
*to- (better: *te/o-, with ablaut).  Recall that if you actually accept
Lehmann's version of /^/ as a prosodic feature that comes and goes (and hence
not part of the root), the result is an absurdly short *nominal* root /t-/.
Thus *_teu-_ i.e. /tew-/ or */tw-/ looks like the bare minimum for anything
nominal, and that's pushing it a bit.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed May 19 18:41:14 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 20:41:14 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <13452421607.15.ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.204114.0200.>

On Tue, 18 May 1999, Rich Alderson wrote:

[On my suggested one-vowel system of Sanskrit:]

> One can just as easily argue that [y] is a realization of /i/, [w] realizes
> /u/, and so on, when the vocalic phoneme is collocated with another vocalic
> phoneme, if one wants to accept this sort of deep-level phonology. [...]

Sure, but the point is that such an alternative is not demanded by
anything, i.e. one can do it one way or the other. The really
noteworthy thing about Sanskrit is that, if one does it this way (namely
by deriving a maximum of syllabicity by rule), this exhausts the system,
except for one single element, /a/, which is always a vowel. This is only
marginally affected by the erratic behaviour of Sievers' "rule"
(especially since competing variants are lexically equivalent) and by
loanwords that have only been integrated in a late (Middle Indic) period
in occasional disagreement with the rules. Even including these fringes,
it gives _exactly_ the picture of a one-vowel language of the style
suggested for PIE by Benveniste and others. But, unlike PIE, the Sanskrit
1-vowel system is very nearly true, since Sanskrit simply has no other
elements than /a/ that cannot be called a consonant, while IE has /e/ and
/o/, and in my opinion also /a/. Also for PIE, the full predictability has
been compromised a bit by analogical levelling, one of the best cases
being the weak forms of nasal presents: From *yw-ne'-g-t, the 3sg
*yune'g-ti is fine, but in the 3pl one expects *yw-n-g-e'nt to
yield **iwNge'nti and not the actual *yunge'nti pointed to by Skt.
yunja'nti, Lat. jungunt; in this paradigm *yun- has simply been carried
through from the sg. where it was regular before the following vowel.

   This is only meant as a refutation of one particular objection always
raised against the "classical" (in my opinions erroneous) analysis of IE
as having only one necessarily syllabic (morpho)phoneme, viz. /e/, this
objection being that the world knows of no other languages of such a
structure. Well, for what it is worth, there IS a language of _exactly_
that structure, namely Sanskrit. I realize that many now don't want
Sanskrit to exist, or, failing that, not to be given this analysis, which
they are at liberty to avoid. But nobody would be right in saying
that it could not theoretically be done to Sanskrit to the same extent as
it was (and sometimes still is) attempted for PIE.

Jens

[ Moderator's response:
  All right, I see the point you were making, and concede that under the same
  kind of phonological theory that led to claims that PIE, or Kabardian, or
  Ubykh, were monovocalic, Sanskrit too is monovocalic.  I understood you to be
  asking that this analysis be accepted as *correct*, rather than that it be
  taken as a strawman against which to argue.  Thank you for the clarification.
  --rma ]


From petegray at btinternet.com  Wed May 19 19:31:53 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 20:31:53 +0100
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.203153.0100.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Steven's posting on Latin has some points that can be clarified further.

> vulgar and Romance evidence suggests that the -i- in the
> -vi perfets was apparently not present on the lips of many speakers;
> some Romance forms seem to require *amaut, &c., instead of CL -amavit-.

Amaut is the regular non-classical development of CL amavit.   We know that
the sequence vowel - v - vowel was often subject to syncope.   Compare
Caesar's shock on hearing a street seller in Brindisium shouting "don't go"
(cave ne eas).   He was actually shouting "figs" (cauneas).

> Similar confusion reigns ... between subjunctive and future endings, and
> forms like -audibo- are attested.  ... in Romance languages ... the future
> has been made over.  (It is possible that given the phonology of VL,
> -monebis- sounded like it was really a contraction for -monere (h)abes-,
> since short 'i' and 'e' fell together in many areas, and h- was dropped.)

There is a better reason for the collapse of the inherited future system.
With the change of /b/ to /B/ (or /v/), the classical distinction between
future amabit, and past amavit, was no longer possible.   Both ended up
/amaut/ > amo: (distinguished from the 1st sing present by the different
placing of the accent - preserved in Italian to this day.)   This form ended
up as the past, and a new future was developed from the infinitive.

> In Classical Latin, we associate the -b- future with the "first and
> second conjugations," verbs with a stem-vowel of -a or -e:  but dialect,
> vulgar, and archaic evidence shows that it was not quite so cut and
> dried in the unpolished world of ordinary speech.

Yes, but look at the actual patterns.   The first conj. has -a- =
indicative, -e- = subjunctive, so needs a periphrastic future.   The second
has -e- = indicative, -a- = subjunctive, so needs a periphrastic future.
Only the 3rd and 4th do not need such a future, and so do not show it in
Classical Latin.   If there is spread of the -b- future, it is part of the
normal intrusion of the dominant forms into other conjugations.   Much more
significant would be -a- or -e- forms used in place of the -b- forms in the
first or 2nd conjugation, but even there, it might only indicate the usual
overlap in meaning of subjunctive and future.

> Going mostly from memory, I doubt that any criteria can really be
> pinpointed.

I don't think we have to be quite that desparing - see my earlier posting.

>Classical Latin is a highly artificial
> literary creation.

I would have said "highly artificial selection".   It rejects some forms
(both morphology and grammar) but these often remained in common speech, and
have resurfaced in late Latin and become the norm in Romance:  e.g. dico
quod (Plautus, Vulgate, and Romance).

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Wed May 19 18:48:13 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 19:48:13 +0100
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.194813.0100.>

Nath said:

> We find inserted
> i in bharibhrati and (ni)ghanighnate from *bher and *ghen and I would be
> very surprised if these two roots ever had an initial laryngeal.

Yes, point taken.    But as with so many historic reflexes of laryngeals,
once the original reason for the "abnormality" is lost, there is influence
and spread and - dare I say it - in a few cases analogy.   I wouldn't dare
to venture a particular explanation for the -i- in the two forms you quote.

I only say what must be said with all these potential indicators of
laryngeals:  the presence of one of the 14 or 15 historic reflexes of
laryngeals may - but only may - indicate a laryngeal.   When we find several
of these indicators, especially if spread over several languages, then we
can speak more certainly.   The claim is that the -i- in these Sanskrit
intensives is one of these indicators.

We could test that claim by checking how many examples there were, and how
many counter-examples.   At least, we could do that, if we were already
certain of where the laryngeals were!

Peter


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed May 19 23:45:39 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 01:45:39 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <002501be9fba$40f3b740$0bd3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.014539.0200.>

On Sun, 16 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> In the case of the non-neuter dual, the Sanskrit form -a:(v)
>> corresponds fully with the evidence from the other languages, only
>> elsewhere the other stem-classes use a different morpheme that can
>> everywhere continue an IE *-e.

> That, IMHO, is a big "ONLY"; "correspond" means something a little more
> restrictive to me. I fail to see how OCS C-st. -i, and u-stem -y  (for nom.
> masc./fem.) "corresponds".

I meant to speak of the _thematic_ non-neuter dual, cf. the following.

>> So, the other languages distinguish o-stems from non-o-stems in this
>> point, Sanskrit does not. English has -s in the genitive sg. and pl., most
>> related languages only in the sg.  The two problems are quite parallel, and
>> analogy is known to be the answer in the latter case, what's wrong with
>> suspecting it in the former?

> There is nothing wrong with a suspicion that is in keeping with the data.

That's the point! Then also Slav. -i and -y are analogical forms
just like the Skt. ones. In all probability the analogy was already
completed in the protolanguage: Just as o-stems form non-ntr. dual in
*-o:, thus i- and u-stems form *-i: and *-u:.

>> I'm not saying the non-neuter was _originally_ *-e, I'm saying it was
>> (or things look as if it was) in the IE protolanguage. I am not sure
>> there were no vowel-initial roots, it is mostly very hard to prove that
>> something as hazy as *H1 was not present. On the other hand, there is
>> absolute certainty that IE did have vowel-initial affixes. You may take
>> the gen.sg. ending; whether you want to posit *-os or *-es, there
>> is no place for "-Hos" or "-Hes";

> Sorry that I did not make clear that my objection to *-e was principally
> directed towards the termination of the perfect.

Okay, but we _were_ talking about the dual.

> Beekes reconstructs most
> dual forms as containing [H{1}] and, formwise, I have no problem with that.

So, for the dual *-e, it _would_ be a problem for you if it did not have
a laryngeal, as sva'sa:rau indicates it did not.

> As for the genitive, I reconstruct *-s(V), with the final vowel falling off
> due to stress-accent of a preceding syllable: "Ce/oC + sV -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

With accent shifting onto a vowel that was not there?

>>  I have managed to explain the nom.pl. *-es from an earlier
>> vowel-less sequence *-z-c (two different sibilants, one marking the
>> nom., the other the pl., in that order, structurally parallel with the
>> acc.pl. in orig. *-m- + sibilant),

> Why not simply *-s(V)s(v)?

In the reading *-ss, no objection, except that we do need two different
sibilants for other reasons.

>> the calculation giving at the same time phonetic explanation of all the many
>> other oddities of the nom. pl. forms, esp. the type in *-'-or-es, *-'-on-es:
>> Why is the -o- not lost? Why is it o, not e? Why is it not long? Why has the
>> e not been lost? And, of course, why is the e not accented?

> There is no doubt that these are all good questions.

>> All of this is explained by **-z-c where there was no vowel to shift
>> to: An unaccented -e- is first reduced to -o-; then the nom. sibilant
>> ("-z-") lengthens (result now *-'-o:r-zc); then short unstressed
>> vowels are lost (but this form does not have any, so the rule operates
>> vacuously here); a long vowel is shorted before word-final
>> triconsonantal clusters [containing the nom. sibilant].

> For some languages, perhaps. But for IE, a tri-consonantal cluster of this
> form is not likely to have been a realized phenomenon at *any* stage of IE.

So, the effects I say they have caused on the surface forms come from
elsewhere? From where? And why are precisely three consonants of a
structure pointed to by the morphology excluded by your ruling? Is it the
number three in itself that is excessive? Or is it the sibilant character
of two of the elements? Or is it my assumption that they were not
identical? Would it help if I said that, for the present purpose, they may
as well be identical since their difference is irrelevant here?

> I think one important factor that should be considered in these equations is
> the example Beekes gives on p. 195 of Greek <o{'}sse>, 'pair of eyes', which
> he derives from *ok{w}-iH{1} THROUGH *ok{w}-ye. We could, just as easily,
> posit a dual in -y and forget about the laryngeal.

In this particular case we could - for Greek. But not for Slavic oc^i
(would have reduced i), nor for Arm. ac^'k' (would not be a-stem, gen.
ac^'ac'). And especially it would not give Skt. -i: with length in the
ntr.du. of cons.-stems.

>> Neither Beekes nor I see the i of *-iH1 as underlyingly syllabic;

> If there is a school that does not accept /i/ as syllabic, I suggest you
> think about changing schools.

>> in phonemic terms it may just as well be given the notation *-yH1. And,
>> hurrah, it is a strong case, i.e. contains no underlying vowels.

> In view of Sanskrit o-stem <yuge:{'}>, I am not sure what the cause for
> jubilation is.

I am pleased by the fact that there is no rightward accent shift in
the ntr.du. of mobile paradigms. Don't look at the o-stems for control,
they never change the accent.

>> *H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e;

> In view of Gk. o{'}sse, why not?

There is no such rule. The /y/ would syllabify and yield **ane'r-i. That's
what happened in the loc.sg. *p at 2-te'r-i > Gk. dat. pate'ri, Skt. loc.
pita'ri.

>> u-stem *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off by a
funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one' (acc.sg.M
amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this giving
ami:, not **amu:.

>> What _is_ the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

> The majority of the attested forms, there being no /i/ in IE..

For most positions, you are right: The original difference between the
morphophonemes /i/ and /y/ are neutralized almost across the board and can
therefore be represented by one phoneme. However, that is not the point
we're discussing; we're arguing about the presence or absence of a
laryngeal in the ntr.du., remember? And in this point Skt. yuge' 'two
yokes' passes judgment, for this form is sandhi resistent ("pragrhya")
and so _must_ have ended in a laryngeal.

>> It may be illogical to abbreviate wordforms when forming enclitic variants
>> of them, but many languages plainly do that.

> Not in my opinion. I believe that emphatic variants are marked by expansions
> of the underlying forms found in enclitics.

That is often the case, perhaps mostly, but not always: Is howdydo an
expansion of howdy? And how-do-you-do an even further expansion?

>> It's like numerals and greetings, you get all sorts of reduced
>> shapes in allegro speech, since people already understand the
>> message at the beginning (sometimes even before).

> Some holes do not improve with additional digging.

>  I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
> a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

So this is wrong too? Well, let me tell you that the Danish decadic
numerals 40-90 were formerly two or three syllables longer than now. A
hundred years ago, you could only write

fyrretyve, halvtredsindstyve, tresindstyve, halvfjerdsindstyve,
firsindstyve, halvfemsindstyve,

but in my lifetime they have always been as short as

fyrre, halvtreds, tres, halvfjerds, firs, halvfems;

and informed scholars know of _no_ phonetic rule to delete word-final
-tyve or -indstyve in this language. These are true abbreviations.

It seems to me that there just are some solutions you do not _like_ on
apriori grounds. Too bad, then, if the material at hand points in that
direction, I am still gonna accept them, even if I do not like them
myself. I am no authority on taste in scholarly solutions, nor do I see on
what grounds anybody else could be. Conversely, there also appear to be
some solutions you would _like_ to be true, even if the material at hands
points unambiguously away from them. I'll be doubting them very much
until, by some unlikely turn of events, the hard evidence turns out to be
illusory and is overruled by a new and better possibility. In the case of
*-e or *-H1e for the non-ntr. dual, not much is needed (but none is
present yet). For *-y or *-iH1, it takes miracles to vindicate the former
over the latter. And that wordforms can be shortened is simply beyond
dispute.

Jens


From ALDERSON at netcom.com  Thu May 20 01:11:13 1999
From: ALDERSON at netcom.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 18:11:13 -0700
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <000c01be9d0c$7e2561a0$3d9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.181113.0700.>

On 13 May 1999, "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote in reply
to my posting of May 11:

>>1.  An original three-vowel system /i u a/, with length, developed allophonic
>>variants [& O:] of /a/ under lengthening processes.  Cowgill argued this as
>>the source of Brugmann's Law in Sanskrit in a paper presented at the LSA in
>>the early 70's; it solved the *e/*o problem for me, so I have adopted it.

>You are, of course, free to *believe* anything you wish but just the first
>premise in this description is untenable because unprovable: an original
>/i u a/.

The five-vowel system licensed by the comparative method can be reduced to a
three-vowel system by a judicious application of internal reconstruction while
doing no injustice to the facts of the language reconstructed, or to linguistic
universals in general, unlike the system proposed by Lehmann.

>>But this is the very point I was making:  The definition you cite from Trask
>>is structuralist, rather than psychological, and not the definition of the
>>phoneme used by Natural Phonology.  Further, even in a structuralist
>>definition, one is not allowed to restrict the word "meaning" as you wish to
>>do, and so your argument for a "non-phonemic vowel" falls apart.

>I think you may be a bit overly "school"-oriented. I still that Lehmann was
>under no obligation to be consistently structuralist; and I do not feel a
>similar restraint myself.

If by "overly 'school'-oriented" you mean that I accept the findings of one
particular theory of phonology in preference to other competing theories, I
plead _nolo contendere_.  If you mean rather that I think Lehmann *must* do
everything as a structuralist because he did most things as one, you misunder-
stand my entire point:  I do not insist that if he did anything as a structur-
alist he must do everything that way; rather, I am simply stating the fact that
on the evidence of his writings themselves, he *did* do things strictly as a
structuralist.

								Rich Alderson


From ALDERSON at netcom.com  Thu May 20 01:19:19 1999
From: ALDERSON at netcom.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 18:19:19 -0700
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905131539190.12182-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.181919.0700.>

On 13 May 1999, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

>But even so, the preform *divaz-dyvai, supposing it is correct (and it is
>a _very_ good idea), may be analyzed as /dyvas-dyvay/ and so makes do with
>only one phoneme that is always syllabic. Would you not agree that the
>vowel was /a/ at one time - and still is synchronically in one stage of
>abstraction - in both cases?

Thank you, the idea is not mine.  As for the phonological analysis of the
phrase, we shall have to agree to disagree, as I cannot accept the lexical
status of the /y/s in the first syllables--the surface realization is *always*
[i], never [y], and is therefore underlying /i/.

(Phonology is a lot simpler, in this way, than Chomsky & Halle thought, though
it is much more complex in others.)

								Rich Alderson


From ALDERSON at netcom.com  Thu May 20 01:31:09 1999
From: ALDERSON at netcom.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 18:31:09 -0700
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as [was Re: "syllabicity"]
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.183109.0700.>

On 13 May 1999, "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote in reply
to my posting of 11 May:

>> There is more than one source, for example, of [e:]--see, for example, _dive
>> dive_ "from day to day", where the first _dive_ is the expected sandhi
>> variant of the ablative _divas_ "from (a) day".  Thus, again, your analysis
>> fails to explain the facts.

>In my opinion, this analysis of _dive dive_ is totally erroneous. This is
>clearly a reduplicated dative.

That is the schoolbook analysis of the phrase, but the semantics come out of
the alternative analysis quite easily (in line with the use of the ablative in
time expressions elsewhere) and we then need not torture the poor dative to
mean its own opposite.

>Also, I am curious if you can cite a non-arguable ablative in -as that becomes
>-e: in sandhi?

>Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

Later, on 16 May 1999, Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de> noted further:

>Since the ante-voiced sandhi form of -as is -o Pat is right in finding -e
>simply incredible.

The sandhi rule in question is that -as becomes -e before voiced dentals, and
only there.  It applies in internal as well as external sandhi, cf. _edhi_ <
*as-dhi (_as-_ "be" + imperative).

This is not, as it happens, my analysis, but what I was taught nearly 25 years
ago in my first Sanskrit class...

								Rich Alderson


From jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au  Wed May 19 00:16:56 1999
From: jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au (Jon Patrick)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 10:16:56 +1000
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 11 May 1999 09:45:04 +0100."
 <Pine.GSO.4.03.9905110908440.15040-100000@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.101656.1000.>

[ Moderator's note:
  I am posting this after some discussion with Mr. Patrick, in which he assures
  me that he is not angry, was not angry in previous posts, and is not looking
  to start a fight.  I ask others to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  I have done some editing for format, but made no other changes.
  --rma ]

    Date:       Tue, 11 May 1999 09:45:04 +0100 (BST)
    From:       Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>

It is taken me sometime to reply to this message as it left me so incredulous
after first reading it.

    [on my claim that Pre-Basque did not permit plosive-liquid clusters and
    Jon's query in terms of words in Azkue's 1905 dictionary of Basque
    containing such clusters]

    > I note that my original reference referred to native words and hence the
    > diversion of this response into "ancient" words is just that.

    I am mystified.  My assertion was about the Pre-Basque of some 2000
    years ago, and about nothing else whatever.  As I pointed out earlier,
    words in Pre-Basque did not contain such clusters, regardless of whether
    they were native or borrowed.  So, it is `ancient' which is relevant
    here, not `native'.

Clearly with a language like basque which you yourself have said is
conservative one would be expect a strong relationship between what is
"ancient" and what is "native"
    [LT]

    >     Third, Azkue does not claim that the words entered in his dictionary
    >     are native.  On the contrary, he declares explicitly, in section IX
    >     of his prologue, that he is entering words of foreign origin which
    >     are well established in Basque

    [JP]

    > As you presented in a later message and which arrived as I was
    > preparing this response the relevant section of Azkue's dictionary
    > is Section XXIV.5, which states that the words in uppercase are
    > primitives or non-derivatives "les mots en capitales ou majuscules
    > sont primitifs ou non derives" (pardon the lack for accents)

    > These are the words I sent to you in the previous email. I believe
    > my comment "he asserts are native words" is a valid interpretation
    > of his work. I was particularly concerned that your first email did
    > not reference this section and was going to refer you to it. Now it
    > appears that you are aware of the section and was remiss in not
    > referring to it in your first message.

    No, not at all.  My reference to section IX was not a response to you at
    all, but to somebody else who had commented on Azkue's use of upper case
    for certain entries.  I was only commenting on that point.

    I'm afraid I can't agree that your interpretation of Azkue's "primitifs
    ou non derives" as `native' is valid.  It seems perfectly clear that
    what Azkue means here is, in modern terminology, `monomorphemic', and
    not `native'.  Even if there could be any doubt about this, Azkue
    explains clearly in section XXIV.5 what he means.  To the best of my
    knowledge, Azkue nowhere uses the term `native', or any equivalent, in
    his prologue.

On translating the french we have the expression "primitive or non--derived"
which I can only take as attributes such as "early", "native", "original". As
well the or(ou) can be read as an inclusive "or" encompassing both primitive
words AND foreign words.

    >    [LT]

    >     That said, I cannot possibly comment on every word in Jon's long
    >     list.

    > Why not? They constitute the whole corpus of material that Azkue has
    > presented which is contrary to your claim.

    No.

    First of all, Azkue has not presented any material at all which is
    contrary to my claim.  My claim is about the Pre-Basque of 2000 years
    ago.  Azkue's book is a dictionary of the Basque of the 16th-19th
    centuries, a completely different period during which Basque has plainly
    tolerated plosive-liquid clusters.  Azkue's dictionary has not one word
    to say about Pre-Basque.

I have searched for words to describe this text and the best I can come up
with is "bizarre". Putting the translation problem above aside we have the
following situation.

1. basque is a conservative language (something you've asserted elsewhere)

2. most materials we have from Roman times that are clearly basque or
prebasque (sometimes called Aquitanian) are readable as such and offer little
problem in recognition.

3. Azkue gives a list of words that he regards as "primitive or non-derived"

4. Therefore those words in Azkue's list that are not identifiable as loans
represent significant evidence about the possible form of ancient/early basque.

5. Those non-loan words are valid and meaningful for appraisal of any  theory
about "early basque"  for whatever time period you want that term to be
applied to.

    Second, your list was hundreds of words long.  Do you really think I
    have so much time on my hands that I can afford to devote days to
    ferreting out known or probable etymologies for every single word in
    that list?

If you want to justify you hypothesis, yes I do expect it.
This comment smells to me like I have contaminated a much loved theory with
some live data and it has raised an unbearable stench.

    > I doubt that any such list has ever been compiled before for basque
    > scholars to investigate. Here is the perfect opportunity for you to
    > settle once and for all if your claim can be substantiated. Do you
    > have no wish to explore and re-investigate old knowledge no matter
    > how well established it is, in the light of new evidence? Is there
    > no sense of true scientific exploration in your spirit where
    > everything is always up for reappraisal?

    The problem is that the entries in Azkue's dictionary are of no
    relevance whatever to the nature of Pre-Basque.

I think my statements above have explained why I find this comment simply
"bizarre"

    Specialists believe that Pre-Old-English had only 16 consonants.
    Any decent dictionary of modern English will reveal that the language
    now has 24 consonants (in most accents).  Would anybody regard this
    observation as casting doubt on the validity of the claim about
    Pre-Old-English?

    English has changed its phonology substantially in the last 1500 years
    or so.  And, of course, Basque has changed its phonology in the last
    2000 years.

    Old English had no phonemic voiced fricatives; modern English has four
    of them.  Pre-Basque did not tolerate plosive-liquid clusters; modern
    Basque does.  These things happen.

The evidence available in english is not the evidence available in basque.
Azkue is one of the largest evidence sources available for studying the
development of basque, all be its limitations. As you so often say we should
look at the evidence. I'm merely asserting the importance of not excluding
evidence that is legitimately admissible for appraisal.

    > In terms of examples you have chosen and the tone of the remainder of
    > your message I can only say I feel you have totally compromised you usual
    > high standards of scholarship. You were asked:

    > " Larry would you say that there is not one word in this list that is
    >  not problematic for your thesis,..."

    > and you chose not to answer that question.

    Sorry, but I did answer it.  I pointed out that the terms `native' and
    `ancient' are utterly independent, and that my claim was about ancient
    words, not about native ones.

here we disagree, the two terms are not independent.

    > Rather you selectively ignored the bulk of the evidence and chose
    > the most extreme examples of the total set to covertly ridicule my
    > attempt to explore and understand this claim and in the end divert
    > the topic to a comic play off on words.

    No, nothing of the sort.  If I've inadvertently offended you, then I
    apologize, but that was never my intent.  All I did was to select a few
    representative words from the list whose origins were familiar or
    obvious, and point out that these words, of varying origins, could not
    be ancient in Basque.  No ridicule was intended.

I don't accept your apology, it is clearly not sincere.

    > As basque scholars know, you included, the Azkue dictionary has its
    > flaws but it is also a fine piece of scholarship, and you have
    > applauded his work in your own book, so any material based on his
    > dictionary deserves close scrutiny, despite the fact we know we will
    > find some clear mistakes.

    Agreed, and in fact the late Luis Michelena devoted a fair amount of
    time to uncovering the mistakes in Azkue's dictionary.  In my book The
    History of Basque, I myself point out some of the major shortcomings of
    the dictionary which users should be aware of.  But the bottom line is
    that a dictionary of modern Basque is of no direct relevance to the
    nature of Pre-Basque.

I have responded to this above.

    >  I have seen many examples in this list and on other lists where you
    > have insisted that claims for phenomena are unjustified because
    > there is no supporting evidence. Yet in this case you are prepared
    > to omit evidence that can be rightfully presented for appraisal. Can
    > we expect that on other occasions you have also played fast and free
    > with omitting legitimate evidence for appraisal because it didn't
    > suit your case?

    Gee whiz, Jon -- you seem to be really cheesed off for some reason, and
    I can't imagine why.

I think the sarcasm here, which as far as I am concerned is inappropriate in
professional discourse, further demonstrates the lack of sincerity in your
apology above.

     that clearly
    Azkue's dictionary is of no relevance here.  What *is* relevant, as I
    pointed out briefly in an earlier posting, is the treatment of Latin
    loans into Pre-Basque.  In these loans, plosive-liquid clusters were
    *invariably* eliminated in one way or another.  This shows clearly that
    the phonology of Pre-Basque did not permit such clusters -- or, in plain
    English, that the speakers of Pre-Basque could not pronounce them.

This evidence is clearly informative but so is the list of Azkue words that
cannot be attributed to loans.

My sole point is that admissable evidence be admitted to the debate and be
appraised. It may well turn out that that evidence supports your hypothesis
and hence strengthens your case. That doesn't mean that it is not open to
scrutiny again at another time. The essence of good scholarship in my
experience, admittedly from non-linguistic disciplines(computing, &
psychotherapy) was to always be prepared to revise even the oldest "laws". I
characterise this notion as perpetual preparedness for flexibility.

cheers
Jon
______________________________________________________________
The meaning of your communication is the response you get


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Thu May 20 03:39:44 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 22:39:44 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.223944.0500.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:
> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
> plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a statement
> that a language which can does not exhibit.

True, but such a weakness tends to be counteracted by less ambiguity
elsewhere.  Japanese, for instance does not distinguish between singular
and plural, but it does distinguish between different levels of
honorifics, as well as cases.  Overall, languages tend to balance out,
they are *roughly equal* in complexity.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu May 20 04:24:55 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 00:24:55 EDT
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.002455.EDT.>

>Patrick C. Ryan

>My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
of >linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
>hence, less explicitly expressive.

-- irrelevant to the present discussion, as all extant and historically
recorded languages, as well as those which can be reconstructed with any
degree of confidence (like PIE) are equally "expressive", ie., basically
equally efficient as means of communication.

Languages are more or less useful for communication according to their degree
of ubiquity or social status; which is to say, for non-linguistic reasons.

Eg., English is not spoken more widely than Serbian because it's in any way a
"better" language, but simply due to historical accident.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 20 06:06:12 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 02:06:12 EDT
Subject: Form following function [was "Latin and Slavonic for `moon'"]
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.020612.EDT.>

I wrote:
<<The intention behind wheel was not to make a wheel or make a new kind of
wheel.  The intention behind the wheel was transportation.>>

In a message dated 5/18/99 3:57:03 PM, colkitto at sprint.ca wrote:

<<Actually, it's the other way round.    people tool around inventng all
sortsof gadgets, most of which are lost with their inventors.  Wheels
wereinvented all over the world.  Everywhere people were faced with "OK, what
are we going to use this for?" once they'd "invented" a given artefact.   It
was only in areas with large domesticable animals,... that people found a
"use" for what had started out as a clever toy (the wheel), and remained so
in many parts of the world. >>

People "tooling around" and "inventing all sorts of gadgets" are still
involved in functional behavior.  Exploring, experimenting, trying something
out are all intentional.

Function has a broader meaning here.  It's not 'practicality.'  Function
refers to a consequence, an effect on the environment.

A rock has form.  When a human picks one up to throw it, function is added.

A square wheel has form.  The problem is that it does not satisfy the
functionality requirement.

Form is everywhere.  What makes a difference between one form and another is
functionality.

Wheels on toys do the same thing that wheels on carts do - they allow the
object to move with less resistance.  Rocks rolling down hills with no one
around do the same thing.   Inventing something that rolls is not an
invention.  The difference between rocks rolling down a hill and a wheel is
human intentionality.  Wheels serve a purpose.

Wheels on carts serve a different function than on a toy - though both are
functional.  The moment a wheel was put on a cart and used for
transportation, a new function for objects that roll was introduced.

<<Function often follows form.>>

As far as human behavior is concerned, forms without function don't make it.
Square wheels do not create a function.  But the idea of square wheels do
have a function - they convey the idea of bad function.

You may be saying that form precedes function in the timeline.  That is
probably always true.  But "form follows function" does not refer to time.

But what determines whether a form stays or disappears is function.
Everything in the world has form.  What makes those forms matter is
intentionality.

<<The same phenomenon often happens in linguistic change - often distinctions
arise, and different functions have to be found for them.>>

But ONLY if they are found functional.  That is the only way they pass from
Saussure's "act of speech" into "the system of language."  No function HAS to
be found for them.  What happens is that they serve some function in language
- communication, reference, etc.

<<(cf. English of and off, the -a/-u genitive alternaton in Polish (see Janda
"Back from the Brink" for an excellent exposition).>>

I don't know the history of these changes.  I take it that they were
meaningless variations in speech that acquired specific functions later.  The
point is that unless that their chances of survival materially increased when
they acquired those functions.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 20 06:13:07 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 02:13:07 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.021307.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/18/99 1:01:22 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

<<Humans communicate the way horses run and tigers stalk.  It's what we do.>>

I think if you look back at our past exchanges you will find clear proof of
how wrong you are.

<<Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
English. >>

First of all, how the heck do you know that?  Secondly, how do you know that
by the time the changes happened, Old English had not become ineffective.
Cf. Crystal on possible causes of inflection in English.

Regards,
Steve Long


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu May 20 08:16:07 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:16:07 +0200
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <001d01bea181$08ef34a0$84d3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.101607.0200.>

>As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
>plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a statement
>that a language which can does not exhibit.

A language which is unable to designate the plural form of a noun (*unable*
!) would be a language without numerals, and without a word for "many"
othl. I strongly doubt that a lg. like this could still be called a natural
language, iow. I doubt the existence of such a thing. Please, correct me.

But, seriously, there is of course sense in talking about a plural like
"dogs" being simpler and producable with less effort than, say, "many dog"
or "three (= many) dog". Othoh, "sheep", "brethren", "l'udi", and "d'on"
aren't. Talking about an overall tendency of increasing complexity in
language change makes thus less sense to me. We could go on and exchange
endless lists of documented changes in languages increasing systemic
complexity, followed by an equally long list showing simplifications (and
all this without a proper definition of complexity/simplicity in hand).
Should we ?

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu May 20 08:25:12 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:25:12 +0200
Subject: Syllabicity
In-Reply-To: <01JBDL6JRGUA9VXJY5@LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.102512.0200.>

>>An /e:/ which is the result of phonological processes or morphology
>>still cannot be considered a phoneme IMHO. For me to accept the
>>phonemic status of [e:], I would need to see two roots: Ce/oC and
>>Ce:/o:C, with different meanings. And yes, I meant to write e:/o:. If
>>e: is phonemic, we should expect to see it participating in Ablaut.

>Pat, I regret to have to say so again, but you simply do not understand what a
>phoneme is.  Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
>*meaning*.  Do study up on this.

The ability to *differentiate* meanings (not to *have* them) is, in *my*
humble opinion, part and parcel of every non-avantgardistic definition of
the notion "phoneme", n'est-ce pas ? Minimal pairs have different meanings,
or are my textbooks hopefully outdated ?

Also, if anyone subscribes to the last but one sentence in the quoted
passage above (which would then lead to the last, of course), how would
this anyone define the notion "distinctive" in this passage ?

Always willing to learn, but, as W. Brandt used to say "Wir waren schon mal
weiter ...".

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu May 20 08:40:10 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:40:10 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905192010220.1045-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.104010.0200.>

>But, unlike PIE, the Sanskrit
>1-vowel system is very nearly true, since Sanskrit simply has no other
>elements than /a/ that cannot be called a consonant, while IE has /e/ and
>/o/, and in my opinion also /a/.

I take it that I have distinguished myself earlier by ignoring these simple
facts, which of course I shouldn't have (I wasn't following the discussion
attentively). At the same time I still feel uneasy with the label
monovocalic system. While I understand the theoretical background, which
leads to this label here by taking into account that all other syllabic
nuclei found in Sanskrit are variants/allophones of phonemes which also
have non-syllabic variants, i.e. consonants by definition, the danger of
this label is that it may lead people to believe that there might be
languages with only one possible syllabic nucleus, the phonetic realization
of which would be entirely predictable from the context. Since this is
still not the case for Sanskrit, I keep to my unease with this notion.
Again: it is theoretically OK, no doubt about that, but still, the
*phonemes* which can, under certain circumstances, surface as "vowels" are
more than one, not just one, with /a/ being the only one which always
surfaces as a vowel.

In short, we should differentiate between two kinds of "monovocalic"
systems: one, where, as in Sanskrit, only one phoneme has only vocalic
allophones, but certain others have consonantic and vocalic ones, and a
system, where only one phoneme *can* have one or several vocalic allophones.
I still view the latter as typologically impossible, resp. unheard of,
while I admit (of course) that the former description fits the Sanskrit
data (and they won't go away by ignoring them, as Jens puts it rightly).

St.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu May 20 08:57:53 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:57:53 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905192356520.3141-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.105753.0200.>

>>  I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
>> a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

So, if the assumption that English is an IE language is still with us,
English morphology is older/more original than that of, say, Vedic or Greek
? French than Latin ? Good heavens !

It may of course be in line with common sense that, in order to get a very
complex system (say, of verbal forms, as e.g. in Ket or Navajo), it has to
be "built up" somehow by several successive stages of grammaticalization. A
fortiori it is reasonable to think that such complex systems have some sort
of a "simpler" pre-history. I think this is basically what you have in
mind. But to derive from this a principle which says that always the
"simpler" (i.e. shorter) form in any given pair of attested ones is the
primary one is, well, for want of a better word, hair-raising (no, this I
time I won't take that back ;-).

St.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From sw271 at cus.cam.ac.uk  Thu May 20 09:17:58 1999
From: sw271 at cus.cam.ac.uk (Sheila Watts)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:17:58 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <001d01bea181$08ef34a0$84d3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.101758.0100.>

>From communication between Joat Simeon and Pat Ryan:

>> Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
>> English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.

>Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development from the
>simple to the complex.

>My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
>of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
>hence, less explicitly expressive.

But defining what is 'simple' and what is 'complex' is not always a
straightforward objective matter, surely. For instance, whether aspect is
by its very nature 'simpler' than tense. And sometimes the common-sense
intuition that systmes will go from simple to complex is hard to fit into
our reconstructions, as with the vexed question of the relative age of
simple two-term verbal systems in Germanic and Hittite and very complex
mulit-term TAM systems in Greek and Sanskrit.

Sheila Watts
_______________________________________________________
Dr Sheila Watts
Newnham College
Cambridge CB3 9DF
United Kingdom

phone +44 1223 335816


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu May 20 09:41:59 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 11:41:59 +0200
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as [was Re: "syllabicity"]
In-Reply-To: <13452722385.15.ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.114159.0200.>

>>Since the ante-voiced sandhi form of -as is -o Pat is right in finding -e
>>simply incredible.

>The sandhi rule in question is that -as becomes -e before voiced dentals, and
>only there.  It applies in internal as well as external sandhi, cf. _edhi_ <
>*as-dhi (_as-_ "be" + imperative).

>This is not, as it happens, my analysis, but what I was taught nearly 25 years
>ago in my first Sanskrit class...

I'm afraid, I have to stick to what I said before. In external and internal
Sandhi the regular result is -o, and not -e, both before voiced dentals,
and before voiced non-dentals.

To wit take RV III,59,1: Mitro da:dha:ra pRthivi:m uta dya:m (pada-text:
MitraH da:dha:ra pRthivi:m uta dya:m) "Mitra supports earth and heaven".
Or, to take one of the most popular Vedic hymns, RV II, 12, 2 (from the
Indra-hymn): yo dya:m astabhna:t; sa, jana:sa, IndraH (pada-text: yaH dya:m
...) "who supported heaven; he, O men, is Indra". Now this may leave us
still in doubt who it is, who actually does support heaven, but not about
the Sandhi behaviour of -as.

However, the form you quote is correct, and it does lead to the assumption
that *at some early stage* some instances of -as ( > -az) before voiced
dentals went to -e. I understand that this behaviour is still not well
understood, but I may be not really up-to-date. Anyway, it is not a normal,
predictable Sandhi.

By this I don't doubt your analysis of dive-dive; only that it may be due
to predictable Sandhi.  I'm unaware of how many examples for the process
seen in /edhi/ exist, but /divedive/ may be another one, but then for an
early sound-law, involving early univerbation of *divas + *dive not a
productive rule still operative in historical times.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From edsel at glo.be  Thu May 20 09:24:51 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 11:24:51 +0200
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.112451.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Max W Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Date: Thursday, May 20, 1999 7:25 AM

>On Mon, 17 May 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

>> According to my Spanish-Dutch dictionary (Van Goor's Handwoordenboek, 4th
>> ed.) 'Gandul' has two meanings: 1. (familiar) lazy, etc., 2. soldier of an
>> old Moorish army corps in Africa and Granada (no etymology given).  I wonder
>> if 1. stems from 2. The meaning 'pigeon pea' is not mentioned.

>> 'Gandula' is quoted as regular Spanish for deck-chair vel sim.

>Curiously, then, Sp. <gandula> 'deck chair' is not in DRAE 1992, nor in
>Moliner's Diccionario de uso del español, nor in the online Diccionario
>Anaya, which does have:

>gandul, -a
>I. Del ár. gandur = fatuo.
>      1. (adjetivo, -a, femenino, sustantivo masculino). Vago.
>      2. (adjetivo, -a, femenino, sustantivo masculino). Bribón.
>      3. (sustantivo masculino). Individuo de una tribu de indios mejicanos.

>      FAM. Gandulear, gandulería, gandulitis.
>      SIN. 1. Holgazán, indolente, perezoso, poltrón. 2. Pícaro, tunante.
>      ANT. 1. Trabajador.

>Max

[Ed Selleslagh]

I also had a look in my 'Sopena' (Nuevo Diccionario Enciclopédico Ilustrado,
Editorial Sopena Argentina, 4th ed. 1965, which I bought years ago, in Lima,
Perú - my wife is Peruvian-). It says:

gandul, -a (ár. gandur, valentón)
adj. fam. Tunante, vagabundo, haragán (Úsase también como substantivo)

and nothing else. 'Valentón' is defined as:

valentón, -na
adj. Altanero o que se jacta de valiente o guapo. (Úsase también como
substantivo).

Still no trace of 'pigeon pea'. BTW, where do they eat arroz con gandules?
Nobody in the family or their acquaintances seem to have heard of it (Spain,
Perú, Venezuela, Cuba...).

Ed.


From edsel at glo.be  Thu May 20 11:23:43 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 13:23:43 +0200
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.132343.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Date: Thursday, May 20, 1999 7:42 AM

[ moderator snip ]

>With respect, I think it is most unlikely that Basque <muga> `boundary,
>frontier' is native in that language.

[ moderator snip of long post ]

>Finally, I might note that, while Basque <muga> means `limit, frontier'
>today, as its apparent cognates commonly do in neighboring languages, in
>our earliest Basque texts the word more usually means `boundary-stone'
>-- that is, a stone marker set up to mark a boundary.  This sense is
>usually rendered today by the compound <mugarri> `boundary-stone', with
><harri> `stone'.

[Ed Selleslagh]

Thanks for the information; I should have consulted Agud & Tovar's
'Diccionario etimológico vasco' first.

Even though I completely agree that the word 'muga' does not fit well in
(Proto-) Basque, I would like to point out that all the Romance dialects you
cite either have or may have been in contact with Basque, its precursors or
related languages.

If it is of IE origin (e.g. Celtic), does anyone on this list have a clue?
(Visi)Gothic is probably too late (and anyway, all I found [in
Wulfila-Gothic] that could be remotely related by form or meaning was:
<bugjan>, 'to buy', and <mota>, 'toll'). In Latin there is <mucro, -onis>,
'1.point of the sword, 2.endpoint, limit', which may be the origin of
Sardinian 'mógoro', and related to Pokorny's celt. *mrogi- (mod. breton.
'moger').

Ed.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 20 12:16:02 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 07:16:02 -0500
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.071602.0500.>

Dear Brent and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Brent J. Ermlick <brent at bermls.oau.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 5:39 AM

> Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> > Do not confuse dependence with function. "I myself am going". Is "myself"
> > not a nominative depending on another nominative?

> In this sentence "myself" is indeed a nominative in apposition to "I",
> but it doesn't correspond to the reflexive meaning meaning of
> PIE *se. Here "I myself" has an emphatic meaning, somewhat like
> Greek "ego:ge".

> *se, on the other hand, always refers back to the subject of the clause;
> this usage is retained in all reflexes that I know of.

Yes, it is certainly the commonest employment but Pokorny does list
"abseits, getrennt, fu{"}r sich" before "Reflexivpronomen"; and, as for an
example of the usage I suggested, Pokorny mentions Albanian:

une{"} vete{"}, I myself; ai vete{"}, he himself; vet, his/her (own).

And Pokorny also mentions OI sve:-vi:ss, 'stubborn', which seems to
incorporate a non-reflexive use also (if reflexive, the meaning would
probably be something like '(self-)insightful'??).

Now, I suppose it is always possible to attempt to explain these examples in
some other way.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 20 12:53:47 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 14:53:47 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <005b01bea1ce$542b2080$cc9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.145347.0200.>

On Wed, 19 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>> Pat replied:

>>>>>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>>>>>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>>>>>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

 [I (Jens) wrote:]

>>  There is
>> no disputing that the PIE thematic verb formed a 3sg injunctive
>> *bhe'r-e-t and a 2pl injunctive *bhe'r-e-te; if you prefer
>> imperfects, you may add the augment in any form you think it had in
>> PIE.  The fact will remain that one form is an *-e longer than the
>> other, everything else being the same. That extra *-e makes a
>> difference all by itself and so is phonemic,

[Pat replied:]

> If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I.
> My point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV
> since there is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

You seem to have a short memory! As the squashed quotations from the
_same_ mail of yours show, you _did_ derive *-t and *-te from the same
underlying form, and it just is wrong to give that form the notation
*-tV in the case where the is no vowel.

Jens


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu May 20 13:36:51 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 14:36:51 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <001d01bea181$08ef34a0$84d3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.143651.0100.>

On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[PR]

>>> All they needed was to perceive and intend to communicate in
>>> another way.

[JS]

> > -- they didn't do that, either.  All they intended to do was talk,
> >and they did -- and you can talk just as effectively in any
> >language, in any era of the human race.

> > Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication
> > than Old English.  It's just different.  Languages change because
> > they do.

[PR]

> Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
> from the simple to the complex.

Not so.  Blatantly not so.

A good counterexample is dedicated parasitism, in which the parasite
loses all structures required for locomotion, perception, self-defense,
pursuit of prey, and whatnot, and is reduced to a mere sac of tissue
able to do nothing but to absorb nutrients from its host and to
reproduce.

Languages are also good counterexamples.  The earliest recorded or
reconstructible languages are in no way simpler than contemporary
languages.  And perhaps no recorded IE language possesses an
inflectional morphology as complex as that of PIE.  Does this make the
modern languages in any way inferior to PIE?

> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the
> onset of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they
> are now; and hence, less explicitly expressive.

It is not possible to make "studies" of the languages of our earliest
ancestors, since no data exist.  As for "common sense", well, I take
Einstein's view: `common sense' is merely a label we apply to something
we believe only because we want to believe it.

Our linguistic methods allow us to penetrate no more than a few thousand
years into the past, even in the most favorable cases, and they reveal
earlier languages in no way "simpler" than modern ones.  We have no way
of reaching back to the remote antecedents of language, tens or hundreds
of thousands of years ago, and we can't guess what these were like.

> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to
> designate the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an
> *ambiguity* into a statement that a language which can does not
> exhibit.

Not remotely true, I'm afraid.  You are confusing grammaticalization
with expressive power.  A language can express distinctions of number
perfectly well without grammaticalizing some of these distinctions.

English is not more ambiguous than Classical Arabic or Fijian because,
unlike them, it does not grammaticalize dual number.  We use words like
`both' or `two'; they use inflected forms of nouns or pronouns for the
same purpose.  There is no difference in expressive power.

The North American language Kwakiutl grammaticalizes visibility:
different pronouns must be selected depending on whether the referent
is, or is not, visible to the speaker at the moment of speaking.
English does not do this.  Does this fact make Kwakiutl "more
expressive" or "more complex" or "less ambiguous" than English?

The tense language English requires `I saw Susie yesterday'; a tenseless
language like Mandarin Chinese has, literally, `I see Susie yesterday'.
There is no ambiguity: there are merely different choices as to which
information should be built into the grammar, as opposed to being
expressed otherwise.

> As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much
> greater range of semantic inclusion than other languages. This also
> is a source of potential ambiguity that is not shared by languages
> that have differentiated semantic ranges more finely.

Not so.  English has only a single past tense, and `Washington crossed
the Delaware' can denote any temporal period between a moment ago and
the beginning of time.  Some other languages grammaticalize much finer
distinctions of past time: a moment ago, within the last hour, earlier
today, yesterday, recently, within the last few months, within the last
few years, many years ago, before I was born, and so on.  Is the African
language Bamileke-Dschang superior to English because it distinguishes
five different past tenses in contrast to our single one?  Is it less
ambiguous?

> Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible
> linguistic discussion.

I know nothing about sociology of any kind, but I do know that there
exists no case for claiming that any living, attested or reconstructed
language is more or less complex than any other, or more or less
expressive, or more or less ambiguous.  That's just a plain fact.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 20 14:31:15 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 09:31:15 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.093115.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 9:46 AM

Leo answers:

> Yes, our knowledge comes from detective work and is necessarily uncertain.
> But we must agree that it's worth doing, else we wouldn't be at it like this.
> So the distinction would seem useful only as a way of weaseling out of the
> consequences of a proper understanding of phonological principles which
> (if they are to have any validity at all) must apply to *all* languages,
> modern and ancient, attested or reconstructed.

Pat responds:

Certainly no one participating in this list could possibly disagree in a
general way with what you write. But making what you and I both seem to
believe is a possible distinction is not properly characterized as
"weaseling"; I will plead guilty to "hair-splitting", however, in this case.

Pat writes:

>> In IE, we simply do not find that CeC is a semantically different
>> morpheme from CoC. Now, as you have rightly identified, these
>> variations *do* mark grammatical distinctions. You obviously prefer to
>> define forms indicating different grammatical employments as
>> semantically different; I do not because, if we did, we would be
>> forced to say that cat / cats  are *semantically* different. I do not
>> think you would be willing to go this far, would you?

Leo responds:

> Look, if you can't find a semantic difference between _cat_ and _cats_, I
> shudder to think what your kitty-litter bill must be.  Yes, I do claim that
> many (not all) so-called "grammatical morphemes" such as plural -s have
> semantic meaning.  And you should too, if you think about it.  Below you make
> an extraordinary claim: that all verb agreement markers were originally nouns
> (there being no original pronouns).  If this were so, wouldn't these markers
> have had *exactly* the same sort of semantic meaning that you postulate for
> roots?

Pat attempts to explain:

Well, I have an animal-door so that I have no kitty-litter bill; I hope you
will not think of this as "weaseling".

But more seriously, yes, I would also claim that these markers had semantic
meaning. The IE plural morpheme -*s, I believe, derives from early *s{h}o,
'clan, herd'. This means that its addition caused a compound of the form N +
'clan/herd = animate group'. So the result would have been, in our example,
something like 'cat-group'. Now my use of "semantic" may be original (not
necessarily better, of course), but I claim that CAT in 'a cat' and CAT in
'cats = cat-group' are *not* semantically different only differently
employed. Now I know you will not like this employment of "semantic" so tell
me what terminology you prefer to make the distinction I am attempting to
make between core meanings (dog/cat) and derived meanings (cat/cats).

<snip>

Leo comments:

> Several comments:

> First, the idea that the family words contain an agent suffix, though old,
> is without basis.

Pat surpisedly responds:

Now, this may be a case properly characterized as "weaseling". Obviously,
your "without basis" relies on the qualification "AGENT". I cannot believe
that you would believe that the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
brother, etc.' *cannot* be analyzed as N/V + -*ter, suffix.  Now you may
wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts you
in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown, employed to mark
nuclear family members. Not a position I would care to defend!

Leo continues:

> Second, the idea that sequences of the type VHCV (where C is a stop, not a
> resonant) were metathesized to VCHV, whence VCV:, is, to say the least,
> novel.

Pat responds:

So far as I can remember, *p6te:{'}r is the only IE root listed in Pokorny
that has the form *C6CV:C (if you know of another, at least, admit it is
rare?). That, by itself, should alert us to the suspicion that something
unusual is going on here. Secondly, if we analyze family member terminology
as consisting of Root + suffix (agentive or no), *p6- is a strangely formed
IE root --- in fact, it cannot be a Normalstufe. *p6- is listed as a
zero-grade form of *pa:-, which suggests that whatever *p6- in *p6te:{'}r
comes from, it probably had the earlier form *pe/oH-. The (I hope you will
be willing to admit) analogous *ma:te{'}r does not show zero-grade. This is
a novel situation, and I have proposed a novel scenario to explain it; sui
generis, so, of course, unprovable. I would be interested to learn how you
propose to explain it.

[ Moderator's comment:
  The accent in *meH_2'te:r differs from than in *pH_2te:'r, doesn't it?
  --rma ]

Leo continues:

> Third, the *historical origin* of the [e:] has nothing to do with its
> *synchronic* phonemic status at any given stage of PIE.  Whether it results
> from laryngeal metathesis or through the lengthening of a stressed final
> syllable of a root with no desinence (not my idea, but a good one) has
> nothing to do with whether it is an allophone of /e/.

Pat counters?:

>> If the long vowel of the nominative were original rather
>> than a result of easily understood phonological developments, it
>> *would* show up as more than -0- in, e.g. the genitive.

Leo responds:

> No one is claiming that _e:_ in _pate:r_ is original.  You, I, and Lehmann
> all agree that it was somehow secondary.

Pat summarizes:

To me, that we all admit it is "secondary", decides the issue conclusively.
IMHO, for it to be phonemic, it would have to be *primary*.

> Pat responded:

>> An /e:/ which is the result of phonological processes or morphology
>> still cannot be considered a phoneme IMHO. For me to accept the
>> phonemic status of [e:], I would need to see two roots: Ce/oC and
>> Ce:/o:C, with different meanings. And yes, I meant to write e:/o:. If
>> e: is phonemic, we should expect to see it participating in Ablaut.

Leo regrets:

> Pat, I regret to have to say so again, but you simply do not understand what
> a phoneme is.  Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
> *meaning*.  Do study up on this.

Pat, testily (with tongue in cheek, difficult and dangerous):

I think your definition of "phoneme" is fine for you. I prefer Larry Trask's
quoted definition: "the smallest unit which can make a difference in
_meaning_ (empahsis added)". Perhaps your exasperation at my adherence to
this definition has caused you to misstate, seemingly as my position:
"Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of *meaning*." I
have not stated this nor do I believe it for the languages under
discussion --- as I think you know.

Leo continues:

> As for ablaut, e:o ablaut is attested for traditional lengthened grade e:
> and for traditional "original" e: i.e. eH.  Beside Gk. _pate:r_ 'father' we
> find both _phra:to:r_ and _phra:te:r_ 'member of a clan' (orig. 'brother').
> And for Gothic _saian_ 'sow' < *seH- we find reduplicated preterite
> (originally perfect) _sai-so_ < _*se-soH-_.

Pat responds:

You have left out the accents: _phra:{'}to:r_ and _phra:{'}te:r_.  Now the
phonological environments are apparently identical, and there is no
grammatical difference between the two either. So, the "Ablaut" is
presumably a deliberate *secondary* device to provide some *semantic*
differentiation. Not the best example in my opinion -- a Greek example of
something like vrddhi.

To _sai{'}so:_: for this example to be significant to my point, you would
have to argue that in IE *se:i- the [e:] is *original* (not the result of
*e/oH) which, on the basis of "_*se-soH_", I presume you would not assert.

For you to make the point I thin you are attempting to make, you need to
identify a primary IE [e:] which undergoes Ablaut in situations analogous to
[e/o].

> [Leo asks for evidence that 3.sg.perfect -e resulted from -He, as Pat
> claimed.]

> Pat responds:

>> 1) On general principles, since inflections are grammaticalized
>> morphemes, and IE has no morphemes beginning in a vowel, any
>> inflection that manifests itself apparently as a V, should be, ab
>> origine, be presumed to be HV.

Leo complains:

> Since when is "general principle" a response to a request for evidence and
> examples?

Pat responds:

An awful lot of what we are doing here relies on "general principles", does
it not?

Leo continues:

> Isn't your claim that no IE morphemes began with a vowel an enormous thesis
> that needs in-depth analysis?  It also seems to be a thoroughly novel thesis
> as well: while others have claimed that IE *roots* could not begin with a
> vowel, I have not until now seen that claim made for *other* morphemes.

Pat responds:

In a word, yes. I have attempted to do that in many of the essays at my
website. If we restrict ourselves to IE evidence, it is not possible to make
a good case *except* on general principles because many of these vocalic
terminations are the result of /?/ + V, which, as we know, is notoriously
difficult to detect conclusively in IE (as H{1}).

Leo continues:

> Let me give you one case to consider.  What do you think of the thematic
> vowel morpheme {-e/o-} (curly brackets being the proper notation for
> morphemes), which is found in both nominal and verbal forms?  Is there *any*
> evidence for a laryngeal there, since the morpheme was never initial?

> I would also suggest that you review *carefully* the concept of the morpheme
> before answering.  Many authors insinuate, or even claim, that the morpheme
> is the minimal unit of *meaning*.  Though common, this is simply wrong.  The
> morpheme is the minimal significant unit of word formation, and hence the
> smallest unit capable of *bearing* meaning.  That's rather different.  Some
> morphemes (the thematic vowel is one such) have no obvious meaning.  (This is
> not to say that thematic and athematic verbs formed from the same root must
> therefore have the same meaning.  Rather, we must say that root + {-e/o-} may
> have a different meaning than bare root.  This is not surprising, since in
> living languages, compound verbs need not have a meaning equivalent to the
> sum of the parts: _understand_ is semanticly not "under" plus "stand".)

Pat responds:

All good points, Leo, as far as I am concerned. I will not be able to
convince you that my answer is right but I will, at least, tell you what I
think.  I believe that all IE roots of the form CVC were earlier "CV-CV. The
thematic vowel is a faint reminder of forms that were stress-accented (at
one point) CV-"CV.

Pat, previously answered:

>> 2) For whatever interest it may be, I published in Mother Tongue an
>> essay describing the differences between the person as vocalic
>> differences, each proceeded by H{1}, i.e. /?/:
>> <http:/www/geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/PERSPRO1.htm>

>> Please do not attribute all my views of 1990 to me now, however.

Leo asks reasonably:

> How are we to know what to believe and what not to?

Pat responds reasonably:

Regard it only as food for thought.

 Pat, on a new subject:

>> I do not believe that the earliest Nostratic had what we would
>> properly call pronouns. I believe all pronouns are only nouns in a
>> specialized use.

Leo acknowledges:

> Typologically, this is acceptable; certainly it seems right for Japanese.
> But the Japanese "pronoun" words look and act like nouns in every way, which
> cannot be said of the IE set.

Pat differs:

IE "pronouns" in every significant way look and act like nouns --- with the
sole exception that the inflections seem to be more conservative.

> Pat said:

>> Yes, I believe that there was a *noun*, which would have the reflex of
>> *to in IE, which meant 'tribal member', and was used in various
>> positions that we would characterize as pronominal or inflectional. We
>> even have an extended form of this *to in *teuta:-, 'people (probably
>> better 'tribe')'.

Leo comments:

> But that still doesn't answer my question about the extraordinary brevity
> of *to- (better: *te/o-, with ablaut).  Recall that if you actually accept
> Lehmann's version of /^/ as a prosodic feature that comes and goes (and
> hence not part of the root), the result is an absurdly short *nominal* root
> /t-/.  Thus *_teu-_ i.e. /tew-/ or */tw-/ looks like the bare minimum for
> anything nominal, and that's pushing it a bit.

Pat finally comments:

One of the most difficult aspects of these discussions is that we are trying
to talk meaningfully about a phenomenon which has been around many thousands
of years, and has drastically changed in several ways at several times.

I do not think I will convince you of this either but, for whatever it may
be worth, I will give you my view,

There are no roots (almost) in IE that have the form CV. This form belongs
to an age which pre-dates IE and mostly, even Nostratic. There are languages
in which simple CV roots (non-reduced from some more complex form) seem to
be attested but, for IE, we can only have an indication that a CV-root
underlies several "inflections" or roots by attempting to analyze a
commonality among them --- in part complicated because these ancient CV
roots were potentially singular or plural, and the inflections and roots
derived from them are tricky to reconcile. Without comparison with languages
outside of IE, the case simply can only be speculated.

Outside of a very few simple forms like *me, *te, *se, etc., which might
slip in under the rubric of nominal, simple nominal and verbal CV-roots,
which had wide semantic ranges, were *differentiated* by additional elements
at a very early time --- at least in the languages from which IE derives. If
we are unwilling to look beyond IE,  then we must say, principally,  that
the simplest nominal and verbal root-form is CVC.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From stevegus at aye.net  Thu May 20 14:33:49 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steven A. Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:33:49 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.103349.0400.>

petegray wrote:

> I don't think we have to be quite that desparing - see my earlier posting.

Understood.  Of course, Palmer's book is older, and written at a time
when the laryngeal hypothesis had only newly been proposed; as such he
can't be strongly faulted for missing it.

>> Classical Latin is a highly artificial literary creation.

> I would have said "highly artificial selection".   It rejects some forms
> (both morphology and grammar) but these often remained in common speech, and
> have resurfaced in late Latin and become the norm in Romance:  e.g. dico
> quod (Plautus, Vulgate, and Romance).

I understand your point.  It has ever seemed to me that the founders of
the standard of CL made deliberate and even aesthetic choices guided by
euphony and the desire to seem august and weighty.  This suggests to me
that they gave the matter a fair amount of conscious thought; and
several passages in Cicero's Oratory seem to bear witness to this
consideration.

It was, of course, also a class-based standard; and because it helps
them perform their social function, a certain arbitrariness is
'desirable' in any such form of speech; cf. the irregular distribution
of the sound change /ae/ > /a/ before certain consonants in southern
British English.  Were it simply a matter of applying rules, many more
people could adapt to the standard, and its value for separating the
patricians from the plebeians would be lessened.

--

"Truth is the successful effort to think impersonally and
inhumanly."
             --- Robt. Musil, -The Man Without Qualities-


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Thu May 20 17:42:45 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 12:42:45 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.124245.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Pat replied to Jens (aka "someone"), a few days ago:

>>>>>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>>>>>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>>>>>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

Jens identified himself:

>> but I was the "someone", and perhaps I should be clearer: There is no
>> disputing that the PIE thematic verb formed a 3sg injunctive *bhe'r-e-t and
>> a 2pl injunctive *bhe'r-e-te; if you prefer imperfects, you may add the
>> augment in any form you think it had in PIE.  The fact will remain that one
>> form is an *-e longer than the other, everything else being the same. That
>> extra *-e makes a difference all by itself and so is phonemic,

Pat replied:

>If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I. My
>point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV since there
>is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

But that's not at all what you said, Pat!  You claimed then that the
*existence* ot the -e was of no consequence, since we could explain it as the
product of stress accentuation.  Having been shown by several people that your
analysis will not work, you now say that the existence of the vowel does
matter, only its quality does not.  Your statements are not compatible.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu May 20 19:14:59 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 20:14:59 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.201459.0100.>

Pat Ryan said:
> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
> of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
> hence, less explicitly expressive.

I don't wish to be rude, but this is demonstrably untrue.   For example,
Polynesian languages have simpler phonology and morphology than the
Austronesian language from which they must have developed.   Likewise modern
Chinese has simplified its phonology from that of the earliest recoverable
records.  Afrikaans has simplified its morphology from its parent langauge.
Though I grant, we are begging some issues about the meaning of "simple"
here - but without such assumptions, your statement is meaningless.

> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
> plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a statement
> that a language which can does not exhibit.

There are many languages which do not regularly show plurals (e.g. Chinese,
and in some cicrumstances, Maori.)    But in any such language the speakers
can remove the ambiguity when they wish.

> As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much greater range
> of semantic inclusion than other languages. This also is a source of
> potential ambiguity that is not shared by languages that have differentiated
> semantic ranges more finely.

Again, this is patent nonsense.   There is only ambiguity when speakers
allow it, and they only allow it when they can tolerate it.   English has
many words which show polysemy, but this causes no ambiguity, since the
context usually disambiguates them.   When there is any real ambiguity,
speakers find ways of avoiding it.  (e.g. funny-haha and funny-peculiar)

You are making assumptions about language that - in my opinion - simply do
not fit facts.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu May 20 19:20:45 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 20:20:45 +0100
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.202045.0100.>

Pat said:

> I understand how you would like to interpret the -i- of the reduplicated
> form (as the residue of a laryngeal) but aside from this, is there any
> evidence in the *un*reduplicated form of your postulated initial laryngeal?

Good question.   Since this conversation began with your theory that
laryngeals were vowels, what would you accept as evidence?

Peter


From s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca  Thu May 20 21:58:21 1999
From: s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca (Stephane Goyette)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 17:58:21 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
In-Reply-To: <005701bea22e$98542800$11efabc3@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.175821.0400.>

On Wed, 19 May 1999, petegray wrote:

> There is a better reason for the collapse of the inherited future system.
> With the change of /b/ to /B/ (or /v/), the classical distinction between
> future amabit, and past amavit, was no longer possible.   Both ended up
> /amaut/ > amo: (distinguished from the 1st sing present by the different
> placing of the accent - preserved in Italian to this day.)

And in Spanish as well, I might add.

> This form ended
> up as the past, and a new future was developed from the infinitive.

The problem with this position is that in a number of Romance languages
(French, Rumanian) the third person singular forms of the perfect must go
back to a contracted form *AMAT (stress on the second syllable, not on the
first as in the present tense form), not *AMAVT (Compare French CHANTA,
Rumanian CINTA and Spanish CANTO', Portuguese CANTOU). Thus, in French and
Rumanian there wouldn't have been any internal phonological motivation for
the future form AMABIT to be eliminated. Yet it was: leaving aside the
forms of the copula, there isn't a trace of the Latin future anywhere in
Romance. As for the new future developed from the infinitive (by which I
assume is meant the new synthetic future, i.e. French CHANTERA or Spanish
CANTARA), it is by no means Pan-Romance: many Southern Italian dialects,
to this day, have no future tense: in Sardinia the future is marked by
means of a reduced form of DEBERE, in Rumanian by means of a reduced form
of VOLERE...these facts clearly indicate that the future was lost at an
early date in Latin/Romance and that, at a later date, various Romance
languages created various new means to indicate futurity.

>> Classical Latin is a highly artificial literary creation.

> I would have said "highly artificial selection".   It rejects some forms
> (both morphology and grammar) but these often remained in common speech, and
> have resurfaced in late Latin and become the norm in Romance:  e.g. dico
> quod (Plautus, Vulgate, and Romance).

I see nothing artificial about Classical Latin, although it probably
eschewed some traits of the spoken language: as Witold Manczak has
argued, Vulgar Latin (or Proto-Romance, or however one cares to call the
ancestor of the Romance languages) is quite plainly a "daughter" of
Classical Latin (Not a "sister" as so many Romance scholars have argued).

Stephane Goyette.


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 20 22:12:54 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 00:12:54 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <003201be9fbf$aa7f6c40$0bd3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.001254.0200.>

On Sun, 16 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[...]

> I believe, with Beekes, that IE was once an ergative language; and that the
> absolutive form in IE was -0. I assume that the attested accusative *te
> maintains the form of the absolute before the introduction of animate
> accusatives in -m. In the datives *toi and *tebh(e)i, we see it retained
> also. If *tu/u: were the underlying form, we should expect **twi and
> *tubh(e)i generally (although this probably explains the Greek forms, e.g.
> in s-.

I have yet to see a really cogent argument for an IE (or pre-IE) ergative.
One is constantly served mere descriptions of what the system would be
like if it is accepted, but nothing to convince one that it _must_ be
accepted. I'm not saying that pre-PIE was _not_ ergative, just that we
cannot really know. Practically all the literature on the subject simply
boasts that the author knows what an ergative is and so is without
scholarly interest. It is as if I would claim that PIE had a definite
article, just because I know what that is.

[On the refl. pronoun in the nom.:]

> Do not confuse dependence with function. "I myself am going". Is "myself"
> not a nominative depending on another nominative?

I'm sure it is, as far as function goes, but I'm also rather sure that the
IE pronoun did not have a nominative form to fulfil this function. What
was the nominative form in your opinion, and what are its reflexes in the
daughter languages on which the reconstruction is based? - Are you
_denying_ that Latin se, Greek he, German sich and Russian sebja have no
nominative? And is this fact - if so it is - to be ignored in a
reconstruction of the protolanguage?

[...(On Gk. 'us two':)]

> My dictionary shows <no:{^}e> *only* as a poetic variant of <no:{^}i>. Do
> you have different information?

Some, but that's not important; even that was IE. Admittedly, the form
no:^i is difficult. It looks like nothing we really know, except an old
dative or locative. One could imagine no:^i being on a par with the
gen.-dat. enclitics moi, toi, hoi; or it could have come from *nH3we-i, a
loc. formed like Skt. asme' 'in, among us' from *nsme-i. The immediate
development of *nH3wei into Greek would be *no:wei, whence, with loss of
the digamma, *no:ei, and with contraction finally no:^i. In the anaphoric
pl. we have acc. sphe and dat. sphi, as parallels of which one might
accept no:^e and no:^i. It would then be a sign of decay of the dual
number category that the i-form is no longer consistently restricted to
the dative. There is _no_ IE comparative support for no:^i, whereas for
no:' and no:^e there is. Thus, it is on the weakest possible grounds that
you see a pre-IE dual in *-wy (of the Egyptian kind) reflected in no:^i. I
admit that my reconstruction *nH3we' for no:^e and Avest. a:va is not
_much_ better, but still it combines forms of IE languages and so works
within the confines of a genetic frame known to be valid and for which the
rules are known. This also makes me immune to your following statement:

> I reject unequivocally your H{3} as a part of the reconstruction.

I feel we are about to reach the borders of how far this subject can
be taken.

Jens


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 21 00:15:17 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:15:17 -0500
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as [was Re: "syllabicity"]
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.191517.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Alderson <ALDERSON at netcom.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 8:31 PM

> On 13 May 1999, "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote in
> reply to my posting of 11 May:

>>> There is more than one source, for example, of [e:]--see, for example,
>>> _dive dive_ "from day to day", where the first _dive_ is the expected
>>> sandhi variant of the ablative _divas_ "from (a) day".  Thus, again, your
>>> analysis fails to explain the facts.

>> In my opinion, this analysis of _dive dive_ is totally erroneous. This is
>> clearly a reduplicated dative.

> That is the schoolbook analysis of the phrase, but the semantics come out of
> the alternative analysis quite easily (in line with the use of the ablative
> in time expressions elsewhere) and we then need not torture the poor dative
> to mean its own opposite.

>> Also, I am curious if you can cite a non-arguable ablative in -as that
>> becomes -e: in sandhi?

>> Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

> Later, on 16 May 1999, Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de> noted further:

>> Since the ante-voiced sandhi form of -as is -o Pat is right in finding -e
>> simply incredible.

> The sandhi rule in question is that -as becomes -e before voiced dentals, and
> only there.  It applies in internal as well as external sandhi, cf. _edhi_ <
> *as-dhi (_as-_ "be" + imperative).

> This is not, as it happens, my analysis, but what I was taught nearly 25
> years ago in my first Sanskrit class...

Well, as someone who did not know and would have questioned Sanskrir -as
becoming -o in sandhi on phonological grounds (which I now know it does,
phonology be damned), I certainly do not claim anything but a *very*
superficial knowledge of Sanskrit --- but (of course, there is always a
but), what I do not understand is that Whitney (1889, I know), I thought,
was generally fairly well regarded as a Sanskrit grammarian. Under the
rubric "Euphonic Combination", he discusses -s in combination on pp. 58-61.
He first writes the rule that Ralf-Stefan mentioned: -as becomes -o "before
any sonant consonant and before short a (175a)"; and then exceptions: in
176a, he mentions several pronouns in -a{'}s that simply lose their -s's
before any consonant: sa dadarCa, 'he saw'. If I understand the rule you
propounded above properly, we would get **se dadarCa unless you argue that
the accent negates the rule.

Now, I am not asserting anything. I just know too little. But I am curious
why the rule you mention does not seem to be in Whitney, and, in fact, a
different, apparently contradictory rule is described.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From Anthony.Appleyard at umist.ac.uk  Fri May 21 07:26:11 1999
From: Anthony.Appleyard at umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:26:11 +0100
Subject: Latin perfects
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.082611.0100.>

Peter <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:- (Subject: Re: Latin perfects):-

> Thanks, Wilmer, for the interesting questions on the Latin perfect, some of
> which have answers, some of which don't, and some of which are disputed.

> > - a 'weak' perfect obtained in the most verbs using -vi/-ui ...

I had an idea that Latin perfects with a {v} inserted may have come by
contraction of a periphrastic perfect using the Latin perfect active
participle ((e.g. *ama:vos- = "having loved") which vanished unrecorded
before written times (unless `mortuus' = "dead" is a thematized relic
survivor form)) with {sum} (plus the persistent bulldozer of Analogical
Levelling destroying evidence by making endings like in other tenses):
e.g. *ama:vo:s estes > ama:vistis "you (pl) have loved". That would
explain why (as far as I know) there are no Latin perfect passive forms
like **ama:vitur = "he has been loved", as prehistoric Latin *{ama:vo:s
estur} would not be perfect passive, if it meant anything at all. It
might also mean that Latin perfects with the {v} missing (e.g. French
{vous donna^tes} < Latin {vos dona(vi)stis) are not contracted but
original, being derived from true IE perfects; the process that happened
next was often perhaps the reverse, with much analogical insertion of
-vi- into early Latin perfects which had fallen identical with presents
by loss of reduplication.


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Fri May 21 09:23:26 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 10:23:26 +0100
Subject: `Sancho'
In-Reply-To: <36f430f2.57005261@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.102326.0100.>

On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

[LT]

> >Nobody knows what the reason is.  All I can report is that /a/ in the
> >first syllable of a polysyllable sometimes develops into /ai/, in a
> >purely sporadic manner.  But I *think* this only ever happens before a
> >coronal consonant, which may be relevant.

> Are there any examples before a single (coronal) consonant?
> Unless I'm overlooking something, all the examples seem to be
> before sibilant+stop or nasal+stop clusters.

I think this is correct, though I can't guarantee it.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk  Fri May 21 11:33:00 1999
From: nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk (Nicholas Widdows)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 12:33:00 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.123300.0100.>

JoatSimeon said:
>> Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
>> English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.

Patrick Ryan replied:

> Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development from the
> simple to the complex.

> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
> of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
> hence, less explicitly expressive.

But it's not wet and huggy sociology, like saying all cultural practices or
all belief systems are equally defensible. Human languages are all equal the
way human beings are all equal. There are no primitive humans, and no
primitive languages. There were once, but as all modern languages are
non-primitive, they got that way either by universal diffusion
(proto-Nostratic inventions like pronouns were carried by canoe to
Tasmanians and Yahgans some short time before European contact) or
exceptionless independent innovation or common descent from a non-primitive
ancestor about 70 000 years ago in Africa who [snip rest of well-known
theory supported by common sense].

Yes, there's a difference of sorts between vervet monkey hoots and the
collected works of Derrida, but snakes have no legs, humans have no tails or
penis bones, viruses probably came from bacteria sloughing off unnecessary
bits, pidgins typically lose the inflexions of their ancestors, modern
Chinese has no case, English has no dual. The modern kind of language
developed once, or at least once, from some precursor of _Homo sapiens
sapiens_ communication, but there's nothing in biology or language or
culture to say it has to continually measurably improve.

> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
> plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a statement
> that a language which can does not exhibit.

Sei Shonagon is renowned for the limpidity of her style, not for the
impossibility of working out how many cherry trees she viewed or empresses
she served. CERN haven't yet had to resort to publishing in Bislama so they
can specify whether it was <mitupela> or <yunmitripela> who observed hadron
collisions.

Now Martina Navratilova can run faster than me, and there's no way I'm
getting in a boxing ring with Alain Prost. Likewise English is in some ways
a vastly richer and more expressive language than Guugu-Yimidhirr or
Hixkaryana, partly because _we've_ got words for helicopter and
zoopharmacology, fouette' and grande jete'e, Dasein and Abschattung,
moccasin and teepee, andante and dal segno, mana and tiki, and they haven't.
But there's no reason in principle why the Hixkaryana Academy couldn't lay a
few weeks aside to devise native equivalents of all of these. There's
nothing cognitive or phonological or grammatical to hinder them.

They're just different.  Languages change because they do.

Nicholas Widdows


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 21 13:51:45 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:51:45 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.085145.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 6:45 PM

<snip>

> That's the point! Then also Slav. -i and -y are analogical forms
> just like the Skt. ones. In all probability the analogy was already
> completed in the protolanguage: Just as o-stems form non-ntr. dual in
> *-o:, thus i- and u-stems form *-i: and *-u:.

That is certainly a possibility.

>>> I'm not saying the non-neuter was _originally_ *-e, I'm saying it was
>>> (or things look as if it was) in the IE protolanguage. I am not sure
>>> there were no vowel-initial roots, it is mostly very hard to prove that
>>> something as hazy as *H1 was not present. On the other hand, there is
>>> absolute certainty that IE did have vowel-initial affixes. You may take
>>> the gen.sg. ending; whether you want to posit *-os or *-es, there
>>> is no place for "-Hos" or "-Hes";

> So, for the dual *-e, it _would_ be a problem for you if it did not have
> a laryngeal, as sva'sa:rau indicates it did not.

Pat responds:

Beekes looks at the same data, and on pg. 194, reconstructs -*He. Why is he
wrong?

Pat responded earlier:

>> As for the genitive, I reconstruct *-s(V), with the final vowel falling off
>> due to stress-accent of a preceding syllable: "Ce/oC + sV -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

Jens asks:

> With accent shifting onto a vowel that was not there?

Pat responds:

Sorry, I should have written "Ce/oC(V) -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

Jens, previously:

>>>  I have managed to explain the nom.pl. *-es from an earlier
>>> vowel-less sequence *-z-c (two different sibilants, one marking the
>>> nom., the other the pl., in that order, structurally parallel with the
>>> acc.pl. in orig. *-m- + sibilant),

Pat asked:

>> Why not simply *-s(V)s(V)?

Jens responded:

> In the reading *-ss, no objection, except that we do need two different
> sibilants for other reasons.

Jens, previously:

>>> the calculation giving at the same time phonetic explanation of all the
>>> many other oddities of the nom. pl. forms, esp. the type in *-'-or-es,
>>> *-'-on-es:  Why is the -o- not lost? Why is it o, not e? Why is it not
>>> long? Why has the e not been lost? And, of course, why is the e not
>>> accented?

Pat responded:

>> There is no doubt that these are all good questions.

Jens explains:

>>> All of this is explained by **-z-c where there was no vowel to shift
>>> to: An unaccented -e- is first reduced to -o-; then the nom. sibilant
>>> ("-z-") lengthens (result now *-'-o:r-zc); then short unstressed
>>> vowels are lost (but this form does not have any, so the rule operates
>>> vacuously here); a long vowel is shorted before word-final
>>> triconsonantal clusters [containing the nom. sibilant].

Pat responded:

>> For some languages, perhaps. But for IE, a tri-consonantal cluster of this
>> form is not likely to have been a realized phenomenon at *any* stage of IE.

Jens now writes:

> So, the effects I say they have caused on the surface forms come from
> elsewhere? From where? And why are precisely three consonants of a
> structure pointed to by the morphology excluded by your ruling? Is it the
> number three in itself that is excessive? Or is it the sibilant character
> of two of the elements? Or is it my assumption that they were not
> identical? Would it help if I said that, for the present purpose, they may
> as well be identical since their difference is irrelevant here?

Pat answers:

I am not disputing that the process you describe is possible --- only that
it is probable. But, that must be tempered by the circumstance that I do not
have a "better" explanation to offer.

Pat wrote previously.

>> I think one important factor that should be considered in these equations is
>> the example Beekes gives on p. 195 of Greek <o{'}sse>, 'pair of eyes', which
>> he derives from *ok{w}-iH{1} THROUGH *ok{w}-ye. We could, just as easily,
>> posit a dual in -y and forget about the laryngeal.

Jens writes:

> In this particular case we could - for Greek. But not for Slavic oc^i
> (would have reduced i), nor for Arm. ac^'k' (would not be a-stem, gen.
> ac^'ac'). And especially it would not give Skt. -i: with length in the
> ntr.du. of cons.-stems.

Pat responds:

I do not have the reference books here to substantiate this comment but, if
I understand Beekes correctly, OCS would not have oc{^}i but rather
oc{^}e{^}. Is that incorrect?

I will not comment on the Armenian since I am in the same situation. But
perhaps a list-member who is more familiar with Armenian and its convoluted
phonology would be willing to comment?

As far as the length of Sanskrit -i:,  it seems to me that a couple of
explanations could account for the length: 1) analogy; 2) vrddhi, etc.

 <snip>

Jens mentioned:

>>> *H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e;

Pat responded:

>> In view of Gk. o{'}sse, why not?

Jens responds:

> There is no such rule. The /y/ would syllabify and yield **ane'r-i. That's
> what happened in the loc.sg. *p at 2-te'r-i > Gk. dat. pate'ri, Skt. loc.
> pita'ri.

Pat responds:

Not sure what you mean by "no rule". It is a process described on p. 195 of
Beekes. Also, the dative has a different base form: -*(H)ey, which is
nothing more than the well-known *Hey-, 'to go'.

Jens mentioned:

>>> u-stem *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

Pat asked:

>> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

Jens responded:

> There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off by a
> funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one' (acc.sg.M
> amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this giving
> ami:, not **amu:.

Pat responds:

I think it is dangerous to assume that combinatory rules have acted
identically at different periods, do you not?

Jens asked:

>>> What _is_ the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

Pat answered:

>> The majority of the attested forms, there being no /i/ in IE..

Jens responded:

> For most positions, you are right: The original difference between the
> morphophonemes /i/ and /y/ are neutralized almost across the board and can
> therefore be represented by one phoneme. However, that is not the point
> we're discussing; we're arguing about the presence or absence of a
> laryngeal in the ntr.du., remember? And in this point Skt. yuge' 'two
> yokes' passes judgment, for this form is sandhi resistent ("pragrhya")
> and so _must_ have ended in a laryngeal.

Pat responds:

Sorry, I cannot accept the idea that laryngeals still functioning in
Sanskrit made yuge{'} sandhi-resistant.

Jens wrote:

>>> It may be illogical to abbreviate wordforms when forming enclitic variants
>>> of them, but many languages plainly do that.

Pat responded:

>> Not in my opinion. I believe that emphatic variants are marked by
>> expansions of the underlying forms found in enclitics.

Jens responded:

> That is often the case, perhaps mostly, but not always: Is howdydo an
> expansion of howdy? And how-do-you-do an even further expansion?

Pat wonders:

Jens, is <howdy> an *enclitic* to you?

Jens continued:

>>> It's like numerals and greetings, you get all sorts of reduced
>>> shapes in allegro speech, since people already understand the
>>> message at the beginning (sometimes even before).

Pat responded:

>> Some holes do not improve with additional digging.
>>  I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
>> a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

Jens protested:

> So this is wrong too? Well, let me tell you that the Danish decadic
> numerals 40-90 were formerly two or three syllables longer than now. A
> hundred years ago, you could only write

> fyrretyve, halvtredsindstyve, tresindstyve, halvfjerdsindstyve,
> firsindstyve, halvfemsindstyve,

> but in my lifetime they have always been as short as

> fyrre, halvtreds, tres, halvfjerds, firs, halvfems;

> and informed scholars know of _no_ phonetic rule to delete word-final
> -tyve or -indstyve in this language. These are true abbreviations.

Pat responds:

Phonological reductions and abbreviations are two different animals;
enclitics and numerals are two more.

Jens writes:

> It seems to me that there just are some solutions you do not _like_ on
> apriori grounds. Too bad, then, if the material at hand points in that
> direction, I am still gonna accept them, even if I do not like them
> myself. I am no authority on taste in scholarly solutions, nor do I see on
> what grounds anybody else could be. Conversely, there also appear to be
> some solutions you would _like_ to be true, even if the material at hands
> points unambiguously away from them. I'll be doubting them very much
> until, by some unlikely turn of events, the hard evidence turns out to be
> illusory and is overruled by a new and better possibility. In the case of
> *-e or *-H1e for the non-ntr. dual, not much is needed (but none is
> present yet). For *-y or *-iH1, it takes miracles to vindicate the former
> over the latter. And that wordforms can be shortened is simply beyond
> dispute.

Pat answers:

I would be lying if I could not admit to some a priori principles. Are any
of us free of them? And although I do believe that "de gustibus non est
disputandum", I hope we are dealing with matters a little less subject to
whim than taste.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 21 13:56:25 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:56:25 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.085625.0500.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Alderson <ALDERSON at netcom.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 8:11 PM

I agree with most everything you have written here.

> If by "overly 'school'-oriented" you mean that I accept the findings of one
> particular theory of phonology in preference to other competing theories, I
> plead _nolo contendere_.  If you mean rather that I think Lehmann *must* do
> everything as a structuralist because he did most things as one, you
> misunderstand my entire point:  I do not insist that if he did anything as a
> structuralist he must do everything that way; rather, I am simply stating the
> fact that on the evidence of his writings themselves, he *did* do things
> strictly as a structuralist.

But, Leo has persuaded me that Lehmann might not have used the structuralist
terminology in the case of "syllabicity" in a totally consistent manner.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri May 21 23:01:03 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 18:01:03 -0500
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.03.9905191133410.26918-100000@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.180103.0500.>

Is this word related to Spanish mojo/n, which in a dictionary means
"landmark or boundary stone" but in spoken Spanish means "pile of shit"

	btw: I've asked Latin Americans from all over about gandul, the
only meaning any of them know is "pigeon pea". The usage "lazy" is
definitely dialect or slang. The standard words for lazy include perezoso &
vago; other more common terms include sentado, flojo, boludo & huevo/n

	Huevo/n gave rise to huevear "to fart around, to scratch your
gonads, to bother people by not doing your work", which gave rise to one of
my favorite words, webear "to surf the web". Likewise, huevadas "nonsense,
bullshit, a pain in the gonads, etc." gave rise to webadas "bullshit on the
web"

[ moderator snip ]

>Finally, I might note that, while Basque <muga> means `limit, frontier'
>today, as its apparent cognates commonly do in neighboring languages, in
>our earliest Basque texts the word more usually means `boundary-stone'
>-- that is, a stone marker set up to mark a boundary.  This sense is
>usually rendered today by the compound <mugarri> `boundary-stone', with
><harri> `stone'.

>Larry Trask

[ moderator snip ]


From stevegus at aye.net  Thu May 27 15:04:52 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steven A. Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 11:04:52 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.110452.0400.>

s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca wrote:

> I do not dispute that Romance was born at an early date: what I dispute is
> the claim that its ancestor was a sister of Classical Latin --a language
> which, I quite agree, was not perfectly homogeneous. The au/o business is
> actually an excellent example of the early birth of Romance and its being
> a "daughter" of Classical Latin: while we indeed have evidence of
> the shift from /au/ to /o/ at an early date (Emperor Augustus himself is
> said to have regarded the pronunciation of his name with an initial /au/
> as pedantic), it is interesting to note that /au/ is preserved as such in
> many Romance languages today, and, more to the point, its distribution
> matches that of Classical Latin --take Romanian AUR "gold", LAUD "I
> praise" versus FOC "fire", DORM "I sleep", where the au/o distribution
> corresponds perfectly to that found in AURUM, LAUDEO, FOCUM and DORMIO.

/au/ was probably the last of the Latin diphthongs to go.  We can be
reasonably sure of that because in certain situations in both Spanish
and Italian, stressed /o/ was diphthongized {fuego, fuoco, uomo &c} but
that didn't happen when the /o/ resulted from CL /au/ {oro, not *uoro}.
And, as you say, it was preserved in Rumanian, and possibly in French,
much later than that.  Therefore /au/ > /o/ in Spanish and Italian must
have occurred after the diphthongization process was well underway.

This suggests, if it does not prove, that if Augustus thought that the
/au/ pronunciation of his title was obsolescent, that there already
existed a wide divergence between the written norm of CL, and the speech
of those Romans whose status in society gave them the clout to set
language norms.

And, if Augustus' ordinary speech was proto-Romance, this really
squeezes the time frame during which CL might have reasonably resembled
a spoken language.  Bear in mind that in 187 BC, the Latin of the
-Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus- was noticeably archaic and
pre-classical.  So were the epitaphs of the Gracchi in 121 BC or
thereabouts.  Of course, it might be expected to find archaic language
in epitaphs and laws.  Still, if folks spoke pre-Classical Latin in 121
BC, and Augustus was speaking proto-Romance when he died in 14 AD, the
time span in which classical Latin was the speech of ranking Romans
shrinks to less than a century.

I think that given this evidence, it may not be reasonable or fruitful
to wonder whether proto-Romance is a lineal descendent or a sister
tongue of CL; but it may indeed be reasonable to say that the written
norm of CL is somewhat archaizing and definitely artificial sample of
the actual river of Roman speech.  Indeed, the life of the classical
norm might owe much to the fact that Rome had an empire, and as such
Latin was a learned speech for many of the Empire's subjects, who
aspired to imitate a norm that was taught to them by schoolmasters.
Folks like Augustus, who spoke "Latin" as their mother tongue, felt far
less pressure to talk like Cicero; and they were the moving force in the
movement from classical Latin to proto-Romance.

--
Steven A. Gustafson, attorney at law
Fox & Cotner:  PHONE (812) 945 9600   FAX (812) 945 9615
http://www.foxcotner.com

Amorem semel contraxi. Consanui, et morbi immunis sum.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 13:56:06 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 08:56:06 -0500
Subject: accusative and ergative languages
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.085606.0500.>

Dear Fabrice and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Fabrice Cavoto <fabcav at adr.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 1:21 AM

Fabrice writes:
> I think that what Patrick refers to is that many typologists mean that the
> evolution 'ergative to accusative' is more commoun than the reverse,
> without excluding it.

Pat responds:

That is, of course, very close to what I believe. But I would go an
unpalatal to some step further, and, agree with G. A. Klimov, that an
ergative form *must* precede an accusative type.

Thank you for your informative remarks.

<snip>

 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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 14:56:37 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 09:56:37 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity (yet again)
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.095637.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 1:50 AM

>> Pat then responded:

>> Leo, I simply do not understand your point. Could you spell it out a
>> little more completely?

>Leo answered:

> We both assume no more than one stress accent per word, don't we?  If so, the
> problem is that it is at least *very* difficult to explain final _-e_ as the
> result of stress accent on that syllable (and you have said that more than
> once) if, at the same, *any* _e_ must be so explained (else it should vanish,
> n'est-ce pas?).  And even if the augment is regarded as a prefix added later
> in some languages, *bherete must then have had three syllables with stress
> accent, else we should expect (in traditional terms) **_bhr.te_, with weak
> ("zero") grade of the root and zero grade of the thematic vowel.  Instead,
> Greek _epherete_ and Skt. _abharatha_ 'ye carried' point to e-grade of the
> root and of the thematic vowel.

Pat responds:

One of the phenomena I believe I have identified in early language is that
the plural morpheme was, at one point, simply stress-accentuation.

It would make our lives easier if we could assume no more than one stress
accent per wood but I would not rule out a secondary stress-accent in a case
like _a{'}bharatha{"???}.

Yes, I believe that vowel retention is generally a function of stress-accent
but I find the explanation that *bherete "had three syllables with
stress-accent" ununderstandable in terms of what I think of as
stress-accent.

<snip all the tsk's>

> But this gets us back to the original point: what earthly reason do you have
> for claiming that 3sg. -t and 2pl. -te are originally a morpheme meaning
> 'member of the tribe'?  You have *said* so, and claimed that *teu-to-
> (better:  *te-w-to-) represents an extended form of the root; but where's the
> evidence?  (One might also ask why -t appears with *inanimate* subjects; were
> they members too?)  If you can present no evidence, I can just as well claim
> that the two items were always separate entities and had no shared meaning
> whatsoever.  If I am right, the problem disappears.  I hate to use the
> argumentum ex auctoritate, since it has no logical force, but my version *is*
> the standard one; if you want to claim something else, it behooves you to
> come up with the evidence.  (And please don't just refer us to your website;
> it must be short enough to summarize in a screenful or so.)

Pat responds:

Well, it is difficult to summarize what is scattered over 8 million bytes
but I can try.

As to one of your points, I do not believe that earliest IE allowed a 3rd p.
inanimate subject of a non-stative verb; hence, no -*t referring to an
inanimate subject. Only animates "do things" which is not illogical if you
associate agentivity with intention.

I also believe that the IE reflexes of T{H}O properly (originally) refer
only to animate entities; a similar form, T{?}O (IE *dV) referred properly
to inanimate objects, and is the basis for neuters in -*d.

Regarding -*t and -*te, I do not believe that any grammatical morpheme in IE
can originally have had the form -*C since I believe that all grammatical
morphemes are originally grammaticalized -*Ce (at a minimum) non-grammatical
morphemes. On this basis, both -*t and -*te must derive from earlier -*tV.
In the absence of evidence to differentiate them, I assume a unitary origin.

For *te-w-to-, although we would both acknowledge -*to, I am not going to be
able to persuade you that a morpheme *te- could be the basis to which a
collective morpheme -*w was added --- in a paragraph or two because you are
unwilling to look beyond IE where *CeC roots are the general rule. It is my
belief that every IE *CeC root can potentially be analyzed into *CV + *CV,
and that these monosyllabic morphemes are recognizable is some early
languages: e.g. Egyptian <t>, 'loaf', is cognate with IE -*dV, neuter
formant.

In a nutshell, I believe the *te- of *te-w-to represents an earlier *T[H]O
because, for example, of its reflexes in Egyptian as <t>, which, I believe,
allows specification of the vowel as *O.

To save you exasperation, both IE *d and *t show up as <t> in Egyptian
**when derived for earlier *T{H/?}O**.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu May 27 17:03:25 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 12:03:25 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <000201bea75f$8a596a40$9202703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.120325.0500.>

You're right, someone obviously put the mojo on my keyboard

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
>Date: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 10:18 AM

[ moderator snip ]

>> <il ont> /ilo~/ > /io~/
>> <ils ont> /ilzo~/ > /zo~/

[ moderator snip ]

>[Ed Selleslagh]

>Actually, it is 'il a' / 'ils ont', unless you meant something I didn't get.
>As far as I can see, the ever-present pronouns are not really needed to
>disambiguate, in almost all cases (However: tu as/il a, same pronunciation:
>tüá/ilá).  In early French, pronouns were *not* used : cf. Rabelais in
>one of his satirical tales, citing the (supposedly archaic, i.e. to him)
>inscription above the gate of the abbey Noirmoustier ('blackminster') "Fays
>ce que voudras" ('Do whatever YOU  [will] want'. In equally archaic
>Castilian: 'Haz lo que quisieres', with future subjunctive).

	Future subjunctive is a weird bird for sure in Spanish. Although it
slipped out of the everyday speech and writing, it still pops up in a few
proverbs and phrases.


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Fri May 28 07:42:25 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 02:42:25 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.024225.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Sprry I can't respond to more of the statements in Pat's latest, but I have to
leave town in the morning to see my oldest graduate, and it's now nearly 2 AM.
Anyway:

>Leo continued:

>> 2.  There are a few established terminologies.  The plural morpheme of
>> English (we definitely do have one) can be called "bound" because it occurs
>> only when connected to the "free" morpheme of a root.  It can be said to
>> have "grammatical meaning", or be called a "grammatical morpheme".  There
>> are not my terms; they're standard.  What's not standard is to say that
>> plural -s does not have "semantic" meaning, since (in normal usage) *all*
>> meaning is "semantic".

>Pat responds:

>I am well aware of this usage and terminology.

Is there some reason why you don't adhere to it?  Some of your arguments seem
to depend on your *not* accepting it.  Why don't you?

[Leo sought a parallel for homonymous suffixes -- hoping to suggest that if the
family words do contain a suffix, it needn't be the agentive suffix.]

>> And then of course, we have -er words which do *not* contain any of the
>> above, such as _cider_ and _spider_.  So what is wrong with saying that the
>> element seen in _father_, _mother_, _brother_, and _daughter_ (but not
>> _sister_, where the -t- is a secondary development) is different from the
>> agentive suffix?

>Pat responds:

>According to my dictionary, spider contains agentive -*ter; and cider is not
>derived from IE. If IE did have triliteral roots, you might have a point.

You mean, spider is *descended*, they say, from a form containing an IE
agentive suffix.  But that's quite another matter.  Other -er-words in English
are synchronically analyzed as having suffixes; spider and cider (whose
etymology is irrelevant) are not -- which, BTW, is why I and many others
pronounce them with [^i] rather than [ai], i.e. with the vowel of _writer_
rather than _rider_.

>However, I fail to see how the points you have presented relate meaningfully
>to the point I am attempting to make.

>I claimed above that -*ter, the common component of 'father, mother,
>brother, daughter', is not coincidental but a regular component of basic
>nuclear family terminology. On the basis of words like *g{^}en6-ter-
>(procreator, father), I believe it likely that it should be interpreted as
>an agentive. But even if it were not agentive -*ter, it is beyond the bounds
>of reasonable scepticism to suppose that its multiple attestations in family
>member terminology is not analyzable as a suffix.

My objection, originally, was precisely to the notion that it was an agent
suffix.  I didn't mean to deny that there was a suffix, although I do wonder
whether that is the best analysis.  A suffix on what?

>Leo commented:

>> Problem: Pokorny's *pa:- means 'feed; pasture'.  Add an agent suffix to that
>> and you get 'shepherd', not 'father'.  And this aside from the problem of
>> the weak grade of the alleged root.

>Pat responds:

>Well, strange that you missed na{"}hren in his definition. Which means 'to
>feed (animal, child); and failed to put that together with *pap(p)a,
>'father, *food* (not animal feed!). If the nuclear family terminology under
>consideration designated typical functions, 'feeder' for father certainly
>would not be amiss.

If the words were formed that way!  But _papa_ ia every bit as much a Lallwort
as _mama_.  Parents read amazing things into baby's babbling.

>And frankly, I am at a loss to see any problem with a reduced grade of the
>root preceding a suffix (agentive -*ter), which normally takes the
>stress-accent. Am I missing something?

I don't know.  Why did you bring that up?

>Pat, withdrawing:

>I refuse to get into another futile discussion of Lallwo{"}rter. Actually,
>one of the interseting arguments for monogenesis is the intriguing
>similarity of <lallen> all over the world.

That saya much about babies and little about languages, or monogesis thereof.

><snip>

>Leo coninues on a different topic:

>> I don't have Larry's dictionary.  But I'll say this point blank: what he
>> gives is merely a characteristic of phonemes.  Morphemes must consist of one
>> or more phonemes (despite the problem of "zero allomorphs").  It is because
>> of this that phonemes are the smallest units capable of *signaling* meaning.
>> But they are units of *sound*.  It might be helpful if you included Larry's
>> *entire* comment, for what you're citing is simply *not* a definition of a
>> phoneme.  See any manual of linguistics which actually discusses the things!

>Pat, for Leo's edification:
>
>phoneme . . . n. In many theories of phonology, a fundamental (often *the*
>fundamental) unit of phonological structure, an abstract *segment* which is
>one of a set of such segments in the phonological system of a particular
>language or speech variety, ___often defined as 'the smallest unit which can
>make a difference in meaning'___.

