Re: Evidence for Nostratic? (was Re: Proto-Uralic?)

On Tue, 8 Jul 2003 18:12:01 +0100, Joe <joe@...> wrote:

>AFAIK, the standard reconstruction for 'foot' is 'ped-', nom. sg. 'peds'.
OK, so the earlier root (and nom. sg.) is *pád(a)-.  Add to this my
proposed genitive in *-sa and regular penultimate stress-accent, and you
get gen. sg. *pádsa or *padása.  Aside from the possibility that the
sigmatic nominative derives from a postposed animate demonstrative, is it
possible that:

1. Stress accent was abandoned, and tonal accent established.
2. Genitive suffix was reduced to -s via apocope.
3. New genitive suffix was extended anologically to root-noun 'nominative'
stems as an ergative suffix; or, if the original gen. sg. was indeed
*padsa, a new genitive was extended analogically based on genitive
adjectives (or something like that?).

Another possibility is that stress-accent lengthened the neutral vowel,
which then became /o/, and tonal accent appeared later (if at all).

- Rob