PIE e/o Ablaut

[proto-language]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen" <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 5:54 PM

>>> On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Pat Ryan (proto-language at email.msn.com) wrote:

<snip>

[PR]

To clarify what my understanding, wrong though it may be, of the purported
change from *e to *o is, I will quote Lehmann's description of the alleged
phenomenon, from page 110 of _Proto-Indo-European Phonology_, which I
support with some reservations:

"After various studies the conditions of change have been defined: /e'/
/e':/ [e' e': a' a':], with phonemic pitch accent, became [o' o':] when the
chief accent was shifted to another syllable, and the syllable accented
formerly received a secondary pitch accent."

Now I feel, in view of the fact that this idea was originated and defended
by an Indo-Europeanist of undoubted competence, that a dismissive question
like "When will you ever learn?" is wholly unjustified. I, like some others,
may well have incorrect ideas about some (or many) things but, as I
understand it, one of the purposes of this list is to get constructive
feedback on ideas so corrections, where appropriate, may be made.

Lehmann's position is maintained more recently (1993) in his _Theoretical
Bases of Indo-European Linguistics_, where he writes on page 131:
"Deflectyed grade is explained by loss of primary accent on a vowel and
replacement by a secondary accent. If in derivation the accent fell on an
affix rather than on the root, the root vowel under such secondary accent
changed to o, as in Greek nomo's "pasture," nomeu's "shepherd" in contrast
with the vowel of the accented root in the verb ne'mo: "I pasture".

Though Jens may assert correctly that I personally am not as familiar with
the literature as he is, I sincerely doubt whether Jens would be justified
in asserting the same for Professor Lehmann.

[JR]

> I don't think the facts are anywhere near this way: In the perfect, the
> /o/ is accented, its unaccented variant being zero;

[PR]

Perfect

As Lehmann sees it, *o' is the result of a secondary tone-accent of a
stress- and tone-accent stage that was preceded by stress-accent stage.
During the combined stress- and tone-accent stage, a hypothetical perfect 1.
p. s. *we'id-eH(2) would have become, in the plural, 1. p. p. *wid-me', with
the full- and zero-grades being the result of the stress-accent while the
tone-accents (marked by ') shifted from the root-syllable to the affix.

As is well known, the perfect "often, but not always, had reduplication".
Therefore, the easiest explanation for the *o of the attested *wo'id-eH(2)
is to assume that it is the simplification of an originally reduplicated
form: *we'-woid-eH(2) with the reduplicating syllable receriving the primary
tone-accent and root-syllable receiving a secondary tone-accent, analogous
with *de'-dork-eH(2) [Greek de'dorka].

[JR]

> the same goes for the
> intensive and the reduplicated aorist; and if the reduplicated present has
> o-vocalism (always or sometimes), for that as well (when applicable).

[PR]

In Beekes, I see no *o-vocalism in intensive reduplication (*we'r-w(e)rt-,
'to turn'; and I am not familiar with the IE reduplicated aorist (Beekes
lists only three types: stem, thematic, and sigmatic) --- could you give an
example?

As for reduplicated presents, I cannot put my finger on an example without a
final root laryngeal, which complicates the pictures. But if you have an
example of root *Ce'C- and reduplicated present: *Ce'CoC-, the same
explanation as above for the perfect could be applied.

[JR]

> unaccented variant of /e/ is also zero,

[PR]

We are, if Lehmann is correct, dealing with *two* phenomena: 1) changes
brought about by tone-accent shifts; and 2) changes brought about by
stress-accent shifts.

Without specifying exactly which you have in mind, statements become
problematical to interpret.

[JR]

> cf. Gk. ane'ra, andro's (acc.
> *H2ne'r-m, gen. *H2nr-o's); a present like *H1e's-ti, 3pl *H1s-e'nti; an
> optative like *H1s-ie'H1-t, 1pl *H1s-iH1-me'; or paradigmatic pieces like
> *'-iH2, gen. *-ye'H2-s; acc. *'-im, gen. *-e'y-s; *'-um, gen. *-e'w-s;
> ntr. *-mn, gen. *-me'n-s; aor. *dhe'H1-t, ppp *dh at 1-to'-s; 'sun' is
> *se'H2-wl, gen. *sH2-ue'n-s. In all of this, and many, many other
> examples, accented /e/ alternates with zero.

[PR]

That is exactly what we should expect as a result of the shift of
stress-accent from *e.