Larry is cautious and trying to include as many theories as possible.  But
"unit of phonological structure" refers precisely to the *sound* system.  I
have never seen the phoneme *defined* anywhere as he does in the final clause,
although it happens to be a true statement, it's a characterization rather than
a definition.  Unfortunately,
it is  misleading.  In some of your earlier stuff, you seem to have
taken it to mean that phonemes actually *have* meaning.  And quite certaiunly
you're wrong when you claimed that lack of a difference in meaning must mean
that the difference in sound *must* be irrelevant.  While I've quarreled enough
with Lehmann, his idea that [e e: {e}] became separate phonemes when they were
no longer predictable, because of changes in the accentual system, is good
structuralist theory, and not original with him.  What happens, in a nutshell,
is that the different vowels are no longer predictable but instead signal
whatever it was that the difference in accent signaled, while it existed.

>Leo responded re ablaut:

>> I have no idea whether it was a deliberate anything.  All I know is that
>> short e alternates with short o, and that the two traditional kinds of long
>> e: alternate with long o:.  The "lengthened grade" variety also alternates
>> with short e/o; the "natural long" ones deriving from vowel + laryngeal
>> alternate with traditional schwa.  Once established, it could be exploited.

>Pat comments:

>And "exploited" it was, to provide a nuance.

Over time, often more.  But that was over time.

>Pat continued:

>If I understand you correctly, you are maintaining that the earliest IE had
>an [e:] which was phonemic (contrasted with [e/o]) and was not the result of
>a reduction of [He] or [eH]; this is what I presume you mean by "original".

Probably not the earliest.  I speak here of lengthened grade, or of the [e:] in
Lehmann's version of things.

>I am asking you to identify an "original" [e:], e.g. in a verbal root,
>*Ce:C, which has a perfect stem *Co:C. A root for which we reconstruct *CeHC
>will, of course, not qualify.

Indeed not.  We must be talking past each other on this.  But lengthened grade
does show ablaut.  The word for 'foot' has Doric Greek nom. sing _po:s_, which
supposedly must reflect lengthened o: (other Gk. _pous_ can derive from
*_pod-s_.  And the Germanic forms have generalized the o: form: Gothic
_fo:tus_, OE _fo:t_, OHG _fuoz_.  Meanwhile, Latin has _pe:s_, which could be
from either *_ped-s_ or *pe:d-s_.  Will that do?

>>> Pat differs:

>>> IE "pronouns" in every significant way look and act like nouns --- with
>>> the sole exception that the inflections seem to be more conservative.
>> ...
>>> Outside of a very few simple forms like *me, *te, *se, etc., which might
>>> slip in under the rubric of nominal, simple nominal and verbal CV-roots,
>>> which had wide semantic ranges, were *differentiated* by additional
>>> elements at a very early time --- at least in the languages from which IE
>>> derives.  If we are unwilling to look beyond IE, then we must say,
>>> principally, that the simplest nominal and verbal root-form is CVC.

>Leo responds:

>> But there you have it!  The IE pronouns neither look nor act like nouns!
>> Pushing it back to Nostratic doesn't change anything there, since you're
>> saying that they must have been different there too.

>Pat, hopefully not patronizingly:

>A pronoun is a pro-noun. It can be put in any position syntactically in
>which a noun can be employed. To say that pronouns do not "act like nouns"
>is completely unjustified!

Not so.  The morphology speaks for itself, so I'll do the syntax.  If they
could, you could say:

	*I want to meet the new her.
	*I want to meet secretary.
        *Poor he/him has to work on Saturday.

But you can't.  Neither can you use interrogative pronouns like nouns, or
demonstratives, or indefinites -- there are a great many things called
"pronouns", and they behave differently from nouns in *many* languages.

	No le veo.  'I don't see him.'   *No veo le.
	No veo a Carlos.  I don't see Charly.'   *No veo a le.

So no, pronouns need *not* have the syntax of nouns.  They act different.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu May 27 17:08:26 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 12:08:26 -0500
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
In-Reply-To: <374C09C2.5C4159BE@aye.net>
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.120826.0500.>

The students that come into my classes don't even grasp USA Today or Strunk
& White, and many of them are English majors.

[snip]
>Quaere: does the spread of the -USA Today- or Strunk & White prose
>styles indicate that the syntax of "classical" English is becoming
>unintelligible to a major segment of contemporary readers?)

[snip]


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu May 27 17:33:00 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 13:33:00 EDT
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.133300.EDT.>

>Patrick C. Ryan

>"Irrelevant" must be your favorite word.

-- certainly, when confronted with irrelevancies.

>What happened to your "*in any era*"?

-- silly me, I must have assumed that anyone would realize this applied to
any era where we have _information_ about the languages.

What proto-people spoke like 200,000 years ago is, to coin a phrase,
irrelevant.  We'll never know.  It's even more irrelevant to Indo-European,
which was not spoken by slope-browed pre-sapient hominids.

>What "extant" languages show is totally irrelevant to what they may have
>been like in the far distant past.

-- you have a time machine?

>As far earlier stages having been "lost", prove it --- if you can.

-- since you're the one attempting a revision of the consensus, YOU prove
that they aren't lost... if you can.

So far, all I've seen is _a priori_ assertions.


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Fri May 28 08:22:08 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 09:22:08 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <v01540b01b372e5343bbc@[208.25.89.101]>
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.092208.0100.>

On Thu, 27 May 1999, Max Dashu wrote:

[LT]

>>  A very few other languages
>> -- such as Proto-Oto-Manguean -- have been reconstructed back to around
>> the same time depth.

> What is this, or rather, where was it?

The Oto-Manguean family is spoken today from central Mexico to Costa
Rica; it is one of the largest American families in terms of
geographical extent, speaker numbers, and language numbers.  The total
number of languages is variously counted at anything from 30 to 80,
depending chiefly on how the large and messy Zapotecan dialect continuum
is treated.  In any case, eight major branches are recognized.

The family has been subjected to intensive historical work, mainly by
linguists from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and these workers
have succeeded in obtaining a substantial reconstruction of the
proto-language.  This, I understand, is widely regarded as one of the
most successful reconstructions in all of American linguistics.  The
proto-language is commonly estimated to have been spoken around 6000
years ago, or perhaps slightly earlier.

For references to the principal published work on the reconstruction of
POM, see p. 157 of Lyle Campbell's book American Indian Languages
(Oxford, 1997).

It should be noted that the O-M languages are perhaps the most
typologically divergent languages in the Americas: they generally permit
only CV syllables, they have elaborate tone systems, and they generally
lack labial consonants.  Some of them are strikingly similar to Chinese.
Even Greenberg reportedly hesitated for a long time before finally
tossing O-M into his "Amerind" grab-bag.


Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From georg at rullet.leidenuniv.nl  Fri May 28 08:10:27 1999
From: georg at rullet.leidenuniv.nl (Stefan Georg)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 09:10:27 +0100
Subject: Syllabicity
In-Reply-To: <003201bea801$e61f57c0$599ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.091027.0100.>

>[ moderator re-formatted ]

>Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

> ----- Original Message -----
>From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
>Sent: Monday, May 24, 1999 9:06 PM

>R-S commented:

>> The lack of contrast between ...... aso.

Sorry, for posting irrelevant stuff ;-), but nothing of the quoted stuff
which followed in this message was written or posted by me, neither
naser"umpfend, nor mit voller Nase ...

[ Moderator's apology:
  I do not check quoted material for correctness of attribution, as I do not
  view myself as the *editor* of the posts on this mailing list (other than for
  legibility of form when mail programs break lines illogically), in general.
  Simple moderation creates enough of a delay in posting; actual editing would
  add days to the dissemination of each message, since it could not be done in
  my brief spare time.

  Please, let's all be careful of attribution of quotes to the correct writer.
  --rma ]


From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de  Fri May 28 08:52:35 1999
From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 10:52:35 +0200
Subject: accusative and ergative languages
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.105235.0200.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" schrieb:

> Fabrice writes:

>> I think that what Patrick refers to is that many typologists mean that the
>> evolution 'ergative to accusative' is more commoun than the reverse,
>> without excluding it.

> Pat responds:

> That is, of course, very close to what I believe. But I would go an
> unpalatal to some step further, and, agree with G. A. Klimov, that an
> ergative form *must* precede an accusative type.

Dear Pat and IEists,

whenever we discuss possible ergative properties of the IE reconstruct,
we should bare in mind that up to now we hardly have a Generalized
Theory of this linguistics and (?) CoCo- (cognition and communication)
feature. The only thing we really can tell is that ergativity and
accusativity is not a linguistic "category" or so, but some kind of
paradigmatic and syntactic behavior that is carried out by a number of
structurally coupled paradigms etc. By this I mean that a language may
well show e.g. an accusative behavior in its noun (!) inflection, but an
ergative behavior in - say - its agreement system, if present. In
general we should assume that accusativity and ergativity represent two
poles on a scale (the "accusative-ergative-continuum" (AEC) on which
single paradigmatic structures are located. If we claim that S
(subjective), O (objective or rather the cluster obejctive-indirect
objective which should be labelled (I)O)) represent metalinguistic
descriptors for these behavior types, accusativity would satisfy the
{S=A;(I)O} condition, whereas ergativity refers to [S=(I)O;A}.
Accusativity would then reflect some kind of A-promince, and ergativity
- on the other hand - some kind of O-prominence. The interaction of
different (liunguistic) categories with respect to the AEC is dominated
(and organized) in accordance with the general archicteture of the
'operating system' (OS) of a language  (that is those parts of grammar
that control the linguistic interpretation of event experience based on
'simple sentences'). The aprts of grammar that are relevant for the OS
are orgenaized as a plycentric dynamic network. The individual centers
are determnined by both paradigmatical aspects of the system
architecture and the degree of functionality that is carried out by
these centers. A simplified (and fictive) example would be
(IO-clustirung is neglected):

NP cases	{S=0;A}
SAP Pronouns	{S=A=O} ['neurtral']
AGR		{S=0;A} IF {S & A} = SAP 	['Speech Act Participant]
		{S=A;0} IF [S & A} = nSAP
TAM		{S=A;0} IF DURATIVE
		{S=O;A) IF PERFECTIVE
Diathesis	{S=O;A}
Word Order	{S=A;0}
DCD		{S=A;0}	[Discource Cohesion Device]

Now, how to claim that such a system (which - in a much more elabortaed
form - is well attested is 'ergative' or 'accusative'? Also, we have to
bare in mind that some of these centers are more colesely connected than
others. For instance, Abkhaz (West cauacsian) is generally thought to be
ergative at least with respect to 3.persons (Abkhaz is head-marking (no
cases, but polypersonal agreement). Its typology goes:

Intrans.:	S-Verb
Trans.:		O-A-Verb

Synchronically, the order of agreement clitics plays a crucial role to
determine the location of theis paradigm on the AEC. S and O behave
parallelly with respect to their position, hence we have {S=O;A}. Now,
it is generally assumed that a polypersonal paradigm did no come up 'at
once', but gradually. Hence , in diachronic perspective, Abkhaz once
probably knew a system that had only S and A clitisized to the stem, a
clear accusative scheme.

	The diachronic perspective of the ACC/ERG problem de facto refers to
the dynamics of the AEC. It can clearly be shown that the polycentric
architecture of the operating system allows parts of its centers to
shift say from ACC to ERG, whereas others in the same time shift from
ERG to ACC. There is no reason and no logics to assume that historically
all such centers once were O-prominent.

	If we now use this frame work in order to explain the morphosyntax of
IE it comes clear that we should first describe the single centers with
respect to their location on the AEC (withut forgetting possible splits
in terms of "Differentiated Agentive Marking" (DAM) (our famous 'active
typology') or 'Differentiated Objective Marking' (DOM) (accusative
split)). Moreover, we have to remember that ACC and ERG in many cases
are discourse features rtahter than mere syntatic or even semantic
features. But what to we know about the organization of sentence
chaining, of topicality etc. in IE? Practically nothing! It is very
dangerous to infer the gerelöa lcation of the IE operating system on the
AEC from just one (functionally reconstructed) paradigm (or center).

	It goes without saying that the AGR system in IE clearly in of the ACC
type (S=A), whereas NOUN (not PRONOUN) inflection may share sme ERG
properties (at a first glance). We know of such (sub)systems from
typological evidence (cf. the problematic ase of Georgian), but WHY to
declare these nominal features as ERG? Just because of a must that stems
from belief?

[Please note new phone number (office) :+89-2180 5343]
___________________________________
| Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
| Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
| Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen
| Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
| D-80539 Muenchen
| Tel:	+89-21802486 (secr.)
|      	+89-21805343 (office) NEW ! NEW !
| Fax:	+89-21805345
| Email: W.Schulze at mail.lrz-muenchen.de
|
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
_____________________________________________________
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From nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk  Fri May 28 12:46:42 1999
From: nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk (Nicholas Widdows)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 13:46:42 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.134642.0100.>

<petegray said:>
At the danger of being politically incorrect, I find different languages
differently "expressive".   Of course they can all express anything, but
some, through deliberate choice or through historical accident, express
certain factors, while others leave some factors vague and ambiguous.
</petegray>

The languages do? Some prominent users do; and you get cultural traditions
intimately tied with languages (such as oratory and poetry and opera). But
how Ciceronian is Plautus, how Demosthenean is Sappho? Old Norse comes
across as a stark, simple, no-nonsense linearity in the sagas, but
occasionally bursts into tortuous, glittering poetry. Voltaire and Derrida
use the same language. Sanskrit ideas somehow got translated into Chinese,
and then into Japanese, and I have no idea what nuances got minced in the
process. Any language with a few hundred years of cultural history can
probably show comparable variety.

Whatever the language has can indeed be used as raw material for the
culture. So the accentuation of English allows it to "naturally" fall into
iambic pentameter, French into alexandrines, Finnish into Kalevala metre,
Italian into Verdi libretti. OE and ON had their huge lists of battles,
seas, byrnies, and heroes, and used them to wonderful effect. Chinese could
be shimmeringly ambiguous, if they chose.

These classical cultures often had a characteristic linguistic timbre, but I
don't think the _linguistic_ constraints had much of a part in forming it.

Nicholas


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 28 13:09:11 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 08:09:11 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.080911.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear John and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton <mclasutt at brigham.net>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 1999 9:17 AM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

>> Actually, your comments show a jejeune understanding of "evolutionary".
>> Evolution does not promise "improve"ment only change that is successful
>> in enhancing survival.

John commented:

> I'm sorry, Pat, but your statement about Evolution here shows EXACTLY why
> modern languages (and any other language we have any evidence of) are NOT
> evolving.  Let's take the loss of the second person singular forms in
> Modern English (the 'thee' and 'thou' forms).  What was "survival enhancing"
> about that?  What it did was make English hugely ambiguous in terms of
> specifying the number of addressees.  Enhanced survival?

Pat responds:

We find many evolutionary changes in animal life for which it is difficult
to assign a specific evolutionary advantage; and, in fact, some changes
appear to take place as random variations that survive because that are
genetically somehow connected with other changes that do evolutionary
advantage.

Do we have any good idea of why it happened? And, perhaps, what is more
interesting: when some speakers lost the singular pronouns, what "advantage"
the loss had that enabled it to become standard usage.

John continued:

> How about the Great Vowel Shift?  Did it lessen the number of distinguishable
> vowels in English?  No (unless you don't count diphthongs).  Did it increase
> or decrease ambiguity?  No.  What was the "survival enhancing" effect?  Zero.
> Were speakers of Anglo-Saxon any less able to cope with their environment
> than we are?  I don't think so.  Could we discuss nuclear physics without all
> the Greek, Latin, and French loanwords that entered the language after
> Hastings and use just our Anglo-Saxon heritage with compounding?  Absolutely.
> The Icelanders do it just fine.  As I have asked you dozens of times before
> Pat, where's your hard evidence?  You always rely on "logic".  "Logic" says
> that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and that the earth is
> stationary.  "Facts" proved otherwise.

Pat responds:

Were AS speakers less able to cope with their environment? The answer is
resoundingly "yes"; the question of whether their language had a bearing on
this is another question.

"Logic" does not really say anything about the sun or the movements of the
earth. Regardless of the "facts", the appearance is that the sun rises in
the east, etc., and the proof of that is that, knowing as we do that it is
scientifically inaccurate, we still publish sunrise and sunset tables.

Nice to have you back, John.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From thorinn at diku.dk  Fri May 28 13:17:34 1999
From: thorinn at diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 15:17:34 +0200
Subject: SV: accusative and ergative languages
In-Reply-To: <01BEA750.E6F83100.fabcav@adr.dk> (message from Fabrice Cavoto on
 Wed, 26 May 1999 08:21:44 +0200)
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.151734.0200.>

> From: Fabrice Cavoto <fabcav at adr.dk>
> Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 08:21:44 +0200

> As Larry Trask suggests, ergativity may well been understood like any other
> feature: it can come and/or go, with or without leaving traces, like a
> mode.

How does a [-ergative] language look? Accusative? Why?

>From yours and Larry's statements, it certainly sounds like ergativity
is a feature that you can add to and take away from any language, and
when it's not there, the language has the default type of accusative.
But where does that leave active and trigger languages? And even if we
ignore that problem, why can't ergative be the default, if there has
to be one at all?

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn at diku.dk> (Humour NOT marked)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 28 13:36:00 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 08:36:00 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.083600.0500.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 1999 12:33 PM

Joat wrote:

> What proto-people spoke like 200,000 years ago is, to coin a phrase,
> irrelevant.  We'll never know.  It's even more irrelevant to Indo-European,
> which was not spoken by slope-browed pre-sapient hominids.

Pat responds:

So you do not believe fully modern man was present 200K BP? You are
definitely in the minority here.

Pat commented:

>> What "extant" languages show is totally irrelevant to what they may have
>> been like in the far distant past.

Joat asked:

> -- you have a time machine?

Pat responds:

We do not need a time-machine to reconstruct IE, do we?

Pat commented:

>> As far earlier stages having been "lost", prove it --- if you can.

Joat answered:

> -- since you're the one attempting a revision of the consensus, YOU prove
> that they aren't lost... if you can.

> So far, all I've seen is _a priori_ assertions.

Pat responds:

Any extant language has traces of the language from which it is derived if
it is not an invention like Klingon or Esperanto.

My website is dedicated to showing that these traces allow us to find the
common elements that constituted the earliest language.

What is an a priori assumption, is to assert that the traces that lead to
this early language have been irretrievably lost whithout offering any
argument against the methodology that is employed on my website.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 28 13:47:17 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 08:47:17 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.084717.0500.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 1999 12:48 PM

>>Patrick C. Ryan

>> As far as language change is concerned, there is no observable process in
>> this universe which is not, at least potentially, understandable,

Joat responded:

> -- that's not the issue.  You have been arguing that languages change in a
> particular direction; ie., that they become more complex, less ambiguous,
> and more expressive.

[ moderator snip ]

Pat responds:

I have not been asserting that languages "become more complex, less
ambiguous, and more expressive". I have asserted only that the
proto-language, which was simple,  became more complex, less ambiguous, and
more expressive over time.

Frankly, it amazes me that you cannot see the difference between the two
statements. I have never asserted that there is an inevitable direction of
movement but only that any complex phenomenon must spring from simpler
roots.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk  Fri May 28 14:44:35 1999
From: nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk (Nicholas Widdows)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 15:44:35 +0100
Subject: accusative and ergative languages
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.154435.0100.>

<Fabrice Cavoto:>
maybe one could assume that if there once has been an ergative system in
IE, no matter how broad/exclusive it was at the very beginning, it was at
its latest stages restricted to the dichotomy 'animate vs. inanimate',
before it was totally lost.
</Fabrice Cavoto>

Has anyone given any evidence for ergativity in pre-IE yet? If they have I
missed it. I don't count direct object and intransitive subject being marked
the same, even if it is in inanimate nouns and therefore at the end of the
Silverstein hierarchy most likely to be ergative. What I want before calling
something ergative is transitive subjects marked differently from the same
word when intransitive.

Even if some ergative features can be identified, pure ergativity is very
rare. So anything that isn't pure accusative is likely to be sitting partway
along the hierarchy. But the presence of mixed type features doesn't imply
that the language is, or has been, diachronically changing type. It may just
be a (near-)universal.

Nicholas


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Fri May 28 13:55:46 1999
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 07:55:46 -0600
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.075546.0600.>

Oto-Manguean is a group of languages spoken in eastern Mexico including
(among many others) Mixtec, Zapotec, and Otomi.

Max Dashu wrote:

>> A very few other languages
>> -- such as Proto-Oto-Manguean -- have been reconstructed back to around
>> the same time depth.

> What is this, or rather, where was it?


From nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk  Fri May 28 15:27:54 1999
From: nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk (Nicholas Widdows)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 16:27:54 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.162754.0100.>

<Pat Ryan:>
languages like IE,
which have principally CVC roots, can be analyzed so that the CVC roots are
recognized to be the results of compounds of CV+CV elements in an earlier
(than Nostratic) language.
</Pat Ryan>

This is putting a lot of functional load on plain CV. Open-syllabled
languages are usually polysyllabic (Polynesian) and monosyllabic languages
are usually strongly tonal (Sinitic, Vietnamese).

Quite possibly Proto-World was CV. No, let me correct that. If no modern
descendant is, parsimony suggests Proto-World wasn't either, but quite
possibly Pre-Proto-World was.

Possibly some descendants of Pre-Proto-World have by chance preserved
against all entropy some features of PPW; such as CV morpheme pattern. I'd
imagine all its descendants had an equal stake in this lottery, so why
didn't CV happen to be preserved in Inuktitut or Ge^-Pano-Carib or
Gunwingguan or Gur, rather than -- remarkable coincidence -- the two most
"ancient" languages we can read, in the jejune sense of ancient meaning a
mere 97% of the distance from PPW.

Nicholas


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri May 28 17:53:58 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 12:53:58 -0500
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
In-Reply-To: <374D5F14.88DC97BD@aye.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.125358.0500.>

Didn't diphthongation in Spanish only affect "open /O/", not "closed /o/"
and wasn't /o/ from /au/ a "closed /o/"?

btw: Portuguese has auru- > ouro, causa- > cousa > coisa, etc.

[snip]

>in certain situations in both Spanish
>and Italian, stressed /o/ was diphthongized {fuego, fuoco, uomo &c} but
>that didn't happen when the /o/ resulted from CL /au/ {oro, not *uoro}.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri May 28 17:59:43 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 12:59:43 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <v01540b01b372e5343bbc@[208.25.89.101]>
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.125943.0500.>

Meso-America:
Chorotega, Mangue in Nicaragua, NW Costa Rica (extinct maybe in the late 1800s)
Otomi/ north of Mexico DF (still spoken)
and I think Zapotec & Mixtec are also Oto-Manguean
maybe Mixe-Zoque? (SE Mexico, postulated to have been spoken by the Olmecs)
so maybe Proto-O-M was spoken c. 3rd millenium BCE in states of Tabasco &
Oaxaca?

>> A very few other languages
>> -- such as Proto-Oto-Manguean -- have been reconstructed back to around
>> the same time depth.

>What is this, or rather, where was it?

>Max Dashu


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri May 28 18:01:13 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 13:01:13 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <8fc3c88c.247edbcc@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.130113.0500.>

I can think of some who still speak IE langs :>

[snip]
>It's even more irrelevant to Indo-European,
>which was not spoken by slope-browed pre-sapient hominids.
[snip]

[ Moderator's comment:
  None of whom, we may be certain, have ever subscribed at any time to this or
  any other mailing list.
  --rma ]


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri May 28 18:20:04 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 19:20:04 +0100
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.192004.0100.>

I (Peter) mentioned:

>the family suffix is not *-ter but *-6ter.

Pat said:

> could you explain a bit further?

>From memory, the article in JIES shows that all the family -ter words
have -6ter:

   p-6ter, ma-6ter, dhug-6ter, ien-6ter, g'en-6ter.

Because the last may be from g'en6-ter reanalysed, the possibility of this
word as the analogical source of the suffix was explored, rejected, and
another suggestion put forward - which I don't now remember!   I only
remember that it seemed rather unconvincing.

I don't have immediate access to JIES any more - otherwise a quick troll
through the indices would pick out the article.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri May 28 18:55:20 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 19:55:20 +0100
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.195520.0100.>

 Steven, attorney at law ,said:

> --- languages developing from spoken [Latin];
> --- edited literary texts; and
> --- a handful of surviving examples of graffiti.

> This is essentially what we have when we consider Latin

We also have:
(a) grammarians' descriptions;
(b) records of stigmatised pronunciations
(c) puns, misunderstandings, and all sorts of paranomasia;
(d) deliberate mimicking of non-classical pronunciations (remember Clodia?
    or Catullus?)
(e) spelling mistakes on formal inscriptions
(f) spelling alternatives on inscriptions

and more.   See W S Allen Vox Latina for more details.   We have a very good
idea of how Romans spoke.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri May 28 18:59:46 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 19:59:46 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.195946.0100.>

>> So can /kaen/ & can't /kaen?/ have to be distinguished by a combination of

>.....  I've always perceived the difference more as
> /k at n/ vs. /k&n(t)/,

Some of us (I say in a superior tone) speak a different dialect, in which
can is /k&n/ and can't is /ka:nt/.   The /t/ can be dropped without any fear
of ambiguity - not, of course, that we would think of doing such a thing!

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri May 28 18:36:53 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 19:36:53 +0100
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.193653.0100.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

I (Peter) said:

>> An ergative description of early PIE or pre-PIE explains various oddities in
>> PIE.

(The context makes it clear that I am not arguing PIE must have been
ergative!)

Brent said:
> OK, would you care to explain which oddities?

This is standard stuff - but do be aware that I am not insisting ergativity
is the only explanation.   My argument is merely that the theory that PIE
was ergative is "interesting" because of the issues it raises, and because
of its potential as an explanation.   My point is already proven, by the
sheer fact that you were interested enough to post your email.

A couple of features explained by a theory of ergativity are:
(a) the identity of nominative and accusative for all neuters.
(b) the lack of a true original passive.
(c) the origin of the verbal endings (see Szemerenyi p 330 for a brief and
confusing summary)

There are others as well, but these will do for the moment.

Peter


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Sat May 29 09:19:49 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 11:19:49 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <005701bea470$fe053880$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SAT.29.MAY.1999.111949.0200.>

>In the matter under discussion, someone may be able to tell us, in the
>historical record, if <jam> is attested earlier than <jamui>.

Mazhvydas (1547) has /jem/, Bretkunas (1591, his native language might have
been Prussian)) has /jamui/, Dauksha (1599) /jam/.

These attestations, at the beginning of Lithuanian writing, are too close
to each other to infer any chronological hypothesis from them. However,
that the pronominal Dative singular was, in Proto-Baltic, longer than just
-m, viz. at least -mu is documented by Prussian forms such as /kasmu/,
/tenne:ismu/, /schismu/ aso.

St.G.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Sat May 29 09:01:59 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 11:01:59 +0200
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <004401bea46e$87cefe00$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SAT.29.MAY.1999.110159.0200.>

>Since numerals in many languages do not automatically require a plural form
>of a noun, I am not sure what relevance "numerals" have to the point I am
>attempting to make.

Possessing numerals is equivalent to being able to indicate plurality
("five dog").

>And, I perceive a difference between "Viele Hunde haben
>Schwa{"}nze" and "Hunde haben Schwa{"}nze" --- do you not?

Sure, but the latter could be conveyed by "Hund haben Schwanz", in
opposition to, say, "Dies Hund haben Schwanz", "Viele Hund h.S." etc. pp.).
If you need to disambiguate, you do, even if you don't have a morphological
plural in your language.

St.G.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri May 28 19:55:50 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 20:55:50 +0100
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.205550.0100.>

There are several points in Steven's posting on Classical Latin which
require response.

Firstly, There is no need to suggest that Classical Latin was ever at any
stage actually spoken.    It has its sources in many things, not least the
drive to produce a language as capable of great literature as Greek.   We
can even trace in the literature the development of the so called Classical
Norms, as certain forms or constructions are felt to be in some way more
appropriate than others.   The achievement of Vergil and Caesar (rather than
Cicero) is to write great Latin within the norms which had been established
for written literature over the previous hundred years.

We know that Caesar, Cicero and the rest spoke very differently from the way
they wrote (see Cicero's more intimate letters);  and we know that the drive
to refine the language begins in earnest somewhere between Plautus (writing
about 200 BC) and Terence (writing after the full impact of Greek literature
has hit Rome, and dying in 154BC).   The spoken language continued as spoken
language does, with the educated people using some of the more "refined"
forms in their speech, but not all, while the less educated used few or
none.

It is the connection of this spoken language to proto-Romance that is
puzzling.   A simple equation of the two is not adequate, as it leaves lots
of problems.   For example, the common (in both senses) pronunciation
of -au- as /o:/ is "extremely well attested".   Yet in Romance the vowel
seems to have been not /o:/ but short /o/, and the original /a/ seems to
have survived very late - at least as late as the 5th century - for several
reasons, not least the French initial consonant in "chose"  (co- would have
given co-).

Likewise CL has sapere (short first e) but Romance points to sape:re.  And
many more such examples.

Another problem is the remarkable uniformity of the Vulgar Latin texts from
the 3rd to the 8th centuries BC.    It is scarcely conceivable that peasants
in Spain, France and Romania all spoke alike;  yet they seem to have written
alike.   So again, a simple equation of Vulgar Latin with proto-Romance may
not be adequate.

However, the claim that Classical Latin is proto-Romance is yet more
difficult, or even far-fetched.   There are too many things from
pre-classical Latin which have disappeared in the written language, but
resurface in both Vulgar Latin and Romance.   The actual speech of the
Romans must have maintained these features through the classical period.

Steven also said:

> This suggests, if it does not prove, that if Augustus thought that the
> /au/ pronunciation of his title was obsolescent,

If you mean he thought it should be eschewed, then I think this is highly
unlikely, given the political overtones of this diphthong.   He might well
have been aware of the tendency towards /o:/, but we cannot really think he
approved of it!

Steven said:

> And, if Augustus' ordinary speech was proto-Romance,

Highly unlikely.   Quite a few Romance features were in evidence before his
time, and just as with any modern language, there were many different
varieties of spoken Latin.

Stgeven said:

> this really
> squeezes the time frame during which CL might have reasonably resembled
> a spoken language.

Precisely.   CL developed through the first century BC, and even Lucretius
(dies 55 BC) cannot be considered a model of Classical Latin.  CL, properly
speaking, does have a very brief time span.   This is another sign of the
fact that it is an artifical fashion, not an actual spoken language.

Peter


From vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu  Sat May 29 20:34:43 1999
From: vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 16:34:43 -0400
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <SAT.29.MAY.1999.163443.0400.>

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

> Actually, if I had to summarize my argument against the consonantal nature
> of laryngeals in IE (except Hittite), I would say that the phenomena are
> reconstructable in terms of lengthened vowels so the presumption is that
> they were lengthened vowels, and the burden of proof is on those who propose
> their consonantal nature *in IE*.

Forms such as Skt aayunak suggest initial laryngeal, but it must disappear
in yugam, Lat iugum . What vowel does this?


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 23:07:42 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 18:07:42 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.180742.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 7:52 AM

>>>> Pat asked:

>>>>>> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

>>>> Jens responded:

>>>>> There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off
>>>>> by a funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one'
>>>>> (acc.sg.M amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this
>>>>> giving ami:, not **amu:.

>>>> Pat responded:

>>>> I think it is dangerous to assume that combinatory rules have acted
>>>> identically at different periods, do you not?

>> Jens objected:

>>> Sure, but you were using completely unknown rules.

>> Pat rejoinds:

>> Since when is compensatory lengthening "unknown"?

> I meant "completely unknown for the language concerned", which of course
> is what matters. I don't believe such a compensatory lengthening rule has
> ever been known for Sanskrit. If you assume -uy > -u: in Sanskrit, it is
> your task to demonstrate that there is such a "rule", meaning that the
> same change occurs in other cases where -u- and final -y meet. It would be
> an interesting discovery if you have examples to show that (for Sanskrit,
> mind you).

Pat responds:

Gee, Jens, I thought you knew about IE *ai -> Sanskrit [e:], or is that not
a lengthened vowel?

>>>> Pat responded:

>>>> Sorry, I cannot accept the idea that laryngeals still functioning in
>>>> Sanskrit made yuge{'} sandhi-resistant.

>>> It is a descriptive fact,

>> Pat rejoinds:

>> Your idea of a "fact" and mine are obviously totally different. That yuge{'}
>> may be sandhi-resistant could be a fact. That the cause is your convenient
>> laryngeal, is not!

Jens counters:

> But facts ought to be given explanations, and in this case it lies right
> at hand. What is simpler than assuming that a neuter dual contains the
> neuter dual ending? Now, in consonant stems the neuter dual in Sanskrit
> ends in /-i:/. The most common (in Beekes' phonology, if I understand him
> correctly, the only) source of that is a PIE sequence of i + laryngeal.
> Then, if /yuge'/ is regular, and the stem is *yugo-, we are made to posit
> *yugo-iH. That fully explains its sandhi-resistence, for before a vowel,
> the H goes to the following syllable, leaving -oi to form a diphthong in a
> syllable of their own, whence Skt. -e, even before vowel in the following
> word.

Pat, amazed again:

Gosh, Jens, does not IE *e/oi -> Sanskrit [e:] also? Besides, 99% of the
cases when <yuge{'}> will come before a vowel involve a following word the
initial of which can anciently have been presumed to be derived from IE *H.


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Fri May 28 00:52:41 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 19:52:41 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.195241.0500.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

> A pronoun is a pro-noun. It can be put in any position syntactically in
> which a noun can be employed. To say that pronouns do not "act like nouns"
> is completely unjustified!

Not entirely so.  One cannot say, for example, *the he.  To the best of
my knowledge, of languages with articles, none of them use them with
pronouns.  In addition, pronouns usually (always?) cannot have
non-predicate adjectives, "old man" is acceptable, "old he" is not.

> They do not look like nouns in one regard: they are principally *Ce vs.
> *CeC; however, that is due to their frequent enclitic employment where
> brevity is recommended.

As in French j', etc.?
--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 28 00:57:50 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 19:57:50 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.195750.0500.>

Dear Robert and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Whiting <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 1:34 PM

> On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
>> from the simple to the complex.

> and then

> On Tue, 25 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> If we are going to keep coming back to "complex", perhaps you would care
>> to define it for us in terms of this discussion. I talked about ambiguity
>> not complexity.

Robert wrote:

> Thank you, Patrick.  Your posting shows more about you and your methods
> than I would ever care to put in print, and you have certainly made all
> my points for me.

Pat answers:

And thank you, Robert, for revealing your methods --- taking two postings,
which appeared a week apart, in different contexts, answering different
questions. Your scholarship must be a wonder to behold!

Robert continued:

> Just one thing though:  When you say

>      Gelb, under whom I studied, ...

> do you mean that he was your dissertation supvervisor or principal
> advisor, or that you took a course from him once, or that you saw him
> around the OI on occasion, or that you studied on the second floor
> while he worked on the third.

Pat responds:

You may conclude whatever you wish.

Robert, in no particular context:

> And I should answer your questions that stem from real ignorance
> rather than being rhetorical.

Pat foolishly asked:

>> But if you do not care to, tell me the word you would use to distinguish
>> between the semantic relationships of 'dog/cat' and 'cat/cats'.

Robert politely responded:

> I would use what everybody else who knows how to use a dictionary would
> use.  'Dog/cat' is an example of a difference in "lexical meaning":

>      lexical meaning n:  the meaning of the base (as in the word _play_)
>      in a paradigm (as _plays, played, playing_).
>                        Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

> while 'cat/cats' is a difference in "grammatical meaning":

>      grammatical meaning n:  the part of meaning that varies from one
>      inflectional form to another (as from _plays_ to _played_ to
>      _playing_).
>                                      Ibid.

> So 'dog/cat' are lexically different and 'cat/cats' are grammatically
> different, but both pairs are semantically different (i.e., have
> different meanings).

Pat answers:

Thanks so much for a full exposition of your views. I will bear your
prefered usages in mind if you will do the same for mine.

Pat previously:

>> What is the method of marking the plural in Chinese nominal forms --
>> what other mechanism?

Robert answered:

> There are a number.  Most commonly there are "measure words" and
> "quantifiers."  Measure words are required between definite quantifiers
> (numbers) and nouns, but are usually optional (but sometimes required)
> after indefinite quantifiers (e.g., ji "some, a few," haoji "quite a few,"
> duo "many, much," etc. [tones not indicated]).  One can also use the
> quantifier one (plus measure word) to indicate the indefinite singular.
> Demonstratives can be marked for singular and plural by the use of measure
> words (-ge for singular, -xie for plural) and these demonstratives can be
> used together with nouns to indicate the number of the noun.  Also, the
> plural marker of pronouns (-men) is often used to mark the plural in nouns
> referring to groups or classes of people.

> Otherwise, singular and plural
> are generally determined from context, but if elimination of ambiguity is
> necessary, there are ways to accomplish it.

Pat responds:

That is precisely what I said.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Fri May 28 02:17:46 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 21:17:46 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.211746.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

"Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton" wrote:

> I'm sorry, Pat, but your statement about Evolution here shows EXACTLY why
> modern languages (and any other language we have any evidence of) are NOT
> evolving.

Actually, "evolve" is a neutral term, indicating mere change by the
accumulation of small scale changes.  It is usually "survival
enhancing", at least in the short term, but can also refer to changes
that are neutral, or even harmful.

> What it did was make English hugely ambiguous in terms of specifying the
> number of addressees.

Which is exactly why many dialects have developed various plural forms,
such as y'all in the South.  "Survival enhancing", you could say.  :-)

> Could we discuss nuclear physics without all the Greek, Latin, and French
> loanwords that entered the language after Hastings and use just our
> Anglo-Saxon heritage with compounding?  Absolutely.  The Icelanders do it
> just fine.

True, by coining words, that is, by changing.  It's only a matter of how
it changed.  English changed by borrowing (very odd terminology, when
you think about it, "stealing" would be more appropriate) words, while
Icelandic changed by creating new words.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Fri May 28 02:34:50 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 21:34:50 -0500
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.213450.0500.>

"Steven A. Gustafson" wrote:

> /au/ was probably the last of the Latin diphthongs to go.  We can be
> reasonably sure of that because in certain situations in both Spanish
> and Italian, stressed /o/ was diphthongized {fuego, fuoco, uomo &c} but
> that didn't happen when the /o/ resulted from CL /au/

However, that diphthongizing only resulted when it was /O/, descended
from Latin short /o/, long /o:/ evolved into /o/, which remained /o/,
thus ho:ra became hora, not *huera, while ossum (?) became hueso.  /au/
became long /o:/, so of course it wasn't diphthongized.  /aurum/ became
/o:ru/, which naturally became /oro/ in Spanish and Italian.

> but it may indeed be reasonable to say that the written
> norm of CL is somewhat archaizing and definitely artificial sample of
> the actual river of Roman speech.

Sure, why not?  "Correct" English has a number of artificial elements
added in for "logic", like the double-negative rule, or the "split
infinitive", and the like.  It's reasonable that the Romans might've
introduced such artificial elements.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw  Sat May 22 05:38:58 1999
From: fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw (Steven Schaufele)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 22:38:58 -0700
Subject: Form following function
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.223858.0700.>

Steve Long (<X99Lynx at aol.com>) writes:

> Function has a broader meaning here.  It's not 'practicality.'
> Function refers to a consequence, an effect on the environment.
>
> A rock has form.  When a human picks one up to throw it, function is
> added.
>
> A square wheel has form.  The problem is that it does not satisfy the
> functionality requirement.

Excuse me, a `square wheel' has a perfectly good function -- especially
if it's attached via an axle to another wheel, whether square or not.
Makes a great table.

I've seen it done.  I've even come across a suggestion (admittedly
speculative) that the original wheel may have been intended as a table.

And what about all those Central American wheels that never got attached
to carts, because they were too busy keeping time?  Just because a wheel
is shaped like a wheel doesn't mean its function is necessarily to
`allow an object to move with less resistance'.

To generalize:  You say `function' has a `broader meaning' here, but
you're not looking broadly enough.  You say `A rock has form.  When a
human picks one up to throw it, function is added.'  But the same is
true when a human picks one up to add to a dike, or to carve into a tool
or a statue.  There's a wide range of possible functions.  We got bones
in our ears that help us hear better; doesn't have anything to do with
the fact that for our reptilian ancestors those were jawbones.  They may
have made damn good jawbones, for all i know.  The functions are
different, but i don't know if one is in any objective sense `better'
than the other -- e.g., better suited to the nature/form of the bones
themselves.

Best,
Steven
--
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department
Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC
(886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504     fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw
Fax: (886)(02)2881-7609
http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html

        ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!***
        ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!***


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Sat May 22 08:48:01 1999
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:48:01 +0300
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <001d01bea181$08ef34a0$84d3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.114801.0300.>

On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

<snip>
>Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
>from the simple to the complex.

Yes, I've noticed how, for example, in the history of writing
systems, the earliest writing systems were incredibly simple
logographic systems consisting of only several hundred to several
thousand signs and that reading and writing was so simple that it
was a specialized occupation that required many years of study to
master.  This simple system gave rise to a more complex system
of syllabaries which needed a couple of hundred (or even less
than a hundred) signs to express the same information.  Finally,
this gave way to the most complex system of all, the alphabet, in
which the tens of thousands of words in a language can be written
with around 30 signs and is so complicated that it takes all the
resources that the average 5-year-old can muster to learn it.

>My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after
>the onset of linguistic communication, languages were simpler
>than they are now; and hence, less explicitly expressive.

It is rather the other way around.  What you mean to say is that
your studies take this as an axiom and therefore fall apart if it
is not true.  But since you cheerfully admit that no linguist
accepts your studies, this is hardly proof of the truth of your
axiom.  And as far as I'm concerned, anyone who claims that there
is no semantic difference between "cat" and "cats" is
disqualified from talking about common sense.

>As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to
>designate the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an
>*ambiguity* into a statement that a language which can does not
>exhibit.

But if, as you have claimed elsewhere, there is no semantic
difference between the singular and plural forms of a given
noun (cat/cats), then being able to mark the plural makes no
difference in meaning and there can be no difference in the
level of ambiguity.  Either one of your statements or the other
has to be wrong (since this is a logical "or," they can also
both be wrong, but they can't both be correct).

>As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much
>greater range of semantic inclusion than other languages. This
>also is a source of potential ambiguity that is not shared by
>languages that have differentiated semantic ranges more finely.

Spoken language expresses meaning through sound.  This means that
an effective language has to be able to express the entire real
and imagined world through sounds used conventionally to convey
meaning.  How each individual language does this is of its own
choosing and whether it uses analytic or synthetic means does not
make it "simpler" or "more complex" than another language that
uses a different method.  If one language expresses relationships
between verbs and nouns through nominal desinences and another
expresses them through an extensive system of prepositons or
postpositions, the one is not necessarily simpler or more complex
than the other; they are simply two methods of achieving the
same result.  Overall, every language has to be able to express
the real and imagined world of its speech community.  Simplicity
in one linguistic area will normally be compensated for by
complexity in another.  If the language doesn't mark the
difference between singular and plural in nouns overtly, there
will be some other mechanism in the language to express the idea.

Finally, no natural language can entirely eliminate ambiguity
through grammatical means no matter how many case endings or
verbal inflections it develops.  The real and imagined world is
simply too large for this to be true, and natural languages just
do not work this way.  Context is the ultimate disambiguator of
meaning.  We understand things by their context.  And I do not
refer solely to the grammatical context of a word in a sentence,
but also to the socio-cultural context in which an utterance is
made.

>Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible
>linguistic discussion.

And please do not introduce your own personal opinions and
prejudices into the discussion under the guise of "common sense"
(even though, according to Einstein, that is what common sense is).

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 15:05:29 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 10:05:29 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.100529.0500.>

Dear Nik and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Nik Taylor <fortytwo at ufl.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 10:39 PM

>> "Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

>> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate
>> the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a
>> statement that a language which can does not exhibit.

>Nik counters:

> True, but such a weakness tends to be counteracted by less ambiguity
> elsewhere.  Japanese, for instance does not distinguish between singular
> and plural, but it does distinguish between different levels of
> honorifics, as well as cases.  Overall, languages tend to balance out,
> they are *roughly equal* in complexity.

Pat replies:

"Roughly equal" as defined in the UN Charter?

To take your conclusion seriously, we would have to get into a probably
interminable discussion of what "complex" means when applied to
languages --- likely not a very satisfying undertaking.

Your answer is illuminating, however, in terms of revealing what the real
bottom-line for the sociologically oriented among us: equality.

Complexity has nothing to do with the point I raised. Specifying whether you
are talking to the Shogun or a fishmonger does not help that entity
understand what you are saying any better if you are unable to specify the
distribution of an item under discussion in its class.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From stevegus at aye.net  Sat May 22 15:40:09 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:40:09 -0400
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.114009.0400.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Pete Gray writes:

>> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
>> of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
>> hence, less explicitly expressive.

>I don't wish to be rude, but this is demonstrably untrue.   For example,
>Polynesian languages have simpler phonology and morphology than the
>Austronesian language from which they must have developed.   Likewise modern
>Chinese has simplified its phonology from that of the earliest recoverable
>records.  Afrikaans has simplified its morphology from its parent langauge.

I suspect that movements towards the "simpler" or "complex" have to do as much
with the direction of phonetic developments as they do with any necessary
evolutionary vector.  If a language is undergoing the process seen over and
over again in IE languages, where final consonants or vowels get dropped, this
languages will seem to become "simpler" as former distinctions get bulldozered.
What is left may depend on how many distinctions can still be carried after the
sound changes have done their work.  Sometimes (Romance) the former
distinctions are completely levelled.  In other situations (Slavic) enough
remains after phonetic change has done its work to allow the older structures
to continue to function.

Obviously, though, this kind of phonetic change cannot go on indefinitely, lest
speech be replaced by silence.  At some time, PIE must have had postpositions
on nouns and pronouns regularly appended to verbs by a fixed VS sentence
structure, and these turned into case and verb inflexions.  In some IE
languages, like the Tocharians, this process continued and begat some exotic
cases.  In modern French, all the inflections that marked case and number have
been mostly lost from the -ends- of nouns; so what they did was add them back
at the beginning.

Modern spoken English seems to be in the process of generating a complex,
highly inflected verb system, with many new and different aspect markers, as
former auxiliary verbs are reduced and lose their distinctness and independent
status.  We have already seen simple verb phrase structures of Early Modern
English (Knowest thou?  I go...) get replaced by more complex and highly
nuanced and aspected ones that require more words.  (Do you know?  I am
going...)  In our time, sandhi and palatalization reduce the once independent
auxiliaries in these phrases to enclitics, and also change the pronouns.  These
may be new inflexions in the oven.

This seems to me to pose difficulties for any attempt to get a firm handle on
the level of "complexity" present in any given language.  In English, the
(archaizing) formal register is noticeably less complex in both syntax and
sounds than the vernacular; where do you insert your dip-stick to measure the
complexity of "English?"  It also seems to suggest that there is no vector
moving in favour of either simplicity or complexification, but that the process
is one of a pendulum moving from one extreme to another; or rather, a process
of punctuated equlibrium in which sound change and grammatical change play off
on each other.

---
With wind we blowen; with wind we lassun;
With weopinge we comen; with weopinge we passun.
With steringe we beginnen; with steringe we enden;
With drede we dwellen; with drede we wenden.
                                  ---- Anon, Lambeth Ms. no. 306

[ moderator snip ]


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 16:02:23 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:02:23 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.110223.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 11:24 PM

>>Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
>> of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
>> hence, less explicitly expressive.

>Joat responded:

> -- irrelevant to the present discussion, as all extant and historically
> recorded languages, as well as those which can be reconstructed with any
> degree of confidence (like PIE) are equally "expressive", ie., basically
> equally efficient as means of communication.

Pat rejoinds:

What you wrote but conveniently have deleted from your present posting was:
"All they intended to do was talk, and they did -- and _you can talk just as
effectively in any language, *in any era*_ of the human race (emphasis
added)."

My comments were relevant to what you wrote whether you can see it or not.
Whether you agree or not, that it what is irrelevant.

The research that is currently being performed now on the origins of
language suggests strongly that language began very simply, as calls and
gestures, which were gradually perfected into language --- unless, of
course, you believe that God bestowed fully developed language on Adam,
which belief would disqualify you from any rational discussion of the topic.

Joat continued:

> Languages are more or less useful for communication according to their
> degree of ubiquity or social status; which is to say, for non-linguistic
> reasons.

> Eg., English is not spoken more widely than Serbian because it's in any
> way a "better" language, but simply due to historical accident.

Pat responds:

Sociologically oriented people just simply seem to be unable to stay away
from terms like "better". I have asserted that early language, for any
non-believer, would have had to have gone through a stage that was less
expressive (more ambiguous) than languages of which we currently have
documented information. This has nothing to do with its "useful"ness. It
does not mean that its was 'worse'. It just means that it was different. Is
that really so hard to understand?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 16:17:02 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:17:02 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.111702.0500.>

Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 3:16 AM

>>Pat wrote:

>> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
>> plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a
>> statement that a language which can does not exhibit.

>R-S responded:

> A language which is unable to designate the plural form of a noun (*unable*
> !) would be a language without numerals, and without a word for "many" othl.
> I strongly doubt that a lg. like this could still be called a natural
> language, iow. I doubt the existence of such a thing. Please, correct me.

Pat answers:

Since numerals in many languages do not automatically require a plural form
of a noun, I am not sure what relevance "numerals" have to the point I am
attempting to make. And, I perceive a difference between "Viele Hunde haben
Schwa{"}nze" and "Hunde haben Schwa{"}nze" --- do you not?

>R-S continued:

> But, seriously, there is of course sense in talking about a plural like
> "dogs" being simpler and producable with less effort than, say, "many dog"
> or "three (= many) dog". Othoh, "sheep", "brethren", "l'udi", and "d'on"
> aren't. Talking about an overall tendency of increasing complexity in
> language change makes thus less sense to me. We could go on and exchange
> endless lists of documented changes in languages increasing systemic
> complexity, followed by an equally long list showing simplifications (and
> all this without a proper definition of complexity/simplicity in hand).
> Should we ?

Pat rejoinds:

Without a proper definition of complexity/simplicity, I agree the discussion
can make little progress.

BTW, I spoke of "ambiguity" not "simplicity" or "complexity".

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 16:33:49 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:33:49 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.113349.0500.>

Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 3:57 AM

Pat wrote:

>>>  I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
>>> a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

R-S responded:

> So, if the assumption that English is an IE language is still with us,
> English morphology is older/more original than that of, say, Vedic or Greek
> ? French than Latin ? Good heavens !

Pat answers:

I do not think we are really disagreeing here. Let me clarify what I said,
and I hope you will agree.

I do believe that simple forms and less extensive categories of expression
came first. That does not mean that *all* "simpler" forms are the basis for
"less simple" forms but it leads to a strong presumption that a "simpler"
form is the retained basis of a "less simple" form.

Fortunately, in many cases, we can historically document the presence of a
"simpler" form earlier in time than the "less simple" form, which
substantiates the presumption.

When we cannot, the possibility of a "less simple" form being "abbreviated"
to a "simpler form" exists but do we not need more than the existence of a
possibility to assert it.

In the matter under discussion, someone may be able to tell us, in the
historical record, if <jam> is attested earlier than <jamui>.

R-S continued:

> It may of course be in line with common sense that, in order to get a very
> complex system (say, of verbal forms, as e.g. in Ket or Navajo), it has to
> be "built up" somehow by several successive stages of grammaticalization.  A
> fortiori it is reasonable to think that such complex systems have some sort
> of a "simpler" pre-history. I think this is basically what you have in
> mind. But to derive from this a principle which says that always the
> "simpler" (i.e. shorter) form in any given pair of attested ones is the
> primary one is, well, for want of a better word, hair-raising (no, this I
> time I won't take that back ;-).

Pat answers:

I think the linchpin of your objection is "always", which, if I implied it,
did so inadvertently. I do, however, based on just the line of reasoning you
have indicated in your last paragraph, believe that the preferred
explanation is derivation and only conflicting data should force us to
affirm abbreviation.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 16:51:15 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:51:15 -0500
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as [was Re: "syllabicity"]
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.115115.0500.>

Dear Ralf-Stefan, Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 4:41 AM

R-S wrote:

> By this I don't doubt your analysis of dive-dive; only that it may be due
> to predictable Sandhi.  I'm unaware of how many examples for the process
> seen in /edhi/ exist, but /divedive/ may be another one, but then for an
> early sound-law, involving early univerbation of *divas + *dive not a
> productive rule still operative in historical times.

Pat writes:

Rather than the result of an ordinary sandhi process, I am inclined to
suspect that [*adhi{'}] to [edhi{'}] may be a rare example of Sanskrit
Umlaut.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 17:00:55 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 12:00:55 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.120055.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 7:53 AM

>> [Pat replied:]

>> If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I.
>> My point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV
>> since there is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

>Jens replied:

> You seem to have a short memory! As the squashed quotations from the
> _same_ mail of yours show, you _did_ derive *-t and *-te from the same
> underlying form, and it just is wrong to give that form the notation
> *-tV in the case where there is no vowel.

Pat responds:

Sorry I did not make myself clear. *t(V) and *tV.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat May 22 17:39:01 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 12:39:01 -0500
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <012f01bea2b3$4e213f40$0204703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.123901.0500.>

As far as I know, gandules are eaten in most of Latin America and parts of
Spain. You can buy gandules in the US packed by Goya, a company from Spain.
They are very popular in Cuba [where I had a plate of gandules], Puerto
Rico, Dominican Republic, Central America, etc. Everyone I've talked to
from South America knows what they are as well. In the US, they're popular
among Cuban-Americans, Dominicans & Puerto Ricans. In Central America,
they're considered as a poor man's substitute for green peas --which are a
delicacy there. And green peas are a real lexical mess: petipoa/s,
petipua/s, arvejas, arverjas, ervejas, guisantes [de olor], chi/charos
[verdes], etc. are used just in Central America.

[snip]

>Still no trace of 'pigeon pea'. BTW, where do they eat arroz con gandules?
>Nobody in the family or their acquaintances seem to have heard of it (Spain,
>Perú, Venezuela, Cuba...).

[snip]


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 17:42:17 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 12:42:17 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.124217.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Larry and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 8:36 AM

[PR]

>> Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
>> from the simple to the complex.

[LT]

> Not so.  Blatantly not so.

> A good counterexample is dedicated parasitism, in which the parasite
> loses all structures required for locomotion, perception, self-defense,
> pursuit of prey, and whatnot, and is reduced to a mere sac of tissue
> able to do nothing but to absorb nutrients from its host and to
> reproduce.

[PR]

And is that parasite one-celled? Was it there at the beginning of life on
earth?

Degeneration of certain functions is always possible. Take Chinese as an
example. The language from which it is derived did have a plural.

[LT continued]

> Languages are also good counterexamples.  The earliest recorded or
> reconstructible languages are in no way simpler than contemporary
> languages.  And perhaps no recorded IE language possesses an
> inflectional morphology as complex as that of PIE.  Does this make the
> modern languages in any way inferior to PIE?

[PR]

It always gets back to "better/worse", "inferior/superior" for the
sociologically oriented. For them, different is a pejorative. Perhaps
ambiguity is better, quien sabe?

[PR wrote]

>> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the
>> onset of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they
>> are now; and hence, less explicitly expressive.

[LT coninued]

> It is not possible to make "studies" of the languages of our earliest
> ancestors, since no data exist.  As for "common sense", well, I take
> Einstein's view: `common sense' is merely a label we apply to something
> we believe only because we want to believe it.

> Our linguistic methods allow us to penetrate no more than a few thousand
> years into the past, even in the most favorable cases, and they reveal
> earlier languages in no way "simpler" than modern ones.  We have no way
> of reaching back to the remote antecedents of language, tens or hundreds
> of thousands of years ago, and we can't guess what these were like.

[PR responds]

Yes, Larry, we know this is your belief. But, although one cannot convince a
believer, let me mention a few things for those readers who still have open
minds:

1) All present languages potentially provide "data" for the languages of our
earliest ancestors if monogenesis is accepted; one can study IE, can one
not? even though we have no attestation of it beyond what we can
reconstruct;

2) Let us not say that "polygenesis" is against common sense; let us rather
say that polygenesis is intellectually on a par with _believing_ that the
earth was created in six days;

3) I am not the only person who believes that languages of much greater
antiquity than that allowed by the flawed mathematics of glottochronology
and lexicostatistics --- linguists, not amateurs like myself.

>>[PR wrote]

>> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to
>> designate the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an
>> *ambiguity* into a statement that a language which can does not
>> exhibit.

>[LT wrote]

> Not remotely true, I'm afraid.  You are confusing grammaticalization
> with expressive power.  A language can express distinctions of number
> perfectly well without grammaticalizing some of these distinctions.

> English is not more ambiguous than Classical Arabic or Fijian because,
> unlike them, it does not grammaticalize dual number.  We use words like
> `both' or `two'; they use inflected forms of nouns or pronouns for the
> same purpose.  There is no difference in expressive power.

[PR writes]

If I had meant to include "dual" as a category, the absence of which
introduces ambiguity, might I not have written that --- just another
straw-man argument from the master debater.

>[LT coninued]

> The North American language Kwakiutl grammaticalizes visibility:
> different pronouns must be selected depending on whether the referent
> is, or is not, visible to the speaker at the moment of speaking.
> English does not do this.  Does this fact make Kwakiutl "more
> expressive" or "more complex" or "less ambiguous" than English?

[PR responds]

Yes, it makes Kakiutl more expressive.

[LT continued]

> The tense language English requires `I saw Susie yesterday'; a tenseless
> language like Mandarin Chinese has, literally, `I see Susie yesterday'.
> There is no ambiguity: there are merely different choices as to which
> information should be built into the grammar, as opposed to being
> expressed otherwise.

[PR responds]

Now one can say in English: 'I saw Susie'. What is the equivalent literal
translation in Mandarin?

[LT continues]

>> As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much
>> greater range of semantic inclusion than other languages. This also
>> is a source of potential ambiguity that is not shared by languages
>> that have differentiated semantic ranges more finely.

> Not so.  English has only a single past tense, and `Washington crossed
> the Delaware' can denote any temporal period between a moment ago and
> the beginning of time.  Some other languages grammaticalize much finer
> distinctions of past time: a moment ago, within the last hour, earlier
> today, yesterday, recently, within the last few months, within the last
> few years, many years ago, before I was born, and so on.  Is the African
> language Bamileke-Dschang superior to English because it distinguishes
> five different past tenses in contrast to our single one?

[PR answers]

You may repeat that 'English has only a single past tense' until the Fenris
wolf swallows the sun, and you will convince only yourself and your friends
who hold it dogmatically.

B-D is, in this regard, more expressive than English; and also less
ambiguous.

>[LT additionally]

> Is it less ambiguous?

>>[PR wrote]

>> Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible
>> linguistic discussion.

>[LT continued]

> I know nothing about sociology of any kind, but I do know that there
> exists no case for claiming that any living, attested or reconstructed
> language is more or less complex than any other, or more or less
> expressive, or more or less ambiguous.  That's just a plain fact.

[PR responds]

Your ignorance of sociology is probably an important component of why you
are unable to distinguish between scientific beliefs justified by reasoning
from data, and your "positions".

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 18:03:26 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 13:03:26 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.130326.0500.>

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 12:42 PM

>> Pat replied:

>> If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I. My
>> point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV since
>> there is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

>Leo objected:

> But that's not at all what you said, Pat!  You claimed then that the
> *existence* ot the -e was of no consequence, since we could explain it as
> the product of stress accentuation.  Having been shown by several people that
> your analysis will not work, you now say that the existence of the vowel does
> matter, only its quality does not.  Your statements are not compatible.

Pat responds:
Leo, I simply do not understand your point. Could you spell it out a little
more completely?

I hope I have been consistent. In IE, I believe there was a morpheme that
can be notated as [-*te/o] or [-*tV] which is the common factor in both
these forms; in the one case, reduced by foregoing stress-accentuation to
[-*t]. If you are relying on the Sanskrit injunctive for your point, surely
it is not unreasonable to think that the vowel of the 2nd p. pl. might be
been retained or analogously restored to maintain a differentiation with the
3rd p. sing.?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 18:17:24 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 13:17:24 -0500
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.131724.0500.>

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 2:20 PM

>> Pat said:

>> I understand how you would like to interpret the -i- of the reduplicated
>> form (as the residue of a laryngeal) but aside from this, is there any
>> evidence in the *un*reduplicated form of your postulated initial laryngeal?

>Pete responds:

> Good question.   Since this conversation began with your theory that
> laryngeals were vowels, what would you accept as evidence?

Pat answers:

It is not correct to characterize my view as "laryngeals were vowels"
without much qualification. I assume that "laryngeals" existed as consonants
at some point in the development of IE or the language (Nostratic) from
which IE developed.

I think that, generally, by the times of reconstructable IE, they had become
vowels: [a:, e:, o:, u:, i:] or caused other nearby vowels to be lengthened.
In the example under discussion, I would accept as evidence of an initial
laryngeal forms of *g{w}em- which indicated a better reconstruction of
*Hg{w}em.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 19:00:49 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 14:00:49 -0500
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.140049.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 5:12 PM

Jens wrote:

> I have yet to see a really cogent argument for an IE (or pre-IE) ergative.
> One is constantly served mere descriptions of what the system would be
> like if it is accepted, but nothing to convince one that it _must_ be
> accepted. I'm not saying that pre-PIE was _not_ ergative, just that we
> cannot really know. Practically all the literature on the subject simply
> boasts that the author knows what an ergative is and so is without
> scholarly interest. It is as if I would claim that PIE had a definite
> article, just because I know what that is.

Pat responds:

The argument of Beekes on pp. 193-4 of his book seems strong to me.

However, there is also the typological angle. It is my impression that most
typologists believe that nominative-type languages developed from
ergative-type languages.

Jens continued:

> I'm sure it is, as far as function goes, but I'm also rather sure that the
> IE pronoun (for *se) did not have a nominative form to fulfil this function.
> What was the nominative form in your opinion, and what are its reflexes in
> the daughter languages on which the reconstruction is based? - Are you
> _denying_ that Latin se, Greek he, German sich and Russian sebja have no
> nominative? And is this fact - if so it is - to be ignored in a
> reconstruction of the protolanguage?

Pat responds:

These are not easy questions, and I can only offer suggestions of
possibilities rather than assert convincedly:

The first datum to notice is that *se, although it frequently refers to
animates, and often is logically employed as an accusative, does not show
*-m, which we might expect.

Instead we find simply *se, suggesting what has been speculated as an
ergative-stage of IE where -*0 marks the absolute.

We also do not find the pattern which Beekes (and I) think might have been
the basis for a nominative formed from a genitive of the ergative-stage:
namely, a nominative (and genitive) in *-s. Instead, we find that
employments of *se in contexts that would suggest a nominative overwhelming
have the form *s(e)we, and that like *tu/u:, apparently have been modeled on
a genitive of a different form: *s(e)we and *t(e)we.

So, a partial answer to your question is that, if I had to designate a
nominative form, I would have to opt for *s(e)we.

I suppose you already know that I would favor the additional idea that the
genitives in *-we probably were derived from a lost topical inflection.

Pat wrote:

>> I reject unequivocally your H{3} as a part of the reconstruction.

Jens concluded:

> I feel we are about to reach the borders of how far this subject can
> be taken.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 19:19:49 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 14:19:49 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.141949.0500.>

Dear Nicholas and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Nicholas Widdows <nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk>
Sent: Friday, May 21, 1999 6:33 AM

<big snip>

> They're just different.  Languages change because they do.

Pat, aghast:

I was with you all the way until this final sentence.

Is this Zen?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Sat May 22 22:43:34 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 00:43:34 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <l03102802b36977ce7552@[195.247.226.29]>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.004334.0200.>

On Thu, 20 May 1999, Ralf-Stefan Georg wrote:

> In short, we should differentiate between two kinds of "monovocalic"
> systems: one, where, as in Sanskrit, only one phoneme has only vocalic
> allophones, but certain others have consonantic and vocalic ones, and a
> system, where only one phoneme *can* have one or several vocalic allophones.
> I still view the latter as typologically impossible, resp. unheard of,
> while I admit (of course) that the former description fits the Sanskrit
> data (and they won't go away by ignoring them, as Jens puts it rightly).

It's always nice to read well-argued words of agreement. I guess you are
supported by empirical typology in dismissing the latter type, but note
that the former (Sanskrit) type was dismissed by typology also, and that
has been found to be wrong. And - most importantly for the IE list - it
was the Sanskrit-type analysis that was proposed and rejected for PIE.
Thus, such rejection loses its cogency (but not its _potential_ adequacy).

Jens


From jer at cphling.dk  Sat May 22 23:05:15 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 01:05:15 +0200
Subject: Syllabicity
In-Reply-To: <001f01bea2cd$6c171500$779ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.010515.0200.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

On Thu, 20 May 1999, [discussing with Leo Conolly] Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> [...] I will not be able to convince you that my answer is right but I will,
> at least, tell you what I think.  I believe that all IE roots of the form CVC
> were earlier "CV-CV. The thematic vowel is a faint reminder of forms that
> were stress-accented (at one point) CV-"CV.

[...]

> I do not think I will convince you of this either but, for whatever it may
> be worth, I will give you my view,

[...]

Pardon my barging in again, but this promts a fundamental question in my
head: How can you form an _opinion_ about a matter, if you have no
decisive arguments? Who would give a damn if I were to declare my belief
in the existence of PIE front rounded vowels (/u"/, /o"/) if I must
confess in the same breath that I have no evidence for it? Who would care
that I "think" or "believe" so, and that it is "my view"? I hope I am not
on record to have done anything of the sort.

Jens


From jer at cphling.dk  Sun May 23 00:22:01 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 02:22:01 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <004201bea391$14035260$529ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.022201.0200.>

On Fri, 21 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[Jens:]

>> So, for the dual *-e, it _would_ be a problem for you if it did not have
>> a laryngeal, as sva'sa:rau indicates it did not.

> Pat responds:

> Beekes looks at the same data, and on pg. 194, reconstructs -*He. Why is he
> wrong?

It is not _very_ wrong to posit *-H1e, seeing that the difference of
this over plain *-e is so small. But an ablaut interplay between
full-grade *-H1e and zero-grade *-H1 is unacceptable for the reasons I
have stated: It would make the nom.-acc. dual a strong case with rightward
accent-and-ablaut movement, which is never found. It would not allow
Brugmann's length in IIr., but that _could_ be analogical. And, addding
another, if the thematic form was really *-o- + consonant-stem *-H1e or
*-e (parallel with the nom.pl. *-o:s from *-o- + consonant-stem *-es), the
option *-o-H1e is excluded by the acute tone of Balto-Slavic and Greek in
this form. To be sure, Beekes also excludes *-o-e in favour of *-oH
precisely on the basic of the Lithuanian acute, but in this point we
differ in our understanding of the rules. If you are content to have some
speaker on IE on your side, pick anyone you like; but if you want to have
arguments to serve you with a criterion as to which one to choose (if
any), ask both parties again.

> Pat responded earlier:

>>> As for the genitive, I reconstruct *-s(V), with the final vowel falling off
>>> due to stress-accent of a preceding syllable: "Ce/oC + sV -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

> Jens asks:

>> With accent shifting onto a vowel that was not there?

> Pat responds:

> Sorry, I should have written "Ce/oC(V) -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

That makes the vowel of the genitive "ending" a part of the preceding
stem. If that is so, there will also appear a vowel before other endings
that cause the accent to move from one vowel to the next. Then why does
this not happen when the endings *-bhyos, *-bhis, *-su are added? And in
root nouns where the stem is identical with that of a radical verb (root
present or root aorist), why does the vowel appear in the genitive *-os
(*-es), but not when verbal endings are added? These problems evaporate if
the stem is posited as consonant-final, and the gen. morpheme is *-os
(*-es).

> I think one important factor that should be considered in these equations is
> the example Beekes gives on p. 195 of Greek <o{'}sse>, 'pair of eyes', which
> he derives from *ok{w}-iH{1} THROUGH *ok{w}-ye. We could, just as easily,
> posit a dual in -y and forget about the laryngeal.

> Jens writes:

>> In this particular case we could - for Greek. But not for Slavic oc^i
>> (would have reduced i), nor for Arm. ac^'k' (would not be a-stem, gen.
>> ac^'ac'). And especially it would not give Skt. -i: with length in the
>> ntr.du. of cons.-stems.

> Pat responds:

> I do not have the reference books here to substantiate this comment but, if
> I understand Beekes correctly, OCS would not have oc{^}i but rather
> oc{^}e{^}. Is that incorrect?

Yes and no. Slavic neuter consonant stems are few in kind, and their
nom.-acc. dual regularly ends in -e^ which must be pure analogy with the
o-stems. The dual of 'eye ' _is_ oc^i (also so given by Beekes 173), along
with us^i 'two ears' a relic of the inherited form.


> Jens mentioned:

>>>> *H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e;

> Pat responded:

>>> In view of Gk. o{'}sse, why not?

> Jens responds:

>> There is no such rule. The /y/ would syllabify and yield **ane'r-i. That's
>> what happened in the loc.sg. *p at 2-te'r-i > Gk. dat. pate'ri, Skt. loc.
>> pita'ri.

> Pat responds:

> Not sure what you mean by "no rule". It is a process described on p. 195 of
> Beekes. Also, the dative has a different base form: -*(H)ey, which is
> nothing more than the well-known *Hey-, 'to go'.

Beekes says no such thing, nor do I know of any basis on which he could
have. The form of the IE dative is immaterial when we are talking about
the fate of the IE locative.

> Jens mentioned:

>>>> u-stem *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

> Pat asked:

>>> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

> Jens responded:

>> There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off by a
>> funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one' (acc.sg.M
>> amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this giving
>> ami:, not **amu:.

> Pat responds:

> I think it is dangerous to assume that combinatory rules have acted
> identically at different periods, do you not?

Sure, but you were using completely unknown rules.

> Jens asked:

>>>> What _is_ the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

> Pat answered:

>>> The majority of the attested forms, there being no /i/ in IE..

> Jens responded:

>> For most positions, you are right: The original difference between the
>> morphophonemes /i/ and /y/ are neutralized almost across the board and can
>> therefore be represented by one phoneme. However, that is not the point
>> we're discussing; we're arguing about the presence or absence of a
>> laryngeal in the ntr.du., remember? And in this point Skt. yuge' 'two
>> yokes' passes judgment, for this form is sandhi resistent ("pragrhya")
>> and so _must_ have ended in a laryngeal.

> Pat responds:

> Sorry, I cannot accept the idea that laryngeals still functioning in
> Sanskrit made yuge{'} sandhi-resistant.

It is a descriptive fact, well established before the advent of laryngeal
analysis and in possession of a perfectly adequate and phonetically
natural explanation since Kuiper's ingenuity was invested in it.

Jens


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun May 23 10:51:19 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 10:51:19 GMT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
In-Reply-To: <21ba013b.246babab@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.105119.GMT.>

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 5/10/99 3:27:35 AM, our moderator wrote:

><<[ Moderator's comment:
>  *g does not > **s in Slavic, but to *z.
>  --rma ]>>

>But *g >*z is also the formula for the first palatalization -

It isn't.

>In other for any initial *g to have gotten to the first palatalization, it
>would have had to survived satemization.  In which case, either *g was
>unaffected by satemization (contrary to mcv's statement) or only borrowings
>with *g were left to undergo the Slavic palatalizations.

You forget PIE *g(h)w and *g(h) [as opposed to *g^(h)].

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun May 23 11:55:12 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 11:55:12 GMT
Subject: Minus quam perfectum
In-Reply-To: <000001bea18c$48047e60$b64435cf@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.115512.GMT.>

"Steve Gustafson" <stevegus at aye.net> wrote:

>"The type of perfect most characteristic of Latin, that in -vi, is not found
>elsewhere."

One can compare Skt. laryngeal verbs in -a:u, but also the
Tocharian B 1st p. sg. in -wa.  Albanian also has a category of
aorists with formant -v- (origin?).

>He does observe that it is probably ancient, in that it often exhibits a
>different ablaut grade from the present stem, giving -sero-, -se:vi-
>as his example.  He believes that it came originally from the aorist of *bhu,
>*bhuei > *fu(v)ei, and that this -vei spread by analogy to whole classes of
>vowel-stem verbs.

>As to the origin of the distinctive personal endings, Palmer says:

>1sg -i = the middle ending -e from Sanskrit and Slavonic, representing -ai
>or -Hai;

>2sg -isti = the element -is-, which Palmer thinks is the same ending you see
>in the -eram and -issem groups, + IE -tha, plus the -i from 1sg, > -is-thai >
>-isti

But cf. Tocharian B 2sg. -sta and the Hittite past forms (2 and
3sg) in -sta (besides -ta and -s).

>3sg. -it, with -t brought over from the primary inflections

>3pl -erunt again has this -is suffix, plus -unt > -ont from the primary.  He
>relates the archaic alternative -ere to the -r endings of the passive.

This, I agree with Beekes, is PIE *-e:r (cf. Skt., Hitt., Toch.)
with -i added.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun May 23 12:43:44 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 12:43:44 GMT
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <001801bea2ba$8a5e3880$779ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.124344.GMT.>

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

>And Pokorny also mentions OI sve:-vi:ss, 'stubborn', which seems to
>incorporate a non-reflexive use also (if reflexive, the meaning would
>probably be something like '(self-)insightful'??).

Dutch <eigenwijs>.  Or, alternatively, Russian <samodur>.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From edsel at glo.be  Sun May 23 12:51:13 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 14:51:13 +0200
Subject: Latin perfects
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.145113.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Appleyard <Anthony.Appleyard at umist.ac.uk>
Date: Saturday, May 22, 1999 2:14 PM

[long snip]

>It might also mean that Latin perfects with the {v} missing (e.g. French
>{vous donna^tes} < Latin {vos dona(vi)stis) are not contracted but
>original, being derived from true IE perfects; the process that happened
>next was often perhaps the reverse, with much analogical insertion of
>-vi- into early Latin perfects which had fallen identical with presents
>by loss of reduplication.

[Ed Selleslagh]

Note that a similar process is taking place in popular southern Spanish:
(yo) planto - (yo) planté
(nosotros) plantamos - (nosotros) plantamos, so my gardener says '(nosotros)
plantemos'!  The Analogy Bulldozer is rolling again.  I predict this is
going to be the norm a sufficient number of years from now, whatever the
opinion of the Real Academia.

BTW, I would be interested to learn more about the process that led to the
infinitive-based synthetic future in many Romance languages.  The story of
the widespread will/shall/must based future is pretty clear, even though the
details may be rather complicated in some cases, like in modern Greek
(tha+aorist root+present ending, tha < thelo:, 'volo').

Ed.


From jer at cphling.dk  Sun May 23 14:35:17 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 16:35:17 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905230126130.12918-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.163517.0200.>

On Sun, 23 May 1999, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote:

[bla bla bla]
> But an ablaut interplay between
> full-grade *-H1e and zero-grade *-H1 is unacceptable for the reasons I
> have stated: It would make the nom.-acc. dual a strong case with rightward
> accent-and-ablaut movement, which is never found.
[+ bla bla bla]

Sorry, let me correct that right away: I meant of course "weak case".

Jens


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 13:05:41 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 14:05:41 +0100
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.140541.0100.>

Pat questioned the sandhi rule -as > e /_{d,dh}.   Like him, I know of no
examples, and cannot find it in any grammar (not that I have a really good
grammar available!).

I also note in the B'gita XI:53 "evamvidho dras.t.um" for --as d--, which
seems to contradict Rich's claim, and shows the usual sandhi -o for -as
before a voiced consonant.  Another example is at XI: 26 "bhismo dron.ah."
for bhismas dron.ah, another at XI 17: "sarvato di:ptimantam", and so on.

I hesitate to contradict Rich, but this evidence at least, doesn't seem to
support what he was taught.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 14:29:36 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 15:29:36 +0100
Subject: Latin perfects
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.152936.0100.>

Concerning Latin perfects from the PIE perfect active participle in -v-.

This is an interesting idea, Anthony.  In truth, no one knows where the -v-
forms come from.   They are not even in Oscan or Umbrian.   There is perhaps
a similar form in the Old Irish preterite 3 sing srai'- (in sraithi = he
hurled it).   Srai' should be from *stra:w-e, and would therfore be related
to Latin stra:vit.

Some (e.g. Martinet) have suggested a laryngeal origin, that it begins when
the 1 sing -Ha suffix is attached to verbs ending in -h3 (such as streh3,
g'neh3, bhleh3 - strew, know, blow) and then it extends to other laryngeal
verbs, thence to all stems ending in a vowel.   Others say this is unlikely.

It would be nice if we could show a relationship to the Sanskrit forms in -u
(which is found on laryngeal verbs) but the origin of this is also unknown.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 13:44:02 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 14:44:02 +0100
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.144402.0100.>

Pat suggested:
> (concerning the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
> brother, etc.) ... you may
> wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts you
> in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
> suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown,

If I dare to join this debate, I offer two points:

(a) We know IE did indeed have two such suffixes, one the agentive (though I
think *-tor is better than *-ter) and the "contrastive pair" suffix, which
we find in a range of words, such as Latin alter, Greek heteros, etc, and in
the comparative -teros.   It was even suggested in the 70's that it was this
last suffix, the comparative pair, which is found in the family words.

(b) We know that the family suffix is not *-ter but *-6ter.   People have
written articles on it in JIES.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 14:02:12 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 15:02:12 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.150212.0100.>

JoatSimeon said:
> all extant and historically
> recorded languages, as well as those which can be reconstructed with any
> degree of confidence (like PIE) are equally "expressive", ie., basically
> equally efficient as means of communication.

At the danger of being politically incorrect, I find different languages
differently "expressive".   Of course they can all express anything, but
some, through deliberate choice or through historical accident, express
certain factors, while others leave some factors vague and ambiguous.
Speakers of Attic Greek were self-consciously proud of the emotional
expressiveness of the particles, which they claimed non-Athenians could
never get right.   Speakers of Latin (or rather, writers) self-consciously
aimed at an architectural style with clear structure, which expresses
relationships of time, cause, etc with great precision, sometimes excessive
precision.   Writers of Classical Chinese deliberately used the inherent
ambiguites of their language to aim at a shimmering style in which it is
sometimes even unclear which is verb and which is noun, so expressing
something impossible in Latin or Greek.

So I stand against pat phrases like "all equal".   Languages, like people,
are differently equal.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 13:12:07 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 14:12:07 +0100
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.141207.0100.>

Jens said:

> I have yet to see a really cogent argument for an IE (or pre-IE) ergative.
> ..., but nothing to convince one that it _must_ be
> accepted.   I'm not saying that pre-PIE was _not_ ergative, just that we
> cannot really know. Practically all the literature on the subject ... is
> without scholarly interest.

I must disagree with your last point here.   An ergative description of
early PIE or pre-PIE explains various oddities in PIE.   I agree that there
are no arguments (yet) that it must have been ergative, and none that it
cannot have been ergative, but in light of its explanatory potential, it
surely is at least "interesting".

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 13:23:47 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 14:23:47 +0100
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.142347.0100.>

Stephane said:
> I see nothing artificial about Classical Latin,

This debate could resolve into a fruitless discussion of what "artificial"
means, and so it may be best merely to agree to differ here.

> as Witold Manczak has
> argued, Vulgar Latin (or Proto-Romance, or however one cares to call the
> ancestor of the Romance languages) is quite plainly a "daughter" of
> Classical Latin (Not a "sister" as so many Romance scholars have argued).

If so, how do you explain:
(a) the Vulgar Latin use of forms and grammatical constructions not in
Classical Latin, but which just happen to be identical to forms in earlier
Latin?   If these are not derived from pre-classical Latin, is it just
coincidence?   How much coincidence is too much coincidence?
(b) the evidence for Vulgar Latin forms alongside Classical Latin at the
same period?   For example, the well known -au- / -o- business (like it or
not, in some words -o- is not classical, but is vulgar and contemporary with
classical), or the evidence from the Satiricon and from inscriptions and
such, showing pre-Romance forms even during the classical period.

Both of these seem to me to indicate that Romance developed from Latin
actually spoken at the very time when Classical Latin was being written.
Like many languages, Latin had a sginficant divergence of written and spoken
forms.    Classical Latin was really only the written form.    It is counter
to what we know of language development to think that pre-literary or
non-literary forms should develop from the written, rather than the spoken,
language.

Peter


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Mon May 24 10:33:21 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 11:33:21 +0100
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <E10l1Ki-0002y8-00@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <MON.24.MAY.1999.113321.0100.>

On Wed, 19 May 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

> It is taken me sometime to reply to this message as it left me so
> incredulous after first reading it.

Why?

[on `native' and `ancient' words in Basque]

> Clearly with a language like basque which you yourself have said is
> conservative one would be expect a strong relationship between what is
> "ancient" and what is "native"

A relationship, perhaps, but not identity.

Anyway, let me clarify a bit.  Basque is phonologically rather
conservative, in that the phonological changes in the language during
the last 2000 years have not been dramatic -- though changes there have
most certainly been.

Lexically, however, Basque is much less conservative.  It has borrowed
many thousands of words from its neighbors, and it has constructed many
more from its own resources.  One day I hope to compile a list of the
Basque words that can reasonably be regarded as monomorphemic, as native
and as having been in the language for at least 2000 years.  I don't
expect that list to contain more than several hundred words.

[on what Azkue says in his preface]

> On translating the french we have the expression "primitive or
> non--derived" which I can only take as attributes such as "early",
> "native", "original". As well the or(ou) can be read as an inclusive
> "or" encompassing both primitive words AND foreign words.

OK.  Here's what Azkue says on p. xxxvi, section 5:

"Les mots en capitales ou majuscules sont primitifs ou non derives, les
autres etant imprimes en minuscules ou caracteres courants, excepte
naturellement la lettre initial.  Par exemple, BESO s'ecrit ainsi parce
qu'il est primitif, original; Besokada, Besondo et Besope en minuscules,
parce qu'ils sont derives.  Mais il est bon d'avertir que seuls les
derives de theme et de desinence connus seront consideres comme tels.
Des mots comme AIZKORA, AIZTUR, AIZTO, dont le theme est connu, mais non
la desinence, et d'autres tels que SALDU, GALDU, dont la desinence est
connue et non le theme, sont imprimes en lettres majuscules, comme s'ils
etaient primitifs."

This is perfectly clear.  Azkue is using `primitive' to mean
`monomorphemic', `not derived from another word'.  He is not using it to
mean either `native' or `ancient'.  This is clarified further in section
IX on p. xv:

"Quant aux termes exotiques, j'ai adopte ceux qui ne possedent pas
d'equivalent pur, et qui ont acquis droit de naturalisation dans notre
langue, comme ELIZA `eglise', LEGE `loi', ERREGE `roi', LIBURU `livre',
MEZA `messe', etc."

Note that these admitted loan words are entered in capital letters,
because Azkue regards them -- correctly -- as `primitive': that is, as
monomorphemic.  Not necessarily ancient, and certainly not native: just
monomorphemic.

There is nothing unusual about Azkue's choice of term.  He was writing
well before modern linguistic terminology was established, and, in those
days, `primitive' was the usual technical term applied to a
monomorphemic word, in French, in Spanish and in English.

Here's an extract from the entry for `primitive' in the second edition
of the OED:

II.4.a. *Gram.* and *Philol.* Of a word or language: Original, radical:
opposed or correlative to derivative.

Among the supporting quotations, the 1824 quote from Lindley Murray's
famous grammar of English is particularly illuminating:

"A primitive word is that which cannot be reduced to any simpler word in
the language: as, man, good, content."

Note Murray's third example: `content'.  This is plainly not a native
word, and it is not even particularly ancient in English, being first
recorded only in 1526.

[LT]

>     First of all, Azkue has not presented any material at all which is
>     contrary to my claim.  My claim is about the Pre-Basque of 2000 years
>     ago.  Azkue's book is a dictionary of the Basque of the 16th-19th
>     centuries, a completely different period during which Basque has plainly
>     tolerated plosive-liquid clusters.  Azkue's dictionary has not one word
>     to say about Pre-Basque.

> I have searched for words to describe this text and the best I can
> come up with is "bizarre". Putting the translation problem above
> aside we have the following situation.

> 1. basque is a conservative language (something you've asserted
> elsewhere)

Yes, but not so conservative that it hasn't changed at all.  Far from
it.

> 2. most materials we have from Roman times that are clearly basque
> or prebasque (sometimes called Aquitanian) are readable as such and
> offer little problem in recognition.

Somewhat overstated, perhaps.

A number of the elements found in the Aquitanian names have transparent
or plausible interpretations in modern Basque.  But many others do not.
Perhaps around 50% of the identifiable elements are interpretable, or
somewhat more if we arbitrarily declare some of the more puzzling names
not to be Aquitanian at all.  (In fact, some of these names are
certainly not Aquitanian, but it's a bit naughty to declare *every*
troublesome name to be non-Aquitanian.)

> 3. Azkue gives a list of words that he regards as "primitive or
> non-derived"

Yes: as monomorphemic.

> 4. Therefore those words in Azkue's list that are not identifiable
> as loans represent significant evidence about the possible form of
> ancient/early basque.

Sorry; this does not follow.  The mere existence of a word in modern
Basque is no guarantee that it is either native or ancient.

> 5. Those non-loan words are valid and meaningful for appraisal of
> any theory about "early basque"  for whatever time period you want
> that term to be applied to.

Nope.  Consider what you're saying, and compare English.  Suppose I wish
to defend the position that Old English did not allow words to begin
with the consonant /z/.  If I look at a dictionary of modern English, I
can find a number of words beginning with /z/.  Some, of course, are
loan words, like `zero', `zygote', `zinc' and `zoo'.  Others are native
but not ancient, like `zap', `zipper', `zilch' and `zoom'.  A couple are
native and of some antiquity but have unusual histories, like `zax' and
`zounds'.

Now, in what way do these words bear upon the proposition I want to
defend?  In particular, how do they cast doubt upon my position?

[LT]

>     Second, your list was hundreds of words long.  Do you really think I
>     have so much time on my hands that I can afford to devote days to
>     ferreting out known or probable etymologies for every single word in
>     that list?

> If you want to justify you hypothesis, yes I do expect it. This
> comment smells to me like I have contaminated a much loved theory
> with some live data and it has raised an unbearable stench.

Hardly.  That word list is simply not relevant to the point under
discussion, that's all.

[LT]

>     The problem is that the entries in Azkue's dictionary are of no
>     relevance whatever to the nature of Pre-Basque.

> I think my statements above have explained why I find this comment
> simply "bizarre"

I don't see why.  A dictionary of modern English is of no direct
relevance to ascertaining the nature of Old English, and a dictionary of
modern Basque is of no direct relevance to ascertaining the nature of
Pre-Basque.  You might as well try to find out what Latin was like by
reading a dictionary of modern French.

[on changes in English]

> The evidence available in english is not the evidence available in
> basque.

Sure, but there *is* good evidence for the phonological nature of
Pre-Basque.  You can find 600 pages of such evidence in Michelena's book
Fonetica Historica Vasca.

> Azkue is one of the largest evidence sources available for studying
> the development of basque, all be its limitations. As you so often
> say we should look at the evidence. I'm merely asserting the
> importance of not excluding evidence that is legitimately admissible
> for appraisal.

With respect, Azkue's dictionary is not the most appropriate place to
look for evidence about Pre-Basque.

[LT]

>     I pointed out that the terms `native' and
>     `ancient' are utterly independent, and that my claim was about ancient
>     words, not about native ones.

> here we disagree, the two terms are not independent.

Yes, they are, and I can't understand how you can disagree.  Look at
English:

	head	native and ancient
	bishop	ancient but not native
	zap	native but not ancient
	pizza	neither native nor ancient

[on my apology]

> I don't accept your apology, it is clearly not sincere.

Jon, what on *earth* is going on here?  My original posting was not
intended to give offense; I never suspected it might give offense; and I
can't see now why it should have given offense.  Yet you declare
yourself offended.  So, mystified, I apologize, and now you refuse my
apology because you believe -- wrongly -- that it is not sincere.

What am I supposed to do: fess up that I was out to get you from the
beginning?  Honestly.

[JP, earlier]

>     >  I have seen many examples in this list and on other lists where you
>     > have insisted that claims for phenomena are unjustified because
>     > there is no supporting evidence. Yet in this case you are prepared
>     > to omit evidence that can be rightfully presented for appraisal. Can
>     > we expect that on other occasions you have also played fast and free
>     > with omitting legitimate evidence for appraisal because it didn't
>     > suit your case?

[LT]

>     Gee whiz, Jon -- you seem to be really cheesed off for some reason, and
>     I can't imagine why.

> I think the sarcasm here, which as far as I am concerned is
> inappropriate in professional discourse, further demonstrates the
> lack of sincerity in your apology above.

Jon, I can detect no sarcasm whatever in my remark.  You have come very
close to accusing me of unprofessional and dishonest behavior, and I
have responded only with mild exasperation, not with sarcasm.

Apparently you have decided, for reasons best known to yourself, that I
am out to get you.  Why?  What have I done that's so awful?

> My sole point is that admissable evidence be admitted to the debate
> and be appraised. It may well turn out that that evidence supports
> your hypothesis and hence strengthens your case. That doesn't mean
> that it is not open to scrutiny again at another time. The essence
> of good scholarship in my experience, admittedly from non-linguistic
> disciplines(computing, & psychotherapy) was to always be prepared to
> revise even the oldest "laws". I characterise this notion as
> perpetual preparedness for flexibility.

I have no quarrel here.  It's merely that I do not accept the suggestion
that the words of modern Basque are directly relevant to determining the
morpheme-structure constraints of Pre-Basque.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From mcv at wxs.nl  Mon May 24 10:44:30 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 10:44:30 GMT
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <l03130304b36b93b5dbc2@[207.120.3.54]>
Message-ID: <MON.24.MAY.1999.104430.GMT.>

Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

[re: muga]
>Is this word related to Spanish mojo/n, which in a dictionary means
>"landmark or boundary stone" but in spoken Spanish means "pile of shit"

Phonetically I don't see how there can be a connection, and
indeed "mojo'n" is said to be derived from Latin MUTULUS (by way
of MUTULONE).  Moliner does list the synonyms <buega>, <mogote>
and <muga>.  But consider also <mota>, <moto> ["pre-Latin"], with
the same basic meaning of "mound, elevation or stone marking a
boundary".  If there's a relation, we are dealing with a
phonologically very unstable substrate item *[bm][ou][tk]-.  Cf.
maybe Pokorny pp. 98-102 under *b(h)(e)u- "aufblasen, schwellen".

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From edsel at glo.be  Mon May 24 19:16:28 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 21:16:28 +0200
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
Message-ID: <MON.24.MAY.1999.211628.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Date: Monday, May 24, 1999 4:15 AM

>Is this word related to Spanish mojo/n, which in a dictionary means
>"landmark or boundary stone" but in spoken Spanish means "pile of shit"
[snip]

[Ed Selleslagh]

<mojón> is derived from Vulgar Latin <mullio, -onis> and is not related to
Basque, Aragonés, etc. <muga>. It is the common Sp. -j- < Lat. -(l)li-  (cf.
hijo < filius) .

Ed.


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Mon May 24 22:31:45 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 17:31:45 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <MON.24.MAY.1999.173145.0500.>

Pat writes, in response to my rude remarks about kitty litter:

>But more seriously, yes, I would also claim that these markers had semantic
>meaning. The IE plural morpheme -*s, I believe, derives from early *s{h}o,
>'clan, herd'. This means that its addition caused a compound of the form N +
>'clan/herd = animate group'. So the result would have been, in our example,
>something like 'cat-group'. Now my use of "semantic" may be original (not
>necessarily better, of course), but I claim that CAT in 'a cat' and CAT in
>'cats = cat-group' are *not* semantically different only differently
>employed. Now I know you will not like this employment of "semantic" so tell
>me what terminology you prefer to make the distinction I am attempting to
>make between core meanings (dog/cat) and derived meanings (cat/cats).

Several remarks:

1.  It is not clear that there actually was an "IE plural morpheme -*s",
although there may have been.  But all that we find are morphemes meaning
"nominative+plural", "dative+plural" etc.  It's not clear that these are
actually divisible, as e.g. the various morphemes of agglutinating languages
such as Turkish.  But let this one pass for now.

2.  There are a few established terminologies.  The plural morpheme of English
(we definitely do have one) can be called "bound" because it occurs only when
connected to the "free" morpheme of a root.  It can be said to have
"grammatical meaning", or be called a "grammatical morpheme".  There are not my
terms; they're standard.  What's not standard is to say that plural -s does not
have "semantic" meaning, since (in normal usage) *all* meaning is "semantic".

><snip>

>Leo comments:

>> First, the idea that the family words contain an agent suffix, though old,
>> is without basis.

>Pat surpisedly responds:

>Now, this may be a case properly characterized as "weaseling". Obviously,
>your "without basis" relies on the qualification "AGENT". I cannot believe
>that you would believe that the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
>brother, etc.' *cannot* be analyzed as N/V + -*ter, suffix.  Now you may
>wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts you
>in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
>suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown, employed to mark
>nuclear family members. Not a position I would care to defend!

But you must, if you speak English.  We have several morphemes which have
merged as -er in English but maintain separate meanings:

	1.  Agentive -er (speak + -er).  This is borrowed in several Germanic
languages from Latin -a:rius.

	2.  Implement -er (bind + -er).  Perhaps one in origin with the above;
I'm not sure.

	3.  Comparative -er (old + -er).  This had two forms in Proto-Germanic:
-iz- and -az-, reflecting PIE -e/os- (note the ablaut).  The two have now
merged.  The -iz-form is responsible for the umlaut in _elder_.

	4.  We have a homonym -or in words of Latin origin such as _creator_.
This suffix has agentive meaning.  Despite its separate origin and discrete
spelling, a case could be made for including it under No. 1.

And then of course, we have -er words which do *not* contain any of the above,
such as _cider_ and _spider_.  So what is wrong with saying that the element
seen in _father_, _mother_, _brother_, and _daughter_ (but not _sister_, where
the -t- is a secondary development) is different from the agentive suffix?

>Pat responds:

>So far as I can remember, *p6te:{'}r is the only IE root listed in Pokorny
>that has the form *C6CV:C (if you know of another, at least, admit it is
>rare?). That, by itself, should alert us to the suspicion that something
>unusual is going on here.

Indeed.  And it should tell us in particular that we are not dealing with the
agentive suffix, since the alleged verbal root is rare or impossible.  Ah, but
as in independent, indivisible *word* there would be no problem.

>Secondly, if we analyze family member terminology
>as consisting of Root + suffix (agentive or no), *p6- is a strangely formed
>IE root --- in fact, it cannot be a Normalstufe. *p6- is listed as a
>zero-grade form of *pa:-, which suggests that whatever *p6- in *p6te:{'}r
>comes from, it probably had the earlier form *pe/oH-.

Problem: Pokorny's *pa:- means 'feed; pasture'.  Add an agent suffix to that
and you get 'shepherd', not 'father'.  And this aside from the problem of the
weak grade of the alleged root.

>The (I hope you will
>be willing to admit) analogous *ma:te{'}r does not show zero-grade.

True.  But it still remains to be shown that it "analogous".

>This is
>a novel situation, and I have proposed a novel scenario to explain it; sui
>generis, so, of course, unprovable. I would be interested to learn how you
>propose to explain it.

It's a problem only if you insist on the agent suffix.  Nominal items show an
astonishing variety of ablaut grades in clearly related, otherwise identical
forms.

>[ Moderator's comment:
>  The accent in *meH_2'te:r differs from than in *pH_2te:'r, doesn't it?
>  --rma ]

Not in PIE.  Attic Greek has a rule by which oxytones with the pattern CV:CV:'C
switched to CV:'CV:C.  Pre-Greek must have been *ma:te:'r.  The non-initial
accent also shows in the operation of Verner's Law in German: OE _faeder_,
_mo:dor_ from a form with suffix accent beside _bro:thar_ from a form with root
accent.

BTW, Pokorny derives says that _mother_ "beruht auf dem Lallwort _ma:_", which
makes better sense anyway.

[stuff omitted]

>Pat summarizes:

>To me, that we all admit it is "secondary", decides the issue conclusively.
>IMHO, for it to be phonemic, it would have to be *primary*.

Not hardly.  By the same token, you would have to say that /c^/ in English
_chin_ is secondary, since it split from Germanic /k/ preserved in words such
as _cold_ (and in German _Kinn_).  The store of phonemes in a a language varies
over time: some are lost through merger (or dropping of the sound), new ones
are created.  That's why English and German do *not* have the same number of
phonemes, even though they were once the same language.

[stuff omitted]

>Leo regrets:

>> Pat, I regret to have to say so again, but you simply do not understand what
>> a phoneme is.  Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
>> *meaning*.  Do study up on this.

>Pat, testily (with tongue in cheek, difficult and dangerous):

>I think your definition of "phoneme" is fine for you. I prefer Larry Trask's
>quoted definition: "the smallest unit which can make a difference in
>_meaning_ (empahsis added)". Perhaps your exasperation at my adherence to
>this definition has caused you to misstate, seemingly as my position:
>"Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of *meaning*." I
>have not stated this nor do I believe it for the languages under
>discussion --- as I think you know.

