Ablaut ad nauseum.

[Rory M Larson]

Excellent!  Thank you, Bob.  That was a very good response, and it leaves 
me some things to chew on.

At this point, I think it would be the better part of valor to either cap 
the discussion or take it off-line.  My apologies to everyone on the list 
for this overly-long wrangle!

All the best,
Rory





"Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at KU.EDU> 
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09/18/2011 06:24 PM
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Re: Ablaut ad nauseum.






> I think we accept that there existed CVCv active verb roots in 
proto-Siouan, where the lower case v represents an unaccented vowel.  We 
seem to be finding that all, or almost all, CVCv active verb roots were 
specifically CVCe.  Some of the daughter languages have secondarily 
derived forms in which the v is some other vowel than -e, as in Omaha 
ttą́ąðį, 'run'.  But in proto-Siouan, active verb roots of the form CVCv 
were in general distinguishable from each other by the initial CVC 
sequence only, and not by the final unaccented vowel.

The exact status of CVCv roots (not stems) in Proto-Siouan is not certain. 
 We used Dick Carter's database originally at the '84 workshop at CU, and 
his database apparently included all the roots he regarded as CVC from his 
dissertation.  Note that these include a lot of STATIVE verbs too.  A 
couple of them were included in the cognate sets I listed in an earlier 
post.  I'll post them again if anybody wants me to.  My main point is that 
we've learned that the selection of lexical verbs isn't random. 

We have tossed out several possible hypotheses to explain this pattern:

> 1) The unaccented final vowel was a separate phoneme that was an 
integral part of the root.  The fact that it was always or almost always 
-e is insignificant, because some vowel had to predominate.

No, it's not possible to establish the facts for integral parts of the 
ROOT except by further internal reconstruction.  But, YES, an integral 
part of the STEM AND of the LEXEME, i.e., final -e was present as part of 
the WORD in ALL of the verbs that show -e, or the regular reflex of *-e, 
in the cognate sets.  We've both cited any number of examples.  You can't 
say it "wasn't there" in proto-Siouan unless you want to claim that each 
of the languages innovated an epenthesis rule independently. 

> 2) The unaccented final vowel was the schwa'ed out reduction of any of 
the eight possible vowels due to a process that affected active verb roots 
of CVCv type.  In this model, a prior position of phonemic distinctiveness 
merged together.  CVCa, CVCe, CVCi, CVCo, CVCu, CVCaN, CVCiN and CVCuN all 
collapsed into something that we reconstruct as CVCe.

I see what you mean.  I don't know that we have evidence for that, but we 
DO have evidence that, even in proto-Siouan, active verbs could end in 
more than just -e, (and also, that CVCv stative verbs could end in 
unaccented -e).  The regularity of such sound changes would affect all 
lexemes in the language, so nouns, adverbs, etc. would also all end in -e 
if unaccented.  If you're dealing with real Lautgesetz, the phonology is 
affected across the board.  It's only found in particular grammatical or 
lexical categories if you're dealing with ANALOGY or BORROWING, i.e., so 
called "Labovian sound change".  So I'd say (2), vowel reduction, is ruled 
out.

3) The CVCe active verb roots were all underlyingly CVC, but received an 
epenthetic -e either as a requirement for the release of a final consonant 
or to fill out syllable structure.  I just don't think we can know this 
for the proto language

This is technically possible, but the phoneme /-e/ is still there in 
reconstructions of Proto-Siouan vocabulary.  Given the otherwise 
completely OPEN syllable structure, I personally wouldn't want to give up 
that important phonological generalization.  It explains accent in Dakotan 
but not in the rest of the languages. In some phonological theories, 
"prediction" of the most common vowel wouldn't be acceptable even if it 
were the only vowel in that environment. 

> 4) The final -e is a separate morpheme, like Spanish -r used to mark the 
infinitives of verbs.  In this case, the root itself of these CVC-e verbs 
is composed of CVC without the -e.

Well, not 'infinitive', but I take your meaning.  We could call it a 'stem 
formative'.  Personally, I don't think this is tenable with our present 
knowledge.  If EVERY active verb ended in -e, we could argue this, but 
many don't.  Bear in mind, though, that putative auxiliary I mentioned in 
my last post, namely *-re.  IF your -e is a morpheme that follows a 
root-final consonant, then *-re would be the allomorph that would follow 
root-final VOWELS.  You could try pursuing that hypothesis.  Personally, I 
just don't know at present whether, e.g., *riN-re would be a proto-Siouan 
STEM formed from a ROOT with the shape *riN 'be moving'.  If you believe 
-e is a stem-forming morpheme, then the next step might be to check out 
the function(s) of *-re.  I've

> I am open to hypotheses 2, 3 and 4, but I find hypothesis 1 to be 
unexplanatory.  My understanding is that Bob favors hypothesis 1 and 
rejects hypotheses 3 and 4.

It looks to me as though we have been lumping the notions ROOT, STEM and 
WORD (or LEXEME).  These are all distinct concepts.  Root is the smallest; 
word is potentially the largest.  We've generally tried to reconstruct the 
largest of these units possible, given sound change regularity, in the CSD 
database. 

Bob, is this a fair statement of what we agree on concerning this 
question, and where we differ?

Given my caveats, I think so.  I believe we just believe in different 
degrees of necessity in "interpretation" of reconstructed vocabulary, 
i.e., in languages other than Dakotan.

Bob


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