Uralic and IE

[Glen Gordon]

Let's try this again. This isn't a good week for sending messages for
me. Hopefully this one will get through to yous...

ME (GLEN):
  See? Animate, inanimate AND heteroclitic can be explained in one big
  swoop.

MIGUEL:
  But you seem to imply that inanimate nouns (always?) had an
  ending -d/-t, which I cannot agree with.  The *-d is pronominal
  only.  We do have cases like Skt. yakrt "liver" (as well as asrk
  "blood", with unexplained -k), and generalized Greek -at- < *-nt-
  (onoma, onomatos etc.).  But except for the n and n/r stems, all
  other neuters have a zero ending [or *-m in the o-stems].

"We may have this, we may have that but aside from even more evidence on
your side..." - this is basically what you're saying. It's much simpler
to say that the neuter was generally marked with *-d unless the word
already ended with another declensional suffix, isn't it? The *-d suffix
IS being used for things other than pronouns later in IE languages so
there's nothing to make us think that IE itself didn't use *-d similarly
and more extensively, especially if it derives from an affixed *to
meaning simply "this, that (inanimate)". It's simply perfect for an
all-purpose inanimate marker. There is loss of *-d after
consonant-ending roots (hence the heteroclitic) so of course there are a
bunch of "zero-ending" neuter nouns - half of them are from a *-d that
disappeared and the other half of the neuters are formed on OTHER
declensional suffixes that didn't mix with *-d.

[ Moderator's query:
  What happened to your proposed *-d ending in neuter i- and u-stems?
  --rma ]

MIGUEL:
  Surely the neuter nom.acc. was unmarked.

In Pre-IE, it was.  It can be seen that there was originally only a
contrast of animate/inanimate made in the accusative where animate took
*-m and inanimate took *-ZERO. When the nominative *-s and
nomino-accusative *-d came along, it became a different story. The
consistent use of *-s and *-d forms in the nominative (whether just in
the pronominal forms or not) MUST be a recent innovation if they are to
be linked with Etruscan grammar. Etruscan has no *-d, period.

[ Moderator's query:
  Where did they come from?  Endings do not just jump up out of the grass of
  the steppes, do they?
  --rma ]

MIGUEL:
  What happened was that there were neuter stems in -nt (and -nk?), as
  well as plain -n (and -r?).  Just like we have m/f stems in -n(s),
  -nt(s) and -r(s). In absolute auslaut (because of -0 ending), these
  developed to -r (-n, -r) and -:r (-nt, -nk) and tended to merge into
  a single r/n heteroclitic paradigm.  One might object that there
  *are* a number of neuter n-stems, but most of them end in -m(e)n,
  where the preceding nasal consonant may have prevented the regular
  development of -n > -r.

Hypotheses built on hypotheses. There is no **-(n)k in IE. Endings of
the sort *-n(s), *-nt(s) and *-r(s) all end in *-s (very badly done).
Similarly, the heteroclitic and pronominal forms with *-d derive from
*-d. Simple, no? We don't have to posit **-nk and other forms that
aren't there. Everything can be generalised into a few simple cases.

Finally, there ARE forms in *-mer and *-wer (thus deriving from **-men-d
and **-wen-d). Let me ask you something: Why do we find endings like
-ant-s in Hittite? Doesn't it look like *-nt + nominative *-s to you?
Don't endings like *-m(e)n look kind of like *-m-(e)nt-d? See? More
wonderful simplification - *-men and forms with -ants are the same
suffix *-nt-[s/d].

MIGUEL:
  While some traces of *-t have remained, we have no trace at all
  of *-k and *-p in PIE.  It is tempting to reason by analogy and
  hypothesize that if **-t > *-H1, then **-p > *-H3 and **-k >
  *-H2.  In the case of *k ~ *H2 we have just a few interesting
  clues, such as Grk. gune:, pl. gunaikes "women".

ME (GLEN):
  I don't find it so tempting. I think there's a very good reason why
  *-k and *-p don't exist in IE. Simply put, words either end with
  pronominal endings of some kind or with a declensional suffix - none
  of these possible suffixes have *-p or *-k and exposed roots are
  non-existant as well.

MIGUEL:
  The neuter nom/acc (and sometimes the loc. of all nouns) had an
  exposed root.  Furthermore, isn't it rather odd [not that that
  proves anything, but still...] that neither *-k nor *-p (nor *-t,
  verbal 3rd.p.sg. secondary and Hittite instr. excepted) occur at
  all in grammatical endings, while *-H1 and *-H2 abound?

You're right - it proves nothing. Mandarin has no *-p, *-k, *-t, *-m,
*-l or *-st. So? I told you the reason. All IE stems end with a suffix
of some kind and take from a limited number of endings which happen to
not have *-k or *-p. It's not the end of the world.

ME (GLEN):
  If you're saying that IE *-t > CS *-H1 then you have to say that IE
  *-k CS *-H2 and IE *-p > CS *-H3. This means that we should see
  Anatolian languages with a cornucopia of *-k's and *-p's. Is this
  what we find?

MIGUEL:
  No.  We must simply assume that the loss of **-p was earlier and
  more complete than the loss of **-k, and the loss of **-k was
  earlier and more complete than the loss of **-t.

What did you say? "No"? Thank you, that'll be all, your honor.

[ Moderator's comment:
  Nonsense.  One postulated development does not require any others.  Thus, the
  fact that we do not find the developments you postulate simply means that no
  such developments took place; the lack of such developments has no bearing on
  the existence of others which *did* take place.
  --rma ]

--------------------------------------------
Glen Gordon
glengordon01 at hotmail.com