I don't have Larry's dictionare.  But I'll say this point blank: what he gives
is merely a characteristic of phonemes.  Morphemes must consist of one or more
phonemes (despite the problem of "zero allomorphs").  It is because of this
that phonemes are the smallest units capable of *signaling* meaning.  But They
are units of *sound*.  It might be helpful if you included Larry's *entire*
comment, for what you're citing is simply *not* a definition of a phoneme.  See
any manual of linguistics which actually discusses the things!

>Leo continues:

>> As for ablaut, e:o ablaut is attested for traditional lengthened grade e:
>> and for traditional "original" e: i.e. eH.  Beside Gk. _pate:r_ 'father' we
>> find both _phra:to:r_ and _phra:te:r_ 'member of a clan' (orig. 'brother').
>> And for Gothic _saian_ 'sow' < *seH- we find reduplicated preterite
>> (originally perfect) _sai-so_ < _*se-soH-_.

>Pat responds:

>You have left out the accents: _phra:{'}to:r_ and _phra:{'}te:r_.  Now the
>phonological environments are apparently identical, and there is no
>grammatical difference between the two either. So, the "Ablaut" is
>presumably a deliberate *secondary* device to provide some *semantic*
>differentiation. Not the best example in my opinion -- a Greek example of
>something like vrddhi.

I have no idea whether it was a deliberate anything.  All I know is that short
e alternates with short o, and that the two traditional kinds of long e:
alternate with long o:.  The "lengthened grade" variety also alternates with
short e/o; the "natural long" ones deriving from vowel + laryngeal alternate
with traditional schwa.  Once established, it could be exploited.

>To _sai{'}so:_: for this example to be significant to my point, you would
>have to argue that in IE *se:i- the [e:] is *original* (not the result of
>*e/oH) which, on the basis of "_*se-soH_", I presume you would not assert.

>For you to make the point I thin you are attempting to make, you need to
>identify a primary IE [e:] which undergoes Ablaut in situations analogous to
>[e/o].

I don't follow your logic at all.  Could you explain?

[stuff omitted]

> Pat, on a new subject:

>>> I do not believe that the earliest Nostratic had what we would
>>> properly call pronouns. I believe all pronouns are only nouns in a
>>> specialized use.

>Leo acknowledges:

>> Typologically, this is acceptable; certainly it seems right for Japanese.
>> But the Japanese "pronoun" words look and act like nouns in every way, which
>> cannot be said of the IE set.

>Pat differs:

>IE "pronouns" in every significant way look and act like nouns --- with the
>sole exception that the inflections seem to be more conservative.
...
>Outside of a very few simple forms like *me, *te, *se, etc., which might
>slip in under the rubric of nominal, simple nominal and verbal CV-roots,
>which had wide semantic ranges, were *differentiated* by additional elements
>at a very early time --- at least in the languages from which IE derives. If
>we are unwilling to look beyond IE,  then we must say, principally,  that
>the simplest nominal and verbal root-form is CVC.

But there you have it!  The IE pronouns neither look nor act like nouns!
Pushing it back to Nostratic doesn't change anything there, since you're saying
that they must have been different there too.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Tue May 25 02:06:44 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 21:06:44 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <MON.24.MAY.1999.210644.0500.>

Leo wrote to Pat:

>>Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
>>*meaning*.  Do study up on this.

Stefan Georg erwiderte:

>The ability to *differentiate* meanings (not to *have* them) is, in *my*
>humble opinion, part and parcel of every non-avantgardistic definition of
>the notion "phoneme", n'est-ce pas ? Minimal pairs have different meanings,
>or are my textbooks hopefully outdated ?

The classic use of minimal pairs is to prove that two sounds contrast (and must
therefore be assigned to separate phonemes).  This is done by showing that at
least in a subset of the language, replacing one phone with another will make a
different word.  But that does not make phonemes minimal units of *meaning*.
In other words: a minimal pair such as English _pin : bin_ while show that the
difference in sound between [ph] and [b] is significant.  The lack of contrast
between [phin] and non-existent *[pin] ([p] normal in _spin_) shows that
aspiration is not significant in English, or in other words, that [ph] and [p]
must be assigned to the same phoneme.  Well and good.  Knowing this, we can
tell that [phaet] and [baet] are different words.  But this does not mean that
[ph] and [b], or /p/ and /b/, actually *have* meaning, as some of the
unfortunate wording in Larry's dictionary led Pat to conclude.  If they did,
we'd have to say that /p-/ and /b-/were prefixes attached to the roots /aet/
and /in/.

>Also, if anyone subscribes to the last but one sentence in the quoted
>passage above (which would then lead to the last, of course), how would
>this anyone define the notion "distinctive" in this passage ?

As 'different' -- 'differentiating' -- 'was anderes'...

>Always willing to learn, but, as W. Brandt used to say "Wir waren schon mal
>weiter ...".

Wir vielleicht schon.  Aber doch nicht alle.  Das erfaehrt man hier doch
staendig.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 25 05:10:40 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 00:10:40 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.001040.0500.>

Dear Robert and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Whiting <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 1999 3:48 AM

> On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> <snip>
> >Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
> >from the simple to the complex.

Robert writes:

> Yes, I've noticed how, for example, in the history of writing
> systems, the earliest writing systems were incredibly simple
> logographic systems consisting of only several hundred to several
> thousand signs and that reading and writing was so simple that it
> was a specialized occupation that required many years of study to
> master.

I. J. Gelb writes: "For the primitive Indo-Europeans, Semites, or
Amerindians the needs of writing were fulfilled in a *****simple*****
picture or series of pictures (emphasis added)." Gelb, under whom I studied,
spent a lifetime studying writing; and I do believe his characterization
carries more weight than your opinions on the subject. Children --- with no
training and only the availability of a crayon --- make the same kind of
pictures that were the basis of early writing; and it is naif in the extreme
to believe --- as you apparently do --- that logographs are somehow more
complex than an alphabet.

How many years of training is required to draw a stick-man, or a rayed sun,
or a hump for a mountain? Answer (for Robert's sake), '0'.

Robert continued:

> This simple system gave rise to a more complex system
> of syllabaries which needed a couple of hundred (or even less
> than a hundred) signs to express the same information.

Pat writes:

The earliest writing system we know that followed pure logographs is the
mixed writing system of Sumer. In Jaritz, there are 972 signs listed; most
of these signs have multiple values so are only a syllabary in the loosest
sense of the word. If you think that reading Sumerian cuneiform is simpler
than interpreting early logographs, you are simply displaying an incredible
lack of contact with or understanding of the subject under discussion.

Robert continued:

> Finally,
> this gave way to the most complex system of all, the alphabet, in
> which the tens of thousands of words in a language can be written
> with around 30 signs and is so complicated that it takes all the
> resources that the average 5-year-old can muster to learn it.

Pat comments:

Yes, actually alphabets are the most complex system of all --- how clever of
you to recognize it! It requires analyzing a morpheme, which has meaning,
into meaningless parts.

Pat wrote earlier:

> >My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after
> >the onset of linguistic communication, languages were simpler
> >than they are now; and hence, less explicitly expressive.

Robert objected:

> It is rather the other way around.  What you mean to say is that
> your studies take this as an axiom and therefore fall apart if it
> is not true.

Pat rejoinds:

Untrue. When I began my studies, I had no idea that the data would force me
to reconstruct and attempt to identify monosyllabic morphemes in an early
language. But, as I have tried to point out for IE, this is the position
which the data recommend. A morpheme of the form -tV is unlikely to have had
the many meanings in IE that it does unless it began to be employed in a
much more general sense in a language earlier than IE.

Robert snipes:

> But since you cheerfully admit that no linguist
> accepts your studies, this is hardly proof of the truth of your
> axiom.

Pat objects:

Among the circa 7000 visits to my website, I have had many e-mails from
linguists who do find some merit or interest in my proposals. Whether any
given linguist did or did not accept the validity of my studies is not a
proof or disproof of my work.

Robert complained:

> And as far as I'm concerned, anyone who claims that there
> is no semantic difference between "cat" and "cats" is
> disqualified from talking about common sense.

Pat responds:

I have made clear that I prefer to restrict my usage of semantic to notional
differences and employ grammatical for the difference between "cat" and
"cats". If you do not care for this usage, you are, of course, free to not
emulate it.

But if you do not care to, tell me the word you would use to distinguish
between the semantic relationships of 'dog/cat' and 'cat/cats'.

Pat continued:

> >As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to
> >designate the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an
> >*ambiguity* into a statement that a language which can does not
> >exhibit.

Robert objected:

> But if, as you have claimed elsewhere, there is no semantic
> difference between the singular and plural forms of a given
> noun (cat/cats),

Pat interjects:

But I *do* claim there is a grammatical difference.

Robert continued his objection:

> then being able to mark the plural makes no
> difference in meaning and there can be no difference in the
> level of ambiguity.

Pat, incredulously:

This kind of freshman logic has no purpose but to ridicule. Robert, you know
quite well that I do believe that the addition of plural -s does make a
difference, and the the difference, which I term grammatical, decreases the
level of ambiguity in a statement.

Robert nailed his point(?):

> Either one of your statements or the other
> has to be wrong (since this is a logical "or," they can also
> both be wrong, but they can't both be correct).

Pat responds:

Nice to know you still have a command of teenage logic. How about an adult
argument --- this is an adult list.

Pat previously:

> >As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much
> >greater range of semantic inclusion than other languages. This
> >also is a source of potential ambiguity that is not shared by
> >languages that have differentiated semantic ranges more finely.

Robert informed us:

> Spoken language expresses meaning through sound.  This means that
> an effective language has to be able to express the entire real
> and imagined world through sounds used conventionally to convey
> meaning.  How each individual language does this is of its own
> choosing and whether it uses analytic or synthetic means does not
> make it "simpler" or "more complex" than another language that
> uses a different method.

Pat interjects:
If we are going to keep coming back to "complex", perhaps you would care to
define it for us in terms of this discussion. I talked about ambiguity not
complexity.

Robert continued:

> If one language expresses relationships
> between verbs and nouns through nominal desinences and another
> expresses them through an extensive system of prepositons or
> postpositions, the one is not necessarily simpler or more complex
> than the other; they are simply two methods of achieving the
> same result.  Overall, every language has to be able to express
> the real and imagined world of its speech community.  Simplicity
> in one linguistic area will normally be compensated for by
> complexity in another.  If the language doesn't mark the
> difference between singular and plural in nouns overtly, there
> will be some other mechanism in the language to express the idea.

Pat asked:

What is the method of marking the plural in Chinese nominal forms -- what
other mechanism?

Robert continued:

> Finally, no natural language can entirely eliminate ambiguity
> through grammatical means no matter how many case endings or
> verbal inflections it develops.  The real and imagined world is
> simply too large for this to be true, and natural languages just
> do not work this way.  Context is the ultimate disambiguator of
> meaning.  We understand things by their context.  And I do not
> refer solely to the grammatical context of a word in a sentence,
> but also to the socio-cultural context in which an utterance is
> made.

Pat responded:

Red herring! I have no claimed that entirely eliminating ambiguity is
possible. I merely suggested that it is deisrable to keep it within moderate
limits.

Pat, previuously:

> >Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible
> >linguistic discussion.

Robert objected:

> And please do not introduce your own personal opinions and
> prejudices into the discussion under the guise of "common sense"
> (even though, according to Einstein, that is what common sense is).

Pat rejoinds:

And what would you have written if I had the ability to enforce your not
introducing your own personal opinions into the discussion. In a word, nada.
And, of course, I do agree. Common sense is a prejudice of a kind. Why not
substitute it for your prejudices?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 25 05:20:46 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 00:20:46 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.002046.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Steve and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Gustafson <stevegus at aye.net>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 1999 10:40 AM

<snip>

> Modern spoken English seems to be in the process of generating a complex,
> highly inflected verb system, with many new and different aspect markers, as
> former auxiliary verbs are reduced and lose their distinctness and
> independent status.  We have already seen simple verb phrase structures of
> Early Modern English (Knowest thou?  I go...) get replaced by more complex
> and highly nuanced and aspected ones that require more words.  (Do you know?
> I am going...)  In our time, sandhi and palatalization reduce the once
> independent auxiliaries in these phrases to enclitics, and also change the
> pronouns.  These may be new inflexions in the oven.

> This seems to me to pose difficulties for any attempt to get a firm handle on
> the level of "complexity" present in any given language.  In English, the
> (archaizing) formal register is noticeably less complex in both syntax and
> sounds than the vernacular; where do you insert your dip-stick to measure the
> complexity of "English?"  It also seems to suggest that there is no vector
> moving in favour of either simplicity or complexification, but that the
> process is one of a pendulum moving from one extreme to another; or rather, a
> process of punctuated equlibrium in which sound change and grammatical change
> play off on each other.

I essentially agree that this is a very real and hard to finally solve
problem.

But a pendulum has a first swing in time. My work has convinced me (and a
very few others) that it may be possible to glimpse a few important moments
of that first swing towards complexity and that even in the subsequent swing
towards simplification, the hypothetical analysis of the elements present in
the first swing illuminate the processes going on during simplification.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Tue May 25 06:23:13 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 01:23:13 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.012313.0500.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

> unless, of
> course, you believe that God bestowed fully developed language on Adam,
> which belief would disqualify you from any rational discussion of the topic.

Why should that disqualify a person from "any rational discussion"?
Admittedly, it would make discussion a moot point, unless it were a
theological discussion on what kind of language God would've created.

> I have asserted that early language, for any
> non-believer, would have had to have gone through a stage that was less
> expressive (more ambiguous) than languages of which we currently have
> documented information.

Certainly, assuming that language evolved, that God didn't create
language all at once, then early language would've been simpler and less
espressive.  Perhaps only a few hundred words, relying heavily on
context to disambiguate, and, I suspect, isolating.  But, this is a moot
point.  We cannot possibly reconstruct that far back.  Even Nostratic,
if it is legitimate, would've been long past that point.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue May 25 07:58:48 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 03:58:48 EDT
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.035848.EDT.>

>Patrick C. Ryan

>suggests strongly that language began very simply, as calls and gestures...

-- this may be true, but it's utterly irrelevant to the languages under
discussion here.  All _extant_ languages are of the same general level of
development, whether PIE or Esperanto.

Any more "primitive" stage of linguistic development is lost.  None of the
languages of which we have records show any such 'simplicity'.  They are all
about the same, at the fundamental level of serving the purposes of human
communication.


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Tue May 25 08:39:26 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 03:39:26 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.033926.0500.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

> Yes, it makes Kakiutl more expressive.

In that aspect.  But overall is it more expressive?  That's a subjective
decision.  I know nothing of that lang in specific, but there are surely
other areas where it is *less* expressive, more ambiguous.  Say it
lacked a plural (I don't know if it does), would it be more or less
expressive overall?  It depends on which you consider more important,
number or visibility?

> Now one can say in English: 'I saw Susie'. What is the equivalent literal
> translation in Mandarin?

There's a morpheme in Mandarin that indicates perfect aspect, that is
used.  Even if it lacked that, one could say something like "earlier" or
"in the past".  Most concepts are expressible in all languages, it's
just a matter of how easily one can state it.  One can say "You, me, and
some other people" in English to express the Bislama "yumifala", it's
just that Bislama gramaticalizes it, and makes it mandatory, whereas in
English it is optional, and rarely actually spelled out.  To use another
example, in Spanish "la vi" can mean "I saw her" or "I saw it",
ambiguous relative to English, but you can also have "las vi" for "I saw
them (fem.)", which could not be interpreted as "I saw the men" (Vi a
los hombres) or "I saw the cars" (Vi los carros), but could mean "I saw
the women" (Vi a las mujeres) or "I saw the tables" (Vi las mesas), less
ambigous than English.  Is it overall less expressive or more
expressive?  Well, that's a judgement call.  I'd say that, overall,
they're roughly equal.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue May 25 08:52:54 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 09:52:54 +0100
Subject: accusative and ergative languages
In-Reply-To: <00aa01bea485$887c3680$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.095254.0100.>

On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> However, there is also the typological angle. It is my impression
> that most typologists believe that nominative-type languages
> developed from ergative-type languages.

No; certainly not.  It is definitely not the view of most typologists
that accusative languages generally descend from ergative ancestors.
Indeed, I can't name a single linguist who holds such a view, apart from
one or two Russian linguists, notably G. Klimov.

This is not surprising, since such unidirectional development would be a
form a stadialism -- the view that every language must proceed through a
predictable series of stages.  And stadialism, we know, is wrong.

It is now perfectly clear that a language can change in any direction at
all.  For example, an ergative language can lose its ergativity and
become accusative, while an accusative language can acquire ergativity.
Likewise, a language can acquire or lose tones, or noun-cases, or
object-agreement, or any of a zillion other things.

All that we can say is that certain changes are far more likely than
others, because obvious pathways exist.  For example, an agglutinating
language can easily become fusional, and a fusional language can easily
become isolating, and an isolating language can easily become
agglutinating.  But it's not so easy for a language to change directly
from agglutinating to isolating (say), because there exists no plausible
pathway.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue May 25 09:06:27 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 05:06:27 EDT
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.050627.EDT.>

>proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>They're just different.  Languages change because they >do.

>Pat, aghast: I was with you all the way until this final >sentence. Is this
Zen?

-- common sense, actually.  Languages don't "improve" over time, at least not
the ones we can observe.  They just change.  The process is not random, but
it isn't evolutionary.  It's more comparable to fashion.


From edsel at glo.be  Tue May 25 10:14:35 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 12:14:35 +0200
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.121435.0200.>

Robert Whiting <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:

[snip]
>Spoken language expresses meaning through sound.  This means that
>an effective language has to be able to express the entire real
>and imagined world through sounds used conventionally to convey
>meaning.  How each individual language does this is of its own
>choosing and whether it uses analytic or synthetic means does not
>make it "simpler" or "more complex" than another language that
>uses a different method.  If one language expresses relationships
>between verbs and nouns through nominal desinences and another
>expresses them through an extensive system of prepositons or
>postpositions, the one is not necessarily simpler or more complex
>than the other; they are simply two methods of achieving the
>same result.  Overall, every language has to be able to express
>the real and imagined world of its speech community.  Simplicity
>in one linguistic area will normally be compensated for by
>complexity in another.  If the language doesn't mark the
>difference between singular and plural in nouns overtly, there
>will be some other mechanism in the language to express the idea.

>Finally, no natural language can entirely eliminate ambiguity
>through grammatical means no matter how many case endings or
>verbal inflections it develops.  The real and imagined world is
>simply too large for this to be true, and natural languages just
>do not work this way.  Context is the ultimate disambiguator of
>meaning.  We understand things by their context.  And I do not
>refer solely to the grammatical context of a word in a sentence,
>but also to the socio-cultural context in which an utterance is
>made.

[Ed Selleslagh]

Very nicely put. I might add, however, that this socio-cultural context may
vary widely in breadth: it is obvious that in western industrial society
there are far more things to talk about and concepts to express than in the
limited world of an isolated tribe. That does not imply that the language of
the latter is simpler or less complex (usually, it's quite the opposite, as
perceived from within the western IE-landscape), but only that its scope, as
determined by that of their socio-cultural context, is more limited.  As
soon as a society is exposed to a wider context, it develops (or 'steals'
from others) the necessary linguistic means to cover it.  E.g. all Europeans
did so during the Renaissance and the colonial period: English is an example
of that.

I believe that complexity of a language, whatever its definition, is roughly
constant (except maybe at the beginning of language development, 120.000
years or so ago) and the same for all languages, although there can be
important internal shifts within a language from one domain to another, e.g.
from inflection to syntax, especially when one domain (not the whole
language) becomes so complex that an ever increasing part of the population
makes more and more mistakes, e.g. false analogy, confusion of cases, etc.,
and effectively begins to break it down. My reason for believing that is
that I also believe, on the one hand, that during development from infant to
adult, all humans learn to fully use their innate language skills, under
peer pressure if necessary, and on the other hand I accept the monogenesis
of present-day humans. And that has nothing to do with an ideological belief
in equality or pop sociology.

[Totally apart from that, and just as a side remark, my favorite theory is
that language(s) started as isolating (normally monosyllabic), then
developed words for abstract ideas and words for linking them, and then
became agglutinatng by attaching 'link words' and other words (e.g. personal
pronouns) to 'noun/verb/... words', until the affixes fused with them and
thus resulted in inflection. In the next stage (apart from phonetic changes)
inflection became increasingly complex and finally desintegrated to be
replaced by syntax, effectively resulting in an isolating language again
(cf. Chinese; English is well on its way). After that, the cycle can start
all over again, but I don't think it already happened anywhere.]

Best regards,
Ed.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 25 12:57:03 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 07:57:03 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.075703.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 1999 6:05 PM

> On Thu, 20 May 1999, [discussing with Leo Conolly] Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> [...] I will not be able to convince you that my answer is right but I
>> will, at least, tell you what I think.  I believe that all IE roots of the
>> form CVC were earlier "CV-CV. The thematic vowel is a faint reminder of
>> forms that were stress-accented (at one point) CV-"CV.

> [...]

>> I do not think I will convince you of this either but, for whatever it
>> may be worth, I will give you my view,

> [...]

> Pardon my barging in again, but this prompts a fundamental question in my
> head: How can you form an _opinion_ about a matter, if you have no
> decisive arguments? Who would give a damn if I were to declare my belief
> in the existence of PIE front rounded vowels (/u"/, /o"/) if I must
> confess in the same breath that I have no evidence for it? Who would care
> that I "think" or "believe" so, and that it is "my view"? I hope I am not
> on record to have done anything of the sort.

Your opinions are always welcome. As for "decisive", as we have seen many
times, that definition is in the mind of the discussant.

I have not said that I have "no evidence" for my views. At my website, I
have attempted to assemble evidence that is the basis for my opinions and
arguments.

Have you read it, or any of it? I have refrained from presenting the basis
for my views in fuller detail on this list (and the Nostratic list) because,
although they might ultimately connect with IE (and so be appropriate), the
data on which , for example, this view is based, comes from languages other
than IE (or Nostratic).

If you should visit my website, and have strong objections to anything
written there, write it up nicely, and I will post it there with links to
the objectionable material.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Tue May 25 12:56:11 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 14:56:11 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <007801bea474$c92a3260$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.145611.0200.>

On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[...]
> Sorry I did not make myself clear. *t(V) and *tV.

Your original statement was that the very existence or non-existence of a
vowel in the ending did not matter, and that a one-vowel system of this
kind was in effect a no-vowel system. Now cornered, you make brackets
matter. You have now arrived at a two-vowel system in which there are
(V) and V opposed to each other - and to zero.

Jens


From nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk  Tue May 25 12:58:43 1999
From: nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk (Nicholas Widdows)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 13:58:43 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.135843.0100.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

JoatSimeon said:

>>>> Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than
>>>> Old English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.

Patrick Ryan replied:

>>> Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development from
>>> the simple to the complex.

Nicholas rebutted this and ended with:

>> They're just different.  Languages change because they do.

Pat, aghast:

> I was with you all the way until this final sentence.
> Is this Zen?

In this famous koan of the Enlightened JoatSimeon-sensei, later commentators
believe he is stating that you don't need overarching principles guiding
language change into any particular direction (such as simple to complex).
Entropy, random drift, local conflicting processes like analogical levelling
and regrammaticalization, will make all languages change, but the change is
local, generation by generation. It's not part of the evolution of human
culture from the pre-human.

I don't think you are with me quite all the way, because our ideas on the
time scale are so different. Let me make it more explicit, with apologies
for doing so in the wrong forum. Then I'll hold my peace.

Like you, I find monogenesis the only reasonable opinion. And I would
certainly _like_ to believe that new statistical analyses can peer further
back, to Nostratic, to Nostratic-Amerind and Dene-Caucasian, and just maybe
the odd word of Proto-World. If monogenesis is true, some such ancestors
necessarily existed, though we might be deceived in which particular modern
families branch from which ancestor. But a common feature of all recorded
languages is that they're all about equally complex. I think there's a
strong consensus on that. [ignore sound of one hand raised in disagreement]
Therefore as a matter of logic it was likely to be a common feature of their
ancestors.

You think you can see much of modern language -- the salient difference
between vervets and Verlaine -- being invented somewhere back near Nostratic
times. If that was say 10 000 years ago, and Nostratic-Amerind must be
pre-Clovis so call it a round 15 000, then where do Aborigines and Andaman
Islanders fit in? Modern humans are known to have lived in Australia 50 000
years ago; there were more results just last week suggesting it could be 70
000. The precise age doesn't matter, because modern Pama-Nyungan languages
have a wide selection of ergatives and instrumentals and causals, past and
future and subjunctive, they don't have weird and wonderful phonology, their
semantic fields are as diverse and as similar as anything from Senegal to
Siberia. In short, there's nothing in Australian languages to suggest that
the speakers branched off three or four times longer ago than we can
possibly trace even the boldest Nostratic, yet the archaeology seems to say
they did.

What I, with many others, conclude from this is that all our present baggage
-- such as the idea of marking the verbs of dependent clauses whether of
French or Bidyara-Gungabula -- arose in its present form in a language
ancestral to the last time we were all one ethnic group, somewhere in Africa
before the division, 50 000 or 100 000 years ago. Complexity can't have
arisen from proto-human simplicity in anything reconstructible from Sumerian
or Egyptian, because they're a scratch on the surface compared to the actual
time depth in which this complexity has been with us all.

Nicholas Widdows


From vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu  Tue May 25 13:53:42 1999
From: vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 09:53:42 -0400
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as [was Re: "syllabicity"]
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.095342.0400.>

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

> in 176a, he [Whitney] mentions several pronouns in -a{'}s that simply
> lose their -s's before any consonant: sa dadarCa, 'he saw'.

The usual explanation is that the original nominative, *so, had no s.
Note that sas loses its s even before unvoiced stops and often the a of
sa is combined with the following vowel.

--

There is a short note in a recent issue of JAOS about the sandhi of -as
that is relevant.

This whole business is strange: a:s regularly loses its s before voiced
sounds, as does -as before vowels except a. In RV, as+a often scans as
two short vowels, not as one long (as as+a => o suggests) or one long
plus one short as the usually written o+a suggests. The samaveda practice
is still different. pre-IA sandhi of -as may have been very different from
what we see latter and must have been subject to considerable leveling.


From urban.lindqvist at telia.com  Tue May 25 15:53:31 1999
From: urban.lindqvist at telia.com (Urban Lindqvist)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 17:53:31 +0200
Subject: SV: sandhi of Skt. -as
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.175331.0200.>

Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> R-S wrote:

>> By this I don't doubt your analysis of dive-dive; only that it may be
>> due to predictable Sandhi.  I'm unaware of how many examples for the process
>> seen in /edhi/ exist, but /divedive/ may be another one, but then for an
>> early sound-law, involving early univerbation of *divas + *dive not a
>> productive rule still operative in historical times.

> Pat writes:

> Rather than the result of an ordinary sandhi process, I am inclined to
> suspect that [*adhi{'}] to [edhi{'}] may be a rare example of Sanskrit
> Umlaut.

Another example of -as > -e (/_voiced dental) might be su:re duhita: (RV
1.34.5d), if we choose to interpret su:re as a genitive form.

Patrick C. Ryan also wrote:

> Under the rubric "Euphonic Combination", he [Whitney] discusses -s in
> combination on pp. 58-61.

> [---]

> in 176a, he mentions several pronouns in -a{'}s that simply lose their -s's
> before any consonant: sa dadarCa, 'he saw'.

The -s in question probably didn't exist in the first place (cf. Gr. ho,
Av. ha:).

Urban


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue May 25 18:31:22 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 18:31:22 GMT
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <l03130306b36c996e4856@[207.120.3.54]>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.183122.GMT.>

Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>As far as I know, gandules are eaten in most of Latin America and parts of
>Spain. You can buy gandules in the US packed by Goya, a company from Spain.

Found it.  The botanical name for pigeon pea is Cajanus cajan,
and Moliner gives Cajanus indicus (close enough) = guandu' or
quinchoncho.  Guandu' :: Arbusto leguminoso. Su fruto es una
legumbre muy sabrosa que se come guisada.  Never heard of it.  In
Spain (Catalonia), we eat jud'ias (mongetes) [beans], guisantes
(pe'sols) [peas], garbanzos (cigrons) [chick peas], lentejas
(llentilles) [lentils] and habas (faves) [broad beans].  There
are also varieties of vetch (algarrobas/guixes) etc. which used
to be eaten, but are now considered animal food.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From petegray at btinternet.com  Tue May 25 19:52:06 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 20:52:06 +0100
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.205206.0100.>

> Pat answers:

> It is not correct to characterize my view as "laryngeals were vowels" ...
> I think that, generally, by the times of reconstructable IE, they had
> become vowels [or ...]

Your original comment was:

>> I do not dispute that 'laryngeals' were consonantal in Nostratic but by
>> Indo-European, I believe their consonantal had been lost except for Hittite

If we then limit ourselves to IE evidence, and produce cases where
consonants are necessary rather than vowels, would that do?

I offered a long list of possible places where laryngeals, if present, would
have to be consonants.   Your counter-arguments so far reduce to:  "there
are no laryngeals involved."   This is in fact not a counter-argument to the
claim that "if there are laryngeals involved here, they must have been
consonants, not vowels."

Peter


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue May 25 21:08:27 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 16:08:27 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <001a01bea469$60a68640$314435cf@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.160827.0500.>

	In your answer, I think you show that the processes of
simplification and complexity are two-way streets. Languages become both
more simpler and more complex.
	French and Chinese, as they approach the limits of one
morphological system, move to another one. Chinese overcomes confusion
through compounding (and ideographs), while (as you state) French becomes a
prefixing language. In this manner, new complexities are created. These new
complexities, in turn,  undergo "simplications" that lead to other types of
complexities.
	So in French, avoir, unlike Italian avere, needs pronouns in order
to express person & number. A new complication.

	French		Italian
	il ont		ha
	ils ont		hanno

	But then spoken French pulls a fast one on us by simplifying the
prefix.

	<il ont> /ilo~/ > /io~/
	<ils ont> /ilzo~/ > /zo~/

	Now an auxiliary pronoun has become a bound morpheme. Another
complication.

	In spoken American English final /-t/ often becomes /?/
So can /kaen/ & can't /kaen?/ have to be distinguished by a combination of
stress & tone
	I can go /aykaeGO/ with rising tone on the last syllable
	I can't go /ayKAEN?go/ with rising tone on the 2nd syllable

	Now, as a non-linguist, I don't know the
dynamics/inter-relationship of stress & tone but both tone and stress are
clearly involved --thereby creating a new complication.


>I suspect that movements towards the "simpler" or "complex" have to do as much
>with the direction of phonetic developments as they do with any necessary
>evolutionary vector.  If a language is undergoing the process seen over and
>over again in IE languages, where final consonants or vowels get dropped, this
>languages will seem to become "simpler" as former distinctions get
>bulldozered.
>What is left may depend on how many distinctions can still be carried
>after the
>sound changes have done their work.

[snip]

>Obviously, though, this kind of phonetic change cannot go on indefinitely,
>lest
>speech be replaced by silence.

[snip}


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 25 22:28:44 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 17:28:44 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.172844.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 1999 7:22 PM

> On Fri, 21 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>Jens previouysly:

>>> So, for the dual *-e, it _would_ be a problem for you if it did not
>>> have a laryngeal, as sva'sa:rau indicates it did not.

>> Pat responded:

>> Beekes looks at the same data, and on pg. 194, reconstructs -*He. Why is
>> he wrong?

>Jens continued:

> It is not _very_ wrong to posit *-H1e, seeing that the difference of
> this over plain *-e is so small. But an ablaut interplay between
> full-grade *-H1e and zero-grade *-H1 is unacceptable for the reasons I
> have stated: It would make the nom.-acc. dual a strong case with rightward
> accent-and-ablaut movement, which is never found. It would not allow
> Brugmann's length in IIr., but that _could_ be analogical. And, addding
> another, if the thematic form was really *-o- + consonant-stem *-H1e or
> *-e (parallel with the nom.pl. *-o:s from *-o- + consonant-stem *-es), the
> option *-o-H1e is excluded by the acute tone of Balto-Slavic and Greek in
> this form. To be sure, Beekes also excludes *-o-e in favour of *-oH
> precisely on the basic of the Lithuanian acute, but in this point we
> differ in our understanding of the rules. If you are content to have some
> speaker on IE on your side, pick anyone you like; but if you want to have
> arguments to serve you with a criterion as to which one to choose (if
> any), ask both parties again.

Pat responds:

The point was that Bekkes, a trained IEist, does not feel that "sva'sa:rau"
indicates no laryngeal.

>> Pat responded earlier:

>>>> As for the genitive, I reconstruct *-s(V), with the final vowel falling
>>>> off due to stress-accent of a preceding syllable: "Ce/oC + sV ->
>>>> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

>> Jens asked:

>>> With accent shifting onto a vowel that was not there?

>> Pat responded:

>> Sorry, I should have written "Ce/oC(V) -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

> That makes the vowel of the genitive "ending" a part of the preceding
> stem.

Pat answers:

Yes, that was my point.

Jens continued:

> If that is so, there will also appear a vowel before other endings
> that cause the accent to move from one vowel to the next. Then why does
> this not happen when the endings *-bhyos, *-bhis, *-su are added?

Pat responds:

If Beekes is to be believed, that are a number of inflectional patterns in
IE. This makes your question a bit tricky to answer untill we know the
circumstances. How about an example?

Jens continued:

> And in
> root nouns where the stem is identical with that of a radical verb (root
> present or root aorist), why does the vowel appear in the genitive *-os
> (*-es), but not when verbal endings are added? These problems evaporate if
> the stem is posited as consonant-final, and the gen. morpheme is *-os
> (*-es).

Pat responds:

I am dependent on Beekes for the most current viewson IE morphology. Why do
you not give us an example of this phenomenon since Beekes does not.

On your second point, I am not sure there has to be a one-for-one
relationship between nominal and verbal endings.

Pat, previously:

>> I think one important factor that should be considered in these equations is
>> the example Beekes gives on p. 195 of Greek <o{'}sse>, 'pair of eyes', which
>> he derives from *ok{w}-iH{1} THROUGH *ok{w}-ye. We could, just as easily,
>> posit a dual in -y and forget about the laryngeal.

>> Jens wrote:

>>> In this particular case we could - for Greek. But not for Slavic oc^i
>>> (would have reduced i), nor for Arm. ac^'k' (would not be a-stem, gen.
>>> ac^'ac'). And especially it would not give Skt. -i: with length in the
>>> ntr.du. of cons.-stems.

>> Pat responds:

>> I do not have the reference books here to substantiate this comment but,
>> if I understand Beekes correctly, OCS would not have oc{^}i but rather
>> oc{^}e{^}. Is that incorrect?

Jens responded:

> Yes and no. Slavic neuter consonant stems are few in kind, and their
> nom.-acc. dual regularly ends in -e^ which must be pure analogy with the
> o-stems. The dual of 'eye ' _is_ oc^i (also so given by Beekes 173), along
> with us^i 'two ears' a relic of the inherited form.

Pat responds:

Analogy to the rescue. What would linguists do without analogy and
laryngeals to explain anomalies?

Perhaps you can explain to me why oc{^}i could not derive from *ok{w}-ye?

>> Jens mentioned:

>>>>> *H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e;

>> Pat responded:

>>>> In view of Gk. o{'}sse, why not?

>> Jens responded:

>>> There is no such rule. The /y/ would syllabify and yield **ane'r-i.
>>> That's what happened in the loc.sg. *p at 2-te'r-i > Gk. dat. pate'ri, Skt.
>>> loc.  pita'ri.

>> Pat responded:

>> Not sure what you mean by "no rule". It is a process described on p. 195
>> of Beekes. Also, the dative has a different base form: -*(H)ey, which is
>> nothing more than the well-known *Hey-, 'to go'.

Jens continued:

> Beekes says no such thing, nor do I know of any basis on which he could
> have. The form of the IE dative is immaterial when we are talking about
> the fate of the IE locative.

Pat responds:

Sorry, missed your point.

>> Jens mentioned:

>>>>> u-stem *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

>> Pat asked:

>>>> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

>> Jens responded:

>>> There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off
>>> by a funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one'
>>> (acc.sg.M amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this
>>> giving ami:, not **amu:.

>> Pat responded:

>> I think it is dangerous to assume that combinatory rules have acted
>> identically at different periods, do you not?

Jens objected:

> Sure, but you were using completely unknown rules.

Pat rejoinds:

Since when is compensatory lengthening "unknown"?

>> Jens asked:

>>>>> What _is_ the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

>> Pat answered:

>>>> The majority of the attested forms, there being no /i/ in IE..

>> Jens responded:

>>> For most positions, you are right: The original difference between the
>>> morphophonemes /i/ and /y/ are neutralized almost across the board and can
>>> therefore be represented by one phoneme. However, that is not the point
>>> we're discussing; we're arguing about the presence or absence of a
>>> laryngeal in the ntr.du., remember? And in this point Skt. yuge' 'two
>>> yokes' passes judgment, for this form is sandhi resistent ("pragrhya") and
>>> so _must_ have ended in a laryngeal.

>> Pat responded:

>> Sorry, I cannot accept the idea that laryngeals still functioning in
>> Sanskrit made yuge{'} sandhi-resistant.

> It is a descriptive fact,

Pat rejoinds:

Your idea of a "fact" and mine are obviously totally different. That yuge{'}
may be sandhi-resistant could be a fact. That the cause is your convenient
laryngeal, is not!

> well established before the advent of laryngeal
> analysis and in possession of a perfectly adequate and phonetically
> natural explanation since Kuiper's ingenuity was invested in it.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Tue May 25 23:47:08 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 01:47:08 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <007d01bea52a$54a8a320$d03963c3@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.014708.0200.>

On Sun, 23 May 1999, petegray wrote:

> Jens said:

>> I have yet to see a really cogent argument for an IE (or pre-IE) ergative.
>> ..., but nothing to convince one that it _must_ be
>> accepted.   I'm not saying that pre-PIE was _not_ ergative, just that we
>> cannot really know. Practically all the literature on the subject ... is
>> without scholarly interest.

> I must disagree with your last point here.   An ergative description of
> early PIE or pre-PIE explains various oddities in PIE.   I agree that there
> are no arguments (yet) that it must have been ergative, and none that it
> cannot have been ergative, but in light of its explanatory potential, it
> surely is at least "interesting".

That is just about what I meant.

Jens


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed May 26 00:16:14 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 02:16:14 +0200
Subject: Minus quam perfectum
In-Reply-To: <3757ea42.58696630@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.021614.0200.>

On Sun, 23 May 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> One can compare Skt. laryngeal verbs in -a:u, but also the
> Tocharian B 1st p. sg. in -wa.  Albanian also has a category of
> aorists with formant -v- (origin?).

The Albanian type punova 'I worked' is formed from a stem punou- (whence
the endingless 3sg used with the refl. particle, u punua 'was worked').
The diphthongization is regular in the old participle, Tosk pun-uar from
*-o-nV (-o- from *-a:-, Lat. 1st conj., cf. loanwords like ke"rko-
'seek'). The sequence *-onV gave *-oune"/*-oure" (with flapped nasal?)
with a diphthong that later gave Old Geg uo, now ue, Tosk ua. The stage
*-oun/re" was resegmented as *-ou-n/re", and *-ou- was introduced
before the productive endings of the aorist, 1sg *-ou-a, 2sg *-ou-e which
gave -ova, -ove. A different reanalysis as *-o-un/re" gave rise to the
ptc. type hap-ur 'opened'.

Jens


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 00:36:25 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 19:36:25 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.193625.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 1999 8:44 AM

> Pat suggested:

>> (concerning the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
>> brother, etc.) ... you may
>> wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts
>> you in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
>> suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown,

Peter helpfully commented:

> If I dare to join this debate, I offer two points:

> (a) We know IE did indeed have two such suffixes, one the agentive (though
> I think *-tor is better than *-ter) and the "contrastive pair" suffix, which
> we find in a range of words, such as Latin alter, Greek heteros, etc, and
> in the comparative -teros.  It was even suggested in the 70's that it was
> this last suffix, the comparative pair, which is found in the family words.

> (b) We know that the family suffix is not *-ter but *-6ter.   People have
> written articles on it in JIES.

Quite ght. Thanks for the additional comments. I should have said: " . . .
that IE had, at least, **three** suffixes: -*ter, agentive, -*ter, meaning
unknown, and -*ter, contrastive.

As to (b), since I have not seen the article, could you explain a bit
further?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca  Wed May 26 01:20:04 1999
From: s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca (Stephane Goyette)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 21:20:04 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
In-Reply-To: <007e01bea52a$5559a3a0$d03963c3@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.212004.0400.>

On Sun, 23 May 1999, petegray wrote:

> > as Witold Manczak has
> > argued, Vulgar Latin (or Proto-Romance, or however one cares to call the
> > ancestor of the Romance languages) is quite plainly a "daughter" of
> > Classical Latin (Not a "sister" as so many Romance scholars have argued).
>
> If so, how do you explain:
> (a) the Vulgar Latin use of forms and grammatical constructions not in
> Classical Latin, but which just happen to be identical to forms in earlier
> Latin?   If these are not derived from pre-classical Latin, is it just
> coincidence?   How much coincidence is too much coincidence?
> (b) the evidence for Vulgar Latin forms alongside Classical Latin at the
> same period?   For example, the well known -au- / -o- business (like it or
> not, in some words -o- is not classical, but is vulgar and contemporary with
> classical), or the evidence from the Satiricon and from inscriptions and
> such, showing pre-Romance forms even during the classical period.

First, a terminological clarification: by "Classical Latin" I mean the
written language used, roughly, from the time of Plautus to that of
Caesar. That later evidence, such as the Satiricon, should show
Romance-like traits is unsurprising.

I do not dispute that Romance was born at an early date: what I dispute is
the claim that its ancestor was a sister of Classical Latin --a language
which, I quite agree, was not perfectly homogeneous. The au/o business is
actually an excellent example of the early birth of Romance and its being
a "daughter" of Classical Latin: while we indeed have evidence of
the shift from /au/ to /o/ at an early date (Emperor Augustus himself is
said to have regarded the pronunciation of his name with an initial /au/
as pedantic), it is interesting to note that /au/ is preserved as such in
many Romance languages today, and, more to the point, its distribution
matches that of Classical Latin --take Romanian AUR "gold", LAUD "I
praise" versus FOC "fire", DORM "I sleep", where the au/o distribution
corresponds perfectly to that found in AURUM, LAUDEO, FOCUM and DORMIO.

> Both of these seem to me to indicate that Romance developed from Latin
> actually spoken at the very time when Classical Latin was being written.

I agree that Vulgar Latin (or proto-Romance) was born at a very early
date, when Classical Latin was being written: this does not invalidate my
point.

> Like many languages, Latin had a sginficant divergence of written and spoken
> forms.    Classical Latin was really only the written form.

Such divergence is a result of the fact that spoken language changes,
while written language resists such change. However, there must originally
have been an identity between the spoken and the written language, and I
maintain that the ancestor of the Romance languages grew out of the spoken
language, represented in writing, which we call Classical Latin. That this
representation of the spoken language was not perfect is indubitable: but
I would challenge anyone to point to a single trait of the Romance
languages which is inexplicable through Classical Latin and requires one
to resort to pre-Classical Latin (as defined above).

Stephane Goyette.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 04:29:26 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 23:29:26 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.232926.0500.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 2:58 AM

> >Patrick C. Ryan

> >suggests strongly that language began very simply, as calls and gestures...

Joat responded:

> -- this may be true, but it's utterly irrelevant to the languages under
> discussion here.  All _extant_ languages are of the same general level of
> development, whether PIE or Esperanto.

> Any more "primitive" stage of linguistic development is lost.  None of the
> languages of which we have records show any such 'simplicity'.  They are
> all about the same, at the fundamental level of serving the purposes of human
> communication.

Pat responds:

"Irrelevant" must be your favorite word. What happened to your "*in any
era*"? Have you just dropped that idea without acknowledging how
wrong-headed it is?

What "extant" languages show is totally irrelevant to what they may have
been like in the far distant past.

As far earlier stages having been "lost", prove it --- if you can.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From BMScott at stratos.net  Wed May 26 04:52:10 1999
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 00:52:10 -0400
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.005210.0400.>

Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> Robert writes:

> > Yes, I've noticed how, for example, in the history of writing
> > systems, the earliest writing systems were incredibly simple
> > logographic systems consisting of only several hundred to several
> > thousand signs and that reading and writing was so simple that it
> > was a specialized occupation that required many years of study to
> > master.

> I. J. Gelb writes: "For the primitive Indo-Europeans, Semites, or
> Amerindians the needs of writing were fulfilled in a *****simple*****
> picture or series of pictures (emphasis added)." Gelb, under whom I studied,
> spent a lifetime studying writing; and I do believe his characterization
> carries more weight than your opinions on the subject. Children --- with no
> training and only the availability of a crayon --- make the same kind of
> pictures that were the basis of early writing; and it is naif in the extreme
> to believe --- as you apparently do --- that logographs are somehow more
> complex than an alphabet.

Contra Gelb:

	[W]riting is defined as _a system of more or less permanent
	marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it
	can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention
	of the utterer_.  By this definition, writing is bound up with
	language; consequently, the widespread practice of recording
	by means of pictures (_pictograms_) of _ideas_ that are not
	couched in a specific linguistic form is excluded.  Such
	pictograms are often designated _forerunners_ of writing (e.g.
	Gelb 1952), but in fact writing systems (or _scripts_) do not
	develop from them (DeFrancis 1989).

[Peter T. Daniels in _The World's Writing Systems_, Daniels & Wm. Bright, eds.]

> The earliest writing system we know that followed pure logographs is the
> mixed writing system of Sumer.

That mixed writing system (or perhaps, in light of recent finds, the
roughly contemporary Egyptian mixed writing system) is the earliest
_writing_ system of which we have record.  Purely pictorial records that
precede these systems, not being writing, cannot sensu stricto be read.

> Robert continued:

> > Finally,
> > this gave way to the most complex system of all, the alphabet, in
> > which the tens of thousands of words in a language can be written
> > with around 30 signs and is so complicated that it takes all the
> > resources that the average 5-year-old can muster to learn it.

> Pat comments:

> Yes, actually alphabets are the most complex system of all --- how clever of
> you to recognize it! It requires analyzing a morpheme, which has meaning,
> into meaningless parts.

The Sumerians and Egyptians had already performed such analyses with
their mixed (logosyllabic) systems.  Moreover, you are confusing two
completely different (and often roughly complementary) things: the
amount of ingenuity needed to develop a system, and the ease and
simplicity of its use.

Brian M. Scott


From fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw  Wed May 26 21:01:48 1999
From: fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw (Steven Schaufele)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 14:01:48 -0700
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.140148.0700.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

> Languages don't "improve" over time, at least not the ones we can
> observe.  They just change.  The process is not random, but it isn't
> evolutionary.  It's more comparable to fashion.

I'm sorry, do i detect an (implied) equation here between `evolutionary
change' and `improvement'?  I believe this is an erroneous belief.  In
biology, `evolutionary change' constitutes `improvement' only in the
very limited sense that members of a community become better suited to
life in their immediate environment.  Likewise, a language changes in
order better to meet the (perceived) needs (often, indeed, in the nature
of `fashion') of the community speaking it.  If this is what you mean by
`improvement' then both biological and linguistic evolution constitute
`improvement'; if not, then neither of them do.

Best,
Steven
--
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department
Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC
(886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504     fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw
Fax: (886)(02)2881-7609
http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html

        ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!***
        ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!***


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Wed May 26 06:12:26 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 01:12:26 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.011226.0500.>

Eduard Selleslagh wrote:
> but I don't think it already happened anywhere.]

It's probly happened dozens of times.  I've read that Egyptian-Coptic
went from fusional to isolating to agglutinating and back to fusional
within a few millennia.  I'm sure there's other known examples of this.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From fabcav at adr.dk  Wed May 26 06:21:44 1999
From: fabcav at adr.dk (Fabrice Cavoto)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 08:21:44 +0200
Subject: SV: accusative and ergative languages
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.082144.0200.>

I think that what Patrick refers to is that many typologists mean that the
evolution 'ergartive to accusative' is more commoun than the reverse,
without excluding it.

As Larry Trask suggests, ergativity may well been understood like any other
feature: it can come and/or go, with or without leaving traces, like a
mode.

What typologists base their statement (above) is that many accusative
languages are said to have traces of ergativity (which they assume from an
earlier stage), while the contrary does not seem to be that commoun. Also,
those languages which have both systems productive seem to have accusative
structure in the most direct and unmarked speech, and ergative in the most
undirect/marked speech, AS IF they had 'forgotten' to change the system
there. However, this is highly speculative, since ergativity, as any other
lgge. feature, may well be used as  (part of) a distinctive parameter, were
it syntactical, prosod. or what ever, and then might concern only specific
parts of the speech. However, it seems that there is too less to see in IE:
maybe one could assume that if there once has been an ergative system in
IE, no matter how broad/exclusive it was at the very beginning, it was at
its latest stages restricted to the dichotomy 'animate vs. inanimate',
before it was totally lost.

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----

[ moderator snip ]


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Wed May 26 06:50:26 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 01:50:26 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity (yet again)
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.015026.0500.>

Some time ago, Jens wrote that the contrast between PIE secondary endings 3sg.
-t, 2pl. -te, as in imperfect *ebheret /= *ebherete 'he/ye carried' or
injunctive *bheret /= *bherete, dooms Pat's attempt to say that both desinences
mean 'member(s) of the tribe' or the like.  Pat's claim, I think, was that the
final -e could be explained as the result of stress accent at some stage of
pre-PIE.

After some discussion, Pat eventually replied:

> If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I. My
> point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV since
> there is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

Leo objected:

> But that's not at all what you said, Pat!  You claimed then that the
> *existence* ot the -e was of no consequence, since we could explain it as
> the product of stress accentuation.  Having been shown by several people that
> your analysis will not work, you now say that the existence of the vowel does
> matter, only its quality does not.  Your statements are not compatible.

Pat now responds:

>Leo, I simply do not understand your point. Could you spell it out a
>little more completely?

We both assume no more than one stress accent per word, don't we?  If so, the
problem is that it is at least *very* difficult to explain final _-e_ as the
result of stress accent on that syllable (and you have said that more than
once) if, at the same, *any* _e_ must be so explained (else it should vanish,
n'est-ce pas?).  And even if the augment is regarded as a prefix added later in
some languages, *bherete must then have had three syllables with stress accent,
else we should expect (in traditional terms) **_bhr.te_, with weak ("zero")
grade of the root and zero grade of the thematic vowel.  Instead, Greek
_epherete_ and Skt. _abharatha_ 'ye carried' point to e-grade of the root and
of the thematic vowel.

>I hope I have been consistent. In IE, I believe there was a morpheme
>that can be notated as [-*te/o] or [-*tV] which is the common factor
>in both these forms; in the one case, reduced by foregoing
>stress-accentuation to [-*t]. If you are relying on the Sanskrit
>injunctive for your point, surely it is not unreasonable to think that
>the vowel of the 2nd p. pl. might be been retained or analogously
>restored to maintain a differentiation with the 3rd p. sing.?

The Skt. injunctive is actually Jens' point, not mine.  But no matter.
If there's anything to what you say, analogy would have to be invoked rather to
explain the *_bhere-_ part, not the ending.  It would also have to be invoked
to explain, in general, why thematic verbs do not automatically have weak grade
of the root instead of the much more common e-grade (two stressed syllables --
tsk, tsk!).

But this gets us back to the original point: what earthly reason do you have
for claiming that 3sg. -t and 2pl. -te are originally a morpheme meaning
'member of the tribe'?  You have *said* so, and claimed that *teu-to- (better:
*te-w-to-) represents an extended form of the root; but where's the evidence?
(One might also ask why -t appears with *inanimate* subjects; were they members
too?)  If you can present no evidence, I can just as well claim that the two
items were always separate entities and had no shared meaning whatsoever.  If I
am right, the problem disappears.  I hate to use the argumentum ex auctoritate,
since it has no logical force, but my version *is* the standard one;
if you want to claim something else, it behooves you to come up with the
evidence.  (And please don't just refer us to your website; it must be short
enough to summarize in a screenful or so.)

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed May 26 09:59:53 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:59:53 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <007f01bea47a$95b53a00$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.105953.0100.>

On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[on my denial of his claim that increase in complexity is everywhere the
norm, and on my example of dedicated parasites]

> And is that parasite one-celled? Was it there at the beginning of
> life on earth?

No, and no.  I am speaking of parasites which are descended from
free-living ancestors and which have lost all the organs, structures and
functions not required in becoming specialized parasites.

Stephen Jay Gould's popular book Full House (a.k.a. Life's Grandeur) is
a splendid account of the idea that the history of life on earth is the
history of a monotonic increase in complexity.  Gould is able to show
that this view is a mirage.

> Degeneration of certain functions is always possible. Take Chinese
> as an example. The language from which it is derived did have a
> plural.

Quite possibly, but the loss of a former grammatical distinction cannot
reasonably be described as "degeneration": the term is emotive,
inaccurate and entirely out of place.

Modern English is not more "degenerate" than Old English because it has
lost so much of the earlier morphology: it is merely different.  Nor is
it more ambiguous, nor is it less complex overall: it is less complex in
some particular respects but more complex in others, and no metric
exists for weighing up overall complexity.

[on my point that modern IE languages are no better or worse than PIE
for having generally simpler inflectional morphology]

> It always gets back to "better/worse", "inferior/superior" for the
> sociologically oriented. For them, different is a pejorative. Perhaps
> ambiguity is better, quien sabe?

It wasn't me who introduced value judgements into historical change or
into typology: it was you.

And, no, ambiguity is not the point either.  Daughter languages are not
more or less ambiguous than their ancestors.  Once again, I think you
are confusing grammaticalization with expressive power.  Every language
can make all the distinctions of time its speakers want to make.
Whether a given language does, or does not, build some of those
distinctions into its grammatical system in the form of tense-contrasts
is irrelevant to expressive power.

[on my point that we have no access to the remote antecedents of human
language]

> Yes, Larry, we know this is your belief. But, although one cannot
> convince a believer, let me mention a few things for those readers
> who still have open minds:

> 1) All present languages potentially provide "data" for the
> languages of our earliest ancestors if monogenesis is accepted;

I can't see that it makes the slightest difference whether one embraces
monogenesis, rejects it, or remains agnostic on the issue.  Anyway, the
point is that modern, attested and reconstructed languages are so remote
in time from the earliest beginnings of language that they are incapable
of shedding any light on those beginnings.

> one can study IE, can one not? even though we have no attestation of
> it beyond what we can reconstruct;

I think you mean `PIE'.  Sure, we can study PIE, because we have enough
data from the daughter languages to do so.  But PIE was spoken only
something like 6000 years ago -- a tiny slice of the total time that
human beings have used language.  And we are exceptionally fortunate in
the material available to us in this case.  A very few other languages
-- such as Proto-Oto-Manguean -- have been reconstructed back to around
the same time depth.  But cases involving significantly greater time
depth -- such as the widely accepted Afro-Asiatic family -- have proved
refractory for reconstruction.

> 2) Let us not say that "polygenesis" is against common sense; let us
> rather say that polygenesis is intellectually on a par with
> _believing_ that the earth was created in six days;

Not so, I'm afraid.  The evidence at our disposal at present does not in
any way allow us to pronounce in favor of either monogenesis or
polygenesis.  Most of us, I suppose, lean toward monogenesis as the
simpler scenario, but at present we have no substantial piece of
evidence telling one way or the other.

> 3) I am not the only person who believes that languages of much
> greater antiquity than that allowed by the flawed mathematics of
> glottochronology and lexicostatistics --- linguists, not amateurs
> like myself.

Sorry; this passage has come out garbled into incomprehensibility.
I will hazard the guess that you are proposing that reconstruction is
possible much further back into the past than has so far been achieved.
True, a few linguists -- though not many -- believe this.  Maybe they're
right, but the only way they can persuade the rest of us is by
exhibiting an undeniable instance of it.  And so far that hasn't
happened.

[on my example of dual number]

> If I had meant to include "dual" as a category, the absence of which
> introduces ambiguity, might I not have written that --- just another
> straw-man argument from the master debater.

Eh?  Lacking or losing an overt plural constitutes ambiguity, while
lacking or losing an overt dual doesn't?  What is this supposed to mean?

[on my example of grammaticalized visibility in Kwakiutl]

> Yes, it makes Kakiutl more expressive.

No, it doesn't.  A speaker of English is perfectly able to express
visibility or invisibility on any occasion on which it appears to be
relevant.  A speaker of any language can do the same.  Kwakiutl merely
happens to build this information into its grammatical system, so that
it must be expressed on every occasion, whether this information is
relevant or not.  In the same way, English builds a modest
time-distinction into its grammar, so that this information must be
expressed even when strictly unnecessary, as in my example `I saw Susie
yesterday', in which the tense marking is entirely redundant.

> Now one can say in English: 'I saw Susie'. What is the equivalent
> literal translation in Mandarin?

Depends on the context.  Utterances are not made in a vacuum: they are
made in a context of what is already known or believed and of what has
already been said.  Even in English, I can hardly say `I saw Susie' if I
have no reason to believe that you are acquainted with Susie, or that
you can immediately tell which one I mean of several people called
`Susie'.  Even if I am sure that you and I both know exactly one person
called `Susie', saying `I saw Susie' would be a very odd way of starting
a conversation in most contexts.

[on my statement that English has only a single past tense]

> You may repeat that 'English has only a single past tense' until the
> Fenris wolf swallows the sun, and you will convince only yourself
> and your friends who hold it dogmatically.

This is mysterious.  English has only two tenses: the past tense and the
other one.  I know of no linguist who questions this, unless you count a
few people who use the term `tense' in an eccentric way, like some of
the Hallidayans.

Of course, in addition to its simple tense system, English has a good
deal of aspect, mood and modality built into its verbal system, or at
least into its sentence structure.  Some of these further distinctions
are expressed morphologically, far more of them lexically, and some of
the distinctions are more strongly grammaticalized than others.  The
result is decidedly elaborate and complex, as anyone knows who has tried
to teach English to foreign learners.  But English has only two tenses.
This statement is no more in doubt than the statement that English has
no grammatical gender.

[on the eleven tenses of Bamileke-Dschang]

> B-D is, in this regard, more expressive than English; and also less
> ambiguous.

Nope -- not at all.  I can say `I saw Susie this morning' or `I saw
Susie two months ago', using the same tense-form, and there is no
ambiguity.  Chinese can do the same using no tense-forms at all.  B-D
must use two different tense-forms in the two cases.  But all three are
equally expressive, and equally lacking in ambiguity.

[on PR's accusation that I am doing "feel-good sociology", whatever that
is]

> Your ignorance of sociology is probably an important component of
> why you are unable to distinguish between scientific beliefs
> justified by reasoning from data, and your "positions".

Very droll, no doubt, but completely wide of the mark.  I would like to
say that this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but it
seems to be more a case of the pot calling the igloo black.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From edsel at glo.be  Wed May 26 10:05:27 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 12:05:27 +0200
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.120527.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Date: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 10:18 AM

> So in French, avoir, unlike Italian avere, needs pronouns in order
>to express person & number. A new complication.

> French Italian
> il ont ha
> ils ont hanno

> But then spoken French pulls a fast one on us by simplifying the
>prefix.

> <il ont> /ilo~/ > /io~/
> <ils ont> /ilzo~/ > /zo~/

> Now an auxiliary pronoun has become a bound morpheme. Another
>complication.

[Ed Selleslagh]

Actually, it is 'il a' / 'ils ont', unless you meant something I didn't get.
As far as I can see, the ever-present pronouns are not really needed to
disambiguate, in almost all cases (However: tu as/il a, same pronunciation:
tüá/ilá).  In early French, pronouns were *not* used : cf. Rabelais in
one of his satirical tales, citing the (supposedly archaic, i.e. to him)
inscription above the gate of the abbey Noirmoustier ('blackminster') "Fays
ce que voudras" ('Do whatever YOU  [will] want'. In equally archaic
Castilian: 'Haz lo que quisieres', with future subjunctive).

[snip]

Ed


From edsel at glo.be  Wed May 26 10:28:46 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 12:28:46 +0200
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.122846.0200.>

Given the extended nature of the discussion on plosive-liquid clusters
in pre-Basque, it might be helpful for Larry and/or others to reiterate
the definition and parameters of the concept 'pre-Basque' (=Aquitanian?) and
then
address the problematic aspects of the notion 'proto-Basque'
(=reconstruction?).
If that is relevant to this list, that is.

Ed.


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Wed May 26 09:43:57 1999
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 05:43:57 -0400
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <007d01bea52a$54a8a320$d03963c3@xpoxkjlf> from petegray at "May
 23, 99 02:12:07 pm"
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.054357.0400.>

petegray wrote:

> I must disagree with your last point here.   An ergative description of
> early PIE or pre-PIE explains various oddities in PIE.   I agree that there
> are no arguments (yet) that it must have been ergative, and none that it
> cannot have been ergative, but in light of its explanatory potential, it
> surely is at least "interesting".

OK, would you care to explain which oddities?

--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed May 26 12:52:18 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 14:52:18 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <004201bea6fe$b83f1b00$73142399@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.145218.0200.>

On Tue, 25 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> The point was that Beekes, a trained IEist, does not feel that
> "sva'sa:rau" indicates no laryngeal.

I respect those feelings: It is a highly subjective matter whether one
takes this apparently solid counterevidence to disprove a laryngeal or
chooses the alternative of analogical levelling. Still, there is no
material demanding a laryngeal. The analysis with the laryngeal is
widespread in IE studies and is not Beekes' invention. I suspect it just
looks more "technical" than a vowel without. - It appears to matter a
great deal to you what Beekes says in the book you have, so you may look
at p. 138 and find it correctly reported that a laryngeal blocks the
working of Brugmann's Law in Indo-Iranian (Kurylowicz' discovery).

[...(Jens:)]

>> That makes the vowel of the genitive "ending" a part of the preceding
>> stem.

> Pat answers:

> Yes, that was my point.

> Jens continued:

>> If that is so, there will also appear a vowel before other endings
>> that cause the accent to move from one vowel to the next. Then why does
>> this not happen when the endings *-bhyos, *-bhis, *-su are added?

> Pat responds:

> If Beekes is to be believed, that are a number of inflectional patterns in
> IE. This makes your question a bit tricky to answer untill we know the
> circumstances. How about an example?

> Jens continued:

>> And in
>> root nouns where the stem is identical with that of a radical verb (root
>> present or root aorist), why does the vowel appear in the genitive *-os
>> (*-es), but not when verbal endings are added? These problems evaporate if
>> the stem is posited as consonant-final, and the gen. morpheme is *-os
>> (*-es).

> Pat responds:

> I am dependent on Beekes for the most current viewson IE morphology. Why do
> you not give us an example of this phenomenon since Beekes does not.

Beekes treats root nouns (189f) and root verbs (234) in a very clear
fashion. Look anywhere in the book, and you'll _never_ find the vowel you
ascribe to the root on the basis of the gen. in *-os reappearing before
_any_ other inflectional ending. Am I to give examples of something that
does not exist? You are the one making claims. You may also look at p. 162
of Beekes' book for the information that "each PIE root begins and ends in
one or two consonants".

[...]

[Pat:]

>>> if I understand Beekes correctly, OCS would not have oc{^}i but
>>> rather oc{^}e{^}. Is that incorrect?

> Jens responded:

>> Yes and no. Slavic neuter consonant stems are few in kind, and their
>> nom.-acc. dual regularly ends in -e^ which must be pure analogy with the
>> o-stems. The dual of 'eye ' _is_ oc^i (also so given by Beekes 173), along
>> with us^i 'two ears' a relic of the inherited form.

> Pat responds:

> Analogy to the rescue. What would linguists do without analogy and
> laryngeals to explain anomalies?

Tell lies.

> Perhaps you can explain to me why oc{^}i could not derive from *ok{w}-ye?

It could not fit Sanskrit /aks.i:'/ 'two eyes' if it did. But they can
_all_ come from a form in *-iH1. Since yo-stems have replaced their
vocative with -u from u-stems and the imperative has been replaced by the
reflex of the optative, I do not know of a case to show unambiguously what
does come out of PIE *-ye in OCS.

[... (Jens):]

>>>>>> u-stem *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

>>> Pat asked:

>>>>> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

>>> Jens responded:

>>>> There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off
>>>> by a funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one'
>>>> (acc.sg.M amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this
>>>> giving ami:, not **amu:.

>>> Pat responded:

>>> I think it is dangerous to assume that combinatory rules have acted
>>> identically at different periods, do you not?

> Jens objected:

>> Sure, but you were using completely unknown rules.

> Pat rejoinds:

> Since when is compensatory lengthening "unknown"?

I meant "completely unknown for the language concerned", which of course
is what matters. I don't believe such a compensatory lengthening rule has
ever been known for Sanskrit. If you assume -uy > -u: in Sanskrit, it is
your task to demonstrate that there is such a "rule", meaning that the
same change occurs in other cases where -u- and final -y meet. It would be
an interesting discovery if you have examples to show that (for Sanskrit,
mind you).

[...]

>>> Pat responded:

>>> Sorry, I cannot accept the idea that laryngeals still functioning in
>>> Sanskrit made yuge{'} sandhi-resistant.

>> It is a descriptive fact,

> Pat rejoinds:

> Your idea of a "fact" and mine are obviously totally different. That yuge{'}
> may be sandhi-resistant could be a fact. That the cause is your convenient
> laryngeal, is not!

But facts ought to be given explanations, and in this case it lies right
at hand. What is simpler than assuming that a neuter dual contains the
neuter dual ending? Now, in consonant stems the neuter dual in Sanskrit
ends in /-i:/. The most common (in Beekes' phonology, if I understand him
correctly, the only) source of that is a PIE sequence of i + laryngeal.
Then, if /yuge'/ is regular, and the stem is *yugo-, we are made to posit
*yugo-iH. That fully explains its sandhi-resistence, for before a vowel,
the H goes to the following syllable, leaving -oi to form a diphthong in a
syllable of their own, whence Skt. -e, even before vowel in the following
word.

[...]

Jens


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 14:53:47 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 09:53:47 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.095347.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Joat and IEists:
 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 4:06 AM

>>proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>> They're just different.  Languages change because they >do.

>> Pat, aghast: I was with you all the way until this final sentence. Is this
>> Zen?

> -- common sense, actually.  Languages don't "improve" over time, at least
> not the ones we can observe.  They just change.  The process is not random,
> but it isn't evolutionary.  It's more comparable to fashion.

Pat responds:

Yes, it is Einsteinian "common sense". Whatever one happens to believe ---
makes sense!

Actually, your comments show a jejeune understanding of "evolutionary".
Evolution does not promise "improve"ment only change that is successful in
enhancing survival.

As far as language change is concerned, there is no observable process in
this universe which is not, at least potentially, understandable, and
analyzable to terms of cause and effect.

To compare language change to changes in fashion is an abandonment of the
effort to understand how it does change; and this is not because changes in
fashion could not be similarly analyzed if someone thought it worth the
trouble.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 15:03:05 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:03:05 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.100305.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Eduard and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Eduard Selleslagh <edsel at glo.be>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 5:14 AM

> I believe that complexity of a language, whatever its definition, is roughly
> constant (except maybe at the beginning of language development, 120.000
> years or so ago)

Pat comments:

This is, of course, the time period during which I believe that ambiguity
was most prevalent.

Eduard coninued:

> [Totally apart from that, and just as a side remark, my favorite theory is
> that language(s) started as isolating (normally monosyllabic), then
> developed words for abstract ideas and words for linking them, and then
> became agglutinatng by attaching 'link words' and other words (e.g. personal
> pronouns) to 'noun/verb/... words', until the affixes fused with them and
> thus resulted in inflection. In the next stage (apart from phonetic changes)
> inflection became increasingly complex and finally desintegrated to be
> replaced by syntax, effectively resulting in an isolating language again
> (cf. Chinese; English is well on its way). After that, the cycle can start
> all over again, but I don't think it already happened anywhere.]

Pat comments:

This is a very eloquent statement of what I believe to have been the process
involved from the "first" language to modern day circumstances.

What I do think is an interesting question is why some speakers seem to be
moving from an inflecting to an isolating language while others are not (or
very slowly).

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 15:11:43 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:11:43 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.101143.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 7:56 AM

> On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> [...]
> > Sorry I did not make myself clear. *t(V) and *tV.

Jens objected:

> Your original statement was that the very existence or non-existence of a
> vowel in the ending did not matter, and that a one-vowel system of this
> kind was in effect a no-vowel system. Now cornered, you make brackets
> matter. You have now arrived at a two-vowel system in which there are
> (V) and V opposed to each other - and to zero.

Pat responds:

Well, this seems to be a notational problem.

I, probably incorrectly, used *t(V) to attempt to indicate that a -*t was
the result of a stress-accent-motivated reduction from an earlier -*tV while
*tV showed the morpheme in its fuller form under the condition of
stress-accentuation.

How would you prefer to indicate a single morpheme, *tV, that has two
realizations: unstressed -*t and stressed -*tV?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 15:24:29 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:24:29 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.102429.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Nicholas and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Nicholas Widdows <nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 7:58 AM

Nicholas concludes:

> Complexity can't have arisen from proto-human simplicity in anything
> reconstructible from Sumerian or Egyptian, because they're a scratch on the
> surface compared to the actual time depth in which this complexity has been
> with us all.

Pat responds:

My apologies in advance for claiming, at least, to essentially agree with
you up to this final point.

You have identified the crux of the matter here. I believe that Sumerian and
Egyptian have morphemes that can be identified as earlier morphemes
(monosyllabic) by inspection or by analysis; and that languages like IE,
which have principally CVC roots, can be analyzed so that the CVC roots are
recognized to be the results of compounds of CV+CV elements in an earlier
(than Nostratic) language.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From stevegus at aye.net  Wed May 26 14:48:34 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steven A. Gustafson)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:48:34 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.104834.0400.>

petegray wrote:

> Both of these seem to me to indicate that Romance developed from Latin
> actually spoken at the very time when Classical Latin was being written.
> Like many languages, Latin had a sginficant divergence of written and spoken
> forms.    Classical Latin was really only the written form.

Or consider, what future historians would be able to deduce about what
is happening to English at the present time, if the only evidence they
had in front of them are:

--- languages developing from spoken English;
--- edited literary texts; and
--- a handful of surviving examples of graffiti.

The graffiti would likelier contain more clues to the way English is
changing than the literary texts would, since the grammar and syntax of
written English have changed little since Samuel Johnson's day.
(Johnson might think that -USA Today- was written in baby-talk, but he
probably could point to few serious errors in grammar or syntax.
Quaere: does the spread of the -USA Today- or Strunk & White prose
styles indicate that the syntax of "classical" English is becoming
unintelligible to a major segment of contemporary readers?)

This is essentially what we have when we consider Latin from our
perspective.  We are largely dependent on a handful of texts, from Cato
the Elder to Petronius Arbiter, that partly escaped the hands of
normalizing editors; and on collections of graffiti and similar (and
also unedited) sources, in order to get a glimpse of how Latin was
actually used by native speakers.  Our only other windows are the
Romance languages.

Whether these remains actually convey a reasonable sample of actual
Latin usage by native speakers can be debated endlessly.  It remains the
case that they're all we got.  To argue about whether Vulgar Latin is
the sister, daughter, or first cousin once removed of Classical Latin is
rather like wondering whether Kerouac's prose is descended from
Johnsonese.

--
Steven A. Gustafson, attorney at law
Fox & Cotner:  PHONE (812) 945 9600   FAX (812) 945 9615
http://www.foxcotner.com

Amorem semel contraxi. Consanui, et morbi immunis sum.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed May 26 16:31:52 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 11:31:52 -0500
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <374cec46.45732221@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.113152.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

It's none of those. It's a small pea, about the size of a lentil. In fact,
it looks more like a round lentil than anything else

I suppose it's either grown in Andalusia or the Canary Islands

btw: ¿qué dicen los judi/os de eso de comer a las judi/as?

>Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>>As far as I know, gandules are eaten in most of Latin America and parts of
>>Spain. You can buy gandules in the US packed by Goya, a company from Spain.

>Found it.  The botanical name for pigeon pea is Cajanus cajan,
>and Moliner gives Cajanus indicus (close enough) = guandu' or
>quinchoncho.  Guandu' :: Arbusto leguminoso. Su fruto es una
>legumbre muy sabrosa que se come guisada.  Never heard of it.  In
>Spain (Catalonia), we eat jud'ias (mongetes) [beans], guisantes
>(pe'sols) [peas], garbanzos (cigrons) [chick peas], lentejas
>(llentilles) [lentils] and habas (faves) [broad beans].  There
>are also varieties of vetch (algarrobas/guixes) etc.

	Here you confused me. I thought vetch was alfalfa. For me,
algarroba is carob --which is what you use to make "fake chocolate"

>which used to be eaten, but are now considered animal food.

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed May 26 16:56:32 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 11:56:32 -0500
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <374c2901.42503546@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.115632.0500.>

>Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>[re: muga]

>>Is this word related to Spanish mojo/n, which in a dictionary means
>>"landmark or boundary stone" but in spoken Spanish means "pile of shit"

>Phonetically I don't see how there can be a connection, and
>indeed "mojo'n" is said to be derived from Latin MUTULUS (by way
>of MUTULONE).  Moliner does list the synonyms <buega>, <mogote>
>and <muga>.  But consider also <mota>,

	which means "reefer" in Mexican, SW US & Central American Spanish,
and supposedly once meant "prisoner, criminal, illegal" evidently because
the word meant supposedly "something marked, designated" --I say supposedly
because I've only heard this from Mexican-Americans

><moto> ["pre-Latin"], with
>the same basic meaning of "mound, elevation or stone marking a
>boundary".  If there's a relation, we are dealing with a
>phonologically very unstable substrate item *[bm][ou][tk]-.  Cf.
>maybe Pokorny pp. 98-102 under *b(h)(e)u- "aufblasen, schwellen".

>=======================
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl
>Amsterdam


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Wed May 26 16:57:28 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 11:57:28 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.115728.0500.>

Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>         In spoken American English final /-t/ often becomes /?/
> So can /kaen/ & can't /kaen?/ have to be distinguished by a combination of
> stress & tone
>         I can go /aykaeGO/ with rising tone on the last syllable
>         I can't go /ayKAEN?go/ with rising tone on the 2nd syllable

Yeah, something like that.  I've always perceived the difference more as
/k at n/ vs. /k&n(t)/, which is a very small difference, which is why I
often use "cannot" if there's a danger of ambiguity.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Wed May 26 18:34:34 1999
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 21:34:34 +0300
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <002701bea66c$f01a8060$c79ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.213434.0300.>

On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
>from the simple to the complex.

and then
On Tue, 25 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> If we are going to keep coming back to "complex", perhaps you would care to
> define it for us in terms of this discussion. I talked about ambiguity not
> complexity.

Thank you, Patrick.  Your posting shows more about you and your methods
than I would ever care to put in print, and you have certainly made all
my points for me.

Just one thing though:  When you say

     Gelb, under whom I studied, ...

do you mean that he was your dissertation supvervisor or principal
advisor, or that you took a course from him once, or that you saw him
around the OI on occasion, or that you studied on the second floor
while he worked on the third.

And I should answer your questions that stem from real ignorance
rather than being rhetorical.

> But if you do not care to, tell me the word you would use to distinguish
> between the semantic relationships of 'dog/cat' and 'cat/cats'.

I would use what everybody else who knows how to use a dictionary would
use.  'Dog/cat' is an example of a difference in "lexical meaning":

     lexical meaning n:  the meaning of the base (as in the word _play_)
     in a paradigm (as _plays, played, playing_).
                       Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

while 'cat/cats' is a difference in "grammatical meaning":

     grammatical meaning n:  the part of meaning that varies from one
     inflectional form to another (as from _plays_ to _played_ to
     _playing_).
                                     Ibid.

So 'dog/cat' are lexically different and 'cat/cats' are grammatically
different, but both pairs are semantically different (i.e., have
different meanings).

> What is the method of marking the plural in Chinese nominal forms -- what
> other mechanism?

There are a number.  Most commonly there are "measure words" and
"quantifiers."  Measure words are required between definite quantifiers
(numbers) and nouns, but are usually optional (but sometimes required)
after indefinite quantifiers (e.g., ji "some, a few," haoji "quite a few,"
duo "many, much," etc. [tones not indicated]).  One can also use the
quantifier one (plus measure word) to indicate the indefinite singular.
Demonstratives can be marked for singular and plural by the use of measure
words (-ge for singular, -xie for plural) and these demonstratives can be
used together with nouns to indicate the number of the noun.  Also, the
plural marker of pronouns (-men) is often used to mark the plural in nouns
referring to groups or classes of people.  Otherwise, singular and plural
are generally determined from context, but if elimination of ambiguity is
necessary, there are ways to accomplish it.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 01:59:19 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 20:59:19 -0500
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.205919.0500.>

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 2:52 PM

> If we then limit ourselves to IE evidence, and produce cases where
> consonants are necessary rather than vowels, would that do?

> I offered a long list of possible places where laryngeals, if present, would
> have to be consonants.   Your counter-arguments so far reduce to:  "there
> are no laryngeals involved."   This is in fact not a counter-argument to the
> claim that "if there are laryngeals involved here, they must have been
> consonants, not vowels."

Pat responds:

I do not believe that is a fair characterization of my views.You produced a
list, and we discussed at some length one or two of the items on it.

In the last communication on the subject, I asked you to choose among the
remaining phenomena you attribute to consonantal laryngeals, and we would
discuss that. I believe it is counterproductive to attempt to discuss a
large number proposals simultaneously.

Actually, if I had to summarize my argument against the consonantal nature
of laryngeals in IE (except Hittite), I would say that the phenomena are
reconstructable in terms of lengthened vowels so the presumption is that
they were lengthened vowels, and the burden of proof is on those who propose
their consonantal nature *in IE*.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 04:57:48 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 23:57:48 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.235748.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Monday, May 24, 1999 5:31 PM

> Pat wrote, in response to my rude remarks about kitty litter:

>> But more seriously, yes, I would also claim that these markers had semantic
>> meaning. The IE plural morpheme -*s, I believe, derives from early *s{h}o,
>> 'clan, herd'. This means that its addition caused a compound of the form N +
>> 'clan/herd = animate group'. So the result would have been, in our
>> example, something like 'cat-group'. Now my use of "semantic" may be
>> original (not necessarily better, of course), but I claim that CAT in 'a
>> cat' and CAT in 'cats = cat-group' are *not* semantically different only
>> differently employed. Now I know you will not like this employment of
>> "semantic" so tell me what terminology you prefer to make the distinction I
>> am attempting to make between core meanings (dog/cat) and derived meanings
>> (cat/cats).

Pat  responds:

I did not consider "kitty litter" rude only humorous.

Leo continued:

> Several remarks:

> 1.  It is not clear that there actually was an "IE plural morpheme -*s",
> although there may have been.  But all that we find are morphemes meaning
> "nominative+plural", "dative+plural" etc.  It's not clear that these are
> actually divisible, as e.g. the various morphemes of agglutinating languages
> such as Turkish.  But let this one pass for now.

Pat responds:

It is also certainly not clear that they are not actually divisible.
Actually, the accusative plural is for me the strongest indication since,
accusative -*m + *-s is transformed into -*ns  (apical before an apical for
labial).

Leo continued:

> 2.  There are a few established terminologies.  The plural morpheme of
> English (we definitely do have one) can be called "bound" because it occurs
> only when connected to the "free" morpheme of a root.  It can be said to have
> "grammatical meaning", or be called a "grammatical morpheme".  There are not
> my terms; they're standard.  What's not standard is to say that plural -s
> does not have "semantic" meaning, since (in normal usage) *all* meaning is
> "semantic".

Pat responds:

I am well aware of this usage and terminology.

>>Leo commented:

>>> First, the idea that the family words contain an agent suffix, though old,
>>> is without basis.

>> Pat surpisedly responded:

>> Now, this may be a case properly characterized as "weaseling". Obviously,
>> your "without basis" relies on the qualification "AGENT". I cannot believe
>> that you would believe that the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
>> brother, etc.' *cannot* be analyzed as N/V + -*ter, suffix.  Now you may
>> wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts you
>> in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
>> suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown, employed to mark
>> nuclear family members. Not a position I would care to defend!

Leo continued:

> But you must, if you speak English.  We have several morphemes which have
> merged as -er in English but maintain separate meanings:

> 1.  Agentive -er (speak + -er).  This is borrowed in several Germanic
> languages from Latin -a:rius.

> 2.  Implement -er (bind + -er).  Perhaps one in origin with the above;
> I'm not sure.

> 3.  Comparative -er (old + -er).  This had two forms in Proto-Germanic:
> -iz- and -az-, reflecting PIE -e/os- (note the ablaut).  The two have now
> merged.  The -iz-form is responsible for the umlaut in _elder_.

> 4.  We have a homonym -or in words of Latin origin such as _creator_.
> This suffix has agentive meaning.  Despite its separate origin and
> discrete spelling, a case could be made for including it under No. 1.

> And then of course, we have -er words which do *not* contain any of the
> above, such as _cider_ and _spider_.  So what is wrong with saying that the
> element seen in _father_, _mother_, _brother_, and _daughter_ (but not
> _sister_, where the -t- is a secondary development) is different from the
> agentive suffix?

Pat responds:

According to my dictionary, spider contains agentive -*ter; and cider is not
derived from IE. If IE did have triliteral roots, you might have a point.

Correction noted with regard to 'sister'.

However, I fail to see how the points you have presented relate meaningfully
to the point I am attempting to make.

I claimed above that -*ter, the common component of 'father, mother,
brother, daughter', is not coincidental but a regular component of basic
nuclear family terminology. On the basis of words like *g{^}en6-ter-
(procreator, father), I believe it likely that it should be interpreted as
an agentive. But even if it were not agentive -*ter, it is beyond the bounds
of reasonable scepticism to suppose that its multiple attestations in family
member terminology is not analyzable as a suffix.

>> Pat responded:

>> So far as I can remember, *p6te:{'}r is the only IE root listed in Pokorny
>> that has the form *C6CV:C (if you know of another, at least, admit it is
>> rare?). That, by itself, should alert us to the suspicion that something
>> unusual is going on here.

Leo answered:

> Indeed.  And it should tell us in particular that we are not dealing with the
> agentive suffix, since the alleged verbal root is rare or impossible.  Ah,
> but as in independent, indivisible *word* there would be no problem.

Pat rejoinds:

If we cultivate myopia, perhaps. But 'daughter' seems easily interpretable
as 'milker'; 'brother' as 'bearer'; and, of course, *g{^}en6-ter,
'biological father'. On the strength of this last pattern itself, I would
think the presumption would be to interpret nuclear family member
terminology agentively. On the basis of the many derived terms from *ma:-
(nursemaid), it is rather likely that *ma:te{'}r can be understood as
'nurser'. With this apparent pattern, it would be unlikely that *p6te{'}r is
not similarly analyzable.

Pat continued:

>> Secondly, if we analyze family member terminology as consisting of Root +
>> suffix (agentive or no), *p6- is a strangely formed IE root --- in fact, it
>> cannot be a Normalstufe. *p6- is listed as a zero-grade form of *pa:-, which
>> suggests that whatever *p6- in *p6te:{'}r comes from, it probably had the
>> earlier form *pe/oH-.

Leo commented:

> Problem: Pokorny's *pa:- means 'feed; pasture'.  Add an agent suffix to that
> and you get 'shepherd', not 'father'.  And this aside from the problem of the
> weak grade of the alleged root.

Pat responds:

Well, strange that you missed na{"}hren in his definition. Which means 'to
feed (animal, child); and failed to put that together with *pap(p)a,
'father, *food* (not animal feed!). If the nuclear family terminology under
consideration designated typical functions, 'feeder' for father certainly
would not be amiss.

And frankly, I am at a loss to see any problem with a reduced grade of the
root preceding a suffix (agentive -*ter), which normally takes the
stress-accent. Am I missing something?

<snip>

Pat continued:

>> This is a novel situation, and I have proposed a novel scenario to explain
>> it; sui generis, so, of course, unprovable. I would be interested to learn
>> how you propose to explain it.

Leo responded:

> It's a problem only if you insist on the agent suffix.  Nominal items show
> an astonishing variety of ablaut grades in clearly related, otherwise
identical
> forms.

>> [ Moderator's comment:
>>   The accent in *meH_2'te:r differs from than in *pH_2te:'r, doesn't it?
>>   --rma ]

Pat interjected:
Rich, if one compares Sanskrit ma:ta{'}r and pita{'}r, I confess I cannot
see a difference of stress-accent.

Leo wrote:

> Not in PIE.  Attic Greek has a rule by which oxytones with the pattern
> CV:CV:'C switched to CV:'CV:C.  Pre-Greek must have been *ma:te:'r.  The
> non-initial accent also shows in the operation of Verner's Law in German: OE
> _faeder_, _mo:dor_ from a form with suffix accent beside _bro:thar_ from a
> form with root accent.

> BTW, Pokorny derives says that _mother_ "beruht auf dem Lallwort _ma:_",
> which makes better sense anyway.

Pat, withdrawing:

I refuse to get into another futile discussion of Lallwo{"}rter. Actually,
one of the interseting arguments for monogenesis is the intriguing
similarity of <lallen> all over the world.

<snip>

Leo coninues on a different topic:

> I don't have Larry's dictionary.  But I'll say this point blank: what he
> gives is merely a characteristic of phonemes.  Morphemes must consist of one
> or more phonemes (despite the problem of "zero allomorphs").  It is because
> of this that phonemes are the smallest units capable of *signaling* meaning.
> But they are units of *sound*.  It might be helpful if you included Larry's
> *entire* comment, for what you're citing is simply *not* a definition of a
> phoneme.  See any manual of linguistics which actually discusses the things!

Pat, for Leo's edification:

phoneme . . . n. In many theories of phonology, a fundamental (often *the*
fundamental) unit of phonological structure, an abstract *segment* which is
one of a set of such segments in the phonological system of a particular
language or speech variety, ___often defined as 'the smallest unit which can
make a difference in meaning'___.

>>> Leo continued:

>>> As for ablaut, e:o ablaut is attested for traditional lengthened grade e:
>>> and for traditional "original" e: i.e. eH.  Beside Gk. _pate:r_ 'father' we
>>> find both _phra:to:r_ and _phra:te:r_ 'member of a clan' (orig. 'brother').
>>> And for Gothic _saian_ 'sow' < *seH- we find reduplicated preterite
>>> (originally perfect) _sai-so_ < _*se-soH-_.

>> Pat responded:

>> You have left out the accents: _phra:{'}to:r_ and _phra:{'}te:r_.  Now the
>> phonological environments are apparently identical, and there is no
>> grammatical difference between the two either. So, the "Ablaut" is
>> presumably a deliberate *secondary* device to provide some *semantic*
>> differentiation. Not the best example in my opinion -- a Greek example of
>> something like vrddhi.

Leo responded:

> I have no idea whether it was a deliberate anything.  All I know is that
> short e alternates with short o, and that the two traditional kinds of long
> e: alternate with long o:.  The "lengthened grade" variety also alternates
> with short e/o; the "natural long" ones deriving from vowel + laryngeal
> alternate with traditional schwa.  Once established, it could be exploited.

Pat comments:

And "exploited" it was, to provide a nuance.

Pat continued:

>> To _sai{'}so:_: for this example to be significant to my point, you would
>> have to argue that in IE *se:i- the [e:] is *original* (not the result of
>> *e/oH) which, on the basis of "_*se-soH_", I presume you would not assert.

>> For you to make the point I think you are attempting to make, you need to
>> identify a primary IE [e:] which undergoes Ablaut in situations analogous
>> to [e/o].

Leo questioned:

> I don't follow your logic at all.  Could you explain?

Pat attempts to answer:

If I understand you correctly, you are maintaining that the earliest IE had
an [e:] which was phonemic (contrasted with [e/o]) and was not the result of
a reduction of [He] or [eH]; this is what I presume you mean by "original".

I am asking you to identify an "original" [e:], e.g. in a verbal root,
*Ce:C, which has a perfect stem *Co:C. A root for which we reconstruct *CeHC
will, of course, not qualify.

 <snip>

>> Pat differs:

>> IE "pronouns" in every significant way look and act like nouns --- with
>> the sole exception that the inflections seem to be more conservative.
> ...
>> Outside of a very few simple forms like *me, *te, *se, etc., which might
>> slip in under the rubric of nominal, simple nominal and verbal CV-roots,
>> which had wide semantic ranges, were *differentiated* by additional elements
>> at a very early time --- at least in the languages from which IE derives.
>> If we are unwilling to look beyond IE, then we must say, principally, that
>> the simplest nominal and verbal root-form is CVC.

Leo responds:

> But there you have it!  The IE pronouns neither look nor act like nouns!
> Pushing it back to Nostratic doesn't change anything there, since you're
> saying that they must have been different there too.

Pat, hopefully not patronizingly:

A pronoun is a pro-noun. It can be put in any position syntactically in
which a noun can be employed. To say that pronouns do not "act like nouns"
is completely unjustified!

They do not look like nouns in one regard: they are principally *Ce vs.
*CeC; however, that is due to their frequent enclitic employment where
brevity is recommended. They have retained an earlier form for some usages.
But, on the other hand, *me has *eme (*Hem = *CeC), for some employments
that mocks the normal nominal/verbal *CeC. Also, various particles
like -*g{^}hi created a virtual *CeC format.

In addition, there is the non-pronominal *me-, 'middle', which seems to be
essentially nominal though *Ce.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 05:28:38 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 00:28:38 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.002838.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Monday, May 24, 1999 9:06 PM

R-S commented:

> The lack of contrast between [phin] and non-existent *[pin] ([p] normal in
> _spin_) shows that aspiration is not significant in English, or in other
> words, that [ph] and [p] must be assigned to the same phoneme.  Well and
> good.  Knowing this, we can tell that [phaet] and [baet] are different words.
> But this does not mean that [ph] and [b], or /p/ and /b/, actually *have*
> meaning, as some of the unfortunate wording in Larry's dictionary led Pat to
> conclude.  If they did, we'd have to say that /p-/ and /b-/were prefixes
> attached to the roots /aet/ and /in/.

Pat responds:

Sorry that my phrasing was such that obviously you and Leo thought that a
misinterpretation by me of the wording in Larry's dictionary had led to my
believing that phonemes have meaning. I do not believe that for any modern
human language.

 <snip>

R-S, naseru{"}mpfend:

> Wir vielleicht schon.  Aber doch nicht alle.  Das erfaehrt man hier doch
> staendig.

Pat, mit voller Nase:

Versta{"}nden Sie einmal was ich geschrieben habe, wa{"}ren die
Heckenschu{"}sse viel treffender.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu May 27 10:24:41 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 11:24:41 +0100
Subject: Pre-Basque
In-Reply-To: <005d01bea762$aa70b7e0$9202703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.112441.0100.>

On Wed, 26 May 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> Given the extended nature of the discussion on plosive-liquid
> clusters in pre-Basque, it might be helpful for Larry and/or others
> to reiterate the definition and parameters of the concept
> 'pre-Basque' (=Aquitanian?) and then address the problematic aspects
> of the notion 'proto-Basque' (=reconstruction?). If that is relevant
> to this list, that is.

Sure; glad to.

I apply the name `Pre-Basque' to the earliest unrecorded stage of Basque
which can be substantially reconstructed.  This is the period when
Basque was beginning to borrow words from Latin, and we can reasonably
date it to around 2000 years BP.  For Pre-Basque we have a substantial
phonological reconstruction, which is summarized and justified in Luis
Michelena's book Fonetica Historica Vasca (first edition 1961; second
expanded edition 1977; two later "editions" are essentially just
reprints).  Morphologically, we are much less well off: we can
reconstruct various bits and pieces of earlier morphology, but we can't
in most cases assign any dates.  Lexically, we have a reasonable
understanding of the current and attested words which are most likely to
have been present in Pre-Basque.

I use the label `Pre-Basque' because I consider the use of `Pre-' to be
standard in labeling an unrecorded early form of a single language.
A few of my colleagues prefer `Proto-Basque', but I consider this term
inappropriate: `Proto-' is normally applied to the reconstructed
ancestor of a family containing two or more languages, not to the
ancestor of a single language.  Michelena himself used neither term,
preferring the noncommittal `Old Basque'.

Since Basque has no known relatives, then, there appears to be no scope
for using `Proto-' in connection with it.

The name `Aquitanian' denotes a language which, according to Roman
sources, was spoken at the time of the Roman conquest of Gaul in
southwestern Gaul, between the Garonne and the Pyrenees.  Aquitanian is
sparsely attested, in the form of about 400 personal names and 70 divine
names embedded in Latin inscriptions, almost all of them either votive
or funerary in nature.

The Romans recognized a number of distinct sub-tribes of the
Aquitanians, and, south of the Pyrenees, they recognized a number of
distinct tribes occupying the area of the historical Basque Country.
Roman sources do not comment on the languages used in this southern
region, and hardly any written material survives.  We have a tiny
handful of texts bearing clearly Aquitanian names south of the Pyrenees,
all of them in the eastern part of the region in question.  We may
therefore conclude that Aquitanian was used in Roman times in at least a
part of the modern Spanish Basque Country.  But we have no evidence at
all for Aquitanian speech in the western parts, and it remains an open
question whether Aquitanian was spoken there at the time.  The (few)
personal names surviving there from the Roman period are all IE, and the
region is characterized today by the presence of a number of place names
which are not Basque and which appear to be IE.

Now, as it happens, the Aquitanian names, which are recorded in the
Roman alphabet, are in their apparent phonology strikingly similar to
our reconstructed Pre-Basque.  (Bear in mind that Aquitanian was not
used at all in reconstructing Pre-Basque.)  If our Pre-Basque were
written in the Roman alphabet, using Latin spelling conventions, then we
would expect to see something almost identical to the Aquitanian names
-- phonologically speaking, I mean.

Moreover, a sizeable proportion of the recurrent morphs in the
Aquitanian names can be readily identified with known items in Basque.
This is true for both stems and suffixes.  On top of this, the apparent
morphological structure of the Aquitanian names is identical to what we
find in words and names in Basque during the historical period.
Finally, assuming the correctness of some of the most obvious
Aquitanian-Basque identifications, we find that the Aquitanian personal
names made frequent use of kinship terms and related words like `son'
and `child' -- exactly what we find, independently, to be the case with
the earliest Basque personal names, recorded in the early Middle Ages.

All this is sufficient to persuade almost all specialists that
Aquitanian was an ancestral form of Basque.  But note that the recorded
Aquitanian may not be quite the *direct* ancestor of modern Basque.
Aquitanian is most abundantly recorded in the north, toward the Garonne,
and attestation of the language is much sparser toward the Pyrenees,
sparser still just south of the Pyrenees, and non-existent further west.
It may therefore be the case that most of our recorded names represent a
northern variety of Aquitanian which died out not long after the Roman
conquest, and that modern Basque descends from a somewhat different, and
largely unrecorded, southern variety.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 13:47:39 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 08:47:39 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.084739.0500.>

Dear Brian and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Brian M. Scott <BMScott at stratos.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 11:52 PM

[ moderator snip ]

Brian wrote:

> Contra Gelb:

> [W]riting is defined as _a system of more or less permanent
> marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it
> can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention
> of the utterer_.  By this definition, writing is bound up with
> language; consequently, the widespread practice of recording
> by means of pictures (_pictograms_) of _ideas_ that are not
> couched in a specific linguistic form is excluded.  Such
> pictograms are often designated _forerunners_ of writing (e.g.
> Gelb 1952), but in fact writing systems (or _scripts_) do not
> develop from them (DeFrancis 1989).

> [Peter T. Daniels in _The World's Writing Systems_, Daniels & Wm. Bright,
> eds.]

Pat responds:

I prefer Gelb's definition.

[ moderator snip ]

Brian wrote:

> That mixed writing system (or perhaps, in light of recent finds, the
> roughly contemporary Egyptian mixed writing system) is the earliest
> _writing_ system of which we have record.  Purely pictorial records that
> precede these systems, not being writing, cannot sensu stricto be read.

Pat responds:

Using Peter's arbitrary distinction. I prefer not to.

[ moderator snip ]

>> Pat commented:

>> Yes, actually alphabets are the most complex system of all --- how clever of
>> you to recognize it! It requires analyzing a morpheme, which has meaning,
>> into meaningless parts.

Brian commented:

> The Sumerians and Egyptians had already performed such analyses with
> their mixed (logosyllabic) systems.  Moreover, you are confusing two
> completely different (and often roughly complementary) things: the
> amount of ingenuity needed to develop a system, and the ease and
> simplicity of its use.

Pat responds:

Well, I am glad that you agree with me that Egyptian was logosyllabic rather
than logoalphabetic. We are in the minority, you know.

Your last comment is, if I may coin a word, alphabetocentric. I have no
doubt that students of the e-dubba were as capable of writing sentences with
cuneiform as alphabetically-trained youngsters at an equivalent age.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu May 27 14:17:41 1999
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 08:17:41 -0600
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.081741.0600.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

> Actually, your comments show a jejeune understanding of "evolutionary".
> Evolution does not promise "improve"ment only change that is successful in
> enhancing survival.

