PIE e/o Ablaut

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Miguel and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 8:07 PM

> Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net> wrote:

>> At 05:44 PM 2/25/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>>> But, let us approach this from another avenue.

>>> 1) What I believe we find in the earliest IE is one vowel, /*e/, which
>>> has a conditioned variant , /*o/.

>> Many have tried to make this so.  But all attempts I have seen come up
>> short.  At the level of the final unity, there are many minimal pairs
>> that differ in /*e/ vs. /*o/.  It is simply not possible for them to have
>> been conditioned variants anymore well prior to the breakup.

>> It is possible that some pre-PIE language had such conditioned variation,
>> but any such conditioning factor had disappeared by the time we reach the
>> reconstructible time layers.  [One viable possibility is an old accent
>> system as the conditioning factor, with conditioning destroyed by a shift
>> in the accent pattern to the one reconstructed for PIE].

[MCV]
> The accent pattern had certainly something to do with zero grade
> vs. normal grade, no doubt about that.  The influence of accent
> on e-grade vs. o-grade is less transparent [quite apart from the
> fact that it makes little sense phonetically].  There are of
> course obvious cases like the pattern [stressed] -e'(:)R vs.
> [unstressed] -o(:)R in the resonant stems.

[PR]
I think we are probably dealing with two different "accents": 1)
stress-accent, which produces full- and zero-grade forms; 2) tonal accent,
which produces *e/*o variations.

[MCV]
> The e/o alternation in the thematic vowel is, one had to agree
> with Jens Rasmussen, caused by the quality of the following
> consonants (*e before voiceless/silence, *o before voiced).

[PR]
I must have been on vacation when this was discussed. Is there any kind of
consensus on this list that Jens has demonstrated this?

[MCV]
> The solution, I think, is to derive qualitative *e/*o-Ablaut from
> an earlier quantitative **a/**a:-Ablaut,

[PR]
Of course, this is a possibility. But if all /**a,**a:/ had become
/*e/*o/-Abldute, how would we ever know? Is this not pure speculation?

[MCV]
> with developments /a/ >
> /&/ > /e/ and /a:/ > /A:/ > /o(:)/.  Lengthening caused by
> ensuing voiced/lenis consonants is well-known (e.g. English).
> The transition from quantitative to qualitative distinction in
> vowels is also commonplace, in the case of /a/ with languages
> generally equally divided between long-backers (a: > o:) and
> short-backers (a > o).  Pre-PIE was a long-backer.  I don't have
> a good explanation for the poim'e:n ~ d'aimo:n phenomenon
> (stressed vowels resisted lengthening by following resonant?).
> Not all cases of e/o alternation seem to be due to secondary
> lengthening of **a, there were probably primary **a:'s as well.

[PR]
But why would they (prtimary /*a:/s) not have become /*o:/? And what would
the source of primary /*a:/ have been? I know of no evidence from PIE
indicating that lengthened grade was a morphological device.

[MCV]
> The backed *o: resulting from **a: generally lost its length
> (i.e. at a time when length was no longer phonemic), so it must
> predate "lengthened grade" and the laryngeal lengthenings.
> Brugmann's Law shows that the length was still allophonic in PII.

Pat

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