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

Rob Haden <magwich78@...> writes:

> On Sat, 5 Jul 2003 13:06:27 +0200, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg=20Rhiemeier?=
> <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
>
> >> >They did, but *e became *a next to *h2 and *o next to *h3.
> >>
> >> I disagree with the current laryngeal theory.  I also reject the notion
> >> that PIE's vowel system was centered on [e].
> >
> >So do I.  The non-high vowel must have been /a/, for simple typological
> >reasons (if a language has only three vowel phonemes, these are
> >always /a/, /i/ and /u/).
>
> I agree.  Furthermore, I would say that PIE /i/ and /u/ are reductions from
> earlier /y/ and /w/ in avocalic environments; i.e., /i/ and /u/ are
> syllabic /y/ and /w/.  So in all probability, the earliest PIE vowel system
> was almost monovocalic: a low-central unrounded vowel /a/ with two
> allophones, /á/ (high tone) and /à/ (low tone).
I don't believe in a monovocalic system at any point of PIE's prehistory.
While there are instances of /i/ and /u/ that arose from syllabic semivowels,
there must have been /i/ and /u/ in pre-ablaut PIE.  I also think that these
took part in ablaut, being diphthongized to /ai/ > /ei/ and /au/ > /eu/
in full grade.

> It appears that the earlier PIE declension system was based on a more or
> less regular penultimate accent system, which may have been initially
> stress-accent and then became tonal accent.
Looks like that.  There was a penultimate accent, and the accent shifts
found in PIE inflectional paradigms were caused by endigs of different
lengths.

>       I'll present some
> reconstructions based on this hypothesis (I'll denote low-tone /à/ as 'a'):
>
> kárda 'heart' gen. sg. kardása
> > kárd, kardás
> > kerd, kr.des
>
> gánwa 'knee' gen. sg. ganwása
> > gánu, ganwás
> > genu, gn.wes
>
> páda 'foot' gen. sg. padása
> > pád, padás
> > ped, p(o)des
One moment.  Only neuters had original endingless nominatives.
Masculine and feminine nouns had a nominative in *-s, which was
lost in those forms that don't have it at a rather late stage,
and I think that *-s is from a suffixed animante demonstrative *-sa.

However, the grammatical animacy of *pad- is probably secondary.

> However,
>
> ganáwa- 'know' > g(a)náu- > gno-
> g(a)naumána 'name' > gnaumán > (g)nomen
> gen. sg. gnaumanás > (g)nomn.es
This is the first time I see the PIE word for "name" reconstructed
with an initial *g.  So far I thought the initial consonant was *h3
(/x^w/).

> Or,
>
> ganáxWa- 'know' > ganáxW- > gnox- ~ gnoh-
> g(a)naxWmána 'name' > gnoxmen > nomen
> gen. sg. g(a)naxWmanás > (g)nomn.es
>
> Of course, this leaves a couple unanswered questions:
>
> 1. In 'active' root nouns, why is the nominative singular *-s but the
> genitive singular is *-os or *-es?
The genitive singular ending must have been longer.  Nom. sg.
was just *-sa, while gen. sg. was *-a-sa.  What I suspect here
is a case of suffixaufnahme, i.e. the genitive ending was *-a,
but took the case suffix of the possessum in addition to that,
as if it was an adjective.  Thus, *-a-sa was the nominative of the genitive.
The thematic noun/adjective class might also come from such genitival forms.

> 2. Where did the ablaut distinctions between verbs and nouns of the same
> root come from?  For example, Latin tego 'I cover' vs. toga '(a) cover,'
> presumably from PIE *teg-.
I don't know.

> >This is exactly my own opinion on the laryngeals!  *h1 was /h/, *h2 was /x/
> >and *h3 was /x^w/.  The labialization correlation between *h2 and *h3
> >strongly points towards a velar articulation, because we know for sure
> >that PIE had plain vs. labialized velars.
>
> Agreed.  One question though: why did (Pre-)PIE /a/ remain /a/ before /x/?
Because /x/, being velar, prevented palatalization of adjacent vowels.
I think this is quite natural.  (And /x^w/ prevented palatalization and
added rounding to the vowel, thus leading to /o/.)