I'm sorry, Pat, but your statement about Evolution here shows EXACTLY why
modern languages (and any other language we have any evidence of) are NOT
evolving.  Let's take the loss of the second person singular forms in Modern
English (the 'thee' and 'thou' forms).  What was "survival enhancing" about
that?  What it did was make English hugely ambiguous in terms of specifying the
number of addressees.  Enhanced survival?  How about the Great Vowel Shift?
Did it lessen the number of distinguishable vowels in English?  No (unless you
don't count diphthongs).  Did it increase or decrease ambiguity?  No.  What was
the "survival enhancing" effect?  Zero.  Were speakers of Anglo-Saxon any less
able to cope with their environment than we are?  I don't think so.  Could we
discuss nuclear physics without all the Greek, Latin, and French loanwords that
entered the language after Hastings and use just our Anglo-Saxon heritage with
compounding?  Absolutely.  The Icelanders do it just fine.  As I have asked you
dozens of times before Pat, where's your hard evidence?  You always rely on
"logic".  "Logic" says that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and
that the earth is stationary.  "Facts" proved otherwise.

John McLaughlin
Utah State University


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu May 27 17:48:40 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 13:48:40 EDT
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.134840.EDT.>

>Patrick C. Ryan

>As far as language change is concerned, there is no observable process in
>this universe which is not, at least potentially, understandable,

-- that's not the issue.  You have been arguing that languages change in a
particular direction; ie., that they become more complex, less ambiguous, and
more expressive.

As has been exhaustively demonstrated by postings which you apparently do not
read, the type of linguistic change which we can observe or reconstruct does
_not_ involve languages becoming more complex, does _not_ involve languages
becoming less ambiguous, and does _not_ involve languages becoming more
expressive.

PIE is has the same overall degree of complexity, ambiguity, and expressivity
as its descendant English, 5-6000 years down the road.

With the addition of some vocabulary for items and concepts developed since
then, we could conduct this conversation in PIE without the least loss of
precision or any other functional aspect of communication.  The languages are
essentially interchangeable in that respect.

The same can be said of every language spoken by humans now, and of every
language humans have ever spoken that we have any record of, and of every
solid reconstructed language as well.  We could say exactly the same things
in Sumerian, Chinese, or Proto-Semitic.

The fact that, at some point over 50,000 years ago or 150,000 years ago, our
remote ancestors may have started out with a primitive language of grunts and
gestures is, to coin a phrase, irrelevant.  Irrelevant to any extant
language; irrelevant to PIE.

By the time any language which has left an unambiguous observable trace came
along, language had _already_ developed to the current state.


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu May 27 18:49:47 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 18:49:47 GMT
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b371d0edf749@[207.120.3.54]>
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.184947.GMT.>

Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>btw: ?qui dicen los judi/os de eso de comer a las judi/as?

Same as Catalan nuns, I suppose...

>	Here you confused me. I thought vetch was alfalfa. For me,
>algarroba is carob --which is what you use to make "fake chocolate"

There's two kinds of algarroba: the small vetch (vicia sativa,
also called "algarrobilla", "alverja", "arveja", "ervilla" or
"veza") and the larger carob (ceratonia siliqua).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From maxdashu at LanMinds.Com  Thu May 27 19:02:50 1999
From: maxdashu at LanMinds.Com (Max Dashu)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 12:02:50 -0700
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.120250.0700.>

> A very few other languages
>-- such as Proto-Oto-Manguean -- have been reconstructed back to around
>the same time depth.

What is this, or rather, where was it?

Max Dashu


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Thu May 27 20:51:36 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 15:51:36 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.155136.0500.>

"Brian M. Scott" wrote:
> Moreover, you are confusing two
> completely different (and often roughly complementary) things: the
> amount of ingenuity needed to develop a system, and the ease and
> simplicity of its use.

I'd say it's just a matter of definition.  Alphabets are certainly very
sophisticated, and quite complicated in origin, but very simple (and
flexible) in use, while logographic systems are very unsophisticated,
quite simple in origin (relatively speaking), but very complex in use.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From jer at cphling.dk  Tue May 25 15:09:15 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 17:09:15 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <00aa01bea485$887c3680$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.170915.0200.>

On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> Dear Jens and IEists:

>  ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
> Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 5:12 PM

> Jens wrote:

>> I have yet to see a really cogent argument for an IE (or pre-IE) ergative.
>> One is constantly served mere descriptions of what the system would be
>> like if it is accepted, but nothing to convince one that it _must_ be
>> accepted. I'm not saying that pre-PIE was _not_ ergative, just that we
>> cannot really know. Practically all the literature on the subject simply
>> boasts that the author knows what an ergative is and so is without
>> scholarly interest. It is as if I would claim that PIE had a definite
>> article, just because I know what that is.

> Pat responds:

> The argument of Beekes on pp. 193-4 of his book seems strong to me.

Perhaps we should stick to discussing our own ideas and not the work of
third party. Let me just say this: In the place you refer to I find the
two well-known observations, (1) neuters have no case in *-s, so
presumably that signalled a role inanimates mostly did not have, and (2)
also the gen.sg. has an /s/, and together they form a nice ergative of
the Eskimo kind. There is also the speculation that the
erg.-turned-genitive lives on in the nom. of the o-stems and thereby
constitutes that class. - The lack of a nominative marker in neuters would
indeed be well explained by their never playing the agent role in
transitive constructions, and that could in itself justify the theory
which just could be true. However, the support from the genitive
evaporates, for the two s's involved do not have identical morphophonemic
properties. And too much is now known about the thematic class to allow it
to be a post-ablaut creation. But perhaps the fundamental differences we
observe between the two morphemes (nom. *-s and gen. *-os, after the
thematic vowel *-o-s and *-e-s + -yo respectively) will some day turn out
not to matter, as I am sure the story of the thematic class does not.
Still, this is _very_ slender evidence, and it is not borne out by the
pronouns which oppose an unmarked nom. to a marked acc. (but that would be
no worse than, say, the nom. : acc. opposition in Eskimo pronouns which
differs from the ergative syntax of the nouns).

> However, there is also the typological angle. It is my impression that most
> typologists believe that nominative-type languages developed from
> ergative-type languages.

I know of a number of cases for which _the opposite_ is above suspicion -
and not of a single one demanding what you say (but that may well be due
to ignorance on my part).

[...]

Jens


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu May 20 01:40:05 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 20:40:05 -0500
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <001f01bea097$8bf13820$0a01703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.204005.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

A major problem with Spanish dictionaries [even those found in the US] is
that almost all of them only have vocabulary from Spain. Those that do have
American Spanish tend to be outdated. The meanings your dictionary gives
for gandul are not normally used or understood outside of Spain. Gandul as
"pigeon pea" is understood by Spaniards that I've met.

>From: Max W Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
>Date: Sunday, May 16, 1999 3:31 AM

>><Gandul> doesn't seem to be slang in contemporary European Spanish, nor
>>does it seem to have the meaning `pigeon pea' there. García de Diego
>>says it's from Arabic <gandur> `majo' (I haven't got Corominas DCEH
>>handy).

>>BTW <gandula> is `deck-chair' in Catalan; a nice metonymy.

>[Ed Selleslagh]

>According to my Spanish-Dutch dictionary (Van Goor's Handwoordenboek, 4th
>ed.) 'Gandul' has two meanings: 1. (familiar) lazy, etc., 2. soldier of an
>old Moorish army corps in Africa and Granada (no etymology given).  I wonder
>if 1. stems from 2. The meaning 'pigeon pea' is not mentioned.
>'Gandula' is quoted as regular Spanish for deck-chair vel sim.

>Ed.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
MUW
Columbus MS 39701
rmccalli at sunmuw1.muw.edu


From artabanos at mail.utexas.edu  Sat May  1 22:06:34 1999
From: artabanos at mail.utexas.edu (Tom Wier)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 17:06:34 -0500
Subject: -t versus no consomant in 3p sg verb forms in common IE
Message-ID: <SAT.1.MAY.1999.170634.0500.>

Anthony Appleyard wrote:

>   But re Greek present {luei}: did this form come from *{lueit}?; or
> perhaps it never ended in a {-t} in the first place. IE *{lueti} would >
> Attic Greek **{luesi}.
>   Perhaps in early IE times the final -t was only present when the verb
> had no noun subject, and ultimately derives from an adhering postposited
> pre-IE subject pronoun.

Well, consider another fact:  intervocalic /s/  in Greek was lost sometime
after the fricativization that you mentioned above:  *lueti > *luesi, which
with the loss of /s/, would produce /luei/, which is the attested form.

[ Moderator's comment:
  The Attic development of Pre-Greek *t > s takes place after the loss of
  intervocalic *s, or we'd never have had any evidence for it.  It is therefore
  irrelevant to Mr. Appleyard's question.
  --rma ]

=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos at mail.utexas.edu>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and
oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil
spirits at the dawn of day. - Thomas Jefferson
========================================================


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May  1 14:18:42 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 09:18:42 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <SAT.1.MAY.1999.091842.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 1999 4:44 PM

<snip>

>> The main problem, however, is one that I think we run into far more often
>> than we generally recognize, and that is that some linguists *contrive* very
>> complicated rules to be able to ascribe a common origin to forms that are
>> simply not commensurable.

> It only makes things worse if you reconstruct _against_ the rules: The
> dual forms mentioned can all derived from *-e, the Greek one alone also
> from *-H1, but then the forms indeed are not commensurable. BTW, I fail to
> see the serious objection (if it is meant to be one): What is complicated
> by deriving /-e/ of one language and /-e/ of another from a common
> protoform *-e ?

But this is not what Beekes is doing. On pp. 194-195 (comp. IE Ling.), he
attempts to ascribe the common basis -*H{1}e to the animate consonant stems.

He then proceeds to identify an inanimate (neuter) -*iH{1}.

I would maintain that the great majority of the (animate and inanimate)
forms can be more simply from *-y.

 <snip>

> It even looks as if Beekes considers the IE languages more closely
> related to each other than to Egyptian.

Ha! But, of course, so do I.

>> I interpret these facts (and others) to indicate that Nostratic had a
>> collective suffix -w(V), and that this suffix was one of those employed
>> to form a dual in IE.

> I fail to see that such a morpheme has left any palpable imprint on IE.
> But show us where!

>> I would analyze Sanskrit -a:(u) as (C)wa in opposition to Beekes' -H{1}e.

>> [ Moderator's comment:
>>   The final -u in the Sanskrit dual is not Indo-European, but an Indic
>>   development that is not present even in Iranian.
>>   --rma ]

In every such case, we have the option of identifying an innovation, or, far
less likely but still possible, a retention of an original feature in only
one branch.

> It is present in Goth. ahtau, Skt. aSta:/-au, Av. ashta. It appears to be
> a special Indic _choice_ out of an Indo-Iranian pair of sandhi variants
> which proceed from an IE pair of variants.

Based on the Egyptian evidence, I prefer to see the -*(u) of *okto:(u) as a
numeral-siffix rather than a dual. I am aware of several attempts to
identify a 'four' root that might have served as a basis for a dual meaning
'eight' though, IMHO, they have not been successful.

<snip>

>> Of course, there are sporadic forms like Greek no{'}: from *no:wi, combining
>> *ne/o + *wi:, 'two', and a 'laryngeal' is not necessary to explain the <o:>
>> in a stress-accented open syllable; a mechanism as simple as transference of
>> length back to the stress-accented syllable from *-wi: could explain it.

> Are you talking about a metathesis of quantity, *nowi: > *no:wi? If so,
> what makes you think that was a rule? Or is it an invention - mother
> of comedy, huh - like some of my early stages?

Well, I thought it was generally accepted that stress-accent in an open
syllable could be lengthened, and that stress-unaccented syllables are
shortened. Have I just invented that?

> [... On the 1st person dual pronoun:]

>> I [...] would go the further step of suggesting that a 'laryngeal' is not
>> required to be reconstructed at all.

> Then what would be the enclitic form meaning "us two" in IE? */no:/ ending
> in a long vowel?

I am going to pass the wand. What do you think it is?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May  1 16:56:18 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 11:56:18 -0500
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <SAT.1.MAY.1999.115618.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 1999 10:42 AM

> On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> [...]
>> (JER:)

>>> Even so, the non-occurrence of the very FORM *mwe (in any
>>> function) does look as strong evidence for a rule *mw- > *m-.

>> Not strong! Not evidence! This seems completely illogical to me.

> But you can't deny the existence of *te and *se along with *twe and *swe,
> a variation for which there seems to be no tangible reason.

If you ever find anything really "tangible" in our speculations, please let
me know. If I cannot bottle it, I would at least like to photograph it.

What is so "intangible" about supposing that *te is the basal form, that
there was an inflection - *-wV which produced -*twe, and that the original
significance of -*twe being lost, both forms came into use as bases for
other forms but with a bias towards the form with -*wV for the nominative
(through its former topical use): -*tu/u:?

> Nor can one
> deny that *me *te *se look parallel (and inflect in very parallel
> fashion). Is the non-occurrence of a **mwe to join the w-forms *two *swe
> then not a thing to be noted and explained? What if we do have rules to
> explain it - isn't it then worth talking about?

I cannot but agree with the anticipation of both your questions but, it
seems, that *mwe probably never got as well established as a topical because
of the suppletion of *eg^-.

> [On Gk. mo:^mar : amu:'mo:n as reflecting *mwoH-/*muH-:]

>> Irrelevant to the question of the pronominal form *mwe but, in any case,
>> why not *mouH-/*muH?

> Because the Gk. full-grade form is not **mow(V)-, but /mo:-/.

And, are you asserting, that IE *mow(V)- could *not* result in Gk. mo:{^}-?

<snip>

>> Why do you not give us your best
>> arguments for proposing a non-Hittite <m/w> alternation *outside of the
>> pronoun series*?

> I am not sure there was such an alternation elsewhere. I have found two
> cases where in-depth analysis leads me to postulate *-G-m- (G being the
> dual marker, I suggest a voiced velar fricative, but do not insist on it)
> as an older form of what I find surfacing as *-w- or *-H3w-. In one case
> the *-m- is the 1st person marker, in the other it is the marker of the
> accusative. Since I cannot believe that the 1st person and the accusative
> was one semantic entity, the homonymy must be accidental, so that the
> covariation can only be due to real phonetic change, i.e. a sound law
> *-Gm- > *-Gw- (~ *-w-).

This is where it would be very helpful to extend your view beyond IE. Even
though Nostratic and early IE might have a vowel system similar to Sanskrit
(basically monovocalic), the language that preceded Nostratic may not have
been so structured.

And, I think it was not. I think it had a *me, in which the <e> was not
subject to apophony, and thus was truly phonemic --- which meant
'converser', and generally covered the semantic range of the 1st person.

I think it also had a *ma, in which the <a> was not subject to apophony, and
thus was truly phonemic --- which meant 'on', and was transfered to serve as
an accusative for animates.

<snip>

> Your task is to demonstrate the youth of the dual. You could do this by
> showing us that its forms are derived according to rules of younger
> periods than those of the plural. In that case the dual should be more
> directly transparent than the plural. If anything, the dual is more
> _opaque_ than the plural. If the y's of some dual forms are there to
> differentiate, then demonstrate that such is their business elsewhere and
> that they have been implemented by the pertinent rules.

> [...]

>>>> I do not assume that the basal form is *tu(:), and so cannot justify
>>>> migrating <u>'s.

>>> Then why not change your assumption about 'thou' and get the benefits?

Whether you agree with my reasons for those assumptions or not, until I find
better reasons, and make other assumptions, I will have to stick to what I
have said.

And, although you do not seem tofeel that Egyptian evidence is very
significant, one of my reasons is the Egyptian pattern of (for the second
person singular) -T, for possessive and verbal affix vs. Tw, an "accusative"
and stative "subjective".

 <snip>

> I would be serious even over a beer. The "benefits" I'm talking about
> comprise the possibility to explain more in a coherent and principled way,
> in general experience no bad measure for closeness to the truth, if not
> without its pitfalls.

I learned a long time ago not to be "too" serious when drinking.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sat May  1 16:43:04 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 17:43:04 +0100
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SAT.1.MAY.1999.174304.0100.>

>> Pat said:

>>> I do not dispute that 'laryngeals' were consonantal in Nostratic but by
>>> Indo-European, I believe their consonantal had been lost except for
>>> Hittite.

>> (c) Reduplication of roots beginning with a laryngeal.   We find an
>> unexpected -i-: e.g. gan-igm-at < Hgen-Hgn-.

>I am not really sure why this is unexpected.

I don't understand your argument, Pat.   If the H's had lost their
consonantal value, as you claim, then they are either vowels or
non-existent.
(a) If they were vowels, there is no explanation for the non-appearance of
them at the beginning of these sanskrit roots.
(b) If they were non-existent, they could not magically produce an -i- when
the root is reiterated.

In other words,
(a) an original IE *Vgen  would not produce the attested root gan, but
*Vgan.
(b) an original IE root *gen would not produce the attested gan-i-gm-, but
gan-gm-.
(c) Only an original IE root *Hgan can produce this pattern of attested root
gan, but repeated gan-i-gam < Hgen-Hgn.

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May  1 17:16:16 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 12:16:16 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SAT.1.MAY.1999.121616.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 1999 6:36 PM

> On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> [...]

>> Rich continues:

>>> Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage of
>>> Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a
>>> language, it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may
>>> alternate with other sounds in the language because of morphological rules
>>> or unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.

Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

> I think he violates an even more fundamental rule: If a segment is opposed
> to zero, it exists!

Differo, ergo sum.

But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
certain.

> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg in
> *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does not
> detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
stress-accentuation: *"-t(i) and *-"te.

IMHO, the morpheme for the second and third persons, containing <t>, has a
unitary origin: *T{H}O, 'tribe-member'.

<snip>

> Thus, in Sanskrit, short /a/ is the only true vowel demanded to allow
> an unambiguous notation of all (normal) words. This is a one-vowel system
> of the kind dismissed as a typological impossibility for PIE. - I rush to
> add that the acceptability of this analysis for Sanskrit does not make it
> correct for PIE which, for completely independent reasons, appears to need
> at least the vowels /a, e, o/ on the phonemic level - and even long /a:,
> e:, o:/ and underlying /i, u/ (opposed to /y, w/!) on an abstract
> morphophonemic level.

> In Sanskrit, as in PIE, the rules stipulating a given sonant/semivowel to
> appear syllabic or nonsyllabic are relatively clear. Such an element is
> nonsyllabic when contiguous with a vowel, otherwise it is syllabic. Only
> Sievers and a touch of analogy compromise predictability.

Well, whatever else we may agree or disagree on, I am truly gratified that
we can see eye to eye on this. I tried to make this point with Allan Bomhard
for seven years (approx.), and could never succeed in getting him to see
it --- nor its implications for Nostratic.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May  2 08:53:57 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 09:53:57 +0100
Subject: The Neolithic Hypothesis (Germanic)
Message-ID: <SUN.2.MAY.1999.095357.0100.>

Steve said:>
>1) no -s or *-s is a 3rd.p.sg. personal marker: Hittite, Tocharian, Germanic.
>3) *-(i)sk-: Armenian.
>4) s-preterite: Italic, Celtic, Albanian.
>5) s-aorist: Greek, Indo-Iranian, Slavic(-Baltic).>>

Firstly, did a number 2 get omitted?  I'd be interested.

Secondly, if the Italic form is not classed with the Greek, then the
Sanskrit cannot be either.  Italic, Greek and Sanskrit share the formation,
but the meaning is differently handled in all three languages.  The Sanskrit
aorist is not the Greek aorist - it has, if anything, a perfective meaning.

Greek:
 Aorist: secondary endings:  "timeless" or, with augment, narrative past.
 Perfect:  perfect endings:   state resulting from previous action

Sanskrit:
 Aorist:  secondary endings:  narrative past, occasionally state resulting
from past action.
 Perfect:  perfect endings:  narrative past (often parallel to aorist or
imperfect, and not distinguishable from them)

Latin:
  Endings:
    Aorist endings survive in 3 sing, and possibly 1 plural;
    Perfect ending survives in 1 sing and possibly 1 plural;
    Others are unclear:  2 sing and plural is possibly a blend of aorist and
perfect endings, and 3 plural shows an adaptation of the perfect in -r;

 Stem Formation:
    All but one of the IE forms can be attested, often on the same root:
eg, from pango:
 (i) pepigi (zero grade reduplication, i.e. either generalised from the
plural or an aorist form, as also found - on different roots - in Greek and
Sanskrit);
 (ii) panxi  (early form:  s-aorist)
 (iii) pe:gi (early form - long vowel aorist)
      The one form that cannot be found in Latin is the reduplication-plus-o
grade which is the commonest form in Greek and Sanskrit.   All Latin
reduplications have zero grade, and all o grade forms lack reduplication.

Meaning:
  narrative past or near past (like English "I have done")
  It is often said that it also had the same meaning as the Greek
resultative perfect, but this develops only after contact with, and profound
influence by, Greek.  Cicero's "vixerunt" (literally "they have lived")
meaning "they are dead" would be a true Greek perfect - but this usage is
perhaps not native to Latin.

So Latin and Sanskrit both fail to distinguish aorist from perfect as Greek
does, although their "failure" takes different forms.

Peter


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun May  2 09:26:15 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 09:26:15 GMT
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.16.19990427222041.3837e5c8@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu>
Message-ID: <SUN.2.MAY.1999.092615.GMT.>

"Roslyn M. Frank" <roz-frank at uiowa.edu> wrote:

>On that note, I'm curious. Miguel, did you come across any reference to a
>feminine form for <chandro> as "gandul, etc." in the dictionary you are
>using. What exactly was the source you were using? (Thanks in advance for
>the bibliographic reference).

The word does not appear in any of my Spanish dictionaries, or so
I thought, until I happened to see it in my 1954 (6th) edition of
the Espasa (Diccionario Enciclope'dico Abreviado):

CHANDRO. adj. Ar. Perezoso, desalin~ado, holgaza'n.

[Where Ar. stands for "Aragone's"]

That's all.  I then did an Altavista search for "chandro", which
yielded two or three Web pages containing Aragonese vocabularies,
confirming what the Espasa says, but not adding any further
information (e.g. about the etymology of the word).  FWIW:

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/6243/diccionario.html
http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Dell/5055/curiosi.html

It's probably merely a coincidence that, apparently, Chandro is
also a name to give to your GSD (German Shepherd Dog), as
officially recognized by the Verein fuer Deutsche Schaeferhunde.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au  Mon May  3 09:31:49 1999
From: jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au (Jon Patrick)
Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 19:31:49 +1000
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 23 Apr 1999 17:12:32 +0100."
 <Pine.GSO.4.03.9904231615090.1931-100000@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <MON.3.MAY.1999.193149.1000.>

    Date:       Fri, 23 Apr 1999 17:12:32 +0100 (BST)
    From:       Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>

    On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:
   [LT]
    [on my claim that Pre-Basque did not permit plosive-liquid clusters]

    [A plosive is any one of /p t k b d g/;
    a liquid is any one of /l ll r rr/.]
    [JP]
    > Further to Larry's assertion that the plosive-liquid cluster was not
    > available in early euksara and have been elimenated I have found the
    > following entries made by Azkue that he asserts are native words.

I note that my original reference referred to native words and hence the
diversion of this response into "ancient" words is just that.

    [JP]
     Larry would you say that there is not one word in this list that is
    > not problematic for your thesis>, that is you can source every single
    > one of these words from outside euskara. I would be certainly
    > grateful for the source of each of them.
   [LT]
    Let's start with a couple of clarifications.

    First, I claim only that Pre-Basque did not permit such clusters.  In
    fact, these clusters apparently remained impossible in Basque for quite
    a few centuries after the Roman period, but eventually, under Romance
    influence, they became acceptable in Basque.  Today they are moderately
    frequent.

    Second, there is a big difference between a word which is *native* and a
    word which is *ancient*.  These two are independent.  For example:

    <snip>
    Third, Azkue does not claim that the words entered in his dictionary are
    native.  On the contrary, he declares explicitly, in section IX of his
    prologue, that he is entering words of foreign origin which are well
    established in Basque -- and a very sensible policy this is, too.
    It would have absurd to produce a dictionary of Basque which excluded
    such everyday words as <liburu> `book', <lege> `law', <bago> `beech',
    <diru> `money' and <eliza> `church', merely because these are of foreign
    origin.

As you presented in a later message and which arrived as I was preparing this
response the relevant section of Azkue's dictionary is Section XXIV.5, which
states that the words in uppercase are primitives or non-derivatives  "les
mots en capitales ou majuscules sont primitifs ou non derives" (pardon the
lack for accents)
These are the words I sent to you in the previous email. I believe my comment
"he asserts are native words" is a valid interpretation of his work. I was
particularly concerned that your first email did not reference this section
and was going to refer you to it. Now it appears that you are aware of the
section and was remiss in not referring to it in your first message.

   [LT]
    That said, I cannot possibly comment on every word in Jon's long list.

Why not? They constitute the whole corpus of material that Azkue has presented
which is contrary to your claim. I doubt that any such list has ever been
compiled before for basque scholars to investigate. Here is the perfect
opportunity for you to settle once and for all if your claim can be
substantiated. Do you have no wish to explore and re-investigate old knowledge
no matter how well established it is, in the light of new evidence? Is there
no  sense of true scientific exploration in your spirit where everything is
always up for reappraisal?

In terms of examples you have chosen and the tone of the remainder of your
message I can only say I feel you have totally compromised you usual high
standards of scholarship. You were asked:
" Larry would you say that there is not one word in this list that is
 not problematic for your thesis,..."

and you chose not to answer that question. Rather you selectively ignored the
bulk of the evidence and chose the most extreme examples of the total set to
covertly ridicule my attempt to explore and understand this claim and in the
end divert the topic to a comic play off on words. As basque scholars know,
you included, the Azkue dictionary has its flaws but it is also a fine piece
of scholarship, and you have applauded his work in your own book, so any
material based on his dictionary deserves close scrutiny, despite the fact we
know we will find some clear mistakes.
 I have seen many examples in this list and on other lists where you have
insisted that claims for phenomena are unjustified because there is no
supporting evidence. Yet in this case you are prepared to omit evidence that
can be rightfully presented for appraisal. Can we expect that on other
occasions you have also played fast and free with omitting legitimate evidence
for appraisal because it didn't suit your case?

yours
jon

[ moderator snip ]

Jon
______________________________________________________________
The meaning of your communication is the response you get


From sharadj at wipinfo.soft.net  Wed May  5 05:31:49 1999
From: sharadj at wipinfo.soft.net (Sharad Joshi)
Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 11:01:49 +0530
Subject: language comparisons
Message-ID: <WED.5.MAY.1999.110149.0530.>

[ Moderator's comment:
  I will make an exception and post any replies which are also CC'd to the
  author, who is not a list member.
  --rma ]

Apologies in advance if this is off-topic. If so, please point me in right
direction, i'll walk out.

Where can i find comparison of grammers of the existing languages. If
there are any pointers on the net, it would be best.

Thank you in advance
Sharad.

P.S.  I am not subscribed to this list, so please mail me personally.


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Fri May  7 12:42:30 1999
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 15:42:30 +0300
Subject: Grimm's Law and Predictability (ex Re: The Neolithic
 Hypothesis)
In-Reply-To: <cfc805b8.2456973d@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.7.MAY.1999.154230.0300.>

On Tue, 27 Apr 1999 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 4/26/99 3:32:41 PM, whiting at cc.helsinki.fi wrote:

><<Predictability and repeatability are
>indeed the hallmarks of a sound scientific theory.>>

>I'm happy we agree about something, more or less.

Actually, I suspect that we would or could agree about a great
deal if you could curb the tendency to jump on the first conclusion
that comes along without looking to see where it is going or even
which direction it is headed in.  This method will always get you
somewhere, but it will seldom get you where you really want to go.
When the evidence seems to disagree with your assumptions you
should question both the evidence and your assumptions.

><<But they are the results of hypothesis testing, not the basis for
>hypothesis formulation and testing. >>

>Scientifically valid hypotheses (be they right or wrong)
>"predict" results and this is the basis of experimentation.  The
>term "predictability" may be somewhat arbitrary, but once again
>it is the common term of art.

But scientifically invalid hypotheses can also "predict" results
that may be the basis of experimentation.  And such hypotheses
are sometimes apparently confirmed by experimentation.  But
eventually it (usually) gets figured out that the results that
were "predicted" by the invalid hypothesis were also predicted
by another hypothesis that no one had even thought up yet.

You are quite correct that this is a term of art.  These people
are playing a game called Vetenskap.  The game is played by
bringing your scientific research to the attention of a small
committee based in Sweden.  First prize in Vetenskap is an
all-expense-paid trip to Stockholm to meet the King of Sweden.
Oh, and while you are there, you get to pick up a medal and a
certificate and about a million dollars in cash.  There is no
second prize.  Now since, as we have already agreed,
predictability is an important aspect of good science, people
who are playing Vetenskap want to make it clear that their
scientific work predicts so they make extensive use of terms
like "our hypothesis predicts" to express the idea that "our
hypothesis accounts for."  Since good science predicts, they
want to make sure that everyone knows that their hypothesis
predicts and therefore is good science.  Not everyone who uses
this terminology is playing Vetenskap at the top level, but there
is still tough competition for research funds, so, as you say,
"hypothesis predicts" is the common term of art.

But we seem to have undergone quite a role reversal here since
the days when you rather stridently asserted that

     There should be NO question that "usage" overwhelmingly says
     that the "definition" of a word is the "dictionary
     definition."

in response to my observation that

     Contrary to popular opinion, dictionaries do not define
     words (Academies do that, or try to) but only record
     usage.

Now you are claiming that the "dictionary definition" is
irrelevant and usage determines meaning entirely, while I am
constantly dragging out the dictionary to show that a word
is not defined the way that you use it.

<snip of three quotations obviously obtained from a web search
for the phrase "hypothesis predicts">

>What is most relevant about the three quotes above (as well as
>thousands of others) is that they all include the phrase
>"hypothesis predicts."  As a matter of language the two terms
>very often come together in this way in scientific usage.  And
>this reflects clearly an understanding that the "predictions" of
>the hypothesis are what is being tested.

But this is not the issue.  It is already agreed that hypotheses
can make predictions and these predictions can be tested by
experiment so you are wasting your time demonstrating something
that doesn't need to be demonstrated while everyone else is
saying "ho hum" and "so what?"  No one questions that some
hypotheses make predictions or that you will find a lot of
references on the web by searching for "hypothesis predicts."
You will also find a lot of references by searching for "bus
plunges" but this does not mean that it is a necessary
characteristic of busses to plunge or that anything that plunges
is a bus.

So one could paraphrase your little homily about "hypothesis
predicts" to apply to "bus plunges":

     As a matter of language the two terms very often come
     together in this way in journalistic usage.  And this
     reflects clearly an understanding that the "plungings"
     of the busses are what is being described.

And this does not prove anything more about the definition of
"bus" or "plunge" than the original does about the definition of
"hypothesis" or "predict."  The simple fact is that "predict" is
not part of the definition of "hypothesis" and "hypothesis" is
not part of the definition of "predict."  "Bird" and "fly" are
often linked as subject and predicate, but this does not mean
that all birds fly or that anything that flies is a bird.

So your contention

    The basic idea is that a hypothesis or premise ought to
    predict observable results.  Otherwise it cannot be tested.

is not only a non-sequitur, it is a non-sequitur based on a false
premise.  Some hypotheses do not make predictions with observable
results.  Hypotheses that do not make predictions with observable
results can still be tested for scientific validity.

Obviously you only know of one kind of hypothesis (the kind that
predicts) and you only know of one way to test a hypothesis (by
experimentation to verify predictions).  And this limited
perspective keeps you from being confused about what you think a
hypothesis is (something that predicts) and what predictability
is (something that can by hypothesized about [with a hypothesis
being, of course, something that predicts]).  This is so circular
that I'm surprised that you didn't meet yourself on the way back.

>Whether that is philosophically right or wrong is another
>matter.

I know this will come as a shock to you, but scientific method is
a philosophical concept.  It belongs to a branch of philosophy
called epistemology which deals with knowledge (scientia) and its
limits.  Basically epistemology tries to clarify what we know and
how we know it.  So whether scientific method or some particular
aspect of it is "philosophically right or wrong" can hardly be
considered "another matter."  Scientific method *is* a philosophy,
and whether a method is scientific or not *is* a philosophical
matter.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Mon May 10 05:41:35 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 00:41:35 -0500
Subject: The Indo-European Hypothesis [was Re: The
 NeolithicHypothesis]-Second post
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.004135.0500.>

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
> Also, the traits of a particular microbe do not transfer to other unrelated
> strains.  If common traits, they develop independently.  In language,
> effective traits can be borrowed in their full maturity.

Actually, that is a common feature of microbes and language.  Viruses
and bacteria can mix genes.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Mon May 10 13:49:53 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 08:49:53 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.084953.0500.>

Dear Peter and Nostraticists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Whale <peter at petegray.freeserve.co.uk>
Sent: Friday, April 30, 1999 2:59 PM

> SOmeone (depedning how many arrows there were before the quote) said:

>>. IE CiC does not show up in AA as normal C-C but rather always
>>>as C-y-C.

> Perhaps this is because only words with AA C-y-C were suggested as cognates.
> Nostratic is still very young - so is this a case of theory coming before
> evidence?

In an effort to accumulate cognates, the quantity of which would tip the
balance of evidence, Nostraticists have overlooked no possible cognates ---
even when the phonology was totally bizarre.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Mon May 10 17:16:52 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 12:16:52 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.121652.0500.>

Pat Ryan wrote in response to the following:

>>>> Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage of
>>>> Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a
>>>> language, it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may
>>>> alternate with other sounds in the language because of morphological rules
>>>> or unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.
>
>Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

More precisely, we must say that it *could indicate* a semantic difference.  In
English, /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct, even though _either_ means
the same no matter how it is pronounced in that word.  Nor do they
indicate a semantic difference in the context /l_t/, there being no word
*_leet_ to contrast with _light_.  It's the semantic difference between _meet_
and _might_ that shows that /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct; we cannot
say that phonemes ever *produce* a semantic difference.

[stuff omitted]

>But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>certain.

He doesn't.  For his "pre-stress" stage, he specifically posits "A
non-segmental phoneme /^/, syllabicity" (_PIEP_, p. 112).  For the stage
"pre-IE with phonemic stress", /^/ is non-segmental, like the phonemes /"/
("maximum stress") and /'/ ("minimum stress"), but he asserts that /"^/ (a
sequence? or simultaneous?) "becomes segmental; allophone [e]" (_PIEP_ p. 113).
(This is a non-standard use of the word "allophone"; the more modern
"realization" would have been much more appropriate.)  But he adds: "In the
neighborhood of resonants it [i.e. /^/ -- LAC] combines with segmental phonemes
[i.e. the resonants -- LAC] in simultaneous articulation:..."  Thus /y^/ yields
[i], etc.  In these two stages his /^/ is most emphatically *not* segmental,
which is what I and some others have been hollering about: it makes no sense to
say it's not.

It's not clear quite what he means for the "period of non-distinctive stress".
He says that [e e: e{sub}] are no longer allophones of /^/ but rather separate
phonemes.  I assume he means them to be segmental at this stage, but he doesn't
actually say so.  Ditto the subsequent "stage of pre-IE with distinctive
pitch".

>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg in
>> *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does not
>> detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

>With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>stress-accentuation: *"-t(i) and *-"te.

Won't work.  Consider the perfect active, where the 3.sg. desinence is PIE -e,
but the stress was on the root (as demonstrated by accent in Greek and
Sanskrit and failure of Verner's Law to operate on Germanic preterite singular
forms, though the plurals were affected; we might also note that the form had
o-grade vocalism rather than zero or reduced grade, as in the plural).
(Yes, it is true that most Greek perfects are reduplicated, and the
reduplication has the accent in the singular.  But the few unreduplicated
perfects do accent the root: _o^de_ 'he knows'.  And augmented or not, thee
plural forms do accent the desinence.)

>IMHO, the morpheme for the second and third persons, containing <t>, has a
>unitary origin: *T{H}O, 'tribe-member'.

Given the tone of recent discussions, I'd best not say what I think of that
proposal.  Let's settle for a notational matter.  Angled brackets are used to
indicate *graphemes*, i.e. units of *written notation*.  <t> means very
precisely "lower-case t", not any kind of raw sound [t] or phoneme /t/ or
morpheme {t} (all standard notations, by the way).  It's OK to fudge by simply
italicizing everything, but don't use a specific notation if you don't mean it.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From roz-frank at uiowa.edu  Wed May 12 00:42:50 1999
From: roz-frank at uiowa.edu (Roslyn M. Frank)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 20:42:50 -0400
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <372d1224.63540508@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.204250.0400.>

At 09:26 AM 5/2/99 GMT, Miguel Carrasquer Vital wrote:
[snip]

>The word does not appear in any of my Spanish dictionaries, or so
>I thought, until I happened to see it in my 1954 (6th) edition of
>the Espasa (Diccionario Enciclope'dico Abreviado):

>CHANDRO. adj. Ar. Perezoso, desalin~ado, holgaza'n.

>[Where Ar. stands for "Aragone's"]

>That's all.  I then did an Altavista search for "chandro", which
>yielded two or three Web pages containing Aragonese vocabularies,
>confirming what the Espasa says, but not adding any further
>information (e.g. about the etymology of the word).  FWIW:

>http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/6243/diccionario.html
>http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Dell/5055/curiosi.html

If it is limited to Aragonese there is still a good chance that we may be
talking about an Euskeric etymology, although as you suggested, there is an
alternative path that would derive it from a proper name. The difficulty
that I see with the second possibility is that if it were the correct
explanation, one would have expected a wider distribution of the item,
e.g., in other dialects. What do you think about that line of argument?

>It's probably merely a coincidence that, apparently, Chandro is
>also a name to give to your GSD (German Shepherd Dog), as
>officially recognized by the Verein fuer Deutsche Schaeferhunde.

Huh?

Thanks, Miguel, for all the info. I'm leaving in a few days for Euskal
Herria. But when I return in August I promise to dig out all my old notes
on this "chandro" fellow.

Ondo ibili,
Roz


From alderson at netcom.com  Mon May 10 19:35:58 1999
From: alderson at netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 12:35:58 -0700
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9904272250360.7516-100000@rask> (message from Jens
 Elmegaard Rasmussen on Tue, 27 Apr 1999 23:44:07 +0200 (MET DST))
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.123558.0700.>

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote on Tue, 27 Apr 1999:

>>[ Moderator's comment:
>>  The final -u in the Sanskrit dual is not Indo-European, but an Indic
>>  development that is not present even in Iranian.
>>  --rma ]

>It is present in Goth. ahtau, Skt. aSta:/-au, Av. ashta. It appears to be a
>special Indic _choice_ out of an Indo-Iranian pair of sandhi variants which
>proceed from an IE pair of variants.

The final <au> in Gothic is a spelling of [O], and does not bear on the
presence or absence of a final *-u in the Indo-European dual, nor is it
entirely clear that the word for '8' is a dual.

The Skt. -u is an extension from the u-stems via sandhi variants to the other
stem formations.  Or so I was taught.

								Rich Alderson


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon May 10 19:42:53 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 15:42:53 EDT
Subject: The Neolithic Hypothesis
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.154253.EDT.>

>X99Lynx at AOL.COM writes:

>-- all what years?  Virtually all our Mycenaean documents date from the same
>period.>>

>What are you talking about?

the 200 years (maximum) mentioned by the moderator, of course.  In fact,
it's less than that, since the _majority_ of our Linear B tablets, those from
the mainland, come from the destruction level of the palaces -- and the
palaces fell at roughly the same time.

>[ Moderator's comment: The Mycenaean documents span roughly 200 years, very
>little time speaking in historical linguistic terms.  The objection is
>warranted and hardly without meaning.

-- exactly.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon May 10 19:46:58 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 15:46:58 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.154658.EDT.>

>xkl.com writes

>I can't disagree with this.  But as early as @600 ace Fredegar has the Frank
>king Dagobert remitting a 500 hide tribute owed by the Saxons in exchange
>for  their defending the border against the Wends

-- that's what I said, east of the Germans, south of the Balts, west of the
Iranians.

The linguistic frontier between Germanic and Slavic fluctuated, just as that
between Slavic and Baltic and Slavic and Iranian did.  But their relative
positions never changed much, and neither did the fact that they were in
continuous contact from PIE times on.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon May 10 19:57:04 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 15:57:04 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.155704.EDT.>

X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>What does this mean?

-- that people usually aren't aware of the overall process of linguistic
change, and that it's not something they set out to do, generally.

>Intentionality is the difference.

-- and there's very little intentionality in the evolution of language.
Nobody said:  "I'm tired of Anglo-Saxon, let's invent Middle English".

Anglo-Saxon segued imperceptibly into Middle English, which merged by an
infinity of gradual steps into Modern English.  These are, to a large extent,
artificial categories, just as "homo erectus" and "homo sapiens" are.  There
was no point at which you could draw a line and say "this is AS" or "this is
Middle English".  It's a continuum.  That's how living languages change.

The acquisition of native languages is a childhood process.  Do you remember
learning to speak your native language?  No?  I didn't think so.

The closest linguistic evolution gets to "intentionality" is a decision to
adopt a slang term because it's "cool" or fashionable.  And this is, from an
individual p.o.v., the choice of a _word_, not a language.

Bilingualism sometimes promotes linguistic change precisely _because_
language is never completely under conscious control.  It's almost impossible
to shed an "accent" in a second language learned as an adult, because an
adult no longer has the linguistic plasticity of a child.  Those options have
been foreclosed.

Likewise, it's extremely difficult not to drop words from the original
language into the second, because that vocabulary -- the one picked up
unconsciously and spontaneously as a child -- is wired in at a more
fundamental level than that learned later.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Mon May 10 19:58:47 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 15:58:47 EDT
Subject: The Indo-European Hypothesis [was Re: The
 NeolithicHypothesis]-Second post
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.155847.EDT.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Also, the traits of a particular microbe do not transfer to other unrelated
>strains.  If common traits, they develop independently.  In language,
>effective traits can be borrowed in their full maturity.

-- ah, you weren't aware of recent research showing that bacteria (and other
species) exchange genes?

[ Moderator's comment:
  Not even all that recent--there were pictures in my highschool biology
  textbook more than thirty years ago of single-celled critters exchanging
  nuclear material.

  But let's not lose sight of the fact that this is only an analogy, and we'll
  avoid drifting from the linguistics of the matter.
  --rma ]


From vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu  Mon May 10 21:18:35 1999
From: vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 17:18:35 -0400
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <MON.10.MAY.1999.171835.0400.>

> [ Moderator's note:
>   Greek _hippos_ is usually taken to be a development of *ek'wos.  This is
>   one of the animal names that extends across the family.
>   --rma ]

Lehmann (Theoretical bases) says that this is (probably?) borrowed because
of the -k'w- [surely initial k'w- exists.]. And if my memory serves me
right, Sihler says that this is the sole reliable example of -k'w-
developing into -pp- in Greek (other centum languages have the same reflex
for labiovelar kw and for k'w.] Any comments?

-Nath


From jer at cphling.dk  Mon May 10 22:27:56 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 00:27:56 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <002e01be93dd$a520d380$ed9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.002756.0200.>

On Sat, 1 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[...(On dual of nouns)]
> But this is not what Beekes is doing. On pp. 194-195 (comp. IE Ling.), he
> attempts to ascribe the common basis -*H{1}e to the animate consonant stems.

I wasn't targeting, but I do think the ending was *-e, not *-H1e. However,
proving lack of /H1/, the least stable of the laryngeals, is not easy,
and the rules may still hold surprises. Barring that, if the Skt. dual
sva'sa:rau 'two sister' is to continue an IE *swe'-sor-e (with -au for
expected *-a on the analogy of thematic stems), the *-o- must be in an
open syllable since it has come out long. Then -i: and -u: of i/u-stems
are analogical on the form -a: of the a-stems.

> He then proceeds to identify an inanimate (neuter) -*iH{1}.

He is right in that.

> I would maintain that the great majority of the (animate and inanimate)
> forms can be more simply from *-y.

Not the ones we find, if they are to be treated by the phonetic rules we
normally accept.

> > It even looks as if Beekes considers the IE languages more closely
> > related to each other than to Egyptian.
>
> Ha! But, of course, so do I.

Oh yeah? You have been known to act as if you didn't; as in:

[... (On the dual form of IE '8'):]
> Based on the Egyptian evidence, I prefer to see the -*(u) of *okto:(u) as a
> numeral-siffix rather than a dual. I am aware of several attempts to
> identify a 'four' root that might have served as a basis for a dual meaning
> 'eight' though, IMHO, they have not been successful.

[... (Vocalism of 'we two'):]
> Well, I thought it was generally accepted that stress-accent in an open
> syllable could be lengthened, and that stress-unaccented syllables are
> shortened. Have I just invented that?

I think you have.

[...]
> > Then what would be the enclitic form meaning "us two" in IE? */no:/
> > ending in a long vowel?

> I am going to pass the wand. What do you think it is?

I'm not that much of an oracle, but my guess is *noH3 which stands to the
accented form *nH3we' as does *nos to *nsme', and in parallel fashion
*woH3 for 'you two' : accented form *uH3we' (apparently dissimilated to
*uH3e') which would match the 2pl *wos : *usme' - provided /m/ develops
into /w/ in the position after the dual marker /H3/.

Jens


From jer at cphling.dk  Mon May 10 22:50:51 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 00:50:51 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <003701be93f3$a8cd10a0$ed9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.005051.0200.>

On Sat, 1 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[...]
> What is so "intangible" about supposing that *te is the basal form, that
> there was an inflection - *-wV which produced -*twe, and that the original
> significance of -*twe being lost, both forms came into use as bases for
> other forms but with a bias towards the form with -*wV for the nominative
> (through its former topical use): -*tu/u:?

That you have to postulate a change before you even start. You are
disqualifying the evidence which points in a different direction than you
want to go. And it is _very_ unsatisfactory to have the preform of *swe
'oneself, sich' be a nominative.

[...]

> > [On Gk. mo:^mar : amu:'mo:n as reflecting *mwoH-/*muH-:]
[...]
> > And, are you asserting, that IE *mow(V)- could *not* result in Gk. mo:{^}-?

Of course I am.

> <snip>

> Whether you agree with my reasons for those assumptions or not, until I find
> better reasons, and make other assumptions, I will have to stick to what I
> have said.

That may be a very basic difference of attitude. Look, I would change _my_
assumptions even if I had come up with _no_ reasons of my own, but only
saw that _yours_ were good. Are you rejecting the dialectic ideal of
scholarly progress?

Jens


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue May 11 08:45:04 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 09:45:04 +0100
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <E10gp82-0006jb-00@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.094504.0100.>

On Mon, 3 May 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

[not too sure why this is on the IE list, but here it is]

[ Moderator's reply:
  Because it continues to return to IE, especially Romance, data for the
  prehistory of Basque, and provides Basque data as a check on the developments
  in Romance.  But if you wish to move this particular discussion to another
  forum, please feel free.
  --rma ]

[on my claim that Pre-Basque did not permit plosive-liquid clusters and
Jon's query in terms of words in Azkue's 1905 dictionary of Basque
containing such clusters]

> I note that my original reference referred to native words and hence the
> diversion of this response into "ancient" words is just that.

I am mystified.  My assertion was about the Pre-Basque of some 2000
years ago, and about nothing else whatever.  As I pointed out earlier,
words in Pre-Basque did not contain such clusters, regardless of whether
they were native or borrowed.  So, it is `ancient' which is relevant
here, not `native'.

[LT]

>     Third, Azkue does not claim that the words entered in his dictionary are
>     native.  On the contrary, he declares explicitly, in section IX of his
>     prologue, that he is entering words of foreign origin which are well
>     established in Basque

[JP]

> As you presented in a later message and which arrived as I was
> preparing this response the relevant section of Azkue's dictionary
> is Section XXIV.5, which states that the words in uppercase are
> primitives or non-derivatives "les mots en capitales ou majuscules
> sont primitifs ou non derives" (pardon the lack for accents)

> These are the words I sent to you in the previous email. I believe
> my comment "he asserts are native words" is a valid interpretation
> of his work. I was particularly concerned that your first email did
> not reference this section and was going to refer you to it. Now it
> appears that you are aware of the section and was remiss in not
> referring to it in your first message.

No, not at all.  My reference to section IX was not a response to you at
all, but to somebody else who had commented on Azkue's use of upper case
for certain entries.  I was only commenting on that point.

I'm afraid I can't agree that your interpretation of Azkue's "primitifs
ou non derives" as `native' is valid.  It seems perfectly clear that
what Azkue means here is, in modern terminology, `monomorphemic', and
not `native'.  Even if there could be any doubt about this, Azkue
explains clearly in section XXIV.5 what he means.  To the best of my
knowledge, Azkue nowhere uses the term `native', or any equivalent, in
his prologue.

>    [LT]
>     That said, I cannot possibly comment on every word in Jon's long list.

> Why not? They constitute the whole corpus of material that Azkue has
> presented which is contrary to your claim.

No.

First of all, Azkue has not presented any material at all which is
contrary to my claim.  My claim is about the Pre-Basque of 2000 years
ago.  Azkue's book is a dictionary of the Basque of the 16th-19th
centuries, a completely different period during which Basque has plainly
tolerated plosive-liquid clusters.  Azkue's dictionary has not one word
to say about Pre-Basque.

Second, your list was hundreds of words long.  Do you really think I
have so much time on my hands that I can afford to devote days to
ferreting out known or probable etymologies for every single word in
that list?

> I doubt that any such list has ever been compiled before for basque
> scholars to investigate. Here is the perfect opportunity for you to
> settle once and for all if your claim can be substantiated. Do you
> have no wish to explore and re-investigate old knowledge no matter
> how well established it is, in the light of new evidence? Is there
> no sense of true scientific exploration in your spirit where
> everything is always up for reappraisal?

The problem is that the entries in Azkue's dictionary are of no
relevance whatever to the nature of Pre-Basque.

Specialists believe that Pre-Old-English had only 16 consonants.
Any decent dictionary of modern English will reveal that the language
now has 24 consonants (in most accents).  Would anybody regard this
observation as casting doubt on the validity of the claim about
Pre-Old-English?

English has changed its phonology substantially in the last 1500 years
or so.  And, of course, Basque has changed its phonology in the last
2000 years.

Old English had no phonemic voiced fricatives; modern English has four
of them.  Pre-Basque did not tolerate plosive-liquid clusters; modern
Basque does.  These things happen.

> In terms of examples you have chosen and the tone of the remainder of your
> message I can only say I feel you have totally compromised you usual high
> standards of scholarship. You were asked:
> " Larry would you say that there is not one word in this list that is
>  not problematic for your thesis,..."

> and you chose not to answer that question.

Sorry, but I did answer it.  I pointed out that the terms `native' and
`ancient' are utterly independent, and that my claim was about ancient
words, not about native ones.

> Rather you selectively ignored the bulk of the evidence and chose
> the most extreme examples of the total set to covertly ridicule my
> attempt to explore and understand this claim and in the end divert
> the topic to a comic play off on words.

No, nothing of the sort.  If I've inadvertently offended you, then I
apologize, but that was never my intent.  All I did was to select a few
representative words from the list whose origins were familiar or
obvious, and point out that these words, of varying origins, could not
be ancient in Basque.  No ridicule was intended.

> As basque scholars know, you included, the Azkue dictionary has its
> flaws but it is also a fine piece of scholarship, and you have
> applauded his work in your own book, so any material based on his
> dictionary deserves close scrutiny, despite the fact we know we will
> find some clear mistakes.

Agreed, and in fact the late Luis Michelena devoted a fair amount of
time to uncovering the mistakes in Azkue's dictionary.  In my book The
History of Basque, I myself point out some of the major shortcomings of
the dictionary which users should be aware of.  But the bottom line is
that a dictionary of modern Basque is of no direct relevance to the
nature of Pre-Basque.

>  I have seen many examples in this list and on other lists where you
> have insisted that claims for phenomena are unjustified because
> there is no supporting evidence. Yet in this case you are prepared
> to omit evidence that can be rightfully presented for appraisal. Can
> we expect that on other occasions you have also played fast and free
> with omitting legitimate evidence for appraisal because it didn't
> suit your case?

Gee whiz, Jon -- you seem to be really cheesed off for some reason, and
I can't imagine why.

Azkue's dictionary is of no relevance here.  What *is* relevant, as I
pointed out briefly in an earlier posting, is the treatment of Latin
loans into Pre-Basque.  In these loans, plosive-liquid clusters were
*invariably* eliminated in one way or another.  This shows clearly that
the phonology of Pre-Basque did not permit such clusters -- or, in plain
English, that the speakers of Pre-Basque could not pronounce them.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 11 12:56:23 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 07:56:23 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.075623.0500.>

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 1999 11:43 AM

[ moderator snip ]

> I don't understand your argument, Pat.   If the H's had lost their
> consonantal value, as you claim, then they are either vowels or
> non-existent.
> (a) If they were vowels, there is no explanation for the non-appearance of
> them at the beginning of these sanskrit roots.

I think there may be two explanations for their non-appearance initially:

1) the effects of stress-accent;

2) a restriction on the number of segments that can be re-duplicated.

> (b) If they were non-existent, they could not magically produce an -i- when
> the root is reiterated.

Agreed.

> In other words,
> (a) an original IE *Vgen  would not produce the attested root gan, but
> *Vgan.
> (b) an original IE root *gen would not produce the attested gan-i-gm-, but
> gan-gm-.
> (c) Only an original IE root *Hgan can produce this pattern of attested root
> gan, but repeated gan-i-gam < Hgen-Hgn.

To be explicit, I am saying that I think it is possible for Vgen to be
reduplicated as *gen-Vgen, possibly through *VgenVgen.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From ctp at germsem.uni-kiel.de  Tue May 11 00:08:33 1999
From: ctp at germsem.uni-kiel.de (Christian Petersen)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 02:08:33 +0200
Subject: East Germanic
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.020833.0200.>

Dear fellow Indo-Europeans,
apart from subscribing to the list, may I draw your attention to some
Gothic pages:

http://www.egroups.com/list/gothic-l/
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~dla/gothic.html#data
http://users.skynet.be/wulfila/

gawair~i
Christian T. Petersen, Kiel University, Germany


From ALDERSON at xkl.com  Wed May 12 01:51:29 1999
From: ALDERSON at xkl.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 18:51:29 -0700
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <000801be9100$8b723da0$c19ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.185129.0700.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote, on Tue, 27 Apr 1999:

>First, let me tell you that I appreciate your taking the time to write a
>magisterial summary of the questions involved.

Hardly magisterial, indeed barely satisfactory, but thank you.  John Lawler at
Michigan used to have a copy of a post of mine on Natural Phonology on his web
site at UMich; I tried to find it before nattering on.

>Rich writes:

>> In structuralist terms, two phones in complementary distribution *must* be,
>> cannot *not* be, allophones of a single phoneme.  (Although a lemma
>> requiring something called "phonetic similarity" was inserted into the
>> theory when it was pointed out that in a pure framework, the English phones
>> [h] and [N], as in _hang_ [h&N], must be allophones of a single phoneme...)
>> Therefore, in the prevailing structuralist framework of the 1940s, Lehmann
>> *had* to define *i and *u as allophones respectively of *y and *w.

>Pat writes:

>Lehmann was under no obligation to be consistently structuralist, and your
>assumption that he was is pure conjecture. By "syllabicity", Lehmann
>indicated that he was quite willing to strike out on uncharted paths. If the
>evidence had indicated anything different, I am positive Lehmann would have
>embraced the position it made mandatory.

One of us has obviously missed something here.  Lehmann's work is *very much*
"consistently structuralist"--that was the point I was making.  Were he not so
consistent, he would not have been forced to make the incorrect claim about
*i *u vs. *y *w.

>Leo writes:

>>>> just as PIE syllabic [M N L R] were allophones of /m n l r/.

>Pat writes:

>>>The syllabic status of [M/N/L/R] is a totally unrelated matter. These become
>>>syllabic when deprived of the stress-accent.

>Rich writes:

>> So the fact that all *six* resonants pattern the same is irrelevant?

>Pat writes:

>In my opinion, it is a mistake to include [Y/W] among the resonants.
>Phonologically, [j] is the voiced palato-dorsal fricative; [w] is the voiced
>bilabial fricative. *And they do not pattern the same*.

If you wish to maintain that stance, we have nothing further to discuss.  The
patterning of all six resonants as a class is a well-established fact of Indo-
European linguistics.

Further, [j] is phonologically *nothing*, although *phonetically* it is (or may
be) a "voiced palato-dorsal fricative".  Its exact phonetic characteristics are
irrelevant to the placement of *y within the phonological system of PIE (under-
stood as a set of oppositions), just as the exact character of *d (plain voiced
stop or glottalic egressive stop) is irrelevant.  (The same thing is true,
_mutatis mutandis_, of [w] vs. *w.)  Thus, to argue against the patterning of
the resonants on the basis of its possible phonetic interpretation is to miss a
very big point.

>Rich writes:

>> That *ey/oy/i parallels *en/on/.n by accident?  Then you disagree with
>> Lehmann?  What of his god-like status?  Never mind, rhetorical questions.

>Pat writes:

>I do not consider Lehmann god-like although I do believe that most people on
>their best days will not equal what has has written on his worst. I also do
>not shrink from disagreeing with his written opinions but, in view of his
>sagacity, I do so with great caution.

>And I reject the idea totally that *ey/oy/i and *ew/ow/u parallel *en/on/n{.}.

And as I noted above, we then have absolutely nothing to say to one another.

>> ... the only way to demonstrate that an analysis is valid is for it to
>> explain not only historical but synchronic phenomena in more than one
>> language).

>Pat writes:

>You surely would include diachronic phenomena, would you not?

For "historical" in my original wording, I expected everyone to understand
"diachronic"; I'm sorry that that was not clear.

>Rich continues:

>> Natural Phonology is, as well as process-oriented, constraint-oriented and
>> hierarchical:  The presence of certain phonological entities entails the
>> presence of others.  Thus, vowel systems are constrained:  Certain kinds of
>> vowel system are more stable than others, and unstable vowel systems rapidly
>> turn into stable systems by either eliminating contrast or by adding
>> contrast.  In addition, processes which are not repressed may increase
>> distinctions between vowels in the system (long vowels may become tense, for
>> example, or a distinction in palatality vs. labiality may arise as in Arabic
>> short /a/ vs. long /a:/ = [&] vs. [O:]).

>Pat writes:

>Although this is not really an argument against the point you are making,
>Arabic long /a:/ does not become [o:]; this is reserved for reductions of
>/aw/.

What happened was this:

1.  An original three-vowel system /i u a/, with length, developed allophonic
variants [& O:] of /a/ under lengthening processes.  Cowgill argued this as the
source of Brugmann's Law in Sanskrit in a paper presented at the LSA in the
early 70's; it solved the *e/*o problem for me, so I have adopted it.

2.  New compensatory length oppositions arose with the loss of various obstru-
ents in different environments.

3.  Next to certain laryngeals (*H_2 and *H_4), /a/ developed a third allophone
[a]; next to *H_3, /a/ also became [O].  Thus, a phonemic opposition arose.

4.  A system /i & a O u/ is unstable, so the process of raising evened out the
oppositions to /i e a o u/.

>Pat writes:

>IMHO, this is incorrect. If we accept Trask's definition of a phoneme as "the
>smallest unit which can make a difference in meaning" and restrict "meaning"
>to "semantic difference" vs. grammatical difference, then a language in which
>CaC, CeC, CiC, CoC, CuC, etc. represent different grammatical stems of a root
>CVC, which has *one*, meaning, then the "syllabicity" in the root makes no
>difference, and hence cannot be considered "phonemic".

But this is the very point I was making:  The definition you cite from Trask is
structuralist, rather than psychological, and not the definition of the phoneme
used by Natural Phonology.  Further, even in a structuralist definition, one is
not allowed to restrict the word "meaning" as you wish to do, and so your argu-
ment for a "non-phonemic vowel" falls apart.

>But, why all the fuss about monosyllabicity when Sanskrit provides us with the
>next logical outcome of a language that, at an earlier stage, was monovocalic
>(at least, phonemically).

>Anything other than <Ca> in Sanskrit is a result of <Ca> + <H>, <w>, or <y>,
>or a combination thereof. That is why Sanskrit does not bother to indicate an
><Ca> in its writing system (only <C>). Only combinations of <Ca> + <?> *need*
>to be indicated.

Sanskrit was never monovocalic, phonologically speaking.  There is more than
one source, for example, of [e:]--see, for example, _dive dive_ "from day to
day", where the first _dive_ is the expected sandhi variant of the ablative
_divas_ "from (a) day".  Thus, again, your analysis fails to explain the facts.

								Rich Alderson


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 12 02:32:44 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 21:32:44 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <TUE.11.MAY.1999.213244.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 12:16 PM

> Pat Ryan wrote in response to the following:

>>>>> Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage
>>>>> of Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a
>>>>> language, it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may
>>>>> alternate with other sounds in the language because of morphological
>>>>> rules or unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.

>> Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>> difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

> More precisely, we must say that it *could indicate* a semantic difference.
> In English, /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct, even though _either_
> means the same no matter how it is pronounced in that word.  Nor do they
> indicate a semantic difference in the context /l_t/, there being no word
> *_leet_ to contrast with _light_.  It's the semantic difference between
> _meet_ and _might_ that shows that /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct;
> we cannot say that phonemes ever *produce* a semantic difference.

Well, there is no set of relationships in IE wherein *CeC is semantically
different from *Ce{sub}C. That, IMHO, demonstrates conclusively that
[e/e{sub}] is not phonemic. As for [e:], I do not believe it is an allophone
but rather the product of *He/e{sub}.

>> But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>> certain.

> He doesn't.  For his "pre-stress" stage, he specifically posits "A
> non-segmental phoneme /^/, syllabicity" (_PIEP_, p. 112).  For the stage
> "pre-IE with phonemic stress", /^/ is non-segmental, like the phonemes /"/
> ("maximum stress") and /'/ ("minimum stress"), but he asserts that /"^/ (a
> sequence? or simultaneous?) "becomes segmental; allophone [e]" (_PIEP_ p.
> 113).  (This is a non-standard use of the word "allophone"; the more modern
> "realization" would have been much more appropriate.)

Leo, c'mon. Give Lehmann a break. He used "phoneme" for "syllabicity" because
there really was not a recognized term then for his analyzed parts of /"^/,
realized as [e]. But, I will grant you this point: I am guilty of what I
accused you. I understood Lehmann in "my" terms rather that the terms he was
actually employing. I can see that his terminology could have been improved but
I still believe his basic idea (as I understood it) has merit.

> But he adds: "In the neighborhood of resonants it [i.e. /^/ -- LAC] combines
> with segmental phonemes [i.e. the resonants -- LAC] in simultaneous
> articulation:..."  Thus /y^/ yields [i], etc.  In these two stages his /^/ is
> most emphatically *not* segmental, which is what I and some others have been
> hollering about: it makes no sense to say it's not.

I have to agree that a simple extension of the principle to resonants creates
just the kind of problems you have identified here.

<snip>

>>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a
>>> 3sg in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course
>>> does not detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

> Won't work.  Consider the perfect active, where the 3.sg. desinence is PIE
> -e, but the stress was on the root (as demonstrated by accent in Greek and
> Sanskrit and failure of Verner's Law to operate on Germanic preterite
> singular forms, though the plurals were affected; we might also note that the
> form had o-grade vocalism rather than zero or reduced grade, as in the
> plural).  (Yes, it is true that most Greek perfects are reduplicated, and the
> reduplication has the accent in the singular.  But the few unreduplicated
> perfects do accent the root: _oi^de_ 'he knows'.  And augmented or not, the
> plural forms do accent the desinence.)

As for the 3rd sg. perfect active, -e is understandable on the same principle
if we consider the earlier form to have been -e: (from *-He), reduced to -e in
a stress-unaccented syllable.

>> IMHO, the morpheme for the second and third persons, containing <t>, has
>> a unitary origin: *T{H}O, 'tribe-member'.

> Given the tone of recent discussions, I'd best not say what I think of that
> proposal.

If you have *reasons* for rejecting this as a possibility, do not hesitate to
let us all know.

> Let's settle for a notational matter.  Angled brackets are used to indicate
> *graphemes*, i.e. units of *written notation*.  <t> means very precisely
> "lower-case t", not any kind of raw sound [t] or phoneme /t/ or morpheme {t}
> (all standard notations, by the way).  It's OK to fudge by simply italicizing
> everything, but don't use a specific notation if you don't mean it.

Noted.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From gordonselway at gn.apc.org  Wed May 12 09:16:56 1999
From: gordonselway at gn.apc.org (Gordon Selway)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 10:16:56 +0100
Subject: Mycenaean (Standardization)
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.101656.0100.>

At 12:41 pm 29/4/1999, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>>In 1741, Parliament specifically narrowly defined "cattle":  >>

>-- in other words, the official, written language was changed to bring it
>more into line with popular spoken useage.

>Selah.  My point is proved.

Utter nonsense, twaddle, just blethering.  Definitions in statutes are
given for the purpose of understanding the statute, and do not - cannot -
have a wider function.  Unless the legislature is _completely_ out of its
mind.  [You may think so from time to time; I could not possibly comment.]

Legislation can appear to have an indirect effect, eg when it embodies
educational policy, and there is a general publicly provided school system
teaching the centrally determined syllabus, but that is confounding the
messenger and the message.

There are other government influences, which may help determine the common
speech of the people: possibly Modern Hebrew (I have no direct source for
this) is a case in point; the origins of standard Modern English include
15th century Chancery usage; and 20th century Irish Gaelic owes a lot to
the need of the civil service to devise a wide range of technical terms and
usages.  But that is clearly not a good example - there is a wide gulf
between what is written in the Department of Finance or the Department of
Education (eg) and what is spoken in Gaoith Doire &c.

What evidence do we have that the good folk of Argos, Knossos, Pylos,
Tiryns, wherever, spoke the language of the tablets?  Maybe the tablets
show a version of Greek which is a short branch off the main thread of the
story, cf the Rgveda language in the history of Indian.

[ Moderator's comment:
  *Somebody* in those cities knew the language, and wrote in it.  Whether or
  not everybody spoke the same language is in a sense irrelevant for the status
  of Mycenaean as a South Greek dialect (like Arcado-Cypriot and Attic-Ionic).
  --rma ]


From edsel at glo.be  Wed May 12 11:14:15 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 13:14:15 +0200
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?(Chandro)
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.131415.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv at wxs.nl>
Date: Monday, May 10, 1999 3:01 PM

>"Roslyn M. Frank" <roz-frank at uiowa.edu> wrote:

>>On that note, I'm curious. Miguel, did you come across any reference to a
>>feminine form for <chandro> as "gandul, etc." in the dictionary you are
>>using. What exactly was the source you were using? (Thanks in advance for
>>the bibliographic reference).

>The word does not appear in any of my Spanish dictionaries, or so
>I thought, until I happened to see it in my 1954 (6th) edition of
>the Espasa (Diccionario Enciclope'dico Abreviado):

>CHANDRO. adj. Ar. Perezoso, desalin~ado, holgaza'n.

>[Where Ar. stands for "Aragone's"]

>That's all.  I then did an Altavista search for "chandro", which
>yielded two or three Web pages containing Aragonese vocabularies,
>confirming what the Espasa says, but not adding any further
>information (e.g. about the etymology of the word).  FWIW:

>http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/6243/diccionario.html
>http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Dell/5055/curiosi.html

>It's probably merely a coincidence that, apparently, Chandro is
>also a name to give to your GSD (German Shepherd Dog), as
>officially recognized by the Verein fuer Deutsche Schaeferhunde.

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

[Ed Selleslagh]
May I suggest another approach that might reconcile both views/facts?

Could it be that 'chandro' is actually derived from Basque 'etxe(ko)andre',
meaning 'lady of the house', and later, in Aragonese dialect, first meant
some figure of authority, then some similar person but one that exploited
his position, and finally anyone with similar behavior?
There is a precedent: 'senyorito': originally the junior master, later the
lazy rich layabout son. 'Caballerito' has a somewhat similar history.

In Dutch, 'knecht' is a male servant, a far cry from 'knight' in English,
but with the same (probably Saxon) origin. In West-Flemish dialect,
'knecht(je)' means a young boy, cf. Eng. 'maid'/'maiden' etc.

This is a very common type of shift, especially when words pass into another
language.  In English e.g., terms of French origin (veal, pork, mutton...)
have a 'nobler' meaning than the Anglo-Saxon/OE original (calf, pig, swine -
the latter actually being of an older, Latin origin, 'suinus', an
adjective - , sheep,...) - or ordinary French for that matter - , because of
well-known historic facts.

Ed.


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Wed May 12 14:59:18 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 09:59:18 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.095918.0500.>

Pat Ryan wrote:

>>But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>>certain.

I replied:

>He doesn't.  For his "pre-stress" stage, he specifically posits "A
>non-segmental phoneme /^/, syllabicity" (_PIEP_, p. 112).  For the stage
>"pre-IE with phonemic stress", /^/ is non-segmental, like the phonemes /"/
>("maximum stress") and /'/ ("minimum stress"), but he asserts that /"^/ (a
>sequence? or simultaneous?) "becomes segmental; allophone [e]" (_PIEP_ p.
>113).  (This is a non-standard use of the word "allophone"; the more modern
>"realization" would have been much more appropriate.)  But he adds: "In the
>neighborhood of resonants it [i.e. /^/ -- LAC] combines with segmental
>phonemes [i.e. the resonants -- LAC] in simultaneous articulation:..."  Thus
>/y^/ yields [i], etc.  In these two stages his /^/ is most emphatically *not*
>segmental, which is what I and some others have been hollering about: it makes
>no sense to say it's not.

I must qualify this last statement.  In and of itself, there would be no
difficulty in saying that /^/ was non-segmental if we were talking only of the
fact that /y/ (already segmental) can appear as syllabic [i] in the right
environment.  But it is hard to see why it would have had to combine with a
non-segmental /^/ to do so.  The larger difficulty concerns the treatment of
/^/ between consonants: if it's actually "between", we would expect it to be
segmental, and Lehmann would have to produce powerful evidence to claim
anything else .  He doesn't even try to prove it.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed May 12 15:34:33 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 10:34:33 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
In-Reply-To: <37283DA5.CB182381@ufl.edu>
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.103433.0500.>

[snip]
Reminds me of the use of "ass" in older Biblical
>translations: "Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's ... ass".  :-)

	So why didn't this word's homonym come into American English as
"arse" with an /R/?
	Was <ass> "buttocks" borrowed from later British English or from
New England or Southern English?

[ Moderator's comment:
  When I lived in Connecticut, I met people who made a distinction between
  "arse" and "ass" consistently, not as a learned item but in casual speech.
  --rma ]


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed May 12 15:26:17 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 17:26:17 +0200
Subject: IE thematic dual
In-Reply-To: <199905101935.MAA20395@netcom2.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.172617.0200.>

On Mon, 10 May 1999, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

[... (JER: Goth. ahtau has diphthongal form of them.dual., like Skt.
as.t.au, ergo the -u was IE already:)]

> The final <au> in Gothic is a spelling of [O], and does not bear on the
> presence or absence of a final *-u in the Indo-European dual, nor is it
> entirely clear that the word for '8' is a dual.

But what can then be the source of the Goth. -au, how ever pronounced?
Both *-o: and *-a: give Goth. <-a>. And can one really reduce the weight
of Kartvelian "otxo" 'four' to nil? I know people are biting each other's
heads off over the exact shape of the protoform, and perhaps also over the
direction of borrowing (supposing any of the two families was the source).
Does this not still leave the unbiased observer with the impression that
the word for 'eight' _was_ an o-stem dual at one point?

> The Skt. -u is an extension from the u-stems via sandhi variants to the other
> stem formations.  Or so I was taught.

I cannot disprove that. Still, is it likely? Are there so many u-stems
that they can have reasonably been used as models for the thematic stems,
including pronouns? - And does the parallelism between *to- + *-e and
perf. *ple-ploH1- + *-e emerging as ta:(v) and papra:(v) count for
nothing?

Jens


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed May 12 15:36:39 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 10:36:39 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
In-Reply-To: <4e65c6a.2459dff1@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.103639.0500.>

That is true but "athletic supporters" are still called "jock straps" in
America

>>Yet we also see "resurrected taboo words" such as "jock," which formerly
>>meant "penis" and now means "athlete" [at least in America] and even
>>"jockette" for a female athlete

>-- if a word stays out of circulation long enough, it loses its 'ooomph' as a
>forbidden term and can be reused, if it hasn't been altogether forgotten.

[ Moderator's comment:
  I think the two writers are actually saying the same thing:  Were the word
  "jock" still in (common) use in the meaning "penis", it would not have been
  extended to the meaning "athlete" no matter what an athletic supporter was
  called.
  --rma ]


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed May 12 15:48:02 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 10:48:02 -0500
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <372d1224.63540508@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.104802.0500.>

a gandul is a "pigeon pea" and is about half the size of a sweet pea
I think it's only used as "lazy" in Spanish slang and I seem to remember
seeing it used that way in literature of the Siglo de Oro --but it's been
many years since I've read that stuff

>"Roslyn M. Frank" <roz-frank at uiowa.edu> wrote:

>>On that note, I'm curious. Miguel, did you come across any reference to a
>>feminine form for <chandro> as "gandul, etc." in the dictionary you are
>>using. What exactly was the source you were using? (Thanks in advance for
>>the bibliographic reference).

>The word does not appear in any of my Spanish dictionaries, or so
>I thought, until I happened to see it in my 1954 (6th) edition of
>the Espasa (Diccionario Enciclope'dico Abreviado):


From petegray at btinternet.com  Wed May 12 18:02:31 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 19:02:31 +0100
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.190231.0100.>

  Pat said:

  >To be explicit, I am saying that I think it is possible for Vgen to be
  >reduplicated as *gen-Vgen, possibly through *VgenVgen.

Thanks for the clarification.  Do you have any evidence of this happening
elsewhere?

Peter


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 12 20:04:31 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 15:04:31 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.150431.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 5:27 PM

> I wasn't targeting, but I do think the ending was *-e, not *-H1e. However,
> proving lack of /H1/, the least stable of the laryngeals, is not easy,
> and the rules may still hold surprises. Barring that, if the Skt. dual
> sva'sa:rau 'two sister' is to continue an IE *swe'-sor-e (with -au for
> expected *-a on the analogy of thematic stems), the *-o- must be in an
> open syllable since it has come out long. Then -i: and -u: of i/u-stems
> are analogical on the form -a: of the a-stems.

Of all the arguments employed to explain divergent forms, analogy is surely
the weakest because it implies a *mistake* on  the part of native speakers
of the language. Were Sanskrit speakers all **childs**?

Now, I have two questions:

1) If no IE syllable may begin with a vowel in a root, and affixes derive
from grammaticalized morphemes, why should we expect any affix to originally
be simply -V?

2) If view of what you have written below about length and its connection
with open syllables, would you mind explaining why an open syllable seems
sufficient grounds to you above to explain the length of Sanskrit <a:>?

I expect that the better explanation is that a termination of *-yeu has
become *-e:u (compensatory lengthening), and that the length has been
metathesized to the foregoing syllable.

>> He then proceeds to identify an inanimate (neuter) -*iH{1}.

> He is right in that.

Well, then it is incumbent upon you to provide the definitive argument for
the existence of the "pure vowel" [i], which has eluded every IEist who has
put his pen to it.

>> I would maintain that the great majority of the (animate and inanimate)
>> forms can be more simply from *-y.

> Not the ones we find, if they are to be treated by the phonetic rules we
> normally accept.

Well, generalizations are less than illuminating. Why not give a few
examples if you believe this?

>>> It even looks as if Beekes considers the IE languages more closely
>>> related to each other than to Egyptian.

>> Ha! But, of course, so do I.

> Oh yeah? You have been known to act as if you didn't; as in:

> [... (On the dual form of IE '8'):]

>> Based on the Egyptian evidence, I prefer to see the -*(u) of *okto:(u) as a
>> numeral-siffix rather than a dual. I am aware of several attempts to
>> identify a 'four' root that might have served as a basis for a dual meaning
>> 'eight' though, IMHO, they have not been successful.

I do not see that as an example of "believing" that IE languages are less
closely related to each other than to Egyptian, which I find utterly
ridiculous.

> [... (Vocalism of 'we two'):]

>> Well, I thought it was generally accepted that stress-accent in an open
>> syllable could be lengthen, and that stress-unaccented syllables are
>> shortened. Have I just invented that?

> I think you have.

See above.


>>> Then what would be the enclitic form meaning "us two" in IE? */no:/
>>> ending in a long vowel?

>> I am going to pass the wand. What do you think it is?

> I'm not that much of an oracle, but my guess is *noH3 which stands to the
> accented form *nH3we' as does *nos to *nsme', and in parallel fashion
> *woH3 for 'you two' : accented form *uH3we' (apparently dissimilated to
> *uH3e') which would match the 2pl *wos : *usme' - provided /m/ develops
> into /w/ in the position after the dual marker /H3/.

This is the least logical proposition that I have seen you advance. So
enclitic *noH{3} just conveniently drops a *-we{'}? and *nos just drops an
inconvenient *-me? and a stress-unaccented enclitic *woH{3} modifies its <w>
to /u/ in *uH{3}we{'}? {3}.

I think you are engaging in free association.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 12 20:40:28 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 15:40:28 -0500
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.154028.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 5:50 PM

> On Sat, 1 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:


>> What is so "intangible" about supposing that *te is the basal form, that
>> there was an inflection - *-wV which produced -*twe, and that the original
>> significance of -*twe being lost, both forms came into use as bases for
>> other forms but with a bias towards the form with -*wV for the nominative
>> (through its former topical use): -*tu/u:?

> That you have to postulate a change before you even start.

And what change is that?

> You are disqualifying the evidence which points in a different direction than
> you want to go.

I am discounting an alternate interpretation of the evidence.

> And it is _very_ unsatisfactory to have the preform of *swe 'oneself, sich'
> be a nominative.

Well, perhaps it your view but not in Pokorny's, where we find *swe listed
under *se as *s(e)we, and "*se- und *s(e)we-, Reflexivpronomen fu{"}r alle
Personen, Gechlechter und Numeri".  *swe means simply 'self', and, as such,
is no case-dependent as compounds like *s(w)e-bh(o)- surely show (cf. also
Armenian <in-kn>).


>>> [On Gk. mo:^mar : amu:'mo:n as reflecting *mwoH-/*muH-:]

>>> And, are you asserting, that IE *mow(V)- could *not* result in Gk.
>>> mo:{^}-?

> Of course I am.

Then, of course, you are wrong in view of Greek <no:{^}i>.

>> <snip>

>> Whether you agree with my reasons for those assumptions or not, until I find
>> better reasons, and make other assumptions, I will have to stick to what I
>> have said.

> That may be a very basic difference of attitude. Look, I would change _my_
> assumptions even if I had come up with _no_ reasons of my own, but only
> saw that _yours_ were good. Are you rejecting the dialectic ideal of
> scholarly progress?

If I were, would we be discussing this? And though you have persuaded me of
very little, I have acknowledged revising my views *recently* when presented
with arguments from some other list-members. That is not to say that you may
not persuade me at some future point of a view of yours.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Wed May 12 23:08:29 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 23:08:29 GMT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
In-Reply-To: <acc3840c.245a828a@aol.com>
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.230829.GMT.>

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>Where I do find *g > z is the first SL palatization - before original front
>vowels.  (I have here as example, OCS ziv~, cf. Lith gyvas.)

That's OCS <z^ivU>, with /Z/ not /z/.  PIE *gwiHw-.

>The second also yielded g > z, but where the front vowel has occured because
>of monophthongisation (example OCS cena, cf Lith kaina.)

Yes. the second palatalization yields /dz/, usually simplified to /z/.

>Also, if this *g behaved like a /k/ in satemization

??

The developments in Slavic are:

PIE       *k^     *k(w)       *g^     *g(w)(h)

"satem"   s       [k]         z       [g]
1st Pal.          c^                  z^
2nd.              c                   (d)z

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 13 01:28:37 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 21:28:37 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.212837.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/11/99 9:19:29 PM, JoatSimeon at AOL.com wrote:

<<>Intentionality is the difference.

-- and there's very little intentionality in the evolution of language.
Nobody said:  "I'm tired of Anglo-Saxon, let's invent Middle English".>>

Quote me in full and it will be obvious that I wasn't talking about the
intention to invent a language.

Language developed as a means to other ends.  The intention behind language
is not language.  The intention is first of all to communicate.  The
intentionally refers to the objective not the means.  Language without
communication would be useless.

The intention behind wheel was not to make a wheel or make a new kind of
wheel.  The intention behind the wheel was transportation.

What logically must drive language is the goal of communication.  No one had
to say let's invent Middle English.  All they needed was to percieve and
intend to communicate in another way.

Form follows function.

Regards
S. Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 13 01:35:02 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 21:35:02 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <WED.12.MAY.1999.213502.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/11/99 9:01:46 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

><<>I can't disagree with this.  But as early as @600 ace Fredegar has the
>Frank king Dagobert remitting a 500 hide tribute owed by the Saxons in
>exchange for their defending the border against the Wends

-- that's what I said, east of the Germans, south of the Balts, west of the
Iranians.

The linguistic frontier between Germanic and Slavic fluctuated, just as that
between Slavic and Baltic and Slavic and Iranian did.  But their relative
positions never changed much, and neither did the fact that they were in
continuous contact from PIE times on.>>

If you look back at what I originally wrote, it was in response to your
derision of pots.  The only way we know what you are saying is pots.  And in
the middle of the first millenium bce, the pots seem to say that the
proto-Slavs (according to some sources) are not in contact with
proto-Germanics.  Check back to see what I wrote.  It may be helpful.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 13 04:14:35 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 00:14:35 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.001435.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/10/99 3:27:35 AM, our moderator wrote:

<<[ Moderator's comment:
  *g does not > **s in Slavic, but to *z.
  --rma ]>>

But *g >*z is also the formula for the first palatalization - so how could *g
> *z  be part of the first change from *PIE - unless of course the same
change happened twice?  My best understanding is that the first
palatalization is reconstructed to have occurred a bit later than the
original split-off from *PIE.  And the first palatization affected *g (> z)
*k and *x only so far as they immediately preceded a front original vowel.
In the examples I gave - 'siedczy', 'snac', 'snowac'  - all closely related
to *g^no(H3) in meaning - the /n/ separates the *g from the original front
vowel.

In other for any initial *g to have gotten to the first palatalization, it
would have had to survived satemization.  In which case, either *g was
unaffected by satemization (contrary to mcv's statement) or only borrowings
with *g were left to undergo the Slavic palatalizations.

Now, remember that mcv wrote: "<<The Slavic palatalizations are not
applicable here, only the satem palatalization *g^ > z.  Cf. znaju "I know"
from *g^en(H3)-
"to know".>>

(And I must go back to my point that <<'sto' (hundred), 'dziesiec' (ten) in
Polish>>  means that if satem palatalization yielded *k > *s as far as those
forms are concerned, then satemization must have preceeded the first
palatalization.  Otherwise, *k would have merely yielded the voiceless dental
affricative /c/ with many examples (OCS cena 'price', cf. Lith 'kaina))

And once again I think it should be an indication that something in the
analysis is out of whack when mcv writes: <<Slavic hasn't preserved *gen(H)-
except in the derivation ze~tI (*gen(@)tis) "son-in-law, sister's husband".>>
 How could such an extensively used root throughout the rest of IE disappear
entirely from Slavic?  It seems like a mistake doesn't it?

And this all seems to based on the *g > *z formula.  And it creates a
situation where a huge number of very fundamental words must be considered
borrowings.  How and when were such words as "gniazd-" (nest), 'gno-ic'
(fertilizer), "go-ic" (care for, heal), "god-y" (wedding), "gniesz-" (pressed
together, grouped), 'gnac', 'gon-ic' (chase), 'geba' (mouth), 'koh-ac' (love,
marry), 'krzek' (spawn), 'nasie' (seed), 'narod' (born), 'siewca' (seedling),
and 'kolano' (knee) were borrowed into Polish - and what words they must have
replaced - is difficult to see (for this naive observer, anyway.)

<<Might this suggest that 'znac' and similar forms might be borrowings coming
after satem?

[ Moderator's reply: No.--rma ]>>

I'm not sure how that can be ascertained, especially since the Slavic
palatalization do precisely the same thing after satemization.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 13 05:13:43 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 01:13:43 EDT
Subject: Mycenaean (Standardization)
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.011343.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/12/99 10:03:40 PM, gordonselway at gn.apc.org wrote:

<<Utter nonsense, twaddle, just blethering.  Definitions in statutes are
given for the purpose of understanding the statute, and do not - cannot -
have a wider function>>

That's interesting.  But not necessarily true.

A case in point.  Unfortunately, just recently , I must have heard the word
'FEMA' repeated at least fifty times by some folks who used it very much in
the context of ordinary speech.  What they were using word referring to a
situation, an action and a consequence that was thoroughly originated in the
language of government.

The next time you ask for "whiskey" at a bar, consider that it was the law
that defined the word that makes it predictable what you get in response.
Ask for a "pound" of meat and realize that modern weights and standards are
the result of governmental action not common usage.  Before government
defined it in a statute, the "gasoline" someone offered you might not have
been something you would have wanted to put in your car.  And in London,
before Parliament acted, if you were a country bumpkin and pledged your
"cattle" to a London banker, you may have thought you were pledging your
livestock, but you were possibly pledging - per London usage - everything you
owned.

Language's first function is communication.  Ambiguoty can interfere with
that communication to the point where it has adverse social consequences.  It
is really a bit naive to think that government can have no effect on such
situations.  And the next time you hear it called the King's English, be
assured that it was therefore not expected that anyone at all could change it
as they wished.

Mallory in ISIE identifies the three leading "agents" of language change in
three "persona": the soldier, the priest and the merchant.  All three have in
the past been identified as having interests intricately wound up in what we
know as "government."

<<What evidence do we have that the good folk of Argos, Knossos, Pylos,
Tiryns, wherever, spoke the language of the tablets?  Maybe the tablets
show a version of Greek which is a short branch off the main thread of the
story, cf the Rgveda language in the history of Indian.>>

I believe Linear B Greek was called "archaic Greek" before someone noticed it
was a dead ringer for Aeolian.  I really don't know what the writings can
tell us about the early standardization of a language.  But I do know that it
would be a mistake to think that they can't tell us anything - at least
without closer examination.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 13 05:53:49 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 01:53:49 EDT
Subject: The Indo-European Hypothesis [was Re: The
 NeolithicHypothesis]-Second post
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.015349.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/11/99 5:50:34 PM, fortytwo at ufl.edu wrote:

<<X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
Also, the traits of a particular microbe do not transfer to other unrelated
strains.  If common traits, they develop independently.  In language,
effective traits can be borrowed in their full maturity.

Actually, that is a common feature of microbes and language.  Viruses
and bacteria can mix genes.>>

Notice I said traits.  Must note here first of all that genes and traits are
not the same thing.  Very important difference.  In most instances,
transferred genetic material in bacteria do not affect the traits manifested
in the individual organism.  The transfer only becomes effective after
reproduction.  The gene changes, but the current traits do not.  (And of
course the transference of genes between strains is limited; it does not
happen between all strains of bacteria and is qualified by the viability of
the resulting traits.  Viruses are a difference matter altogether.)

As far as the analogy with language goes, within a single generation, a
sheepherder can turn into a computer programmer - or a French speaker into an
English speaker.  But a single generation is not enough to turn an e.coli
amicus into an e. coli virilus or a sheep into a computer programmer.

Regards,
Steve Long


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Thu May 13 06:14:44 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 01:14:44 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.011444.0500.>

Rick Mc Callister wrote:
>         So why didn't this word's homonym come into American English as
> "arse" with an /R/?

It's my understanding that "ass" began as a *euphemism* for "arse",
which later disappeared from most dialects of American English.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 13 06:46:44 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 01:46:44 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.014644.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Alderson <ALDERSON at xkl.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 1999 8:51 PM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote, on Tue, 27 Apr 1999:

> Further, [j] is phonologically *nothing*, although *phonetically* it is (or
> may be) a "voiced palato-dorsal fricative".  Its exact phonetic
> characteristics are irrelevant to the placement of *y within the phonological
> system of PIE (understood as a set of oppositions), just as the exact
> character of *d (plain voiced stop or glottalic egressive stop) is
> irrelevant.  (The same thing is true, _mutatis mutandis_, of [w] vs. *w.)
> Thus, to argue against the patterning of the resonants on the basis of its
> possible phonetic interpretation is to miss a very big point.

My specification of the phonetic characteristics of [j] and [w] was to
suggest that they are properly fricatives of the dorsal and labial series,
and to put them in a separate class (semivowels) is misleading.

Furthermore, contrary to your assertion, they [j/w] do not pattern the same
as [m/n/l/r]. Just one example: initial stress-unaccented *nV in Sanskrit
becomes <a>; initial stress-unaccented *jV in Sanskrit does not become <a>.

[ moderator snip ]

> What happened was this:

> 1.  An original three-vowel system /i u a/, with length, developed allophonic
> variants [& O:] of /a/ under lengthening processes.  Cowgill argued this as
> the source of Brugmann's Law in Sanskrit in a paper presented at the LSA in
> the early 70's; it solved the *e/*o problem for me, so I have adopted it.

[ moderator snip ]

You are, of course, free to *believe* anything you wish but just the first
premise in this description is untenable because unprovable: an original /i
u a/.

>>Pat writes:

>>IMHO, this is incorrect. If we accept Trask's definition of a phoneme as
>>"the smallest unit which can make a difference in meaning" and restrict
>>"meaning" to "semantic difference" vs. grammatical difference, then a
>>language in which CaC, CeC, CiC, CoC, CuC, etc. represent different
>>grammatical stems of a root CVC, which has *one*, meaning, then the
>>"syllabicity" in the root makes no difference, and hence cannot be considered
>>"phonemic".

> But this is the very point I was making:  The definition you cite from Trask
> is structuralist, rather than psychological, and not the definition of the
> phoneme used by Natural Phonology.  Further, even in a structuralist
> definition, one is not allowed to restrict the word "meaning" as you wish to
> do, and so your argument for a "non-phonemic vowel" falls apart.

I think you may be a bit overly "school"-oriented. I still that Lehmann was
under no obligation to be consistently structuralist; and I do not feel a
similar restraint myself.

>>But, why all the fuss about monosyllabicity when Sanskrit provides us with
>>the next logical outcome of a language that, at an earlier stage, was
>>monovocalic (at least, phonemically).

>>Anything other than <Ca> in Sanskrit is a result of <Ca> + <H>, <w>, or <y>,
>>or a combination thereof. That is why Sanskrit does not bother to indicate an
>><Ca> in its writing system (only <C>). Only combinations of <Ca> + <?> *need*
>>to be indicated.

> Sanskrit was never monovocalic, phonologically speaking.

I disagree, strongly.

> There is more than one source, for example, of [e:]--see, for example, _dive
> dive_ "from day to day", where the first _dive_ is the expected sandhi
> variant of the ablative _divas_ "from (a) day".  Thus, again, your analysis
> fails to explain the facts.

In my opinion, this analysis of _dive dive_ is totally erroneous. This is
clearly a reduplicated dative.

Also, I am curious if you can cite a non-arguable ablative in -as that
becomes -e: in sandhi?

Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From edsel at glo.be  Thu May 13 10:16:59 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 12:16:59 +0200
Subject: IE thematic dual (Gothic <au>)
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.121659.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Subject: IE thematic dual

>On Mon, 10 May 1999, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

>[... (JER: Goth. ahtau has diphthongal form of them.dual., like Skt.
>as.t.au, ergo the -u was IE already:)]

>> The final <au> in Gothic is a spelling of [O], and does not bear on the
>> presence or absence of a final *-u in the Indo-European dual, nor is it
>> entirely clear that the word for '8' is a dual.

>But what can then be the source of the Goth. -au, how ever pronounced?
>Both *-o: and *-a: give Goth. <-a>.

[Ed Selleslagh]

May I add a very down-to-earth remark: in Antwerp Dutch dialect (of Frankish
origin), in certain positions (depending on the phonetic history of the
<o:>), <o:> is always pronounced <au>, like in 'auto' ('car'), pronounced
<ottau>; or 'over' (same as in English) ==> <auver>. Maybe the Goths did
exactly the same, and wrote it. [In other words with a different phonetic
history for the <o:>, it is pronounced <u:@>, like in 'lopen' ('to run')]

I do believe that present-day phonetic phenomena are relevant, even when
dealing with languages that died out many centuries ago, and especially when
these are related to the modern language.  Not all wisdom comes from
Sanskrit, which is not even a kentom language, and as such, in a way, one
step farther away from PIE, because of the satemization (I won't restart the
discussion about this term or the y>g>y issue).


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 13 13:47:52 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 15:47:52 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <13450628935.15.ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.154752.0200.>

On Tue, 11 May 1999, Rich Alderson wrote:

[snip]

>Sanskrit was never monovocalic, phonologically speaking.  There is more than
>one source, for example, of [e:]--see, for example, _dive dive_ "from day to
>day", where the first _dive_ is the expected sandhi variant of the ablative
>_divas_ "from (a) day".  Thus, again, your analysis fails to explain the
>facts.

But even so, the preform *divaz-dyvai, supposing it is correct (and it is
a _very_ good idea), may be analyzed as /dyvas-dyvay/ and so makes do with
only one phoneme that is always syllabic. Would you not agree that the
vowel was /a/ at one time - and still is synchronically in one stage of
abstraction - in both cases?

Jens


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 13 14:47:39 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 09:47:39 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.094739.0500.>

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 1999 1:02 PM

>   Pat said:

>   >To be explicit, I am saying that I think it is possible for Vgen to be
>   >reduplicated as *gen-Vgen, possibly through *VgenVgen.

> Thanks for the clarification.  Do you have any evidence of this happening
> elsewhere?

I know that this is a bit late in the game to be asking this question but
where did we get this Sanskrit form in the first place? I cannot find it in
Whitney's _Die Wurzeln, Verbalformen und Prima{"}ren Sta{"}mme der
Sanskrit-Sprache_.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 13 15:05:05 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:05:05 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <001201be9cb2$d19a1380$87142399@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.170505.0200.>

On Wed, 12 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> [ moderator re-formatted ]

> Dear Jens and IEists:

[ moderator snip ]

> Of all the arguments employed to explain divergent forms, analogy is surely
> the weakest because it implies a *mistake* on  the part of native speakers
> of the language. Were Sanskrit speakers all **childs**?

I'm sure all speakers of Sanskrit were children at one time. Aren't you
in effect dismissing the existence of analogy as a factor in language
change? In the case of the non-neuter dual, the Sanskrit form -a:(v)
corresponds fully with the evidence from the other languages, only
elsewhere the other stem-classes use a different morpheme that can
everywhere continue an IE *-e. So, the other languages distinguish
o-stems stems from non-o-stems in this point, Sanskrit does not. English
has -s in the genitive sg. and pl., most related languages only in the sg.
The two problems are quite parallel, and analogy is known to be the answer
in the latter case, what's wrong with suspecting in the former?

> Now, I have two questions:

> 1) If no IE syllable may begin with a vowel in a root, and affixes derive
> from grammaticalized morphemes, why should we expect any affix to originally
> be simply -V?

Oh boy. I'm not saying the non-neuter was _originally_ *-e, I'm saying it
was (o things look as if it was) in the IE protolanguage. I am not sure
there were no vowel-initial roots, it is mostly very hard to prove that
something as hazy as *H1 was not present. On the other hand, there is
absolute certainty that IE did have vowel-initial affixes. You may take
the gen.sg. ending, whether you want to posit as *-os or as *-es, there is
no place for "-Hos" or "-Hes"; the 3pl active ends in *-ent, certainly not
"-Hent" (I am speaking of the full forms, I know there as zero-grade
variants, but they are plainly derived from the fuller variants by rule).
As for the ultimate origin of the dual *-e, I have given that question a
good deal of thought, and perhaps we are not so far apart in this. Form a
purely IE point of view, the form *-e is odd in a point which seems ti
have caused no concern to anybody else, namely its being a strong case.
For strong and weak inflectional forms are normally (and I believe,
ultimately completely) distributed by a phonetic principle: The stress
simply shift one syllable towards the end of an inflected stem if the
added flexive has an underlying vowel. Thus, there is not stress shift
before *-m, *-s, *-t of the sg. active, for there is no syllable to go to,
and hense these are strong forms; by contrast before *-me, *-te, *-ent,
and those of the dual and the whole of the middle voice (e.g. *-H2e) there
is a stress shift, so these are weak forms. Likewise in declension, where
*-s, *-m, *-H2 and zero leave the accent where it was (strong forms),
while *-os, *-ey, *-VH1, *-oom, *-bhyos, *-bhis, *-su do cause the accent
to move (weak forms). Only the dual in *-e and the nom.pl. in *-es seem
reluctant to fall into line. I have managed to explain the nom.pl. *-es
from an earlier vowel-less sequence *-z-c (i.e., two different syllables,
one marking the nom., the other the pl., in that order, structurally
parallel with the acc.pl. in orig. *-m- + sibilant), the calculation
giving at the same time phonetic explanation of all the many other
oddities of the nom. pl. forms, esp. the type in *-'-or-es, *-'-on-es: Why
is the -o- not lost? Why is it o, not e? Why is it not long? Why has the e
not been lost? And, of course, why is the e not accented? All of this is
explained by **-z-c where there was no vowel to shift to: An unaccented
-e- is first reduced to -o-; then the nom. sibilant ("-z-") lengthens
(result now *-'-o:r-zc); then short unstressed vowel are lost (but this
form does not have any, so the rule operates vacuously here); the a long
vowel is shorted before word-final triconsonantal clusters containing the
nom. sibilant (result now *-'-or-zc, much like nom.sg. of prs.ptc.
**-ent-z, through **-ont-z and *-o:nt-z with length at the critical time
when short unaccented vowels were lost, is shortened to *-ont-z, PIE
*-onts); from *-'-or-zc to the actual *-'-or-es the road is short: it
takes a vowel insertion, and since we have no contrasting evidence to stop
us we may just postulate a change to *-'-or-ezc before the last step, the
well-known change of all sibilant clusters to plain /s/, creates the
IE output *-'-ores which everybody posits on different grounds already.
Thus encouraged, one would like to derive the dual *-e from something
ultimately in equal fashion. Now, since the pronouns make one posit /H3/
as the morpheme of the dual, one may simply toy with an older form in
*-H3. From a consonant stem like *H2ner- 'man', the form PIE *H2ne'r-e
would then have to be derived from an older form *H2ne'r-H3. This entails
the postulate that word-final *-H3 developed an auxiliary vowel after a
preceding consonant, i.e. went to *-eH3. I know of no IE words in
unaccented *-eH3, nor any words in *-C-H3, so the postulate that this gave
*-C-eH3 and then lost the H3 to yield IE *-e would contradict nothing we
know, and so could be correct. - Note, however, that even without this
possibility of a principled understanding I would still have to posit *-e,
for that is what the existing evidence gives you.

