Syllabicity

[Patrick C. Ryan]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 9:46 AM

Leo answers:

> Yes, our knowledge comes from detective work and is necessarily uncertain.
> But we must agree that it's worth doing, else we wouldn't be at it like this.
> So the distinction would seem useful only as a way of weaseling out of the
> consequences of a proper understanding of phonological principles which
> (if they are to have any validity at all) must apply to *all* languages,
> modern and ancient, attested or reconstructed.

Pat responds:

Certainly no one participating in this list could possibly disagree in a
general way with what you write. But making what you and I both seem to
believe is a possible distinction is not properly characterized as
"weaseling"; I will plead guilty to "hair-splitting", however, in this case.

Pat writes:

>> In IE, we simply do not find that CeC is a semantically different
>> morpheme from CoC. Now, as you have rightly identified, these
>> variations *do* mark grammatical distinctions. You obviously prefer to
>> define forms indicating different grammatical employments as
>> semantically different; I do not because, if we did, we would be
>> forced to say that cat / cats  are *semantically* different. I do not
>> think you would be willing to go this far, would you?

Leo responds:

> Look, if you can't find a semantic difference between _cat_ and _cats_, I
> shudder to think what your kitty-litter bill must be.  Yes, I do claim that
> many (not all) so-called "grammatical morphemes" such as plural -s have
> semantic meaning.  And you should too, if you think about it.  Below you make
> an extraordinary claim: that all verb agreement markers were originally nouns
> (there being no original pronouns).  If this were so, wouldn't these markers
> have had *exactly* the same sort of semantic meaning that you postulate for
> roots?

Pat attempts to explain:

Well, I have an animal-door so that I have no kitty-litter bill; I hope you
will not think of this as "weaseling".

But more seriously, yes, I would also claim that these markers had semantic
meaning. The IE plural morpheme -*s, I believe, derives from early *s{h}o,
'clan, herd'. This means that its addition caused a compound of the form N +
'clan/herd = animate group'. So the result would have been, in our example,
something like 'cat-group'. Now my use of "semantic" may be original (not
necessarily better, of course), but I claim that CAT in 'a cat' and CAT in
'cats = cat-group' are *not* semantically different only differently
employed. Now I know you will not like this employment of "semantic" so tell
me what terminology you prefer to make the distinction I am attempting to
make between core meanings (dog/cat) and derived meanings (cat/cats).

<snip>

Leo comments:

> Several comments:

> First, the idea that the family words contain an agent suffix, though old,
> is without basis.

Pat surpisedly responds:

Now, this may be a case properly characterized as "weaseling". Obviously,
your "without basis" relies on the qualification "AGENT". I cannot believe
that you would believe that the IE words for 'father, mother, sister,
brother, etc.' *cannot* be analyzed as N/V + -*ter, suffix.  Now you may
wish to dispute whether -*ter in these cases is *agentive* but that puts you
in the rather dubious position of arguing that IE had, at least, **two**
suffixes: -*ter, agentive, and -*ter, meaning unknown, employed to mark
nuclear family members. Not a position I would care to defend!

Leo continues:

> Second, the idea that sequences of the type VHCV (where C is a stop, not a
> resonant) were metathesized to VCHV, whence VCV:, is, to say the least,
> novel.

Pat responds:

So far as I can remember, *p6te:{'}r is the only IE root listed in Pokorny
that has the form *C6CV:C (if you know of another, at least, admit it is
rare?). That, by itself, should alert us to the suspicion that something
unusual is going on here. Secondly, if we analyze family member terminology
as consisting of Root + suffix (agentive or no), *p6- is a strangely formed
IE root --- in fact, it cannot be a Normalstufe. *p6- is listed as a
zero-grade form of *pa:-, which suggests that whatever *p6- in *p6te:{'}r
comes from, it probably had the earlier form *pe/oH-. The (I hope you will
be willing to admit) analogous *ma:te{'}r does not show zero-grade. This is
a novel situation, and I have proposed a novel scenario to explain it; sui
generis, so, of course, unprovable. I would be interested to learn how you
propose to explain it.

