PIE e/o Ablaut

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

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

>From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

>> The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
>> vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
>> on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
>> fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
>> course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
>> [unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

>[PR]

>I think we are probably dealing with two different "accents": 1)
>stress-accent, which produces full- and zero-grade forms; 2) tonal accent,
>which produces *e/*o variations.

That is often said, but it needs to be elaborated for it to make
sense.  Did (Pre-)PIE have simultaneous stress accent and tonal
accent, or did it switch from one to the other in the course of
its development?  If it switched from stress accent to pitch
accent (as suggested by zero grade everywhere and Vedic-Greek
accentuation), how did the unstressed vowels that were to become
o's by pitch accent survive the reduction caused by stress
accent? Etcetera.

>[MCV]

>> The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
>> with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
>> consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

>[PR]

>I must have been on vacation when this was discussed. Is there any kind of
>consensus on this list that Jens has demonstrated this?

I don't think there's a consensus.  I find the evidence
conclusive (one does need however, to distinguish between two
kinds of sibilant: **"s" [*-e-s] and **"z" [*-o-s]).

>[MCV]

>> with developments /a/ >
>> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
>> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
>> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
>> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
>> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
>> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
>> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
>> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
>> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
>> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.

>[PR]

>But why would they (prtimary /*a:/s) not have become /*o:/? And what would
>the source of primary /*a:/ have been? I know of no evidence from PIE
>indicating that lengthened grade was a morphological device.

Primary (etymological, non-apophonic) **a:'s gave *o (sometimes
<a:> in Indo-Iranian by Brugmann's Law) just like secondarily
lengthened **a's.  This is the origin of the PIE acrostatic
paradigms (I again agree with Jens), as opposed to the "regular"
proterodynamic (root/extension-accented) and hysterodynamic
(extension/suffix-accented) models without an original long vowel
in the root.

Lengthened grade was certainly a morphological device in PIE
(vrddhi).  JER has an alternative explanation, but I would
distinguish between cases of "old vrddhi", where the **a was
lengthened to **a: and appears as PIE *o (e.g. the
causative-iteratives in CoC-'ei-e-), and "younger vrddhi" where
the **a first developed to *e and was subsequently lengthened to
*e:.

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