> 2) If view of what you have written below about length and its connection
> with open syllables, would you mind explaining why an open syllable seems
> sufficient grounds to you above to explain the length of Sanskrit <a:>?

Brugmann's law simply records the fact that IE short *-o- in an IE open
syllable turns up in Indo-Iranian with length, i.e. as IIr. /-a:-/. I see
no problem with such a phonetic rule pertaining to one of the IE braches.
In terms of phonetic naturalness, it is okay, for [o] is more sonorous tha
either [e] or [a], and open syllables do accord more space for lengthening
than closed ones, ergo, if only one of the three vowels e,a,o should come
out longer than the others, it would be o; and if it should be sensitive
to the syllable structure, it is expected to work better in open than in
closed syllables.

> >> He then proceeds to identify an inanimate (neuter) -*iH{1}.

> > He is right in that.

> Well, then it is incumbent upon you to provide the definitive argument for
> the existence of the "pure vowel" [i], which has eluded every IEist who has
> put his pen to it.

Neither Beekes nor I see the i of *-iH1 as underlyingly syllabic; in
phonemic terms it may just as well be given the notation *-yH1. And,
hurrah, it is a strong case, i.e. contains no underlying vowels.

> >> I would maintain that the great majority of the (animate and inanimate)
> >> forms can be more simply from *-y.

> > Not the ones we find, if they are to be treated by the phonetic rules we
> > normally accept.

> Well, generalizations are less than illuminating. Why not give a few
> examples if you believe this?

*H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e; u-stem. *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:. What
_is_  the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

[... (On "us two" in IE):]

> (JER:)

> > I'm not that much of an oracle, but my guess is *noH3 which stands to the
> > accented form *nH3we' as does *nos to *nsme', and in parallel fashion
> > *woH3 for 'you two' : accented form *uH3we' (apparently dissimilated to
> > *uH3e') which would match the 2pl *wos : *usme' - provided /m/ develops
> > into /w/ in the position after the dual marker /H3/.

> This is the least logical proposition that I have seen you advance. So
> enclitic *noH{3} just conveniently drops a *-we{'}? and *nos just drops an
> inconvenient *-me? and a stress-unaccented enclitic *woH{3} modifies its <w>
> to /u/ in *uH{3}we{'}? {3}.

> I think you are engaging in free association.

I'm trying to make sense of it all in a principled way that respects the
evidence of IE itself where there is some. It may be illogical to
abbreviate wordforms when forming enclitic variants of them, but many
languages plainly do that. It's like numerals and greetings, you get all
sorts of reduced shapes in allegro speech, since people already understand
the message at the beginning (sometimes even before). The Lithuanian
dative jam 'to him' is not from some enigmatic m-form in IE, its older
form was jamui, a perfectly regular dative, from which it has been
abbreviated by no known rule whatsoever.

Jens


From stevegus at aye.net  Thu May 13 14:56:20 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steven A. Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 10:56:20 -0400
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.105620.0400.>

> Moderator's comment:
>   When I lived in Connecticut, I met people who made a distinction between
>   "arse" and "ass" consistently, not as a learned item but in casual speech.

Which brings to mind the other question of the effect of language
taboos, that of taboo deformations.  "Heck is a place for people who
don't believe in Gosh," &c.

You would expect "arse" to yield something like /aas/, rather than /aes/
in most varieties of non-rhotic English, since /ae/ does not seem to be
possible before /r/ for most people, and in most brands of non-rhotic
American, at least, the lingering influence of /r/ still prevents it
from appearing.  My understanding is that the /ae/ > /a/ or /aa/ that
marks southern British English only occurs before /s/, /z/, /th/, /f/,
and perhaps a couple more, but not /r/.  This might be another taboo
deformation.

Back when I was in college, it was widely held that you had to make
special exceptions to ordinary rules of phonetic development for words
like "wolf," because they were worship-words that were deliberately
changed.  I don't have Beekes in front of me, but I seem to recall being
somewhat surprised when he discussed a number of these words and made no
reference to this hypothesis.  Is it no longer needed?

Steven A. Gustafson, attorney at law
Fox & Cotner:  PHONE (812) 945 9600   FAX (812) 945 9615
http://www.foxcotner.com

Sports only build character if you are the kid nobody wants on
their team.


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 13 16:09:32 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 18:09:32 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <002301be9cb7$acc51d20$87142399@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.180932.0200.>

On Wed, 12 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> Dear Jens and IEists:

>  ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
> Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 5:50 PM

> > On Sat, 1 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> >> What is so "intangible" about supposing that *te is the basal form, that
> >> there was an inflection - *-wV which produced -*twe, and that the original
> >> significance of -*twe being lost, both forms came into use as bases for
> >> other forms but with a bias towards the form with -*wV for the nominative
> >> (through its former topical use): -*tu/u:?

> > That you have to postulate a change before you even start.

> And what change is that?

The change in function. Quite often theories are rejected because they are
"ad hoc", the assumption being that in principle anyone can explain
anything if he is allowed to make the necessary extra assumptions. Still,
the easiest ad hoc solution ought at least to be specified, so as to be
evaluated on its own merits and to be kept in mind reconsideration in
case additional evidence later emerges. But you theory is not "ad hoc", it
is "ad aliud": it simply explains something different from what we find.
To be of interest, such a theory must have something _very_ elegant and
simplyfing about it, otherwise there is hardly a chance it could be true.

> > You are disqualifying the evidence which points in a different
> > direction than you want to go.

> I am discounting an alternate interpretation of the evidence.

That may be put down as a plea of guilty.

> > And it is _very_ unsatisfactory to have the preform of *swe 'oneself, sich'
> > be a nominative.

> Well, perhaps it your view but not in Pokorny's, where we find *swe listed
> under *se as *s(e)we, and "*se- und *s(e)we-, Reflexivpronomen fu{"}r alle
> Personen, Gechlechter und Numeri".  *swe means simply 'self', and, as such,
> is no case-dependent as compounds like *s(w)e-bh(o)- surely show (cf. also
> Armenian <in-kn>).

Pokorny also knew that sich, se, sego did not form a nominative. The lack
of "Kasus" in the enumeration of the global function of the pronoun is
eloquent. - That derivatives or compounds containing the reflexive stem
can occur in all cases is a consequence of the complex meaning of the
result and does not reflect a nominative case meaning of the reflexive
itself. By the same logic, you might say that Lat. no:s 'we, us' could be
the singular, just because there is a derivative noster that can be used
in all the forms an adjective can have.

> >>> [On Gk. mo:^mar : amu:'mo:n as reflecting *mwoH-/*muH-:]

> >>> And, are you asserting, that IE *mow(V)- could *not* result in Gk.
> >>> mo:{^}-?

> > Of course I am.

> Then, of course, you are wrong in view of Greek <no:{^}i>.

I have never derived Gk. no:^i 'us two' from any IE or post-IE preform
with *now(V)-. I have derived the acc. no:^e from *nH3we via
Proto-Gk. *no:we, this equating the form with the IIr. stem /a:va(-)/.

Jens


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu May 13 16:32:56 1999
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max W Wheeler)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:32:56 +0100
Subject: Taboo replacements
In-Reply-To: <l03130305b35f502a2d5d@[207.120.3.58]>
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.173256.0100.>

On Wed, 12 May 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> That is true but "athletic supporters" are still called "jock straps" in
> America

[snip]

> [ Moderator's comment:
>   I think the two writers are actually saying the same thing:  Were the word
>   "jock" still in (common) use in the meaning "penis", it would not have been
>   extended to the meaning "athlete" no matter what an athletic supporter was
>   called.
>   --rma ]

Athletic supports are called jock straps in British English too, but
until this correspondence I had no idea why (which sort of supports
rma's point).

Max
___________________________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975; fax: +44 (0)1273 671320
___________________________________________________________________________


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu May 13 16:43:49 1999
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max W Wheeler)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:43:49 +0100
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <l03130306b35f5246ac0a@[207.120.3.58]>
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.174349.0100.>

On Wed, 12 May 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> a gandul is a "pigeon pea" and is about half the size of a sweet pea
> I think it's only used as "lazy" in Spanish slang and I seem to remember
> seeing it used that way in literature of the Siglo de Oro --but it's been
> many years since I've read that stuff

<Gandul> doesn't seem to be slang in contemporary European Spanish, nor
does it seem to have the meaning `pigeon pea' there. Garc?a de Diego
says it's from Arabic <gandur> `majo' (I haven't got Corominas DCEH
handy).

BTW <gandula> is `deck-chair' in Catalan; a nice metonymy.

Max
___________________________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975; fax: +44 (0)1273 671320
___________________________________________________________________________


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Thu May 13 17:30:50 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 12:30:50 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.123050.0500.>

Pat Ryan wrote, concerning whether PIE [e] etc. were phonemic:

>>> Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>>> difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

I replied:

>> More precisely, we must say that it *could indicate* a semantic difference.
>> In English, /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct, even though _either_
>> means the same no matter how it is pronounced in that word.  Nor do they
>> indicate a semantic difference in the context /l_t/, there being no word
>> *_leet_ to contrast with _light_.  It's the semantic difference between
>> _meet_ and _might_ that shows that /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct;
>> we cannot say that phonemes ever *produce* a semantic difference.

Pat responded:

>Well, there is no set of relationships in IE wherein *CeC is semantically
>different from *Ce{sub}C. That, IMHO, demonstrates conclusively that
>[e/e{sub}] is not phonemic.

With Lehmann, I agree that [e e{sub}] were originally allophones of a single
phoneme, however that phoneme must be analyzed.  But the stress system of
(pre)-PIE changed, and that changed things greatly.  At one point, [e{sub}] was
a predictable variant of [e] under weak stress.  But later, the occurrence of
[e] and [e{sub}] was no longer predictable.  More than meaning, it is the
*unpredictability* of one form or another that requires them to be analyzed as
separate phonemes.  Once speakers could no longer know from the stress pattern
of a word which to say, it was one more fact to be remembered about the word --
which in systems which understand phonemes as *psychological* entities,
(essentially, all post-structuralist systems), is sufficient. -- Needless to
say, the contrast was not instantly exploited for semantic purposes, at least
in the sense that new roots were introduced which differed from alreathy
existing roots precisely because one had [e], one [e{sub}].  But quantitative
ablaut came to play a very large role in the verb system, as well as in the
declension of certain nominal types.  Germanic strong verbs (called "irregular"
in English) exploit ablaut to this day.  The reflexes of the difference do not
differentiate roots, but they still differentiate verb tenses.  That would be
impossible if they weren't separate phonemes!

(I should add, by the way, that most Indo-Europeanists reject /e{sub}/, and
apparantly also [e{sub}].  But the reason is what they see as lack of evidence
for it, not some theoretical problem.)

>As for [e:], I do not believe it is an allophone
>but rather the product of *He/e{sub}.

This just plain won't work.  Consider the word for 'father' in Greek and
Sanstrit:
			Greek		Sanskrit
	Nominative	pate:'r		pita:
	Genitive	patro's		pituh.
	Dative		patri'		pitre:
	Accusative	pate'ra		pitaram
	Vocative	pa'ter		pitah.

Surely the long vowel of the nominative  cannot derive from /He/: if so, at
least the accusative and vocative should have shown the same development.  The
[e:] of which Lehmann speaks is traditional PIE lengthened grade.  It occurs in
specific morphological forms, in part old, in part through later extension
(verb tenses in many languages).  It has nothing to do with laryngeals;
although I grant that sequences VH yield V: in many forms in many IE languages.
(HV normally yields a short vowel, not a long one, except in Sanskrit, which
has an abnormal number of long vowel reflexes.  "Laryngeal metathesis" seems
likely for Sanskrit, but (peace, brethren and sisteren!) not elsewhere.

[my stuff on Lehmann's /^/ omitted]

>Leo, c'mon. Give Lehmann a break. He used "phoneme" for "syllabicity" because
>there really was not a recognized term then for his analyzed parts of /"^/,
>realized as [e].

I didn't object to Lehmann's calling /^/ a phoneme.  Like any good
structuralist or post-structuralist, I accept the idea that some phonemes are
non-segmental.  My objection is only to his claim that /^/ was, for some
reason, non-segmental.  Only his notion that there were originally no other
vowel phonemes could possibly support such a claim, and even then it's
unacceptable for all sorts of other reasons.

Someone wrote:

>>>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg
>>>> in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does
>>>> not detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

Pat replied:

>>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

I responded:

>> Won't work.  Consider the perfect active, where the 3.sg. desinence is PIE
>> -e, but the stress was on the root (as demonstrated by accent in Greek and
>> Sanskrit and failure of Verner's Law to operate on Germanic preterite
>> singular forms, though the plurals were affected; ...

Pat suggested:

>As for the 3rd sg. perfect active, -e is understandable on the same principle
>if we consider the earlier form to have been -e: (from *-He), reduced to -e in
>a stress-unaccented syllable.

I know of no evidence for a laryngeal there -- and one piece of evidence
against.  Skt. _cakara_ 'I have done' reflects PIE _*kwe-kwor-Ae_, where A is
an a-coloring laryngeal.  The short -a- of the root, where -a:- would be
expected by Brugmann's Law, is often taken as evidence for a laryngeal in the
desinence: Brugmann's Law operated only on -o- in open syllables.  But the
3.sg. is _caka:ra_ < *_kew-kwor-e_ -- Brugmann's law operated in the open
syllable.  (Not all accept this argument: the 1.sg. can have -a:-, presumably
by analogy, and some deny Brugmann's Law altogether.  But in any event I know
of no evidence *for* a laryngeal there.  Do you have any?)

>>> IMHO, the morpheme for the second and third persons, containing <t>, has
>>> a unitary origin: *T{H}O, 'tribe-member'.

>> Given the tone of recent discussions, I'd best not say what I think of that
>> proposal.

>If you have *reasons* for rejecting this as a possibility, do not hesitate to
>let us all know.

Indeed I do.  You are, in effect, positing a nominal stem (not pronominal, if
it has the meaning you attribute to it) which is shorter than any other in the
language.  Or do you mean the pronoun underlying Lat. _is-tu-d_, Gk. _to-d_,
English _tha-t_ (the dental is a pronominal desinence)?  And what is {H} in
your reconstruction?  Without a lot of explanation, your reconstruction (and in
particular your gloss) cannot be accepted.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu May 13 20:24:17 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 21:24:17 +0100
Subject: arse & ass
Message-ID: <THU.13.MAY.1999.212417.0100.>

> [ Moderator's comment:
>   When I lived in Connecticut, I met people who made a distinction between
>   "arse" and "ass" consistently, not as a learned item but in casual speech.
>   --rma ]

NZ English distinguishes between the two in casual speech as well - but in a
school of mine there was a Scottish teacher who used to pronounce "ass" the
way I would pronounce "arse".   So we seem to have:
(a) dialects with /&/ for both
(b) dialects with /a/ for both
(c) dialects which distinguish them;  but different dialects may distinguish
different groups of words.   For example, my ancient and decidedly RP
rhyming dictionary gives only "farce" and "sparse" for the sound I use for
"arse".   It rhymes crass, gas, lass, mass  (in my speech all with /&/) with
grass, brass, class, pass, glass (in my speech all with /a/).

Peter


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 13 22:27:53 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 00:27:53 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905131742580.13194-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <FRI.14.MAY.1999.002753.0200.>

On Thu, 13 May 1999, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote:

[In a reply mail to Patrick C. Ryan]

> Pokorny also knew that sich, se, sego did not form a nominative. [...]

Trying to avoid kicking up a storm: Did I write sego? Sorry, I meant
sebja.

Jens


From Anthony.Appleyard at umist.ac.uk  Fri May 14 07:04:21 1999
From: Anthony.Appleyard at umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 08:04:21 +0100
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <FRI.14.MAY.1999.080421.0100.>

In discussion re `ass' = "donkey" and also being the USA word for UK
"arse",
Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:-

> So why didn't this word's homonym come into American English as "arse"
> with an /R/?  Was <ass> "buttocks" borrowed from later British English or
> from New England or Southern English?

> [ Moderator's comment:
> When I lived in Connecticut, I met people who made a distinction between
> "arse" and "ass" consistently, not as a learned item but in casual speech.
>  --rma ]

I heard once of a German word `assloch' = "anus". Perhaps there is
influence here from German immigrants: compare the USA English word
"burg" = "town" taken from German, and a USA habit of mispronouncing UK
placenames ending in "-burgh" as if they were spelt "-burg".

And in the case of the English word "hart" becoming disused, as in
previous discussion, there is also an ambiguity-causing homophony with
"heart" here to affect matters.


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Sat May 15 19:03:34 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 15:03:34 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <SAT.15.MAY.1999.150334.EDT.>

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Quote me in full and it will be obvious that I wasn't talking about the
>intention to invent a language.

-- you spoke of the "invention" of German, didn't you?

>The intention is first of all to communicate.  The intentionally refers to
>the objective not the means.

-- nobody said "let's communicate!" either.

Humans communicate the way horses run and tigers stalk.  It's what we do.

>All they needed was to percieve and intend to communicate in another way.

-- they didn't do that, either.  All they intended to do was talk, and they
did -- and you can talk just as effectively in any language, in any era of
the human race.

Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.


From wirix at tin.it  Sat May 15 20:40:51 1999
From: wirix at tin.it (Wilmer "Xelloss" Ricciotti)
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 22:40:51 +0200
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905121703390.1522-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <SAT.15.MAY.1999.224051.0200.>

In latin we have the following perfects, depending on the verb:

- a 'weak' perfect obtained in the most verbs using the -vi/-ui
characteristic (and the first question I have is: where does this
characteristic come from? is it cognate to the *wos/*ws characteristic
we have in greek perfect participles (lelykos, lelykyia, lelykos <
lely-kWOS, lely-kWSja, lely-kWOS))?

- a sigmatic perfect ('scripsi' from 'scribo'), which comes from the old
aorist

- a perfect obtained using the 'doubling' (I don't know if it's the
correct term in english) ('mo-mordi' from 'mordeo', 'de-di' from 'do'),
which is a typical indoeuropean characteristic for the perfect

- perfects obtained by lenghtening a vowel in the stem ('lEgi' from
'lego') or without characteristic ('lui' from 'luo')

- perfects obtained from a different stem ('fui' from 'sum')

What I can't understand is the criterion which was used to choose for
the new pefect an aorist form instead of a perfect one and vice versa.
Where does the -i ending for the 1st pers. sing. in the perfect come
from? In greek we have -a in the perfect as well as in the aorist and in
forms completely cognate to latin ones as 'oida' (< woid-a) is to
'vid-i' (< void-i) or as 'fe-ci' is to'(e)the-ka' ('cappatic' aorist
from tithemi) (here latin conserves even the -k-, and extends it to the
present tense).

Where does the (archaic) -ere ending for the 3rd pers. pl. in the
perfect come from? I've been told that -ere is the old perfect ending,
while -erunt is the old aorist one...

Well I think that's all, at the moment.

Bye
--
Wilmer Ricciotti - Italy
wirix at tin.it


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Sat May 15 23:11:50 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 01:11:50 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <000c01be9d0c$7e2561a0$3d9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.011150.0200.>

>> Sanskrit was never monovocalic, phonologically speaking.

>I disagree, strongly.

>Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

>Pat

Since the ante-voiced sandhi form of -as is -o Pat is right in finding -e
simply incredible. But I also find the idea of "monovocalic Sanskrit"
hair-raising.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Sun May 16 23:25:57 1999
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 19:25:57 -0400
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.192557.0400.>

>The intention behind wheel was not to make a wheel or make a new kind of
>wheel.  The intention behind the wheel was transportation.

>What logically must drive language is the goal of communication.  No one had
>to say let's invent Middle English.  All they needed was to percieve and
>intend to communicate in another way.

>Form follows function.

Actually, it's the other way round.    people tool around inventng all sorts
of gadgets, most of which are lost with their inventors.  Wheels were
invented all over the world.  Everywhere people were faced with "OK, what
are we going to use this for?" once they'd "invented" a given artefact.  It
was only in areas with large domesticable animals, which could pull loads
many tmes larger than what a human could do,  that people found a "use" for
what had started out as a clever toy (the wheel), and remained so in many
parts of the world. (see Diamond, "Guns, Germs, and Steel").

The same phenomenon often happens in linguistic change - oftne distinctions
arise, and different functions have to be found for them (cf. English of and
off, the -a/-u genitive alternaton in Polish (see Janda "Back from the
Brink" fro an excellent exposition).

Function often follows form.


From BMScott at stratos.net  Sun May 16 03:27:26 1999
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 23:27:26 -0400
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <SAT.15.MAY.1999.232726.0400.>

Nik Taylor wrote:

> Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>> So why didn't this word's homonym come into American English as
>> "arse" with an /R/?

> It's my understanding that "ass" began as a *euphemism* for "arse",
> which later disappeared from most dialects of American English.

As I understand it, 'ass' /&s/ is a relic of sporadic early (15th c.)
/r/-loss evidenced by such forms as <Dasset> 'Dorset' and inverted
spellings like <farther> 'father' in the Cely papers.  'Arse' /A:s/, on
the other hand, shows the later (17th - 18th c.) southeast English
/r/-loss following the vowel lengthening before /rC/ and /r#/.

Peter wrote:

> NZ English distinguishes between the two in casual speech as well - but in a
> school of mine there was a Scottish teacher who used to pronounce "ass" the
> way I would pronounce "arse".

I believe that the RP long-short contrast /A:/ - /&/ is neutralized to
/a/ in Scots Standard English.

Brian M. Scott


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Sun May 16 04:45:36 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 23:45:36 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <SAT.15.MAY.1999.234536.0500.>

>I heard once of a German word `assloch' = "anus".

The German word is _Arschloch_ with /s^/.  The /r/ is weak, but distinguishable
from *Aschloch 'ash hole'.

(Since this is a historical list, after all, I should point out that the German
word is now vulgar but was once respectable.  It appears in Old High German as
_arsloh_, used to gloss Latin _anus_.)

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From ek at idiom.com  Sun May 16 05:09:47 1999
From: ek at idiom.com (ek)
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 22:09:47 -0700
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <SAT.15.MAY.1999.220947.0700.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Well, until this discussion I had always thought that jock straps were worn by
jocks (football players etc) which also supports his point.
-eva

On Thursday, May 13, 1999 9:33 AM, Max W Wheeler [SMTP:maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk]
wrote:

> On Wed, 12 May 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>> [ Moderator's comment:
>>   I think the two writers are actually saying the same thing:  Were the word
>>   "jock" still in (common) use in the meaning "penis", it would not have
>>   been extended to the meaning "athlete" no matter what an athletic
>>   supporter was called.
>>   --rma ]

> Athletic supports are called jock straps in British English too, but
> until this correspondence I had no idea why (which sort of supports
> rma's point).

> Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>

[ moderator snip ]


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun May 16 14:59:58 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 09:59:58 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.095958.0500.>

Dear Anthony and IEists:

[ moderator snip ]

In actual usage among German immigrants in the USA, I have heard only
<Arschloch>.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun May 16 16:35:38 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 11:35:38 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.113538.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 1999 10:05 AM

> On Wed, 12 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

>> Of all the arguments employed to explain divergent forms, analogy is surely
>> the weakest because it implies a *mistake* on the part of native speakers of
>> the language. Were Sanskrit speakers all **childs**?

> I'm sure all speakers of Sanskrit were children at one time. Aren't you
> in effect dismissing the existence of analogy as a factor in language
> change?

No, I am not. What I tried to do is to suggest that 'analogy' as an
explanation is to be *least* preferred because each "mistake" is sui
generis; no "mistake" implies that another mistake *will* be made only that
it *might * be made,

> In the case of the non-neuter dual, the Sanskrit form -a:(v)
> corresponds fully with the evidence from the other languages, only
> elsewhere the other stem-classes use a different morpheme that can
> everywhere continue an IE *-e.

That, IMHO, is a big "ONLY"; "correspond" means something a little more
restrictive to me. I fail to see how OCS C-st. -i, and u-stem -y  (for nom.
masc./fem.) "corresponds".

> So, the other languages distinguish o-stems stems from non-o-stems in this
> point, Sanskrit does not. English has -s in the genitive sg. and pl., most
> related languages only in the sg.  The two problems are quite parallel, and
> analogy is known to be the answer in the latter case, what's wrong with
> suspecting in the former?

There is nothing wrong with a suspicion that is in keeping with the data.

>> Now, I have two questions:

>> 1) If no IE syllable may begin with a vowel in a root, and affixes derive
>> from grammaticalized morphemes, why should we expect any affix to originally
>> be simply -V?

> Oh boy. I'm not saying the non-neuter was _originally_ *-e, I'm saying it
> was (o things look as if it was) in the IE protolanguage. I am not sure
> there were no vowel-initial roots, it is mostly very hard to prove that
> something as hazy as *H1 was not present. On the other hand, there is
> absolute certainty that IE did have vowel-initial affixes. You may take
> the gen.sg. ending, whether you want to posit as *-os or as *-es, there is
> no place for "-Hos" or "-Hes";

Sorry that I did not make clear that my objection to *-e was principally
directed towards the termination of the perfect. Beekes reconstructs most
dual forms as containing [H{1}] and, formwise, I have no problem with that.
As for the genitive, I reconstruct *-s(V), with the final vowel falling off
due to stress-accent of a preceding syllable: "Ce/oC + sV -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

> the 3pl active ends in *-ent, certainly not "-Hent" (I am speaking of the
> full forms, I know there are zero-grade variants, but they are plainly
> derived from the fuller variants by rule).  As for the ultimate origin of the
> dual *-e, I have given that question a good deal of thought, and perhaps we
> are not so far apart in this. From a purely IE point of view, the form *-e is
> odd in a point which seems to have caused no concern to anybody else, namely
> its being a strong case.  For strong and weak inflectional forms are normally
> (and I believe, ultimately completely) distributed by a phonetic principle:
> The stress simply shifts one syllable towards the end of an inflected stem if
> the added flexive has an underlying vowel. Thus, there is not stress shift
> before *-m, *-s, *-t of the sg. active, for there is no syllable to go to,
> and hence these are strong forms; by contrast before *-me, *-te, *-ent, and
> those of the dual and the whole of the middle voice (e.g. *-H2e) there is a
> stress shift, so these are weak forms. Likewise in declension, where *-s,
> *-m, *-H2 and zero leave the accent where it was (strong forms), while *-os,
> *-ey, *-VH1, *-oom, *-bhyos, *-bhis, *-su do cause the accent to move (weak
> forms). Only the dual in *-e and the nom.pl. in *-es seem reluctant to fall
> into line. I have managed to explain the nom.pl. *-es from an earlier
> vowel-less sequence *-z-c (i.e., two different syllables, one marking the
> nom., the other the pl., in that order, structurally parallel with the
> acc.pl. in orig. *-m- + sibilant),

Why not simply *-s(V)s(v)?

> the calculation giving at the same time phonetic explanation of all the many
> other oddities of the nom. pl. forms, esp. the type in *-'-or-es, *-'-on-es:
> Why is the -o- not lost? Why is it o, not e? Why is it not long? Why has the
> e not been lost? And, of course, why is the e not accented?

There is no doubt that these are all good questions.

> All of this is explained by **-z-c where there was no vowel to shift to: An
> unaccented -e- is first reduced to -o-; then the nom. sibilant ("-z-")
> lengthens (result now *-'-o:r-zc); then short unstressed vowel are lost (but
> this form does not have any, so the rule operates vacuously here); the a long
> vowel is shorted before word-final triconsonantal clusters

For some languages, perhaps. But for IE, a tri-consonantal cluster of this
form is not likely to have been a realized phenomenon at *any* stage of IE.

> containing the nom. sibilant (result now *-'-or-zc, much like nom.sg. of
> prs.ptc.  **-ent-z, through **-ont-z and *-o:nt-z with length at the critical
> time when short unaccented vowels were lost, is shortened to *-ont-z, PIE
> *-onts); from *-'-or-zc to the actual *-'-or-es the road is short: it takes a
> vowel insertion, and since we have no contrasting evidence to stop us we may
> just postulate a change to *-'-or-ezc before the last step, the well-known
> change of all sibilant clusters to plain /s/, creates the IE output *-'-ores
> which everybody posits on different grounds already.

For whatever it may be worth, on the strength of comparative data (which
most will not accept), I do not believe the genitive -s and plural -s had a
voicing contrast, rather an earlier difference of vowel: plural /so/;
genitive /se/.

> Thus encouraged, one would like to derive the dual *-e from something
> ultimately in equal fashion. Now, since the pronouns make one posit /H3/
> as the morpheme of the dual, one may simply toy with an older form in
> *-H3.

I do not believe that the data "make" us posit /H{3}/ as a dual formant.

> From a consonant stem like *H2ner- 'man', the form PIE *H2ne'r-e would then
> have to be derived from an older form *H2ne'r-H3. This entails the postulate
> that word-final *-H3 developed an auxiliary vowel after a preceding
> consonant, i.e. went to *-eH3. I know of no IE words in unaccented *-eH3, nor
> any words in *-C-H3, so the postulate that this gave *-C-eH3 and then lost
> the H3 to yield IE *-e would contradict nothing we know, and so could be
> correct. - Note, however, that even without this possibility of a principled
> understanding I would still have to posit *-e, for that is what the existing
> evidence gives you.

I think one important factor that should be considered in these equations is
the example Beekes gives on p. 195 of Greek <o{'}sse>, 'pair of eyes', which
he derives from *ok{w}-iH{1} THROUGH *ok{w}-ye. We could, just as easily,
posit a dual in -y and forget about the laryngeal.

>> 2) If view of what you have written below about length and its connection
>> with open syllables, would you mind explaining why an open syllable seems
>> sufficient grounds to you above to explain the length of Sanskrit <a:>?

> Brugmann's law simply records the fact that IE short *-o- in an IE open
> syllable turns up in Indo-Iranian with length, i.e. as IIr. /-a:-/. I see
> no problem with such a phonetic rule pertaining to one of the IE branches.
> In terms of phonetic naturalness, it is okay, for [o] is more sonorous than
> either [e] or [a], and open syllables do accord more space for lengthening
> than closed ones, ergo, if only one of the three vowels e,a,o should come
> out longer than the others, it would be o; and if it should be sensitive
> to the syllable structure, it is expected to work better in open than in
> closed syllables.

This is interesting speculation but I believe that IE displays far more -a:-
than -o:-. Is that not true?

>>>> He then proceeds to identify an inanimate (neuter) -*iH{1}.

>>> He is right in that.

>> Well, then it is incumbent upon you to provide the definitive argument for
>> the existence of the "pure vowel" [i], which has eluded every IEist who has
>> put his pen to it.

> Neither Beekes nor I see the i of *-iH1 as underlyingly syllabic;

If there is a school that does not accept /i/ as syllabic, I suggest you
think about changing schools.

> in phonemic terms it may just as well be given the notation *-yH1. And,
> hurrah, it is a strong case, i.e. contains no underlying vowels.

In view of Sanskrit o-stem <yuge:{'}>, I am not sure what the cause for
jubilation is.

>>>> I would maintain that the great majority of the (animate and inanimate)
>>>> forms can be more simply from *-y.

>>> Not the ones we find, if they are to be treated by the phonetic rules we
>>> normally accept.

I claim to accept every established phonetic rule that you do but we differ
in their application.

>> Well, generalizations are less than illuminating. Why not give a few
>> examples if you believe this?

> *H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e;

In view of Gk. o{'}sse, why not?

u-stem. *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

> What _is_ the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

The majority of the attested forms, there being no /i/ in IE..

> [... (On "us two" in IE):]

>> (JER:)

>>> I'm not that much of an oracle, but my guess is *noH3 which stands to the
>>> accented form *nH3we' as does *nos to *nsme', and in parallel fashion *woH3
>>> for 'you two' : accented form *uH3we' (apparently dissimilated to *uH3e')
>>> which would match the 2pl *wos : *usme' - provided /m/ develops into /w/ in
>>> the position after the dual marker /H3/.

>> This is the least logical proposition that I have seen you advance. So
>> enclitic *noH{3} just conveniently drops a *-we{'}? and *nos just drops an
>> inconvenient *-me? and a stress-unaccented enclitic *woH{3} modifies its <w>
>> to /u/ in *uH{3}we{'}? {3}.

>> I think you are engaging in free association.

> I'm trying to make sense of it all in a principled way that respects the
> evidence of IE itself where there is some.

IMHO, this is the least principled of your arguments heretofore --- some of
which, however, are thought-provoking and interesting.

> It may be illogical to abbreviate wordforms when forming enclitic variants of
> them, but many languages plainly do that.

Not in my opinion. I believe that emphatic variants are marked by expansions
of the underlying forms found in enclitics.

> It's like numerals and greetings, you get all sorts of reduced shapes in
> allegro speech, since people already understand the message at the beginning
> (sometimes even before).

Some holes do not improve with additional digging.

> The Lithuanian dative jam 'to him' is not from some enigmatic m-form in IE,
> its older form was jamui, a perfectly regular dative, from which it has been
> abbreviated by no known rule whatsoever.

I prefer to think that there is no enigma involved in *me; that it was
expanded in some languages by H{1}e- for semantic distinctiveness and
perhaps emphasis; that a topical  (and later, simply more distinctive) form
of *me was *mew (seen in Hittite -mu); and that this (once) inflected form
was *also* expanded by H{1}e-, and finally inflected for the dative (-ei),
producing jamui. I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun May 16 17:15:14 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 12:15:14 -0500
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.121514.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 1999 11:09 AM

[ moderator snip ]

<snip>

> > And what change is that?
>
> The change in function. Quite often theories are rejected because they are
> "ad hoc", the assumption being that in principle anyone can explain
> anything if he is allowed to make the necessary extra assumptions. Still,
> the easiest ad hoc solution ought at least to be specified, so as to be
> evaluated on its own merits and to be kept in mind reconsideration in
> case additional evidence later emerges. But your theory is not "ad hoc", it
> is "ad aliud": it simply explains something different from what we find.
> To be of interest, such a theory must have something _very_ elegant and
> simplyfing about it, otherwise there is hardly a chance it could be true.

I believe, with Beekes, that IE was once an ergative language; and that the
absolutive form in IE was -0. I assume that the attested accusative *te
maintains the form of the absolute before the introduction of animate
accusatives in -m. In the datives *toi and *tebh(e)i, we see it retained
also. If *tu/u: were the underlying form, we should expect **twi and
*tubh(e)i generally (although this probably explains the Greek forms, e.g.
in s-.

Additionally, the Hittite enclitics -du and -ta clearly point to an early
competition between the basal forms (-ta from *te) and the expanded form
(-du from *twe).

If IE had a topical inflection in -w, it is precisely among the conservative
pronouns that we would expect it to manifest itself.

>>> You are disqualifying the evidence which points in a different
>>> direction than you want to go.

>> I am discounting an alternate interpretation of the evidence.

> That may be put down as a plea of guilty.

That may be characterized as a Star Court proceeding.

>>> And it is _very_ unsatisfactory to have the preform of *swe 'oneself,
>>> sich' be a nominative.

>> Well, perhaps it your view but not in Pokorny's, where we find *swe listed
>> under *se as *s(e)we, and "*se- und *s(e)we-, Reflexivpronomen fu{"}r alle
>> Personen, Gechlechter und Numeri".  *swe means simply 'self', and, as such,
>> is not case-dependent as compounds like *s(w)e-bh(o)- surely show (cf. also
>> Armenian <in-kn>).

> Pokorny also knew that sich, se, sego did not form a nominative. The lack
> of "Kasus" in the enumeration of the global function of the pronoun is
> eloquent. -

Do not confuse dependence with function. "I myself am going". Is "myself"
not a nominative depending on another nominative?

> That derivatives or compounds containing the reflexive stem
> can occur in all cases is a consequence of the complex meaning of the
> result and does not reflect a nominative case meaning of the reflexive
> itself.

I think you should read Pokorny's definition again: "urspru{"}nglich
'abseits, getrennt, fu{"}r sich', DANN Reflexivpronomen..."

> By the same logic, you might say that Lat. no:s 'we, us' could be the
> singular, just because there is a derivative noster that can be used in all
> the forms an adjective can have.

I hope I never succumb to such a logic.

 <snip>

>> Then, of course, you are wrong in view of Greek <no:{^}i>.

> I have never derived Gk. no:^i 'us two' from any IE or post-IE preform
> with *now(V)-. I have derived the acc. no:^e from *nH3we via
> Proto-Gk. *no:we, this equating the form with the IIr. stem /a:va(-)/.

My dictionary shows <no:{^}e> *only* as a poetic variant of <no:{^}i>. Do
you have different information?

I reject unequivocally your H{3} as a part of the reconstruction.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun May 16 19:38:11 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 14:38:11 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.143811.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 1999 12:30 PM

<snip>

Leo writes:

> With Lehmann, I agree that [e e{sub}] were originally allophones of a single
> phoneme, however that phoneme must be analyzed.  But the stress system of
> (pre)-PIE changed, and that changed things greatly.  At one point, [e{sub}]
> was a predictable variant of [e] under weak stress.  But later, the
> occurrence of [e] and [e{sub}] was no longer predictable.  More than meaning,
> it is the *unpredictability* of one form or another that requires them to be
> analyzed as separate phonemes.

Pat responds:

I think a useful distinction to be made is whether we *can* predict the
occurences --- limited by our imperfect understanding of the
stress-accentual fluctuations  ---  and --- if we had a better understanding
of them, whether we could predict them.

Leo continues:

> Once speakers could no longer know from the stress pattern of a word which to
> say, it was one more fact to be remembered about the word -- which in systems
> which understand phonemes as *psychological* entities, (essentially, all
> post-structuralist systems), is sufficient.

Pat responds:

Whether we can "know" and whether the speakers then could have known is,
again, to me, two separate questions.


Leo continues:

> -- Needless to say, the contrast was not instantly exploited for semantic
> purposes, at least in the sense that new roots were introduced which differed
> from already existing roots precisely because one had [e], one [e{sub}].  But
> quantitative ablaut came to play a very large role in the verb system, as
> well as in the declension of certain nominal types.  Germanic strong verbs
> (called "irregular" in English) exploit ablaut to this day.  The reflexes of
> the difference do not differentiate roots, but they still differentiate verb
> tenses.  That would be impossible if they weren't separate phonemes!

Pat responds:

This is one of those questions in which it is hard to decide if the dog is
chasing his tail or the tail is teasing the dog.

On a non-IE scenario, a phoneme can easily be identified as marking a
semantic difference: English cat / cot.

In IE, we simply do not find that CeC is a semantically different morpheme
from CoC. Now, as you have rightly identified, these variations *do* mark
grammatical distinctions. You obviously prefer to define forms indicating
different grammatical employments as semantically different; I do not
because, if we did, we would be forced to say that cat / cats  are
*semantically* different. I do not think you would be willing to go this
far, would you?

 <snip>

Pat comments:

>> As for [e:], I do not believe it is an allophone but rather the product of
>> *He/e{sub}.

Leo answers:

> This just plain won't work.  Consider the word for 'father' in Greek and
> Sanstrit:
> Greek Sanskrit
> Nominative pate:'r pita:
> Genitive patro's pituh.
> Dative patri' pitre:
> Accusative pate'ra pitaram
> Vocative pa'ter pitah.

Pat argues:

I have no reason to think that the analysis of this word is other than as a
compound of the root plus the suffix of the nomina agentis -ter (not
**te:r).

Leo continues:

> Surely the long vowel of the nominative  cannot derive from /He/: if so,
> at least the accusative and vocative should have shown the same development.

Pat interjects:

Correct, I do not believe that the e: of this word derives from /He/; I also
do not believe it is original. In view of *ma:te{'}r, and in view of the
fact that we have no IE root of the form *p6-, considering that *p6te:{'}r
is obviously an analogous formation, I believe the likeliest scenario for
the long vowel is a metathesis of laryngeal (or, just simply, the feature
length): *pV:(H)-ter -> *p(6)-te:r.  On the basis, the /e:/ is simply an
allophone of /e/, hence, cannot be phonemic. If the long vowel of the
nominative were original rather than a result of easily understood
phonlogical developments, it *would* show up as more than -0- in, e.g. the
genitive.

Leo continues:

> The [e:] of which Lehmann speaks is traditional PIE lengthened grade.  It
> occurs in specific morphological forms, in part old, in part through later
> extension (verb tenses in many languages).  It has nothing to do with
> laryngeals; although I grant that sequences VH yield V: in many forms in many
> IE languages.  (HV normally yields a short vowel, not a long one, except in
> Sanskrit, which has an abnormal number of long vowel reflexes.  "Laryngeal
> metathesis" seems likely for Sanskrit, but (peace, brethren and sisteren!)
> not elsewhere.

Pat responds:

An /e:/ which is the result of phonological processes or morphology still
cannot be considered a phoneme IMHO. For me to accept the phonemic status of
[e:], I would need to see two roots: Ce/oC and Ce:/o:C, with different
meanings. And yes, I meant to write e:/o:. If e: is phonemic, we should
expect to see it participating in Ablaut.

 <snip>

Leo re-opens a subject:

> I didn't object to Lehmann's calling /^/ a phoneme.  Like any good
> structuralist or post-structuralist, I accept the idea that some phonemes
> are non-segmental.  My objection is only to his claim that /^/ was, for some
> reason, non-segmental.  Only his notion that there were originally no
> other vowel phonemes could possibly support such a claim, and even then it's
> unacceptable for all sorts of other reasons.

Pat responds:

I understand your concerns; and you have convinced me that Lehmann should
have expressed this differently.

Leo picks up on:

<snip>

> Pat suggested:

>> As for the 3rd sg. perfect active, -e is understandable on the same
>> principle if we consider the earlier form to have been -e: (from *-He),
>> reduced to -e in a stress-unaccented syllable.

Leo responds:

> I know of no evidence for a laryngeal there -- and one piece of evidence
> against.  Skt. _cakara_ 'I have done' reflects PIE _*kwe-kwor-Ae_, where A is
> an a-coloring laryngeal.  The short -a- of the root, where -a:- would be
> expected by Brugmann's Law, is often taken as evidence for a laryngeal in the
> desinence: Brugmann's Law operated only on -o- in open syllables.  But the
> 3.sg. is _caka:ra_ < *_kew-kwor-e_ -- Brugmann's law operated in the open
> syllable.  (Not all accept this argument: the 1.sg. can have -a:-, presumably
> by analogy, and some deny Brugmann's Law altogether.  But in any event I know
> of no evidence *for* a laryngeal there.  Do you have any?)

Pat responds:

1) On general principles, since inflections are grammaticalized morphemes,
and IE has no morphemes beginning in a vowel, any inflection that manifests
itself apparently as a V, should be, ab origine, be presumed to be HV.

2) For whatever interest in may be, I published in Mother Tongue an essay
describing the differences between the person as vocalic differences, each
proceeded by H{1}, i.e. /?/:
<http:/www/geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/PERSPRO1.htm>

Please do not attribute all my views of 1990 to me now, however.

 Leo continues:

> Indeed I do.  You are, in effect, positing a nominal stem (not pronominal, if
> it has the meaning you attribute to it) which is shorter than any other in
> the language.

Pat responds:

Shorter than *se? or *me?  But, I am cheating a little. But, here I think
the humor hides the truth. I do not believe that the earliest Nostratic had
what we would properly call pronouns. I believe all pronouns are only nouns
in a specialized use.

Leo asks:

> Or do you mean the pronoun underlying Lat. _is-tu-d_, Gk. _to-d_,
> English _tha-t_ (the dental is a pronominal desinence)?

Pat responds:

Yes, I believe that there was a *noun*, which would have the reflex of *to
in IE, which meant 'tribal member', and was used in various positions that
we would characterize as pronominal or inflectional. We even have an
extended form of this *to in *teuta:-, 'people (probably better 'tribe')'.

Leo then asks:

> And what is {H} in your reconstruction?

Pat answers:

Nothing esoteric --- simply aspiration.

> Without a lot of explanation, your reconstruction (and in particular your
> gloss) cannot be accepted.

Of that I am very well aware.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 16 19:38:16 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 20:38:16 +0100
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.203816.0100.>

   Pat said:

> I know that this is a bit late in the game to be asking this question but
> where did we get this Sanskrit form in the first place? I cannot find it in
> Whitney's _Die Wurzeln, Verbalformen und Prima{"}ren Sta{"}mme der
> Sanskrit-Sprache_.

No, you won't find it in Whitney (notice he says the "primary stems").
Whitney lists all the various forms actually found (or cited in the
grammarians) from a particular root, such as which of the 10 possible
present formations a root shows, which of the 12 possible infinitives, which
of the 7 possible aorist formations, and so on.   (Incidentally, similar
variety is concealed in Latin , since the classical language standardised
one form for each verb at the expense of the others - pango, for example,
shows pepigi, pe:gi and panxi, but only the first became "standard".)

What Whitney does not show, is derivative stems, compounds, and so on.   A
root may form several other derived "stems" which function as new verbs.   A
few of these become treated as root verbs, and are listed independently in
Whitney, but most are not in Whitney, and need to be found in a good
dictionary.

The particular form I cited is an intensive, where the entire root, or
almost all the root, is repeated.   The first occurrence normally has -e-
grade (guna) although some other strengthened forms (e.g. infixed -r-
or -n-) are also possible.  The second occurrence has zero grade.

For example, ru "to roar" forms roru:yate < reu-ru-;   di:p "to shine"
forms dedi:pyate < dei-di-; and so on.   Kram "to stride" forms camkramyate
"to step to and fro".  Note the "c" showing that the first vowel derived
from IE -e-.

Some of these insert an -i- between the two occurrences of the root, e.g.
(sam)jari:harti "destroys repeatedly"  (Note again the "j" showing an IE -e-
vowel).  A second example is  the form which provoked this discussion.
The presence or absence of this -i- (or -i:-) has no justification within
Skt and appears random - until we recognise that it is present in roots with
an initial laryngeal.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 16 19:45:00 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 20:45:00 +0100
Subject: Taboo replacements
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.204500.0100.>

Anthony said:
> I heard once of a German word `assloch' = "anus".

The German is Arschloch, and simply means arse-hole, both literal and
metaphorical.

Peter


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sun May 16 21:01:26 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 16:01:26 -0500
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.03.9905131738380.25791-100000@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.160126.0500.>

[ moderator snip ]

><Gandul> doesn't seem to be slang in contemporary European Spanish, nor
>does it seem to have the meaning `pigeon pea' there.

	To a Spanish-speaker outside of Spain, it's slang or, at best, a
regionalism, just like the word <majo>.

	BTW: what do they call arroz con gandules in Spain?


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sun May 16 21:09:14 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 16:09:14 -0500
Subject: Taboo replacements
In-Reply-To: <373BCAF4.47C6D72D@umist.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.160914.0500.>

In German isn't the word arschloch? The Germans who settled in the US were
principally from the Rhine valley, so any German influence would come from
that area but I think a more logical explanation can be found in some
American or British dialect

>I heard once of a German word `assloch' = "anus". Perhaps there is
>influence here from German immigrants: compare the USA English word
>"burg" = "town" taken from German, and a USA habit of mispronouncing UK
>placenames ending in "-burgh" as if they were spelt "-burg".

[snip]


From vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu  Sun May 16 21:20:08 1999
From: vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 17:20:08 -0400
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.172008.0400.>

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

> Also, I am curious if you can cite a non-arguable ablative in -as that
> becomes -e: in sandhi?

> Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

I don't know of >non-arguable< as that becomes e: in Sanskrit, but it did
occur in some MIA dialects. Pali sermons often begin with bhikkhave <
bhiks.avas, which can only be a generalization of a sandhi variant.

And in a different message:

> I know that this is a bit late in the game to be asking this question but
> where did we get this Sanskrit form [I think ganigam-/ganigm] in the
> first place?

The forms in RV are gani:ganti (6.75.3) and ganigmatam (10.41.1).  The n for
the m of the root makes me wonder if the i(:) is original. We find inserted
i in bharibhrati and (ni)ghanighnate from *bher and *ghen and I would be
very surprised if these two roots ever had an initial laryngeal.

-Nath


From jer at cphling.dk  Sun May 16 21:57:36 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 23:57:36 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <01JB5AXJBFQA95EEE3@LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.235736.0200.>

On Thu, 13 May 1999 CONNOLLY at latte.memphis.edu wrote:

> Someone wrote:

>>>>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg
>>>>> in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does
>>>>> not detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

> Pat replied:

>>>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>>>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>>>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

Pardon my gate-crashing, but I was the "someone", and perhaps I should be
clearer: There is no disputing that the PIE thematic verb formed a 3sg
injunctive *bhe'r-e-t and a 2pl injunctive *bhe'r-e-te; if you prefer
imperfects, you may add the augment in any form you think it had in PIE.
The fact will remain that one form is an *-e longer than the other,
everything else being the same. That extra *-e makes a difference all by
itself and so is phonemic, even under an (erroneous) analysis that
accepts only one vowel for PIE.

Jens


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Sun May 16 09:32:36 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 11:32:36 +0200
Subject: Taboo replacements
In-Reply-To: <373BCAF4.47C6D72D@umist.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <SUN.16.MAY.1999.113236.0200.>

>I heard once of a German word `assloch' = "anus".

It's /Arschloch/, and though it does maintain the anatomical meaning in the
margin, its main use is that as a somewhat less-than-polite form of
address. Try to say it to a cop, and you'll know what I mean (it is of
course /asshole/). The range of pronunciations oscillates about forms with
and without an audible -r- in German as well (whether I myself have an
r-less form or rather one with -r- I'm unable to tell, since, it goes
without saying, I've never pronounced this word ;-).

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From edsel at glo.be  Mon May 17 18:56:45 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 20:56:45 +0200
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
Message-ID: <MON.17.MAY.1999.205645.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Max W Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Date: Sunday, May 16, 1999 3:31 AM

[ moderator snip ]

><Gandul> doesn't seem to be slang in contemporary European Spanish, nor
>does it seem to have the meaning `pigeon pea' there. Garc?a de Diego
>says it's from Arabic <gandur> `majo' (I haven't got Corominas DCEH
>handy).

>BTW <gandula> is `deck-chair' in Catalan; a nice metonymy.

>Max

[Ed Selleslagh]

According to my Spanish-Dutch dictionary (Van Goor's Handwoordenboek, 4th
ed.) 'Gandul' has two meanings: 1. (familiar) lazy, etc., 2. soldier of an
old Moorish army corps in Africa and Granada (no etymology given).  I wonder
if 1. stems from 2. The meaning 'pigeon pea' is not mentioned.
'Gandula' is quoted as regular Spanish for deck-chair vel sim.

Ed.


From edsel at glo.be  Mon May 17 18:38:25 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 20:38:25 +0200
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
Message-ID: <MON.17.MAY.1999.203825.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv at wxs.nl>
Date: Monday, May 10, 1999 3:01 PM

[ moderator snip ]

>That's all.  I then did an Altavista search for "chandro", which
>yielded two or three Web pages containing Aragonese vocabularies,
>confirming what the Espasa says, but not adding any further
>information (e.g. about the etymology of the word).  FWIW:

>http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/6243/diccionario.html
>http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Dell/5055/curiosi.html

[snip]

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

[Ed Selleslagh]

Miguel,
I don't know if you noticed that in the first of these two web pages, the
Aragonese-Castilian dictionary mentions Ar. MUGA - Cast. LIMITE.  This is
unmistakably pure Basque! So, a Basque origin for CHANDRO wouldn't be
improbable at all.

Ed.


From ddcars at gte.net  Mon May 17 22:41:41 1999
From: ddcars at gte.net (Douglas Carswell)
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 18:41:41 -0400
Subject: Gaelic consonants
Message-ID: <MON.17.MAY.1999.184141.0400.>

I've been studying Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic mostly) and some of the other
Celtic languages and have recently wondered what is considered a Gaelic
allophone? Would an aspirated version of of a word consist of a
different phoneme in the language? An example:

    Gaelic        English translation
    c?                 dog
    mo ch?          my dog
    ar c?             our dog

Would ch be considered an allophone of c in this case since it's form
depends on the preceding word? The meaning of dog doesn't change. But
what about:


        Gaelic        English translation
        c?                dog
        a ch?            his dog
        a c?              her dog

Here it does change the meaning. But, it changes the meaning of the word
before it. Or I guess you could say, it changes the meaning of the noun
phrase. Would this be considered a different allophone of c or would it
be a different phoneme altogether?
To make it even more confusing, some words have no aspirated form. e.g.:

        Gaelic        English translation
        mo l?mhan        my hands
        a l?mhan           his/her hands

Although, I have heard that there are some dialects that make an
aspirated l a little more sonorant than a non-aspirated l which would
give a slight distinction. Again, would it be an allophone or a
different phoneme?

I wonder if anyone more familiar with Gaelic or Celtic languages would
be able to tell me a little bit about the manifestations of aspiration
on the Gaelic phonemic system.

Thanks,
Doug Carswell


From petegray at btinternet.com  Tue May 18 19:56:01 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (Peter)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 20:56:01 +0100
Subject: Latin perfects
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.205601.0100.>

Thanks, Wilmer,  for the interesting questions on the Latin perfect, some of
which have answers, some of which don't, and some of which are disputed.

> - a 'weak' perfect obtained in the most verbs using -vi/-ui

One theory, (which I think is true, but I don't know how much agreement
there is about it), is that:
(A) -vi/ui was added only to stems ending in a vowel or laryngeal.   The
vowel is sometimes obscured or lost by the time we get to meet the verb, but
often recoverable.   Here's some details:
(a) The Latin 1st, 2nd, and 4th declensions all have a vowel suffix on the
stem (eyo / -yo) hence the "choice" of the -vi / ui perfect, giving the
regular -avi, -ui, -ivi
(b) About half of the other forms which have -ui, the irregular verbs, end
in laryngeals, which of course have been lost before the time of the written
language.  Examples are:
crepo, crepui (laryngeal shown by Sanskrit -is- aorist)
domo, domui (a well known laryngeal root)
tono, tonui (laryngeal appears in the long -i:- in the imperfect in
Sanskrit:  asta:ni:t, and elsewhere)
Likewise vomui, volui, enecui, genui, colui, posui, serui
(c) I do not know whether the other half of the irregular -ui roots ended in
laryngeals or not.
(d) As far as I know, all of the irregular forms in -vi are laryngeal roots,
with the single exception of iu:vi, discussed below.  For example, fo:vi,
mo:vi, la:vi, ca:vi etc.

(B) -s- was added only to roots which ended in a consonant.   This appears
to be invariably true, although it may not be true that all roots ending in
a consoant were given the -s-.   Normally the vowel was also lengthened,
although there are some exceptions, such as coxi (short o), but this word at
least must be late in formation.

(C) In addition, there were survivals of other forms:
(a) reduplication (what you call "doubling").   In Latin this always has
zero grade, and never the -o- grade whcih is regular in Greek and Sanskrit.
(b) -o- grade.   In Latin this is never found with reduplication, and by
classical times is disguised by vowel changes.  You find it in iu:vit <
iouvit, vi:dit < voidit, vi:cit, li:quit, fu:git, fu:dit, etc.   (oi
normally > oe > u:, but after v, or between l and a labial or labiovelar it
> i:)
(c) lengthened grade.  There are traces of this throughout IE (e.g. a few
Germanic perfect plurals, a few Greek perfects, etc).  In Latin it is more
complex because long vowels were also produced through phonetic changes from
reduplicated perfects, such as e:git < h1e-h1g-it, or se:dit < se-sd-it, or
from -o- grades, such as iu:vit < iouvit.   The best example in Latin is
probably venio, ve:nit, which has parallels in the Germanic plural qe:mum.
scabo, sca:bi remains a mystery.

(D) The few short vowel perfects were originally reduplicated, but have lost
the reduplication, for example, tuli, fidi, -peri etc.

(E) Perfects without change usually have the prefect form obscured.   This
is true of the -uo, -ui forms you mention, but also of mandi, verri, and
many of the others.  It may be true of them all.   Bibo, bibi remains a
mystery.

It is important to recognise that the distinction of aorist and perfect
which is familiar from Greek is found in no other IE language in quite that
form.   Sanskrit distinguishes the forms of aorist and perfect, but the
meanings, when they are distinct, are reversed.    Most IE languages have no
such distinction.    So it is not such a surprise that Latin, too, has
merged the two forms.   In fact many verbs show a variety of forms for the
perfect, e.g. pango has pepigi, pe:gi and panxi.

As for the endings, Latin has a muddle of aorist and perfect forms.   The 3
sing is aorist, the 1 plural could be either, the 1 sing is perfect, and the
3 plural and 2 sing and plural seem to be a blend.   You m ention the 3
plural in particular.   There is dispute, and details are not clear, but it
looks like a cross between the -nt of the aorist, and an -r which is found
in some other IE languages in some forms, such as Tocharian, and the perfect
in Sanskrit.   Celtic also has a blend of -nt and -r , but the other way
round.   Generally Celtic has retained the two sets of endings, but with
asbolutely no difference in meaning.

The origin of the -vi/-ui form is disputed, and variously connected with the
perfect participle (as you do), or with a u stem noun form, or derived
phonetically from a laryngeal, or developed by analogy.   No one knows.

The 1 sing was originally in Latin not -i but -ai, though that doesn't
answer your question about the origin of the -i.  The best guess might be
that it is the same as the -i added to make the present (or primary)
endings -mi, -si, -ti, etc.

Hope that helps

Peter


From stevegus at aye.net  Tue May 18 21:10:04 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steven A. Gustafson)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:10:04 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.171004.0400.>

Wilmer "Xelloss" Ricciotti wrote:

> What I can't understand is the criterion which was used to choose for
> the new pefect an aorist form instead of a perfect one and vice versa.

Going mostly from memory, I doubt that any criteria can really be
pinpointed.  Latin verbs in a number of tenses show some strong signs of
being taken apart and reassembled after someone mixed up the pieces, and
lost a few along the way.  Classical Latin is a highly artificial
literary creation.

The most obvious such process occurred in the Latin 'future,' which in
some verbs was made with a verbal suffix from -bhu; and in other verbs
the "future" is really the old subjunctive, and a new subjunctive was
shoehorned in, made mostly of the old optative.

In Classical Latin, we associate the first future with the "first and
second conjugations," verbs with a stem-vowel of -a or -e:  but dialect,
vulgar, and archaic evidence shows that it was not quite so cut and
dried in the unpolished world of ordinary speech.

A Faliscan cup inscription from Praeneste goes "foied vino pipafo cra
carefo," CL "hodie vinum bibam cras carebo."  Obviously in this closely
related dialect the -bhu future attached itself to the cognate word of
-bibere-; in Latin that would yield *bibebo, which even the Pope
couldn't say with a straight face.

Similar confusion reigns during the vulgar period, where graffiti show
endless confusion between subjunctive and future endings, and forms like
-audibo- are attested.  These verb forms were apparently subject to much
confusion in the non-literary language, and had to be reorganized yet
again; even in Romance languages with relatively conservative verb
systems, like Castilian, the future has been made over.  (It is possible
that given the phonology of VL, -monebis- sounded like it was really a
contraction for -monere (h)abes-, since short 'i' and 'e' fell together
in many areas, and h- was dropped.)

Which may not directly answer your question, but the point is: the Latin
verb endings are reshuffled in a major way, in an ongoing process, in
which the attested forms of CL are but one stop along the highway.
There appears to have been a large random element when the final
decision came down as to what was considered classical.  Analogy and
shoehorning have largely refitted the grammatical options that were "in
the air" in the Latin dialects into the standardized literary language.

My vague general understanding is that the perfect personal endings
represent the old "secondary" endings, given a fairly extensive
analogical remodelling, which may have as much to do with the
substitution of -erunt for the archaic and poetical -ere in the perfect
as anything else.  (All the rest of the 3pl forms have -nt- somewhere in
there.)

I will see if I can find anything in any of my Latin books about where
the -i came from.  It may have been added by analogy in the first
place.  Again, vulgar and Romance evidence suggests that the -i- in the
-vi perfets was apparently not present on the lips of many speakers;
some Romance forms seem to require *amaut, &c., instead of CL -amavit-.

Given this further evidence of tinkering by arbiters of elegance, you
have to wonder how "reliable" the attested forms of the literary
language are on details like this.

"Truth is the successful effort to think impersonally and
inhumanly."
             --- Robt. Musil, -The Man Without Qualities-


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 18 21:05:55 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 16:05:55 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.160555.0500.>

Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 1999 6:11 PM

>>> Sanskrit was never monovocalic, phonologically speaking.

>>I disagree, strongly.

>>Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

>>Pat

> Since the ante-voiced sandhi form of -as is -o Pat is right in finding -e
> simply incredible. But I also find the idea of "monovocalic Sanskrit"
> hair-raising.

It is sincerely nice to have Ralf-Stefan's fine input to the list again.

Looks like I won one, lost one. Hope I can stay at zero or better.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue May 18 21:58:56 1999
From: alderson at netcom.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 14:58:56 -0700
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <199905102137.OAA02906@netcom2.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.145856.0700.>

On 29 Apr 1999, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

>On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> Rich continues:

>>>Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage of
>>>Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a language,
>>>it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may alternate
>>>with other sounds in the language because of morphological rules or
>>>unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.

>I think he violates an even more fundamental rule: If a segment is opposed
>to zero, it exists! Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology
>would oppose a 3sg in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.
>This of course does not detract from the stimulating effect of the book -
>just look at us!

I believe that we have stated the same argument from two slightly different
perspectives.

>[... PCR:]

>> But, why all the fuss about monosyllabicity when Sanskrit provides us with
>> the next logical outcome of a language that, at an earlier stage, was
>> monovocalic (at least, phonemically).

>I believe this is right even synchronically, barring words of marginal
>phonological integration: In Sanskrit,
>	[a:] is identical with /a/ +/a/
>	[i] is a realization of /y/
>	[u] is a realization of /v/
>	[i:] is identical with [i] + [i], thus a realization of /yy/
>	[u:] is identical with [u] + [u], thus a realization of /vv/
>	[r.] is a realization of /r/
>	[r.:] is identical with [r.] + [r.], thus a realization of /rr/
>	[l.] is a realization of /l/
>	[e:] is a realization of /ay/
>	[o:] is a realization of /av/
>	[a:u] is a realization of /aav/
>	[a:i] is a realization of /aay/

One can just as easily argue that [y] is a realization of /i/, [w] realizes
/u/, and so on, when the vocalic phoneme is collocated with another vocalic
phoneme, if one wants to accept this sort of deep-level phonology.  The better
analysis, in my opinion, is to accept that the vowels /i(:) a(:) u(:) e: o:/
are all phonemic, and deal with the other surface realizations as the result of
*morphophonemic* rules, not phonological rules or processes.

>Thus, in Sanskrit, short /a/ is the only true vowel demanded to allow an
>unambiguous notation of all (normal) words. This is a one-vowel system of the
>kind dismissed as a typological impossibility for PIE. - I rush to add that
>the acceptability of this analysis for Sanskrit does not make it correct for
>PIE which, for completely independent reasons, appears to need at least the
>vowels /a, e, o/ on the phonemic level - and even long /a:, e:, o:/ and
>underlying /i, u/ (opposed to /y, w/!) on an abstract morphophonemic level.

>In Sanskrit, as in PIE, the rules stipulating a given sonant/semivowel to
>appear syllabic or nonsyllabic are relatively clear. Such an element is
>nonsyllabic when contiguous with a vowel, otherwise it is syllabic. Only
>Sievers and a touch of analogy compromise predictability.

It is the compromised predictability that requires us to see both vowels and
resonants as phonemic, with some morphological rules creating interactions
between them, in a synchronic description of Sanskrit.

								Rich Alderson


From alderson at netcom.com  Tue May 18 22:14:23 1999
From: alderson at netcom.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 15:14:23 -0700
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <199905110145.SAA27049@netcom2.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.151423.0700.>

On 1 May 1999, "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>Dear Jens and IEists:

> ----- Original Message -----
>From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk
>Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 1999 6:36 PM

>> On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>> Rich continues:

>>>> Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage of
>>>> Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a
>>>> language, it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may
>>>> alternate with other sounds in the language because of morphological rules
>>>> or unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.

>Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

Phonemic vowels are not defined only in contrast to other phonemic vowels, but
in contract to non-vowels as well.  Thus, only if there were no obstruents of
any kind in a language might one be entitled to argue that a vowel was not
phonemic (but one might also wish to deny the status of language to such an
object of wonder).

Further, your definition of "semantic" is sorely lacking if it excludes the
meanings associated with so-called "grammatical morphemes", a seemingly _ad
hoc_ definition constructed only to allow you to deny the phonemic status of
vowels you would like to ignore.

>> I think he violates an even more fundamental rule: If a segment is opposed
>> to zero, it exists!

>Differo, ergo sum.

>But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>certain.

But he explicitly denies it!

>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg in
>> *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does not
>> detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

>With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>stress-accentuation: *"-t(i) and *-"te.

The difference between *-t and *-te is best explained by the fact that they are
two different lexical items, morphemes meaning "3rd singular" and "2nd plural"
respectively.  Anything else does violence to any reasonable reconstruction of
PIE based on the actual data.

								Rich Alderson


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 18 22:51:56 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:51:56 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.175156.0500.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 1999 2:03 PM

>> All they needed was to perceive and intend to communicate in another way.

> -- they didn't do that, either.  All they intended to do was talk, and they
> did -- and you can talk just as effectively in any language, in any era of
> the human race.

> Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
> English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.

Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development from the
simple to the complex.

My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
hence, less explicitly expressive.

As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a statement
that a language which can does not exhibit.

As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much greater range
of semantic inclusion than other languages. This also is a source of
potential ambiguity that is not shared by languages that have differentiated
semantic ranges more finely.

Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible linguistic
discussion.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From stevegus at aye.net  Wed May 19 00:11:07 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 20:11:07 -0400
Subject: Minus quam perfectum
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.201107.0400.>

As promised, what I have been able to glean about the origins of the Latin
perfect inflexions from books:

According to R. L. Palmer's -The Latin Language-, pp. 272-275, the Latin
perfect, since it was used as both perfect and aorist, "comprises stems drawn
from both these series of tense stems."  He proposes no rule to tell which ones
will be picked.

"The type of perfect most characteristic of Latin, that in -vi, is not found
elsewhere."  He does observe that it is probably ancient, in that it often
exhibits a different ablaut grade from the present stem, giving -sero-, -se:vi-
as his example.  He believes that it came originally from the aorist of *bhu,
*bhuei > *fu(v)ei, and that this -vei spread by analogy to whole classes of
vowel-stem verbs.

As to the origin of the distinctive personal endings, Palmer says:

1sg -i = the middle ending -e from Sanskrit and Slavonic, representing -ai
or -Hai;

2sg -isti = the element -is-, which Palmer thinks is the same ending you see
in the -eram and -issem groups, + IE -tha, plus the -i from 1sg, > -is-thai >
-isti

3sg. -it, with -t brought over from the primary inflections

3pl -erunt again has this -is suffix, plus -unt > -ont from the primary.  He
relates the archaic alternative -ere to the -r endings of the passive.

Beekes, p. 239, by contrast, simply observes: "Latin has added -i to all its
singular endings and the 3pl.  In 2sg. and pl. the -is- is unclear."

My comment: all of these explanations look pretty ad-hoc to me.

---
With wind we blowen; with wind we lassun;
With weopinge we comen; with weopinge we passun.
With steringe we beginnen; with steringe we enden;
With drede we dwellen; with drede we wenden.
                                  ---- Anon, Lambeth Ms. no. 306


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Wed May 19 04:58:55 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 23:58:55 -0500
Subject: Gaelic consonants
Message-ID: <TUE.18.MAY.1999.235855.0500.>

Douglas Carswell wrote:
> Would ch be considered an allophone of c in this case since it's form
> depends on the preceding word?

No.  Allophones are predictable from purely *phonetic* grounds, such as
the English aspiration rule, that is [t] (as well as [p] and [k], of
course) after /s/ or before approximates or syllable-finally, [t_h]
elsewhere, thus [t_hIl], [stIl], [tr_0Il], [k_h&t].  Since <c> and <ch>
(which isn't a difference of aspiration, IIRC, isn't is [k]/[x]?) can
both occur in the same phonetic environment in Scots Gaelic, they're
separate phonemes.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 19 06:04:21 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 01:04:21 -0500
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.010421.0500.>

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 16, 1999 2:38 PM

> Some of these insert an -i- between the two occurrences of the root, e.g.
> (sam)jari:harti "destroys repeatedly" (Note again the "j" showing an IE -e-
> vowel).  A second example is the form which provoked this discussion.  The
> presence or absence of this -i- (or -i:-) has no justification within Skt and
> appears random - until we recognise that it is present in roots with an
> initial laryngeal.

I understand how you would like to interpret the -i- of the reduplicated
form (as the residue of a laryngeal) but aside from this, is there any
evidence in the *un*reduplicated form of your postulated initial laryngeal?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 19 06:53:56 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 01:53:56 -0500
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.015356.0500.>

Dear Nath and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Vidhyanath Rao <vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Sunday, May 16, 1999 4:20 PM

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

>> Also, I am curious if you can cite a non-arguable ablative in -as that
>> becomes -e: in sandhi?

>> Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

> I don't know of >non-arguable< as that becomes e: in Sanskrit, but it did
> occur in some MIA dialects. Pali sermons often begin with bhikkhave <
> bhiks.avas, which can only be a generalization of a sandhi variant.

Thanks for this input.

> And in a different message:

>> I know that this is a bit late in the game to be asking this question but
>> where did we get this Sanskrit form [I think ganigam-/ganigm] in the
>> first place?

> The forms in RV are gani:ganti (6.75.3) and ganigmatam (10.41.1).  The n
> for the m of the root makes me wonder if the i(:) is original. We find
> inserted i in bharibhrati and (ni)ghanighnate from *bher and *ghen and I
> would be very surprised if these two roots ever had an initial laryngeal.

The <bharibhrati> example is interesting. I was leaning towards a suspicion
that the -i- in ganigmatam was perhaps inserted to prevent the immediate
juxtaposition of n-g, which, if producing the dorsal nasal, would have
produced a possibly ambiguous (-sounding) reduplication of gan-.
Incidentally, contrary to what I wrote earlier, <ga{'}ni:gam-> is listed on
pg. 34 in Whitney as an intensive. Although I cannot find any indication
with the materials I have here, is it possible perhaps that the intial
gan(i)- with the strange <n> is perhaps a Sanskrit reflex of something
related to IE *gagina?

Also, in the case of <bharibhrati>, the perhaps intrusive <i> seems to be
preventing an analysis of <bharbh->, which would have lost some phonological
continuity if modified to <**barbh->?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 19 07:53:25 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 02:53:25 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.025325.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Alderson <alderson at netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 5:14 PM

<snip>

>> Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>> difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

> Phonemic vowels are not defined only in contrast to other phonemic vowels,
> but in contrast to non-vowels as well.  Thus, only if there were no
> obstruents of any kind in a language might one be entitled to argue that a
> vowel was not phonemic (but one might also wish to deny the status of
> language to such an object of wonder).

> Further, your definition of "semantic" is sorely lacking if it excludes the
> meanings associated with so-called "grammatical morphemes", a seemingly _ad
> hoc_ definition constructed only to allow you to deny the phonemic status of
> vowels you would like to ignore.

Pat responds:

Well, I would term dog/cat different semantically. You seem to me to be
suggesting that dog/dog's are different semantically. If you had to
distinguish between the two kind of "semantic" differences, what word would
you use to differentiate the second situation from the first?

>>> I think he violates an even more fundamental rule: If a segment is opposed
>>> to zero, it exists!

>>Differo, ergo sum.

>>But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>>certain.

> But he explicitly denies it!

Pat admits:

I have already granted this point in a posting to Leo & List. Lehmann could
have expressed himself a little better on this point --- perhaps a case of
slicing atoms vs. slicing slices.

>>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a 3sg
>>> in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course does
>>> not detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at us!

>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(i) and *-"te.

> The difference between *-t and *-te is best explained by the fact that they
> are two different lexical items, morphemes meaning "3rd singular" and "2nd
> plural" respectively.  Anything else does violence to any reasonable
> reconstruction of PIE based on the actual data.

Pat responds:

Hopefully we can try to integrate insights that may have been obtained in
languages prior to and outside of PIE to PIE questions.  Taking into
consideration the fact that every "pronominal" form we know, **when**
subjected to additional analysis, reveals a nominal form that is neutral
with regard to person so that we must assume that the personal assignment of
the pronoun is arbitrary, and bearing in mind the stress-accentual
differences in the verbal paradigm between singular and plural inflections,
and considering IE *to (better *te/o), I do not believe that any violence is
done to any reasonable reconstruction of IE if we assume that:

1) IE had a morpheme *te/o of non-personally restricted semantic range,
which

2) could be employed in a number of personal contexts:

     a) 2nd p. s. pronoun: *te

     b) 2nd p. pl. inflection: -*te

     c) 3rd p. s. inflection: *-t(V)

     d) demonstrative: -*to (**te/o)

To ascribe individual origins to each of these employments of what I
maintain is one morpheme is difficult since how could they be distinguished?
They all can be referred to *te/o.

And even these employments of this versatile morpheme do not exhaust its
presences in IE, for it occurs also in collectives -*tV, and as expanded
verbal in *te(:)u-.

To paraphrase, you're talking a major morpheme here.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 19 08:05:14 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 03:05:14 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.030514.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens ante portas and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Sunday, May 16, 1999 4:57 PM

> On Thu, 13 May 1999 CONNOLLY at latte.memphis.edu wrote:

>> Someone wrote:

>>>>>> Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology would oppose a
>>>>>> 3sg in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.  This of course
>>>>>> does not detract from the stimulating effect of the book - just look at
>>>>>> us!

>> Pat replied:

>>>>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>>>>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>>>>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

> Pardon my gate-crashing,

C'mon in. But, the water is murky.

> but I was the "someone", and perhaps I should be clearer: There is no
> disputing that the PIE thematic verb formed a 3sg injunctive *bhe'r-e-t and a
> 2pl injunctive *bhe'r-e-te; if you prefer imperfects, you may add the augment
> in any form you think it had in PIE.  The fact will remain that one form is
> an *-e longer than the other, everything else being the same. That extra *-e
> makes a difference all by itself and so is phonemic,

If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I. My
point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV since there
is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

> even under an (erroneous) analysis that accepts only one vowel for PIE.

And I thought perhaps we on a similar wavelength after what you wrote about
Sanskrit!

For PIE, I reiterate that I believe the situation was as you described so
masterfully for Sanskrit - monovocalic. For later IE, the situation is
considerably more complex.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed May 19 09:34:52 1999
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max W Wheeler)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 10:34:52 +0100
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <001f01bea097$8bf13820$0a01703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.103452.0100.>

On Mon, 17 May 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> According to my Spanish-Dutch dictionary (Van Goor's Handwoordenboek, 4th
> ed.) 'Gandul' has two meanings: 1. (familiar) lazy, etc., 2. soldier of an
> old Moorish army corps in Africa and Granada (no etymology given).  I wonder
> if 1. stems from 2. The meaning 'pigeon pea' is not mentioned.
> 'Gandula' is quoted as regular Spanish for deck-chair vel sim.

Curiously, then, Sp. <gandula> 'deck chair' is not in DRAE 1992, nor in
Moliner's Diccionario de uso del espa?ol, nor in the online Diccionario
Anaya, which does have:

gandul, -a
I. Del ?r. gandur = fatuo.
      1. (adjetivo, -a, femenino, sustantivo masculino). Vago.
      2. (adjetivo, -a, femenino, sustantivo masculino). Brib?n.
      3. (sustantivo masculino). Individuo de una tribu de indios mejicanos.

      FAM. Gandulear, ganduler?a, gandulitis.
      SIN. 1. Holgaz?n, indolente, perezoso, poltr?n. 2. P?caro, tunante.
      ANT. 1. Trabajador.

Max
___________________________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975; fax: +44 (0)1273 671320
___________________________________________________________________________


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed May 19 10:52:44 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 11:52:44 +0100
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <001e01bea097$8b7d40a0$0a01703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.115244.0100.>

On Mon, 17 May 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> Miguel,

> I don't know if you noticed that in the first of these two web
> pages, the Aragonese-Castilian dictionary mentions Ar. MUGA - Cast.
> LIMITE.  This is unmistakably pure Basque! So, a Basque origin for
> CHANDRO wouldn't be improbable at all.

With respect, I think it is most unlikely that Basque <muga> `boundary,
frontier' is native in that language.

First, it has a seemingly impossible form for a native word of any
antiquity.  Pre-Basque apparently had no */m/ at all, and word-initial
/m/ in native words derives from no source other then */b/ in the
configuration */bVn-/ -- not possible with <muga>.

Second, the word occurs very widely in western Romance.  According to my
sources, we find <muga> not only in Aragonese but also in Old Catalan,
and we have <mougue> in Bearnais.  Similar and apparently cognate nouns
and derived verbs occur in most of Ibero-Romance and in much of
Gallo-Romance, with a possible but uncertain outlier in Sardinian.
These various Romance forms sometimes have /b/ in place of /m/, and /o/
or /ue/ in place of /u/.  One source also reports a similar word in
Breton.

The word has been intensively studied by Vasconists and Romanists for
generations.  There is something of a consensus that the source is an
item of the variable form *<muga> ~ *<moga> ~ *<buga> ~ *<boga>.  But
the origin of this item is much debated.  Some Romanists label it
"pre-Roman", which is Romanist code for "we haven't a clue where it
comes from".  Inevitably, several people have tried to see it as of
Celtic origin, though more than one Celtic source has been proposed, all
of them with conspicuous asterisks.  At least one person has tried to
trace it back to an IE root.  But nobody seems to want to see the word
as being of Basque origin: the form is wrong, and there is no parallel
for such widespread diffusion of a Basque loan into western European
languages.

Finally, I might note that, while Basque <muga> means `limit, frontier'
today, as its apparent cognates commonly do in neighboring languages, in
our earliest Basque texts the word more usually means `boundary-stone'
-- that is, a stone marker set up to mark a boundary.  This sense is
usually rendered today by the compound <mugarri> `boundary-stone', with
<harri> `stone'.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Wed May 19 10:39:04 1999
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 06:39:04 -0400
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <003201be9fbf$aa7f6c40$0bd3fed0@patrickcryan> from "Patrick C.
 Ryan" at "May 16, 99 12:15:14 pm"
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.063904.0400.>

Patrick C. Ryan wrote:
	. . .
>
> Do not confuse dependence with function. "I myself am going". Is "myself"
> not a nominative depending on another nominative?

In this sentence "myself" is indeed a nominative in apposition to "I",
but it doesn't correspond to the reflexive meaning meaning of
PIE *se. Here "I myself" has an emphatic meaning, somewhat like
Greek "ego:ge".

*se, on the other hand, always refers back to the subject of the clause;
this usage is retained in all reflexes that I know of.

Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Wed May 19 14:46:08 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 09:46:08 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.094608.0500.>

>Leo writes:

>>With Lehmann, I agree that [e e{sub}] were originally allophones of a
>>single phoneme, however that phoneme must be analyzed.  But the stress
>>system of (pre)-PIE changed, and that changed things greatly.  At one
>>point, [e{sub}] was a predictable variant of [e] under weak stress.
>>But later, the occurrence of [e] and [e{sub}] was no longer
>>predictable.  More than meaning, it is the *unpredictability* of one
>>form or another that requires them to be analyzed as separate
>>phonemes.

>Pat responds:

>>I think a useful distinction to be made is whether we *can* predict
>>the occurences --- limited by our imperfect understanding of the
>>stress-accentual fluctuations  ---  and --- if we had a better
>>understanding of them, whether we could predict them.

I concede that the real question is whether speakers of some particular time
could select the correct form solely on the basis of phonological environment
(including stress and whatever other suprasegmentals may have been relevant).
If they could, then [e e{sub}] were allophones of a single phoneme, and any
semantic difference would be attributable to the difference in the phonetic
environment.  Whether we could know the details is irrelevant; it's their
phonemes, not ours, and they were the ones who had to know.  And while we're
the ones with the theory, they're the ones who really know.

Yes, our knowledge comes from detective work and is necessarily uncertain.  But
we must agree that it's worth doing, else we wouldn't be at it like this.  So
the distinction would seem useful only as a way of weaseling out of the
consequences of a proper understanding of phonological principles which (if
they are to have any validity at all) must apply to *all* languages, modern and
ancient, attested or reconstructed.

[stuff omitted]

Pat responds to remarks on ablaut in Germanic::

>This is one of those questions in which it is hard to decide if the
>dog is chasing his tail or the tail is teasing the dog.

>On a non-IE scenario, a phoneme can easily be identified as marking a
>semantic difference: English cat / cot.

>In IE, we simply do not find that CeC is a semantically different
>morpheme from CoC. Now, as you have rightly identified, these
>variations *do* mark grammatical distinctions. You obviously prefer to
>define forms indicating different grammatical employments as
>semantically different; I do not because, if we did, we would be
>forced to say that cat / cats  are *semantically* different. I do not
>think you would be willing to go this far, would you?

Look, if you can't find a semantic difference between _cat_ and _cats_, I
shudder to think what your kitty-litter bill must be.  Yes, I do claim that
many (not all) so-called "grammatical morphemes" such as plural -s have
semantic meaning.  And you should too, if you think about it.  Below you make
an extraordinary claim: that all verb agreement markers were originally nouns
(there being no original pronouns).  If this were so, wouldn't these markers
have had *exactly* the same sort of semantic meaning that you postulate for
roots?

 <snip>

Pat commented earlier:

>>>As for [e:], I do not believe it is an allophone but rather the
>>>product of *He/e{sub}.

[Leo called attention to the long vowel in the nominative singular of Gk.
_pate:r_, Skt. _pita_ 'father.]

Pat argues:

>I have no reason to think that the analysis of this word is other
>than as a compound of the root plus the suffix of the nomina agentis
>-ter (not **te:r).

	[stuff omitted]

>I do not believe that the e: of this word derives from /He/; I also do
>not believe it is original. In view of *ma:te{'}r, and in view of the
>fact that we have no IE root of the form *p6-, considering that
>*p6te:{'}r is obviously an analogous formation, I believe the
>likeliest scenario for the long vowel is a metathesis of laryngeal
>(or, just simply, the feature length): *pV:(H)-ter -> *p(6)-te:r.  On
>the basis, the /e:/ is simply an allophone of /e/, hence, cannot be
>phonemic.

Several comments:

First, the idea that the family words contain an agent suffix, though old, is
without basis.

Second, the idea that sequences of the type VHCV (where C is a stop, not a
resonant) were metathesized to VCHV, whence VCV:, is, to say the least, novel.

Third, the *historical origin* of the [e:] has nothing to do with its
*synchronic* phonemic status at any given stage of PIE.  Whether it results
from laryngeal metathesis or through the lengthening of a stresses final
syllable of a root with no desinence (not my idea, but a good one) has nothing
to do with whether it is an allophone of /e/.

>If the long vowel of the nominative were original rather
>than a result of easily understood phonlogical developments, it
>*would* show up as more than -0- in, e.g. the genitive.

No one is claiming that _e:_ in _pate:r_ is original.  You, I, and Lehmann all
agree that it was somehow secondary.

[stuff omitted]

Pat responded:

>An /e:/ which is the result of phonological processes or morphology
>still cannot be considered a phoneme IMHO. For me to accept the
>phonemic status of [e:], I would need to see two roots: Ce/oC and
>Ce:/o:C, with different meanings. And yes, I meant to write e:/o:. If
>e: is phonemic, we should expect to see it participating in Ablaut.

Pat, I regret to have to say so again, but you simply do not understand what a
phoneme is.  Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
*meaning*.  Do study up on this.

As for ablaut, e:o ablaut is attested for traditional lengthened grade e: and
for traditional "original" e: i.e. eH.  Beside Gk. _pate:r_ 'father' we find
both _phra:to:r_ and _phra:te:r_ 'member of a clan' (orig. 'brother').  And for
Gothic _saian_ 'sow' < *seH- we find reduplicated preterite (originally
perfect) _sai-so_ < _*se-soH-_.

<snip>

[Leo asks for evidence that 3.sg.perfect -e resulted from -He, as Pat claimed.]

Pat responds:

>1) On general principles, since inflections are grammaticalized
>morphemes, and IE has no morphemes beginning in a vowel, any
>inflection that manifests itself apparently as a V, should be, ab
>origine, be presumed to be HV.

Since when is "general principle" a response to a request for evidence and
examples?  Isn't your claim that no IE morphemes began with a vowel an enormous
thesis that needs in-depth analysis?  It also seems to be a thoroughly novel
thesis as well: while others have claimed that IE *roots* could not begin with
a vowel, I have not until now seen that claim made for *other* morphemes.

Let me give you one case to consider.  What do you think of the thematic vowel
morpheme {-e/o-} (curly brackets being the proper notation for morphemes),
which is found in both nominal and verbal forms?  Is there *any* evidence for a
laryngeal there, since the morpheme was never initial?

I would also suggest that you review *carefully* the concept of the morpheme
before answering.  Many authors insinuate, or even claim, that the morpheme is
the minimal unit of *meaning*.  Though common, this is simply wrong.  The
morpheme is the minimal significant unit of word formation, and hence the
smallest unit capable of *bearing* meaning.  That's rather different.  Some
morphemes (the thematic vowel is one such) have no obvious meaning.  (This is
not to say that thematic and athematic verbs formed from the same root must
therefore have the same meaning.  Rather, we must say that root + {-e/o-} may
have a different meaning than bare root.  This is not surprising, since in
living languages, compound verbs need not have a meaning equivalent to the sum
of the parts: _understand_ is semanticly not "under" plus "stand".)

>2) For whatever interest in may be, I published in Mother Tongue an
>essay describing the differences between the person as vocalic
>differences, each proceeded by H{1}, i.e. /?/:
><http:/www/geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/PERSPRO1.htm>

>Please do not attribute all my views of 1990 to me now, however.

How are we to know what to believe and what not to?

[stuff omitted]

>I do not believe that the earliest Nostratic had what we would
>properly call pronouns. I believe all pronouns are only nouns in a
>specialized use.

Typologically, this is acceptable; certainly it seems right for Japanese.  But
the Japanese "pronoun" words look and act like nouns in every way, which cannot
be said of the IE set.

[stuff omitted]

Pat said:

>Yes, I believe that there was a *noun*, which would have the reflex of
>*to in IE, which meant 'tribal member', and was used in various
>positions that we would characterize as pronominal or inflectional. We
>even have an extended form of this *to in *teuta:-, 'people (probably
>better 'tribe')'.

But that still doesn't answer my question about the extraordinary brevity of
*to- (better: *te/o-, with ablaut).  Recall that if you actually accept
Lehmann's version of /^/ as a prosodic feature that comes and goes (and hence
not part of the root), the result is an absurdly short *nominal* root /t-/.
Thus *_teu-_ i.e. /tew-/ or */tw-/ looks like the bare minimum for anything
nominal, and that's pushing it a bit.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed May 19 18:41:14 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 20:41:14 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <13452421607.15.ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.204114.0200.>

On Tue, 18 May 1999, Rich Alderson wrote:

[On my suggested one-vowel system of Sanskrit:]

> One can just as easily argue that [y] is a realization of /i/, [w] realizes
> /u/, and so on, when the vocalic phoneme is collocated with another vocalic
> phoneme, if one wants to accept this sort of deep-level phonology. [...]

Sure, but the point is that such an alternative is not demanded by
anything, i.e. one can do it one way or the other. The really
noteworthy thing about Sanskrit is that, if one does it this way (namely
by deriving a maximum of syllabicity by rule), this exhausts the system,
except for one single element, /a/, which is always a vowel. This is only
marginally affected by the erratic behaviour of Sievers' "rule"
(especially since competing variants are lexically equivalent) and by
loanwords that have only been integrated in a late (Middle Indic) period
in occasional disagreement with the rules. Even including these fringes,
it gives _exactly_ the picture of a one-vowel language of the style
suggested for PIE by Benveniste and others. But, unlike PIE, the Sanskrit
1-vowel system is very nearly true, since Sanskrit simply has no other
elements than /a/ that cannot be called a consonant, while IE has /e/ and
/o/, and in my opinion also /a/. Also for PIE, the full predictability has
been compromised a bit by analogical levelling, one of the best cases
being the weak forms of nasal presents: From *yw-ne'-g-t, the 3sg
*yune'g-ti is fine, but in the 3pl one expects *yw-n-g-e'nt to
yield **iwNge'nti and not the actual *yunge'nti pointed to by Skt.
yunja'nti, Lat. jungunt; in this paradigm *yun- has simply been carried
through from the sg. where it was regular before the following vowel.

   This is only meant as a refutation of one particular objection always
raised against the "classical" (in my opinions erroneous) analysis of IE
as having only one necessarily syllabic (morpho)phoneme, viz. /e/, this
objection being that the world knows of no other languages of such a
structure. Well, for what it is worth, there IS a language of _exactly_
that structure, namely Sanskrit. I realize that many now don't want
Sanskrit to exist, or, failing that, not to be given this analysis, which
they are at liberty to avoid. But nobody would be right in saying
that it could not theoretically be done to Sanskrit to the same extent as
it was (and sometimes still is) attempted for PIE.

Jens

[ Moderator's response:
  All right, I see the point you were making, and concede that under the same
  kind of phonological theory that led to claims that PIE, or Kabardian, or
  Ubykh, were monovocalic, Sanskrit too is monovocalic.  I understood you to be
  asking that this analysis be accepted as *correct*, rather than that it be
  taken as a strawman against which to argue.  Thank you for the clarification.
  --rma ]


From petegray at btinternet.com  Wed May 19 19:31:53 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 20:31:53 +0100
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.203153.0100.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Steven's posting on Latin has some points that can be clarified further.

> vulgar and Romance evidence suggests that the -i- in the
> -vi perfets was apparently not present on the lips of many speakers;
> some Romance forms seem to require *amaut, &c., instead of CL -amavit-.

Amaut is the regular non-classical development of CL amavit.   We know that
the sequence vowel - v - vowel was often subject to syncope.   Compare
Caesar's shock on hearing a street seller in Brindisium shouting "don't go"
(cave ne eas).   He was actually shouting "figs" (cauneas).

> Similar confusion reigns ... between subjunctive and future endings, and
> forms like -audibo- are attested.  ... in Romance languages ... the future
> has been made over.  (It is possible that given the phonology of VL,
> -monebis- sounded like it was really a contraction for -monere (h)abes-,
> since short 'i' and 'e' fell together in many areas, and h- was dropped.)

There is a better reason for the collapse of the inherited future system.
With the change of /b/ to /B/ (or /v/), the classical distinction between
future amabit, and past amavit, was no longer possible.   Both ended up
/amaut/ > amo: (distinguished from the 1st sing present by the different
placing of the accent - preserved in Italian to this day.)   This form ended
up as the past, and a new future was developed from the infinitive.

> In Classical Latin, we associate the -b- future with the "first and
> second conjugations," verbs with a stem-vowel of -a or -e:  but dialect,
> vulgar, and archaic evidence shows that it was not quite so cut and
> dried in the unpolished world of ordinary speech.

Yes, but look at the actual patterns.   The first conj. has -a- =
indicative, -e- = subjunctive, so needs a periphrastic future.   The second
has -e- = indicative, -a- = subjunctive, so needs a periphrastic future.
Only the 3rd and 4th do not need such a future, and so do not show it in
Classical Latin.   If there is spread of the -b- future, it is part of the
normal intrusion of the dominant forms into other conjugations.   Much more
significant would be -a- or -e- forms used in place of the -b- forms in the
first or 2nd conjugation, but even there, it might only indicate the usual
overlap in meaning of subjunctive and future.

> Going mostly from memory, I doubt that any criteria can really be
> pinpointed.

I don't think we have to be quite that desparing - see my earlier posting.

>Classical Latin is a highly artificial
> literary creation.

I would have said "highly artificial selection".   It rejects some forms
(both morphology and grammar) but these often remained in common speech, and
have resurfaced in late Latin and become the norm in Romance:  e.g. dico
quod (Plautus, Vulgate, and Romance).

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Wed May 19 18:48:13 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 19:48:13 +0100
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.194813.0100.>

Nath said:

> We find inserted
> i in bharibhrati and (ni)ghanighnate from *bher and *ghen and I would be
> very surprised if these two roots ever had an initial laryngeal.

Yes, point taken.    But as with so many historic reflexes of laryngeals,
once the original reason for the "abnormality" is lost, there is influence
and spread and - dare I say it - in a few cases analogy.   I wouldn't dare
to venture a particular explanation for the -i- in the two forms you quote.

I only say what must be said with all these potential indicators of
laryngeals:  the presence of one of the 14 or 15 historic reflexes of
laryngeals may - but only may - indicate a laryngeal.   When we find several
of these indicators, especially if spread over several languages, then we
can speak more certainly.   The claim is that the -i- in these Sanskrit
intensives is one of these indicators.

We could test that claim by checking how many examples there were, and how
many counter-examples.   At least, we could do that, if we were already
certain of where the laryngeals were!

Peter


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed May 19 23:45:39 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 01:45:39 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <002501be9fba$40f3b740$0bd3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.014539.0200.>

On Sun, 16 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> In the case of the non-neuter dual, the Sanskrit form -a:(v)
>> corresponds fully with the evidence from the other languages, only
>> elsewhere the other stem-classes use a different morpheme that can
>> everywhere continue an IE *-e.

> That, IMHO, is a big "ONLY"; "correspond" means something a little more
> restrictive to me. I fail to see how OCS C-st. -i, and u-stem -y  (for nom.
> masc./fem.) "corresponds".

I meant to speak of the _thematic_ non-neuter dual, cf. the following.

>> So, the other languages distinguish o-stems from non-o-stems in this
>> point, Sanskrit does not. English has -s in the genitive sg. and pl., most
>> related languages only in the sg.  The two problems are quite parallel, and
>> analogy is known to be the answer in the latter case, what's wrong with
>> suspecting it in the former?

> There is nothing wrong with a suspicion that is in keeping with the data.

That's the point! Then also Slav. -i and -y are analogical forms
just like the Skt. ones. In all probability the analogy was already
completed in the protolanguage: Just as o-stems form non-ntr. dual in
*-o:, thus i- and u-stems form *-i: and *-u:.

>> I'm not saying the non-neuter was _originally_ *-e, I'm saying it was
>> (or things look as if it was) in the IE protolanguage. I am not sure
>> there were no vowel-initial roots, it is mostly very hard to prove that
>> something as hazy as *H1 was not present. On the other hand, there is
>> absolute certainty that IE did have vowel-initial affixes. You may take
>> the gen.sg. ending; whether you want to posit *-os or *-es, there
>> is no place for "-Hos" or "-Hes";

> Sorry that I did not make clear that my objection to *-e was principally
> directed towards the termination of the perfect.

Okay, but we _were_ talking about the dual.

> Beekes reconstructs most
> dual forms as containing [H{1}] and, formwise, I have no problem with that.

So, for the dual *-e, it _would_ be a problem for you if it did not have
a laryngeal, as sva'sa:rau indicates it did not.

> As for the genitive, I reconstruct *-s(V), with the final vowel falling off
> due to stress-accent of a preceding syllable: "Ce/oC + sV -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

With accent shifting onto a vowel that was not there?

>>  I have managed to explain the nom.pl. *-es from an earlier
>> vowel-less sequence *-z-c (two different sibilants, one marking the
>> nom., the other the pl., in that order, structurally parallel with the
>> acc.pl. in orig. *-m- + sibilant),

> Why not simply *-s(V)s(v)?

In the reading *-ss, no objection, except that we do need two different
sibilants for other reasons.

>> the calculation giving at the same time phonetic explanation of all the many
>> other oddities of the nom. pl. forms, esp. the type in *-'-or-es, *-'-on-es:
>> Why is the -o- not lost? Why is it o, not e? Why is it not long? Why has the
>> e not been lost? And, of course, why is the e not accented?

> There is no doubt that these are all good questions.

>> All of this is explained by **-z-c where there was no vowel to shift
>> to: An unaccented -e- is first reduced to -o-; then the nom. sibilant
>> ("-z-") lengthens (result now *-'-o:r-zc); then short unstressed
>> vowels are lost (but this form does not have any, so the rule operates
>> vacuously here); a long vowel is shorted before word-final
>> triconsonantal clusters [containing the nom. sibilant].

> For some languages, perhaps. But for IE, a tri-consonantal cluster of this
> form is not likely to have been a realized phenomenon at *any* stage of IE.