[ Moderator's comment:
  The accent in *meH_2'te:r differs from than in *pH_2te:'r, doesn't it?
  --rma ]

Leo continues:

> Third, the *historical origin* of the [e:] has nothing to do with its
> *synchronic* phonemic status at any given stage of PIE.  Whether it results
> from laryngeal metathesis or through the lengthening of a stressed final
> syllable of a root with no desinence (not my idea, but a good one) has
> nothing to do with whether it is an allophone of /e/.

Pat counters?:

>> If the long vowel of the nominative were original rather
>> than a result of easily understood phonological developments, it
>> *would* show up as more than -0- in, e.g. the genitive.

Leo responds:

> No one is claiming that _e:_ in _pate:r_ is original.  You, I, and Lehmann
> all agree that it was somehow secondary.

Pat summarizes:

To me, that we all admit it is "secondary", decides the issue conclusively.
IMHO, for it to be phonemic, it would have to be *primary*.

> Pat responded:

>> An /e:/ which is the result of phonological processes or morphology
>> still cannot be considered a phoneme IMHO. For me to accept the
>> phonemic status of [e:], I would need to see two roots: Ce/oC and
>> Ce:/o:C, with different meanings. And yes, I meant to write e:/o:. If
>> e: is phonemic, we should expect to see it participating in Ablaut.

Leo regrets:

> Pat, I regret to have to say so again, but you simply do not understand what
> a phoneme is.  Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of
> *meaning*.  Do study up on this.

Pat, testily (with tongue in cheek, difficult and dangerous):

I think your definition of "phoneme" is fine for you. I prefer Larry Trask's
quoted definition: "the smallest unit which can make a difference in
_meaning_ (empahsis added)". Perhaps your exasperation at my adherence to
this definition has caused you to misstate, seemingly as my position:
"Phonemes are minimal distinctive units of *sound*, not of *meaning*." I
have not stated this nor do I believe it for the languages under
discussion --- as I think you know.

Leo continues:

> As for ablaut, e:o ablaut is attested for traditional lengthened grade e:
> and for traditional "original" e: i.e. eH.  Beside Gk. _pate:r_ 'father' we
> find both _phra:to:r_ and _phra:te:r_ 'member of a clan' (orig. 'brother').
> And for Gothic _saian_ 'sow' < *seH- we find reduplicated preterite
> (originally perfect) _sai-so_ < _*se-soH-_.

Pat responds:

You have left out the accents: _phra:{'}to:r_ and _phra:{'}te:r_.  Now the
phonological environments are apparently identical, and there is no
grammatical difference between the two either. So, the "Ablaut" is
presumably a deliberate *secondary* device to provide some *semantic*
differentiation. Not the best example in my opinion -- a Greek example of
something like vrddhi.

To _sai{'}so:_: for this example to be significant to my point, you would
have to argue that in IE *se:i- the [e:] is *original* (not the result of
*e/oH) which, on the basis of "_*se-soH_", I presume you would not assert.

For you to make the point I thin you are attempting to make, you need to
identify a primary IE [e:] which undergoes Ablaut in situations analogous to
[e/o].

> [Leo asks for evidence that 3.sg.perfect -e resulted from -He, as Pat
> claimed.]

> Pat responds:

>> 1) On general principles, since inflections are grammaticalized
>> morphemes, and IE has no morphemes beginning in a vowel, any
>> inflection that manifests itself apparently as a V, should be, ab
>> origine, be presumed to be HV.

Leo complains:

> Since when is "general principle" a response to a request for evidence and
> examples?

Pat responds:

An awful lot of what we are doing here relies on "general principles", does
it not?

Leo continues:

> Isn't your claim that no IE morphemes began with a vowel an enormous thesis
> that needs in-depth analysis?  It also seems to be a thoroughly novel thesis
> as well: while others have claimed that IE *roots* could not begin with a
> vowel, I have not until now seen that claim made for *other* morphemes.

Pat responds:

In a word, yes. I have attempted to do that in many of the essays at my
website. If we restrict ourselves to IE evidence, it is not possible to make
a good case *except* on general principles because many of these vocalic
terminations are the result of /?/ + V, which, as we know, is notoriously
difficult to detect conclusively in IE (as H{1}).

