conditioning of Uto-Aztecan *p in Nahuatl

[Paolo Ramat]

Nathan Hill  wrote:

  “Dear Historical Linguists. [...]My neogrammarian heart tells me that sound changes are aware of phonetic environments only and not part of speech categories.”
  I have high respect for the Neogrammarians, but the statement above is a very strong one. It amounts to separate completely phonetics from grammar and syntax (or morphoyntax). If, say, a derivational suffix comes to modify the final part of a verbal root we can have a new basis in the word formation rule. For instance OGk. Nom. gàla “milk”, Genit. gàlak(t)os observes the rule that no OGk. word can end by a  stop consonant. This induces the morphologically bound sound change –k > 0 in the Nomin. A rule that does not apply to words such as galaktìzo “I’m breast-feeded”, galaktokòmos “shepherd” etc. .On its turn gala-, and not galak-,can be the basis form for compounds such as galathenòs “suckling child”.

Best.

Paolo

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Prof.Paolo Ramat
Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS )
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From: Alexander Vovin 
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2012 8:49 AM
To: Nathan Hill 
Cc: histling-l 
Subject: Re: [Histling-l] conditioning of Uto-Aztecan *p in Nahuatl

Dear Nathan,

Very roughly speaking, but nouns and verbs behave very differently in this respect in Japanese. Even within the verbal paradigm, older grammaticalizations are different from more recent, although they can be traced to very similar phonological forms, e,g., the paradigmaic form of the verb yom- 'to count/read'

                                         Old Japanese        Late Middle Japanese                         Modern Japanese
perfective                          yo2mi1taru            yomitaru                                              yoNda
desiderative                      _____                    yomitai                                                yomitai

Desiderative is much younger form than the perfective, and although both are essentially identical phonologically. they show two very different ref;exes in MJ.

Hope this helps,

Sasha



On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 12:34 AM, Nathan Hill <nathanwhill at gmail.com> wrote:

  Dear Historical Linguists,

  In a paper about Tibetan I am criticizing someone for proposing that
  the same segment became one thing in nouns and another thing in verbs.
  My neogrammarian heart tells me that sound changes are aware of
  phonetic environments only and not part of speech categories. Such a
  thing is thus only possible if verbs are phonetically different than
  nouns in a systematic way (which is of course possible).

  Anyhow, a reviewer tells me that proto-Uto-Aztecan initial *p becomes
  zero in Nahuatl nouns but is preserved in verbs and cites the pair
  (.-tl "water" vs -p.ca "to wash"). The reviewer does not cite a
  discussion of this and I am totally at sea in the Uto-Aztecan
  literature. But, if this is an uncontroversial part of Uto-Aztecan
  historical phonology surely it has given rise to the same
  methodological concerns that I raise (sound change should apply
  blindly).

  I would be very grateful for any discussion of this or advice on
  treatments of this question in literature.

  with gratitude,
  Nathan
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  Histling-l mailing list
  Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
  https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l




-- 

Alexander Vovin
Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA
========================
iustitiam magni facite, infirmos protegite



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