So, the effects I say they have caused on the surface forms come from
elsewhere? From where? And why are precisely three consonants of a
structure pointed to by the morphology excluded by your ruling? Is it the
number three in itself that is excessive? Or is it the sibilant character
of two of the elements? Or is it my assumption that they were not
identical? Would it help if I said that, for the present purpose, they may
as well be identical since their difference is irrelevant here?

> I think one important factor that should be considered in these equations is
> the example Beekes gives on p. 195 of Greek <o{'}sse>, 'pair of eyes', which
> he derives from *ok{w}-iH{1} THROUGH *ok{w}-ye. We could, just as easily,
> posit a dual in -y and forget about the laryngeal.

In this particular case we could - for Greek. But not for Slavic oc^i
(would have reduced i), nor for Arm. ac^'k' (would not be a-stem, gen.
ac^'ac'). And especially it would not give Skt. -i: with length in the
ntr.du. of cons.-stems.

>> Neither Beekes nor I see the i of *-iH1 as underlyingly syllabic;

> If there is a school that does not accept /i/ as syllabic, I suggest you
> think about changing schools.

>> in phonemic terms it may just as well be given the notation *-yH1. And,
>> hurrah, it is a strong case, i.e. contains no underlying vowels.

> In view of Sanskrit o-stem <yuge:{'}>, I am not sure what the cause for
> jubilation is.

I am pleased by the fact that there is no rightward accent shift in
the ntr.du. of mobile paradigms. Don't look at the o-stems for control,
they never change the accent.

>> *H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e;

> In view of Gk. o{'}sse, why not?

There is no such rule. The /y/ would syllabify and yield **ane'r-i. That's
what happened in the loc.sg. *p at 2-te'r-i > Gk. dat. pate'ri, Skt. loc.
pita'ri.

>> u-stem *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off by a
funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one' (acc.sg.M
amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this giving
ami:, not **amu:.

>> What _is_ the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

> The majority of the attested forms, there being no /i/ in IE..

For most positions, you are right: The original difference between the
morphophonemes /i/ and /y/ are neutralized almost across the board and can
therefore be represented by one phoneme. However, that is not the point
we're discussing; we're arguing about the presence or absence of a
laryngeal in the ntr.du., remember? And in this point Skt. yuge' 'two
yokes' passes judgment, for this form is sandhi resistent ("pragrhya")
and so _must_ have ended in a laryngeal.

>> It may be illogical to abbreviate wordforms when forming enclitic variants
>> of them, but many languages plainly do that.

> Not in my opinion. I believe that emphatic variants are marked by expansions
> of the underlying forms found in enclitics.

That is often the case, perhaps mostly, but not always: Is howdydo an
expansion of howdy? And how-do-you-do an even further expansion?

>> It's like numerals and greetings, you get all sorts of reduced
>> shapes in allegro speech, since people already understand the
>> message at the beginning (sometimes even before).

> Some holes do not improve with additional digging.

>  I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
> a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

So this is wrong too? Well, let me tell you that the Danish decadic
numerals 40-90 were formerly two or three syllables longer than now. A
hundred years ago, you could only write

fyrretyve, halvtredsindstyve, tresindstyve, halvfjerdsindstyve,
firsindstyve, halvfemsindstyve,

but in my lifetime they have always been as short as

fyrre, halvtreds, tres, halvfjerds, firs, halvfems;

and informed scholars know of _no_ phonetic rule to delete word-final
-tyve or -indstyve in this language. These are true abbreviations.

It seems to me that there just are some solutions you do not _like_ on
apriori grounds. Too bad, then, if the material at hand points in that
direction, I am still gonna accept them, even if I do not like them
myself. I am no authority on taste in scholarly solutions, nor do I see on
what grounds anybody else could be. Conversely, there also appear to be
some solutions you would _like_ to be true, even if the material at hands
points unambiguously away from them. I'll be doubting them very much
until, by some unlikely turn of events, the hard evidence turns out to be
illusory and is overruled by a new and better possibility. In the case of
*-e or *-H1e for the non-ntr. dual, not much is needed (but none is
present yet). For *-y or *-iH1, it takes miracles to vindicate the former
over the latter. And that wordforms can be shortened is simply beyond
dispute.

Jens


From ALDERSON at netcom.com  Thu May 20 01:11:13 1999
From: ALDERSON at netcom.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 18:11:13 -0700
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <000c01be9d0c$7e2561a0$3d9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.181113.0700.>

On 13 May 1999, "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote in reply
to my posting of May 11:

>>1.  An original three-vowel system /i u a/, with length, developed allophonic
>>variants [& O:] of /a/ under lengthening processes.  Cowgill argued this as
>>the source of Brugmann's Law in Sanskrit in a paper presented at the LSA in
>>the early 70's; it solved the *e/*o problem for me, so I have adopted it.

>You are, of course, free to *believe* anything you wish but just the first
>premise in this description is untenable because unprovable: an original
>/i u a/.

The five-vowel system licensed by the comparative method can be reduced to a
three-vowel system by a judicious application of internal reconstruction while
doing no injustice to the facts of the language reconstructed, or to linguistic
universals in general, unlike the system proposed by Lehmann.

>>But this is the very point I was making:  The definition you cite from Trask
>>is structuralist, rather than psychological, and not the definition of the
>>phoneme used by Natural Phonology.  Further, even in a structuralist
>>definition, one is not allowed to restrict the word "meaning" as you wish to
>>do, and so your argument for a "non-phonemic vowel" falls apart.

>I think you may be a bit overly "school"-oriented. I still that Lehmann was
>under no obligation to be consistently structuralist; and I do not feel a
>similar restraint myself.

If by "overly 'school'-oriented" you mean that I accept the findings of one
particular theory of phonology in preference to other competing theories, I
plead _nolo contendere_.  If you mean rather that I think Lehmann *must* do
everything as a structuralist because he did most things as one, you misunder-
stand my entire point:  I do not insist that if he did anything as a structur-
alist he must do everything that way; rather, I am simply stating the fact that
on the evidence of his writings themselves, he *did* do things strictly as a
structuralist.

								Rich Alderson


From ALDERSON at netcom.com  Thu May 20 01:19:19 1999
From: ALDERSON at netcom.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 18:19:19 -0700
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905131539190.12182-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.181919.0700.>

On 13 May 1999, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

>But even so, the preform *divaz-dyvai, supposing it is correct (and it is
>a _very_ good idea), may be analyzed as /dyvas-dyvay/ and so makes do with
>only one phoneme that is always syllabic. Would you not agree that the
>vowel was /a/ at one time - and still is synchronically in one stage of
>abstraction - in both cases?

Thank you, the idea is not mine.  As for the phonological analysis of the
phrase, we shall have to agree to disagree, as I cannot accept the lexical
status of the /y/s in the first syllables--the surface realization is *always*
[i], never [y], and is therefore underlying /i/.

(Phonology is a lot simpler, in this way, than Chomsky & Halle thought, though
it is much more complex in others.)

								Rich Alderson


From ALDERSON at netcom.com  Thu May 20 01:31:09 1999
From: ALDERSON at netcom.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 18:31:09 -0700
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as [was Re: "syllabicity"]
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.183109.0700.>

On 13 May 1999, "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote in reply
to my posting of 11 May:

>> There is more than one source, for example, of [e:]--see, for example, _dive
>> dive_ "from day to day", where the first _dive_ is the expected sandhi
>> variant of the ablative _divas_ "from (a) day".  Thus, again, your analysis
>> fails to explain the facts.

>In my opinion, this analysis of _dive dive_ is totally erroneous. This is
>clearly a reduplicated dative.

That is the schoolbook analysis of the phrase, but the semantics come out of
the alternative analysis quite easily (in line with the use of the ablative in
time expressions elsewhere) and we then need not torture the poor dative to
mean its own opposite.

>Also, I am curious if you can cite a non-arguable ablative in -as that becomes
>-e: in sandhi?

>Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

Later, on 16 May 1999, Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de> noted further:

>Since the ante-voiced sandhi form of -as is -o Pat is right in finding -e
>simply incredible.

The sandhi rule in question is that -as becomes -e before voiced dentals, and
only there.  It applies in internal as well as external sandhi, cf. _edhi_ <
*as-dhi (_as-_ "be" + imperative).

This is not, as it happens, my analysis, but what I was taught nearly 25 years
ago in my first Sanskrit class...

								Rich Alderson


From jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au  Wed May 19 00:16:56 1999
From: jonpat at staff.cs.usyd.edu.au (Jon Patrick)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 10:16:56 +1000
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 11 May 1999 09:45:04 +0100."
 <Pine.GSO.4.03.9905110908440.15040-100000@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.101656.1000.>

[ Moderator's note:
  I am posting this after some discussion with Mr. Patrick, in which he assures
  me that he is not angry, was not angry in previous posts, and is not looking
  to start a fight.  I ask others to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  I have done some editing for format, but made no other changes.
  --rma ]

    Date:       Tue, 11 May 1999 09:45:04 +0100 (BST)
    From:       Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>

It is taken me sometime to reply to this message as it left me so incredulous
after first reading it.

    [on my claim that Pre-Basque did not permit plosive-liquid clusters and
    Jon's query in terms of words in Azkue's 1905 dictionary of Basque
    containing such clusters]

    > I note that my original reference referred to native words and hence the
    > diversion of this response into "ancient" words is just that.

    I am mystified.  My assertion was about the Pre-Basque of some 2000
    years ago, and about nothing else whatever.  As I pointed out earlier,
    words in Pre-Basque did not contain such clusters, regardless of whether
    they were native or borrowed.  So, it is `ancient' which is relevant
    here, not `native'.

Clearly with a language like basque which you yourself have said is
conservative one would be expect a strong relationship between what is
"ancient" and what is "native"
    [LT]

    >     Third, Azkue does not claim that the words entered in his dictionary
    >     are native.  On the contrary, he declares explicitly, in section IX
    >     of his prologue, that he is entering words of foreign origin which
    >     are well established in Basque

    [JP]

    > As you presented in a later message and which arrived as I was
    > preparing this response the relevant section of Azkue's dictionary
    > is Section XXIV.5, which states that the words in uppercase are
    > primitives or non-derivatives "les mots en capitales ou majuscules
    > sont primitifs ou non derives" (pardon the lack for accents)

    > These are the words I sent to you in the previous email. I believe
    > my comment "he asserts are native words" is a valid interpretation
    > of his work. I was particularly concerned that your first email did
    > not reference this section and was going to refer you to it. Now it
    > appears that you are aware of the section and was remiss in not
    > referring to it in your first message.

    No, not at all.  My reference to section IX was not a response to you at
    all, but to somebody else who had commented on Azkue's use of upper case
    for certain entries.  I was only commenting on that point.

    I'm afraid I can't agree that your interpretation of Azkue's "primitifs
    ou non derives" as `native' is valid.  It seems perfectly clear that
    what Azkue means here is, in modern terminology, `monomorphemic', and
    not `native'.  Even if there could be any doubt about this, Azkue
    explains clearly in section XXIV.5 what he means.  To the best of my
    knowledge, Azkue nowhere uses the term `native', or any equivalent, in
    his prologue.

On translating the french we have the expression "primitive or non--derived"
which I can only take as attributes such as "early", "native", "original". As
well the or(ou) can be read as an inclusive "or" encompassing both primitive
words AND foreign words.

    >    [LT]

    >     That said, I cannot possibly comment on every word in Jon's long
    >     list.

    > Why not? They constitute the whole corpus of material that Azkue has
    > presented which is contrary to your claim.

    No.

    First of all, Azkue has not presented any material at all which is
    contrary to my claim.  My claim is about the Pre-Basque of 2000 years
    ago.  Azkue's book is a dictionary of the Basque of the 16th-19th
    centuries, a completely different period during which Basque has plainly
    tolerated plosive-liquid clusters.  Azkue's dictionary has not one word
    to say about Pre-Basque.

I have searched for words to describe this text and the best I can come up
with is "bizarre". Putting the translation problem above aside we have the
following situation.

1. basque is a conservative language (something you've asserted elsewhere)

2. most materials we have from Roman times that are clearly basque or
prebasque (sometimes called Aquitanian) are readable as such and offer little
problem in recognition.

3. Azkue gives a list of words that he regards as "primitive or non-derived"

4. Therefore those words in Azkue's list that are not identifiable as loans
represent significant evidence about the possible form of ancient/early basque.

5. Those non-loan words are valid and meaningful for appraisal of any  theory
about "early basque"  for whatever time period you want that term to be
applied to.

    Second, your list was hundreds of words long.  Do you really think I
    have so much time on my hands that I can afford to devote days to
    ferreting out known or probable etymologies for every single word in
    that list?

If you want to justify you hypothesis, yes I do expect it.
This comment smells to me like I have contaminated a much loved theory with
some live data and it has raised an unbearable stench.

    > I doubt that any such list has ever been compiled before for basque
    > scholars to investigate. Here is the perfect opportunity for you to
    > settle once and for all if your claim can be substantiated. Do you
    > have no wish to explore and re-investigate old knowledge no matter
    > how well established it is, in the light of new evidence? Is there
    > no sense of true scientific exploration in your spirit where
    > everything is always up for reappraisal?

    The problem is that the entries in Azkue's dictionary are of no
    relevance whatever to the nature of Pre-Basque.

I think my statements above have explained why I find this comment simply
"bizarre"

    Specialists believe that Pre-Old-English had only 16 consonants.
    Any decent dictionary of modern English will reveal that the language
    now has 24 consonants (in most accents).  Would anybody regard this
    observation as casting doubt on the validity of the claim about
    Pre-Old-English?

    English has changed its phonology substantially in the last 1500 years
    or so.  And, of course, Basque has changed its phonology in the last
    2000 years.

    Old English had no phonemic voiced fricatives; modern English has four
    of them.  Pre-Basque did not tolerate plosive-liquid clusters; modern
    Basque does.  These things happen.

The evidence available in english is not the evidence available in basque.
Azkue is one of the largest evidence sources available for studying the
development of basque, all be its limitations. As you so often say we should
look at the evidence. I'm merely asserting the importance of not excluding
evidence that is legitimately admissible for appraisal.

    > In terms of examples you have chosen and the tone of the remainder of
    > your message I can only say I feel you have totally compromised you usual
    > high standards of scholarship. You were asked:

    > " Larry would you say that there is not one word in this list that is
    >  not problematic for your thesis,..."

    > and you chose not to answer that question.

    Sorry, but I did answer it.  I pointed out that the terms `native' and
    `ancient' are utterly independent, and that my claim was about ancient
    words, not about native ones.

here we disagree, the two terms are not independent.

    > Rather you selectively ignored the bulk of the evidence and chose
    > the most extreme examples of the total set to covertly ridicule my
    > attempt to explore and understand this claim and in the end divert
    > the topic to a comic play off on words.

    No, nothing of the sort.  If I've inadvertently offended you, then I
    apologize, but that was never my intent.  All I did was to select a few
    representative words from the list whose origins were familiar or
    obvious, and point out that these words, of varying origins, could not
    be ancient in Basque.  No ridicule was intended.

I don't accept your apology, it is clearly not sincere.

    > As basque scholars know, you included, the Azkue dictionary has its
    > flaws but it is also a fine piece of scholarship, and you have
    > applauded his work in your own book, so any material based on his
    > dictionary deserves close scrutiny, despite the fact we know we will
    > find some clear mistakes.

    Agreed, and in fact the late Luis Michelena devoted a fair amount of
    time to uncovering the mistakes in Azkue's dictionary.  In my book The
    History of Basque, I myself point out some of the major shortcomings of
    the dictionary which users should be aware of.  But the bottom line is
    that a dictionary of modern Basque is of no direct relevance to the
    nature of Pre-Basque.

I have responded to this above.

    >  I have seen many examples in this list and on other lists where you
    > have insisted that claims for phenomena are unjustified because
    > there is no supporting evidence. Yet in this case you are prepared
    > to omit evidence that can be rightfully presented for appraisal. Can
    > we expect that on other occasions you have also played fast and free
    > with omitting legitimate evidence for appraisal because it didn't
    > suit your case?

    Gee whiz, Jon -- you seem to be really cheesed off for some reason, and
    I can't imagine why.

I think the sarcasm here, which as far as I am concerned is inappropriate in
professional discourse, further demonstrates the lack of sincerity in your
apology above.

     that clearly
    Azkue's dictionary is of no relevance here.  What *is* relevant, as I
    pointed out briefly in an earlier posting, is the treatment of Latin
    loans into Pre-Basque.  In these loans, plosive-liquid clusters were
    *invariably* eliminated in one way or another.  This shows clearly that
    the phonology of Pre-Basque did not permit such clusters -- or, in plain
    English, that the speakers of Pre-Basque could not pronounce them.

This evidence is clearly informative but so is the list of Azkue words that
cannot be attributed to loans.

My sole point is that admissable evidence be admitted to the debate and be
appraised. It may well turn out that that evidence supports your hypothesis
and hence strengthens your case. That doesn't mean that it is not open to
scrutiny again at another time. The essence of good scholarship in my
experience, admittedly from non-linguistic disciplines(computing, &
psychotherapy) was to always be prepared to revise even the oldest "laws". I
characterise this notion as perpetual preparedness for flexibility.

cheers
Jon
______________________________________________________________
The meaning of your communication is the response you get


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Thu May 20 03:39:44 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 22:39:44 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.223944.0500.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:
> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
> plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a statement
> that a language which can does not exhibit.

True, but such a weakness tends to be counteracted by less ambiguity
elsewhere.  Japanese, for instance does not distinguish between singular
and plural, but it does distinguish between different levels of
honorifics, as well as cases.  Overall, languages tend to balance out,
they are *roughly equal* in complexity.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
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From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu May 20 04:24:55 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 00:24:55 EDT
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.002455.EDT.>

>Patrick C. Ryan

>My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
of >linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
>hence, less explicitly expressive.

-- irrelevant to the present discussion, as all extant and historically
recorded languages, as well as those which can be reconstructed with any
degree of confidence (like PIE) are equally "expressive", ie., basically
equally efficient as means of communication.

Languages are more or less useful for communication according to their degree
of ubiquity or social status; which is to say, for non-linguistic reasons.

Eg., English is not spoken more widely than Serbian because it's in any way a
"better" language, but simply due to historical accident.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 20 06:06:12 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 02:06:12 EDT
Subject: Form following function [was "Latin and Slavonic for `moon'"]
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.020612.EDT.>

I wrote:
<<The intention behind wheel was not to make a wheel or make a new kind of
wheel.  The intention behind the wheel was transportation.>>

In a message dated 5/18/99 3:57:03 PM, colkitto at sprint.ca wrote:

<<Actually, it's the other way round.    people tool around inventng all
sortsof gadgets, most of which are lost with their inventors.  Wheels
wereinvented all over the world.  Everywhere people were faced with "OK, what
are we going to use this for?" once they'd "invented" a given artefact.   It
was only in areas with large domesticable animals,... that people found a
"use" for what had started out as a clever toy (the wheel), and remained so
in many parts of the world. >>

People "tooling around" and "inventing all sorts of gadgets" are still
involved in functional behavior.  Exploring, experimenting, trying something
out are all intentional.

Function has a broader meaning here.  It's not 'practicality.'  Function
refers to a consequence, an effect on the environment.

A rock has form.  When a human picks one up to throw it, function is added.

A square wheel has form.  The problem is that it does not satisfy the
functionality requirement.

Form is everywhere.  What makes a difference between one form and another is
functionality.

Wheels on toys do the same thing that wheels on carts do - they allow the
object to move with less resistance.  Rocks rolling down hills with no one
around do the same thing.   Inventing something that rolls is not an
invention.  The difference between rocks rolling down a hill and a wheel is
human intentionality.  Wheels serve a purpose.

Wheels on carts serve a different function than on a toy - though both are
functional.  The moment a wheel was put on a cart and used for
transportation, a new function for objects that roll was introduced.

<<Function often follows form.>>

As far as human behavior is concerned, forms without function don't make it.
Square wheels do not create a function.  But the idea of square wheels do
have a function - they convey the idea of bad function.

You may be saying that form precedes function in the timeline.  That is
probably always true.  But "form follows function" does not refer to time.

But what determines whether a form stays or disappears is function.
Everything in the world has form.  What makes those forms matter is
intentionality.

<<The same phenomenon often happens in linguistic change - often distinctions
arise, and different functions have to be found for them.>>

But ONLY if they are found functional.  That is the only way they pass from
Saussure's "act of speech" into "the system of language."  No function HAS to
be found for them.  What happens is that they serve some function in language
- communication, reference, etc.

<<(cf. English of and off, the -a/-u genitive alternaton in Polish (see Janda
"Back from the Brink" for an excellent exposition).>>

I don't know the history of these changes.  I take it that they were
meaningless variations in speech that acquired specific functions later.  The
point is that unless that their chances of survival materially increased when
they acquired those functions.

Regards,
Steve Long


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu May 20 06:13:07 1999
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 02:13:07 EDT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.021307.EDT.>

In a message dated 5/18/99 1:01:22 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

<<Humans communicate the way horses run and tigers stalk.  It's what we do.>>

I think if you look back at our past exchanges you will find clear proof of
how wrong you are.

<<Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
English. >>

First of all, how the heck do you know that?  Secondly, how do you know that
by the time the changes happened, Old English had not become ineffective.
Cf. Crystal on possible causes of inflection in English.

Regards,
Steve Long


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu May 20 08:16:07 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:16:07 +0200
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <001d01bea181$08ef34a0$84d3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.101607.0200.>

>As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
>plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a statement
>that a language which can does not exhibit.

A language which is unable to designate the plural form of a noun (*unable*
!) would be a language without numerals, and without a word for "many"
othl. I strongly doubt that a lg. like this could still be called a natural
language, iow. I doubt the existence of such a thing. Please, correct me.

But, seriously, there is of course sense in talking about a plural like
"dogs" being simpler and producable with less effort than, say, "many dog"
or "three (= many) dog". Othoh, "sheep", "brethren", "l'udi", and "d'on"
aren't. Talking about an overall tendency of increasing complexity in
language change makes thus less sense to me. We could go on and exchange
endless lists of documented changes in languages increasing systemic
complexity, followed by an equally long list showing simplifications (and
all this without a proper definition of complexity/simplicity in hand).
Should we ?

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu May 20 08:25:12 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:25:12 +0200
Subject: Syllabicity
In-Reply-To: <01JBDL6JRGUA9VXJY5@LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.102512.0200.>

>>An /e:/ which is the result of phonological processes or morphology
>>still cannot be considered a phoneme IMHO. For me to accept the
>>phonemic status of [e:], I would need to see two roots: Ce/oC and
>>Ce:/o:C, with different meanings. And yes, I meant to write e:/o:. If
>>e: is phonemic, we should expect to see it participating in Ablaut.

>Pat, I regret to have to say so again, but you simply do not understand what a
>phoneme is.  Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
>*meaning*.  Do study up on this.

The ability to *differentiate* meanings (not to *have* them) is, in *my*
humble opinion, part and parcel of every non-avantgardistic definition of
the notion "phoneme", n'est-ce pas ? Minimal pairs have different meanings,
or are my textbooks hopefully outdated ?

Also, if anyone subscribes to the last but one sentence in the quoted
passage above (which would then lead to the last, of course), how would
this anyone define the notion "distinctive" in this passage ?

Always willing to learn, but, as W. Brandt used to say "Wir waren schon mal
weiter ...".

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu May 20 08:40:10 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:40:10 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905192010220.1045-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.104010.0200.>

>But, unlike PIE, the Sanskrit
>1-vowel system is very nearly true, since Sanskrit simply has no other
>elements than /a/ that cannot be called a consonant, while IE has /e/ and
>/o/, and in my opinion also /a/.

I take it that I have distinguished myself earlier by ignoring these simple
facts, which of course I shouldn't have (I wasn't following the discussion
attentively). At the same time I still feel uneasy with the label
monovocalic system. While I understand the theoretical background, which
leads to this label here by taking into account that all other syllabic
nuclei found in Sanskrit are variants/allophones of phonemes which also
have non-syllabic variants, i.e. consonants by definition, the danger of
this label is that it may lead people to believe that there might be
languages with only one possible syllabic nucleus, the phonetic realization
of which would be entirely predictable from the context. Since this is
still not the case for Sanskrit, I keep to my unease with this notion.
Again: it is theoretically OK, no doubt about that, but still, the
*phonemes* which can, under certain circumstances, surface as "vowels" are
more than one, not just one, with /a/ being the only one which always
surfaces as a vowel.

In short, we should differentiate between two kinds of "monovocalic"
systems: one, where, as in Sanskrit, only one phoneme has only vocalic
allophones, but certain others have consonantic and vocalic ones, and a
system, where only one phoneme *can* have one or several vocalic allophones.
I still view the latter as typologically impossible, resp. unheard of,
while I admit (of course) that the former description fits the Sanskrit
data (and they won't go away by ignoring them, as Jens puts it rightly).

St.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu May 20 08:57:53 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:57:53 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905192356520.3141-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.105753.0200.>

>>  I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
>> a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

So, if the assumption that English is an IE language is still with us,
English morphology is older/more original than that of, say, Vedic or Greek
? French than Latin ? Good heavens !

It may of course be in line with common sense that, in order to get a very
complex system (say, of verbal forms, as e.g. in Ket or Navajo), it has to
be "built up" somehow by several successive stages of grammaticalization. A
fortiori it is reasonable to think that such complex systems have some sort
of a "simpler" pre-history. I think this is basically what you have in
mind. But to derive from this a principle which says that always the
"simpler" (i.e. shorter) form in any given pair of attested ones is the
primary one is, well, for want of a better word, hair-raising (no, this I
time I won't take that back ;-).

St.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From sw271 at cus.cam.ac.uk  Thu May 20 09:17:58 1999
From: sw271 at cus.cam.ac.uk (Sheila Watts)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:17:58 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <001d01bea181$08ef34a0$84d3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.101758.0100.>

>From communication between Joat Simeon and Pat Ryan:

>> Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
>> English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.

>Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development from the
>simple to the complex.

>My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
>of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
>hence, less explicitly expressive.

But defining what is 'simple' and what is 'complex' is not always a
straightforward objective matter, surely. For instance, whether aspect is
by its very nature 'simpler' than tense. And sometimes the common-sense
intuition that systmes will go from simple to complex is hard to fit into
our reconstructions, as with the vexed question of the relative age of
simple two-term verbal systems in Germanic and Hittite and very complex
mulit-term TAM systems in Greek and Sanskrit.

Sheila Watts
_______________________________________________________
Dr Sheila Watts
Newnham College
Cambridge CB3 9DF
United Kingdom

phone +44 1223 335816


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu May 20 09:41:59 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 11:41:59 +0200
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as [was Re: "syllabicity"]
In-Reply-To: <13452722385.15.ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.114159.0200.>

>>Since the ante-voiced sandhi form of -as is -o Pat is right in finding -e
>>simply incredible.

>The sandhi rule in question is that -as becomes -e before voiced dentals, and
>only there.  It applies in internal as well as external sandhi, cf. _edhi_ <
>*as-dhi (_as-_ "be" + imperative).

>This is not, as it happens, my analysis, but what I was taught nearly 25 years
>ago in my first Sanskrit class...

I'm afraid, I have to stick to what I said before. In external and internal
Sandhi the regular result is -o, and not -e, both before voiced dentals,
and before voiced non-dentals.

To wit take RV III,59,1: Mitro da:dha:ra pRthivi:m uta dya:m (pada-text:
MitraH da:dha:ra pRthivi:m uta dya:m) "Mitra supports earth and heaven".
Or, to take one of the most popular Vedic hymns, RV II, 12, 2 (from the
Indra-hymn): yo dya:m astabhna:t; sa, jana:sa, IndraH (pada-text: yaH dya:m
...) "who supported heaven; he, O men, is Indra". Now this may leave us
still in doubt who it is, who actually does support heaven, but not about
the Sandhi behaviour of -as.

However, the form you quote is correct, and it does lead to the assumption
that *at some early stage* some instances of -as ( > -az) before voiced
dentals went to -e. I understand that this behaviour is still not well
understood, but I may be not really up-to-date. Anyway, it is not a normal,
predictable Sandhi.

By this I don't doubt your analysis of dive-dive; only that it may be due
to predictable Sandhi.  I'm unaware of how many examples for the process
seen in /edhi/ exist, but /divedive/ may be another one, but then for an
early sound-law, involving early univerbation of *divas + *dive not a
productive rule still operative in historical times.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From edsel at glo.be  Thu May 20 09:24:51 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 11:24:51 +0200
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.112451.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Max W Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Date: Thursday, May 20, 1999 7:25 AM

>On Mon, 17 May 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

>> According to my Spanish-Dutch dictionary (Van Goor's Handwoordenboek, 4th
>> ed.) 'Gandul' has two meanings: 1. (familiar) lazy, etc., 2. soldier of an
>> old Moorish army corps in Africa and Granada (no etymology given).  I wonder
>> if 1. stems from 2. The meaning 'pigeon pea' is not mentioned.

>> 'Gandula' is quoted as regular Spanish for deck-chair vel sim.

>Curiously, then, Sp. <gandula> 'deck chair' is not in DRAE 1992, nor in
>Moliner's Diccionario de uso del espa?ol, nor in the online Diccionario
>Anaya, which does have:

>gandul, -a
>I. Del ?r. gandur = fatuo.
>      1. (adjetivo, -a, femenino, sustantivo masculino). Vago.
>      2. (adjetivo, -a, femenino, sustantivo masculino). Brib?n.
>      3. (sustantivo masculino). Individuo de una tribu de indios mejicanos.

>      FAM. Gandulear, ganduler?a, gandulitis.
>      SIN. 1. Holgaz?n, indolente, perezoso, poltr?n. 2. P?caro, tunante.
>      ANT. 1. Trabajador.

>Max

[Ed Selleslagh]

I also had a look in my 'Sopena' (Nuevo Diccionario Enciclop?dico Ilustrado,
Editorial Sopena Argentina, 4th ed. 1965, which I bought years ago, in Lima,
Per? - my wife is Peruvian-). It says:

gandul, -a (?r. gandur, valent?n)
adj. fam. Tunante, vagabundo, harag?n (?sase tambi?n como substantivo)

and nothing else. 'Valent?n' is defined as:

valent?n, -na
adj. Altanero o que se jacta de valiente o guapo. (?sase tambi?n como
substantivo).

Still no trace of 'pigeon pea'. BTW, where do they eat arroz con gandules?
Nobody in the family or their acquaintances seem to have heard of it (Spain,
Per?, Venezuela, Cuba...).

Ed.


From edsel at glo.be  Thu May 20 11:23:43 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 13:23:43 +0200
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.132343.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Date: Thursday, May 20, 1999 7:42 AM

[ moderator snip ]

>With respect, I think it is most unlikely that Basque <muga> `boundary,
>frontier' is native in that language.

[ moderator snip of long post ]

>Finally, I might note that, while Basque <muga> means `limit, frontier'
>today, as its apparent cognates commonly do in neighboring languages, in
>our earliest Basque texts the word more usually means `boundary-stone'
>-- that is, a stone marker set up to mark a boundary.  This sense is
>usually rendered today by the compound <mugarri> `boundary-stone', with
><harri> `stone'.

[Ed Selleslagh]

Thanks for the information; I should have consulted Agud & Tovar's
'Diccionario etimol?gico vasco' first.

Even though I completely agree that the word 'muga' does not fit well in
(Proto-) Basque, I would like to point out that all the Romance dialects you
cite either have or may have been in contact with Basque, its precursors or
related languages.

If it is of IE origin (e.g. Celtic), does anyone on this list have a clue?
(Visi)Gothic is probably too late (and anyway, all I found [in
Wulfila-Gothic] that could be remotely related by form or meaning was:
<bugjan>, 'to buy', and <mota>, 'toll'). In Latin there is <mucro, -onis>,
'1.point of the sword, 2.endpoint, limit', which may be the origin of
Sardinian 'm?goro', and related to Pokorny's celt. *mrogi- (mod. breton.
'moger').

Ed.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 20 12:16:02 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 07:16:02 -0500
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.071602.0500.>

Dear Brent and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Brent J. Ermlick <brent at bermls.oau.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 5:39 AM

> Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> > Do not confuse dependence with function. "I myself am going". Is "myself"
> > not a nominative depending on another nominative?

> In this sentence "myself" is indeed a nominative in apposition to "I",
> but it doesn't correspond to the reflexive meaning meaning of
> PIE *se. Here "I myself" has an emphatic meaning, somewhat like
> Greek "ego:ge".

> *se, on the other hand, always refers back to the subject of the clause;
> this usage is retained in all reflexes that I know of.

Yes, it is certainly the commonest employment but Pokorny does list
"abseits, getrennt, fu{"}r sich" before "Reflexivpronomen"; and, as for an
example of the usage I suggested, Pokorny mentions Albanian:

une{"} vete{"}, I myself; ai vete{"}, he himself; vet, his/her (own).

And Pokorny also mentions OI sve:-vi:ss, 'stubborn', which seems to
incorporate a non-reflexive use also (if reflexive, the meaning would
probably be something like '(self-)insightful'??).

Now, I suppose it is always possible to attempt to explain these examples in
some other way.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 20 12:53:47 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 14:53:47 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <005b01bea1ce$542b2080$cc9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.145347.0200.>

On Wed, 19 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>> Pat replied:

>>>>>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>>>>>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>>>>>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

 [I (Jens) wrote:]

>>  There is
>> no disputing that the PIE thematic verb formed a 3sg injunctive
>> *bhe'r-e-t and a 2pl injunctive *bhe'r-e-te; if you prefer
>> imperfects, you may add the augment in any form you think it had in
>> PIE.  The fact will remain that one form is an *-e longer than the
>> other, everything else being the same. That extra *-e makes a
>> difference all by itself and so is phonemic,

[Pat replied:]

> If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I.
> My point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV
> since there is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

You seem to have a short memory! As the squashed quotations from the
_same_ mail of yours show, you _did_ derive *-t and *-te from the same
underlying form, and it just is wrong to give that form the notation
*-tV in the case where the is no vowel.

Jens


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu May 20 13:36:51 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 14:36:51 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <001d01bea181$08ef34a0$84d3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.143651.0100.>

On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[PR]

>>> All they needed was to perceive and intend to communicate in
>>> another way.

[JS]

> > -- they didn't do that, either.  All they intended to do was talk,
> >and they did -- and you can talk just as effectively in any
> >language, in any era of the human race.

> > Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication
> > than Old English.  It's just different.  Languages change because
> > they do.

[PR]

> Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
> from the simple to the complex.

Not so.  Blatantly not so.

A good counterexample is dedicated parasitism, in which the parasite
loses all structures required for locomotion, perception, self-defense,
pursuit of prey, and whatnot, and is reduced to a mere sac of tissue
able to do nothing but to absorb nutrients from its host and to
reproduce.

Languages are also good counterexamples.  The earliest recorded or
reconstructible languages are in no way simpler than contemporary
languages.  And perhaps no recorded IE language possesses an
inflectional morphology as complex as that of PIE.  Does this make the
modern languages in any way inferior to PIE?

> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the
> onset of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they
> are now; and hence, less explicitly expressive.

It is not possible to make "studies" of the languages of our earliest
ancestors, since no data exist.  As for "common sense", well, I take
Einstein's view: `common sense' is merely a label we apply to something
we believe only because we want to believe it.

Our linguistic methods allow us to penetrate no more than a few thousand
years into the past, even in the most favorable cases, and they reveal
earlier languages in no way "simpler" than modern ones.  We have no way
of reaching back to the remote antecedents of language, tens or hundreds
of thousands of years ago, and we can't guess what these were like.

> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to
> designate the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an
> *ambiguity* into a statement that a language which can does not
> exhibit.

Not remotely true, I'm afraid.  You are confusing grammaticalization
with expressive power.  A language can express distinctions of number
perfectly well without grammaticalizing some of these distinctions.

English is not more ambiguous than Classical Arabic or Fijian because,
unlike them, it does not grammaticalize dual number.  We use words like
`both' or `two'; they use inflected forms of nouns or pronouns for the
same purpose.  There is no difference in expressive power.

The North American language Kwakiutl grammaticalizes visibility:
different pronouns must be selected depending on whether the referent
is, or is not, visible to the speaker at the moment of speaking.
English does not do this.  Does this fact make Kwakiutl "more
expressive" or "more complex" or "less ambiguous" than English?

The tense language English requires `I saw Susie yesterday'; a tenseless
language like Mandarin Chinese has, literally, `I see Susie yesterday'.
There is no ambiguity: there are merely different choices as to which
information should be built into the grammar, as opposed to being
expressed otherwise.

> As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much
> greater range of semantic inclusion than other languages. This also
> is a source of potential ambiguity that is not shared by languages
> that have differentiated semantic ranges more finely.

Not so.  English has only a single past tense, and `Washington crossed
the Delaware' can denote any temporal period between a moment ago and
the beginning of time.  Some other languages grammaticalize much finer
distinctions of past time: a moment ago, within the last hour, earlier
today, yesterday, recently, within the last few months, within the last
few years, many years ago, before I was born, and so on.  Is the African
language Bamileke-Dschang superior to English because it distinguishes
five different past tenses in contrast to our single one?  Is it less
ambiguous?

> Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible
> linguistic discussion.

I know nothing about sociology of any kind, but I do know that there
exists no case for claiming that any living, attested or reconstructed
language is more or less complex than any other, or more or less
expressive, or more or less ambiguous.  That's just a plain fact.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 20 14:31:15 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 09:31:15 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.093115.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 9:46 AM

Leo answers:

> Yes, our knowledge comes from detective work and is necessarily uncertain.
> But we must agree that it's worth doing, else we wouldn't be at it like this.
> So the distinction would seem useful only as a way of weaseling out of the
> consequences of a proper understanding of phonological principles which
> (if they are to have any validity at all) must apply to *all* languages,
> modern and ancient, attested or reconstructed.

Pat responds:

Certainly no one participating in this list could possibly disagree in a
general way with what you write. But making what you and I both seem to
believe is a possible distinction is not properly characterized as
"weaseling"; I will plead guilty to "hair-splitting", however, in this case.

Pat writes:

>> In IE, we simply do not find that CeC is a semantically different
>> morpheme from CoC. Now, as you have rightly identified, these
>> variations *do* mark grammatical distinctions. You obviously prefer to
>> define forms indicating different grammatical employments as
>> semantically different; I do not because, if we did, we would be
>> forced to say that cat / cats  are *semantically* different. I do not
>> think you would be willing to go this far, would you?

Leo responds:

> Look, if you can't find a semantic difference between _cat_ and _cats_, I
> shudder to think what your kitty-litter bill must be.  Yes, I do claim that
> many (not all) so-called "grammatical morphemes" such as plural -s have
> semantic meaning.  And you should too, if you think about it.  Below you make
> an extraordinary claim: that all verb agreement markers were originally nouns
> (there being no original pronouns).  If this were so, wouldn't these markers
> have had *exactly* the same sort of semantic meaning that you postulate for
> roots?

Pat attempts to explain:

Well, I have an animal-door so that I have no kitty-litter bill; I hope you
will not think of this as "weaseling".

But more seriously, yes, I would also claim that these markers had semantic
meaning. The IE plural morpheme -*s, I believe, derives from early *s{h}o,
'clan, herd'. This means that its addition caused a compound of the form N +
'clan/herd = animate group'. So the result would have been, in our example,
something like 'cat-group'. Now my use of "semantic" may be original (not
necessarily better, of course), but I claim that CAT in 'a cat' and CAT in
'cats = cat-group' are *not* semantically different only differently
employed. Now I know you will not like this employment of "semantic" so tell
me what terminology you prefer to make the distinction I am attempting to
make between core meanings (dog/cat) and derived meanings (cat/cats).

<snip>

Leo comments:

> Several comments:

> First, the idea that the family words contain an agent suffix, though old,
> is without basis.

Pat surpisedly responds:

Now, this may be a case properly characterized as "weaseling". Obviously,
your "without basis" relies on the qualification "AGENT". I cannot believe
that you would believe that the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
brother, etc.' *cannot* be analyzed as N/V + -*ter, suffix.  Now you may
wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts you
in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown, employed to mark
nuclear family members. Not a position I would care to defend!

Leo continues:

> Second, the idea that sequences of the type VHCV (where C is a stop, not a
> resonant) were metathesized to VCHV, whence VCV:, is, to say the least,
> novel.

Pat responds:

So far as I can remember, *p6te:{'}r is the only IE root listed in Pokorny
that has the form *C6CV:C (if you know of another, at least, admit it is
rare?). That, by itself, should alert us to the suspicion that something
unusual is going on here. Secondly, if we analyze family member terminology
as consisting of Root + suffix (agentive or no), *p6- is a strangely formed
IE root --- in fact, it cannot be a Normalstufe. *p6- is listed as a
zero-grade form of *pa:-, which suggests that whatever *p6- in *p6te:{'}r
comes from, it probably had the earlier form *pe/oH-. The (I hope you will
be willing to admit) analogous *ma:te{'}r does not show zero-grade. This is
a novel situation, and I have proposed a novel scenario to explain it; sui
generis, so, of course, unprovable. I would be interested to learn how you
propose to explain it.

[ Moderator's comment:
  The accent in *meH_2'te:r differs from than in *pH_2te:'r, doesn't it?
  --rma ]

Leo continues:

> Third, the *historical origin* of the [e:] has nothing to do with its
> *synchronic* phonemic status at any given stage of PIE.  Whether it results
> from laryngeal metathesis or through the lengthening of a stressed final
> syllable of a root with no desinence (not my idea, but a good one) has
> nothing to do with whether it is an allophone of /e/.

Pat counters?:

>> If the long vowel of the nominative were original rather
>> than a result of easily understood phonological developments, it
>> *would* show up as more than -0- in, e.g. the genitive.

Leo responds:

> No one is claiming that _e:_ in _pate:r_ is original.  You, I, and Lehmann
> all agree that it was somehow secondary.

Pat summarizes:

To me, that we all admit it is "secondary", decides the issue conclusively.
IMHO, for it to be phonemic, it would have to be *primary*.

> Pat responded:

>> An /e:/ which is the result of phonological processes or morphology
>> still cannot be considered a phoneme IMHO. For me to accept the
>> phonemic status of [e:], I would need to see two roots: Ce/oC and
>> Ce:/o:C, with different meanings. And yes, I meant to write e:/o:. If
>> e: is phonemic, we should expect to see it participating in Ablaut.

Leo regrets:

> Pat, I regret to have to say so again, but you simply do not understand what
> a phoneme is.  Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
> *meaning*.  Do study up on this.

Pat, testily (with tongue in cheek, difficult and dangerous):

I think your definition of "phoneme" is fine for you. I prefer Larry Trask's
quoted definition: "the smallest unit which can make a difference in
_meaning_ (empahsis added)". Perhaps your exasperation at my adherence to
this definition has caused you to misstate, seemingly as my position:
"Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of *meaning*." I
have not stated this nor do I believe it for the languages under
discussion --- as I think you know.

Leo continues:

> As for ablaut, e:o ablaut is attested for traditional lengthened grade e:
> and for traditional "original" e: i.e. eH.  Beside Gk. _pate:r_ 'father' we
> find both _phra:to:r_ and _phra:te:r_ 'member of a clan' (orig. 'brother').
> And for Gothic _saian_ 'sow' < *seH- we find reduplicated preterite
> (originally perfect) _sai-so_ < _*se-soH-_.

Pat responds:

You have left out the accents: _phra:{'}to:r_ and _phra:{'}te:r_.  Now the
phonological environments are apparently identical, and there is no
grammatical difference between the two either. So, the "Ablaut" is
presumably a deliberate *secondary* device to provide some *semantic*
differentiation. Not the best example in my opinion -- a Greek example of
something like vrddhi.

To _sai{'}so:_: for this example to be significant to my point, you would
have to argue that in IE *se:i- the [e:] is *original* (not the result of
*e/oH) which, on the basis of "_*se-soH_", I presume you would not assert.

For you to make the point I thin you are attempting to make, you need to
identify a primary IE [e:] which undergoes Ablaut in situations analogous to
[e/o].

> [Leo asks for evidence that 3.sg.perfect -e resulted from -He, as Pat
> claimed.]

> Pat responds:

>> 1) On general principles, since inflections are grammaticalized
>> morphemes, and IE has no morphemes beginning in a vowel, any
>> inflection that manifests itself apparently as a V, should be, ab
>> origine, be presumed to be HV.

Leo complains:

> Since when is "general principle" a response to a request for evidence and
> examples?

Pat responds:

An awful lot of what we are doing here relies on "general principles", does
it not?

Leo continues:

> Isn't your claim that no IE morphemes began with a vowel an enormous thesis
> that needs in-depth analysis?  It also seems to be a thoroughly novel thesis
> as well: while others have claimed that IE *roots* could not begin with a
> vowel, I have not until now seen that claim made for *other* morphemes.

Pat responds:

In a word, yes. I have attempted to do that in many of the essays at my
website. If we restrict ourselves to IE evidence, it is not possible to make
a good case *except* on general principles because many of these vocalic
terminations are the result of /?/ + V, which, as we know, is notoriously
difficult to detect conclusively in IE (as H{1}).

Leo continues:

> Let me give you one case to consider.  What do you think of the thematic
> vowel morpheme {-e/o-} (curly brackets being the proper notation for
> morphemes), which is found in both nominal and verbal forms?  Is there *any*
> evidence for a laryngeal there, since the morpheme was never initial?

> I would also suggest that you review *carefully* the concept of the morpheme
> before answering.  Many authors insinuate, or even claim, that the morpheme
> is the minimal unit of *meaning*.  Though common, this is simply wrong.  The
> morpheme is the minimal significant unit of word formation, and hence the
> smallest unit capable of *bearing* meaning.  That's rather different.  Some
> morphemes (the thematic vowel is one such) have no obvious meaning.  (This is
> not to say that thematic and athematic verbs formed from the same root must
> therefore have the same meaning.  Rather, we must say that root + {-e/o-} may
> have a different meaning than bare root.  This is not surprising, since in
> living languages, compound verbs need not have a meaning equivalent to the
> sum of the parts: _understand_ is semanticly not "under" plus "stand".)

Pat responds:

All good points, Leo, as far as I am concerned. I will not be able to
convince you that my answer is right but I will, at least, tell you what I
think.  I believe that all IE roots of the form CVC were earlier "CV-CV. The
thematic vowel is a faint reminder of forms that were stress-accented (at
one point) CV-"CV.

Pat, previously answered:

>> 2) For whatever interest it may be, I published in Mother Tongue an
>> essay describing the differences between the person as vocalic
>> differences, each proceeded by H{1}, i.e. /?/:
>> <http:/www/geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/PERSPRO1.htm>

>> Please do not attribute all my views of 1990 to me now, however.

Leo asks reasonably:

> How are we to know what to believe and what not to?

Pat responds reasonably:

Regard it only as food for thought.

 Pat, on a new subject:

>> I do not believe that the earliest Nostratic had what we would
>> properly call pronouns. I believe all pronouns are only nouns in a
>> specialized use.

Leo acknowledges:

> Typologically, this is acceptable; certainly it seems right for Japanese.
> But the Japanese "pronoun" words look and act like nouns in every way, which
> cannot be said of the IE set.

Pat differs:

IE "pronouns" in every significant way look and act like nouns --- with the
sole exception that the inflections seem to be more conservative.

> Pat said:

>> Yes, I believe that there was a *noun*, which would have the reflex of
>> *to in IE, which meant 'tribal member', and was used in various
>> positions that we would characterize as pronominal or inflectional. We
>> even have an extended form of this *to in *teuta:-, 'people (probably
>> better 'tribe')'.

Leo comments:

> But that still doesn't answer my question about the extraordinary brevity
> of *to- (better: *te/o-, with ablaut).  Recall that if you actually accept
> Lehmann's version of /^/ as a prosodic feature that comes and goes (and
> hence not part of the root), the result is an absurdly short *nominal* root
> /t-/.  Thus *_teu-_ i.e. /tew-/ or */tw-/ looks like the bare minimum for
> anything nominal, and that's pushing it a bit.

Pat finally comments:

One of the most difficult aspects of these discussions is that we are trying
to talk meaningfully about a phenomenon which has been around many thousands
of years, and has drastically changed in several ways at several times.

I do not think I will convince you of this either but, for whatever it may
be worth, I will give you my view,

There are no roots (almost) in IE that have the form CV. This form belongs
to an age which pre-dates IE and mostly, even Nostratic. There are languages
in which simple CV roots (non-reduced from some more complex form) seem to
be attested but, for IE, we can only have an indication that a CV-root
underlies several "inflections" or roots by attempting to analyze a
commonality among them --- in part complicated because these ancient CV
roots were potentially singular or plural, and the inflections and roots
derived from them are tricky to reconcile. Without comparison with languages
outside of IE, the case simply can only be speculated.

Outside of a very few simple forms like *me, *te, *se, etc., which might
slip in under the rubric of nominal, simple nominal and verbal CV-roots,
which had wide semantic ranges, were *differentiated* by additional elements
at a very early time --- at least in the languages from which IE derives. If
we are unwilling to look beyond IE,  then we must say, principally,  that
the simplest nominal and verbal root-form is CVC.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From stevegus at aye.net  Thu May 20 14:33:49 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steven A. Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 10:33:49 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.103349.0400.>

petegray wrote:

> I don't think we have to be quite that desparing - see my earlier posting.

Understood.  Of course, Palmer's book is older, and written at a time
when the laryngeal hypothesis had only newly been proposed; as such he
can't be strongly faulted for missing it.

>> Classical Latin is a highly artificial literary creation.

> I would have said "highly artificial selection".   It rejects some forms
> (both morphology and grammar) but these often remained in common speech, and
> have resurfaced in late Latin and become the norm in Romance:  e.g. dico
> quod (Plautus, Vulgate, and Romance).

I understand your point.  It has ever seemed to me that the founders of
the standard of CL made deliberate and even aesthetic choices guided by
euphony and the desire to seem august and weighty.  This suggests to me
that they gave the matter a fair amount of conscious thought; and
several passages in Cicero's Oratory seem to bear witness to this
consideration.

It was, of course, also a class-based standard; and because it helps
them perform their social function, a certain arbitrariness is
'desirable' in any such form of speech; cf. the irregular distribution
of the sound change /ae/ > /a/ before certain consonants in southern
British English.  Were it simply a matter of applying rules, many more
people could adapt to the standard, and its value for separating the
patricians from the plebeians would be lessened.

--

"Truth is the successful effort to think impersonally and
inhumanly."
             --- Robt. Musil, -The Man Without Qualities-


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Thu May 20 17:42:45 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 12:42:45 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.124245.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Pat replied to Jens (aka "someone"), a few days ago:

>>>>>> With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>>>>>> between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>>>>>> stress-accentuation: *"-t(e) and *-"te.

Jens identified himself:

>> but I was the "someone", and perhaps I should be clearer: There is no
>> disputing that the PIE thematic verb formed a 3sg injunctive *bhe'r-e-t and
>> a 2pl injunctive *bhe'r-e-te; if you prefer imperfects, you may add the
>> augment in any form you think it had in PIE.  The fact will remain that one
>> form is an *-e longer than the other, everything else being the same. That
>> extra *-e makes a difference all by itself and so is phonemic,

Pat replied:

>If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I. My
>point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV since there
>is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

But that's not at all what you said, Pat!  You claimed then that the
*existence* ot the -e was of no consequence, since we could explain it as the
product of stress accentuation.  Having been shown by several people that your
analysis will not work, you now say that the existence of the vowel does
matter, only its quality does not.  Your statements are not compatible.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu May 20 19:14:59 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 20:14:59 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.201459.0100.>

Pat Ryan said:
> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
> of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
> hence, less explicitly expressive.

I don't wish to be rude, but this is demonstrably untrue.   For example,
Polynesian languages have simpler phonology and morphology than the
Austronesian language from which they must have developed.   Likewise modern
Chinese has simplified its phonology from that of the earliest recoverable
records.  Afrikaans has simplified its morphology from its parent langauge.
Though I grant, we are begging some issues about the meaning of "simple"
here - but without such assumptions, your statement is meaningless.

> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
> plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a statement
> that a language which can does not exhibit.

There are many languages which do not regularly show plurals (e.g. Chinese,
and in some cicrumstances, Maori.)    But in any such language the speakers
can remove the ambiguity when they wish.

> As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much greater range
> of semantic inclusion than other languages. This also is a source of
> potential ambiguity that is not shared by languages that have differentiated
> semantic ranges more finely.

Again, this is patent nonsense.   There is only ambiguity when speakers
allow it, and they only allow it when they can tolerate it.   English has
many words which show polysemy, but this causes no ambiguity, since the
context usually disambiguates them.   When there is any real ambiguity,
speakers find ways of avoiding it.  (e.g. funny-haha and funny-peculiar)

You are making assumptions about language that - in my opinion - simply do
not fit facts.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu May 20 19:20:45 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 20:20:45 +0100
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.202045.0100.>

Pat said:

> I understand how you would like to interpret the -i- of the reduplicated
> form (as the residue of a laryngeal) but aside from this, is there any
> evidence in the *un*reduplicated form of your postulated initial laryngeal?

Good question.   Since this conversation began with your theory that
laryngeals were vowels, what would you accept as evidence?

Peter


From s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca  Thu May 20 21:58:21 1999
From: s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca (Stephane Goyette)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 17:58:21 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
In-Reply-To: <005701bea22e$98542800$11efabc3@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.175821.0400.>

On Wed, 19 May 1999, petegray wrote:

> There is a better reason for the collapse of the inherited future system.
> With the change of /b/ to /B/ (or /v/), the classical distinction between
> future amabit, and past amavit, was no longer possible.   Both ended up
> /amaut/ > amo: (distinguished from the 1st sing present by the different
> placing of the accent - preserved in Italian to this day.)

And in Spanish as well, I might add.

> This form ended
> up as the past, and a new future was developed from the infinitive.

The problem with this position is that in a number of Romance languages
(French, Rumanian) the third person singular forms of the perfect must go
back to a contracted form *AMAT (stress on the second syllable, not on the
first as in the present tense form), not *AMAVT (Compare French CHANTA,
Rumanian CINTA and Spanish CANTO', Portuguese CANTOU). Thus, in French and
Rumanian there wouldn't have been any internal phonological motivation for
the future form AMABIT to be eliminated. Yet it was: leaving aside the
forms of the copula, there isn't a trace of the Latin future anywhere in
Romance. As for the new future developed from the infinitive (by which I
assume is meant the new synthetic future, i.e. French CHANTERA or Spanish
CANTARA), it is by no means Pan-Romance: many Southern Italian dialects,
to this day, have no future tense: in Sardinia the future is marked by
means of a reduced form of DEBERE, in Rumanian by means of a reduced form
of VOLERE...these facts clearly indicate that the future was lost at an
early date in Latin/Romance and that, at a later date, various Romance
languages created various new means to indicate futurity.

>> Classical Latin is a highly artificial literary creation.

> I would have said "highly artificial selection".   It rejects some forms
> (both morphology and grammar) but these often remained in common speech, and
> have resurfaced in late Latin and become the norm in Romance:  e.g. dico
> quod (Plautus, Vulgate, and Romance).

I see nothing artificial about Classical Latin, although it probably
eschewed some traits of the spoken language: as Witold Manczak has
argued, Vulgar Latin (or Proto-Romance, or however one cares to call the
ancestor of the Romance languages) is quite plainly a "daughter" of
Classical Latin (Not a "sister" as so many Romance scholars have argued).

Stephane Goyette.


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu May 20 22:12:54 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 00:12:54 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <003201be9fbf$aa7f6c40$0bd3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.001254.0200.>

On Sun, 16 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[...]

> I believe, with Beekes, that IE was once an ergative language; and that the
> absolutive form in IE was -0. I assume that the attested accusative *te
> maintains the form of the absolute before the introduction of animate
> accusatives in -m. In the datives *toi and *tebh(e)i, we see it retained
> also. If *tu/u: were the underlying form, we should expect **twi and
> *tubh(e)i generally (although this probably explains the Greek forms, e.g.
> in s-.

I have yet to see a really cogent argument for an IE (or pre-IE) ergative.
One is constantly served mere descriptions of what the system would be
like if it is accepted, but nothing to convince one that it _must_ be
accepted. I'm not saying that pre-PIE was _not_ ergative, just that we
cannot really know. Practically all the literature on the subject simply
boasts that the author knows what an ergative is and so is without
scholarly interest. It is as if I would claim that PIE had a definite
article, just because I know what that is.

[On the refl. pronoun in the nom.:]

> Do not confuse dependence with function. "I myself am going". Is "myself"
> not a nominative depending on another nominative?

I'm sure it is, as far as function goes, but I'm also rather sure that the
IE pronoun did not have a nominative form to fulfil this function. What
was the nominative form in your opinion, and what are its reflexes in the
daughter languages on which the reconstruction is based? - Are you
_denying_ that Latin se, Greek he, German sich and Russian sebja have no
nominative? And is this fact - if so it is - to be ignored in a
reconstruction of the protolanguage?

[...(On Gk. 'us two':)]

> My dictionary shows <no:{^}e> *only* as a poetic variant of <no:{^}i>. Do
> you have different information?

Some, but that's not important; even that was IE. Admittedly, the form
no:^i is difficult. It looks like nothing we really know, except an old
dative or locative. One could imagine no:^i being on a par with the
gen.-dat. enclitics moi, toi, hoi; or it could have come from *nH3we-i, a
loc. formed like Skt. asme' 'in, among us' from *nsme-i. The immediate
development of *nH3wei into Greek would be *no:wei, whence, with loss of
the digamma, *no:ei, and with contraction finally no:^i. In the anaphoric
pl. we have acc. sphe and dat. sphi, as parallels of which one might
accept no:^e and no:^i. It would then be a sign of decay of the dual
number category that the i-form is no longer consistently restricted to
the dative. There is _no_ IE comparative support for no:^i, whereas for
no:' and no:^e there is. Thus, it is on the weakest possible grounds that
you see a pre-IE dual in *-wy (of the Egyptian kind) reflected in no:^i. I
admit that my reconstruction *nH3we' for no:^e and Avest. a:va is not
_much_ better, but still it combines forms of IE languages and so works
within the confines of a genetic frame known to be valid and for which the
rules are known. This also makes me immune to your following statement:

> I reject unequivocally your H{3} as a part of the reconstruction.

I feel we are about to reach the borders of how far this subject can
be taken.

Jens


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 21 00:15:17 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:15:17 -0500
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as [was Re: "syllabicity"]
Message-ID: <THU.20.MAY.1999.191517.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Alderson <ALDERSON at netcom.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 8:31 PM

> On 13 May 1999, "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote in
> reply to my posting of 11 May:

>>> There is more than one source, for example, of [e:]--see, for example,
>>> _dive dive_ "from day to day", where the first _dive_ is the expected
>>> sandhi variant of the ablative _divas_ "from (a) day".  Thus, again, your
>>> analysis fails to explain the facts.

>> In my opinion, this analysis of _dive dive_ is totally erroneous. This is
>> clearly a reduplicated dative.

> That is the schoolbook analysis of the phrase, but the semantics come out of
> the alternative analysis quite easily (in line with the use of the ablative
> in time expressions elsewhere) and we then need not torture the poor dative
> to mean its own opposite.

>> Also, I am curious if you can cite a non-arguable ablative in -as that
>> becomes -e: in sandhi?

>> Frankly, I find -as in sandhi becoming -e: simply incredible.

> Later, on 16 May 1999, Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de> noted further:

>> Since the ante-voiced sandhi form of -as is -o Pat is right in finding -e
>> simply incredible.

> The sandhi rule in question is that -as becomes -e before voiced dentals, and
> only there.  It applies in internal as well as external sandhi, cf. _edhi_ <
> *as-dhi (_as-_ "be" + imperative).

> This is not, as it happens, my analysis, but what I was taught nearly 25
> years ago in my first Sanskrit class...

Well, as someone who did not know and would have questioned Sanskrir -as
becoming -o in sandhi on phonological grounds (which I now know it does,
phonology be damned), I certainly do not claim anything but a *very*
superficial knowledge of Sanskrit --- but (of course, there is always a
but), what I do not understand is that Whitney (1889, I know), I thought,
was generally fairly well regarded as a Sanskrit grammarian. Under the
rubric "Euphonic Combination", he discusses -s in combination on pp. 58-61.
He first writes the rule that Ralf-Stefan mentioned: -as becomes -o "before
any sonant consonant and before short a (175a)"; and then exceptions: in
176a, he mentions several pronouns in -a{'}s that simply lose their -s's
before any consonant: sa dadarCa, 'he saw'. If I understand the rule you
propounded above properly, we would get **se dadarCa unless you argue that
the accent negates the rule.

Now, I am not asserting anything. I just know too little. But I am curious
why the rule you mention does not seem to be in Whitney, and, in fact, a
different, apparently contradictory rule is described.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From Anthony.Appleyard at umist.ac.uk  Fri May 21 07:26:11 1999
From: Anthony.Appleyard at umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:26:11 +0100
Subject: Latin perfects
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.082611.0100.>

Peter <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:- (Subject: Re: Latin perfects):-

> Thanks, Wilmer, for the interesting questions on the Latin perfect, some of
> which have answers, some of which don't, and some of which are disputed.

> > - a 'weak' perfect obtained in the most verbs using -vi/-ui ...

I had an idea that Latin perfects with a {v} inserted may have come by
contraction of a periphrastic perfect using the Latin perfect active
participle ((e.g. *ama:vos- = "having loved") which vanished unrecorded
before written times (unless `mortuus' = "dead" is a thematized relic
survivor form)) with {sum} (plus the persistent bulldozer of Analogical
Levelling destroying evidence by making endings like in other tenses):
e.g. *ama:vo:s estes > ama:vistis "you (pl) have loved". That would
explain why (as far as I know) there are no Latin perfect passive forms
like **ama:vitur = "he has been loved", as prehistoric Latin *{ama:vo:s
estur} would not be perfect passive, if it meant anything at all. It
might also mean that Latin perfects with the {v} missing (e.g. French
{vous donna^tes} < Latin {vos dona(vi)stis) are not contracted but
original, being derived from true IE perfects; the process that happened
next was often perhaps the reverse, with much analogical insertion of
-vi- into early Latin perfects which had fallen identical with presents
by loss of reduplication.


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Fri May 21 09:23:26 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 10:23:26 +0100
Subject: `Sancho'
In-Reply-To: <36f430f2.57005261@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.102326.0100.>

On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

[LT]

> >Nobody knows what the reason is.  All I can report is that /a/ in the
> >first syllable of a polysyllable sometimes develops into /ai/, in a
> >purely sporadic manner.  But I *think* this only ever happens before a
> >coronal consonant, which may be relevant.

> Are there any examples before a single (coronal) consonant?
> Unless I'm overlooking something, all the examples seem to be
> before sibilant+stop or nasal+stop clusters.

I think this is correct, though I can't guarantee it.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk  Fri May 21 11:33:00 1999
From: nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk (Nicholas Widdows)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 12:33:00 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.123300.0100.>

JoatSimeon said:
>> Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
>> English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.

Patrick Ryan replied:

> Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development from the
> simple to the complex.

> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
> of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
> hence, less explicitly expressive.

But it's not wet and huggy sociology, like saying all cultural practices or
all belief systems are equally defensible. Human languages are all equal the
way human beings are all equal. There are no primitive humans, and no
primitive languages. There were once, but as all modern languages are
non-primitive, they got that way either by universal diffusion
(proto-Nostratic inventions like pronouns were carried by canoe to
Tasmanians and Yahgans some short time before European contact) or
exceptionless independent innovation or common descent from a non-primitive
ancestor about 70 000 years ago in Africa who [snip rest of well-known
theory supported by common sense].

Yes, there's a difference of sorts between vervet monkey hoots and the
collected works of Derrida, but snakes have no legs, humans have no tails or
penis bones, viruses probably came from bacteria sloughing off unnecessary
bits, pidgins typically lose the inflexions of their ancestors, modern
Chinese has no case, English has no dual. The modern kind of language
developed once, or at least once, from some precursor of _Homo sapiens
sapiens_ communication, but there's nothing in biology or language or
culture to say it has to continually measurably improve.

> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
> plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a statement
> that a language which can does not exhibit.

Sei Shonagon is renowned for the limpidity of her style, not for the
impossibility of working out how many cherry trees she viewed or empresses
she served. CERN haven't yet had to resort to publishing in Bislama so they
can specify whether it was <mitupela> or <yunmitripela> who observed hadron
collisions.

Now Martina Navratilova can run faster than me, and there's no way I'm
getting in a boxing ring with Alain Prost. Likewise English is in some ways
a vastly richer and more expressive language than Guugu-Yimidhirr or
Hixkaryana, partly because _we've_ got words for helicopter and
zoopharmacology, fouette' and grande jete'e, Dasein and Abschattung,
moccasin and teepee, andante and dal segno, mana and tiki, and they haven't.
But there's no reason in principle why the Hixkaryana Academy couldn't lay a
few weeks aside to devise native equivalents of all of these. There's
nothing cognitive or phonological or grammatical to hinder them.

They're just different.  Languages change because they do.

Nicholas Widdows


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 21 13:51:45 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:51:45 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.085145.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 6:45 PM

<snip>

> That's the point! Then also Slav. -i and -y are analogical forms
> just like the Skt. ones. In all probability the analogy was already
> completed in the protolanguage: Just as o-stems form non-ntr. dual in
> *-o:, thus i- and u-stems form *-i: and *-u:.

That is certainly a possibility.

>>> I'm not saying the non-neuter was _originally_ *-e, I'm saying it was
>>> (or things look as if it was) in the IE protolanguage. I am not sure
>>> there were no vowel-initial roots, it is mostly very hard to prove that
>>> something as hazy as *H1 was not present. On the other hand, there is
>>> absolute certainty that IE did have vowel-initial affixes. You may take
>>> the gen.sg. ending; whether you want to posit *-os or *-es, there
>>> is no place for "-Hos" or "-Hes";

> So, for the dual *-e, it _would_ be a problem for you if it did not have
> a laryngeal, as sva'sa:rau indicates it did not.

Pat responds:

Beekes looks at the same data, and on pg. 194, reconstructs -*He. Why is he
wrong?

Pat responded earlier:

>> As for the genitive, I reconstruct *-s(V), with the final vowel falling off
>> due to stress-accent of a preceding syllable: "Ce/oC + sV -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

Jens asks:

> With accent shifting onto a vowel that was not there?

Pat responds:

Sorry, I should have written "Ce/oC(V) -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

Jens, previously:

>>>  I have managed to explain the nom.pl. *-es from an earlier
>>> vowel-less sequence *-z-c (two different sibilants, one marking the
>>> nom., the other the pl., in that order, structurally parallel with the
>>> acc.pl. in orig. *-m- + sibilant),

Pat asked:

>> Why not simply *-s(V)s(V)?

Jens responded:

> In the reading *-ss, no objection, except that we do need two different
> sibilants for other reasons.

Jens, previously:

>>> the calculation giving at the same time phonetic explanation of all the
>>> many other oddities of the nom. pl. forms, esp. the type in *-'-or-es,
>>> *-'-on-es:  Why is the -o- not lost? Why is it o, not e? Why is it not
>>> long? Why has the e not been lost? And, of course, why is the e not
>>> accented?

Pat responded:

>> There is no doubt that these are all good questions.

Jens explains:

>>> All of this is explained by **-z-c where there was no vowel to shift
>>> to: An unaccented -e- is first reduced to -o-; then the nom. sibilant
>>> ("-z-") lengthens (result now *-'-o:r-zc); then short unstressed
>>> vowels are lost (but this form does not have any, so the rule operates
>>> vacuously here); a long vowel is shorted before word-final
>>> triconsonantal clusters [containing the nom. sibilant].

Pat responded:

>> For some languages, perhaps. But for IE, a tri-consonantal cluster of this
>> form is not likely to have been a realized phenomenon at *any* stage of IE.

Jens now writes:

> So, the effects I say they have caused on the surface forms come from
> elsewhere? From where? And why are precisely three consonants of a
> structure pointed to by the morphology excluded by your ruling? Is it the
> number three in itself that is excessive? Or is it the sibilant character
> of two of the elements? Or is it my assumption that they were not
> identical? Would it help if I said that, for the present purpose, they may
> as well be identical since their difference is irrelevant here?

Pat answers:

I am not disputing that the process you describe is possible --- only that
it is probable. But, that must be tempered by the circumstance that I do not
have a "better" explanation to offer.

Pat wrote previously.

>> I think one important factor that should be considered in these equations is
>> the example Beekes gives on p. 195 of Greek <o{'}sse>, 'pair of eyes', which
>> he derives from *ok{w}-iH{1} THROUGH *ok{w}-ye. We could, just as easily,
>> posit a dual in -y and forget about the laryngeal.

Jens writes:

> In this particular case we could - for Greek. But not for Slavic oc^i
> (would have reduced i), nor for Arm. ac^'k' (would not be a-stem, gen.
> ac^'ac'). And especially it would not give Skt. -i: with length in the
> ntr.du. of cons.-stems.

Pat responds:

I do not have the reference books here to substantiate this comment but, if
I understand Beekes correctly, OCS would not have oc{^}i but rather
oc{^}e{^}. Is that incorrect?

I will not comment on the Armenian since I am in the same situation. But
perhaps a list-member who is more familiar with Armenian and its convoluted
phonology would be willing to comment?

As far as the length of Sanskrit -i:,  it seems to me that a couple of
explanations could account for the length: 1) analogy; 2) vrddhi, etc.

 <snip>

Jens mentioned:

>>> *H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e;

Pat responded:

>> In view of Gk. o{'}sse, why not?

Jens responds:

> There is no such rule. The /y/ would syllabify and yield **ane'r-i. That's
> what happened in the loc.sg. *p at 2-te'r-i > Gk. dat. pate'ri, Skt. loc.
> pita'ri.

Pat responds:

Not sure what you mean by "no rule". It is a process described on p. 195 of
Beekes. Also, the dative has a different base form: -*(H)ey, which is
nothing more than the well-known *Hey-, 'to go'.

Jens mentioned:

>>> u-stem *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

Pat asked:

>> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

Jens responded:

> There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off by a
> funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one' (acc.sg.M
> amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this giving
> ami:, not **amu:.

Pat responds:

I think it is dangerous to assume that combinatory rules have acted
identically at different periods, do you not?

Jens asked:

>>> What _is_ the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

Pat answered:

>> The majority of the attested forms, there being no /i/ in IE..

Jens responded:

> For most positions, you are right: The original difference between the
> morphophonemes /i/ and /y/ are neutralized almost across the board and can
> therefore be represented by one phoneme. However, that is not the point
> we're discussing; we're arguing about the presence or absence of a
> laryngeal in the ntr.du., remember? And in this point Skt. yuge' 'two
> yokes' passes judgment, for this form is sandhi resistent ("pragrhya")
> and so _must_ have ended in a laryngeal.

Pat responds:

Sorry, I cannot accept the idea that laryngeals still functioning in
Sanskrit made yuge{'} sandhi-resistant.

Jens wrote:

>>> It may be illogical to abbreviate wordforms when forming enclitic variants
>>> of them, but many languages plainly do that.

Pat responded:

>> Not in my opinion. I believe that emphatic variants are marked by
>> expansions of the underlying forms found in enclitics.

Jens responded:

> That is often the case, perhaps mostly, but not always: Is howdydo an
> expansion of howdy? And how-do-you-do an even further expansion?

Pat wonders:

Jens, is <howdy> an *enclitic* to you?

Jens continued:

>>> It's like numerals and greetings, you get all sorts of reduced
>>> shapes in allegro speech, since people already understand the
>>> message at the beginning (sometimes even before).

Pat responded:

>> Some holes do not improve with additional digging.
>>  I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
>> a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

Jens protested:

> So this is wrong too? Well, let me tell you that the Danish decadic
> numerals 40-90 were formerly two or three syllables longer than now. A
> hundred years ago, you could only write

> fyrretyve, halvtredsindstyve, tresindstyve, halvfjerdsindstyve,
> firsindstyve, halvfemsindstyve,

> but in my lifetime they have always been as short as

> fyrre, halvtreds, tres, halvfjerds, firs, halvfems;

> and informed scholars know of _no_ phonetic rule to delete word-final
> -tyve or -indstyve in this language. These are true abbreviations.

Pat responds:

Phonological reductions and abbreviations are two different animals;
enclitics and numerals are two more.

Jens writes:

> It seems to me that there just are some solutions you do not _like_ on
> apriori grounds. Too bad, then, if the material at hand points in that
> direction, I am still gonna accept them, even if I do not like them
> myself. I am no authority on taste in scholarly solutions, nor do I see on
> what grounds anybody else could be. Conversely, there also appear to be
> some solutions you would _like_ to be true, even if the material at hands
> points unambiguously away from them. I'll be doubting them very much
> until, by some unlikely turn of events, the hard evidence turns out to be
> illusory and is overruled by a new and better possibility. In the case of
> *-e or *-H1e for the non-ntr. dual, not much is needed (but none is
> present yet). For *-y or *-iH1, it takes miracles to vindicate the former
> over the latter. And that wordforms can be shortened is simply beyond
> dispute.

Pat answers:

I would be lying if I could not admit to some a priori principles. Are any
of us free of them? And although I do believe that "de gustibus non est
disputandum", I hope we are dealing with matters a little less subject to
whim than taste.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 21 13:56:25 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:56:25 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.085625.0500.>

Dear Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Alderson <ALDERSON at netcom.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 8:11 PM

I agree with most everything you have written here.

> If by "overly 'school'-oriented" you mean that I accept the findings of one
> particular theory of phonology in preference to other competing theories, I
> plead _nolo contendere_.  If you mean rather that I think Lehmann *must* do
> everything as a structuralist because he did most things as one, you
> misunderstand my entire point:  I do not insist that if he did anything as a
> structuralist he must do everything that way; rather, I am simply stating the
> fact that on the evidence of his writings themselves, he *did* do things
> strictly as a structuralist.

But, Leo has persuaded me that Lehmann might not have used the structuralist
terminology in the case of "syllabicity" in a totally consistent manner.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri May 21 23:01:03 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 18:01:03 -0500
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.03.9905191133410.26918-100000@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.180103.0500.>

Is this word related to Spanish mojo/n, which in a dictionary means
"landmark or boundary stone" but in spoken Spanish means "pile of shit"

	btw: I've asked Latin Americans from all over about gandul, the
only meaning any of them know is "pigeon pea". The usage "lazy" is
definitely dialect or slang. The standard words for lazy include perezoso &
vago; other more common terms include sentado, flojo, boludo & huevo/n

	Huevo/n gave rise to huevear "to fart around, to scratch your
gonads, to bother people by not doing your work", which gave rise to one of
my favorite words, webear "to surf the web". Likewise, huevadas "nonsense,
bullshit, a pain in the gonads, etc." gave rise to webadas "bullshit on the
web"

[ moderator snip ]

>Finally, I might note that, while Basque <muga> means `limit, frontier'
>today, as its apparent cognates commonly do in neighboring languages, in
>our earliest Basque texts the word more usually means `boundary-stone'
>-- that is, a stone marker set up to mark a boundary.  This sense is
>usually rendered today by the compound <mugarri> `boundary-stone', with
><harri> `stone'.

>Larry Trask

[ moderator snip ]


From stevegus at aye.net  Thu May 27 15:04:52 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steven A. Gustafson)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 11:04:52 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.110452.0400.>

s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca wrote:

> I do not dispute that Romance was born at an early date: what I dispute is
> the claim that its ancestor was a sister of Classical Latin --a language
> which, I quite agree, was not perfectly homogeneous. The au/o business is
> actually an excellent example of the early birth of Romance and its being
> a "daughter" of Classical Latin: while we indeed have evidence of
> the shift from /au/ to /o/ at an early date (Emperor Augustus himself is
> said to have regarded the pronunciation of his name with an initial /au/
> as pedantic), it is interesting to note that /au/ is preserved as such in
> many Romance languages today, and, more to the point, its distribution
> matches that of Classical Latin --take Romanian AUR "gold", LAUD "I
> praise" versus FOC "fire", DORM "I sleep", where the au/o distribution
> corresponds perfectly to that found in AURUM, LAUDEO, FOCUM and DORMIO.

/au/ was probably the last of the Latin diphthongs to go.  We can be
reasonably sure of that because in certain situations in both Spanish
and Italian, stressed /o/ was diphthongized {fuego, fuoco, uomo &c} but
that didn't happen when the /o/ resulted from CL /au/ {oro, not *uoro}.
And, as you say, it was preserved in Rumanian, and possibly in French,
much later than that.  Therefore /au/ > /o/ in Spanish and Italian must
have occurred after the diphthongization process was well underway.

This suggests, if it does not prove, that if Augustus thought that the
/au/ pronunciation of his title was obsolescent, that there already
existed a wide divergence between the written norm of CL, and the speech
of those Romans whose status in society gave them the clout to set
language norms.

And, if Augustus' ordinary speech was proto-Romance, this really
squeezes the time frame during which CL might have reasonably resembled
a spoken language.  Bear in mind that in 187 BC, the Latin of the
-Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus- was noticeably archaic and
pre-classical.  So were the epitaphs of the Gracchi in 121 BC or
thereabouts.  Of course, it might be expected to find archaic language
in epitaphs and laws.  Still, if folks spoke pre-Classical Latin in 121
BC, and Augustus was speaking proto-Romance when he died in 14 AD, the
time span in which classical Latin was the speech of ranking Romans
shrinks to less than a century.

I think that given this evidence, it may not be reasonable or fruitful
to wonder whether proto-Romance is a lineal descendent or a sister
tongue of CL; but it may indeed be reasonable to say that the written
norm of CL is somewhat archaizing and definitely artificial sample of
the actual river of Roman speech.  Indeed, the life of the classical
norm might owe much to the fact that Rome had an empire, and as such
Latin was a learned speech for many of the Empire's subjects, who
aspired to imitate a norm that was taught to them by schoolmasters.
Folks like Augustus, who spoke "Latin" as their mother tongue, felt far
less pressure to talk like Cicero; and they were the moving force in the
movement from classical Latin to proto-Romance.

--
Steven A. Gustafson, attorney at law
Fox & Cotner:  PHONE (812) 945 9600   FAX (812) 945 9615
http://www.foxcotner.com

Amorem semel contraxi. Consanui, et morbi immunis sum.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 13:56:06 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 08:56:06 -0500
Subject: accusative and ergative languages
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.085606.0500.>

Dear Fabrice and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Fabrice Cavoto <fabcav at adr.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 1:21 AM

Fabrice writes:
> I think that what Patrick refers to is that many typologists mean that the
> evolution 'ergative to accusative' is more commoun than the reverse,
> without excluding it.

Pat responds:

That is, of course, very close to what I believe. But I would go an
unpalatal to some step further, and, agree with G. A. Klimov, that an
ergative form *must* precede an accusative type.

Thank you for your informative remarks.

<snip>

 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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 14:56:37 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 09:56:37 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity (yet again)
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.095637.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 1:50 AM

>> Pat then responded:

>> Leo, I simply do not understand your point. Could you spell it out a
>> little more completely?

>Leo answered:

> We both assume no more than one stress accent per word, don't we?  If so, the
> problem is that it is at least *very* difficult to explain final _-e_ as the
> result of stress accent on that syllable (and you have said that more than
> once) if, at the same, *any* _e_ must be so explained (else it should vanish,
> n'est-ce pas?).  And even if the augment is regarded as a prefix added later
> in some languages, *bherete must then have had three syllables with stress
> accent, else we should expect (in traditional terms) **_bhr.te_, with weak
> ("zero") grade of the root and zero grade of the thematic vowel.  Instead,
> Greek _epherete_ and Skt. _abharatha_ 'ye carried' point to e-grade of the
> root and of the thematic vowel.

Pat responds:

One of the phenomena I believe I have identified in early language is that
the plural morpheme was, at one point, simply stress-accentuation.

It would make our lives easier if we could assume no more than one stress
accent per wood but I would not rule out a secondary stress-accent in a case
like _a{'}bharatha{"???}.

Yes, I believe that vowel retention is generally a function of stress-accent
but I find the explanation that *bherete "had three syllables with
stress-accent" ununderstandable in terms of what I think of as
stress-accent.

<snip all the tsk's>

> But this gets us back to the original point: what earthly reason do you have
> for claiming that 3sg. -t and 2pl. -te are originally a morpheme meaning
> 'member of the tribe'?  You have *said* so, and claimed that *teu-to-
> (better:  *te-w-to-) represents an extended form of the root; but where's the
> evidence?  (One might also ask why -t appears with *inanimate* subjects; were
> they members too?)  If you can present no evidence, I can just as well claim
> that the two items were always separate entities and had no shared meaning
> whatsoever.  If I am right, the problem disappears.  I hate to use the
> argumentum ex auctoritate, since it has no logical force, but my version *is*
> the standard one; if you want to claim something else, it behooves you to
> come up with the evidence.  (And please don't just refer us to your website;
> it must be short enough to summarize in a screenful or so.)

Pat responds:

Well, it is difficult to summarize what is scattered over 8 million bytes
but I can try.

As to one of your points, I do not believe that earliest IE allowed a 3rd p.
inanimate subject of a non-stative verb; hence, no -*t referring to an
inanimate subject. Only animates "do things" which is not illogical if you
associate agentivity with intention.

I also believe that the IE reflexes of T{H}O properly (originally) refer
only to animate entities; a similar form, T{?}O (IE *dV) referred properly
to inanimate objects, and is the basis for neuters in -*d.

Regarding -*t and -*te, I do not believe that any grammatical morpheme in IE
can originally have had the form -*C since I believe that all grammatical
morphemes are originally grammaticalized -*Ce (at a minimum) non-grammatical
morphemes. On this basis, both -*t and -*te must derive from earlier -*tV.
In the absence of evidence to differentiate them, I assume a unitary origin.

For *te-w-to-, although we would both acknowledge -*to, I am not going to be
able to persuade you that a morpheme *te- could be the basis to which a
collective morpheme -*w was added --- in a paragraph or two because you are
unwilling to look beyond IE where *CeC roots are the general rule. It is my
belief that every IE *CeC root can potentially be analyzed into *CV + *CV,
and that these monosyllabic morphemes are recognizable is some early
languages: e.g. Egyptian <t>, 'loaf', is cognate with IE -*dV, neuter
formant.

In a nutshell, I believe the *te- of *te-w-to represents an earlier *T[H]O
because, for example, of its reflexes in Egyptian as <t>, which, I believe,
allows specification of the vowel as *O.

To save you exasperation, both IE *d and *t show up as <t> in Egyptian
**when derived for earlier *T{H/?}O**.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu May 27 17:03:25 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 12:03:25 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <000201bea75f$8a596a40$9202703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.120325.0500.>

You're right, someone obviously put the mojo on my keyboard

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
>Date: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 10:18 AM

[ moderator snip ]

>> <il ont> /ilo~/ > /io~/
>> <ils ont> /ilzo~/ > /zo~/

[ moderator snip ]

>[Ed Selleslagh]

>Actually, it is 'il a' / 'ils ont', unless you meant something I didn't get.
>As far as I can see, the ever-present pronouns are not really needed to
>disambiguate, in almost all cases (However: tu as/il a, same pronunciation:
>t??/il?).  In early French, pronouns were *not* used : cf. Rabelais in
>one of his satirical tales, citing the (supposedly archaic, i.e. to him)
>inscription above the gate of the abbey Noirmoustier ('blackminster') "Fays
>ce que voudras" ('Do whatever YOU  [will] want'. In equally archaic
>Castilian: 'Haz lo que quisieres', with future subjunctive).

	Future subjunctive is a weird bird for sure in Spanish. Although it
slipped out of the everyday speech and writing, it still pops up in a few
proverbs and phrases.


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Fri May 28 07:42:25 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 02:42:25 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.024225.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Sprry I can't respond to more of the statements in Pat's latest, but I have to
leave town in the morning to see my oldest graduate, and it's now nearly 2 AM.
Anyway:

>Leo continued:

>> 2.  There are a few established terminologies.  The plural morpheme of
>> English (we definitely do have one) can be called "bound" because it occurs
>> only when connected to the "free" morpheme of a root.  It can be said to
>> have "grammatical meaning", or be called a "grammatical morpheme".  There
>> are not my terms; they're standard.  What's not standard is to say that
>> plural -s does not have "semantic" meaning, since (in normal usage) *all*
>> meaning is "semantic".

>Pat responds:

>I am well aware of this usage and terminology.

Is there some reason why you don't adhere to it?  Some of your arguments seem
to depend on your *not* accepting it.  Why don't you?

[Leo sought a parallel for homonymous suffixes -- hoping to suggest that if the
family words do contain a suffix, it needn't be the agentive suffix.]

>> And then of course, we have -er words which do *not* contain any of the
>> above, such as _cider_ and _spider_.  So what is wrong with saying that the
>> element seen in _father_, _mother_, _brother_, and _daughter_ (but not
>> _sister_, where the -t- is a secondary development) is different from the
>> agentive suffix?

>Pat responds:

>According to my dictionary, spider contains agentive -*ter; and cider is not
>derived from IE. If IE did have triliteral roots, you might have a point.

You mean, spider is *descended*, they say, from a form containing an IE
agentive suffix.  But that's quite another matter.  Other -er-words in English
are synchronically analyzed as having suffixes; spider and cider (whose
etymology is irrelevant) are not -- which, BTW, is why I and many others
pronounce them with [^i] rather than [ai], i.e. with the vowel of _writer_
rather than _rider_.

>However, I fail to see how the points you have presented relate meaningfully
>to the point I am attempting to make.

>I claimed above that -*ter, the common component of 'father, mother,
>brother, daughter', is not coincidental but a regular component of basic
>nuclear family terminology. On the basis of words like *g{^}en6-ter-
>(procreator, father), I believe it likely that it should be interpreted as
>an agentive. But even if it were not agentive -*ter, it is beyond the bounds
>of reasonable scepticism to suppose that its multiple attestations in family
>member terminology is not analyzable as a suffix.

My objection, originally, was precisely to the notion that it was an agent
suffix.  I didn't mean to deny that there was a suffix, although I do wonder
whether that is the best analysis.  A suffix on what?

>Leo commented:

>> Problem: Pokorny's *pa:- means 'feed; pasture'.  Add an agent suffix to that
>> and you get 'shepherd', not 'father'.  And this aside from the problem of
>> the weak grade of the alleged root.

>Pat responds:

>Well, strange that you missed na{"}hren in his definition. Which means 'to
>feed (animal, child); and failed to put that together with *pap(p)a,
>'father, *food* (not animal feed!). If the nuclear family terminology under
>consideration designated typical functions, 'feeder' for father certainly
>would not be amiss.

If the words were formed that way!  But _papa_ ia every bit as much a Lallwort
as _mama_.  Parents read amazing things into baby's babbling.

>And frankly, I am at a loss to see any problem with a reduced grade of the
>root preceding a suffix (agentive -*ter), which normally takes the
>stress-accent. Am I missing something?

I don't know.  Why did you bring that up?

>Pat, withdrawing:

>I refuse to get into another futile discussion of Lallwo{"}rter. Actually,
>one of the interseting arguments for monogenesis is the intriguing
>similarity of <lallen> all over the world.

That saya much about babies and little about languages, or monogesis thereof.

><snip>

>Leo coninues on a different topic:

>> I don't have Larry's dictionary.  But I'll say this point blank: what he
>> gives is merely a characteristic of phonemes.  Morphemes must consist of one
>> or more phonemes (despite the problem of "zero allomorphs").  It is because
>> of this that phonemes are the smallest units capable of *signaling* meaning.
>> But they are units of *sound*.  It might be helpful if you included Larry's
>> *entire* comment, for what you're citing is simply *not* a definition of a
>> phoneme.  See any manual of linguistics which actually discusses the things!

>Pat, for Leo's edification:
>
>phoneme . . . n. In many theories of phonology, a fundamental (often *the*
>fundamental) unit of phonological structure, an abstract *segment* which is
>one of a set of such segments in the phonological system of a particular
>language or speech variety, ___often defined as 'the smallest unit which can
>make a difference in meaning'___.

Larry is cautious and trying to include as many theories as possible.  But
"unit of phonological structure" refers precisely to the *sound* system.  I
have never seen the phoneme *defined* anywhere as he does in the final clause,
although it happens to be a true statement, it's a characterization rather than
a definition.  Unfortunately,
it is  misleading.  In some of your earlier stuff, you seem to have
taken it to mean that phonemes actually *have* meaning.  And quite certaiunly
you're wrong when you claimed that lack of a difference in meaning must mean
that the difference in sound *must* be irrelevant.  While I've quarreled enough
with Lehmann, his idea that [e e: {e}] became separate phonemes when they were
no longer predictable, because of changes in the accentual system, is good
structuralist theory, and not original with him.  What happens, in a nutshell,
is that the different vowels are no longer predictable but instead signal
whatever it was that the difference in accent signaled, while it existed.

>Leo responded re ablaut:

>> I have no idea whether it was a deliberate anything.  All I know is that
>> short e alternates with short o, and that the two traditional kinds of long
>> e: alternate with long o:.  The "lengthened grade" variety also alternates
>> with short e/o; the "natural long" ones deriving from vowel + laryngeal
>> alternate with traditional schwa.  Once established, it could be exploited.

>Pat comments:

>And "exploited" it was, to provide a nuance.

Over time, often more.  But that was over time.

>Pat continued:

>If I understand you correctly, you are maintaining that the earliest IE had
>an [e:] which was phonemic (contrasted with [e/o]) and was not the result of
>a reduction of [He] or [eH]; this is what I presume you mean by "original".

Probably not the earliest.  I speak here of lengthened grade, or of the [e:] in
Lehmann's version of things.

>I am asking you to identify an "original" [e:], e.g. in a verbal root,
>*Ce:C, which has a perfect stem *Co:C. A root for which we reconstruct *CeHC
>will, of course, not qualify.

Indeed not.  We must be talking past each other on this.  But lengthened grade
does show ablaut.  The word for 'foot' has Doric Greek nom. sing _po:s_, which
supposedly must reflect lengthened o: (other Gk. _pous_ can derive from
*_pod-s_.  And the Germanic forms have generalized the o: form: Gothic
_fo:tus_, OE _fo:t_, OHG _fuoz_.  Meanwhile, Latin has _pe:s_, which could be
from either *_ped-s_ or *pe:d-s_.  Will that do?

>>> Pat differs:

>>> IE "pronouns" in every significant way look and act like nouns --- with
>>> the sole exception that the inflections seem to be more conservative.
>> ...
>>> Outside of a very few simple forms like *me, *te, *se, etc., which might
>>> slip in under the rubric of nominal, simple nominal and verbal CV-roots,
>>> which had wide semantic ranges, were *differentiated* by additional
>>> elements at a very early time --- at least in the languages from which IE
>>> derives.  If we are unwilling to look beyond IE, then we must say,
>>> principally, that the simplest nominal and verbal root-form is CVC.

>Leo responds:

>> But there you have it!  The IE pronouns neither look nor act like nouns!
>> Pushing it back to Nostratic doesn't change anything there, since you're
>> saying that they must have been different there too.

>Pat, hopefully not patronizingly:

>A pronoun is a pro-noun. It can be put in any position syntactically in
>which a noun can be employed. To say that pronouns do not "act like nouns"
>is completely unjustified!

Not so.  The morphology speaks for itself, so I'll do the syntax.  If they
could, you could say:

	*I want to meet the new her.
	*I want to meet secretary.
        *Poor he/him has to work on Saturday.

But you can't.  Neither can you use interrogative pronouns like nouns, or
demonstratives, or indefinites -- there are a great many things called
"pronouns", and they behave differently from nouns in *many* languages.

	No le veo.  'I don't see him.'   *No veo le.
	No veo a Carlos.  I don't see Charly.'   *No veo a le.

So no, pronouns need *not* have the syntax of nouns.  They act different.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu May 27 17:08:26 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 12:08:26 -0500
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
In-Reply-To: <374C09C2.5C4159BE@aye.net>
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.120826.0500.>

The students that come into my classes don't even grasp USA Today or Strunk
& White, and many of them are English majors.

[snip]
>Quaere: does the spread of the -USA Today- or Strunk & White prose
>styles indicate that the syntax of "classical" English is becoming
>unintelligible to a major segment of contemporary readers?)

[snip]


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu May 27 17:33:00 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 13:33:00 EDT
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.133300.EDT.>

>Patrick C. Ryan

>"Irrelevant" must be your favorite word.

-- certainly, when confronted with irrelevancies.

>What happened to your "*in any era*"?

-- silly me, I must have assumed that anyone would realize this applied to
any era where we have _information_ about the languages.

What proto-people spoke like 200,000 years ago is, to coin a phrase,
irrelevant.  We'll never know.  It's even more irrelevant to Indo-European,
which was not spoken by slope-browed pre-sapient hominids.

>What "extant" languages show is totally irrelevant to what they may have
>been like in the far distant past.

-- you have a time machine?

>As far earlier stages having been "lost", prove it --- if you can.

-- since you're the one attempting a revision of the consensus, YOU prove
that they aren't lost... if you can.

So far, all I've seen is _a priori_ assertions.


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Fri May 28 08:22:08 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 09:22:08 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <v01540b01b372e5343bbc@[208.25.89.101]>
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.092208.0100.>

On Thu, 27 May 1999, Max Dashu wrote:

[LT]

>>  A very few other languages
>> -- such as Proto-Oto-Manguean -- have been reconstructed back to around
>> the same time depth.

> What is this, or rather, where was it?

The Oto-Manguean family is spoken today from central Mexico to Costa
Rica; it is one of the largest American families in terms of
geographical extent, speaker numbers, and language numbers.  The total
number of languages is variously counted at anything from 30 to 80,
depending chiefly on how the large and messy Zapotecan dialect continuum
is treated.  In any case, eight major branches are recognized.

The family has been subjected to intensive historical work, mainly by
linguists from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and these workers
have succeeded in obtaining a substantial reconstruction of the
proto-language.  This, I understand, is widely regarded as one of the
most successful reconstructions in all of American linguistics.  The
proto-language is commonly estimated to have been spoken around 6000
years ago, or perhaps slightly earlier.

For references to the principal published work on the reconstruction of
POM, see p. 157 of Lyle Campbell's book American Indian Languages
(Oxford, 1997).

It should be noted that the O-M languages are perhaps the most
typologically divergent languages in the Americas: they generally permit
only CV syllables, they have elaborate tone systems, and they generally
lack labial consonants.  Some of them are strikingly similar to Chinese.
Even Greenberg reportedly hesitated for a long time before finally
tossing O-M into his "Amerind" grab-bag.


Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From georg at rullet.leidenuniv.nl  Fri May 28 08:10:27 1999
From: georg at rullet.leidenuniv.nl (Stefan Georg)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 09:10:27 +0100
Subject: Syllabicity
In-Reply-To: <003201bea801$e61f57c0$599ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.091027.0100.>

>[ moderator re-formatted ]

>Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

> ----- Original Message -----
>From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
>Sent: Monday, May 24, 1999 9:06 PM

>R-S commented:

>> The lack of contrast between ...... aso.

Sorry, for posting irrelevant stuff ;-), but nothing of the quoted stuff
which followed in this message was written or posted by me, neither
naser"umpfend, nor mit voller Nase ...

[ Moderator's apology:
  I do not check quoted material for correctness of attribution, as I do not
  view myself as the *editor* of the posts on this mailing list (other than for
  legibility of form when mail programs break lines illogically), in general.
  Simple moderation creates enough of a delay in posting; actual editing would
  add days to the dissemination of each message, since it could not be done in
  my brief spare time.

  Please, let's all be careful of attribution of quotes to the correct writer.
  --rma ]


From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de  Fri May 28 08:52:35 1999
From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 10:52:35 +0200
Subject: accusative and ergative languages
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.105235.0200.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" schrieb:

> Fabrice writes:

>> I think that what Patrick refers to is that many typologists mean that the
>> evolution 'ergative to accusative' is more commoun than the reverse,
>> without excluding it.

> Pat responds:

> That is, of course, very close to what I believe. But I would go an
> unpalatal to some step further, and, agree with G. A. Klimov, that an
> ergative form *must* precede an accusative type.