[JR]

> However, lengthened /e:/ does
> alternate with unaccented /o:/: nom.sg. *p at 2-te:'r as opposed to
> *swe'-so:r; Gk. lime:'n as opposed to a'kmo:n; end-stressed s-stem
> eugene:'s as opposed to root-stressed s-stem he'o:s /*a'uho:s/. Thus, if
> the compounded form of Gk. pate:'r is as in eupa'to:r, the o-timbre is not
> by virtue of the stem's being deaccented, but by its being simply
> unaccented (for whatever reason), for words that never changed their
> accent also show /o/ in case they have root-accent.

[PR]

I find the "contrast" between "deaccented" and "simply unaccented"
unconvincing based on the examples given since the data could be explained
as simply as due to the different times during which the compounds were
formed: lime:'n at a time when the affix was stress-accented; a'kmo:n at a
time when secondary tonal accent produced *o. What seems important from the
examples is that the affix -*men at one time had both the stress- and
tone-accents. Also, in the case of *swe'so:r, a component of *ser-,
'female', has been proposed (see Pokorny p. 911, under 4. *ser-).

[JR]

> The route to this /o:/
> must go via a reduction of the underlying /e/ prior to the lengthening
> induced by the nominative marker file://-s//, i.e. the /-o:-/ is nothing
> but the lengthened variant of reduced /-e-/.

[PR]

Frankly, lengthened variants of reduced vowels need a swipe of Occam's
razor.

[JR]

> In stems with underlying long
> vocalism, lengthening of /-e:-/ yielded /-o:-/, thus *pe:d- => nom.
> *po:'d-s; likewise *de:m- => *do:'m-s (exact form of nom.sg. insecure, but
> acc. can only be *do:'m); I take this to indicate that the final part of
> the superlong vowel was unaccented and so developed o-timbre, and the
> /-o:(:)-/ is the product of contraction.

[PR]

Well, this explanation does not explain Latin pe:s very well.  And the
situation of *de/e:m-/*do/o:m- is so fluid that another example would surely
be better.

[JR]

>    - There are special cases that demand special rules, thus the thematic
> vowel (stem-final vowel of all kinds of stems) which is not reduced by the
> accent, but alternates e/o depending on the phonetic nature of what
> follows (the alternation is best preserved in pronouns and verbs, but
> plainly applied originally also to nouns), actually in a very simple way:
> /e/ is the form before voiceless segments and zero, while /o/ is the form
> before old voiced segments, including the little surprise (or flaw, if you
> look at it with a hostile mind) that the nominative *-s acts like a voiced
> segment and produces *-o-s; thus, the nom. *-s is different from the *-s
> of the 2sg of the verb which has *-e-s; note that the two also differ in
> the detail that the 2sg marker does not cause lengthening and so must have
> been originally phonetically different from the nom. morpheme.

[PR]

I would gladly grant the IE *-s (2. p. sing.), which I derive from earlier
/s[h]o/ has a different origin from nominative *-s, which I derive from
earlier /so/.

But I cannot accept that voicing of a root-final obstruent determines the
quality of the root-vowel --- at least, consistently, for we have *pe/e:d-
and *de/e:m- alongside *po/o:d- and *do/o:m-.

[JR]

>    - Another special case is the "o-infix" I claim to have found in the
> causative and in thematic derivatives like Gk. tome:', po'rne:. To my very
> great surprise these forms only became amenable to normal algebra if the
> /-o-/ segment was derived from an earlier consonantal added morpheme, i.e.
> an infixed sonant which later, after the working of ablaut proper,
> developed into /o/ (or was lost, the two results being in phonetic
> complementary distribution).

[PR]

It is the firmest of my beliefs that IE had *no* infixes. An only apparent
exception is the *metathesized* -n- in certain present stems.

[JR]

> It is only in such forms that we find
> "laryngeal loss in words with o-grade", often called Saussure's rule,
> because Saussure collected a few examples of wanting laryngeal reflex and
> found their common salient feature to be "o-grade". Saussure did not offer
> any explanation of the strange fact, and as long as the o is taken to be a
> phenotype of the old _vowel_, there can be none; however, if the o is seen
> as an old consonant, the solution is obvious: laryngeals were lost where
> there were many clustering consonants, and retained where there were
> fewer. We also understand that the _unaccented_ -o- of, say, caus.
> *mon-e'ye-ti 'causes to think' was not lost: it was a consonant when the
> ablaut worked.

[PR]

A rather complicated solution when Lehmann's simple solution is at hand:
*me'n- + *e'ye- -> *mone'ye-.

[JR]

>    These facts are all well known - or based on the analysis of types of
> examples that have been in the focus of attention for a century. Their
> actual testimony is _very_ far from being "e goes to o when the accent is
> shifted away from it". When will you ever learn?

[PR]

And when will you cease patronizing condescension?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
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