Syllabicity (yet again)

[CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU]

Some time ago, Jens wrote that the contrast between PIE secondary endings 3sg.
-t, 2pl. -te, as in imperfect *ebheret /= *ebherete 'he/ye carried' or
injunctive *bheret /= *bherete, dooms Pat's attempt to say that both desinences
mean 'member(s) of the tribe' or the like.  Pat's claim, I think, was that the
final -e could be explained as the result of stress accent at some stage of
pre-PIE.

After some discussion, Pat eventually replied:

> If anyone has disputed that the *-e makes a difference, it is not I. My
> point was, that you could just as easily notate the form as -*tV since
> there is no contrasting -**ta or **-to.

Leo objected:

> But that's not at all what you said, Pat!  You claimed then that the
> *existence* ot the -e was of no consequence, since we could explain it as
> the product of stress accentuation.  Having been shown by several people that
> your analysis will not work, you now say that the existence of the vowel does
> matter, only its quality does not.  Your statements are not compatible.

Pat now responds:

>Leo, I simply do not understand your point. Could you spell it out a
>little more completely?

We both assume no more than one stress accent per word, don't we?  If so, the
problem is that it is at least *very* difficult to explain final _-e_ as the
result of stress accent on that syllable (and you have said that more than
once) if, at the same, *any* _e_ must be so explained (else it should vanish,
n'est-ce pas?).  And even if the augment is regarded as a prefix added later in
some languages, *bherete must then have had three syllables with stress accent,
else we should expect (in traditional terms) **_bhr.te_, with weak ("zero")
grade of the root and zero grade of the thematic vowel.  Instead, Greek
_epherete_ and Skt. _abharatha_ 'ye carried' point to e-grade of the root and
of the thematic vowel.

>I hope I have been consistent. In IE, I believe there was a morpheme
>that can be notated as [-*te/o] or [-*tV] which is the common factor
>in both these forms; in the one case, reduced by foregoing
>stress-accentuation to [-*t]. If you are relying on the Sanskrit
>injunctive for your point, surely it is not unreasonable to think that
>the vowel of the 2nd p. pl. might be been retained or analogously
>restored to maintain a differentiation with the 3rd p. sing.?

The Skt. injunctive is actually Jens' point, not mine.  But no matter.
If there's anything to what you say, analogy would have to be invoked rather to
explain the *_bhere-_ part, not the ending.  It would also have to be invoked
to explain, in general, why thematic verbs do not automatically have weak grade
of the root instead of the much more common e-grade (two stressed syllables --
tsk, tsk!).

But this gets us back to the original point: what earthly reason do you have
for claiming that 3sg. -t and 2pl. -te are originally a morpheme meaning
'member of the tribe'?  You have *said* so, and claimed that *teu-to- (better:
*te-w-to-) represents an extended form of the root; but where's the evidence?
(One might also ask why -t appears with *inanimate* subjects; were they members
too?)  If you can present no evidence, I can just as well claim that the two
items were always separate entities and had no shared meaning whatsoever.  If I
am right, the problem disappears.  I hate to use the argumentum ex auctoritate,
since it has no logical force, but my version *is* the standard one;
if you want to claim something else, it behooves you to come up with the
evidence.  (And please don't just refer us to your website; it must be short
enough to summarize in a screenful or so.)

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis