Re: Indo-European question

> Date:         Thu, 21 Jun 2001 14:23:44 -0500
> From: Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
>
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2001 at 10:37:35PM -0000, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> > Beekes assumes that the marker of this ergative case was zero, but
> > doesn't explain (anywhere I can find) why the vowel gets
> > lengthened.
>
> Ah, fascinating stuff. I know a little about conventional PIE theories, and
> next to nothing about the ergative or active theories. Is there anything of
> Beekes on the web?
I'm trying to write up a short summary of the material in Beekes ---
but it doesn't want to stay short.

> >From the little I've read, nominative singulars which once had **-s but then
> dropped it experienced vowel lengthening to compensate for the lost *-s.
> E.g.:
>
> **ph_2ters "father" (nom.) > *ph_2te:r (perhaps via **ph_2terr)
>
> where ** means a form which has been reconstructed based on inference from
> other forms present in the same level of development the language, as
> opposed to *, meaning a form reconstructed from later forms
>
> So anyway, is *ph_2te:r the kind of lenghtened grade word you're talking
> about?
It is --- though Beekes' explanation (which I've now found) is
different: The nominative -s, where found, is a later development, but
there's a general sound law that lengthens the last vowel in a word if
followed by a sonorant other than m (i.e., i, u, l, r, n). And since
many athematic noun stems end in sonorants, we see this effect in the
nominative where the ending (is zero or) has no vowel.

I don't have the book right here, so detail will have to wait.

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

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