Dear Pat and IEists,

whenever we discuss possible ergative properties of the IE reconstruct,
we should bare in mind that up to now we hardly have a Generalized
Theory of this linguistics and (?) CoCo- (cognition and communication)
feature. The only thing we really can tell is that ergativity and
accusativity is not a linguistic "category" or so, but some kind of
paradigmatic and syntactic behavior that is carried out by a number of
structurally coupled paradigms etc. By this I mean that a language may
well show e.g. an accusative behavior in its noun (!) inflection, but an
ergative behavior in - say - its agreement system, if present. In
general we should assume that accusativity and ergativity represent two
poles on a scale (the "accusative-ergative-continuum" (AEC) on which
single paradigmatic structures are located. If we claim that S
(subjective), O (objective or rather the cluster obejctive-indirect
objective which should be labelled (I)O)) represent metalinguistic
descriptors for these behavior types, accusativity would satisfy the
{S=A;(I)O} condition, whereas ergativity refers to [S=(I)O;A}.
Accusativity would then reflect some kind of A-promince, and ergativity
- on the other hand - some kind of O-prominence. The interaction of
different (liunguistic) categories with respect to the AEC is dominated
(and organized) in accordance with the general archicteture of the
'operating system' (OS) of a language  (that is those parts of grammar
that control the linguistic interpretation of event experience based on
'simple sentences'). The aprts of grammar that are relevant for the OS
are orgenaized as a plycentric dynamic network. The individual centers
are determnined by both paradigmatical aspects of the system
architecture and the degree of functionality that is carried out by
these centers. A simplified (and fictive) example would be
(IO-clustirung is neglected):

NP cases	{S=0;A}
SAP Pronouns	{S=A=O} ['neurtral']
AGR		{S=0;A} IF {S & A} = SAP 	['Speech Act Participant]
		{S=A;0} IF [S & A} = nSAP
TAM		{S=A;0} IF DURATIVE
		{S=O;A) IF PERFECTIVE
Diathesis	{S=O;A}
Word Order	{S=A;0}
DCD		{S=A;0}	[Discource Cohesion Device]

Now, how to claim that such a system (which - in a much more elabortaed
form - is well attested is 'ergative' or 'accusative'? Also, we have to
bare in mind that some of these centers are more colesely connected than
others. For instance, Abkhaz (West cauacsian) is generally thought to be
ergative at least with respect to 3.persons (Abkhaz is head-marking (no
cases, but polypersonal agreement). Its typology goes:

Intrans.:	S-Verb
Trans.:		O-A-Verb

Synchronically, the order of agreement clitics plays a crucial role to
determine the location of theis paradigm on the AEC. S and O behave
parallelly with respect to their position, hence we have {S=O;A}. Now,
it is generally assumed that a polypersonal paradigm did no come up 'at
once', but gradually. Hence , in diachronic perspective, Abkhaz once
probably knew a system that had only S and A clitisized to the stem, a
clear accusative scheme.

	The diachronic perspective of the ACC/ERG problem de facto refers to
the dynamics of the AEC. It can clearly be shown that the polycentric
architecture of the operating system allows parts of its centers to
shift say from ACC to ERG, whereas others in the same time shift from
ERG to ACC. There is no reason and no logics to assume that historically
all such centers once were O-prominent.

	If we now use this frame work in order to explain the morphosyntax of
IE it comes clear that we should first describe the single centers with
respect to their location on the AEC (withut forgetting possible splits
in terms of "Differentiated Agentive Marking" (DAM) (our famous 'active
typology') or 'Differentiated Objective Marking' (DOM) (accusative
split)). Moreover, we have to remember that ACC and ERG in many cases
are discourse features rtahter than mere syntatic or even semantic
features. But what to we know about the organization of sentence
chaining, of topicality etc. in IE? Practically nothing! It is very
dangerous to infer the gerel?a lcation of the IE operating system on the
AEC from just one (functionally reconstructed) paradigm (or center).

	It goes without saying that the AGR system in IE clearly in of the ACC
type (S=A), whereas NOUN (not PRONOUN) inflection may share sme ERG
properties (at a first glance). We know of such (sub)systems from
typological evidence (cf. the problematic ase of Georgian), but WHY to
declare these nominal features as ERG? Just because of a must that stems
from belief?

[Please note new phone number (office) :+89-2180 5343]
___________________________________
| Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
| Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
| Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen
| Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
| D-80539 Muenchen
| Tel:	+89-21802486 (secr.)
|      	+89-21805343 (office) NEW ! NEW !
| Fax:	+89-21805345
| Email: W.Schulze at mail.lrz-muenchen.de
|
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
_____________________________________________________
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From nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk  Fri May 28 12:46:42 1999
From: nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk (Nicholas Widdows)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 13:46:42 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.134642.0100.>

<petegray said:>
At the danger of being politically incorrect, I find different languages
differently "expressive".   Of course they can all express anything, but
some, through deliberate choice or through historical accident, express
certain factors, while others leave some factors vague and ambiguous.
</petegray>

The languages do? Some prominent users do; and you get cultural traditions
intimately tied with languages (such as oratory and poetry and opera). But
how Ciceronian is Plautus, how Demosthenean is Sappho? Old Norse comes
across as a stark, simple, no-nonsense linearity in the sagas, but
occasionally bursts into tortuous, glittering poetry. Voltaire and Derrida
use the same language. Sanskrit ideas somehow got translated into Chinese,
and then into Japanese, and I have no idea what nuances got minced in the
process. Any language with a few hundred years of cultural history can
probably show comparable variety.

Whatever the language has can indeed be used as raw material for the
culture. So the accentuation of English allows it to "naturally" fall into
iambic pentameter, French into alexandrines, Finnish into Kalevala metre,
Italian into Verdi libretti. OE and ON had their huge lists of battles,
seas, byrnies, and heroes, and used them to wonderful effect. Chinese could
be shimmeringly ambiguous, if they chose.

These classical cultures often had a characteristic linguistic timbre, but I
don't think the _linguistic_ constraints had much of a part in forming it.

Nicholas


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 28 13:09:11 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 08:09:11 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.080911.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear John and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton <mclasutt at brigham.net>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 1999 9:17 AM

> "Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

>> Actually, your comments show a jejeune understanding of "evolutionary".
>> Evolution does not promise "improve"ment only change that is successful
>> in enhancing survival.

John commented:

> I'm sorry, Pat, but your statement about Evolution here shows EXACTLY why
> modern languages (and any other language we have any evidence of) are NOT
> evolving.  Let's take the loss of the second person singular forms in
> Modern English (the 'thee' and 'thou' forms).  What was "survival enhancing"
> about that?  What it did was make English hugely ambiguous in terms of
> specifying the number of addressees.  Enhanced survival?

Pat responds:

We find many evolutionary changes in animal life for which it is difficult
to assign a specific evolutionary advantage; and, in fact, some changes
appear to take place as random variations that survive because that are
genetically somehow connected with other changes that do evolutionary
advantage.

Do we have any good idea of why it happened? And, perhaps, what is more
interesting: when some speakers lost the singular pronouns, what "advantage"
the loss had that enabled it to become standard usage.

John continued:

> How about the Great Vowel Shift?  Did it lessen the number of distinguishable
> vowels in English?  No (unless you don't count diphthongs).  Did it increase
> or decrease ambiguity?  No.  What was the "survival enhancing" effect?  Zero.
> Were speakers of Anglo-Saxon any less able to cope with their environment
> than we are?  I don't think so.  Could we discuss nuclear physics without all
> the Greek, Latin, and French loanwords that entered the language after
> Hastings and use just our Anglo-Saxon heritage with compounding?  Absolutely.
> The Icelanders do it just fine.  As I have asked you dozens of times before
> Pat, where's your hard evidence?  You always rely on "logic".  "Logic" says
> that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and that the earth is
> stationary.  "Facts" proved otherwise.

Pat responds:

Were AS speakers less able to cope with their environment? The answer is
resoundingly "yes"; the question of whether their language had a bearing on
this is another question.

"Logic" does not really say anything about the sun or the movements of the
earth. Regardless of the "facts", the appearance is that the sun rises in
the east, etc., and the proof of that is that, knowing as we do that it is
scientifically inaccurate, we still publish sunrise and sunset tables.

Nice to have you back, John.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From thorinn at diku.dk  Fri May 28 13:17:34 1999
From: thorinn at diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 15:17:34 +0200
Subject: SV: accusative and ergative languages
In-Reply-To: <01BEA750.E6F83100.fabcav@adr.dk> (message from Fabrice Cavoto on
 Wed, 26 May 1999 08:21:44 +0200)
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.151734.0200.>

> From: Fabrice Cavoto <fabcav at adr.dk>
> Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 08:21:44 +0200

> As Larry Trask suggests, ergativity may well been understood like any other
> feature: it can come and/or go, with or without leaving traces, like a
> mode.

How does a [-ergative] language look? Accusative? Why?

>From yours and Larry's statements, it certainly sounds like ergativity
is a feature that you can add to and take away from any language, and
when it's not there, the language has the default type of accusative.
But where does that leave active and trigger languages? And even if we
ignore that problem, why can't ergative be the default, if there has
to be one at all?

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn at diku.dk> (Humour NOT marked)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 28 13:36:00 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 08:36:00 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.083600.0500.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 1999 12:33 PM

Joat wrote:

> What proto-people spoke like 200,000 years ago is, to coin a phrase,
> irrelevant.  We'll never know.  It's even more irrelevant to Indo-European,
> which was not spoken by slope-browed pre-sapient hominids.

Pat responds:

So you do not believe fully modern man was present 200K BP? You are
definitely in the minority here.

Pat commented:

>> What "extant" languages show is totally irrelevant to what they may have
>> been like in the far distant past.

Joat asked:

> -- you have a time machine?

Pat responds:

We do not need a time-machine to reconstruct IE, do we?

Pat commented:

>> As far earlier stages having been "lost", prove it --- if you can.

Joat answered:

> -- since you're the one attempting a revision of the consensus, YOU prove
> that they aren't lost... if you can.

> So far, all I've seen is _a priori_ assertions.

Pat responds:

Any extant language has traces of the language from which it is derived if
it is not an invention like Klingon or Esperanto.

My website is dedicated to showing that these traces allow us to find the
common elements that constituted the earliest language.

What is an a priori assumption, is to assert that the traces that lead to
this early language have been irretrievably lost whithout offering any
argument against the methodology that is employed on my website.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 28 13:47:17 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 08:47:17 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.084717.0500.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 1999 12:48 PM

>>Patrick C. Ryan

>> As far as language change is concerned, there is no observable process in
>> this universe which is not, at least potentially, understandable,

Joat responded:

> -- that's not the issue.  You have been arguing that languages change in a
> particular direction; ie., that they become more complex, less ambiguous,
> and more expressive.

[ moderator snip ]

Pat responds:

I have not been asserting that languages "become more complex, less
ambiguous, and more expressive". I have asserted only that the
proto-language, which was simple,  became more complex, less ambiguous, and
more expressive over time.

Frankly, it amazes me that you cannot see the difference between the two
statements. I have never asserted that there is an inevitable direction of
movement but only that any complex phenomenon must spring from simpler
roots.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk  Fri May 28 14:44:35 1999
From: nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk (Nicholas Widdows)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 15:44:35 +0100
Subject: accusative and ergative languages
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.154435.0100.>

<Fabrice Cavoto:>
maybe one could assume that if there once has been an ergative system in
IE, no matter how broad/exclusive it was at the very beginning, it was at
its latest stages restricted to the dichotomy 'animate vs. inanimate',
before it was totally lost.
</Fabrice Cavoto>

Has anyone given any evidence for ergativity in pre-IE yet? If they have I
missed it. I don't count direct object and intransitive subject being marked
the same, even if it is in inanimate nouns and therefore at the end of the
Silverstein hierarchy most likely to be ergative. What I want before calling
something ergative is transitive subjects marked differently from the same
word when intransitive.

Even if some ergative features can be identified, pure ergativity is very
rare. So anything that isn't pure accusative is likely to be sitting partway
along the hierarchy. But the presence of mixed type features doesn't imply
that the language is, or has been, diachronically changing type. It may just
be a (near-)universal.

Nicholas


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Fri May 28 13:55:46 1999
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 07:55:46 -0600
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.075546.0600.>

Oto-Manguean is a group of languages spoken in eastern Mexico including
(among many others) Mixtec, Zapotec, and Otomi.

Max Dashu wrote:

>> A very few other languages
>> -- such as Proto-Oto-Manguean -- have been reconstructed back to around
>> the same time depth.

> What is this, or rather, where was it?


From nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk  Fri May 28 15:27:54 1999
From: nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk (Nicholas Widdows)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 16:27:54 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.162754.0100.>

<Pat Ryan:>
languages like IE,
which have principally CVC roots, can be analyzed so that the CVC roots are
recognized to be the results of compounds of CV+CV elements in an earlier
(than Nostratic) language.
</Pat Ryan>

This is putting a lot of functional load on plain CV. Open-syllabled
languages are usually polysyllabic (Polynesian) and monosyllabic languages
are usually strongly tonal (Sinitic, Vietnamese).

Quite possibly Proto-World was CV. No, let me correct that. If no modern
descendant is, parsimony suggests Proto-World wasn't either, but quite
possibly Pre-Proto-World was.

Possibly some descendants of Pre-Proto-World have by chance preserved
against all entropy some features of PPW; such as CV morpheme pattern. I'd
imagine all its descendants had an equal stake in this lottery, so why
didn't CV happen to be preserved in Inuktitut or Ge^-Pano-Carib or
Gunwingguan or Gur, rather than -- remarkable coincidence -- the two most
"ancient" languages we can read, in the jejune sense of ancient meaning a
mere 97% of the distance from PPW.

Nicholas


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri May 28 17:53:58 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 12:53:58 -0500
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
In-Reply-To: <374D5F14.88DC97BD@aye.net>
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.125358.0500.>

Didn't diphthongation in Spanish only affect "open /O/", not "closed /o/"
and wasn't /o/ from /au/ a "closed /o/"?

btw: Portuguese has auru- > ouro, causa- > cousa > coisa, etc.

[snip]

>in certain situations in both Spanish
>and Italian, stressed /o/ was diphthongized {fuego, fuoco, uomo &c} but
>that didn't happen when the /o/ resulted from CL /au/ {oro, not *uoro}.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri May 28 17:59:43 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 12:59:43 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <v01540b01b372e5343bbc@[208.25.89.101]>
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.125943.0500.>

Meso-America:
Chorotega, Mangue in Nicaragua, NW Costa Rica (extinct maybe in the late 1800s)
Otomi/ north of Mexico DF (still spoken)
and I think Zapotec & Mixtec are also Oto-Manguean
maybe Mixe-Zoque? (SE Mexico, postulated to have been spoken by the Olmecs)
so maybe Proto-O-M was spoken c. 3rd millenium BCE in states of Tabasco &
Oaxaca?

>> A very few other languages
>> -- such as Proto-Oto-Manguean -- have been reconstructed back to around
>> the same time depth.

>What is this, or rather, where was it?

>Max Dashu


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Fri May 28 18:01:13 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 13:01:13 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <8fc3c88c.247edbcc@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.130113.0500.>

I can think of some who still speak IE langs :>

[snip]
>It's even more irrelevant to Indo-European,
>which was not spoken by slope-browed pre-sapient hominids.
[snip]

[ Moderator's comment:
  None of whom, we may be certain, have ever subscribed at any time to this or
  any other mailing list.
  --rma ]


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri May 28 18:20:04 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 19:20:04 +0100
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.192004.0100.>

I (Peter) mentioned:

>the family suffix is not *-ter but *-6ter.

Pat said:

> could you explain a bit further?

>From memory, the article in JIES shows that all the family -ter words
have -6ter:

   p-6ter, ma-6ter, dhug-6ter, ien-6ter, g'en-6ter.

Because the last may be from g'en6-ter reanalysed, the possibility of this
word as the analogical source of the suffix was explored, rejected, and
another suggestion put forward - which I don't now remember!   I only
remember that it seemed rather unconvincing.

I don't have immediate access to JIES any more - otherwise a quick troll
through the indices would pick out the article.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri May 28 18:55:20 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 19:55:20 +0100
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.195520.0100.>

 Steven, attorney at law ,said:

> --- languages developing from spoken [Latin];
> --- edited literary texts; and
> --- a handful of surviving examples of graffiti.

> This is essentially what we have when we consider Latin

We also have:
(a) grammarians' descriptions;
(b) records of stigmatised pronunciations
(c) puns, misunderstandings, and all sorts of paranomasia;
(d) deliberate mimicking of non-classical pronunciations (remember Clodia?
    or Catullus?)
(e) spelling mistakes on formal inscriptions
(f) spelling alternatives on inscriptions

and more.   See W S Allen Vox Latina for more details.   We have a very good
idea of how Romans spoke.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri May 28 18:59:46 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 19:59:46 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.195946.0100.>

>> So can /kaen/ & can't /kaen?/ have to be distinguished by a combination of

>.....  I've always perceived the difference more as
> /k at n/ vs. /k&n(t)/,

Some of us (I say in a superior tone) speak a different dialect, in which
can is /k&n/ and can't is /ka:nt/.   The /t/ can be dropped without any fear
of ambiguity - not, of course, that we would think of doing such a thing!

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri May 28 18:36:53 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 19:36:53 +0100
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.193653.0100.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

I (Peter) said:

>> An ergative description of early PIE or pre-PIE explains various oddities in
>> PIE.

(The context makes it clear that I am not arguing PIE must have been
ergative!)

Brent said:
> OK, would you care to explain which oddities?

This is standard stuff - but do be aware that I am not insisting ergativity
is the only explanation.   My argument is merely that the theory that PIE
was ergative is "interesting" because of the issues it raises, and because
of its potential as an explanation.   My point is already proven, by the
sheer fact that you were interested enough to post your email.

A couple of features explained by a theory of ergativity are:
(a) the identity of nominative and accusative for all neuters.
(b) the lack of a true original passive.
(c) the origin of the verbal endings (see Szemerenyi p 330 for a brief and
confusing summary)

There are others as well, but these will do for the moment.

Peter


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Sat May 29 09:19:49 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 11:19:49 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <005701bea470$fe053880$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SAT.29.MAY.1999.111949.0200.>

>In the matter under discussion, someone may be able to tell us, in the
>historical record, if <jam> is attested earlier than <jamui>.

Mazhvydas (1547) has /jem/, Bretkunas (1591, his native language might have
been Prussian)) has /jamui/, Dauksha (1599) /jam/.

These attestations, at the beginning of Lithuanian writing, are too close
to each other to infer any chronological hypothesis from them. However,
that the pronominal Dative singular was, in Proto-Baltic, longer than just
-m, viz. at least -mu is documented by Prussian forms such as /kasmu/,
/tenne:ismu/, /schismu/ aso.

St.G.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Sat May 29 09:01:59 1999
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg)
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 11:01:59 +0200
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <004401bea46e$87cefe00$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SAT.29.MAY.1999.110159.0200.>

>Since numerals in many languages do not automatically require a plural form
>of a noun, I am not sure what relevance "numerals" have to the point I am
>attempting to make.

Possessing numerals is equivalent to being able to indicate plurality
("five dog").

>And, I perceive a difference between "Viele Hunde haben
>Schwa{"}nze" and "Hunde haben Schwa{"}nze" --- do you not?

Sure, but the latter could be conveyed by "Hund haben Schwanz", in
opposition to, say, "Dies Hund haben Schwanz", "Viele Hund h.S." etc. pp.).
If you need to disambiguate, you do, even if you don't have a morphological
plural in your language.

St.G.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri May 28 19:55:50 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 20:55:50 +0100
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <FRI.28.MAY.1999.205550.0100.>

There are several points in Steven's posting on Classical Latin which
require response.

Firstly, There is no need to suggest that Classical Latin was ever at any
stage actually spoken.    It has its sources in many things, not least the
drive to produce a language as capable of great literature as Greek.   We
can even trace in the literature the development of the so called Classical
Norms, as certain forms or constructions are felt to be in some way more
appropriate than others.   The achievement of Vergil and Caesar (rather than
Cicero) is to write great Latin within the norms which had been established
for written literature over the previous hundred years.

We know that Caesar, Cicero and the rest spoke very differently from the way
they wrote (see Cicero's more intimate letters);  and we know that the drive
to refine the language begins in earnest somewhere between Plautus (writing
about 200 BC) and Terence (writing after the full impact of Greek literature
has hit Rome, and dying in 154BC).   The spoken language continued as spoken
language does, with the educated people using some of the more "refined"
forms in their speech, but not all, while the less educated used few or
none.

It is the connection of this spoken language to proto-Romance that is
puzzling.   A simple equation of the two is not adequate, as it leaves lots
of problems.   For example, the common (in both senses) pronunciation
of -au- as /o:/ is "extremely well attested".   Yet in Romance the vowel
seems to have been not /o:/ but short /o/, and the original /a/ seems to
have survived very late - at least as late as the 5th century - for several
reasons, not least the French initial consonant in "chose"  (co- would have
given co-).

Likewise CL has sapere (short first e) but Romance points to sape:re.  And
many more such examples.

Another problem is the remarkable uniformity of the Vulgar Latin texts from
the 3rd to the 8th centuries BC.    It is scarcely conceivable that peasants
in Spain, France and Romania all spoke alike;  yet they seem to have written
alike.   So again, a simple equation of Vulgar Latin with proto-Romance may
not be adequate.

However, the claim that Classical Latin is proto-Romance is yet more
difficult, or even far-fetched.   There are too many things from
pre-classical Latin which have disappeared in the written language, but
resurface in both Vulgar Latin and Romance.   The actual speech of the
Romans must have maintained these features through the classical period.

Steven also said:

> This suggests, if it does not prove, that if Augustus thought that the
> /au/ pronunciation of his title was obsolescent,

If you mean he thought it should be eschewed, then I think this is highly
unlikely, given the political overtones of this diphthong.   He might well
have been aware of the tendency towards /o:/, but we cannot really think he
approved of it!

Steven said:

> And, if Augustus' ordinary speech was proto-Romance,

Highly unlikely.   Quite a few Romance features were in evidence before his
time, and just as with any modern language, there were many different
varieties of spoken Latin.

Stgeven said:

> this really
> squeezes the time frame during which CL might have reasonably resembled
> a spoken language.

Precisely.   CL developed through the first century BC, and even Lucretius
(dies 55 BC) cannot be considered a model of Classical Latin.  CL, properly
speaking, does have a very brief time span.   This is another sign of the
fact that it is an artifical fashion, not an actual spoken language.

Peter


From vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu  Sat May 29 20:34:43 1999
From: vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 16:34:43 -0400
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <SAT.29.MAY.1999.163443.0400.>

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

> Actually, if I had to summarize my argument against the consonantal nature
> of laryngeals in IE (except Hittite), I would say that the phenomena are
> reconstructable in terms of lengthened vowels so the presumption is that
> they were lengthened vowels, and the burden of proof is on those who propose
> their consonantal nature *in IE*.

Forms such as Skt aayunak suggest initial laryngeal, but it must disappear
in yugam, Lat iugum . What vowel does this?


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 23:07:42 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 18:07:42 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.180742.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 7:52 AM

>>>> Pat asked:

>>>>>> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

>>>> Jens responded:

>>>>> There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off
>>>>> by a funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one'
>>>>> (acc.sg.M amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this
>>>>> giving ami:, not **amu:.

>>>> Pat responded:

>>>> I think it is dangerous to assume that combinatory rules have acted
>>>> identically at different periods, do you not?

>> Jens objected:

>>> Sure, but you were using completely unknown rules.

>> Pat rejoinds:

>> Since when is compensatory lengthening "unknown"?

> I meant "completely unknown for the language concerned", which of course
> is what matters. I don't believe such a compensatory lengthening rule has
> ever been known for Sanskrit. If you assume -uy > -u: in Sanskrit, it is
> your task to demonstrate that there is such a "rule", meaning that the
> same change occurs in other cases where -u- and final -y meet. It would be
> an interesting discovery if you have examples to show that (for Sanskrit,
> mind you).

Pat responds:

Gee, Jens, I thought you knew about IE *ai -> Sanskrit [e:], or is that not
a lengthened vowel?

>>>> Pat responded:

>>>> Sorry, I cannot accept the idea that laryngeals still functioning in
>>>> Sanskrit made yuge{'} sandhi-resistant.

>>> It is a descriptive fact,

>> Pat rejoinds:

>> Your idea of a "fact" and mine are obviously totally different. That yuge{'}
>> may be sandhi-resistant could be a fact. That the cause is your convenient
>> laryngeal, is not!

Jens counters:

> But facts ought to be given explanations, and in this case it lies right
> at hand. What is simpler than assuming that a neuter dual contains the
> neuter dual ending? Now, in consonant stems the neuter dual in Sanskrit
> ends in /-i:/. The most common (in Beekes' phonology, if I understand him
> correctly, the only) source of that is a PIE sequence of i + laryngeal.
> Then, if /yuge'/ is regular, and the stem is *yugo-, we are made to posit
> *yugo-iH. That fully explains its sandhi-resistence, for before a vowel,
> the H goes to the following syllable, leaving -oi to form a diphthong in a
> syllable of their own, whence Skt. -e, even before vowel in the following
> word.

Pat, amazed again:

Gosh, Jens, does not IE *e/oi -> Sanskrit [e:] also? Besides, 99% of the
cases when <yuge{'}> will come before a vowel involve a following word the
initial of which can anciently have been presumed to be derived from IE *H.


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Fri May 28 00:52:41 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 19:52:41 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.195241.0500.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

> A pronoun is a pro-noun. It can be put in any position syntactically in
> which a noun can be employed. To say that pronouns do not "act like nouns"
> is completely unjustified!

Not entirely so.  One cannot say, for example, *the he.  To the best of
my knowledge, of languages with articles, none of them use them with
pronouns.  In addition, pronouns usually (always?) cannot have
non-predicate adjectives, "old man" is acceptable, "old he" is not.

> They do not look like nouns in one regard: they are principally *Ce vs.
> *CeC; however, that is due to their frequent enclitic employment where
> brevity is recommended.

As in French j', etc.?
--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Fri May 28 00:57:50 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 19:57:50 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.195750.0500.>

Dear Robert and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Whiting <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 1:34 PM

> On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
>> from the simple to the complex.

> and then

> On Tue, 25 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> If we are going to keep coming back to "complex", perhaps you would care
>> to define it for us in terms of this discussion. I talked about ambiguity
>> not complexity.

Robert wrote:

> Thank you, Patrick.  Your posting shows more about you and your methods
> than I would ever care to put in print, and you have certainly made all
> my points for me.

Pat answers:

And thank you, Robert, for revealing your methods --- taking two postings,
which appeared a week apart, in different contexts, answering different
questions. Your scholarship must be a wonder to behold!

Robert continued:

> Just one thing though:  When you say

>      Gelb, under whom I studied, ...

> do you mean that he was your dissertation supvervisor or principal
> advisor, or that you took a course from him once, or that you saw him
> around the OI on occasion, or that you studied on the second floor
> while he worked on the third.

Pat responds:

You may conclude whatever you wish.

Robert, in no particular context:

> And I should answer your questions that stem from real ignorance
> rather than being rhetorical.

Pat foolishly asked:

>> But if you do not care to, tell me the word you would use to distinguish
>> between the semantic relationships of 'dog/cat' and 'cat/cats'.

Robert politely responded:

> I would use what everybody else who knows how to use a dictionary would
> use.  'Dog/cat' is an example of a difference in "lexical meaning":

>      lexical meaning n:  the meaning of the base (as in the word _play_)
>      in a paradigm (as _plays, played, playing_).
>                        Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

> while 'cat/cats' is a difference in "grammatical meaning":

>      grammatical meaning n:  the part of meaning that varies from one
>      inflectional form to another (as from _plays_ to _played_ to
>      _playing_).
>                                      Ibid.

> So 'dog/cat' are lexically different and 'cat/cats' are grammatically
> different, but both pairs are semantically different (i.e., have
> different meanings).

Pat answers:

Thanks so much for a full exposition of your views. I will bear your
prefered usages in mind if you will do the same for mine.

Pat previously:

>> What is the method of marking the plural in Chinese nominal forms --
>> what other mechanism?

Robert answered:

> There are a number.  Most commonly there are "measure words" and
> "quantifiers."  Measure words are required between definite quantifiers
> (numbers) and nouns, but are usually optional (but sometimes required)
> after indefinite quantifiers (e.g., ji "some, a few," haoji "quite a few,"
> duo "many, much," etc. [tones not indicated]).  One can also use the
> quantifier one (plus measure word) to indicate the indefinite singular.
> Demonstratives can be marked for singular and plural by the use of measure
> words (-ge for singular, -xie for plural) and these demonstratives can be
> used together with nouns to indicate the number of the noun.  Also, the
> plural marker of pronouns (-men) is often used to mark the plural in nouns
> referring to groups or classes of people.

> Otherwise, singular and plural
> are generally determined from context, but if elimination of ambiguity is
> necessary, there are ways to accomplish it.

Pat responds:

That is precisely what I said.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Fri May 28 02:17:46 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 21:17:46 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.211746.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

"Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton" wrote:

> I'm sorry, Pat, but your statement about Evolution here shows EXACTLY why
> modern languages (and any other language we have any evidence of) are NOT
> evolving.

Actually, "evolve" is a neutral term, indicating mere change by the
accumulation of small scale changes.  It is usually "survival
enhancing", at least in the short term, but can also refer to changes
that are neutral, or even harmful.

> What it did was make English hugely ambiguous in terms of specifying the
> number of addressees.

Which is exactly why many dialects have developed various plural forms,
such as y'all in the South.  "Survival enhancing", you could say.  :-)

> Could we discuss nuclear physics without all the Greek, Latin, and French
> loanwords that entered the language after Hastings and use just our
> Anglo-Saxon heritage with compounding?  Absolutely.  The Icelanders do it
> just fine.

True, by coining words, that is, by changing.  It's only a matter of how
it changed.  English changed by borrowing (very odd terminology, when
you think about it, "stealing" would be more appropriate) words, while
Icelandic changed by creating new words.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Fri May 28 02:34:50 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 21:34:50 -0500
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.213450.0500.>

"Steven A. Gustafson" wrote:

> /au/ was probably the last of the Latin diphthongs to go.  We can be
> reasonably sure of that because in certain situations in both Spanish
> and Italian, stressed /o/ was diphthongized {fuego, fuoco, uomo &c} but
> that didn't happen when the /o/ resulted from CL /au/

However, that diphthongizing only resulted when it was /O/, descended
from Latin short /o/, long /o:/ evolved into /o/, which remained /o/,
thus ho:ra became hora, not *huera, while ossum (?) became hueso.  /au/
became long /o:/, so of course it wasn't diphthongized.  /aurum/ became
/o:ru/, which naturally became /oro/ in Spanish and Italian.

> but it may indeed be reasonable to say that the written
> norm of CL is somewhat archaizing and definitely artificial sample of
> the actual river of Roman speech.

Sure, why not?  "Correct" English has a number of artificial elements
added in for "logic", like the double-negative rule, or the "split
infinitive", and the like.  It's reasonable that the Romans might've
introduced such artificial elements.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw  Sat May 22 05:38:58 1999
From: fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw (Steven Schaufele)
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 22:38:58 -0700
Subject: Form following function
Message-ID: <FRI.21.MAY.1999.223858.0700.>

Steve Long (<X99Lynx at aol.com>) writes:

> Function has a broader meaning here.  It's not 'practicality.'
> Function refers to a consequence, an effect on the environment.
>
> A rock has form.  When a human picks one up to throw it, function is
> added.
>
> A square wheel has form.  The problem is that it does not satisfy the
> functionality requirement.

Excuse me, a `square wheel' has a perfectly good function -- especially
if it's attached via an axle to another wheel, whether square or not.
Makes a great table.

I've seen it done.  I've even come across a suggestion (admittedly
speculative) that the original wheel may have been intended as a table.

And what about all those Central American wheels that never got attached
to carts, because they were too busy keeping time?  Just because a wheel
is shaped like a wheel doesn't mean its function is necessarily to
`allow an object to move with less resistance'.

To generalize:  You say `function' has a `broader meaning' here, but
you're not looking broadly enough.  You say `A rock has form.  When a
human picks one up to throw it, function is added.'  But the same is
true when a human picks one up to add to a dike, or to carve into a tool
or a statue.  There's a wide range of possible functions.  We got bones
in our ears that help us hear better; doesn't have anything to do with
the fact that for our reptilian ancestors those were jawbones.  They may
have made damn good jawbones, for all i know.  The functions are
different, but i don't know if one is in any objective sense `better'
than the other -- e.g., better suited to the nature/form of the bones
themselves.

Best,
Steven
--
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department
Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC
(886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504     fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw
Fax: (886)(02)2881-7609
http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html

        ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!***
        ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!***


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Sat May 22 08:48:01 1999
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:48:01 +0300
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <001d01bea181$08ef34a0$84d3fed0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.114801.0300.>

On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

<snip>
>Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
>from the simple to the complex.

Yes, I've noticed how, for example, in the history of writing
systems, the earliest writing systems were incredibly simple
logographic systems consisting of only several hundred to several
thousand signs and that reading and writing was so simple that it
was a specialized occupation that required many years of study to
master.  This simple system gave rise to a more complex system
of syllabaries which needed a couple of hundred (or even less
than a hundred) signs to express the same information.  Finally,
this gave way to the most complex system of all, the alphabet, in
which the tens of thousands of words in a language can be written
with around 30 signs and is so complicated that it takes all the
resources that the average 5-year-old can muster to learn it.

>My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after
>the onset of linguistic communication, languages were simpler
>than they are now; and hence, less explicitly expressive.

It is rather the other way around.  What you mean to say is that
your studies take this as an axiom and therefore fall apart if it
is not true.  But since you cheerfully admit that no linguist
accepts your studies, this is hardly proof of the truth of your
axiom.  And as far as I'm concerned, anyone who claims that there
is no semantic difference between "cat" and "cats" is
disqualified from talking about common sense.

>As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to
>designate the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an
>*ambiguity* into a statement that a language which can does not
>exhibit.

But if, as you have claimed elsewhere, there is no semantic
difference between the singular and plural forms of a given
noun (cat/cats), then being able to mark the plural makes no
difference in meaning and there can be no difference in the
level of ambiguity.  Either one of your statements or the other
has to be wrong (since this is a logical "or," they can also
both be wrong, but they can't both be correct).

>As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much
>greater range of semantic inclusion than other languages. This
>also is a source of potential ambiguity that is not shared by
>languages that have differentiated semantic ranges more finely.

Spoken language expresses meaning through sound.  This means that
an effective language has to be able to express the entire real
and imagined world through sounds used conventionally to convey
meaning.  How each individual language does this is of its own
choosing and whether it uses analytic or synthetic means does not
make it "simpler" or "more complex" than another language that
uses a different method.  If one language expresses relationships
between verbs and nouns through nominal desinences and another
expresses them through an extensive system of prepositons or
postpositions, the one is not necessarily simpler or more complex
than the other; they are simply two methods of achieving the
same result.  Overall, every language has to be able to express
the real and imagined world of its speech community.  Simplicity
in one linguistic area will normally be compensated for by
complexity in another.  If the language doesn't mark the
difference between singular and plural in nouns overtly, there
will be some other mechanism in the language to express the idea.

Finally, no natural language can entirely eliminate ambiguity
through grammatical means no matter how many case endings or
verbal inflections it develops.  The real and imagined world is
simply too large for this to be true, and natural languages just
do not work this way.  Context is the ultimate disambiguator of
meaning.  We understand things by their context.  And I do not
refer solely to the grammatical context of a word in a sentence,
but also to the socio-cultural context in which an utterance is
made.

>Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible
>linguistic discussion.

And please do not introduce your own personal opinions and
prejudices into the discussion under the guise of "common sense"
(even though, according to Einstein, that is what common sense is).

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 15:05:29 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 10:05:29 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.100529.0500.>

Dear Nik and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Nik Taylor <fortytwo at ufl.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 10:39 PM

>> "Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

>> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate
>> the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a
>> statement that a language which can does not exhibit.

>Nik counters:

> True, but such a weakness tends to be counteracted by less ambiguity
> elsewhere.  Japanese, for instance does not distinguish between singular
> and plural, but it does distinguish between different levels of
> honorifics, as well as cases.  Overall, languages tend to balance out,
> they are *roughly equal* in complexity.

Pat replies:

"Roughly equal" as defined in the UN Charter?

To take your conclusion seriously, we would have to get into a probably
interminable discussion of what "complex" means when applied to
languages --- likely not a very satisfying undertaking.

Your answer is illuminating, however, in terms of revealing what the real
bottom-line for the sociologically oriented among us: equality.

Complexity has nothing to do with the point I raised. Specifying whether you
are talking to the Shogun or a fishmonger does not help that entity
understand what you are saying any better if you are unable to specify the
distribution of an item under discussion in its class.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From stevegus at aye.net  Sat May 22 15:40:09 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:40:09 -0400
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.114009.0400.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Pete Gray writes:

>> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
>> of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
>> hence, less explicitly expressive.

>I don't wish to be rude, but this is demonstrably untrue.   For example,
>Polynesian languages have simpler phonology and morphology than the
>Austronesian language from which they must have developed.   Likewise modern
>Chinese has simplified its phonology from that of the earliest recoverable
>records.  Afrikaans has simplified its morphology from its parent langauge.

I suspect that movements towards the "simpler" or "complex" have to do as much
with the direction of phonetic developments as they do with any necessary
evolutionary vector.  If a language is undergoing the process seen over and
over again in IE languages, where final consonants or vowels get dropped, this
languages will seem to become "simpler" as former distinctions get bulldozered.
What is left may depend on how many distinctions can still be carried after the
sound changes have done their work.  Sometimes (Romance) the former
distinctions are completely levelled.  In other situations (Slavic) enough
remains after phonetic change has done its work to allow the older structures
to continue to function.

Obviously, though, this kind of phonetic change cannot go on indefinitely, lest
speech be replaced by silence.  At some time, PIE must have had postpositions
on nouns and pronouns regularly appended to verbs by a fixed VS sentence
structure, and these turned into case and verb inflexions.  In some IE
languages, like the Tocharians, this process continued and begat some exotic
cases.  In modern French, all the inflections that marked case and number have
been mostly lost from the -ends- of nouns; so what they did was add them back
at the beginning.

Modern spoken English seems to be in the process of generating a complex,
highly inflected verb system, with many new and different aspect markers, as
former auxiliary verbs are reduced and lose their distinctness and independent
status.  We have already seen simple verb phrase structures of Early Modern
English (Knowest thou?  I go...) get replaced by more complex and highly
nuanced and aspected ones that require more words.  (Do you know?  I am
going...)  In our time, sandhi and palatalization reduce the once independent
auxiliaries in these phrases to enclitics, and also change the pronouns.  These
may be new inflexions in the oven.

This seems to me to pose difficulties for any attempt to get a firm handle on
the level of "complexity" present in any given language.  In English, the
(archaizing) formal register is noticeably less complex in both syntax and
sounds than the vernacular; where do you insert your dip-stick to measure the
complexity of "English?"  It also seems to suggest that there is no vector
moving in favour of either simplicity or complexification, but that the process
is one of a pendulum moving from one extreme to another; or rather, a process
of punctuated equlibrium in which sound change and grammatical change play off
on each other.

---
With wind we blowen; with wind we lassun;
With weopinge we comen; with weopinge we passun.
With steringe we beginnen; with steringe we enden;
With drede we dwellen; with drede we wenden.
                                  ---- Anon, Lambeth Ms. no. 306

[ moderator snip ]


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 16:02:23 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:02:23 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.110223.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 11:24 PM

>>Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
>> of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
>> hence, less explicitly expressive.

>Joat responded:

> -- irrelevant to the present discussion, as all extant and historically
> recorded languages, as well as those which can be reconstructed with any
> degree of confidence (like PIE) are equally "expressive", ie., basically
> equally efficient as means of communication.

Pat rejoinds:

What you wrote but conveniently have deleted from your present posting was:
"All they intended to do was talk, and they did -- and _you can talk just as
effectively in any language, *in any era*_ of the human race (emphasis
added)."

My comments were relevant to what you wrote whether you can see it or not.
Whether you agree or not, that it what is irrelevant.

The research that is currently being performed now on the origins of
language suggests strongly that language began very simply, as calls and
gestures, which were gradually perfected into language --- unless, of
course, you believe that God bestowed fully developed language on Adam,
which belief would disqualify you from any rational discussion of the topic.

Joat continued:

> Languages are more or less useful for communication according to their
> degree of ubiquity or social status; which is to say, for non-linguistic
> reasons.

> Eg., English is not spoken more widely than Serbian because it's in any
> way a "better" language, but simply due to historical accident.

Pat responds:

Sociologically oriented people just simply seem to be unable to stay away
from terms like "better". I have asserted that early language, for any
non-believer, would have had to have gone through a stage that was less
expressive (more ambiguous) than languages of which we currently have
documented information. This has nothing to do with its "useful"ness. It
does not mean that its was 'worse'. It just means that it was different. Is
that really so hard to understand?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 16:17:02 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:17:02 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.111702.0500.>

Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 3:16 AM

>>Pat wrote:

>> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to designate the
>> plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an *ambiguity* into a
>> statement that a language which can does not exhibit.

>R-S responded:

> A language which is unable to designate the plural form of a noun (*unable*
> !) would be a language without numerals, and without a word for "many" othl.
> I strongly doubt that a lg. like this could still be called a natural
> language, iow. I doubt the existence of such a thing. Please, correct me.

Pat answers:

Since numerals in many languages do not automatically require a plural form
of a noun, I am not sure what relevance "numerals" have to the point I am
attempting to make. And, I perceive a difference between "Viele Hunde haben
Schwa{"}nze" and "Hunde haben Schwa{"}nze" --- do you not?

>R-S continued:

> But, seriously, there is of course sense in talking about a plural like
> "dogs" being simpler and producable with less effort than, say, "many dog"
> or "three (= many) dog". Othoh, "sheep", "brethren", "l'udi", and "d'on"
> aren't. Talking about an overall tendency of increasing complexity in
> language change makes thus less sense to me. We could go on and exchange
> endless lists of documented changes in languages increasing systemic
> complexity, followed by an equally long list showing simplifications (and
> all this without a proper definition of complexity/simplicity in hand).
> Should we ?

Pat rejoinds:

Without a proper definition of complexity/simplicity, I agree the discussion
can make little progress.

BTW, I spoke of "ambiguity" not "simplicity" or "complexity".

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 16:33:49 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:33:49 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.113349.0500.>

Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 3:57 AM

Pat wrote:

>>>  I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
>>> a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

R-S responded:

> So, if the assumption that English is an IE language is still with us,
> English morphology is older/more original than that of, say, Vedic or Greek
> ? French than Latin ? Good heavens !

Pat answers:

I do not think we are really disagreeing here. Let me clarify what I said,
and I hope you will agree.

I do believe that simple forms and less extensive categories of expression
came first. That does not mean that *all* "simpler" forms are the basis for
"less simple" forms but it leads to a strong presumption that a "simpler"
form is the retained basis of a "less simple" form.

Fortunately, in many cases, we can historically document the presence of a
"simpler" form earlier in time than the "less simple" form, which
substantiates the presumption.

When we cannot, the possibility of a "less simple" form being "abbreviated"
to a "simpler form" exists but do we not need more than the existence of a
possibility to assert it.

In the matter under discussion, someone may be able to tell us, in the
historical record, if <jam> is attested earlier than <jamui>.

R-S continued:

> It may of course be in line with common sense that, in order to get a very
> complex system (say, of verbal forms, as e.g. in Ket or Navajo), it has to
> be "built up" somehow by several successive stages of grammaticalization.  A
> fortiori it is reasonable to think that such complex systems have some sort
> of a "simpler" pre-history. I think this is basically what you have in
> mind. But to derive from this a principle which says that always the
> "simpler" (i.e. shorter) form in any given pair of attested ones is the
> primary one is, well, for want of a better word, hair-raising (no, this I
> time I won't take that back ;-).

Pat answers:

I think the linchpin of your objection is "always", which, if I implied it,
did so inadvertently. I do, however, based on just the line of reasoning you
have indicated in your last paragraph, believe that the preferred
explanation is derivation and only conflicting data should force us to
affirm abbreviation.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 16:51:15 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:51:15 -0500
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as [was Re: "syllabicity"]
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.115115.0500.>

Dear Ralf-Stefan, Rich and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 4:41 AM

R-S wrote:

> By this I don't doubt your analysis of dive-dive; only that it may be due
> to predictable Sandhi.  I'm unaware of how many examples for the process
> seen in /edhi/ exist, but /divedive/ may be another one, but then for an
> early sound-law, involving early univerbation of *divas + *dive not a
> productive rule still operative in historical times.

Pat writes:

Rather than the result of an ordinary sandhi process, I am inclined to
suspect that [*adhi{'}] to [edhi{'}] may be a rare example of Sanskrit
Umlaut.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 17:00:55 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 12:00:55 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.120055.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 7:53 AM

>> [Pat replied:]

>> If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I.
>> My point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV
>> since there is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

>Jens replied:

> You seem to have a short memory! As the squashed quotations from the
> _same_ mail of yours show, you _did_ derive *-t and *-te from the same
> underlying form, and it just is wrong to give that form the notation
> *-tV in the case where there is no vowel.

Pat responds:

Sorry I did not make myself clear. *t(V) and *tV.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat May 22 17:39:01 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 12:39:01 -0500
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <012f01bea2b3$4e213f40$0204703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.123901.0500.>

As far as I know, gandules are eaten in most of Latin America and parts of
Spain. You can buy gandules in the US packed by Goya, a company from Spain.
They are very popular in Cuba [where I had a plate of gandules], Puerto
Rico, Dominican Republic, Central America, etc. Everyone I've talked to
from South America knows what they are as well. In the US, they're popular
among Cuban-Americans, Dominicans & Puerto Ricans. In Central America,
they're considered as a poor man's substitute for green peas --which are a
delicacy there. And green peas are a real lexical mess: petipoa/s,
petipua/s, arvejas, arverjas, ervejas, guisantes [de olor], chi/charos
[verdes], etc. are used just in Central America.

[snip]

>Still no trace of 'pigeon pea'. BTW, where do they eat arroz con gandules?
>Nobody in the family or their acquaintances seem to have heard of it (Spain,
>Per?, Venezuela, Cuba...).

[snip]


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 17:42:17 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 12:42:17 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.124217.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Larry and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 8:36 AM

[PR]

>> Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
>> from the simple to the complex.

[LT]

> Not so.  Blatantly not so.

> A good counterexample is dedicated parasitism, in which the parasite
> loses all structures required for locomotion, perception, self-defense,
> pursuit of prey, and whatnot, and is reduced to a mere sac of tissue
> able to do nothing but to absorb nutrients from its host and to
> reproduce.

[PR]

And is that parasite one-celled? Was it there at the beginning of life on
earth?

Degeneration of certain functions is always possible. Take Chinese as an
example. The language from which it is derived did have a plural.

[LT continued]

> Languages are also good counterexamples.  The earliest recorded or
> reconstructible languages are in no way simpler than contemporary
> languages.  And perhaps no recorded IE language possesses an
> inflectional morphology as complex as that of PIE.  Does this make the
> modern languages in any way inferior to PIE?

[PR]

It always gets back to "better/worse", "inferior/superior" for the
sociologically oriented. For them, different is a pejorative. Perhaps
ambiguity is better, quien sabe?

[PR wrote]

>> My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the
>> onset of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they
>> are now; and hence, less explicitly expressive.

[LT coninued]

> It is not possible to make "studies" of the languages of our earliest
> ancestors, since no data exist.  As for "common sense", well, I take
> Einstein's view: `common sense' is merely a label we apply to something
> we believe only because we want to believe it.

> Our linguistic methods allow us to penetrate no more than a few thousand
> years into the past, even in the most favorable cases, and they reveal
> earlier languages in no way "simpler" than modern ones.  We have no way
> of reaching back to the remote antecedents of language, tens or hundreds
> of thousands of years ago, and we can't guess what these were like.

[PR responds]

Yes, Larry, we know this is your belief. But, although one cannot convince a
believer, let me mention a few things for those readers who still have open
minds:

1) All present languages potentially provide "data" for the languages of our
earliest ancestors if monogenesis is accepted; one can study IE, can one
not? even though we have no attestation of it beyond what we can
reconstruct;

2) Let us not say that "polygenesis" is against common sense; let us rather
say that polygenesis is intellectually on a par with _believing_ that the
earth was created in six days;

3) I am not the only person who believes that languages of much greater
antiquity than that allowed by the flawed mathematics of glottochronology
and lexicostatistics --- linguists, not amateurs like myself.

>>[PR wrote]

>> As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to
>> designate the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an
>> *ambiguity* into a statement that a language which can does not
>> exhibit.

>[LT wrote]

> Not remotely true, I'm afraid.  You are confusing grammaticalization
> with expressive power.  A language can express distinctions of number
> perfectly well without grammaticalizing some of these distinctions.

> English is not more ambiguous than Classical Arabic or Fijian because,
> unlike them, it does not grammaticalize dual number.  We use words like
> `both' or `two'; they use inflected forms of nouns or pronouns for the
> same purpose.  There is no difference in expressive power.

[PR writes]

If I had meant to include "dual" as a category, the absence of which
introduces ambiguity, might I not have written that --- just another
straw-man argument from the master debater.

>[LT coninued]

> The North American language Kwakiutl grammaticalizes visibility:
> different pronouns must be selected depending on whether the referent
> is, or is not, visible to the speaker at the moment of speaking.
> English does not do this.  Does this fact make Kwakiutl "more
> expressive" or "more complex" or "less ambiguous" than English?

[PR responds]

Yes, it makes Kakiutl more expressive.

[LT continued]

> The tense language English requires `I saw Susie yesterday'; a tenseless
> language like Mandarin Chinese has, literally, `I see Susie yesterday'.
> There is no ambiguity: there are merely different choices as to which
> information should be built into the grammar, as opposed to being
> expressed otherwise.

[PR responds]

Now one can say in English: 'I saw Susie'. What is the equivalent literal
translation in Mandarin?

[LT continues]

>> As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much
>> greater range of semantic inclusion than other languages. This also
>> is a source of potential ambiguity that is not shared by languages
>> that have differentiated semantic ranges more finely.

> Not so.  English has only a single past tense, and `Washington crossed
> the Delaware' can denote any temporal period between a moment ago and
> the beginning of time.  Some other languages grammaticalize much finer
> distinctions of past time: a moment ago, within the last hour, earlier
> today, yesterday, recently, within the last few months, within the last
> few years, many years ago, before I was born, and so on.  Is the African
> language Bamileke-Dschang superior to English because it distinguishes
> five different past tenses in contrast to our single one?

[PR answers]

You may repeat that 'English has only a single past tense' until the Fenris
wolf swallows the sun, and you will convince only yourself and your friends
who hold it dogmatically.

B-D is, in this regard, more expressive than English; and also less
ambiguous.

>[LT additionally]

> Is it less ambiguous?

>>[PR wrote]

>> Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible
>> linguistic discussion.

>[LT continued]

> I know nothing about sociology of any kind, but I do know that there
> exists no case for claiming that any living, attested or reconstructed
> language is more or less complex than any other, or more or less
> expressive, or more or less ambiguous.  That's just a plain fact.

[PR responds]

Your ignorance of sociology is probably an important component of why you
are unable to distinguish between scientific beliefs justified by reasoning
from data, and your "positions".

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 18:03:26 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 13:03:26 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.130326.0500.>

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 12:42 PM

>> Pat replied:

>> If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I. My
>> point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV since
>> there is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

>Leo objected:

> But that's not at all what you said, Pat!  You claimed then that the
> *existence* ot the -e was of no consequence, since we could explain it as
> the product of stress accentuation.  Having been shown by several people that
> your analysis will not work, you now say that the existence of the vowel does
> matter, only its quality does not.  Your statements are not compatible.

Pat responds:
Leo, I simply do not understand your point. Could you spell it out a little
more completely?

I hope I have been consistent. In IE, I believe there was a morpheme that
can be notated as [-*te/o] or [-*tV] which is the common factor in both
these forms; in the one case, reduced by foregoing stress-accentuation to
[-*t]. If you are relying on the Sanskrit injunctive for your point, surely
it is not unreasonable to think that the vowel of the 2nd p. pl. might be
been retained or analogously restored to maintain a differentiation with the
3rd p. sing.?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 18:17:24 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 13:17:24 -0500
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.131724.0500.>

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 2:20 PM

>> Pat said:

>> I understand how you would like to interpret the -i- of the reduplicated
>> form (as the residue of a laryngeal) but aside from this, is there any
>> evidence in the *un*reduplicated form of your postulated initial laryngeal?

>Pete responds:

> Good question.   Since this conversation began with your theory that
> laryngeals were vowels, what would you accept as evidence?

Pat answers:

It is not correct to characterize my view as "laryngeals were vowels"
without much qualification. I assume that "laryngeals" existed as consonants
at some point in the development of IE or the language (Nostratic) from
which IE developed.

I think that, generally, by the times of reconstructable IE, they had become
vowels: [a:, e:, o:, u:, i:] or caused other nearby vowels to be lengthened.
In the example under discussion, I would accept as evidence of an initial
laryngeal forms of *g{w}em- which indicated a better reconstruction of
*Hg{w}em.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 19:00:49 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 14:00:49 -0500
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.140049.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 5:12 PM

Jens wrote:

> I have yet to see a really cogent argument for an IE (or pre-IE) ergative.
> One is constantly served mere descriptions of what the system would be
> like if it is accepted, but nothing to convince one that it _must_ be
> accepted. I'm not saying that pre-PIE was _not_ ergative, just that we
> cannot really know. Practically all the literature on the subject simply
> boasts that the author knows what an ergative is and so is without
> scholarly interest. It is as if I would claim that PIE had a definite
> article, just because I know what that is.

Pat responds:

The argument of Beekes on pp. 193-4 of his book seems strong to me.

However, there is also the typological angle. It is my impression that most
typologists believe that nominative-type languages developed from
ergative-type languages.

Jens continued:

> I'm sure it is, as far as function goes, but I'm also rather sure that the
> IE pronoun (for *se) did not have a nominative form to fulfil this function.
> What was the nominative form in your opinion, and what are its reflexes in
> the daughter languages on which the reconstruction is based? - Are you
> _denying_ that Latin se, Greek he, German sich and Russian sebja have no
> nominative? And is this fact - if so it is - to be ignored in a
> reconstruction of the protolanguage?

Pat responds:

These are not easy questions, and I can only offer suggestions of
possibilities rather than assert convincedly:

The first datum to notice is that *se, although it frequently refers to
animates, and often is logically employed as an accusative, does not show
*-m, which we might expect.

Instead we find simply *se, suggesting what has been speculated as an
ergative-stage of IE where -*0 marks the absolute.

We also do not find the pattern which Beekes (and I) think might have been
the basis for a nominative formed from a genitive of the ergative-stage:
namely, a nominative (and genitive) in *-s. Instead, we find that
employments of *se in contexts that would suggest a nominative overwhelming
have the form *s(e)we, and that like *tu/u:, apparently have been modeled on
a genitive of a different form: *s(e)we and *t(e)we.

So, a partial answer to your question is that, if I had to designate a
nominative form, I would have to opt for *s(e)we.

I suppose you already know that I would favor the additional idea that the
genitives in *-we probably were derived from a lost topical inflection.

Pat wrote:

>> I reject unequivocally your H{3} as a part of the reconstruction.

Jens concluded:

> I feel we are about to reach the borders of how far this subject can
> be taken.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sat May 22 19:19:49 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 14:19:49 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SAT.22.MAY.1999.141949.0500.>

Dear Nicholas and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Nicholas Widdows <nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk>
Sent: Friday, May 21, 1999 6:33 AM

<big snip>

> They're just different.  Languages change because they do.

Pat, aghast:

I was with you all the way until this final sentence.

Is this Zen?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Sat May 22 22:43:34 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 00:43:34 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <l03102802b36977ce7552@[195.247.226.29]>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.004334.0200.>

On Thu, 20 May 1999, Ralf-Stefan Georg wrote:

> In short, we should differentiate between two kinds of "monovocalic"
> systems: one, where, as in Sanskrit, only one phoneme has only vocalic
> allophones, but certain others have consonantic and vocalic ones, and a
> system, where only one phoneme *can* have one or several vocalic allophones.
> I still view the latter as typologically impossible, resp. unheard of,
> while I admit (of course) that the former description fits the Sanskrit
> data (and they won't go away by ignoring them, as Jens puts it rightly).

It's always nice to read well-argued words of agreement. I guess you are
supported by empirical typology in dismissing the latter type, but note
that the former (Sanskrit) type was dismissed by typology also, and that
has been found to be wrong. And - most importantly for the IE list - it
was the Sanskrit-type analysis that was proposed and rejected for PIE.
Thus, such rejection loses its cogency (but not its _potential_ adequacy).

Jens


From jer at cphling.dk  Sat May 22 23:05:15 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 01:05:15 +0200
Subject: Syllabicity
In-Reply-To: <001f01bea2cd$6c171500$779ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.010515.0200.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

On Thu, 20 May 1999, [discussing with Leo Conolly] Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> [...] I will not be able to convince you that my answer is right but I will,
> at least, tell you what I think.  I believe that all IE roots of the form CVC
> were earlier "CV-CV. The thematic vowel is a faint reminder of forms that
> were stress-accented (at one point) CV-"CV.

[...]

> I do not think I will convince you of this either but, for whatever it may
> be worth, I will give you my view,

[...]

Pardon my barging in again, but this promts a fundamental question in my
head: How can you form an _opinion_ about a matter, if you have no
decisive arguments? Who would give a damn if I were to declare my belief
in the existence of PIE front rounded vowels (/u"/, /o"/) if I must
confess in the same breath that I have no evidence for it? Who would care
that I "think" or "believe" so, and that it is "my view"? I hope I am not
on record to have done anything of the sort.

Jens


From jer at cphling.dk  Sun May 23 00:22:01 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 02:22:01 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <004201bea391$14035260$529ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.022201.0200.>

On Fri, 21 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[Jens:]

>> So, for the dual *-e, it _would_ be a problem for you if it did not have
>> a laryngeal, as sva'sa:rau indicates it did not.

> Pat responds:

> Beekes looks at the same data, and on pg. 194, reconstructs -*He. Why is he
> wrong?

It is not _very_ wrong to posit *-H1e, seeing that the difference of
this over plain *-e is so small. But an ablaut interplay between
full-grade *-H1e and zero-grade *-H1 is unacceptable for the reasons I
have stated: It would make the nom.-acc. dual a strong case with rightward
accent-and-ablaut movement, which is never found. It would not allow
Brugmann's length in IIr., but that _could_ be analogical. And, addding
another, if the thematic form was really *-o- + consonant-stem *-H1e or
*-e (parallel with the nom.pl. *-o:s from *-o- + consonant-stem *-es), the
option *-o-H1e is excluded by the acute tone of Balto-Slavic and Greek in
this form. To be sure, Beekes also excludes *-o-e in favour of *-oH
precisely on the basic of the Lithuanian acute, but in this point we
differ in our understanding of the rules. If you are content to have some
speaker on IE on your side, pick anyone you like; but if you want to have
arguments to serve you with a criterion as to which one to choose (if
any), ask both parties again.

> Pat responded earlier:

>>> As for the genitive, I reconstruct *-s(V), with the final vowel falling off
>>> due to stress-accent of a preceding syllable: "Ce/oC + sV -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

> Jens asks:

>> With accent shifting onto a vowel that was not there?

> Pat responds:

> Sorry, I should have written "Ce/oC(V) -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

That makes the vowel of the genitive "ending" a part of the preceding
stem. If that is so, there will also appear a vowel before other endings
that cause the accent to move from one vowel to the next. Then why does
this not happen when the endings *-bhyos, *-bhis, *-su are added? And in
root nouns where the stem is identical with that of a radical verb (root
present or root aorist), why does the vowel appear in the genitive *-os
(*-es), but not when verbal endings are added? These problems evaporate if
the stem is posited as consonant-final, and the gen. morpheme is *-os
(*-es).

> I think one important factor that should be considered in these equations is
> the example Beekes gives on p. 195 of Greek <o{'}sse>, 'pair of eyes', which
> he derives from *ok{w}-iH{1} THROUGH *ok{w}-ye. We could, just as easily,
> posit a dual in -y and forget about the laryngeal.

> Jens writes:

>> In this particular case we could - for Greek. But not for Slavic oc^i
>> (would have reduced i), nor for Arm. ac^'k' (would not be a-stem, gen.
>> ac^'ac'). And especially it would not give Skt. -i: with length in the
>> ntr.du. of cons.-stems.

> Pat responds:

> I do not have the reference books here to substantiate this comment but, if
> I understand Beekes correctly, OCS would not have oc{^}i but rather
> oc{^}e{^}. Is that incorrect?

Yes and no. Slavic neuter consonant stems are few in kind, and their
nom.-acc. dual regularly ends in -e^ which must be pure analogy with the
o-stems. The dual of 'eye ' _is_ oc^i (also so given by Beekes 173), along
with us^i 'two ears' a relic of the inherited form.


> Jens mentioned:

>>>> *H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e;

> Pat responded:

>>> In view of Gk. o{'}sse, why not?

> Jens responds:

>> There is no such rule. The /y/ would syllabify and yield **ane'r-i. That's
>> what happened in the loc.sg. *p at 2-te'r-i > Gk. dat. pate'ri, Skt. loc.
>> pita'ri.

> Pat responds:

> Not sure what you mean by "no rule". It is a process described on p. 195 of
> Beekes. Also, the dative has a different base form: -*(H)ey, which is
> nothing more than the well-known *Hey-, 'to go'.

Beekes says no such thing, nor do I know of any basis on which he could
have. The form of the IE dative is immaterial when we are talking about
the fate of the IE locative.

> Jens mentioned:

>>>> u-stem *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

> Pat asked:

>>> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

> Jens responded:

>> There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off by a
>> funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one' (acc.sg.M
>> amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this giving
>> ami:, not **amu:.

> Pat responds:

> I think it is dangerous to assume that combinatory rules have acted
> identically at different periods, do you not?

Sure, but you were using completely unknown rules.

> Jens asked:

>>>> What _is_ the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

> Pat answered:

>>> The majority of the attested forms, there being no /i/ in IE..

> Jens responded:

>> For most positions, you are right: The original difference between the
>> morphophonemes /i/ and /y/ are neutralized almost across the board and can
>> therefore be represented by one phoneme. However, that is not the point
>> we're discussing; we're arguing about the presence or absence of a
>> laryngeal in the ntr.du., remember? And in this point Skt. yuge' 'two
>> yokes' passes judgment, for this form is sandhi resistent ("pragrhya")
>> and so _must_ have ended in a laryngeal.

> Pat responds:

> Sorry, I cannot accept the idea that laryngeals still functioning in
> Sanskrit made yuge{'} sandhi-resistant.

It is a descriptive fact, well established before the advent of laryngeal
analysis and in possession of a perfectly adequate and phonetically
natural explanation since Kuiper's ingenuity was invested in it.

Jens


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun May 23 10:51:19 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 10:51:19 GMT
Subject: Latin and Slavonic for `moon'
In-Reply-To: <21ba013b.246babab@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.105119.GMT.>

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 5/10/99 3:27:35 AM, our moderator wrote:

><<[ Moderator's comment:
>  *g does not > **s in Slavic, but to *z.
>  --rma ]>>

>But *g >*z is also the formula for the first palatalization -

It isn't.

>In other for any initial *g to have gotten to the first palatalization, it
>would have had to survived satemization.  In which case, either *g was
>unaffected by satemization (contrary to mcv's statement) or only borrowings
>with *g were left to undergo the Slavic palatalizations.

You forget PIE *g(h)w and *g(h) [as opposed to *g^(h)].

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun May 23 11:55:12 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 11:55:12 GMT
Subject: Minus quam perfectum
In-Reply-To: <000001bea18c$48047e60$b64435cf@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.115512.GMT.>

"Steve Gustafson" <stevegus at aye.net> wrote:

>"The type of perfect most characteristic of Latin, that in -vi, is not found
>elsewhere."

One can compare Skt. laryngeal verbs in -a:u, but also the
Tocharian B 1st p. sg. in -wa.  Albanian also has a category of
aorists with formant -v- (origin?).

>He does observe that it is probably ancient, in that it often exhibits a
>different ablaut grade from the present stem, giving -sero-, -se:vi-
>as his example.  He believes that it came originally from the aorist of *bhu,
>*bhuei > *fu(v)ei, and that this -vei spread by analogy to whole classes of
>vowel-stem verbs.

>As to the origin of the distinctive personal endings, Palmer says:

>1sg -i = the middle ending -e from Sanskrit and Slavonic, representing -ai
>or -Hai;

>2sg -isti = the element -is-, which Palmer thinks is the same ending you see
>in the -eram and -issem groups, + IE -tha, plus the -i from 1sg, > -is-thai >
>-isti

But cf. Tocharian B 2sg. -sta and the Hittite past forms (2 and
3sg) in -sta (besides -ta and -s).

>3sg. -it, with -t brought over from the primary inflections

>3pl -erunt again has this -is suffix, plus -unt > -ont from the primary.  He
>relates the archaic alternative -ere to the -r endings of the passive.

This, I agree with Beekes, is PIE *-e:r (cf. Skt., Hitt., Toch.)
with -i added.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From mcv at wxs.nl  Sun May 23 12:43:44 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 12:43:44 GMT
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <001801bea2ba$8a5e3880$779ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.124344.GMT.>

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

>And Pokorny also mentions OI sve:-vi:ss, 'stubborn', which seems to
>incorporate a non-reflexive use also (if reflexive, the meaning would
>probably be something like '(self-)insightful'??).

Dutch <eigenwijs>.  Or, alternatively, Russian <samodur>.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From edsel at glo.be  Sun May 23 12:51:13 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 14:51:13 +0200
Subject: Latin perfects
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.145113.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Appleyard <Anthony.Appleyard at umist.ac.uk>
Date: Saturday, May 22, 1999 2:14 PM

[long snip]

>It might also mean that Latin perfects with the {v} missing (e.g. French
>{vous donna^tes} < Latin {vos dona(vi)stis) are not contracted but
>original, being derived from true IE perfects; the process that happened
>next was often perhaps the reverse, with much analogical insertion of
>-vi- into early Latin perfects which had fallen identical with presents
>by loss of reduplication.

[Ed Selleslagh]

Note that a similar process is taking place in popular southern Spanish:
(yo) planto - (yo) plant?
(nosotros) plantamos - (nosotros) plantamos, so my gardener says '(nosotros)
plantemos'!  The Analogy Bulldozer is rolling again.  I predict this is
going to be the norm a sufficient number of years from now, whatever the
opinion of the Real Academia.

BTW, I would be interested to learn more about the process that led to the
infinitive-based synthetic future in many Romance languages.  The story of
the widespread will/shall/must based future is pretty clear, even though the
details may be rather complicated in some cases, like in modern Greek
(tha+aorist root+present ending, tha < thelo:, 'volo').

Ed.


From jer at cphling.dk  Sun May 23 14:35:17 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 16:35:17 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.05.9905230126130.12918-100000@rask>
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.163517.0200.>

On Sun, 23 May 1999, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote:

[bla bla bla]
> But an ablaut interplay between
> full-grade *-H1e and zero-grade *-H1 is unacceptable for the reasons I
> have stated: It would make the nom.-acc. dual a strong case with rightward
> accent-and-ablaut movement, which is never found.
[+ bla bla bla]

Sorry, let me correct that right away: I meant of course "weak case".

Jens


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 13:05:41 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 14:05:41 +0100
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.140541.0100.>

Pat questioned the sandhi rule -as > e /_{d,dh}.   Like him, I know of no
examples, and cannot find it in any grammar (not that I have a really good
grammar available!).

I also note in the B'gita XI:53 "evamvidho dras.t.um" for --as d--, which
seems to contradict Rich's claim, and shows the usual sandhi -o for -as
before a voiced consonant.  Another example is at XI: 26 "bhismo dron.ah."
for bhismas dron.ah, another at XI 17: "sarvato di:ptimantam", and so on.

I hesitate to contradict Rich, but this evidence at least, doesn't seem to
support what he was taught.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 14:29:36 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 15:29:36 +0100
Subject: Latin perfects
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.152936.0100.>

Concerning Latin perfects from the PIE perfect active participle in -v-.

This is an interesting idea, Anthony.  In truth, no one knows where the -v-
forms come from.   They are not even in Oscan or Umbrian.   There is perhaps
a similar form in the Old Irish preterite 3 sing srai'- (in sraithi = he
hurled it).   Srai' should be from *stra:w-e, and would therfore be related
to Latin stra:vit.

Some (e.g. Martinet) have suggested a laryngeal origin, that it begins when
the 1 sing -Ha suffix is attached to verbs ending in -h3 (such as streh3,
g'neh3, bhleh3 - strew, know, blow) and then it extends to other laryngeal
verbs, thence to all stems ending in a vowel.   Others say this is unlikely.

It would be nice if we could show a relationship to the Sanskrit forms in -u
(which is found on laryngeal verbs) but the origin of this is also unknown.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 13:44:02 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 14:44:02 +0100
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.144402.0100.>

Pat suggested:
> (concerning the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
> brother, etc.) ... you may
> wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts you
> in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
> suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown,

If I dare to join this debate, I offer two points:

(a) We know IE did indeed have two such suffixes, one the agentive (though I
think *-tor is better than *-ter) and the "contrastive pair" suffix, which
we find in a range of words, such as Latin alter, Greek heteros, etc, and in
the comparative -teros.   It was even suggested in the 70's that it was this
last suffix, the comparative pair, which is found in the family words.

(b) We know that the family suffix is not *-ter but *-6ter.   People have
written articles on it in JIES.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 14:02:12 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 15:02:12 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.150212.0100.>

JoatSimeon said:
> all extant and historically
> recorded languages, as well as those which can be reconstructed with any
> degree of confidence (like PIE) are equally "expressive", ie., basically
> equally efficient as means of communication.

At the danger of being politically incorrect, I find different languages
differently "expressive".   Of course they can all express anything, but
some, through deliberate choice or through historical accident, express
certain factors, while others leave some factors vague and ambiguous.
Speakers of Attic Greek were self-consciously proud of the emotional
expressiveness of the particles, which they claimed non-Athenians could
never get right.   Speakers of Latin (or rather, writers) self-consciously
aimed at an architectural style with clear structure, which expresses
relationships of time, cause, etc with great precision, sometimes excessive
precision.   Writers of Classical Chinese deliberately used the inherent
ambiguites of their language to aim at a shimmering style in which it is
sometimes even unclear which is verb and which is noun, so expressing
something impossible in Latin or Greek.

So I stand against pat phrases like "all equal".   Languages, like people,
are differently equal.

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 13:12:07 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 14:12:07 +0100
Subject: Personal Pronouns
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.141207.0100.>

Jens said:

> I have yet to see a really cogent argument for an IE (or pre-IE) ergative.
> ..., but nothing to convince one that it _must_ be
> accepted.   I'm not saying that pre-PIE was _not_ ergative, just that we
> cannot really know. Practically all the literature on the subject ... is
> without scholarly interest.

I must disagree with your last point here.   An ergative description of
early PIE or pre-PIE explains various oddities in PIE.   I agree that there
are no arguments (yet) that it must have been ergative, and none that it
cannot have been ergative, but in light of its explanatory potential, it
surely is at least "interesting".

Peter


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun May 23 13:23:47 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 14:23:47 +0100
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <SUN.23.MAY.1999.142347.0100.>

Stephane said:
> I see nothing artificial about Classical Latin,

This debate could resolve into a fruitless discussion of what "artificial"
means, and so it may be best merely to agree to differ here.

> as Witold Manczak has
> argued, Vulgar Latin (or Proto-Romance, or however one cares to call the
> ancestor of the Romance languages) is quite plainly a "daughter" of
> Classical Latin (Not a "sister" as so many Romance scholars have argued).

If so, how do you explain:
(a) the Vulgar Latin use of forms and grammatical constructions not in
Classical Latin, but which just happen to be identical to forms in earlier
Latin?   If these are not derived from pre-classical Latin, is it just
coincidence?   How much coincidence is too much coincidence?
(b) the evidence for Vulgar Latin forms alongside Classical Latin at the
same period?   For example, the well known -au- / -o- business (like it or
not, in some words -o- is not classical, but is vulgar and contemporary with
classical), or the evidence from the Satiricon and from inscriptions and
such, showing pre-Romance forms even during the classical period.

Both of these seem to me to indicate that Romance developed from Latin
actually spoken at the very time when Classical Latin was being written.
Like many languages, Latin had a sginficant divergence of written and spoken
forms.    Classical Latin was really only the written form.    It is counter
to what we know of language development to think that pre-literary or
non-literary forms should develop from the written, rather than the spoken,
language.

Peter


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Mon May 24 10:33:21 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 11:33:21 +0100
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <E10l1Ki-0002y8-00@rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <MON.24.MAY.1999.113321.0100.>

On Wed, 19 May 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

> It is taken me sometime to reply to this message as it left me so
> incredulous after first reading it.

Why?

[on `native' and `ancient' words in Basque]

> Clearly with a language like basque which you yourself have said is
> conservative one would be expect a strong relationship between what is
> "ancient" and what is "native"

A relationship, perhaps, but not identity.

Anyway, let me clarify a bit.  Basque is phonologically rather
conservative, in that the phonological changes in the language during
the last 2000 years have not been dramatic -- though changes there have
most certainly been.

Lexically, however, Basque is much less conservative.  It has borrowed
many thousands of words from its neighbors, and it has constructed many
more from its own resources.  One day I hope to compile a list of the
Basque words that can reasonably be regarded as monomorphemic, as native
and as having been in the language for at least 2000 years.  I don't
expect that list to contain more than several hundred words.

[on what Azkue says in his preface]

> On translating the french we have the expression "primitive or
> non--derived" which I can only take as attributes such as "early",
> "native", "original". As well the or(ou) can be read as an inclusive
> "or" encompassing both primitive words AND foreign words.

OK.  Here's what Azkue says on p. xxxvi, section 5:

"Les mots en capitales ou majuscules sont primitifs ou non derives, les
autres etant imprimes en minuscules ou caracteres courants, excepte
naturellement la lettre initial.  Par exemple, BESO s'ecrit ainsi parce
qu'il est primitif, original; Besokada, Besondo et Besope en minuscules,
parce qu'ils sont derives.  Mais il est bon d'avertir que seuls les
derives de theme et de desinence connus seront consideres comme tels.
Des mots comme AIZKORA, AIZTUR, AIZTO, dont le theme est connu, mais non
la desinence, et d'autres tels que SALDU, GALDU, dont la desinence est
connue et non le theme, sont imprimes en lettres majuscules, comme s'ils
etaient primitifs."

This is perfectly clear.  Azkue is using `primitive' to mean
`monomorphemic', `not derived from another word'.  He is not using it to
mean either `native' or `ancient'.  This is clarified further in section
IX on p. xv:

"Quant aux termes exotiques, j'ai adopte ceux qui ne possedent pas
d'equivalent pur, et qui ont acquis droit de naturalisation dans notre
langue, comme ELIZA `eglise', LEGE `loi', ERREGE `roi', LIBURU `livre',
MEZA `messe', etc."

Note that these admitted loan words are entered in capital letters,
because Azkue regards them -- correctly -- as `primitive': that is, as
monomorphemic.  Not necessarily ancient, and certainly not native: just
monomorphemic.

There is nothing unusual about Azkue's choice of term.  He was writing
well before modern linguistic terminology was established, and, in those
days, `primitive' was the usual technical term applied to a
monomorphemic word, in French, in Spanish and in English.

Here's an extract from the entry for `primitive' in the second edition
of the OED:

II.4.a. *Gram.* and *Philol.* Of a word or language: Original, radical:
opposed or correlative to derivative.

Among the supporting quotations, the 1824 quote from Lindley Murray's
famous grammar of English is particularly illuminating:

"A primitive word is that which cannot be reduced to any simpler word in
the language: as, man, good, content."

Note Murray's third example: `content'.  This is plainly not a native
word, and it is not even particularly ancient in English, being first
recorded only in 1526.

[LT]

>     First of all, Azkue has not presented any material at all which is
>     contrary to my claim.  My claim is about the Pre-Basque of 2000 years
>     ago.  Azkue's book is a dictionary of the Basque of the 16th-19th
>     centuries, a completely different period during which Basque has plainly
>     tolerated plosive-liquid clusters.  Azkue's dictionary has not one word
>     to say about Pre-Basque.

> I have searched for words to describe this text and the best I can
> come up with is "bizarre". Putting the translation problem above
> aside we have the following situation.

> 1. basque is a conservative language (something you've asserted
> elsewhere)

Yes, but not so conservative that it hasn't changed at all.  Far from
it.

> 2. most materials we have from Roman times that are clearly basque
> or prebasque (sometimes called Aquitanian) are readable as such and
> offer little problem in recognition.

Somewhat overstated, perhaps.

A number of the elements found in the Aquitanian names have transparent
or plausible interpretations in modern Basque.  But many others do not.
Perhaps around 50% of the identifiable elements are interpretable, or
somewhat more if we arbitrarily declare some of the more puzzling names
not to be Aquitanian at all.  (In fact, some of these names are
certainly not Aquitanian, but it's a bit naughty to declare *every*
troublesome name to be non-Aquitanian.)

> 3. Azkue gives a list of words that he regards as "primitive or
> non-derived"

Yes: as monomorphemic.

> 4. Therefore those words in Azkue's list that are not identifiable
> as loans represent significant evidence about the possible form of
> ancient/early basque.

Sorry; this does not follow.  The mere existence of a word in modern
Basque is no guarantee that it is either native or ancient.

> 5. Those non-loan words are valid and meaningful for appraisal of
> any theory about "early basque"  for whatever time period you want
> that term to be applied to.

Nope.  Consider what you're saying, and compare English.  Suppose I wish
to defend the position that Old English did not allow words to begin
with the consonant /z/.  If I look at a dictionary of modern English, I
can find a number of words beginning with /z/.  Some, of course, are
loan words, like `zero', `zygote', `zinc' and `zoo'.  Others are native
but not ancient, like `zap', `zipper', `zilch' and `zoom'.  A couple are
native and of some antiquity but have unusual histories, like `zax' and
`zounds'.

Now, in what way do these words bear upon the proposition I want to
defend?  In particular, how do they cast doubt upon my position?

[LT]

>     Second, your list was hundreds of words long.  Do you really think I
>     have so much time on my hands that I can afford to devote days to
>     ferreting out known or probable etymologies for every single word in
>     that list?

> If you want to justify you hypothesis, yes I do expect it. This
> comment smells to me like I have contaminated a much loved theory
> with some live data and it has raised an unbearable stench.

Hardly.  That word list is simply not relevant to the point under
discussion, that's all.

[LT]

>     The problem is that the entries in Azkue's dictionary are of no
>     relevance whatever to the nature of Pre-Basque.

> I think my statements above have explained why I find this comment
> simply "bizarre"

I don't see why.  A dictionary of modern English is of no direct
relevance to ascertaining the nature of Old English, and a dictionary of
modern Basque is of no direct relevance to ascertaining the nature of
Pre-Basque.  You might as well try to find out what Latin was like by
reading a dictionary of modern French.

[on changes in English]

> The evidence available in english is not the evidence available in
> basque.

Sure, but there *is* good evidence for the phonological nature of
Pre-Basque.  You can find 600 pages of such evidence in Michelena's book
Fonetica Historica Vasca.

> Azkue is one of the largest evidence sources available for studying
> the development of basque, all be its limitations. As you so often
> say we should look at the evidence. I'm merely asserting the
> importance of not excluding evidence that is legitimately admissible
> for appraisal.

With respect, Azkue's dictionary is not the most appropriate place to
look for evidence about Pre-Basque.

[LT]

>     I pointed out that the terms `native' and
>     `ancient' are utterly independent, and that my claim was about ancient
>     words, not about native ones.

> here we disagree, the two terms are not independent.

Yes, they are, and I can't understand how you can disagree.  Look at
English:

	head	native and ancient
	bishop	ancient but not native
	zap	native but not ancient
	pizza	neither native nor ancient

[on my apology]

> I don't accept your apology, it is clearly not sincere.

Jon, what on *earth* is going on here?  My original posting was not
intended to give offense; I never suspected it might give offense; and I
can't see now why it should have given offense.  Yet you declare
yourself offended.  So, mystified, I apologize, and now you refuse my
apology because you believe -- wrongly -- that it is not sincere.

What am I supposed to do: fess up that I was out to get you from the
beginning?  Honestly.

[JP, earlier]

>     >  I have seen many examples in this list and on other lists where you
>     > have insisted that claims for phenomena are unjustified because
>     > there is no supporting evidence. Yet in this case you are prepared
>     > to omit evidence that can be rightfully presented for appraisal. Can
>     > we expect that on other occasions you have also played fast and free
>     > with omitting legitimate evidence for appraisal because it didn't
>     > suit your case?

[LT]

>     Gee whiz, Jon -- you seem to be really cheesed off for some reason, and
>     I can't imagine why.

> I think the sarcasm here, which as far as I am concerned is
> inappropriate in professional discourse, further demonstrates the
> lack of sincerity in your apology above.

Jon, I can detect no sarcasm whatever in my remark.  You have come very
close to accusing me of unprofessional and dishonest behavior, and I
have responded only with mild exasperation, not with sarcasm.

Apparently you have decided, for reasons best known to yourself, that I
am out to get you.  Why?  What have I done that's so awful?

> My sole point is that admissable evidence be admitted to the debate
> and be appraised. It may well turn out that that evidence supports
> your hypothesis and hence strengthens your case. That doesn't mean
> that it is not open to scrutiny again at another time. The essence
> of good scholarship in my experience, admittedly from non-linguistic
> disciplines(computing, & psychotherapy) was to always be prepared to
> revise even the oldest "laws". I characterise this notion as
> perpetual preparedness for flexibility.

I have no quarrel here.  It's merely that I do not accept the suggestion
that the words of modern Basque are directly relevant to determining the
morpheme-structure constraints of Pre-Basque.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From mcv at wxs.nl  Mon May 24 10:44:30 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 10:44:30 GMT
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <l03130304b36b93b5dbc2@[207.120.3.54]>
Message-ID: <MON.24.MAY.1999.104430.GMT.>

Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

[re: muga]
>Is this word related to Spanish mojo/n, which in a dictionary means
>"landmark or boundary stone" but in spoken Spanish means "pile of shit"

Phonetically I don't see how there can be a connection, and
indeed "mojo'n" is said to be derived from Latin MUTULUS (by way
of MUTULONE).  Moliner does list the synonyms <buega>, <mogote>
and <muga>.  But consider also <mota>, <moto> ["pre-Latin"], with
the same basic meaning of "mound, elevation or stone marking a
boundary".  If there's a relation, we are dealing with a
phonologically very unstable substrate item *[bm][ou][tk]-.  Cf.
maybe Pokorny pp. 98-102 under *b(h)(e)u- "aufblasen, schwellen".

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam


From edsel at glo.be  Mon May 24 19:16:28 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 21:16:28 +0200
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
Message-ID: <MON.24.MAY.1999.211628.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Date: Monday, May 24, 1999 4:15 AM

>Is this word related to Spanish mojo/n, which in a dictionary means
>"landmark or boundary stone" but in spoken Spanish means "pile of shit"
[snip]

[Ed Selleslagh]

<moj?n> is derived from Vulgar Latin <mullio, -onis> and is not related to
Basque, Aragon?s, etc. <muga>. It is the common Sp. -j- < Lat. -(l)li-  (cf.
hijo < filius) .

Ed.


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Mon May 24 22:31:45 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 17:31:45 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <MON.24.MAY.1999.173145.0500.>

Pat writes, in response to my rude remarks about kitty litter:

>But more seriously, yes, I would also claim that these markers had semantic
>meaning. The IE plural morpheme -*s, I believe, derives from early *s{h}o,
>'clan, herd'. This means that its addition caused a compound of the form N +
>'clan/herd = animate group'. So the result would have been, in our example,
>something like 'cat-group'. Now my use of "semantic" may be original (not
>necessarily better, of course), but I claim that CAT in 'a cat' and CAT in
>'cats = cat-group' are *not* semantically different only differently
>employed. Now I know you will not like this employment of "semantic" so tell
>me what terminology you prefer to make the distinction I am attempting to
>make between core meanings (dog/cat) and derived meanings (cat/cats).

Several remarks:

1.  It is not clear that there actually was an "IE plural morpheme -*s",
although there may have been.  But all that we find are morphemes meaning
"nominative+plural", "dative+plural" etc.  It's not clear that these are
actually divisible, as e.g. the various morphemes of agglutinating languages
such as Turkish.  But let this one pass for now.

2.  There are a few established terminologies.  The plural morpheme of English
(we definitely do have one) can be called "bound" because it occurs only when
connected to the "free" morpheme of a root.  It can be said to have
"grammatical meaning", or be called a "grammatical morpheme".  There are not my
terms; they're standard.  What's not standard is to say that plural -s does not
have "semantic" meaning, since (in normal usage) *all* meaning is "semantic".

><snip>

>Leo comments:

>> First, the idea that the family words contain an agent suffix, though old,
>> is without basis.

>Pat surpisedly responds:

>Now, this may be a case properly characterized as "weaseling". Obviously,
>your "without basis" relies on the qualification "AGENT". I cannot believe
>that you would believe that the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
>brother, etc.' *cannot* be analyzed as N/V + -*ter, suffix.  Now you may
>wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts you
>in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
>suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown, employed to mark
>nuclear family members. Not a position I would care to defend!

But you must, if you speak English.  We have several morphemes which have
merged as -er in English but maintain separate meanings:

	1.  Agentive -er (speak + -er).  This is borrowed in several Germanic
languages from Latin -a:rius.

	2.  Implement -er (bind + -er).  Perhaps one in origin with the above;
I'm not sure.

	3.  Comparative -er (old + -er).  This had two forms in Proto-Germanic:
-iz- and -az-, reflecting PIE -e/os- (note the ablaut).  The two have now
merged.  The -iz-form is responsible for the umlaut in _elder_.

	4.  We have a homonym -or in words of Latin origin such as _creator_.
This suffix has agentive meaning.  Despite its separate origin and discrete
spelling, a case could be made for including it under No. 1.

And then of course, we have -er words which do *not* contain any of the above,
such as _cider_ and _spider_.  So what is wrong with saying that the element
seen in _father_, _mother_, _brother_, and _daughter_ (but not _sister_, where
the -t- is a secondary development) is different from the agentive suffix?

>Pat responds:

>So far as I can remember, *p6te:{'}r is the only IE root listed in Pokorny
>that has the form *C6CV:C (if you know of another, at least, admit it is
>rare?). That, by itself, should alert us to the suspicion that something
>unusual is going on here.

Indeed.  And it should tell us in particular that we are not dealing with the
agentive suffix, since the alleged verbal root is rare or impossible.  Ah, but
as in independent, indivisible *word* there would be no problem.

>Secondly, if we analyze family member terminology
>as consisting of Root + suffix (agentive or no), *p6- is a strangely formed
>IE root --- in fact, it cannot be a Normalstufe. *p6- is listed as a
>zero-grade form of *pa:-, which suggests that whatever *p6- in *p6te:{'}r
>comes from, it probably had the earlier form *pe/oH-.

Problem: Pokorny's *pa:- means 'feed; pasture'.  Add an agent suffix to that
and you get 'shepherd', not 'father'.  And this aside from the problem of the
weak grade of the alleged root.

>The (I hope you will
>be willing to admit) analogous *ma:te{'}r does not show zero-grade.

True.  But it still remains to be shown that it "analogous".

>This is
>a novel situation, and I have proposed a novel scenario to explain it; sui
>generis, so, of course, unprovable. I would be interested to learn how you
>propose to explain it.

It's a problem only if you insist on the agent suffix.  Nominal items show an
astonishing variety of ablaut grades in clearly related, otherwise identical
forms.

>[ Moderator's comment:
>  The accent in *meH_2'te:r differs from than in *pH_2te:'r, doesn't it?
>  --rma ]

Not in PIE.  Attic Greek has a rule by which oxytones with the pattern CV:CV:'C
switched to CV:'CV:C.  Pre-Greek must have been *ma:te:'r.  The non-initial
accent also shows in the operation of Verner's Law in German: OE _faeder_,
_mo:dor_ from a form with suffix accent beside _bro:thar_ from a form with root
accent.

BTW, Pokorny derives says that _mother_ "beruht auf dem Lallwort _ma:_", which
makes better sense anyway.

[stuff omitted]

>Pat summarizes:

>To me, that we all admit it is "secondary", decides the issue conclusively.
>IMHO, for it to be phonemic, it would have to be *primary*.

Not hardly.  By the same token, you would have to say that /c^/ in English
_chin_ is secondary, since it split from Germanic /k/ preserved in words such
as _cold_ (and in German _Kinn_).  The store of phonemes in a a language varies
over time: some are lost through merger (or dropping of the sound), new ones
are created.  That's why English and German do *not* have the same number of
phonemes, even though they were once the same language.

[stuff omitted]

>Leo regrets:

>> Pat, I regret to have to say so again, but you simply do not understand what
>> a phoneme is.  Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
>> *meaning*.  Do study up on this.

>Pat, testily (with tongue in cheek, difficult and dangerous):

>I think your definition of "phoneme" is fine for you. I prefer Larry Trask's
>quoted definition: "the smallest unit which can make a difference in
>_meaning_ (empahsis added)". Perhaps your exasperation at my adherence to
>this definition has caused you to misstate, seemingly as my position:
>"Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of *meaning*." I
>have not stated this nor do I believe it for the languages under
>discussion --- as I think you know.

I don't have Larry's dictionare.  But I'll say this point blank: what he gives
is merely a characteristic of phonemes.  Morphemes must consist of one or more
phonemes (despite the problem of "zero allomorphs").  It is because of this
that phonemes are the smallest units capable of *signaling* meaning.  But They
are units of *sound*.  It might be helpful if you included Larry's *entire*
comment, for what you're citing is simply *not* a definition of a phoneme.  See
any manual of linguistics which actually discusses the things!

>Leo continues:

>> As for ablaut, e:o ablaut is attested for traditional lengthened grade e:
>> and for traditional "original" e: i.e. eH.  Beside Gk. _pate:r_ 'father' we
>> find both _phra:to:r_ and _phra:te:r_ 'member of a clan' (orig. 'brother').
>> And for Gothic _saian_ 'sow' < *seH- we find reduplicated preterite
>> (originally perfect) _sai-so_ < _*se-soH-_.

>Pat responds:

>You have left out the accents: _phra:{'}to:r_ and _phra:{'}te:r_.  Now the
>phonological environments are apparently identical, and there is no
>grammatical difference between the two either. So, the "Ablaut" is
>presumably a deliberate *secondary* device to provide some *semantic*
>differentiation. Not the best example in my opinion -- a Greek example of
>something like vrddhi.

I have no idea whether it was a deliberate anything.  All I know is that short
e alternates with short o, and that the two traditional kinds of long e:
alternate with long o:.  The "lengthened grade" variety also alternates with
short e/o; the "natural long" ones deriving from vowel + laryngeal alternate
with traditional schwa.  Once established, it could be exploited.

>To _sai{'}so:_: for this example to be significant to my point, you would
>have to argue that in IE *se:i- the [e:] is *original* (not the result of
>*e/oH) which, on the basis of "_*se-soH_", I presume you would not assert.

>For you to make the point I thin you are attempting to make, you need to
>identify a primary IE [e:] which undergoes Ablaut in situations analogous to
>[e/o].

I don't follow your logic at all.  Could you explain?

[stuff omitted]

> Pat, on a new subject:

>>> I do not believe that the earliest Nostratic had what we would
>>> properly call pronouns. I believe all pronouns are only nouns in a
>>> specialized use.

>Leo acknowledges:

>> Typologically, this is acceptable; certainly it seems right for Japanese.
>> But the Japanese "pronoun" words look and act like nouns in every way, which
>> cannot be said of the IE set.

>Pat differs:

>IE "pronouns" in every significant way look and act like nouns --- with the
>sole exception that the inflections seem to be more conservative.
...
>Outside of a very few simple forms like *me, *te, *se, etc., which might
>slip in under the rubric of nominal, simple nominal and verbal CV-roots,
>which had wide semantic ranges, were *differentiated* by additional elements
>at a very early time --- at least in the languages from which IE derives. If
>we are unwilling to look beyond IE,  then we must say, principally,  that
>the simplest nominal and verbal root-form is CVC.

But there you have it!  The IE pronouns neither look nor act like nouns!
Pushing it back to Nostratic doesn't change anything there, since you're saying
that they must have been different there too.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Tue May 25 02:06:44 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 21:06:44 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <MON.24.MAY.1999.210644.0500.>

Leo wrote to Pat:

>>Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
>>*meaning*.  Do study up on this.

Stefan Georg erwiderte:

>The ability to *differentiate* meanings (not to *have* them) is, in *my*
>humble opinion, part and parcel of every non-avantgardistic definition of
>the notion "phoneme", n'est-ce pas ? Minimal pairs have different meanings,
>or are my textbooks hopefully outdated ?

The classic use of minimal pairs is to prove that two sounds contrast (and must
therefore be assigned to separate phonemes).  This is done by showing that at
least in a subset of the language, replacing one phone with another will make a
different word.  But that does not make phonemes minimal units of *meaning*.
In other words: a minimal pair such as English _pin : bin_ while show that the
difference in sound between [ph] and [b] is significant.  The lack of contrast
between [phin] and non-existent *[pin] ([p] normal in _spin_) shows that
aspiration is not significant in English, or in other words, that [ph] and [p]
must be assigned to the same phoneme.  Well and good.  Knowing this, we can
tell that [phaet] and [baet] are different words.  But this does not mean that
[ph] and [b], or /p/ and /b/, actually *have* meaning, as some of the
unfortunate wording in Larry's dictionary led Pat to conclude.  If they did,
we'd have to say that /p-/ and /b-/were prefixes attached to the roots /aet/
and /in/.

>Also, if anyone subscribes to the last but one sentence in the quoted
>passage above (which would then lead to the last, of course), how would
>this anyone define the notion "distinctive" in this passage ?

As 'different' -- 'differentiating' -- 'was anderes'...

>Always willing to learn, but, as W. Brandt used to say "Wir waren schon mal
>weiter ...".

Wir vielleicht schon.  Aber doch nicht alle.  Das erfaehrt man hier doch
staendig.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 25 05:10:40 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 00:10:40 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.001040.0500.>

Dear Robert and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Whiting <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 1999 3:48 AM

> On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> <snip>
> >Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
> >from the simple to the complex.

Robert writes:

> Yes, I've noticed how, for example, in the history of writing
> systems, the earliest writing systems were incredibly simple
> logographic systems consisting of only several hundred to several
> thousand signs and that reading and writing was so simple that it
> was a specialized occupation that required many years of study to
> master.

I. J. Gelb writes: "For the primitive Indo-Europeans, Semites, or
Amerindians the needs of writing were fulfilled in a *****simple*****
picture or series of pictures (emphasis added)." Gelb, under whom I studied,
spent a lifetime studying writing; and I do believe his characterization
carries more weight than your opinions on the subject. Children --- with no
training and only the availability of a crayon --- make the same kind of
pictures that were the basis of early writing; and it is naif in the extreme
to believe --- as you apparently do --- that logographs are somehow more
complex than an alphabet.

How many years of training is required to draw a stick-man, or a rayed sun,
or a hump for a mountain? Answer (for Robert's sake), '0'.

Robert continued:

> This simple system gave rise to a more complex system
> of syllabaries which needed a couple of hundred (or even less
> than a hundred) signs to express the same information.

Pat writes:

The earliest writing system we know that followed pure logographs is the
mixed writing system of Sumer. In Jaritz, there are 972 signs listed; most
of these signs have multiple values so are only a syllabary in the loosest
sense of the word. If you think that reading Sumerian cuneiform is simpler
than interpreting early logographs, you are simply displaying an incredible
lack of contact with or understanding of the subject under discussion.

Robert continued:

> Finally,
> this gave way to the most complex system of all, the alphabet, in
> which the tens of thousands of words in a language can be written
> with around 30 signs and is so complicated that it takes all the
> resources that the average 5-year-old can muster to learn it.

Pat comments:

Yes, actually alphabets are the most complex system of all --- how clever of
you to recognize it! It requires analyzing a morpheme, which has meaning,
into meaningless parts.

Pat wrote earlier:

> >My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after
> >the onset of linguistic communication, languages were simpler
> >than they are now; and hence, less explicitly expressive.

Robert objected:

> It is rather the other way around.  What you mean to say is that
> your studies take this as an axiom and therefore fall apart if it
> is not true.

Pat rejoinds:

Untrue. When I began my studies, I had no idea that the data would force me
to reconstruct and attempt to identify monosyllabic morphemes in an early
language. But, as I have tried to point out for IE, this is the position
which the data recommend. A morpheme of the form -tV is unlikely to have had
the many meanings in IE that it does unless it began to be employed in a
much more general sense in a language earlier than IE.

Robert snipes:

> But since you cheerfully admit that no linguist
> accepts your studies, this is hardly proof of the truth of your
> axiom.

Pat objects:

Among the circa 7000 visits to my website, I have had many e-mails from
linguists who do find some merit or interest in my proposals. Whether any
given linguist did or did not accept the validity of my studies is not a
proof or disproof of my work.

Robert complained:

> And as far as I'm concerned, anyone who claims that there
> is no semantic difference between "cat" and "cats" is
> disqualified from talking about common sense.

Pat responds:

I have made clear that I prefer to restrict my usage of semantic to notional
differences and employ grammatical for the difference between "cat" and
"cats". If you do not care for this usage, you are, of course, free to not
emulate it.

But if you do not care to, tell me the word you would use to distinguish
between the semantic relationships of 'dog/cat' and 'cat/cats'.

Pat continued:

> >As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to
> >designate the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an
> >*ambiguity* into a statement that a language which can does not
> >exhibit.

Robert objected:

> But if, as you have claimed elsewhere, there is no semantic
> difference between the singular and plural forms of a given
> noun (cat/cats),

Pat interjects:

But I *do* claim there is a grammatical difference.

Robert continued his objection:

> then being able to mark the plural makes no
> difference in meaning and there can be no difference in the
> level of ambiguity.

Pat, incredulously:

This kind of freshman logic has no purpose but to ridicule. Robert, you know
quite well that I do believe that the addition of plural -s does make a
difference, and the the difference, which I term grammatical, decreases the
level of ambiguity in a statement.

Robert nailed his point(?):

> Either one of your statements or the other
> has to be wrong (since this is a logical "or," they can also
> both be wrong, but they can't both be correct).

Pat responds:

Nice to know you still have a command of teenage logic. How about an adult
argument --- this is an adult list.