Leo continues:

> Let me give you one case to consider.  What do you think of the thematic
> vowel morpheme {-e/o-} (curly brackets being the proper notation for
> morphemes), which is found in both nominal and verbal forms?  Is there *any*
> evidence for a laryngeal there, since the morpheme was never initial?

> I would also suggest that you review *carefully* the concept of the morpheme
> before answering.  Many authors insinuate, or even claim, that the morpheme
> is the minimal unit of *meaning*.  Though common, this is simply wrong.  The
> morpheme is the minimal significant unit of word formation, and hence the
> smallest unit capable of *bearing* meaning.  That's rather different.  Some
> morphemes (the thematic vowel is one such) have no obvious meaning.  (This is
> not to say that thematic and athematic verbs formed from the same root must
> therefore have the same meaning.  Rather, we must say that root + {-e/o-} may
> have a different meaning than bare root.  This is not surprising, since in
> living languages, compound verbs need not have a meaning equivalent to the
> sum of the parts: _understand_ is semanticly not "under" plus "stand".)

Pat responds:

All good points, Leo, as far as I am concerned. I will not be able to
convince you that my answer is right but I will, at least, tell you what I
think.  I believe that all IE roots of the form CVC were earlier "CV-CV. The
thematic vowel is a faint reminder of forms that were stress-accented (at
one point) CV-"CV.

Pat, previously answered:

>> 2) For whatever interest it may be, I published in Mother Tongue an
>> essay describing the differences between the person as vocalic
>> differences, each proceeded by H{1}, i.e. /?/:
>> <http:/www/geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/PERSPRO1.htm>

>> Please do not attribute all my views of 1990 to me now, however.

Leo asks reasonably:

> How are we to know what to believe and what not to?

Pat responds reasonably:

Regard it only as food for thought.

 Pat, on a new subject:

>> I do not believe that the earliest Nostratic had what we would
>> properly call pronouns. I believe all pronouns are only nouns in a
>> specialized use.

Leo acknowledges:

> Typologically, this is acceptable; certainly it seems right for Japanese.
> But the Japanese "pronoun" words look and act like nouns in every way, which
> cannot be said of the IE set.

Pat differs:

IE "pronouns" in every significant way look and act like nouns --- with the
sole exception that the inflections seem to be more conservative.

> Pat said:

>> Yes, I believe that there was a *noun*, which would have the reflex of
>> *to in IE, which meant 'tribal member', and was used in various
>> positions that we would characterize as pronominal or inflectional. We
>> even have an extended form of this *to in *teuta:-, 'people (probably
>> better 'tribe')'.

Leo comments:

> But that still doesn't answer my question about the extraordinary brevity
> of *to- (better: *te/o-, with ablaut).  Recall that if you actually accept
> Lehmann's version of /^/ as a prosodic feature that comes and goes (and
> hence not part of the root), the result is an absurdly short *nominal* root
> /t-/.  Thus *_teu-_ i.e. /tew-/ or */tw-/ looks like the bare minimum for
> anything nominal, and that's pushing it a bit.

Pat finally comments:

One of the most difficult aspects of these discussions is that we are trying
to talk meaningfully about a phenomenon which has been around many thousands
of years, and has drastically changed in several ways at several times.

I do not think I will convince you of this either but, for whatever it may
be worth, I will give you my view,

There are no roots (almost) in IE that have the form CV. This form belongs
to an age which pre-dates IE and mostly, even Nostratic. There are languages
in which simple CV roots (non-reduced from some more complex form) seem to
be attested but, for IE, we can only have an indication that a CV-root
underlies several "inflections" or roots by attempting to analyze a
commonality among them --- in part complicated because these ancient CV
roots were potentially singular or plural, and the inflections and roots
derived from them are tricky to reconcile. Without comparison with languages
outside of IE, the case simply can only be speculated.

Outside of a very few simple forms like *me, *te, *se, etc., which might
slip in under the rubric of nominal, simple nominal and verbal CV-roots,
which had wide semantic ranges, were *differentiated* by additional elements
at a very early time --- at least in the languages from which IE derives. If
we are unwilling to look beyond IE,  then we must say, principally,  that
the simplest nominal and verbal root-form is CVC.

Pat

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