> For example, hypothesized PIE root xag- 'drive' > Latin ago 'I drive.'  The
> Greek reflexes seem clearer: (Pre-)PIE /h/ > /?/, /x/ > /h/, /xW/ > /(h)o/.
Which Greek forms have /x/ > /h/?  What I know from Greek is
*h1 > e, *h2 > a, *h3 > o in initial position before a consonant,
and in forms with syllabic laryngeals.

> >> However, I think we would see more remnants of a stative paradigm in the
> >> living Uralic languages if there had been one in Proto-Uralic.
> >
> >So do I.  The existence of a stative conjugation in Proto-Uralic cannot
> >be ruled out, but one would expect more traces.  My question:
> >does the Hungarian stative conjugation show similarities to the PIE one?
> >If it does, it points to a Proto-Indo-Uralic stative conjugation.
> >If not, it is most likely a Hungarian innovation.
>
> It's not a stative conjugation in Hungarian, it's the 'indefinite
> conjugation.'  There is 1sg -Vk, 2sg -sz, 3sg -0, 1pl -Vnk, 2pl -tok, 3pl -
> nak.
These endings are used when the object is indefinite, right?
They look more like a Hungarian innovation to me than anything else.
But the possibility of it coming from a Uralic stative conjugation
cannot be ruled out: 1sg. -k might be cognate to IE stative 1sg. -h2
(PIE seems to have changed final stops into fricatives, cf. PIE pl. *-s: PU pl. *-t).

>       Selkup also has a 1sg stative/intransitive verb ending -k ~ -ng.  As
> far as I know, those are the only examples of such a stative in the Uralic
> languages.
>
> I believe that a reconstruction of a Uralic stative paradigm similar to
> that of Hungarian or Selkup is problematic.
So do I.  What do the Selkup forms look like?  Are they similar to the
Hungarian ones, and what is their meaning?

It seems as if Proto-Uralic verbs agreed to their objects only in number,
not in person, and to their subjects in person and number.

>       Both languages appear to have
> been heavily influenced by substrate languages, Turkic and other in
> Hungarian, and presumably Paleosiberian in Selkup.  Either that or the
> Magyars and Selkups originally spoke other languages and then adopted a
> Uralic language, as Ago Kunnap suggests.
It is always possible that some Uralic languages are spoken by populations
that have switched their language.  But that holds for just about any family.

> >Hittite has two conjugations, one using active endings, the other stative;
> >however, the conjugation classes no longer show any strong correlation
> >to active/stative semantics.
>
> There is evidence that certain PIE statives/mediopassives were re-
> interpreted as actives.  For example, Greek oida 'I know' (presumably
> stative of PIE *weid- 'see') and Latin sequor 'I follow' (mediopassive of
> PIE *sekW- 'see, keep in sight').
Yes.

> >It is very well possible that some thematic nouns do not derive from
> >adjectives, but from true nouns that just happened to end in *a.
> >But perhaps they are all former adjectives; a noun such as *wlkWos
> >might have been an adjective that replaced the original word
> >due to a taboo.
>
> PIE reconstruction, as it stands today, is very muddled.  I think the
> reason behind this is that PIE went through at least two changes in its
> accent system during its 'lifetime.'  There's also a very real possibility
> that some of the accepted reconstructed forms are incorrect.
Yes.  There are so many open questions and controversial issues
that one has to assume that much of what we reconstruct is wrong.

>       Take
> *wl.kWos, for example.  The accent is on the /l./, which would've arose
> only by reduction of unaccented vowels.  It seems to me that the simplest
> reconstruction is this:
>
> wálkWa-s > welkWos > wl.kWos
>
> This means that there was a change such that wel- > wl.-.  Is that
> realistic?  I can see no other plausible origin for wl.kWos.
The form *wl.kWos is indeed problematic as it requires a reduction
of an accented vowel, which seems unlikely.  I think the accent was
on the *o, and later retracted by analogy with other thematic nouns.
This might indicate that it is of different origin than most thematic forms
which might be adjectival in origin.

Jörg.

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