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

On Fri, 4 Jul 2003 01:02:15 -0500, Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
wrote:

>They don't mean *precisely* the same thing; the latter is a superset
>of the former.  Glottalic consonants are those articulated with a
>particular airstream mechanism, of which ejectives and implosives
>are (the) two kinds. Ejectives are articulated by making closure
>at some point of articulation and raising the secondarily closed
>glottis, thus raising the air-pressure between the closure in the
>oral tract and the glottis. This creates a click-like burst.
>Implosives are simply the lowering of the closed glottis after
>oral closure, and then release.
OK.

>> The first two look like simple reductions of the root vowels.
>
>Except that
>
>(1) this is not a phonological process, since many, even most,
>words satisfy the licensing condition but nevertheless do not
>undergo the alternation.
>(2) The quality of the ablaut vowels is predictable, as
>is their location in the root:  they always surface
>immediately before the last consonant of the root.
Ah, so then what do you think is the origin of the alternations?

>> The alternation in the third one also seems to involve the final vowel.
>
>How so? I don't follow you here.
I meant the difference between "...grix-e" and "...k'(a)l-i".  But you have
already pointed out that I was incorrect.

>> So my earlier hypothesis was confirmed?
>
>Exactly which hypothesis was this?
The hypothesis that vowels immediately before the last consonant of the
root are elided when followed by a vowel, as with the 3rd person aorist
conjugations.

>Do you mean the first and second verbs listed above, or the
>first and second persons?  If you mean why do -k'l- and -gn-
>use -i- in the aorist, but -grex- uses -e-, that is because
>each simply subcategorizes for one of the other. -k'l- and
>-gn- belong to one (sub)conjugation, and -grex- to another.
I meant why do the 1st and 2nd person aorists end in -i or -e, and the 3rd
person aorist ends in -o or -a.

>Well, I was thinking of Hebrew "hit", which I heard is intransitive,
>but a better example would be English "dine".  Clearly something is
>being dined upon, and yet it is absolutely impossible for it to take
>an NP complement, unlike "eat" and "devour".
>
>The lesson to take away from this is that there is no Platonic
>"transitivity" floating out in linguistic space. A verb is transitive
>if and only it can take a structural complement; that is all. The
>semantics and syntax of words, though they interact with one another,
>are entirely autonomous.
Ah, OK.  So transitivity/intransitivity depends mainly on semantics.
Although I would say that English "dine" was originally used as a medio-
passive, and that "dined upon (something)" was a later innovation.

- Rob