Re: Indo-European question

> Date:         Sun, 17 Jun 2001 23:49:42 -0500
> From: Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
>
> On Sun, Jun 17, 2001 at 07:21:23PM -0400, Nik Taylor wrote:
> > Patrick Dunn wrote:
> > > Is there an PIE paradigm somewhere on the web, by any chance?
>
> http://www.geocities.com/indoeurop/main10.html might come in handy. (But
> then, it might not; last time I checked at it it was fairly badly designed
> and didn't have all that much grammar, but hopefully it's better now.)
I just checked. The only essay there that goes into any detail seems
to be one by Pat Ryan. The sad thing is that it only shows his attempt
to reconstruct some ergative Pre-Pre-PIE with a lot of local cases
like in Finnish, all based on his imaginary Proto-World. In short,
don't read it to get info on the actual reconstructible PIE paradigms.

It might not be a bad move to go and buy Beekes 1995 at your nearest
university bookstore. It's a textbook, so it's not prohibitively
priced --- I got mine for 12 quid at Foyle's --- but it's still very
detailed. (Pat Ryan refers to it extensively, too, but don't let that
be a point against it; I don't have the book here to check, but I
strongly suspect that he overinterprets many of Beekes' conclusions).

About all the multiple choices: There were several classes of nouns in
PIE already (i.e., we can't reconstruct a stage with only one class
--- or if we try, we get something that isn't PIE anymore). The main
divide was between thematic nominals (o-stems) and athematic ones,
where the thematics simply have different endings in some cases.

According to Beekes, the athematic nominals can then be classified by
how the ancient accent moved (or didn't move) during inflection ---
this causes different types of ablaut in both stems and endings. Each
type is then divided by the final conoid in the stem, where stops,
laryngeals, and semivowels all give different developments.

If I get time, I can try to make a short synopsis of the material
tonight.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)

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