"centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE attributes]

[Stanley Friesen]

At 03:35 PM 2/22/00 -0800, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

>Benveniste's root theory is very specific:  *All* roots are of the form C1VC2,
>where the V is the apophonic *e/o vowel, and C1 and C2 have some co-
>occurrence restrictions:

Yes, and I believe he gets there by over generalization.

There are a fair number of roots for which e/o cannot be reconstructed, and
even more for which it is doubtful (finding an e- or o-grade in just one
branch of IE is not, IMHO, sufficient to securely reconstruct a PIE e/o,
given the power of analogical change).

Now, I suspect the 38% listed in the other post does include forms for
which an e/o plus laryngeal is the best reconstruction.  On the other hand,
adding in some of the forms with doubtful e/o somewhat compensates for
this.  I would not be surprised to find as many as 20% of roots as having
no reconstructible vowel except i or u.

>Benveniste's theory treats *i and *u as conditioned variants of *y and *w,
>only occurring on the surface when *e/o is not present for accentual reasons.

>The real problem is that there are occurrences of *i and *u which do not ever
>vary with *y and *w, so they must be phonemic, and the interchange is no
>longer phonetically or phonemically automatic.

Quite so.  Nor am I convinced all of these *ever* had an e/o.

[I also question Benveniste's root+enlargement concept].

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com