Uralic and IE

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

"Glen Gordon" <glengordon01 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>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?

It's much simpler, but unfortunately the neuter was *never*
marked with *-d in nouns and adjectives.

>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.

Not sure.  There is in Greek (lynx).

>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?

Simple, but again there *are* no heteroclitic forms with *-d.
What we have is a couple of *-t's (from neuter nt-stems, I say).

I haven't got the time to check all the facts, but on p. 176 of
Beekes Comparative IE, there's an interesting table, listing the
possible PIE consonant/sonorant stems:

n.  -s  -r/n  -l/n  -n  -i  -u
mf. -s  -r    -l    -n  -i  -u  -k  -t  -nt  -m  -H1  -H2

(Where neuter l/n-stems consist of one word only, and n-stems are
mostly -mn).

There is not a shred of evidence that the neuter nom/acc. forms
should be derived from *-sd, *-rd/*-nd/*-ld, *-id or *-ud.

On the other hand, it *is* interesting to speculate about what
might have caused the heteroclitics, what happened to neuter -k,
-t, -nt, -m stems, and what the laryngeal stems are all about.

I like JER's suggestion of -n > -r (and I would add -nt > -r(t),
to explain yakrt etc., and -mn > -mn to explain the neuter
n-stems), and I like (of course) my own suggestion of -t > -H1,
-k > -H2 (which would make the feminines in -H2 (-H1?) originally
neuters, which is good).

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

[ Moderator's comment:
  I'm a little confused:  If *-t# > *-H_1# and *-k# > *-H_2#, what do you mean
  by *-t and *-k in your table above?  Or are all of those to be read as *-t-,
  *-k-, ktl.?
  --rma ]