Pat previously:

> >As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much
> >greater range of semantic inclusion than other languages. This
> >also is a source of potential ambiguity that is not shared by
> >languages that have differentiated semantic ranges more finely.

Robert informed us:

> Spoken language expresses meaning through sound.  This means that
> an effective language has to be able to express the entire real
> and imagined world through sounds used conventionally to convey
> meaning.  How each individual language does this is of its own
> choosing and whether it uses analytic or synthetic means does not
> make it "simpler" or "more complex" than another language that
> uses a different method.

Pat interjects:
If we are going to keep coming back to "complex", perhaps you would care to
define it for us in terms of this discussion. I talked about ambiguity not
complexity.

Robert continued:

> If one language expresses relationships
> between verbs and nouns through nominal desinences and another
> expresses them through an extensive system of prepositons or
> postpositions, the one is not necessarily simpler or more complex
> than the other; they are simply two methods of achieving the
> same result.  Overall, every language has to be able to express
> the real and imagined world of its speech community.  Simplicity
> in one linguistic area will normally be compensated for by
> complexity in another.  If the language doesn't mark the
> difference between singular and plural in nouns overtly, there
> will be some other mechanism in the language to express the idea.

Pat asked:

What is the method of marking the plural in Chinese nominal forms -- what
other mechanism?

Robert continued:

> Finally, no natural language can entirely eliminate ambiguity
> through grammatical means no matter how many case endings or
> verbal inflections it develops.  The real and imagined world is
> simply too large for this to be true, and natural languages just
> do not work this way.  Context is the ultimate disambiguator of
> meaning.  We understand things by their context.  And I do not
> refer solely to the grammatical context of a word in a sentence,
> but also to the socio-cultural context in which an utterance is
> made.

Pat responded:

Red herring! I have no claimed that entirely eliminating ambiguity is
possible. I merely suggested that it is deisrable to keep it within moderate
limits.

Pat, previuously:

> >Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible
> >linguistic discussion.

Robert objected:

> And please do not introduce your own personal opinions and
> prejudices into the discussion under the guise of "common sense"
> (even though, according to Einstein, that is what common sense is).

Pat rejoinds:

And what would you have written if I had the ability to enforce your not
introducing your own personal opinions into the discussion. In a word, nada.
And, of course, I do agree. Common sense is a prejudice of a kind. Why not
substitute it for your prejudices?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 25 05:20:46 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 00:20:46 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.002046.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Steve and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Gustafson <stevegus at aye.net>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 1999 10:40 AM

<snip>

> Modern spoken English seems to be in the process of generating a complex,
> highly inflected verb system, with many new and different aspect markers, as
> former auxiliary verbs are reduced and lose their distinctness and
> independent status.  We have already seen simple verb phrase structures of
> Early Modern English (Knowest thou?  I go...) get replaced by more complex
> and highly nuanced and aspected ones that require more words.  (Do you know?
> I am going...)  In our time, sandhi and palatalization reduce the once
> independent auxiliaries in these phrases to enclitics, and also change the
> pronouns.  These may be new inflexions in the oven.

> This seems to me to pose difficulties for any attempt to get a firm handle on
> the level of "complexity" present in any given language.  In English, the
> (archaizing) formal register is noticeably less complex in both syntax and
> sounds than the vernacular; where do you insert your dip-stick to measure the
> complexity of "English?"  It also seems to suggest that there is no vector
> moving in favour of either simplicity or complexification, but that the
> process is one of a pendulum moving from one extreme to another; or rather, a
> process of punctuated equlibrium in which sound change and grammatical change
> play off on each other.

I essentially agree that this is a very real and hard to finally solve
problem.

But a pendulum has a first swing in time. My work has convinced me (and a
very few others) that it may be possible to glimpse a few important moments
of that first swing towards complexity and that even in the subsequent swing
towards simplification, the hypothetical analysis of the elements present in
the first swing illuminate the processes going on during simplification.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Tue May 25 06:23:13 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 01:23:13 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.012313.0500.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

> unless, of
> course, you believe that God bestowed fully developed language on Adam,
> which belief would disqualify you from any rational discussion of the topic.

Why should that disqualify a person from "any rational discussion"?
Admittedly, it would make discussion a moot point, unless it were a
theological discussion on what kind of language God would've created.

> I have asserted that early language, for any
> non-believer, would have had to have gone through a stage that was less
> expressive (more ambiguous) than languages of which we currently have
> documented information.

Certainly, assuming that language evolved, that God didn't create
language all at once, then early language would've been simpler and less
espressive.  Perhaps only a few hundred words, relying heavily on
context to disambiguate, and, I suspect, isolating.  But, this is a moot
point.  We cannot possibly reconstruct that far back.  Even Nostratic,
if it is legitimate, would've been long past that point.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue May 25 07:58:48 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 03:58:48 EDT
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.035848.EDT.>

>Patrick C. Ryan

>suggests strongly that language began very simply, as calls and gestures...

-- this may be true, but it's utterly irrelevant to the languages under
discussion here.  All _extant_ languages are of the same general level of
development, whether PIE or Esperanto.

Any more "primitive" stage of linguistic development is lost.  None of the
languages of which we have records show any such 'simplicity'.  They are all
about the same, at the fundamental level of serving the purposes of human
communication.


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Tue May 25 08:39:26 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 03:39:26 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.033926.0500.>

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

> Yes, it makes Kakiutl more expressive.

In that aspect.  But overall is it more expressive?  That's a subjective
decision.  I know nothing of that lang in specific, but there are surely
other areas where it is *less* expressive, more ambiguous.  Say it
lacked a plural (I don't know if it does), would it be more or less
expressive overall?  It depends on which you consider more important,
number or visibility?

> Now one can say in English: 'I saw Susie'. What is the equivalent literal
> translation in Mandarin?

There's a morpheme in Mandarin that indicates perfect aspect, that is
used.  Even if it lacked that, one could say something like "earlier" or
"in the past".  Most concepts are expressible in all languages, it's
just a matter of how easily one can state it.  One can say "You, me, and
some other people" in English to express the Bislama "yumifala", it's
just that Bislama gramaticalizes it, and makes it mandatory, whereas in
English it is optional, and rarely actually spelled out.  To use another
example, in Spanish "la vi" can mean "I saw her" or "I saw it",
ambiguous relative to English, but you can also have "las vi" for "I saw
them (fem.)", which could not be interpreted as "I saw the men" (Vi a
los hombres) or "I saw the cars" (Vi los carros), but could mean "I saw
the women" (Vi a las mujeres) or "I saw the tables" (Vi las mesas), less
ambigous than English.  Is it overall less expressive or more
expressive?  Well, that's a judgement call.  I'd say that, overall,
they're roughly equal.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue May 25 08:52:54 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 09:52:54 +0100
Subject: accusative and ergative languages
In-Reply-To: <00aa01bea485$887c3680$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.095254.0100.>

On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> However, there is also the typological angle. It is my impression
> that most typologists believe that nominative-type languages
> developed from ergative-type languages.

No; certainly not.  It is definitely not the view of most typologists
that accusative languages generally descend from ergative ancestors.
Indeed, I can't name a single linguist who holds such a view, apart from
one or two Russian linguists, notably G. Klimov.

This is not surprising, since such unidirectional development would be a
form a stadialism -- the view that every language must proceed through a
predictable series of stages.  And stadialism, we know, is wrong.

It is now perfectly clear that a language can change in any direction at
all.  For example, an ergative language can lose its ergativity and
become accusative, while an accusative language can acquire ergativity.
Likewise, a language can acquire or lose tones, or noun-cases, or
object-agreement, or any of a zillion other things.

All that we can say is that certain changes are far more likely than
others, because obvious pathways exist.  For example, an agglutinating
language can easily become fusional, and a fusional language can easily
become isolating, and an isolating language can easily become
agglutinating.  But it's not so easy for a language to change directly
from agglutinating to isolating (say), because there exists no plausible
pathway.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Tue May 25 09:06:27 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 05:06:27 EDT
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.050627.EDT.>

>proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>They're just different.  Languages change because they >do.

>Pat, aghast: I was with you all the way until this final >sentence. Is this
Zen?

-- common sense, actually.  Languages don't "improve" over time, at least not
the ones we can observe.  They just change.  The process is not random, but
it isn't evolutionary.  It's more comparable to fashion.


From edsel at glo.be  Tue May 25 10:14:35 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 12:14:35 +0200
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.121435.0200.>

Robert Whiting <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:

[snip]
>Spoken language expresses meaning through sound.  This means that
>an effective language has to be able to express the entire real
>and imagined world through sounds used conventionally to convey
>meaning.  How each individual language does this is of its own
>choosing and whether it uses analytic or synthetic means does not
>make it "simpler" or "more complex" than another language that
>uses a different method.  If one language expresses relationships
>between verbs and nouns through nominal desinences and another
>expresses them through an extensive system of prepositons or
>postpositions, the one is not necessarily simpler or more complex
>than the other; they are simply two methods of achieving the
>same result.  Overall, every language has to be able to express
>the real and imagined world of its speech community.  Simplicity
>in one linguistic area will normally be compensated for by
>complexity in another.  If the language doesn't mark the
>difference between singular and plural in nouns overtly, there
>will be some other mechanism in the language to express the idea.

>Finally, no natural language can entirely eliminate ambiguity
>through grammatical means no matter how many case endings or
>verbal inflections it develops.  The real and imagined world is
>simply too large for this to be true, and natural languages just
>do not work this way.  Context is the ultimate disambiguator of
>meaning.  We understand things by their context.  And I do not
>refer solely to the grammatical context of a word in a sentence,
>but also to the socio-cultural context in which an utterance is
>made.

[Ed Selleslagh]

Very nicely put. I might add, however, that this socio-cultural context may
vary widely in breadth: it is obvious that in western industrial society
there are far more things to talk about and concepts to express than in the
limited world of an isolated tribe. That does not imply that the language of
the latter is simpler or less complex (usually, it's quite the opposite, as
perceived from within the western IE-landscape), but only that its scope, as
determined by that of their socio-cultural context, is more limited.  As
soon as a society is exposed to a wider context, it develops (or 'steals'
from others) the necessary linguistic means to cover it.  E.g. all Europeans
did so during the Renaissance and the colonial period: English is an example
of that.

I believe that complexity of a language, whatever its definition, is roughly
constant (except maybe at the beginning of language development, 120.000
years or so ago) and the same for all languages, although there can be
important internal shifts within a language from one domain to another, e.g.
from inflection to syntax, especially when one domain (not the whole
language) becomes so complex that an ever increasing part of the population
makes more and more mistakes, e.g. false analogy, confusion of cases, etc.,
and effectively begins to break it down. My reason for believing that is
that I also believe, on the one hand, that during development from infant to
adult, all humans learn to fully use their innate language skills, under
peer pressure if necessary, and on the other hand I accept the monogenesis
of present-day humans. And that has nothing to do with an ideological belief
in equality or pop sociology.

[Totally apart from that, and just as a side remark, my favorite theory is
that language(s) started as isolating (normally monosyllabic), then
developed words for abstract ideas and words for linking them, and then
became agglutinatng by attaching 'link words' and other words (e.g. personal
pronouns) to 'noun/verb/... words', until the affixes fused with them and
thus resulted in inflection. In the next stage (apart from phonetic changes)
inflection became increasingly complex and finally desintegrated to be
replaced by syntax, effectively resulting in an isolating language again
(cf. Chinese; English is well on its way). After that, the cycle can start
all over again, but I don't think it already happened anywhere.]

Best regards,
Ed.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 25 12:57:03 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 07:57:03 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.075703.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 1999 6:05 PM

> On Thu, 20 May 1999, [discussing with Leo Conolly] Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> [...] I will not be able to convince you that my answer is right but I
>> will, at least, tell you what I think.  I believe that all IE roots of the
>> form CVC were earlier "CV-CV. The thematic vowel is a faint reminder of
>> forms that were stress-accented (at one point) CV-"CV.

> [...]

>> I do not think I will convince you of this either but, for whatever it
>> may be worth, I will give you my view,

> [...]

> Pardon my barging in again, but this prompts a fundamental question in my
> head: How can you form an _opinion_ about a matter, if you have no
> decisive arguments? Who would give a damn if I were to declare my belief
> in the existence of PIE front rounded vowels (/u"/, /o"/) if I must
> confess in the same breath that I have no evidence for it? Who would care
> that I "think" or "believe" so, and that it is "my view"? I hope I am not
> on record to have done anything of the sort.

Your opinions are always welcome. As for "decisive", as we have seen many
times, that definition is in the mind of the discussant.

I have not said that I have "no evidence" for my views. At my website, I
have attempted to assemble evidence that is the basis for my opinions and
arguments.

Have you read it, or any of it? I have refrained from presenting the basis
for my views in fuller detail on this list (and the Nostratic list) because,
although they might ultimately connect with IE (and so be appropriate), the
data on which , for example, this view is based, comes from languages other
than IE (or Nostratic).

If you should visit my website, and have strong objections to anything
written there, write it up nicely, and I will post it there with links to
the objectionable material.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Tue May 25 12:56:11 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 14:56:11 +0200
Subject: "syllabicity"
In-Reply-To: <007801bea474$c92a3260$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.145611.0200.>

On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[...]
> Sorry I did not make myself clear. *t(V) and *tV.

Your original statement was that the very existence or non-existence of a
vowel in the ending did not matter, and that a one-vowel system of this
kind was in effect a no-vowel system. Now cornered, you make brackets
matter. You have now arrived at a two-vowel system in which there are
(V) and V opposed to each other - and to zero.

Jens


From nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk  Tue May 25 12:58:43 1999
From: nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk (Nicholas Widdows)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 13:58:43 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.135843.0100.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

JoatSimeon said:

>>>> Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than
>>>> Old English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.

Patrick Ryan replied:

>>> Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development from
>>> the simple to the complex.

Nicholas rebutted this and ended with:

>> They're just different.  Languages change because they do.

Pat, aghast:

> I was with you all the way until this final sentence.
> Is this Zen?

In this famous koan of the Enlightened JoatSimeon-sensei, later commentators
believe he is stating that you don't need overarching principles guiding
language change into any particular direction (such as simple to complex).
Entropy, random drift, local conflicting processes like analogical levelling
and regrammaticalization, will make all languages change, but the change is
local, generation by generation. It's not part of the evolution of human
culture from the pre-human.

I don't think you are with me quite all the way, because our ideas on the
time scale are so different. Let me make it more explicit, with apologies
for doing so in the wrong forum. Then I'll hold my peace.

Like you, I find monogenesis the only reasonable opinion. And I would
certainly _like_ to believe that new statistical analyses can peer further
back, to Nostratic, to Nostratic-Amerind and Dene-Caucasian, and just maybe
the odd word of Proto-World. If monogenesis is true, some such ancestors
necessarily existed, though we might be deceived in which particular modern
families branch from which ancestor. But a common feature of all recorded
languages is that they're all about equally complex. I think there's a
strong consensus on that. [ignore sound of one hand raised in disagreement]
Therefore as a matter of logic it was likely to be a common feature of their
ancestors.

You think you can see much of modern language -- the salient difference
between vervets and Verlaine -- being invented somewhere back near Nostratic
times. If that was say 10 000 years ago, and Nostratic-Amerind must be
pre-Clovis so call it a round 15 000, then where do Aborigines and Andaman
Islanders fit in? Modern humans are known to have lived in Australia 50 000
years ago; there were more results just last week suggesting it could be 70
000. The precise age doesn't matter, because modern Pama-Nyungan languages
have a wide selection of ergatives and instrumentals and causals, past and
future and subjunctive, they don't have weird and wonderful phonology, their
semantic fields are as diverse and as similar as anything from Senegal to
Siberia. In short, there's nothing in Australian languages to suggest that
the speakers branched off three or four times longer ago than we can
possibly trace even the boldest Nostratic, yet the archaeology seems to say
they did.

What I, with many others, conclude from this is that all our present baggage
-- such as the idea of marking the verbs of dependent clauses whether of
French or Bidyara-Gungabula -- arose in its present form in a language
ancestral to the last time we were all one ethnic group, somewhere in Africa
before the division, 50 000 or 100 000 years ago. Complexity can't have
arisen from proto-human simplicity in anything reconstructible from Sumerian
or Egyptian, because they're a scratch on the surface compared to the actual
time depth in which this complexity has been with us all.

Nicholas Widdows


From vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu  Tue May 25 13:53:42 1999
From: vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath Rao)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 09:53:42 -0400
Subject: sandhi of Skt. -as [was Re: "syllabicity"]
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.095342.0400.>

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

> in 176a, he [Whitney] mentions several pronouns in -a{'}s that simply
> lose their -s's before any consonant: sa dadarCa, 'he saw'.

The usual explanation is that the original nominative, *so, had no s.
Note that sas loses its s even before unvoiced stops and often the a of
sa is combined with the following vowel.

--

There is a short note in a recent issue of JAOS about the sandhi of -as
that is relevant.

This whole business is strange: a:s regularly loses its s before voiced
sounds, as does -as before vowels except a. In RV, as+a often scans as
two short vowels, not as one long (as as+a => o suggests) or one long
plus one short as the usually written o+a suggests. The samaveda practice
is still different. pre-IA sandhi of -as may have been very different from
what we see latter and must have been subject to considerable leveling.


From urban.lindqvist at telia.com  Tue May 25 15:53:31 1999
From: urban.lindqvist at telia.com (Urban Lindqvist)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 17:53:31 +0200
Subject: SV: sandhi of Skt. -as
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.175331.0200.>

Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> R-S wrote:

>> By this I don't doubt your analysis of dive-dive; only that it may be
>> due to predictable Sandhi.  I'm unaware of how many examples for the process
>> seen in /edhi/ exist, but /divedive/ may be another one, but then for an
>> early sound-law, involving early univerbation of *divas + *dive not a
>> productive rule still operative in historical times.

> Pat writes:

> Rather than the result of an ordinary sandhi process, I am inclined to
> suspect that [*adhi{'}] to [edhi{'}] may be a rare example of Sanskrit
> Umlaut.

Another example of -as > -e (/_voiced dental) might be su:re duhita: (RV
1.34.5d), if we choose to interpret su:re as a genitive form.

Patrick C. Ryan also wrote:

> Under the rubric "Euphonic Combination", he [Whitney] discusses -s in
> combination on pp. 58-61.

> [---]

> in 176a, he mentions several pronouns in -a{'}s that simply lose their -s's
> before any consonant: sa dadarCa, 'he saw'.

The -s in question probably didn't exist in the first place (cf. Gr. ho,
Av. ha:).

Urban


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue May 25 18:31:22 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 18:31:22 GMT
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <l03130306b36c996e4856@[207.120.3.54]>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.183122.GMT.>

Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>As far as I know, gandules are eaten in most of Latin America and parts of
>Spain. You can buy gandules in the US packed by Goya, a company from Spain.

Found it.  The botanical name for pigeon pea is Cajanus cajan,
and Moliner gives Cajanus indicus (close enough) = guandu' or
quinchoncho.  Guandu' :: Arbusto leguminoso. Su fruto es una
legumbre muy sabrosa que se come guisada.  Never heard of it.  In
Spain (Catalonia), we eat jud'ias (mongetes) [beans], guisantes
(pe'sols) [peas], garbanzos (cigrons) [chick peas], lentejas
(llentilles) [lentils] and habas (faves) [broad beans].  There
are also varieties of vetch (algarrobas/guixes) etc. which used
to be eaten, but are now considered animal food.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From petegray at btinternet.com  Tue May 25 19:52:06 1999
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 20:52:06 +0100
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.205206.0100.>

> Pat answers:

> It is not correct to characterize my view as "laryngeals were vowels" ...
> I think that, generally, by the times of reconstructable IE, they had
> become vowels [or ...]

Your original comment was:

>> I do not dispute that 'laryngeals' were consonantal in Nostratic but by
>> Indo-European, I believe their consonantal had been lost except for Hittite

If we then limit ourselves to IE evidence, and produce cases where
consonants are necessary rather than vowels, would that do?

I offered a long list of possible places where laryngeals, if present, would
have to be consonants.   Your counter-arguments so far reduce to:  "there
are no laryngeals involved."   This is in fact not a counter-argument to the
claim that "if there are laryngeals involved here, they must have been
consonants, not vowels."

Peter


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue May 25 21:08:27 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 16:08:27 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <001a01bea469$60a68640$314435cf@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.160827.0500.>

	In your answer, I think you show that the processes of
simplification and complexity are two-way streets. Languages become both
more simpler and more complex.
	French and Chinese, as they approach the limits of one
morphological system, move to another one. Chinese overcomes confusion
through compounding (and ideographs), while (as you state) French becomes a
prefixing language. In this manner, new complexities are created. These new
complexities, in turn,  undergo "simplications" that lead to other types of
complexities.
	So in French, avoir, unlike Italian avere, needs pronouns in order
to express person & number. A new complication.

	French		Italian
	il ont		ha
	ils ont		hanno

	But then spoken French pulls a fast one on us by simplifying the
prefix.

	<il ont> /ilo~/ > /io~/
	<ils ont> /ilzo~/ > /zo~/

	Now an auxiliary pronoun has become a bound morpheme. Another
complication.

	In spoken American English final /-t/ often becomes /?/
So can /kaen/ & can't /kaen?/ have to be distinguished by a combination of
stress & tone
	I can go /aykaeGO/ with rising tone on the last syllable
	I can't go /ayKAEN?go/ with rising tone on the 2nd syllable

	Now, as a non-linguist, I don't know the
dynamics/inter-relationship of stress & tone but both tone and stress are
clearly involved --thereby creating a new complication.


>I suspect that movements towards the "simpler" or "complex" have to do as much
>with the direction of phonetic developments as they do with any necessary
>evolutionary vector.  If a language is undergoing the process seen over and
>over again in IE languages, where final consonants or vowels get dropped, this
>languages will seem to become "simpler" as former distinctions get
>bulldozered.
>What is left may depend on how many distinctions can still be carried
>after the
>sound changes have done their work.

[snip]

>Obviously, though, this kind of phonetic change cannot go on indefinitely,
>lest
>speech be replaced by silence.

[snip}


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue May 25 22:28:44 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 17:28:44 -0500
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.172844.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 1999 7:22 PM

> On Fri, 21 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>Jens previouysly:

>>> So, for the dual *-e, it _would_ be a problem for you if it did not
>>> have a laryngeal, as sva'sa:rau indicates it did not.

>> Pat responded:

>> Beekes looks at the same data, and on pg. 194, reconstructs -*He. Why is
>> he wrong?

>Jens continued:

> It is not _very_ wrong to posit *-H1e, seeing that the difference of
> this over plain *-e is so small. But an ablaut interplay between
> full-grade *-H1e and zero-grade *-H1 is unacceptable for the reasons I
> have stated: It would make the nom.-acc. dual a strong case with rightward
> accent-and-ablaut movement, which is never found. It would not allow
> Brugmann's length in IIr., but that _could_ be analogical. And, addding
> another, if the thematic form was really *-o- + consonant-stem *-H1e or
> *-e (parallel with the nom.pl. *-o:s from *-o- + consonant-stem *-es), the
> option *-o-H1e is excluded by the acute tone of Balto-Slavic and Greek in
> this form. To be sure, Beekes also excludes *-o-e in favour of *-oH
> precisely on the basic of the Lithuanian acute, but in this point we
> differ in our understanding of the rules. If you are content to have some
> speaker on IE on your side, pick anyone you like; but if you want to have
> arguments to serve you with a criterion as to which one to choose (if
> any), ask both parties again.

Pat responds:

The point was that Bekkes, a trained IEist, does not feel that "sva'sa:rau"
indicates no laryngeal.

>> Pat responded earlier:

>>>> As for the genitive, I reconstruct *-s(V), with the final vowel falling
>>>> off due to stress-accent of a preceding syllable: "Ce/oC + sV ->
>>>> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

>> Jens asked:

>>> With accent shifting onto a vowel that was not there?

>> Pat responded:

>> Sorry, I should have written "Ce/oC(V) -> Ce/o-"Ce/os.

> That makes the vowel of the genitive "ending" a part of the preceding
> stem.

Pat answers:

Yes, that was my point.

Jens continued:

> If that is so, there will also appear a vowel before other endings
> that cause the accent to move from one vowel to the next. Then why does
> this not happen when the endings *-bhyos, *-bhis, *-su are added?

Pat responds:

If Beekes is to be believed, that are a number of inflectional patterns in
IE. This makes your question a bit tricky to answer untill we know the
circumstances. How about an example?

Jens continued:

> And in
> root nouns where the stem is identical with that of a radical verb (root
> present or root aorist), why does the vowel appear in the genitive *-os
> (*-es), but not when verbal endings are added? These problems evaporate if
> the stem is posited as consonant-final, and the gen. morpheme is *-os
> (*-es).

Pat responds:

I am dependent on Beekes for the most current viewson IE morphology. Why do
you not give us an example of this phenomenon since Beekes does not.

On your second point, I am not sure there has to be a one-for-one
relationship between nominal and verbal endings.

Pat, previously:

>> I think one important factor that should be considered in these equations is
>> the example Beekes gives on p. 195 of Greek <o{'}sse>, 'pair of eyes', which
>> he derives from *ok{w}-iH{1} THROUGH *ok{w}-ye. We could, just as easily,
>> posit a dual in -y and forget about the laryngeal.

>> Jens wrote:

>>> In this particular case we could - for Greek. But not for Slavic oc^i
>>> (would have reduced i), nor for Arm. ac^'k' (would not be a-stem, gen.
>>> ac^'ac'). And especially it would not give Skt. -i: with length in the
>>> ntr.du. of cons.-stems.

>> Pat responds:

>> I do not have the reference books here to substantiate this comment but,
>> if I understand Beekes correctly, OCS would not have oc{^}i but rather
>> oc{^}e{^}. Is that incorrect?

Jens responded:

> Yes and no. Slavic neuter consonant stems are few in kind, and their
> nom.-acc. dual regularly ends in -e^ which must be pure analogy with the
> o-stems. The dual of 'eye ' _is_ oc^i (also so given by Beekes 173), along
> with us^i 'two ears' a relic of the inherited form.

Pat responds:

Analogy to the rescue. What would linguists do without analogy and
laryngeals to explain anomalies?

Perhaps you can explain to me why oc{^}i could not derive from *ok{w}-ye?

>> Jens mentioned:

>>>>> *H2ner-y cannot give Gk. ane'r-e;

>> Pat responded:

>>>> In view of Gk. o{'}sse, why not?

>> Jens responded:

>>> There is no such rule. The /y/ would syllabify and yield **ane'r-i.
>>> That's what happened in the loc.sg. *p at 2-te'r-i > Gk. dat. pate'ri, Skt.
>>> loc.  pita'ri.

>> Pat responded:

>> Not sure what you mean by "no rule". It is a process described on p. 195
>> of Beekes. Also, the dative has a different base form: -*(H)ey, which is
>> nothing more than the well-known *Hey-, 'to go'.

Jens continued:

> Beekes says no such thing, nor do I know of any basis on which he could
> have. The form of the IE dative is immaterial when we are talking about
> the fate of the IE locative.

Pat responds:

Sorry, missed your point.

>> Jens mentioned:

>>>>> u-stem *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

>> Pat asked:

>>>> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

>> Jens responded:

>>> There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off
>>> by a funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one'
>>> (acc.sg.M amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this
>>> giving ami:, not **amu:.

>> Pat responded:

>> I think it is dangerous to assume that combinatory rules have acted
>> identically at different periods, do you not?

Jens objected:

> Sure, but you were using completely unknown rules.

Pat rejoinds:

Since when is compensatory lengthening "unknown"?

>> Jens asked:

>>>>> What _is_ the basis of your decision in favour of *-y ??

>> Pat answered:

>>>> The majority of the attested forms, there being no /i/ in IE..

>> Jens responded:

>>> For most positions, you are right: The original difference between the
>>> morphophonemes /i/ and /y/ are neutralized almost across the board and can
>>> therefore be represented by one phoneme. However, that is not the point
>>> we're discussing; we're arguing about the presence or absence of a
>>> laryngeal in the ntr.du., remember? And in this point Skt. yuge' 'two
>>> yokes' passes judgment, for this form is sandhi resistent ("pragrhya") and
>>> so _must_ have ended in a laryngeal.

>> Pat responded:

>> Sorry, I cannot accept the idea that laryngeals still functioning in
>> Sanskrit made yuge{'} sandhi-resistant.

> It is a descriptive fact,

Pat rejoinds:

Your idea of a "fact" and mine are obviously totally different. That yuge{'}
may be sandhi-resistant could be a fact. That the cause is your convenient
laryngeal, is not!

> well established before the advent of laryngeal
> analysis and in possession of a perfectly adequate and phonetically
> natural explanation since Kuiper's ingenuity was invested in it.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From jer at cphling.dk  Tue May 25 23:47:08 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 01:47:08 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <007d01bea52a$54a8a320$d03963c3@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.014708.0200.>

On Sun, 23 May 1999, petegray wrote:

> Jens said:

>> I have yet to see a really cogent argument for an IE (or pre-IE) ergative.
>> ..., but nothing to convince one that it _must_ be
>> accepted.   I'm not saying that pre-PIE was _not_ ergative, just that we
>> cannot really know. Practically all the literature on the subject ... is
>> without scholarly interest.

> I must disagree with your last point here.   An ergative description of
> early PIE or pre-PIE explains various oddities in PIE.   I agree that there
> are no arguments (yet) that it must have been ergative, and none that it
> cannot have been ergative, but in light of its explanatory potential, it
> surely is at least "interesting".

That is just about what I meant.

Jens


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed May 26 00:16:14 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 02:16:14 +0200
Subject: Minus quam perfectum
In-Reply-To: <3757ea42.58696630@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.021614.0200.>

On Sun, 23 May 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> One can compare Skt. laryngeal verbs in -a:u, but also the
> Tocharian B 1st p. sg. in -wa.  Albanian also has a category of
> aorists with formant -v- (origin?).

The Albanian type punova 'I worked' is formed from a stem punou- (whence
the endingless 3sg used with the refl. particle, u punua 'was worked').
The diphthongization is regular in the old participle, Tosk pun-uar from
*-o-nV (-o- from *-a:-, Lat. 1st conj., cf. loanwords like ke"rko-
'seek'). The sequence *-onV gave *-oune"/*-oure" (with flapped nasal?)
with a diphthong that later gave Old Geg uo, now ue, Tosk ua. The stage
*-oun/re" was resegmented as *-ou-n/re", and *-ou- was introduced
before the productive endings of the aorist, 1sg *-ou-a, 2sg *-ou-e which
gave -ova, -ove. A different reanalysis as *-o-un/re" gave rise to the
ptc. type hap-ur 'opened'.

Jens


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 00:36:25 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 19:36:25 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.193625.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 1999 8:44 AM

> Pat suggested:

>> (concerning the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
>> brother, etc.) ... you may
>> wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts
>> you in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
>> suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown,

Peter helpfully commented:

> If I dare to join this debate, I offer two points:

> (a) We know IE did indeed have two such suffixes, one the agentive (though
> I think *-tor is better than *-ter) and the "contrastive pair" suffix, which
> we find in a range of words, such as Latin alter, Greek heteros, etc, and
> in the comparative -teros.  It was even suggested in the 70's that it was
> this last suffix, the comparative pair, which is found in the family words.

> (b) We know that the family suffix is not *-ter but *-6ter.   People have
> written articles on it in JIES.

Quite ght. Thanks for the additional comments. I should have said: " . . .
that IE had, at least, **three** suffixes: -*ter, agentive, -*ter, meaning
unknown, and -*ter, contrastive.

As to (b), since I have not seen the article, could you explain a bit
further?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca  Wed May 26 01:20:04 1999
From: s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca (Stephane Goyette)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 21:20:04 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
In-Reply-To: <007e01bea52a$5559a3a0$d03963c3@xpoxkjlf>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.212004.0400.>

On Sun, 23 May 1999, petegray wrote:

> > as Witold Manczak has
> > argued, Vulgar Latin (or Proto-Romance, or however one cares to call the
> > ancestor of the Romance languages) is quite plainly a "daughter" of
> > Classical Latin (Not a "sister" as so many Romance scholars have argued).
>
> If so, how do you explain:
> (a) the Vulgar Latin use of forms and grammatical constructions not in
> Classical Latin, but which just happen to be identical to forms in earlier
> Latin?   If these are not derived from pre-classical Latin, is it just
> coincidence?   How much coincidence is too much coincidence?
> (b) the evidence for Vulgar Latin forms alongside Classical Latin at the
> same period?   For example, the well known -au- / -o- business (like it or
> not, in some words -o- is not classical, but is vulgar and contemporary with
> classical), or the evidence from the Satiricon and from inscriptions and
> such, showing pre-Romance forms even during the classical period.

First, a terminological clarification: by "Classical Latin" I mean the
written language used, roughly, from the time of Plautus to that of
Caesar. That later evidence, such as the Satiricon, should show
Romance-like traits is unsurprising.

I do not dispute that Romance was born at an early date: what I dispute is
the claim that its ancestor was a sister of Classical Latin --a language
which, I quite agree, was not perfectly homogeneous. The au/o business is
actually an excellent example of the early birth of Romance and its being
a "daughter" of Classical Latin: while we indeed have evidence of
the shift from /au/ to /o/ at an early date (Emperor Augustus himself is
said to have regarded the pronunciation of his name with an initial /au/
as pedantic), it is interesting to note that /au/ is preserved as such in
many Romance languages today, and, more to the point, its distribution
matches that of Classical Latin --take Romanian AUR "gold", LAUD "I
praise" versus FOC "fire", DORM "I sleep", where the au/o distribution
corresponds perfectly to that found in AURUM, LAUDEO, FOCUM and DORMIO.

> Both of these seem to me to indicate that Romance developed from Latin
> actually spoken at the very time when Classical Latin was being written.

I agree that Vulgar Latin (or proto-Romance) was born at a very early
date, when Classical Latin was being written: this does not invalidate my
point.

> Like many languages, Latin had a sginficant divergence of written and spoken
> forms.    Classical Latin was really only the written form.

Such divergence is a result of the fact that spoken language changes,
while written language resists such change. However, there must originally
have been an identity between the spoken and the written language, and I
maintain that the ancestor of the Romance languages grew out of the spoken
language, represented in writing, which we call Classical Latin. That this
representation of the spoken language was not perfect is indubitable: but
I would challenge anyone to point to a single trait of the Romance
languages which is inexplicable through Classical Latin and requires one
to resort to pre-Classical Latin (as defined above).

Stephane Goyette.


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 04:29:26 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 23:29:26 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.232926.0500.>

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 2:58 AM

> >Patrick C. Ryan

> >suggests strongly that language began very simply, as calls and gestures...

Joat responded:

> -- this may be true, but it's utterly irrelevant to the languages under
> discussion here.  All _extant_ languages are of the same general level of
> development, whether PIE or Esperanto.

> Any more "primitive" stage of linguistic development is lost.  None of the
> languages of which we have records show any such 'simplicity'.  They are
> all about the same, at the fundamental level of serving the purposes of human
> communication.

Pat responds:

"Irrelevant" must be your favorite word. What happened to your "*in any
era*"? Have you just dropped that idea without acknowledging how
wrong-headed it is?

What "extant" languages show is totally irrelevant to what they may have
been like in the far distant past.

As far earlier stages having been "lost", prove it --- if you can.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From BMScott at stratos.net  Wed May 26 04:52:10 1999
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 00:52:10 -0400
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.005210.0400.>

Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> Robert writes:

> > Yes, I've noticed how, for example, in the history of writing
> > systems, the earliest writing systems were incredibly simple
> > logographic systems consisting of only several hundred to several
> > thousand signs and that reading and writing was so simple that it
> > was a specialized occupation that required many years of study to
> > master.

> I. J. Gelb writes: "For the primitive Indo-Europeans, Semites, or
> Amerindians the needs of writing were fulfilled in a *****simple*****
> picture or series of pictures (emphasis added)." Gelb, under whom I studied,
> spent a lifetime studying writing; and I do believe his characterization
> carries more weight than your opinions on the subject. Children --- with no
> training and only the availability of a crayon --- make the same kind of
> pictures that were the basis of early writing; and it is naif in the extreme
> to believe --- as you apparently do --- that logographs are somehow more
> complex than an alphabet.

Contra Gelb:

	[W]riting is defined as _a system of more or less permanent
	marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it
	can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention
	of the utterer_.  By this definition, writing is bound up with
	language; consequently, the widespread practice of recording
	by means of pictures (_pictograms_) of _ideas_ that are not
	couched in a specific linguistic form is excluded.  Such
	pictograms are often designated _forerunners_ of writing (e.g.
	Gelb 1952), but in fact writing systems (or _scripts_) do not
	develop from them (DeFrancis 1989).

[Peter T. Daniels in _The World's Writing Systems_, Daniels & Wm. Bright, eds.]

> The earliest writing system we know that followed pure logographs is the
> mixed writing system of Sumer.

That mixed writing system (or perhaps, in light of recent finds, the
roughly contemporary Egyptian mixed writing system) is the earliest
_writing_ system of which we have record.  Purely pictorial records that
precede these systems, not being writing, cannot sensu stricto be read.

> Robert continued:

> > Finally,
> > this gave way to the most complex system of all, the alphabet, in
> > which the tens of thousands of words in a language can be written
> > with around 30 signs and is so complicated that it takes all the
> > resources that the average 5-year-old can muster to learn it.

> Pat comments:

> Yes, actually alphabets are the most complex system of all --- how clever of
> you to recognize it! It requires analyzing a morpheme, which has meaning,
> into meaningless parts.

The Sumerians and Egyptians had already performed such analyses with
their mixed (logosyllabic) systems.  Moreover, you are confusing two
completely different (and often roughly complementary) things: the
amount of ingenuity needed to develop a system, and the ease and
simplicity of its use.

Brian M. Scott


From fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw  Wed May 26 21:01:48 1999
From: fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw (Steven Schaufele)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 14:01:48 -0700
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.140148.0700.>

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

> Languages don't "improve" over time, at least not the ones we can
> observe.  They just change.  The process is not random, but it isn't
> evolutionary.  It's more comparable to fashion.

I'm sorry, do i detect an (implied) equation here between `evolutionary
change' and `improvement'?  I believe this is an erroneous belief.  In
biology, `evolutionary change' constitutes `improvement' only in the
very limited sense that members of a community become better suited to
life in their immediate environment.  Likewise, a language changes in
order better to meet the (perceived) needs (often, indeed, in the nature
of `fashion') of the community speaking it.  If this is what you mean by
`improvement' then both biological and linguistic evolution constitute
`improvement'; if not, then neither of them do.

Best,
Steven
--
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department
Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC
(886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504     fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw
Fax: (886)(02)2881-7609
http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html

        ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!***
        ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!***


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Wed May 26 06:12:26 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 01:12:26 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.011226.0500.>

Eduard Selleslagh wrote:
> but I don't think it already happened anywhere.]

It's probly happened dozens of times.  I've read that Egyptian-Coptic
went from fusional to isolating to agglutinating and back to fusional
within a few millennia.  I'm sure there's other known examples of this.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From fabcav at adr.dk  Wed May 26 06:21:44 1999
From: fabcav at adr.dk (Fabrice Cavoto)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 08:21:44 +0200
Subject: SV: accusative and ergative languages
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.082144.0200.>

I think that what Patrick refers to is that many typologists mean that the
evolution 'ergartive to accusative' is more commoun than the reverse,
without excluding it.

As Larry Trask suggests, ergativity may well been understood like any other
feature: it can come and/or go, with or without leaving traces, like a
mode.

What typologists base their statement (above) is that many accusative
languages are said to have traces of ergativity (which they assume from an
earlier stage), while the contrary does not seem to be that commoun. Also,
those languages which have both systems productive seem to have accusative
structure in the most direct and unmarked speech, and ergative in the most
undirect/marked speech, AS IF they had 'forgotten' to change the system
there. However, this is highly speculative, since ergativity, as any other
lgge. feature, may well be used as  (part of) a distinctive parameter, were
it syntactical, prosod. or what ever, and then might concern only specific
parts of the speech. However, it seems that there is too less to see in IE:
maybe one could assume that if there once has been an ergative system in
IE, no matter how broad/exclusive it was at the very beginning, it was at
its latest stages restricted to the dichotomy 'animate vs. inanimate',
before it was totally lost.

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----

[ moderator snip ]


From CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU  Wed May 26 06:50:26 1999
From: CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU (CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 01:50:26 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity (yet again)
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.015026.0500.>

Some time ago, Jens wrote that the contrast between PIE secondary endings 3sg.
-t, 2pl. -te, as in imperfect *ebheret /= *ebherete 'he/ye carried' or
injunctive *bheret /= *bherete, dooms Pat's attempt to say that both desinences
mean 'member(s) of the tribe' or the like.  Pat's claim, I think, was that the
final -e could be explained as the result of stress accent at some stage of
pre-PIE.

After some discussion, Pat eventually replied:

> If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I. My
> point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV since
> there is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

Leo objected:

> But that's not at all what you said, Pat!  You claimed then that the
> *existence* ot the -e was of no consequence, since we could explain it as
> the product of stress accentuation.  Having been shown by several people that
> your analysis will not work, you now say that the existence of the vowel does
> matter, only its quality does not.  Your statements are not compatible.

Pat now responds:

>Leo, I simply do not understand your point. Could you spell it out a
>little more completely?

We both assume no more than one stress accent per word, don't we?  If so, the
problem is that it is at least *very* difficult to explain final _-e_ as the
result of stress accent on that syllable (and you have said that more than
once) if, at the same, *any* _e_ must be so explained (else it should vanish,
n'est-ce pas?).  And even if the augment is regarded as a prefix added later in
some languages, *bherete must then have had three syllables with stress accent,
else we should expect (in traditional terms) **_bhr.te_, with weak ("zero")
grade of the root and zero grade of the thematic vowel.  Instead, Greek
_epherete_ and Skt. _abharatha_ 'ye carried' point to e-grade of the root and
of the thematic vowel.

>I hope I have been consistent. In IE, I believe there was a morpheme
>that can be notated as [-*te/o] or [-*tV] which is the common factor
>in both these forms; in the one case, reduced by foregoing
>stress-accentuation to [-*t]. If you are relying on the Sanskrit
>injunctive for your point, surely it is not unreasonable to think that
>the vowel of the 2nd p. pl. might be been retained or analogously
>restored to maintain a differentiation with the 3rd p. sing.?

The Skt. injunctive is actually Jens' point, not mine.  But no matter.
If there's anything to what you say, analogy would have to be invoked rather to
explain the *_bhere-_ part, not the ending.  It would also have to be invoked
to explain, in general, why thematic verbs do not automatically have weak grade
of the root instead of the much more common e-grade (two stressed syllables --
tsk, tsk!).

But this gets us back to the original point: what earthly reason do you have
for claiming that 3sg. -t and 2pl. -te are originally a morpheme meaning
'member of the tribe'?  You have *said* so, and claimed that *teu-to- (better:
*te-w-to-) represents an extended form of the root; but where's the evidence?
(One might also ask why -t appears with *inanimate* subjects; were they members
too?)  If you can present no evidence, I can just as well claim that the two
items were always separate entities and had no shared meaning whatsoever.  If I
am right, the problem disappears.  I hate to use the argumentum ex auctoritate,
since it has no logical force, but my version *is* the standard one;
if you want to claim something else, it behooves you to come up with the
evidence.  (And please don't just refer us to your website; it must be short
enough to summarize in a screenful or so.)

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed May 26 09:59:53 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:59:53 +0100
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <007f01bea47a$95b53a00$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.105953.0100.>

On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[on my denial of his claim that increase in complexity is everywhere the
norm, and on my example of dedicated parasites]

> And is that parasite one-celled? Was it there at the beginning of
> life on earth?

No, and no.  I am speaking of parasites which are descended from
free-living ancestors and which have lost all the organs, structures and
functions not required in becoming specialized parasites.

Stephen Jay Gould's popular book Full House (a.k.a. Life's Grandeur) is
a splendid account of the idea that the history of life on earth is the
history of a monotonic increase in complexity.  Gould is able to show
that this view is a mirage.

> Degeneration of certain functions is always possible. Take Chinese
> as an example. The language from which it is derived did have a
> plural.

Quite possibly, but the loss of a former grammatical distinction cannot
reasonably be described as "degeneration": the term is emotive,
inaccurate and entirely out of place.

Modern English is not more "degenerate" than Old English because it has
lost so much of the earlier morphology: it is merely different.  Nor is
it more ambiguous, nor is it less complex overall: it is less complex in
some particular respects but more complex in others, and no metric
exists for weighing up overall complexity.

[on my point that modern IE languages are no better or worse than PIE
for having generally simpler inflectional morphology]

> It always gets back to "better/worse", "inferior/superior" for the
> sociologically oriented. For them, different is a pejorative. Perhaps
> ambiguity is better, quien sabe?

It wasn't me who introduced value judgements into historical change or
into typology: it was you.

And, no, ambiguity is not the point either.  Daughter languages are not
more or less ambiguous than their ancestors.  Once again, I think you
are confusing grammaticalization with expressive power.  Every language
can make all the distinctions of time its speakers want to make.
Whether a given language does, or does not, build some of those
distinctions into its grammatical system in the form of tense-contrasts
is irrelevant to expressive power.

[on my point that we have no access to the remote antecedents of human
language]

> Yes, Larry, we know this is your belief. But, although one cannot
> convince a believer, let me mention a few things for those readers
> who still have open minds:

> 1) All present languages potentially provide "data" for the
> languages of our earliest ancestors if monogenesis is accepted;

I can't see that it makes the slightest difference whether one embraces
monogenesis, rejects it, or remains agnostic on the issue.  Anyway, the
point is that modern, attested and reconstructed languages are so remote
in time from the earliest beginnings of language that they are incapable
of shedding any light on those beginnings.

> one can study IE, can one not? even though we have no attestation of
> it beyond what we can reconstruct;

I think you mean `PIE'.  Sure, we can study PIE, because we have enough
data from the daughter languages to do so.  But PIE was spoken only
something like 6000 years ago -- a tiny slice of the total time that
human beings have used language.  And we are exceptionally fortunate in
the material available to us in this case.  A very few other languages
-- such as Proto-Oto-Manguean -- have been reconstructed back to around
the same time depth.  But cases involving significantly greater time
depth -- such as the widely accepted Afro-Asiatic family -- have proved
refractory for reconstruction.

> 2) Let us not say that "polygenesis" is against common sense; let us
> rather say that polygenesis is intellectually on a par with
> _believing_ that the earth was created in six days;

Not so, I'm afraid.  The evidence at our disposal at present does not in
any way allow us to pronounce in favor of either monogenesis or
polygenesis.  Most of us, I suppose, lean toward monogenesis as the
simpler scenario, but at present we have no substantial piece of
evidence telling one way or the other.

> 3) I am not the only person who believes that languages of much
> greater antiquity than that allowed by the flawed mathematics of
> glottochronology and lexicostatistics --- linguists, not amateurs
> like myself.

Sorry; this passage has come out garbled into incomprehensibility.
I will hazard the guess that you are proposing that reconstruction is
possible much further back into the past than has so far been achieved.
True, a few linguists -- though not many -- believe this.  Maybe they're
right, but the only way they can persuade the rest of us is by
exhibiting an undeniable instance of it.  And so far that hasn't
happened.

[on my example of dual number]

> If I had meant to include "dual" as a category, the absence of which
> introduces ambiguity, might I not have written that --- just another
> straw-man argument from the master debater.

Eh?  Lacking or losing an overt plural constitutes ambiguity, while
lacking or losing an overt dual doesn't?  What is this supposed to mean?

[on my example of grammaticalized visibility in Kwakiutl]

> Yes, it makes Kakiutl more expressive.

No, it doesn't.  A speaker of English is perfectly able to express
visibility or invisibility on any occasion on which it appears to be
relevant.  A speaker of any language can do the same.  Kwakiutl merely
happens to build this information into its grammatical system, so that
it must be expressed on every occasion, whether this information is
relevant or not.  In the same way, English builds a modest
time-distinction into its grammar, so that this information must be
expressed even when strictly unnecessary, as in my example `I saw Susie
yesterday', in which the tense marking is entirely redundant.

> Now one can say in English: 'I saw Susie'. What is the equivalent
> literal translation in Mandarin?

Depends on the context.  Utterances are not made in a vacuum: they are
made in a context of what is already known or believed and of what has
already been said.  Even in English, I can hardly say `I saw Susie' if I
have no reason to believe that you are acquainted with Susie, or that
you can immediately tell which one I mean of several people called
`Susie'.  Even if I am sure that you and I both know exactly one person
called `Susie', saying `I saw Susie' would be a very odd way of starting
a conversation in most contexts.

[on my statement that English has only a single past tense]

> You may repeat that 'English has only a single past tense' until the
> Fenris wolf swallows the sun, and you will convince only yourself
> and your friends who hold it dogmatically.

This is mysterious.  English has only two tenses: the past tense and the
other one.  I know of no linguist who questions this, unless you count a
few people who use the term `tense' in an eccentric way, like some of
the Hallidayans.

Of course, in addition to its simple tense system, English has a good
deal of aspect, mood and modality built into its verbal system, or at
least into its sentence structure.  Some of these further distinctions
are expressed morphologically, far more of them lexically, and some of
the distinctions are more strongly grammaticalized than others.  The
result is decidedly elaborate and complex, as anyone knows who has tried
to teach English to foreign learners.  But English has only two tenses.
This statement is no more in doubt than the statement that English has
no grammatical gender.

[on the eleven tenses of Bamileke-Dschang]

> B-D is, in this regard, more expressive than English; and also less
> ambiguous.

Nope -- not at all.  I can say `I saw Susie this morning' or `I saw
Susie two months ago', using the same tense-form, and there is no
ambiguity.  Chinese can do the same using no tense-forms at all.  B-D
must use two different tense-forms in the two cases.  But all three are
equally expressive, and equally lacking in ambiguity.

[on PR's accusation that I am doing "feel-good sociology", whatever that
is]

> Your ignorance of sociology is probably an important component of
> why you are unable to distinguish between scientific beliefs
> justified by reasoning from data, and your "positions".

Very droll, no doubt, but completely wide of the mark.  I would like to
say that this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but it
seems to be more a case of the pot calling the igloo black.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From edsel at glo.be  Wed May 26 10:05:27 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 12:05:27 +0200
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.120527.0200.>

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Date: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 10:18 AM

> So in French, avoir, unlike Italian avere, needs pronouns in order
>to express person & number. A new complication.

> French Italian
> il ont ha
> ils ont hanno

> But then spoken French pulls a fast one on us by simplifying the
>prefix.

> <il ont> /ilo~/ > /io~/
> <ils ont> /ilzo~/ > /zo~/

> Now an auxiliary pronoun has become a bound morpheme. Another
>complication.

[Ed Selleslagh]

Actually, it is 'il a' / 'ils ont', unless you meant something I didn't get.
As far as I can see, the ever-present pronouns are not really needed to
disambiguate, in almost all cases (However: tu as/il a, same pronunciation:
t??/il?).  In early French, pronouns were *not* used : cf. Rabelais in
one of his satirical tales, citing the (supposedly archaic, i.e. to him)
inscription above the gate of the abbey Noirmoustier ('blackminster') "Fays
ce que voudras" ('Do whatever YOU  [will] want'. In equally archaic
Castilian: 'Haz lo que quisieres', with future subjunctive).

[snip]

Ed


From edsel at glo.be  Wed May 26 10:28:46 1999
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 12:28:46 +0200
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.122846.0200.>

Given the extended nature of the discussion on plosive-liquid clusters
in pre-Basque, it might be helpful for Larry and/or others to reiterate
the definition and parameters of the concept 'pre-Basque' (=Aquitanian?) and
then
address the problematic aspects of the notion 'proto-Basque'
(=reconstruction?).
If that is relevant to this list, that is.

Ed.


From brent at bermls.oau.org  Wed May 26 09:43:57 1999
From: brent at bermls.oau.org (Brent J. Ermlick)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 05:43:57 -0400
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <007d01bea52a$54a8a320$d03963c3@xpoxkjlf> from petegray at "May
 23, 99 02:12:07 pm"
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.054357.0400.>

petegray wrote:

> I must disagree with your last point here.   An ergative description of
> early PIE or pre-PIE explains various oddities in PIE.   I agree that there
> are no arguments (yet) that it must have been ergative, and none that it
> cannot have been ergative, but in light of its explanatory potential, it
> surely is at least "interesting".

OK, would you care to explain which oddities?

--
Brent J. Ermlick		Veritas liberabit uos
brent at bermls.oau.org


From jer at cphling.dk  Wed May 26 12:52:18 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 14:52:18 +0200
Subject: IE pers.pron. (dual forms)
In-Reply-To: <004201bea6fe$b83f1b00$73142399@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.145218.0200.>

On Tue, 25 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> The point was that Beekes, a trained IEist, does not feel that
> "sva'sa:rau" indicates no laryngeal.

I respect those feelings: It is a highly subjective matter whether one
takes this apparently solid counterevidence to disprove a laryngeal or
chooses the alternative of analogical levelling. Still, there is no
material demanding a laryngeal. The analysis with the laryngeal is
widespread in IE studies and is not Beekes' invention. I suspect it just
looks more "technical" than a vowel without. - It appears to matter a
great deal to you what Beekes says in the book you have, so you may look
at p. 138 and find it correctly reported that a laryngeal blocks the
working of Brugmann's Law in Indo-Iranian (Kurylowicz' discovery).

[...(Jens:)]

>> That makes the vowel of the genitive "ending" a part of the preceding
>> stem.

> Pat answers:

> Yes, that was my point.

> Jens continued:

>> If that is so, there will also appear a vowel before other endings
>> that cause the accent to move from one vowel to the next. Then why does
>> this not happen when the endings *-bhyos, *-bhis, *-su are added?

> Pat responds:

> If Beekes is to be believed, that are a number of inflectional patterns in
> IE. This makes your question a bit tricky to answer untill we know the
> circumstances. How about an example?

> Jens continued:

>> And in
>> root nouns where the stem is identical with that of a radical verb (root
>> present or root aorist), why does the vowel appear in the genitive *-os
>> (*-es), but not when verbal endings are added? These problems evaporate if
>> the stem is posited as consonant-final, and the gen. morpheme is *-os
>> (*-es).

> Pat responds:

> I am dependent on Beekes for the most current viewson IE morphology. Why do
> you not give us an example of this phenomenon since Beekes does not.

Beekes treats root nouns (189f) and root verbs (234) in a very clear
fashion. Look anywhere in the book, and you'll _never_ find the vowel you
ascribe to the root on the basis of the gen. in *-os reappearing before
_any_ other inflectional ending. Am I to give examples of something that
does not exist? You are the one making claims. You may also look at p. 162
of Beekes' book for the information that "each PIE root begins and ends in
one or two consonants".

[...]

[Pat:]

>>> if I understand Beekes correctly, OCS would not have oc{^}i but
>>> rather oc{^}e{^}. Is that incorrect?

> Jens responded:

>> Yes and no. Slavic neuter consonant stems are few in kind, and their
>> nom.-acc. dual regularly ends in -e^ which must be pure analogy with the
>> o-stems. The dual of 'eye ' _is_ oc^i (also so given by Beekes 173), along
>> with us^i 'two ears' a relic of the inherited form.

> Pat responds:

> Analogy to the rescue. What would linguists do without analogy and
> laryngeals to explain anomalies?

Tell lies.

> Perhaps you can explain to me why oc{^}i could not derive from *ok{w}-ye?

It could not fit Sanskrit /aks.i:'/ 'two eyes' if it did. But they can
_all_ come from a form in *-iH1. Since yo-stems have replaced their
vocative with -u from u-stems and the imperative has been replaced by the
reflex of the optative, I do not know of a case to show unambiguously what
does come out of PIE *-ye in OCS.

[... (Jens):]

>>>>>> u-stem *-u-y cannot give Skt. -u:.

>>> Pat asked:

>>>>> Why cannot su:nu{'}- + -y yield su:nu:{'} with compensatory lengthening?

>>> Jens responded:

>>>> There is no such rule. In one instance, a stem amu- got segmented off
>>>> by a funny analogy in the inflection of the pronoun asau 'that one'
>>>> (acc.sg.M amu-m) and was used in the formation of a pl. with /-y/, this
>>>> giving ami:, not **amu:.

>>> Pat responded:

>>> I think it is dangerous to assume that combinatory rules have acted
>>> identically at different periods, do you not?

> Jens objected:

>> Sure, but you were using completely unknown rules.

> Pat rejoinds:

> Since when is compensatory lengthening "unknown"?

I meant "completely unknown for the language concerned", which of course
is what matters. I don't believe such a compensatory lengthening rule has
ever been known for Sanskrit. If you assume -uy > -u: in Sanskrit, it is
your task to demonstrate that there is such a "rule", meaning that the
same change occurs in other cases where -u- and final -y meet. It would be
an interesting discovery if you have examples to show that (for Sanskrit,
mind you).

[...]

>>> Pat responded:

>>> Sorry, I cannot accept the idea that laryngeals still functioning in
>>> Sanskrit made yuge{'} sandhi-resistant.

>> It is a descriptive fact,

> Pat rejoinds:

> Your idea of a "fact" and mine are obviously totally different. That yuge{'}
> may be sandhi-resistant could be a fact. That the cause is your convenient
> laryngeal, is not!

But facts ought to be given explanations, and in this case it lies right
at hand. What is simpler than assuming that a neuter dual contains the
neuter dual ending? Now, in consonant stems the neuter dual in Sanskrit
ends in /-i:/. The most common (in Beekes' phonology, if I understand him
correctly, the only) source of that is a PIE sequence of i + laryngeal.
Then, if /yuge'/ is regular, and the stem is *yugo-, we are made to posit
*yugo-iH. That fully explains its sandhi-resistence, for before a vowel,
the H goes to the following syllable, leaving -oi to form a diphthong in a
syllable of their own, whence Skt. -e, even before vowel in the following
word.

[...]

Jens


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 14:53:47 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 09:53:47 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.095347.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Joat and IEists:
 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 4:06 AM

>>proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>> They're just different.  Languages change because they >do.

>> Pat, aghast: I was with you all the way until this final sentence. Is this
>> Zen?

> -- common sense, actually.  Languages don't "improve" over time, at least
> not the ones we can observe.  They just change.  The process is not random,
> but it isn't evolutionary.  It's more comparable to fashion.

Pat responds:

Yes, it is Einsteinian "common sense". Whatever one happens to believe ---
makes sense!

Actually, your comments show a jejeune understanding of "evolutionary".
Evolution does not promise "improve"ment only change that is successful in
enhancing survival.

As far as language change is concerned, there is no observable process in
this universe which is not, at least potentially, understandable, and
analyzable to terms of cause and effect.

To compare language change to changes in fashion is an abandonment of the
effort to understand how it does change; and this is not because changes in
fashion could not be similarly analyzed if someone thought it worth the
trouble.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 15:03:05 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:03:05 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.100305.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Eduard and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Eduard Selleslagh <edsel at glo.be>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 5:14 AM

> I believe that complexity of a language, whatever its definition, is roughly
> constant (except maybe at the beginning of language development, 120.000
> years or so ago)

Pat comments:

This is, of course, the time period during which I believe that ambiguity
was most prevalent.

Eduard coninued:

> [Totally apart from that, and just as a side remark, my favorite theory is
> that language(s) started as isolating (normally monosyllabic), then
> developed words for abstract ideas and words for linking them, and then
> became agglutinatng by attaching 'link words' and other words (e.g. personal
> pronouns) to 'noun/verb/... words', until the affixes fused with them and
> thus resulted in inflection. In the next stage (apart from phonetic changes)
> inflection became increasingly complex and finally desintegrated to be
> replaced by syntax, effectively resulting in an isolating language again
> (cf. Chinese; English is well on its way). After that, the cycle can start
> all over again, but I don't think it already happened anywhere.]

Pat comments:

This is a very eloquent statement of what I believe to have been the process
involved from the "first" language to modern day circumstances.

What I do think is an interesting question is why some speakers seem to be
moving from an inflecting to an isolating language while others are not (or
very slowly).

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 15:11:43 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:11:43 -0500
Subject: "syllabicity"
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.101143.0500.>

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 7:56 AM

> On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> [...]
> > Sorry I did not make myself clear. *t(V) and *tV.

Jens objected:

> Your original statement was that the very existence or non-existence of a
> vowel in the ending did not matter, and that a one-vowel system of this
> kind was in effect a no-vowel system. Now cornered, you make brackets
> matter. You have now arrived at a two-vowel system in which there are
> (V) and V opposed to each other - and to zero.

Pat responds:

Well, this seems to be a notational problem.

I, probably incorrectly, used *t(V) to attempt to indicate that a -*t was
the result of a stress-accent-motivated reduction from an earlier -*tV while
*tV showed the morpheme in its fuller form under the condition of
stress-accentuation.

How would you prefer to indicate a single morpheme, *tV, that has two
realizations: unstressed -*t and stressed -*tV?

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Wed May 26 15:24:29 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:24:29 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.102429.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Nicholas and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Nicholas Widdows <nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 7:58 AM

Nicholas concludes:

> Complexity can't have arisen from proto-human simplicity in anything
> reconstructible from Sumerian or Egyptian, because they're a scratch on the
> surface compared to the actual time depth in which this complexity has been
> with us all.

Pat responds:

My apologies in advance for claiming, at least, to essentially agree with
you up to this final point.

You have identified the crux of the matter here. I believe that Sumerian and
Egyptian have morphemes that can be identified as earlier morphemes
(monosyllabic) by inspection or by analysis; and that languages like IE,
which have principally CVC roots, can be analyzed so that the CVC roots are
recognized to be the results of compounds of CV+CV elements in an earlier
(than Nostratic) language.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From stevegus at aye.net  Wed May 26 14:48:34 1999
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steven A. Gustafson)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:48:34 -0400
Subject: Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new
 perfect?
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.104834.0400.>

petegray wrote:

> Both of these seem to me to indicate that Romance developed from Latin
> actually spoken at the very time when Classical Latin was being written.
> Like many languages, Latin had a sginficant divergence of written and spoken
> forms.    Classical Latin was really only the written form.

Or consider, what future historians would be able to deduce about what
is happening to English at the present time, if the only evidence they
had in front of them are:

--- languages developing from spoken English;
--- edited literary texts; and
--- a handful of surviving examples of graffiti.

The graffiti would likelier contain more clues to the way English is
changing than the literary texts would, since the grammar and syntax of
written English have changed little since Samuel Johnson's day.
(Johnson might think that -USA Today- was written in baby-talk, but he
probably could point to few serious errors in grammar or syntax.
Quaere: does the spread of the -USA Today- or Strunk & White prose
styles indicate that the syntax of "classical" English is becoming
unintelligible to a major segment of contemporary readers?)

This is essentially what we have when we consider Latin from our
perspective.  We are largely dependent on a handful of texts, from Cato
the Elder to Petronius Arbiter, that partly escaped the hands of
normalizing editors; and on collections of graffiti and similar (and
also unedited) sources, in order to get a glimpse of how Latin was
actually used by native speakers.  Our only other windows are the
Romance languages.

Whether these remains actually convey a reasonable sample of actual
Latin usage by native speakers can be debated endlessly.  It remains the
case that they're all we got.  To argue about whether Vulgar Latin is
the sister, daughter, or first cousin once removed of Classical Latin is
rather like wondering whether Kerouac's prose is descended from
Johnsonese.

--
Steven A. Gustafson, attorney at law
Fox & Cotner:  PHONE (812) 945 9600   FAX (812) 945 9615
http://www.foxcotner.com

Amorem semel contraxi. Consanui, et morbi immunis sum.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed May 26 16:31:52 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 11:31:52 -0500
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <374cec46.45732221@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.113152.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

It's none of those. It's a small pea, about the size of a lentil. In fact,
it looks more like a round lentil than anything else

I suppose it's either grown in Andalusia or the Canary Islands

btw: ?qu? dicen los judi/os de eso de comer a las judi/as?

>Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>>As far as I know, gandules are eaten in most of Latin America and parts of
>>Spain. You can buy gandules in the US packed by Goya, a company from Spain.

>Found it.  The botanical name for pigeon pea is Cajanus cajan,
>and Moliner gives Cajanus indicus (close enough) = guandu' or
>quinchoncho.  Guandu' :: Arbusto leguminoso. Su fruto es una
>legumbre muy sabrosa que se come guisada.  Never heard of it.  In
>Spain (Catalonia), we eat jud'ias (mongetes) [beans], guisantes
>(pe'sols) [peas], garbanzos (cigrons) [chick peas], lentejas
>(llentilles) [lentils] and habas (faves) [broad beans].  There
>are also varieties of vetch (algarrobas/guixes) etc.

	Here you confused me. I thought vetch was alfalfa. For me,
algarroba is carob --which is what you use to make "fake chocolate"

>which used to be eaten, but are now considered animal food.

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Wed May 26 16:56:32 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 11:56:32 -0500
Subject: Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?
In-Reply-To: <374c2901.42503546@mail.wxs.nl>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.115632.0500.>

>Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>[re: muga]

>>Is this word related to Spanish mojo/n, which in a dictionary means
>>"landmark or boundary stone" but in spoken Spanish means "pile of shit"

>Phonetically I don't see how there can be a connection, and
>indeed "mojo'n" is said to be derived from Latin MUTULUS (by way
>of MUTULONE).  Moliner does list the synonyms <buega>, <mogote>
>and <muga>.  But consider also <mota>,

	which means "reefer" in Mexican, SW US & Central American Spanish,
and supposedly once meant "prisoner, criminal, illegal" evidently because
the word meant supposedly "something marked, designated" --I say supposedly
because I've only heard this from Mexican-Americans

><moto> ["pre-Latin"], with
>the same basic meaning of "mound, elevation or stone marking a
>boundary".  If there's a relation, we are dealing with a
>phonologically very unstable substrate item *[bm][ou][tk]-.  Cf.
>maybe Pokorny pp. 98-102 under *b(h)(e)u- "aufblasen, schwellen".

>=======================
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl
>Amsterdam


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Wed May 26 16:57:28 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 11:57:28 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.115728.0500.>

Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>         In spoken American English final /-t/ often becomes /?/
> So can /kaen/ & can't /kaen?/ have to be distinguished by a combination of
> stress & tone
>         I can go /aykaeGO/ with rising tone on the last syllable
>         I can't go /ayKAEN?go/ with rising tone on the 2nd syllable

Yeah, something like that.  I've always perceived the difference more as
/k at n/ vs. /k&n(t)/, which is a very small difference, which is why I
often use "cannot" if there's a danger of ambiguity.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi  Wed May 26 18:34:34 1999
From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 21:34:34 +0300
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
In-Reply-To: <002701bea66c$f01a8060$c79ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.213434.0300.>

On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
>from the simple to the complex.

and then
On Tue, 25 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> If we are going to keep coming back to "complex", perhaps you would care to
> define it for us in terms of this discussion. I talked about ambiguity not
> complexity.

Thank you, Patrick.  Your posting shows more about you and your methods
than I would ever care to put in print, and you have certainly made all
my points for me.

Just one thing though:  When you say

     Gelb, under whom I studied, ...

do you mean that he was your dissertation supvervisor or principal
advisor, or that you took a course from him once, or that you saw him
around the OI on occasion, or that you studied on the second floor
while he worked on the third.

And I should answer your questions that stem from real ignorance
rather than being rhetorical.

> But if you do not care to, tell me the word you would use to distinguish
> between the semantic relationships of 'dog/cat' and 'cat/cats'.

I would use what everybody else who knows how to use a dictionary would
use.  'Dog/cat' is an example of a difference in "lexical meaning":

     lexical meaning n:  the meaning of the base (as in the word _play_)
     in a paradigm (as _plays, played, playing_).
                       Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

while 'cat/cats' is a difference in "grammatical meaning":

     grammatical meaning n:  the part of meaning that varies from one
     inflectional form to another (as from _plays_ to _played_ to
     _playing_).
                                     Ibid.

So 'dog/cat' are lexically different and 'cat/cats' are grammatically
different, but both pairs are semantically different (i.e., have
different meanings).

> What is the method of marking the plural in Chinese nominal forms -- what
> other mechanism?

There are a number.  Most commonly there are "measure words" and
"quantifiers."  Measure words are required between definite quantifiers
(numbers) and nouns, but are usually optional (but sometimes required)
after indefinite quantifiers (e.g., ji "some, a few," haoji "quite a few,"
duo "many, much," etc. [tones not indicated]).  One can also use the
quantifier one (plus measure word) to indicate the indefinite singular.
Demonstratives can be marked for singular and plural by the use of measure
words (-ge for singular, -xie for plural) and these demonstratives can be
used together with nouns to indicate the number of the noun.  Also, the
plural marker of pronouns (-men) is often used to mark the plural in nouns
referring to groups or classes of people.  Otherwise, singular and plural
are generally determined from context, but if elimination of ambiguity is
necessary, there are ways to accomplish it.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 01:59:19 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 20:59:19 -0500
Subject: Intensive Reduplication
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.205919.0500.>

Dear Peter and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 2:52 PM

> If we then limit ourselves to IE evidence, and produce cases where
> consonants are necessary rather than vowels, would that do?

> I offered a long list of possible places where laryngeals, if present, would
> have to be consonants.   Your counter-arguments so far reduce to:  "there
> are no laryngeals involved."   This is in fact not a counter-argument to the
> claim that "if there are laryngeals involved here, they must have been
> consonants, not vowels."

Pat responds:

I do not believe that is a fair characterization of my views.You produced a
list, and we discussed at some length one or two of the items on it.

In the last communication on the subject, I asked you to choose among the
remaining phenomena you attribute to consonantal laryngeals, and we would
discuss that. I believe it is counterproductive to attempt to discuss a
large number proposals simultaneously.

Actually, if I had to summarize my argument against the consonantal nature
of laryngeals in IE (except Hittite), I would say that the phenomena are
reconstructable in terms of lengthened vowels so the presumption is that
they were lengthened vowels, and the burden of proof is on those who propose
their consonantal nature *in IE*.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 04:57:48 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 23:57:48 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <WED.26.MAY.1999.235748.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Monday, May 24, 1999 5:31 PM

> Pat wrote, in response to my rude remarks about kitty litter:

>> But more seriously, yes, I would also claim that these markers had semantic
>> meaning. The IE plural morpheme -*s, I believe, derives from early *s{h}o,
>> 'clan, herd'. This means that its addition caused a compound of the form N +
>> 'clan/herd = animate group'. So the result would have been, in our
>> example, something like 'cat-group'. Now my use of "semantic" may be
>> original (not necessarily better, of course), but I claim that CAT in 'a
>> cat' and CAT in 'cats = cat-group' are *not* semantically different only
>> differently employed. Now I know you will not like this employment of
>> "semantic" so tell me what terminology you prefer to make the distinction I
>> am attempting to make between core meanings (dog/cat) and derived meanings
>> (cat/cats).

Pat  responds:

I did not consider "kitty litter" rude only humorous.

Leo continued:

> Several remarks:

> 1.  It is not clear that there actually was an "IE plural morpheme -*s",
> although there may have been.  But all that we find are morphemes meaning
> "nominative+plural", "dative+plural" etc.  It's not clear that these are
> actually divisible, as e.g. the various morphemes of agglutinating languages
> such as Turkish.  But let this one pass for now.

Pat responds:

It is also certainly not clear that they are not actually divisible.
Actually, the accusative plural is for me the strongest indication since,
accusative -*m + *-s is transformed into -*ns  (apical before an apical for
labial).

Leo continued:

> 2.  There are a few established terminologies.  The plural morpheme of
> English (we definitely do have one) can be called "bound" because it occurs
> only when connected to the "free" morpheme of a root.  It can be said to have
> "grammatical meaning", or be called a "grammatical morpheme".  There are not
> my terms; they're standard.  What's not standard is to say that plural -s
> does not have "semantic" meaning, since (in normal usage) *all* meaning is
> "semantic".

Pat responds:

I am well aware of this usage and terminology.

>>Leo commented:

>>> First, the idea that the family words contain an agent suffix, though old,
>>> is without basis.

>> Pat surpisedly responded:

>> Now, this may be a case properly characterized as "weaseling". Obviously,
>> your "without basis" relies on the qualification "AGENT". I cannot believe
>> that you would believe that the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
>> brother, etc.' *cannot* be analyzed as N/V + -*ter, suffix.  Now you may
>> wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts you
>> in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
>> suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown, employed to mark
>> nuclear family members. Not a position I would care to defend!

Leo continued:

> But you must, if you speak English.  We have several morphemes which have
> merged as -er in English but maintain separate meanings:

> 1.  Agentive -er (speak + -er).  This is borrowed in several Germanic
> languages from Latin -a:rius.

> 2.  Implement -er (bind + -er).  Perhaps one in origin with the above;
> I'm not sure.

> 3.  Comparative -er (old + -er).  This had two forms in Proto-Germanic:
> -iz- and -az-, reflecting PIE -e/os- (note the ablaut).  The two have now
> merged.  The -iz-form is responsible for the umlaut in _elder_.

> 4.  We have a homonym -or in words of Latin origin such as _creator_.
> This suffix has agentive meaning.  Despite its separate origin and
> discrete spelling, a case could be made for including it under No. 1.

> And then of course, we have -er words which do *not* contain any of the
> above, such as _cider_ and _spider_.  So what is wrong with saying that the
> element seen in _father_, _mother_, _brother_, and _daughter_ (but not
> _sister_, where the -t- is a secondary development) is different from the
> agentive suffix?

Pat responds:

According to my dictionary, spider contains agentive -*ter; and cider is not
derived from IE. If IE did have triliteral roots, you might have a point.

Correction noted with regard to 'sister'.

However, I fail to see how the points you have presented relate meaningfully
to the point I am attempting to make.

I claimed above that -*ter, the common component of 'father, mother,
brother, daughter', is not coincidental but a regular component of basic
nuclear family terminology. On the basis of words like *g{^}en6-ter-
(procreator, father), I believe it likely that it should be interpreted as
an agentive. But even if it were not agentive -*ter, it is beyond the bounds
of reasonable scepticism to suppose that its multiple attestations in family
member terminology is not analyzable as a suffix.

>> Pat responded:

>> So far as I can remember, *p6te:{'}r is the only IE root listed in Pokorny
>> that has the form *C6CV:C (if you know of another, at least, admit it is
>> rare?). That, by itself, should alert us to the suspicion that something
>> unusual is going on here.

Leo answered:

> Indeed.  And it should tell us in particular that we are not dealing with the
> agentive suffix, since the alleged verbal root is rare or impossible.  Ah,
> but as in independent, indivisible *word* there would be no problem.

Pat rejoinds:

If we cultivate myopia, perhaps. But 'daughter' seems easily interpretable
as 'milker'; 'brother' as 'bearer'; and, of course, *g{^}en6-ter,
'biological father'. On the strength of this last pattern itself, I would
think the presumption would be to interpret nuclear family member
terminology agentively. On the basis of the many derived terms from *ma:-
(nursemaid), it is rather likely that *ma:te{'}r can be understood as
'nurser'. With this apparent pattern, it would be unlikely that *p6te{'}r is
not similarly analyzable.

Pat continued:

>> Secondly, if we analyze family member terminology as consisting of Root +
>> suffix (agentive or no), *p6- is a strangely formed IE root --- in fact, it
>> cannot be a Normalstufe. *p6- is listed as a zero-grade form of *pa:-, which
>> suggests that whatever *p6- in *p6te:{'}r comes from, it probably had the
>> earlier form *pe/oH-.

Leo commented:

> Problem: Pokorny's *pa:- means 'feed; pasture'.  Add an agent suffix to that
> and you get 'shepherd', not 'father'.  And this aside from the problem of the
> weak grade of the alleged root.

Pat responds:

Well, strange that you missed na{"}hren in his definition. Which means 'to
feed (animal, child); and failed to put that together with *pap(p)a,
'father, *food* (not animal feed!). If the nuclear family terminology under
consideration designated typical functions, 'feeder' for father certainly
would not be amiss.

And frankly, I am at a loss to see any problem with a reduced grade of the
root preceding a suffix (agentive -*ter), which normally takes the
stress-accent. Am I missing something?

<snip>

Pat continued:

>> This is a novel situation, and I have proposed a novel scenario to explain
>> it; sui generis, so, of course, unprovable. I would be interested to learn
>> how you propose to explain it.

Leo responded:

> It's a problem only if you insist on the agent suffix.  Nominal items show
> an astonishing variety of ablaut grades in clearly related, otherwise
identical
> forms.

>> [ Moderator's comment:
>>   The accent in *meH_2'te:r differs from than in *pH_2te:'r, doesn't it?
>>   --rma ]

Pat interjected:
Rich, if one compares Sanskrit ma:ta{'}r and pita{'}r, I confess I cannot
see a difference of stress-accent.

Leo wrote:

> Not in PIE.  Attic Greek has a rule by which oxytones with the pattern
> CV:CV:'C switched to CV:'CV:C.  Pre-Greek must have been *ma:te:'r.  The
> non-initial accent also shows in the operation of Verner's Law in German: OE
> _faeder_, _mo:dor_ from a form with suffix accent beside _bro:thar_ from a
> form with root accent.

> BTW, Pokorny derives says that _mother_ "beruht auf dem Lallwort _ma:_",
> which makes better sense anyway.

Pat, withdrawing:

I refuse to get into another futile discussion of Lallwo{"}rter. Actually,
one of the interseting arguments for monogenesis is the intriguing
similarity of <lallen> all over the world.

<snip>

Leo coninues on a different topic:

> I don't have Larry's dictionary.  But I'll say this point blank: what he
> gives is merely a characteristic of phonemes.  Morphemes must consist of one
> or more phonemes (despite the problem of "zero allomorphs").  It is because
> of this that phonemes are the smallest units capable of *signaling* meaning.
> But they are units of *sound*.  It might be helpful if you included Larry's
> *entire* comment, for what you're citing is simply *not* a definition of a
> phoneme.  See any manual of linguistics which actually discusses the things!

Pat, for Leo's edification:

phoneme . . . n. In many theories of phonology, a fundamental (often *the*
fundamental) unit of phonological structure, an abstract *segment* which is
one of a set of such segments in the phonological system of a particular
language or speech variety, ___often defined as 'the smallest unit which can
make a difference in meaning'___.

>>> Leo continued:

>>> As for ablaut, e:o ablaut is attested for traditional lengthened grade e:
>>> and for traditional "original" e: i.e. eH.  Beside Gk. _pate:r_ 'father' we
>>> find both _phra:to:r_ and _phra:te:r_ 'member of a clan' (orig. 'brother').
>>> And for Gothic _saian_ 'sow' < *seH- we find reduplicated preterite
>>> (originally perfect) _sai-so_ < _*se-soH-_.

>> Pat responded:

>> You have left out the accents: _phra:{'}to:r_ and _phra:{'}te:r_.  Now the
>> phonological environments are apparently identical, and there is no
>> grammatical difference between the two either. So, the "Ablaut" is
>> presumably a deliberate *secondary* device to provide some *semantic*
>> differentiation. Not the best example in my opinion -- a Greek example of
>> something like vrddhi.

Leo responded:

> I have no idea whether it was a deliberate anything.  All I know is that
> short e alternates with short o, and that the two traditional kinds of long
> e: alternate with long o:.  The "lengthened grade" variety also alternates
> with short e/o; the "natural long" ones deriving from vowel + laryngeal
> alternate with traditional schwa.  Once established, it could be exploited.

Pat comments:

And "exploited" it was, to provide a nuance.

Pat continued:

>> To _sai{'}so:_: for this example to be significant to my point, you would
>> have to argue that in IE *se:i- the [e:] is *original* (not the result of
>> *e/oH) which, on the basis of "_*se-soH_", I presume you would not assert.

>> For you to make the point I think you are attempting to make, you need to
>> identify a primary IE [e:] which undergoes Ablaut in situations analogous
>> to [e/o].

Leo questioned:

> I don't follow your logic at all.  Could you explain?

Pat attempts to answer:

If I understand you correctly, you are maintaining that the earliest IE had
an [e:] which was phonemic (contrasted with [e/o]) and was not the result of
a reduction of [He] or [eH]; this is what I presume you mean by "original".

I am asking you to identify an "original" [e:], e.g. in a verbal root,
*Ce:C, which has a perfect stem *Co:C. A root for which we reconstruct *CeHC
will, of course, not qualify.

 <snip>

>> Pat differs:

>> IE "pronouns" in every significant way look and act like nouns --- with
>> the sole exception that the inflections seem to be more conservative.
> ...
>> Outside of a very few simple forms like *me, *te, *se, etc., which might
>> slip in under the rubric of nominal, simple nominal and verbal CV-roots,
>> which had wide semantic ranges, were *differentiated* by additional elements
>> at a very early time --- at least in the languages from which IE derives.
>> If we are unwilling to look beyond IE, then we must say, principally, that
>> the simplest nominal and verbal root-form is CVC.

Leo responds:

> But there you have it!  The IE pronouns neither look nor act like nouns!
> Pushing it back to Nostratic doesn't change anything there, since you're
> saying that they must have been different there too.

Pat, hopefully not patronizingly:

A pronoun is a pro-noun. It can be put in any position syntactically in
which a noun can be employed. To say that pronouns do not "act like nouns"
is completely unjustified!

They do not look like nouns in one regard: they are principally *Ce vs.
*CeC; however, that is due to their frequent enclitic employment where
brevity is recommended. They have retained an earlier form for some usages.
But, on the other hand, *me has *eme (*Hem = *CeC), for some employments
that mocks the normal nominal/verbal *CeC. Also, various particles
like -*g{^}hi created a virtual *CeC format.

In addition, there is the non-pronominal *me-, 'middle', which seems to be
essentially nominal though *Ce.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 05:28:38 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 00:28:38 -0500
Subject: Syllabicity
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.002838.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Monday, May 24, 1999 9:06 PM

R-S commented:

> The lack of contrast between [phin] and non-existent *[pin] ([p] normal in
> _spin_) shows that aspiration is not significant in English, or in other
> words, that [ph] and [p] must be assigned to the same phoneme.  Well and
> good.  Knowing this, we can tell that [phaet] and [baet] are different words.
> But this does not mean that [ph] and [b], or /p/ and /b/, actually *have*
> meaning, as some of the unfortunate wording in Larry's dictionary led Pat to
> conclude.  If they did, we'd have to say that /p-/ and /b-/were prefixes
> attached to the roots /aet/ and /in/.

Pat responds:

Sorry that my phrasing was such that obviously you and Leo thought that a
misinterpretation by me of the wording in Larry's dictionary had led to my
believing that phonemes have meaning. I do not believe that for any modern
human language.

 <snip>

R-S, naseru{"}mpfend:

> Wir vielleicht schon.  Aber doch nicht alle.  Das erfaehrt man hier doch
> staendig.

Pat, mit voller Nase:

Versta{"}nden Sie einmal was ich geschrieben habe, wa{"}ren die
Heckenschu{"}sse viel treffender.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Thu May 27 10:24:41 1999
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 11:24:41 +0100
Subject: Pre-Basque
In-Reply-To: <005d01bea762$aa70b7e0$9202703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.112441.0100.>

On Wed, 26 May 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> Given the extended nature of the discussion on plosive-liquid
> clusters in pre-Basque, it might be helpful for Larry and/or others
> to reiterate the definition and parameters of the concept
> 'pre-Basque' (=Aquitanian?) and then address the problematic aspects
> of the notion 'proto-Basque' (=reconstruction?). If that is relevant
> to this list, that is.

Sure; glad to.

I apply the name `Pre-Basque' to the earliest unrecorded stage of Basque
which can be substantially reconstructed.  This is the period when
Basque was beginning to borrow words from Latin, and we can reasonably
date it to around 2000 years BP.  For Pre-Basque we have a substantial
phonological reconstruction, which is summarized and justified in Luis
Michelena's book Fonetica Historica Vasca (first edition 1961; second
expanded edition 1977; two later "editions" are essentially just
reprints).  Morphologically, we are much less well off: we can
reconstruct various bits and pieces of earlier morphology, but we can't
in most cases assign any dates.  Lexically, we have a reasonable
understanding of the current and attested words which are most likely to
have been present in Pre-Basque.

I use the label `Pre-Basque' because I consider the use of `Pre-' to be
standard in labeling an unrecorded early form of a single language.
A few of my colleagues prefer `Proto-Basque', but I consider this term
inappropriate: `Proto-' is normally applied to the reconstructed
ancestor of a family containing two or more languages, not to the
ancestor of a single language.  Michelena himself used neither term,
preferring the noncommittal `Old Basque'.

Since Basque has no known relatives, then, there appears to be no scope
for using `Proto-' in connection with it.

The name `Aquitanian' denotes a language which, according to Roman
sources, was spoken at the time of the Roman conquest of Gaul in
southwestern Gaul, between the Garonne and the Pyrenees.  Aquitanian is
sparsely attested, in the form of about 400 personal names and 70 divine
names embedded in Latin inscriptions, almost all of them either votive
or funerary in nature.

The Romans recognized a number of distinct sub-tribes of the
Aquitanians, and, south of the Pyrenees, they recognized a number of
distinct tribes occupying the area of the historical Basque Country.
Roman sources do not comment on the languages used in this southern
region, and hardly any written material survives.  We have a tiny
handful of texts bearing clearly Aquitanian names south of the Pyrenees,
all of them in the eastern part of the region in question.  We may
therefore conclude that Aquitanian was used in Roman times in at least a
part of the modern Spanish Basque Country.  But we have no evidence at
all for Aquitanian speech in the western parts, and it remains an open
question whether Aquitanian was spoken there at the time.  The (few)
personal names surviving there from the Roman period are all IE, and the
region is characterized today by the presence of a number of place names
which are not Basque and which appear to be IE.

Now, as it happens, the Aquitanian names, which are recorded in the
Roman alphabet, are in their apparent phonology strikingly similar to
our reconstructed Pre-Basque.  (Bear in mind that Aquitanian was not
used at all in reconstructing Pre-Basque.)  If our Pre-Basque were
written in the Roman alphabet, using Latin spelling conventions, then we
would expect to see something almost identical to the Aquitanian names
-- phonologically speaking, I mean.

Moreover, a sizeable proportion of the recurrent morphs in the
Aquitanian names can be readily identified with known items in Basque.
This is true for both stems and suffixes.  On top of this, the apparent
morphological structure of the Aquitanian names is identical to what we
find in words and names in Basque during the historical period.
Finally, assuming the correctness of some of the most obvious
Aquitanian-Basque identifications, we find that the Aquitanian personal
names made frequent use of kinship terms and related words like `son'
and `child' -- exactly what we find, independently, to be the case with
the earliest Basque personal names, recorded in the early Middle Ages.

All this is sufficient to persuade almost all specialists that
Aquitanian was an ancestral form of Basque.  But note that the recorded
Aquitanian may not be quite the *direct* ancestor of modern Basque.
Aquitanian is most abundantly recorded in the north, toward the Garonne,
and attestation of the language is much sparser toward the Pyrenees,
sparser still just south of the Pyrenees, and non-existent further west.
It may therefore be the case that most of our recorded names represent a
northern variety of Aquitanian which died out not long after the Roman
conquest, and that modern Basque descends from a somewhat different, and
largely unrecorded, southern variety.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Thu May 27 13:47:39 1999
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (Patrick C. Ryan)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 08:47:39 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.084739.0500.>

Dear Brian and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Brian M. Scott <BMScott at stratos.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 11:52 PM

[ moderator snip ]

Brian wrote:

> Contra Gelb:

> [W]riting is defined as _a system of more or less permanent
> marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it
> can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention
> of the utterer_.  By this definition, writing is bound up with
> language; consequently, the widespread practice of recording
> by means of pictures (_pictograms_) of _ideas_ that are not
> couched in a specific linguistic form is excluded.  Such
> pictograms are often designated _forerunners_ of writing (e.g.
> Gelb 1952), but in fact writing systems (or _scripts_) do not
> develop from them (DeFrancis 1989).

> [Peter T. Daniels in _The World's Writing Systems_, Daniels & Wm. Bright,
> eds.]

Pat responds:

I prefer Gelb's definition.

[ moderator snip ]

Brian wrote:

> That mixed writing system (or perhaps, in light of recent finds, the
> roughly contemporary Egyptian mixed writing system) is the earliest
> _writing_ system of which we have record.  Purely pictorial records that
> precede these systems, not being writing, cannot sensu stricto be read.

Pat responds:

Using Peter's arbitrary distinction. I prefer not to.

[ moderator snip ]

>> Pat commented:

>> Yes, actually alphabets are the most complex system of all --- how clever of
>> you to recognize it! It requires analyzing a morpheme, which has meaning,
>> into meaningless parts.

Brian commented:

> The Sumerians and Egyptians had already performed such analyses with
> their mixed (logosyllabic) systems.  Moreover, you are confusing two
> completely different (and often roughly complementary) things: the
> amount of ingenuity needed to develop a system, and the ease and
> simplicity of its use.

Pat responds:

Well, I am glad that you agree with me that Egyptian was logosyllabic rather
than logoalphabetic. We are in the minority, you know.

Your last comment is, if I may coin a word, alphabetocentric. I have no
doubt that students of the e-dubba were as capable of writing sentences with
cuneiform as alphabetically-trained youngsters at an equivalent age.

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
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)


From mclasutt at brigham.net  Thu May 27 14:17:41 1999
From: mclasutt at brigham.net (Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 08:17:41 -0600
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.081741.0600.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

"Patrick C. Ryan" wrote:

> Actually, your comments show a jejeune understanding of "evolutionary".
> Evolution does not promise "improve"ment only change that is successful in
> enhancing survival.

I'm sorry, Pat, but your statement about Evolution here shows EXACTLY why
modern languages (and any other language we have any evidence of) are NOT
evolving.  Let's take the loss of the second person singular forms in Modern
English (the 'thee' and 'thou' forms).  What was "survival enhancing" about
that?  What it did was make English hugely ambiguous in terms of specifying the
number of addressees.  Enhanced survival?  How about the Great Vowel Shift?
Did it lessen the number of distinguishable vowels in English?  No (unless you
don't count diphthongs).  Did it increase or decrease ambiguity?  No.  What was
the "survival enhancing" effect?  Zero.  Were speakers of Anglo-Saxon any less
able to cope with their environment than we are?  I don't think so.  Could we
discuss nuclear physics without all the Greek, Latin, and French loanwords that
entered the language after Hastings and use just our Anglo-Saxon heritage with
compounding?  Absolutely.  The Icelanders do it just fine.  As I have asked you
dozens of times before Pat, where's your hard evidence?  You always rely on
"logic".  "Logic" says that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and
that the earth is stationary.  "Facts" proved otherwise.

John McLaughlin
Utah State University


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu May 27 17:48:40 1999
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 13:48:40 EDT
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.134840.EDT.>

>Patrick C. Ryan

>As far as language change is concerned, there is no observable process in
>this universe which is not, at least potentially, understandable,

-- that's not the issue.  You have been arguing that languages change in a
particular direction; ie., that they become more complex, less ambiguous, and
more expressive.

As has been exhaustively demonstrated by postings which you apparently do not
read, the type of linguistic change which we can observe or reconstruct does
_not_ involve languages becoming more complex, does _not_ involve languages
becoming less ambiguous, and does _not_ involve languages becoming more
expressive.

PIE is has the same overall degree of complexity, ambiguity, and expressivity
as its descendant English, 5-6000 years down the road.

With the addition of some vocabulary for items and concepts developed since
then, we could conduct this conversation in PIE without the least loss of
precision or any other functional aspect of communication.  The languages are
essentially interchangeable in that respect.

The same can be said of every language spoken by humans now, and of every
language humans have ever spoken that we have any record of, and of every
solid reconstructed language as well.  We could say exactly the same things
in Sumerian, Chinese, or Proto-Semitic.

The fact that, at some point over 50,000 years ago or 150,000 years ago, our
remote ancestors may have started out with a primitive language of grunts and
gestures is, to coin a phrase, irrelevant.  Irrelevant to any extant
language; irrelevant to PIE.

By the time any language which has left an unambiguous observable trace came
along, language had _already_ developed to the current state.


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu May 27 18:49:47 1999
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 18:49:47 GMT
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b371d0edf749@[207.120.3.54]>
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.184947.GMT.>

Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>btw: ?qui dicen los judi/os de eso de comer a las judi/as?

Same as Catalan nuns, I suppose...

>	Here you confused me. I thought vetch was alfalfa. For me,
>algarroba is carob --which is what you use to make "fake chocolate"

There's two kinds of algarroba: the small vetch (vicia sativa,
also called "algarrobilla", "alverja", "arveja", "ervilla" or
"veza") and the larger carob (ceratonia siliqua).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From maxdashu at LanMinds.Com  Thu May 27 19:02:50 1999
From: maxdashu at LanMinds.Com (Max Dashu)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 12:02:50 -0700
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.120250.0700.>

> A very few other languages
>-- such as Proto-Oto-Manguean -- have been reconstructed back to around
>the same time depth.

What is this, or rather, where was it?

Max Dashu


From fortytwo at ufl.edu  Thu May 27 20:51:36 1999
From: fortytwo at ufl.edu (Nik Taylor)
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 15:51:36 -0500
Subject: Sociological Linguistics
Message-ID: <THU.27.MAY.1999.155136.0500.>

"Brian M. Scott" wrote:
> Moreover, you are confusing two
> completely different (and often roughly complementary) things: the
> amount of ingenuity needed to develop a system, and the ease and
> simplicity of its use.

I'd say it's just a matter of definition.  Alphabets are certainly very
sophisticated, and quite complicated in origin, but very simple (and
flexible) in use, while logographic systems are very unsophisticated,
quite simple in origin (relatively speaking), but very complex in use.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-name: NikTailor


From jer at cphling.dk  Tue May 25 15:09:15 1999
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 17:09:15 +0200
Subject: Personal Pronouns
In-Reply-To: <00aa01bea485$887c3680$ab9ffad0@patrickcryan>
Message-ID: <TUE.25.MAY.1999.170915.0200.>

On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> Dear Jens and IEists:

>  ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
> Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 5:12 PM

> Jens wrote:

>> I have yet to see a really cogent argument for an IE (or pre-IE) ergative.
>> One is constantly served mere descriptions of what the system would be
>> like if it is accepted, but nothing to convince one that it _must_ be
>> accepted. I'm not saying that pre-PIE was _not_ ergative, just that we
>> cannot really know. Practically all the literature on the subject simply
>> boasts that the author knows what an ergative is and so is without
>> scholarly interest. It is as if I would claim that PIE had a definite
>> article, just because I know what that is.

> Pat responds:

> The argument of Beekes on pp. 193-4 of his book seems strong to me.

Perhaps we should stick to discussing our own ideas and not the work of
third party. Let me just say this: In the place you refer to I find the
two well-known observations, (1) neuters have no case in *-s, so
presumably that signalled a role inanimates mostly did not have, and (2)
also the gen.sg. has an /s/, and together they form a nice ergative of
the Eskimo kind. There is also the speculation that the
erg.-turned-genitive lives on in the nom. of the o-stems and thereby
constitutes that class. - The lack of a nominative marker in neuters would
indeed be well explained by their never playing the agent role in
transitive constructions, and that could in itself justify the theory
which just could be true. However, the support from the genitive
evaporates, for the two s's involved do not have identical morphophonemic
properties. And too much is now known about the thematic class to allow it
to be a post-ablaut creation. But perhaps the fundamental differences we
observe between the two morphemes (nom. *-s and gen. *-os, after the
thematic vowel *-o-s and *-e-s + -yo respectively) will some day turn out
not to matter, as I am sure the story of the thematic class does not.
Still, this is _very_ slender evidence, and it is not borne out by the
pronouns which oppose an unmarked nom. to a marked acc. (but that would be
no worse than, say, the nom. : acc. opposition in Eskimo pronouns which
differs from the ergative syntax of the nouns).

> However, there is also the typological angle. It is my impression that most
> typologists believe that nominative-type languages developed from
> ergative-type languages.

I know of a number of cases for which _the opposite_ is above suspicion -
and not of a single one demanding what you say (but that may well be due
to ignorance on my part).

[...]

Jens


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu May 20 01:40:05 1999
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 20:40:05 -0500
Subject: gandul 'lazy'
In-Reply-To: <001f01bea097$8bf13820$0a01703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <WED.19.MAY.1999.204005.0500.>

[ moderator re-formatted ]

A major problem with Spanish dictionaries [even those found in the US] is
that almost all of them only have vocabulary from Spain. Those that do have
American Spanish tend to be outdated. The meanings your dictionary gives
for gandul are not normally used or understood outside of Spain. Gandul as
"pigeon pea" is understood by Spaniards that I've met.

>From: Max W Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
>Date: Sunday, May 16, 1999 3:31 AM

>><Gandul> doesn't seem to be slang in contemporary European Spanish, nor
>>does it seem to have the meaning `pigeon pea' there. Garc?a de Diego
>>says it's from Arabic <gandur> `majo' (I haven't got Corominas DCEH
>>handy).

>>BTW <gandula> is `deck-chair' in Catalan; a nice metonymy.

>[Ed Selleslagh]

>According to my Spanish-Dutch dictionary (Van Goor's Handwoordenboek, 4th
>ed.) 'Gandul' has two meanings: 1. (familiar) lazy, etc., 2. soldier of an
>old Moorish army corps in Africa and Granada (no etymology given).  I wonder
>if 1. stems from 2. The meaning 'pigeon pea' is not mentioned.
>'Gandula' is quoted as regular Spanish for deck-chair vel sim.

>Ed.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
MUW
Columbus MS 39701
rmccalli at sunmuw1.muw.edu